An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Stan comes to Gravity Falls, but when Ford doesn’t show up he has to go looking for him. Amidst, a strange house and a mysterious presence he tries to figure out what exactly is going on and where Ford disappeared to.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Stan comes to Gravity Falls, but when Ford doesn’t show up he has to go looking for him. Amidst, a strange house and a mysterious presence he tries to figure out what exactly is going on and where Ford disappeared to.
Chapter 6: The Man on the Radio
______(~2.8k words)______
It’s the climax chapter :3c y’all
(I know it says ch7, ao3 counts the prologue as ch 1 unfortunately, but heads up about this chapter because.... Hey).
Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Stan comes to Gravity Falls upon receiving a postcard from Ford, but he can’t find him and he has to figure out what’s going on. || Ao3 || Fic Tag
Prologue || Ch 1 || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || - || - || -
______(~3.5k words)______
After an hour he still hadn’t seen Ford, and it was still freezing. When he checked the thermostat he saw why the heat hadn’t changed, out of the side of it there a few wires poked out and when Stan pulled the cover off he saw the bundle of mangled wires that had been shakily cut and pulled.
An hour and a half ago, this would have been something he could play off, instead it just added onto the pile of everything else he had found since. The blood, the locks, and then all the writings.
The paranoid scrawls of Ford’s handwriting across papers scattered both on the floor and his desks, none of any that made real sense. Most of his cursive had turned illegible with haphazard lines and out of what wasn’t it was mostly technical talk about machinery and electric waves that Stan didn’t understand the first thing about.
There was only one idea that Stan could get out of the writings, because Ford had written it over and over in different ways, and it was creepy as hell.
‘I’m being watched.’
The idea echoed throughout the entire house - into the excessive amount of locks on the front door, the extra nails in the thick boards pressed against the windows, the barbed wire strung out in the snow around the house.
It even followed Stan himself when he had gone outside to grab firewood from the stack of cut logs near the edge of the trees. He only felt it though because he’d been reading the idea over and over while in some kind of horror movie murder hut looking cabin out in the middle of the woods.
It somehow felt even colder inside even after he closed the door. The icy wind from outside whipping inside after him and scraping at his sides and around his shoulders persisting until he was halfway down the hallway. He supposed that’s what he got for breaking a window for all the wind to come in through.
Stan carried the logs to the fireplace and lit a fire there, settling down on the floor in front of it for the heat.
His gut insisted something was wrong, but Stan had already figured that when he’d gotten the letter. Only difference now was it was a lot harder to think that Ford had sent him the postcard so they could reconnect or- or something like that.
There was no denying something was wrong by this point. He just wished Ford would show up so he could ask him what that something was.
Stan waited by the fire, letting crackling heat fill the space and time with half thoughts flitting every which way.
One particular rabbit hole of thinking kept pulling him back down every time he tried to convince himself that Ford would be back any minute.
Where would his brother have gone out in the middle of a blizzard so bad it frosted over Stan’s car in five minutes? And why?
After a half hour, the question was too big to ignore.
“Dammit, Ford, where the hell are you?” He muttered absently. Another cold wind wound its way into the room.
Grimacing, Stan got up off the floor, leaving his duffel bag in the middle of the floor and went to the kitchen. The fridge wasn’t empty, but it was clear not everything in there was meant to be food so Stan turned towards the pantry instead. As he did though, his eyes caught onto the window and stared. Between the wooden boards, the view outside was darkening.
If Ford was still outside - what if he was stuck somewhere close? Just nearby, Stan could check that far. Ford himself couldn’t have gotten that far on foot himself, and if he was in a car then he at least had something to hide in to keep himself from turning into a popsicle.
Even if he didn’t find anything, Stan couldn’t stand just waiting around and doing nothing like this, not when something bad was looming over this whole situation.
Stan turned on his heel, out the kitchen and unlocking the back door before remembering to zip his jacket closed and pull up the hood. Stepping outside, he pulled on his gloves. He didn’t bother locking the door back.
The white expanse in front of his feet quickly led to the tall forest, and Stan walked forward, keeping his hands in his pockets for the time being, only pulling them out to mark snow against a tree side to help him keep track of where he was at or for balance going down a steep little hill.
