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After hearing from Dipper about his experience with the shapeshifter, Ford makes it a point to head down to the bunker himself to check and see that it’s still secure. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Dipper when he said they handled it, but the cryochamber Dipper mentioned pushing him into is fairly old, and Ford would just as soon make sure it’s still functioning properly.
So, after lunch, he heads down to the bunker, with a fair amount of tools to update the chamber if need be.
It’s been quite a long time since he’s been to the bunker, even after arriving back in this dimension, so he’s not surprised to find things moved around and changed. Dipper did mention, with a fair amount of sheepishness, that they’d moved things around in the main observatory, and done quite a bit of damage in the tunnels. Dipper might have oversold it a bit, however, because when Ford arrives in the observatory, he doesn’t find much damage apart from moved around papers and some flipped switches that appear to be long past use anyway. The cryochamber is visible on one of the monitors, and the shapeshifter is still frozen inside, sure enough, looking just like Dipper. The sight is more than a little unsettling, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about the chambers being on the verge of collapse. There’s no sign of any thawing, or dripping water, or anything that would mean he had a time crunch in checking it over, and he doesn’t need to head straight in there.
He heads instead for the control console, and checks over the readings on the cryochamber.
It seems to be in good shape for the most part, and though he’ll need to replace the temperature modulator at some point in the next ten years, he did build it to last.
Ford writes down a couple notes in the third journal, which he brought with him, and is about to head back towards the entrance, when suddenly, a new figure appears on the monitor.
For a second, Ford wonders if the shapeshifter really has escaped and he’s seeing things, because he can’t think of many other reasons for Stanley to be down here in the bunker. He’s carrying an armful of cans of “Baron Num Nums High Flyin' Beans,” and seems to be singing to himself.
Ford groans, but presses the button on the console that overrides the disinfectant closet’s doors, and marches over to it as Stan approaches the main room, making sure his irritation is plain on his face.
“Stockin’ beans for the apocalypse, do do do do,” Stan sings as he walks through from the tunnels, eyes closed and not seeming to have noticed Ford yet.
“Stanley,” Ford says, if for no other reason than to put an end to his singing.
Stan yelps and drops nearly half the cans as he opens his eyes and looks over at Ford. He looks down at the cans on the ground, then glares back up.
“Great. Thanks, Ford.”
“What are you doing down here? This place is dangerous.”
“Relax, would ya? The thing is locked up,” he says, gesturing to the cryochamber. “And Wendy mentioned a whole bunch of cans of beans down here, so I figured I’d add to my stash for the apocalypse. Hey, help me pick these cans up.”
Ford rolls his eyes and makes no such movement. “You shouldn’t have come down here without my permission,” he says.
“Oh, excuse me,” Stan says, adding a fair amount of mockery to his tone. “I’ve been pokin’ around your creepy inventions for thirty years, Poindexter, forgive me if I don’t start asking permission now.”
“I never wanted you poking around my inventions in the first place,” Ford says coolly.
Stan sets down some of the cans so he can shift around the ones in his arms, and starts singing again. “Ignoring my brother, do do do do, ‘cause he’s bein’ a jerk, do do do do do do…”
Ford groans and turns to walk back into the control room, figuring he might as well give Stanley a taste of his own medicine.
He grabs his notebook, and is about to start back through the security room, when he hears Stan start walking again, sounding like he’s carrying far too many cans.
Ford turns around with a sigh, because if Stan’s going to insist on bringing all of the cans back Ford might as well take some of them, just to make the jangling of the cans quieter, naturally. But before he can offer, one of the cans balanced precariously on top of the pile slips off, and Stan doesn’t seem to notice, too busy trying to balance another one that was about to do the same thing.
“Stan,” Ford starts, but he’s too late. The can rolls just far enough into the control room for Stan’s foot to hit it as he steps out of the disinfectant chamber. He tumbles down towards the ground, and all of the cans in his arms go flying— right into the security room.
“Wait!” Ford yells, leaping immediately for the control panel, but it’s too late. Dozens of cans hit dozens of the alert panels, and the security mechanism slams shut at what to it is registering as a small army. The disinfectant chamber slams shut and locks on the other side of the room, and an alarm starts blaring overhead.
Ford groans and turns a displeased look back on Stan, who’s currently climbing up from the ground.
“Uh,” Stan says, having the decency to look sheepish. “Whoops.”
“Fantastic,” Ford mutters, sitting down at the control panel. He hits a couple buttons, and the alarm shuts off, at least.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Stan says. “Welp. I’ve lost all of my beans. You want to get us out of here so I can go home and mope in peace?”
