Archive of Our Own

Stanford Pines is four years old when he falls in love with the sea. He is twenty-nine when it kills him. 

Growing up in New Jersey, in Glass Shard, guaranteed growing up with the ocean. Caryn's boys learned to swim as soon as they'd learned to walk: first Sherman, then the twins, years later. Even the woman herself loved the sea. She would stand with her feet in the shallows for hours, telling her children all the ways the ocean could tell your future, if only you were brave enough to listen. 

None of the Pines took to the sea the way the twins did, though: Stanley, who needed the ocean, and Stanford, who loved it. Free spirits, both of them; inseparable, once. An escape: from expectations, good and bad, from parents and peers and a world that could have never loved them. A place all their own.

It wouldn't last, of course, but at nine years old with their own boat and their own dreams, neither of them knew that. Not even little Stanford, who would spend hours floating on his back, imagining the salt breaching his skin barrier and crystallizing against his bones, changing him into something less human; who woke sometimes in the dead of night and stared out of the window at the ocean, imagining he could hear a voice calling to him from far, far away, had any inkling of what was to come.

The rest of their childhood is well-worn history: best friends, partners in crime. A cold and uncaring world. Devils—those that lurk in caves and those that lurk within. Growing up and apart; a betrayal, a breaking, a closed curtain. A separation greater than the Red Sea.

For Stanley: traveling, trapped outside of any place that might be called home. Lost. Lonely. Drowning himself in bad decision after bad decision. Finding success—only in his dreams, of course. Never meant to be on his own, but forced into solitude, regardless.

For Stanford: college. Chasing his dreams—a paler imitation of them, anyway. Never the real thing. The west coast had spent eighteen years calling for him only to be denied at the last moment. His dreams taste of betrayal, often. Even friendship drifts sour onto his tongue. He pours himself into his studies, graduates top of his class as he was always meant to do. This time, when he lays awake at night and hears the Pacific call his name, he doesn't resist.

Gravity Falls, different in every timeline. In this one, a sleepy seaside town bordered on three sides by forest and one by water. Plagued by a perpetual fog and strange creatures that creep about, scaring lumberjacks and stealing pies. Where every bird cries out at midnight and when the tides change. Where sons old enough to have strange sons of their own gather each weekend and go fishing, pulling up things with pulsing eyes and glowing skin, where less-than-happy campers regale others of chilling laughter heard in the woods. 

Stanford Pines' first love is the ocean. His second is Gravity Falls. He loves it—the creatures in the woods, the sunlight filtered through the trees. The taste of magic in the air, like ozone and burnt sugar. The people, with their strange lives and incomprehensible social norms that he doesn't understand. The storms that come down the valley and shake the walls as if the Earth itself is begging for something back.

He builds his house in the woods—his dreams of the ocean, of voices, only grow stronger after moving but the ocean had always been Stanley's place and it feels like tar in his throat to be there without him. The lumberjacks are hired to help, building the cabin in the center of a circlet of birch trees. They complain about being watched by the spirits in the woods, by the owl-eyed man with thick glasses and strange hands. Stanford says nothing, watching the work as he details their observations in his journal. He tells himself the insults don't hurt. He tells himself the woodland spirits will make an interesting avenue of study. He tells himself that this is a reminder: even here, he must be alone. It is what he's meant for, after all.

And all the while, the ocean sings.

Stanford works. Diligently. Happily, even. Studies the creatures in the woods. Studies the townspeople—one of those gains a harsher reaction than the other. Interviews the gnomes. Puts to use the skills gained in the first-year art class he was forced to take for elective credits in high school. Fills one journal, then another. Visits the fish markets, buys the ones with too-many eyes, with off-color scales. Feels a kinship with them, with their strangeness, even as he cuts them open and studies their insides. Answers the phone, sometimes, when he remembers to: talks to Shermie, to Ma, listens to an all-too-familiar silence. Dates a siren, for a short while, before she leaves because he cannot hear her song. Piles curios (skulls, eyeballs, strange shifting snakeskins found in the woods) inside his house. Cares for an abandoned shapeshifter egg, leaves food out on his porch each night for it to eat.

And when he doesn't work, Stanford dreams: of another Gravity Falls, one with cave paintings and portals and a happier ending. About being young again, floating on his back beneath the stars. About infinity, about a universe where he is finally seen for more than his strange and empty body.

Mostly, he dreams about flying.

He does his best to stay away from the sea, as punishment or repentance or some secret third thing he dare not name. But the Pines twins have always been cursed to love the ocean, and it is not long before his resolve breaks. There is a spot on the cliffs that overlooks the waves. Fifty feet below, rocks like jagged teeth peer out from shallow water. The townspeople call it the Devil's Cliffs for the way any who fall would die. 

Stanford loves it. Loves the way others avoid it. Loves the way the waves lap below, barking like hungry dogs. Loves the vertigo he feels when standing at the edge. He goes there often, with a secret journal just for this. Sketches the sky, the sunrise, the water. Speculates about his research, whether or not the townspeople like him, how he might obtain six-fingered gloves. Sometimes, he whispers these thoughts into the water below, just to feel he has a friend.

Sometimes, he thinks about jumping in.

This is what he's doing on the day it all shifts—drawing, carefully detailing the highlights along the waves and wondering how they would feel against his ankles as he fell. 

"Hello." The voice echoes, tasting like salt and briny breath. It is the shifting of the tides, the rasp of sand on stone. It is feet on a boardwalk and the screaming of gulls and the endless sound of a summer seaside storm. There is nothing beautiful about it, yet Stanford feels the breath knocked from his throat all the same.

He drops his pencil, not even noticing as it rolls off the cliffs and into the sea. The hair on his neck stands up, like a prey animal being watched, like the Earth before lightning strikes, scarring it forever.

"You—" he gasps, voice rasping from salt and disuse. "Where—"

"Stanford Pines," the voice says, speaking over him. It is massive, a crushing pressure, cold front rushing in before a storm, and Ford wonders if he's even being heard at all. "I've been watching you for a very long time."

Ford stands, brushing dirt and other grime off his pants. He wonders if he's meeting God, or hallucinating, or about to be killed. "Watching... me?" He adjusts his glasses. Even now, that ugly streak of insecurity raises its head.

The voice-thing chuckles. "Watching you, Stanford Pines." A pause, then, softer: "I like your drawings of me."

"Of... of you?" He frowns, leafing through his sketchbook. An eyebat here, a gnome there. A few doodles of the hide-behind—all speculative, of course. Mostly, his drawings are of the sunrise, the rocks. Stormclouds brewing. The ocean. He looks up. "Are you—"

"I am. Here, show me what you're working on. I want to see it." Ever the scientist, his thoughts speed past at a thousand miles an hour. The implications that a sentient ocean could have on the Cryptozoological community are—

At the same time, he can't help the chuckle that escapes him. The voice—the ocean—sounds petulant, like a child begging for a toy. He can imagine it making grabby hands at his sketchbook, desperate to take. Carefully, he rips the page out of his sketchbook along the perforated edge, then drops it off the edge of the cliff, watching it drop down, down, down. By the time it hits the surface of the water, the paper is too small to see. Perhaps he should look into getting new glasses.

There's a humming sound as waves crash into the cliffside, and Ford backs away, wary of falling in. The silence stretches on for a moment, then a moment more, and just as Stanford begins to wonder if maybe he's just been hearing voices in his head, if he should finally listen to his college guidance counselor and "seek therapy," the voice returns.

"Wow, look at this! You sure know how to make a guy blush, huh?"

Ford blinks. "Are you a... 'guy?'" He picks at his sleeve, hoping he's not being insensitive. It would be just his luck, really, to scare off an ocean-whatever with his lack of social skills.

But the ocean just laughs, spraying cold salt into his face. The sound is cruel, but Ford thinks—perhaps hopefully, maybe a little naive—that it's not on purpose. "If you want. That's your word, you know. Humans."

Ford hums, thoughtfully, sitting back down. Legs crossed. Trusting, like fingers dangled by the open mouth of a tiger. Like a cigarette hanging limply over spilled kerosene.

"Do you have a preference? I'd hate to be, um, rude. You know, I'm here studying oddities and their cultures, it was my—"

"Major, I know. But "a guy" is fine. Though you can call me anything you want—except late for dinner." The ocean giggles, the crying out of a thousand gulls. "It's a joke, see? Because I don't have a mouth! What about you, Stanford Pines?"

Ford shivers at the feel of his voice translated through the crashing of a thousand waves. "I..." A pause. I see all. He wonders if the ocean knows what he's felt—the ill-fitting weight of his skin crushing him all his life, a body that could never catch up with his mind. Always jealous of the weightlessness of stars. Always jealous of everyone else, born with a social rulebook in their hands. Born with nothing but the knowledge that he hated being this—not that he had any idea what this was.

A wry grin: "You can call me anything you want—except late for dinner."

"HA! You know, I think I'm starting to like you, Stanford."

Ford blushes, tucks his hair behind his ears. If he cared more for appearances he might make a mental note to cut it, soon. So sweet, so naive. This is a version of Stanford Pines who has no idea what he has gotten himself into. "Like me?"

The waves bob about below, like a head nodding. "Of course. You and I are going to do great things together, Stanford Pines. Great things indeed."

And Stanford—desperate to prove himself, desperate to please—laughs wildly, and gives what little remains of his heart to the sea.

He returns the next day, weighed down by journals and quills and hardcover books about sirens and oceanography and ancient, buried gods. The few other townsfolk awake at dawn eye him silently but otherwise pay him no mind, not wanting to interrupt the strange scientist with his wide-eyed, frantic stare. Boyish Dan notes his path towards the Devil's Cliff and wonders if the day will end with the scientist's broken body fished from the water. 

He wouldn't be the first to be driven mad by the fog.

But Stanford has no plans to drown himself, not today. No, he has one thing on his mind: work. Research. Dreams of being the first to discover a hitherto undocumented entity, gaining fame among the scientific community, being taken seriously despite all his freakishness.

He sits down in what he's taken to thinking of as his spot atop the cliffs, spreading his resources out in a semicircle around him. His journal sits in his lap, pen uncapped and hovering just a millimeter off the page. He stays like that for a moment, perfectly still, before realizing he doesn't know how to actually summon the ocean. 

"Ah," he says, embarrassment coloring the tips of his ears, making him look sunburnt despite the fog. "hello?" A pause, then, louder: "HELLO?"

The sound echoes off the cliffs. Waves crash below. Then:

"Stanford Pines." The voice curls around his name as if the ocean itself is smiling at him. "There you are."

"Sorry for the, um, the wait. If you were waiting. Or—for interrupting you, if you were busy. I don't really know what you..." he trails off, awkwardly. Berates himself for presuming that a creature like him would spend its time waiting for a mere human.

"I am everywhere. And I was waiting. I find everything is true, to some degree. But what do you have for me today? More art?"

