Chapter Text
“You said you wanted me to have it so I'll do what I want with it!”
“My research!”
Stan was surprised at just how hard Ford hit him. His twin had always been the brains to Stan’s brawn, a skinny little nerd who had taken to their boxing lessons like a duck to tar. Something had clearly changed in the years since they'd last seen each other; there was some solid muscle on Ford's frame now and before Stan knew it he was hitting the floor with a thud that knocked the air from his lungs in a rush.
Then again, a lot of things had changed since then.
He heard the journal hit the ground somewhere nearby and Ford was immediately scrambling after it, breathing harder than the exertion really merited. Not thinking, not caring about anything except that Ford didn’t get what he wanted, not now, not this time, Stan tripped him and lunged for the journal himself.
“Stanley, give it back!”
Stan turned, back against the door, clutching the journal tight to his chest and expecting to see Ford come charging after him. But his brother only made it halfway up off the floor before collapsing back onto his hands and knees. He was shaking all over, sweating and panting like he’d just run a marathon.
“Give it back,” he whispered. “You don’t understand…”
Stan gripped the journal harder, eyes flicking back and forth between it and Ford, and part of him was roaring to destroy the book then and there while Ford couldn’t stop him, but the edges of his anger were being cooled by confusion. What was going on? Was there something wrong with Ford? Had he called Stan here because he was sick or hurt?
He didn’t know what to do.
“Please,” Ford said, and then he slumped all the way to the ground and lay still.
Stan found himself shaking as well as the sudden burst of adrenaline started to drain away. He hadn’t eaten much in the past few days-it had taken every last bit of money he had to pay for gas from New Mexico to Oregon- and he could feel it very abruptly starting to catch up with him.
He wanted to run to Ford and ask him what was wrong, make sure he was okay. He wanted to take the damn book and leave and never look back. He wanted to wake Ford up and make him watch Stan burn the book in front of him. He wanted to shout, he wanted to hit something, he wanted to cry. He wanted so many things that he couldn’t do anything at all, only stand there, muscles locked tight, paralyzed and overwhelmed, for what felt like an aching eternity though it could only really have been a few seconds.
In the end he threw the book away, hard, heard it hit something with a satisfying crack, and stumbled over to Ford. His brother was breathing shallowly, and under the sweat and stubble his face was too pale. Stan shook him gingerly by the shoulder.
“Hey. Hey, uh, bro, wake up.”
Ford moaned and shifted slightly, but didn’t open his eyes.
Stan located a wrist and felt for Ford’s pulse, since that seemed like the kind of thing you did in this situation. It felt faster than a healthy pulse probably should, not that he would really know, but more immediately concerning was how hot the skin was.
So Ford was definitely sick, at least enough to have a fever. Stan felt like this should mean something to him, but all he got was a bare handful of half-remembered sayings and childhood recollections of illness that swirled around his head for a moment before dissipating, leaving him more confused than ever. He didn’t know how to take care of someone who was sick. When he got sick there was rarely anything more he could afford to do than power through it.
So now what?
Leave him, hissed something welling up from the back of his head, hot and bitter with old poisons. Leave him here, that’s what he wanted, isn’t it? He didn’t want to see you, he doesn’t want you in his life, he only wanted you to do something for him, so go do it and leave him here like he wants.
It’s not like you’ll be able to help him, even if he wanted it. When have you ever accomplished anything good for anyone? If you stay here you’ll just ruin things all over again. Take the book and go. It’s best for everyone.
He knew that voice. It was the same one that had roared in his ears about how Ford was going to go away to college and leave him alone forever and ever, until he was angry and desperate enough to destroy something; it whispered to him late at night whenever he was knee-deep in the latest problem and struggling to see why he should bother to keep going at all; it hissed at him every time he picked up a payphone or put a pen to postcard, exhausted and lonely and aching to hear just a few words from family, prodded and tormented him until he surrendered and gave up the attempt.
Leave him. Leave him like he left you. You’re never going to make up with him, so what’s the point? He still hates you and he always will. He told you as much himself.
“Sail as far away as you can-”
“I’m selfish? I’m selfish? Stanley, how can you say that after costing me my dream school-”
“I’m giving you the chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life-”
It’s not like he’s even wrong. Whatever it is probably would be the first worthwhile thing you’ve ever done. Look at him, look at all he’s managed to accomplish without you around to weigh him down. Meanwhile it’s been ten years and what have you got to show for it?