“I can’t,” Ford says, glaring at him. “With that many alarms, it stays up for 24 hours.”
“What? Why? Wouldn’t any intruders be pretty crushed pretty immediately?”
“Humans
would, but they’re not what we were worried about when Fiddleford and I built the thing,” Ford snaps. He tries a couple more switches to no avail, and sits back in his chair with a sigh. “We’re stuck down here until it turns off.”
“Oh sure, and whose fault is that?”
Ford turns to him in bafflement.
“Yours?”
“I didn’t build a death trap for a security system.”
Ford leans forward to massage at his temples, then reaches into his bag, then pulls out the walkie talkie he’d given to Dipper in case he ran into some kind of trouble and needed to let someone know. He presses the button.
“Dipper? Come in, Dipper,” he says into it, and lets go.
“Great Uncle Ford!” comes Dipper’s worried voice. “Are you okay?”
“Stanley set off the security system and we’re stuck down here for the next 24 hours,” Ford says.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have set it off if you hadn’t—”
“Will you two be alright until we get out?” Ford cuts him off.
“Yeah, I think so,” Dipper says. “But do you need me to come there?”
“There’s nothing you could do anyway,” Ford says. “Just hang out at the shack, alright?”
“Tell Soos to stay after,” Stan adds in. “But I’m not paying him any extra.”
“Okay,” Dipper says. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Over and out,” Ford says. Dipper doesn’t say anything else, and he drops the walkie talkie back into his bag.
“So,” Stan says, a smugness to his voice that makes Ford immediately regret his life choices. “They should just hang out at the
shack,
huh?”
Ford gives Stan a confused look. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s what you said to Dipper,” Stan says, leaning against the console. “That they should hang out at the
shack.”
Ford goes over his word choices and kicks himself. “It is the shack until the end of the summer,” he says, trying to put “I didn’t mess up, I said exactly what I meant to say” into his voice. “And then it will go back to being my house again.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Stan says, because Ford has never been able to properly lie to him.
Ford rolls his eyes and turns back to his journal, scribbling “I am writing this down in order to ignore Stanley,” in small letters.
It seems to work well enough, because Stan just shrugs and goes to collect what cans of beans escaped the security system.
Ford leans back in the chair and closes the journal. He’s not exactly thrilled at the prospect of spending twenty four hours here with Stanley. At least neither of them are hurt, and since they’re in this room specifically, they’ll be able to tell as soon as the security system shuts off, and get out right afterwards.
Out of the corner of his vision, Ford sees Stan set five cans of beans on the ground by the door, which seems to be all that survived the crushing. Stan gives a disappointed sigh and wanders over to one of the shelves on the other side of the room. He starts to whistle to himself.
“Please don’t,” Ford says instantly. “Being stuck here is going to be hard enough.”
Stan’s only response is to start to whistle louder.
Ford resists the instinct to slam his head onto the desk.
It is going to be a long 24 hours.
…
With every minute, Ford is regretting more not putting a clock down here. He can always radio Dipper if he needs to know what time it is that badly, but he doesn’t want to bother the boy with something so trivial. It’s not like knowing what time it is will make the time they’re down here lessen. Besides, then Stan could mock him for blinking first, and Ford can’t let him win.
Eventually, he and Stan settle into activities. Stan has begun trying to balance the beakers that were sitting on the shelves. Ford hasn’t stopped him because he hasn’t broken any yet, and at least he’s not saying anything. Ford is reading through his journal and making updated notes and additions, though he often doesn’t have much space to do so. His drawings tend to take up a lot of space.
Ford would be perfectly content to do just that for the entire time they’re down there, but he also would be a fool if he doesn’t expect Stanley to ruin it at some point.
Sure enough, as Ford is going through Dipper’s entries and highlighting parts that intrigue him, Stanley speaks up.
“So, uh, did you build this place just to house your shapeshifter guy?”
Ford sighs, and doesn’t look up from the journal as he responds.
“Not at first,” he says. “I wanted to explore Gravity Falls underground. I had planned to expand the tunnels at first, before—” the Shapeshifter turned dangerous. And before Bill showed up, and all but robbed Ford of everything he’d loved about Gravity Falls in the first place, made all of the anomalies he’d come here for seem like pointless wastes of time.
“Before the shifter guy happened?” Stan asks, cutting off Ford’s train of thought.
Ford sighs, making sure his exasperation is clear. The response “Actually it was before I got shoved into another dimension,” pops into his head, but he swallows it down and nods instead. It’s needlessly callous, and would just add more tension when they’re going to have to be here for a while yet.
