#if i read ONE MORE ‘oh stanley you’re the Real Smart One because you would’ve never been tricked by bill’

[anistarrose]

Missteps and Miscommunication (GF One-Shot)

Summary: Ford loses consciousness in the fight in the basement, and Stan knows exactly one thing: the being cheerfully offering to reconcile with him is not his brother.

Word Count: 2400

Warnings: Bill possession and some injuries (nothing graphic)

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/22059016

A Secret Santa gift for @usuallyherdragon! Despite the title, it’s actually fulfilling the request of hurt/comfort with a happy ending!

***

“You want me to get rid of this book? Fine! I'll get rid of it right now!”

“No! You don’t understand —”

Stan’s not even sure how it happens, but one moment Ford’s lunging for the journal like a starving wild animal, and the next, he has the book in his hands again but he’s lurching backwards as his legs collapse underneath him. His head hits a pipe half-buried in the ground, but he doesn’t even flinch from the pain. He just goes limp.

“FORD!” Is this my fault? Did I let go of the journal? Did I hurt him? “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay, I’m so fucking sorry —”

Ford’s body twitches, and a faint smile spreads across his face.

“No need to apologize!” he responds without opening his eyes. “We both got a little carried away — just like old times, eh?”

Stan’s heart pounds in his chest. All of his instincts are telling him to bolt.

“Uh… are you s-sure you’re okay?” he asks through chattering teeth. He buries his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, but they don’t feel any warmer.

“Of course! What’s a little head injury to me, Stanford Pines? I’ve got plenty of brain cells to spare!” His eyes still closed, Ford gets to his feet and turns around to face away from Stan. More quietly, he adds:

“If anything, I should be apologizing to you, my dear brother. I let my impulsiveness get the better of me and pushed you away, but really, I wouldn’t want to change the world with anyone else at my side.”

That brazen lie is all it takes to confirm Stan’s suspicions. This thing in front of him in the trenchcoat and glasses isn’t Ford, not anymore.

“Hitting my head gave me an epiphany,” Not-Ford prattles on, gesturing towards the portal. “I was so afraid of what my research could do if it was released into the world, and people with less noble intentions than I got their hands on it — but with your street smarts backing me up, I know we could change the world for the better! What do you say, Stanley?”

“I say you better turn around and face me right now,” Stan growls. “Open your goddamn eyes and turn around and look at me.”

Not-Ford’s limbs jerk unnaturally as he whirls around, blinking catlike yellow eyes as he shoots Stan a toothy grin.

“You caught on after all!” he exclaims. “Now we’ll get to have some real fun!”

Not-Ford feints to the left and Stan falls for it, raising his fists to block a punch that never comes as Not-Ford scampers towards the control panel instead.

“Get out of his body, you — you demon!” Stan shouts, giving chase.

“I’m just borrowing it!” Not-Ford whines. “He said I could!”

“Liar!” Stan makes a grab for the hem of Ford’s trenchcoat, but Not-Ford narrowly dodges out of the way, twisting one last key into the control panel as he darts across the basement.

“Careful, Stanley!” the demon jeers. “You wouldn’t want to hurt your brother! You might even push him into another dimension at this rate, if you’re not careful!”

He wants to turn the portal on, Stan realizes. And I can use that. I just have to find a way to make sure he can’t hurt Ford —

He twists the key back into its initial position and watches the light above it go out, then pulls the key out of the panel and waves it above his head. “Hey, body snatcher! Look what I’ve got!”

“What?! Put that back!”

“Try and catch me with it, sucker!”

Stan makes a break for the elevator room, and Not-Ford gives chase only to trip and fall on his face. Stan flinches, but takes a deep breath and throws open the door anyway, scouring the room for rope, electrical cords, anything that he could use to restrain Ford’s body while looking for a way to get rid of the demon.

His eyes come to rest on a mannequin stuffed in the corner to his left. It has a rope tied around its waist, and he kneels down to untangle the knots —

“Look what I found!” a too-cheery voice sings behind him, followed by the sound of a door being kicked open and a flame hissing to life.

Stan whirls around to find the demon wielding a blowtorch, its blue glow reflecting in Ford’s glasses and almost hiding those horrible slit-pupiled eyes.

