Chapter Text
The road stretches out ahead of them like the loop of some bygone giant’s cursive hand, ferrying them along into some new paragraph or footnote. The russet May sun is fading into the first notes of June. The Diablo roars along in the orange-warm light, the tension-taut air, and it feels like they’re really adults now, really independent, on a real road trip to start living in the real world.
And all Stanley’s contributed so far is a metric ton of awful, terrible, stomach-turning puns (and sometimes a spontaneous and equally as stomach-turning song).
“Hey, Sixer. I’d tell you a chemistry joke, but I know it wouldn’t get a reaction!” Cue finger guns. “Aaayy!”
Stanford has had it up to here (he mentally takes a hand off the steering wheel and jabs fiercely at his own neck) with him. Honestly! He's been smacked in the face with an erratic dance move too many times to count, and after more than twenty years of life Stanley still can’t carry a tune to save it. Really, he’s being disgustingly immature, not to mention the distinct lack of awareness of something called personal space; Stanford rescinds the thought about them being real adults and instead labels Stanley a teenager, at best. Fiddleford is quiet in the back seat for the most part, but sometimes he lets out a traitorous laugh at one of Stanley’s jokes, so he’s no better.
All in all, though, it’s about what he expected when he embarked on a thirty-hour road trip with his brother and his boyfriend.
“You know why I break into song so often? ‘Cause I can’t find the key!”
It’s 6:18 p.m. They left Arkansas nearly eight hours ago, after bidding a final farewell to that too-small dorm room they’d occupied together for three years (a time before Stanley was living there seems so distant and unreal), and to the university that was in all honesty the best thing that had ever happened to any of them. The funding for this trip was, of course, willingly provided by Backupsmore, after Stanford submitted a high-grade application and a promise of mentions in academic writings, and did just a little bit of sucking-up. Backupsmore was sad to see their brightest alumnus depart; they squeezed three speeches out of Stanford at the commencement ceremony and nearly, nearly convinced him to stay on and start another doctorate (and where they say convinced others might say begged on their knees until he felt guilty enough to stop saying no, but that’s all semantics). Stanford was adamant, though, and with a cheque for his research grant in one hand and his admirable diploma in the other, he waved goodbye. The dean of students only cried for an hour.
Another flailing limb enters Stanford’s vicinity. He grimaces, and the movement makes perspiration roll down his face from where it had been collecting above his eyes. Maybe leaving in summer was a mistake, because the air conditioning in the Diablo (the Stanleymobile! Stanford can almost hear his brother shouting) was never quite up to par, and he’s pretty sure he’s lost about half his body weight in sweat. They rotate seats every few hours and getting up from the leather always peels off a layer of skin. But the summer air does lend a certain quality to the journey, setting every moment alight, making them feel at least a little bit like adventurers with feathers in their caps.
“You know why you should avoid cheap eye surgeons? They probably cut a lot of corneas! Right? Corners, get it?”
So now here he is: on his way to a small town whose name tastes like mysteries (Gravity Falls, the rhythm of it, the subtle ring of humour— it’s the kind of name to be said expectantly, or awedly) with the two people in the world he loves most (sappy, but true, despite Stanley’s current and forever obnoxiousness) to fulfill one of his wildest dreams (anomaly hunting, because who can honestly say they’ve never wanted to find the weird in the world?), and—
It’s all a bit terrifying, to be honest.
Like he always does when he’s scared, he falls to taking inventory.
If one were to catalogue the contents of the car (spoken in hypothetical, as if Stanford hadn’t leaned on the bonnet that morning with a notepad and ticked off each item as they were packed, as if he hadn’t thoroughly double- and triple- and etcetera-checked the page throughout his shift in the passenger seat) then the list might look something like this:
- Books and papers and graphs and instruments designed to measure weirdness as a quantifiable substance, designed by Stanford, engineered by Fiddleford, and named by Stanley. The Science Nerd-Box 2001! The Zapperoni and Cheese! Gizmotron 2.0! Yeah, he’s a creative genius.
- Personal effects, i.e. money, identification, wallets, banjos. All the essentials. (As well as Stanley’s glasses, which he’s worn maybe once since moving in and then out with his brother. Stanford hangs on to them anyway.)
- Maybe, if you look hard enough, ninety percent of a wardrobe of assorted clothes between the car’s three occupants, in various states of cleanliness according to which young man each article belongs to. Despite his organisational skills in other parts of his life, Stanford still falls short of enlightenment in the field of laundry. (Stanley: “These are my summer clothes. Summer paid for, summer not! True story.” Stanford: “I don’t think you paid for any of these.” Fiddleford: “Are those my pants?”)
- Sundry miscellaneous knick-knacks, the kind of ugly souvenirs one brings home from an interstate trip; a combined effort on the parts of Stanley and Fiddleford, who discovered their collective flair for finding Uglies in their second year of friendship and thereafter stuffed the dorm to the brim with them, much to the chagrin of Stanford.
- More sensible knick-knacks, thank you, such as photographs and posters of scientists and books laden with sentiment; a solitary effort by Stanford to balance the scale slightly more in his favour.
- All of the furnishings that Stanley could surreptitiously lift from the dorm when they left, i.e. a desk lamp and a shelf ripped from the wall, the latter still with plaster flaking from its brackets.
- Three strapping young men, or young men that each embody at least some aspect of strappingness. In no particular order:
Taking up the entire passenger seat and encroaching upon everywhere else is Stanley Pines, twenty-two years old no matter what his actions might say, enthusiasm and hair both unbridled and the latter tending dangerously towards mullet territory. This morning he woke up and felt ready for whatever the world could throw at him, then swallowed two pills and felt exactly the same. (A year ago, almost, Fiddleford succeeded in his gentle needling and Stanley went to a white office where someone in a crisp pressed shirt pronounced manic depressive in clinical syllables, and told him to swallow the bottle of lithium to keep his head from alternately floating too far into the the clouds and sinking into the trenches of the ocean. At least, that’s what Stanley heard when he looked at the medication— take this to fix you because there’s no other hope, I’m afraid— and he left the bottle alone on the bathroom shelf like something volatile until Fiddleford suggested, cautiously, that it might take the edges off the hard times, hmm? He took it one morning and stepped forward and leant on his friends as well, and discovered that a sense of balance helps keep your life on track, and he’s glad that he at least has the chance to take uncertain steps in the world and not in a hospital.) In any case, he feels good, and he’s determined to enjoy the surreal departure from life that is a road trip for however long he can.
Stanley takes up space like it’s his job, legs spread at an angle in the passenger seat and arms constantly in motion, offbeat with the music or curling a hand into the semi-liquefied bag of candy in the centre console; he’s a slash of bright neon in the car, freedom unrestrained by the somewhat-convention of school and set loose upon the world for better or worse. (Probably worse, muse both Stanford and Fiddleford.) He seems to be having fun, at least, with the edgy thrill in his lungs when he sings along tunelessly, or the real and gleeful smile he pushes each godawful note and joke through. Stanley, more than any of them, has been wanting for something that tastes like the wild, and he relishes it through and through and turns it over in his mouth and picks it up bodily with each and every bump on the road. His warp and weft are tailored to the atmosphere of a road trip; his needles and threads work expertly around the event and fit it into the ever-unfolding tapestry of a person, the embroidery of becoming someone.