“If you’re stuck in a damn ditch right now...” He swore aloud, nearly losing his balance and falling. With the light of the sun dying he couldn’t stay outside long, and he knew it and he knew walking into the woods when it was getting dark was stupid, but it was better than nothing.
As Stan turned right, walking in a large circle around where he knew the shack was, he shouted for Ford as he went. Nothing around him looked like a person and the only colors around were white and brown.
Stan got increasingly frustrated as the light dimmed to the point that he had even less of a chance of making anything important out.
Ford was supposed to be here. Not outside here, but- but when Stan had showed up! Instead Stan came up to an empty cabin. Something was wrong enough for him to call Stan and he couldn’t tell what because Ford couldn’t even just be here for when Stan showed up!!
He looked like he’d been the one needing help though. Maybe a gang was after Ford. He didn’t really think Ford would have gotten involved with a gang much less people at all looking at the state of his house, but it’d at least make sense.
All the little details inside the house screamed that Ford was scared of something or someone, and that wasn’t even bringing into the fact that Ford wrote like someone was after him, watching him.
Stan’s foot snagged onto a covered tree branch and he tipped forward with a curse - hands going out to catch himself. He hit the snowy floor on his gloved hands and then down the hill, sliding onto his side.
He stopped halfway down the hill, his entire right side covered with snow. He turned to a sitting position and carefully stood up, wobbling against the wind. He numbly wiped the snow off of himself before it all melted, gloves wet by the time he was done.
He sighed, biting down on his lip and taking in his dark surroundings. He wouldn’t be able to see Ford even if he was here.
Stan took in a deep breath, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted one last time. “Ford if you’re there then just say something!”
He waited in the dull hum of wind broken up by dense trees and softly shifting snow, straining his ears for a response.
Standing still like this and waiting for a noise only made him feel all the more alone.
He glanced down at his hands and took the wet gloves off to shove into his pockets up against the brass knuckles. Turning, he headed back up the hill towards the shack, pushing his hands into his pockets.
He started shivering after a couple minutes, clenching his jaw tight to stop his teeth from clacking.
Stan pressed his arms into his sides bracing himself as he made it back onto flat ground again. The wind has since started to die down, at the very least.
A little while later he finally saw the shape of the shack through the trees, and turned direction to make a beeline towards it.
His right arm and leg felt like they were overheating by this point, but he’d been around enough to know when he was actually in danger of frostbite. That being said, he needed to change and light that fire again because the house was cold enough he’d definitely catch frostbite if he didn’t do anything about it.
Still shaking, he started the fire again. It took a few minutes because his fingers weren’t exactly cooperating right now, but hey.
He went upstairs to swipe some clothes from Ford’s room. He snorted at seeing the few sweater vests hanging in the closet, instead going for a plain black shirt and some pants.
After he changed, he raided through closets until he finally found one with a blanket inside and wrapped it around himself before going back down and sitting in front of the fire to warm up. He was still hungry, but he could deal with that later.
The more he warmed up the more bone tired he felt.
Stan tried to let himself fall asleep, and he was well beyond the point of being tired enough for it, but it took a while. He knew he’d wake up if Ford did come back in the middle of the night, he was a light sleeper. Not knowing what was going on though wasn’t helping.
Eventually though Stan fell asleep.
______
When Stan woke up the fire in front of him had burnt out and the cold was creeping in at him where he wasn’t covered.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes and blearily staring at the burn out embers turned black and gray now.
After a while he finally got up and changed into his dry clothes, calling a couple times into the empty house for Ford. It was worth a shot, even if Ford was nowhere to be seen, of course.
Stomach growling and rolling in on itself, he went to the kitchen and pulled a sleeve of crackers out from the pantry to eat on at the small kitchen table and sitting near the window so he could look out between the wooden boards.
Finding Ford was- hell Ford was the only reason he was here in the first place, he had to find him. And if he hadn’t showed up by now he wasn’t coming back here.
Stan sighed heavily. It was either finding him or figuring out what happened so he could find him. Neither one was going well right now though.
“Okay,” he said to himself. “Okay.”
