Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Summer, 1982

The heat drags on forever. Bill, for whom “forever” was both a possible concept and one that he was laughably short of grasping, doesn’t find this to be an exaggeration. By “forever” he means “for 75% of the goddamn day.” Any day. That much of a day being the same is a small forever.

He doesn’t mind the heat too much. Lay in it for long enough, there’s a kind of baked-in radiance that reminds him of back when he used to be made of photons and his anger or his intensity could light fires. “You’re like a lizard,” Fidds says, and it drives him into an offended rage for an entire six hours, despite enjoying playing dragon sometimes. Fiddleford is so annoying and awful and Bill hates him more than he’s ever hated a single other person in his life that he hasn’t also killed.

There is a cruelty to Fiddleford McGucket that manifests as longsufferingness. It was the same, really, for many of those regarded by the Catholic church as saints, as Bill spends a rant explaining to him: piety, meekness, is so often a poison-tipped blade, and in this Fidds is embarrassingly unoriginal. He should be embarrassed. It should embarrass him how, whenever Bill is doing something horrible and undignified with the body, or saying incredibly violent things, Fidds just sort of sighs into their shared brainspace with something like resigned exasperation. He should know by now that altar lambs don’t get sainted, and yet he’s still acting like he’s jousting for pity points from god.

It's either that, or he kind of likes having Bill around, which would be insane.

Anyway. One of their recent deals was that if Bill would agree to put on sunscreen anytime Fidds said so this summer, he would get a trampoline, and at present he’s laying on the roof, head dangling over the edge, watching Ford assemble said trampoline. It came from the Sears catalog. Bill wanted to get rid of the safety netting, but was swiftly denied. He is currently on his third ice pop. One day a couple of weeks ago, Fidds let him eat a whole box so that he could “learn his tolerance,” which is stupid altar lamb speak for “fuck around and find out,” a tactic he employs with Bill often. Much to Ford’s chagrin.

Bill contends, however, there is a significant difference between knowing a whole box of ice pops is a really bad idea, and knowing exactly how many ice pops is a bad idea.

Yeah. Human life gets boring. He’s now trying to figure out how many ice pops is truly too many, plastic overconsumption be damned. He used to inspire actual scientists to do actual science.

He supposes it could be worse, he thinks, enjoying the view of the blinding sun bouncing off Ford’s sweat-sheened shoulders. He’s in an undershirt and slacks and…hiking boots. Bill snorts, taking in the outfit as a whole the first time. His and Fidds’s shared opinion is that it’s dorky as fuck, but quite nice to look at, now that the undershirt’s been sweated through and is fleshily translucent. Ford, who categorically refuses to wear sunscreen, is sure to burn quick.

“You could really stand to come down here and help me, it’s your trampoline,” Ford gruffs up from the verdant yard, which none of them bother to mow.

“Do you really want me assembling a trampoline?” Bill projects down at him. “Me, who’s so bad with these hands and will then get on said trampoline and do a lot of really vigorous movements?” Ford grumbles, swearing under his breath, and mops the sweat off his face. Bill, who’s also in a body that’s sweating, doesn’t bother to do the same, enjoying the way it rolls slowly from his brow into his upside-down hairline.

“And I really wish you wouldn’t hang over the roof like that,” Ford calls, seeming only half-focused on actually arguing with Bill. Despite his complaining, Ford’s actually enjoying assembling the thing. He needs something to do. This whole summer, his lack of A Purpose has been a problem. “We installed a railing for a reason.”

“Railings are for hands, not for heads.” Bill blinks sweat out of his blurry eyes, having been convinced, at least, to take off their glasses and leave them on the roof where they’re safe. “I’m fine, Fordsy, the shingles and my shirt are having a friction moment. It’s like Velcro.”

“That’s not—Bill,” Ford grouses, torquing a nut unnecessarily hard. Heheh. The veins in his hands flex and bulge and Bill has a moment of very strange yearning for a time when he knew what that felt like from the inside. My ex-wife still misses me, he thinks, pinging the thought around like cat swatting at a ball. But her aim is gettin’ better, Fidds finishes. The body emits a shared blare of lazy laughter. “What’s so funny?” Ford grumbles, looking up from his work and squinting at them through blurry glasses.

“Inside joke,” Bill says, and Fidds laughs again. “Stop that, it wasn’t funny,” Bill complains, but because his body’s laughing he starts laughing. Ugh, I hate this. “Fiddleford.” Bill swats at the air with the melting ice pop, an idiotic gesture that doesn’t mean anything and results in a trail of sticky Red 40 and water spilling down his wrist. Despite himself, Ford is smiling just a little at this, which infuriates Bill to the point that he puts the whole rest of the ice pop in their mouth at once. (It’s weird. They’ve been lazily swapping the mouth back and forth between their respective control without really thinking about it, or bargaining for it, which implies an ease of cohabitation that Bill really doesn’t like to dwell on lest the claustrophobia of his confinement sneak up on him again; at times he goes near catatonic with it, inside or outside.)

With a quiet huff of exasperated fondness, Ford goes back to trampoline assembly, popping the thing upright for the first time a few minutes later. He has to really work the muscles in his back to do it, and Bill attempts to do a wolf whistle through the mouth and fails miserably. For a moment, he retreats inside to thrash around a little, more out of irritation than embarrassment, no matter what Fidds says, and Fidds, now in the body, swings carefully upright, their face tingling as blood goes back to where it usually lives. Fidds puts on their glasses, blinking down, now right-side-up, at Ford, who faces away from them, hands on his shapely hips. Bill takes the body back just in time to shout a muted protest at Ford for climbing up onto the trampoline.

“I built it, you can’t say I don’t deserve first dibs,” Ford says, giving an experimental bounce that makes Bill want to shred him a little bit, a feeling which is in large part sexual. He’s being so fucking aggravating. Bill stands up, intending to jump from the roof onto the trampoline, an effort immediately vetoed by Fidds.

“God, fuck you,” Bill snarls, stomping back to the window to get down from the roof “the safe way,” whatever that means. “Fuck you both so bad.” He storms through the window, much as someone can fenestrate angrily, then storms downstairs and out the back door with a mild slam (mild, it’s only mild, no matter what Fidds says), climbing onto the trampoline with uncalled-for aggression, his usual approach to life. Ford has settled carefully with his legs crossed under him, observing them with a keen curiosity that Bill has so sorely missed. There was a good chunk of time, another forever, where Ford refused to be interested in them at all, or, rather, in Bill’s residence as a part of the “them” they’ve become. No note-taking, no study, no curiosity. All of the things he could take away from Bill, who had already been deprived of so much in one fell swoop, he swiftly took. His cruel, beautiful Sixer. That’s changed in recent weeks. There’s a fragility to their truce that Bill tries very hard to ignore, but one indicator he’s identified is how often Ford will stare at them with naked interest, and not necessarily in a sex way.

“Is this trampoline big enough for three grown men?” Bill asks nastily, to cover for the fact that he’s feeling some kind of wretched yearning again, which he would contend is an entirely embodied thing and not something he ever had to deal with before getting stuck like this.

“Moot question,” Ford answers, pushing his glasses up. “You don’t count as your own one.” He’s burning, all right, a hard flush coming to the surface of his skin from how angry it is that the sun’s touching it, promising peeling in their near future. Bill remembers distantly that if he’s nice enough for Ford’s weird, arbitrary, and frankly absurd standards, then Ford might let him peel the dead skin off like he’s a snake, so he bites down on a return insult and concentrates on standing up without looking like an idiot. Ford shifts, unsettling the strange, taut rubber surface, just to watch Bill wobble, and Bill gives him a fiery glare that unfortunately comes off more as a pout on this stupid face. It’s definitely the face that’s the problem, and not Bill.

But at last, though mirth shines in Sixer’s eyes—now crinkled a bit, the first early signs of age a worry line between his brow; fitting—he’s still, and Bill embraces the coltishness of new legs on new surfaces and, with a bit of a false start, jumps. Once. Twice. And for a moment earth drops out from under his stomach and he’s flying again.

*

Fall, 1982

Bill’s come to understand it is a privilege to get to argue with Sixer. And boy do they ever fight. Like cats and dogs, the way Ford and Fidds always used to, the rare times they fought at all before everything: Ford’s is an anger that can simmer for days, only to kick up hissing at random times, and of late his lack of purpose has been turning up the burner, so to speak. A month ago, he and Fidds published the revised version of Fidds’s thesis, his last offering on Ford’s altar before he turned himself into a new kind of vessel. Yeesh, Bill’s morose tonight, a little wine-drunk and fresh off another spat, besides.

He refuses to sleep in the spare room because it used to be his room, and Ford won’t let him into the study or the lab at all, so that’s out, and he also refuses to sleep on the couch because he will not be the shunned husband in this metaphor. So he is on his trampoline, lying angry and boneless, the stars above him.

Anyway, it’s a privilege, the fighting, because it means Ford gives a shit, that Bill exists in his periphery, his schema of the world, and will continue to do so, instead of forgetting Bill and trying to ignore his existence and turn him substanceless. The worst thing about prayer when you’re a god is that so easily the conduit can turn the other way, your notice seething unwillingly into the vacuum left by a worshipper’s sudden shunning. The fighting is a privilege. And Bill hates few things more than being in the position of receiving privilege from others.

“So whenever you die, what d’you think happens, Specs?” His voice is a clanging echo projected as if in the air around them, bouncing back into their—his—ears, when in truth it’s just an aural trick he’s playing on them. On himself. Heheh. The boundary line between I and you and we is ever-shifting, like this. There’s something horrible about never being alone. Something giddy about it, too. Like a glass of cosmic sand, getting you drunk off just the possibility of being drunk, before you’ve even drank it.

“I dunno.” Fidds doesn’t have to answer aloud, but he does, maybe enjoying the whole ears thing as much as Bill is. Enjoying having them, that is. “Ain’t you the cosmic entity? Hadn’t you oughta know if there’s anything after this?”

“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t,” Bill sing-songs, trying to bait him into asking. Fidds hums thoughtfully, using his eye to trace over the shape of Orion in the sky above them.

“Well, I don’t wanna know, anyhow. Not that I think you’d tell me the truth.”

“You don’t w—sorry, you don’t want to know? The answer to the most defining question underpinning human moral intelligence?” Bill makes the hair on their body stand on end so that Fidds feels like he’s being stared at.

“Quiddit,” Fidds grouses tipsily. “No, I don’t wanna know. Consider that what underpi—what’s—oh, that ain’t a word. Maybe the basis of moral intelligence’s the fact that we can’t know. It’s about the question, not the answer, Bill.”

“You just…don’t wanna know. You don’t want certainty? You don’t want knowledge?” This may just be the most interesting, and most pathetic, thing that Bill has ever discovered about the man whose body now serves as his boardinghouse. House arrest. Boardinghouse arrest. To coin a phrase. “Where’s your sense of curiosity?”

