@guesso submitted:
Ford and fidds working on some kind of complicated set of problems for some new project they’re working on together. They have chalkboards absolutely filled with different attempts at the problem, theories and other proofs scattered over desks and on the floors. Everything is an absolute warzone of math and hypotheses, spilled ink, eyebags, stale coffee. They’ve cracked open old textbooks from college, ones they both swore they’d never open again (it was a mistake to take that one class on top of everything else, even though they’d never admit that to anyone other than each other). Stan comes through about a week into this madness, just hanging out in his pjs, slippers crunching the loose sheets of failed mathematics on the carpet. He stares at one chalkboard in particular, one that fidds and ford have both kind of cast off - their closest attempt, but nothing else is working to get them any closer, so they abandoned that route.
Stan picks up one of the textbooks that he remembers spending a lot of time with. Some of the pages are still stained and dog-eared, as he left them. He nods as he reads it over, then picks up a piece of chalk. He clears part of the board, despite angry and frantic protests from both of the worn- out nerds. He re-does the math, and adds more to it.
Fidds and ford are awestruck. Stanley puts down the chalk, and grabs a piece of paper that hadn’t already been completely covered in frantic chicken scratch. He copies the problem down, then does it again, checking to see whether he had made a fool of himself or if he’d really done it.
“There. You two gonna get rid of this mess now, or what?” he’s gruff, and avoiding eye contact with either of them. “I wanna get back to watchin my shows” He grabs his mug of coffee and plops down.
“Stanley, how did you do that? This is incredible, you just solved something Fiddleford and I have been working on for years!”
“‘S nothin. I just remembered somethin some turtleneck nerd guy had said in one of your other books. Figured if that was the case there, maybe the opposite was right here.”
“Do you mean … ?” Stanford quickly digs through old notebooks and even older textbooks (including ones which he might have ‘accidentally forgotten’ to give back to the archives from BU) “Incredible… Sweet Moses, Stan, you just made a breakthrough! You have to come with us to the conference! You have to present on this with us!”
Sputtering through hot coffee and nerd babble, he puts his head in his hands. He just wanted to watch tv, dammit.
