Finally, after all these long years of waiting... I'm actually writing a Gravity Falls fic! I was debating posting this whole thing as one chapter, because I might want to go back and change stuff in the different sections, but it's turning out to be bigger than I expected and if I wait too long to at least start posting it, I might never actually finish it. So here we go! (Title is from the song by Stars)
[1]
Stan doesn't sleep that night.
Instead, he lays on the couch and stares at the ceiling. The room is fairly lived in, the assorted research documents strewn about the desk indicating that this is probably an office. It has an ugly blue and yellow shag carpet. There had been a time when Stan would have teased his brother mercilessly for owning such an atrocity.
He tries not to think about Ford. The grain of the wooden ceiling, he tells himself, is very interesting. It has textures that vary, and the shades of brown from one plank to the next are slightly different in places. Very fascinating.
But between his eyes and the intriguing woodwork floats a vision of Ford, his face white with terror, his lips forming desperately around the words Stanley help me!, and then, when it's all over, his glasses lying abandoned on the cold floor.
Stan absently rubs his thumb over the rim of the glasses. The roar of the portal had been so intense that when it finally stopped, the return of silence was like a thunderclap on his ears. In that stifling, sickening stillness, the clatter of Ford's glasses hitting the ground might as well have been a gunshot.
He tries not the think about the darkened machine floors beneath him, but it's like he can feel it. Its presence is ominous, pricking at his spine, and he feels unsafe with his back to it. Despite this (and the fiery ache in his shoulder), he doesn't move. His body is like lead, too heavy to so much as twitch a finger.
He tries not to think about anything at all.
He fails.