Chapter Text
That thing that was Stan’s brother is bleeding.
It curls into the corner of the laboratory, wedged beneath banks of the warm, humming computers. The heavy black fabric of its coat disguises its wounds, but cannot stop its blood from smearing across the concrete floor in wide swathes where it moves. Its eyes track Stan as he crosses the room: unholy eyes, bleached white, without irises or pupils. Its numerous wings shuffle as he kneels before it, and it hisses. The noise is old, primal; it makes Stan’s own wings twitch with the urge to flee.
“Hey, Sixer,” he says, instead, pitching his voice low. “Easy. It’s just me.”
The thing regards him without recognition.
“You look pretty banged up, there,” Stan continues. “I need to take a look at you, make sure it’s not anything serious. You gonna let me?”
Rather predictably, the thing does not respond.
Stan sets down the Shack’s first aid kit—a paltry assortment of cartoon Band-Aids, soft gauze, and swabs of dark brown iodine. It won’t be enough. The thing’s fingers flex, its untrimmed talons grating against the floor. It cocks its head, regarding the kit with no small amount of suspicion.
“It’s just some Band-Aids and disinfectant and stuff,” Stan tells it, crouching to make himself less of a target. He keeps his wings folded tightly against his back, the feathers slicked down in instinctive unease. “Let’s get your coat off and see what we’re workin’ with, here.”
The moment Stan reaches for it, the thing flares its wings—too many wings, way too many wings—with an infuriated shriek. It lashes out, its talons snagging and tearing through the weathered skin on the back of his hand. Stan recoils with a cry, his own wings snapping out as he tries to catch his balance. He fails to do so, toppling onto his ass and bringing his arms up to shield his face. The thing slams him into the ground, baring a mouthful of bright teeth and unnaturally sharp canines.
Fear blazing through him, Stan reaches for the knife tucked into his waistband. His fingers skid across the hilt, but he can’t bring himself to draw it—not against the thing that was his brother. It’s his fault Ford turned into this this. Stan shoved him through the portal thirty years ago, shoved him into a malevolent multiverse that ripped him apart and put him back together wrong. If the thing wants to kill him for it, well—
That’s what it’s owed, isn’t it?
But the thing doesn’t kill him.
Instead, it crouches over Stan, one knee digging painfully into his stomach. Its hands brace against his shoulders, keeping him pinned. The tips of its talons prick warningly through his shirt. Six massive wings splay behind it, casting heavy shadows over Stan’s face. Its eerie eyes glue to Stan’s own wings, which sprawl to either side of him. One is bent rather uncomfortably against the concrete, but he dare not move it.
The thing cocks its head again, expressionless as it studies Stan’s feathers. After several seconds it drags its gaze back to Stan’s face. Then it calls to him—a soft, warbling flock-call. It’s the same call Stan uses with Dipper and Mabel when they’re all curled up together in the living room, munching their way through paper bowls of popcorn and pretzels. It’s the same call Ma and Pa used with him when he was still small enough to fit in their laps like a nestling. It’s the same call he and Ford used with each other when they wanted attention and couldn’t be bothered to find the right words to ask.
The response tears from Stan’s throat before he can think about, instinctive and pleading: flock-safe-home.
The thing that was his brother coos, leaning down and rubbing their faces together in mindless affection. Its wings relax, drooping onto the ground beside them. Its fingers uncurl, the points of its talons no longer threatening to break through Stan’s skin.
“Hey, Sixer, yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, it’s just me. It’s just Stanley. You know me, huh?”
The thing chirps, its eyes squinting in an expression of contentment.
Stan exhales in relief, his heart stumbling its way to a steadier rhythm once it realizes they aren’t about to be slaughtered. His breaths remain strained, however, though he reckons that has more to do with the thing’s weight crushing him than anything else. What happened to his scrawny twig of a twin, huh? The thing above him has broad shoulders, wide wings, a strong spine—there’s nothing scrawny about it.
“Alright, I gotta get up. You’re squishin’ me,” Stan manages, a little breathless. He places one hand on the thing’s wrist. When his fingers aren’t torn off for the infraction, he slides his hand up to the thing’s shoulder and pushes it back. The thing allows it, shifting to crouch in front of Stan, instead. Its eyes never leave his face.
