Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are a great many things that, for the sake of the world around him, and for his continued existence in it, Fiddleford does not say. 

Things like, I think that skirts on men are just fine with me, actually. Or I sometimes wish that I had never been born at all, that I didn’t exist, and there was nothing of me to mourn. Or You are the best thing, you are everything, I look at the shape of your mouth and I believe in god. 

This last, of course, to—

Well, who else. 

He looks every bit the man Fidds remembers from college. Every bit, too, like someone entirely different—someone for whom seven years have certainly passed, someone who’s just been running, running ever since Fidds knew him, since before then; running towards, running from, it don’t matter much in the end does it? In Fidds’s estimation. 

Stanford Pines has shed the chubby-ish college look he had in his late teens, early twenties, and then put back on some weight in the way befitting a man approaching thirty. All trace of the boyish padding around his jawline, baby fat clinging—gone. His stubble comes in dark and hard, and he walks with his weight set firmer on his hips, like he owns his body, like he belongs in it. He’s not the kid Fidds knew so well, too well, maybe, he’s seen a thing or two, made some…new friends—they’re men now. 

They’re men now. The dreams they spun up on dusty dorm room carpeting are gone, or they’re realized. Gone is the inconsequential sepia glow of early college. All of the things they do in this world are now done. They always were, Fidds guesses, but it’s not so much that when you’re a kid your decisions don’t matter—it’s that you ain’t old enough to believe they do. 

*

Fidds isn’t sure he likes the new Ford, but neither can he find it in himself to look away. The thing about liking and loving: you can sure have one without the other. 

It’s easy to fall back in old habits. That spot on Ford’s neck where his hair is growing out just a bit too long, starting to curl, occluding the edge of his collar—call that habit. Counting every drum of his fingertips against a surface, drrrrl, the thing he does when he’s thinking—call that habit. Habit, too: the way Fidds hangs like a ghost in space whenever Stanford falls asleep in the middle of his work, which is often, only way he sleeps at all these days, really. 

Painfully bright, too, the way habits Fidds had gained since parting ways with him just…fade. Namely the one where Fiddleford will see something, or have the most perfect day, or read some article, and think so hard it steals his breath: God, you would have loved—He doesn’t have to think that anymore. They’re back in step, same as they were since college, like no time’s passed, them two just living up in each other’s space and doing everything together. 

He’d sell his company for pennies on the dollar, he would, if he could just know he’d have this forever. But he’ll never know that. Nobody can know that for sure, not even folks who are the most in love you’ve ever seen, much less Stanford, whom Fidds ain’t sure he’s ever seen take even a passing interest in someone like that. Much less Fiddleford, for whom it’s more important to protect himself, and thus Ford, from something with the potential to so spectacularly erupt. 

Anyway. Ford’s got this new friend. 

The thing about liking and loving. Momma used to say “hate the sin, love the sinner.” In more wistful times, Fidds used to hope that meant she’d find a way to love him somehow, if ever the world got to where he could tell her, but now he knows that’s not so. Fiddleford loves this brilliant, tunnel-vision man with whom he shares a space, with whom his heart has never fully parted, but he does not like the thing that sometimes wears his body. 

There was never any hope of him hiding it. His muse, whatever it is he wants to call the thing. Fidds tries not to think too hard about the fact that hiding it was definitely what Ford was planning on, whenever he’d called Fidds down here. Bill—that’s its name; imagine a demon with a normal-ass name like Bill—was always planning on being part of the conversation. 

A rather mean part, if Fidds did say so. Calling him “four-eyes,” “egghead,” all that…Ford never took issue with the nicknaming, but Fidds didn’t take too kindly to it. That, and Bill tends to run Ford ragged whenever he’s…piloting. Like he’s chasing a high, like he’s a toddler, careening headfirst into sensation just for the novelty of it, for the joy of wind between his teeth. Not like Ford holds his body that sacred either, not when there’s shit to test and research to keep him up for days at a time, but at least Ford eventually—by sheer force of exhaustion—rests. 

Suffice it to say there’s no great love lost between him and Bill, but neither can Fiddleford let on how much he hates him because….

It’s so close to how his Daddy was back at the end. With the drink. Too sick to get up and get it himself, hollering and carrying on for Fidds to go into town and get him a handle. And you want to tell them no because you love ‘em. You don’t want to be the thing that harms them, you want to protect, but beyond the guilt from how they insist you’re hurting them anyway, there’s the fact they’ll take their love back. You become the monster. You become the knife. 

No. Fidds knows better than to stand between an addict and the drug, between a zealot and the pulpit. He ain’t a good enough person to stand up to them anyway. His drug is love, even stolen in dreams and misread in meaningless glances, even if it’ll never be to Ford what it is to him—he can’t bear to do nothing that’ll break it. 

This is going nowhere good. When he’s inclined to be gracious to himself, he rationalizes that there’s nothing he can do about it either way, that at least with him here the fridge stays stocked and the furnace stays working and the bills stay paid—that when whatever is gonna happen happens, Fidds’ll be there to pick up the pieces. 

When he’s more inclined to be honest with himself, the truth is he couldn’t say no to Stanford about nothing. Never could, probably. The truth is he’s a weak-ass little punk who goes childlike with love anytime the man’s in the room, who would follow him anywhere. That they’re both lucky Ford’s drug of choice ain’t heroin: Fidds would be the one holding the needle. And eventually you take your final hit. 

*

When the thing Ford calls his muse is in his body, it stares at Fiddleford sometimes. 

The way it speaks makes his heartbeat ping all over his body. There’s Ford’s gravelly undertone and the molasses-sweet tenor of his voice, but it’s like there’s a hitchhiker riding along. Like it’s clinging to the words, drawing out syllables just a touch longer than Ford woulda done, emphasizing this and that word…creepy. 

“Fiddle-ford and Stan-ford,” it said once. “How’s that for fate? D’you think the universe meant for it to happen?”

Fidds is a master at hiding what he thinks. He put on the careful disinterest that seemed to head off Bill’s interest more often than not and said, “I don’t know. You seem to know an awful lot more about these things than we do, so what do you say, Bill?”

“Hmm, hmm,” Bill said. “I think fate is a mortal conception, probably. You want to believe you matter, that someone means for your life to go the way it does. Don’t you, Fiddleford?”

“I laid religion down a long time ago,” Fidds answered evenly. Looked up; looked it right in the eyes, there was that shudder again: the way they set in the face was Stanford’s, the nose between them his, but the eyes themselves were a sickly yellow, pupils puddled into black dashes. What Fidds was saying: I won’t pick it back up for nobody, least of all you.

Bill knew it, too. 

Fidds has an inkling Bill didn’t want him here to begin with. That, uncomfortably, Fidds and Bill share in the fact they need to appease Stanford by allowing each other’s presence. Fidds because of love. Whereas he can’t quite bring himself to entertain the notion that Bill has any such noble motivations. 

No…as the pile of almost-religious Bill imagery grows, no matter how much Ford tries to hide it, Fidds has a feeling deep down that it’s something much more sinister. But Bill’s wily. He knows better than to show his hand. Him and Fidds got that in common, too. 

*

The closer their project gets to working, the more Fidds gets the sense Bill wants him gone, and that he’s willing to pay more and more to get it. 

Always has done, but it’s worse. He takes to hissing things in Fidds’s ears, in Stanford’s body, dead of night when even the most monomaniacal of scientists have got to try and sleep. I’m gonna take that car for a joyride sometime soon, Fiddsy…Ford said I could, how much air can you get in that thing? 

Gets to where Fidds starts staying up to watch Bill in Ford’s body even more than he already does. Can’t even find the wit required to make it less obvious that that’s what he’s doing; he figures Bill already knew anyway. 

The demon likes to interrogate Fidds about why Fidds doesn’t trust him. And Fidds says, “I do trust you, Bill.”

“No you don’t.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your body language.” 

“And what would you know about that, Bill?” 

It’s this game they play. Each one daring the other to be the one to put their foot down and say it’s me or him. Fidds can play this game forever. Not in a literal sense, like Bill might be able to claim, but he’s strongly of the conviction that having a lifespan means you’re more liable to hang onto what you got, because it’ll all be gone sometime. 

Daddy woulda called it “grit.” 

It’s only when Fidds knows Bill’s gone and Ford’s passed out asleep that he lets himself lose it a little. Goes out into the damp, green Oregon air, dead of night, height of day, whatever time it is and just cries if he needs to. 

Five minutes at a time. He sets it on his watch. 

Remembers when he was just little. One time too many, he cried when they had to slaughter the hogs, and Daddy started to look at him askance. Start talking about toughening him up, calling him a pansy—as if you could know a thing like that, know someone was gay, just because they had a soft heart—anyway, Momma maybe did it out of love. It ain’t healthy, he knows that, but maybe it was all she had. 

Fiddleford, you listen to me. If you can’t shut it off, you put it away. Let it exist, but you put it away. You wait until it’s safe, til nobody can see you, and whatever it is you get to feel it for five minutes, you understand? Five minutes. And if five minutes ain’t big enough, well then you get down on your knees and you pray. That’s how you know you’re in trouble.

And Fiddleford don’t pray anymore. 

So it never takes him any longer than five minutes. 

And then he goes back inside and does whatever he needs to do. Pays the bills piling up. Throws out the milk that’s gone off. Puts a blanket around Stanford’s shoulders, permits himself his little habits, and only then—only sometimes—does he let himself rest a little bit. His whole life, right now, is caring too much, caring so hard he almost thinks it might be enough to cover the way Ford doesn’t even care about himself—and he doesn’t care if Ford ever realizes how much Fidds does for him. 

It doesn’t matter to him. He’s a drunkard’s son. He’s used to it. 

It does matter. It does. It just…nothing will change, so he might as well put that one in the box of things that get five minutes here and there on a clear, damp night, and no more. 

*

Say what you will about Bill. He has a nose for weaknesses. 

Which is mighty unfortunate. Fiddleford’s weakness has been Stanford for over a decade, maybe always will be. Ford’s the general category. Everything else—

Well. 

With a weakness as big as a whole person, you can get mighty specific about how it plays out. 

Fidds is in the kitchen washing dishes, first time it happens. He’s left Ford passed out on the couch, calculations and observations sprawled around him, as ever. He doesn’t hear Ford come up on him, just his voice all of a sudden: “Fiddleford.”

“Mm-hmm?” He’s tired, really he is. Would much rather have sprawled himself out on the carpet next to the couch and slept, too, but there’s plenty that needs done. 

“You do so much for me. Thank you.” 

It makes his knees want to wobble straight outta their sockets, he swears it, goosebumps rising on his skin—thank god for dish gloves. His heart’s in his throat, bullying its way forward into the roof of his mouth, until he realizes—

“I don’t do it for you, Bill.” 

The aggravated growl he lets out carries that hitchhiker effect it usually does. Fidds wills his heart to stop pounding with how he almost sounded natural for a second, almost sounded like Ford. “I had you,” Bill whines. “How did you know?”

Because Ford don’t ever say things like that. “He’s my best friend, Bill. I know his voice.” Fidds sets down the sponge, tugs the gloves off his hands. “What do you think you’re doin’, anyway?”

“I was curious,” Bill hisses. Now that Fidds has turned to face him, it’s plain to see who’s in the body. Bill wears it weird, like he’s rigid, a coat hanger, and the body’s a loose towel hung over it that he struggles to move with finesse. “Why Ford thinks those things but doesn’t ever say them. Is it a taboo? He’s not supposed to say them, or?”

Fidds reminds himself this is a demon he’s talking to. That Bill rarely interacts with him unless it’s to play with him, manipulate him, get Fidds to give him something he wants—he wanted ice cream a couple days ago, wanted a brain freeze, just to feel something, he said. Crazy shit. “First of all, he hasn’t gotta say it for me to know it,” Fidds says flatly. “Second of all, if he’s keepin’ his thoughts private, don’t you think you maybe oughta ask him why, and keep ‘em to yourself otherwise?” 

“Why?”

“Because it’s polite, Bill.”

