He drinks the water first.
Sue him alright, he's probably got heatstroke, and the glass is already next to his hand, and it's at that perfect amount of cold where the ice cubes haven't melted but the water is cold enough to make the glass all drippy with condensation.
He drinks the water, until the ice slides forward onto his nose and lips inside the glass and even that feels amazing. He sucks down the entire glass, probably too quickly, and then, a little guiltily, sets the glass back down on the side table.
Then he promptly freaks the fuck out.
How. The fuck is he here right now?
The last thing he remembers is the trunk. Suffocating darkness and heat, unable to stretch his legs out and unable to breathe properly, the ropes around his wrists and legs scuffing painfully at the fragile skin.
There's medical wrap tied around his wrist now.
Stan stares at it. It's wrapped very loosely, and there's some kind of cream or ointment that's dabbed onto the wound itself, cooling and pain-numbing.
He throws back the blanket- it's a quilt, made of soft cotton fabric scraps in various faded colors- and finds that his ankles have received the same treatment. He's still in the clothes he was in before, the dark, threadbare jeans he stole from a halfway house and a T shirt he found outside a gas station.
Stan cringes a little at the state of the once-clean sheets underneath him.
Standing proves to be a little difficult. His head throbs, and even after the glass of water he still feels woozy and dehydrated, like a rasin that's been beaten to a pulp.
He also still feels a little beat up, and as Stan checks under his shirt, he finds that the bruising he got from Rico's goons is still uncovered.
Undiscovered, probably. Ford probably didn't think to check under his shirt. People don't get thrown into trunks, tied and half gagged, without getting the shit kicked out of them first.
Stan looks at the note again.
It certainly looks like Ford's handwriting. The cursive Stan barely remembers how to read, let alone write (the letters all swirling and doing backflips off the page) and that insufferable way for writes his own name, with the 'F' twice as big as the rest of the letters.
So it is probably his brother. But none of this makes sense. He's in a bedroom, in some non disclosed location, with a note from probably his twin giving no details, with no memory of how he got out of that trunk in New Mexico, and most confounding of all,
Walking is a little harder than standing. He makes it to the doorway and has to pause, nor just to open the door, which he does- lifting the door just a touch up and off it's possibly squeaky hinges by the door handle so it's silent- but also to catch his breath.
The door opens out into a hallway, which leads into another door, and then an open foyer and stairs, and into a kitchen.
By the time he gets there, sweaty and still too hot, he's thirsty as all hell again. He forgot his glass in the other room, and he's not going back to get it, so Stan just drinks water from the tap in cupped hands, like an uncivilized animal.
Thank goodness Ford's out. That gives him time to get himself together.
After guzzling down an impressive amount of water, (and standing still in the kitchen as the lack of air for even a moment makes his head swim) Stan peeks further around the house. It's cluttered, but it feels like a home.
There are papers everywhere, and what look to be strange scientific experiments littering every surface. When Stan looks into the fridge (the note said he could help himself) there's a saran wrapped plate with a sandwich on it, and another note with that same, familiar cursive that just says Stanley.
It's a turkey sandwich. Stan lifts the bread and then every ingredient underneath. He would not be surprised if there's a pill snuck somewhere in here. There's also no cheese, which could mean that Ford still keeps kosher.
Stan eats the whole thing in maybe four bites, and licks his fingers clean. It's been a little while since he's had real, good and prepared food, and he washes the meal down with more water from the tap.
He washes the plate too, for good measure.
For a moment, Stan actually considers taking a shower and then tucking himself back in. It's tempting, the idea of laying back down and letting himself rest, but this is Ford's house, and not only does Stan not know the rules yet, he doesn't know how he got here at all.
It's frightening. Stan is a little frightened.
Theres a sound in the distance.
The muscles in Stan's neck and back tighten, straining as he listens. It's a car engine, and it's getting closer and closer.
Soon the sound of car tires on gravel pull up to the house.
Stan feels the urge to duck away and hide. He wants to throw himself upstairs, or back to the kitchen to grab a knife, or a weapon, something, or even worse he wants to scurry back to the bedroom he woke up in, to the melting ice cubes and the note from his brother, the only lifeline in this place.
But Stan's not some wuss. He stands his ground, here in the foyer, clutching an umbrella to his chest and peaking up through the front door's peephole like a real man.
There's a car in the driveway.
A shiver goes down Stan's spine.
It's his car. The Stanmobile.
He'd given her up, about a week ago. Technically it was a "gift" or maybe a placatingly sacrifice to Rico. Stan flubbed a deal not too long ago, and to save his own skin, he ditched the car, the last real thing to his name. He loves that car. Loved, that car, but he fully expected never to see her again.
And he hadn't, until it was the dead of night in the middle of nowhere, and Stan was being pummeled into the ground by a handful of assholes and shoved into the Stanmobile's trunk.
He expected to die in that car, just the same as he'd been living in it for seven years.
The drivers side door opens, and a frizzy haired, glasses wearing nerd pops his head out.
