After another three days of hell, Ford sat down next to him as he was eating lunch.

Just casually sat next to him as if nothing had happened.

It made it harder to see his face. Maybe that was the point.

Stan said nothing. He wanted to but he didn't know how to do it. He didn't know where to start.

"We haven't spoken in a week, Stan," Ford said.

"We've gone longer without speaking," Stan said noncommittally.

"Yes but that was when we were living hundreds of miles away from each other," Ford pointed out. "Back home, I couldn't even last three hours without talking to you."

"Back home the worst thing I ever did was step on your glasses. And no one, not even Dad, thought that I did that on purpose. My own glasses, sure. But not yours."

"I don't want to turn into this," Ford said. "I've been thinking a lot over the past week and I don't want us to be just roommates who are strangers. You're my twin brother, Stanley. I can't have you here and not talk to you. We can't both be living here and not talk."

"Are you kicking me out?" Stan asked. He didn't think that Ford would but it had been a long week that left him questioning every decision he had made since that damn science fair all those years ago. Sometimes he thought that nothing would surprise him now.

"I already told you that I wouldn't," Ford said evenly.

Stan shrugged. "Things change."

"Not this," Ford said firmly. "I'm not Dad. That's one line I won't cross."

"At least that."

"Give me something," Ford said.

"What?"

"I don't know. More than that. I'm trying here and you're just giving me monosyllabic replies."

Stan sighed. "I'm tired, Ford. I don't know what you want to hear."

Ford shook his head impatiently. "Don't worry about what I want to hear. When have you ever cared about that?"

He had always cared about that and especially since he had come back to this time. He just hadn't always given Ford the words he was looking for. But there was little point in trying to explain. Ford wasn't the kind of person who would want someone to tell him just what he wanted to hear anyway.

"I keep looking back on what happened and trying to understand how me just sketching some stuff led to…all of that. Radio silence for a whole week," Stan said helplessly.

A flash of what might have been guilt flashed across Ford's face. "Yeah, me, too."

"I just…I know how you feel about tourist attractions. I know you don't understand why they're so important to me. But I just…I miss the Mystery Shack."

"Stan, it looked exactly like my house but with some letters on top," Ford said.

Stan smiled humorlessly. "What, you think your house is some kind of unique specimen or something? The place I'm thinking of looks a lot like this place. Not exact but close enough."

"You are right, you know."

Stan blinked at him. "Come again?"

Ford glared half-heartedly at him. "You heard me. You're right about me not understanding. You more than understand, or at least as well as anyone can who isn't a freak-"

"I swear, it's like talking to a wall," Stan interrupted. "Ford, you're not a freak."

Ford's laugh sounded painful. "See? Even angry with me and hurt, you still won't let me say it."

Stan shifted uncomfortably. "Well, what can I say? I wouldn't want to be inconsistent about my message. Me being upset doesn't make you a freak. Your lack of freakishness isn't really dependent on me."

Ford shook his head. "We can talk about this later."

"We will be talking about this later," Stan said, feeling oddly like he was threatening his brother. "Preferably with a therapist. But please, go on."

"You understand where I'm coming from but I really don't understand why you're so set on this idea," Ford said. "And since you usually try to avoid things you know will upset me, this must be something you're really set on."

"Maybe," Stan conceded.

"So just tell me. Don't worry about whether I'll agree or not, just try and make me understand."

Stan sighed. "Okay, the first thing you need to understand is that a high school diploma, or at least a GED, is extremely important when trying to get a job. An address is also a big help. Maybe some references. A phone number you can be reached at. You know, that kind of thing."

"It, uh, stands to reason."

"Well when I got kicked out I didn't have any of those things. I didn't really know what to do. I had never really planned for the future. I guess I knew treasure hunting was never going to work but I still tried it anyway because at that point, why not? It was my one chance of making millions. That, uh, didn't pan out. I needed a job. Those are hard to come by. I wasn't really all that good at anything. I went to prison once or twice. Or, uh, well, you know what? The number of times really doesn't matter. Basically I was in a lot of trouble. And with some criminals, too. I don't really want to get into the details but you found me at a place that was literally called Dead End Flats."

Ford bowed his head. "I remember. So where do tourist traps come in?"

Stan spread his hands and smiled mirthlessly. "Would you believe it's the first thing in my life I was ever really good at? I mean, there was boxing of course but those days are long gone. Scamming people out of money? Making them thank me for the privilege? Actually getting some repeat customers and lifelong fans? Oh, you had better believe I had found my calling. And I actually liked making up the attractions. Trying to figure out what would appeal to the most number of people and how to make it fun even when people knew they were being ripped off. I'm not you, Ford. I don't excel at practically everything. I didn't expect to be good at this. I just sort of fell into it. But I am! It's a reliable way of making money and I think Gravity Falls would be the perfect place for something like that, even without the added boost of the public's curiosity about you. I know you don't want anything like that and I'm not going to force it. But I can't deny that I've been thinking about it."