“Come onnnn, four-eyes, don’t you wanna hear it? What he thinks about you?”

“If Ford needs me to know somethin’, he tells me.” 

“You do wanna hear it. I can tell.” 

“Bill. What do you want?”

“This isn’t about me.” 

“Of course it’s about you.” Fidds forces his voice flat, not giving him any reaction. “You don’t talk to me outta the goodness of your heart. You want somethin’, so just tell me what it is and I’ll give you a proper yes or no.” 

“Maybe I’m just lonely,” Bill whines. “When I’m in here, he’s gone. So I only have you to talk to.” 

“Half the time, your talkin’ to me just means trying to creep me out or make me mad, so maybe you oughta think about that.”

“Hmm,” says Bill. “You’re no fun.”

“I guess I ain’t, Bill. I got work to do.” 

And from there it just gets more frequent. Bill’s playing with his head, Fidds knows it. But—Fidds can’t lie—he’s getting better. Better at masking his own voice riding alongside Ford’s. 

Not good enough to fool Fidds, most of the time, not really. But enough that for half a second, Fiddleford’s traitor heart wants him to stay blind to the manipulation and believe it a little bit. 

Fiddleford, I don’t know what I’d do without you. 

Why are you so good to me? I don’t deserve you. 

“Lay off the cheap soap operas, Bill,” Fidds says flatly. But Bill carries on, each time digging closer and closer to those things Fidds doesn’t say, the things he’s hidden like he hid Daddy’s gun in the coffin, let it get choked by the dirt alongside the rest of him, just so it couldn’t ever turn itself on the wrong person. Or the right one.

It ain’t always sweet words, said sickly. Sometimes it’s a hand on a shoulder. It’s a thumb brushing his hair out of his eyes. Bill is playing. Banking on the fact that Fidds will not be able to bear this—that he will leave, if only to break himself from the source of his pain, the thing he wants, the thing Bill wants him to think he can have, even though he knows he can’t. 

Not just because Ford would never, but because the world is broken. Because Fidds might make do with his knees on a men’s room floor, or with smoke-drenched hotel rooms in neighboring cities, but these are things you can allow yourself in a broken world. What you cannot allow yourself is giving in to the one you look at and think, What I wouldn’t give for my name in your mouth, in every way. The broken world will make sure it won’t last, if he hasn’t made sure first, and then you’ll start to disappear from what remains of your life. 

So Bill’s counting on Fidds to run from the certain doom of sticking around. From whatever Bill’s pushing—Fiddleford can just imagine him goading Fidds into a confession of some sort, only to drop from Ford’s body at the crucial moment and ensure their relationship would crumble. Or just fucking his head around until, even when Ford is Ford, Fidds won’t be able to function around him. 

Unfortunately for him, there is a whole hell of a lot that Fidds can bear. 

*

As it turns out, Fiddleford cannot bear this. 

“This” being a pivotal night in late September, the spooky shroud of fall starting to descend here in their little pocket of Oregon, the rare night on which Ford has crashed out at a reasonable-ish time. Nearly 1 AM. Still, small victories. 

Fidds actually sleeps when Ford does, nowadays. Bill’s taken to waking him anytime he takes over, anyway, like prodding at Fiddleford is his prime objective these days—and he’s been anxious, both Bill and Ford snappier than usual, the completion of the portal so close that every failure feels like a theft. So Fidds is reasonably certain Bill ain’t gonna do anything to jeopardize that by putting Ford’s borrowed body in danger. 

Ford’s slumped over the kitchen table, immovable, the afghan Fidds dropped on him heavy around his shoulders. Fidds knows better than to try and move him; Ford gets aggressive when roused mid-sleep. Fiddleford allows himself one last longing look at his sleeping form, one last moment of habit, before he turns out the light and makes his rounds, locking the doors before stepping into the den to shut off the last lamps. Ford’s so bad about it, leaving them on wherever he goes, the world’s greatest fire hazard—not the greatest look for someone working on potentially groundbreaking electrical engineering projects. 

That said, it’s another small victory anytime Ford falls asleep above ground level at all. The closer in proximity he is to food, the more likely he might remember to eat it, same with water—at least he’s fastidious about hygiene, if nothing else. Fidds has thought of moving the fridge downstairs, to either the study or the lab, but at least if it’s up here Ford’ll surface at all. Lately all he’s wanted to do is be down there, mired in calculations. 

Anyway. Fidds leaves the lamp beside the hall entry for last, as he’ll come back this way. He flicks it off, then stands for a moment in the mouth of the hall, staring out the window at the night-cloaked forest. 

Sometimes he’d almost rather Ford sleep in the daytime, because at night, when he’s asleep and Fidds ain’t, Fiddleford feels the chasm between them like a physical thing, a lonely, echoing, obvious thing. The kinda thing a man would have to be mighty stupid to think he can cross. Not that Fidds does. He just pretends it isn’t there, until these nights, until he finds himself setting a timer on his watch for five minutes and letting the tears stream silently down his face. 

He rarely does it in the house. But he’s so leaden with aching loneliness right now that he can’t bear to move a step, his heart quavering, crying out for—something—not that he reckons there’s too many pickings in town but…maybe he oughta make his way down to Portland for a couple days. Just…but no. 

He knows that won’t help. It didn’t in college, it won’t now. 

When the five minutes are up, Fidds still doesn’t pray. But maybe some little part of his heart is screaming out to the universe enough to count, because he hears footsteps behind him. Ford’s familiar, flat-footed shuffle. “What’re you doing up?” Fiddleford asks weakly. Thankful for the dark, not that he’s gonna turn around one minute before he has to. 

“I don’t know, Fidds. I could ask the same of you.” His voice is raspy, thick with sleep, and it soothes some part of Fiddleford, despite the chasm. Despite the void. 

And then Ford presses his forehead against the back of Fiddleford’s skinny shoulders, and it’s all he can do not to shiver. 

He used to do that—standing in line places. Always said standing in line made him sleepy. Supermarkets, movie theaters, cafeterias—Ford would end up behind him, sometimes make a show of being gentlemanly, you go first, Fid, I insist—you’re just gonna put your oily face in the back of my shirt again, ain’t you—suddenly standing in lines got a lot more appealing to Fidds. 

He hasn’t done it since their graduation. 

“Go on back to sleep, Ford,” Fidds says shakily. “Maybe in a bed this time, huh? We—we ain’t nineteen anymore.” 

“No, we certainly aren’t.” His laugh—all of his laughs—are like things Fiddleford carries around under his skin, he knows every one. This one’s wry, almost bitter, a little self-deprecating. “We’re…all grown up now. Supposed to be.”

“Mm. Not so sure I feel it.” Fidds chokes back another sob, reminding himself his five minutes is up, been up for long before he stopped crying, if he’s honest. Five minutes last a lot longer when you’re avoiding religion. 

“Me either,” Ford whispers, his breath—him—warming Fiddleford’s spine. “I feel so…lost, sometimes.”

“Really? You?” Fiddleford half-turns, mainly his head, really, not that he’s able to make out much more than a vaguely head-shaped blob—he’d taken his glasses off to cry. “Stanford Pines, you feel lost?”

“Not as much,” Ford whispers, “with you around.” 

There it is. Fidds’s heart catches at the edge of his ribs. You’re lying, he wants to say, but he can’t. 

“I’m tired of fighting it,” Ford rasps. No, no, he can’t be serious. “How I feel—”

“Stanford, you hush,” Fiddleford hisses, turning around. Doesn’t care if Ford can see he’s been crying now. There are things—Fidds has his reasons for not voicing it aloud. It’s for both their own good. “Don’t say nothing. You go to bed. You sleep. And you get up in the morning and it’ll be like this never happened—”

“No,” Ford grits out. Fidds can’t see his face at all really, but he can tell Ford ain’t looking at him. Because he knows this is—this is dangerous. More dangerous than shapeshifters. More dangerous than portals. “I need you to tell me—tell me I’m not crazy.”

Fidds sags against the oak-paneled wall with a whimper. “Ford,” he begs softly. 

“I’m not, am I? Please, Fiddleford—”

“Oh, you’re crazy, all right. You’re a crazy sumbitch, and—and you just go running headlong into any old thing, and I—and here I go, fucking—following you anyway.” His hands shake, and he knots one in the bottom hem of his shirt, flattening the other palm on the wall behind him. “Yeah, you’re crazy. But—”no, Fidds, stop, goddammit—“but you ain’t alone.” 

The silence in the hallway hangs like a third presence, amplifying the fact that they’re both breathing heavy. Still, Fidds knows—like every other time—he’s the one who takes care. He’s the one who protects. “But Stanford,” he says softly, “you know—we can’t—”

Ford cuts him off with his mouth. His mouth, pressed against Fiddleford’s mouth, unpracticed, a bit desperate, and it’s—everything, it’s perfect, it’s Ford.

Fiddleford’s drug of choice. He couldn’t have ever stopped him, not really. Not a soul in the world that he knows of could stop Stanford Pines when his mind is set on something. 

Fidds realizes his own hands are hovering in midair, shaking, and he doesn’t think too hard when he wraps one around the back of Ford’s head and the other around his side. He’s—warm, he’s solid, he’s real, he’s Ford, he’s such a bad idea—

When Ford pulls away, Fidds figures it’s because he’s scared himself off, or Fidds has, but then he whispers, “Fiddleford,” and Fidds open his eyes and—

God. Fuck.

It’s Bill. 

How long has it been Bill? Has it—has this been Bill this whole time? “What the fuck,” Fidds chokes, shoving him away hard enough his back hits the opposite wall, god, fuck, how could Fidds not have seen it, how could this happen, how—how fucking dare he. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Oh my god—”

“I figured I could fool you, but then I realized I don’t want to keep my eyes closed the whole time,” Bill says, as though that explains anything—

Fidds’s mind is a whirl of anxiety. I’m a fucking idiot, I kissed him, Ford’s gonna find out, Ford’s gonna hate me, Ford’s gonna kick me out—“Now I gone and done it,” he snarls. “Haven’t I? Huh? You got what you wanted, you little triangle fuck?”

“Not yet I haven’t.” 

“Yeah. Yeah. Probably I oughta just hightail it outta here, huh? What—d’you really think Ford’ll believe you over me?” He’s frantic, scattered. This—this can’t be the way he loses him.

“What? Now, hang on a second, Fiddsy. Maybe we got our wires crossed. You think I’m doing this to get between you?” Fiddleford maybe can’t see, but he can hear, the smirk on his face. “Ideally, Ford will never know.”

“He—what?”

“He needs to unwind. He said it himself. And I happen to want…certain experiences. So…we’ve come to an agreement. Put your glasses on. C’mon.” 

Fiddleford glares bloody murder at him but puts them on, if only to be able to glare more precisely, and then Bill hands him Ford’s ever-present journal. In which an entry, sure enough, says, Have agreed that my muse may pursue a sexual partner while in my body. Getting to the point where stress may actually be hindering my progress, rather than helping it, as usual, but I am simply unable to stomach losing valuable working time seeking out someone with whom to share a sweaty, awkward experience in some hotel room. Much simpler to enjoy the benefits of the interaction without being forced to bear the memory of participating in it. If only…. The entry cut out there, probably because Ford had drifted off midway through writing it, or something else had caught his attention. 

“Bill, this…this is sick,” Fidds says slowly, shutting the journal and tucking it into his own waistband. “You—I didn’t wanna know about this. This is—”

“You’d rather I did it with you without you knowing about it? I guess that can be arranged—”

“With m—Bill, that’s—you really are somethin’ else, you know that?” Fiddleford rakes a fretful hand through his hair. “You—what, you figured just because I—care about him—”

“The way you kissed him just now goes beyond caring about a friend, and we both know it,” Bill interrupts. “The way you look at him. This is what you want. Isn’t it?”

