Stan waited for Ford seemed to just want to stare at him. After a few moments of that, Stan had to concede that Ford was right. It was a little…unnerving.

Was he supposed to go first?

He hadn't been the one who came over here with something to say or with the vague notion that some sort of talk should happen.

He politely stared back.

"I've been…" Ford trailed off, whetted his lips. "I've been thinking about this for a while now."

"Could have fooled me."

Ford winced. "Stan, please, don't be difficult."

Stan laughed incredulously. "Don't be difficult? This is the second time you've talked to me in more than half a year and all you want to say is 'don't be difficult'? The first time, by the way, was when you were yelling at me because having to see me was just too hard for you?"

"Stan, that was months ago," Ford said.

"Everything was months ago! And yet I still seem to be living it. And don't you dare tell me I'm doing fine. Shermie and Rachel are the reason I'm doing fine. And them being there for me doesn't let you off the hook."

"I'm not trying to be let off of any hook," Ford said, beginning to get frustrated. "I just…"

"You just what? You don't even know. All this time you were waiting for me and you couldn't even come up with an answer," Stan said.

Ford said nothing.

"Look, it's late and I'm tired and I want to go to bed." Still nothing. "So you know what? I'm going to make this really easy for you. Have you figured out that what happened was an accident yet?"

"I-I don't know," Ford admitted.

Stan's eyes narrowed and he banged on the table. "What do you mean you don't know? I've only been telling you it was since the beginning!"

"Well, yes, but you could conceivably get something out of it being an accident. Even with being thrown out, there's less sympathy available for someone who knowingly sabotaged me and then didn't like the consequences or had a change of heart too late to matter than for someone who truly didn't mean to do it. And not telling me afterwards was certainly not an accident."

Stan scowled. "I thought you didn't come here to fight."

"You're the one who-" Ford stopped himself. "It doesn't matter. Whether it was an accident or not, it doesn't matter."

"And why is that?" Stan demanded. "Because it's just such an unforgivable sin the fact it broke is all you care about?"

"No because placing too much emphasis on whether it was an accident or not makes it seem like whether it can be forgiven is a values judgment. Like if it was an accident you shouldn't have had any consequences at all and should be forgiven but if it had been on purpose you deserve everything that happened to you and worse and ought never be forgiven."

"I am way too tired to be getting into a philosophical debate," Stan said flatly.

"It's been, as you said, more than half a month. What's done is done. I'm going to a really good school and I don't have to pay for it. I just need to keep my grades above a certain level and I would do that anyway. Do you think I should make whether I forgive you or not dependent on whether you meant to do it or didn't? Say you had done it on purpose. It wouldn't have been because you wanted to hurt me, it would have been because you were too selfish to put what was best for me above what was best for you," Ford said. "Should I stay if it were an accident and leave if it weren't?"

Stan's shoulders slumped. "No."

"I want to believe it was an accident. I've already explained why I have my doubts."

"So…what does this mean?" Stan asked, hating how hopeful his voice was coming out. If Ford were setting him up for a fall…It didn't sound like something he would do but it had been a long time since they had last really been on the same page. Even before the science fair thing. If he never heard the words 'science fair' as long as he lived…

"It means I'm trying to," Ford said.

Annoyance flared back up. "Trying to? Is that it? You came all the way over here to tell me you're trying to forgive me?"

Ford briefly closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "It's not that easy, Stan. I've managed to come back from what you've done. I'm satisfied with where I seem to be going. But every time I think about what happened…and it's not even so much West Coast Tech although, yeah, that really was my dream. But I trusted you and you betrayed me and how do you get past that?"

"I never betrayed you!"

Ford simply raised an eyebrow.

Stan remembered what he said about how he should have done something, anything, afterwards instead of just propping that piece back on and hoping for the best.

He slumped in his seat. "Yeah. I guess so. But I didn't mean to."

"That much I'll believe," Ford said.

"So if you haven't forgiven me then what are you doing here?" Stan asked.

"I told you, I am trying," Ford said. "I'm sick of being angry. But it hasn't been all that long. I just need time."