“Died just about the time I seen a gnome for the first time,” Fidds drawls flatly. “Seriously, I wasn’t ever one for—for the great mysteries o’ life, and whatever else. I just—c’mon. I went into engineerin’. Hardly a speculative science.” That, even drunk, he can say words like speculative (speckle-uh-tiv) is a sleight of tongue Bill, who still hasn’t figured out how to whistle, desperately and hatefully envies. “Somethin’ either functions, or it don’t. Left the big questions to Ford, and look how that turned out.”

“Yes, and that’s why Ford got chosen by a god, instead of you,” Bill answers snippily.

Fidds smirks, cat-like and serene, up at the sky and says, “That what you call it?”

“What else would you call him having a muse?”

“Not what I meant, angel, I meant—oh, nevermind.” Fidds settles comfortably in the mind, as if he’s kicking back into a hammock, an entirely smug gesture that’s entirely for Bill’s (dis)benefit. Ooh, Bill hates him. Unlike Fidds, Bill is afflicted with a terminal curiosity, to the point of destructiveness.

“Tell me.”

“Nothin’ to tell. You wouldn’t like it, anyway.”

“Tell me, or else I’m going to do a sommel—a somes—” Despite not using the physical mouth, drunkenness still lends itself to certain lingual hangups, apparently, when you’re housed in a physical body, and the word somersault remains stubbornly out of reach. “I’m going to do a flip. And then throw up mid-air.”

“That would be impressive.” Despite the declaration, Fidds tangiblly weighs the cost/benefit ratio before giving in, not keeping his stupid, pathetic little game of reticence going. “I was gonna say, are you really gonna carry on like you didn’t choose me too, just a little bit, by the end?”

“You shut up.” Bill makes their hair stand on end again, just to feel something. Fidds, who doesn’t have control of the motor center right now, wheels around uncomfortably internally, wanting to run his hands over them to try and dissipate the feeling; Bill stubbornly refuses, enduring the discomfort with (metaphorically) gritted teeth. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that, I only like Ford. Not you.” In retort, Fidds starts aggressively beaming the image of that bronze-capped wolf tooth that hangs from the central ring of Ford’s stupid fucking collar into the interstice between them, and Bill snarls and sinks astral dragon claws into their chest threateningly. Obviously they both feel it, Bill’s manipulating the body’s nervous system to do it, but since he’s causing it, it affects him less. Fidds, meanwhile, lets out a breathy grunt, taken off guard.

“I told you Ford put that on there—”

“—and I told you I know when you’re lyin’. And more importantly I know when he’s tellin’ the truth.” Bill growls, like the wind chittering through dead reeds, then abandons the metaphysical effort, letting go of their chest. He’s back to melancholiness again at the reminder of Ford.

“Just go inside,” Fidds says softly. Like it’s on Bill. “You don’t really wanna be mad anymore, Bill—”

“I thought I told you not to butt in.”

“And I didn’t, did I? This ain’t buttin’ in, this is me not wantin’ to sleep out on the gotdamn trampoline.”

“You’re fine. I’m fine. He can come out here.”

Fidds sighs. “D’you even remember what you were mad about?”

Something about the lab, or the bunker. Or had that come after Bill already decided to be angry? Something about the TV remote and whether they could get a better cable plan. Or was that last time? “None of your business.” Bill glares up at the sky, feeling the chill for the first time since they came out here. “He’s just—so—ughh—”

“Yeah, he can be a real bastard sometimes. But you like him anyway.” Fidds thinks Bill’s in love with the guy, which is stupid. Bill doesn’t do love with anyone but himself. And even if he does, that’s Ford’s business, not Fidds’s.

Still.

Did you ever love me? He had been on his back. Much like this. Though, then, he had been alone. Shoved into the inelegant confines of this secondhand, timeshare body, unable to even traipse through the glass he’d so ragefully broken because he was sworn not to draw blood, though clearly Fidds had no such qualms, and he hadn’t wanted this. He hadn’t. The only appealing thing about a human body was that he could bend it to new realities and not have to deal with the fallout. The only good thing about it was ever the mind within, and all the ways Bill could supersede its will, crack it like an egg—and in that moment, Fidds had vacated the premises, as if to punish him.

Ford, hurt, more so than Bill had ever seen him, even in his memories of Stanley, had looked like some kind of grieving, vengeful angel, his face flushed, tears turning his brown eyes into kaleidoscopes of fury, and instead of Why or How could you do this to me or I’m going to kill you—that came later—he had asked, Did you ever love me?

I don’t know. How the fuck should I know?

The stars shine down at them like chips of broken glass through clouds, and Bill’s remembrance brings about the phantom itch of old scars, long healed by now, raised and meticulous and almost beautiful in a savage, vicious way around their shoulders, chest, and back. Like a map of some unearthly sky in an old atlas somewhere. Ugh. Being a demon, you have to nod to the symbolism in everything. Heaven and earth, upstairs and downstairs, stars and scars, it’s all a mirror.

After Fidds is asleep—the easiest way to get him inside the mind while Bill remains outside it—Bill sleepwalks the body back inside. He doesn’t really have a plan, but Ford doesn’t seem surprised to find Bill looming over him beside the mattress, staring, like a toddler that threw up. Half-asleep, Ford mutters, “Bill, don’ just stand there.”

“Why not?” Bill demands sullenly, yet still submits to Ford sleepily grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him into the bed.

“Where were you?” Ford mumbles, rather than answering an admittedly stupid question.

“None of your business.”

“Mmhm.” Ford pries his eyes a little more open and squints at Bill. “Are you drunk?”

“None of your business,” Bill repeats, playing restlessly with Ford’s hand. What had they fought about, again? “Only a little.”

“Did you open my good whiskey,” Ford mutters.

“No. So what if I did.” Bill’s trying to summon the energy to continue fighting. He can’t find it. He used to never run out.

“Bill.” The way Ford sighs it is put out, but more than a little fond. He doesn’t seem to have a goal besides just saying Bill’s name. “Stop it.” Bill doesn’t think either of them remembers what Ford is telling him to stop doing, if they ever did know.

Still, he says, “You stop it.”

“Shh.” Ford paws sleepily at Bill’s face, in what’s probably supposed to be a soothing gesture but is giving more can’t find the light switch in this damn bathroom.

“Ford.” The body is trying to drag Bill down into sleep, but he keeps the eyes half-open, taking in the predictable dimensions of Ford’s body in the dark. He whispers the next part, almost hoping Ford’s asleep, almost not meaning to say anything at all: “Do you love me?”

He must have, once. He never said it, though. Only in the past tense: I still have habits from when I loved you. You never deserved my love, Bill. In those fleeting moments during the ill-fated bodyswapping carpet attempt, the last time Bill was anywhere near Ford’s mind, he had felt the hurting sort of love, or something like it.

Or in the abstract, by way of non-denial. You still love me, baby— And you still need me—

And he’s called Bill my love exactly once since this whole body-sharing fiasco took place. All summer, they’ve danced neatly around the issue. So it goes, so it’s always gone. Once upon a time, Bill was in his head, and he didn’t particularly want or care for the human forms of love that he found in there; now, not only does this body feel its absence—or vagueness—like a physical hurt, but it also feels like it’s stretching across spacetime and not reaching anything. Like something’s emitting, at great resource cost, from Bill and eating up the lightyears like a rocket trapped in Zeno’s arrow paradox: always halving the distance, half and half again. Never reaching.

“Bill,” Ford answers, then sighs, then repeats again: “Bill.” His arm drags Bill tighter against him. “Why now? You’re drunk.”

“What better time than now to say something you can take back in the morning,” Bill says nastily.

“No. I’ll tell you in the morning when I can’t take it back at all,” Ford answers, breathing on Bill’s neck in that awful, pleasant way he does when they sleep like this, which is always. Goddammit, but it’s always.

“I don’t believe you,” Bill whispers.

“Your belief is of no consequence to me,” Ford answers, almost back asleep already, “when I know damn well what will happen.”

And in the morning they get up and they find new things to justify continuing their fighting, but after another snarled outburst, Ford reaches out and tousles Bill’s head in a way that isn’t particularly gentle and says, “Just stop it, you idiot. I love you.” And the set of his jaw is still angry but his goddamn eyes are smug because he knows that’s a trump card.

Bill really, really, really hates trump cards.

*

Winter, 1983

Two things happen in the winter of 1982-1983: Ford figures out that “interdimensional” is one of the craziest leaps you can make from a portal, and Stanley misses a call.

The first feels like a bit of a ridiculous oversight. It would’ve probably been just as groundbreaking if he'd invented normal, in-universe teleportation, revolutionizing whole industries, maybe even solving greenhouse gas emissions in a variety of sectors, but then again Bill had been a master at sleight-of-hand, so to speak. Dangle the big flashy thing in front of the face, while all the uglier machinations happen just out of view. Stanley would call it a classic con and make fun of Ford relentlessly for it, if 1. Ford had told him anything approximating the whole story, and 2. Stanley was calling at all.

The first is a very engaging problem, one that Ford’s been rather needing, having sunk into a bit of a depression following…everything. Don’t think about yesterday. Tomorrow, on the other hand, is back on the table. In large part, the issue is he sold off most of the portal stuff in a fit of pique, and some of it was actually rather necessary.

So invested is he in this newest diversion that he doesn’t realize it’s past midnight down in the lab, and yet the phone still hasn’t rung. Stanley usually calls between 9 and 11 on Wednesday nights, depending on…certain things that Ford assumes are happening in his life but hasn’t asked about, the thread between them still too fragile. It's now 1:30 AM.

It's entirely possible nothing bad has happened. But…if it had…Ford has the sudden stomach-plummeting realization that, in looking to preserve the tenuous peace with his estranged twin as much as possible, he may have committed a similar error as he had with Fidds. If something has gone wrong, he’s got no earthly idea where to begin to solve it—he has the area code of Stanley’s last call, but no guarantee he’s still there, no idea what he’s involved in or whether it’s legal or—anything.

All because he’s spent the better part of the last year mulling vaguely over non-confrontational ways to say Are you partaking in criminal activities and is it bad or Do you have an actual bed in the town you’re currently in or What’s wrong, Stanley, why do you sound so stressed, or is that just the way you sound and I just don’t know because I thought I could flip a switch when really I was just running and so now who am I to presume I know you better than anyone else? Was that true once, or have I always just been so in my own head?

Or anything like that. He’s just shelved it as a problem to either solve down the line, or let Stanley be the one to bring up, and he’s just decided to take the relative normalcy at face value, being as he’s so sorely lacked it lately—god, I’m an idiot—

He recognizes it for the compulsion that it is, the way he stares desperately at the silent landline for a long moment before scrambling to the elevator. Booking it upstairs, where he struggles not to hesitate, nor to be too loud, as he opens the door to the master bedroom, where Fidds is currently sleeping, sprawled across the bed with a bonelessness that blurs his recognition system between Fidds and Bill until it just becomes them. And there is…no glass on the floor, no blood on the counter, no horrible, stark dividing line between Before / After. Just dark, cool sheets, and sleeping, even breaths, and his heart rate finally slowing.