“I don’t even know how to tell you how fucked-up that is,” Fiddleford spits, his eyes starting to water again. “What you’re talkin’ about—god, you really just don’t understand—”

“What? Love? No, I don’t. Probably never will.” He pads closer, and Fidds sees it now, the different way Bill holds the weight of this body. How hard must he have been trying to mimic Ford? “But…be honest.” It gives him chills for two very different reasons, the way the Bill in Ford’s voice just sort of…drops out. If he couldn’t see his eyes, he’d think this was Ford. “You might never get this chance again,” Ford—Bill—murmurs, his face six inches from Fiddleford’s. “He just might end the world soon.”

“I know,” Fiddleford whispers, forcing his eyes to stay on Bill’s eyes, to remember this isn’t Ford. 

“And you just might let him.” Fidds flinches. Because of course Bill sees that, too. 

“Fuck you,” he chokes out. 

“Is that a yes?” His breath is an indictment against Fiddleford’s skin, his eyes almost fitting in Ford’s face, hooded as they are instead of held wide like usual. “Think about it—do you really trust some rando I manage to snag to take proper care of him, anyway?”

“I hate you, you know that?” Fidds whimpers, but it’s getting harder and harder to convince himself this night will end the way it oughta. It should end with him finding some way to knock Bill out of the body, wake Ford up, convince him to drop the guy. Or, at the very least, with Bill-as-Ford running off to honor the actual agreement they made. “I really do hate you—”

“But you love him. And he’ll never know about it.” He halves the distance between their faces, and then his hand cups Fidds’s face, brushing tears off his cheeks, just—god, Fidds can’t stand it, the heat of his skin, the calluses he knows Ford has, has always imagined, has imagined correctly apparently—“I made a deal with him, remember? I can’t break those. He’ll never know.”

Fiddleford McGucket ain’t a good person. He’s known this for awhile now. It’s the real reason he doesn’t do religion anymore: not because he necessarily discredits the idea of a god somewhere, but because he knows they can see him for what he is, and he ain’t someone who belongs in a church, in any kind of church. He is selfish and cowardly and addicted, and even if he gave up believing he was any kind of deviant for who he is a long time ago, the way he feeds it sparingly and nurses it bitterly only leads to worse decisions. 

He thought he could at least be good to Stanford. Maybe he was wrong. Or maybe—

As Bill kisses him again (as Fidds doesn’t stop him), he rationalizes. Ford wants this—wants sex, anyway. Ford doesn’t wanna remember. Ford won’t remember nothing. Wasn’t Bill right? Wasn’t there nobody better who’d take care of him besides Fiddleford? (He shoves away the voice in the back of his head that wants to remind him agreeing with Bill on anything is never a good call.) Fidds has over a decade of furtive, periodical encounters under his belt, he knows what he’s doing.

So maybe he is being good to Stanford. In his own way. Maybe this counts as the best of a bad batch of options.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway, as he knots his shaking fingers in the back of Ford’s hair and turns his head, fixing the angle, deepening it, god—wasn’t this how he’d imagined it, as far back as freshman year, when it was so clear Ford didn’t know his way around another person any type of way, much less like this—Bill hums in appreciation, again, so close to how Fidds had imagined it, if not better, and runs his over-eager hands up Fidds’s sweatshirt. 

“Is the crying normal?” Bill asks when their lips part, and Fidds glares at him and mops his tears off with his sleeve. 

“No, Bill. None of this is normal. Uh-uh—” Fidds presses a hand over his mouth. “Swear to god, if you ask me ‘why’ I will end this right here and now.”

“Taking charge, I like it,” Bill says breathily when Fidds lets up on him. “Much as I hate to admit it, I haven’t done this in a really long time, and I was a woman the last time, so—” He cocks Ford’s head and looks at Fidds through his lashes, fuck, it’s fucked-up how the eyes don’t really ruin the effect—“Teach me?” he says, dropping the Bill outta his voice, and fuck. 

There’s revulsion rising up in Fiddleford, sure, but not near enough to curdle the heat in his gut. This is so wrong. “Don’t do that,” he husks, and Bill huffs out sarcastically, so Ford it hurts. 

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do, Bill, I mean it.”

“You don’t have to punish yourself. We aren’t doing anything wrong.” 

“Bill.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.” Fidds yanks him back in by the collar, memorizes—despite himself—the shape of Ford’s mouth, the particular spot on his bottom lip that gets him gasping when Fidds nips it…that’s physiological, right? Biological? Would it be the same if—he’s thinking too hard. If he keeps thinking hard, he’ll stop. 

And he ain’t a good enough person to stop, as has been established. 

Ford’s gravelly voice turns even the most breathy of whines raspy and rumbly, just like Fidds would’ve fucking hoped, has dreamed about, and it’s—Fidds is addicted. Was already, but this is—this just adds to the goddamn list. He chases more sounds, sucking his way down the strong column of Ford’s neck, his head turned—he can almost forget it’s Bill, this way, which is dangerous—

“Ah, hm,” Bill hums, six fingers back up under Fidds’s shirt, roaming aimlessly. “My heart rate’s up, I don’t remember if that’s—normal—”

Fiddleford huffs a laugh into the underside of his jaw. “Yes, it’s normal.”

“How high can it go? Before he—”

“Don’t ask me things like that, Jesus, Bill. It ain’t gonna get anywhere close, anyway.” 

“Hmm,” says Bill, and then he’s wrangling his head around, getting at Fidds’s neck the same way Fidds was. He uses too much teeth. Fidds can’t find it in himself to mind as much as he pretends to. 

“You’re gnawing like a goddamn puppy, ease up on the teeth, Bill. Suck—no, Bill.” He’s just making a slurping noise with his mouth, has he never sucked anything in a human body before? “You make a seal with your lips, and then—okay, that’s…better.” It’s…fine. “Guess I’ll be the one doing most of the sucking anyway,” he adds, under his breath, but Bill rears back, furrowing his brow at him in the adorable way Ford does, this is so wrong.

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“I don’t recall no deal with you.”

“The one I made with Ford. He set out to get fucked.”

“You mean to fuck. Getting fucked is a little different, Bill.”

“I know that. Other people say words for reasons, too, four-eyes,” Bill snarks, and now it’s Fiddleford’s turn to wrinkle his brow. 

“Hang on a second. You’re saying Ford set out to…to do this with….”

“...someone with a dick? Yeah, yes, that’s what I’m saying.” 

“So he’s—”

“I don’t know what Ford is. Ford doesn’t know what Ford is.” The way Bill says it, it’s like they’ve argued about it a thousand times, which is—

None of Fiddleford’s business, is what it is. The whole situation just kinda grinds his brain to a halt, anyway, it’s enough trouble to try and think through the heat suffusing his body at the thought of—

“He’s too scared to do it himself,” Bill grumbles. “Just wants to know how much it’ll hurt the next day.”

“Oh my god.” Every time he thinks he knows all the ways in which this situation isn’t right, Bill opens his goddamn mouth. “Fuckin’ hell, Ford. This ain’t healthy, you know that? For any of us.”

“That doesn’t really apply to me,” Bill says, shrugging Ford’s shoulders in that syrupy, feline way so telltale for Bill. 

“Okay.” Fidds breathes in and out real slow, ignoring the way his dick is smarting in his pants, his already half-present erection rearing itself with a fury when the idea of actually fucking him set in. This is so fucked up. “If we’re gonna do this, it ain’t gonna be in the hallway,” he grumbles, then grabs Bill by the shirtsleeve and drags him towards the stairs. 

“Ford’s bed is bigger,” Bill sing-songs. Fidds gives him a dirty look over his shoulder.

“I got a feeling Ford ain’t got what we need, because Ford don’t know what he’s doing,” he grumbles.

“Really? His bed is the line you draw?”

“You don’t got any right to criticize my line, now, do you, Bill?” Fidds says flatly. “I’m the one who knows how to do this, aren’t I?” They’ve reached the top of the stairs, the corner into the hallway where Fidds’s room is, and Fidds takes the opportunity to crowd Bill backwards into the wall, their positions reversed. “And another thing. Whoa, nuh-uh.” As Bill tries to wriggle around him, clearly annoyed with the delays, Fiddleford puts one of his thighs between Ford’s, trying not to show how much it gets to him, the heat, the press of his erection, fuck—“Look at me, Bill.”

“What,” Bill says dumbly, probably consumed in the moment much the same as Fidds is. Lucky for Fidds, he’s done this a whole lot more than Bill has.

“We do this my way, or not at all.” Fidds squeezes Ford’s jaw in his fingertips, glaring at Bill’s eyes. It’s hard to keep them straight, the way they blur into one another, at least right now. Ford’s body, Bill’s mind. “No fussing. No rushing. No fuckin’ around. I tell you to do something, you do it. This ain’t a quick process, do you understand?”

“You’re so protective of him,” Bill croons, craning his face up to nuzzle his forehead against Fidds’s. “Knew you were the right choice. Told you.”

“Bill, I am being fuckin’ serious.”

“I know. Jesus Christ, I’ll play nice, okay?” He drops his voice again, picks up Ford’s. “I’ll be good, I promise….”

Fidds can’t quite clamp down on his expression in time to hide whatever’s probably going on. Goddammit. “I told you to stop doing that,” he mutters under his breath, then grabs him by the collar and hauls him the rest of the way down the hall.

Bill looks around Fiddleford’s room with naked curiosity. Fidds takes great pains not to allow him in here, most of the time, not that there’s really anything worth hiding—he just doesn’t want Bill in his space, generally. It’s pretty bare up here, few decorations; Fidds doesn’t spend much time here, anyway. The lab spaces are more his than anywhere else. He steals Bill’s attention by reaching for the rumpled button-down Ford’s wearing and starting to undo the buttons.

“I can do that myself,” Bill says, like it’s a proud fact, him being able to undo buttons, and Fidds rolls his eyes.

“Part of the appeal is usually, you know. Undressing each other,” he says drily, and Bill takes that to heart, tugging at Fiddleford’s sweatshirt with an utter lack of grace. Fidds huffs but lets him have it. Lets him get all weird and entranced while Fidds undoes the last of the buttons and tries very hard not to react. Or break down. Either option seems likely right now. Because it’s Ford, and Ford is—

Everything he’s been obsessed with since he was just shy of nineteen. Everything in the whole world.

There’s guilt. But then there’s always guilt. His love for Ford has always been inseparable from his general guilt and shame, the way he exists in this goddamn world, so constant and all-consuming that it’s easy to shove on the back burner and replace with…obligation. To take care of Ford’s body the best way he knows how. In some ways, it’s how he’s been living his life these eighteen months he’s been in Gravity Falls. Not much changes.

“Whoa,” Bill says, sounding drunk. “This brain really likes seeing you shirtless.” If Fidds is flushed about that, there ain’t nothing he can do about it. Ford just probably hasn’t seen anyone naked in a long time, is all. Bill doesn’t ask before he reaches out and runs Ford’s beautiful, broad hands all over Fiddleford’s bare chest, playing with the scant hair there—which, by the way, Ford has more, and it’s darker, and—god, the softness of his belly is new, because Fidds has been feeding him, god knows how he survived until now. Guilt on the back burner, Fiddleford reciprocates, and they fall back into kissing, their hands roaming.

It's not that Fidds ain’t seen him shirtless before. Hell, the laceration on the back of his left shoulder, from when he fell when they were constructing the bunker and a piece of sharp wire gouged into him—Fidds stitched it up himself. But touching like this—that’s new. “Fiddleford,” Bill mumbles against his mouth. “Does it damage the penis if you have an erection for too long in constricting pants? Because—”

Fiddleford breaks off into a bout of coughing laughter, part of it due to discomfort. Jesus Christ, this sounds like something a much younger Stanford might’ve actually asked at some point. He doesn’t like to think about the ways Bill and Ford are alike. “No, Bill, but you also don’t need my permission to take your pants off,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, I thought it was your way or not at all—”

“You can’t figure out the zipper, can you.” Fidds shoves him backwards onto the mattress, then deftly undoes Ford’s fly and tugs his pants and underwear down.

