Heyyyyy! It's @nowimjustastranger, I'm Asking Anonymously Since My Main Blog Has Nothing To Do With GF

Heyyyyy! It's @nowimjustastranger, I'm asking anonymously since my main blog has nothing to do with GF lol. I just wanted to say that I love all your stuff! But your recent magic user Ford AU has got me in a chokehold. I need to know what Ford's reaction to finding Stan in the trunk was. Like Stan was beaten and tied up (his wrists and ankles chafed) in his own car, suffering from heat-stroke. Omg I bet he'd be angry.

I cannot BELIEVE you would do this to me. I saw this ask like. Three hours ago and here we are.

I PLANNED to write the Safety Alarm AU from exclusively STAN'S POV but uh. Then I wrote this.

Here ya go jackass

- I’m also gonna tag @leo-artista because they made the original prompt that I springboarded this AU off of!

Ford wakes up to his face mashed against his couch's armrest, his feet tangled up in a throw blanket,and the sharpest burning sensation he has ever felt, searing liquid fire into his arm.

He yelps, flails like he's wrenching his arm away from a hot stove, but it doesn't lessen, the mark doesn't cool, it's attached.

The spell.

Even with his lopsided glasses-he fell asleep reading, again- Ford can see the mark actually glowing red hot, like a poker, and it burns, more than Ford can stand and he wants to tear it away, scrape the mark off of himself so it doesn't hurt anymore.

The mark.

Ford fumbles, frantically, to readjust his glasses. Even bending his arm hurts, his skin hot and inflamed. He looks down, holds his arm out so he can see, which one which one who is it-

It's Stanley's mark.

For a second Ford just blinks down at it, horrified and confused. The sailboat, simple and holding the weight of years worth of memories, is still glowing.

It's red hot, and burning, and then, it flickers.

Just a second. Less than that, a millisecond. As he watches, it flickers. Dark, and cool, and just for a moment it's just a dark mark on his skin, a picture, blackened and blank like a regular tattoo, but it feels like ice.

Then the mark flicks back on, red hot and glowing ever brighter.

Stanley.

Ford stands up so fast from the couch he trips, stumbles and crashes to the ground again, knees jamming painfully into the hardwood floor. He frees himself, quickly, frantically, and launches forward, scrambling at his desk.

Stanley. It's Stanley's mark. Stanley's mark is burning, it's on fire, that's danger, danger and harm and fire and blood and it flickered, it could be-it could mean-

Stanley could be dying.

He needs to find him. Locator spell, he needs a Locator spell this instant.

Ford almost breaks his journal's cover with how fast he flings it open. The pages fly by as he scans, searching.

The Safety Alarm spell is one of those spells that Ford put in place, with the intention that it would never really have a use. His mother is at home, in New Jersey, resting comfortably and taking her psychic calls for poor, gullible customers. Shermie, his older brother, is creating a home in California, his third child on the way. Fiddleford is in the same state, inventing away to his heart's content.

The spell… the spell was never meant to go off.

The worst case scenario, the worst thing, was maybe if Ford's mother had a bad fall in her old age or there was some car accident or something. Danger isn't really something Ford has to worry his family is constantly getting into in their daily lives.

At least. He never thought, he never even imagined that-

Locator Spell. Found it.

His eyes flick over the components faster than he's ever skimmed a page before. Envisioning, and a connecting item of the object or person one is trying to locate.

Shit.

Ford turns, wide eyed and searching, for something, anything in this room that connects back to Stanley. He looks over bookshelves, paperwork, knick knacks, all useless. There's a framed photo on his desk, a family portrait, his father, his mother, with Ford and Shermie standing side by side. They used to have to squeeze in to get everyone in the picture.

Stanley took up so much space.

Now the picture is incomplete.

The mark on Ford's arm burns, and somehow amps up in its intensity.

Ford jolts into action and runs, sprinting out of the living room and into the hallway, into his bedroom. Something of Stanley's, he needs something of Stanley's.

When Ford moved away, moved up to Oregon, his mother had visited. A house warming party, she called it, and she'd opened her suitcase and dumped a bunch of things from Ford's childhood all over his meticulously, freshly cleared off kitchen table.

Childhood medals and photographs, old homework assignments she had no real reason to keep, and worst of all, items that weren't even his.

He hadn't corrected her, not to her face, not after she came all this way, Ford had just taken everything, shoved it into a box and then shoved that box into his closet, out of sight out of mind.

Now he's tearing open the closet door and flinging himself forward, the mark on his arm like a brand, scrabbling like an animal for that box.

Twelve fingers find cardboard, and he wrenches the box out into the light, and throws back the top.

