is finally complete! after some life-issues delays.
A portal-working 1980's classic fiddlestan setting, this ~23k fic explores the emotional complexities of falling for someone and growing, while bumping up against old established patterns.
Check it out from the beginning!
(Rated E, it contains one sex scene, which is mostly skippable if that's not your bag but you're interested anyways.)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Stan Pines
Characters: Fiddleford H. McGucket, Stan Pines
Additional Tags: Smut, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Light Bondage, Blow Jobs, Hickies, Divorced Fiddleford H. McGucket, Young Fiddleford H. McGucket, Young Stan Pines, Valentine's Day, Stan and Fiddleford being cute
Summary:
For their first Valentine's Day, Fiddleford wants to ensure everything is perfect. Perfection, however, is so infrequently attainable. When dinner's burnt, sometimes other appetites are worth sating.
...
“Oh, Fidds, I’m nothing but trouble.”
In Fiddleford’s experience, he wasn’t wrong. Pines men attracted trouble like metal rods did lightning.
“Well then,” Fiddleford began. He locked eyes with Stan as he draped his arms around his neck. “Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me, doesn’t it?”
Fiddleford wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to smoke a cigarette again without thinking of kissing Stan Pines.
Chapters: 9/?
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Stan Pines
Characters: Fiddleford H. McGucket, Stan Pines, Ford Pines
Chapter 9 is live, babyyyyyy!
Can we also appreciate that my Moving Right Along has 21234 words right now???? (At least until I go back and reread it in 20 minutes and find 17 errors that I swear weren’t there in the word doc ;-;)
a sight lingering in view after seeing what one knew
A month after opening the Murder Hut, Stan is no closer to finding any clues as to how to get Ford back—until one literally jumps him.
Rating: E (not until much later chapters, nor central to plot)
No archive warnings apply
Chapter 1
After reading Ford’s journal front-to-back for weeks now, it wasn’t really as if Stan ought to have been surprised when he saw the… thing? Creature? “Anomaly”? Weird little guy? Whatever it was.
And, after the colorful history of his entire adult life, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he got jumped. His body wasn’t, at least—long-trained reflexes had his assailants on the ground before they could drag Stan off to God-knows-wherever anyone would want to drag Stan off to in Buttfuck Nowhere, Oregon.
But seriously, getting jumped here? He hadn’t been expecting it. Nobody had caught up to him here yet. He knew that the faked death might not convince every person who wanted a pound of his flesh (and not in the fun way), but had still thought that between it and the literally-not-on-any-maps seclusion of this sleepy little town, he’d reached a rare place of relative safety.
Aside from, y’know, giant zombie bats or whatever, tree giants that ate cars. Shit like that.
Of course Ford would have been living here.
But, apparently, Stan now had to add “cloaked weirdos sneaking up behind you” to the list of exceptions to that safety. Seriously, what the fuck? The dude sprawling underneath him looked like some cultist out of a cheap comic book from his youth.
Stan went to lift their hoods—might as well have a better idea of what he was dealing with, especially if he saw these people around town or something later.
The first person was nondescript enough, nobody Stan was familiar with, but the second person—
Stan tensed.
He’d been all through Ford’s basement laboratory; had utterly ransacked it by now, searching desperately for some small clues as to the portal’s origins, reconstruction, and use.
And now, one was knocked flat on his ass unconscious beneath Stan.
The the very 70s facial hair was gone, replaced by a haggard sense of age beyond what a decade alone should have dealt to his looks—but the rest of the face was the same.
“Try to forget,” the ripped photo in the drawer had said.
Who forget who, Stan had wondered at the time; it hadn’t been in Ford’s handwriting, though.
Stan needed answers, and he needed them yesterday. And here before him was the first hope in hell of getting any that he’d had since the journal he'd already read cover-to-cover at least 20 times.
But how to get them from this guy?
Fiddleford H…—H…? …fuck—Fiddleford McGucket woke with a start, in about his second-least-favorite way to wake up. He started to shake as he thrashed against his bindings—how did the damned thing get at him—before he realized that he wasn’t in the bunker, and that these bindings weren't as extensive as before—and that he couldn’t quite remember what it was that he was even scared of in the first place, nor the bunker.
