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“Alright, and—”
Stan heard the familiar pop sound as Ford tried his latest attempt at permanently fixing Stan’s cat curse problem. Along with the pop, he felt his body shifting, feline form changing to human. Stan wiggled his fingers and toes experimentally.
“It worked?” he muttered to himself. Excited, he looked up at his brother… and kept looking up, and up, and up—
Oh no.
“Why are you still so big?” Stan asked. His tail swished along the floor behind him in his confusion.
Wait… Tail?
Stan looked over his shoulder and groaned. Guess it hadn’t worked. Or, at least not fully. He had a human body, but his cat tail was still there. Something twitched in his hair in annoyance. Were his…? Stan reached up to the top of his head. Yup. Cat ears in place. Ugh.
He sighed. “Okay. This was a bust. Change me back again.”
He was met with silence.
“Ford?” Stan looked up and up and up at his brother.
Ford was staring down at him, one hand covering his mouth. His shoulders were shaking silently, his eyes shining.
Stan scowled. “Don’t laugh! This is your fault!”
A snort escaped Ford, and he quickly turned away as laughter began to seep through his fingers.
Irritated, Stan stomped forward to attack Ford’s legs. It was all he could reach, after all. Stan bared his teeth—mostly human, but his canines were sharper than they should be—and settled for kicking his brother’s ankles. It didn’t end up being very effective though, as Ford simply reached down and plucked him up, ignoring Stan’s angry hiss.
“Look at you,” Ford cooed at him through mirthful chuckles. “You’re so cute!”
“Take that back!” Stan demanded. “I’m rugged and handsome!”
Wordlessly, Ford stood and carried Stan over to a mirror, holding him up in front of it.
Stan stared at his reflection with wide eyes. He was human, bar the cat ears and tail, but he was the same size as his cat form, meaning quite small. He wasn’t sure if it was an effect of the anti-curse attempt or just his small size playing tricks on the eye, but his facial features seemed… softer in a way. A little more rounded than square. And his eyes looked bigger than normal, his pupils slitted like a cat’s.
“Change me back!” Stan yelled once he’d digested his new appearance.
Ford didn’t respond, just staring at him as if drinking the sight of Stan in.
“Ford!”
Stan went to smack his brother to get his attention, but Ford, used to being smacked by cat-Stan, caught his hand and stopped him. Ford then proceeded to stare down at where his hand dwarfed Stan’s. Stan’s hands were only a little larger than his paws had been, which made them minuscule in comparison to Ford’s.
Ford’s entire face softened. “Aww.”
“Don’t ‘aww’ me!” Ugh, even Stan’s voice sounded kind of weird. Still deep, but not as gruff as it should normally be. “Do something!”
Ford did something. He walked right back to his desk and sat down with Stan in his lap. Stan then immediately attempted to climb down, but Ford was adept at pinning his cat form at this point, and easily kept him in place.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay like this?” Ford had the audacity to ask. “You’re mostly human. You can eat human foods again and talk. Isn’t that good enough?”
“I’m tiny!”
“Yes!” Ford sounded way too happy about it. “You are easily portable like this. Maybe it’s an improvement.”
Stan hissed to show his displeasure.
Ford only cooed at him again. “And you still make little kitty noises!” He sounded adoring. “So cute!”
“I’m not cute!” Stan insisted. “And I don’t want to be stuck like this!” He huffed angrily, but it really only had the effect of making his cheeks puff out.
Ford made a sound that Stan had only heard teenage girls make before, and he scooped Stan up to hug him to his face, gushing over him.
“Put me down!” Stan wriggled furiously, cheeks reddening in embarrassment. Sure, Ford had buried his face in Stan’s fur many times when he was a cat, but it was awkward when he was human.
But Ford only held him tightly. “I could just squish you! You’re so squish-able right now!”
“Don’t squish me!” Stan slapped the sides of Ford’s face repetitively. “What is wrong with you?!”
Ford pulled back when Stan knocked his glasses askew, setting Stan back down on his lap and fixing them. “I don’t really know what came over me,” he explained, which didn’t explain anything. “You’re just very adorable right now.”