"Oh!" Stanford says, remembering himself. "No, I had—I had a few questions for you, if that's alright?"

The ocean chuckles, like the sputtering of a speedboat engine. "I suppose. Yes, alright." A pause. "But throw me more of your drawings. They're hard to see from down here."

He'd predicted this, brought his sketchbook down to the cliffs in the hopes of making a trade—art for information. Desperate to gain the ocean's favor, he tears out—carefully, so carefully; even now, he cannot bring himself to destroy his own work—three of the best drawings, ones where the light or the swell of the waves is captured just right, and drops them off the cliffside. 

There is silence for a while, then: 

"Wow, Stanford! Do you draw all oceans this pretty, or am I just your favorite?" The words are teasing, but Ford recognizes the shake beneath the bravado: is this real? Is this how you see me?

"You might be my favorite," Stanford says, teasing back, "if you answer my questions."

"HA! You drive a hard bargain. Alright then, Pines, whatdya got for me?"

 Ford readjusts, pulling his journal back onto his lap. Spins his pen, adjusts his glasses with the same hand, fails to notice the ink left behind on his cheek. "Right! First, um, do you have a name? It feels awfully rude to just call you 'the ocean.'" He's not really expecting an answer—at most, he'll probably get some other variation of you can call me anything you want. He's not expecting— 

"Bill!"

Stanford blinks. "...Bill?"

"Bill! It's so human, don'tcha think? I picked it out myself." He can imagine the ocean—Bill—grinning, despite his facelessness. Below, the waves lap happily against the cliff.

"It's very... unexpected. For something like yourself, I mean."

Bill cackles. "Everything about me is unexpected, kid."

Ford laughs quietly, narrating their conversation for his journal. Documentation is one of the most important parts of the scientific process, after all.

"Right, okay, next... what are you? I mean—I have theories, of course: you could be some sort of Undine, or maybe a Merrow; you could be a siren, of course, or maybe a minor god—"

"Hey, who are you calling 'minor' bud? I am INFINITE. I am the changing of the tides and the lightning in every storm. Within my depths are a thousand things, miraculous and horrible, that humanity has never seen. I am older than you, and older than this Earth, and when your solar system is swallowed whole by its sun I alone will remain."

Ford wonders if he should be afraid. A weaker man would be, he tells himself, but he is not weak.

(A smarter man would turn tail and run, but Stanford Pines has never been a smart man, no matter what he thinks.)

"What could you possibly want with me, then?"

Bill laughs, anger forgotten. When he speaks, his voice is lilting, and Ford can imagine a tongue curling around his teeth. "Maybe I want to eat you."

Ford laughs: unabashed, bright. Like Icarus looking into the sun and seeing nothing but light and warmth, he has no idea the danger he is in. "You can't eat me."

"And why not?"

"You'd miss my drawings," he says, with all the self-assurance of someone who thinks they have all the answers, with all the hidden of anxiety of someone who doesn't believe they deserve to be missed.

"Hmm. I suppose. Alright, then, a truth: I chose you, Stanford Pines, because I can tell that you and I are going to have fun." Fun tastes like the booming of thunder, something long-buried rising from the deep. 

"Why now? And why here? And why—"

"Ah-ah!" A spray of water breaches the top of the cliffs, flicks him on the nose. "That's enough for today, I think. You'd hate to uncover all my secrets so soon, wouldn't you? No, I think you like a good mystery. Something to really sink your teeth into."

Stanford frowns, but relents. "Alright, then." He begins gathering his things, stacking books together, not wanting to overstay his welcome.

"I didn't tell you to leave. Stay, Fordsy. Tell me about your research."

"Fordsy...?" He frowns, shaking his head. One can't expect an ocean to comprehend human social norms, he supposes, even if the pet name does feel oddly intimate. Leaving his books where they are, he cracks open his journal, leafing to the beginning. A thought crosses his mind—a memory, really: balancing books on his lap just like he's doing now, anything from superhero comics to scientific textbooks. Perched, carefully, on the edge of Stanley's bed, reading to him by the light of their desk lamp. His brother's wide, nightmare-wet eyes reflecting back at him in the dark.

Something hot and painful threatens to spill from his mouth. But Ford has gotten good at pushing things down.

"After finishing my studies at Backupsmore, I realized I needed to choose an area of study. Naturally, I chose to study oddities—I've always been attracted to the strange, being strange myself. Through my preliminary research, I discovered Gravity Falls, a hotspot for anomalies."

Bill hums, encouragingly. Ford wonders how much he knows about the surface. Does anything about this make sense, to a thing like Bill? Is Ford simply explaining the obvious?

"I started out studying the gnomes. They're easy enough to catch—you just have to leave out a plate of food next to a snare, and they'll walk right in. They're a bit like wild cats, honestly. We—there were a few back in Jersey. There's actually one lineage that's cursed—something related to names, I'm guessing it was a fey that cursed them, though I have no concrete proof—but they can't communicate, not really, so getting information out of them about the curse is rather difficult. I used to go into the woods to study them, but then they tried to kidnap me so I, ah, tend to avoid their den."

Bill cackles. "The gnomes are idiots. Sometimes they forget they're not supposed to walk on the cliffs and they fall in."

Ford laughs, though a part of him feels guilty for doing so. He wonders if that's what happened to their previous queen. 

"Is that all you do? Spy on people drawing and watch gnomes fall off cliffs?"

There's silence, for a little while; even the gulls quiet. Ford wonders if he was too cruel—he has a tendency for it. Cruelty. Not that it's intentional, usually. He just doesn't know how to be a person in a way that other people will like.

"No." Petulant. Hurt—or maybe Ford's just personifying again. "There's a chess set down here—couple'a idiot sailors dropped it off the side of their boat. It's kinda boring playing by myself, though. And most of the pieces are missing." Bill sounds, in that moment, horrifically young. Horrifically lonely. Stanford wonders what it would be like, to be powerful and endless and endlessly alone. Even at Backupsmore, in Glass Shard, he'd had—someone. Even if their paths diverged, in the end.

"Oh. Do oceans... do oceans know how to play chess?"

"Of course I know how to play chess. Obviously. Mostly. The goal is to have the most horses, right?"

Stanford laughs, delighted, and makes a mental note to bring extra chess pieces next time he visits the cliffs. "Mostly. Sort of. I could teach you, if you wanted."

Beneath the surface, something older than the ocean it is posing as grins. In another timeline, there is another Stanford Pines—distant. Older. In many ways, worse for wear. In many ways, better off. That Stanford Pines understands that when it comes to the devil, there are not many differences between a promise and a Faustian bargain. Both offer your soul—if you're lucky, that is, and Stanford Pines is not a lucky man. When dealing with the unlucky, the devil always takes your heart. All that changes is whether you get something out of it, and promises rarely gain something in return.

Stanford Pines—all Stanford Pineses, across every timeline—love in the same way. Brash. Unafraid, but in a stupid sort of way, like a child who doesn't think they should be afraid of the dark. Like Achilles on his warpath, uncaring of the destruction strewn at his feet. Stanford Pines is the sort of man who would inhale water and call it love.

Fishing happens on Saturday, always. A town tradition—even in winter, everyone gathers with pickaxes and thick gloves, struggling to break through the ice. A holiday in its own right. Stanford's lack of participation is yet another thing to make him an outcast—worse, an oddity—among the townsfolk. Not for lack of interest, of course. With fishing day comes the reeling in of anomalous creatures, with too-many eyes (or not enough) and bodies better suited for life far below the surface. But the ocean has always felt more like Stanley's than his own, and ever since that night seasalt has always tasted like betrayal.

Until Bill, of course. Stanford can't help the grin that tugs at his lips as he waits in line at the Gravity Falls Boat Rental, chess set tucked under one arm. He looks insane, he thinks, properly insane, but can't bring himself to care as much as he might. He hasn't gotten to play chess with someone since—since Fiddleford, really. 

(Hasn't had a friend since Fiddleford, but that feels too sad to admit, even to himself.)

The man working the rental—tall, wall-eyed, out-of-season beanie covering his thinning hair—chews his gum and eyes Ford suspiciously.

"You that scientist?"

"Mm-hm."

"Ya don't often come down here, do ya?" His gum smacks wetly against the inside of his mouth as he speaks.

Ford shifts from foot to foot. "No." 

The man leans forwards. "Y'know, yer a real strange feller. Real... real strange stuff ya got goin' on in that house there." Smack, smack, smack.

Ford wishes his arms weren't full, if only so he could tuck his hands into his pockets. He feels like there's a lance in his throat, pinning him to the spot, stopping him from defending himself. Just as he's debating whether escaping this conversation is worth disappointing Bill, a woman's voice sounds from within the shack.

"Myrtle! Stop bein' nosy and hurry up now!"

The man humphs but turns to the register, taking the cash Ford reluctantly slides across the counter. "Women, am I right? Always naggin'. Gettin' a wife's the worst thing that can happen to a man, I tell ya. Though..." He eyes Ford again, raking his gaze up and down, slowly. Ford shudders under the attention. "dunno if someone like you would know about that."

Stanford's breath catches in his throat, and it is a struggle to end the transgression with nothing more than a curt "good day, sir," as he turns on his heel and stalks away. How dare he, he thinks, untying his boat and climbing in. The thought becomes a mantra set to the metronome of his oars as he rows out. How dare he, how dare he, how dare he. And beneath it, smaller, nearly silent: I didn't do anything wrong.

To his dismay, hot tears threaten to spill from his eyes. He swipes at his face furiously, a thousand things rushing through his mind: Don't let them get to you. Men don't cry. I didn't do anything wrong. Stop being a child.

Water laps into the boat, soaking through his boots and socks, chilling his toes. When Bill speaks, his voice is quieter than Ford is used to. Gentle, like the rustling of waves against the shore. 

"You're upset."

Ford laughs, shakily. "Oh, did... did you see that?"

"I'm going to kill him."

"You can't kill people, Bill," Ford chides, electing to ignore the way the words make him feel oddly touched. 

"He made you—" a pause, "scared."

"That's not—" he cuts himself off, swiping at his eyes. "I'm fine."

"Humans are stupid. You're better than him, anyway."

"I'm human too," he says, faking offence. Bill makes a noise that might have been a hum or might have been the puttering of a waterlogged engine. The boat rocks with the sound, causing the chess pieces to rattle in their box. Ford brightens, sitting up straighter.

"Oh, I brought—I brought you a present! Here, let me—"

More water spills into the boat, little waves pushing eagerly at Ford's hands. "What is it? More drawings? Deer teeth? A human sacrifice?"

Ford chuckles. He wonders, briefly, if he's being foolish; if offering a game to a deity older than the Earth is like a cat offering a dead rat to their master: unwanted. Silly. "I was... I was thinking we could maybe play chess?"

Bill is silent, nothing but the ripple of water, the faint shouting of birds. Wind blows gently against Stanford's upset-heated skin, and he worries, for a moment, that he's overstepped. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, almost human. Human enough that someone unattuned to the currents in his voice might not recognize what he is.