Leave him.
Leave him, leave your brother, he’s sick, he might be dying, you don’t know, and what are you going to do about it? Leave him to lay here on the cold floor because he won’t thank you for sticking around-
Stan crouched there in the cold blue machine light, holding his brother’s hand and shivering and waiting for the voice to run its course; and then, because in the end he knew there was only ever one thing he was going to do, he hefted Ford up off the floor and began the long, slow process of getting him back upstairs.
Stan had carried his brother before. When they were teens, and he was starting to get some muscle and heft from boxing while Ford steadfastly remained as weedy as ever, Stan had delighted in picking his twin up and running around the house with him, to win arguments or make Ford take a break from studying or just because he could. Ford had always protested, but rarely as vehemently as he could have. Then there were times that Stan had carried him because Ford had needed help: when he'd twisted his ankle in gym class, or when he had come down with the flu and tried to go to school anyway only to pass out halfway through math class.
Carrying Ford had been a regular part of life, once upon a time. But, like so many things, it was no longer as easy as it had been.
Stan was hardly in boxing shape anymore, and he had been running on nothing but caffeine and nerves for too long, and Ford might still have been skinny and sickly but he was heavy enough to knock Stan down, which meant he was heavy enough to be a real pain to get up off the floor. For a moment, feeling his knees shake as he lifted his twin, Stan wasn’t sure they would be going anywhere.
But once he had Ford mostly upright with an arm over Stan’s shoulder, things got easier. Ford didn't seem to wake up entirely, but he shuffled his feet along and took a bit of the weight off Stan. And at least there was an elevator, so they didn't have to walk all the way up. (Which, who had an elevator in their basement, anyway? Then again, who had a giant scary doomsday portal thing in their basement?)
Ford muttered and mumbled occasionally as they walked, and once, when Stan bent down awkwardly to pick up that stupid book, Ford jerked his head up and cried, “No, no, can't, I can't-” But Stan never found out what it was Ford couldn't; he subsided and slumped back down again, his head lolling against Stan’s shoulder.
Once they finally made it out of the basement, Stan was faced with a new dilemma: where exactly to putFord. The house was an absolute wreck, and he had no idea where to find a bed or couch or anything under all the mess. He tried asking Ford, but only got a faint “hnnnngh” sound in response.
Thankfully, there turned out to be a bedroom near the top of the stairs that seemed to have escaped most of the carnage. It was the barest spot in the house that Stan had seen so far, with a low couch, a desk, and little else. He lowered Ford onto the couch carefully and stood there for a moment, massaging his back and looking down at his brother.
He'd thought Ford had looked bad as soon as he'd opened the door-well, alright, as soon as he'd put the crossbow down, that had been fairly distracting- but in this first still, quiet moment, he could see that Ford was in even worse shape than he’d thought. His face was pale and ashen and too thin, and he had the heaviest shadows under his eyes that Stan had ever seen. His hair was in disarray, there was untidy stubble across his jaw, and he looked like he hadn't changed his clothes in several days at least. Not that Stan could really comment on hygiene much, but it wasn't like Ford to let things go like that.
Then again, it had been ten years. Did he really know what Ford was like anymore? What had happened to his brother since then?
Hell, what had happened to him?
Stan sighed and, not knowing what else to do, pulled off Ford’s shoes and laid them by the bed. As an afterthought he also took off his tie (why was Ford wearing a tie while he was alone in his own house anyway?) and put it on the bedside table with his glasses. He didn’t even bother trying to remove the trenchcoat, which Ford was still clutching around him like a security blanket.
Not that Stan could blame him. It was cold in the house. Did Ford not have the heat on? No wonder he’d gotten sick. And if Stan was cold, Ford had to be feeling even worse with that fever. There was one small, inadequate-looking blanket on the back of the couch, and nothing else useful in the room. It was getting dark outside, and the snow was falling even heavier than it was when Stan arrived. He’d had a difficult enough time getting to Ford’s house at all; he’d even parked the Stanleymobile back at the main road and walked the rest of the way, not trusting the look of that winding, uncleared drive. Getting away from Ford’s house was currently looking more or less impossible, but that was, apparently, exactly what his brother wanted.
“You just gotta make everything difficult, don’t you,” Stan muttered, throwing the lone blanket on top of Ford. After a moment’s thought, he shucked off his own jacket and added it over the top, then went off to see if he could find anything else.