Ford was quiet for a long moment. "That-that's not what I expected."

Stan crossed his arms. "Well what did you expect? 'Ripping people off is fun'?"

"I don't know what I expected," Ford admitted. "Maybe some variant of that. I-I know what it's like to feel like you're only valuable for one thing."

Stan couldn't even pretend not to be skeptical and it probably showed on his face.

"I'm, uh, lumping academics into one thing," Ford explained.

Stan rolled his eyes. "Well, sure, if you're going to lump a million things into one then you're only good at one thing."

"And being good at conning people is probably multiple different things, too, right?" Ford asked a little uncertainly.

"Well, sure, but I'm not really counting things like pickpocketing and counterfeiting as my legitimate skill sets," Stan said. "I mean, I'm good at pretty much all conman activities but I was talking about things that don't have the potential to land me jail time. And I've had a lot of jobs but nothing suits me quite as much as running my own tourist trap."

"I'll, uh, have to…I see," Ford said awkwardly.

Stan shrugged. "Well, you asked."

"I know I did. I know that I'm probably the one who started it last week. And then who escalated it. You eventually got in on it but I really don't understand how zen you've gotten over the last decade," Ford said.

Stan shrugged. "What's to understand? There's a lot of stuff that would normally make me mad but, after being on my own for so long, I started to realize what was important. I'm not about to let little things like you consistently saying the wrong thing in any given situation tear us apart again. And if that's suffocating then I just…" He shook his head. "I don't know what to tell you."

"That wasn't…that wasn't fair," Ford admitted, pointedly staring straight ahead of him.

"No, it wasn't," Stan agreed. "But you were right, too. You can't help what you feel. I can't blame you for that, even if I want to. Even if I don't agree and honestly don't see how objectively this past month has been suffocating."

"There you go with your maturity," Ford said, shaking his head. "Who would have thought losing everything and going through hell, metaphorical of course, would have given you so much character growth?"

"The years no doubt have changed me," Stan quoted.

Ford just looked at him askance. "But it's not just about this past month. It's about, due to the fact we had pretty much no one else our whole lives and you were starting to need me more than I needed you, towards the end I was feeling like we needed a break. And then once you left, those feelings only intensified whether or not it was really fair. And now you're back and things are different and I feel we have a much better dynamic. But it's so easy to slip into old patterns."

"I know," Stan admitted.

Ford stared at him. "Do you? Because you don't seem to be slipping into any!"

Stan smiled ruefully. "Glad to see all my hard work is paying off. And, for what it's worth, you're doing far better than I would have done if I'd been in your shoes."

"I feel like all I've done recently is fuck everything up," Ford admitted softly. "I've been feeling like that for a while. Maybe I haven't done anything right since I first summoned Bill."

Stan considered his words carefully. "Well, I can certainly see how doing that could lead to a whole host of bad choices. But you've made some good ones. You reached out to me, didn't you? And I'd like to think that together we've been making some pretty great choices."

"But that was all you," Ford pointed out. "I wanted you to take the journal and go. Which…I'm starting to suspect will never be done."

"I've been busy!"

"But that still would have left me all alone with nothing but my fears and the portal and no way to protect myself. You give me someone to talk to and you gave me the idea to protect the house so I could take down the portal. You convinced me that maybe I should actually have someone in town I wasn't related to who was on speaking terms with me."

It was tempting to just take the accolades. Instead, Stan shook his head. "But that's looking at it from the outside. It's always easy to see the solution to someone else's problem. I come here, you're kind of a wreck. Solution: get some sleep and eat some real food. You can't bring yourself to leave the house for fear of what will happen to the portal when you're gone? Solution: find a goddamn unicorn and do whatever it takes to get that hair. People in town are literally confusing me with you despite the fact we don't look all that much alike anymore? Solution: introduce you to people. It's pretty basic but it's not my life. I'm sure if I had asked you how to survive being homeless without ending up in a Colombian prison, you could offer some helpful hints."

"I, uh…" Ford trailed off, his eyes wide.

"It doesn't matter," Stan said quickly. "Don't worry about it."

"Doesn't matter? Stan, you just told me that you went to prison in Colombia!" Ford exclaimed.

"Which I should not have done," Stan said.

"I'm your brother! You need to tell me these things!"

Stan bit down his instinctual response about how he'd have loved to have done that if only Ford had been willing to speak to him at the time. They seemed like, after this hellish week, they might actually be getting somewhere. "There's no point worrying you after the fact. And it's not like you were having an easy time of it yourself up here."

Ford winced. "That was pretty recent. Well, Bill I've known for a few years now but it's only been the last few months that I knew the truth about him."

"Enough about that. If we're going to talk about the past, let's talk about something that could actually impact our future. Namely, what did you mean when you said you felt like we needed a break back in high school? Assuming that this is what you were genuinely feeling at the time and not just how you felt in retrospect after your project broke," Stan said.

