Author's note: I had actually originally planned to move things a bit further along in this chapter, but I kind of thought it would be a good idea to focus a little more on the world building here since I've put both of the brother's in the other's respective shoes and I wanted to flesh out how their relationship usually works under this set of circumstances. Hopefully I've still managed to keep them both reasonably in character :P
Anyways, sorry this took so long again, but the next couple chapters should be coming out a little quicker as I've already half written them. And boy are a lot of really bad things going to go down there. Consider this the calm before the storm. I'm sure that most of you will already have a bit of an idea where I'm going to be taking it after this chapter, but let's just say that Stanley's version of this situation is going to end up being a little more intense ;)
Chapter 13
Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.
Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. - Author Unknown
"Stanley."
He was completely surrounded on all sides by an encompassing, thick, impenetrable sea of darkness. The broken body of a ragged and haggard man was lying before him in the void, arm outstretched and reaching towards where he was sitting just opposite. Stanley couldn't help but notice that this wreck of a man somewhat resembled himself, except… perhaps older.
Yes. If the deep and jagged lines etched into his face were anything to go by, then he was definitely older. Older and infinitely more miserable. A thin film of plastic acted as a barrier between the two of them, separating them. Dividing them into two halves.
"Hey Staaaanley. Wake up already."
The obnoxious alarm bell beside him was blaring, ringing throughout his head with all the acute and resounding clarity of a small tin hammer striking against his skull, and the sound of shuffling feet, scraping metal, and excited chatting saturated the air around him. Stanley winced a little and groaned as he drowsily toiled to turn his head over to escape the persistently irritating clamor. His cheek stuck oddly to the smooth, cool surface that was currently being used as a pillow beneath him.
The outline of the man was only barely visible, illuminated by some dim and unseen source of red lighting behind Stanley. The scabs, cuts, and bruises that marred his battered face were almost completely erased by the sharp, black shadows viciously slashing their way across his grim expression.
A low and scratchy voice echoed weakly in the empty space.
"Don't you dare abandon him."
"Yeesh, ya meathead." A high-pitched feminine voice gave an annoyed sigh from somewhere just above him. The person the voice belonged to was close enough that he could smell faint traces of cigarette smoke even underneath the overpowering floral perfume. "How do ya expect to graduate from high school if you keep sleeping through all of your classes, huh?" Slim fingers partially wrapped themselves around the fabric of his shirt and started shaking him forcefully.
His eyes, though. His eyes burned softly in the gloom. Twin pinpricks, hard, bright, unyielding, and utterly determined, peeked out from within the dark shade that rested around the hollows of his sockets. They shined with an eerie and unnatural light that made him look dangerous, menacing, and even ghoulish; a light that made the worn and tired impression that his frayed state suggested, melt away into something unbearably hot and fierce. It was like looking at a pair of furious white embers.
"If you abandon him, I'll never forgive you."
"Heya Larry!" Another girl with an especially thick New Jersey accent bellowed out from somewhere to his left. "You wanna come help me and Carla out for a sec! I think our favorite upstart boxin' champion has been completely KO'd over here."
A loud and slightly gravely scoff was made a little ways away. It was swiftly followed by what sounded like something heavy being swung around and smacking carelessly up against a plaster wall. "Yeah, yeah toots. Just hang on and let me finish packin' up my gear."
"Show me why even demons fail to displace you from your brother's heart."
A different, more dissonant and airy voice now rasped at him from within the surrounding darkness. This one wasn't coming from the man. It was coming from…
Who was it coming from?
"Show me that both of you are capable of conquering even the manipulations of an ancient magic such as I."
A sudden, hard slap struck the side of Stanley's head, rousing him from his ominous and unsettling dream. His eye's shot open instantly in surprise, and he let out an undignified yelp as he jerked himself sharply back in his desk chair. The force of quick and unplanned movement was almost enough to knock him out of his seat entirely. "Ow. Owwww. What the…. Who?"
Stanley's transition into the world of the waking had been jarring, and it took him a few seconds to familiarize himself with his surroundings. Warm yellow sunlight was streaming in through the classroom windows, giving some life to the otherwise sterile white pallor of the floor and walls. Young men and women noisily pushed and crowded around the exits in an attempt to leave as quickly and chaotically as possible. Their teacher was slouched over at the front of the classroom and dusting off the blackboard, his sloppy strokes sending puffs of white chalk up into the air as he tried to wipe away whatever mathematical equations had been written earlier.
"Oi Stanley! Rise and shine already sleepin' beauty." The young and lanky man standing above him drew back the hand that had previously been used to cut Stanley's slumber short. He shifted the weight of the knapsack slung over his shoulders a little while a playful smirk started stretching its way across his thin, freckled jaw. "Believe it or not, some of us have things we'd rather be doing right now then hanging 'round after school while yer busy countin' sheep."
Stanley gave a few more sluggish blinks, somewhat confused and still not entirely awake yet, as he finally took proper notice of the three people standing right smack dab in front of his desk.
The first was the boy in front of him named Larry, a tall and scrawny scarecrow of a human being who Stanley enjoyed boxing with on a pretty regular basis. He may not have really seemed fit for the sport at first glance, but he had a way of making his height really work to his advantage in the ring. After all, it does become a little easier to avoid getting knocked out when half of your opponents can't even swing high enough to reach your head.
The second person he noticed, the girl currently to his immediate left, was Shannon, an abrasive, sarcastic, and loudmouthed little redhead who went about her own special brand of assholery as though it was some sacred mission given to her and her alone by some higher power. But once you got passed her tendency to rub people the wrong way she was a pretty fun person to hang around. Hell, Stanley didn't think he'd ever met someone who was better at counting cards than she was, even including all of the local mobsters he had grown up around. That particular talent, along with her bright red hair, had earned her the nickname 'Bloody Lady Luck' and it was the one of the main reasons why the folks on her street didn't hold blackjack nights anymore. Well, that and because they had been shut down by the cops a little while ago for some illegal pug trafficking that had been happening on the side.
