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Ford didn't believe in miracles.
He had seen enough in his lifetime to make a normal man go mad - anomalies, alien worlds, every imaginable way that the laws of science could twist themselves into unrecognizable outcomes.
But that is all they were. Laws. Laws unknown to most of humankind, perhaps, but set by the gavel all the same.
Ford could travel through infinite more multiverses and come to the same conclusion that miracles were a foolish man's way of giving up, of accepting a world he did not understand, of depriving himself of choice, of consequence.
But this...
"He couldn't have forgotten everything! He can't!"
His grand-niece scrambled around the ruins of the shack as his grand-nephew and the hamster-like man watched, too miserable to move.
She gathered trinkets and memorabilia in her increasingly dirty hands to dump them on the lap of his twin brother, who picked up each broken accessory and shard of home decor with the sentimentality of a grocery store bagger.
The items meant nothing to him, of course, but the mounting desperation of the kids around him brought a deeply set frown to his face. Stan didn't know it, not consciously, but they were the most important people in his life, once.
"Kid, I'm sorry, I just..."
Stan struggled to think of the words, his mind no doubt still fuzzy around the edges from the devastation of the memory gun.
Instead, he opted to gather Mabel in his arms, which prompted Dipper to stagger forward and join her. Their faces were wet with tears as Stan hugged them. It was stilted, almost polite. Ford wasn't sure if it alleviated their sobbing.
"Look. I might not be the man you know and love, but I'm still here, and this house is still here. How about we take a step back. Nice to meet you, I guess I'll be your brand new, second Grunkle."
Ford would've watched the entire exchange, culminating with Soos finally barrelling into the group hug and making them all topple over the recliner into a tearful, breathless, giggly pile, but instead his attention was elsewhere, mind spinning with his plans of excuses and half truths as he instinctively held his hand against the bright pink scrapbook inside his inner coat pocket.
By all possibilities, he spotted it before anyone else did, acting on instinct from a revelation he had just minutes prior.
It came to Ford in the woods. He followed Stan and the kids towards the shack, but he soon grew too miserable and tight and ashamed to bear anything else than his own well worn turtleneck and coat, comforting in their weight and familiarity. Stan only looked at him blankly as he pulled him away from their funeral march. Ford felt Dipper and Mabel's fearful gazes on his back, as if Stan would disappear in front of their eyes.
"Your clothes? Why am I wearing your clothes?" Stan later asked, once Ford shrugged off his suit jacket in a forest clearing.
"It's a long story, Stanley. I'll tell you all about it. But I assure you, for now, you'll be much more comfortable in your own suit."
Now that they were alone together, looking at his brother made Ford's guilt tear at his insides. If Stan was himself, he'd probably want the whole town to celebrate and lavish him. Throw a parade, call it Stan Pines Day, or if he was feeling generous, Pines Day, so the kids could perch themselves up on the highest float.
But now, the Stan in front of him just shrugged and listened to him without complaint. He started with the gloves and paused, emitting a soft "Whoa". He glanced over at Ford's hands unbuttoning his shirt.
Ford felt a sudden pull to run away to his basement and lock himself away, away from all this unbearable sunlight and birdsong when his world was collapsing in front of him.
He only turned away instead. Stan's voice was conversational over his shoulder.
"Heh. Too bad, you probably look better in that suit than I do. Suits you better."
"No," Ford sighed. "It's... it's not for me. You looked good in it." Ford sounded impossibly calm to his own ears, because it was true, though he never would've said it before.
A soft rumble of a chuckle. "There a reason you not helping me out of this, then?"
Ford froze.
"What did you say?" He said, hushed.
Stan stuttered. "Oh. Uh. I just thought, with the kids- I just-"
Ford spun around, a step too quickly to look natural. Stan's eyes were wide, arms caught in his turtleneck pulled over his head. He looked petrified.
He was showing far too much skin.
Ford realized he was staring, and he said the first thing that came to mind. It came out high and strained. "Are you offering?"
He regretted saying it immediately, but Stan seemed to relax at that, tension seeped out from his body. He smiled, then, and held out his arms.