“It’s supposed to be that color, right?” Bill asks, craning his neck down to look at—

Fiddleford swallows thickly. Ugh. What he wouldn’t give to have this be…normal. To have it be the right way. Ford’s gorgeous, cut dick rising up from a thick snarl of dark hair, every bit something to drool over, and lord, is Fidds drooling. “Yeah, Bill, it’s supposed to be that color,” he says faintly. God, this is so wrong.

What he wouldn’t give to be able to look into Ford’s eyes and know the other man knew exactly who was doing this to him. His body, bare and spread out in Fiddleford’s sheets, is straight out of a fantasy, a dream—day and night—he’s had a thousand times. His heart twists uneasily in his ribcage and he turns away under the guise of grabbing the lubricant out of his nightstand. Really, he’s trying to bite down on the swell of emotions rising up in him, the ones that usually find him setting a timer and taking off his glasses and not praying.

Fuck. He can do this—this ain’t about him. It’s about Ford, really, when you think about it. (Of course he knows he’s fooling himself, but hell, it’s working.) He returns to the bed, bottle in hand, and looks over the other man with an eye for logic.

“Isn’t there a part where you, you know—touch me?” Bill deadpans, and Fidds glares at him.

It’d probably be easiest to put him up on all fours, really. But, selfishly, Fidds needs to be able to see his face. See them demon eyes. Otherwise he fears he’ll forget himself, forget this isn’t really Ford he’s—

Fucking.

He’s really doing this.

“I told you this ain’t a fast process,” Fidds drawls, standing and moving to grab a towel from his laundry. It’s dirty anyway. He wraps it around one of his pillows, then taps at Bill’s side. “Lift your hips up.” This, apparently, is not intuitive to figure out. “Okay, here—put your feet up on the bed and—there you go.” He gets the pillow under his hips and Bill flushes, god Stanford’s face has always been so pretty flushed all red, and without thinking Fidds is raising a hand to trace the spread of it across his cheekbones, Bill looking nakedly curious at the gesture. “Don’t be embarrassed, Bill. Ain’t like most men is the epitome of grace.”

“Are you just gonna call me ‘Bill’ the whole time?” Bill asks in Ford’s voice, and Fiddleford glares at him, wrenching one of his knees up for better access.

“What, d’you expect me to call you Ford? Get real.”

“No. I mean, you can if you want. But don’t people usually call each other…you know, honey…I could see you being a honey kinda guy—”

“There are pet names I would call a hooker that I wouldn’t call you,” Fidds says flatly. Because he’s weak, because he’s selfish, he wraps a hand around Stanford’s gorgeous cock and tells himself it’s just to shut Bill up. Not that it works. Bill put’s Ford’s vocal chords into a guttural whimper, wriggling inanely, clearly trying to make sense of what the body wants of him. Which is to thrust up into Fidds’s hand, but Bill can’t figure it out. Fiddleford bites back a mean laugh. “Yeah, I’m just gonna call you Bill,” he hums, pumping him lightly from base to tip before tracing his fingers down, marking a path between his plush ass cheeks.

Even if it weren’t Ford, if it weren’t the man he’s loved since meeting him, Fiddleford would probably kill his cousin for this ass, if it asked him to. Which has always been true.

In the absence of his hand, Bill starts inching his hands towards his dick, and Fiddleford makes a psst noise like Bill’s a naughty dog, which ain’t far off in Fidds’s book, and Bill freezes. “It’ll feel a whole lot better if you wait.”

“How on earth can that be true?” Bill wheezes. “You do this voluntarily? This is—agony.”

“Yeah?” Fiddleford sets about lubing up his fingers, warming it up, because he’s all considerate like that. “The body wants you to touch it, don’t it? Is it just real bad, Bill?”

“You’re—making fun of me,” Bill pants, and Fidds clicks his tongue in mock sympathy and starts rubbing circles over his hole, feeling it twitch under his fingertips. “That feels weird. I kind of prefer what you were doing before.”

“You need to relax,” Fidds says neutrally, grabbing hold of his cock again. “Shut your eyes, Bill. Try to focus on wherever the body’s holding tension.”

“Kinda hard to do that when you’re being a fucking tease,” he grits out, his voice only like Ford’s because it’s strained, and Fidds is thankful his eyes are shut because Fiddleford is biting his tongue. He could get used to Ford’s voice like that, low and demanding and bitten off.

“You want me to stop?” he says, when he can say anything.

“No. That would be worse.”

“Then quit your whinin’ and focus. Try breathing a little slower. You gotta relax, that’s it.” Slowly, he slides a finger in, not bothering to conceal the sound he makes at the feel of it clenching on him, sucking him in.

“Oh—god,” Bill whispers. “Okay—okay. I’m relaxing, I’m relaxed. Shit is easy.”

“Uh-huh,” Fidds mutters sarcastically.

“Something I’ve been meaning to ask,” Bill strains, “is it normal to have a stabbing pain between your shoulders anytime you sit up?”

“No,” Fiddleford grouses, “and you are gonna let me work on that when we’re done here, but the good news is—” He gets a second finger in without much fanfare, aside from a series of overwhelmed moans from Bill, which god he wishes it was Stanford, but this is just further proof that the world’s broken and he ain’t ever gonna have what he wants. “That’s two,” he finishes softly, drinking in the way Ford’s body is flushed, breaths deep and fast, his eyes—Bill’s eyes—glazed over.

“How big can your dick possibly be?” Bill pants.

“Thanks, Bill. Bigger’n two fingers, that’s for sure,” Fidds drawls—just for that, he lets go of Ford’s dick, and Bill’s eyes pool up at him.

“Please—Fiddleford—” As if it doesn’t just destroy him, hearing Ford’s voice say please all pretty.

“No whining.” Fiddleford stretches his fingers, using his other hand to push Ford’s thigh back further, looking for—there. He can just barely reach it, but it’s enough. Bill mewls as he brushes against his prostate, his trunk twisting again in the way that means he can’t figure out what the body wants from him. “Relax, Bill, relax,” Fiddleford scolds. “I know you wanna move, but don’t, okay? I don’t want you spraining nothing ‘cause you don’t know what you’re doing, so just—there you go.” Bill has gone limp, Ford’s thigh pressing heavy into Fiddleford’s hand, his eyes slitted with the effort.

Fiddleford starts stretching him out, gently scissoring his hole open, his own cock twitching anytime the walls of muscle around his fingers flutter or clench. It’s so hard to stay detached. To remember this is Bill. To remember this ain’t for him.

Sure feels like it’s for him, in all the worst ways. In all the ways Fidds is rotten deep inside.

Along the way, it seems like Bill’s getting a handle on the whole relaxing thing. Fiddleford remembers Ford expounding once over how Bill had said he sometimes has to focus on a single muscle at once, especially for fine motor movements—maybe it’s coming in handy here. In any case, he’s opened up and ready for Fidds in the lower end of time Fiddleford’s used to spending on this part.

He allows himself a moment of habit. Not that habit’s ever been anything like this, but still, the watching, the wanting—that’s the same. Ford’s body is sprawled there in his sheets, lax and trembling at once, his cock curved up over his belly and weeping a puddle all over the softness of it, sticking in the hairs—he’s flushed, sheened in cooling sweat, his head thrown back—

He tries valiantly not to save it in his mind so he can pretend it was Ford later. He fails; he knew he would.

“Fid,” Bill murmurs, and his lashes come up, and Fidds sees the almost-glowing yolk of his eyes just beneath them. “Please, please.”

“Please what, Bill?” Fiddleford’s already kicking out of his pants, rolling on a condom—he’d made the decision, one of the only altruistic ones he’s made tonight, figuring Ford wouldn’t appreciate the way the lube comes out, much less cum.

“I don’t know, I don’t know what this stupid body is telling me,” Bill grits out. “Just—whatever comes next, I think—please tell me the fucking comes next.”

Fiddleford laughs breathlessly, running a lube-slicked hand over his cock before kneeing up between Ford’s thighs (god, he wants to see his teeth marks in them, he wants to mark them up, he can’t) and leaning over him, allowing Bill to run his teeth all over Fidds’s neck again. “You ain’t gonna figure out how to leave a hickey before the night’s over, are you? Hopeless,” Fiddleford mutters. “And yes, Bill, the fucking comes next.” With that, he lines himself up, sliding slowly in.

Dear god.

Ford’s—Bill’s, fuck, shit—arm comes up, grappling around Fidds’s back and clinging, probably on reflex, and Fiddleford for his part presses his forehead into the mattress next to Ford’s head (Bill’s head, fuck) and hisses out a low groan. Dear god, it’s been too long since he’s had a proper lay.

On a good day, he’s too busy. On a bad day, he knows he’d just be imagining Ford anyway, and the guilt eats him until he jacks off all sad and goes to bed.

Well. This’ll ruin him for even that, probably. Not only will he be imagining Ford, he’ll be imagining him right. And nothing else will ever measure up. “Bill,” he snarls out, finally rearing his head up to look him in the eyes, “if it hurts, you better tell me.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Bill slurs. “It doesn’t—oh my god, is there more of it?” Fiddleford can’t help snickering as he hitches the next couple inches into him.

“We’re about halfway,” he says smugly.

“Well, it—still doesn’t hurt,” Bill pants, his thighs shaking against Fiddleford’s hips. “I asked you how big it was—”

“It’s an average size, Bill, Ford is just—apparently—a virgin,” Fidds pants. And it’s in that moment it kinda hits him. That he’s taking Ford’s virginity. And two thoughts go through his head: this is so goddamn wrong and mine mine mine, both of them echoing each other, amplifying each other, adding up to the same end. He snaps his hips forward the rest of the way, buried in Ford to the root, a snarl punching out of him.

“Okayyy,” Bill groans. “That’s all of it? Fuck, where did that come from—and can I maybe get more—”

“More of that? You want it rough, Bill?”

“If you had asked me a second ago I would have said I was neutral,” Bill whispers, reaching up to brush Fiddleford’s hair out of his face—it’s too weird, too tender for fucking Bill—“but honestly I think it’s not—my want, if that makes sense. Heh. The more you know. Although I could’ve told you Ford was a freak long before now—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fiddleford snarls, slapping Bill’s hand outta his face and setting his arms in a better position. Leverage is fucking important. “And you better tell me the second anything hurts, d’you understand me?”

“I will do anything to get you to move,” Bill answers, and his voice cracks a little, and okay. So Fidds ain’t the only one in deep water here. See how it fucking feels.

“Good. You remember that.” He reminds himself that if Bill’s to be believed, this is what Ford wants, and he just prays—no, he hopes, goddamn, this gorgeous man spread out under him is the closest to religion he’s ever been—he hopes he can last. Make it good for him, even if he won’t remember it—dammit, Fidds, don’t start cryin’ again.

He starts fucking. Aiming for approximately where he remembers Ford’s prostate being. Bill yells out wordlessly, which is good enough for him. Twelve fingernails rake tracks into Fidds’s back, and he shudders. Another thing that’s better than he’d imagined it.

He’s imagined it so many times, in so many ways. Never quite like this. But close.

Under him, Ford’s body arches, so goddamn pretty, but Fidds is quick to drop his weight on Bill. “What’d I tell you—don’t sprain nothing.”

“That wasn’t me,” Bill hisses, then bites at Fidds’s chin, letting out a harsh sound against his skin. “Don’t think the biting’s all me either. In case you were gonna lecture me agai—ffuh-ck, Fiddleford—” Fidds is fucking him again, slow and deep this time, Ford’s cock trapped between their bodies.

“You’re almost polite when you want somethin’,” Fidds pants. “You ain’t called me four-eyes but once since you started this.”

“Maybe I get pent up too,” Bill spits. “Fed up with watching you want each other, also.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?”

“Nothing, Fidds,” Bill says, and his weird eyes bore into Fiddleford’s, and all of a sudden Fidds remembers Bill Cipher don’t do anything but play games. That nothing he says can be taken serious.

That’s all right. Fidds doesn’t need him to say nothing.