After every sign and turnoff they pass the build of it grows bigger in his heart— in all of their hearts— but in his most of all.
“You know why I wear short sleeves? I’m exercising my right to bare arms!”
Currently occupying the driver’s seat and looking incredibly put-upon is Stanford Pines, also twenty-two, why yes we are twins, why yes I do hate our father for giving us these names. He’s gripping the wheel so hard all twelve knuckles go white. Given that he’s had to put up with Stanley’s boisterous presence in such a small space for about eight hours already, he’s doing remarkably well in terms of keeping his temper checked. Behind the surface frustration, though, is a simmering anxiety; about the prospect of living properly independently, and whether he’ll be able to adequately use the research grant he’s been generously given, and really if this whole venture is a good idea at all and maybe he should just turn around and go back to college and start another PhD. At least he knows he’d be able to handle that.
Graduating with honors was expected, but finishing a PhD in just four years still makes him glow a little when he thinks about it. His parents had been thrilled, even if Dad hadn’t really cared until he heard the words hundred thousand dollar grant, and even then he’d fallen back to gruff approval when Stanford had diplomatically informed him that research grants really are just for research. He’d explained the in-depth reports required and how he’d have to keep a tight rein on the money, so he wouldn’t be able to send any home, sorry Dad; the phone call had turned a little colder after that. The fact that Stanford had been home only a few scarce times in four years made it strained to begin with, though.
The sun draws lower and redder in the sky as the afternoon saunters into evening, and he flicks his eyes to his brother for an instant. Sometimes he still catches himself thinking bitterly about an accident that cost him a dream, and they’ve certainly had spats over the years that dredged up sour blood from old wounds, but he can generally say he’s happy to have his brother with him on the road to whatever new chapter this might be. Stanford thinks that, and then realises how sappy it sounds, and resolves never to say it out loud. Stanley thwacks him in the side of the head with an errant dance move. He sighs for the hundredth time, and wishes that Oregon would get a move on and hurry to where they are.
“Hey, Fiddlenerd’s surprisingly calm when he plays the banjo, right? Seems he’d have a lot to fret about!”
In the back seat and trying to cover his treasonous laughing mouth is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, twenty-three, who introduces himself with his full name every time he meets someone new because he’s grown to love the dissonance of it. A side-effect of knowing the Pines twins, he’s found, is that weirdness of all kinds starts fitting in niches everywhere, so you may as well embrace it. Another is that you gain an alarmingly good tolerance for shenanigans. That one comes in handy when capital-P Plans fall from the sky, or when your boyfriend works himself into a frenzy over something incredibly irrelevant.
At the moment, he’s wearing one of Stanford’s button-ups (mustard yellow, which should by all rights be a horrible colour on him, but the fact that it’s Stanford’s lends it a sort of kitschy charm) and trying to pretend he isn’t laughing at Stanley’s jokes. He can understand why Stanford is so irritated— but some of them are genuinely funny, and even when they’re about him he can’t help but smile along. It’s a nice break from the venomous jokes at his expense that he’s heard out of the mouths of dozens of bullies and would-be friends, to have this good-natured ribbing come from a place of real caring. When he’d been driving earlier in the day, Stanley, sitting in the back, had kept up a running commentary of every other car they passed on the road, enthusiastically postulating about the stories of their drivers. (“Oh, he has royally fucked up. It was supposed to be his weekend with the kids, see, but he forgot to pick them up after school, so he bought them a ton of candy each as a bribe so they won’t tell their mother. And his date went badly— see the suit? There’s wine stains all down his front; he definitely said the wrong thing. He’s rushing from a bad date to get his kids three hours late. You can see it in his eyes. The suffering.”) Stanford had sighed rebelliously after each tale, but Fiddleford had seen him twitch a smile once or twice. Now, he passes off the laugh as a cough and looks placidly into Stanford’s blazing eyes in the rear view mirror. He just barely resists the urge to say, smugly, “Don’t fret, darling,” only because he thinks he’d probably lose a fair amount of blood if he did.
If Stanley and Stanford are the heart and brains of the trio, Fiddleford supposes he’s the bones. Or maybe the muscles, somehow. Either way, he holds them together in some fashion; he is the reason the brothers are talking at all, he sometimes tells himself, feeling quite self-satisfied. But then, Stanley is the reason that he and Stanford are together, and Stanford is the reason that he’s found a friend in Stanley that he can genuinely trust, so in the end they’re all an essential part of each other. He reflects back on the name he offhandedly gave the three of them— the Mystery Trio— and thinks that it fits, and that there’s nobody he’d rather be part of a trio with in the world. Over every break that required them to leave the dorm, they’d situate themselves firmly within the McGucket clan home, and the effortless functioning as a team never left, so he reasons that it isn’t just born of necessity in the tiny room they shared; hopefully it’ll continue into their new home (home! What an altogether terrifying and heartwarming prospect) and keep them orbiting for the foreseeable future.
Although, maybe Stanley’s going to get himself kicked out of the car before then.
“Oh! Oh! This one is my favourite. What’s green, fuzzy, and would kill you if it fell out of a tree and landed on your head?”
There’s silence, but for an unspeakably exhausted sigh.
“A pool table!”
That punchline gets a result. “I— What? That wasn’t even a pun, Stanley! It was just— it doesn’t make any sense!” says Stanford exasperatedly, marking the first joke in four hours he’s dignified with a response. He looks as if he’s about to tear the steering wheel off the column. Fiddleford goes very silent.
Stanley apparently doesn’t care about his impending death. “Maybe you just don’t understand my jokes, Sixer. Hey-ohh! Name pun!” he cries, slapping a knee gleefully. “That was a pretty outstanding one, if I do say so myself. Wouldn’t you agree, Fiddleford?” he says, dangerously sweet, looking over his shoulder at the back seat. Fiddleford shakes his head frantically to indicate he’d very much like to remain a neutral party here. Let me be Switzerland, he thinks, feverishly. Please don’t start an actual war.
“Don’t recruit him! Fidds, please don’t indulge his terrible—”
“Oh, don’t act so standoffish, Ford. We all know you can withstand much worse humour than this. Resistance is fu—”
“Right! That’s it,” Stanford says, overly upbeat, as he starts the venomous click of the right-hand indicator, “we are having dinner and swapping drivers. I need a nap. There’s a limit to how much constant Stanley I can take; I’m only human.”
Fiddleford pats his shoulder consolingly from the back seat.
“Oho! Nice one,” says Stanley, grin like a switchblade. “Constant, Sixer? I might have to pass my crown over to you.”
If looks could kill, then the glare that Stanford gives him at that moment murders him extravagantly and with great relish, pockets his cash and watch, disembowels the corpse, tidies the blood and entrails, buries him in a shallow grave, dances a disrespectful jig atop it, and then returns to the scene of the crime to grieve and participate in the investigation of his poor brother’s mysterious death slash disappearance. (All signs point to the butler!)