Stan slowly puts the umbrella back in it's stand.
Ford...honestly he looks good. He looks healthy, and his shoulders have filled out the Pines family way and he's taller, less like the skinny kid he was.
They still look alike, Stan realizes, as he watches Ford lean across the driver's seat and pull out bags of groceries.
Their faces are almost the same. Twins, forever and always.
Ford pulls out four or five bags of groceries from the front seat. His hands are completely full, so he closes the door to the Stanmobile with his foot. It slams, and jars the whole car so that she rocks a little, from side to side, and Ford winces so hard that his shoulders hike up to his ears, and he freezes.
He half turns, slowly, and looks at the car for a moment fretfullly. Even from way over here, from behind the front door, Stan can see Ford's dumb expression, like a windblown owl.
Ford walks up to the steps, bags in hand, making for the door. Stan's about to step away, maybe go hide in the kitchen or something so Ford doesn't know he was watching, when there's a loud rip, and a tumbling noise.
One of the grocery bags just broke.
Ford actually managed to half catch it with his foot, lopsided and clunky, so nothing actually fell out of the bag. He is struggling though, and as he lifts it and rearranges the bag only tears more, until Ford has to hold it like a toddler, still weighed down on the other side by the other groceries he's carrying.
This close to the door, Stan can make out the sound of-relatable- utter frustration from his twin, and despite all of this, this entire situation, Stan's mouth twitches in a grin.
Ford's so distracted by his crumbling dreams of a solid, unbroken grocery bag that he doesn't even hear Stan unlock the door, and doesn't realize Stan's there until Stan clears his throat.
Ford promptly makes an undignified sound of swallowing his own tongue and maybe a shriek, and damn near jumps out of his skin.
"Need a hand?" Stan asks.
"Stanley!" Ford says, startled and surprised. He's almost just dropped the groceries again, but his eyes are wide and staring at Stan like he's surprised he's here at all. "Stanley." He says again, more composed. This time his eyes dart all over Stan's face, and then to the wrists, considering and a little concerned.
It makes something in Stan's chest twist.
"I said, Need a hand?" Stan repeats, but he doesn't wait for an answer. He grabs the broken grocery bag from Ford's arm, careful of the giant tear down the side of it.
Ford lets him take it, surprisingly, but he immediately starts complaining about it.
"No no, Stan it's no-be careful-there's eggs in that one!"
"Yeah yeah," Stan says over his shoulder. He unloads his armful onto the kitchen table (carefully) and retrieves said precious bounty of eggs, a dozen, perfectly unbroken.
Ford closes the door behind him, and then steps into the kitchen after Stan. "I didn't think you'd be up so soon," he says, and he sets the rest of the bags on the table, right on top of some stacked, important looking papers. "I thought I'd be back before you-did you see my note?"
"I did." Stan says, and he slides the eggs in the fridge and looks through the broken bag for more things to be refrigerated. A package of cheese goes in too. "I drank the water, and then came and got more. And the sandwich."
The grocery bags rustle, and after a minute Ford stands right beside him, placing a half gallon of milk on the shelf in the fridge. He mutters "watch your head," as he opens the freezer to slot in a pint of ice cream.
It's rocky road. Stan's favorite.
This is weird. This is very weird.
"So uh," Stan says, eager to fill the silence. "You drove my car, huh?"
Ford sucks air between his teeth. "I did," he says. "She runs like a beauty."
Her brakes are shot, the engine is faulty, the tires are past bare, and Stan doesn't remember the last time he wasn't on past a quarter tank of gas. Also, the interior of the car has trash literally everywhere, because until a week ago, Stan was living out of the backseat.
Ford's lying now. To what, spare his feelings? This is past weird, this is getting into His-brother-is-on-drugs territory.
The silence between them flares up again, to an uncomfortable, awkward and unbearable level, and this time Stan doesn't break it. They just silently unload the groceries, side by side in Ford's kitchen.
Stan can't stand it anymore.
"Ford-" he starts to say, right when his twin says seriously, "You were very lucky."
The kitchen goes quiet again.
"You were very lucky." Ford repeats. He reaches up into the cabinet and puts away a can of beans, and then turns his head to make eye contact. "I only put that safety alarm spell on a week ago, if I hadn't you'd have-"
Ford's face screws up like he's tasted something rotten. "If I hadn't it would have been bad."
Stan blinks. "A what? A spell?" He asks incredulously.
"A safety alarm spell. I put one on Ma and Shermie too. It alerts me if you are in danger."
Ford rolls up his right sleeve and there, on his forearm, right before the elbow bends, is a line of four little icons, like tattoos. He tilts his arm so Stan can see.
A crystal ball, a baby rattle, some kind of instrument, like a banjo, and on the inner end, is a sailboat.
The sailboat icon is blood red, and the skin around it is slightly inflamed, agitated.
Stan looks up from the strange, tattoo like symbols into his brother's serious, slightly concerned eyes.
"Ford," Stan says very gently. "What the fuck are you talking about."