This, at least, is as he left it, and Bill—the more rousable of the two, given the nature, Ford assumes, of his consciousness—cracks one waxen yellow eye open at him. His voice projects quietly into Ford’s ear. “What? You look like you’re expecting me to jump at you or something.”

“You would jump at me if you thought it would get you something,” Ford says flatly, but quietly, toeing his shoes off and motioning for Bill to scoot over. Bill gives him a long stare, as if considering the merits, before flopping semi-gently over onto his back. The body snores, but its other occupant doesn’t wake. This state of half-awareness Bill can suspend himself in is endlessly fascinating, but Ford can only ever get so many answers to his many, many queries about this situation before one or both of them is getting snippy, neither too keen on being an experiment. He keeps a whole notebook just for them, regardless.

“What would it get me?”

“Nothing. But I wouldn’t catch you, and then it would hurt.”

“Hmm.” Bill, concerningly, appears once more to be debating the merits, but ultimately decides to remain where he is. “So what is it, then?”

“Hmm?”

“What were you staring for with that weird, kicked-dog look on your face?”

“I did not have a—a kicked-dog look.” Bill, crossly, shushes him, apparently not wanting to deal with an unwillingly woken Fidds. This is fair; he can be a menace. “I was worrying,” Ford continues, just above a whisper.

“What could you possibly have to worry about?”

Ford sighs softly. “Stanley hasn’t called.” 

Bill lets out a soft pff of dismissal, still projecting his voice rather than move unnecessarily. “He’s like a cockroach, Stanford, he’s fine. …Don’t look at me like that, I mean it as a compliment.”

“You would.”

“Probably just pool-sharked too close to the sun, or something. Unlike you, he probably has a social life.”

“You’re one half of my social life, so what does that say about you?”

“I’m not talking about me,” Bill answers snippily, “right now. I’m making fun of you. And how boring you are.” Rather than take offense, Ford just huffs a muted laugh at that. Boring doesn’t exactly get you Bill’s notice, no matter what he may say after the fact.

“How bored must you have been then, at large, to still bother with me.”

“I was a party animal. I throw great parties. I was going to throw you one, when I came over here.”

“I’ve never been a party person.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“And still, you were bored.” The crescent moon of that one cracked eye glints at him, the facial expressions muted due to the body’s near total state of slumber, but something wavers there, maybe, and softens.

“I was. But I wasn’t, too.” You were still interesting remains unsaid, Bill ungiven to those displays of emotion unless unconscious or coerced. Two of a kind, them. Fidds has ever been the outlier in this strange folie a trois. “You were bored,” Bill continues, one of those Bill statements that’s really a question.

“I was, but I wasn’t.”

“We should throw a party.” Another Bill-ism: changing the subject to hide that he’s pleased or that something makes him feel a little too open, too human.

“And invite whom?”

“Three’s a crowd.” A corner of the mouth twitches. As of late that’s been Ford’s daily cross to bear: the puns as to the quantities of persons in any given situation. He doesn’t know if it means anything regarding the state between Fidds and Bill, or if it’s just their latest trend, after variants of the phrase “it’s an inside joke” plagued him all summer. (Here, another indicator of Ford’s terminal purposelessness this year: he had come up with an entire matrix for charting the relative values of humor vs. repetition in an attempt to convince them to stop running the same joke formats into the ground. In truth, he had neither wanted to succeed, nor expected to; he’d just needed to give the aggravation inherent in his life something to chew on. In Bill’s brutalist jargon, he would put it thus: “You’re a predator, Fordsy, you need the pursuit.”)

“Stan will be fine,” Bill says. A propos of nothing, as usual, his throwaway, blunt affections. When he surrenders them, he does so only once it’s no longer appropriate. Heaven forbid he be prompted to be kind.

“Is that cosmic knowledge, or a platitude?” It’s an honest question, and not always easy to tell with Bill, whether or not he can be convinced to provide an answer. “I’ll take…either.” Ford sighs the last part, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his face.

Rather than answer, Bill pries. “Do you know where he is?”

Knowing Bill, knowing what to expect, or not to, Ford takes it in stride. “His area code last week was Des Moines.”

“Nothing good in Des Moines. If he’s smart, he’s not calling ‘cause he’s on the road as we speak.”

“Then he’s fine.”

“Yes,” Bill says, with a lack of complexity that tells Ford the answer to his question: it was a platitude, not a prophecy.

Still. Stan calls the next morning, late, and Ford’s not in the lab at the time, so the voicemail box picks it up. Sorry I missed our usual call. Had to work late. Just now getting in.

Ford doesn’t like it, but he’s so awash with relief and some irritation that—despite his near-panicked revelation last night—he elects to continue his policy of unobtrusiveness.

If Stan doesn’t want to tell him, then maybe he doesn’t need to know.

*

This is stupid, of course.

When you’re estranged for a decade with your brother, whom you never stopped wondering about, never stopped missing, and ached for the chance to be angry at from a closer distance—though, not enough to put down your pride—you come back into the relationship with a great many burning needs to know. To know anything. Where are you sleeping who are you with where did you go after you left why did you keep calling why don’t you hate me—you should hate me—

So it’s stupid. If he’s learned anything this year it’s that, for a genius, he’s never been a particularly smart man.

Anyway, Stanley doesn’t call the next week, and Ford paces the lab until the sun’s up, trying not to worry himself into a fit. It rings at 10 AM, startling him awake, but it’s only Bill. He’s walked, apparently, to the Dusk-2-Dawn to use their payphone and call Ford.

“You could have just waited until I came upstairs.” Ford’s already gathering up his jacket, his keys, from where he dropped them last night. Honestly, walking a couple of miles up the road to call Ford from a payphone is so Bill.

“You could just start letting us in the lab again, and the problem would be solved,” Bill answers, talking through the vocal chords in a snippy way that tells Ford he’s just been worried in his inexplicable, unspoken, and doubtless self-centered Bill manner. “Did he call?” Ford sighs.

“No. I just—it’s just two weeks in a row.”

“Maybe his work schedule is still fucked.”

“He could’ve mentioned that last week. I don’t even know what he’s doing for work.”

“You don’t? Jesus, what even is there to talk about, then?”

“Oh, please, don’t throw stones in the glass house I built you,” Ford snaps.

“I’m not in the glass house, I walked miles just to speak to you,” Bill snarls. “And I don’t want to walk back.”

“You want me to come get you.”

“Yes.” Bill is not allowed car keys for a multitude of reasons. Fidds’s truck keys now reside on Ford’s keychain alone. Just another thing that pangs his heart; Fidds doesn’t drive him anywhere anymore. He shakes off the moment of pensiveness as Bill says, “I got groceries for the house, anyway.”

“Wow, you must have been really worried.” A moment of silence from the other end before Fidds speaks, apparently having regained custody of the body.

“There’s, like, three gallons of ice cream in these bags,” Fidds answers. “So yes, we were worried, but also…hungry. I guess.”

“Ice cream? It’s 23 degrees out.”

“You’re tellin’ me.” Fidds sounds less annoyed than he does fond. These days, jealousy is a near-constant thing, as both of Ford’s partners are now closer to one another by default than they are to him. Which, as Bill has so often sadistically pointed out, is not something he’s ever handled well. It’s getting better, but he does have to shove down the part of himself that’s almost inclined to make them walk back out of spite.

Bill stares at him openly as Ford drives them back home, a headache brewing behind his eyes. He’s hardly slept, had no coffee, besides, and that’s not to mention the stress about Stanley. Bill keeps staring while Ford does the work of putting the groceries away, though he at least turns and attends to the coffee pot after enough pointed, sullen looks from Ford. Bill’s control is obvious in the way he wears the body, even now, a creature slant to the limbs, the motions of the hands, that Ford privately hopes he never grows out of. Not only because he sometimes has stress-dreams in which he can’t tell which of them is which, leading to disastrous consequences, but because it's part of what has always been beautiful about Bill. There is an inhumanity about him, that fluid jitteriness.

Oh, but it’s damningly hard, some days, to think around it. Neither of them is entirely recognizable as who they were when Ford fell in love with each of them. People change, yes, but surely this is…an outlier.

Or maybe he’s just never seen either of them clearly. Maybe with Bill that would’ve been impossible, but then again Fidds somehow managed it. He’ll chase his own tail around about this until he passes out if he lets it continue, so he tries to draw himself back down out of the haze, takes quiet stock of everything in his immediate vicinity. Hands around a hot coffee cup, eyes heavy from exhaustion, belly in knots from anxiety. Okay, too much going on in this wretched vessel—he externalizes: countertop digging into his lower back, tiles under his feet, Bill perched precariously on the table with one foot hiked up on the back of a chair in a way that can’t be entirely comfortable. Another Billism: flexion or extension of a limb or several, like he needs the reassurance of opposing force, of proprioception.

“Did you call back?” Bill says, projecting his voice into the air between them.

“Yes, but someone else picked up,” Ford sighs. “Whatever hotel room he was calling from, he’s left now.”

“Still in Des Moines?”

“Reno.” Bill tilts his head, about to say something else, and Ford bites out, before he can stop himself, “Quit it.”

“Quit what?”

“Just—” He thinks about times past, when he might’ve come to Bill on something like this out of more than just a moment of midnight weakness, when they were muse and adherent, and how he would’ve taken Bill’s consolation as the word of God. How Bill’s consolation, regarding Stanley, would be—had been—You’re better off without him, and you always have been. “Stop trying to be—helpful. Because you aren’t.”

“Who said I was? Trying?” With a wince, the leg slips off the back of the chair—Fidds returning to motor control, moving both feet to the seat of the chair beneath him. Bill’s agitated, slipping, though he’s trying to pretend otherwise. The headache throbs again, and Ford takes off his glasses, kneading at the bridge of his nose with one hand. “I’m just asking questions, genius—”

“—don’t call me that. Jesus, Bill, you spent years reaffirming my grudge against Stanley, don’t act like—it’s just backhanded. It’s insulting, is what it is.”

“You used to ask for my advice.”

“And you used that trust to fucking isolate me. To make me bitter, paranoid—”

“—oh, please, with your industrial-size superiority complex, you were begging to be put on a pedestal, you built the damn thing yourself. You used to love when I took an interest in your little human squabbles.” Ford’s glasses are back on, now, and it’s Bill in both eyes, which can only mean Fidds retreated inside willingly. In the moment, it stings.

“‘Little human squabbles’ got you astrally body-trapped. You’re not above it and you never were, and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather you recuse yourself from all matters related to Stanley.”