For his part, Stanley pokes out his tongue and looks resolutely unrepentant. Unrepenstant, even.
They pull into the parking lot of a diner; someone stumbling across the wall yells an incoherent phrase at them and Stanley replies in kind. Stanford cuts the engine with a stutter and slumps back in his seat, rubbing at his eyes, and then tiredly gets out of the Diablo. In contrast, Stanley looks almost gleeful as his shoes meet the ground: he’s in his element here, in the forever 3 a.m. haze of an unknown restaurant, the same one that’s at every highway turnoff with the same tired hands working the register and the same ambiguous stain in the corner of the ceiling (and yet you can never recall the name of the chain, or if it’s even a franchise at all; when you check a map later there’s no eateries for miles around). They all shiver a little at the breeze that runs across their slightly sweaty skin.
Inside is lit by a sickly glow; they shuffle into a booth and a waitress that looks dead on her feet comes by with laminated menus. She looks them all in the eyes one by one and places a menu in front of each of them, not even bothering to give a falsely energetic greeting before turning lethargically on her heel and leaving them to their devices.
“I like the look of this Early Bird Pancake Stack,” says Stanley. He’s sitting alone on his side of the sticky table, eagerly raking his eyes over the tacky-looking specials.
“That’s a breakfast, Stan. It’s almost 7 in the evening.” Stanford is barely conscious, but still has enough kick in him to nip Stanley’s potential mischief in the bud. “Please, just get a burger or something. Don’t cause a scene.”
Fiddleford hums and lets his boyfriend rest a weary head on his shoulder. “I’ll just have something small. A grilled cheese and a coffee. What about you, dear?”
Despite its obvious bony nature, Fiddleford’s shoulder seems to be acting as a fairly good pillow for Stanford. “Mm. I’ll have the same, but no coffee,” he murmurs, eyes nearly closed but still keeping a trained focus on Stanley.
The subject of his stare doesn’t seem to notice the intense scrutiny being laid upon him; Stanley huffs about not being allowed to have pancakes for dinner and starts making the case for a banana split instead. “It’s got fruit in it, so it’s healthy, and the sugar’ll keep me awake for my shift of driving. Also,” he says with an eyebrow raised, “it’s objectively the most delicious thing on this menu that I’m allowed to have at this time of day, or whatever.” Stanford blinks at him.
“Look, I’m far too exhausted right now to play the part of the responsible guardian, so as long as you behave yourself, Stanley,” he replies in a monotone, “then you can have a banana split for dinner.” Stanley looks like he’s about to explode with joy. Stanford lets his eyes close and leans into Fiddleford’s body with a sigh.
The waitress comes back with a clipboard; she looks at them for a long moment, and then makes an impatient gesture with her pen. “Well? What’ll it be, fellas?” Her voice is raspy and she has the air of someone working overtime for less than minimum wage.
Fiddleford cuts in before Stanley can open with a crass joke. “Two grilled cheese sandwiches, please, and a black coffee for me,” he says, and casts a worried glance across the table before finishing, “and a banana split for him.” Stanley winks at the waitress; she nods once, mechanically, and leaves without writing any of it down.
Stanford says “Do you think this red stuff on the table is blood?” and falls asleep. They wait for the food in silence.
When it finally arrives, carried by a different dead-looking teenager, Stanford wakes up enough to eat three-quarters of his sandwich and then curl into Fiddleford’s side; Fiddleford looks fondly down at him despite the resulting loss of movement in his right arm. Stanley demolishes the banana split in about ten seconds and eyes the remains of his brother’s food.
The banana split turns out to be delicious, the sandwiches less so. Fiddleford is pretty sure the coffee was made with dirt. He knocks it back in two goes anyway, sacrificing tastebuds for a hit of caffeine that should hopefully last him until they can find an adequate motel to stop at.
They pay for the food (correction: Fiddleford pays for the food, while supporting Stanford’s body and keeping a watchful eye on a worryingly energetic Stanley) and leave the diner, all three of them looking forward to a real bed at the end of the night; it’s only twenty past seven, though, and their goal of three ten-hour days looks a lot less desirable now. Why couldn’t the epicentre of weirdness in the States be in Arkansas instead? Stanley’s sure he saw enough cryptids and anoma-whatevers at Backupsmore alone to justify studying there, but no, his brother has to uproot them and make them trek all the way to some hick town in the Pacific Northwest.
As he unlocks the car and helps Fiddleford to nudge a sleeping Stanford inside, though, he can’t really find it in him to be that angry.
After they fold Stanford into the back seat and rest him at an angle that hopefully won’t give him too bad of a neck cramp when he wakes up, they have a silent argument over who’s driving the last shift. It involves lots of head-shaking and overwrought mouthing of words.
“I’m fine to drive, Stanley,” Fiddleford says, breaking the silence in a quiet-harsh whisper. “I drank that garbage coffee for a reason.” He already has a hand on the handle of the driver’s door, the other braced on Stanley’s shoulder.
“It’s my turn, though! And my car. Does that licence plate say Fiddsmobile, hmm?” retorts Stanley, stubborn as ever in the pointless things, while trying to bat away Fiddleford’s hand. It’s turned surprisingly dark in the short time they were inside, and a few stars see their way to shining in the sky above; they’ll likely only drive for another two hours, or until a sufficiently hygienic motel appears. “Does it? No? Well, get in shotgun.”
For a moment, Fiddleford looks like he might argue about it; then, his eyes flick to Stanford breathing peacefully in the back seat and he draws back. “Alright. But tell me if you need a break. You’ll be on a sugar crash before you know it, and I’d rather that didn’t lead to a real crash,” he says as he resignedly walks around to the other side of the car.
“No promises,” says Stanley with a wry grin, but he does nod seriously while he says it. The car starts with a purr, and they roll slowly from the parking lot and back onto the road; the tacky neon above the drive-thru flickers behind them like a fluttering wave goodbye. For a brief, absurd moment, Stanley considers waving back.
They’re both silent for a long time, listening to the steady in-out of Stanford’s breathing, watching the stars slowly wink into existence. It’s calming, like the high-strung energy of the day is spinning out harmlessly into the atmosphere, carrying the fire from Stanley’s mind and setting each individual star alight.
“That banana split was fucking amazing,” Stanley murmurs wistfully.
Fiddleford stifles a laugh in his sleeve. “Clearly that diner makes better desserts than beverages. The coffee tasted worse than the mud milkshakes I used to make myself as a kid.” He lets his head fall back with a sigh. There’s something in it that makes him sound decades older, a bone-deep weariness that he almost never lets show. He lets his eyes close for a moment, takes a moment to let himself breathe in the starry sky, and then shakes himself back to life. “Y’alright there, Stanley?” he says, more for the sake of saying something than anything else.
Stanley looks at him sideways. “Yeah. You?” He’s never too blatant in his caring, but he listens, and he’s heard scores of those singularly tired sighs; coupled with the few fractures that sometimes slowly seep into Fiddleford’s carefully-kept front of calmness, Stanley can guess at some of the anxious-frenzy feelings he methodically keeps at bay. Fiddleford worries and worries and worries, but never enough about himself.