“Let me strike a deal with you, Stanley! You help me turn the portal on, I’ll give you your brother back, and I’ll let the both of you live when I conquer this dimension! Heck, I’ll even give each of you your own continent to rule! I sure won’t need ‘em all when I’ve got the whole galaxy under my command!”

Back against the wall and staring down a grinning demon and a searing butane flame, Stan knows he’s cornered. But with a rope in one hand and a key in the other, he still has one last desperate idea.

“Well?” the demon asks. “Deal or no deal?”

“Go long!” Stan hurls the key over Not-Ford’s head and the demon dives backwards, dropping the blowtorch as he outstretches his arms —

Then the back of his shoulder slams into a red-hot sigil etched into the side of the desk, and his body spasms for several terrifying seconds before dual beams of yellow light fly out of his eyes and Ford slumps to the ground, unconscious.

***

The first thing Ford processes after waking up is the rope chafing around his wrists, restraining him as he attempts to bolt to his feet.

“Well, look who’s finally awake.”

“Go to hell, Bill!” Ford spits. “Why are you still —”

He blinks. “Stanley?”

“Oh, are you you again? I wasn’t sure.” Stan steps forward and puts a hand on Ford’s shoulder, stopping the chair Ford’s tied to from toppling over before leaning in close to take a look at Ford’s eyes. Then Stan nods, apparently satisfied.

“You know, actually telling me that you get possessed by a fucking demon when you’re unconscious would’ve been really helpful an hour ago.”

Ford allows himself one tiny sigh of relief. It’s good — better than Ford could’ve hoped for, really — that Stan has picked up on the nature of Ford’s predicament, but that doesn’t mean all is well. Far from it.

“Bill didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Nah, he was waving around a blowtorch for a minute or two, but I don’t think he really knew how to use the thing.” Noting what must’ve been a truly horrified expression on Ford’s face, Stan frowns. “Why do you care anyways?”

“Because — because you’re my brother?!” Ford splutters.

Stan looks away, and Ford can just sense that another argument is imminent, though he can’t imagine why. (Other than how he’d told Stan to get out of his house earlier, and how he’d certainly never given Stan any reasons over the past decade to believe that he did care, and… alright, he can imagine quite a few explanations why.)

“Look, Stanley, there are — there are a million more productive things we can, and should, be discussing right now. Did Bill do anything to the portal? If he did, I need you to untie me right this minute so I can get downstairs and make sure it doesn’t get activated —”

“He flipped a couple switches, but the thing didn’t look too active to me,” Stan answers quietly. “After I got you — er, your body — tied up, I went and switched back the settings to what I remembered them looking like when we first came downstairs. Half your damn diary was illegible, but one of the pages I could read helped with that.”

“Then — then I don’t know how you did it, but you probably just averted a universal apocalypse.” Ford takes a deep breath. “I really should still go down to double-check the portal’s status in the basement, but… I owe you an apology. I —”

“You really don’t,” Stan mumbles.

Ford tries several times to say something before finally managing: “Are you really still that determined to disagree with me about everything?!”

Stan slumps into the kitchen’s other chair, still not making eye contact. “You haven’t got the full story, Ford. How does your shoulder feel? Not great, I’m guessing.”

Ford grimaces. His shoulder admittedly feels horrible — he’d ignored it at first only because random injuries are a given whenever Bill is involved. “What happened?”

“It was an accident, I swear. I was just — just trying to distract the demon so he didn’t blowtorch my ass, but he backed up into this brand you had on the side of your desk, and —”

“A brand? You mean the protective sigil?!”

“You think I know what a protective sigil looks like? It had a circle, a diamond, some arrows —”

“And you said Bill backed into it on his own? You didn’t push him onto it?!”

“Yeah, but what difference does it make? It was still my fault —”

Ford tries and fails to hold in a delirious, sleep-deprived laugh. “Oh my god, Stan…”

Stan cringes. “Oh, just get it over with already! Tell me you never want to see my face again —”

“Are you kidding?” Ford asks. “Why would I say that after you just accomplished what I thought was impossible?!”

Stan’s jaw drops. “You’ve completely lost your mind, haven’t you.”

“Quite the opposite! My mind is safer than it’s ever been —” Ford pauses. “Although you wouldn’t have any way of knowing that, would you? I’m sorry. I should explain.”