“Are you seriously blaming me for you not getting your head out of your ass sooner?” Bill sneers, cutting straight to the quick. “You are, aren’t you? You’re standing over there acting like I wasn’t just plucking at threads you’d already woven. Your own subconscious gave me the goddamn blueprint. Villainize me all you want for using you, Ford, but you handed me the toolkit.”

It doesn’t matter whether it’s true, really. That’s just the thing with these arguments. At the end of the day, Bill and Ford share in the capacity for rather vicious cruelty, even in uncalled-for situations. The absolute truth of a situation matters little when Bill knows exactly how to twist the blade, and Ford’s not above playing dirty. A surgeon, and a scrapper. In hindsight, it’s no surprise Fidds absented himself from the discussion; he’s never been the type. “Okay, whatever," Ford spits. “All the more reason that you standing over there, trying to get me to reason through it like you’re trying to provide some comfort, is a fucking disgrace. A farce that used to be beneath you.”

“Ohh, you’re upset I’m not worthy of your worship anymore, is that it?” Bill’s snarling grin is more cruelty than glee. “Does it disgust you, Fordsy? That you can hurt me in the normal way, now, instead of it taking effort, seeming impossible? Your pet and your god are too hard to tell apart now, I keep forgetting how much that fucks with you.” It’s true. Ford has struggled to adjust far more than either of them has, and it stings. Low-hanging fruit, really. The days where everything feels normal sit with fevered surrealness over days where he feels entirely twisted up about it, but more sane.

“Just because you feel things now doesn’t make you human,” Ford says dully, already withdrawing from the conversation. Bill freezes in a way that typically means he’s thrashing around inside, but with Fidds retreated, Bill’s stuck at the helm, buffering. “You know, I can tolerate you pretending to take interest in my well-being because it’s new for you, all part of your grand experiment, all right, but not when it’s about Stanley. So just—just stop.”

Bill makes a strangled sound that’s obviously hell on the vocal chords. “You are fucking impossible,” he snarls, and then he’s lurching out of the room, sending the kitchen chair to the floor with a clatter. Ford stares numbly at it for over a minute straight before picking up his coffee and retreating to the downstairs office to try and pretend to himself that he’s busy.

Fidds finds him a couple of hours later, haloed in the light from the hallway outside where he leans against the doorframe. Another winter storm is casting everything in an eerie, sick gray, and it makes Fidds look sun-spun, inviting, with his golden hair and last summer’s freckles still glowing on his pale skin. He and Bill spent hours out on that trampoline, or lounging on the roof, like an overgrown cat. Goddamn him, but Ford adores them, often to lengths that turn him feral, untamed. Both eyes are blue, and Ford tries not to feel any way about it—god, but he knows there’s no pleasing him sometimes. He wants them each to himself, just as much as he wants both of them, all of the time.

“I’m sorry Stan didn’t call,” Fidds says, and Ford holds out both hands pleadingly. Fidds comes to him, lets Ford wind both arms around his waist and lean his head there. There’s a new-ish softness to him, subtle but there, from Bill’s interest in culinary desecrations offsetting Fidds’s tendency to become nauseated when overly stressed and skip meals. Fidds cards his fingers through Ford’s hair in a way that has him fighting off drowsiness within seconds.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Ford mutters. “I just—I hate not knowing.”

“I know, honey.”

“Was the walk this morning your idea, or Bill’s?” Fidds’s fingers pause for a second while he considers the question. Out of necessity, he’s taken up something of a careful neutrality when it comes to mediating between Bill and Ford. Memorably, he’d said something to Ford like If you can’t hardly talk to me proper, why in hell should I help you talk to Bill? Which was later watered down with tact into something more like grown people can manage their own business.

“Bill’s,” Fidds says, resuming. His tone tells Ford to be careful. Fidds would have made a handy diplomat, Ford thinks, in another life. He’s frustratingly consistent in how he applies these rules of engagement.

Ford would not have made a handy diplomat. “Does he actually care, or is this just more manipulation?” Fidds sighs, his belly tensing with it under Ford’s ear, then releasing.

“Stanford, you know I can’t answer that.”

“Well it’s not as if Bill’s going to answer it.”

“You ain’t askin’ Bill, are you?”

“You think I should ask Bill?” Even though Ford knows what Fidds’s answer is going to be, he’s as prickly as ever. The response is predictable: Fidds takes a step back, though he lets Ford’s arms stay loose around him, glaring down at Ford.

“I don’t think one way or the other. I’m just sayin’ that you should be takin’ this up with him, not me. It ain’t my fight.”

It’s easier for you, though, isn’t it, Ford thinks, but doesn’t say. In part because it’s almost certainly not true, and in part because it’s something they’ve gone over before. Easy enough, he sometimes thinks, uncharitably, for Fidds to take the neutral ground when he and Bill have to gel at some point simply by virtue of proximity. Easy, even, for Ford to take a similarly neutral stance regarding the two of them because he’s so rarely consulted to begin with. One solid fight about it with Fidds, however, and then one memorable shared airing of grievances with Bill, revealed it’s just as infuriating from Bill’s side as it is from Ford’s, if not more so.

Ford, as usual, just feels left out because—again—he’s alone in his head for the first time in years, and he feels like Fidds is getting what he’s so sorely missed. (Or not missed. It goes back and forth. Half the time he’s envious, the other half repulsed.)

“I’m sorry, darling. I know you’re right,” is what he ends up saying. Getting better at saying those words. Even when he doesn’t feel them in the moment, he’s finding it’s easier to tell when he will mean them in retrospect, when he’s further removed from the turmoil, from a blow to his pride. Like paying trust forward to the future. “I just don’t know what to do about Stan.” About anything. You, Bill, work, my life.

“D’you think the hotel’s got any idea where he got off to?”

“I thought of that, but—I’m just afraid to overstep. I mean, what if—what if he’s just working, or staying at a girlfriend’s place, and he takes it as me being my usual know-it-all self and sticking my nose in places it doesn’t belong? Checking up on him, like I think he can’t take care of himself?”

“I would hope he’d do you the decency of fightin’ with you over it, not just cuttin’ contact again,” Fidds says gently. “From what you’ve told me, I don’t think he wants that again, and neither do you, right? Maybe he’ll be glad to see you were worryin’ at all.”

“Perhaps I’ll…give it a day or two? And if he hasn’t left a message, then—then I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“Sure, honey. Whatever you think is best,” Fidds answers, moving back in, letting Ford lean against him again. “Anything I can do for you in the meantime?”

“Hmm.” Ford rubs his cheek against the well-worn cotton of Fidds’s flannel shirt, inhaling the unique smell that’s started to cling to them—the way Fidds has always smelled, like Irish Spring and laundry detergent and machine oil, plus something distinctly Billish, like the lingering hints of an electrical fire, or the snow-bright smell of a winter storm. “I could use a distraction.” Fidds’s fingers stutter in his hair again.

“Oh?” Even after close to two years of having Fidds the way Ford’s always wanted him, the fact that they can so quickly get one another hot under the collar must count for something, right? They may fight, and clash, and muddle through various roadblocks, but the sex is still good. Ford never thought of himself as an overly sexually-motivated person, but then again he’d spent most of his adult life thinking aggressively about Fiddleford McGucket—all over him, most often under him, sometimes just holding his hand—and so, perhaps there was only ever room for two very specific people. Ten years of pent-up, unidirectional longing. If either of the others were complaining, that would be another story, but thus far everyone remains mutually hungry.

And sure. There’s always a vicious, jealous joy in getting Fidds alone. It doesn’t happen so often these days unless they’ve planned it out, as Bill is still an absolute dick about his deals. Next time Bill is in the body, it’ll be amped up on oxytocin that he had no part in cultivating, which always drives him a particular type of crazy, and Ford’s still angry at him, and Fidds is more than happy to be the vehicle-slash-beneficiary of their mutual aggression. It works for them. It’s one of the few things that does, it would seem.

So Ford drags it out, because he can. Because control is a thing he’s been conditioned since youth to covet. There’s some comfort in knowing the outcome, that by the end of it all Fidds will be sweaty and limp against him and they’ll find something to laugh about, and then later Bill will excise what he sees as his “due” one way or another and both Ford and Bill will uncomfortably glaze over the fact that they had a rather nasty spat today. It wasn’t really all that bad, in the grand scheme of their fights, but given that the night of the ritual represents rock bottom, Ford’s aware that’s a ridiculous metric.

Except it’s so easy to take that certainty for granted when you’ve been living in a bubble for so long. When you’ve forgotten that external factors are always liable to change. The catharsis he’s come to anticipate doesn’t come because, an hour or two afterwards—Fidds now laid down for a pre-dinner nap, recouping sleep lost worrying about Ford last night—Ford goes down to the basement to check the voicemail and his world goes skewing sideways.

There’s a voicemail from a nurse at a hospital in Reno. Calling on behalf of an unidentified male patient brought in some time in the early hours of the morning, nothing on him but a few personal items and this phone number written on a scrap of paper in his pocket.

Ford calls back immediately. There’s a heavy sense of unreality that accompanies the action: in his mind, his first assumption is that someone’s stolen Stanley’s jacket, and that unless Ford can ensure it’s returned, Stanley won’t be able to call him again. This, of course, is ridiculous, and the product of rapidly-mounting panic, but only hindsight will make this clear.

He goes through several transfers once he calls the hospital back, bounced around between a few different departments, his anxiety rising the entire time, before at last he reaches someone who can tell him a goddamn thing about what’s going on. “We had a patient come in with this number in his jacket, yes,” the nurse confirms. “Only reason I called is because he can’t call on his own behalf.”

“Can’t call on his own—I don’t, what does that mean? He’s already left?”

“No, I mean he’s not conscious,” the nurse says delicately. “I can’t say too much more unless you’re family, though.” Ford asks more questions and the nurse talks around him and it only makes him more goddamn upset and at last he gets a description. Height and demographics and age range all match Stanley, and then Ford describes the birthmark just below his twin’s left collarbone that Stanley always said looked like a dog, while Ford maintained it looked more like Michigan, and at last the sword falls. He gets the information he’s been so aggravatedly chasing, just in time to remember he really doesn’t want this to be Stanley. You’re a predator, Fordsy, you need the pursuit.

“Can you give me a last name?” the nurse asks, and Ford just barely has his wits about him enough to say “No.” To remember this is Stanley, who’s changed his name over a series of failed business attempts and alluded to having done prison time somewhere. Okay. The nurse refuses to give him any more information about Stanley’s condition, then, besides what she’d already said. (That he’s in surgery, right now. And he’ll probably be fine, but they need to know whose insurance—

Ford imagines she finishes her sentence and spends a moment saying Hello? repeatedly before realizing he’s hung up.)

He remembers, just barely, to delete the existing voicemail box message before booking it back upstairs. Later, he’ll regret this—that had been such an exciting day for Fidds, his voice so sweet and so singular. You’ve reached the Pines-McGucket Laboratory. Sorry we didn’t catch ya! Leave a number and we’ll call you right back.