Ford’s house was weird. Every surface was covered in clutter, most of which looked like it should be in a museum: strange scientific instruments, specimen jars with unsettling things floating in them, skulls and bones that didn’t belong to any animals he knew of, weird artifacts right out of a pulp adventure comic, and everywhere there were piles of paper like snowdrifts covering the furniture. Stan shifted through a few of them, hoping to find some clue to whatever strange situation Ford had gotten himself into, but none of them made the slightest bit of sense. Some were covered in equations or diagrams that made his head spin, some seemed to be written in some kind of code, and a disturbing few were just maddened scribbles, incomprehensible rants smeared with ink and graphite and occasionally...blood?
“Right,” Stan said out loud to the looming silence, putting down a paper that just had HE’S WATCHING written all over it in uneven letters. “I see what’s happened here. You’ve gone and landed yourself in the middle of a horror movie. Why am I not surprised?”
In one room-some kind of study, probably, judging by the way it seemed to be the eye of the paper hurricane-he found a space heater sitting in a corner. It was an innocuous enough object in the midst of all the craziness, aside from being a bit too close to an awful lot of very flammable paper, but Stan found himself stopping to consider it. How could his brother afford this house and all that expensive-looking equipment, but not afford to turn the heat on? Maybe it was just some strange quirk of frugality, but it struck him as odd all the same. He unplugged it and put it aside to pick up later; at least he could make Ford’s room a little warmer.
He also found a surprising amount of weapons-along with the crossbow Ford had greeted him with, there were some knives scattered across a desk, another one that was actually buried in the wall, a sword, some kind of sci-fi blaster looking thing, and, staring coldly up at him from an opened drawer, a pistol.
Stan stared at it for a long moment. It wasn’t like he was exactly unfamiliar with firearms, but this one, laying there unloaded and harmless, somehow felt more ominous and threatening than any other gun he had ever seen, including the ones that had been pointed directly at him. The other weapons he could maybe write off as being some nerd thing, for decoration or study rather than use, but this... What did Ford need with a gun? What did his shy, anxious, nerdy brother, who would let himself get punched and picked on and taunted to tears rather than ever throwing a blow himself, who would prefer doing a detailed drawing of a bug to swatting it, who had always needed Stan around to look after him and protect him...what was he doing with this?
He’s living out here in the sticks, Stan told himself, shoving the drawer closed. It’s probably just for protection. In case of...bears, or...hillbillies, or...whatever. Who knows what’s out there. He probably barely even knows how to use it.
Sure.
He did finally find a bedroom, or at least a room that contained a bed, albeit not one that looked like it had been used in some time, judging by the pile of books all over it. Deciding it would be easier to make Ford comfortable in the downstairs room than to move him again, he extricated the blankets and pillows and headed back downstairs. On the way, he saw from the corner of his eye something that looked like it might be a bathroom behind a barely cracked-open door and stopped. Maybe he could find some medicine. Not that he really knew what medicine he should even be using-hell, he didn’t even know what Ford was sick with-but it was worth a shot. You took aspirin for fevers, right? That couldn’t hurt him, at least.
He dropped the blankets and space heater in the hallway, pushed open the door, and froze.
There were sticky red smears all over the sink, along the edges of the cracked mirror, even on the wall and floor. Some were drawn-out splotches arranged in patterns of six; in other places there were little pools and splatters freely dribbled about. The little trash can was overfull of used bandages. A nearly empty roll of them sat on the sink alongside a bottle of hydrogen peroxide covered in red fingerprints.
Stan swallowed hard several times, trying to get the sudden awful taste out of his mouth. It shouldn’t have bothered him. He’d never been squeamish. Anyway, he’d seen more blood than this, and under worse circumstances...there wasn’t even that much, he told himself firmly, it was just all...spread around. It shouldn’t have bothered him.
But there was something eerie about it all. Something about the stark, half-told story in front of him, something about all the questions and implications he couldn’t quite pin down, something that was just wrong. The sick feeling that had been building in his stomach all evening was becoming too much to bear.
He shut the door, firmly, without bothering to look for any medicine, picked up his bundle, and hurried away.
He was almost back to the room when he heard a panicked shout that had him instantly breaking into a run. He shoved his way through the door with no idea what to expect and found Ford flailing around blindly; somehow he had gotten tangled up in Stan’s jacket and was trying to simultaneously extricate himself, find his glasses, and get off the couch.