“I’m fine,” he says. It’s not really a lie.
Stanford mumbles something in his sleep and Fiddleford instinctively turns to check on him, mouth softly curling up in a smile at the sight of his partner’s serene face. Even now, the feeling of being a part of Stanford’s life is a warm heat under his ribcage, buoying him along; the idea of being not only liked and accepted, but loved by someone so wholeheartedly amazing— he could wax poetic about it for hours, but Stanley would make fun of him. Not cruelly— Stanley’s never spiteful in his teasing, not to his friends— but sometimes it’s nice to moon over your boyfriend without the exaggerated kissing noises in the background. Fiddleford gives a sigh that might (maybe, just the tiniest bit) sound a touch besotted.
True to form, Stanley jabs him with an elbow and taunts, “Someone’s all a-smitten by Doctor Snoozeface over there, hmm?” (Stanley refuses to let anyone forget that Stanford having a PhD opens up a whole world of doctorate-related ribbing.) He raises an eyebrow at Fiddleford’s unimpressed face. “Sorry, sorry,” he says with a laugh after a moment, and then cocks his head to one side. His face softens. “You really love him, though, don’t you?”
Fiddleford splutters. Trust Stanley to go from mocking to heartfelt fast enough to give a man whiplash. “I— Um, well, that is—” he says, uselessly, and then slaps Stanley on the shoulder. “Shut up. Yes. I hate you.” He puts his face in his hands to cover the rising blush in his cheeks and sighs again. “I guess I’m pretty obvious about it, aren’t I? Is it weird for me to be all gone over your brother like this?”
Truthfully, Stanley does find it a touch weird (anything to do with his brother is weird, but that’s a given), but it’s not because it’s Stanford. It’s more to do with the strange curl of otherness he feels in his sternum when there’s any sort of romance in the air, pressing in on his lungs and reminding him that he doesn’t— has never, probably could never— know what it feels like to be part of that. “Mmm,” he hums, as a starting point, and then steels himself for the drop into a Deep And Meaningful Conversation. He looks out at the road, at the constellations coming into sight above, at his fingers firm on the wheel, and decides that he can trust Fiddleford. “Can I… Can I talk about something that’s pretty— pretty personal? Are we close enough friends for that?” he asks, and waits anxiously. He doesn’t know whether he wants to hear yes or no.
Fiddleford looks startled at the second sudden change of tone in as many minutes, but nods earnestly all the same. “‘Course we are,” he says softly, then, “I’m pretty sure that personal conversations are a requisite part of road trips, anyway.” Stanley laughs, and looks intensely vulnerable. Stanford shifts in his sleep. The road curves slowly, vastly, to the right.
Stanley feels like he’s baring his soul to the elements. Maybe he’ll die of exposure before the embarrassment catches up with him.
“There was…” he starts. “Back in Glass Shard Beach, there was this girl. Carla McCorkle. We went to school together, and me ‘n her would hang out a lot at this one diner a lot… I don’t remember ever asking her out, but everyone kind of assumed we were a thing. And maybe we were? I dunno,” he sighs, shoulders drawing in slightly. “She was great, and funny, and I loved spending time with her, but it never felt like…”
He trails off and his eyes flick momentarily away from the road to look at his brother’s sleeping form in the rear view mirror. Stanford looks fairly solidly asleep, chest rising and falling in a soporous rhythm with the passing streetlights. He looks younger. More vulnerable.
(A few years ago, Stanley slept like that— angled in the back seat and lit by dim yellow, the weight of the wide world on his shoulders. If it weren’t for a phone call and the capacity for forgiveness and his brother’s worn-raw trust, maybe that’s where he’d still be.)
“Never felt like what, Stanley?” Fiddleford prods gently, pulling him back to the present. Stanley glances sidelong at him, takes in the soft concern there.
“Like… like all the songs and movies said it’d feel like,” Stanley finally says. “I mean— I liked Carla a lot, and we must’ve seemed like the picture of young love to everyone else; it was pretty well accepted that we were together and all, but. I never felt like I liked liked her.” He laughs shallowly. “God, I sound like a fucking middle schooler. And that’s the problem— I’ve never felt like that about anyone, never had a crush or anything. Carla was the closest I ever got, and even with her it was just like— friendship. And for a while I just thought, okay, maybe she wasn’t The One, but everyone else around me was talking about how amazing it is to be in love, or what-the-fuck-ever, and I never felt it. So. There’s my malfunction.” His voice goes quiet and soft towards the end. “It’s— it probably doesn’t even matter, I explained it badly—”
“No, no,” says Fiddleford quickly, “I get it. I mean— I can’t understand exactly what it feels like, but I get where you’re coming from, at least.”
Stanley tries to grin, but just looks intensely grateful instead. “I— that means a lot. That you’re listening at all,” he says. The car rumbles, as if in reassurance. “I mean. Do you think there’s a reason I’m like this?” His voice breaks, almost pathetically, near the end. Do you think anyone else has ever felt the same, he doesn’t ask. Do you think I’m broken, he doesn’t ask.
There’s a lot of things Stanley doesn’t ask, and a lot of things he never will.
Fiddleford frowns slightly and purses his lips, trying to measure the right ratio of honesty to kindness. “I… Well, I don’t really know, and I’m no psychologist or nothing, so I can’t provide much of a professional opinion. I’m not in your head; I can’t feel exactly what you feel. But as a person— as your friend, Stanley— I’d say that everyone’s different, and that don’t make any one way of feeling things wrong.” He pauses to gather his scattered thoughts. “You’re not a bad person for not like liking this girl, y’know?” he says, making lazy air quotes around the word ‘like’, “and I’d make a healthy wager that you aren’t the first one to ever feel like this. Human experience— it can make you feel hellishly alone at times, but there’s six billion odd people out there, so the chances of someone being in a similar situation is pretty high. And as for a reason?” There he shuts his eyes again for a breath. “Sometimes, I reckon there is no reason for why people are the way they are. We just gotta sort out what we can know from what we were never meant to.”
That spiel, spoken in a soft southern lilt and underscored by the muted sounds of car and road and the wide endless land— it doesn’t make Stanley cry, shut up, he isn’t crying. He just has something in his eye. Some words drifted over and got sentiment stuck in his retinas.
“...Thanks, Fiddleford,” he says when his voice isn’t in danger of wobbling. He casts an uneasy look into the mirror, over his brother’s still-peaceful form. “Can… can we keep this between us for now? S’not that I don’t trust Ford, but I…” he trails off aimlessly, and Fiddleford seems to understand what he doesn’t know how to say, somehow.
“Sure thing.” The car is quiet again, companionably. “By the way, does it bother you when Stanford and I are all— you know,” Fiddleford says, flushing. “Because we can tone it down around you if you need.”
Stanley snorts and shakes his head. “No, no, feel free to be as sappy and awful as you like. It’s just— I think part of why I felt weird about it is not knowing why. And I still don’t really have a concrete reason, but it’s nice to know that you don’t think I’m wrong.” And Fiddleford nods, and pats his shoulder where he slapped it earlier, and settles more comfortably into his seat.