"I felt a lot of things differently in retrospect," Ford said. "But that was not one of them. I really did feel like we needed to take a break."

Stan made a face. "And…if you want to stop with the romantically coded way of phrasing that then that would be great."

"…What?" Ford asked eloquently.

"I'm just saying," Stan said, feeling slightly ridiculous. But it was one of those things where once you started you really had to see it through to the end. "We keep talking about taking a break. I feel like we're talking about a freaking break-up here."

"But…we're brothers," Ford said slowly, looking at Stan like he was quite possibly deranged. "And we're clearly not."

Stan sighed. "Just…different word choice? For me?"

"Okay…I thought it would be a good idea for the two of us to have some distance between us," Ford said. "Even before everything went horribly wrong. My main goal from college was to escape from New Jersey. I figured you might get out or you might not but either way it was unlikely you'd end up at my same college."

"You didn't consider that maybe I'd follow you wherever you went?" Stan asked.

"Honestly? No. Maybe I should have if that was what you were thinking. But I wanted some space."

"But…why?" Stan asked, feeling ridiculously seventeen and rejected again. "What did I do wrong?"

"You did nothing wrong!" Ford immediately reassured him. "It's just what you said. Our whole lives, we had no one but each other. Oh, sure, there were our parents but they were far from perfect. Dad literally constantly told us that having children ruined your life. And I'm pretty sure he was mostly talking about Shermie because if you do the math then he's the reason they got married but that kind of thing messes you up. And Shermie was fine but he was just so much older. And the rest of the world…well."

"Fuck them," Stan said bluntly. "Bunch of New Jersians anyway."

"We're also from New Jersey," Ford pointed out.

"Good luck proving it."

"I don't need to prove it; I was there," Ford said. "I…oh, never mind. The point is, I was looking for a change. I wanted to see who I was for a change. On my own."

"Without me," Stan said. "Yeah, I get it. How is that not about me?"

"You remember that day that the principal told me about West Coast Tech?" Ford asked rhetorically. "We talked about it afterwards but I didn't have to tell you what was said. Why was that?"

"Because that door didn't muffle shit," Stan said. "I could hear all about it, him going off about how great you were, especially in comparison to me who would never amount to anything."

"He was an idiot," Ford said firmly. "But that was what I was getting at. They wanted me so they called us. It was always us. The Pines twins. The Stan twins. Dad couldn't even be assed to give us our own names! Or at least letting Mom pick one of them."

"Honestly, she probably did. Hence Stanley and Stanford," Stan said.

"Haven't you ever felt like that?" Ford asked, almost beseechingly. What he was looking for, Stan didn't know.

"Felt like what?" Stan asked.

"Like you just turned around and realized how much of who you are depended on another person," Ford said. "Like it terrified you and like you didn't know what to do about it. Like it wasn't anybody's fault but you needed to just be a whole instead of a half."

And the worst thing was, he did. He probably felt that way before Ford ever had. At least Ford was the brains of the operation. He got the 'why can't he be more like his brother's while other kids like him got the 'they just need to apply themself's.

But it had never been Ford's fault. He'd always been so proud of him. Even that day he got a B and was so excited to show his mother but Ford got there first with his perfect A like usual and he knew nothing that he tried would ever be able to measure up so why even bother wasting everybody's time with that?

And then all the years of trying to forget that he'd ever even had a twin, out on his own. All those years of might as well having been an only child for all the good having brothers was doing him. Ford had rejected him and Shermie…he hadn't even been able to call Shermie, to deal with his reaction. It hadn't occurred to him it would be anything but bad and hadn't that weighed heavily on him when Shermie had confided how bad losing Stan had hurt him?

"I guess I can," Stan conceded.

"You're not doing anything wrong here," Ford said. "I'm sorry if I made you feel otherwise. I can't promise that these feelings are going to go away overnight but I'm working on it. And I'm willing to try if you are."

Stan smiled at him. "I'm always willing to try. And…" He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, too."

"For the science fair? I think you already apologized for that," Ford said.

"I know. But I can't say it enough. That's what really started all of this. Maybe if I hadn't done that, maybe if I'd been around, you wouldn't have needed to turn to evil geometry to get you through your worries."

Ford shook his head. "I can't put that on you. I won't. I made my own choices and, even if some of them stemmed from yours, they're still mine. I-I don't know if I believe it was an accident or not. But I'm starting to think it doesn't matter. And no matter what happened, you didn't deserve what came next. I think I'm ready to forgive you."

It had been an accident. Stan had been through worse than this Ford, the one who would never see the other side of the portal, could even begin to imagine. Being graciously forgiven for one little fuck-up that had hurt Ford but destroyed Stan shouldn't have meant this much to him.

But it did.

Blinking back what was most certainly not tears, Stan threw his arm around his brother.

After a moment, Ford tentatively returned the embrace.