Stan rubs the back of his hand where the thing’s talons had torn him open. The wound isn’t deep, but it bleeds like a bitch. Keeping a careful eye on the thing, he reaches for the first aid kit and rummages through it for a square of gauze. The thing scoots closer, its eyes narrowing when it sees the blood on Stan’s hand. It reaches for him, and—
Stan flinches.
The thing flinches, too, yanking its hand back to its chest like Stan stung it. They both stare at each other for a moment, round-eyed.
“God, this is stupid,” Stan says, and huffs out some tired noise that might have passed for a laugh, once. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to spook you.”
The thing warbles uncertainly. It reaches for the first aid kit instead of Stan, rifling through paper packets of gauze and tubes of triple antibiotic ointment. While it searches the kit, Stan finishes wiping the blood from his skin. He presses a pad of gauze to the cut, after, willing the bleeding to stop.
A six-fingered hand appears in his field of view. Deep purple bruises mar the thing’s scabbed knuckles, and blood cakes its talons—far more blood than came from Stan himself. It holds a pink Hello Kitty-themed Band-Aid carefully between two fingers.
“Thanks,” Stan says, a wry smile twisting his mouth. He plasters the Band-Aid across the cut, then turns his hand to show it to the thing. “Eh? Charming, right?”
The thing doesn’t laugh, but it doesn’t maul him, either. Progress is progress. Stan’ll take what he can get.
“Gonna let me look at you, now?” Stan asks.
The thing doesn’t answer him—go figure—but Stan’s gotta try. That’s no small amount of blood smeared across the concrete. It’s hurt somewhere, and bad. Stan’s guessing adrenaline is the only thing keeping it going, at this point.
“Here, c’mon,” Stan coaxes, touching the thing’s hand again. When it doesn’t recoil, he slides his hand up to its neck and begins to unwind the scarf there. He sets the soiled black fabric aside, but the thing picks it up and holds it close to its chest.
Slowly, Stan circles around to the thing’s back. He keeps one hand on it at all times, letting it know exactly where he is—not that its gaze on him ever wavers. He kneels behind it and unbuttons the back panel of its jacket and, beneath, its sweater. The skin underneath, where its wings attach to its body, is marred with thick scars. Its extra four wings attach above and below its original pair, pulling grotesquely at the muscles of its spine and shoulders. Stan brushes his fingers over the thing’s back and feels hard lumps where the wings artificially anchor into bone.
The thing hisses softly when he touches there.
“Sorry,” Stan murmurs, pulling the thing’s tattered jacket and sweater off. He takes care not to jostle its wings, but they’re awkward and ungainly—it’s difficult not to. The thing doesn’t seem to mind, beyond an uncomfortable ruffle of its feathers.
Beneath the thick layers of fabric, Stan finds the source of the bleeding: four parallel gashes rend the skin of the thing’s lower back open, flaying it deeply enough that Stan can see the yellow gleam of fat within. He hisses between his teeth at the sight, and the thing copies him with a hiss of its own. If he didn’t know better, he would think it almost sounded offended.
“Sorry, bud,” Stan repeats, pushing its sweater and jacket aside. The thing gathers those up and holds them close, too. “These are pretty bad.”
Despite what common sense suggests, Stan doesn’t offer to take the thing to a hospital. He already knows how well that would go over. It still needs some kind of care, though—the wounds have started to clot over, but they’re still oozing blood that the thing can’t afford to lose. The thing only exists because of Stan (because of what he did to Ford, all those years ago) and he figures that makes it his responsibility. So what if he loses a finger or two trying to prod it where it hurts?
“I’m gonna take a closer look here,” Stan mutters, gathering a wad of gauze from the first aid kit. He dabs up as much of the blood as he can without actually touching the wound, keeping up a constant stream of chatter as he works. “How’d you get these, anyway? Fightin’ some gnarly alien on the other side of the universe? Sounds just like you, Sixer. You’ll have to tell me all about it when you’re feelin’ better. I bet you’ve gone on all kind of adventures, just in like your nerdy space books—the, uh, Star Trek ones, right? Or was it Star Wars?”
The thing allows Stan to touch it without complaint, quiet chirps escaping it whenever Stan pauses in their one-sided conversation. It even seems to be relaxing, sitting down with its knees pulled to its chest and its chin dropped onto them. Its feathers fluff, as though trying to invite Stan to preen them. Stan lets his fingers brush over the only pair of wings he recognizes—the middle set, pinioned tightly to the thing’s back, with feathers the color of milky caramel. They’re a perfect match to Stan’s own.