If they just stepped a little further to the yawning precipice of Deep Conversation Topics, full to the brim with all of their respective tics and tripwires, they might start talking about the way Fiddleford finds himself tapping out patterns on his hands that he can’t stop for fear of destroying some circular design in his head, or how the anxious thoughts can almost take on form and edge him closer to a terrifyingly bad decision, or the fact that even now he’s convinced that he doesn’t deserve any of the grace he’s been given in life— but they fall just short of it, and stay on the rocky cliffside between Talking About Love and Holding Impromptu Therapy Sessions. At least it’s comfortable, especially when you’re there with someone you can trust.
It really isn’t that Stanley doesn’t trust his brother. It’s just that— being next to someone for your entire young life, and sharing so much with them, and being so close to them that you may as well be half of one whole person— it’s not suffocating, but sometimes they’re too near to know some things. Sometimes you feel naked even thinking about confiding something in them, because they’ve seen you at your best and your worst. He’ll tell Ford eventually, he thinks, but telling people on his own terms makes the whole mess seem a bit more manageable.
They don’t talk much for the rest of the drive, but Stanley smiles more, and Fiddleford feels like he’s carrying a tiny star in his throat: the feeling of being a confidant, he thinks. The feeling of being trusted. Above them, the sky grows darker and brighter all at once, and constellations sew themselves together; they’re scared and all a little bit alone in the world, and Stanley thinks that maybe nobody really knows what everything means, or how to be an adult, and he feels better. In the back, Stanford’s breathing keeps the world turning at a steady rhythm.
It’s edging towards 10 p.m. when they finally pass a sign that implores them to stay at the upcoming motel. (Three and a half stars! No murders in recent memory! Not haunted, we swear!) Stanley and Fiddleford look at each other and shrug.
Stanley parks the Diablo and, with great relish, shouts “Wakey-wakey, Sixer!” at a volume a few notches below thunderous. Stanford jolts up, tries to stand, hits his head on the roof, and falls back to the seat with his eyes wide, all within the space of about half a second. When he comes to his senses, Stanley is already cackling his way out of the door. Fiddleford glares at Stanley’s back and offers Stanford an apologetic smile.
“What’s the time?” Stanford slurs, rubbing his eyes and cracking his joints as he creaks out of the car. He thinks, not for the first time, that he doesn’t envy Stanley’s life on the streets, and that nobody deserves to wake up with that many body pains. Fiddleford chivalrously holds the door open.
“Quarter to ten. Sleep alright?” he replies dryly, with a quirked eyebrow which makes it clear that the question is sarcastic.
“Ha-ha, Fidds,” says Stanford, standing upright. He blinks forcefully. “I feel even more tired than when I fell asleep. That’s just unfair.”
Fiddleford pats his hand, and they hurry to catch up with Stanley. “There there, darling. You’ll be in a three-star bed soon enough,” he soothes as they walk into the yellow-green lobby. A world-weary receptionist looks up when they enter.
“Three and a half star, thank you!” says the receptionist indignantly.
Paying for a room and getting a key seems a little blurry even while it’s happening, like the strung-out buzz of the day is catching up with all of their brains. (Fiddleford forgets how to count money for a solid minute.) They trudge down the hallway blearily.
“Do you think that red stuff on the wall is blood?” says Stanford. (At the diner, it had turned out to be jam, and he’d felt a bit disappointed.)
“No,” says Fiddleford, at the same time as Stanley says “Probably.”
The room is underwhelming, as motel rooms often are. (There isn’t even any maybe-blood in here, Stanford almost protests.)
Fiddleford immediately claims the first shower. No matter how selfless he may be in literally everything else, he likes his showers hot and punctual, and won’t hesitate to fight for the cause. Left feeling a bit aimless, the twins each sit down on a bed; Stanley kicks his legs against the wheezy bedsprings until his brother gives him a Look. In the bathroom, the shower spray rattles, and Fiddleford starts his own— relatively unique— brand of singing in the shower.
They look at each other like they’re skirting around an issue; like hunted prey, which isn’t the most heartening thing to find yourself being compared to.
The wallpaper is peeling in one corner and Stanford fixes his gaze on it as he tries to wake himself up. The beige paisley isn’t doing him any favours in that department, though, and he looks for something else to focus on. The off-white bedspread. A surprisingly modern-looking lamp. Stanley, looking tense and ready to flee.
Stanford sighs, quietly. No time like the present to jump off a metaphorical roof.
“So…” he starts, which he figures is a good a place to start as any. (A showtune leaps unbidden in his mind and says no, really, you should start at do: a deer, a female deer, and follow it along until you get to so: a needle pulling thread; he’s somewhat taken aback. When has he ever watched The Sound of Music? When has anyone ever watched The Sound of Music?)
Judging by the wary look Stanley gives him, though, he wasn’t expected to start anywhere at all; not for the first time he remembers that his thoughts aren’t broadcast to everyone around him, and he needs to provide context when he says things. This might be less breaking the ice and more plummeting into subzero waters and contracting hypothermia.
“I… wasn’t asleep the entire time, Stan,” he says, after gathering up all of his confidence. “In the car, I mean,” he clarifies unnecessarily, and clears his throat. “When you were talking about, uh. Love.”
He tries to keep his tone light, but Stanley still sucks in a breath and bites down hard on it. His hands (which had always been bigger than Stanford’s, irrationally, even with the extra width afforded by a sixth finger, and somehow that hybrid memory-observation makes him think, oh, I am glad he’s here) clench like he’s about to wind up a punch— and then the tension dissipates helplessly and he slumps.
“Do— do you think I’m broken, then?” he asks, voice tiny and indigo-blue. It sounds like papercuts in the air. The motel room positively drips with atmosphere, in the narrow-crooked walls of it.
If Stanley speaks in surface wounds, then Stanford probably causes internal bleeding when he half-shouts, “No! No, of course not, Stanley, I— hell, I thought I might have been the same for a while, before you pulled my head out of the general regions of my ass—” He’s rambling. The words tangle up in his eyeteeth. “Sorry, but I— it doesn’t make you broken. No two people will ever feel what we quantify as ‘love’ in exactly the same way, and not feeling it at all— the romantic kind, at least, the one that people commercialise— that doesn’t make you broken. It makes you you, and you don’t need to love someone a certain way to be worthy of respect and care and, yes, love in return. That isn’t how it works.” And if his words sound rehearsed then it’s a trick of the light because he’s only barely weighing each sentence as he goes, talking as his mind hastily turns. “If you fall in love one day, then I’ll be happy for you, and if you never do, then I’ll be here all the same. I don’t think anyone really even fully knows what love is. I sure don’t understand it— me, who has somehow floundered through a lasting three-year relationship!— past the flowery feelings I get in my heart or wherever, and that I enjoy spending time with Fiddleford.”
That’s true, no matter how you slice it: he’s carried out experiments and studies in the name of furthering science’s unerring grasp of everything under the sun, but the actual concept of love still escapes him.