“So-” he ran his hand through his hair and sighed again. “So, what do I got? He thought someone was watching him, built this place up like he was expecting a raid or something, and now he’s not here.” Stan tapped his finger on the table and chewed on another cracker.
Both doors were locked too so it didn’t look like he was dragged out. Even if someone did drag him out of here, locking the door wouldn’t have made a difference and would have been more work than it was worth.
Stan pulled the postcard Ford had sent him out of his pocket now, looking at it and flipping it over. It had gotten crumpled and the texture had changed from where it had gotten wet last night, but everything was still readable.
He frowned. No send date stamped on it, so that didn’t help him. It could have taken the mail system anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for the post card to reach Stan from Oregon.
So... why would Ford have left this place after he’d fortified it this much. He couldn’t have had somewhere more secure than this, right? Not unless there was secretly a castle in the woods he could hold up inside. Did being watched matter so much that he had to get out of here?
Stan was still looking down at the postcard, thumb tracing over the bent corner that was close to falling off.
Where would he go if he thought this place wasn’t safe?
“Who’d even be watching you out here...?” Stan muttered, tucking the card away and getting up.
Stan went back through the rooms, grabbing any scrap of paper he saw with writing on it and dumped it all onto the desk in a relatively empty study.
He turned the lamp overhead on and started going through the papers for any information, quickly slapping all the stuff that only had equations on it into one pile to look if he got desperate.
What he was left with was - still hard to read just like yesterday, but this time he took the time to try and figure out the actual messy scrawls where they happened and find anything that could help point to what was going on.
The most legible stuff was full of technical jargon and Stan had to focus hard to not read the same sentence over and over again or look at the occasional doodled triangle.
It seemed to be about some machine to do with... electric omega waves? Some kind of waves. The more Stan read the more he picked up on the less scientific stuff inside. Supernatural barriers and rituals that definitely hadn’t come out of a physics textbook.
There was a room here that had been half filled with photos and samples of supernatural things, like mushrooms three times as tall as Ford himself and the needles of whatever a gremloblin was. It was a nice reminder that even if he hadn’t seen Ford yet, his brother still hadn’t changed that much.
After reading through most of the boring stuff Stan was able to piece together at least something. Ford had made two machines.
The first one, which Stan was going to call the problem machine, had made some kind of problem that Ford was trying to fix. He kept briefly mentioning this problem - a hole, a rift, a breach, never anything specific enough to know what it actually was though. No matter what though it always sounded like something about it was a problem or had made a problem.
The second machine was supposed to fix that. Stan didn’t really know how, kinda didn’t look like Ford had figured that out either, but it had something to do with waves and something supernatural.
Going from knowing zilch to knowing something was great, really it was better than the absolute jack all he had yesterday, but he still didn’t know what these machines were actually for.
If he was trying to use the supernatural with the fixer machine though maybe the problem also had something supernatural to it. And whatever the problem was, it was definitely big. Big enough that someone was after him.
Stan nearly gave up on the really illegible stuff, but half way through one page he realized that for several lines Ford was writing the same thing over and over ‘can’t sleep.’
Stan felt a pit drop into his stomach, looking for the very worst writing he could find across the pages and nearly every sentence he managed to trudge through sounded like that. Over and over again, Ford kept talking like even a nap like it was the end of the world.
Finally- god damn finally- Ford mentioned someone.
‘I have to stay awake. I can’t let Him win.’
“Come on, give me a name or something here." It was like the most annoying game of 'Guess Who' but from a vague piece of paper that nobody else besides Stan probably would have bothered to read through considering it was torn nearly in half and smudged in dirt.
Tapping his foot, Stan tried to quickly read and just winded up getting frustrated when he couldn’t, before he finally tossed the paper away from him.
His imagination got away from him, seeing Rico’s guys coming after Ford - except as soon as he imagined them creeping up to where Ford was tucked into the cabin it stopped making sense and the picture in his head fell away.
There were no bullet holes anywhere around the house, not even any forced signs of entry besides the one Stan made himself. So what had been going on when Ford had been here?
He wasn’t sure if he’d prefer if it was like the people he’d dealt with before, it’d be bad, but at least Stan knew how to work with that. This guy? Stan didn’t know what this guy had been doing or what he’d been planning to do that had Ford this scared.