He pops up on an elbow again, gets his leverage back. Roughens up his thrusts a bit, because it shuts Bill up. Well, not really, but at least he ain’t saying anything coherent now, just a litany of sounds and Fidds’s name—fuck, okay, this isn’t much better, but it’s at least something Fiddleford can ferret away into his little selfish heart and keep forever. But Fidds isn’t gonna last much longer with all the noise he’s making. If Bill riding along sounds this good, Ford must be even better—

He's gotta focus. He can’t keep thinking like that. He drags his free hand down to Ford’s dick and starts stroking it in time with his own thrusts, which are getting more erratic the closer he gets. Bill snarls in his ear, then bites down on his shoulder. Hard enough to bruise. That ain’t helping with the whole lasting-much-longer situation.

When the little fucker’s unlatched, he rasps into Fiddleford’s skin, “Something’s happening—”

“Yeah, Bill, I’d sure hope so.” His dick twitches in Fidds’s palm, slick with precum, and then Bill’s twisting again, the same weird not-used-to-his-body wriggling, and Fidds is quick to hitch Ford’s knee up higher and leverage his weight down into him. “Don’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t if you would give me—give me,” Bill spits, his eyes wild, clearly not really knowing what he’s trying to say.

“Be patient. You’re about thirty seconds from cumming, if I had to guess, if you would only be still and let me do what I’m doin’ and relax,” Fiddleford scolds. “You’re probably resisting it without meaning to. Stop thinking about how weird it feels and just feel it.”

“How do you learn how to do this?” Bill mutters crankily, then closes his eyes. Fiddleford gets back to it, half-leaning on Ford’s broad frame to keep Bill from twisting around again, picking up the pace when he senses Bill’s relaxing more. “Most people don’t gotta learn,” Fidds pants. “Just comes—natural, that’s it, Bill, lean into it—” Ford’s ass is clenching around him, this is the cat-and-mouse Fidds remembers from past encounters, where the faster they get close, the faster you get close, or vice versa. Bill’s totally silent, for once in his goddamn life, apparently focusing really hard on not focusing too hard.

And then all of a sudden his back arches, his fingers digging into Fiddleford’s shoulder, his thigh, his head thrown back—Fidds can’t even find it in himself to scold him for moving, the sight of it is too damn pretty, and too fluid to be anything but muscle memory. A wounded noise wrenches out of the man under him, his dick shooting cum halfway up his chest, wow he wasn’t kidding about being pent up, Fidds thinks—

And then Fidds ain’t thinking anymore because the rhythmic pulsing around his dick is dragging him under, his ears roaring with heartbeat, euphoria in the front seat, guilt riding along, the silent, ever-present passenger.

They hang there for a minute. Fidds with his arms still braced either side of his best friend’s body, dick still in him, and Ford—Bill—his eyes squeezed shut, breathing hard. And then Bill opens his eyes, glazed and lazy and smug, and Fiddleford pulls out with a hiss of “Goddammit, Bill. Fuck.”

“That good? Cause it was for me,” Bill gloats, and Fidds divests himself of the condom with angry, guilty, shaking hands. Reaches for the box of tissues on a side table and throws them at Bill.

“Clean up,” he says roughly. “Get dressed.” And then he turns around and pulls back on his sweatshirt, his boxers. Fuck. What was he thinking?

All the right things in all the wrong ways. Ain’t that just typical.

“You treat all your bedfellows this way after?” Bill says icily, and Fidds whirls, his face glaring murder.

“I think you know damn well it’s you, Bill. Chrissakes, what’d you expect, huh? You want me to be all sweet and lovey with you? I didn’t take you for the sentimental type.”

“Oh, on the contrary, I just forgot how much I don’t like you bossing me around.”

“Then you shouldn’t’ve fuckin’ slept with me in my best friend’s body, should you have, Bill. You owe me now, far’s I figure.”

“Maybe you aren’t as smart as he thinks you are, because I think your calculations are off,” Bill says, throwing the soiled tissues on the ground and standing up, putting his arms gracelessly back in the sleeves of Ford’s shirt, putting on his underwear backwards. “I don’t owe you shit—”

“Hmm. Which of us d’you think he’d be angrier at for what just happened?” Bill narrows his eyes, and Fiddleford smirks, internally hoping Bill won’t call his bluff. Well, Bill can’t call his bluff, anyway, so that’s fine. “If I told him, d’you think he’d drop you, or me? I mean, in all honesty, it’s probably both of us, but do you really wanna take that bet, huh? Think I’ve forgotten you admitting you were—what’d you call it…expecting to end the world sometime soon?”

“You’re too much of a coward to follow through with that threat. You’ll just sit by and watch it happen like you’ve been doing—"

“Do you wanna bet?” Fiddleford’s laugh is a bit manic even to his own ears. “Cause I have gone to lengths tonight I didn’t think I ever woulda. So I suggest you do the simple thing. You are gonna eat a full meal. You are gonna drink two glasses of water. You are gonna let me work on that shoulder. And then you are gonna go to sleep. Whole hell of a lot more straightforward than hopin’ I won’t rat us both out.”

“He wouldn’t pick you.”

“But you’d maybe go down with me. Hell, may as well.”

They stand there for a long moment, throwing murderous glares at each other, before Bill relents. “Fine.” Fidds does his best not to think too hard as he follows him downstairs, makes sure he puts together a sufficiently-nutritious sandwich, then makes him sit there drinking water slowly while Fiddleford works out the knots in his shoulders.

“Jesus Christ, he is outta control,” Fiddleford mutters, his thumbs digging in with a harshness that’s part therapeutic, part pissed off. Unhinged. “You’re not good for him, Bill.”

“And you’re an enabler, and a pussy,” Bill answers, then takes another sip of water. “As long as we’re stating the obvious.”

He finishes his second glass, and Fiddleford goes and turns off the kitchen light, headed back toward the hallway. “Go to sleep on a bed or a couch this time,” he tells Bill dully.

“You got it, mom. Hey, Fiddleford.”

“What.”

“I got all that shit I said from his own head, you know.”

God, that statement feels like a knife to the back of the neck. “Uh-huh,” Fiddleford says numbly. “Don’t stay up much longer, Bill.”

“Goodnight,” Bill says smugly, sing-song the way he does, and Fiddleford doesn’t look back. Heads straight for the stairs and back up to his room, shoves the towel-wrapped pillow off the bed without looking at it, climbs in and buries himself under the covers.

Now he’s gone and done it. Ruined the whole rest of his life forever.

There ain’t any putting this back in the box. There ain’t a way he can go back to being content with the shallow, stolen little bits of loving he was surviving on before. He wishes he could do it over again, say no—well, no, he doesn’t. He wishes he was a good enough person to want that. A strong enough person to have said no at the start.

There are two possible worlds here: one where Bill is lying about getting all this from Ford’s head, and one where he’s telling the truth. Neither case ends with the possibility of Fiddleford ever being okay.

If he’s lying, it’s to get at Fidds, make him think there’s hope, which don’t matter much—Fidds doesn’t have much of that to begin with. But even hearing it’s possible ruins him.

If he’s telling the truth—well, then he’s stolen something irreplaceable from them both. Ruined any chance Fidds has of hearing those words someday and feeling them the way he should. That realization…hurts. Fiddleford was complicit in it, too. And Bill likes to hurt people. It’s for that reason that Bill being truthful is exactly what Fidds thinks is going on. He’s going for the maximum hurt, the maximum drama, like always. He wants Fidds to know what he’s taken from him—from Ford—

God. They’ve both taken so much from Ford tonight that they can never give back. Fidds makes a choked noise as the guilt hits him proper, his palm clapped over the teeth marks in his shoulder. Poor, beautiful, scared Ford, who needed a release but was terrified of pain, of vulnerability. Ford, who’s always been vulnerable, who’s always built a shell of intellect around himself and hugged as much of the world to his chest as he could—“I’m sorry, Stanford. Where did I go so wrong?” Fiddleford whispers to nobody—when did he get so rotten?

He doesn’t bother setting his watch this time. If this don’t ever end, he’ll probably deserve it.

Chapter Text

Fidds is a wreck for the week following the encounter. Lucky for him Ford’s a little oblivious, though, really, that ain’t typical—usually Ford can tell when Fidds is in a funk, no matter how deep he is into his own obsessions. Only makes Fiddleford feel worse. Feels like what he deserves, too. So there’s that.

He’s a little paranoid maybe Bill did tell Ford, after all, but Ford’s not shutting him out, or kicking him out, so that can’t be it.

But he does think they’re arguing, lately; there’s a particular way Ford goes into trance to confer with Bill these days, a particular divot between his eyebrows that usually means the discussion’s not going well. A way he paces after, throws himself into work, that speaks to some deep-held strife inside him. There go Fidds’s habits again. Noticing.

One night he wakes, halfway, thinking he feels a presence in the room. Mutters, “Bill, lemme sleep.”

“Sorry,” Bill says, and Fidds thinks, huh, that’s odd, and then Bill turns into a jackalope and Fidds is dreaming again, lost to sleep. Stanford ain’t been sleeping well enough lately for Fidds to rest much.

And then three days later, Fidds wakes up from a late-night crash, sunlight pouring in from the stupid triangular window, birdsong too. It’s a beautiful morning, chilly, fall in full swing now, and Fidds pulls on a sweater and trudges downstairs. He oughta make coffee; Ford’ll be wanting some whenever he surfaces, if he ain’t up already—

Ah. He’s up already. The smell of coffee hits him like a wall midway down the stairs, and he sighs softly, wondering if he’ll find out Ford only cat-napped for 30 minutes instead of sleeping proper.

When he gets to the kitchen, it’s plain to see Ford’s been up for awhile, but as to why—there’s no riot of diagrams and calculations around him, no blackboard anywhere in sight, just his journal, which he’s rifling through idly, his posture so relaxed and unstrained that Fidds almost thinks it’s Bill.

Ford about jumps a mile outta his seat when he hears Fidds behind him, though. Nope, that’s Ford all right. Always daydreaming. “How long have you been up?” Fiddleford yawns, reaching for the coffeepot.

“An hour.” Drrrl, his fingers on the countertop. Fidds counts: one drum, two, three—“Two hours. Oh, I don’t know, Fid.”

“I ain’t your momma,” Fiddleford says mildly, though he sure acts like it sometimes.

“No, you just worry about me too much,” Ford says, and okay, now Fidds is feeling squirrelly. Is it Bill? He turns around as casually as he can, squinting at Ford.

Nope. No yellow eyes, just Ford’s doe-soft dark brown pupils. Like always, Ford gets fed up with the eye contact soon enough and turns his eyes back down to the cover of his journal. “You’re seeming off this morning,” Fidds remarks, a quirk of anxiety running down his spine. Is it…? There’s no way he found out, right? “You feelin’ okay?”

Ford seems to consider that, honestly consider it, for a long moment. “Yeah,” he says finally, rubbing at his jaw. “Yeah, actually, I am. Only—”

He breaks off abruptly, his head popping up so fast Fidds gets a little dizzy looking at him, his eyes searching Fiddleford’s face, making him suddenly self-conscious. “Uhh,” Fidds titters, “Ford—you just kinda stopped talking all a sudden. What’s…goin’ on?”

“I think we should talk,” Ford blurts. “Probably.”

“About?” Fidds pulls his free hand up into his sleeve, bunching it in the material to try and hide how he’s strung tight as a bow all of a sudden, pumped full of creature-fear, heart pounding. He takes a sip of his coffee shakily.

“Please…don’t hate me,” Ford says slowly, and Fidds chokes on the stupid coffee, loses himself to a coughing fit for a moment.

“Hate you—Stanford, now you really got me worried. What, didja go through the portal without tellin’ me, somehow? Adopt another shapeshifter?”

“No, but I—I fear this might be worse.”

“Enough with the dramatics, then. You’re gonna accost a man before he’s finished his coffee, you damn well better spit it out.” Fidds plunks his coffee cup down with an aggravation he does not feel.

