I reread the last chapter and found spelling errors I'm too lazy to fix. Grammarly! Return to me! I watched Sense and Sensibility writing this. Hence it being so wordy.
Fourth chapter for ya:
Stan was a mystery that both Fiddleford and Ford were determined to solve. When he moved in he only had one bag, which was to be expected. What they had not expected was the substantial amount of baseball bats he owned. He took to hiding them in the oddest of places and whenever one of them asked about it all he answered was with a gruff, 'don't touch.'
They could assume what they were for anyway. Ford had hired him for protection, after all.
Stanley didn't move in immediately. When he did, he acted...strange at first.
In many aspects, Stan was much the same as he was when they were children. He loved to laugh and make others laugh, he always smiled. But at the same time, his smile seemed forced in certain moments and his mood would swing back and forth worse than a teenage girl's. He never lashed out or anything of the sort to openly display that something was wrong, but he would grow silent, quieter. His eyes would reveal the trials he had lived through, growing older than his years.
These moments would grow less and less common, until Stan seemed rather the same as he did back then, despite the physical changes. Ford knew better.
Stan had his guard up.
But why?
Anyone who saw him knew immediately that Stan had been through the ringer. Ford was mentally prepared to hear the stories behind them, expecting atrocities he couldn't imagine his twin going through. But Stan was stubbornly unwilling to share.
Fiddleford told Ford that in their short acquaintance Stan never alluded to anything in his past and both of them thought of ways to get Stan to open up.
They were scientists after all.
Unfortunately for them, Stan was tougher to crack than a bank safe. Infinitely more so. Considering he himself had opened a few.
Despite this, Ford was enjoying having his twin back. Fidds certainly was too. They were no longer living off coffee for one thing. They had learned rather quickly that Stan was a remarkably good cook. And a mother hen. Stanley refused to let them start working without breakfast or to go to sleep without dinner.
He made them sleep on a schedule too. The first few nights, Stan would carry them to bed from where they fell asleep at their desks. Fidds and Ford both found it rather embarrassing and Stan didn't have to fight too hard to get them to go to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.
The result was almost instant. The bags disappeared from under their eyes and they found they improved in functioning and made fewer mistakes while working. They were both very grateful for Stan, so when they noticed Stan still looked as unwell as he did when he moved in, they both tried to reciprocate Stan's hard work.
But as said before, Stan was very, very stubborn.
Pfft. This was very very wordy. So, the next chapter shall start up with Ford and Fidds trying to make sure Stanley is ok. Since he still looked awful. Etc. So, lots of fluff. This was 566-word exposition on Stan not giving up the contents of his past, so...we got nowhere, not really. Sorry. Hope you enjoyed!
( I looked up a lot of synonyms for this.)