So there won’t be any rage-out from Bill. No vicious, vengeful sex that they both pretend fixes everything when they both know it doesn’t, that pretending nothing they say matters only makes it all matter doubly the next time around. No future interest to borrow from this time around. Ford goes upstairs and he shakes them awake, and it’s both of them for a moment but a half-second later it’s only Fidds, and that hurts badly in some distant part of him but the majority of his heart is already galloping down the highway to Reno.

“I have to go,” Ford says, and Fidds says, “You mean we have to go,” already sliding his feet into his shoes before he even seems fully awake.

“Fidds, I don’t know if you should—”

“Should what?” The words are woven through with a half-formed hurt, and Fidds shakes his head, taking a deep breath. “Forget me, okay, I ain’t lettin’ you go alone. No way you’re drivin’ yourself all the way to fuckin’ Reno, your hands ain’t stopped shakin’ since you got in here.”

“Fiddleford, you—” Ford runs a shaking hand through his hair. “I have your keys for a reason.”

“Trust me, Bill ain’t comin’ out anytime soon,” Fidds says dully, though it lands sharply to Ford, but a half-second later he remembers his brother, his fucking brother in surgery for god-knows-what, and the relationship stuff falls easily under the tide. Ford stands and tries not to sway uselessly on his feet as Fidds stuffs a few extra outfits for each of them in a suitcase and grabs some cash from the safe. Ford manages to unstick himself just in time to put his own winter coat on instead of Fidds doing it for him, and then they’re out the door. Fidds mercifully saves them both the moment of hesitation surrounding the keys by pickpocketing Ford sometime in the interim, and he’s in the driver’s seat before Ford even realizes they’re gone.

The drive to Reno is less than nine hours from here in normal conditions, but night is fast approaching. Their southeastern trajectory will get them past the worst of the weather conditions, but traffic’s bad due to the icy roads all the way through Oregon. What should take two hours takes closer to four, and Ford cycles from panic to hollow numbness and back to panic again several times. Fidds has to remind him several times that they’re no good to Stanley if they get reckless and spin out and hit something. Close to midnight—and just over 2/3 of the way there—they stop for gas, and exhaustion wears on Fidds’s features. Still, he’s not complaining, and Ford’s calmed down enough to feel guilty about how frayed his nerves have been. He gently persuades Fidds to let him drive the rest of the way.

“I’m stayin’ awake the whole time, though,” Fidds says insistently.

“Whatever you want, that’s fine,” Ford answers, knowing—yep, he’s out like a light less than thirty minutes down the road.

Ford keeps thinking How could I not know? Isn’t there supposed to be a twin sense type of thing? Despite the stereotypes about scientists, science and mysticism have never been binary opposites to Ford, and he’d swear there were moments throughout their childhood that he and Stanley demonstrated a kind of astral bond not often seen in singlets. Even since then, there’ve been nights he feels he’s having Stanley’s dreams, and vice versa, even for just a few stolen minutes of sleep at a time, not that it’s ever told him much about where his twin is or what he might be doing. So how could he not know? Surely if something is hospital-inducingly injurious, nevermind surgically serious, for Stanley “I’ll Walk it Off” Pines, isn’t that exactly the goddamn time for him to just know?

(Of course, later, what Stanley will say—what Ma would’ve said—is Why would the spirit guides, or whoever, need to clue your ass in if the hospital was already gonna? Which has some merit, pragmatically speaking, but is nonetheless infuriating because it feels like an injustice. Way to cut corners, spirit guides.)

When they arrive in Reno, it’s the middle of the night, and cold as hell. Ford wakes Fidds up swearing, wrestling with the parking meter in the hospital parking lot. (Seriously, why the hell is that allowed?) Fidds, cranky—still all him, no Bill to be seen—gently shoos him away, promising he’ll take care of it. Fidds joins him a few minutes later as he’s arguing with hospital staff that, yes, he is Stanley’s twin brother (just look at him, for fuck’s sake), and no, he won’t be showing ID to prove it because they’re not legally allowed to ask him that. (Fidds thinks they might be, actually, but wisely keeps it to himself.)

Ford is deemed not worth wrestling over and they’re ushered to a family waiting room, where a doctor tells them Stanley had surgery a few hours ago due to a broken rib puncturing his lung. Ford’s increasingly panicked questions about the circumstances are unfortunately unanswered, as Stanley seems to have walked in himself, relatively lucid, for an unrelated injury to his leg. “He actually got the bullet out on his own pretty well, it was the infection that was the problem,” says the doctor.

“Oh my god, of course he did,” Ford mutters faintly. “Can we see him?”

“I’m afraid visiting hours don’t begin until 8:30 tomorrow morning. Your brother needs his rest, and I’m sure you could use some sleep, too.”

They get a motel room. Ford doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep, but he’s out like a light, without even changing clothes. Spending the whole night pacing and half the day driving will do that to a person.

Fidds (still just Fidds) wakes him a little before 8, figuring he’d want to get to the hospital bright and early. “I called last night and gave ‘em the motel number in case anything changed, but they ain’t called,” Fidds says, and a swell of gratefulness rises in Ford’s chest that he was far too stressed to make room for yesterday. His toothbrush is waiting for him in the bathroom, too. What would I do without you? He’s horrible, especially when frazzled, at saying it, but he squeezes Fidds in a tight embrace for a moment and knows he gets the gist.

There’s the beginning of a question on the edge of his mind, as they load up to head back to the hospital, about whether this is realy a good time to introduce Fiddleford and Stanley, but…oh, hell, he’s never been one for choosing the ideal or conventional route. They’re all here now. It is what it is.

When they get there, Stanley’s awake and fairly lucid, and it’s the first time Ford has seen him in a decade, and of course—of course—he’s using his lucidity to flirt with the nurse who’s come in to take his vitals. His eyes flick to Ford’s and there’s a crinkle at the edge of them, like when they were kids, a hey, watch this, bringing Ford in on some mischief, and he swindles the nurse into an extra pudding cup or something.

And then it’s like he’s realized, suddenly, oh, shit, this is Ford, and his eyes widen with something like shock. Don’t think “horror,” it’s not that. “Stanford, am I seein’ shit, or is that you?”

Ford shoves his hands into his pockets, feeling suddenly awkward. As the nurse brushes past him, he’s forced to step further into the doorway, and Fidds lingers just outside, waiting. Watching. “Uh—no. I mean, yes, it’s me. My number was, uh, in your jacket.”

“Shit.” Stan tips his head back against the raise head of the bed, his hair long and unruly and needing a wash. “God, I wish they wouldn’t have done that.”

Fuck this. Ford is right next to the bed before he’s made a conscious decision, mindful of the network of monitors and tubing connected to his goddamn brother. “I would be tackling your ass if you didn’t have a punctured lung! You could have died, Stanley!”

“Yeah, I know that.” Stan sounds so utterly exhausted that it pulls Ford up short. “I was handling it, okay? I woulda been fine if that jackass hadn’t gone for the same spot twice.”

“I don’t even—Stan.” The word is weighed down with all the exasperated love only a sibling can really bestow, and Ford sits heavily on the edge of the bed, next to Stan’s knees. “If you’d died, or—or disappeared, I would have—had no idea. I told myself I was just trying not to be overbearing, but I think I was just—scared.”

“I don’t need you looking out for me, Six.” The words are almost halting, like Stan’s repeated them to himself in a mirror somewhere. “S’not your job—”

“You think I can look out for you? Hell, I can’t look after myself,” Ford grumbles. “My method of managing problems isn’t something anyone wants, trust me. I just—I want to know. I want to be so annoyingly in your life that you’re constantly fighting with me for being a know-it-all—”

“You? Never.” Stan narrows his eyes, like he’s trying to figure out if Ford pities him or something. Ford tries to broadcast that he doesn’t pity Stan in the slightest because they both know neither of them tends to get into shit without knowing the possible risks—they just think they’re faster than whatever bullet’s headed their way. “You’re gonna back out in two days,” Stan decides. “You hate Reno.”

“I fucking love Reno. Reno is my favorite place on Earth.”

“I’ll take that fuckin’ bet. 20 bucks.”

“I’m not betting with you on whether I’m going to abandon you or not, Stanley.”

“Your loss.” Stan gives him a stupid, twisted grin, and his implication—that Ford would win the bet; that he gets this is serious—feels more like closure than those three words they don’t say to one another. I forgive you. Because Pines men so rarely forgive, which all of a sudden seems to Ford more compelling a reason than any other to actually say them. It’s bullshit, so much of what they grew up with—their ideas of what the world would be, what it meant to be men.

Another time, maybe. For now, he lets Stan tug him awkwardly into a half-leaning, unsteady hug. Actually a pretty generous description of it, more a butting of shoulders than anything else. The guardrail and the wires kind of get in the way. And when Stan lets go, Ford catches Fidds’s eye in the doorway and beckons him over. “Uhh—so,” Ford says, “while perhaps not the ideal circumstances…this is—this is Fiddleford.”

“Well if I knew you were bringing company I woulda put on my mascara,” Stan deadpans, and Fidds smiles uncertainly, and Ford remembers all at once that he can actually be rather shy. “Heard a lot about ya,” Stan continues, to which Ford has another remembrance: Stan’s good with shy. Everything’s going to be fine. “All good things. Though I figure anybody wiling to put up with a Pines as long as you have has already made the most questionable decision of their life.”

“One of ‘em,” Fidds blurts, flushing a moment after. Ford stifles a laugh. “I mean—I’ve also heard, uh, a lot about you. And I’m real glad you seem to be doin’ all right. Y’know, considering.”

Stan rests back against the pillow, regarding both of them with exhausted, but pleased eyes. “Yeah. Considering everything, I think I’m gonna be just fine.”

*

Trouble comes calling soon enough in the form of cops showing up to the hospital. Standard procedure for gunshot wounds, and it’s much harder to lie one’s way around providing ID when it’s the police asking.

What’s not so standard is that Stanley is wanted for a set of truly baffling crimes here in Reno, most recently a combination of impersonating a police officer and art forgery, but also under suspicion for some kind of clown incident six years ago, which Stanley refuses to elaborate on. Not least because he now finds himself with a uniformed officer stationed in the hallway outside his room. Ford puts his foot down that nobody will be speaking to the police without a lawyer present, and he and Stanley have their first earnest fight since reconciling. It’s carried out in whisper-shouting and sharp gestures, mindful of prying ears. Stanley’s bullishly against too much of what he perceives of as “charity,” and what Stanford would contend is due him by the world at large, nevermind Stanford himself. Stanley’s also of the opinion that Ford and Fidds should take their leave, that going to bat for him is liable to get them hurt or worse.