And the last person to his right, though she certainly wasn't the least in Stanley's mind, was Carla 'Hot Pants' McCorkle.
The moment Stanley's eyes met up with hers, his heart started fluttering rapidly in his chest like an agitated butterfly in a glass jar. He could feel his cheeks heating up just looking at the soft curves of her bright and deceptively gentle features, and he made a hasty attempt to wipe away the drool that had pooled on the surface of he desk while he had been dozing off.
"H-hey." He managed; voice cracking a little before he repeated the greeting in a slightly deeper and what he hoped was a smoother tone. "I mean, hey. Hey there Carla."
Carla gave him a coy, knowing smile, and in response to that an unpleasant ball of tightness started to form somewhere between Stanley's lungs and stomach. But it wasn't the kind of light and floaty constriction that often accompanies lovesick teenagers when looking at a crush. No, it was… it was…
Images began flashing across Stanley's minds eye. Ghosts from another man, haunting memories from another life, were silently crawling their way into his thoughts. The walls and floors of the classroom, the students, and the whole world around him trembled, shimmered, darkened, and transformed for a few moments into a thickly layered web of glowing red symbols. The sun above him was boiling hot, tearing into the soft flesh of his skin with the long claws of its bright rays and leaving him a half stinging, half numb mess. Even without opening his eyes he could feel the pressure of its immense weight draining the life out of him. His breath rasped weakly into the dirt, and his hand curled around whatever it was holding on to a little more tightly. The sound of crumpling plastic followed shortly afterward, echoing eerily in the otherwise perfect silence.
Stanley had no idea what was going on anymore. His head, and heart, and sense of reality were completely thrown out of balance, reeling as though they were scattered bits of debris in a whirling dust devil.
It had been years and years since Stan had seen his old high school sweetheart, in photograph or otherwise, and he wasn't quite sure what to feel around her now. After he'd been forced to drop out of school in order to complete his father's requirements to be accepted back into the family, he and Carla hadn't seen much of each other, and as consequence, had grown quite distant. In the end, there had been a pretty nasty fall out between the two of them involving transcendental music and some new-age hippie's van, and the memory of the incident even now sat so bitterly within Stanley's chest that he couldn't look at bouquets of flowers without getting a sour taste in his mouth.
But just as these mixed feelings of forlorn misery and caustic heat proceeded to swell up within his body and erase the surrounding classroom completely into the blinding glare of the sun, a dark and inky shadow began bleeding into the forefront of Stanley's mind. It reached its jet-black filaments out and coated the dissenting memories in a thick film of nothingness. After a few moments, Stanley found that he couldn't recall what it was that he had been so upset about, and the world around him came back into perfect focus.
"Hey Stanley. Stanley, you ok?" Carla's face was a bit closer now as she leaned in to give him a concerned stare. "You look like you're a little out of it."
"Fine." Stanley managed to absent-mindedly mumble. And he was fine because he was still in high school, and Carla was still his girlfriend, and they were still happy together; and here, wherever this was, all of that other stuff never had, and never would happen. Because he was Stanley Filbrick Pines, the favored son, elder Pines twin by a few minutes, and family genius.
Well, genius as far a fighting went. His grades in school certainly weren't anything to get excited about, though he didn't really care much for that kind of book learning anyways. What mattered was that he was strong, he was capable, he was confident, and he had a bright and promising future ahead of him. Everyone said so, his coach, teachers, peers, friends, parents. His brother.
Everyone knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was destined to accomplish something great one day.
Stanley brought a hand up to his temple and shook his head slightly to try and clear out the strange feeling of empty numbness that was now seemed to be saturating specially selected portions of his brain.
Another small, teasing smile trekked its way across the edges of Carla's lips. "Still not a hundred percent there yet, huh?"
"Mmm." Stan hummed in agreement.
Not even a half second later the perturbed brunette spun around to glare up at Larry's still amused and smirking expression. "You know, that really wasn't necessary Larry. I love hitting things as much as the next gal, but in case you haven't realized it yet I'll go ahead and fill you in on this little secret about the existence of other ways to deal with your problems besides just smacking them around."
The gangly young man let out a small chuckle before waving his hand dismissively in Stanley's general direction. "Ah, don't blow a gasket 'Hot Pants'. You've seen as well as anyone else how good ol' Stanley over here's at takin' a punch in the ring. Fella's a brick house. I wasn't hurtin' him none."
"Yeah, yeah. Bite me twiggy. " Stanley groused in irritation as he moved the hand at his temple down to sullenly rub at the side of his still stinging ear. "You're just lucky I'm the type who prefers to settle my disputes peacefully instead'a resortin' t' violence. Otherwise…"
"Otherwise what? We'd go a bout or two and everyone'd get t'watch me kick yer butt."
Stanley let out a scoff, a smile of his own finally starting to light upon the features of his face. "Not even in your wildest dreams ya glass jaw. I bet I could take ya out in one hit."
Larry folded his long arms, and his mouth drew itself into a little bit of a pout only to be almost instantly replaced a few seconds later by a wild grin. He shook his head nonchalantly. "Oh, ya wish Pines. Ya wish. Anyways, don't cha think you should be showin' me a little appreciation or even thankin' me maybe? After all, I spared ya from havin' t'wake up all alone in the middle of an empty school, didn't I?" His eyes then moved to look at something that was to Stanley's back, and he tilted his chin up slightly to point at it. "Though I guess technically you woulden't've been completely alone, what with your mirror image over there conked out just as much as you were."
At this, Stanley raised a perplexed eyebrow and twisted himself around in his chair to peer behind him. Stanford was there; hunched over his desk with his head half pillowed in his crossed arms, and his cheek pressed into the smooth surface of the wood. His eyes were closed and his back rose and fell steadily. He hadn't been woken up yet, in spite of all the ruckus going on around him, and the lines upon his brow were still smooth and untroubled behind the slightly askew frames of his glasses.