"Oh. Yeah—yeah, kid, we can play."

Ford grins to himself as he begins setting up the board. The water in the boat shifts, leaving the center of the boat dry. Stanford fights the urge to take out his journal, sketching the movement, making notes on Bill's control of the water. He doesn't, forcing himself to focus as he lines each piece up in the center of their square: king and queen in the middle, then knights, bishops, rooks. Mirrored on the other side. He gives Bill the white pieces, letting him go first. 

"Alrighty, I, uh—my horse eats your king. To assert dominance."

Ford laughs, sharp and bright. The words taste too much like long-winded rainy days in Glass Shard; he and Stanley surrounded by their family's meager collection of board games, foregoing the rules for doing whatever they wanted. It doesn't hurt, though, not like most reminders do. There is only Ford, and the high noon sun, and the being that chose him above all others. 

"You don't know how to play chess, do you?"

"I know how to play chess! Maybe you don't know how to play chess!" A wave crests over the side of his boat, splashing him in the face. Ford splutters, wiping the spray from his glasses as well as he can. When he regains his vision, the boat is filled with a thin layer of water, chessboard upturned and pieces floating about.

"Bill..." he sighs. Only the silence answers him, and he can't help but be reminded of a child throwing a tantrum. Most of the pieces have remained in the boat, only one falling out: a knight, how fitting. As he reaches into the water to grab it, he can't help but feel—frustrated? Upset? He'd thought they were playing. He'd thought Bill got it, that he wasn't like everyone else, that he wouldn't get mad at Ford for violating meaningless social rules. 

(He doesn’t even understand what he did wrong.)

Like wind gliding, gentle, over the water's surface: "Oh."

Ford pauses, fingers wrapped around the lone knight, hand submerged. "What?" He's being curt, maybe, acting too easily offended. He can't bring himself to care. Bill isn't the only one to lead with anger.

"You're like... my fish."

Stanford fully removes his hand from the water. "I'm not a fish."

"No, I mean, your hands—" a brief sound of frustration— "I mean you're different from the other humans. You're weird. You're a freak of nature, kid!"

Ford draws his arms across his chest, crosses them. "I should—"

"You're not listening to me. It's a good thing. Being normal is for small-minded idiots who don't have the ambition to be more than a cog in the machine." Water laps at his ankles soothingly. Maybe this is Bill's attempt at an apology. Maybe it's unfair for Ford to expect a being like him to understand how to be human, when Ford barely understands how to, himself.

"Well of course you could say that. You have no—" he swallows, forcing the jealousy out of his voice. "You have no idea what humanity is like. How awful they are."

A hum. If Bill had a body, maybe he would be laughing. Maybe he would wrap Ford up and press him into salt-stained hair. "Then don't be human."

Ford laughs. Don't you think I've tried?  "It's not that easy."

"Why not, Sixer? If you want something, you should take it."

People like me don't get what they want, he thinks. But that feels too vulnerable, too much like giving Bill an excuse to disappear. Instead: "Maybe I want to teach you how to play chess." It's not a lie, really. If there's one thing Stanford picked up from his mother, it's how to conceal the truth beneath a hundred softer things. "But don't—don't run away again."

A scoff. "I'm Bill Cipher, kid, I don't run away!"

Ford huffs, resetting the board. Water leaks out of the boat—back in Bill's good graces, for now. "You did. You—" he swallows, thickly. "I'm not good at people. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't—I'm trying. I need you to not leave when I don't do whatever you want."

Bill is silent just long enough to make Ford think he's scared him away. Then: "Sure, kid, fine." A wave rocks into the boat, spraying salt into his hair. "Yeah, I guess I could stick around. Now on to the important questions: how many pieces do you have to fit in your mouth to win?"

In other universes, Bill Cipher is little more than a spider—poisonous. Deadly. Sat in the center of a web of his own construction, time spent spinning and plotting and drawing in his next meal. His web is strong, nearly impossible to escape from, but it's a two-way street: the best lies ensnare not just the fly, but the spider, tangling them both even as they struggle to escape. Delusions of grandeur are easy to resist. But stories of companionship—two wayward souls finding each other in an inherently lonely world—those can be deadly. 

This game of chess is only the beginning: round after round played, some won, some lost. Bill trying to goad Ford into eating the pieces. Laughter. The boat rocking, water spreading through Ford's socks and coat, staining them with salt that will never truly come out. Ford, last of the townsfolk to leave the water, something secret and strange humming in his chest. Laughing under his breath at Myrtle, who stands, soaked through, complaining about "freak currents."

Stanford Pines has always been attracted to the strange and unusual. Sometimes, the strange loves him back. Usually, it destroys him. This Stanford Pines, in this timeline—better off in some ways, worse off in others—is no different. As Spring blooms into Summer, so too does his connection with Bill. More time is spent sketching at the cliffs or playing chess by the waterside than taking notes in his study. He attends fishing day every week, something he once avoided like the plague. He treks down to the seaside before dawn, collecting seaglass and other trinkets left for him in the tide pools. What little social life he has falls to the wayside. Work falls to the wayside. He stays out later, leaves earlier. Eyebags find a new, permanent home on his face. He takes longer to pay his bills, write grant requests, submit papers. Answers the phone on the third ring rather than the first—though he always picks up, something like stupid hope fluttering in his chest each time.

(The caller is never who he wants them to be. But he's learned to live with the sting of abandonment long enough that it fades into the background.)

The people of Gravity Falls rarely see him, but those who do cannot help but notice a difference. He laughs, sometimes, at things that are only in his head. Smiles more, talks to himself in a low voice. Seems a little less afraid when asking about nautical books in the library or nutritional supplements at the Dusk 2 Dawn. There is a spark in his eyes, noticed by few, recognized by less. 

A warm night; cicadas buzz gently. Fireflies dot the grass like flickering flames of candlelight. Various objects are strewn about the clifftop: a chess board, one king knocked over. Books on etymology, oceanography, local legends. A journal, dog-eared and well-worn, notes half-finished, then abandoned. A sketchbook, half the pages missing. Pens, covered in teeth marks, lay in the grass. Below, the ocean sighs, waves thrumming against the cliffside. At the center of it all, Stanford Pines, laid nearly-flat in the grass, chin in hand, eye heavy.

"I should—" he stifles a yawn, circadian rhythm begging to be obeyed— "head back, Bill, it's late."

"C'maannn, Sixer, already? I haven't even gotten to tell you about the constellations!" 

"Bill..." Ford chides, in a tone that means you've told me about the constellations three times this week already. That means please don't make this harder than it needs to be.

"Ohh, I see how it is. Gotta get back to your other life, huh? What, do you have another ocean waiting for you at home? Am I just your sidepiece—"

Ford laughs, body shaking from the force of it. "God, no, Bill. There's only you." Too close, maybe, for a closeness as tenuous as theirs.

The waves press closer into the cliffside. "Damn right! I chose you, Stanford Pines. There better not be anyone else."

Ford smiles, rolling onto his back. He raises a hand, brushes it through the seasalt air as if it were a lover's hair. He doesn't consider himself a sentimental man, but the night makes it easier: poetry perched on his tongue. Yearning thick in his throat.

"Alright, Bill. Tell me about the constellations."

A fish leaps from the water, splash audible far above the surface. Stanford is used to Bill's silences now, as if speaking is difficult for something like him, or searching for the right words is a struggle. Ford understands, and doesn't push.

"Near the southernmost star, there's a bright patch. Four points, one in the center. It's called—" a sound like skipping stones, one that echoes off the inside of his skull rather than translating to English like Bill's speech usually does. It's not a fully unpleasant feeling, the sound tasting faintly of the cigarettes his mother smokes. "The lone eye."

Ford squints, trying to find it behind the glare created by his glasses. "...where?"

The waves hiss below. "You can't see it. It belonged to another dimension's sky, and that dimension is dead."

Ford breaths out, shaky. "Oh. Are you from..." are these ghosts yours? "That is, I mean to say—are you not from Earth?"

"Hmm, no. I told you, kid, I'm BILLIONS of years older than this little rock."

"Still, I..." He closes his eyes, folds his hands over his sternum. "Your entire dimension?"

"I was the last of my kind." Bill's voice shifts, grows darker, like the red of the sky before a storm. "And they destroyed me—trapped me, in this useless form—"

"I could help you." Ford pushes himself into a sit, turning to face the yawning void of the cliffside, like an open mouth. "I could—whoever did this to you, I mean, I could hunt them down, I—" Exhaustion forgotten in place of righteous anger burning hot inside his chest, like the core of a neutron star. Never one to forgive and forget.

A sound like a laugh, low and dangerous, interrupts his tirade. "Y'know what, Six? Maybe I'll let you."

Salt spray lands in his hair, on the bridge of his nose, collects on his glasses. Exhaustion creeps over him slowly, reminding him of the weight in his bones. The walk back feels impossibly long—building his cabin so far from the sea feels silly, now.

"Of course, I'll—" a yawn, barely stifled, "anything you need, I—"

A sigh. "Go to sleep, Sixer. Wouldn't wanna make a promise you can't keep."

Ford, sleepy, trusting, hopeless, does nothing but nod and curl into the grass, squinting as it tickles his face. "Bill..."

Softer, now, waves more like a lullaby than their earlier anger: "Yeah, kid?"

"What was that? The..." he tries his best to recreate the sound in a human mouth, a few half-hearted clicks. "the name of the constellation."

"That? There's uh... not much of a translation that your brain could comprehend. Called—" another skipping-stones sound. "A dead language for a dead world."

"Wish I could learn it. Maybe you could teach it to me."

A pause. "Maybe."

Ford smiles, eyes drifting shut. "Goodnight, Bill."

A sound like wind over sand dunes. Words he can't quite catch. "Q ewctl jczv bpm abiza wcb wn bpm asg nwz gwc, sql."

"What was that?"

"...nothing. G'night, kid."

Ford dreams, that night, of running. His bare feet against pavement, a splinter-filled boardwalk, a spiral staircase made of books. In front of him, a golden light—like an angel, like an oncoming train. No matter how fast he runs, he can never catch it, not until he careens off the edge of the world. Wax drips from his bones as he falls, laughing, into the dark.

There is more to fill their days than easy companionship, of course. Stanford, being a human with human needs, must venture into town often: for food, for coffee. For library books and art supplies. To walk the fish market, taking note of each anomaly if only to hear Bill’s words replayed in his head: You’re like my fish.

(You’re mine.)

Wishful thinking on his part, probably, but it’s the little things that allow him to survive even the worst of days: crowded streets, bodies pushing in on him from all sides. Social interactions that go a little too long, words dried up in his throat. Eyes that linger on his hands, that linger on the way he hides them. Eyes everywhere, really. Watching. Staring. Perceiving, which is, in a way, worse—the feeling that everyone knows more about him than he does about them. A reflection that at best reminds him of his brother, at worse feels irreparably, irrevocably wrong. Days when rolling out of bed seems like too much effort, days when it’s easier to rest among his dreams than trudge out into the world in a skin that has never felt like his own.