The thing warbles softly when Stan touches its feathers, burying its face against its knees and fanning its wings. It would take a harder heart than Stan’s to deny such an obvious invitation, so he sets about preening the soft brown secondaries near the thing’s back. He runs his thumbnail down the barbs of each feather, re-aligning them into neat rows. There are several bald patches to contend with, and he skirts carefully around these—the skin beneath is raw and pink. Soft, pleased chirrups escape the thing’s throat as Stan works, and it melts beneath his touch. It melts so well, in fact, that it begins to list to the side and startles itself when it nearly topples over. Its wings twitch wide to catch its balance, and it hisses in annoyance.
“Hey, don’t get cranky,” Stan says, tweaking a few more feathers into their proper places. “It’s not my fault you’re sleepy.”
It occurs to him, then, that the thing could be exhausted for more than one reason. Stan’s touch may be lulling it towards sleep, but it’s also lost more blood than any creature rightly should—no wonder it’s on the verge of passing out just from a little preening.
“Here, c’mon,” says Stan, removing his fingers from its feathers. “I gotta look at your back, Six. We gotta get these patched up.”
Stan splashes a clean pack of gauze with saline, using it to clean the crusted blood around the wounds. The moment he passes the gauze over the edge of one, however, the thing flinches away from him. A high, nervous growl pinches in its throat, and it shifts to put its back to the wall.
“I need to see it. I know it hurts, but we gotta clean it up.”
The wounds probably need a hundred or so stitches, too—hell, he’d settle for staples—but Stan knows the odds of the thing holding still for that are pretty goddamn long. He could try restraining it, but he doesn’t want to freak it out any more than he has to. If there were some way to knock it out—
“Hold that thought,” Stan says, straightening and tossing the soiled gauze into the nearby biohazard bin. “I got an idea.”
Stan steps to the lab’s wall of cabinets, filtering through them until he finds the one he’s looking for: a box of bright orange bottles and tiny glass vials. Most had been here when he moved in, thirty years ago. He tries not to question why Ford had needed so many drugs—prefers to think he used them on his experiments, rather than on himself. But Stan’s been around the metaphorical block a few times, now, and he knows exactly what he needs from the stash if he wants to send the thing on a nice, sleepy sort of trip. He draws up a couple milliliters of clear fluid from one of the vials, flicking it to drive the air bubbles towards the top of the syringe. He presses the air out, fits on a slender needle, and slips it into his pocket.
“For the record, I am sorry about this,” he tells the thing.
It rests its chin on its knees and hums quietly, watching him as he approaches. He kneels next to it, fixing a few more of its feathers, and it chirrups quietly in appreciation. Its eyes slide shut. It looks exhausted—its face drained, its wings slouched. Tiny shivers roll down its back.
Quietly, Stan pulls the syringe from his pocket and tugs the needle cap off with his teeth. He cups one hand against the back of the thing’s neck to keep it still, and then slides the needle into its shoulder as quickly as he can. He slams the medication in, and just in time, too: the thing snarls in pain and lunges—not toward him, this time, but away. It shoves itself beneath the computer bank, its wings trying to mantle but only banging up against the metal desk. It shies away from him when he moves towards it, cowering into the corner like a beaten thing.
Guilt lodges itself in Stan’s throat. It’s a familiar feeling, though it never gets any easier to swallow. Lamely, he repeats, “I’m sorry.”
The thing shuffles its feathers to create a soft, papery rustle of warning. Stan holds his hands up in surrender and sits down several feet away from it. It glowers at him, and hisses in irritation when their eyes meet.
“Shh, I know you’re mad,” Stan says, trying to shape his voice into something soft. “I know you’re so mad. I’m a big traitor, huh? Make like I’m sweet to you and then stab you—yeah, I know, a real grade-A jerk over here. But I promise it’s for your own good, Sixer. I’m gonna get you feelin’ better.”
The sedative, to Stan’s relief, works fast. Within ten minutes the thing is wavering, its blinks growing slower and slower. It sags to one side and then flicks its wings and sits upright again, shaking its head as though trying to keep itself alert. An annoyed growl rattles through its chest.
“Shh,” Stan says again, calm and slow and sweet. “It’s alright. You’re alright. You don’t gotta fight so hard. Just rest a little, huh?”
