Chapter Text
“Fuck!” Stan yells in frustration as he throws the stupid physics textbook in his lap across the room. It thumps against the wall, and the noise of that is enough to make him want to rip his own skin off, if he wasn’t already considering it before.
His brain is practically throbbing against his skull from the hours he’s spent staring at the pages—and yet he feels no closer to understanding a single damn thing in it. In fact, he almost feels like he knows less than he did before he started reading this dumb thing.
Out of all the things his brother just had to be—a scientist of all things. He could never make things easy, could he?
He’s gnawing at his lip, his head between his elbows as his head drops to his knees. He squeezes his eyes shut as an all too familiar wave of hopelessness and disappointment washes over him.
He was so stupid to think he—some high school drop-out without a single drop of intellect—could learn physics. Come on, he couldn’t even remember how to do long division, how the hell was he supposed to understand shit about motion and energy!
His legs are bouncing wildly beneath his face, caught between not wanting to waste a single second doing anything else and knowing it was pointless to force himself to continue working tonight. Not even working—just thinking.
He’s done with everything for tonight, he decides.
The loud buzzing in his head finally begins to quiet, his legs slowly coming to a stop, and he relaxes against himself.
Exhaustion finally hits him. He inhales. He exhales.
He doesn’t think he can sleep though. Not yet. Maybe not at all. He couldn’t even remember if he slept yesterday night, and yet sleep still seems like an impossible endeavor.
With heavy footsteps, he makes his way to the kitchen and pops the fridge open. He shuffles the last three cans of beer into his arms, and makes a mental note to go to the store first thing tomorrow. Alcohol was one of the only things able to quiet his mind. Always had been. With everything going on recently, though? He was almost ashamed to admit how much of his funds had been going to keeping the fridge stocked up on it. His liver was gonna hate him, if it didn’t already.
That’s for future Stanley to worry about though.
He shuts the door with his foot and takes his cans to the living room. He lazily slumps down in the lone chair, cracking open one of the beers that were now splayed around him.
He’s about halfway through his first drink when there’s a loud knocking at the door that nearly makes him jump out of his skin.
“Agh—shit—“ he curses as some of it spills out onto his white shirt. He rubs at it with his hand as he puts the drink down, his head glancing over towards the doorway to the gift shop.
He waits a few moments, wondering if maybe all the late nights working to get his brother back—on top of running his new business, coming up with new attractions—were starting to take a toll on him. Then he hears the knocking again, a little more insistent this time.
Who the hell is going to visit tourist attractions this late at night?
He’s practically stomping to the gift shop entrance, and he’s got half a mind to chew out whoever was on the other side of the door this late. The only thing that stops him is the fatigue wearing at him.
“Hut’s closed, buddy. Come back tomorrow,” he says through the door, not bothering to hide the clear annoyance he felt.
“I’m not here for that,” the voice says. There’s a clear accent in the voice—something southern, for sure. “Could I speak with ya, if you wouldn’t mind?”
His eyebrow quirks at the request. “Gimme a second,” he replies, quickly grabbing one of the many bats he kept hidden around the house from behind the nearby counter. Never could be too safe—he learned that a long time ago. Leaning it against the wall beside the door, just out of view from his late night visitor, he slowly twists the door knob.
“Uhh…who are you?” He keeps the door only barely cracked open, his fingers itching to grab the emergency bat at a moment’s notice.
He peers at the stranger standing on his (Ford’s?) front porch through the dark outside. He’s skinny as hell, got eye bags that could make a person weep (though Stan could hardly judge), and was donning a loose patterned shirt and bellbottoms. He definitely has the look of a hippy, which earned a brief look of aversion from Stan. Never had a good interaction with one before, probably never will, which didn’t make this situation any more pleasant. More than that, though, what stuck out most was the contorted look on his face that made Stan feel all sorts of uneasy.