“Be honest with me right now,” Ford hisses, “if there’s someone coming after you to finish the job, because I need to start building a gun now if so—”

“—Jesus, Stanford, cop’s right fuckin’ there—” Stan grabs him by the collar, dragging him in so they’re just about brow-to-brow, his hissing going lower. “No, there’s nobody else after me…in this country anyway! Are you insane? Huh? You gonna put that sweetheart of yours in harm’s way? He looks like he’s allergic to goddamn bees—”

“Is that an insult? Allergens are hardly a reflection on one’s character! And besides, he’s dealt with worse, trust me—”

“Poindexter, if somethin’ happens to you on account of sticking with my reckless ass—”

“—or are you forgetting I narrowly avoided ending the world last year?!”

“Yeah, yeah, that shit is above my paygrade and you’re a dramatic sonofabitch anyway, so who’s to say! Do not do this, I mean it, Ford. Go home. They ain’t even got state marshals on my ass here yet, trust me, there’s worse things than doing the time here in Reno.”

“As if you have any intention of doing the time. You know if you have warrants at the state level they’ll find that out soon, anyway, if they take you in!” Stan does that half-wince he does when he’s caught out. “You thought I didn’t know how the legal system worked, Stanley?! No, you’re gonna try and mount some harebrained escape plan, and when your lung collapses again you’re gonna die in the driver’s seat of that goddamn El Diablo. And she’ll be sold at an absolute steal because of it.”

“Nahh, already retired the old girl.” Stan’s glum demeanor, suddenly, gives “retire” a more…arsonous meaning. “Like I said, no more bounties on my head.” How those two statements connect, Ford’s sure he doesn’t want to know, not with a police interview room being a possibility in his near future.

“All the more reason you might like to have, oh, I don’t know, a getaway driver.”

“You and your gay lover are not going toe-to-toe against the cops for me in motherfucking Reno of all places. They don’t know you’re together yet, and they ain’t gonna find out, because you are going back home.”

The argument ends in an exhausted stalemate, cancelled by the ending of visiting hours. Stan hisses that he better not see Ford here tomorrow and Ford snaps that Stan’s not getting rid of him that easily, and he drives back to the motel stewing in rage.

Where—just his luck—Bill has picked the absolute worst time to reemerge, and alone, no less. Fidds had been stuck at the laundromat with their laundry for half the afternoon, and he’d either fallen asleep after walking back here, Bill waking alone, or is voluntarily inside. Ford gives Bill a long look, only barely managing not to verbally say You have got to be kidding me. Based on the muted flicker of hurt on Bill’s face before he stifles it, it gets across well enough anyway.

“Bad time?” Bill asks pointedly, after letting the moment drag on uncomfortably long.

“Everyone is generally having a bad time right now, Bill.” Unsaid: It’s hardly the time to deal with our latest fight. In part because Ford (stupidly) feels the whole thing was justified and rather moot anyway given the current situation, and in part because he knows saying it would not mean anything to Bill, so there’s no point. “Not that you’d know.” Idiot. Way to go. Well, he supposes the fight was going to happen anyway, it was just a matter of who started it.

“I don’t like hospitals,” Bill says bluntly, rather than the expected taunt about Ford not liking the silent treatment because it doesn’t give him an excuse to hear himself lecture, or something. Huh. Maybe there’s something of a lesson there about Ford’s eagerness to have a predictable sort of fight, but if there is, he’s not in any place to learn it.

“Please. That’s got to be one of the worst excuses you’ve ever made to me.” Another flicker of hurt, confusion-laced this time, before Bill is pulling his gaze away with a hiss.

“You asked me,” he says snippily, “I believe, to recuse myself from anything to do with your brother, and as far as I can tell everything is right now, so what the hell did you want, huh?”

“Oh, don’t be deliberately obtuse! Locking yourself away and not speaking to anyone for an entire week is not the same as just—just stopping with all the cheap attempts to ingratiate yourself. To stop using Stanley to try and win favor with me.”

“To be clear, you’re angry I wasn’t speaking to you,” Bill sneers. “I was still speaking to Fidds. And believe it or not, I wasn’t sulking, or trying to punish you, I just know us both well enough to know that—that of course this would go poorly! You’d resent me talking about Stanley, but you’d also resent not being able to talk to me about Stanley because you think I don’t really care, when deep down you want me to—”

“But you don’t!” Ford isn’t raising his voice, but it’s a near thing. He growls in exasperation. “It’s not resentment, it’s just realism. You don’t care about what goes on with Stanley, you’re unendingly self-interested, something you love to remind me about anytime I’m disappointed in you, so why in hell would I operate any differently all of a sudden?! Don’t act like the silent treatment was some act of care—”

“Oh, of course, because I’m not human. I don’t care like you, I don’t bleed like you, I don’t feel fear or hunger or fatigue the way you do—except, wait, that’s not exactly fucking true anymore, is it?” Bill seethes. “I’m closer to human than I’ve ever been, so what the fuck do you want from me—”

“Maybe that’s the goddamn problem.” Even as he says the words, Ford is aware he’s just committed an act of small devastation that goes beyond his and Bill’s usual viciousness. He’s suddenly starkly aware of the hypocritical duality within himself wherein with one hand, he critiques and shuts Bill out for not being human enough, and with the other, resents him for being so far removed from the god Ford once revered him as. A curl of disgust at himself rises from the bottom of his belly, but it’s not enough to stop him once he’s gotten started—it never is. It's not enough to pull him back and make him apologize, and it’s certainly not enough to make him realize this isn’t good for them, and that he should remove himself from the situation.

Bill’s eyes flash in vindication, because hadn’t he accused Ford of exactly this back when they’d last fought—when last Ford had seen him? And then a low, tired sort of hurt that almost frightens Ford to see on Bill’s face—to see on Fidds’s face when Bill is wearing it. And then anger again because he and Ford erroneously share the consensus that anger is easiest. “Then how could you have meant it when you said that you still loved me, hm? What could I ever do that would be good enough for you?!”

“Nothing!” Ford is raising his voice now. There is a high likelihood that they’ll get a call from management in the next thirty minutes. “Nothing that you could think to do would satisfy me because you are already the next best thing!” This situation—whatever peace he and Bill have made with it between themselves—is undone, the pieces slipping through his grasp, not that he’s trying especially hard to contain them. “You are the albatross around my fucking neck, Bill. I wish I had never even met you!”

In hindsight he’ll think it’s almost worse that Bill wasn’t surprised. That he’s just sort of…run out of steam, for a second, that he’s not struggling to reorganize himself around the statement. “Okay,” Bill says, and then he picks up his coat and puts on his shoes and strides out into the night, and when motel management calls a moment later, it’s only Ford answering, on the verge of tears already. He’s used up all his fight today, a moment too late.

It's now that the guilt sets in, though he only allows hmself to frame it as worry for Fidds at first. They’re in an unfamiliar place, it’s the dead of winter, and he doesn’t even know if Bill’s taken his wallet, or where he’s headed—he falls asleep, traitorously, in the middle of this thought, and is plagued with dreams. His last one before signing off on the concept of sleep sometime around 6 AM features him and Fidds growing to old age together with Bill never coming back, and he wakes up crying.

God, what a mess.

He flip-flops between self-loathing and relentless worry for two hours, at which he departs for the hospital’s visiting hours. There’s a small chance, he reckons, that Bill will have burnt himself out overnight and Fidds will be headed where he knows Ford will be.

What greets him is arguably worse: Fidds called right before he got there, asked the nurse to tell Ford he was doing fine but got “caught up on business,” whatever that means, and that he’d see him “after awhile.” All of which could mean anything—that Fidds is going along with whatever Bill’s doing to burn off steam, that Bill is impersonating Fidds—Ford starts to worry Fidds is being held hostage somehow before remembering he can veto anything Bill does. So whatever’s happening, Fidds is—Don’t think “in on it,” it’s uncharitable and self-centered—okay with. Or has deemed to be the best option for now.

He'd almost rather it not have happened, because he no longer has the convenience of his worry for Fidds with which to cloak his guilt towards Bill. Towards both of them, really, because it’s impossible, now, for it to just be one or the other. (It always has—or should have—been. Ford just struggles with its present degree of literalness.)

Stan’s not happy to see him, after their argument last night, but either his own exhaustion or Ford’s bedraggled appearance make him unwilling to continue fighting about it. They spend the morning watching shitty daytime TV and pretending to ignore one another. The cop comes trawling around again but doesn’t take much persuasion to fuck back off to the hallway—their department chief has probably already told them the Pineses have lawyered up. In the late morning, Stan finally grunts, “You send Fidds back to Oregon at least?”

Ford fidgets. “He’s got errands in town. He might be by this afternoon.” Please let it be done by this afternoon.

“Stanford.”

“Fidds doesn’t go anywhere he doesn’t want to go.” It comes out a bit surlier than he’d intended, maybe, belying his general angst about the situation, but if Stan notices it, he doesn’t divine the reasoning enough to pick at the scab, so to speak. “He’s stubborn like that.”

“Guess he’d have to be. Either extraordinarily stubborn or an absolute pushover, dealing with you all the time.” It’s a brotherly snipe, ribbing but leaning towards complimentary, an awkward sign that their latest feud is over. It releases something in Ford’s chest that he hadn’t realized was tight: the first fight, now, that they’ve resolved since reconciling. 

The day, as they are wont to do in hospitals, crawls by slowly. Fidds doesn’t show up. Ford begins to worry that he’s been picked up by police, that he’s being detained waiting for a lawyer somewhere. He wrestles with the idea of calling the police station to check before ultimately deciding that less contact with cops is always the right answer. “Ford,” Stanley says again. “You look like you’re chewin’ on something over there. You sure everything’s all right?”

“Everything’s just fine.”

“Helluva lot of errands,” Stan says quietly, not in a heated way at all. Just I see you worrying.

“Yeah. A lot to do.”

“Like you said, he’ll be fine.” It calls to mind that day Stanley left a message on the answering machine. The night before, lying in the dark with Bill, talking around everything like usual. A stab of guilt spikes against his hard palate, the confession on the tip of his tongue. It’s my fault.

But that would require telling Stan about the whole Bill situation. Something Ford hasn’t even allowed himself to think about since before coming down here, because thinking about Bill has only made him angry this past week, and out of sight, out of mind. And this is not the time or place.

When he returns to the motel, it’s empty. No sign that they’ve been back to change clothes, even—neither Fidds nor Bill has been here all day. If they had been, Ford thinks Fidds would’ve left a note. He sits and waits past midnight for the phone to ring, hours of late-night infomercials a blur in his memory, and sleeps fitfully until morning.

They’re talking about discharging Stanley when he gets to the hospital, since he’s doing so well. The brothers spend the better part of the morning trying to cajole the doctor into giving them one or two more extra days, just to avoid Stan going straight into county lockup. The few moments Ford does have to think about Fidds and Bill at all are fleeting and intense, and he’s having trouble holding on to the anger of it all. He’s afraid, more than anything.

