Still Brothers
Darkness. Nothing but unending darkness and pain and sorrow and too many coulda-shoulda-wouldas. No one but my regrets left, phantasmal moans and cries in my ears personifying all that I had lost or given up of my own volition but lived to regret.
Stanford… I pushed him in.
He looked so sad.
He looked so scared.
My twin, my twin, how could I do that to him…?
Such a dumbass, asking for thank-yous right off the bat when obviously he hasn't recovered from the FIRST spat we had…. Or forgiven me entirely for that either….
Why hasn't he forgiven me? Why are we still strangers when we were once closer than close? Why is it that he's here, he's back, he's returned…. And yet I feel more alone than ever.
What did I do to deserve thirty years of hatred? I know I messed up his dream school…. But… He found this place, the Falls, because of that fuckup of mine. If I hadn't done that, he wouldn't be here and this wouldn't have happened… I wouldn't have lived thirty years knowing I stabbed my brother in the back twice…
HE'S hurt me back, too. Kicking me out of the only place I've known any sort of stability, actually been able to make money and be slightly successful at something...At least, going to kick me out when summer ends as it will eventually, at the very DAMN least HE has the decency not to dump both me and the twins out on our rumps…. Once I'm gone the twins will never come back to HIM, I'll see to that…. They've already gone through enough at the hands of the Falls, and I don't want Dipper swallowed up like HE was. Swallowed and never spit out, not til lately, but they're already bonding and I don't want to break that…. Maybe they can help each other. Dipper's not as engulfed as HE was, maybe Dipper can pull HIM out….
Can't talk to him, thirty years are between us…. Thirty years of hate and pain and regret and loneliness….
With that last word, I woke with a sharp pain through my chest… Like I'd been stabbed by something. Or burnt again, this time on the stomach. Old eyes opened to see the ceiling of my room, just as I had left it when I attempted to sleep. Breathing hard, I passed a wrinkled hand over my eyes. The pain was only in my head after all.
I sat up, knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep any more tonight. Oof, that hurt. Creaky bones aren't doing me no favors tonight. Despite the bone deep ache that resided in my bones after nights like this, the pain that wouldn't quit, I stood up and yanked on a wife beater- not caring whether or not it smelled, the kids wouldn't see me tonight anyway. With a glance at the clock this was confirmed, it was two in the morning. Too early for even the paranoid, continually sleepless half of the younger twins to be awake.
My paranoid other half might be another story, but that thought didn't enter my head as I shuffled along in my slippers to the porch. With a creak of springs and a thump, I sat down on the old couch situated on whichever porch I'd ended up on… There were at least two, maybe three. Sleep deprived, I didn't really care.
I leaned back into the couch, closing my eyes. Night was the time in Gravity Falls where the air was… clear and clean. Wild almost. It held a bit of danger in it, the Falls was the most dangerous at night after all…. But coming out here at night had grown to comfort me over the many all-nighters spent over the portal that held the key to my brother's return. Gravity Falls had settled into these old bones, and I had…bonded with the place like no other since the day I got kicked out of my first home.
The "home" that I preferred not to think about, but Ford was a constant reminder of. Especially since he seemed to have taken after Pa in that he fully intends to kick me out….
I groaned. Wallowing in probable dark futures had never helped me once…. Doing that had nearly ended my life more than once after Stanley had fallen (been pushed?) into that portal. It had been all my fault he disappeared….. And what did I do? I took his life, took his name… And manipulated it into the life I had today.
Which, with the twins around, had started to become…better, than the past twenty-odd years. Them being around also helped me to stay… more positive about Stanley possibly coming back. Or at least me finally getting closure as to what happened to him… He could have died over there for all I know. Or been fried the moment he was pushed into that portal. Pushed by his own flesh and blood, too ignorant and angry and hurt to be careful.
"…Stanley?"
I jumped half a mile, head snapping around to where I had heard that voice. Familiar… But so strange. He didn't tend to talk to me very much, even after he came back. Now his voice was hoarse, like he hadn't had anything to drink for a while that actually hydrated.
"… You couldn't sleep either, then…"
I just stayed quiet. Looking at him. If he still knew me at all he'd know why I was having trouble sleeping. Then again, thirty years alone changes a person. I should know.
He just stood there, looking awkward and uncomfortable for a long moment- it was almost like we were teenagers again and he was stuck in the middle of a party without a book. After that moment, I just patted the seat beside me. He knew it for what it was, and sat down on the other end of the couch… mostly on the edge of it. He still looked highly uncomfortable.
We both remained rather awkwardly quiet. What could we say to one another, after all that was said down in the lab right after he came back?
I groaned, rolling my eyes at how my brother was fidgeting in his seat. Still not used to socialization. I looked over at him, really looked. He looked like shit- bags under his eyes, phlegmy breathing, shiver-y hands… Crap. Had he really gotten himself sick this fast?
I smacked a hand on his forehead. He gave a yelp of surprise, giving me an offended look through glassy brown eyes. His skin was clammy and cool to the touch, and he was probably having chills from how he was starting to shake under my hand. For a genius, Sixer could be remarkably stupid when it came to his own personal health.
"Dumb nerd. Worked yourself sick again."
With the arm already over there, I pulled him into a one-arm hug. He doesn't resist. Not an annoyed peep from him, which was a bit surprising. Even when he felt like shit he usually snapped right back at me when me, of all people, called HIM dumb.