The first thing he sees are old beat up boxing gloves, faded red with time.

Ford remembers unhooking them from the bunk bed post one morning in a fit of emotion, flinging them away because he couldn't stand the sight of them, hanging above an empty, stripped mattress.

There's no time for reminiscing. Ford grabs them, and starts the spell there.

It's a simple spell, he's done it before to find things like rare potion ingredients or, embarrassingly, that time he lost track of where he parked in a busy shopping center. Ford focuses, as best he can, and tries to ignore the panic clawing at his throat, the burning on his arm.

Focus. Recite.

Nunc quid mihi deperditum inveniatur

Visus est videre in caelo vel in terra

Visiones ad me redire debent

Quod quaero, fiat

Ford says the words, closes his eyes, and reaches, straining for the vision. It swims, in that odd, darkened way, and he begins to see.

Dirt, gritty and tan and sunbaked. A cloudless sky, heat. Ford sees a car, one he recognizes, and in the distance, a sign, Welcome To New Mexico written in cheery font.

Ford blinks back to awareness.

New Mexico. Stanley is in New Mexico.

But Ford is in Oregon. He's hours, hundreds of miles away, Stanley is states away, and he's in danger, and Ford is too far.

A shiver goes down Ford's spine.

The mark, the little sailboat nestled in the space before Ford's arm bends, goes shockingly, terrifyingly cold.

No.

Ford stares down at it, and his heart stutters in his chest and his lungs gallop and buck around and he can't breathe because the mark is cold, the alarm was going off and now it's not and-

Heat catches again, like a fire sputters back to life, like the last smoke of a match catches again, and the air punches back into Ford's chest.

Hold on Stanley.

He sprints back into the study. He's scared shittless, panicking and frantic, but Ford grabs the ingredients he needs before he knows what they are exactly.

This will be difficult magic.

He's done transportation, teleportation spells and incantations before. Each one is different, draining, and even then he'd just been testing, using them to transport an apple across a room, or a book from another room.

He's never done it on anything living, let alone a person.

Let alone his brother.

What choice does he have?

Ford steps down from his front porch, to the space in front of his house, and readies his stance.

Legs shoulder length apart, his journal on the ground, open in front of him, with his arms outstretched, fingers splayed.

There is no time for second guessing, there is no time for disbelieving in himself. This has to work.

It has to it has to it has to-

Stop.

Ford takes a deep breath.

He feels the air circulate down into his lungs. He feels it expand his chest, his stomach, he feels it strengthen his limbs, settle the oxygen in his brain.

Three deep breaths, and then he begins.

This spell is difficult, and it is hard to even write down in his journal to explain, let alone actually use. Ford is reaching out, with his mind and his magic, through the fabric that makes up the world, searching. The fabric is like a loosely knitted sweater, the holes between the fibers big enough to look through, even to pull things through. But a car is not little, it's not like an apple, or a book, and it's certainly not like a person.

He doesn't want to break the fabric, instead he carefully uses his magic like a pry bar, like a tool, to push the fibers of space apart to reach for his brother.

New Mexico. The Locator spell was very clear. The Stanmobile.

Ford can see it, in his mind even now, with his eyes closed. The red, almost burgundy color, four doors, hatchback, with a white top. He knows this car, he's been in it, even if it's been years. It should make the spell easier.

The weaving cords of space glow a sort of translucent, holographic brown behind Ford's eyelids. Like roots, folded over and under each other, like the project of the world on a loom, and Ford must card his fingers through to search, achingly, for Stanley.

New Mexico. The Stanmobile. Stanley.

Ford is running out of breath.

Magic like this, deep, concentration spells are detrimental to the spellcasters physical body. It drains to do magic like this. It drains the energy from the limbs, the sugar from the blood, the breath from the lungs. It's taxing, and Ford cannot do it for long, but he must be slow, and careful.

He can feel it, when his magic catches on the car.

It's like a fish on a hook. Ford can feel the exact moment the line of his magic drops, tugs, even the most miniscule amount.

He's got it.

Stan taught him how to fish, when they were children. They both learned how to tie knots, how to bait the hook properly, how to cast the line out. But it was Stanley, ruddy cheeked and grinning, who taught Ford how to be patient with it, how to reel in a catch.

Like this, Sixer, Stan used to say. Slowly, and every once in a while you give a little tug, just to be sure the hook is in there good. Then you just reel it in.

Ford tugs, a little sharply, with his magic, and he can feel two of the wheels of the Stanmobile fall away into the space in between space, closer.

Reel it in.

He draws the magic back, slowly as he can stand. His body is running out of breath, distantly he can feel it start to wobble, his lungs start to shudder from lack of air. Still, Ford makes himself take time. Slowly.