“My name is…I’m…” he trails off, and the poor guy looks as confused as Stan’s been feeling lately. There’s an abrupt slap to his head a few times and he finally perks up. “I’m Fiddleford McGucket!”
The first thing he thinks is that this guy has got to be fucking with him. Then he really takes a good look at his face, and he can’t see anything but sincerity. Stan knows a conman when he sees one. This guy didn’t have the stench. “Okay…Fiddleford,” he clears his throat. “Mind explaining why you’re knocking on my door at—” he pauses to glance at the clock behind him, “eleven at night.” He eyes him up and down. He certainly doesn’t look like a cop, and god knows he sure as hell doesn’t act like any cop he’s been around. Stan likes to think his cop radar is way better than most people’s—and he wasn’t getting any signal of the sort on him.
Somehow the guy manages to look even more lost than before. There’s something familiar in his eyes—something Stan wants to label desperation.
“I…I don’t…I don’t know.”
Really, this should be a giant red flag at this point. Creepy, even. Some man he’s never seen before shows up on his front porch in the middle of the night, saying he has absolutely no idea why he’s here? Looking as anxious as a sinner in a church? Not even mentioning the name he was given which, frankly, sounds like a fake this guy pulled from a comic book. Stan would know—he’s done that before. A lot. Despite everything about this situation being undoubtedly wrong, Stan weirdly doesn’t get the feeling that this hippy is up to anything nefarious. In fact, he might even call the guy genuine.
Maybe Stan really was going crazy from lack of sleep.
Fiddleford is glancing around wildly, looking—frankly—like some sort of small frightened animal. “Ya see, I just got up from my chair at home and, well…my feet just up and took me here.” He finally quits acting like the treeline and the wood beneath his feet are the most interesting things in the world and looks Stan in the eyes. He clutches the side of his head, as if it pained him. “I’m sincerely sorry for ramblin’ like this. My point is, I—I think I might’ve been here before.” He wrings his hands together anxiously. “I know this sounds strange…but, well…have I?”
Shit. Was this some guy who knew his brother personally? Fuck. He was hoping Ford had mostly stayed a recluse, just to make filling his nerdy shoes a little easier on him. Well, for better or for worse, the guy seemed to be losing his mind. Convincing him he’s never been here should be easy then, right?
“We’ve never met before, pal,” Stan says, deciding to quickly put that train of thought to an end before it even has the inkling to go anywhere. “Unless you’ve seen me around town. Been here a few years, you know.”
The man deflates and, for some reason, something prickles in Stan’s chest. Pity? “Ah…I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.” He puts a hand to his head again. “Once again, my apologies for the disturbance. I’ll—”
“Your head. What’s up with that?” It’s bothering him now—the way he kept grabbing at his head like it was about to explode.
The man is in the middle of turning to leave when he stops. “My head?” He touches it again, as if to see if it was still there. “Truthfully, I ain’t sure. My head’s been feelin’ like it’s gonna split. Or…or maybe the opposite? But it doesn’t feel like any headache or migraine I had before. Aha, sorry, I know I sound like I’m spewin’ a buncha nonsense.”
This is the part where he tells him to feel better soon or whatever, shoo him back off to wherever he came from, and never see him again. It’s what he should do—every voice in his head is telling him that. And yet.
“I, uh, probably got something lying around. Wanna come in?”
No, you idiot! What are you doing?
The man’s tense body suddenly relaxes a little. “You…are ya sure? I know it’s late and I wouldn’t wanna—”
Call it whatever you want. Pity. Generosity (hah!). Straight up stupidity. Stan knows the look of a man with nowhere to go, with no one to turn to for help.
“Get in before I change my mind,” he says, completely against his better judgement, and he finally fully opens the door and takes a step back.
“Thank you,” he smiles as he walks through the door. It’s the first time he’s seen anything other than a look of bewilderment and fear etched on his face tonight. He strangely finds he likes it, and he’s immediately pushing that thought out of his head. “I really do appreciate it. You’re real kind.”