It occurs to him sometime around noon that he’s not considered the threat of them…leaving. And he knows what Bill would say about it if he were here: You like that you’re the flight risk, if any of us is. True or not, it’s impossible to pretend as if he hasn’t operated with the idea that their sticking with him is inevitable, unquestioned. In truth, Stanford never once thought about leaving them—in the beginning, because he wouldn’t, could never, leave Fidds, and now for the both of them—but Fidds was afraid of it for awhile. Of course he was—he’d done this terrifying, impossible thing because Ford refused to give either one of them up, to everything’s detriment. All grappling for one another in the worst ways. He takes it for granted, he really does. He’s so used to them needing him.

He needs them both. In waves, it comes over him, this idea that they might be gone for good, on their way to pack up in Oregon right now, set off on some life path that doesn’t include him—just the idea of it makes him dizzy, nauseous—he’s in the hospital bathroom, he has to get it together. But once it’s started, it doesn’t stop. They’ve left him, whether temporarily or not, he doesn’t know, and he’s faced with the possibility of the next part—Stanley, the injury, the legal issues, whatever comes after—being all on him. No Fiddleford to soothe him, to give him someone to stay grounded for. No Bill to meddle, to ping-pong discourse back and forth with in the dead of night.

“Stanford, what is going on with you, bub?” Stan asks, once he’s emerged, still short on breath, it seems. He sways for a moment before sitting heavily in the chair beside his brother’s bed. “I mean, besides the obvious?”

“I don’t think this morning’s coffee is agreeing with me.”

“Uh-huh. You’re a shit liar, y’know that?”

“Stanley?”

“Hm?”

“Fidds and I think when all of this gets figured out that you should come back to Oregon with us.”

“Y—what?” The conversation sufficiently reroutes his twin from further probing and gets Stanford’s mind off of the whole…Fidds issue. Or as far off it as he can be, right now. It starts another fight, essentially, though the fight is less about Stanley not wanting it and more about him being convinced it’s a bad idea for reasons that Ford is thoroughly invested in debunking.

And then the day—of course—takes a turn. The cops have apparently gotten wind that the doctors are pretty sure Stanley’s ready for discharge, but that the twins have been stalling them, and a bit of a scuffle ensues. The doctor is more on the fence than Ford would like, talking about test results but then flip-flopping to Well maybe we’ll just have to see, and then But don’t tell me what to do with my patient, officer, and then Though we could certainly use the bed, and Ford’s throwing around threats of suing for—something, anything, and Stanley is visibly panicking, though it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone but Ford. His brother is silent, pale, in the bed, not speaking, but gradually his heart rate rises, and he’s breathing too quickly, too shallowly. The officer accuses him of faking, and Stan tries to snarl back but is too panicked to make any sense, and Ford has just about had it. If one more tension-inducing event happens in this goddamn room, he just might lay hands on this officer. And he’ll probably get arrested for it, and so what?! His one reason to give a fuck about that, other than Stanley, has vanished into thin Reno air. Fucking Reno.

Something terrible is on the verge of happening. Ford’s raised his voice and the officer doesn’t like that, and the doctor’s trying to get Stan to calm down but the officer’s still trying to strongarm him, and it’s all just a pot boiled to the top of the lid, one instant from overflowing, scalding everything around it. And there goes the soup, and the dignity—

A sharp whistle from the doorway cuts through the almost-something. The lead detective that’s been sniffing around is stood there, squinting his froggish eyes at the scene before him. “Officer, give us the room, please,” he says, and Ford is about to erupt again when his brother’s hand snags his wrist, a silent plea. Just be here. Okay. He can do that. The doctor stays until Stan has stopped hyperventilating, and then leaves, and Ford puts himself between his brother and the detective because it’s all he can do, and says, “You can’t just take him.”

“Nobody’s taking anybody,” the detective says icily, eyes flicking between the two of them. “DA’s dropped the charges.”

“Um,” says Ford, because in what universe does that make any sense?

“Now, both of you listen here. I know you both are dirty as they come. Matter of fact, the whole precinct knows it. I don’t know if you’ve got friends in high places, or low ones, but either way this is your one and only Hail Mary, do you understand me?” We’re Jewish, Ford thinks, but has the good sense not to say. To stir the already-boiling pot. “The very second you leave this hospital, I better not see hide nor hair of y’all ever again, or I will slam both your asses so hard you’ll never see straight again. You are gonna get the hell out of Reno and then the whole damn state if you know what’s good for you.”

“Scout’s honor,” Stan says, squeezing Ford’s wrist silently.

They both know the skin of their teeth when they taste it. “Yes, you got it,” Ford confirms. Though there’s nothing in the detective’s mouth, he looks as if he chews something, if only in spirit, staring them down like he wishes his looks could kill. And then he’s gone, and Stan’s hold on Ford’s wrist loosens abruptly, a laugh knocking free from his chest. There’s a rattle behind it that Ford doesn’t like, but nonetheless he follows it with one of his own.

“Stanford, what the hell’d you do?” Stan asks after a moment, breathless.

“What did I do?! I—you—I have no idea what in hell just happened!”

“No way. You’re a fuckin’ liar.”

“You just said I was a shit liar about two hours ago.”

“You’re right, you are.” Stan narrows his eyes at Ford. “You really didn’t do anything, didja?”

“I most certainly did not. Any ‘friends in high places’ you can think of?”

“So then what the hell is going on? No, I don’t got anybody with that kinda pull!”

“Maybe god just owed you one, then.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t believe that for a second. First of all, not my sinning ass. Second of all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I don’t like it.”

Ford doesn’t like it either, but: “I’d rather have the problem of a mystery beneficiary than a looming state.”

“Just be normal for once and say ‘it’s better than the alternative,’ my god,” Stanley groans. “Oh my god, can you believe that guy? ‘Hide nor hair of you.’ That’s what you sound like.”

“Shut up,” Ford laughs breathlessly. Then remembers he’s not the only one in the room that’s breathless.

Stan’s breathing has backslid a little bit. The doctor’s pretty sure it’s only the additional strain from the stress earlier, pulling on the tender areas, but they’ll keep him at least one night more to be on the safe side. And then a nurse drops by and tells Ford someone is sitting on his truck and won’t get down.

His heart slams about in his chest like a restless dog in a kennel and he’s up on his feet so quickly he nearly falls over. “Stanford, Jesus,” Stanley chides, half-hearted with fatigue. “It’s just a truck, don’t kill yourself.” And then, almost to himself, “You drive a truck?”

“I’ve got to—I’ll be right back, Stanley.” He hurries out, his fingertips numb with anticipation. Please let it be Bill. Fidds. Both, either.

It’s Bill. He’s sat on the roof of the cab, his feet swinging, dangerously close to knocking off a side mirror with every arc, leering at a police officer who’s clearly there to keep an eye on the Pines twins’ comings and goings and has likely been told to leave Bill the hell alone. Even if they didn’t know he was affiliated, they’d certainly have no interest in protecting Stanford’s vehicle. “Bill,” Ford gasps, feeling a bit like he’s been gored open, all his insides spilling out, before he sucks in air and tucks them back in. “Christ, where in the hell have you been.”

“Around,” Bill says, snarly but still a bit muted for Bill. He slithers down to the hood of the truck, his reptilian eyes pinned assessingly on Ford. Like he’s waiting for something. Ford doesn’t give a damn what he’s waiting for: what he gets is Ford roughly looping him into an embrace that he hopes comes off as more gruffly platonic than incredibly gay to the officer. Bill makes a sound that’s half-disgruntled, half-pleased, and rubs his cheek against Ford’s shoulder like a cat, which he's pretty sure falls closer to the gay side, so, to hell with it—he hugs Bill a moment longer than he strictly needs to.

And then lets go, Bill sliding down until his feet plop carelessly to the asphalt, and Ford really takes him in. He's got one shoe untied, and his hair is tangled, and his jacket sleeves are rolled up even though it’s quite chilly out, and— “Is that blood?” Ford hisses it under his breath, regarding the bottom hem of the jacket, and a reddish-brown smear near the knee of their jeans.

“It’s not mine,” Bill says, deadpan, in a way that’s meant to remind Ford that even if it was, it wouldn’t be his doing, per his limitations. “A goat gave her life for the cause.”

“For what cause?” Ford decides they’ve had enough of this conversation in the parking lot and unlocks the truck, herding Bill into the passenger side of it. Just one barrier between them and the outside world, please. “Where have you been, Bill?”

Bill stares at him for a long moment, longer than is comfortable, then asks, “How’s Stanley?”

“You’re not just going to get out of talking about this.”

“Last time we talked about things, it didn’t go so well.”

“Stanley’s fine. Recovering well.” Bill just stares, and Ford sighs harshly before continuing. “I don’t know what happened, but the whole legal situation seem to have mysteriously cleared up, and—you.” The whirling gears in his mind abruptly click into place. “You’ve done something, haven’t you? Bill.”

A muscle in his face twitches, one of those Bill microexpressions that Ford’s still learning how to parse the meaning of. “If I had,” Bill says slowly, “would it change anything?”

“Change anything about—about what?”

“You said nothing,” Bill says haltingly. “Nothing that I would ever think to do. So I thought of something I wouldn’t think to do. And then I did it.” Nothing that you would ever think to do would satisfy me—Ford had said that, hadn’t he. “Or is that too fucking human of me?” His voice is rising, syllables growing clipped. He’s—upset. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Fordsy, I—I don’t know how to fucking be what I’ve become.”

“Bill—” Fuck, Ford’s chest hurts. He reaches across the bench seat and pulls Bill against his side. The cab light is off, and he doesn’t care, in this moment, if anyone is watching, anyway. “I didn’t—mean it, I was just angry—”

Bill doesn’t exactly pull away, but he does go rigid, huddled, under Ford’s arm. “Then maybe—don’t say it! I—I’m not in your fucking head anymore, I can’t exactly tell!” Ah. Ford…has never thought about it this way before. “It’s not—” Like it used to be. “You have to decide. I can’t—ughh.” He rips himself away, sliding out the passenger door and stomping away towards the tailgate. Ford inhales once, exhales. Inhales a second time, follows on the exhale. Realizes, as the harsh winter light catches the side of Bill’s face, that it’s wet; wonders if this is the first time Bill’s cried of his own volition since the incident. “I sacrificed a goat for nothing,” Bill grumbles, trying to pretend the tears aren’t on his face. “And two rabbits, because god forbid anything be easy—”

“It wasn’t for nothing. Bill. Whatever you did, it wasn’t—” You did it for me. For yourself, but for me. “Whatever you did, you saved him. Will you just—” Ford catches Bill’s wrist in the midst of his pacing, and Bill stops, but only just. “You fixed everything. You somehow fixed everything, and that’s—that’s the opposite of nothing. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” At last Bill folds, gracelessly, letting Ford wrap him up, releasing a harsh breath. Fidds accused Ford of never apologizing, never saying those two words to him, and he doesn’t think he’s said them to Bill, either, not since everything. Beforehand, yes, but only as part of his fealty to his higher power.