Then he surprises me. Awkwardly, he positions himself and hugs me as properly as possible while sitting- both arms and everything. I return the hug. My smarty-pants brother is shaking worse now, and I hear a faint cough a moment later from the region of my shoulder. I snort. Rather than getting ticked like I normally would at someone who just coughed on me, I just pat his back.
"Get to bed. And I mean real bed. No, actually, I'm not letting you go alone. Come on, up you get."
The coughing gets worse when he stands up. I get the picture that he's feeling awful, from the way he isn't talking much and actually seems to want my company. I tug and herd him back to my room. Keeping an eye on the workaholic nerd to make sure he doesn't go back to work while this sick would in all honesty, make me feel better.
He looks surprised when he finds himself in my room. Turns his head, looks at me, mild discomfort behind those eyes that were once a carbon copy of mine. That implies that one of us was the original and the other a carbon paper duplicate, but I know…And he knew at one point… That while we looked alike, we were very different people even then. But… Family love had bridged that gap easily while we were children. How I wish that could have remained the same, sometimes.
But we're here, now, and I have to deal with what I've done and what he's done, too; besides, I have the twins to look after. He does too, but… not in the same capacity, somehow.
I'm snapped out of my musings when my twin coughs again, wracking noises that don't sound good. With a sigh, I herd him toward bed. He resists a bit -finally, there's the stubborn hardass- but eventually sits down, the mattress creaking. Good enough. I wrap one of the several blankets I keep on my bed around his shoulders- slimmer than mine, forever the fragile nerd, but he's bulked up since I last saw him- and go to get a dose of cold meds from the master bathroom. He watches as I go, fairly alert but quiet.
I come back with the bottle and he's already curled up. Big baby, he always hated being sick. Used to look after him like this back then too. I sit beside him and lightly shake his shoulder. He twitches and looks up at me blearily.
"Cold meds. Swallow a dose."
Looking a bit grumpy and a bedhead already beginning, he sits back up and takes the dose I poured out. Makes a face at the taste, like most times when he took medicine. Then I looked at the flavor. Riiiight… Forgot he hates cherry flavored anything. I just grimace apologetically, it was the only flavor I had since cherry happened to be cheapest when I bought it. With a little huff he drops the issue, squinching his eyes shut briefly.
He plops the medicine cup back on top of the bottle, for once not grumping at me to wash it so the bottle top wouldn't get sticky. I went to go put it back, rinsing the cup out while I was near the sink anyways. When I came back, he was still sitting up but looked very sleepy.
He looks at me for a minute. I give him a "scooch over" gesture. For tonight, everything but the fact that my twin is sick and I want to look after him can go jump in a river. He looks grateful- brown eyes melting the way they always did when he was relieved about something. I just shoot him a smile and scoot into my half of the bed.
He sleeps on his side, facing the wall. I sleep on my back, less pain in the morning that way and there's space with the way he's sleeping, all cramped against the side. It's a bit of a squeeze, but two old men still fit in my bed.
I hear a groan, and a flump. Ford was sleeping on his back like me, making a pained face. Our arms touched and those six fingers twitched, but it was unavoidable with both of us in the same bed. I didn't bring it up.
"Back issues?"
"….You know it."
There's a fit of coughing and snuffles afterward; Ford covers his mouth with his hand this go round. I just shake my head.
"Need Kleenex?"
"No…"
I rolled my eyes. Lie. Even after so long he's a shit liar, at least to me.
I pop the box of Kleenex on my nightstand onto his face anyway. He makes a grouchy noise but uses a few anyway, tossing them into the can I kept by my bed after he was done. He put the box on my chest and in turn I put it back where it went.
We lay in silence for a bit. At least, almost silence. With it this quiet, I can hear Ford's raspy breathing.
At some point, his six-fingered hand finds mine properly and our fingers twist into one another's like we used to as children, that extra finger curling around my palm and clinging as best it could. With that, something in me knows that Ford doesn't hate me. Not really. He may be still mad and a bit frustrated with me on some things, that happened during the best of times me not being as bright as he is, but… It won't be forever. And now we have a chance to work it out. Hopefully before this summer ends.
"…Sixer."
He grunts, telling me he heard me.
"I'd do it all again. For you. To hell with the risk…Even if you kick me out at the end of the summer…. Just…please… don't leave me all alone again… Let me come see you sometimes even if your still mad…..I don't… I…hate being alone and without the twins or the Shack team, I essentially have…no one." I had squeezed his hand at some point while saying that.
Ford was quiet for a while, and I almost dozed off waiting for him to answer. He squeezed my hand a little.
"You meant well, at least… I should have known you'd place family above all else…even after what happened with Dad. Maybe especially.."
He was quiet for a minute.
"Even if you leave this place, you'll always have friends, Stanley. Family too, if the twins are anyone to go by…You have a gift for making people love you. I never had that gift. And…even if you're a knucklehead sometimes and I get mad at you…brothers are still brothers. And even without me…you'd never be alone."
I turned over and hugged him silently. A surprised cough later, I could feel a hesitant arm wrap around my shoulders in return. I laughed, soft and hoarse. We hugged each other tightly in the silence of my bedroom. Everything was going to be okay… Someday, at least.
...I have no excuse beyond wanting, so so so badly, for the elder Pines twins to make up...
Second Gravity Falls Fanfiction, helpful criticism welcome.
Unwarranted and nasty criticism will be used to toast Doritos.
Review please ^ _ ^
-June