He’s choosing to ignore that last comment.
Stan watches as his eyes scan over the gift shop. “It’s a, uh, work in progress.” He still hadn’t moved a few of Ford’s weird contraptions and doohickeys out, but he’d get to it! Eventually.
“A work in progress?” He laughs, “Why, I’ll be excited to see how exactly you fix this place up, then! I hadn’t a clue it was still in development.”
Stan rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, “Haha, yeah…thanks. I’ll go grab those pills for your head, then. You can come sit in here if you want,” he says, gesturing for Fiddleford to come along with him as he makes his way to the living room. “Or not. I don’t really care.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Fiddleford replies, following a few paces behind him.
Once they get into the well lit living room, Fiddleford breaks the silence almost immediately. “You…you look—”
“Handsome? Dashing? Oh, I know. Anyways, be right back!” he cuts him off quickly, turning his back to him before Fiddleford could take a closer look at him.
Stan disappears to the bathroom, praising himself for the quick thinking, and starts going through the cabinets. He knew Ford kept some stuff here, the only question was if any of it would help a headache. He’s scrounging through a bunch of bottles, ointments, and various containers of god-knows-what as his mind naturally wanders.
He’s keenly aware of how weird this situation is, but Stan is even more aware that weirdness has seemed to find him his whole life, so of course this would happen to him. The stranger in his living room was clearly going through some sort of episode—a spell of amnesia, that was for damn sure. He got the feeling he likely had something to do with whatever the hell Ford got up to here, considering the little he thought he could remember. Remembering his way to the shack, even without any memory of why? Thinking Stan looked familiar? That same scared, paranoid look on his face that made him feel like he was looking at his brother again?
This all can’t be some coincidence, he knows that.
“Damn it, Ford…what the hell were you up to all these years…?” he grumbles to himself, as he finally finds a bottle of Tyleonol. He shakes it and hears a few pills clambering around inside. “Jackpot.”
He lazily throws everything back into the cabinet, promising himself he’d clean it later (or tomorrow…or maybe sometime after that), and gets back to his feet. It’s a short trip back to the living room.
Fiddleford is still standing awkwardly in the same place he left him.
“There’s a chair right next to you, you know,” he says, tossing the bottle at him from across the room.
Fiddleford stumbles, nearly dropping it, but seems proud of himself when he manages to recover without letting it hit the floor. “It, ah, felt a bit rude to just waltz in and use yer things.”
“Use my—it’s a chair.” He shakes his head, deciding this was probably one of those unspoken “social rules” people used to try to drill into him. A chair was made to be sat in, so why not if it’s not being used? “Never mind. If you aren’t gonna sit down, I sure am.”
While he sits down, he notices Fiddleford eyeballing the mostly empty bottle he threw to him, and Stan wonders whether he’s second guessing the whole “taking drugs from a stranger” thing. Not that he’d blame him if he decided to decline the meds after all. Stan sure as hell wouldn’t take some “migraine medicine” from some weirdo in the middle of the woods. Probably. “I just realized I never got yer name.”
“Oh, it’s Stan…ford. Stanford Pines,” he says with a wide grin that probably came off more off-putting than an attempt at being convincing. That’s gonna take a while to get used to saying.
“Stanford…Stanford Pines,” Fiddleford repeats back, rolling the words around his mouth slowly and thoughtfully, as if he could taste them. He mumbles it a few times more to himself, underneath his breath, and Stan feels himself start to go cold. “It feels real familiar. Swear I’ve heard it before…”
Shit. “Of course you have! Stanford Pines, man of mystery! Whole town’s been talking about me ever since I opened up the Murder Hut. And who could blame ‘em!” His voice is maybe a pitch too loud in an attempt to be overconfident, but Stan’s always had a problem with gauging his tone and volume. “The, uh…name’s a work in progress, by the way.”