"Time," Stan repeated, barking out a laugh. "You know, I've been hearing that it hasn't been that long and you just need more time since literally the night it happened."

"That…would be because if it hasn't been all that long and I still need time right now, it logically follows that any time before this moment had been even less time since it happened and I would need even more time than I do now."

"Pfft. Logic."

Ford's eyes flickered.

"If you keep saying that then sooner or later it'll be five years gone and you'll still be saying that."

"I certainly hope not," Ford said. "That's part of why I came here tonight."

"What do you mean?" Stan asked carefully.

"I miss you."

Was it just him or was his breathing getting loud? It was all he could seem to hear and he listened to it for a moment, vaguely aware that Ford was watching him for his response. But he didn't know what to say. Ford certainly hadn't acted like it. But he didn't want to start another fight. "Oh?"

"I miss you," Ford repeated. "I miss hearing about your day and telling you about the things I'm working on. I miss working on the Stan o' War and watching you goof off in class. I miss sharing a room with you and driving to school together. I just…miss you."

"I thought you said I was suffocating."

Ford had accused him of that months ago now but some hurts stayed with you.

"I did," Ford agreed. "And I miss you."

"That doesn't even make any sense," Stan said.

"These things are always complicated," Ford said. "Or so people keep telling me. I don't know what to tell you. I don't…I don't think that I was wrong to think that we needed some space but I think that maybe that was the wrong way to go about it. You don't go from sharing everything to not even making eye contact overnight. Me going away to college, even only a state away, and you staying here…I think that could be enough space."

"We seem to be able to stay out of each other's way even staying in the same classroom," Stan said.

Ford just looked at him and Stan could feel his resolve crumbling. It wasn't fair that as easy as it was to stay angry at Ford when he was gone, all he had to do was show up and want something from him – literally anything – and suddenly all Stan wanted was to give it to him. It wasn't Ford's fault, granted, but it really wasn't fair either.

"I miss you," he said quietly. "I miss…" How did he put it into words? He missed everything, the good and the bad. He missed just having Ford in his life and he thought he was getting used to living without his brother but just being with him now reminded him how much it hurt.

"I know."

Stan shook his head. He was going to find the words. Ford could do it, why couldn't he?

"I miss having to hide your textbooks when you go to the bathroom so you'll actually get some sleep the night before a test. I miss sitting on the swing set for hours. I miss making plans for a million things we'll never do. I miss making no effort to actually look or act like the other one of us but still spending hours trying to convince Shermie that you're me and I'm you. I miss knowing that, whatever else may happen in my life, whoever may come or go, I'll always have at least one friend that won't ever really be gone."

It felt like some sort of barrier had fallen away, not quite like it used to but there was anticipation in the air. A wall was falling somewhere.

Ford sat there, absorbing that. "I don't know why you think you need me."

Stan tensed. "I don't-"

"You can deny it if you want but I think we both know that you do."

Stan sighed. Yeah, that much was true. "Why wouldn't I? I've needed you my whole life."

"You managed to get by just fine without me all this time," Ford pointed out. "You even graduated from high school on your own merit instead of just copying off of me which is honestly how I always thought it would go."

"Me, too," Stan admitted. "Ford, I've been miserable."

"Not the whole time," Ford said. "I've seen you."

"No, maybe not the whole time," Stan conceded. "But enough. Too damn much. More than I would have been if things hadn't worked out like they had."

"I'm not sure that that's true," Ford said. "You'd have been miserable watching me prepare to go off to school, even if it's a lot closer than it could have been."

"I'd have probably gotten over it," Stan said. "That's the worst part. You could be going off to the other side of the country and it's been long enough I think I'd have been okay by now. But instead…"

"Yeah. Instead," Ford echoed. "You have friends, Stan."

"They're mostly Carla's friends."

"And they don't have to like you, too, but they do and you were at a party tonight. You have a girlfriend."

"She gets way too caught up in causes. I thought she was going to run off with a hippie and Shermie had to kidnap me to stop me from driving his car off a cliff," Stan said. "Apparently that's no way to get her to want to go out with you again and she'll just think you're crazy."