Stanley couldn't help but find it more than a little strange that he hadn't noticed him there at all till just now, and some part of him was idly running through his memories in an effort to recall whether or not he actually had been there the whole time. But for the most part, he really didn't care all that much. An unusually soft smile for him started to stretch its way across his jaw at the sight of sleeping twin.
It didn't really matter to Stanley right now how or why his brother was here, just that he was.
"Yeash, I swear." Shannon's nasally voice yammered on to his left as she turned back to her own desk and started packing her things. "Is there anythin' under the sun that the pair of ya don't do together? You both look similar enough as it is that just seein' ya walk into class every day is enough to make me feel like I'm on one of those freaky episodes of the twilight zone." Carla giggled a little at that, and Stanley heard a light smack reverberate through the air as she gave a good-natured slap to the other girl's arm. However, he didn't turn back around to look at them. There was something else that he was busy focusing his attention on.
He hadn't noticed before, but Stanford's mouth was slightly moving in his sleep. He seemed to be whispering, muttering just under his breath. The noise of it was almost drowned out and rendered completely inaudible by the gradually decreasing background cacophony of the emptying classroom, and Stanley found that he had to lean in close to catch what it was that his brother was saying.
"No… no, no. Bill, he… he warned me about you. He told me what you… w-what you are. What you're after." Stanford's brows furrowed sharply, the earlier peacefulness of his unconscious state washed away in the rising tide of some nightmare that he was apparently struggling against.
"Hey Sixer." Stanley put a hand on his brother's shoulder and gave him a rough little shake to try and wake him up.
But instead of rousing from his sleep Stanford's eyes pinched themselves even tighter, and voice took on a sudden spike in volume. His face twisted itself into a distressed and wary grimace as the muscles in his neck and shoulders tensed harshly. "I'm not going to let you trick me. You're just… just some specter, a level seven poltergeist at best. Not going to let you… make a fool of me. S-stay away from me."
One of Stanley's eyebrows began to inch itself up his forehead at the odd dialogue streaming out from his brothers partially open mouth. "Sooo, am I gonna have to use a less gentle method of wakin' ya, or…"
Just as Stanley had reached his other hand over to give his brother a pat or two on the cheek Stanford's eyes suddenly shot wide open. "I said stay away! Sta-"
Stanford bolted backward in his chair so hard that he ended up falling out of it entirely and hitting the tiled ground with a loud smack. Stanley's face twitched in two separate directions, torn between wanting to laugh at the ridiculous tangle of limbs that his brother had managed to land in, and feeling a little concerned about whether or not he was hurt because of it. In the end, he settled for an odd mixture of both as he slipped out of his own chair to kneel down by his very bewildered and dazed twin.
"Huh. Wha-who? S-Stanley?" Stanford blinked a couple of times before slowly gazing around the room and taking in everything and everyone else. He groaned slightly and brought his fingers up under his still askew glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.
"Yeah it's me alright. Who else in this world could have a mug as ugly as yours." Stanley groused amiably before swinging his arms out wide in an attempt to gesture to himself. He had to bite his tongue a little as he accidentally ended up slapping his hand against the hard wooden desk in the process, but it was worth the slight pain to see the beginnings of a smile work its way onto the corners of Stanford's mouth.
He shot a sly glance in Stanley's direction as he reached up to fix his glasses. "Oh, I don't know about that. I'd say that you're at least a little bit uglier than me." His mouth twitched into a full-blown, teasing grin that wiped away his previous expression of tired puzzlement almost entirely. "I at least have the decency to wash my face every now and then."
A mischievous light sparked into Stanley's eyes as he took in his twin's comment. Before Stanford even had the time to become properly alarmed by the look his brother was giving him, Stanley had already brought his hand up to lick it and then hastily shoved his open palm across the other boy's face. Stanley could just barely see his brother's horrified and revolted expression peeking out from between the gaps in his fingers. "Whoopsie. Sorry about that Fordsey. Thought I saw a bit of dirt on your face and figured I clean it off for ya. Ya know, since personal hygiene is just soooo important to ya."
Stanford sputtered for a few moments before finally managing to overpower his brothers hold on his face and knock his hand away. He attempted to level a glare at Stanley, but it didn't exactly pack much of a punch since he wasn't quite able to completely get rid of the grin still stubbornly plastered on his mouth. "Ugh! Uggghhhh! You're so gross. Here, at least let me see your shirt for a second." He removed his glasses and stared brushing them against one of Stanley's sleeves in order to remove the streaks of spit tarnishing the otherwise clear surface.
Stanley's own expression began to shift itself back so that it was more within the realm of concern again, and he studied his brother closely, though, he wasn't quite sure what he was looking for. "So… what was up with that, huh? Bad dream or something?"
Stanford hummed distractedly while his fingers worked themselves into the fabric of his brother's shirt to more effectively clear off the smudging, before fully registering his question and turning his eyes back up to answer him a little hesitantly. "Oh I… Yeah. Yeah, just a… or something I guess."
"Heh, you're not the only one. I was having a pretty wacked out dream myself."
The look of concentration on Stanford's face as he finished clearing his glasses off started ironing itself out into an appraising smile. He raised an eyebrow at his twin's statement before a slight, half awkward, half amused chuckle eased itself out from his chest. "Don't tell me our twin telepathy was acting up again."
"Might've been." Stanley noncommittally shrugged as he helped his brother to pick himself up from off the ground and launched into his next question. "So who's Bill anyways?"
"Who's… Bill?" At the mention of the name Stanford's brightly shining eyes seemed to dull suddenly and loose their focus. His expression incrementally morphed into the sort of puzzled, frustrated, blankness that accompanies someone who knows that they've forgotten something, but isn't quite capable of recalling whatever it is that they've forgotten. "I'm not…" He shook his head as though trying to clear something away. "What are you talking about?"