Fiddleford is nodding, and Stan feels the prickles of panic begin to subside. He believes him. “That must be it. Word spreads like wildfire around here, don’t it?”
“You’re telling me.” It was good for business, at the very least. Raking in some cash to help fund his brother’s return (and pay off his damn mortgage) would be easy. Probably.
Fiddleford finally twists off the cap of the bottle and 3 small pills drop into his hands. He slams them back into his mouth, swallowing without the help of any water. He twists the cap back on and hands it back to Stan. He can tell from the way it silently lands in his hand that it’s empty.
“Thank you kindly, Stanford.”
He instinctively makes a face at the sound of his brother’s name. He knows that name is technically his now, but he isn’t sure he could handle being called his brother’s full name everyday. “Just call me Stan,” he says. “Stanford’s a mouthful.”
“Oh, alright,” he says with a smile. “You can call me Fidds then. Fiddleford is a bit of a mouthful too, ain’t it?”
“Hah, I’ll say! What, were your parents fiddlers or something?” he jokes.
“My ma was a fiddler, actually! That’s how my parents met—she was up performin’, and Pa was in the audience, just taken with her. The rest is history, I guess. That’s what they told me, at least.”
Well, he’ll be damned. “You uh…never changed it?”
“Change it? Why would I?”
He’d be pissed if his parents named him something like that, but this guy didn’t seem to mind. For some reason. “Never mind. Alright then Fiddle. Since you’re here, you wanna beer?” he asks, holding up one of the unopened beer cans to him.
“Oh, I do appreciate the offer, but well…” he shuffles awkwardly. “It’s quite late. I fear I might’ve overstayed my welcome. I should probably head back home.”
Stan glances up at the clock on the wall and it's nearly midnight. “Suit yourself.” He relaxes further into his chair. “Drop by the Hut sometime and get a tour.” May as well sprinkle a little bit of advertising into this interaction.
“I think I will,” he says, smiling. “Thank you again for everything, really. I do so appreciate it. Good night, Stan.” He gives a small wave, adjusts the glasses on his face, and then starts walking out.
“Night, Fidds.”
He hears the sound of the door at the entrance opening, and cracks open another beer. Might as well continue with his original plans for the rest of the night.
A few moments pass before he realizes he never heard the door close. With some grumbling under his breath, he reluctantly leaves the comfort of the chair again to head back to the entrance. Seriously, how does someone forget to close the front door?
When he flips on the light switch, he lets out a yelp as he sees a figure standing in his doorway. He’s only met with another yelp, this time of the other’s, as the figure spins around with his hand over his heart.
“...Fidds? What the hell are you doing in my doorway?” he questions, and only feels panic rise for a moment when he realizes the bat in this room is across the room, right by Fiddleford. Just looking at him though, he knows he’d be able to take him in a fight, if that’s what this was coming down to. Those noodle arms don’t stand a chance against him.
Fiddleford opens his mouth, and only sputters and trips over his words.
“Okay, slow down! I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
A moment passes before Fiddleford’s head suddenly drops, hanging between his shoulders. “I…I’m afraid.”
Stan blinks at him for a moment.
“...Afraid? Afraid of what?”
“These woods…I—I feel like I’m being watched,” he says, his eyes clearly avoiding Stan’s. “I fear the second I begin my trek home, I’ll be taken.”
“Taken by who?”
“Anything! Everything!” He moves erratically, his hands reaching out and grabbing Stan by the shoulders. Stan just stares at him for a moment, and then Fiddleford suddenly looks sheepish as he removes his hands from him. He breathes in, clearly trying to calm down. He taps his fingers together a few times, and that rhythmic movement seems to relax himself at least a little. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Okay, so this guy was a little crazy. Stan’s been out in the woods at night a number of times since coming here, and he’s never felt those stares he’s talking about. Not anything more special than that normal survival instinct you get when you’re out at night, at least.
