#oh god this hurt to write
Stancest:1.1k
Description: Stan gets really drunk for the first time and thinks about Ford. Based on the AU that you see color for the first time when you meet your soulmate, but altered: you experience color over time as you learn to love.
Warnings: angst, incest, depressing 60s songs, alcohol, drinking, Stan is hurt and I’m sorry
(Companion piece: Hello Green)
The first color Stan saw was blue.
It was a cold autumn night in Glass Shard, the hash ocean winds whipping the dead leaves into the air and sending mist-laden, humid air throughout the small Jersey town. He had exactly twelve dollars and fifty-nine cents to his name as he trudged into the seven-eleven just past midnight to pick up a 12 pack of the cheapest. He left two dollars and fifty cents poorer, chased out the door by the stinging remarks of the night clerk. The moment he got back to the El Diablo he fires it up, ignoring the bitter cold in his bones as he cranked the engine and began to drive.
He cracks the first can and downs it before he gets back to the beach he’s been crashing on less than 5 miles away. He throws the old car into park and cuts the headlights, ignoring the blaring ‘empty’ light on the dash; he’d run her for five more minutes to warm up and shut her down for the night. He figured he’d have just enough to get back to that same damn seven-eleven in the morning.
He wouldn’t.
He cracks the second can and turns on the radio.
“Oh yeah, I’ll tell you somethin’, I think you’ll understand~”
He chugs the rest of the second beer and starts in on the third.
“When I’ll, say that something, I wanna hold your hand~”
He’s halfway done with the pack by the time the Beatles finally fade out.
“What a dream I had, pressed in organdy~”
He’s chugging through them and gets through two more before he breaks and his eyes begin to water.
“When I awoke and found you warm and near~”
He doesn’t think about Ford’s warm body, so soft and comforting in the morning light.
“I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears~”
Or about how beautiful he looked as they laughed and wrestled and kissed as the sun crept through their window and fell on Ford like an angel straight out of heaven.
“Oh, I love you girl. Oh, I lo-”
Stan frowned and pressed the power button for the radio. He tapped it lightly on the side (It did this sometimes, he had found just the right angle to hit so it would pop back on). Nothing happened. It slowly registered in his drunken mind that cold air was beginning to seep in around his ankles through the poorly insulated doors.
So he sat back. And he chugged his beer. And pulled his only other coat from the back seat and slipped it on, telling himself it would help.
He kept drinking.
It wasn’t until the last can that he noticed it. Just a flash of difference as he raised the can to his lips.
The label on the can was coloured.
It was a color of depth; somehow it seemed colder than the can itself. It was bright yet dark at the same time, and he found himself pulling the can closer to his face. He blinked, hard, trying to rid the sight before him and return his world to the simple, monotonous grey-scale that he knew.
The color was still there.
He chugged the can.
He finished them all, tossing the last crumpled can onto the heap in the floor of the passengers seat and tumbled out of the car to take a piss. He walked past the sand dunes and unzipped, trying to keep most of his mess off of his clothes. He partially succeeded. He fixed himself up as best he could and went to turn around, but paused. His jeans were coloured. Blue. Jeans were blue. Pabst Blue Ribbon was blue. And so was- He looked up and immediately turned away and retched.
When he was done, he spat and wiped his mouth, walking down toward the icy waterline and sat in the dry sand just above the tide line.
The ocean was blue. The horizon was dark, almost blackish in shade, slowly giving way to the lighter, softer blues where the moonlight reflected off of the water. He sat and watched the pale waves roll onto the grey beach, feeling as if every crest and break drove daggers into his heart.
The night sky was also blue. It was both a darker and lighter color than the ocean; the now-stark contrast of the stars revealing the true vastness of the sky. No wonder Ford was so obsessed with space.
Ford.
His gut seized and he nearly vomited again, but was able to hold it down, instead closing his eyes and laid back, forcing himself to think about literally anything else.
Don’t think about his smile, and the way it lit up his face so big and was so contagious Stan always felt himself grinning in return. Stan wondered if Ford had blue eyes.
Don’t think about those stolen nights in the El Diablo, the ones where the petting was more than heavy and the windows fogged up so bad they had to sit and giggle for several minutes after while the defrost chased away the evidence of their lovemaking. Stan glanced back at the El Diablo. It was not blue.
Don’t think about the Stan O’ War, and the first time Ford said those three little words, whispered like a precious secret against his skin, hidden from the shore by the taunt fabric of the sail.
The ocean was blue.
Maybe Ford could have seen it.
Maybe not.
Stan opened his eyes and stared at the midnight sky, finally allowing his tears to fall. Leave it to him to finally see, to have his ‘colour moment’, and it not be with him. No, instead it had to be with a shitty 12 pack of cheap beer on a broken down beach.
Everything about this was fucked up. The fact that he hadn’t seen color with Ford: fucked up. The fact that he still allowed himself to fall in love with him, his own brother!, without seeing color with him: fucked up. The fact that he was still hurt by the bastard’s actions even now, months later: fucked up.
But more than that, than all of that was the color blue.
That blue had to be the color of the label of this godforsaken beer. And the color of his jeans and the ocean. And that the color meant that Stan, somehow, some way, intrinsically loved beer more than he ever did Ford. That he got to experience something new and exciting and life changing not because he cared so much for a person, but for a thing.
He found his colour from getting drunk for the first time. Not from his first kiss, not from his first ‘I love you’, not from his first time having sex. But from fucking beer.
He passed out on the beach that night, and the last thought that passed through his mind was his sheer, unabashed hatred of the damn color blue.