The two of them were distracted for a moment by the series of snickers and muffled bangs as their teacher accidentally knocked a stack of books and papers over in his efforts to collect them all up. Stanley watched on in amusement as Carla rushed over to help the old fogey out before turning back to his brother and giving an offhanded grunt. "Meh, how should I know? You were the one who was just mutterin' stuff in yer sleep about him. I was just wondering if he was a friend of yours that I don't know about. Or, if he's an enemy…"A threating smirk flickered at the corners of his mouth as he pulled up his sleeve and gave his arm a couple of appreciative flexes. "Just say the word and I'll show him what happens when ya try t'mess with a member of the Pines family."
But Stanford didn't look very reassured. If anything he seemed to pull back even deeper within himself, his eyes flitting back and forth as though he were thoroughly sifting through the contents of his own memories. "I… I don't actually remember what I was… dreaming about. Do you?"
Stanley gave his arm another flex just for good measure; a little surprised himself at the definition of the muscle there (Had they always been like that?), before casually answering. "Nah, not really. But I don't really think tha-"
"Ay Stanley, Stanford. You two slugs wanna hurry it up already." Larry obnoxiously griped from where he was leaning up against the doorframe of the classroom along with Shannon and Carla. "Some of us actually got places we need to be getting to right 'bout now."
Stanley rolled his eyes, making absolutely no effort to hide his irritation, before reaching down to where his and Stanford's backpacks were laying on the ground and lifting them both up in a single effortless swoop. "Yeah, we're coming, we're coming. Yeesh. Can't even have a decent conversation without you guys getting all uppity."
Stanford gingerly took the backpack that his brother was offering to him, and his eyes abruptly widened as he seemed to finally realize something. "Wait, are we… did we… Oh no." He slapped a hand up to his face before slowly dragging it down and stretching out his features in a moaning self-reproach. "Don't tell me we slept through our statistics class again."
Stanley shrugged as he and his brother started making their way out into the hallway to join the other three. "Heh, looks like it."
The brows on Stanford's forehead sunk down sharply over his eyes and his shoulders tensed up in frustrated agitation. He released a harsh and pointed exhale in his brother's general direction as his voice rose a couple of octaves. "Stanley, don't give me that aloof attitude! At the rate I'm going at right now I'm only barely going to make it out of high school with passable grades. You probably won't even manage that!"
"Ah, come on Ford. It's not tha-" Stanley's attempt to provide reassurance was promptly cut off by a pair of long and boney arms slinging themselves over each of the brother's shoulders and then pulling them in haphazardly enough that they almost ended up knocking their heads together. Larry's somewhat familiar twang butted itself into the conversation uninvited.
"Yeah maybe, but do ya really think Stanley even needs to finish high school at this point?" Larry gave a large and noncommittal shrug that flexed his arms inwards, and this time he actually did end up bumping the twin's heads slightly against each other. He returned the annoyed, side eyed-glare that Stanford sent in his direction with a wide and cocky smirk. "I mean, as his brother you've seen better than anyone how well he handles himself in the ring. Just last week our boy Stanley here took down Bradley Finnegan, someone who's not only a seasoned veteran but who also outweighed your brother by about two-hundred pounds!"
"I think that's more than a bit of an exaggeration. It was probably more like seve-" Stanford managed to mumble before the conversation was interrupted again by Shannon loudly and unexpectedly slamming her fist against her open palm.
"JUST BLAMO!" She shouted, turning around to grin wildly at the trio of boys so quickly that her frizzy red hair seemed to get whiplash and bobbed around as though it were jello in a bounce house. "One little taste of the fabled Stanley Pines left hook and he went down harder than a solid chunk lead in the ocean! It was like watching someone reenact David and Goliath straight from the good book, wasn't it? Boy, was that a match for the ages!" She shook her head in wonder and then absently mindedly bunted her rear end against the rapidly approaching doors in order to avoid having to face forward to open them and breaking the momentum of her exposition. "I'm tellin' ya Fordsey, your brother's a school hero, practically Hercules. If he decides to take on a professional boxing career, I really can't see him not becomin' world famous."
The group of five exited the school building and began to make their way down the stone steps and out into the clamor of honking horns and shouted profanities that made up the regular background noise of New Jersey street life. Larry was grudgingly forced to give up the comfortable slouching position he had taken between the twins or else risk the three of them tripping over each other and traversing the stairs via the express route. A cool, wet, and brackish sea breeze swept playfully between the teens, tugging at their hair and ruffling their clothing, and as it passed over Stanley, he found himself almost unconsciously ground to a complete halt.
All of the sights, and smells, and sounds going on around him should have been typical and unextraordinary, and he knew it. This was everyday life coming at him again, just as it had always been. He and Stanford had been stuck in their hometown for practically forever, not even getting the chance to leave it for vacations as their father had always seen such trips as a frivolous waste that couldn't be afforded on the family's low budget. His eyes shouldn't have started pricking uncomfortably and moistening as he took in the unremarkable street before him. His heart shouldn't have sped up, and his chest shouldn't have started aching. A feeling of melancholy nostalgia shouldn't have crept its way into his limbs and drained the energy from them.
But it did.
He managed to get his legs to start working again, allowing him to catch back up with the other four who had thankfully walked on without noticing his slight pause, but couldn't help but get the impression that he was strange and out of place as his feet finally touched down onto the sidewalk. It was as though he was a washed out object oddly inserted into a bright and colorful background that he didn't quite belong to. It was an absolutely ridiculous thing to feel, but despite his best efforts to shake it off, the odd pressure of the homesickness swirling behind his sternum persisted. He turned to look at Stanford and, to his slight surprise, found his own wistful and dreary expression mirrored in his brother's introspective, downward gaze.
Carla, being as ever observant as she was, seemed to take notice of both of their unusually pensive and distant moods, and raised a wondering eyebrow before questioning them about it. "Wow. The two of you got real quiet all of a sudden. Something botherin' ya?"
