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Dipper and Mabel ran ahead, Mabel holding Waddles in the Huggy Wuvvy Tummy Bundle while yelling something or other about making him a new sweater. Dipper followed behind closely, faintly Stan could hear the kid muttering about the size of the different dinosaurs.
“You were, like, so sick in there Mr. Pines!” Soos commented from beside him.
“Hey, don’t I know it!” Stan smirked, jabbing his thumb into his own chest, “You know there was a reason I was the best boxer in Jersey for a while there!”
A shot of pain zapped through his hand at that, rushing from where he had tried to ball up his fingers and up his arm. Ok, maybe the lack of fighting for 30 years was going to catch up with him sooner than he thought. He tensed, quickly letting his hand fall to his side again.
“You alright, Mr. Pines?”
“Yeah, yeah, old man bones and whatever, shouldn’t you be getting home soon?” he definitely didn’t snap that last part, it was just… harder to talk when he was clenching his teeth.
“Haha, true! Don’t want abuela to worry, see you dudes later.” Soos waved and turned back towards his truck. Leaving stan alone to figure out how he’d fucked up his body this time.
He’d been through this more times than he could count honestly, between boxing most days of his teen years, using the walls of his house as a stress relief, and having to protect himself for over a decade hand injuries were not new.
But damn if they didn’t hurt like a bitch.
Lifting up his wrist it became pretty clear what had happened, his knuckles were bruised, but the pinky especially so. His whole wrist hurt, he could feel that zapping pain again going up from the pinky and wrist. He was sure there was a wrist brace somewhere in the shack, god knows he’d used it more than once after spraining his wrist from hitting something down in the basement. Honestly, it was a miracle he hadn’t done permanent damage with the amount of frustration he’d taken out on those metal walls.
He sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he’d just have to deal with a wrist brace for a week or two as he followed after the twins.
“Grunkle Stan?” Mabel called from up ahead, “What’s taking so long?”
Holding his wrist to keep from aggravating it further, he made his way to the front porch where the kids stood waiting for him.
“Nothin’, Pumpkin,” He threw the keys to Dipper, “just old man things.”
He meandered into the shack after the kids, Dipper immediately ran upstairs with a yell that he had to go write something down. Mabel wasn’t far behind him.
He watched the kids disappear up the stairs,making sure he heard the door slam shut before letting out a breath and going into his bedroom. The spare first aid kit sat where he'd squirreled it away in his drawer, a habit worn into him after years of patching him and his brother up after a fight with Crampelter or with their Pa. Stan grabbed it, throwing it onto the bed before sitting down himself.
It probably wasn’t anything a bandage and some ice wouldn’t help, but he hesitated. It was hard to bring himself to waste the bandages on something so…trivial. They had been something he had used countless times this summer. Any type of nonlethal injury the twins could get they had, and at this point Stan was just waiting for the inevitable call for him to come help patch them up after the adventure they had.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he had never really gotten good at fixing himself after he fucked up his wrists. He never had to, on the street he was too aware to let a stupid mistake like that set him back on much needed funds. Before that…
Before that he’d always had help.
His Ma would tsk and oy as long as it took to patch him up, working gently, carefully, with hands that had grown practiced from years of trial and error. Quietly, quieter than he ever heard his mom during the day she would talk to him. Under the fluorescent lights, she would hold his hand and tell him to be careful, begging him to just keep himself safe for her.
You know I hate to see you hurting like this, Lee.
He knew, and as he slowly, carefully, cut out a small portion of the bandages for himself, he smiled humorlessly. He could (and would) get more on his next grocery run because god only knows what the hell those kids would get into next.
God, did he get what his mom meant. Some days he just wanted to nail the damn door shut and never let them out of his sight and-
“Grunkle Stan?” A voice called out from the attic, “Can you get the first-aid kit? Dipper’s leg got all scratched up!”
“Tell that kid to learn to bandage his own leg!” He called back, giving his wrist a testing flex as he stood.
Yeah, he’d definitely need to get more bandages soon.