If it weren’t for Bill, he might have long since drowned. But the company of the ocean—his ocean, when he’s being selfish, when he’s being sentimental—is enough to at least pull him out of bed and out of the house each day, if only to say hello. Good days consist of chess, drawing, Ford spending hours explaining his research. Bad days vary from silent, foggy mornings where nothing is said to days when Ford can do nothing but throw himself into the sand and let the waves wash over his ankles, feet, wrists, struggling to breathe around angry sobs.

“I hate this body. I hate—” a choked-off sob— “you have no idea. You can’t—I can’t—”

A wave washes over his face, a smack and a caress all in one that leaves him shivering and dripping wet.

“Before, when I was… not this, I could have given you the world. An entire galaxy, fit into the palm of your hand.” Another wave washes over him, gentler, this time. “You’re beautiful, Sixer. I wish I could make you beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” Ford says, bitter and longing. “I wish I could be—nothing. Like you.”

Fog twines itself into his hair, winds around his shoulders like a hug. “Maybe someday, Sixer.”

Stanford closes his eyes and imagines the fog is like hands at his neck.

Neither of them are good at comforting but they do their best to help, when they can. Ford, with promises of vengeance and games of chess. Bill, with shining trinkets pulled from his depths and quests to secret places in the forest, so much like the Muse he might have been.

Like this one: a rumor of a hidden glade, deep in the woods, where Nymphs grow enchanted fruits. Accessible only by following a hidden tributary leading from the ocean, water brackish enough that it would allow Bill to follow his human as he quests.

“Admittedly, it has been a while since I’ve gone out—not that I don’t enjoy my research, of course, I’ve just been—” a pause as he takes a hearty swig of coffee from the thermos clipped onto his bag— “ah, distracted, I suppose.” He glances sideways at the creek, which splashes against its bank happily.

“Distracted, eh? I can show you distracting, Fordsy.”

Ford laughs, sharp and bright, ears red. Fog nips at his heels, like Stanley’s possum following the two around the boardwalk. “It is curious that you’re able to come this far into the woods. I would have assumed you were restricted to the ocean. Do you command all saltwater?”

“Ehh, yes and no. My presence is strongest by the cliffs—once you leave the Falls I can’t really interact with the physical world, except maybe destroying a ship or two. But I can go wherever I want, it’s just a matter of whether I’ll be more of a presence or an idea.”

“Fascinating,” Ford breathes, making a few quick notes in his journal as he walks, lack of attentiveness nearly causing him to get whacked in the face with a briar-laden branch. He sputters, glancing to the side nervously as if checking to see if Bill noticed his blunder, despite the ocean’s claims of omniscience.

“Better watch where you’re going, specs! Wouldn’t wanna lose an eye!”

Ford rolls his eyes. Bill’s jokes often take the form of gory descriptions and threats of violence, but Ford doesn’t mind. His sense of humor is refreshing, really, after years spent around humans and their obsessions with what constitutes as “socially acceptable.”

(Besides, he trusts them to be just jokes. And if they’re not, well—Ford knows Bill would never hurt him.)

Ford reaches the glade soon enough. A ring of birch trees surrounds a clear patch of grass, unnaturally sunny despite the Falls’ constant fog. At the center is a small lake, the endpoint of the creek he'd been following. It's surrounded by women—Nymphs, with green-gray barklike skin, glowing embers in their eyes. Their glamours, human disguises, are only half-applied, causing them to look strange and shifting, skin blurring between human lips and teeth and hair to wet roots and tangled stems. They all freeze up, like deer caught in a hunter's crossbow, when Ford approaches.

"Ah," he says, nervously, raising a hand in greeting. "Hello. Apologies, I didn't—"

One of the Nymphs screams like a cornered rabbit, pointing at Ford—at his hands—in terror. In an instant, they all disappear, turning to mud and fallen leaves and brackish water, until Ford stands alone in the clearing.

He bristles, tucking his hands against himself. Idiot. He kicks at the ground, sending a handful of pebbles flying into the water with a gentle splash that morphs into the sound of Bill cackling.

"Ha! I love getting to see those green bastards terrified. Buncha stuck-up little idiots, oh, don't talk to the thing in the water, please. I wasn't even gonna eat any of them!" He can't quite hide the bitterness in his words—or maybe he isn't trying. Ford scoffs.

"You could have warned me, at least. That they would…" He trails off, feeling like an idiot. Almost thirty years old, and it still bothers him.

"Aw, don't be sour Fordsy! It's not like that, they're just scared of humans. Don't take it too personally."

He bends over, taking off his shoes and carefully rolling up his pant legs. "Still… I suppose I'm just predisposed to think the worst in situations like this. Humans—and, er, human children—have an incredibly penchant for cruelty." Legs bare to the knee, he sits on the pond's edge, letting his feet dangle into the water. He balances his journal on his lap and begins sketching what little he got to see of the Nymphs, their shifting disguises, their firelike eyes. "Not that you would know much about that, I'm sure—I mean, being not-human, as you are."

Bill laughs hollowly. "You'd be surprised, kid. In my original form, I was the biggest freak on—uh, my planet." A low chuckle, like the shifting of undersea silt. "Haha, yeahhh… not as great as you might think."

"I wish I could have seen it. Your original form, I mean."

There is silence for a moment. He continues sketching, kicking his feet aimlessly as he waits for Bill to find his words. Skittish, he writes, having finished his sketch. Dislikes anything unfamiliar. Bpmg ammu tqsm bpmg ewctl omb itwvo emtt eqbp bpm cvqkwzva.

"I want—" Bill says, loudly, silence shattered by his words. He makes a low noise, something distinctly inhuman that causes the hairs on the back of Ford's neck to rise. Water laps at his ankles, agitated. "Let me show you?"

Ford, unaware of what he's agreeing to, nods slowly.

"Alright."

Immediately, there is a pressure at his temples, like the onset of a migraine, or cold fingers trying to breach his skin barrier. Something bright and purple and hopelessly painful bites at his mind. He flinches, a startled scream caught like sparrows in his throat, a hand flying up to grasp at his skull

"Bill—!"

—and then there is barrage of images flooding his mind, overwriting any of his own thoughts, overriding everything that sits before him:

Hands intertwined; sweat building up between palms. Bodies: dancing, laughing, twirling. Closeness, connection, touch. Interaction on more than a metaphysical plane. A kiss, a touch; salt and sweat and skin. Pressing closer, closer. Closer. A heart, open and beating and waiting to be taken. A merging of two bodies, two minds. Ownership. Protection. An abandonment of the physical. A singing harmony of two souls, like half-empty wine glasses struck. Heat, like the slick center of a star.

—when Ford comes back into his body, images vanishing as quick as they'd appeared, he has to gasp for breath, a shaking hand locked tightly around his journal so as not to accidentally knock it into the water.

Small waves lap against his bared skin, creeping closer, closer. The cool of it is a shock after the searing sun-center heat of—of whatever just happened.

"Bill, I—"

"The things I would do to you, Stanford Pines, with a body."

Ford covers his face with a hand. "I can't—I can't do this," he says, overwhelmed. A ragged breath drawn in through clenched teeth. "Don't do this to me." Please, please don't make me want this. "I mean, you're—you're this beautiful nothing, and I'm just—"

"You're like a star, Six." The words are weighted with a reverence he does not deserve. Fog curls about his shoulders. Waves lap at his ankles. The water below is dark. If he were to drown out here, his bones might never be found.

He pulls his legs out of the water, tucking them against his chest. "I wish you were here. Or that I wasn't. I just… I miss you all the time, even though we talk every day. Even though we haven't even really met." He laughs, wet and wobbling and wrong.

"Aww, what, you want a handshake?" Bill's voice is just the wrong side of cruel, words landing like little barbs. Ford buries his face in his knees and shakes his head. He feels like a child.

"I don't know what I want." He squints his eyes until they hurt. "I wanted to go to college, and then my brother ruined it for me, because—I don't know why. Because I wasn't enough for him, or I didn't do what he wanted, or…" Ford doesn't understand why he's telling Bill about Stanley. He didn't tell Fiddleford about Stanley. He hasn't even talked to his mother about Stanley, except once, when she mentioned that she gave Stan his number.

(Ford waited. He didn't call.)

"I just want people to like me. But I can never figure out what I'm doing wrong, and I'm too freakish, and—" and I don't even like myself.

"I like you." Immediate. Certain. "I like that you're freakish. And that you're not good at people."

Ford makes a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. "I like you too. And I want—what you said." He pulls his head out of his knees, tips his gaze up to the sky. "I could build you a body, if you wanted…" he muses, "I started looking into cloning technology, once… inputting a consciousness into a new skin."

A hum, like the buzzing of a hundred insects. "I love watching that brain of yours work, Fordsy. All those neurons firing…" A sigh. "I wasn't lying, you know. When I said I wanted to eat you."

Ford laughs, uncoiling, letting his legs dangle back into the water. "I thought you didn't have a mouth. 'Anything except late for dinner,' right?"

Bill splashes loudly, scaring a bird out of its tree. "You remembered!" Water laps at his skin—for a moment, he can almost feel a hand wrapped around his ankle before the sensation dissipates. "See, this is why you're—" Bill makes a crumbling-stone sound, the not-words tasting like chalk dust and lingonberries.

Ford blinks. "What was that?"

"My favorite," Bill says, then, darker: "Mine."

Ford flushes, rolling the word around in his head, prodding at it like an open sore. "Yours."

Bill trills, happy, then repeats the sound. "Mine. And then you say—" a similar sound, simpler. Falling rocks and clicks and echos. Ford copies it as best he can, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Bill trills again, small waves smacking against each other in a way that almost mimics applause.

"That's the ticket!"

"What is it? I mean—what am I saying?"

"It's, hm… call it a promise. You're mine—I'm yours. Not a direct translation, but close enough. Technically, we're not even speaking the language correctly, since it's made of colors, not words. But I don't have the biology for that anymore, and humans can't see most of the colors, anyway."

Grief paints the world in white. Fog weighs the air down, coiling like a noose about Ford's neck. The wind goes silent, and the water goes still. Silence hangs in the air. Stanford blinks back tears, caught unaware by the suddenness of it all.

"Oh. I… I'm sorry."

As soon as it came, the fog lightens. Breathing comes easier; life is brought back to the surrounding woods.

"Ehh, don't be! It was a long time ago, I'm not even sad about it!" Water laps at Stanford's lap playfully, nearly touching his journal, begging him to forget. "Hey, I got an idea—why don'tcha draw me? It's been a while, y'know, and I'm starting to feel pre-etty neglected!"