And so the man launches into the most preposterous, flustered, defensive ramble Fidds thinks he’s ever heard from him. And he’s heard Ford ramble every kind of way. “So I might’ve come into your room a few days ago and stole your memory from—uh—”

“Oh my god—”

“Please, Fid, let me finish, it’s not gonna make sense otherwise! From the night that Bill was…that, uh. Well, you know what happened—” It would be cute, how he’s blushing, if Fiddleford wasn’t in the middle of watching his whole fucking world break apart for probably the last time. “Anyway, I stole it with your memory gun thing, and then I made two copies, and I put one copy back into your head and printed the other one on a sheet of LSD at a molecular level. It was actually kind of fascinating, I think there are a variety of applications, actually—”

“Ford,” Fidds whimpers, then presses his sleeved hands to his face.

“Right, sorry, I—this is probably as embarrassing for you as it is for me, if not more. I took the LSD, basically, and—”

“And you saw the memory.”

“I experienced it the way you did. I think. Unless that’s just the LSD—”

“Dear god.”

“That’s what I said.” Fidds feels it start, the tears. Because this is the part where everything implodes. “When I found out Bill was fully expecting the portal to end the world—that he was gloating over it—I was so pissed off, you have no idea, Fid, I’m a little mad at you about it, too, actually, because you knew and didn’t tell me!”

Okay…okay. This is…so not what Fidds was expecting. Had he only taken a section of the night?

There’s a possibility he didn’t see…the rest. Beyond the kiss, and the conversation after. So Fidds waits for his eyes to stop watering before dropping his hands and glaring back at Ford. They can have a fight about this, that’s fine. They’ve survived worse disagreements. “As if anything I said coulda convinced you! You woulda just said ‘well, quit then, if you don’t like it.’”

“I don’t sound like that!”

“That’s what you take issue with? Really?”

“I take issue with everything! I take issue with being a—a pawn this whole time, and you knew—”

“I suspected, there’s a difference—”

“You just went along with it!”

“Because I know how you get! You get so dialed in that if anything comes between you and the work, you set it on fire. Competitors, collaborators, friends—” Fidds stops himself just sort of saying brothers, knowing there is such thing as going too far. “You are who you are, Ford,” he finishes, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to cool down. “When you want something, you go get it. Besides, I wouldn’t be much use stoppin’ you from causing some kinda armageddon if you threw me out, huh?”

“I guess,” Ford grumbles, crossing his arms. He breathes in and out a few times, seeming to steel himself, before looking at Fiddleford again. “That’s not—not what I needed to talk to you about, though.” Oh, no. “Let’s just say…the, uh, the memory…ended when you went to sleep.”

Fiddleford shudders. Feels his stomach turn, the bottom dropping out of it. “Oh, we should probably disable the portal, also,” Ford continues, like this is just normal, like this is just a normal Ford rant, “and make sure nobody else can ever build another one—also also, I blocked Bill from my mind, at least I think so. Anyway—so since I took the memory LSD, as I said before, I experienced everything as if I was you. And I—oh, god, Fiddleford, please don’t cry. I don’t—I’m not trying to—embarrass you.”

Embarrass him. Ford’s worried about embarrassing him. As if Fidds deserves his worry at all, now that he knows. Fidds slides down against the cabinets, sitting heavy on the freezing tile floor, and presses his sleeves to his face again.

“I didn’t want him running off somewhere and—getting you hurt,” he chokes out. As if the lie’s feasible now that Ford’s been him, apparently. “This ain’t a safe world for that—much less Bill—”

“I know that, obviously,” Ford replies, and then his footsteps come up on Fidds, and Fidds senses him crouching at his side. “I—”

“I know it’s fucked up,” Fidds interrupts, the words sticking in his throat. “I know I—I’m fucked up, and I understand if you want me to go—there ain’t a good excuse, Ford, I know that—”

“What are you t—hey,” Ford says, and then he awkwardly wriggles an arm around Fidds’s back and squishes him into a weird embrace that’s just so Ford that Fidds’s heart breaks all over again with how much he’ll miss…this. The awkwardness, the gangliness, the oddities. He doesn’t know why Ford’s doing it, but he ain’t a good person, he’s a selfish asshole, and he doesn’t fight. “Fid, I’m more mad that I wasn’t—that it, that I—that it was him and not me,” he rushes. Fidds is still trying to understand what he’s saying when he adds, “If I hadn’t’ve been such a coward, it—could’ve been me? Apparently?”

“What?” Fidds raises his head sluggishly, mostly succeeding in bonking the top of it into Ford’s jaw, and when they’ve sorted all that out Fidds squints at him through smudgy glasses and blurry eyes. “Ford—” His best friend’s face is tomato red, his nose the worst of all, besides maybe his ears.

“Bill wasn’t lying,” Ford says roughly, like he’s forcing himself to say it at all, “when he said he—I mean, that I—that he got it all from inside my head.”

“Ford….”

“And I had always told myself, you know, there’s so much to do. And it’s—well, I don’t think it’s wrong, but I certainly think it’s unsafe—but there was so much to do, and I thought, well, maybe after we finish our work, but our work was never finished—and then, you know, now I’m 29, if there’s any time I should be able to say what I’m thinking it should be now, we’re grown-ups—”

Fiddleford tries to say something, but he’s not sure what, and it’s not really a word.

This is…not what he was expecting.

“I thought maybe if I got over, uh, that first hurdle—which was sort of what I was more nervous about—then maybe I’d be brave enough?” Dear god, it’s just so very…Ford. Awkward, nervous, overthinking Ford, thinking that losing his virginity (and not remembering it) and figuring out if he could live with the pain would make him brave enough to talk about feelings. “I was sort of right in the end, it turns out, it just…sort of happened…backwards.”

“Ford.”

“And I know you didn’t say anything because—because you thought it would protect me. Protect our…friendship. In fact, I now happen to know just how much of your time you spend worrying about me.”

“You make it easy,” Fidds deadpans, and Ford glares mildly at him, his face still red, his one hand still clutching at the shoulder of Fiddleford’s shirt.

“I feel like an idiot. I mean, here we’ve been secretly in love with each other since college, and now we’re only getting together because of the stupidest possible reasons—oh, goddammit, I’m getting ahead of myself, the thing is, do you want to get together with me? In light of the whole being in love, and all—unless that was the LSD. Please tell me it wasn’t the LSD—”

“No, it wasn’t the LSD, you big dummy. But no, wait, hold on a minute, Stanford, you just hang on. You can’t possibly—I mean, after what I did—”

“I don’t understand why you feel guilty about it? Because I don’t blame you, I mean—”

“It was fucked-up, Ford, that’s why! Jesus Christ—”

“It was exactly what I wanted!” Ford argues. “And besides, I—fuck, how do people talk about this—I was there, remember? In your head? Fid.” He stares intently at Fiddleford’s eyes, the way he tends to do. If it ain’t avoidance, it’s an uncomfortably piercing kinda eye contact. “You spent the whole time thinking about the best way to—to take care of me, even though I wasn’t there. You spent it terrified of losing me. You’re not a bad person. You’re not selfish. I don’t understand how you can think those things while also loving me as much as you apparently do. Unless it’s at least partly the LSD.”

“Enough about the LSD,” Fidds grumbles. He’s feeling teary again, part of his heart wanting to believe it, even though he knows—he knows that no matter if they both feel the same, this don’t lead anywhere good. In this fucked-up world, people like them don’t get the good endings. He busies himself with wiping off his glasses on the hem of his shirt.

But, like he’s reading his mind, Ford squeezes his shoulder and says, “I know you think it’s doomed to fail, also. Probably because…I mean, we both read the news. But you just watched me nearly (possibly) doom the whole world, so…it’d be a little hypocritical, don’t you think?”

Fidds has to laugh at that. He’s…kind of right, actually—

“Don’t wait for it to make sense,” Ford whispers. “I did, and look where that got me.”

Fiddleford puts his glasses back on, then turns his head to look at Ford. Beautiful, brilliant Ford, who at this very moment is trying very hard not to look away. Fidds does the merciful thing and drops his gaze first. “How’d you figure out it was me?”

“You had a bruise in the shape of my left bicuspid on your shoulder.”

“Seriously?”

“No. That was wishful thinking, I just happened to be right.” Ford’s staring at Fiddleford’s shoulder now, Fidds isn’t even sure he knows he’s doing it.

“Someday you are gonna open your eyes and see that what I did wasn’t right.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Ford answers cattily, a particular slant in his voice that gets Fidds thinking—once again—oh, no. But for very different reasons this time.

Because that is the way Ford sounds when he declares he’s gonna build a goldang interdimensional portal. When he proclaims that perpetual motion is possible. When he exclaims that he can and will prove it. That’s the voice Ford gets when he’s about to pick his latest bone and run with it—and he’s directing it at Fiddleford.

Fidds realizes right then that Ford just might be obsessive enough to overlook the obvious—that Fidds is not a good person, not a good choice—for a very long time. Hell, look what he did with Bill. Fidds also realizes (again) that he is still not a good enough person to say no. That he is selfish, and an addict, and he will keep on saying yes to this until hell freezes over, or Ford figures him out.

“Say yes,” Ford says, like a command but also like he’s begging, and Fidds turns, opens up his posture a bit so he’s facing Ford head on, leaning into his space just to watch him flush again.

“Say yes to what, Ford?”

Ford licks his lips. Fuck, does he know what he looks like? He must, now that he’s been Fidds, now that he’s seen himself the way Fidds sees him. “Me. Please.”

Yeah. Ain’t no way he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Fidds can’t remember every thought that went through his head that night, but he does remember thinking furiously about how pretty that word sounded in his best friend’s mouth. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Then let me find out. Please, Fid.” Okay, now he’s for sure doing it on purpose, and Fiddleford feels his breath hitch. Lets it.

“Then yes. It ain’t like I could ever tell you no anyway,” Fidds teases, and then—like a repeat of that night, like they might actually get a do-over—Ford kisses him clumsily, desperately, but there’s something about it that’s…more real. Or maybe Fidds is just paying better attention. Fidds lets out a sigh that might be a groan and gently takes him by the back of the head and directs him, feels him clutch at Fidds’s shirt, nips that spot on his bottom lip and gets an even better sound than the first time. “I guess it is physiological,” Ford mumbles, and Fidds snorts and pulls back.

“You can’t go doing that the whole time. It’s creepy, Stanford.”

“Shut me up, then.”

“I shoulda known you’d be bossy.” Fidds takes him by the collar and drags him into another kiss, kisses like he can suck the air out of him, like there’s nothing else in the world, like he’s been wanting to do since he was eighteen and the world was so big and so empty whenever Ford wasn’t there. Ford takes his silent instruction like a pro, until he’s suddenly kissing back in a way that makes Fidds feel like he’s underwater.

And then Ford pulls back and goes, “You know it wasn’t me you fucked, it was Bill.”

“Yes, I know that. I’d really rather stop talking about it—”

“So that means there are still a lot of things I’ve never done before.”

He groans. “Ford. Jesus, fuck. That isn’t fair.”

“I know it’s not. The world isn’t fair, Fid.”

“Yeah, well—” Fiddleford grabs him by the front of the shirt and wrangles him like a hog until he’s straddling Fidds’s lap. “How’s that for fair. And don’t be jealous, baby, I wouldn’t’ve done it if it weren’t you. It was all about you.”

Ford answers with another clumsy kiss, and Fidds indulges him for a few minutes before ducking away. “Hey. You know you don’t gotta rush into anything, Ford—”

“What do I ever do but rush into things,” he pants, “and besides, I’d say a decade of living up to my last name isn’t exactly rushing, now is it?”

Fidds looks up at him setting there, his face all red and his lips all kissed, like he belongs there, the late morning light streaming in and shining him gold, and hums to himself. “That’s true. You always do know what you want, don’t you?”

“Exactly,” Ford exclaims, then expels a harsh sound as Fidds yanks him in close and nips at the side of his neck, just above where the tendon is, Ford’s fingers in the back of his hair clenching, tugging just enough to be painful. “Fid—please—”

“What? What is it?” Fiddleford leans his head back against the cabinets, taking the opportunity to center himself. God, he’s overcome. Dizzy with it, drunk off the warm bulk of this boy spread across his lap.

“The kitchen floor,” Ford pants, “is not where I pictured this happening.”

