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Stan was stuck in a limbo between life and death. He was leaning on the kitchen wall, watching as the two most important in his life clean up another mess he made. A failed dinner Stan had hoped to share an important part of his life.
Instead he was stuck with stained skin better suiting an abused doll and the inability to interact with the real world. Leaning against the kitchen wall was the most he was able to do to the world around him, his hands wouldn't grab anything but he couldn’t just go through the walls or objects in the house.
It took sometime before the two men could get the oven fire out and most of the smoke out of the house. Working in tandem to open windows and throw the smoking dinner into a small patch of concrete in the yard.
Once the house was safe from the failed dinner, Ford started looking around. He was slowly moving around the room, careful not to move anything else than what he had to. His eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed in thought.
Ford stopped in front of the dinner table, staring intensely at the mostly set table. His eyes tracing the places, ignoring the semi-pulled out chair must to Stan’s chagrin.
“Fiddleford,” Ford’s tense voice rang out, “Where is Stan?”
Stan watched as both men glanced around the room, seeing them become more and more disturbed by his absence.
“Maybe he went to the store and forgot about the food?” Fiddleford hesitantly questioned, clearly not believing himself.
“Are you delirious!” Ford exclaimed, appalled at the idea, “My brother wouldn’t just leave when making dinner, he was too excited for this to just, just, LEAVE.”
Started pacing the kitchen, right hand going up to pull at his hair while his left was used to flail around while he talked.
“On top of that, he always tells us if he leaves. This makes no sense for him.” Ford began to rant, “Stanley would never leave without saying anything . While my brother can sometimes be an inconsiderate meat head,” that one stings a little for Stan, “He still worries about us too much to stress us out on purpose.”
Ford’s pacing was becoming more and more frantic as he kept working himself up. He began almost ripping out his hair, the stress of trying to figure out Stan’s disappearance making him distressed.
“Ford, ya gotta stop yanking on your hair that hard.” Stan said out loud to no one's ears but his own. It was said as a force of habit left over from when they were young. “You're gonna go bald.”
Suddenly Ford stopped with a gasp, turning sharply to stare at Fiddleford. “Fiddleford,” Ford’s eyes became wide and scared, “Stanley has so many enemies! What if one came while we were occupied in the Bio-Laboratory!”
Ford began breathing erratically, both hands now in his hair. He was pulling too hard, just looking at it made Stan wince. Walking up to his brother, Stan tried to grab at his arms. Forgetting that he couldn’t interact with the real world in a bid to help his twin not hurt himself.
“Hey, you need to stop,” Stan’s hands went right through his twin with an uncomfortable chilly tingle.
Ford shot his head up to look directly in Stan’s eyes, seemingly being able to see him. The moment passed as he began whipping his head around, trying to figure out what happened. Stan went to reach out to Ford again when Fiddleford called out.
“Ford, come look at this.” Using a somber tone and grim face, Fiddleford turned to face them.
Turning to look at where the man was, Stan saw that he was kneeling next to the broken ring. Face grim as he held up the shattered remains, Stan noticed that they were no longer colorful. The ring was just white, the colors seemingly transferred to Stan with the curse.
“We are never going to hear the end of this.” Ford blurted out, with eyes wide and his face slack.
Stan let out a bark of laughter at his twin’s exclamation. He was completely right, Stan wasn’t going to let this go if he got out of this mess. He was going to lord this over the nerd patrol for the rest of their lives . He told them the ring was bad news, and did they listen? Noooo, instead these scientists decided to just grab it and take it home. Not only that, they fucking put it on the kitchen table instead of, like Stan doesn’t know, a safe in one of the twenty different labs in this fucking house!
But that's okay, Ford will find a way to fix this. And once he does then Stan is going to tear him apart and no homemade food for a week, at least! For now though for now, he is stuck with painted skin and living in the realm between worlds.
Stan grabbed at his twin's arm again, the same unsettling feeling racing through him. It was worse than a brain freeze and more painful than being stabbed. He didn’t know if it felt like this for Ford but at least it lets him know something is wrong.
“Stanley?”
Ford looked at Stan again, it really felt like he was looking right at him. But that moment passes again and now his brother is looking around for something that isn’t there. There was a wild look in his eyes, the look of a predator hunting. It scared Stan a little, how Ford has always had this feral part of him.
“Ford, what are you doin’ over there, this ring is broken and Stan’s missin’” Fiddleford asked, walking over to Ford and gently setting a hand on his friend's shoulder.
Spinning to grab at Fiddleford’s shoulders, Ford leaned in with a manic smile on his face. “I can find Stanley anywhere in the world now.”
With that Ford goes sprinting deeper into the house. Stan followed his twin around the house as he ran around, looking for seemingly random objects to grab. A map, some blue crystal, gold, candles, a mirror, and a few other things were snagged before he went sprinting back to the kitchen.