The rest of the world seemed to shrink, all of its light and racket fading away as Ford stepped towards his brother with the suit and dress shirt draped over his shoulder.
"Was I going too fast?" Stan asked. "I don't even remember your name."
"Ford. I'm Ford, and you're Stan."
He didn't mention his shared prefix, opting to surrender it from now until the end of time. He pulled off the rest of the turtleneck from Stan and dropped it unceremoniously into the wet morning grass.
When he flicked his eyes up, he could see that Stan's eyes were scanning his bare chest along with its webwork of scars and tattoos. All familiarity and familial affiliation lost, and Stan was eyeing him so openly.
Stan quickly looked away. It made Ford's heart jump against his chest.
One part of Ford rationalized that all the looks were only curiosity, the other part, deep down, was screaming 'He doesn't know, he doesn't know, he doesn't know.'
Stan began to knit his brows, troubled. He looked like he wanted to say something. "I'm-"
"They're not our kids," Ford blurted out.
Stan startled, but seemed to take Ford's interruption in stride. "I mean, I guess that's obvious. I'm guessing I'm around the same age as you, huh?"
Ford's hands became too shaky to be unnoticeable at the last button hole, so he stopped. He shook out the suit jacket.
"Very similar. We're their great uncles."
"Huh."
Ford didn't explain further, giving Stan a moment to think it over and come to his own conclusions. Ford eventually pointed to his pants, and Stan let out an 'Oh'.
"That what a grunkle is?" Stan asked as he struggled to hop out of the pant leg with his shoes on.
"Yes." Ford mirrored his action, but unlaced his shoes first. "They don't know, by the way. We're just their two Grunkles."
The statement was just vague enough to dig himself out of this hole if he wanted to, if he was being too overeager.
"What the hell? Really?"
A glint of hope. Ford caught a guilty glance at Stan's lower body, the second one that day, one that he was certain Stan could notice this time.
"Their parents thought them too young."
"Pfft. Pussies."
"Stan!"
But they both laughed. It wasn't surprising how easily the lies came to Ford. What was surprising was how fully formed they were. Like his subconscious had built these fantasies and stored them away just for this occasion.
The last items of clothing were Ford's gloves. Stan pulled his leather glove over his hand slowly, gently, flexing out his extra pinky experimentally. He ran a cautious thumb over it, and Ford's heart ached with the tenderness.
When they were all dressed, Ford stopped and smiled at Stan in his misshapen clothes. He looked a bit closer to himself but not too much. New. Different.
"There. Much better already."
The side of Stan's mouth quirked up into a smile that was almost shy, and Ford couldn't help but listen to that rapturous, terrified part of him, so he leaned forward and pecked that part of his face with a chaste barely-kiss.
Stan didn't move, didn't say anything, perhaps still stunned from the new world he's found himself in where Ford could love him wholly, in the way he could only dream of since they were teenagers conspiring about the cutest girls in their class while Ford could only think 'You, you, it's only been you, damn everyone else.'
Eventually, after a tenuous moment when Ford could almost hear the gears turning in his mind, Stan's half smile broke into a grin. All of Ford's guilt and misery were quickly forgotten with the surge of joy that rolled through him.
He didn't know .
So while everyone's eyes were anxiously set on Stan as he saw the shack for the first time, Ford quickly picked up the scrapbook and hid it in his coat. He didn't even have time to think it through, to see if the kids would say anything, but they did not notice.
And they did not mention Ford's relation to Stan, too swept up in reciting every strange creature or dangerous circumstance they experienced together throughout the summer.
Nor did they object to Ford helping his brother up from the chair, saying that he could find a way to bring his memories back with all of his cross-dimensional knowledge and equipment but would need Stan to himself, sheltered from excess stimuli.
He finally pulled Stan into the basement as the kids left with Soos to gather supplies to fix the shack. The once core belief he held was wiped away with the force of the kiss he swept Stan into, hands fisting into his dirty suit jacket and wispy hair, because Stan kissed him back .
Miracles upon miracles.