“Stan!” he yelped, squinting desperately at the door. “Is that you? Are you alright? What happened? Oh, God-”
“Uh,” Stan said, coming forward slowly and setting the heater down on the floor. “I just went to see if I could find you some blankets, ‘cause it’s freezing in here. Do you not have heating in this place-”
“But what happened?” Ford demanded, shaking his head frantically. “How did I get up here?”
“You...passed out,” Stan said. “I carried you up here.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Nothing...nothing happened…?”
“No, nothing happened.” Ford had a wild, frightened look in his eyes, and he kept glancing back and forth between Stan and his own hands, as if expecting to see evidence of some terrible sin. “Everything’s fine, Sixer-”
Ford jumped as if Stan had swung a fist at him. “Don’t call me that!”
There was a moment of awful silence.
Stan set the bedding down on the couch with slow exaggerated movements. “Okay. Ford, what’s going on?”
“I...I can’t...it’s complicated,” Ford mumbled. “Stan, will you please-will you just take my journal and go?”
Stan sighed and sat down on the end of the couch. The anger was still there, like a heavy stone in his chest, almost too heavy to breathe around; but he was so damn tired and all his stupid tangled-up emotions felt dull and slow and far away, less like fresh reopened wounds and more like crooked old broken bones that had never been set right.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ford,” he said.
“Stanley, please-”
“Ford-”
“You don’t understand the stakes here-”
“Ford.”
“This isn’t just about me and you-I’m not trying to be cruel but you have to understand-”
“Ford.”
“I’ve made some terrible mistakes and the potential consequences-”
It was clear that Ford was on a roll now and not about to stop, a familiar enough circumstance, so Stan just patiently kept repeating, “Ford. Ford. Ford. Ford. Ford,” while his brother ambled on at length, making, as usual, exactly no sense.
“What, Stanley?” Ford finally snapped. “I’m trying to tell you something here-”
“And I’m trying to tell you something. Look outside.”
Ford whipped his head around to the little window above the couch, like he expected something terrible to be looming there. After a moment he finally pushed his glasses on and frowned. “I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly. You don’t see anything because you can’t see anything because there is a blizzard going on outside and night is falling and also, for your information, I have enough gas left to make it maybe five miles and the Stanleymobile has been making a weird noise since I crossed the state line. So you see, Ford, I will not be leaving tonight, unless you want me to either wrap my car around a tree because I can’t see anything, or freeze to death after breaking down before I even get out of the county.”
Ford opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and said, “You’re still driving that thing?”
Stan rolled his eyes. “She’s a good car, and way to miss the point.”
Ford bit his lip and absent-mindedly huddled under Stan’s jacket. Then he realized what he was doing and pushed the stained jacket away with a look of distaste that Stan, having seen what Ford’s house currently looked like, felt was rather hypocritical.
“Town is only a mile away,” Ford said, rallying somewhat. “You can get gas, and there’s a mechanic there-I think-”
“No,” Stan said.
“No? What do you mean, no-”
“I mean no, I can’t get gas, or see a mechanic, because I have no money, Ford.” Which hadn’t exactly stopped him more often than not, but Ford didn’t necessarily need to know that right now. “It took all I had to get here in the first place. I didn’t expect to be sent away again within half an hour. Although maybe I should have,” he added, half to himself.
Ford was staring at him like a sleep-deprived owl. Stan couldn’t bear it; he got up and began looking for somewhere to plug the space heater in.
“Were you in my office?” Ford asked, sounding peeved.
“I was looking for blankets. Your house is a wreck, by the way.” He cranked the heater up all the way and turned to find Ford still frowning at him.
“What?” he said.
“Why were you looking for blankets?”
Stan gave him a long look, just to make sure Ford had actually said what Stan thought he’d said. “You’re sick,” he said, slowly, like he was talking to a child. “And it’s way too cold in here.”
“I’m not sick,” Ford muttered.
Stan groaned. And to think Ford was supposed to be the smart one. “Did you miss the part where you passed out on me and I had to carry your ass all the way up the stairs? Or the part where you’re running a fever and shaking like a leaf? Or the-”
He very nearly said or the fact that your bathroom is covered in blood, but pulled up at the last moment. He wanted to ask about that-or, well, in a way he wanted to ask about that, and in another way he very much did not want to ask about it at all-but that was a discussion he wasn’t sure either of them were up to just now.
