#high six

Post-Weirdmageddon Stanley remembering “High Six?” for the first time after getting his mind wiped. They’re on the Stan-O-War II. It’s been a tumultuous day. Stan had some memory problems in the morning. The boat got attacked by a creature and they started heading toward shore to make repairs. It’s putting them behind schedule to reach the arctic and discover the source of the anomalies. 

Ford’s worried, stressed, and upset. He’s anxious at not being able to find a pattern for Stan’s memory lapses. He wishes it were something he could solve. He’s worried the repairs will be tricky, or more than they can handle themselves at port. He’s not gotten a lot of sleep lately and just generally has those deep shadows under his eyes.

Also, the anomaly that attacked caused him to sprain his ankle. He’s down a bit in mobility and he hates feeling weakened for any reason. Especially when Stan’s depending on him.

Stan cooks dinner and brings it to Ford’s bunk where he’s resting his leg, at Stan’s insistence. They sit on Ford’s bunk, eating in relative silence. Ford’s chewing on his pencil more than the food Stan brought.

Stan breaks the silence first.

“Hey, Ford, don’t worry so much. It’ll be okay.”

Ford wanted to laugh with bitterness. He tried to give a small smile instead, but he could feel how fake it felt on his face. Stan read people for a living. He could see his brother wasn’t buying it either.

“Chin up buddy, we’ll leave the hard times behind as soon as we get everything fixed up.” Stan looked around for a second, then down at Ford’s hands, and back up. He gasped and grinned, raising one hand to hover near Ford’s hand.

“High six?”

Ford’s face transformed. It went from anxious to awestruck to ecstatic. He brought his hand up to clap against Stan’s, a soft high six! escaping him. The brothers grinned at each other for a moment before settling back down to finish supper.

Stanuary 2018 - Week Three: Youth

The handprint poster in Stan and Ford’s childhood room had to have a sweet story behind it. Maybe the “high six” was even invented on the day that they made it, when Stan held up his messy green hand to mix paint colors with his twin. 

I had a lot of solid angst in mind for this prompt, but decided to go with some tiny Stan fluff instead. Might return to the prompt later to approach Stan’s stolen youth, but we’ll see.

Still struggling to lock down a drawing style that I like, but I definitely feel like I’m getting better at Illustrator, which is nice. Please forgive sloppy shading, I got lazy.

Ford finally gets that she was after a high-five, and whether by being sensitive to his polydactyly, or if that was just the lingo of today, she managed to avoid a sore point for him. Ford smiled and raised both of his hands. “Double up top?” he asked her, and she squealed, launching herself in the air to double high-five him. The both laughed, Ford rubbing one of his hands and telling Mabel she didn’t know her own strength.