For once, though, in this thing, he’s content to not understand it; it’s unlike him (a scientist who doesn’t push the limits of his knowledge in every facet of his life, how disgraceful!), but maybe he’s just growing as a person. That happens, right?
Stanford continues, finding his rhythm hesitatingly: “Even if you don’t fit into one of the prepackaged notions of love, or— or romance, even— that doesn’t make you any less a person. You’re still my brother, and my friend, and you’re still uncannily good at predicting who dies in slasher movies, and you still make Plans that’ll change the world one day, and you’re still the most likely of all of us to be an active participant on either side of the apocalypse.” He’s risen from the bed, now, and is gesturing emphatically. Stanley looks intimidated. “None of that changes because you weren’t in love with Carla McCorkle, Stanley. You liked spending time with her? Then it was worth it, true love or no,” says Stanford, and apparently that seems to be his upper limit on impassioned speeches for the evening, because he sinks back onto the bed looking winded. Fiddleford yodels gently from the bathroom.
“And you don’t,” Stanley says, frowning down at his knuckles in the relative silence, “hate me for not telling you first? This feels like the kind of thing you talk about with a twin. I don’t know. I’m sorry, anyway.” He’s evasive and slides his gaze anywhere but Stanford’s eyes; now, he folds in on himself, like an awaited reprimand. Now, he seems muted and dull.
“I— what? Why would I hate you for that?” replies Stanford, baffled, frowning equally as hard at his brother’s knuckles, as if the reason for this leap of logic could be found in the chafed skin there, in the tight clenched geometry of fingers. “Being a twin doesn’t mean that we only have each other. It’s more that— that you can tell me everything, but you don’t have to, and I trust you, and at the end it might turn out to be us against the world,” he says. (Or us against each other with the world placing bets; in the event of twin fallout, find a shelter immediately, and take the side with the least potential casualties, he thinks, morbidly.) “Before the apocalypse comes, though, you’re allowed to have other friends. You can have people apart from me in your life. And that’s why I’m so glad you’re friends with Fidds— I mean, apart from the fact that we seem to be inexorably stuck together at this point so it’s better that you tolerate him, at least— because I know that sometimes it’s terrifying to share personal things with someone you’ve grown up with and, ah,” he looks sheepish, “fought with and all that. But you two are good for each other. And I love you both, and I’m glad that you have— well, a friend. A real one. Not just one of circumstance, because I turned out to be pretty bad at that anyway,” he finishes, feeling a bit off centre, like he should have had a stronger thesis. Didn’t he learn anything from writing his dissertation, from his application for a research grant? Apparently not, says the clumsy string of words hung in the air above them like fireflies. He’s still as awkward as ever in the things that matter. “I should apologise, really, for eavesdropping. Putting up false pretences of sleep.”
Stanley looks up, eyes like raw charcoal in their bare honesty, and tries to smile. He gives it a heroic effort, but it just ends up pinning one cheek to his gums lopsidedly and leaves him looking pained, or panicked, or both, topped with the frantic air of one caught without something to say. His edges seem to blur in the shabby motel light, and then he bows his head almost reverently (almost like a prayer that neither of them have faith enough for, to the empty shells of dead stars above) and cries for a few seconds.
It’s a quiet affair. Tears roll from the corners of his eyes and cut an efficient path towards the corners of his mouth and then fall to all the rest of his threadbare corners and edges and planes, and he looks stuck for a moment like the crook of an elbow, and then he takes a deep breath and stops crying. The moment feels like a shed skin, sloughed onto the stained carpet and leaving both of them soft-scaled and shining under the moon.
“Stanley,” says Stanford quietly. It’s like a habit to say his name, now, a reflection of their first bizarre reconnection. “Stanley. It’s okay.” (When has anything ever really been okay when someone says that?)
But it seems to work on some level, because the look on Stanley’s face turns tender and he straightens up a little, meeting his brother’s eyes and remembering the trust he sees there.
Fiddleford comes out of the bathroom still towelling off his hair. He walks headlong into the palpable atmosphere of the room and stops short. “Did I miss something important?” he says, and drips onto the carpet.
Something twists, then, in the sentiment of the moment, and even though saying that it’s okay usually means the binary opposite, Stanley finds a weight rolling from his shoulders like so many heavy stones, and he smiles, really and genuinely and fluorescent in the dim lighting. He looks like a kid again.
“Just a little brother-brother bonding,” he says, and reaches over to punch Stanford in the arm. He looks over his brother’s shoulder at Fiddleford, who still looks bemused, and gives him a raw-hopeful Look, and that seems to convey everything essential about the situation. Fiddleford beams quietly back at him. Stanford rubs his arm and looks offended. Then he smiles in that crooked way of his, and they all feel a little triumphant, that they’ve survived a third of a veritable quest across the country with no lasting injuries; in that shabby room they cross their ankles and stay up talking until nobody can keep their eyes open, and each one of them falls asleep with their lungs a little lighter, a little more golden.
(The motel does turn out to be haunted, in the end. Stanley throws free soap samples at the wall and threatens to weaponise his puns until the poltergeist shuts up.)
The second morning of their journey starts with Stanley belting Disco Girl at the top of his lungs, and that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the day.
Everything in the room is hovering when Stanford opens his eyes. Apparently the spirits ensconced in the drywall of the motel are also really into BABBA, and Stanley will take any opportunity to perform for an audience. The furniture abstractly dances to the beat of the song.
“I’m really not in the mood for an exorcism,” Stanford says, but he does it anyway; these particular vestiges of dead souls are quite complacent, and only need a little encouragement to go into the light. The beds fall back to earth with a mighty crash. Stanley pouts at the loss of his newfound fans.
They escape the motel at high and dubiously legal speeds, and are quickly back on the road; everything looks about the same as the yesterday, and that surreal feeling of a time loop settles back over their minds. Stanford contemplates a highway fashioned after a moebius strip. Maybe there’s something built in the asphalt of every road, so that after you spend more than an hour driving over it it strings backwards through all the memories of similar roads, and everything starts tasting like deja vu.
Stanley’s jokes didn’t get any better overnight, for one thing. They all feel horribly familiar.
(“Y’know, I’ve always wanted to get into theatre. My debut will be a performance about puns— it’s a play on words!”
You didn’t hear about those three huge holes in the ground? Well, well, well!”
“So this guy with a premature ejaculation problem comes out of nowhere—” “Stanley!”
“Heh, you know what? This is my tenth pun of the day, and I’d hoped that at least one of them would make you laugh. But clearly, no pun in ten did.”
That about sums it up, really.)
The day passes in snapshots, certain moments crystallising amongst the ocean-brine of the rest. Later, when he reflects on them, a few stand out in their sentimentality or absurdity, pasted into some kind of scrapbook in his head.
In a vague, sort of wobbly chronological order, it goes like this:
Stanley drives first, because he’s territorial about his car, and he screams down the highway with the radio at full blast. It’s playing Murderous Matriarch, and while Stanford has always had a soft spot for Freddie Quicksilver, his brother really isn’t doing the song any favours by tunelessly yelling the words out the window. The drivers in the cars passing them send a few pointed glares at the Diablo. For their troubles, they receive a rude gesture and the next few lines of the song at increased volume.