"Yeah, I…Yeah, that sounds about right. I'm glad you didn't. Even if I really should have heard about Shermie having to kidnap you."

"Yeah," Stan said meaningfully. "You should have."

"I feel like…I was trying to help you, you know, when I started letting you copy off of me," Ford said. "You didn't get the material as fast as I did and you just got so frustrated when I tried to explain it. I don't think I'm the best teacher, either, since I have problems breaking things down for others and don't really understand how things I understand instantly aren't immediately understood by everyone. And it would take you hours to do something I could do in twenty minutes. I really thought that was the answer."

"Hey, hold up, now, Pointdexter," Stan said. "Who was ever complaining about any of that? The way I see it, you saved my ass there."

Ford nodded. "That's how I saw it then, too. But now the way I see it is that you managed to pay very little attention in school for literal years then when you had to do the work on your own again you managed to catch up really quickly."

Stan barked out a laugh. "Catch up quickly? Are you kidding me? I worked my ass off to catch up and let's not pretend I was making A's. If Rachel and Shermie weren't so obsessed with this whole high school thing then I'd have thrown in the towel a long time ago."

"That's what I'm saying, though. As hard as it would have been to stay caught up, catching up afterwards would be worse. If I hadn't let you slide by…I think I may have helped sabotage your education."

Stan snorted. "My education. Trust me, I wanted to do it myself I would've done it myself."

"My point is, you've had it in your head all this time that I'm the smart twin and you're the dumb twin and that you needed me," Ford said. "And maybe…maybe it wasn't all in your head. But you don't need me, Stan. Not like you think you do."

"I do need you," Stan argued. "I always will. But…you're right, too. I can live without you. I didn't think I could but I can. I don't want to, though."

"I don't want to, either," Ford said.

Stan wasn't going to ask if Ford needed him or not. He didn't know if he would be honest enough to admit it to himself if he did. He was here and that was enough, wasn't it? These last few months without him had to have meant something, right?

"So now what?" Stan asked. "I missed you and you missed me and in the fall you're moving up to New York and I'm staying here and learning how to fix cars."

"I don't know," Ford said. "We have some time. I had the sense not to come over the night before I was leaving."

"At least that," Stan agreed. "But we can't just slap a Band-Aid on it and make it all better. We literally didn't speak at all, except one time that just turned into a big fight, for most of the school year."

"That…got out of hand," Ford admitted. "I am glad that they insisted on taking some pictures of us together today. I wouldn't have suggested it but I did want that."

"You didn't say anything."

"Neither did you," Ford pointed out.

"And what makes you think I want those pictures?" Stan asked.

Ford looked surprised. "Are you really saying that you didn't?"

Stan sighed. "I don't know. We'll have to see how they turned out. But whenever I look at them, I'm going to remember that we might have been pretending to be happy but we still weren't speaking and we were forced into getting them taken."

"I wasn't forced," Ford said softly.

Stan sighed. "That's just it, Sixer. You can't just think these things and trust me to get them. That whole psychic twin thing is a load of crap. If you want to make sure that I know something, even if you think it's obvious, you have to actually tell me."

Ford said nothing.

"You're trying to forgive me for the science fair project and to move on. I'll admit it. I definitely dropped the ball that night and you didn't deserve to pay the price for that. Well, I'm trying to move on, too, and has it occurred to you that I might have things to be angry about, too?"

"Because Dad kicked you out?" Ford guessed.

Stan managed a laugh and shook his head. "This isn't about Dad, Ford. My issues with him are with him and, frankly, if I never see him again it will be too soon. I'm talking about you."

"I already told you, I couldn't have stopped him-"

"And it had literally just happened, I know," Stan interrupted. "I remember. We've had this discussion. But what about the day after that? Did you even ask me if I was alright?"

"Shermie told me that he had taken you in," Ford said. "And you were in school so clearly you were doing okay."

"Or what about the week after that? Or the month after that? Or any time in all the months after that before tonight? No, the only time you wanted to talk to me was to yell at me. I was kicked out by my own father. Even if Shermie made sure I was okay, you just left it at that. For months."