"Huh? Oh, it's…" Stanley's brain floundered around as he scrambled to remember whatever topic they had all been discussing last before they had left the school. After a few seconds of awkward silence, he was finally able to offer up a hasty answer back. "Eh, I guess it's just that I never really thought about making a career out of boxing before. I mean sure, I love doin' it, and I've got no problem ruling the ring 'round our side of the river here. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm cut out for the big leagues, ya know." Stanley rubbed the back of his neck a little in an oddly open display of doubt for him, before offering up a shrug and looking back into the faces of the group of friends surrounding him. "Do… do you guys really think I could make it in that world?"
Larry let out a roar of laughter before giving Stanley a huge slap across the back that probably had enough force behind it to knock over small children and the elderly effortlessly. "Are you kiddin' me Stanley!? Don't pretend ya didn't see the figures you raked in from people bettin' on your last match. And just like you said, you haven't even hit the big leagues yet! Nuts to school and all that junk. Yer obviously made for somethin' better than that, for something great! Ya got a real gift from Mother Nature here, a real talent when it comes to what goes down in the boxin' ring." Larry put a scrawny hand on Stanley's shoulder and waved his arm out in front of them as though he was drawing back a curtain. "Trust me on this one meathead, if ya keep up with the direction you're going right now, then I think it's safe to guarantee that you're gonna have a pretty heavy and ace-tastic career ahead 'f ya."
Stanford gave a little huff beside them and testily rolled his shoulders to readjust the straps of his backpack before murmuring something under his breath. "Hmph. I guess that just shows how much you guys understand about our plans for the future."
"Sorry, what was that Fordsey?" Shannon's grating and nasally voice chirped out as she reached over and unsuccessfully tired to muss Stanford's hair before he managed to dodge her. She raised her eyebrows at this and gave him the sly look that someone would likely give to a misbehaving child. "Why don't cha try speakin' up a little so someone besides you brother can hear ya for once, huh."
Stanford shot the slightly taller girl an annoyed glare and rolled his eyes in obvious exasperation with her antics, but he did raise his voice a little to address her. "I said, I'd appreciate it if you'd respect my personal space, please. And since you've apparently missed the memo despite the numerous times I've reiterated it, for your sake I'll say it again. Don't. Call. Me. Fordsey.'"
"Oh, a little sensitive aren't cha." Shannon giggled and made another halfhearted attempt to fuss with Stanford's hair, which he again dogged like a reclusive cat expertly avoiding the sticky hands of a young child. "Awww. S'matter Fordsey? I don't get it. You don't seem to have a problem whenever Stanley calls ya that. Actually you don't seem to be bothered by any of his nicknames for ya, even that 'Sixer' one which I thought for sure would get'cha all upset and zappy cause… " She made a vague gesture to the sky to draw attention to her wiggling fingers as an unapologetic smirk stretched its way across her face. "Well, you know."
Stanford's gaze became hard at the jab, and he drew himself up a little while his jaw set itself uncomfortably tight enough to cause the muscles to twitch. He tried to force his face to remain blank in order to close himself off completely from her mean-spirited teasing, and he responded in a cool and controlled tone. "Yes, well it may have escaped your notice, but you aren't my brother."
"Goodnessssss!" Shannon moaned loudly, rolling her neck and throwing out her arms as obnoxiously as she was probably capable of. "Why d'ya have to be such an antisocial killjoy all the time, eh? Don't tell me that freaky extra finger of yours is just there to suck all the fun right out of ya."
Something dark and distressed passed over Stanford's face at this, and his eyes shot sharply downward to stare at the ground. He stiffly jerked his shoulders back and then shoved his hands deeply into his jean pockets. Stanley felt his own cheeks heating up out of secondhand embarrassment, and he sent a fiery scowl in the redhead's direction as he started to lose hold of his own temper.
"Ay Shannon, why don't ya cut it out, huh!" Stanley groused, loud enough that his voice was easily able to cut through even the regular noise of the street; so much so that it practically bounced off from the rows of buildings to either side of them before he lowered it again to chastise her more directly. "If my brother wants you to stop callin' him Fordsey, then you're gonna stop calling him that right now. Got it." He let out a little scoff before allowing himself a sour smile and pointing a finger at her face to give her a little taste of her own medicine. "And besides, if anything's sucking the fun away right now, I'd be that gigantic zit sticking out from your nose. Seriously, I feel like there's someone hiding on one of these rooftops and aiming a laser pointer right down at ya. Talk about distractin'."
Shannon eyes crossed a little as she focused in on the offending red bump, and her lips swung out boldly to the side of her jaw as her freckled features set themselves into a firm pout. She then raised a finger of her own to point in Stanley's direction while simultaneously knocking his off to the side. "Yeah, yeah. That's real rich comin' from you, braille face. Your heads such a grease ball it looks like it hasn't even been washed in at least a few months."
Stanley felt one of his eye brows start to twitch as Larry snickered from up above him, and out of the corner of his vision he caught sight of Stanford moving a hand out of his pocket and up over his mouth in a poor attempt to cover his own laughter. He gave his brother a withering glance, but Stanford only lowered his hand a little so Stanley could see his struggling grin, and then shrugged his shoulders in a semi insincere apology.
"Well." He muttered after he had managed to rein back his smile to a more reasonable level of snide enjoyment. "That is pretty much what I was telling you earlier, right?"
"Traitor." Stanly grumbled before turning to face Carla who had put a hand on his shoulder in order to gain his attention.
"Actually, they both kind of have a point there Stanley. Ya do smell pretty ripe up close. Did ya even bother with deodorant today?"
Stanley's cheeks couldn't help but flush a little at her teasing. He gave a small laugh in order to cover up his embarrassment and then put on a confident smirk with the intention of playing the whole thing off as aloofly as possible. "Ah well, what can I say. When you're workin', ugh, hard on gun's like these-" He whipped out his arms and flexed them appreciatively. "-you tend to forget about trivial little things like personal hygiene."