“What was this guy watching you for anyway?” He asked the paper, the only damn thing around here that could even answer his questions.
The lamp light flickered three times before returning to normal. “Better not be cameras in here.” Stan muttered, before picking up a new page to read.
The lamp, however, started going in and out, electricity failing for long enough that it got distracting.
Stan stood up and unplugged the lamp from the wall then securely plugged it back in, looking back at the light a moment to make sure it wasn’t about to go on the fritz again before sitting back down.
He didn’t get far though because the light flickering again, stopping when Stan turned his head to watch it for a moment. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it back onto two legs and letting his eyes glaze over in the direction of all the paper piled up in front of him.
Maybe the guy had nabbed Ford while he was out of the house. It made enough sense. It’d explain why everything had still been locked up when Stan got here and why Ford wouldn’t have come back to his fortress of solitude.
If he was watching Ford then sure he’d know when he left the house and Ford couldn’t stay inside forever if he ran out of food.
The only other option Stan could really think of was that Ford decided this shack wasn’t safe anymore, but again - Stan had no idea where Ford could have gone.
Technically, he also had no idea where anything in town was or where someone could be trapping Ford, but finding a shady place sounded a lot easier than finding whatever Ford would consider safe from this guy’s eyes when a remote cabin out in the woods wasn’t. If Ford left for a new hideout, paranoid that he was being watched, then chances were he made sure he wasn’t seen and left no traces behind.
Stan started to feel grounded, with some options finally sliding into place.
Ford was either being held captive somewhere or he had hidden himself somewhere nobody would find him. So all Stan had to do was look around until he found someone that fit the bill, or if Ford was hiding out somewhere then for him to notice Stan running around and eventually leave him some kind of sign.
Stan's eyes focused as the light from the lamp started to quietly buzz, darkening to a low light before it began flickering.
Stan tipped his chair back to the ground, and reached inside to twist the bulb in tighter.
He watched the lamp expectantly and for a solid couple seconds it seemed like it had done the trick.
Then the light began to flicker on repeatedly, flashing three times and after a pause the light held on for a moment before the bulb darkened again.
Stan watched the faulty light flicker along for a few seconds before he finally stood up and just unplugged it from the wall entirely. He was done reading anyway.
Plus he could eat pretty much anything he wanted when Ford wasn’t here. Even if Ford wanted to get mad at him about it later, he’d just say he couldn’t get to the store for food anyway. Not that Stan had any money to buy food even if he went to town.
Stan went downstairs and into the kitchen, ready to rummage something more than crackers this time.
When he flipped the light switch on though it started flickering and Stan groaned. “You gotta be kidding me.”
He flipped the switch back off. Then on. “Work.”
The light turned on and Stan stayed poised with his finger at the switch and waited. When nothing happened he finally went over to the pantry. “That’s what I thought.”
He pushed aside the box of crackers and started to inspect the cans for soup or something good when the light started slowly flickering again. He ignored it for the first couple seconds, but it kept going.
After a dozen seconds he finally shot a scowl at the still flickering light before walking back towards the switch. The instant he took a step, the light started going completely haywire and he swore he could hear the electricity from it buzzing.
“Alright, yeah that’s-”
Stan had made it halfway across the kitchen when there was a loud pop and the light over his head burst, plunging the room into darkness with the tinkling of glass and a crackling noise of uncontained electricity that soon died down.
Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Stan comes to Gravity Falls upon receiving a postcard from Ford, but he can’t find him and he has to figure out what’s going on. || Ao3 || Fic Tag
Prologue || Ch 1 || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || - || - || -
______(~800 words)______
Stan hesitated for a half second because this would be the worst ‘re-first impression’ or whatever, breaking into his house. That only lasted half a second though because it was a blizzard outside and Ford had written for him to come here anyway, the least he could have done was answer the door. Why wasn’t he answering the door?
He pushed the worried thought aside though, just because this looked creepy and ominous didn’t mean it was.
Stan took a few steps back, dropping his duffel bag onto the wooden porch then body slammed the front door. And immediately regretted thinking of this place as some rickety cabin in the middle of the woods because that door was not rickety in the slightest.