But he was still tied up, in the forest, at night, so he started thrashing harder.
“Don’t wear yourself out,” came an unfamiliar, gravelly voice from the shadows. Through them, Fiddleford could make out the silhouette of the man he’d been unsuccessful at restraining—at helping, he immediately corrected himself.
Clearly, the experience of not only seeing the eerie creature, but also of being unable to have the Society’s help in soothing his mind from the frightful experience had set this man on edge, and he’d lashed out in confused retaliation. Nevermind—he would feel better as soon as Fiddleford could, well, escort him back to the Society’s base, and they could calm his agitated nerves.
Getting an impression of the man’s bulk and the way he moved with the well-honed grace of a predator-prey, Fiddleford wasn’t sure how he was going to manage that on his own. Upon reflection, maybe it had been a bit foolish thinking that just he and a single colleague alone could usher this man back to their base of operations.
Fiddleford squirmed and jerked around, regardless of what the stranger said, as he tried to come up with a plan. He’d just have to use some manner of persuasion—somehow—but the silhouetted figure sighed, cutting off Fiddleford’s thoughts.
“Listen, those bindings aren’t comin’ undone ’til I cut you loose, you’ll just give yourself rope burn.”
The stranger shifted closer, and a beam of bright moonlight struck his face.
Fiddleford gasped, then gagged, then choked a little.
“Ah fuck—” he heard the unfamiliar voice mutter, and a meaty fist was pounded to Fiddleford’s back as he coughed.
“Y—you,” Fiddleford gasped. “Th—wh—who—”
His face worked furiously as his mind scrambled through half-shredded fragments of memory.
Then it clicked, hitting him in the gut like a freight train as broken recollections pieced themselves back together again.
“Stanford?!” he started, staring up at his former friend, wild-eyed—then, looking him over, he registered the slight incongruities of the heavy man’s features, and blanched.
Five fingers.
The voice hadn’t been right, either.
Memories of the shapeshifter came crashing back to him, and his heart raced like a hunted rabbit as he searched for a way out. He found none.
Fiddleford flopped frantically like a hooked fish, senseless with terror.
He would have fallen flat on his face and probably broken something had it not been for strong, broad hands catching his pathetically panicking form.
“Woah, uh, hey there—” an awkward rumble came from Not-Stanford, as thick arms loosely encircled Fiddleford.
There was a hesitant gentleness now to this creature's voice and gestures that Fiddleford couldn't reconcile. The shapeshifter was masterful at visual deception, but he couldn’t imagine it capable of being startled into tenderness, nor imitating such a reaction so well.
And not so masterful this time with the visual deception either—so then, what…?
Fiddleford shook violently in Stanford-Not-Stanford’s hovering grasp as he searched the doppelgänger’s face. The trickles of memories knitting themselves back together had become floods, and he remembered Actual-Stanford rambling enthusiastically about the traits of certain shapeshifting anomalies: those who could become lookalikes, but usually missed some key features.
Like the cleft chin, Fiddleford remembered.
No glasses either, and the hair was much too long for the time that had passed.
In his wild panic, he even examined the hands for signs of stumps where sixth digits used to be, but nothing.
There was only one explanation that Fiddleford was drawing, and it was not a good one.
Why then the genuine concern on this shapeshifter’s face?
Cautiously, the creature lowered Fiddleford’s back to rest against a tree, propping him into a more comfortable sitting position.
“Look, I’m sorry about the restraints—sort of; to be fair, you did jump me.”
a sight lingering in view after seeing what one knew
A post-Fiddauthor Fiddlestan fic exploring trauma, aftermath equations, healing together, and loss.
*eventually: contains explicit content
Chapter 3
“More coffee?”
As the sun dipped below the horizon, his companion had gone through four more cups and Stan didn’t even know how many pages of head-splitting equations and codes and diagrams and all manner of bullshit like that.
“Oh—yes, thank you,” Fiddleford replied absently, his full focus on the decryption notes before him. They’d stayed in the kitchen after Fiddleford’s panic attack below ground and gotten to work not long after their conversation.
