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"You did what you knucklehead?!"
Filbrick's firm grip soon found its way to the front of Stan's shirt as Ford stood, the truth before his eyes slowly registering. He had started this. Filbrick pulled Stan off his feet, hoisting him into the air, clearly obstructing his airways.
"Pa stop--"
Ford lunged forward to try to untangle his brother and father, to no use. Filbrick shrugged him off with ease, and the scrawnier teenager fell to the ground. From his new, more vulnerable position, Ford quickly crawled backward to gain some distance from his enraged father.
With all the thumping and yelling, they had obviously awoken their mother, who came to investigate the horrific scene unfolding in her lounge room. Her input was unneeded though, as Filbrick charged toward their front door, with Stan in tow. At least with the new movement, his brother seemed to get a few gulps of oxygen into his lungs, face turning a little less blue.
"You ignoramus. Your brother was gonna be our ticket out of this dump! All you ever do is lie and cheat and ride on your brother's coattails. Well, this time, you cost our family potential millions! And until you make us a fortune, you're not welcome in this household!"
With those words, Ford finally realised the seriousness of the situation. His brother was being kicked out. He looked over to his mother, who this was still dawning on. Suddenly, with a surge of energy, Ford raced upstairs, throwing anything he could into the first bag he got his hands on. The crummy red gym bag would have to do as he stuffed it to its brim with clothes and whatever he deemed essential. He also grabbed Stan's car keys.
All the anxiety and adrenaline pumping through his veins kept him moving, until his gaze landed on a notebook and pen. With the desperation of a starving man moving for a hot meal, Ford fumbled to scribble down a few words. He could hear his father slam the door, meaning his time was up. Ford stuffed the note into the crappy duffle bag and went to the bedroom window. Below, he saw Stan scrabbling away from the curb, attempting to stand and recover from his lack of oxygen.
"STAN!"
He waved his arms to get his disoriented brother's attention.
Once he saw Stan's hazy eyes lock onto him, he threw the bag down with all the grace of a flailing bird. His brother took it, with an appreciative glance, before running to unlock his car and drive the wrong way out of a one-way road.
As Ford watched Stan's car slowly get harder to see, he sighed, slumping against the closest wall of his bedroom.
* * *
Stan was torn. He was freshly kicked out of home and disowned until he brought back a fortune. He had nothing to his name. Well, except for that scruffy duffle bag his brother threw at him after his father slammed the door.
With a sigh, he thought he might as well see what he was left with. Turning to look at the shoddy gym bag he had haphazardly thrown into the back seat of his equally shoddy car, Stan reached a hand backward to retrieve it. Once he felt the stitched fabric Stan pulled it into the front seat and onto his lap. As he tore the zipper open, Stan peered inside. Instead of what he assumed was just a bag of clothes, there was a note placed at the top in distinctly Ford's shaky handwriting.
'I'm Sorry. Wait for me at the Stan'O'War, please'
* * *
It was getting late. Surely late enough that his cinderblock of a father was asleep.
Ford carefully pulled off his blankets, very conscious of each impossibly loud crinkle it might let out if he moved too quickly. Ford had known how thin his childhood home's walls were from a very young age.
Once he was finally free of his bed, Ford tiptoed around every creaky floorboard his memory could supply him. He had started to form a plan of escape. Obviously, the front door was out of the question, their hinges were far louder than any blanket's crinkle or corroding floorboard's protest to his weight. So, logically, Ford decided their father's pawnshop fire escape door would be perfect, after all, they had to keep that door perfectly oiled incase of an inspection.
As he continued to make his way through the shady house, Ford spotted the stairs that led downstairs. One wrong step would result in Ford knocking over one of the many fragile porcelain decorational pieces their mother kept on the shelves built into the wall parallel to their stairway.
Finally, he reached the pawnshop. He felt the breath leave his lungs, there was the door. The doubt was starting to get a little clearer in his mind after the imminent anger was out of the way. There, in front of him, was the door. It was right there! So why were his legs freezing up? His thoughts began to get less foggy as his dread formed words.
'I'm the reason Stanley was kicked out. Why would he listen to the note? He would probably be halfway to Pennsylvania by now without a backward glance, and he would probably be better for it. Why would he wait for his backstabbing brother?'
He had to shake the worry from his shoulders. No. He couldn't go back upstairs. What if Stan had listened to his note, and then Ford just, didn't show up? That would be stabbing him in the back even further. Twisting in the knife, if you will.
So, steeling his nerves, Ford crossed the room and rested his hand on the doorknob. Breath in, breath out, and turn.
The cold night air welcomed him as the door swung open to the alley beside their small block. Ford found his feet moving before his brain could catch up with his actions. He closed the door and began to make his way to the beach Stan and him had grown up on. On the way there, his desperate pace soon devolved into a sprint, Ford's adrenaline discarding the ache in his core almost instantly as he saw the Stan'O'War, and a figure beside it.