“You know, if you wanted to explore Gravity Falls underground, there was a dinosaur cavern already sitting there,” Stan says.
“I read about it in Dipper’s journal,” Ford says. “I didn’t know it existed back then. I’ll probably make time to go there eventually.”
“Watch out for pterodactyls,” Stan deadpans. “Glad to know I beat you to that, though.”
Ford grits his teeth and opts not to respond.
“Did you hear about how I punched it in the face?”
“Are you
trying
to start an argument?” Ford snaps, glaring down at him.
“It would definitely make the time go faster,” Stan says, giving Ford a grin that’s just a little too smug.
“Considering how quickly I beat you last time, no it wouldn’t,” Ford says, adapting a smug smile of his own.
Stan’s face drops into a scowl. “Hey, you caught me off guard after I’d just run from a bunch of FBI agents through an entire town. Gimme a break. I bet you couldn’t beat up a bunch of zombies.”
“Please,” Ford says, rolling his eyes. “Most of them are in an advanced state of decay. I did physically overpower quite a few of them once.”
“Oh, please. If you had, you’d have written it in your stupid journals,” Stan says, rolling his eyes as he looks back up at the ceiling.
Ford clenches his teeth. “They’re not stupid,” he says, in lieu of revealing to Stanley the pages that he ripped out of the journal. He doesn’t want to revisit those experiences anytime soon, and especially not with
Stanley
of all people.
Stan doesn’t reply with anything more than a grunt, before going back to picking up one of the smaller beakers and placing it on top of the one currently balanced atop all the others. At which point, his streak ends and they topple over, several of them shattering on the ground.
“Fantastic,” Ford snaps, standing and pushing the chair back. “I don’t have any way to clean up broken glass right now, Stanley.”
“I don’t see any other way to entertain myself here,” Stan snaps back, bending down to pick up the ones that aren’t broken and setting them back on the shelves. “I didn’t come down here with plans to stay, I didn’t bring anything to
do.”
“That’s not
my
fault.”
“Did I
say
it was?”
Ford groans in frustration and sits back down at the desk, getting back to work on the journal.
Stan doesn’t go for the beakers again, but instead goes and leans against the other wall. He’s never been one to sit still for long, however, so Ford’s not surprised when he speaks up again before long.
“It grabbed Mabel’s pet pig, you know.”
Ford shot a confused look over his shoulder. “What did?”
“The pterodactyl,” Stan says, crossing his arms and looking up at the ceiling in reminiscence. “It uh, burst into the house and grabbed it right out of my hands.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Ford says, rolling his eyes and turning back to his journal.
“What, you’re not seriously gonna write in that thing the whole time, are ya? We’re stuck here for a while, might as well reminisce for a bit.”
“I cannot think of any circumstance that would make me want to
reminisce
with
you,”
Ford says without looking up.
“And that’s just the kind of warm fuzziness that makes you so pleasant to be around, Poindexter.”
Ford drops his pen and spins around in his chair, glaring at Stanley. “Need I remind you it’s your fault we’re here in the first place?”
“You think maybe if you’d helped me carry a couple of those cans we wouldn’t be in this mess?” Stan shoots back, narrowing his eyes.
“It’s not my job to help you with every hare-brained scheme you come up with.”
“Yeah, heaven forbid you have to help me out with something like
carrying groceries.
Oh, the indignity.”
“I came down here for something
important,
Stanley!” Ford snaps, which seems to be the wrong thing to say, because Stan’s gaze darkens.
“Well,” he says coldly. “If you don’t give a shit about my thing, why the hell should I give a shit about yours?”
Ford sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine,” he says. “There won’t be any long-term harm done, it’s just a rather large inconvenience. We’re just going to have to grin and bear it.”
Stan huffs, and grabs one of the cans of beans, yanking the top back until it opens. He pulls the metal lid off and bends it until it makes a satisfactory spoon, which he uses to scoop the beans up and into his mouth.
“Beans?” he grumbles, nodding down at them.
“I think I’ll manage,” Ford says, spinning his chair back around. “I’ve gone longer than 24 hours without food.”
Many times, actually. Food isn’t always easy to find in every dimension out there in the multiverse, and there are quite a few instances he can think of having to go without. He’ll make it until lunchtime tomorrow just fine.
He’s not expecting a response from Stanley in regards to that, but to his surprise, he gets one.
“It’s uh, not a skill you can just pick right back up, Poindexter.”
Ford turns and gives him a curious look. “Excuse me?”