Stan kept wanting to interject and stop Fiddleford from pushing himself too hard. At the same time he didn’t want to be pushy himself—in any direction. Despite how resolute the man had seemed in his decision to stay, Stan couldn’t help but feel like he would disappear into a puff of smoke if Stan so much as breathed on him.
And good God did he need Fiddleford’s help. He tried not to be a leeching bum about it, keeping Fiddleford’s mug full and the materials coming. They sat side-by-side as they worked, part of which involved Stan catching him up on his own portal work of the last six weeks. It seemed to Stan that he’d mostly just spent the whole time scrambling to even kind of catch up to Fiddleford and his brother.
It didn’t occur to Stan once that he was trying to teach himself PhD-level theoretical physics, as well as mechanical engineering that relied heavily on alien technology, without ever having been afforded the opportunity to so much as complete his high school degree.
Perspective was something far beyond Stan now. He’d had tunnel-vision focus on his fuck-ups and on recovering Stanford. Little else had mattered to him besides doing what little he must to keep a source of cash coming. Though he did spare an occasional thought to an unfamiliar sense of pride in the Murder Hut: Stan had meant it earlier that day when he’d said people seemed to enjoy the place, and business was already starting to do well with both townsfolk and overly-optimistic early-season tourists alike.
Stan looked up from pretending to study notes he’d already read ten times. Dusk had given way to the full black of night, and he realized that it had been a while since he’d eaten. Fuck—he hadn’t even offered to feed Fiddleford yet or anything.
He stretched, glancing furtively around the kitchen. Thankfully, it wasn’t in the worst shape he’d seen it after that first time he’d finally cleaned Ford’s abomination of a dish pile.
He turned to Fiddleford. “You hungry?”
Fiddleford jumped, startled out of his concentration. “Wh!—oh, ah—” he stared into the middle distance. “Why… I suppose so, yes.”
“Good, ‘cuz I make a mean French onion gratinée—that is, au gratin—soup. Haven’t made it in a good while, but I think I actually have most of the ingredients for it right now. Want any for dinner? Or I could, uh,”
Stan got up to review the contents of the fridge, but before he could offer any more choices, Fiddleford said behind him—with a smile that Stan couldn’t see— “that sounds delightful.”
“Great,” Stan said, twisting back to grin at Fiddleford over his shoulder. The tail-end of Fiddleford’s smile still lingered on his face and for far too many seconds the entirety of Stan’s brain became TV static.
“Uh—sorry—what?” Stan asked, flustered back into reality by the realization that Fiddleford had said something to him.
Fiddleford flushed a little, for some reason.
“Ah, I just asked where you learned to make it. Sounds fancy—I didn’t even know you could make a soup au gratin.”
“Oh! Uh. I managed to keep down a job as a cook at this nice diner once, back when I’d managed to stay in one place for a while. During winter too, so I got to keep warm. They had us makin' a lot of stuff like this.”
“I see,” Fiddleford murmured. Stan tried not to squirm under the intensity of his gaze.
That was something that Stan was beginning to notice about Fiddleford already—just how fucking piercing those pale blue eyes of his could be when the man was focused on something. God, and didn’t that make him sound like a cheesy romance novel.
Not that he knew what a cheesy romance novel sounded like. Obviously.
Quickly Stan busied himself with clearing out more room on the kitchen surfaces and got to work on the soup, leaving Fiddleford to his code-breaking.
Fiddleford tried to concentrate on re-familiarizing himself with his own work and piecing apart Stanford’s cryptograms, but damn if it wasn’t hard after Stan had looked at him like that.
In some ways, it hadn’t reminded him of Stanford at all—but in too many ways, it had. Stanley Pines was already becoming both balm and burr to the pain of being here.
He did his best to focus on his equations, his progress—but it was no use. Stanley would start humming to music only he could hear, or swaying his hips a little as he cooked, and Fiddleford’s train of thought would make a grisly collision with a brick wall.
Just when he had almost gotten back on track, staring at a diagram he was just barely beginning to remember drawing himself, a meaty hand appeared in his vision to sweep his papers to one side. “And presto!” Stanley announced, placing a bowl and spoon in front of him, then a plate of bread in the center of the table. He was wearing a proud grin and seemed pleased with himself.