That strategy turns out to be a bad idea when one of the drivers recognises his car and face (underneath the mullet and peach fuzz) as those of Steve Pinington, from whom he bought a large quantity of Rip-Offs from a few years ago. Grudges have an uncanny memory. “Pinington! I used those bandaids on delicate areas, asshole!” he shouts by way of greeting. He has dark hair and an unfortunate moustache, and those are the only features Stanford finds himself remembering as they suddenly accelerate to escape velocity and Stanley yells “You’ll never take me alive!”
They finally slow down a few miles later, or maybe a few rotations of the earth, when Stanley’s sure he’s left the unsatisfied customer behind. Fiddleford clutches wordlessly at his chest. Stanford feels like he might have left some of his internal organs behind.
“That was fun,” says Stanley. “Anyone want some candy?”
.
In the early afternoon, after they’ve stopped for lunch (no banana splits this time, though Stanley did haggle his way into a plate of waffles), the car is blessedly quiet. Stanley seems to have briefly run dry of one-liners, and the radio hasn’t played a song he likes for a while; rather than feeling relieved, though, Stanford sits up rigidly in the back seat and braces himself for something to come along and spontaneously combust in the face of this fragile peace and quiet. Fiddleford doesn’t seem to have noticed anything; he’s still driving steadily, a touch below the speed limit, keeping well within his lane. But Stanford can feel something building, terrifyingly, in the humid air circulating through the windows cracked open. Something loud and possibly destructive is about to happen.
The start of that loud and destructive thing comes about in the form of Stanley declaring “I really need a piss,” and Fiddleford replying “I told you to go when we were filling up the car,” but he pulls docilely off the road all the same. They’re somewhere green-brown, trees lining up sparse past the gravel.
When they crawl to a stop, spitting gravel from the rear tyres, Stanley slides out of the passenger seat and quickly disappears behind a tree. Fiddleford sighs and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I wish this country weren’t so damn big,” he says, tiredly. “We’re barely even halfway there, and we’ve still got another full day of driving tomorrow.” His eyes close for a moment, and he sits there lit by the sunlight, caught in an angle between sleeping and wakefulness, suddenly full of so much beauty and weariness, and Stanford thinks, Oh. Just that.
“Do you want me or Stanley to take over for a bit?” he asks, gently, leaning forward to put a hand on his partner’s narrow shoulder. He tries to imbue the question with all the thoughts he can’t put words to, and he thinks Fiddleford understands, because he turns and smiles, and then pulls Stanford forward by the chin and kisses him, once, softly.
“I’m fine, darling,” Fiddleford says. Stanford gives a weak, infatuated little smile, and goes to say something almightily sappy and gooey, like he’d never say with his brother within earshot.
And then Stanley screams.
Stanford is out of the car first (though he does hit his head on the way), yelling “Stanley!” He crashes through the negligible undergrowth as Stanley screams again, higher-pitched and wordless. Fiddleford is right behind him with the baseball bat Stanley keeps in the Diablo for special occasions. They round a corner and find themselves behind a thick tree, peppered with mushrooms at its base, and—
“You sparkly dick! Give me back my pants!” says Stanley. Stanford and Fiddleford blink at the scene before them.
Stanley’s on the ground, legs akimbo and boxers sagging, engaged in a vicious game of tug-of-war with a tiny floating figure. The rope and stakes both seem to be his pants. On closer inspection, his opponent is a fairy of some kind; it’s screaming obscenities at him and digging its tiny claws into the denim it has in a death grip.
“Um,” says Fiddleford. He lowers the baseball bat in confusion. “What exactly am I looking at here?”
“You’re looking at a filthy pants-thief, you knucklehead!” Stanley cries. “Hurry up and punt it into the fucking treetops!” He sounds absolutely fed up with the entire situation, which is a pretty fair reaction, all things considered; his blazing eyes alternately fix their gaze on the fairy and on an indecisive Fiddleford.
“But I don’t want to hurt the poor thing,” Fiddleford says, gesturing helplessly at the creature. It’s still swearing shrilly and has moved to spitting what looks like acid down at Stanley. “It’s so tiny!”
“Try and knock it out, Fidds,” interjects Stanford, his mind instantly switching from protective brother to paranormal researcher. “I’d love to study it. Stanley, have you been able to observe any of its abilities? Anatomy?”
Stanley fixes him with a deadpan look. “Sixer, this thing snuck up on me from behind and yanked my pants off for no justifiable reason,” he says flatly. “I have never been less interested in the anatomy of fairies.” The fairy hisses at him and takes advantage of his momentarily lowered defences to give an enormous wrench to the pants. They split in two at the seams.
Apparently that’s enough to satisfy the fairy; it cackles away into the forest, trailing its half of the jeans below its shimmering trail. Stanley looks forlornly at his solitary pant leg.
“Uh,” starts Stanford. “Sorry about your pants?”
.
Sometime between 4 p.m. and midnight, they drive past a river, and the reflection of the sky on the water’s surface makes Stanford’s ever-turning mind pause for a moment in its machinations, and he thinks about boats, and sailing, and travelling the world. When he glances away from the road to look at Stanley dozing in the back seat, he feels an incomparable stab of guilt deep in his gut.
.
That night, they sleep in a motel that isn’t haunted, but the cleaner they edge by in the hall bears more than a passing resemblance to a vampire.
The third day feels simultaneously the same and impossibly different.
For one, the anticipation is finally almost tangible in the air; from the moment that Stanford opens his eyes in the morning his heart is veritably buzzing with excitement. (A voice in the back of his mind wonders whether he shouldn’t get that looked at.) He looks across the room to Stanley’s bed, and then at the floor, which is where Stanley actually is, a crumpled mass of limbs tangled in the sheets. Admirably, he’s still asleep.
Fiddleford is already awake and vertical, and probably has been for about half an hour at this point; he’s sitting neatly cross-legged in the corner with a book. “Morning,” he says when he sees Stanford looking at him. “Someone’s looking excited.”
“Oh, you know me,” says Stanford, sitting up and barely containing a bounce. “Sleeping on plastic motel mattresses really jazzes me up.” He doesn’t bother trying to contain the smile that spreads like sunshine across his face.
“Mhm. I’m sure it’s got nothing at all to do with the fact that we’re on the last leg of the journey, right?” Fiddleford teases. “I’ve already had breakfast, by the way. There’s a McDonald’s just across the road.”
Stanley wakes up at light speed when the word ‘breakfast’ is spoken. He rapidly disentangles himself from the bed’s extraneous hold on him and stumbles his way into an upright position. “Wuzzat? You got food without me?” he says, accusatory and only half joking in how offended he sounds.
After mollifying his hungry brother and putting on some decent clothes (what do you mean he needs to get some shirts that aren’t single-coloured button-ups?), they check out and decide to stretch their legs by being dragged behind Stanley to McDonald’s. The decision is pretty much out of anyone’s hands, though, once he catches sight of the golden arches. He’s scarily fast when he wants to be.