On the second shove, he heard the clinks and scraping of metal, but- more than one. There had to be at least two or three metal locks on the other side of this thing, which either meant Ford was inside or went out another way.
“Ford?” He called out again, a last ditch effort. “You in there?”
Nothing.
Grimly, Stan picked up his bag and braced himself going back into the cold and around the house for another door or window.
At the side door there was a window beside it, it was almost too easy, until Stan saw the window was boarded up.
He jabbed an elbow into the pane of the window closest to the door handle, the sound of the relatively dull crack of the thick glass getting swept away by the wind. After clearing the glass away, he started hitting at the board of wood in his way. After a few minutes of artful property damage, he reached an arm inside and unlocked the door.
The air inside was almost as cold as it was outside and there were no lights on. The only light was the light gray outside from behind him, casting his shadow down the hallway.
Stan shivered and closed the door beside himself, haphazardly hitting the board back in place enough for it to go back in place enough to cover up what he’d done.
“Ford?” He called out loudly, not waiting or expecting a response as he started to walk into the house.
The very first room he passed made him stop because there was a damn dinosaur skull in a tank, a tall metal tower with subtle blinking lights, and within seconds Stan was catching more of the odd items inside the room.
After he was over the small shock of seeing a living room covered with stuff like this, which honestly made sense for Ford, he realized that it was... kinda disorganized. Not messy. As much as he didn’t really like thinking about the room they used to live in together, because how did he think about the room without thinking about everything else, he remembered it and how Ford had been.
Ford could be messy and hell they both had been, but there was a difference between a mess and the disorganized chaos of jars tipped over and spreads of paper that looked as though they had been stepped on and kicked.
So- So, it was disorganized, so what.
Stan quickly moved through the rest of the house, flicking on lights as he went.
Living spaces were all about the same as what he’d seen. Kitchen was a mess and reeked of burnt coffee.
The longer Stan went without seeing Ford the more worried, and at the same time at ease he got. On the one hand, the longer he went without seeing him was the longer he didn’t know what was going on and the way this place looked wasn’t helping with where his thoughts ran. On the other, not seeing Ford meant not finding his body lying on the ground or anything like that.
Then Stan got to the upstairs. The upstairs bathroom had a crack in the mirror, and a lump of white cotton that was covered in distinct, dark burgundy stains. A lot of stains. Not enough to make him think too much though, but enough that it didn’t look like a small accident.
The last room Stan went into was the attic with a grim anticipation only for it to turn out... to really just look like any other attic with boxes stacked inside and covering most of the walls.
Stan slowly breathed out, lingering around the room and gradually relaxing. He still had no idea where Ford was at, but nothing looked like a crime scene here besides maybe where Stan had broken in and ‘technically’ committed a crime.
He passed back around the house again, slow and actually taking in the rooms this time around. Turned on the heating too, though he probably would have been better just looking for wood to put in the fireplace and holing up in there.
Hell, maybe Ford went out for groceries. His kitchen looked like he lived solely off of coffee right now.
For now, Stan would just look around while he had the chance.
Whatever this was, it was going to come slamming back into his face any minute as soon as Ford got home, he was sure.
Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Ford is still recovering from the memory gun, but at least Stan has some friendly fire... that did come from his car burning but hey you take the good where you can, right? (A post fic of after the unknownconstants’ blog events, aka thie/uc ford and stan from the wwtd spinoff/oneshot.)
______(~1,100 words) ______
It wasn’t every day that Stan’s life went to hell. More like every few days or something like that. A couple weeks if he was on a real streak! This was not one of those streaks. Turns out meeting up with your brother who’s apparently dealing with getting possessed every now and then by a literal alien ghost demon whatever turned out to have a lot of bad moments! Like him switching back and forth on a dime between needing him and wanting him as far away as possible, then the whole fight about the portal, and then...this.
Stan was leaning onto a clear corner of the same desk that Ford had spread an avalanche of papers and tools in front of his memory encoding machine where he had his hands inside a panel with a pair of wire cutters. Meanwhile the local walking fire, Scraps, was latched around Stan’s leg. Thankfully, not actually burning him, but like Hell he knew why or how that worked since they’d burned Ford before, but then didn’t burn him later. Scraps was probably the best thing to happen to him today, which was kinda funny since Scraps was also a result of the second worst thing that happened today. The first worst thing was in the room with him.