Whether it wants to or not, the thing eventually obeys. The drug drags it down into sleep, and it slumps against the wall. He waits a couple of minutes, making sure it’s well and truly down, before he moves in. He hooks his arms under the thing’s and pulls it out from under the computers, laying it out on its stomach. It twitches as he moves it, makes a noise like it’s trying to growl but can’t quite get enough breath for it.
“I know, I know, you’re big and scary,” Stan soothes, stuffing its jacket under its head to cushion it. “Scariest thing around, Six. Nothing’s gonna get you.”
Once he’s got it in place, he gives it another few minutes to lapse back into sleep while he gathers his supplies. He unlocks the lab’s medical cabinet, which offers far more robust options than the Shack’s measly first aid kit. He pulls out the skin stapler—stitches would be prettier, but they’d take too long. The thing would be back awake and clawing his eyes out before he could finish. So, staples it is.
Stan moves back to the thing’s side and douses the wounds with a hefty amount of numbing spray. It won’t work quite as well as an actual injection of lidocaine might, but he doesn’t have time to inject all the wound edges properly. This will have to do. Better than nothing, right?
Stan flushes the wounds with a bottle of saline, and wipes off the crusted dirt and blood on the edges. The thing shifts beneath him, groaning quietly, and he presses a hand between its wings to keep it down. “You’re fine, bud. It’s just me—just gettin’ you cleaned up.”
He reapplies the numbing spray, then swabs each wound with iodine to disinfect it. While the iodine dries to a dull brown, he scrubs his hands clean in the lab’s sink and slathers them in Germ-X. The closure won’t be properly sterile no matter what, but he’ll do his best to keep things as clean as he can anyway. He tugs on a pair of nitrile gloves and goes to kneel next to the thing again, re-applying the numbing spray.
“Bear with me just a couple minutes, okay?” he mutters to the thing, as he opens the stapler. “This is gonna suck, but it’ll be fast.”
Stan uses one hand to pinch the edges of one laceration together while the other hand operates the stapler, moving it as quickly as he can down the length of the wound. Click-click-click goes the stapler, clamping the thing’s skin together with sturdy metal rings. The thing moans in pain, its talons scratching weakly across the concrete and its wings shuddering.
“I know, I know, I know,” Stan says, his voice thick. He finishes with one laceration and moves swiftly to the next. “You’re doin’ so good, Six. Just a little bit more and we’re done.”
A splintered whine escapes the thing’s throat, and it feels like Stan’s fuckin’ heart is bein’ mauled. He’d deserve it.
Stan finishes the second laceration and moves to the third. As he does, the thing musters its energy and tries to scrabble upright again. Swearing, Stan drops the stapler and pushes it back to the ground. It cries out beneath him, wings flapping weakly against the concrete—a bird pinned. Bile rises in Stan’s throat. He hates this.
“I’m sorry,” he says, again, because it’s all that he can say. This is his fault. His rash anger turned Ford into this thing—this terrible, bleeding, unnatural thing. “Shh, hey, hey. I’m not trying to be mean to you, Six, I just gotta fix these cuts. Come on, settle down. You’re not goin’ anywhere.”
The thing wails, thin and broken, and then it flock-calls again—for home, for safety, for help.
Stan presses his head to the back of the thing’s shoulder and calls back to it. The noise breaks in his throat, but it seems to work anyway. The thing’s struggles falter, and it drops its forehead against its jacket again. A soft, distressed chirr escapes it. Stan’s throat closes. He grew out of bird calls a long, long time ago—besides the flock call, he, like most people, largely preferred to communicate with words once he’d grown up enough to wield them appropriately. Words were precise, expansive, mature. Bird calls were for nestlings who didn’t know any better.
Nestlings, and the thing.
Stan swallows what little pride he has and croons quietly at the thing—a low, aching noise meant to comfort. The thing rubs its face against its own filthy jacket, its feathers pressed flat in pain and fear. But it’s stopped trying to get away, and Stan’s got to take advantage of that while he can. He sits up, straddling the thing’s back to keep it pinned in place, and reaches for the stapler again.
The thing shudders beneath him but doesn’t fight, and Stan finishes stapling the last two lacerations as quickly as he can. He wipes away the fresh blood with a handful of gauze, then coats the wounds in a thin layer of antibiotic ointment before plastering a large square bandage over the top.
“There you go, bud,” he says, shifting his weight off of the thing’s back. It stirs only briefly beneath him—still fogged by the effects of the drugs, and too exhausted to escape. “I’m just gonna check the rest of you. Then we’ll get you into something clean and I’ll quit messin’ with you.”
