I haven't been able to stop thinking about your mute Stan headcanons and I started thinking about what would've happened if Stan lost his voice sooner, like in childhood instead of out on the road. Maybe he was in an accident or nearly died drowning or something and the incident made him stop talking around the age of 12. Just thinking about how upset Ford would be that his brother doesn't talk anymore but being determined to help him, and the two of them learning different ways to communicate, with ASL and Morse code, and Ford basically having to become Stan's translator when they're at school. I also think it would make Filbrick a little softer on Stan, if the accident was horrific enough.
Wow, this is great I love it!! At first I was thinking Stan was nonverbal most of his life since birth, but this is gold!
A rare opportunity for Filbrick, personally I have a hard time writing him as anything other than the big bad lurking in the minds of his children, I think the fandom in general internalizes his actions too much by placing the weight of their own experiences on this figure, which makes it very difficult to see him beyond what they already decided he would be, but I think your vision is very interesting to be explored.
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Maybe Filbrick was taking a moment during the summer, the store closed for reasons beyond his control that forced him to not work that day. He ends up going for a quick walk on the beach and the twins follow him like a family outing eager to show their father their boat. Stan would obviously be the most excited and vocal one running back and forth while Ford would be walking in front of his father facing him talking non-stop but in a more normal tone.
Filbrick would be distracted looking at the sea while Stan would be imitating a plane circling around him and then, for a moment, a sharp turn of the child going off the sidewalk and a motorcycle would collide with him not too sharply but enough to throw his small body further forward and twist one of his arms at a completely unnatural angle.
From Stan's perspective he would be scared as hell, any child would be, screaming and crying and trying to get up and seek safety by his father's side, but Filbrick would be busy arguing with the owner of the motorcycle, the two of them yelling at each other almost becoming physical, the whole situation scaring the boy more, Ford coming to his side also in tears trying to help Stan in some way but being mostly useless and not able to calm him down.
At some point Stan could see his father approaching, his eyes hidden behind his glasses holding him by the shoulders and saying something, but with the crying and the screams and the pain he wasn't really listening until his father started yelling at him to shut up and be quiet and stop crying, his father's screams getting louder over his own, the whole situation escalating to the point where a small crowd was gathering. Then he becomes unable to make a sound when Filbrick puts his hand over his mouth, permanently shutting him up and carrying his body back home to get the car and take him to the doctor, his mother driving while his brother is left at home and Filbrick's hand still covering his mouth the whole way.
By the time they get to the hospital, when the doctor puts him on a stretcher and he is finally released from his father's hands, he is not making any sound, just the softest whimpers as the doctor gives him anesthesia and he is intubated.
After he wakes up, a cast on his arm and his mother and brother by his bedside smiling at him, his father in the store that is already open, all Stan can remember of the whole event is the screams and the hand preventing him from speaking. Going home with some painkillers, he stays quiet in bed for the first few days, barely making a sound. Ford with all his little heart tries to start any conversation, about monsters, comics, the boat, but nothing seems to cheer up his little brother.
The weeks pass and Stan stays at home because despite being physically recovering well he seems unable to whisper more than a few words, the doctor attributes this to the trauma of the situation and suggests that the family encourage him to talk more.
His mother keeps him at home for the rest of the summer, calling him to help her with her work on the phone, but this doesn't seem to have any effect, Ford tries to persuade him to talk about boats, about their life when they travel the world, about the new comics they could read and although Stan seems very interested he can't get more than a few sounds out of him. Filbrick calls him to work at the store one day, letting him stay in his usual position at first in front of the main display window where Stan used to make up silly stories to convince some customer, but the moment the third person leaves the store without buying anything and without getting any useful information about prices or discounts from the boy he is permanently moved to the cashier, Ford goes along trying to help his brother by supporting him where he can't act, but after he gives the wrong change once he is transferred to a stool in the corner of the cashier just watching his father work.
At one point Filbrick throws the question at Stan, wanting to know why he wasn't talking, why he was acting so strange, why he couldn't be normal. It's not meant to be a mean question, he just doesn't know how to connect with his son, understand his reasons, he was so desperate when the accident happened, the mere thought of one of his children getting hurt when he was around was incapable of protecting someone who should always be protected when he was around, he just wanted the boy to calm down, to go back to the way he was before the accident, for all that pressure to go away. Stan was always such a hard child to read, while he was open to any kind of conversation he didn't really say anything of importance, always running around and screaming and being so hard to control, Filbrick just wanted to understand what was going on, he wanted to fix what was wrong, but how could he reach out to someone so different from himself, he loved his children, he would even die for them, but it was so hard to enjoy being around them, it was hard to feel like being with them. He wanted them safe, but he also wanted them out of his mind, out of his home, taking his childhood problems with them. The guilt that gnawed at the edges of his mind was chased away only by the voice of his innermost desire: he could not be blamed for not loving his children; he had given them his food, his home, and his time. What more would it take for him to give?
Stan eventually had to go back to school, while his quietness was appreciated by his teachers the lack of answers to questions in class was not. Ford was frustrated but he was adapting, the Bros' codes and Morse code being used more than ever both in class and on the street, he became Stan's voice to the world. Stan was still the muscle of the team, fending off any idiot who came at them, at some point Ford found a book on ASL in the school library and took it home, by the arrival of adolescence and its end Ford and Stan had become fluent in sign language and had even created their own signs.
Then the science fair happened and it was pretty much the same thing, except Stan didn't have any words to really defend himself, signing didn't doing any good if the person his were talking to wasn't really paying attention to them.
Filbrick was so pissed, Stan could be silent now but it was still a problem with low grades and a ridiculous attitude of going out and fighting with other kids, when he threw Stan out the door he grabbed the first kid's bag that was lying nearby, the one he used to box.
It should just be a few days of sleeping in the car, he told his wife, it would teach him, it would give him a greater sense of gratitude for his father's efforts and to think of the excuses he would give to his brother, he would look for the boy by the end of the week.
But life is funny in the cruelest ways sometimes, like when you go to the police station to explain that your son is missing and have to explain to the chief that you kicked him out of the house just to teach him a lesson but the local authority figure doesn't seem to agree with the effectiveness of your methods, nor does seem particularly interested in solving any of your problems.
By the end of the month Filbrick had spent more on gas than on his own cigars, visited more tourist spots in the city than any tourist and seen more tears fall from his wife's eyes than any husband has seen in the history of mankind, he thinks, but the boy seemed to have disappeared from the world, swallowed up by the road fulfilling an old dream of his father, disappearing and taking with him his childhood problems for better or worse.
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Filbrick is weiFilbrick is weird to write, yikes. I wrote this here that was supposed to be one of the first versions of the story, I really liked your idea, I hope you write it too, it will be cool to see this AU growing.