Ford looked the same, at least right now when he was focused on something, but it was jarring how different Ford was acting. How different the look was in his eyes half the time. How it was clear like hell that he didn’t really recognize Stan even if he called him by his name. Ford sent him to try and talk down a maybe murderous shapeshifting alien he had trapped in a bunker, not a good start, and as soon as Stan had gone away it had all gone to shit. Ford’s memory completely wiped, his car... just gone, and when Stan had realized someone had piled the heaviest junk possible to trap him down in the bunker it had still taken him a long time to even get out with the help of the walking fire hazard that was also emotionally his car or his feelings about his car or the emotions he had while in his car - or all of that combined! And if it hadn’t been for damn luck with the interdimensional communicator getting left where Bill hadn’t seen it, their whole world could have gone to a more literal alien demon kind of Hell.
And then- then it had turned out the device had switched to a whole different dimension, he didn’t even want to think about that right now, and they got it switched back again pretty easy. Ford wouldn’t talk to them though, which had left Stan to break all the news. He wanted it to be nice. It should have been nice because it was talking with people that knew him him plus actually recognized him.
It... hadn’t been though. At first, yeah. Then he started catching them up and they got worried, which hell should have been nice, would have been nice. Except it just- it just wasn’t and he didn’t want to think about that either. People on the chopping block or set to leave shouldn’t be making friends, that was all.
Stan rubbed a hand over his face, pushing the communicator onto the desk and looking down at Scraps.
Scraps’ charcoal darkened legs were wrapped securely around his calf, leaving behind sooty black marks where they shifted their short legs, and their coal eyes blinked at him as Stan looked down. They didn’t really ‘have’ a mouth according to Ford until they opened one up to eat something, but all the burnt junk at the bottom of their fire made it look like they did sometimes. Well, it looked like someone had tossed a bunch of trash into fire and it had curled up into indistinguishable shapes, but the shape kinda made a face sometimes! It was like whatever the equivalent of a birthmark was for scampfires. Maybe burnthmarks.
Scraps scittered up Stan’s leg, staying stuck though like at any moment someone was going to try and snatch them off, and settled onto the top of his knee.
Stan sighed, cautiously pushing a hand through the fire that seemingly refused to burn him no matter what. Maybe it really was emotionally his car because he was already feeling the same urge to talk to it like he would when he drove alone.
“Ha, are scampfires always this clingy?” He asked, asking Ford instead of Scraps themself. One of the few good things right now was that Ford at least seemed to have remembered all the weird stuff he studied and when he talked about anomalies he looked like himself.
Ford quietly glanced over to see where Scraps was, but then looked back into the wiring. “In my experience, not unless I had food of some kind, but some of my testing may have warded them off from getting too friendly.”
“What was the testing?” Stan snorted.
Ford paused and there was actually a very brief wary look at Scraps as though they were covertly listening. “Minor amounts of water and snow.”
“Ha,” He laughed. “What’d you think was going to happen when you threw water on a fire?”
“Well, I had wanted-” he hesitated, “I had to check to make sure.”
Stan smiled, talking to the scampfire. “Hear that, Scraps?”
“Don’t do that,” Ford interrupted before Stan could continue, “they already don’t like me!”
“‘They don’t like you,’” Stan rolled his eyes. “What makes you think they don’t like you?”
Ford looked at Scraps, seriously evaluating for a moment, and pulling back towards the panel of wiring again as he talked. “They hiss at me.”
“Only when you leave the room.”
Ford stopped like Stan had said something a lot more important than it was.
Stan continued. “Ford, it’s just like when a dog barks when they get left alone.”
Ford grimaced slightly, trying to hide the expression by looking directly at the wires and pushing at some with his hand.
Stan wanted to press on the weird reaction further, but he didn’t know if he could take one more possibly bad thing tonight. So instead he tried to put a positive spin on it. “Look, don’t worry about it too much, okay. Just means they want you around.” He reassured him. “Heck, it’s not like they’re alone here either.” Stan said, gesturing to himself.