He's keeping the fibers, the strands of space apart so he can fit the Stanmobile through. The car is sinking through space like quicksand, and Ford knows that if he opens his eyes now, he would see the two front tires, maybe the front of the windshield, melting up through the ground in front of him.

Focus. Reel it in.

He's so close. He's so, infinitely close and his breath is almost gone and his vision, even if his eyes are closed, is starting to darken. But he can't wrench his magic, he can't force it too fast, he can't let the fish off the hook.

The mark on his arm throbs, and burns, and keeps burning.

Ford pulls, and he feels more of the car slip out to here, in Oregon, just ahead of him, in front of his house. He cannot look, but he feels his magic gather and pull and at last, and long last, he's almost through.

Reel it in.

Ford is stretched impossibly thin, but he gives it one more, solid tug of the magic, and the very end of the car, the trunk the back wheels of the Stanmobile slide into existence, woven through the fabric of space.

Ford gently lets the magic he was reaching for go, pulling back the tendrils of his mind until they are back here, with him, back into his body.

The last bit snaps back, and Ford gasps in a large, gulping breath.

The Stanmobile sits, like it was just parked there, perfectly still in his driveway.

Ford stumbles, sways forward and then backwards, his legs unsteady. It's a headrush, a massive tax and a suckerpunch to his body all at once, and his vision of the trees swims.

Breathe, he can breathe now.

It feels difficult to, for a moment, the weight of the heavy magic use sits so heavily on his chest Ford can feel it in his spine. He gasps, heaves in more air, and without looking gropes his hand sideways, to the ingredients he gathered before the spell.

It's a bottle of sugar water, with dissolved glucose tablets, and Ford downs the entirely, sickeningly sweet bottle before he can properly stand up again.

Stanley. Where's Stanley?

The mark on his arm is no longer burning, but it's not cold either, it's warm, a little too warm, but only just barely noticeable.

Ford's feet move underneath him, pushing, straining towards the car. He's dizzy, disoriented and exhausted from the heaviest use of magic he's done in a long time, but it doesn't matter. He doesn't even allow time to celebrate.

“Stanley?” Ford croaks out.

His brother isn't in the driver's seat.

Ford opens the door anyway, nearly pulls it off its hinges from how hard he opens it. The seat is empty. And so is the backseat.

“Stanley?” Ford calls, a little louder.

He's sure. The magic worked. The Locator spell worked. New Mexico, and here is the car and it looks like Stanley's stuff is in here and where's Stanley?

“Stan!” Ford wrenches the door to the backseat open too, sticks his head into the car and looks around like his brother, a grown man, would shove himself down to the floor of his own car for some reason.

“Stanley!” This time the cry is cracked and loud and breaking, and Ford spins and looks desperately around the car, like Stan could have gotten out and made a break for it before Ford recovered from the spell.

There's no footprints, there's no sign of his brother.

He should be here. The car is here, the spell worked, where is he?

Ford finds the marks on his arm again. Stanley's icon is still there, but it's no longer glowing. It's still warm, warmer than the rest of Ford's skin, but it's not flickering with terrifying shots of cold and it hasn't gone dark, like Stanley-like he-

“Stan! Answer me!” Ford yells. He grabs a fistfull of his own hair and tugs, terrified. It worked. The car is here, Stanley should be here, but he's not, his brother isn't-what's happening, why didn't it-

There is the smallest, muffled noise of pain.

Ford goes utterly still.

His mind is blank, listening.

There is a crumpled, half hearted and barely there moan of pain from the trunk of the Stanmobile.

“Oh god,” Ford chokes out, and he runs.

He dives around the side of the car, and there's a padlock, a lock on the outside of the trunk-that already locks there's no need to, Stanley would never put another lock on the- and Ford pulls at it, fumbles with it with shaking hands like an idiot for a moment before he remembers he has magic, and he unlocks it with a wave of his hand, the spell just another drop in his horribly drained magic reserves.

Ford pops the hatch open, and pulls it up.

There is a dark shape that takes up the entire space of the trunk.

Ford chokes, and his mind stutters, turns over, and tries to catch back into the rhythm of working.

It's Stanley. It's his brother.

“No,” the word is punched out of him. Ford reaches, his fingers numb, as he just barely touches his brother's shoulder. Stanley is curled up, forced to be curled up due to how small the space is, and he's not moving.

The sweater he's wearing is hot to the touch.

“No,” Ford says again, and he digs his fingers in a little, shaking. His brother doesn't move, doesn't stir. “Stanley?”

Ford doesn't wait for a response. He leans forward and scoots an arm-the arm with the alarm spell marked into his skin, Stanley's icon is still warm- underneath Stanley's other shoulder, and pulls.