Carla gave a coy smile and started poking, prodding, and running her fingers along the muscles in his arms as though she was inspecting fruit at the supermarket. "Hmm. Well, these are pretty nice. I suppoooose… I might be able to find it in my heart to forgive you, just so long as you wouldn't mind using these guns of yours to help me out with somethin' a little later this evening."
Stanley lowered his arms and then tilted his head back to let out a long and exasperated groan. He should have figured that Carla wouldn't let him get away with skipping his morning shower that easily. "Ah, what is it this time? Don't tell me your car's got a flat tire again."
The brunette raised an eyebrow at this and did her best to project an innocent look upon her face, but Stanley knew her too well to fooled by it for even a moment. "Hm. That was a quick guess. Have ya been takin' phone psychic lessons from your mom or something?"
"No, but if you keep on repeatin' the same shtick over and over again even a knucklehead like me will start t'catch on eventually." Stanley scoffed a little and shook his head in a weary acceptance of the hard manual labor he was now destined to partake in come a few hours time. "So, are you gonna at least tell me which poor sap you ended up running over this time?"
"What!" Carla brown eyes widened, and she squeaked indignantly as she dug her fingernails into his bicep. "No one! I didn- Look, that was a one-time thing ok. And besides, I wouldn't've even come close to scraping that hippie if he hadn't suddenly jumped out in front of me like that. It's not like I've made a habit out of hitting people with my car."
"Oh really?" Larry piped up from behind. "And what about that greaser you barreled over back in May?"
"Well… Ok, ok. There's that one too, but I was doing it on purpose that time so it doesn't really count. I mean, that creep was trying to set fire to Mrs. Peterson's little grocery store on the corner, and right after that poor old woman had lost her husband too. Don't tell me you wouldn't've done the same thing if you'd been in my situation." She leveled the whole group with a sharp and acidic glare as if daring any of them to disagree. Thankfully everyone had the good sense not to, so she turned herself forwards again and continued on. "Besides, I only broke his legs. He was fine. Mostly."
"Meh, if that's how you wanna try and justify the pretty obvious case'a road rage ya got goin' on here 'Hot Pants', then who am I to judge." Larry acquiesced, a teasing tone brightly threading its way through his voice while he shook his head dismissively. "As far as I'm concerned, both you and my pops are just livin' in straight up denial land."
"Pfft. Maybe I'll run you over next, huh?" Carla gave Larry a side-glance and then stuck her tongue out childishly in his direction. Stanley's arm was lightly shaken as she smiled up at him and refocused his attention on her pervious request. "Well anyways Stanley, ya think you might be able to make it over to my place sometime tonight? The two of us can go dancin' at the Juke Joint together once we've finished up."
At the mention of some proper motivation, Stanley whole posture perked up and a wild grin started spreading itself across his wide jawline. Dancing with his favorite gal in the whole world, now that was something he could really get behind. He did his best to bite back the smile lighting up his face and curbed his enthusiasm a little in order to address Carla as smoothly and charmingly as possibly could. "Heh, you know I'm easy babe. I'd love t-"
Stanley abruptly cut himself off as some previously forgotten detail suddenly occurred to him, and as he glanced back at Stanford the two of them shared a meaningful look. That's right, it was Tuesday, which meant...
He took a moment to recollect his thoughts before his eyes nervously darted away from Carla, and he backpedaled hard out of his preceding affirmation.
"Actually…" He made a slight pause again as he debated something in his mind, and then finally settled on a compromise. "All right, so I'll probably have enough time to do the car tonight, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have t'take a rain check on the dancing part." He winced a little at this hoping that she wouldn't be too upset, and decided to throw in an easy laugh just for good measure. "Heh. You know the deal when it comes to Tuesday and Sunday nights. Me and Ford already have plans."
"Oh, riiiiight." Shannon rolled her eyes patronizingly as she chimed in. "I nearly forgot about that silly pet project you and your brother have been working on. What d'ya guys even plan on doin' with that gloried pile of beach junk anyways. I mean, even if ya do manage to get that thing seaworthy I don't really see what it's really gonna be good for. It looks like it'd just barely fit the two 'f ya as it is."
Stanford bristled at that, and the grip that he had on the shoulder straps of his bag tightened severely till it turned his knuckles white. He swiftly twisted himself to face the redhead straight on, nearly falling outright as he stumbled over the curb that he was ignoring in his righteous indignation, and he leveled her with a steely glare. "I'll have you know that what the Stan O'War may lack in size, it more than makes up for in durability. And as for what we're going to use it for..." He scowled darkly before looking away from her dismissively. " Well that really isn't any of your business, now is it."
Larry folded his hands behind his head in a sort of nonchalant thoughtfulness and added in his own offhand input to try and ease the tension of the conversation slightly. "From what Stanley told me it sounds like the two 'f ya plan on using that thing t'sail around the world and hunt for monsters, and treasure, and other junk like that. Like the pair 'f ya were famous adventurers or somethin'." He smiled and looked up into the sky at that, as though he were remembering something warm and nostalgic before shaking his head a little and letting his hands fall back down again. "Heh. It was a cute dream while the two of ya were kids, but ya can't seriously still be hanging onto it even now. I mean, even you have to realize how completely unrealistic that is."
Stanford's cheeks started growing bright red in stark contrast to his absolutely tight lipped and frigid expression. "It is not! Stanley and I have been planning this out for years. It's plenty feasible if we work at it together."
"Don't bother arguing with him Larry." Shannon snorted as she jabbed a thumb in Stanford's direction. "Remember this is the kid who tried t'convince us that he and Stanley saw a mermaid out by the docks a few summers back. Obviously he doesn't have the best grip on reality."