“Maybe the anti-curse attempt had some weird effect on you too?” Stan suggested.
“Perhaps,” Ford said, though he sounded like he didn’t believe it.
A large hand landed on Stan’s head, sifting through his hair and gently petting his ears. As usual, a purr rumbled up through Stan’s chest in response, and he reflexively pushed his head further into Ford’s hand, rubbing against him. Ford’s countenance melted, and he looked at Stan with a soft gaze.
“Fix me,” Stan demanded again, even as he unashamedly accepted the petting.
Ford sighed in disappointment. “Fine. But it’s likely going to take a day or two for me to figure out what went wrong this time and how to reverse it. So you’ll be stuck like this for a little while until I can fix you—unless at some point you change your mind and want to stay like this.”
Stan rolled his eyes. “Not gonna happen.”
Stan hissed as Fiddleford grabbed him by the back of his shirt, interrupting his attempt to get a snack from the kitchen. Fiddleford lifted him into the air at arm’s length and eyed him dubiously.
“So you’re a tiny cat-man now?” he muttered.
Stan did not appreciate this. What gave Fiddleford the right to pick him up just because he was small? He was a grown man!
Rather than voicing any of these protests though, Stan instead growled lowly in his throat, twisted around, and bit Fiddleford’s arm. Fiddleford yelped (yes!) and dropped him (no!) as he reeled back.
Stan screeched as he began to fall, limbs flailing. It wouldn’t have been a big deal had he still been fully cat, but as he was, the chances of him landing on his feet were very narrow. And it was quite the drop too, considering Fiddleford’s height and his own current size.
But thankfully the bullying did not go unnoticed, as while Stan was falling he heard a loud, admonishing “Fiddleford!” and a rush of footsteps as Ford came running. Unfortunately, he didn’t arrive in time to catch Stan, but no sooner had Stan hit the floor with a grunt than he was being scooped up into familiar arms.
“Oh goodness, Stanley! Are you alright?” Ford asked as he worriedly looked Stan over.
Stan actually felt fine, honestly. He’d probably be a little bruised, and his left ankle twinged, but he was okay. But he also knew this was his opportunity for revenge. So Stan widened his eyes, flattened his ears, and let his tail and shoulders droop, portraying a pitiful image.
“He dropped me for no reason!” Stan lied to his brother.
He watched with inward glee as Ford’s expression hardened into a glare. “Fiddleford! How could you?!” he accused, clutching Stan to his chest protectively.
Fiddleford gaped. “Wha—? I had a darn reason! He bit me!”
Stan clutched at Ford’s shirt with his tiny hands and buried his face into his brother’s shoulder. “He just picked me up out of nowhere!” he said, voice muffled. “I was startled!”
Ford’s hand rubbed his back gently even as his tone was waspish when he spoke to Fiddleford. “How could you? Stanley is afraid of heights. He just reacted because you scared him!”
Stan peeked over at Fiddleford and flashed him a devilish smirk that Ford didn’t notice.
Fiddleford gawked and waved his hands around. “What! He—! You—!” He threw his hands up. “Agh! Never mind. You’ll always take his side anyway.”
“You could have seriously hurt him, dropping him from a height like that,” Ford snapped, cuddling Stan even closer. “No more Stanley privileges for you.”
Fiddleford sputtered. “Privileges? What—No. You know what? I’m not even going to argue. Keep your brother to yourself.”
He stalked off, looking thoroughly irritated. Stan counted it as a win.
“Are you okay?” Ford asked Stan again, all his attention focused on him now with Fiddleford gone.
Stan shrugged. “I’m okay. My ankle hurts, but I think it’s only twisted.”
Ford cooed at him sympathetically, rubbing Stan’s furry ears. “Well, let me take a look at it. We can get some ice for it from the freezer if need be.”
Stan was struck then by the unfortunate realization that if his ankle really was twisted, Ford probably wasn’t going to put him down again for the rest of the day. Walking privileges revoked. That was going to be very annoying.
Ah, well. At least he still got one over Fiddleford.