“I’m fine,” Ford said, apparently not noticing Stan’s stumble.
Stan rubbed at his eyes. He was very tired. “Look, Ford, can we just-can we just wait until morning? Can we talk about this then? Because I can’t go anywhere right now anyway, and you need to sleep-”
“I can’t sleep,” Ford snapped, and then immediately put the lie to his own words by letting out a jaw-cracking yawn. He looked horrified and struggled to sit up. “I can’t sleep. And you can’t stay here.”
It shouldn’t have hurt, not after everything else, not when Ford was just repeating the same thing he’d already said a million times. But it did.
Stan looked away. Snow was still falling thick and fast outside in swirls that caught the light for brief moments before disappearing into the dark. “You really want me gone that badly, huh.”
“It’s not like that,” Ford mumbled. His voice was thick with fatigue and his eyes were drooping behind his glasses. The valiant efforts of the plucky little space heater were clearly having an effect on him. “It’s not-it’s just-it’s not safe for you here.”
And that had to be just about the funniest damn thing Stan had heard in ten years, because he started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. It just kept coming and coming and Ford was looking at him like he was crazy, which was even funnier because Ford was the one who had a house full of skulls and weird paranoid scribbling and blood in places blood should not have been, and it had been a very long day, no, a very long decade, and…
“Not safe?” he finally managed to croak out. “Not safe here? Oh my goodness me, whatever will I do? I’ve never been somewhere that wasn’t safe before.”
Ford’s only response was a light snore.
Stan blinked and looked over at him. Despite his protestations, Ford had apparently been unable to hold on to wakefulness; he was sound asleep, slumped back down with his face mushed against the couch and one arm hanging off.
“Right,” Stan said. “In the morning, then.”
He pushed the pillow under Ford’s head and spread the blankets out on top of it, and left his brother alone.
Stan, himself, would have quite liked to sleep, but there didn't seem to be anywhere in the house that would work well for that, and anyway he didn’t think he would have been able to fall asleep any time soon. He was tired, yes, god he was tired, but his head was too full, buzzing with more thoughts and questions and worries than he could keep track of, all blurring and tripping over each other in one big confusing mess. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep just yet, even if he could find anything to sleep on. Instead he paced around the house for a while, shivering, trying to figure out what to do, trying to at least stop thinking, and eventually found himself in the kitchen.
Even compared to the rest of the house the kitchen was a disaster area. It didn’t look like Ford had washed a dish in weeks. The sink was overflowing, and the mess spilled over onto the table and the stove and any other available surface. Some of them seemed to have things growing on them.
Stan paused in the doorway, chewing on his lower lip and thinking. There were a few strange odds and ends scattered about-a shrunken head, a throwing star, something’s spine-but, aside from the mess, this was easily the most normal looking room in the house. There didn’t seem to be any important experiments in progress that he might be interrupting, unless Ford was attempting to see if food gunk could become sentient.
Washing dishes was easy enough. He’d done it more often than he could count to earn meals; even he had a hard time screwing that up. And he had to do something, or he’d go crazy walking around his brother’s demented funhouse and worrying at himself.
Besides, he thought wryly as he started consolidating the dish piles, now at least Ford won’t be able to say I haven’t done anything worthwhile.
It went well enough, at first. He let himself sink into the work, concentrating on the motions: scrub, rinse, repeat, not thinking about what was wrong with Ford, or about the fight, or about what he was going to do next, or about whether he really had a chance of making things up, no, none of that, just scrub, rinse, repeat…
He didn’t know how long he’d been there, only that it was full dark outside and he had made a respectable enough dent in the dish pile, when he heard the crash.
He paused in the middle of scrubbing a particularly tough stain off a plate. Had something fallen over? There were certainly enough precarious piles scattered throughout the house…
“Oh man, this body is a mess! What’ve ya been doin’ to yerself, Sixer?”
Stan froze.
It was Ford’s voice, but it…
...wasn’t Ford’s voice.
He heard a door creaking open, footsteps, and another crash, like something-or someone- slamming into a wall.
“See, I can barely keep myself upright! Everything just keeps spinning around-whoops, here we go again!”
A painful-sounding thud. Stan winced instinctively, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t. He knew that was Ford, it had to be Ford, there was no one else in the house-but somehow he did not want to get any closer to the source of that voice.