“Not eating for more than a day. It’s not a skill you can just pick right back up. You’ve had, you know, stable meals for a couple weeks now.”
Ford looks at him for a moment, not sure quite what that means.
“I know,” he says eventually.
Stan sighs, and shakes his head. He sets his open can down, grabs three of the cans of beans off the floor and walks over to the console, then sets them down next to Ford. “Eat ‘em when you get hungry,” he says, and walks back over to pick up his open can again.
“I mean it,” he adds when Ford doesn’t say anything.
Ford sighs but doesn’t object, then turns back to his journal.
He’ll end up eating the beans in a couple hours.
…
As the time drags on, the quiet gets more comfortable. Ford gives Stan a turn in the chair eventually, since it’s the only real place to comfortably sit in there. To his surprise, Stan quickly falls asleep leaning against the desk.
It’s probably close to night at this point, but Ford had figured they’d eventually try to sleep on the ground, since sleeping in a chair like that would be bad for their backs at this age.
To be fair, the ground probably wouldn’t be much better, but he still can’t help but notice that Stan seems far more comfortable than he should be, hunched over a desk like that. Maybe he just never grew out of his ease with falling asleep in class?
Or maybe, Ford realizes with a start, he’s fallen asleep in a desk chair a lot these past thirty years.
Ford doesn’t want to linger on that thought for too long, so he sits down against the wall with his journal and starts sketching out plans to install a failsafe to the security system. Best to avoid a repeat of this situation in the future, and it’s easier to work without Stan jabbering on.
He makes his way through a decent amount of the changes he’ll have to make and the overrides he’ll have to install before his focus is dragged away by Stan starting to mutter in his sleep.
Ford sighs, looking at Stan in part exasperation, part amazement. Even when he’s
asleep,
Stan finds a way to break his concentration.
Ford keeps his gaze on him for a minute, trying to decide if this is more or less annoying than Stan’s periodic interruptions. He’s thrown out of that internal debate, however, when he hears what Stan’s actually saying.
He’s muttering apologies.
Maybe he’s also done that a lot while asleep at a desk chair these past thirty years—
Ford pushes himself to his feet, walks across the room, and shakes Stan’s shoulder.
Stan jerks awake immediately, and is already swinging fists towards him. Ford steps back, just far enough to avoid the swing of Stan’s fists. Sometimes those multiverse instincts are very helpful.
It takes Stan a minute, but eventually he seems to shake awareness back into his head, and blinks a couple of times at Ford.
“You— ugh,” he grumbles, the tension slipping out of his posture as he rubs at his eyes. “What the hell was that for?”
Ford doesn’t answer right away.
“You were being unintentionally vulnerable in your sleep and I didn’t want to know things you didn’t want to tell me”
doesn’t feel like it will go over well. But it’s true. If there’s anything three decades in the multiverse has taught him, it’s that you don’t just go around sharing your secrets with anyone. It’s dangerous. And that’s definitely what he’s thinking about. It’s the safety thing. It’s definitely not just that he doesn’t want to force anything like that on Stan.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Ford says instead. “I’m trying to work.”
“Are you kidding me?” Stan snaps, glaring at him. “Let a man sleep, Poindexter. It’s been a long day.”
Ford walks back over to where he’d been sitting before and sits down with his journal.
Stan huffs and puts his arms back on the control panel, then leans his head on top of his arms, shutting his eyes again.
“I have nightmares too,” Ford mutters, because he can’t help it.
Stan gives a very loud, obviously fake snore, and Ford pulls open his journal and gives up.
Stan does manage to fall asleep again, after a while, and the nightmares thankfully don’t make a recurrence.
Ford hadn’t thought that after forty years apart he would have anything in common with his brother anymore. He wouldn’t have picked nightmares, if he had a choice.
Or food insecurity, for that matter.
In the end, Ford decides an all nighter is more appropriate. There’s too high a chance that if he shuts his eyes right now, he’ll have a nightmare of his own. Bill would come to pay a visit, if nothing else. He wouldn’t miss out on a chance to show up and mock Ford for something like this. Ford can’t be sure that Stan will pay him the same courtesy of waking him up, and Ford isn’t ready to be vulnerable either.
So instead, he finishes the plans for the security system override, turns to a new page, and sketches a drawing of what Stan probably looked like, fallen asleep at a different desk.
Purely to pass the time, of course.
…
Stan sleeps well into the morning, which Ford definitely doesn’t mind. He gets one radio communication from Dipper, that it’s 7 in the morning and they have five hours left on the security system, and also that Soos is going to run the shack today.
That last part wakes Stan up.