Ford looked between Stan and Scraps, the worry on his face easing away for the most part. “No. No, you’re right.” He agreed, resuming work. “They’re not alone. Not now.”
Bandaging Stanley’s wound went relatively well, though perhaps only because neither one of them talked beyond basic exchanges. ‘This is going to sting.’ ‘You done?’ ‘So how many limbs am i losing?’
The last one, admittedly, made Ford smile a little, although there was a part of him worried about the wound still. Even if he had picked up the magic of the sigil, as the orange glow indicated, it was a protective one so if it did anything it should be to help him.
After they went downstairs and Ford handed him a painkiller medicine, he expected them to break out of the silence immediately. They didn’t. Though it was only a matter of time.
Ford realized why Stan avoided talking for just a few moments, probably stalling on time for the stinging pain from the medicine on his shoulder to die down before another fight potentially flared up with more injuries or going out into the cold that could feel good, but most likely would be an unpleasant minute until his car warmed up.
Why Ford himself didn’t just get it out of the way though, especially when he didn’t have the time? ... What was he doing? Maybe it was some belated hope that Stan might change his mind about taking his research to hide it, except nothing had changed so there was no reason for him to think that might happen.
He heard a distant hum like the portal that he was sure he was imagining again, because it couldn’t be active and it was just his mind replaying what had happened downstairs. That could have done something. He should be checking on that instead of just sitting idly by-
Light flashed and Ford’s eyes shot open, first recognizing that they had been slipping closed which was always a bad sign, then noticing the kitchen lit up with dim yellowing light from above the kitchen sink then dark with a triangular shape of moonlight from the small window falling onto the floor in front of him.
Finally, he noticed Stan, who was beside the light switch flicking it back and forth, leaving it on when Ford looked at him. He raised an eyebrow at him and let his hand fall back down again.
Ford quickly felt his breathing returning to normal. “Why did you do that?” He asked tiredly.
“Well, saying hey wasn’t waking you up and I was already over here.” He said with an unbalanced shrug.
“...I was asleep?”
“Looked like you were getting there.” Stan answered nonchalantly, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
Ford straightened up, and ran his hands through his hair, harsher than necessary for some painful stimulation to confirm that he was really awake right now. Everything since Stan had arrived had left him with far less mental energy than normal to manage any nightmare scenarios, which was really saying something considering his average mental energy these days.
The words came out of Ford’s mouth as soon as he thought them. “You need to go.”
Stan stopped breathing for a moment, and after a beat his breath came out with a word. “What?”
Ford tried to think of a million explanations and his thoughts crumbled onto one another uselessly. “I have to work and you don’t want to be here.”
“Who said-” but as soon as Stan started, he just as quickly stopped himself and shifted, his stance widening as he pointed at Ford. “You know what, you’re the one that asked me to come here and one minute later you ask me to leave. You didn’t want me here, I don’t care. I don’t-” He took a step forward, and harshly repeated himself. “I don’t care, Ford! Hell, I couldn’t care less even, but you don’t call me here then send me away because you suddenly don’t even want me here at all!”
“How could you-” Ford grumbled before matching Stan’s level of noise. “I didn’t change my mind! I needed you here to take the journal and hide it! How is that- How-?” He laughed in disbelief at Stan, at this entire situation, at how he was having this argument in a series of events that shouldn’t have ever happened. “Why are you-?”
“Because I came all the way out here, and now all you want is to never see me again!!”
“I didn’t say that!!”
“You told me to go as far away as possible!”
“I wanted you to take my RESEARCH as far away as possible!”
“Then hire a fucking mailman!!” Stan shouted, swinging his arms out wide, a restrained cringe in his expression.
Ford put his hands against his head that was mere seconds from bursting and his surroundings swinging back and forth, glaring down at the floor.
Stan audibly sighed, taking quick steps to his left then back again to his right back in front of Ford, breaking where the moonlight fell onto the ground.
Ford couldn’t help but notice how Stan was faced towards the hall though, ready to walk away, ready to leave, ready to- “You don’t want to help me, that’s fine.” He should have known. He should have- Ford continued, refusing to look up. “I don’t need you to take the journal.”