“Yeah.” Stan buries his head in his hands. “You really should.”

“Let me start… near the beginning. I made a deal with a demon, which was incredibly foolhardy of me, even though he initially appeared to be more of a muse than a demon at the time, and… that deal allowed him to take over my body whenever I fell asleep.”

Ford waits for the mocking, the contempt, the ‘serves you right,’ but it never comes.

“Tough break,” is all Stan mutters, in a voice that doesn’t seem judgemental as much as it does numb.

“His ultimate goal was to use that portal, which he tricked me into creating, to open a rift to the dimension his physical form resides in,” Ford slowly goes on. “Such a rift would allow him to enter our world, and then do with it as he pleased. He’d be nigh-omnipotent here — hence my desperation to get rid of the journals that explained how to activate the portal. And that was why I called you here — but that was a mistake.”

Stan flinches, and Ford quickly adds: “I don’t mean asking for your help was a mistake! I mean it was a mistake to try and send you away — except it was that argument that led to Bill getting exorcised, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise, so — I don’t know. Maybe it was the right choice, but made for all the wrong reasons —”

“Exorcised?” Stan echoes. “That’s what the sigil did to Bill?”

“Exactly. Bill’s locked out of my body until the scars disappear… which might not ever happen, for all I know.” Momentarily forgetting he’s still tied up, Ford tries to rub his shoulder.

“Except I couldn’t just brand myself with it while I was awake,” he explains. “Bill had to come in contact with it of his own free will while possessing my body, or it wouldn’t work. At first, I’d planned to turn the house into a minefield of protective sigils in hope that Bill would stumble onto one of them, but it took so long to properly enchant the one on the desk that I gave up before preparing any others, and passed it off as a lost cause.”

“Holy shit.” Stan rubs his head. “…Well, guess you’ll want me to untie you now, huh.”

“That would be ideal, yes.”

Stan fumbles with the knots for a few moments of awkward silence before simply pulling out a pocketknife and cutting through the ropes. As Ford stretches his arms, Stan asks: “What are you going to do now?”

“Double-check the portal settings. Disassemble a few key components so they’re still repairable, but we can be sure we won’t have any more close calls. Then… god, I think I might actually be able to sleep after that. I can hardly believe it.”

“…Ford?” Stan asks, so quietly that Ford might not have heard it at all were the house not so silent otherwise.

“Yes?”

“Can I spend the night here? I mean, I don’t want to get in the way of your work saving the world and all that, but… it’s still snowing like crazy outside, and I don’t know how far the Stanmobile can make it —”

“You can stay as long as you need to,” Ford says, and instantly regrets it. Not because he doesn’t want Stanley to stay, but because need implies that the stay will only last a few nights at most. And as much as he’s tried to deny it for years, Ford is lonely.

“Okay. I’m gonna go grab some stuff from my car —”

“Actually, scratch that,” Ford interrupts, and Stan freezes like a deer in the headlights.

“What I meant to say was… you can stay as long as you like. And for all I know, that still may not be very long, because I haven’t been the best brother or even paid my goddamn heating bills, but… well, I’d like to catch up with you, if that’s — gah!”

The hug catches Ford off guard, leaving him gasping for breath

“I’d like that too, Sixer,” Stan whispers.

Ford hugs him back, and Stan finally manages a laugh. “Even if we have to tell stories while sitting around a goddamn bonfire so we don’t freeze to death. Seriously, why did you stop paying your heating bills?”

“It seemed like a good way to keep myself awake at the time…” Ford murmurs in the moments before drifting back to sleep right then and there, leaning on his brother’s shoulder in the middle of an empty kitchen.

[ohblackdiamond]

I’m definitely down to read your fic. Y’know, is there a tag or sum’ with all photos of them? Thanks love

Aw, okay! The piece I have is below (it doesn’t look like I can put it under a cut? Weird.). Sadly I don’t have a tag with all the photos of them together but I do have a tag for Paul/Peter and the Peter Criss tag might help (the Paul Stanley tag… comprises most of my posts…). I also have this same basic scene done from Paul’s perspective, which is what I may go with when/if this gets finished, but Peter’s perspective doesn’t get much credit, so I’ll just go with this for now.

-----

“Why is it a shamrock?”