Reel it in.

Stanley's head flops back with it, limp and unconscious as Ford drags him out of the trunk.

Stan's eyes are closed, but it is Stanley.

Ford steps backwards, pulling, until his brother's weight is entirely on his own chest and Stan's legs thump together down to the dirt, out of the trunk, and Ford still doesn't stop pulling until his brother is away from it, away from the open hatch of the tiny coffin he was stuffed in.

Stan is breathing, raspy, drawn out breaths that sound strained.

He's alive.

“Stan,” Ford says, and almost gently, he jostles his brother's limp form, trying to shake him awake. “Stanley, wake up, it's me, it's Ford.”

There are beads of water on Stan's forehead. Ford rearranges, leaning his brother's top half further into the crook of his other arm and lap, so he can feel Stan's face with the back of his hand.

It's hot and sweaty to the touch. Stan's entire body is warm, too hot, even the jacket is heated like it's been in the sun, baking away.

He was in the trunk.

There was a padlock on the hatch and Stan was stuffed in there, stuffed into a tiny box but he's alive, he's here and he's breathing and he is too hot, like he was baking in there like-

Stanley's wrists are bound.

There's nylon rope, the cheap, plastic-y kind you get at a hardware store for cheap, wrapped around and around in terrible knots around Stan's wrists. When Ford looks, his ankles are tied too.

This was done to him.

Stanley was tied up and shoved into the trunk of his own car to die.

The realization settles, like a heavy lead weight, like a stone, directly into Ford's gut. Anger sparks and sizzles to life right beside it.

Someone did this. Someone did this to Stanley, to his brother, to his twin. This was done to him on purpose and Ford feels nothing but rage.

He might not have known. A week, that's how long it's been since he cast that spell. Seven days, and if he'd done it seven days later his brother would be dead.

Dead. Killed, murdered in the trunk of his own car.

Rage is a dangerous thing. It fills out the space between Ford's bones, in between the ligaments of his fingers, his jaw. Stanley is his brother. His brother and they might not have spoken in years, but how dare someone try to hurt him. How dare someone do this, Ford will-he's going to-

Stan lets out a particularly raspy breath, and he stirs, just a bit in Ford's arms.

Ford's head snaps down, anger shoved aside as concern and worry surges. “Stanley?” He asks quietly, and he brushes his hand over Stan's sweaty hair. “Are you with me?”

Stan's eyelids flutter, but Ford can only see the whites of them. His brother is not coherent, not lucid.

Heatstroke.

The word sends a nail into the back of Ford's skull.

God he's just, he's just been sitting here.

“Mudnaregirfer,” Ford mutters, and he feels the magic glow from his fingertips as he places a cooling hand over Stan's head.

Immediately, Stan settles, and he lets out a little sigh.

Ford lets the cooling magic flow for a moment more, and then he lets it go, utterly exhausted.

Pulling Stan inside is harder than it would have been, had Ford actually used magic, but the guest bedroom his house produces is close enough that he doesn't have to carry Stan in too far.

He lays Stan down on the bed, peeling the covers out from underneath him and then around him, and pops Stan's shoes off. His brother's condition is bad enough as it is, and Ford leaves the room as quickly as he can to go make up cooling towels.

He lays them carefully on Stan's forehead, his neck, and then jolts, as he realizes that Stan's hands are still tied, the rope burn evident on his skin.

Ford swears under his breath as he undoes the knots. They are tied tightly, too tightly, and Stan's hands are puffy and purplish from the lack of circulation.

It's an awful sight, and Ford tries to rub some blood back into them.

He never expected this to be how they are reunited.

He never expected Stanley, his twin, the single person in the world who seemed unshakable, to be reduced to a limp, tired and injured body in Ford's guest bedroom.

Stan's face isn't gaunt, but it is sallow and the skin is clammy. As Ford wraps his wrists carefully with a loose bandage, the wrists there are rubbed raw, not just from the tightness of the ropes but from a struggle, like Stan fought, or tried to fight.

Ford feels sick.

He has to get up, or get away from this. He unties Stan's ankles, wraps those too, and gets up, pushes himself away.

He doesn't know Stanley anymore.

He used to, they used to know everything about each other, but now Ford stares at the man in a pinched unconsciousness and realizes that he doesn't know him.

They've been apart for so long that Ford hardly recognizes him.

Ford pours a glass of ice water and sets it on the bedside table. He scribbles a note, although he expects to be back sooner than it suggests.

Just before he leaves the room Ford pauses, and then draws a sign in the air above Stanley's head, a simple incantation for a dreamless sleep.

.

.

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