Not that he had much choice, because by the sound of it the voice was coming closer to him.
“You’ve only got yourself to blame, you know!” Crash. Something rattled and fell over. “I didn’t put you in this state. That was aaaaaaaalll you, buddy.” Bang. It almost sounded as if Ford was deliberately throwing himself into the walls. “Things would really go a lot easier for you if you would just play along already! Not that I’m complaining. It’s pretty funny to watch you try to resist!”
Stan found himself looking around the room for a weapon of some kind, swearing quietly as he realized he’d left his knuckledusters in his jacket pocket, then pulled up short as he realized what he was doing. It was only Ford. He didn’t need to defend himself against Ford.
Did he-
“Wellllllwellwellwellwell, look who we have here!”
Stan turned slowly.
Ford was standing in the kitchen doorway, hands gripping either side of the frame, a wide, wide grin on his face.
Stan swallowed hard. “Ford, I-I think you should go back to bed.”
“You think? I don’t recall anyone asking you what you thought!” That grin was too wide. It almost looked painful. “Last I checked, I was the one who did the thinking and you were the one who ruined things for everybody! But who’s keeping track, eh?”
Ford had never talked to him like that. Ford could be exasperating and arrogant and self-centered, but Stan had never heard anything like that gleeful malice in his voice, never seen anything like that grin.
“Ford-” he began weakly.
Ford cocked his head to one side. “Ya know, I didn’t actually expect you to make it here. I mean, any sensible person woulda given up on ol’ Fordsy a long time ago. Then again, sensibility doesn’t exactly run in the Pines genepool, huh?”
He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. There was something wrong with those eyes, but Stan couldn’t pin it down-maybe Ford just looked odd without his glasses. Maybe.
“Now that you are here, though…” Ford took a step forward. He was wobbling at the knees, but he didn’t seem to notice. “What say we make a deal?”
Stan found himself backing up against the sink. Soapy water was soaking into his t-shirt. “What are you talking about?”
“A deal, smart guy! You know all about deals, right? Bit of a deal-maker yourself, aren’tcha? Bit of a hustler? A conman? Lovable rogue-well, bit short on the lovable, but we’ll work with what we have.”
Ford kept walking towards him, step by staggering step, and with every step the voice in Stan’s head insisting that this was wrong wrong WRONG got louder and louder.
“What deal?” he said, trying to back up, but there was nowhere else to go.
“It’s simple! I have something you want, and you-well, you can do a few things for me.” Step. Step.
“Ford, I-I didn’t come here to beg,” Stan said. “I don’t-I don’t want-”
“Really? You don’t want? But there’s so much I have that you don’t! A cozy house, a college degree, a dream job-you name it! Don’t you ever get jealous of that? Doesn’t it make you wish your brother could spread the wealth around a little?”
Stan squirmed, his own words ringing in his ears.
Meanwhile, where have you been? Living it up in your fancy house in the woods, selfishly hoarding your college money because you only care about yourself!
“I can offer you a lot, Stanley.” Ford was real close now, and it must have been a trick of the light that made his eyes seem so wrong. Must have been, even though there was hardly any light in the room to begin with. “Money. Power. Or...ooooh, no. Better than even that. I know what you really want.”
“And what is that,” Stan muttered, scooting along the edge of the sink.
“Why, the love of your brother, of course!” Ford threw his arms wide. Stan flinched. “That’s all you’ve ever really wanted, isn’t it? To be loved. To be wanted. Why else would you come crawling back after ten years just because of two words on a postcard? Why would you even still be here when you came all this way just to get sent off again? You truly are desperate, aren’t you?”
He was close. He was too close.
“I can give you that. You want to be back in your brother’s good graces? Want to be forgiven for all your sins? Want to be pals again just like the good ol’ days? Just say the word, buddy!”
Stan tried to speak, to say...something, he didn’t know what, but his mouth was suddenly too dry. Of course he wanted that. He wanted nothing else more than that, and only a few hours ago he had briefly thought that he would get it, just like that.
You remember our plans to sail around the world on a boat?
But it hadn’t been that simple.
Things were never that simple.
Ford was watching him, and in the dim light Stan could almost tell what was wrong with his eyes, but not quite. His own eyes had never been much good, but Ford was the one who wore glasses, because that was how it worked. Ford was the brains and he was the brawn. Ford was the smart one and he was the one who wasn’t much of anything.