“‘Cause I ain’t all Italian.”

“Oh.” A pause. “So you’re Irish, too?”

“Some.” Peter lifted his head.

“This guy thought I was Italian one time.”

“You?”

“Yeah. … Don’t give me that look.” Paul was looking at the covers, tracing the hem with one finger. “I was going to take this girl out, I was in front of her apartment. I had my car parked and everything. I came out and her dad’s out there waiting for me. He gets one look in and then he says, ‘I only let my daughter date you because I thought you were Italian. But you’re a Jew.’ Then he shut the door in my face.’

“How old were you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Shit.“  

Paul shrugged.

"It doesn’t matter.”

“It always matters.” Peter swallowed back any other comments. Paul would’ve just said he didn’t get it, and probably he would’ve been  right, but fuck, his family was all immigrants, too. Criscuola didn’t roll off the tongue any better, or any less conspicuously, than Eisen. Going to Europe for his honeymoon a couple years ago, on Lydia’s dime (he swore he’d take her somewhere even finer sometime, when he made it, and she’d believed him), was when he’d really realized it. Going to see all those ancient places, built up by people with names and lands and–castles, honest-to-God castles–it made him feel– it made him feel poor. It made him feel inferior. Like he couldn’t make it in any important way, like there was something intrinsic he’d just been let out of the loop of. Shit like old money and blue bloods wasn’t supposed to matter in America– the fashion was to pretend you were poorer than you were–but Peter couldn’t shake the feeling that they, those sorts, the right kind of people with streets named for them and Mayflower ancestry and D.A.R. membership,  still had something he’d never have the means to buy.

Gene would’ve chewed on that awhile and said something real smart about the class system that Peter wouldn’t understand, just to piss him off, and Paul would’ve nodded as if Paul understood more than half of Gene’s bullshit, and Ace would’ve laughed off the whole thing. But Paul was the only one there, a foot away on the bed, and so Peter didn’t try to explain himself again.

They’d been smoking dope for awhile. The stale burnt-rope smell was strangely comforting. Peter had thought, early on, that Paul was as dully straight-lace as Gene, but he wasn’t. Paul would occasionally sample amphetamines, and seemed to be fond of white cross in particular as a pre-show pick-me-up.  He’d have a beer sometimes if Ace hadn’t drained the whole six-pack, and he’d smoke a joint if it was offered. Nothing heavier than that. Paul was too scared for it.

“I like your tattoos.” Paul said it a bit out of nowhere, and Peter glanced up and realized Paul was looking him right in the chest, like there was really anything to see.  The little drum on his arm was barely the size of his thumbnail, and the shamrock on his chest was even smaller. But there wasn’t much in the way of bleedthrough on either piece, the outlines clean and crisp. “You know, you’re the first person I ever met who had any.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought you’d been around a little more.”

Paul shrugged.

“I dunno. I’ve smoked dope before, if that counts.”

“You haven’t smoked it much.” Peter reached over and plucked the joint out from between Paul’s fingers. He took a puff or two before saying anything more, turning his head away from Paul when he exhaled.

[marypsue]

Raising Stakes 20 / 24

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four

Bit of a short chapter this time, but I had a specific place I wanted to end it, and I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Next one will almost certainly be longer.

I’m also on AO3, as MaryPSue!

...

The truck bumped to a stop, and Stan let out the breath he’d been holding.

Customs had been a nightmare, trapped in the back of the truck for hours trying to keep the pugs quiet, and the drive into Mexico had been, if possible, worse. But now he was safely across the border, out of US jurisdiction and, hopefully, the reach of Thistle's cronies, and he'd charmed Rico into helping him out and forgetting the grudge he'd held. Not to mention that Mexico was hotter even than Santa Cruz, almost warm enough to make Stan forget about the chill that lived deep in his bones.

Yup. Finally, finally, everything was coming up Stan.

There was a clatter and a thump, voices rising in a language Stan recognised as rapid-fire Spanish, and then the double doors at the back of the truck swung wide, letting in a waft of warm night air. The smell was - well, it wasn't roses, but compared to being stuck in the back of a truck full of pugs for the last three days, it smelled damn near to heaven. Stan pushed himself to his feet, groaning at the protest from his stiff joints, and waded his way through the sea of overexcited puppies towards the open doors.