“Absolutely not,” he says, before he’s even finished blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “Tell him we’re opening late.”
“He can do it, Grunkle Stan!” comes Mabel’s voice. “Besides, Dipper’s done a tour before, he can’t do worse than that!”
“Hey!”
“That is true…”
“Hey!”
“Oh, alright. But you watch him, pumpkin. You’ve got experience with bossing people around.”
“You got it! Over and out!”
“Hey, I get to say—”
The radio cuts off.
Ford chuckles a little. “So, do you think the place will still be standing when we get back?”
“Eh, I give it a 70/30 chance. Apparently they did knock a new hole in the wall last time I let Mabel run things, but it was fixed by the time I got home.”
“You— I’m sorry?”
“Mabel and I made a bet.”
“Of course you did,” Ford sighs, though if the damage is already fixed he supposes he can’t be
that
upset.
Stan stands and stretches, with a couple pops in his back that sound rather painful.
“You’re up,” he says, jerking his thumb at the chair as he starts to walk around the room.
Ford gives a wave of thanks and walks over to sit down in the chair. It definitely feels nice to sit on something cushioned instead of the cold floor.
“According to Dipper we have about five hours left, by the way,” Ford says. Stan gives a grunt of acknowledgement.
Ford sets his journal open to the page where he drew the plans for the override, and spends the last five hours comparing his notes to the actual control console. Stan takes an hour or so to wake up, then spends the time balancing the much less breakable bean cans in different ways.
The fact that they have less time to wait than they did yesterday certainly helps the mood of the room, but even so, by the time Dipper radios to alert them they only have an hour left, Ford can tell they’re both itching to get out of there. Ford does his best to keep track of how much time passes in the last hour, since he doesn’t want to bother Dipper every couple minutes for an update, but the closer it gets to the time the system will shut off, the more Ford wants
out
of there.
“Gonna go home and make some food,” Stan mutters to himself at one point. “And gonna have to thank Soos for watching the kids for so long. Maybe I’ll just let him run the shack for the rest of the day, he would take that as thanks.”
“You’d just spend the day napping,” Ford says, and winces. He’d actually been aiming more for teasing, but there’s far too much flatness to his tone for it to count.
Sure enough, Stan snaps back, “Yeah, and maybe I’ve earned it, huh? I’ve had to put up with your ugly mug for the last 24 hours.”
“We have the same face,” Ford groans, looking up at the ceiling.
“Your point being?”
Ford grumbles and turns back to his journal, though he is most certainly out of anything interesting he could find it there.
And then, to his great relief, there’s the sound of loud clanking, and both he and Stan turn in desperate hope to see the tiles to the other room sliding back, leaving their exit from the bunker clear.
“Finally,” Stan groans, moving immediately towards the room.
“Stop,” Ford snaps, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him back.
“Don’t
step on the tiles.”
Stan shoots him a dirty look. “I know that, Poindexter,” he snaps. “I came down here in the first place, didn’t I?”
Ford huffs, and pulls Stan back so he can slip out past him first. He trusts himself more when it comes to avoid tripping, and he’s not going to get stuck down here again.
He hears Stan’s irritated grumbling behind him, but Ford just ignores it to turn on the radio and tell Dipper they’re on their way out.
“Awesome!” Dipper calls. “I mean, uh, that’s good, Great Uncle Ford. We’ll see you in just a bit!”
“See you soon, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford!” Mabel calls, sounding thrilled at the prospect.
“See you soon,” Ford agrees, with a fond smile, though neither Mabel or Dipper could see it.
“Oh, and you don’t need to worry about food or anything, Soos made you lunch!” Mabel adds on as an afterthought.
“Yeah, alright,” Stan calls as they both head out of the security room and towards the front room, and head for the staircase.
“You want me to tell him thanks, Grunkle Stan?” Mabel asks.
Ford glances back to see Stan’s obvious distaste at the idea, but he responds, “Sure, pumpkin,” in a tone of voice that doesn’t let any of that through. “But all of you prepare yourselves, ya hear? I’ve got a whole day of annoying you knuckleheads to make up for.”
Mabel’s delighted giggles and Dipper’s exhausted groan both come through the radio.
“Roger that! Over and out!” Mabel calls.
“I get to say that! Hey, give me back the—” the radio cuts out.
Stan chuckles with a fond roll of his eyes. Ford looks at him for another moment, then pulls his gaze away so Stan doesn’t think he’s staring. Still, as they both start up the steps, it occurs to him that he might actually still have one more thing in common with his brother.
This one, he can’t say he minds that much.