"I'm sorry," Ford said.

Stan drew back, surprised.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I shouldn't have let it drag out this long. I should have at least asked about what happened after you were thrown out and made sure you were okay before ignoring you. It's just that once you get an idea in your head, you're mad at your brother and he ruined your chance and it's all so suffocating, it's so hard to get past it. The more time passed where we weren't talking and I didn't know how to change that." A bit reproachfully, he added, "You didn't come to me either."

"How could I? I broke your project. You were the wronged party. And then you said I was suffocating when I didn't even go anywhere near you," Stan said. "Rachel said that if my relationship with you was important then I should fight for it. I don't know how I was supposed to do that. I used to think of all the things I'd say to you if you decided to start talking to me again but I knew I was never going to get the chance to say them. You weren't going to stand there, chastened, while I monologued at you."

"That sort of thing is best for the movies," Ford said.

"How do you fight for a relationship that the other person has decided they don't want? Maybe if someone is busy or thinks they're not good enough or there was a misunderstanding or something else in their life is going wrong then you can fight for them. But when the problem is you…what do you do when you're the problem? I feel like any attempt that I made to do anything at all except leaving you alone would just be proving your point. And if I left you alone, were you even still in my life? Did we have a relationship at all or were you just slipping away?"

Ford looked guilty. "Yeah, I can-I can see that. I could bring up what you did to me and how that's been killing me for months but I think that's beating a dead horse at this point. What really got to me, the night it happened, though?"

"What?" Stan asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"I asked you what happened and you dissembled, talked about how you were just joking around. I told you I didn't think it was a mistake and you said that it was and then immediately started talking about how now it looked like we could go treasure hunting. No apologies, no expression of sympathy, not even a 'there will be other schools.' You didn't even choose to tell me what happened. You just started talking about how now that you had ruined what I wanted to do we could go off and do what you wanted to do."

Stan stared at his hands. "I, uh, didn't think of it like that."

"That much was obvious," Ford told him. "Even if that were how you really felt, it was a stupid way to play it."

"I was just…after it happened I thought it was fine. Then you came in yelling and it clearly wasn't fine. And you were so angry and you wanted it so much…It was an accident. I was just trying to, oh, what's the word? Mina-I was trying to make it seem like it wasn't that big of a deal so you wouldn't be so mad at me. I didn't really think it would work but what else can you do when you're facing down the fact that you fucked up royally? I think that if Dad had given us time to talk I could have made you see what had happened and why and even if you didn't forgive me at least you wouldn't spend months thinking I did it on purpose."

"Maybe," Ford said distantly. "I was glad when Shermie took you in, you know?"

"You were?" Stan asked, surprised. First he was hearing of this.

"I never thought you deserved to become homeless over what happened, not even if you had done it on purpose."

"Then why not saying anything?" Stan asked.

"Because there was no point except making you feel better and that was asking kind of a lot from me just then," he replied. "You going to Shermie meant that I had time to just mourn what might have been without having to have that grief tempered by wondering what had happened to you and feeling guilty because you didn't deserve it."

"Guilt? But why would-"

"It's not always the things we do or can change that cause us guilt," Ford interrupted. "I don't know. I can't help but feel that if Dad hadn't come in, things still would have deteriorated that night and maybe he'd have taken your car or grounded you forever or something but if he had done pretty much anything except what he did, we could have worked this out a long time ago. We wouldn't have managed to avoid each other nearly this long."

"Yeah," Stan said wistfully. "But at least we're talking now."

"I think we should decide, right here and now, that the next time either one of us does something truly horrible to the other – probably by accident, fine – we're not going to just stop speaking indefinitely. We're going to work it out. And possibly call Mom or Shermie or someone in to act as a mediator."

"Uh, next time? Isn't that a bit pessimistic, Ford?"

"It's called being prepared," Ford said. "A scientist is always prepared."

"If you say so…"

"I just…I feel like you've been gone this whole time. You weren't, of course, but I only saw you in passing. I know almost nothing about your life during our senior year."

"Shermie kind of told me about what you were up to, at least as far as you told him," Stan said.