Three faces greeted him, one splitting into a broad, gleaming smile, the other two with heavy scowls that didn’t quite mask the glints of fear Stan caught in both pairs of eyes. A shiver started to walk its way up the back of Stan’s neck, incongruous with the hot evening air.

“Uh,” he said, trying to remember his rusty high school Spanish, wondering if there was anything he’d picked up on the streets of California that wasn’t rude or obscene. “Hi, fellas...?”

One of the scowlers muttered something to the other, and Stan caught the word ‘vampiro’.

Stan managed, at the last second, to keep his expression from shifting. How did they know? Had Rico told them? How would he have known?

A little too loud, to drown out his own rising sense that something here had gone seriously sideways, Stan started, “Uh, muchas gracias for meeting me, I guess, but I really gotta get moving -”

The smiler stepped closer, blocking the exit. Stan debated whether he could clear the guy’s head if he jumped, decided it probably wasn’t worth it to try.

“You’re not going anywhere, brujo,” the smiler said, between those perfectly white teeth. Stan stepped back, just as one of the scowlers stepped forward.

The last thing Stan saw was the inside of a burlap sack, before everything went dark.

...

If Stan had had any doubts about Bill - that he was real, that he was really what Ford had described him as - they would've dried up and blown away under the force of Bill's grin.

It wasn't Ford. There was no way anybody who knew Ford could mistake it for Ford. The only time Ford had ever come even close to smiling that wide in his whole entire life was probably when - actually, Stan didn't know, but he'd be willing to bet it had something to do with something sciencey. It looked painful.

“Stanley Pines! The traitor twin in the flesh!” Bill looked Stan up and down assessingly. The unimpressed look he shot at Stan made Ford’s face look, for an instant, too much like their father’s, before Bill’s too-wide smile overtook it again.

“Bill,” Stan ground out, the word curling into a growl at the end, slapping away the hand Bill had outstretched to shake. Bill’s smile grew, impossibly, even wider. “You’re the one who’s been hurting my brother.”

“Well hey there, look who’s the smart guy now!” Bill slung an arm around Stan’s shoulders and clapped him jovially on the back. It took everything Stan had in him not to recoil from the touch. “Pieced it all together, didja? Not that you could’ve done it without that book Ford gave you - I’m gonna need that back, by the way! Can’t get this party started without it!” He flashed that brilliant grin in Stan’s direction, coupling it with a big, insincere wink. His eyes glowed, faintly, Stan could see now, a dim, sickly yellow light projecting against the inside of Ford’s glasses.

“Get outta my brother’s body and then we’ll talk,” Stan said. He silently thanked whatever forces governed the universe that his voice didn’t quaver.

Bill threw Ford’s head back and laughed, long and loud and hard. Stan barely suppressed a flinch at the thought of what he was doing to Ford’s vocal cords. “Oh! Oh, wow, you really are something! Ol’ Fordsy here wasn’t kidding about you!”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean,” Stan said, short, pulling away from the arm Bill had thrown across his shoulders. He had a sinking feeling he already knew. “Look. I’m finished with this shit. I’m sick of getting the runaround, I’m sick of this fuckin’ weather, I’m sick of this fuckin’ town. I’m not playin’ your games. Get outta Ford’s body and tell me what you want.”

Bill surveyed him for a moment. Now that Stan’s eyes had had a chance to adjust to the near-complete darkness inside the shack, it was even easier to tell that whatever was animating Ford’s body wasn’t Ford. Bill held himself completely differently, shoulders squared, arms stiff, head cocked at an uncomfortable angle, the complete opposite of the hunched, secretive, nervous mess Ford had been the last two times Stan had been here. Just looking at him made Stan’s skin crawl. 

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you rolled into town,” Bill said, and Stan remembered, abruptly, the feeling of eyes on his back. “And I gotta say, I don’t believe a word of what Sixer here’s said about you ‘deliberately sabotaging’ his big project! You’re waaaaayyyyyyy too incompetent for that!”

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Stan said. “Real vote of confidence. What’d you do with Susan? What do you want from Ford?” He considered for a split second, before making up his mind. If this Bill guy had really been watching him since he’s first come to town, then all his cards were on the table anyway. Might as well work with what he’d got. “And can you take it from me instead?”

