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There’s a man in the Quadrangle of Confusion.
He’s sitting at the edge of a weak spot in the fabric of reality, lightly skipping rocks across the surface of time-space. His posture looks relaxed, but it’s not. It’s perfectly calculated stillness.
“You’re not my Ford,” he says.
This interloper Ford looks at him. His beard is stupid. He’s glad his Ford hasn’t grown a beard that stupid.
“My Bill is going to die tomorrow,” beard Ford says.
“You’re going to kill him tomorrow,” Bill says, unconcerned. (What does he care about other, lesser Bills – about Bills too pathetic to avoid being killed by their own pet. Assuming Temu Fordsy here can even do the job.)
“Yes,” beardy agrees. “Or rather, no. For the last three thousand years, I've been erasing every trace of my Bill in my universe. And only my universe. I'm going to check the Library tomorrow. And if he's not in it, then I'm the only one left in the universe who knows him. And I'll wipe my mind.”
Bill whistles to hide the way his exoskeleton crawls at the thought of that gun Specs had built. “Your Bill didn't get around nearly enough if it only took three thousand years.”
“I miss you,” Ford says. “That's the worst part of all this. I hear stories about you, thousands of years of stories, and I find myself wishing I could talk to you about them. Even as I erase them from history.”
“Well, why wouldn't you?” Bill preens.
Ford gets up. He's leaner than Bill’s Ford. Older. Tired. Boring.
“Your Ford is – fifty? He's still angry.”
“Just sulking,” Bill scoffs.
“Then you probably haven't played chess in a while.”
“You came here – to me – where I could kill you and stop you and make another me owe me—” Bill says, “—for a game of chess?”
“Just one.”
Bill snaps his fingers.
The ground comes up and twists around Ford’s ankles, trapping him. Bill dodges the laser blast Ford fires at him and laughs. “Easy, boy,” he coos. “Don’t you want to play chess?”
“This doesn't look like chess.”
“You can play chess in your head. Close your eyes, pet.”
Ford glares for a moment, but he lowers his gun and closes his eyes. “White or black?”
“Black.” He strokes Fordsy’s side, in as much as he can, with no physical form, watching to see if his eyes will flutter open, but he keeps them shut. Obedience or avoidance?
“Pawn to E4,” Ford says.
“Pawn to E5,” Bill says, as the firmament curled around Fordsy’s ankles twists higher, curling at the curious human weak spot at the backs of his knees. So much armor at the front, so many deliciously painful nerves underneath.
Ford struggles to keep his balance with the pressure, and Bill watches him wobble, eyes firmly shut. “Knight to F3.”
“D6,” Bill says, tilting reality around them until Fordsy is on his knees and then drawing the threads of madness around Ford, shredding his clothing away.
Ford shivers. It’s cold, here, if you can feel that sort of thing. It’s even colder if you can’t. “D4.”
Bill reaches out and inside Ford’s chest, making him gasp for air like he’s just been doused in ice cold water. “Bishop to G4.”
“That's a weak move,” Ford murmurs.
“You'd know all about weak.”
Bill rummages around in reality until he finds something he can manipulate, something he can grab a handful of, and pulls it through as he pulls his hand out of Ford’s chest, admiring how the still-warm still-bleeding mass of something in his hand looks as though he's just pulled out one of Ford’s organs.
He looks up and finds Ford’s dark eyes looking back at him, or rather, at his hand, at the bleeding mess. “I told you to close your eyes,” he reminds him.
Ford’s eyes flick up to meet Bill’s eye, and then he closes his eyes. “Did – did you say bishop to G4?”
“Keep your eyes on the board and maybe you'd remember where my pieces are,” Bill says, dragging his new prize over Ford’s chest. His best ever prize. Blood drips down the plane of Ford’s stomach.
“I – I capture your pawn. E5.”
“Clever boy,” Bill praises, dragging the handful of flesh down lower. “My bishop takes your knight.”
Ford’s breath hitches as blood drips onto his shaft. “My queen takes your bishop.”