“And what’s my end of this deal supposed to be?” he asked, suddenly feeling far too tired for all this. Was this how Ford thought he worked? That he wouldn’t understand anything unless it was put in terms of a transaction? “Let me guess. You want me to take your book and go far away.”
“Go far away? Absolutely not!” Ford slammed his hand down on the edge of the sink, so hard it made Stan wince, but Ford didn’t even register it. “I want you to stay, Stanley. I want you here so you can help me with this project of mine. It’s almost done. Just needs a few more touches. Nothing complex. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough. I’m wearing out. You were always the strong one. So whaddya say, Stanley? Stay here and be my muscle? The brawn to my brains? And when it’s all over we’ll have a graaaaaand old time. There’ll be adventures like you wouldn’t believe…”
Ford extended his hand.
Stan looked at it.
Ford had been right about one thing. Stan was a conman and a hustler and, in general, a rogue, though he knew he wasn’t exactly a lovable one. For ten years his livelihood-such as it was-depended on reading people. Reading body language, studying tics, listening for the subtle inflections in a voice that told him what someone was feeling. It wasn’t even something he needed to think about anymore. It had become instinct, an automatic background process.
Which was good, because right now he wasn’t thinking much of anything. Right now his head seemed to be cavernously empty, washed out by that sick sideways grin and that intense stare boring right into him, but somewhere far away all that instinct and intuition still clicked along, and it was telling him, no, it was screaming at him that this person staring him down in the dark kitchen might have looked like his brother and sounded like his brother but it was not his brother.
“No,” he said.
Ford blinked, slowly and deliberately. “No?”
“No, I’m not making any damn deals with you,” Stan said. “You...I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Ford, but I think you’re sick and you need to go back to bed and...and...we’ll figure something out, okay?”
“Figure something out? But we already have! Didn’t you hear me? What could be easier? Just shake on it, and everything will be alright.”
“You really think it works like that?” Stan snapped. “You really...it’s been ten years. Yeah, I want to make up, I want everything to be better, but it’s not as easy as just...just making a deal, okay? Christ, Ford, I woulda thought even you would know better than that.”
Ford stared at him for a long moment. Stan braced himself, waiting for the explosion, waiting for the fight to begin again.
“Hm. Pity,” Ford said causally. “I could have used the extra hands. Oh well! If you’re not going to help, I’ll just have to get rid of you.”
Stan boggled at him. “You...what-”
There was, very suddenly, a knife in Ford’s hand, and it was coming straight for his face. Stan yelped and jumped backward, almost falling on the wet floor.
“Nothing personal, you understand,” Ford said cheerfully, still grinning, swinging the knife wildly. “But I can’t have you around here getting in the way if you’re not going to cooperate, and I can’t have you going away and being a loose end either! Especially not with that journal! It’s just so much easier if I take care of you right here and now!”
“What the-Ford!” He jerked back just barely in time to avoid being sliced across the face. “What are you doing-”
“I’m murdering you! Wow, you really are the dumb one, aren’t you?” Ford was moving fast, too fast for Stan to find an opening in the flashing steel. He tried to edge away around the table, but Ford had him pinned in the corner.
“You know, you oughta hear some of the things Fordsy thinks of you,” Ford said casually. Slice. Slice. Slice. He was wavering, shaking all over, but it only made the swings wilder, harder to dodge. “It’s delicious, really! Let me tell you, you really oughta have taken my deal, ‘cause you didn’t have a chance of making up with him on your own. He hates you!”
Slice. Stan felt the metal, felt the wetness starting to run down his face, but there wasn’t any pain. There should have been pain, shouldn’t there?
“Ford…” He could taste the salt and metal on his lips. “You...you don’t…”
“Oh, but he does.” Ford paused, grinning terribly, blood running down the knife and smearing across his hand. “He does. You think he woulda called you here if he didn’t think he could get some use outta you? But you couldn’t even get that right! Between you and me, pal, he thinks it woulda been better for everyone if you’d just done yourself in a long time ago! Taken a nice, dignified swan dive off the pier and ended a life of ruining everything you touch before it could get started-”
Stan punched him.
Ford went down like a sack of bricks.
Stan stood there for a moment, breathing hard, blood running down his face, staring at his brother lying crumpled on the kitchen floor and feeling the world go distant and strange.