Bill’s smile returned, wide and unsettling. His steady, unblinking gaze (and no wonder Ford’s eyes had been so red, if Bill had been forcing him to hold them open like this) stared straight through Stan like his entire life story was printed on the back of his jacket and Bill was reading it through Stan’s chest.

“Depends!” he said, suddenly, and Stan was slightly too slow to fight down the urge to jump. “What've you got that I’d want?”

Stan examined his fingernails, trying to swallow the bile burning at the back of his throat, the press of his fangs against his jaw. If Bill knew how desperate he was - though, if Bill had been watching him, that ship had probably already sailed.

“That depends on what you want,” he said, trying to sound cool, like his heart wouldn’t be hammering his way out of his chest if it still beat. “But - and stop me if you’ve heard this one before - it looks like you need a body.”

He watched Bill’s - Ford’s - Bord’s? - eyes carefully. It might’ve been his imagination, but he thought he caught a flicker of interest.

“Why would I need a body?” Bill said, but there was something in his voice that wasn’t there before, and he’d started to look Stan up and down assessingly. “Got a perfectly good one right here!”

“Oh, sure,” Stan said. “If you like weedy nerds. An’ I’m pretty sure he’s so sleep deprived I could spit in his direction and knock ‘im over. Not exactly a specimen of physical perfection.”

Bill raised one of Ford’s eyebrows. “Wow, don’t let Fordsy hear you saying that!” 

“Why not? He’s not gonna deny it,” Stan said. He could feel himself starting to slide back into his old patter, the familiar (but not too familiar), friendly tone that set people at their ease, made them want to like him and trust him and listen to more of what he had to say. It wasn’t exactly the supernatural charm that’d gotten him into at least as many sticky situations as it’d gotten him out of, but it was almost definitely a cousin. It’d seen him through so many infomercials. And it must’ve worked, because somehow he’d always at least broken even. “Look, look at yourself. This body you’re inhabiting? It’s a wreck. Ford never took all that great care of it even before you came along, and now that you’ve turned him into a paranoid husk of a man, I think he’s forgotten that human beings need sleep and food to live!”

He made a show of sucking in a deep breath, and then pinched his nose, screwing up his face in disgust. It wasn’t exactly an act. “Ugh! Smell that? That’s the smell of a flesh vessel that’s made personal care its last priority! And just look at this!” 

Stan reached out and grabbed Ford’s wrist, pushing up the sleeve despite the warning glare Bill gave him and the way Ford’s whole body went tense. It was a gamble, but one that paid off when Ford’s shirtsleeve caught on a ladder of barely-scabbed-over cuts and shiny burn marks, climbing the inside of his arm. His nose had been right. Stan barely managed to swallow back bile, to cling to his showman’s patter, his mouth motoring away while his brain just stared in horror. “Disgraceful! Just look at that! This human body takes a little collateral damage and it’s out of commission for weeks, maybe even months! It takes an embarrassingly long time to heal from even the most minor of abrasions, and you have to be so careful not to break it!”

Bill’s smile stayed eerily wide and fixed, but he tilted Ford’s head to one side, like he was thinking about what Stan was saying. Stan reached out, hesitating for only a fraction of a second before laying a hand on Ford’s shoulder. 

“D’you see this hole in my jacket?” he asked, his mouth going dry even as he forced the words out. He’d made big pitches before, ones with a lot riding on them, but this was going to be the biggest damn sale of his worthless unlife. Either he sold this, or Ford was worse than dead.

Better fucking sell it, then.

“This hole,” Stan said, sticking his fingers into the hole and wiggling them around, “goes all the way through. Because it got there when somebody staked me in the ribs last night.” He gave an extra little wiggle of his fingers, for effect. “Went right through me. And see?” 

He unzipped his jacket, pulling up his shirt to reveal the knot of silvery scar tissue where the stake hole had been. “Not a scratch!” 

Bill tilted Ford’s head forward, that too-wide smile growing even more menacing. “Is that so.”

Stan blinked, steeling himself, and then reached out and grabbed Ford’s wrist, pressing the hand against his abdomen right over the pucker of scar tissue. He gave himself a mental point for the look of confused irritation on Bill’s face. “Oh yeah. Just stick some fresh blood in its face, and boom! Good as new! Like there was never a hole in the first place!”