“Pictured what happening?”

“Me telling you I want a do-over.”

“You want a—god, you’re gonna kill me, Ford.” Ford hums discontentedly and shifts on Fiddleford’s lap, the gesture clumsy and blunt, but certainly enough to draw a hiss outta Fidds through his teeth. “Stanford,” he scolds, but he’s breathless, and he knows Ford knows it.

“Say yes,” he breathes in Fidds’s ear, petulant, like a child, and then he bites down on the lobe of it, his hips rocking again, and Fidds just pants and lets himself reel for a moment before he pulls Ford back by the back of the collar.

“Git up off me and show me your bedroom and we’ll see where we get,” Fidds tells him, and then he holds back a laugh as Ford scrambles up on shaky legs to do just that. But then he pauses.

“Is there—I mean, a reason you don’t want to….”

“Have you in my bed? Because Bill was there,” Fidds says flatly. “Point of a do-over ain’t to do things the same, Ford, it’s to do ‘em right.”

“Right—”

“And your bed’s bigger, and you better get used to me being in it.”

“Right,” Ford breathes, and then he’s all fluster and bustle again, satisfied, pulling Fidds down the hall to his room. “I, uh, I went shopping,” he says as they crest the threshold. “And it was very embarrassing, and I don’t know how you do it—” It’s lube he’s pulling out of a paper bag that’s halfway under his bed, and he looks visibly embarrassed all over again to be holding it, god, he’s just so Ford that it hurts. “Don’t laugh at me,” he grumbles, glaring down at the floor until Fiddleford quits laughing and drags him in by a beltloop and kisses the pout off his face.

“And you’re sure.”

“Yes, for god’s sake.” Ford starts glaring again, and then he reaches for the hem of Fidds’s sweater, and Fidds lets him pull it off, shaking off the chill of the room. And by now Fidds really should just expect the teeth, Ford seems intent on leaving indentations, Fidds don’t even mind it. At least Ford’s a little more intentional with it, seeming to chase Fiddleford’s reactions. And he’s good at that, too—Fidds is in trouble.

While Ford’s busy biting, Fiddleford manages to get his shirt unbuttoned and push it off his shoulders, followed soon by his undershirt—Ford shivers as Fidds’s fingers run up his sides, something to remember. “I remember,” Ford pants, leaning his face into Fiddleford’s shoulder, seeming to take a minute to savor Fidds’s hands on him, “what you thought when you looked at me. About how I’d gotten soft because you were making sure I was eating—”

“Yeah, well, if you ate proper I wouldn’t think so much about it—”

“I like it, Fidds,” Ford says breathlessly. “I like that you care, I like how hard you think about me—”

“You’re all I think about, Stanford, you drive me fuckin’ crazy, do you get that?” Fidds bites out, then shoves him onto his back on the bed, startling a sort of squeak out of the other man. Ford’s pupils are blown, dark islands in the middle of his eyes, and of course they are. Of course this would be Ford’s thing, being the object of someone’s obsession. Being their everything. Fidds can deliver.

He's got about a decade of it built up, anyhow.

“You like hearin’ that, don’t you?” he continues, working at Ford’s fly, unhurried. “Bet you loved feeling it, too, when you were in my head. How much I want you. How much I need you to need me.”

“That makes me a narcissist, probably,” Ford wheezes, but his eyes are raking desperately over Fidds, like he’s scared any minute Fidds might back off and turn this around. That just won’t do. Fidds pauses what he’s doing to lean over Ford, just out of easy kissing range, and stare into his face.

“You musta heard me thinking you’re the closest thing to religion I got,” he says softly, watches Ford’s lashes flutter. “Yeah, you did. You need me to say it, darlin’?”

“I need you to give me more than you gave him,” Ford grits out, and there it is. He’s insecure. He needs to know it’s him that captures Fidds’s every thought, that he’s the most important thing, that Fidds will give him more than he’ll give anyone else. “Fid, say yes—”

“Shh, hush, Ford. Listen to me. Bill is nothing to me. Nobody ain’t nothing to me where you’re concerned. I’ll give you whatever you want, the question is whether you’re gonna shut up and let me.” Ford laughs self-consciously, then says, “So will you do it without a condom on, then?”

“Jesus Christ, Ford. You want me dead,” Fidds says raggedly. “Are you sure?”

“If you had anything, that’s what you would’ve been thinking about when you put it on,” Ford says confidently. “Instead, you were just thinking about how much I’d hate the mess. Which isn’t true. Or at least I don’t think it is.”

“Baby.”

“Please, Fid, I wanna feel you—”

“Just push all my buttons, why don’t you,” Fiddleford snarls, tugging Ford’s bottoms off him with renewed zeal, taking in the sight of him like it’s the first time, like it’s the last time. “This ain’t fair.”

“You’ve been in my ass, and I’ve been in your head, I don’t see what’s unfair about that.”

“Your ass didn’t whisper none of your secrets.”

“Then make it.”

“My god.” Fidds shakes his head, his upper lip curling. Of course, the second Ford’s libido woke up, he’d become such a little slut. He never does anything halfway. “You got a towel you don’t care about?”

“Next to the bed.”

“How long have you been planning this?”

“Three days.”

Fidds shakes his head again and snatches up the towel, turning around to find that Ford’s already grabbed a pillow. “Very helpful,” Fiddleford mutters, almost sarcastically, but he doesn’t miss the way Ford’s chin twitches up. He’s been with guys before that liked being told how good they looked, how good they were doing, and even if he hadn’t…this is Stanford “Validation Addict” Pines. Shit’s downright intuitive.

Well, all right. If there’s that little part of Ford that’s clamoring and carrying on for him to get Fidds to prove it to him—how much Ford’s wrecked his life, how much more he’ll give him than anyone else, whether or not they’re wearing Ford’s body—he’ll damn well show him. He drags the standing mirror over from beside the door to the bed while Ford gets the whole pillow-towel setup finished. Doesn’t even think Ford figures out what he’s doing for a second.

“What’s—what’s with that?”

“Well, you seem to like seein’ yourself an awful lot,” Fidds teases, then climbs up on the bed next to him, shucking his own bottoms along the way. “You wanna know how I see you, you wanna know how gorgeous you are to me—” Ford sucks in breath sharply; something to remember—“this is the next best thing, don’t you think?”

“Um,” says Ford. Oh yeah, Fidds’s got his number.

“Go on and look.” Fidds jerks his head at the mirror, and as soon as he’s sure Ford’s looking, he runs a hand up his cock, hums out a tuneless sound at the way Ford arches, his belly straining. “Yeah, like that. That’s all I dream about these days, swear to god.”

“Oh,” Ford whispers. “My god, I look—”

“What? Debauched?” Fidds drawls, snapping the cap off the lube. Notes that it’s already unsealed, drizzling coldly into his hands, where he warms it up mindlessly. “Wrecked? Perfect?”

“I was going to say ‘sweaty,’” Ford says, a slight whine in his voice, watching Fiddleford’s hands in the mirror. “Or ‘chubby—’”

“Yeah? And who’s been feedin’ you?” Fidds presses his thigh up and back, his fingertips digging into the plush coating the muscle, which Ford certainly has plenty of, too.

“You, Fid,” Ford gasps as Fidds massages his ass with a thumb, his other hand playing with Ford’s thigh hairs. Ford’s eyes are still locked on the mirror, darting back and forth between himself and Fidds with a combination of fascination and lust and embarrassment.

“And who puts you to bed?”

“You do, Fid—mm,” Ford chokes out, interrupted by Fiddleford’s first finger sliding into him.

“Uh-huh. And who makes sure the lights stay on?” Fidds croons, using his free hand to cup Ford’s balls gently out of the way, drawing a whimper from him.

“It—‘s you, Fiddleford,” Ford says throatily, his fluttering eyes still fixed on their reflections. God, he’s cute. “Oh, god—” This said as Fidds adds a second finger, suspiciously easily.

“And who,” he says slyly, “were you thinkin’ about when you fingered yourself this morning?”

“Fuck—is it that obvious?” Ford finally drags his eyes away from his own reflection to look at Fidds. His face is half embarrassment, half calculation. Probably he’s filing this away like data, something to test and validate.

“Lube was open,” Fidds smirks, and then he leans down and fulfils his urge to bite up the inside of Ford’s thighs, they’re almost annoyingly perfect, really, he wants to fucking mess them up. “Yeahhh,” Ford hisses, “god, it was you, Fid. Oh—” Fidds has found his prostate. “So that’s what that feels like. I couldn’t reach it on my own.”

Fidds snorts, letting go of his thigh.

“You’re laughing at me again,” Ford growls irritably.

“You’re just such a scientist, even now, baby,” Fidds sighs, shaking his head.

“You’re one to talk. You were thinking the exact same way when you were—”

“Okay, that’s the last I wanna hear about it while any of my body parts are in you,” Fidds says, his tone clipped. “I ain’t playing.” From the way Ford shifts and hums to himself, Fidds is betting he likes him bossy. “Be good,” he adds meanly, just to confirm his hypothesis (Jesus, Ford ain’t lying), and the watery whimper he gets just about counts as proof.

He opens Ford up slower than he strictly needs to, and he thinks they both know it. Thanks to him playing this morning, apparently, it’s easy, but Fidds still wants to drag this out. Wants to live here for a little bit of his time on earth, just right here, wants to believe it never ends. “Tell me what you were thinkin’ about when you did this earlier,” Fidds says, running a finger up Ford’s poor neglected dick, feeling the springy skin, the desperate heat of it.

“I can’t—think about anything when you do that, Fid…I—I was thinking about how you were…okay, this is a really hard question to answer if you don’t want me to talk about—”

“Just spit it out, Stanford.”

“Uh—yeah, that, you’re just so—competent,” Ford pants, trying—failing—to wriggle further onto Fidds’s fingers, the brat. “But especially the parts where you were holding me still. Or, him, I mean. I dunno, it’s a weird thing I have—”

“Don’t start overthinking, now. It’s real simple. You want a guy who’ll pin you down and force you to see how much of a goner he is for ya,” Fidds says wryly. He’s done with waiting, playing. He gives Ford’s prostate a parting nuzzle with the backs of his fingers before pulling them out, jerking his chin at the lube bottle. “You wanna get me ready?”

Ford takes to the assignment with zeal, though his fingers are clumsy with cold and nerves and need, his own cock straining up toward his belly. Ford apparently has no qualms about putting his cold-ass lubey hands all over Fidds, which gets Fidds snarling and glaring down at him. “I’mma give you a pass this time cause I know you’re overeager,” he hisses, “but that just ain’t polite, Ford.”

“Sorry.” He is surely not sorry, but Fidds can’t help but spoil him.

“Now, you look at me, babe,” Fidds orders, taking his chin and rolling his gaze away from the mirror. He’s created a monster. “Yeah, lemme see you,” and then he slides in. It’s better than the first time, it’ll always be better, because it’s Ford’s dark eyes glittering up at him with their boundless depth, going hazy and faraway as the mess of new sensations hits him. It’s all Ford, the way his next noise is his tongue buzzing against his palate, dzzzzt, not a noise Fidds has ever heard him make before but something so quintessentially him, and almost like the last sound in Fidds’s nickname. Like Ford’s been saving up the tail ends just to give ‘em all back to him when he needs them most.  

God, the way Fidds don’t deserve a damn thing. But he didn’t get here by refusing things he didn’t deserve. “Here we go, easy, easy—” He leans down to kiss Ford, distract him, he’s tensed up a little, maybe at the realization this is happening, maybe at the overwhelm. “Hey—breathe.” After a moment, a breath, Ford relaxes enough for Fidds to rock the rest of the way in, and Ford makes a sound between a groan and a sob, and it’s just. He’s just. Perfect. “Okay? Anything hurt?” Fidds asks.

“No,” Ford breathes, squirming, probably because Fidds is worrying about him again, caring again. “It j—I just, uh—” One of his hands is snaking down between their bodies, and Fidds makes a disapproving noise and snags it, pins it up by his head. Doesn’t miss the quickening of his breath. Doesn’t miss anything when it comes to Ford.