Stan shucks off the thing’s boots and pants, checking beneath for any other wounds. The thing has a multitude of bruises and scrapes, but no injuries as severe as those on its back. He gives it a cursory wipe-down with a warm washcloth, removing streaks of tacky blood from its arms and legs, before rifling through the spare closet for clean clothes. He finds a few of Ford’s old things: a thick black sweater, tan pants, and a pair of socks decorated in a repeating pattern of—who even is that? Isaac Newton? Whoever it is, the man’s face is plastered all over the socks. Ford would never have bought something like that for himself, and Stan has to smile imagining what his brother’s face would’ve looked like to receive them as a gift.
“Who got these for you, huh, Poindexter?” Stan asks, as he tugs the socks onto the thing’s feet. “I didn’t think you had any friends out here.”
Once the thing is semi-clean and dressed, Stan returns it to its makeshift shelter beneath the computers. He pillows its head on its jacket once more—he’ll need to make a trip upstairs to get actual blankets and pillows, because like hell is he going to leave the thing here in the cold and the dark without even a proper nest. For now, he drapes his own hoodie over the thing’s shoulders and tucks it in around its sides.
As he does, the thing’s eyes slit open. Their eerie white glow has dimmed, some, but Stan still feels its gaze pierce through to the slimy, rotting innards of him.
“Hey,” he says, resisting the urge to reach out and pet the thing’s hair out of its eyes. He doubts his touch would be appreciated, at the moment. “I’m all done pesterin’ you, so you can sleep a little before dinner.”
Before the thing can respond, the elevator doors hiss open. Light, quick footsteps descend the stairs, and Mabel pops into the lab.
“Hey Grunkle Stan!” she says, in a very poor imitation of a whisper. “Are you still alive? Because you’ve been down here for, like, ever, and—woah.”
The thing has pushed itself upright once more, its eyes fixated on Mabel. Stan moves to place himself between them, spreading his wings to block the thing’s view of her. It hadn’t attacked her or Dipper after it came through the portal, but it had been distracted then—namely, by trying to rip Stan’s trachea out of his neck. Its focus is much more honed, now.
“Mabel,” Stan says, his voice stiff, “go back upstairs.”
“Is he okay?”
The thing creeps out from beneath the computers, pushing its way around Stan. He grips its shoulder, fingers sinking into dense muscle—but it doesn’t attack.
“Mabel, upstairs, now,” Stan repeats.
“I think he likes me?”
“It doesn’t—” Stan cuts himself off, studying the thing. Its drug-dazed eyes rake over Mabel’s wings—over the soft, barred brown of her juvenile plumage—before latching onto her face. Its own feathers begin to fluff again, and it offers a sweet little flock call to her. “Oh. Well, how about that?”
Mabel beams so widely Stan wouldn’t be surprised if it hurt. She returns the thing’s flock call much more enthusiastically—a bright, chirruping noise. “Do you think he knows who I am?” she asks eagerly. “Did you tell him?”
Stan thinks that the thing’s tiny animal brain saw juvenile plumage—a dead ringer for Stan’s own juvenile plumage, when he’d been a kid—and went baby-flock-brood. The thing clearly lacks Ford’s more discerning nature, or any amount of basic intelligence.
“It thinks you’re its nestling,” Stan says bluntly.
“Aww, Grunkle Ford!” Mabel edges closer, holding out one hand like she expects the thing to sniff it. “Hi. My name’s Mabel. I’m your great-niece!”
The thing coos sweetly to her, raising one of its mid-wings in invitation. With an excited squeal, she wedges herself beneath it. It pulls her into its side and fluffs its feathers even further, a pleased expression on its face.
“God, you’re broodier than a hen,” Stan says, torn between delight and horror. He pulls out his phone and takes a picture the way Dipper had taught him to, at the beginning of the summer. If Ford ever regains his mind, Stan needs to have this blackmail. “Just—be easy, Mabel, okay? He’s pretty banged up.”
Mabel nods earnestly. “I will.”
“Mabel? Grunkle Stan?” Dipper calls, from the top of the stairs. “Are you okay?”
“Dipper! Come down here!” Mabel shouts. The thing winces at the noise, and she pats its shoulder apologetically. “Sorry, Grunkle Ford. Grunkle Stan is always getting onto me about volume control, too.”