“Just let me...” Stan’s hand started to lift from his side, and Ford saw it- Stan taking the journal and burning it, just to get back at him, burning away years of his life, the only years worth anything.
Ford interrupted before he could finish the sentence, finally looking up with a venomous glare. “No, and that’s final.”
Stan withdrew his hand, eyes wide, and took a short step back. A brief silence before he would no doubt snap at him about his ‘dumb mysteries’ again.
Except that never came because within that short second the glow off of Stan’s shoulder shined bright enough that Ford could see the orange light mingling with the moonlight, and Stan’s legs apparently giving out underneath him as gravity suddenly pulled him straight down.
Fandom: Gravity Falls || CW: - || Legitimately, these are just 3 different cuts I did for the day 7 and day 8 fics that I wound up cutting
______(~500 words) ______
As it turned out his first aid kit was ‘lacking’ to put it kindly. Practically empty would have been a better way to describe it, but lately situations didn’t lend a chance to even be phrased in a positive manner so Ford resolved to at least do so now.
The first kid was lacking bandaging, most of its bandages, every ointment, and a few minor list of other essentials.
“Some bandaids and a pair of broken scissors.” Stan commented.
Ford cleared his throat. “There’s some safety pins in here too.”
“Right, right, you’re right. Let me start over. Some bandaids, broken scissors, and a few bent safety pins.”
Ford set the safety kit down onto the bathroom counter. “That’s okay. All I need is some clean cloth and enough chemical to clean the burn.”
“Why are these bent anyways?” Stan asked, picking up one of the safety pins that was, of course, bent into the shape of a triangle.
He waved a hand, brushing off the question. “Just stay here one moment.” He said shortly before leaving Stan in the bathroom. An alcohol to clean with, was easy enough to find. The clean cloth on the other hand...
------------ NEW START -----------
“How do you get supernaturally burned?”
“Well- evidently with a hot plate of metal that had a sigil carved into it.”
Stan had to look over his shoulder to see the glow in the mirror, while Ford stood on his injured sign observing the burn.
A red tint to the skin was ordinary for a burn, an orange glow that took up a very particular design was not. On the bright side, it didn’t look like there was any blistering with the surrounding burn even though it probably should have.
“Doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything...” Stan said. “Besides feeling like any other kind of burn.”
“You see it glowing too, right?” Ford asked, needing to be sure that his sleep deprivation wasn’t getting the worst of him.
“Of course, I can. I’m not blind. I wouldn’t mind it as much if it wasn’t burning still.” Stan said. “So... what’s it going to do?”
Ford didn’t answer. His mind coming to a blank.
“Ford, what’s it going to do?” Stan asked again.
He adjusted his glasses, stalling for time. “Well, ah... judging by the shape and- well the location shouldn’t matter too much, unless it does... it should ahm...” He tapped his fingers against his lips.
Stan looked over at him. “You don’t know.”
“I don’t know.” Ford admitted. “A few- some months ago I etched several different sigils into countless places. None of them had worked though! It should be some kind of protection or act like a ‘security alarm,’ but most of them weren’t precisely clear on their purpose”
“Did you try branding yourself with any of them?”
“I- no, but evidently I should have.” It apparently worked with this sigil.
Stan stopped to look at him. “Hey, so what I said was a joke-”
“-Right, right, no, of course. Of course, it was.” Ford pushed a hand under his glasses to rub at his eyes, pushing against closed lids. He took a breath and opened his eyes again. “There’s no way to know for certain what this will do until something attempts to harm you.”
“Sounds like a bad excuse to try and punch me.”
Ford grit his teeth, taking a deep breath in through his nose. “Leaving it exposed can’t be helping.” He said simply before binding the remains of a clean cotton shirt around the wound. The sooner he got this done the sooner... he didn’t know, the sooner the problem would go away? He hadn’t come up with any solution. Maybe the sooner he could get some space to at least think about what to do now. Between Stan’s injury which could just as easily turn out to be something harmful for all he knew and what to do about the journal now- he just needed to think.
------------ NEW START -----------
A red tint to the skin was ordinary for a burn, an orange glow that took up a very particular design was not.