“Wait. Trust me,” Fidds breathes.

“Please,” Ford chokes, but he ain’t moving his hand, even though he’s probably stronger than Fidds—no, he’s looking at the damn mirror again, and Fidds’s gaze follows his, finds his there. Admires the pretty picture he makes, his raised arm adding a bow to his body, his strong thighs caging Fiddleford.

“Yeah, that’s it. Look over there, look at you,” Fidds soothes, and then he starts fucking. It ain’t gonna be that long, anyway—he’s bare, the slide of Ford’s insides against his cock nothing short of a headrush, his control stretched thin as it is. He keeps his gaze down at Ford, admiring the flex of his neck, the way his chest shudders with every thrust. Yeah, it ain’t gonna be long, it’s Ford. He’s a wet dream, he’s a porn mag, he’s a car crash turned aphrodisiac, he’s Fidds’s whole world.

“Fiiiiid,” Ford whines, and then his teeth sink into Fiddleford’s arm, the closest available thing, and once again Fidds can’t find it in himself to mind.

“I know, darlin’. If you would let me have my arm, I would touch you.” Ford makes a grr sound into said arm, and Ford narrowly bites back a laugh. God, he’s so weird, he’s adorable, he’s perfect. When Ford finally lets up, he spits, “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Oh, yeah?” Fidds slows up, partly to hide how close to snapping he is, brushing Ford’s hair out of his face with his now-free arm.

“I was gonna say stop being gentle with me,” Ford hisses, twisting his hips in a way that’s vicious in its lack of wit, enough to leave them both gasping for a moment. “Give it—give—give me everything,” he pants when he’s got his voice back.

“You want me mean? You want me rough? Okay, babe. You’ve been so good,” Fidds huffs, and Ford tosses his head restlessly, “how could I say no to you?” He shifts his hips, his knees, his arms, until he’s where he needs to be. “Hold onto something, Stanford. Something that ain’t your dick,” he adds, just to be clear, and Ford grumbles but complies. “And no more lookin’ at the mirror, you look at me.” God, look at me, want me, memorize me the way I do you, please, he thinks. He don’t deserve it, but he gets it anyway, just a little.

“Yeah, Fid—oh—” Ford breaks off into a mess of snarled-up sounds as Fidds starts railing him proper, giving in to the way his hips want to snap all savagely, as if his dick could drive his intentions and his wishes and his prayers into Ford. Like he’s angry—like he’s in love.

“That’s right, listen to you, baby, how could I ever want anyone else?” Ford makes that dzzhh sound again, like an overheated robot, his lashes fluttering. God, all Fidds’s gotta do is tell him. He’s got years of not tellin’ him stored up. “The minute I saw you, you fuckin’ ruined me. Everything I done in the last decade has either been to keep you or forget you, which didn’t work out so well, now did it.” He’s a little angry about it actually, a little in love. He squeezes Ford’s cock in one hand, the other cupping the back of his head.

“Mm—sorry, Fid,” Ford groans, and Fidds knows he ain’t, not really, but it makes him shiver anyhow. Interesting.

“Are you?” Fidds purrs, slowing his thrusts to a deep, grinding crawl, stroking Ford’s dick with equal torpor. “You sorry for how much of my brain you take up on a daily basis? Sorry I can’t do nothing right except take care of you?”

“I just—keep needing you,” Ford grits out, pressing his forehead against Fiddleford’s, “and you keep letting me—Fiddleford, my god, please—”

“Ohhh, I don’t know. Maybe you look too pretty like this, begging—now, what’d I tell you, Ford—” He’s flicked his eyes to the mirror, of course he has. Hopeless. He quickly looks back up at Fiddleford, biting the corner of his mouth fretfully. “Maybe I shouldn’t give what you want so easy, til you learn, huh?” Fidds threatens, even though he’s about driving himself crazy, staying so still.

“Learn what?” Ford objects, rocking his hips until Fidds pins him down to the mattress.

“That you’re mine,” Fiddleford snarls, which don’t make much sense, but wasn’t meant to. Ford lets out a warbly little sound and then growls a little bit, glaring up into Fidds’s eyes.

“No, you’re mine,” he says, haughty and needy all at once, desperate in a way that tells Fidds this ain’t about semantics, it’s about Ford’s need to entrench himself in everything he knows is real, it’s about which of them’s obsessive and which one’s compulsive, it’s about love. And that little realization is about where Fidds—well. Snaps.

“You might be right about that, baby,” he pants, slamming his hips into Ford’s. “You got a string around my heart, don’t you, Stanford?” Ford seems a bit beyond words at the moment, his lips hanging slack, his eyes pinned on Fidds helplessly, god does Fidds love him. “You can bite, sweetheart, go ahead—ohh, yeah, there you go.” He’s probably gonna break the skin on Fidds’s bicep, the one up by his face, elbow planted in the mattress—Fidds don’t care.

And it’s precarious as hell, Fidds’s positioning, he’s tilted to the side while his other hand works Ford’s cock, but Fidds ain’t a quitter. His boy’s body starts bowing taut, clenching around him, and he lets out a choked sound into where he’s got Fidds’s arm between his teeth. “You wanna cum for me? Yeah, I know you do, c’mon, babe—Ford—” Fidds’s eyes wanna roll back in his head, but he won’t let ‘em. He’s downright enraptured as Ford’s jaw falls open, sobbing out some little sound Fidds swears to god is just designed to torture him forever, to be the thing he can’t get outta his head or get enough of until he dies. Cum splatters both their bellies, Fidds having sagged a bit at the frisson of sound and sensation (Ford’s ass tight as a vice around him, goddamn) and closed the gap between them yet more.

“God, you’re so perfect,” Fidds breathes, resting his forehead against Ford’s. Okay. Somehow Fidds didn’t cum through all that. He thinks he might’ve been too caught up in holy worship of this boy to remember he’s got a dick. “Hey, I’m just gonna—”

Ford says grr again and clamps his thighs around Fidds’s waist, tight, the meaning clear even though he’s not in a talkin’ mood right now: Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, don’t you fucking dare pull out, you PROMISED is what his eyes are saying. “You’re impossible,” Fidds wheezes. “Okay, well then just tell me if you want me to—or just buck me off, you know, this ain’t exactly pleasant a lot of the time—okay, okay, I get it. Enough talkin’.” He’s cut himself off because Ford's biting again, this time because he’s mad. Fidds really oughta get him a chew toy or something.

It don’t take him long, anyhow. If it’s uncomfortable for Ford, he vents it by chewing on Fiddleford, Fidds guesses. And then Fidds is done but Ford’s still wrapped around him like a little monkey, not letting him up. He ain’t biting anymore, but Fidds can tell he’s glaring into his shoulder. “What is it, Ford?” he pants, his arms shaking. Whew, he could go for a nap.

He’s patient. A minute of silence, and then Ford growls, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

They both know damn well Ford didn’t tell him, either, but Fidds’ll take the blame for this, if Ford won’t let him take it for anything else. “Because I was scared,” Fidds sighs. “Still am. Ford, will you—lemme up—” Ford growling again tells him the answer is no. “Okay, fine, you can hang onto me but will you at least let me pull out? This can’t be comfortable—thank you.” And then Fidds drops all his weight onto Ford, getting a muffled oof from the other man. “You want me on you, you’re gonna git me on you,” Fidds says, trying not to laugh at him, and Ford finally—in increments—loosens his vice grip.

“I ain’t going nowhere, baby,” Fidds says tiredly as he rolls to the side, Ford following so that they’re facing, Ford’s hands still hanging on to his arms stubbornly. “Except maybe to grab us a washcloth here in a minute. You’re still glaring.”

“I’m not glaring, I’m thinking,” Ford says crankily, and Fidds sighs, mussing up his hair, which gets Ford glaring more and grabbing at his wrist. “I have to rethink my whole life, now, Fiddleford!”

“Join the club, y—hey, and you started it,” Fidds protests, glaring back at him. They glare at each other for almost a minute straight before bursting into winded laughter. “C’mere, git on over here,” Fidds fusses, beckoning with his arms until Ford rolls over and squishes his face into Fidds’s chest. Jesus, the man has no idea how to cuddle, even, everything he does endears him to Fidds all the more—Fidds grabs his limbs and pulls him around until they’re in a more natural position.

“How are you so good at this?” Ford asks, meaning, of course, cuddling, fucking, too, the way bodies fit together. Fidds holds back the thought that not only is he good at it, Ford’s uniquely bad at it and just says, “I got practice.”

“Fid?”

“Mm-hmm.” Fidds’s eyelids are heavy, but he works to keep them open. Doesn’t wanna fall asleep on Ford his first proper time having sex.

“I’m still scared, too.”

“I know,” Fidds whispers, trailing his fingers up and down Ford’s back, trying to be gentle with him the way he always does. “But, hey…maybe we ain’t the queerest thing going on in this neck of the woods.” Ford chuckles at that, that deep, wry sound Fidds loves so much. “I mean, we got this house, we got no neighbors for miles…and if we ever needed to, we got a whole bunker underground.”

“The more you say it, the more logical it sounds.”

“Mm-hmm.” It’s not logical. Fidds knows it ain’t, because if Ford was thinking straight he would rightly have kicked Fidds out, he would never be speaking to him again after what he’s done—

But then, almost like he can read Fidds’s thoughts (which, in light of recent events, is maybe somewhat close to the truth), Ford lifts his head up and looks at him, god—he’s so soft here, unguarded, lazy—and says, “You’ve got no idea how much I’d hoped Bill would sleep with you somehow. I just didn’t really think he would, because…well, you hate each other.”

“Stanford.” Fidds glares up at him for a moment before rolling his eyes. “First of all, I cannot believe you let Bill do that, second of all I love you a whole lot more’n I hate Bill. And you are lucky.”

“I know that. Obviously.”

“You have no idea what coulda happened to you, and—oh, now just hang on a minute, Stanford Pines, how could I forget you like it when I lecture you. This whole time—” Ford’s beet-red again, pressing his heated face back into Fidds’s shoulder with a miserable sound, the little shit. “You let me run around frettin’ about you and getting after you to sleep once in awhile because you like it—”

“No, that’s not why, it’s just a pleasant consequence,” Ford mumbles sheepishly, and Fidds snorts out a laugh, jostling him gently.

“Well…now you know firsthand how much power you got over me, so…I’d say we’re even,” Fidds sighs.

“I promise not to use it for evil.”

“I don’t believe that for one second, darlin’.” Ford hums sleepily in response, running his fingers over the bite marks, which Fidds is probably half covered in now, he really is like a puppy.

Fidds tries, unsuccessfully, to get Stanford to let him up so they can both clean off. But he’s latched on, going cranky again, probably because he ain’t hardly slept, so Fidds just stays still and lets Ford crash on top of him. Not like he’s gonna miss an opportunity to let him sleep.

And as Ford sleeps, Fidds’s mind drifts. To where he starts to think he might finally have an understanding of religion.

Maybe it ain’t about god seeing you through and through and finding you deserving. Maybe there’s nobody in the world who deserves to set foot in a church. Because Ford’s the closest thing Fidds has to god, and now, well—Fidds guesses Ford’s seen through him, just about as much as any person can.

Yet Fidds ain’t been shunned from the altar.

Maybe religion ain’t about you deserving to be where you are. Maybe it’s about you not deserving. Maybe god’s the word for somebody who looks at you and believes, despite all other evidence, that you can be good. Maybe even believing if you can be, then you already are.

Or maybe he’s sex-addled. Loopy from the toxin Stanford is to him, the thing he can’t help huffing and shooting up and swallowing and otherwise absorbing anyway he’ll let him. Maybe the world’s broken, and Fidds is rotten, and these two facts ain’t going away no matter how pretty a veneer he puts on them, no matter how pretty a boy is draped across him snoring.

Hell. If Fidds knows one thing, it’s that he don’t know nothing at all. Maybe he doesn’t have to know anything. Maybe he just has to hold this moment a little tighter and find himself lucky if it lasts.