Stanley couldn't help but wince a little as he watched his brother's eyes grow bright with anger at the girl's condescending skepticism, and he seemed to lose whatever tenuous hold he'd managed to keep thus far on his composed restraint. He couldn't say that he was too surprised at that, though. He knew exactly what direction this conversation was going to head in now. Ever since they were young kids Stanford had always possessed an intense passion for the supernatural and the strange, the undiscovered; and as such the quickest and easiest was to get a rise out of him was usually through doubting or making fun of his findings.
Maybe… maybe if Stanford had been born with the brains to be able to back up such wild and fantastic assertions this wouldn't have ever been a problem. Maybe if he had been able to provide sufficient proof and confidence for himself, he wouldn't have been so upset when he was denied the validation of their peers. Maybe if somewhere down the line he'd acquired the sheer genius necessary to fully immerse himself within the strange world that so enthralled him, he wouldn't have had such a difficult time getting along with others and wouldn't have clashed with the people who disagreed with him quite so vehemently.
Yes, maybe. But as things were here and now Stanford tended to come off…
Well, Stanley thought to himself, there really wasn't a nice way of putting it, was there.
Stanford tended to come off as a bit of a loon.
Stanford's fists were curled up so tight and severely that they faintly trembled, and his voice had raised itself to the point where he was nearly shouting at the redhead. "There was a mermaid there! Just because you don't see anomalies every day doesn't mean that they don't exist. That's. The reason. Why. They're called. Anomalies!"
"Uh huh." Shannon shot back cruelly. "Well being an anomaly yourself, I suppose you'd probably recognize them better than anyone else when ya see'em, eh."
Stanford's eyes flashed so bright and furiously behind the lenses of his glasses that the sheer anger of his gaze almost completely covered up the open hurt that passed though his face as well. Almost. He grasped at his backpack more securely so it wouldn't flop around, and then lowered his head before taking off running down the sidewalk.
"Ford, Ford!" Stanley tried calling out after his brother to get him to stop, but Stanford just ignored him and ducked around the street corner. He slapped a hand across his own face, cursing himself inwardly for not intervening sooner, and then decided to go ahead and release a string of muttered profanities outwardly too just for good measure.
An awkward silence persisted for a moment only to be broken by Shannon's shrill laughter and the sound of Carla slapping the other girl across the arm while scolding her. "Oh for goodness sake Shannon, will you knock it off already! You're not bein' funny; you're bein' a huge jerk. Now go apologize to Stanford for that right this instant."
"What!" She shoved Carla away a little roughly, grin still plastered onto her face. "I'm not gonna apologize for nothin'. It's not my fault that Stanley's baby bro is so sensitive that he can't take a little joke every here and there."
"Are you kidding me! Are you seriously going to-"
"It's fine Carla." Stanley ground out lowly. His face had twisted into a heated scowl and his eyes were as sharp as razor blades. His hands tightened on the straps of his backpack as he prepared himself to chase after his brother. "This is where we split from you guys anyways. Catcha later."
And with that, Stanley raced around the corner too.
He didn't look back or wait for any of them to return his goodbye.
Thankfully Stanford hadn't run very far once he'd passed out of sight behind the corner, so it didn't take too long for his brother to catch up with his now straggling gait. Stanley slowed his approach once he started getting closer to his twin, and then hesitated for a few seconds before deciding to test his luck and placing a reassuring hand on one of his brother's shoulders. Stanford jolted a little in surprise; as though he had been so lost in his own thoughts and hadn't noticed Stanley coming up behind him at all till just then, but otherwise he gave no other response save to continue looking at his feet.
"Hey Ford, you alright?" Stanley attempted an easy grin, but he wasn't able to keep it for long before the corners of his mouth melted downwards into a softer look of concern.
Stanford said nothing at that. He gazed into nothing, pensively examining some thought or emotion that Stanley couldn't quite make out on his carefully controlled and blank expression. But in the end, even his best efforts to close himself off to his twin weren't really all that effective. The small movement he made to hide his hands under his tightly crossed arms gave him away pretty easily.
Stanley opted to throw caution to the wind and tossed one of his own arms recklessly over his brother's stiff shoulders, jostling the pair of them and nearly sending both careening down to the sidewalk below. His gambit worked, and Stanford choked back a muffled cry of surprise as his previously rigid posture was forced to loosen in order to avoid toppling over. A satisfied smile wormed its was onto Stanley's face at his small victory, and though his brother shot him an annoyed glare and attempted to shrug him off almost immediately afterward, Stanley just made sure to hold on even tighter.
"Ah, come oooon Ford." He groaned playfully, giving his brother another good shake to help open him up a little more. "You know better than to take Shannon too seriously. That gal just doesn't have much in the way of an internal filter." Stanley put his hand up to his chin in a mock thoughtful gesture. "Heh. Kinda like me I suppose."
"Hmm. You can be pretty obnoxious sometimes." Stanford agreed testily. His annoyed frown was still firmly in place, but it at least wasn't as deeply set as it had been before. Like the waves of the ocean washing away deep footprints in the sand, bit-by-bit Stanley's good spirits were starting to cause his brother's previous moodiness to fade completely.
"Yup, but I'm your brother so you're just gonna have to deal with that." Stanley's voice was extra boisterous in his cheer, and his grip around his brother drew even tighter as grinned at him roguishly. "You're stuck with me, whether ya like it or not."
A small smile finally managed to thaw its way over Stanford's slightly cool expression as he spared a sideways glance back at his twin, but it didn't get the chance to persist for long. Something else, some dark doubt or remorseful dejection, crept along the edges of his features at Stanley's comment, and he slowly turned his head away in order to try and hide whatever was thinking from his brother.
"… Stanford?" Stanley asked softly, though he made sure that his voice was still firm enough to let his brother know that he wouldn't be taking silence as an acceptable answer.
His twin continued to stubbornly hold his tongue for a few more moments, and Stanley patiently waited for him while he watched the rows of buildings pass them by and listened to a couple of old men arguing about the rising price of newspapers on the side of the street opposite theirs. Finally, Stanford let out a long sigh and relented, his arms uncrossing as he peered at his brother a little hesitantly. "I just… I don't understand why you like hanging out with those guys."