Ford laughs at the absurdity of it. How could Bill—Bill, his whole world—possibly be neglected? Still he plays along, letting his concern fall to the back of his mind.

"Of course, of course. I would hate to leave you wanting, my—Bill." His tone is overly grandiose, playful, but there is truth to his devotion, hidden behind sweeping gestures and dramatic wording. Stanford shakes his head, letting his curls fall into his eyes, feeling foolish, feeling like too much. Bill—always delighted by any attention that's on him (though better if it's worshipful, better if it's Ford's)—laughs.

"That's right, isn't it, Sixer? You're going to give me everything I want."

Ford laughs, batting, uselessly, at the fog that surrounds him. "You'll have to move if you want me to draw you. I can't see."

Bill huffs but retracts, restoring his human's visibility, who begins sketching on a new page, now, one ready to be ripped out and thrown to the sea as a gift. He's running out of pages rather quickly—he estimates that he'll have finished his third journal in just a few months.

Nearly every page of Stanford's journal is covered—not just in notes, but in drawings of the sea, the fog, the coast's jagged edges. Pages upon pages have been dedicated to transcribing their conversations, Ford clinging on to each detail like it could be stolen from him at any moment. Even the entries focused on his own research are dotted with small doodles of wavelike patterns or details he wants to point out to Bill the next time they speak.

There is nothing in his life untainted by Bill. Ford wouldn't have it any other way.

His birthday arrives in the way it always does—with a slow, creeping dread. Once something celebrated, looked forwards to each year, now weighted with a thick, angry kind of grief.

It is a struggle to get out of bed, dress himself, leave the house. But the desire to visit his ocean just overpowers his inertia, dragging him out of his little cabin and towards the beach before the sun rises over Gravity Falls.

He'd spent the previous night, as he spends all his nights, at the cliffs, listening to Bill speak on and on in that strange, skipping-stone language of his. He'd been able to pick out a few words: stars, sight, water. His own name. Bill's been teaching him, though the going is slow, as his human mouth is unequipped to speak it.

More often then not, he falls asleep at the cliffs, no sound more comforting than that of waves crashing into the shore. But Bill had shooed him away last night, though not without bidding him to "come back early. I have a surprise for you."

Ford can't help but wonder what it could be. New specimens, maybe. He's not quite as excited as he should be, but he tries, anyway.

The beach is dazzling, when he reaches it. Shells and glass and a thousand lost things cover the beach, tide sunk far lower than normal to reveal its treasures. Ford smiles, despite his melancholy, arms crossed against his chest to shield from the wind. He picks his way down the shore, carefully, noting each detail and doing his best not to crush any of the gifts.

"Bill, this is…" wonderful, maybe. He trails off. He hasn't received a birthday present in—in years, now. He stopped coming home for the Summer after his first year at Backupsmore. There was nothing left for him in Glass Shard—the only thing that could have drawn him back had already gone away, driving off into the night. And he'd never told Fiddleford when his birthday was, knowing his friend would push too hard for him to celebrate it.

The ocean responds with nothing but the gentle hiss of waves against the shoreline. Ford frowns, but keeps walking. The sun blossoms, slowly, over the edge of the world, wrapping every shell in molten gold, light filtering through seaglass and painting the sand in blues and greens. There'd been a church, in Glass Shard, and though he'd never gone Ford had often walked through shadows painted purple-blue by stained glass and wondered what it would feel like to really believe in something.

He reaches the end of the accessible area of the beach sooner than he'd expected. Rocks like jagged teeth create a barrier, stretching from the side of the cliffs to the point where the water becomes deep enough to swallow them up. Waves crash angrily against the stone as if the sea is trying to take something back. A flash of white distracts Ford for a moment, gaze turning from the ocean to—

The body.

Laid like a fallen leaf against the sand, white dress tangled against its legs. Sun-bleached hair halos its head and covers its face, though what little of its skin remains visible is a sickly grayish color.

It twitches, once, twice, struggling to push itself up on its arms. Bile rises in Ford's throat. She's alive. Oh God, she's still alive—this is so much worse. A suicide is one thing. A failed suicide is—

He shudders, trying not to vomit. She's still struggling, and he creeps forward, even as some buried instinct begs him to run away. Already, he's calculating the distance to the Gravity Falls hospital, how long it would take to get there without a car, how much blood she might have lost.

"Oh my god—are you—" he bends down, offering a hand. "are you alright?"

Stupid question, he knows. Obviously not. He doesn't expect an answer, not really, not with the condition she must be in—certainly doesn't expect her head to snap to the side, gaze trained eerily on his face. Her—his?—his left eye, the only one uncovered by hair, is blank, pulsing with a golden glow like sunlight on the waves. He takes Ford's hand, skin clammy, lips spread in a rictus grin.

"Just peachy, Sixer!"

Ford laughs, breathless, shocked. He offers his other hand, which Bill clings onto just as readily. "I—it's you."

Bill cackles, letting himself be pulled upright. "In the flesh—woah!" he stumbles, falling into Ford's side and clutching at his shoulders in an attempt to steady himself. Ford flounders for a moment, unsure if he's allowed to touch, before settling his hands on Bill's waist; to hold him upright, to hold him close.

"Hey there, clingy much? Betch'a just couldn't wait to get your grimy human paws all over me," he teases. Ford might have pulled back at that, if not for the way Bill's fingers dig into his skin, the way he shifts to press their bodies closer, hip to hip, chest to chest. Bill's form is damp, saltwater weighing down its dress and soaking through his hair—it's a little uncomfortable, though Ford supposes it makes sense for the physical manifestation of an ocean to be, well. Wet.

"Maybe," he sighs, nestling his face into Bill's hair. He has questions—of course he has questions, about the body: where it came from and what it's made of and why. But he lets them fall to the wayside for now. There's something coiled tight, buried deep inside of him, that loosens at the touch of another person's skin. He breathes in salt and sand and sunlight, and lets his hands tighten around his ocean's waist.

"Oh," Bill says, sounding strangely gentle—though maybe that's just Ford, projecting. "Hey, Six."

"Hi," Ford says back, more hum than words, mouth pressed into the crown of Bill's head. He pulls back a little, just enough to let out a little warbling click of their alien language: yours.

Bill clicks back, reduced to the same awkward sounds through the same awkward mouth that Ford has to use. Mine. It's strange, hearing Bill's voice through human vocal chords, words no longer filtered through tides and salt-spray, though they still echo strangely, like speaking to a cliff face.

"Fordsy?"

A hum.

"Take me home with you?"

Ford steps back, eyes soft. "I—yeah, Bill. Yeah. Of course."

He takes a few steps, backwards, down the beach. Bill follows, nails digging into his arms, stumbling like a newborn fawn as he goes.

"Y'know, I haven't used this body in a hundred years—guess it doesn't have its landlegs yet!"

Ford hums, and then, in a single swift motion, scoops Bill up into a bridal carry, his ocean shrieking as he does. He might not have enjoyed boxing as much as Stanley did, but Fillbrick had demanded that both his sons participate in the sport. Ford hated it, but he supposes it can't have been all bad.

"Can I ask—I mean, I don't want to be rude, but why are you, ah—"

Bill smacks him on the shoulder, playfully, leaving a wet spot on his coat. "Stanford!" he shouts, scandalized. Ford flinches away from the sound of his voice, ear ringing. "You don't see me going around asking why you're human, do you?"

Ford decides against pointing out that Bill has, on multiple occasions, asked him why he's human. Ford doesn't think he quite understands that Ford can't just leave his body behind—doesn't know if he understands that he would, if only he could.

"I suppose not," he says, eyes trained on the beach ahead. He's almost at the road into town, and then they'll be—well. Home. "Sorry, then, I didn't mean to—to pry."

"Fordsy," Bill says, urgently, tapping him on the chest. "Sixer. Hey."

He stops, turning his head to the side. "I—oh!"

Bill surges up like a storm, like the crest of a wave, capturing Ford's mouth with his own. The inside of his mouth tastes brackish, like saltwater and sunburn. He bites down on Ford's lip, too-hard and clumsy, drawing blood. He moves like he doesn't know what he's doing, like he wants to eat Ford rather than kiss him. Ford jerks at the sudden pain, stumbling, but manages to right himself before the two collapse. He pulls back from the kiss, gasping, mouth slick.

"Fuck."

Bill sighs, sweetly, laying his head back against Ford's shoulder. "I don't know," he says, as if the kiss hadn't happened. "I just wanted to see you. You never visit for long enough, and the water is lonely."

"You know that I come by whenever I can…"

"It would never be enough, Sixer. I need to own you."

Ford shivers, and wonders if knowing he's in danger should feel as exciting as it does. He ducks his head, kissing Bill again. "You can." He feels six years old again, like he's falling backwards into the ocean and being pummeled into the sand and surf and not knowing if he would make it out alive. "You do."

"Silly boy," Bill says, Ford's jaw in his hands. "Don't you know what happens to fools that make promises to demons?" His gold, pupil-less eye catches the light, turning it from fog gray-green to something—other.

Ford shakes his head. "I don't care." He doesn't. He's better than all those other fools, anyway. Bill is in love with him—how could it ever go wrong?

Bill cackles. "You're a freak, Six, did you know that?" he stretches, arms above his head, body lanky and long and beautiful. He pats the side of his face. "Oh, don't look so sad, you know I don't mean it like that. You're like a puppy." He then, inexplicably, kicks Ford in the ribs, forcing him to gasp as he tries not to double over and drop Bill onto the dunes. "Now giddyup, I wanna see this cabin of yours."

Ford nods, tightening his grip on Bill's legs. "We'll have to take the long way around, I don't want people to see us." Just the thought of it fills him with anxiety. It's not as bad as if Bill was in a man's body, of course, but— "they're going to think I kidnapped you."

Bill squirms about like an eel captured in clasped hands. "Then put me down, smart guy! I can walk!"

Ford raises an eyebrow but lowers him down, gently, regardless. He doesn't miss the way that Bill stays close, the way he wraps both hands around Ford's forearm hard enough to bruise.

"You can walk, huh?"

Bill scoffs. "If I still could, I'd vaporize you for that, y'know."

"You like me too much," he says, self-assured and giddy with it. Bill glares at him but doesn't refute it, and Ford grins so widely it hurts his face.

They make their way through the town slowly, Bill stumbling as Ford works to steady him. Even as his balance improves, his hold on Ford's arm remains. Eventually Ford's hand finds its way around his waist, and they walk like that, side-by-side, almost capable of passing as normal human lovers if not for the way the sun shines too-brightly on Bill's eye, his hair; the way his skin sits like fog against too-thin bones; the saltwater dripping from his dress and leaving damp footprints in his wake.

The town wakes up, quietly, around them. Fog curls about doorstops as storefronts flip their signs from closed to open; neighbors greet each other as they water their plants or check the mail. The librarian glares at them on her way to work—probably still holding a grudge over Ford's fourteen overdue books—but other than that, the town leaves them alone to whisper quietly to each other, Bill pointing out all the dozens of ways the area has changed since he was on Earth last.