Ford smiled mirthlessly. "I guess I wasn't really receptive to receiving status updates."

"We've never been apart before," Stan said. "And this wasn't truly being apart as we were still both right there." They had even been called to the principal's office collectively a few times but Stan always ended up going, as the one more likely to be called, and only if he were sent back quickly did Ford venture down there. "Is this what people do? Talk about the things they've been up to since the last time they saw them?"

"I guess so," Ford said. "We're going to have a lot of catching up to do once I leave. I, uh, heard you're going to be a mechanic."

"Yeah," Stan said, feeling suddenly shy. What would Ford have to say about that? It had been Shermie's idea in the first place and Carla kept talking about how he always fixed her car and all their friends' cars and his mother thought it was brilliant but what about Ford? What about the guy who believed that getting a B on something was failing? "What do you think?"

"Me?" Ford asked. "I-Does it matter?"

Stan gave him the look that such a ridiculous question deserved.

"I guess so, huh? Well, I mean, it's not something I would ever want to do. But I know you would hate doing what I want to do, too. You seem to be good at it. I think. I don't really know enough to tell. You're certainly better at that sort of thing than I am. And you're still going to school, even if it's shorter, I can't disapprove of that. If it requires some sort of license or degree then that's some level of prestige, isn't it? Maybe anyone can change a tire-"

"You can't," Stan muttered.

"But if anyone wanted to be a mechanic they'd have to work hard and go to school. And after watching you play catch up and actually manage to graduate, I'm confident that you can put the work in."

"Well, uh, I think so, too. Probably."

"Are you going to stay with Shermie?"

"Yeah," Stan said. "It seems like a waste to get my own place when I could be saving up to pay for school. Rachel and Shermie are being amazing."

"As upset as I was about this whole thing, I could never deny that Shermie was being a good brother," Ford agreed.

"It wasn't ever our thing that made me not be able to go home. Or, I guess it's not even home anymore, is it?" Stan asked rhetorically.

"Mom brings you up all the time," Ford said. "Kind of passive-aggressively, actually. Dad never talks about you unless he's complaining about Shermie taking you in."

"Does he?" Stan asked, unsure why he was even surprised. "He never told me that."

"Yeah, well, he wouldn't," Ford said. "He doesn't care what Dad thinks."

"I do," Stan admitted. "I'm trying not to."

Ford laughed quietly. "I know that feeling."

"What do you mean?" Stan asked. "Since when have you pissed Dad off?"

"I haven't," Ford said. "Yet."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

But Ford just shook his head. "Oh, you know. He's not a man easily impressed. I'm sure I'll find a way to do that sooner or later. I'll have to go to Shermie for some not giving a fuck tips later."

"I think it helps that he's a real grown-up with a wife and kid and everything. And he no longer lives there."

"You don't live there," Ford pointed out.

"Shermie wasn't thrown out," Stan countered.

"Ah. There is that."

They sat there in silence for a while.

"How do we do this?" Ford asked finally.

"Do what?"

"How do we rebuild a relationship? I've never had to leave the house to see you before. And we won't be at school anymore. We both said and did some things that we shouldn't have. And wanting to get past it is a good first step but…I don't know. It can't be that easy."

"It might be," Stan said. "Or it might not. I guess we just play it by ear. See what happens. What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Probably sleeping most of the day," Ford said. "To make up for not getting any sleep tonight."

Stan rolled his eyes. "On the first day of freedom? BE more of a nerd."

"Alright, what did you have in mind?" Ford asked. "Since apparently sleep deprivation is where it's at."

"How about we work on the Stan o' War? I, uh, still go by there sometimes. Just to make sure no one messed with our stuff."

"It was almost finished," Ford said slowly. "But we're not going to take it out into the world."

"We could always take it around New Jersey," Stan said. "We worked on that for a long time. Might as well go sailing at least a couple times."

Ford smiled slowly. "I think that that would be a very good use of our time."

"It would be fun is what you mean."

"And responsible," Ford added.

Stan rolled his eyes. "Man, it's a good thing you've got me back, Sixer, because you have clearly lost all awareness of what 'fun' actually means…"