'Please Come,' the letter said.

The immediate feeling was something hopeful, but more than that – worried. Stan pushed down the feeling with an embittered thought.

Guy lives up in some fancy house with his research money, and after what? 13 years? He FINALLY has something to say to Stan and he only spares him two words. Two words that, he realizes, is just some plea just asking him to come to wherever he's at. Like Stan is just going to drop everything he's got going on because he spent five minutes to drop him a post card. Psh, whatever! Granted… he doesn't have anything actively going on here and now besides laying low, but that wasn't the point!

The point was you don't just send someone two words and expect them to come to your place, no explanation, nothing. Just, please come.

Stan scoffed, setting the letter onto the nightstand of the hotel room before resolutely sitting right back at the end of the bed again. There was some gnawing instinct to pack everything and head off, but Stan just shoved it to the back of his mind, focusing back on the game show currently on TV.

He keeps ignoring the post card for another 3 days, letting it gather dust on the nightstand, untouched. That's when he picks it up and looks at it again though. The lettering wasn't exactly neat… it looked pretty rushed if anything… Like the nerd could barely stop to even just write out the simple pl- the simple request.

What does he owe him though? If Ford really needed help then… come on, he wouldn't ask Stan of all people. Why would he ask Stan? After a decade and going through college, he had more resources than an estranged twin he refused to even send a word to before.

Stan holds up for a few more days, he's got this hotel for the week after all. However, a thought finally hits him. How desperate would Ford have to be to contact him of all people?

He packs what he cares to bring and gets on the highway to Oregon, using the cash that was owed to the hotel for gas money.

Ice and snow slicks up the roads once he gets far enough north making his attention split between paying attention to the road and pushing back worried thoughts. If it was that urgent Ford would have called him. There's no way he was expecting him to leave the second he got the letter. It'd probably take most people a couple days to just up and leave on some road trip. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been too time important.

Still, Stan is anxious as he drives into the woods – tired from the drive he barely took breaks from. He spots something when he's about to park the car. It's several yards away from the actual shack, but a barely snowed over form makes him pull his car to a quick stop and turn it off, hopping out of the car.

Even through the flurry of snow he can see snow-dusted brown hair and Stan sprints, leaving his car door open. "Ford?!"

He messily slides to a stop near the body near Ford. It's Ford and he's just barely shifting, an unmistakably six-fingered hand near his head, straining very slightly. There's heavy impressions in the snow by him, like he'd fallen twenty feet back and had just- started crawling across the ground. There's a couple of items back there too, but Stan spends no time even bother registering what they are right now. He's already pulling Ford up by his arm, trying to pick him up.

"Ford!" He turns his head just slightly towards him, and he mumbles something, but it's too shaky for Stan to make it out. His whole body is giving trembles every few seconds, which is more worrisome than if he'd just been shivering the whole time. "Okay- okay, I'm getting you inside." He tells him, his own voice shaking a bit.

Stan roughly starts to pull Ford along, his feet dragging on the snowy ground, only weakly cycling – he should probably just pick him up entirely, but Stan doesn't dare to waste a second to even see if Ford can walk.

It still takes far too long in his mind for them to reach the porch – and Stan is repeatedly muttering curses and half assurances under his breath the whole time.

He hefts Ford over to one arm and tries the door which is locked. "Damnit!" He curses, and tries to shove against the door to no avail, of course.

Ford is hazily looking over at the shack, and his breath is coming out shallow and god damn it Stan hopes like hell the key is in one of the pockets on him because the alternative is going back to his car to grab the crowbar from the back and breaking in that window.

"YES!" Stan pulls out a key- "Oh, fucking of course." It's a ring of a few keys which means more time to find the RIGHT key. He shoves one key in, trying it, before the next one – fumbling to use it with one hand. Quickly enough though, he finally has the door and he's carrying Ford inside to a house with messes pressed against the walls.

The house – is nearly as cold as the outside which just makes the situation worse because how is he going to get Ford warm?

He stops when he sees a room with an unlit fireplace and a chair – it's no couch, but it's the best thing he's found so far. Stan sets Ford into the chair. "Stay here," he says before he's flat out running back through the house.

He has to run up to the damn second floor to actually find a bedroom. There's a mirror partially covered, a ton of junk just piled on top of the bed itself, and a thin layer of dust on everything in the room.

Grabbing the edge of the blankets he holds tight and pulls it off, everything loudly clattering to the wooden floor. Thankfully there's a few blankets and at least one of them is a heavy duvet.

Stan barely stops when he's jogging on his way back as he notices the thermostat on the wall – it's switched off. "Seriously?!" He flicks the switch for the air and turns the dial to the highest temperature, hearing a shudder of the vents turning on in the walls.

When he reaches the room again, Ford is, thankfully, still in the chair and he notices for a brief second how his fingers are barely flexing the slightest bit. "Okay, okay," he says setting the blankets down, "clothes and shoes. They're all drenched."

Ford is responsive, but it's so delayed. At the very least though, Ford nods slightly and he moves as much as it seems he's able in order to help.

Stan is tossing aside the ice-encrusted coat and boots, but he pauses briefly after he's chucked the shirt because even despite the red of Ford's skin he can see various wounds across much of it – some bandaged, others seeming only recently 'healed' or even just scabbed over. He's got his own scars, but the worrisome thing is how NEW every one of these looks.

He continues. "When you're not dying you are telling me what the Hell is going on." Stan says, continuing, tossing boots and more into the wet pile before he's quickly wrapping Ford in layers of blankets, cocooning him in. Stan's own hands are shaking, making it difficult.

He's tucking the third blanket around his brother when he says something, voice slurring.

"What? What is it?" Stan looks back up at Ford's face. There's a concentrated effort along with a desperate urgency.

He takes a few normal sized breaths, which sounds like it's taking him most of his effort. Then he tries again. "D-Door. Lock the… door."

Stan feels a creep of cold over his skin. He wants to ask a million questions about what the hell is going on and who is he in trouble with, but Ford can barely talk as is. "I got it." He tells him, finishing tucking the blanket in before he does walk off. He goes to shut the door which he hadn't even bothered closing before, glancing out into the snowy landscape for someone as he does. There's nobody. That doesn't mean there won't be someone later though.

He locks the door… and sees the several other locks adorning the door as well. All of which he uses too.

Back in the room, there's thankfully wood already in the fireplace and some fire starters nearby. Stan gets a fire started, then pushes the chair Ford is in close to it.

Finally, Stan sits against the wall beside the fireplace, rubbing his hands together before putting them up against his forehead. He glances over and over at Ford who seems to be on the bare edge of consciousness – and Stan can't relax. He can't.

If he had waited another day Ford would be dead. Frozen to death because for some reason his body couldn't make it just half a minute longer to reach the door. He doesn't know what's going on and Ford almost died. Ford could still die.

Stan's not cold, but he's shaking so bad that it's past pathetic now.

AUTHORS NOTE:

This STARTED as a one shot, but I wound up writing more for it and *checks* yeah, I got 6k for the google doc of this.

Don't by any means expect a long fic though! Enjoy the paranoid and mullet sons!