By the time they reach the cabin, Bill is panting—though from exertion or something else, Ford isn't sure.

"Are you alright?" he asks, tracing circles on Bill's arm. He's cold, clammy, though Ford doesn't know if it's due to Bill being, well, Bill, or if it's cause for concern. He wants to cut him open, test him for cold-bloodedness, learn everything about this new body. Hold the heart of it in his palms, just to feel it beat.

Bill nods, left eye half-lidded and sleepy. Exhaustion weighs at both their bones, Ford's due to the latest in a long string of late nights and early mornings.

"I told you, this thing doesn't have its landlegs yet. And I might be drying out a little. I dunno, I don't take this thing out much. Or ever. Guess you're just special."

He reaches out to flick Ford on the nose, who frowns and bats his hand away. "I—is that dangerous for you?" Something like protectiveness—something he hasn't felt since he was twelve years old and could still afford taking the time to wipe down Stanley's bruised knuckles each time he decided to get into a fight—rolls in his gut.

Bill laughs, though Ford doesn't miss the way he presses closer into his side, like a needy cat. "I'm infinite, Six, a little dry spell isn't gonna hurt me."

Still, he lets Ford lead him inside; careful, so careful, as if he's holding spun glass.

The foyer is dirty, air thick with dust, books and papers and forgotten things littered on the floor. Ford frowns, kicking a stray boot out of the way. He's long been used to living with clutter, but having another person witness it is… embarrassing.

"Sorry," Ford says, guiding Bill up the stairs. He follows, fingers like ice, wheezing slightly on every exhale. "about the mess, I mean. I don't usually…"

"Have people over?" Bill laughs. "I know! You're kind of a loser, Fordsy. It's a good thing you've got me around." A sigh. "No one else on this backwater planet appreciates you, not like I do."

Ford grimaces. "…thanks, Bill." He's spent enough time around his ocean to know that his words—probably—aren't as mean-spirited as they sound. Ford's just the wrong side of too-sensitive.

They reach the bathroom soon enough, though Ford's shoulder aches from carrying most of Bill's weight. He lowers Bill down, slowly, into his claw-footed bathtub, turning on the tap so that a thin stream of water covers the bottom of the tub.

"To help," he explains, "with the drying out."

"Aww," Bill coos, "aren't you sweet?" He closes his eye, head against the back of the tub. Here, Ford can finally get a good look at him, all gold and white and green, beautiful in the way that only dangerous things are.

The body is thin to the point of being concerning—Ford knows, from long nights spent asking Bill about his biology that he doesn't need to eat, but he worries anyway. The dress he's wrapped in is simple, with a long skirt and tears along the neckline and sleeves. His hair, golden, pools at the hollows of his collarbones and pours over the back of the tub, dripping onto the floor. Bruises circle his neck. The remnants of his right eye bleed from under closed lashes. Light shines through his skin, and beneath the surface something dark and far older than Ford or the body writhes, trapped.

Stanford understands, finally, why so many would dedicate their lives to the service of a god.

Bill breathes in, out, in, chest rising and falling and rising, the movement horribly real. Ford tucks himself against the wall and tries not to stare.

"Your house is so far," he says, eye still closed. "Don't you know how cruel that is? To come all the way to the other side of your world for me, and then sit just out of my reach."

Ford leans his head against the side of the tub, porcelain cold against his temples. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to be so far—or I did, or… I don't know. The ocean was always Stanley's—er, my brother's—place. I guess it just felt wrong to be there without him."

Bill shifts, water splashing as he moves. "Who cares about a bunch'a spare parts like him?"

Ford shrugs. "I don't know. But everyone always liked him better—I wouldn't be surprised if you did, too."

Bill gasps, scandalized. "Stanford Pines! What kind of an ocean do you think I am, the Atlantic?"

Ford wraps an arm around his legs, gaze fixed on the yellow-orange tile floors. "I'm serious, you know."

"Sixer. Hey, Stanford. C'mere." He taps Ford on the shoulder until he finally turns, letting Bill lean forward and press their faces uncomfortably close together. "I'm serious, too. I chose you, remember? I chose you. There's nobody else."

Ford closes his eyes. "Thanks, Billy." There is silence for a moment, like bated breath, then the gentle sounds of a body moving through water. He doesn't move, even as cool hands cup his cheeks, even as he hears something rise out of the water. He lets Bill kiss him, gentle at first, then rough, his hands clawlike, his tongue probing like it wants to cut off his oxygen supply. Ford wraps both hands around his waist before Bill moves one to his chest with a sound not unlike a growl. Pressed together like this, so close they could almost be one, Ford finds the weight of his body almost bearable.

They break apart only when Ford needs to breathe, though Bill doesn't let him go far. He sits on the floor, folded over, his knees aching, face and shirt and hair dripping onto the floor, wet anywhere Bill had touched him.

"You know," Bill says conversationally, as if he hadn't just been trying to suck Ford's soul out through his mouth, "I have a body, now. And you have a body."

Ford eyes him warily. "Finally going to eat me?"

Bill grins, predatory, hands splayed over Ford's chest. "Something like that."

Growing up, Ford had thought himself uninterested in romance. His parents' relationship had been rocky on the best of days—the two always fighting, always complaining about each other to their children. Marriage had seemed like a trap, a lifelong bond to someone you couldn't stand for the purpose of passing down your genes and continuing to populate the human species. Ford, with his faulty genetics and distaste for most other people, saw it as nothing but a burden.

Stanley hadn't shared his twin's reservations, being as good at charming girls as he was anything else. But Stanley was Stanley and Ford was Ford and liking one twin had never guaranteed anyone would like the other.

He'd started figuring out he maybe liked boys in junior year, but by then the rift between him and Stanley had grown and he'd already decided not to tell his twin too many things—not that he was a queer, not about the way his skin and his body fit too-tight around his bones, not that their sailing dreams were beginning to feel more and more like a weight pinning him to the Earth.

Then there was the science fair, and Ford deciding he didn't need anyone but himself, and then college and Fiddleford and him thinking that maybe he did, maybe this was what falling in love felt like, and then graduation and Fiddleford's wedding and Ford realizing that people like him were just meant to be alone.

And then there was Bill. Bill, who was beautiful and awful and everything Ford had ever wanted to have, to be. Bill, translucent skin glowing green in the sunlight, hair shining, singular eye alight. Bill, in a body, right here, right within reach.

Bill in his bathtub, acting like it was absurd to think Ford was the worse twin. Bill in his bed, hands around his neck, skin tasting like salt. Bill, afterwards, on his kitchen counter, dressed in Ford's old college hoodie, leaning into Ford's coffeemaker for warmth, then leaning into Ford.

"Let's go," he says, eye half-lidded, chin digging into Ford's chest.

Ford sets his coffee mug on the counter. "Go where?"

"Out," Bill says, "I don't know. Would it be too much to ask for this town to have a karaoke bar?"

"I—" Ford blinks. "It might, actually. But—why?"

Bill flicks him between the eyes. "It's your birthday, genius. Remember? Or did I fuck all the brains out of your pretty little head?" Bill continues undeterred as Ford sputters, choking on air. "We should go out! To celebrate! And also because I haven't gotten to go to a bar in—when is it, eighty-something?" he pauses, counting on his fingers. "a few hundred years, give or take."

Ford blinks again, hard, trying to focus. "Bill, I—I don't drink."

"Aw, c'maaan," Bill pushes his head harder into Ford's sternum, nearly sending them both tumbling over backwards. He bats his lashes coquettishly as he does so, unaware—or at least pretending to be—of the way Ford's hands grip the counter, knuckles going white in an attempt to maintain his balance. "it'll be fun! And hey," he straightens up, tracing a single damp finger over the shell of Ford's ear, "if you hate the party—which you won't, by the way, because I'm great at parties—I'll take you home."

Ford lets himself lean into the touch. "Alright. But the townspeople are going to notice that you're not from here."

Bill shrugs. "Eh, I don't care. I'm a demon, Fordsy, and also up until this morning an ocean. If anyone asks you can just say I'm your out-of-town, uh—" he glances down at his body, squinting at the shape of it through Ford's baggy hoodie— "girlfriend. That's a thing humans are still doing, right?"

Ford swallows around the lump of—something caught in his throat. The thought of Bill as his girlfriend sticks to the inside of his ribs, making him giddy. He tries to ignore it—from the way he had glanced over the word, it's clear the term doesn't hold nearly as much weight to Bill as it does to Ford. And yet. Bill as his girlfriend. Boyfriend. Whatever.

"Um," he says, remembering a moment too late that he's supposed to respond. "alright." Cheeks hot, he tucks his face into Bill's neck, breathing in his sun-sea-salt scent. "Yeah, alright."

He feels more than hears Bill's chest hitch with excitement. "You have no idea, Sixer. This is gonna be perfect. Best birthday party of your life, trust me—no one knows how to party better than your pal Billy, yeah?"

Ford laughs. "No one, hm? I find that highly statistically unlikely—"

"Oh shut up," Bill hisses, but it's playful, affectionate. "you should be thanking me. C'mon, Sixer, kiss me already."

Ford—the perfect disciple, in every timeline—does nothing but obey.

His head hurts. The room spins. He takes a step forwards, wobbles, falls back against the bar. It's too loud in here. Where's his—?

"Bill!"

"Over here, Six." The words come from the left. He turns—there he is. His ocean. Demon. Boyfriend. Whatever.

Ford grins. If he was sober he would probably be concerned about looking stupid. But sobriety feels—very far away. Bill steps closer. There's something in his hands. Glasses. Color, condensation.

"Got you another—ack!"

Ford ignores the drinks, pitching forwards so he can bury his face in Bill's hair. He squirms for a moment before settling in, placing their drinks on the bar and letting his hands settle at Ford's side.

"Missed you…" he slurs, words lost against the crown of Bill's head.

Bill laughs. "Wow-ie, you're wasted, Fordsy."

He nods, suddenly tired. The whole night has been a blur—the bar, Bill's hands on his waist. Drinking something sweet and alcoholic, then another, then another. Disco Girl. The room spinning, spinning…

"'s your fault."

Bill chuckles. "Yeahh, prolly. But hey," he taps Ford on the sternum until he backs off. "you're good, right? You're okay?" He cranes his head back, trying to make eye contact. "You don't wanna stop the party, right Six?"

"I dunno," Ford says, glaring at the floor. "feels…" He thinks this is a test—he doesn't want to fail it. What if Bill doesn't like him anymore? But— "feels bad."

"Aww," Bill coos, patting him on the cheek. "poor baby."

Ford frowns, crosses his arms. "'m not a baby."

"Sure you are, kid!" He goes to flick Ford's nose, misses, just barely avoids poking him in the eye. "I'm a—a trillion years old, remember? Everyone's a baby to me."