“Mmm. An eye for an eye, is it? My pawn takes your pawn.” Bill squeezes the handful of meat, dribbling blood over Ford’s cock and watching the appendage twitch, flushed and bobbing between Fordsy’s thighs.
“Then – then kingside bishop to C4.”
Bill dips down, running the blood-slick shredded flesh over the smooth skin of Ford’s shaft. “Knight to—” something 6 “—F6.”
Ford makes an interested noise, bucking as much as he can into the friction. He bares his teeth in a breathless grin. “You’re distracted,” he accuses.
“I'm just playing chess on a much, much bigger scale than you,” Bill taunts, curling his hand – and the meat inside it – around the head of Ford’s cock like it’s a stroker. Ford’s sunk up to his mid-thighs in quicksand. “Your move, Fordsy.”
He drags a whimper out of Ford, watching him jerk his hips forward helplessly, sinking himself in deeper with every squirming movement chasing friction, and then: “Queen to B3,” Ford gasps out.
Bill snorts. “You think I’d let you mate in two, pet?” He mocks, finally letting Ford fuck into his fist, dragging friction down his shaft and not just the head. “Queen to E7.”
“You’re the one who’s stuck not being able to ca—” Ford starts, but it’s so easy to shut him up now, twisting his wrist on the next stroke and watching him have to choke on a moan.
“What was that?” Bill goads. “It didn’t sound like a chess move. It sounded like you were enjoying yourself.”
“Bill,” Ford breathes, his eyelids fluttering open. His eyes are so dark, pupils almost swallowing the pretty brown that used to reflect the stars so nicely when they gazed up at Bill full of adoration.
Bill leans closer. “Yyyyyyyyes?”
“Knight to C3,” Ford says, with just the hint of smugness.
Bill plunges his free hand back inside Ford’s chest and runs it along Ford’s spinal column, playing with the bundle of nerves inside with staticky fingers and watching his eyes roll back, convulsing helplessly and sinking deeper into the quicksand.
“Pawn to C6!” Bill says cheerfully.
It takes Ford a while to recover from that, and for a moment his face is so perfectly vacant and pleased that he looks young again, almost the boy that fell to his knees so obediently for Bill and let his muse clear his clever mind and soothe his racing thoughts. He leans forward, into Bill, and Bill drags his fingertips over Ford’s scalp in a parody of ruffled hair. “Aw, pretty little whore,” Bill coos, “are you getting overwhelmed this fast?”
Ford makes a noise of denial. Bill moves the meat over his cock and listens to his breathy little whine.
“Your body and your mouth never did agree.”
“Wh–where did you move?” Ford mumbles.
“You should have been listening, baby boy. I'm not telling!”
Ford takes a shaky breath. And another. The third hitches as Bill resumes moving his fistful of wet flesh over Ford’s cock more steadily, but he keeps breathing calmly. That's what's fun about older Ford – he has more fight in him. There’s more to chew on before Bill breaks him apart completely.
“Bishop to G5,” Ford says, voice so soft and calm you can almost believe he’s not up to his thighs in alien quicksand getting a handjob with a handful of still-bloody organ meat.
“Hmmmmmmm,” Bill says, pretending he's thinking about anything other than taking Ford’s careful control apart. “Pawn to B5.”
“I'll take it with my knight,” Ford counters.
“And I'll take your knight with my pawn,” Bill replies.
“And I'll take your pawn with my bishop.”
Back and forth. Capture, sacrifice, capture, sacrifice. How long had this Ford run from his Bill, all across the multiverse? Stumbling and giving up parts of himself, abandoning plans at the last moment, leaving any place, any person long before it started to feel like home, all to have another sliver of a chance at maybe, maybe defeating Bill. Centuries of obsession and still just starting to understand the smallest fraction of eternity.
You promised me eternity, Bill thinks, whatever version of me it was. And I intend to collect.
“Knight to D7,” Bill says idly. He could draw this out, but why bother? They both know where this ends. They've been hurtling towards it since the start and they might as well pitch forward into the abyss of inevitability. “Do you have any idea what you look like right now, Sixer? Trapped and helpless and begging for it—”
The gun is stuck in the quicksand too, Ford’s wrists pinned at his sides.