One large order of fries and two burgers later, everyone feels generally more awake and ready to face the day. (Stanford might be more so if he’d gotten to eat more than half a burger, but he knows when not to challenge Stanley’s appetite.) Stanley’s licking his fingers with obvious relish while they walk, unhurried, back to the motel.
“I could live off the grease they cook their food in,” Stanley says, and the scary thing is that he probably could. He’s a tenacious beast. Things that should probably kill him often fall very short. “McDonald’s and a road trip… the last day of a road trip. Thank Sagan.”
Even if it’s meant as a joke, Stanford still smiles at the little habit of his that Stanley’s mimicking. With a little luck, he might even be allowed to put up two Carl Sagan posters in their new home.
They get in the car, they drive, the sun marches unstoppably across the sky. Someone tells bad jokes. Someone conducts overly loud acapella covers of BABBA songs. They pass all at once into the Pacific Northwest. Stars begin fading into the darkening blue-black.
As ten-hour days go, it’s blessedly short.
Finally finally finally, after a hasty dinner that Stanley wolfs down in record time, they’re into the last hour. The Diablo hums, seems to lean forward at its axles, eager to finish the journey.
The stars over Oregon look just the same as everywhere else, but Stanford can’t help but think that the sky is that little bit deeper, or the trees offer a little more mystery, or that the air tastes a little more like the supernatural. He sighs, wistfully, and says to himself, Here’s the beginning of it.
The beginning of something, in any case, he muses as eyes light up between the trees.
When they pass the sign welcoming them boldly to Gravity Falls, something happens.
It’s nothing dramatic, but a shiver runs sparking through all of them and makes their hair stand slightly on end; the stars in the sky shine brighter for a moment, almost marking some indescribable pattern— and then it’s over, and they jolt back to earth with the feeling of waking up from a falling dream.
Stanley speaks first. “Did… what was that? Did I hit a magic pothole or something?” he says, absently patting his mullet down at the back. He looks disconcerted. “That better not have damaged the car. If it did, recompense is coming out of your pocket, Sixer.”
“Um,” says Stanford. He doesn’t know what it was. “I don’t know what that was.” For a moment he blinks, and then a wondrous grin spreads across his face. “But damned if I’m not going to find out.”
.
The town is quiet under the blanket of night, velvet tones quieting the sounds of people in favour of the woods surrounding them; their car is the only vehicle on the road, save for a dawdling police car that rests on one corner. (Stanley shrinks down a little in his seat and turns up the collar of his shirt, even though he hasn’t committed any recent crimes, and none at all since he’s had a mullet.)
There seems to be just one small hotel in Gravity Falls, on the main road of town next to all the other major shops, and that’s where they wearily, finally park. In the morning, they’ll have to talk to someone about buying, or renting, somewhere more permanent, but for now they’re exhausted enough to be happy with The Beaverbuck Inn. A stuffed beaver regards them solemnly from above the service counter.
A woman— she looks and sounds rather like a Sally, Stanford decides— gives them a cheery smile as they walk in. “You fine men looking for a room tonight?” she says, with a hint of a twang.
It feels a bit anticlimactic. Stanford thinks that maybe they should have had more fanfare when arriving in the town he’s going to write his most famous and well-published scientific papers from. After all, he’s going to put Gravity Falls well and truly on the map with his groundbreaking discoveries— surely there should be something happening to recognise his appearance. He almost says this to Fiddleford, but decides it sounds a bit too self-centred; instead, he plasters a bracing smile to his face and resolves to force the enthusiasm.
It’s with light hearts and heavy heads that they finally settle down in the rustic room. “So,” says Stanford. The other two nod as if he’s said something profound.
“Yeah,” is Stanley’s contribution.
“Mhm,” nods Fiddleford. He’s already half-asleep.
They’re too tired to make an event of it, but Stanford at least stands up and proclaims, “Welcome to Gravity Falls, gentlemen.” Stanley half-heartedly applauds. Fiddleford falls asleep.
By the time the clock chimes eleven they’re all out cold, letting the Oregon air circulate in their lungs, and feeling the magic seep into their bones bit by bit. And while they sleep and fireflies float like earthbound stars in the forest, something intangibly supernatural fills the space between their skin and bones—
And they dream.
.
Fiddleford’s dream goes like this:
He’s somewhere that looks like the library at Backupsmore, and there’s autumn sunlight streaming in the window, and he doesn’t have anywhere pressing to be. He’s comfortable in his easy chair, with an old book; everything is tinged sepia with some sort of early-onset nostalgia. Then there’s a whirling of colour and movement and he’s somewhere else— outside, maybe, among tall trees, and the autumn sunlight fractures into a cold winter moon, and everything is alarmingly grey, and he catches the faintest impression of eyes watching him following him seeing into your soul, Fiddleford McGucket—
You aren’t as pure as you’d like to think, are you?
And he wakes up with a light sheen of sweat on his brow, breathing heavily. When he rolls over and goes back to sleep, he dreams about pie instead.
Stanley’s dream goes like this:
It’s a mishmash of the day’s events, as dreams often are, and he’s trying to fix one of the wheels on the Stanleymobile while his brother monologues about love in the background. “And I’m leaving you both to elope with Bigfoot,” he’s saying. Stanley tunes him out and squints at the tyre, which is apparently an eyeball now. It blinks at him.
Then there’s a voice surrounding him, saying, “Oh, now this is different. You might come in handy later.” And his surroundings all burst into flame, Stanford included, and everything spins rapidly like he’s being swallowed by a whirlpool, and there’s fire and swirling black all around him—
And he wakes up unceremoniously, and blinks at the unfamiliar ceiling. The dream is already slipping away from his fingers, except for the unnatural ring of that voice in his ears. He shuts his eyes and falls asleep a few minutes later, and those words curve through the rest of his slumber, even though the being that spoke them from has already moved on.
Stanford’s dream goes like this:
The trees surrounding him are pines (of course they are, his mind is ridiculously blunt in its imagery), and they tower over him like grim authority figures. Between the trunks flit a dark shape, equally as intimidating, though perhaps more frightening in the uncertainty of it. He takes an uneasy step back, testing the ground, the springiness of the needle covering— but something in him feels warily drawn to stay, rather than flee. It’s terrifying.
And then there’s a voice, saying—
“There you are, Sixer. I’ve been waiting for you.”
And he wakes up not knowing how he feels.
The night goes on, unmindful of their dreams and the common thread that pins them together, and carries them forward to their first morning in Gravity Falls.
Somewhere, perpendicular to the plane of reality, geometry comes together to form the lemon-yellow outline of a triangle. Void forms into a top hat and bowtie, and into cartoonish approximations of limbs that grab a simplistic cane from the air. Bill Cipher opens his eye, and without a mouth, he smiles.
“This,” he says, to nobody in particular (especially as he can’t yet materialise in the physical world, and thus nobody at all can hear his dulcet tones), “is going to be very interesting.”
And he falls back to the shadows of this dimension, and wait for things to develop.