Dipper stops on the bottom-most stair, regarding the lab uncertainly. He tenses when he sees Mabel beneath the thing’s wing, his eyes darting from Stan to the thing and back. “Um,” he says.
Stan shrugs helplessly. “Neither one of them listens to me.”
The thing’s eyes go round when it sees Dipper. It lifts its other wing and coos at him, fluffing up so much it looks like a damn nestling itself. Stan is stricken by the urge to preen it again, but resists.
“Does he—is he—?” Dipper stammers.
“Best I can guess, it doesn’t know who you are,” Stan explains. “Just knows that you’re babies, and that you look like us. I guess that’s all it takes.”
“We’re not babies.” Dipper scowls. “We’re almost thirteen.”
The thing croons to him again, clearly unconvinced.
“Yeah, well, try tellin’ it that,” Stan mutters.
“Grunkle Stan, can we take him upstairs?” Mabel asks, peeking out from beneath the thing’s wing. “We can make him a nest in his old room. That’d be more comfortable than down here, right?”
Stan blows out a breath, rubbing the back of his neck. It would be better upstairs, but he doesn’t want the thing walking that far if he can help it. It’s still weak, and he doesn’t want it breaking open any of the staples. “I guess we can try,” he says. “Come on out of there. I’m gonna grab him, and I don’t know that he’ll like it very much.”
“We’ll go get the nest ready!” Mabel wiggles out from under the thing’s wing, ignoring its plaintive chirps for her return. She runs towards Dipper, tugging him along with her. “C’mon, Dip-Dop!”
The thing stumbles to its feet, taking a few unsteady steps after her. Before it can get very far, Stan swoops in and heaves it into his arms—a task easier said than done. It’s heavy, and Stan’s back isn’t up to much lifting these days. “God, what have you been eating, elephants? Jesus.”
The thing flails its wings in surprise when he picks it up, nearly knocking Stan in the face. He tightens his grip and plows ahead, tromping up the stairs with grit teeth. The thing falls still but hisses anxiously at him, fingers curling tight into his shirt. Its wings drag against the ground—it’s either too tired to pull them in, or unable to fit all six properly against its back. Stan guesses it’s a little of both.
By the time he gets the thing upstairs and into Ford’s old room, the kids have turned the old couch into a proper nest—thick blankets crowd the cushions, and all the spare pillows in the house have been stuffed into the corners. Stan lays the thing down and throws a blanket over its head. It falls still, warbling softly to itself.
“Do you like it, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asks, bouncing on her toes. “It’s got all the best blankets. The kitten one is mine, and the plaid one is Grunkle Stan’s.”
“Hey, I didn’t say you could steal my blankets,” Stan protests—though, seeing the thing bundled up in a cozy nest, he can’t bring himself to take it away. He’s got more blankets, anyway.
The thing pulls the blanket off of its head and blinks at them in bemusement.
“I think he likes it,” Mabel decides, beaming.
“Err,” Dipper says, “maybe?”
“We’ll go make dinner, too,” Mabel adds, already darting towards the kitchen, “so you and Grunkle Ford can finish talking!”
There’s little enough talking to be done—not when the thing can’t seem to manage a single word. But Stan’s glad to be left alone with it for a bit longer, anyway. With any luck, he can coax it back to sleep before it’s subjected to one of Mabel’s diabetes-inducing concoctions.
“Hey,” Stan says, and the thing wrenches its blistering white gaze back him. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”
The thing looks away from him, again, its gaze locked onto the kitchen hallway where the children had disappeared.
Stan sits down next to it with a groan, stretching out one of his own wings and draping it over the thing’s head. “They’re okay, old man. Quit your worryin’.”
The thing relaxes in the shadow of Stan’s wing, its eyes lidding. It lists over to lean against his side, fluffing its feathers and pressing one wing against him in a silent demand.
“You’re insatiable,” Stan realizes, even as his fingers find the thing’s feathers once more. He begins to preen through them, the familiar rhythm of the act soothing him. It’s been almost forty years since he preened his brother’s wings, but his hands haven’t forgotten how.
The thing chirrs, the noise slurred with exhaustion. Its head lands against Stan’s shoulder, its eyes fluttering shut. Its breathing falls into the slow, steady rhythm of rest.
“Yeah,” Stan murmurs, to the thing that is his brother. “We’re okay, Ford. Just get some sleep, and we’ll figure everything out in the morning.”
Ford rubs his cheek affectionately against Stan’s shoulder, and for once in his life he listens.