Chapter Text
Ford misses being a kid sometimes; what person didn’t as life went on? He worked not to let nostalgia blind him too much, of course. He knows his childhood wasn't all sunshine and roses. He remembers the bullies, the beatings and the taunts, the burning shame he felt for the longest time due to the number of fingers he had been born with. He remembers the pressure of his father’s expectations for his grades, for his boxing, for his life. He remembers thinking that his ma, for as much as he knew she loved him, always secretly liked Stan more than him. But Ford hadn’t minded so much, because he’d liked Stan more than anyone in their family for their entire childhood. Stan wasn’t just his brother, wasn’t just his twin, he was his best friend. And that’s what he missed, really. Having a best friend like that.
They’d fought as kids, of course. No brothers in existence had been able to resist pushing buttons. Sometimes Stan would hit too hard or Ford would joke too mean. Sometimes they’d scream and break each other’s toys and say all the mean things the kids at school would say. Sometimes they’d take turns sleeping on the floor of Shermie’s room to avoid each other. Stan would hang up sheets along the bottom bunk to make a Fort Stanley for himself, not a Fort Stan for them to share. Ford would sit and read in the shop all day, knowing Stan couldn’t stand being in there for too long before yelling and getting kicked out by their father.
But it was an inevitably that they would make up. They weren’t just brothers; after all, they were best friends, the only friend the other had in the world. Usually they’d just start playing a new game like nothing had happened. If the fight was particularly bad and Ford felt particularly guilty, he would leave a bag of toffee peanuts on Stan’s bed or maybe Stan would leave a drawing of a new monster in one of Ford’s books. An apology without words. Good enough for two little boys that just wanted to play and be friends again.
Ford thinks about those little boys sometimes, with their peeling sunburns and delusions that their broken down boat could ever survive the sea. He thinks about games played in the sand where they followed monster tracks that they both pretended Stan hadn’t made while Ford had been distracted. He thinks about crying because some bully had called him a freak and Stan running to punch them. He thinks about hitting Stan’s smaller hand with his while echoing his call for a high six. He thinks about how badly he misses that while sitting alone in his dorm, while struggling to solve the mysteries of the town he’s made his home, while waiting for Cipher’s bounty hunters to leave the abandoned sector he’s hiding in.
Then he thinks about a broken machine and the anger comes back. The betrayal of not just his brother, but his best friend. He thinks about the college he’ll never attend because Stanley was selfish and stupid. Because he didn’t understand. He thinks about the home he’d lost after Stan pushed him, because he didn’t see how important Ford’s work was. Because he didn't understand. He thinks about the grief of all the lives his brother cost him and he mourns himself.
But still he thinks about those little boys. He thinks about yelling at Fiddleford for eating the unopened bag of toffee peanuts that had sat in his desk drawer for months after he bought it without thinking in college. He thinks about every time he had opened a book with a vague hope in the back of his mind that there would be a lopsided drawing on notebook paper hidden inside. He thinks about finally asking their mother to stop telling him that Stanley had called because it made the thoughts come more often and more painfully. He thinks about the photo that he’s held onto across states, across dimensions, of those stupid little boys that always smelled of salt no matter how much they showered. He thinks of Fort Stan when he builds a makeshift shelter from the liquid metal rain of dimension 623¿. Nothing feels as big or as safe as those cardboard boxes and sofa cushions had. He doesn’t miss Stan, he tells himself. He misses being a clueless kid with a best friend.
Fiddleford was a good friend, the best and only he’d ever had outside of Stan in their home dimension. They played games of graph paper and dice together in their dorm; they talked about science and the future. Fiddleford talked about the girlfriend that he loved in college, then the wife and son that he missed in Gravity Falls. He talked gibberish after seeing a glimpse of what Bill had in store for their world. Then he talked about nothing, at least not to Ford.
Ford never learned how to apologize to someone. If it was his dad, he just had to stare at his shoes and say the words punctuated with the title sir. His ma just needed a kiss on the cheek and a promise to do better next time. But Stan had never needed words. Just a bag of his favorite snack and maybe a punch to the arm and it was like it never happened. It had been easy.
He thinks about those little boys while he takes the portal apart beneath the feet of his family. He thinks about the framed picture of them that sat in the control room, hidden behind cracked glass and a photo of the new Pines twins. There are several bags of toffee peanuts in the kitchen cabinets; it would be so easy to take one and leave it in Stan’s chair. Would that still work? Did that count anymore? How much of the little boy that had made monster tracks in the sand was left? How much of the boy that had followed them was left?
He’s still angry, still bitter; he’s not ready to forgive Stan, not yet. But he thinks about it. More often now that he sees his brother every day and they live in the same house for the first time in forty years. He thinks about it when he misses those little boys, when he misses being one of them.
He thinks about the feeling of someone slapping his hand while they cheered their last name and his heart aches. When it felt like they were going to rule the world together. He misses having a best friend in a brother. Having someone that would have your back no matter what because they were family, because they were your best friend. Most of all he misses the ease that forgiveness came with back then. Just a bag of snacks, just a drawing in a book, just an arm slung over the shoulders and a ‘what’s the plan for today’ like nothing had been wrong in the first place. Just two boys on a boat that they’d found and claimed like their own personal slice of the world. Who knew what the future held with a certainty that there was no need to question, no need to doubt. It was all theirs for the taking and they’d take it together.
He misses being a kid sometimes.