But then Stan remembers the state of his brother, that stupid portal he made, and those journal pages he’s been combing through and suddenly this guy doesn’t seem that crazy at all. Fiddleford definitely knows something about his brother, even if he can’t remember exactly. Maybe he knows something about the portal too. If not, it’s at least for certain he knows more about this town than Stan does right now, and that’s important.
“I never said that.” Fiddleford perks up at that, practically beaming . “Look, if you’re too scared to walk home, I got a chair in the living room you can sleep on.” He takes the beer in his hand and practically shoves it into Fiddleford’s chest. “Let’s just say you owe me another pack of beer as a favor. And a visit during opening hours.” If he could get this guy to come back—keep coming back—maybe he could discreetly pick his brain about this town. Maybe even attempt to get some information about the portal. Anything would help at this point.
“Of—of course I will! Whatever you want! You have my word.” he says, his fingers brushing against Stan’s hand as he takes the drink from him. “Thank you Stan. I won’t forget this kindness.”
Stan laughs as he wraps his arm around Fidds’s shoulder, pushing him back toward the living room. “I got exactly one unopened can left. Whaddya say we see who can chug their drink faster? I took a little sip outta the one you’re holding, so I’d say we’re about evenly matched on who wins now.”
Fiddleford laughs for the first time that night—Stan was almost afraid the guy didn’t know how to before. It’s high pitched and kind of grating, but Stan weirdly finds he likes it. Probably from that beer he drank earlier.
“I gotta warn ya…I did some drinking in my college years. You might not wanna underestimate me.”
And the guy has a sense of humor, who knew! “Hah! Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
It’d been a while since he had a drinking buddy.
When Stan wakes up in the morning, he’s passed out on the floor with not a clue as to what the time is. His back hurts from sleeping on the ground—a reminder that he’s getting older. He’s not a kid anymore, no matter how much he’d like to go back.
He cracks his back with a groan, scratching at his arm as he glances around the room. A few beer cans are left on the ground, and he suddenly remembers the events of last night. Fiddleford McGucket, the stranger (but not really anymore?) who practically appeared out of nowhere with a real bad memory and maybe even worse anxiety.
They’d talked to god knows what time, and yes Stan did beat them in their little drinking race, as he knew he would. Fiddleford was better than he thought though, he had to admit—who knew the nerd could drink! He was definitely out of practice though. Just one tiny beer in and his ears had started to turn a light pink.
And he wasn’t here.
The chair he’d fallen asleep on was empty—except for a small, neatly folded piece of paper resting on the cushion.
His knees crack as he gets to his feet and stumbles over to the chair, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to get them to focus as he unfolds the paper.
Stanford,
Thank you for allowing me to stay the night in your home. I’ll always remember the hospitality you showed me. I would’ve loved to stay to thank you again this morning, but I fear I have already long overstayed my welcome, and you looked like you needed the rest. I hope you slept well.
Sincerely,
Fiddleford H. McGucket
P.S. Check your fridge :) Hope you don’t mind me poking around a little.
Stan finds himself smiling by the end of the letter. Well, what do you know! You’re nice and it actually pays off for once! Happy he didn’t have to spend the money on buying a new pack himself (and maybe, just maybe, happy about receiving a nice letter in general), he shoves the paper in his pocket and heads to his fridge.
When he opens it, there’s the beer, just as he expected.
However, he also sees a styrofoam takeout container. That was new. He curiously grabs the box and finds a yellow sticky note pressed to the top of it.
Wasn’t sure what to get you, but this is my favorite thing from Greasy’s Diner. Hope you enjoy!
He pops open the lid and, sure enough, there’s pancakes, bacon, and eggs staring right back at him. “Hah, ‘hope you enjoy.’ Who wouldn’t like this?” he says to himself, grabbing the plastic fork inside eagerly.
It’s still a little warm. Fiddleford must have only left a short time ago.
Maybe living here won’t be so bad after all.