Do I need a reason to help out a friend?

“Stanford! Catch!” Stan hurls a rope across the deck in the direction Ford is skidding in. Stanford catches it at the nick of time, regaining his footing by wrapping the rope around his hands and pulling it taut.

Stan heaves in the opposite end, feet struggling to keep their footing. The rope cuts into his palms painfully and he sputters against an onslaught of icy sea water making intimate acquaintance with his face.

But Stanford is secured, and so is their antennae, now holding the majority of the weight keeping the two of them aboard.

Maybe.

Honestly, he doesn’t hold much hope for the thing, it was the first thing to buckle the second the waves grew bigger than two feet.

Speaking of, Stanley braces himself as the ship tanks into a valley again, a slow, straining creaking echoing beneath the roar of the sea.

Moses if this keeps up, they’re going to need a plan B.

Plan A: Secure the innards of the cargo, the kitchen, and take down the sails.

Plan B: Forget all of that and get off the damn deck.

Keeping the boat perpendicular with the storm worked for them the first half hour, until the winds began to twist oddly, and the currents seemed to gauge deeper.

The Stan’o’war rattles violently.

They lost a chunk of their scanner equipment and dismasted, and now he wishes they would’ve just let it be lost and hadn’t stepped foot outside. There’s nothing but pitch black nothing and bone chilling water out here. He’s not sure what they were expecting to find.

Stanford yells something at him through the roaring and howling, but he’s got the wind against him and even if Stan strains, it’s near impossible to hear a damn thing Ford is shouting.

“What?!” He shouts back. Stanford shouts it again, still nothing.

Stanley grunts, he dares take a step, then another, in Ford’s direction. Following the rope carefully. His footing is unsure, and he stops dead in his tracks the second he feels himself start to slip but he’s closer.

“You’ve gotta repeat that, six!”

“I said–” Ford’s voice sputters for a second as he’s caught crashing into a wall of water. The rope he’s clutching onto tightens at the force and Stan winces at the added weight. He throws his whole body weight into reeling it backwards and gasps for the breath that’s being knocked out of him.

“I said- One of us needs to get inside, right our course and fall off to the south-east!”

“South?!” Stan shouts. “Are you crazy?!”

“We need to get out of this storm, Stanley! We’re going to capsize at this rate! Didn’t you say the wind came from south-west?! We’ll sail near the wind!”

They’ve been keeping their heading north-east, aiming for Svalbard, the northernmost part of Norway. But with this weather, they might as well cut it straight east and take a chance at hitting near the Norwegian coast somewhere.

It’ll be a rough rumble, the waves are at least 6 feet and the old girl is already tired as is. But it should be a straight cut to the coast, and if he remembers right, they shouldn’t be more than a slingshot from land.

Stanley makes a decision. He steps gradually forwards, focuses on one foot over the next, until he’s close enough to grip onto the rope and whirl it around his back.

“I’ll hold ‘er down!” He yells. “But we head to the coast, we’re not going all the way back to Scotland!”

Stanford squints at him in confusion for a moment before lighting up and giving him a nod in acknowledgement and setting off. Stanley grins at him.

It’s a careful affair to get the rope securely around his back. The weight is uneven, the antenna is holding on by a thread and a sudden lurch of the hull has Stanford stumbling forwards, knocking himself directly onto the railing for the bridge stairs. Stanley throws his head to watch him start climbing upwards, up towards the bridge.

He handles it pretty well, Stan has to admit. Stanford has grown a lotta guts over the years. He’s impressed and even a smidge bit proud, as he hauls the rope and winds it around his back properly to keep himself and the equipment as steady as possible.

Stanford is thrown through the door to the bridge and bodily slams it shut behind him with a breath. The wind whistles around the stan’o’war like it has something to say. The stab’o’war whines through the storm, and with each plunge the lights flicker and the window panes give a shuddering rattle.

Stanford makes it across the room to the controls. Fingers painfully prickley, face equally as uncomfortably frozen.

Nothing he hasn’t dealt with before, but an unpleasant experience to have to live through again regardless. He really hates being cold. Nothing that quite makes his bones ache just as much.

He checks their altitude.

Then has to do a double take at how far off course they’ve drifted in such a short amount of time. Their starboard has drifted from North, over to a stark western direction. Turning her east is going to be a battle.

Stanford clutches onto the rudder and prepares himself. He takes a deep, steadying breath, checks Stanley on the deck holding his ground with the antennae. His hat has blown off to somewhere, his hair is plastered to his head. Stanford thinks he’ll have to ask Mabel nicely if she’ll knit him a new one -

Stanford unchecks the safety lock, the rudder jolts against his grip and he’s nearly thrown sideways from the pressure. He catches it, puts the force into his legs, and begins to heave the rudder in the opposite direction.

Stanley is practically an icicle at this point.

He’s bitten his teeth together, jaw working against itself to stay focused.

Sleet has rolled in over the ship, the ship’s headlight catching every plummet and drop of the stuff as it makes the deck practically unchartable. His eyes flicker to the bridgehouse. Stanford’s eyes are squeezed shut in effort, his teeth bared, as he throws his whole body into getting the ship forced sideways.

The wind pushes him sideways a few steps the moment the bridgehouse has shifted away from sheltering him from the worst of it, but it’s enough for the antenna to slip, and tweak itself into an even more precarious position than before.

Stanley watches it with frustration. It’s just as useless as the totem antenna back in Gravity Falls. The amount of times he had to fix that up and right it, just for it to break the week after.

Piece of junk.

Nothing has been going right for the past two days. Sputtering engine, chewed wiring and now a storm forming against all odds of it forming otherwise. Stanford would know, he checks everything at least three times daily. If there was uptick to a polar low like this one, he’d have definitely known about it. And if he hadn’t known about it, then the radio would’ve known about it. There’s nothing that indicated a storm of this magnitude would’ve rolled over.

Unpredictable seafaring is called unpredictable for a reason, alright.

Stanley starts to search the deck for passage back to the bridge.

The antenna is beyond saving now. It’s done for.

The rope he’s got a hold of, despite the antennae hanging on the way it is, still holds him in place, so if he can just use that rope and move back along it, then it should be fine. He begins to slowly move backwards. Looking forward to the hot cup of joe he’s going to relish the second this whole mess blows over.

He’s just near the door, one hand letting go of the rope to reach for the railing when a deep, guttural rumble rolls over the ship from the sea.

Stan turns towards it in surprise.

“Stanley!” Ford’s voice comes through the speakers in alarm. It’s otherworldly, the way the void seems to take shape as a beast of it’s own.

“Stanley, inside! Now!”

From the black waves, Stanley glimpses something dead-ahead. He widens his eyes, balking at the scale of the single, black mass of a hand emerging from the waves.

“Don’t gotta tell me twice!”

Stanley lets go of the rope, uncaring, and starts barrelling up the steps at the fastest possible pace he can muster, without risking becoming fish food.

Or food for whatever the hell is trying to reach out for them from the depths.