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There’s a curl spiraling down the wrinkled slope of Stanley’s forehead, pinned beneath the wide brim of his red beanie. The coy coil of its end taps against Stan’s brow, jumping in time with the strong breeze whipping across The Stan-O’-War-II, forcing Stanley and Stanford to huddle beneath the same blanket as Stan lazily casts another line out into the Atlantic.
Stan bats the curl away absentmindedly, but the capricious thing springs back into place as if he'd had never touched it at all, that red beanie holding it in place. It does something strange to Ford’s stomach every day that Stan wakes up and pulls that particular hat on above all his others – and Pythagorus knows that Mabel has knitted Stan enough hats to outfit a small army. Correlation does not in any way, shape, or form equate to causation, Stanford Pines knows.
So it’s rather strange to explain why his stomach flips every time he sees Stanley adorned in the same color as Ford’s sweater. Ford’s color.
Stan shifts, shoving uselessly at his hair again as it dances closer to his eyes. “This damn mop is getting too long,” he grouses beneath his breath. “I'm going to get it cut at the next port, I swear.”
“Don’t you dare,” Ford says automatically, then leans forward. “Here, let me.” He is already reaching for his brother, moving quickly as soon as he has allowed himself to move at all like a magnet released from its holdings, flying to its opposite pole.
Gently, he coils the end of Stan’s curl around his finger, peeling the brim of his red, red, red beanie up just enough to tuck it inside.
“Honestly, Stanley,” he huffs as he leans back, fingertips burning with the residual heat of him. “You’d be a mess without me.”
“Gimme some credit here, Sixer,” Stan says, and his eyes are the sepia of a childhood memory, just as soft, just as fond, just as distant. He brushes his fingers against his own forehead, as if Ford’s touch, too, lingers like a brand. “I’m a mess with you too.”
Stan has quit smoking sporadically, in fits around the holidays and his birthday and whenever he can’t stop that wheezing old man cough of his in the morning. He’d lasted the longest when the twins were around, but once they left, he’d scarcely made it a week before he was digging out one of his good Cuban cigars, eyes lidded in pleasure as the warmth crept into his chest. There’s always a point that his craving crests, that the itching beneath his skin writhes into a frenzy, that his legs bounce and fingers twitch and his mind is abuzz with all-consuming hunger.
It’s so easy to light up, to breathe in, to let the snarling cravings turn to docile, purring urges.
Yet, when the smoke dies away, his hunger only grows.
Here, on the deck of the Stan-O’-War-II, he knows being with Ford again is just like that breaking point – dangerous and heady and addictive as a smoker’s first hit months after quitting. He never should’ve gotten a morsel. Now he just wants it more.
Stanley has never been good at denying himself, except for this one thing. Because there is one, only one, thing he wants more than the warmth of Ford’s hand in his own, his lips moving against Stan’s, for that deep voice to rumble out “I love you” the same way that Stan means it – and that is his brother. He wants Ford more than anything, and that means he will never have him, despite everything. Stan spent thirty years trying desperately to get his brother back; he will not survive another if he pushes him away now.
Stanley Pines is a consummate gambler. He knows when to fold.
“C’mon, Sixer,” he says, and reels the line in, no fish in sight. It relaxes him, this time sitting, staring across the open ocean meditatively, Ford at his side. What Ford gets from it, he has no idea. “Sun’s about to go down. Let’s see what we can rustle up, alright?”
Dinner is an affair of inside jokes, of thrilled speculation, of comfortable silence. Ford has had luxuries in his life. He’s met kings of distant galaxies, tried strange delicacies, eaten his fill and been offered more – he’s been sated, been delighted by culinary inquests. He thinks, vaguely, as his brother throws his head back to laugh, the column of his throat stained silver with moonlight, that he would give each and every bite of those feasts up for a shitty can of reheated beans, so long as it was split with Stanley.
There’s only one bed. It’s the oldest cliché in the God-damned book, and Stanley would know; he’s pretty sure he was around when the damn thing was written. He’s not sure which one of them fabricated the bright idea, which one concocted the excuse, eyes averted and chest puffed and voice too-loud, too-cheerful, as if that would make the whole thing any less odd. The result is the same: a queen sized bed – queen, something inside of Stan snorts derisively, remembering the ache of his arches after hours in heels – tucked away modestly in the corner of their too-drafty cabin, as if they can both forget what it means if they don’t have to look at it directly.
It’s a small ship. There’s only so many places they can look.
Mabel had certainly been delighted by the discovery, squealing and making kissy faces through bouts of laughter after she spotted it over their shoulders over Skype. They’d explained it away to her just as they’d done to each other at the beginning, in overlapping babble, noises of “saving space” and “maximizing efficiency” and “keeping an eye out”. For their own ears, thrillingly, Stanford had muttered fast and quick, as if he just couldn’t help it, “might be nice.”
Their bedtime routine has turned into a well-choreographed dance – one of those complicated, whirling, achingly structured promenades straight out of The Duchess Approves. Ford twirls, facing the wall, as Stan tugs his shirt over his head. Stan bows low to avoid looking as Ford emerges from the shower, water still clinging to the hair on his chest. It’s the sort of dance where the partners orbit each other, mirrored in their steps and turners, rises and falls, close enough to feel but not to touch. Never, ever, ever, to touch. It’s not the sort of thing done in polite company, after all, not without a family-ruining scandal. Stanley has caused enough of those for a lifetime.
So he half-steps and turns, just on cue, and his eyes do not linger on Ford’s thighs peeking out from his worn-soft sleep shorts. They waltz around each other one-two-three as they fold into the bed – Stan with his back to the wall, Ford with easy access to the door, to escape.
The dance concludes. There is no rapturous applause, although Stan feels he deserves it for being so damn normal about the whole thing, circumstances considered.
“Good night, Stanley,” Ford says, instead of I'm sorry I’ve done all this. “Sleep well,” he says, instead of I love you. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says, instead of how is it possible to miss you when you’re less than a foot away?
“‘Night, Sixer,” Stan says, instead of I’m sorry I’m like this. “I‘m kicking you if you snore again,” he says, instead of I love you. “Don’t let the bugs bite,” he says, instead of how can you not see I love you?
There’s a little lie Stan tells himself, to stay sane. Well, more than one if he’s (rarely) being honest. He lies to himself about his feeble charm, he lies to himself about how Ford’s eyes linger on him because shit, what if he’s wrong, he lies to himself about how much his back (and knees and shoulders and fuck, everything) hurts. And every night, laying there, staring across the impossible space of four inches between himself and Ford, he lies to himself and says tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow will be the day he finally, finally says something.
And then he rolls over and faces the warped ceiling of the Stan O’ War II with a wry grin. Nah, he thinks. Probably not.
But there’s a maybe hidden there somewhere, the sliver of a real possibility, a lock he could pick to the future he’s always wanted, and that maybe keeps him going. He falls asleep like that, unsurpassable four inches away from his brother, and neither knows that they’re dreaming of the exact same impossible thing: eleven fingers, intertwined in the light of day.
They get up with the sun the next morning. It’s achingly cold out, and when Stanley tugs on his red beanie, a trapped curl spirals down the wrinkled slope of his forehead.