Bill opened Ford’s mouth like he was getting ready to say something else unnecessarily vague and creepy, but Stan didn’t give him the chance. “And that’s not all this baby can do! Ever been frustrated with a human body’s top speed? You don’t have to answer that one, I can tell by the look on your face that you have. And how about their night vision, huh? I’m just kidding, we both know they don’t have any!”

Stan managed to force down the sick feeling that tried to crawl up the back of his throat as he slung an arm companionably around Ford’s shoulders, pulling Bill and his creepy eyes in close like they were old pals. “Look at that - oh ew, his eye’s started bleeding. That’s just - well, that’s just what I’m talking about, huh? He's not even injured! It’s just leaking blood! Now - now that’s what I call shoddy craftsmanship.”

Bill’s smile had turned thoughtful, and he stared at Stan with those bleeding, glowing eyes like he was liking what he was seeing. Stan didn’t let himself relax. He’d seen that look on the faces of enough people who were smiling in anticipation of beating the shit out of him.

“Look,” Stan said, giving Bill’s shoulder - Ford’s shoulder - a friendly squeeze, despite how it made his skin crawl. “Guy like you, you’re goin’ places, you got big plans -”

“You can’t even begin to imagine how big!” Bill interrupts. “Your pitiful, puny meatbrain couldn’t process it!”

“Great,” Stan said, trying his absolute hardest not to give Bill the blank stare he really felt like giving him right about now. “Sure. Whatever. What I’m sayin’ is, human bodies - Ford’s body - was all right for starters. But a guy like you? A real mover and shaker?”

Finally, finally, Stan gave in to the itch in his gums, fangs dropping to cover his showman’s smile as he said, “You’re gonna wanna upgrade.”

Bill looked at Stan with that smile frozen on his face for a long moment. Stan didn’t breathe, didn’t trust himself to so much as twitch with Bill’s gaze on him. 

Then Bill threw Ford’s head back and laughed, long and hard.

Stan waited until Bill doubled over, his laughter turning into silent wheezing, before asking, “So...that a yes, or...?”

That set Bill off all over again. Stan folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the door frame for half a second, before self-consciously zipping his jacket closed again. It was almost as cold - if not colder - in Ford’s house than it had been outside. Didn’t the guy have heat? He was still alive, he could still freeze to death -

“Oh!” Bill gasped, at last, straightening up. “Oh, this is better than anything I could’ve expected! All this time I was trying to get rid of you, and it was this easy all along?” He thrust out one of Ford’s hands, so fast that Stan flinched back before realising that Bill was offering it to him to shake. “Sure, I’ll take your body!”

“And leave Ford alone,” Stan pressed, and Bill rolled Ford’s eyes. The blood starting to crust around his right eye bubbled, a fresh trickle creeping down Ford’s cheek.

Stan swallowed, and forced his gaze away.

Bill tilted Ford’s head expectantly, giving Ford’s hand a little waggle in case Stan had forgotten it was there. “Hey, this is a limited time offer!”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll get outta Ford’s body and leave him alone?” Stan insisted.

Bill’s smile dropped like an anvil on the head of an unsuspecting coyote.

“Well, I can’t exactly be in two bodies at once!” he chirped, though his morbid cheer suddenly seemed forced.

Stan considered for a moment. Like a rock to gravity, his gaze was tugged  down to Bill’s outstretched hand. Six familiar fingers, trembling slightly with either excitement or malnutrition and exhaustion, met his gaze, and he had to shut his eyes. What the hell was he thinking? What the hell was he doing?

Then again, what other choice did he have?

“Sure,” Stan sighed, reaching out and grabbing his brother’s hand, maybe a little too tight. “Let’s do this.”

Bill’s smile returned, scribbling itself over Ford’s face like a markered-in devil horns and goatee on a glossy photograph. “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride! This won’t hurt you a bit!” he said, his voice gaining a strange echo. Stan realised, a moment too late, that the smile really was over Ford’s face, hanging just a little too far forward in the air. 

And it wasn’t a smile. It was a single, laughing, unblinking, eye.

Stan just had time to ask himself, again, what the hell he thought he was doing, before the hand in his erupted in blue fire and he was yanked unceremoniously out of himself.