A confused Fiddleford stood in the center of the room, still reeling from Ford’s exit. Pushing him aside Ford threw everything he collected onto the dining room table, the manic energy pouring off of him in droves.
Throwing a map open in the table Ford started doing some incantation, at the end a multi colored dot appeared over somewhere in Oregon. Laughing and opening a map of Oregon, he did it again. The same dot appeared, now over Gravity Falls.
Stan did not like where this was heading. He watched as Ford threw open the last map, Stan saw it was one of the full layouts of the house.
“This better not be what I think it is Ford, or we are having a conversation about boundaries again.”
But there it was, three colored dots. One blue where Ford was, one green where Fiddleford was, and one red where Stan was. Ford made something that could track them whenever he wanted.
“Ford, why are there three dots?” Fiddleford asked, the same question was on Stan’s mind.
Ford twirled his hand above his head before answering with a distracted tone, “Oh the matching tattoos we have make it so I can find either of you anywhere in the world.”
Fiddleford’s face twitched in annoyance, “Why in tarnation would you do that!”
“In case someone takes one of you.” Ford said like it was a completely normal thing, like it could happen to anyone at any time.
“Ford!”
That made his brother look bewildered, glancing up at his friend before turning back to the table to work. “I made sure I had one as well, so that way you could do it as well.”
“Ford! Did you teach Stan how to do it.”
Ford paused whatever he was doing at the table, slowly turning his head towards Fiddleford with the look of a child with their hand in a cookie jar. “No.”
“Then neither of us could track you with this!”
“Oh.”
“Yeah Oh!” Fiddleford raged, fuming at the stupidity of Ford’s logic. Stan was not that far behind him, he loved his twin so much but holy shit that is deranged.
Stan took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling with conflicting emotions bubbling in his chest. This is one of the coolest things Ford has ever done and it was very sweet, in a weird way, that Ford was so concerned for them that he found a way to track them. Holy shit his brother was steps away from being some kind of plague creator or something else that ends the world.
With a noise of excitement, Ford held up some stone with a hole perfectly in the middle right at Stan. Stan cocked his head to the side as he stared at the stupid stone in his brothers hands, what the fuck was some random rock gonna do?
“Lee!” Ford cried out, relief coloring his voice. “Why do you look like that?”
“Oh I don't know Ford,” Stan put his hand under his chin and kicked his hip to the side, “maybe because your dumb ring cursed me!”
“I can not hear you Lee, I can only see that you are indeed mad about the ring.” Ford answered with a wince.
Fiddleford stole the stone from Ford’s hand to look at him as well. Gasping when he made eye contact, “Your skin took the color of the ring!”
Stan rolled his eyes and made a gesture to try and convey annoyance as well as ‘well duh.’
“Right, right. 'm sorry Stan.” Fiddleford relented, turning to Ford with a grimace. “How do we solve this?”
Grabbing a second stone with the hole just slightly off center, Ford looked at Stan again. He didn’t say anything or move, just looked at him in this kinda unsettling way.
“Ford?” Fiddleford pressed again.
With a small humm Ford put the stone back down, “I think I know someone who could help.”
It took some time for the two nerds to find a way to bring Stan back from whatever curse the ring gave him. Some nice witch Ford knew told them that it was because of some bullshit magic reason that the ring cursed Stan, apparently whoever cursed the ring hated the color red.
The moment that Stan was able to exist in the real world again Ford wouldn’t let Stan go. He just kept holding him tight to his body as he kept checking him over for non existent injuries.
It was sweet but they needed to talk, starting the conversation harshly. “Hey so are we gonna talk about the fact you gave me a tracking glyph as a tattoo?”
Ford squeezed him tighter before responding, “No.”
“We really should.”
”If we were going to talk about it, which we aren’t, then this is what I would say.” He said with a hint of embarrassment laced into his haughty tone, ”It is an important thing to have when you keep disappearing all the time! This is the second time you have just been gone when I try to find you.”
Well Stan couldn’t argue with that, this is the second time that his sudden disappearance stressed Ford out. And this time it was helpful.
“Alright you got me there.”
Ford hummed happily as he stood up, not letting Stan out of his grasp. Slowly shuffling them out of the nice witches house and back to their cabin. Fiddleford was both laughing and fuming at the same time. He was still mad about their tattoos being some way to track them but it was funny to watch two grown men fight about how Ford made them walk back.
The rest of the day and night with Ford holding Stan and then Fiddleford making him teach them the tracking spell as well. He even wrote down the steps and what they would need to make it work. Now if any of them needed to find each other they could, there was nowhere on this planet that they couldn’t be found.
The idea of it made something in Stan feel safer, even if it was super uncomfortable to think about the fact that he now had no privacy. But Ford loved them enough to find a way to track them down and keep them safe. That was good enough for Stan.