Ford glances around, nervously. Luckily Bill's words seem to have been mostly swallowed by the noise of the bar, but he can't help but be cautious. Not everyone is as fond of the supernatural as he is.

When he looks back Bill is—not there. The floor sways beneath his feet. Did he leave? Why would he leave? Doesn't he know that Ford needs him? Was it because he's not good at partying, because he's just—just Ford, probably, that's what it always comes down to.

He shoves his fingers—too many—under his glasses, pushes at his eyes until he sees stars. He might be crying. Stupid fucking baby. Babyish. Be a man, Pines, this is why—

There are hands on his wrists. He opens his eyes and then Bill's there, all up in his face, brows furrowed. It's all moving too fast. He needs to sit down.

"—ixer," Bill is saying, patting his face, "Sixer, hey, what happened?"

Ford blinks, dumbly. Stupid little— "…What?"

Bill's grip tightens. "You're crying. Did someone say something? I'll fuckin'—turn their fuckin' face inside out, just tell me—"

"You left," Ford whines.

Bill's movements cease. "What? No. No, I was just getting you water." He shoves a glass and a small plastic square into Ford's hands. "Also I stole your credit card."

Ford frowns. That's supposed to be—important, he thinks. Bad. But his head hurts, so instead of thinking about it he tilts his head back and chugs his drink, water pouring down his chin and soaking through his shirt.

"Whoa," Bill says, grabbing his arm and pulling his glass away, "slow down there, bub." Ford whines as Bill backs away, placing the empty glass on the bar next to their abandoned drinks. As soon as he steps back within reach, Ford wraps his arms around his ribcage, tethering them together, chest to chest. Eyes closed, he nestles his face into the side of Bill's neck, breathing him in.

Cautious hands card through his hair, snag on his curls. "You're not having fun," Bill says, like he already knows the answer, "are you?"

Ford shrugs. "'s better now that you're here. Why'd you leave?"

"Hey." Bill tugs at his hair until Ford straightens up, glasses crooked and face damp. "Your abandonment issues are soo cute, okay? You're like—" he squeezes Ford's cheeks, squinting—"I dunno. But you gotta stop. You're mine forever, okay? The fuckin'—Axolotl couldn't keep me away from you."

Ford swallows. His mouth feels oddly dry. Something about what Bill said—mine forever. Yeah. That's it.

"Oh. Really?"

Bill's hands slip down from his cheeks to wrap around his neck. "Yeah. Demons—we're like, uh, penguins. That's an Earth animal, right?" Ford nods, blearily. "Yeah. We mate for life. Or whatever."

He stares down at the floor next to their shoes. It might just be the purple-pink light of the bar, but Ford swears that he's blushing. All across his—the body's—cheeks, nose, ears, is brushed pink. He shifts from foot to foot, throat bobbing as he swallows.

Oh, Ford realizes, a moment of clarity breaking through the haze clouding his mind. He's nervous. The thought is laughable—that Bill would have any reason to doubt Ford's devotion. Bill, the center of Ford's life, the brightest star in his sky, the best thing that ever happened to him.

He touches Bill's cheek, gently, the wet of his skin soaking onto Ford's. He tries to say half of what's floating around in his head, but all that makes it out is:

"Y're really pretty."

Bill blinks at him, surprised, before laughing, too-loud and too-close to Ford's ears.

"Shit, you sure know how to sweet-talk a guy, huh? You're precious, Fordsy. C'mon, lets get you outta here."

Something inside him loosens at his words. He wants to do nothing more than let Bill take him home, let Bill take care of him as if he's something small. And yet—

"D'you wanna leave? You're the one who—you're the one who wanted to 'go out.'"

Bill stares at him, turns to look around the bar—sticky, crowded, air thick with heat and light and the scent of booze—then turns back to Ford.

"Nah," he says, grabbing Ford's hand. His extra finger perfectly encloses all of Bill's. "let's go home, Six."

Later, another day, brighter. Sweeter, less tinged with the acrid taste of bars and shitty booze: Ford and Bill in Ford's study, pressed together against the armrest of the couch. Drawing: Ford, in his third journal; Bill in an extra sketchbook that Ford wasn't worried about being ruined by the wet of his hands.

Ford's drawing Bill, as he often does, the ocean his muse in everything but name. He worries the inside of his cheek as he traces the curve of his cheek, the shadow of his eyelashes. He'd been awake all the previous night, watching Bill sleep, his chin pillowed against Ford's side, until the image was burned onto his retinas. Now, he sketches it out, trying to convey in charcoal the gold-green glow that had leaked out from under his eyelid.

He pauses only when his fingers start to cramp up. With a sigh, he sets his pencil and journal down, shaking out his hand. Bill, usually incapable of letting Ford journal in peace, usually so eager to poke and prod and stare at Ford's drawings of him, is silent. Ford peers over his shoulder at the sodden page in his hand. It's covered in little shapes, dozens of them, with spindly limbs and sideways eyes. They could almost be insects, if not for their carefully drawn fingers, the little hat on one, the bow on the other.

"Are those… people?"

Bill flinches, grip on the page tightening and causing it to crease.

"No," he says, in a way that cannot mean anything other than yes.

"Who are they?" Ford asks, tact flying out the window in the face of his curiosity.

Bill sighs. "Nobody, Six. Nobody that matters."

Ford waits, hoping he'll say more. Now that he's paying attention, he can see the way Bill's jaw is clenched, the tenseness of his shoulders. After a moment, his silence is rewarded.

"They're all dead, anyway."

Ford lets out a slow breath. That dimension is dead. I was the last of my kind. "I'm sorry."

Bill laughs, but it sounds brittle, like crumbling sandstone. "Why would you be? it was a trillion years ago!" Ford can't tell if he's laughing or crying. Instead of shedding tears, water drips from his body, causing him to look more like he'd just stepped out of a torrential rainstorm than the usual dampness that permeates his skin. It's fascinating, but Ford ignores the urge to start taking notes in his journal. There are more important things to focus on—namely Bill, who Ford pulls towards him so the demon can shake apart in his arms.

"You're alright," Ford says. He's always been awful at comforting—he was better as a child, but then—well. No one's needed him to take care of them in a long time. He pets through Bill's hair, the salt-sticky strands clinging to his fingers in a way that would be unbearably uncomfortable if it were anyone else.

"They never understood," Bill says, vibrations echoing through Ford's ribcage from where his face is pressed into his chest. "and they died for it."

Ford hums. "Families," he says after a moment, hoping his hypothesis is correct, hoping he's not making a fool of himself, "rarely understand." He pokes at something unhealed inside of him with the words, a wet cyst covered by hasty bandages and closed curtains.

Bill chuckles, wet and ruined. "No one understands," he says, shifting so that his face, still dripping, is level with Ford's. "not like you and I, right Fordsy?"

Ford nods, even though he doesn't get it, not fully—doesn't understand what happened to Bill, even with all the clues he's been given; doesn't understand why he would give up being a nothing to go play at humanity with Ford.

Bill doesn't notice his hesitation—or doesn't seem to, anyway, based on the way he grins with too-many teeth, pushing himself up onto his hands.

"You get it, Sixer. You see—" he reaches out, traces a finger in teasing, concentric circles around Ford's eye. Closer, closer. He might be worried about it getting pulled out if he didn't trust Bill so fully. "—what nobody else sees." He taps him twice, right below the waterline. "It's why you're my favorite."

Ford flushes. "I just… pay attention."

Bill shakes his head, sitting up so his thighs bracket Ford's hips. "Not what I mean. You're—you're like—" he growls, then makes a sound in that alien language of his, one Ford doesn't recognize. "You're a freak. And I'm a freak. And nobody else understands but it doesn't matter, right, because you're mine—"

Ford nods frantically. "Yours," he agrees, sitting up so he can capture Bill's mouth in a kiss.

Bill growls, shoving Ford down by the shoulders so he can stare down at him.

"You're mine, Stanford Pines, you're mine, I own you, forever—"

"—From now until the end of time," he gasps, pulling Bill down into a kiss, teeth knocking together. He arches upwards, pressing all of him into all of Bill, body feeling, for once, weightless.

Stanford wakes, later that night, to emptiness. He and Bill often sleep together, the two unwilling to be parted even for a moment after all the time spent searching for each other—even if they didn't know, then, what it was they were searching for. Often this is Bill in Ford's bed, sheets growing sticky and damp with saltwater, their bodies intertwined like a Gordian knot. On nights when the sensation of his physical form drying out is too much for Bill to stand, he sleeps in the bathtub, tap providing just enough of a current to help him hold himself together. Ford spends nights like these sat on the bathroom floor, drifting off in interment bursts with his chin propped on the side of the tub.

But tonight he wakes to drying sheets and an empty space at his side. His bed—despite being very obviously built for a single person—seems absurdly large.

Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, his sits up on one arm, blanket slipping off his bare shoulders with the movement. The room is dark, and his lack of glasses doesn't help, but—there. Against the window, dress billowing about his ankles like white curtains, skin glowing seaglass-green in the moonlight. He looks like a spirit, maybe: like a ghost fading out of this world.

"Bill?"

Face turned to the windowpane, he doesn't move when his name is called. "Go back to sleep, Sixer."

Ford sits up further, grabbing his glasses off the nightstand. "What're you doing?"

"I—" a breath. Bill reaches out, traces something Ford can't see in the air in front of him. "Do you have any idea? What I was?"

A demon, Ford thinks. "Come back," he says instead, the eggshell-quality of Bill's voice warning him to tread carefully.

"What I would have done?" he continues, as if Ford hadn't spoken. "To this world? To you?" His voice breaks. Something in his face—what little Ford can see of it—twists, before he schools it into something calmer. "I would have held your mind like it was a dying star. I would have destroyed you."

I don't care, Ford thinks.

I would let you, Ford thinks.

"Come back," he says, again, too tired to put any of it to words. What does some hypothetical world even matter, anyway? Bill might as well be destroying him now. He's certainly ruined him for anyone else.

Bill shakes his head. "Do you know that I—" he cuts himself off, hand falling into a fist at his side. When he turns to stare at Ford, his eye catches the light, a miniature sun. "I'm going to drown this whole hick town, one day. For what they did to me. To you. Not even their gods could save them, Sixer." He blinks, shrouding the room in darkness. When he opens his eye again, it seems like a light inside has gone out. "Go back to sleep."

Ford shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to stay awake. Already he is starting to fall back into that dreamlike haze. But he doesn't want to let this fade. That's—what Bill said, that's bad, Ford knows, bad in a way that's going to hurt people, bad in a way that only hurt things know how to be. And there's something important here, something in the way Bill holds himself like a weapon he's afraid to use.

Still, his eyes go heavy.

"C'mere…" he sighs, falling back into his pillow. Just as he falls asleep, he imagines a touch—a kiss, maybe, or a gentle brush of fingers—against his forehead.