"Ah come on Ford, don't be like that. They're your friends too, aren't they?"
Stanford's eyes darted away again, and he readjusted his backpack a little under Stanley's still outstretched arm before easing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. A dreary look passed over him, one that seemed to completely drain the color from his features in spite of the warm golden glow of the afternoon sun washing over him. He looked tired suddenly, utterly exhausted by the heavy weight of his own somber musings, and very, very alone.
"If you…" Stanford's voice was so softly murmured that his brother almost didn't hear him speaking at all, and had to lean a little inwards in order to avoid missing it. "If you want to go dancing with Carla tonight, you can go ahead and do that. You don't have to stay behind just for my sake. You don't have to be stuck with the naïve dreamer or t-the…" A dark wash of introspective, almost self-hating, cold anger leaked into the centers of his eyes as he paused for a second.
It was a look that Stanley always hated seeing on his brother's face because it reminded him too much of himself. Both of them had a tendency to be fairly ill-tempered when it came right down to it, and each could easily be driven to their own versions of intense bouts of fury and bleak, desolate musings if left in a bad mood for too long. The only difference between them, in that respect at least, was the way they each went about handling their particular energies.
Stanley burned hot, he always had and always would. For him, anger was synonymous with fire, brightly blazing inferno's that sparked up at his center and heated his blood to a raging, torrid boil. It brought about a thoughtless, feverish, lightheadedness that was well suited when quick, dangerous, or unrelentingly persistent action needed to be taken. But it also more often than not ended up getting him into a lot of trouble as he didn't really think things through before diving headfirst into any given situation.
Stanford, on the other hand, ran his own inner workings quite coldly. Anger didn't often translate to immediate action in him so much as careful, introspective brooding and calculated planning. The more upset he got, the more he tended to draw inwards and bite frigidly at anyone who would dare to intrude upon his personal space. When things got really bad he would sometimes withdraw entirely, and when someone would look into his eyes all they would see of him would be a frozen, blank, and emotionlessness black pits.
That was the kind of expression that was trying to freeze itself into his brother gaze now, a painfully accepting and oddly detached grimace.
"The freak." He finished quietly. "You don't have to be stuck with the freak if you don't want to be. I…I don't need your pity."
"Pity!?" A bit of a scowl began to form on Stanley's own face at this, and he leveled a hard and serious glare back at his brother. "Stanford quit being ridiculous. And cut out that talk about being a freak too, it's stupid and ya know it."
But though the fierce and unyielding heat of his brother's words caused Stanford's features to melt and become a little softer, he still looked largely unconvinced. The thaw revealed something else that was hiding in his face, something that seemed vulnerable, unsure, and maybe even…
Afraid.
"Stanford, listen to me." Stanley drew both of them to a halt and placed his hands firmly on both of his twin's shoulders, preventing him from turning away again so that Stanley could be sure that the truth of his words struck his brother head-on and made it through the thick wall of dark doubt in his eyes. "Wherever we go, we go together, remember? Just because I make friends with other people doesn't mean I'm abandoning you. Back when we were kids and everyone would look down and pick on us, we promised that we would always have the other's back, and that isn't changin' anytime soon." The sternness of his gaze restrained itself slightly and morphed into something warm and inviting. Hot and determined. "No matter what happens the two of us are always gonna come first for each other, all right."
"You…" The slope of Stanford's brows eased and smoothed out as he regarded his brother with a hesitant hope and affection. "You really don't think I'm a burden holding you back? Or that I'm suffocating you?"
A wide smirk stretched across Stanley's jaw as he quickly shifted one of his arms all the way around his brother's shoulders and pulled him into a sturdy headlock. "Who's bein' suffocating?" He teased loudly enough that he was able to drown out the volume of his twin's squirming and surprised protests.
He let out a gravely laugh as he finally let Stanford push him off after a few seconds before leveling him with a slightly more sincere and deliberate look. "Seriously, if you ever hear someone talking like that, be sure to point me in their direction so I can go and give them a black eye." A booming smack resounded through the humid and smoggy air as Stanley punched at his open palm for added emphasis.
"Heh." Stanford readjusted his glasses, as they had been slightly skewed off from his face in his efforts to get out of the headlock, and then offered back his twin a warm and rueful smile of his own. "Thanks. I guess a was being pretty silly there, wasn't I. Thanks for that."
"Not a problem Fordsey. High six?"
Stanford stared at the offered hand for only half a second before his face completely lit up like the first rays of shining yellow sunlight on a cool summer morning, and he brought his own six fingered hand up to return the gesture. "High six."
The two started walking home once again, this time at a slightly more easy pace as Stanford whipped out a red covered notebook from his backpack and proceeded to explain to his brother in enthusiastic detail all the new adjustments he planned on having them make for the Stan O'War. Stanley wasn't quite sure what the weird feeling of soft pressure pressing up against his chest might be as he watched his brother's pencil tap absentmindedly at the intricate and detailed drawing of their ship, but if he had been forced to make a guess he might have thought that it was some kind of equivalent to...
Well, it wasn't really happiness, or joy, or any other temporary or fleeting form of that emotion. It was something that was more solid than bliss but ran deeper than simple contentment. He felt... at home. He couldn't think of any better way to describe it than that.
Being around Stanford felt like being at home, more than anywhere else in the world possibly could.
With that kind of warm, and thick, and practically glowing cheerfulness racing its way through his veins, all of the unsettling disquiet brought upon by the strange dream he'd been having earlier, as well as the permeating feelings of homesickness and displacement, had completely lost their roots in his mind and were blown away high into the dark blue October sky along with the fiery hurricane of bright orange leaves already swirling there. An indomitable smile burst out from the center of his chest and perched itself lightly upon his face. He was completely at ease and carefree, and as such, neither he nor Stanford noticed a deep, lightless, dark, and vaguely human-shaped shadow trailing watchfully after them a fair distance away.