“M’not trapped,” Ford argues, rocking up into Bill’s hand with a wet squelch. “I castle.”
Bill laughs, cupping Ford’s chin. Ford is so pliant, tipping his head back for Bill even though the touch is just the faintest TV static fuzz of a touch. “Rook to D8, then.”
“I’ll take your knight anyway.”
“Then your rook is mine.” You're mine. Why should he respect any other Bill’s claim?
“Rook to D1,” Ford says. He's flushed so prettily. Just like he used to. Sliding the other rook into the same position the first had just been in. Like a shell game. Like time travelling four dimensional chess, which Ford refuses to play because he claims Bill opening wormholes that eat half of Ford’s pieces is not in the spirit of the game. It's just truth in advertising, champ!
“Queen to E6,” Bill says. Come and get it, then.
Ford is trembling, eyes squeezed shut, cock that pretty red shade that has nothing to do with the streaks of blood and little chunks of meat clinging to it, and everything to do with all his blood rushing south as his nerves light up with every pull and push and sudden twist of Bill’s hands. “N-n—” He stutters, like he's going to say no, and Bill wonders if he said come and get it aloud, but— “Bishop. To D7. I take your knight.”
“And I take your bishop with my other knight. You’re so close, pet. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? This is what you really came here for.”
Ford opens his eyes again. They're shining with unshed tears. “Please.”
“Cum for me, puppy. Give in.”
And Ford obeys, because of course he does, whimpering and shuddering and spilling all over Bill’s hand and mixing with the blood and meat and dribbling into the quicksand. He sinks down, relaxing, and the floor of the Nightmare Dimension cradles him there.
“Bill,” Ford breathes. “Kiss me?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Bill says. “What do you need to say to make those kinds of demands?”
Ford opens his eyes again. Tears are spilling down his cheeks. “Please, my muse,” he murmurs.
“Good boy,” Bill praises, smearing scraps of meat across Ford’s lips and leaning down to press it into his mouth with his tongue, and Ford accepts it, pulling his hands free and curling his hands around Bill’s edges. He chokes a little as the tongue forces the meat deeper, but he just swallows, his tongue brushing over Bill’s throat working around it.
“Bill,” Ford mumbles, when Bill deigns to let him catch his breath, running his tongue over Ford’s face where it’s not covered by that stupid beard.
“Mm?”
“Queen to B8,” he says, a faint grin curling across his face. “Check.”
A queen sacrifice. This late in the game? “I'll take it,” Bill says. I'll take you. I'll keep you. Do the other Bill a favor, do myself a favor, do Fordsy a favor. Let him settle down here.
“Then – then rook to D8. And checkmate.”
Bill wipes the smug look off his face by kissing him again, without the meat, just running his tongue over Ford’s teeth, dipping in to prickle electricity over the nerves in his jaw.
He barely notices six of Ford’s fingers leave his edge, barely notices him reach behind his back, barely notices the blue glow so like his own fire as the gun powers up.
But only barely.
He pulls back.
Ford looks up at him. “I already checked the Library, Bill. There's no trace of y—of my Bill.”
“What does the Library know,” Bill scoffs.
“Everything. Everything in creation. This won't kill me, but,” he pulls out a flask. “This will. You're not my Bill. I'm not your Ford. We don't owe each other anything. But your Ford is angry right now and he won't stop being angry for a very, very long time. Take it from me,” he says with a little laugh. “Will you hold me?”
What do I care, Bill thinks. You're not my Ford. You're just a cheap substitute with an ugly beard.
But he also doesn't care about that other Bill out there. That Bill that's so easily erased from time. And he can't have his Ford right now. So maybe a cheap substitute will do.
Ford doesn't wait for an answer. He drinks whatever’s in that flask and he levels the gun at his own head with the screen that says BILL CIPHER and he looks up at Bill.
And Bill gathers him in his arms, dozens of them, as he pulls the trigger and washes them both in blue light.