Ford wakes the next morning to Bill curled on his side next to him, golden hair in both their eyes. It is almost too easy to dismiss the previous night as nothing but a dream—and yet, the taste of it lingers.

They return to their new rhythm, well-worn despite only a few weeks having passed since Ford first pulled Bill's new body from the sea. Ford makes coffee in the mornings—Bill watches and drinks his too-hot, claims he likes the burn of it. They go into the woods, often: Ford, laden with journals and pens and half-finished maps following Bill to secret places he remembers from when he was still infinite. Areas of the forest where the trees press in with grasping branches and staring eyes; cliffs that hide cave paintings Bill watches for what seems like hours, a broken sort of reverence in his face before he asks Ford for his help in destroying them. The alien spaceship under the town that had left Ford so starstruck he couldn't stop shaking for hours.

When supplies are needed—paper, food, bandages to patch up the scrapes Ford gets from running around in the forest—they go together into town, where Bill becomes the center of attention, sparking curiosity and making jokes that are only slightly unsettling. Entranced by the arrival of someone new, none of the townspeople think to mention Ford's extra fingers or the way Bill looks more like a ghost than a human.

And still, still, that night lingers.

I'm going to drown this whole hick town. I would have destroyed you.

On days he lets the paranoia win, Ford watches Bill breathe and wonders if this has all been a ploy to hurt people. On days he lets himself be weak, Ford wonders if Bill wants to hurt him, too.

He trusts Bill. Far more than he trusts himself. And yet. And yet, he'd trusted Fiddleford, and he'd trusted Stanley, and he'd still, still spent so many years alone, trapped in a future and a school that he hated and that hated him back.

Despite it, for a while, things are good. But good things rarely last, no matter how much we want them to. An echo of another timeline: things change, Stanford Pines. Things change.

It happens like this:

Ford, distracted, searching for a quill or favorite inkpot or something equally meaningless. Ford, wandering into his study, unaware. Bill, bent over the desk, journal clutched in greedy hands, paper falling to pulp under wet fingers.

Ford stops. "What are you doing?" He doesn't mean to be paranoid, not really, but—well. It's in his nature, isn't it?

Bill, whirling, eye wide. If there were a way to allay suspicion, it would be… not this. "Sixer!" he laughs, nervous. "I was just, ah, reading." He doesn't mean for this to taste of betrayal, of silver linings, but—well. It's in his nature.

A step closer, eyes lingering only on the ruined pages, ink and paper forming a messy slurry that collects on the desk's cluttered surface. "You—my research. What are you doing?"

Hands, white-knuckled, gripping the edge of the desk. "I wanted to see your drawings of me."

"I—if you wanted to see my drawings you ask, Bill, you ruined my research!"

He glances at the mess left by his hands, as if just now noticing, then back at Ford. "Does it even matter?"

Ford scoffs, disbelieving. Absurd. It was absurd to think he could have anything with anyone that wouldn't always end the exact same way. "This work is my whole life, Bill, it is all that I am, of course it matters—"

"I am your whole life!" He shrieks, face twisting. "You revolve around me, you promised—" he cuts himself off. "I keep waiting, you know. For you to realize that this doesn't even matter—"

Something twists in Ford's gut. "That what doesn't matter?"

Bill laughs, arms thrown wide, gesturing at the house, the room, the research. Them. "All of it! Nothing matters, Fordsy, none of this cares back, none of this could even compare to the infinity I could give you!" He chokes, hands fisting in golden hair before he pulls, and even now, angry and betrayed and confused because he still doesn't understand Bill, not yet, Stanford still feels the urge to comfort him. "I keep waiting, keep thinking that maybe, once I finally show you how great things are when we're tied together, you'll—but you—" a sound, less a laugh then a downpour— "you just want to trap me in this festering slime mold you call humanity!"

He slips to the floor, shaking like a leaf trapped in the storm of himself. Ford steps forward, finally, untethering himself from the doorway. Even angry, he's never wanted to hurt anyone he loves, not really, and from here Bill looks more like a half-starved animal then anything capable of doing real damage.

"I hate it here," he whispers, dripping onto the floor. "I know you hate it too, Fordsy, but I—I hate it here. I was a god, and they trapped me in this body, bound me so I could never leave, and then threw it into the sea, do you have—" all of a sudden, the tension drains from his shoulders, face going blank as he stares into Ford's eyes— "do you have any idea what they did to me, in this body?"

"I'm sorry," Ford says, offering Bill his hands like they're back to that first beautiful day at the beach, because what else can he do? What else can you do, but put yourself back together and pretend none of it hurts?

Bill lets Ford pull him to standing, lets Ford kiss him, lets Ford try to brush away his seasalt tears.

"I can't do this," he says, breathing the words directly into Ford's mouth like they're sharing a cigarette. There's no smoke, but Ford's eyes and lungs burn all the same.

Like a sob, like a prayer: "No."

Bill presses a hand to Ford's cheek even as he untangles himself from his hold. "This isn't over, Pines. But I fucking hate it here. You know I can't stay."

Ford tries to grab onto him—his wrists or his hair or anything tangible that's left—but like water rushing through empty fingers, he's already gone. Ford forces himself to breathe: in, out, but when he hears the cabin door open then slam shut he trips forwards, catching himself on his desk, hands planted in piles of soggy paper.

His whole ruined life, sitting under too-many fingers.

He stays there for—a moment, maybe, or a year. Going over all the ways it had twisted, all the ways he'd taken it too far. This isn't over, Pines, sure but—God, what is he supposed to do if Bill is done with him?

It's the phone ringing, of all things, that snaps him out of it. The absurdity of it all makes him laugh—that the world could just go on for anyone else, for everyone else, in the wake of the tidal wave that is Bill.

(It reminds him of his father the morning After, his refusal to look at Ford or his mother's red eyes or the Empty that seemed to pervade everywhere his twin wasn't.)

He picks up the phone, and says nothing, and the caller says nothing, and maybe it's just the feeling of gravity trying to drag Ford to the center of the Earth that makes him brave enough to risk the embarrassment of being hopelessly, pitifully wrong, but when he finally speaks all he can say is—

"Stanley?"

There's a muffled curse on the other side of the line, and then the dial tone echoing in his ears, and Ford drops the phone and laughs because he'd rather that than cry and he doesn't know what to do with or about any of this, the leaving and the not having been left and—

When he leaves the house, a part of him doesn't expect to ever come back.

He finds Bill at the beach, sat underneath the cliffs where they'd met. He's not surprised by this—of course he's not, where else would an ocean be? He is surprised, though, to find him still dressed in human skin.

Neither of them speaks as Ford takes a seat in the sand next to Bill, who could almost pass as unaffected if not for the subtle release of tension in his spine as Ford approaches.

He folds his legs to his chest, sets his chin on his knees. Before him, the ocean stretches on and on and on. It's beautiful. It's always been beautiful.

Bill scratches in the sand with a piece of driftwood. Ford glances at his drawing out of the corner of his eye: a little triangle thing, with an eye in the center and buglike limbs and what might be a top hat.

Bill catches him looking. "This is me. What I was."

Objectively, it's absurd. But Ford doesn't laugh.

"Lets go be nothings together, Fordsy."

Ford thinks about it, what he means: leaving it all behind. The brother who abandoned him but maybe not really and the parents who were never impressed with anything he did and the town that hated him and the work that was never enough and the body that was never enough or maybe too much and the loneliness that never went away not really not even through Fiddleford and his peers in the scientific community and how he can never stop moving and how he's so, so tired. Thinks about when he'd found Bill in the new body, thinking he'd broken himself open against the rocks jutting from the sea.

"You really are like a Siren," he says, because maybe this is all he is: another fool lured to his death by something he thought was love.

Bill hums, low and lovely despite it all. "Maybe." he glances up, almost shyly, at Ford. "But you still love me, right?"

Ford closes his eyes. He opens them again just in time to watch Bill's body—his prison, maybe, if everything the demon says is to be believed, and despite it all Ford still wants to believe him—turn to seafoam and sink back into the sea.

It only takes him a few days to prepare, though being alone for the first time in months makes them feel longer. His affairs are all in order—it didn't take as much considering as it should have to decide to leave everything to his estranged twin, attaching to his will a phone number gotten from the all-knowing mailbox. Does knowing it really was Stanley on the other end of the line all those years make up for the silence and the betrayal and ruining his life? He doesn't know.

But maybe Ford could have tried to reach out, sooner. Maybe a part of it is his fault, too. Maybe another version of himself would have stuck around long enough to fix things, but this version can give his brother nothing but the house the work and everything else inside—everything except for the picture of them as children, which will stay with Ford to his watery grave.

When he leaves the house for what's really the last time—the house that he'd loved, the house that he'd haunted—he takes only what he can't bear to be parted with: the picture, of course, and his coat, and every drawing he'd ever done of Bill, as a human or an ocean or anything else. To apologize with, maybe, or just as a way of keeping his heart close. His research stays behind. Maybe Stanley will read it, and believe him, even if no one else did. Maybe it will sit in the study and be long forgotten like the man who wrote it.

It doesn't matter. Little matters, except getting to speak with Bill again. He's been avoiding the ocean, if only because he needs to do this prepared, and every time Bill asks him to be 'nothings' together, it gets harder to refuse him.

A part of him recognizes this as unhealthy, but there is so little of him left that cares. In so many timelines, Stanford Pines and Bill Cipher are wound together, the very fabric of their souls connected by blue flame. Even when wrenched apart—by fate or circumstance or Bill's actions—there is always a part of them that will remain with the other. There is no way to fully separate the two, and this timeline is no different.

The air has begun to taste of Winter, and it nips at the dry skin of Ford's face. Despite how long it's been since he visited, the cliffs still feel like home. The sunset paints the grass at his feet in orange and rose. Below, the ocean waits: gold and green and blue.

Ford's hands are steady. His breaths are even. At the end, he has never been more sure of himself.

And still, beneath it all, a part of him wonders if he is nothing but a fool in a long line of fools to be tricked by a pretty face and prettier words. Fine then. Let him be a fool. What has his intelligence ever given him, anyway?

Ford takes a breath: the last he will ever need—in this body, at least. A step, then another, then another, and then he's running, and when there is nothing but empty air and the taste of endings beneath him his body is finally, finally, weightless.

If he hits the water with a sound, he doesn't hear it. The cold reaches him first, and then colder magic fists a hand in his soul like a fishhook and pulls and then there is nothing but Bill and Ford, burning like two stars within the sea, twining together and laughing like children and burying themselves into each other until they are nothing but beautiful and bodiless and nothing, nothing at all.

Above them, the body floats on its back, glassy greying eyes reflecting nothing but the dawning stars a trillion miles above.

On the other side of the world, a man—not a twin, not for ten years and now, never again—reels, from a call that no one who has ever been a sibling wants to receive. Hands shaking, he closes his eyes and tells himself that he feels nothing, nothing at all.