“I don’t know what I am, and you’re not helping,” Bill whispers, nonetheless staying in Ford’s clutches for now. “You’re just waiting around for me to fail at being human, or fail at being a god—”

“No, that’s not true.” Maybe it was, even yesterday, but if so he’s resolved to change it. “You’re not either of those things, Bill, you’re…something else. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s not good or bad. But either way I should love you as you are, if I’m going to love you at all, shouldn’t I?”

There’s a subtle sort of shiver. Unnatural, not really inborn, wholly Bill. “You confuse the hell out of me lately, Stanford.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s not as if I’m not confused myself—” Don’t make excuses. “I just—my feelings flip-flop. But not—not my feelings for you, so don’t even start.” Bill peeks up at him, flashing a canine ruefully. “We could have talked about this.” You not knowing what you are. “You don’t have to keep it to yourself.”

“Who says I do?” It’s a jab, really, a reminder that Bill always has Fidds, but at the same time it’s an admission.

“Just be what you need to be. Don’t try and cater to me, I’m not a good compass, anyway. And I’ll sort out myself one way or another and adjust accordingly.”

“I don’t know if I believe you.” Bill props his chin on Ford’s shoulder, looking sideways at him with narrowed eyes.

“I suppose you’ll just have to stick around and see what happens, then.”

“You,” Bill says slowly, “thought I was leaving you. Didn’t you? That we were leaving you? Is that why you’re being so nice to me?”

“Yes and no! Can’t I be nice?!”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” Bill argues. “Be nice to me! I deserve it! I just fixed everything, remember?” And…just like that: back to our regularly scheduled Bill. Ford sighs fondly, letting go of him.

“You’re going to hold that over me, aren’t you?”

“Forever and ever.” Bill says it brightly, easily, like he doesn’t have to think about it. And seeing as this is Bill, it’s unlikely that it’s just for Ford’s benefit. “It’ll be in our wedding vows, Fordsy!” What?! “Oh my god, your face. Try not to throw up, okay? It’s one of the few bodily fluids we’ve avoided in the last couple of days.” Somehow less baffling than the wedding vows thing.

“Bill—” Ford cuts himself off before he starts. Stanley’s probably wondering where he is. “I love you, you horrible creature.” Bill curls his upper lip, fidgeting in a way that Ford has recently categorized as Pleased and uncomfortable about it. “I’ve got to go in and tell Stanley, I sort of ran out here.” Bill makes a low humming sound and tucks his arm in Ford’s, and a moment later there’s a softening, then a tightening, and then it’s Fidds looking over at him, blinking as he comes back to awareness.

“Oh, thank god.” Fidds grins, his nose wrinkling with the force of it. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes, honey.”

“You’re one to talk, you were gone,” Ford protests, squeezing his arm. “God, I was worried. I’m sure you have stories.”

“Tell ya later.” Fidds shivers, tugging the sleeves of his jacket down before bending to tie his shoe. “Just hopin’ you two are ready to make nice with each other now. Had enough of runnin’ all over creation for a minute.”

“I think we are,” Ford answers, and Fidds puts his hands on his hips, smiling fondly.

“Good.” They head into the hospital together. There’s about half an hour on the clock before visiting hours are over for the day; Stan snaps his eyes open from the beginnings of a doze as they enter, giving them a bright, if tired, grin.

“Starting to think you’d made the smart choice and run for the hills, Fiddles,” Stanley says, to which Fidds gives a chuckle. They’ve gotten decently acquainted in their time here, though Stanley’s not at full capacity, and Ford thinks things will go well once they’ve all gone back to Oregon.

“Nahh, wasn’t me doin’ the runnin’ around,” Fidds says easily, and Ford…realizes all at once that he hasn’t exactly told Fidds that Stanley doesn’t know about Bill.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” Stan asks, squinting from where his head’s leaned back against the pillows. Ford nudges Fiddleford’s foot with his own, hoping he’ll take the hint. Not now.

“Just…a stupid inside joke,” Fidds says after a minute, crossing his arms. He looks perfectly at ease, but Ford knows him well enough to know he’s mad. Because god forbid he go two days without pissing off one or the other or both of his partners. Stanley’s too tired and too polite to press the issue, and they spend the last of visiting hours talking about Gravity Falls and the things they’ll do when they get back. After the sudden dropping of his charges, Stanley’s self-conscious objections to the plan seem to have collapsed. Maybe seeing how protective Ford got was enough to show him that Ford needs this as badly as he does, if not more.

A nurse comes to tell them visiting hours are over, and as they step out into the night, Ford feels Fidds’s simmering gaze directed at him. “Seriously, Stanford?” Fidds says tightly.

“I know,” he mutters, pulling his coat tighter around himself. “The timing just never felt right, so—but I should’ve told you he didn’t know.”

“You think?” Ford sighs, unlocking the truck and climbing in; by the time they’re both inside, Fidds is gone and Bill is back.

“Insert mocking whistle here,” Bill says to him. Bill’s continued inability to whistle in this body has been a point of much frustration. “Out of one doghouse and into another, huh, Fordsy?”

“Oh, just—shut up.” Bill snickers.

“We haven’t exactly slept right in a minute,” Bill says after a moment of, presumably, basking in Ford’s kicked-dog look. “He’s not even really that mad.” Ford would think it altruistic, soothing, even, if he didn’t know that Bill really likes kicking the stilts out from under Fidds’s anger just to mess with him.

“Don’t meddle,” Ford says half-heartedly. He glances over, trying not to be obvious about the fact that he’s really enjoying looking at Bill right now. Enjoying having someone in the passenger’s seat to look at. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I had gas station peanuts.”

“That doesn’t answer my—you know what, forget it, we’re going to get dinner.” Ford pulls out of the lot, heading towards a strip of Reno dotted with fast food restaurants. They pull through a drive-through, where he has to haggle with Bill about the appropriate ice-cream-to-normal-food ratio for the human body, and they park in a vacant lot and climb into the tailgate to eat. Fidds is picky about what can be eaten in the truck and when. As the sunset shreds the clouds into bloody tatters, Bill starts to explain where the hell they’ve been for the last two days.

“I spent half the first night, like, rage-hiking,” he tells Ford. “And we got up on this hill and I just started running in circles until I was too tired to stand up and I fell over.”

“Sounds…balanced.”

“And so then I asked Fidds to tell me how the hell the legal system works. Let me tell you, you guys are so laughably primitive. And so that took the rest of the night, and then we slept for an amount of time and came back into town to stalk the district attorney.”

“Oh,” says Ford. “Bill, you….” Didn’t have to do that. “Look—”

“Here I thought I was gonna have to stalk the guy human-style, maybe learn to operate a sniper rifle on the fly.” Bill’s in full storytelling mode now, gesturing with that creature drunkenness Ford’s so fond of. “But one look at him and I can tell we’re in luck. He’s an adherent of Bathym. Can smell the guy all over him.” Ford seems to recall Bathym as one of the demon court in…Pseudomonarchia Daemonium? Ars Goetia? One of the demonic grimoires vaguely descended from some Christian tradition, anyway. “You’d be surprised how many of these legal guys are in with one of the Hellspawn,” Bill continues as they pile back into the cab of the truck. “Poor bastards are still stuck playing by Bible rules, unlike yours truly.”

“That’s fascinating. I never attempted summonings from that branch of the occult,” Ford says. Not really his speed. Still, Bill shoots him a sharp look.

“And you shouldn’t! They’re backwater bastards, playing by some archaic ruleset that purports that everything has an inborn balance. Good and evil. Order and chaos. Demon and angel. Get real!” Bill’s more riled than the situation calls for. Jealous, Ford suddenly realizes, at the prospect of him near any other demons, “backwater” or not. “Now, me and Bathym go way back. His mortal sin was breaking out of human dreamspace. Big Yahweh needs the mortals to think they’re the only thinking things out there, see? That anything beyond the physical realm is his. So he’s got his own subnet, a way to try and cage astral projectors who pledge their faith to him, so they can’t meet any of the gnarly, nasty things out there that’ll tell them the multiverse is so much bigger than their god. Bathym wandered over into my territory when he was just a supple young seraph, and he got himself de-haloed for it.”

It comes over Ford all at once, as Bill prattles on about his occasional clashes or collusions with Bathym and his adherents, that it’s been forever since he’s done this. Just sat and listened to Bill hold forth on one mystery of the multiverse or another, the disciple sat at his master’s proverbial feet. Campfire story or parable, Bill knows how to draw a person into the periphery of his limelight. “Bathym didn’t currently owe me a favor,” Bill says. A red stoplight bathes him in a rosy glow, shifting the amber of his eyes towards the orange side of the spectrum, and Ford’s transfixed, caught the same way he was a  few years ago, when that canny regard first turned on him and he found himself on the precipice of something great and awful. “But his nemesis, Caliel, did. Bathym’s scared to shit of that guy….” He goes on about the system of checks and balances, the rather hamfisted assignation of one angel per demon, but Ford’s mind is on the way he holds the muscles in his face, turning familiar softness almost wolfish in the dim light. The light is green. They go.

“So we summon Bathym,” Bill continues. The motel’s in view now, and Ford’s palms buzz on the wheel. He has that selfish hunger burning behind his breastbone again, the thing Bill so effortlessly turns him into, or used to. “He’s like, ‘Bill, this whole human legal battle shit seems beneath you,’ and I’m like, ‘I know, right? But don’t fucking worry about it, get your guy to leave my guys alone.’” (And that’s what does it: My guys. Not just Ford, not just Fidds, but Stanley too. Casual possession being as close as Bill gets to a human sort of care.) “I’m like, ‘Which one of us has Caliel on speed dial again?’ That’s how I figured out Bathym and Caliel have been fucking. I’m telling you, Fordsy, sex ruins everything.” They’ve pulled in now, and the streetlight over the parking lot is just now flickering on, illuminating the wry flash of a canine tooth as Bill preens in the passenger’s seat.

“And so Bathym ends this awful conversation,” Bill continues, leaving the truck—a word or two gets lost as Ford joins him after shutting off the engine— “…crazy statue. Some kind of cursed thing that showed up in his bathroom one day and he thinks we’re enough of a sucker to just go, ‘Yeah we’ll take that off your hands.’ Seriously, the gall. I’m kind of happy if this screws him over, honestly.” He doesn’t seem to notice that Ford’s got his arm and is hustling him towards the door of their motel room, too caught up in open mic mode. “We watched through the DA’s windows while Bathym went and did his whole scary benefactor routine, honestly, it was so chintzy—”

Bill’s cut off by Ford slamming the door of the motel room behind them and pinning him against it, kissing the taste of drive-through soft-serve off his tongue. Bill turns it sloppy immediately, with the lax way he always holds the mouth, purring a breathless, “Well, hello,” when Ford lets him up for air for a second. His eyes glow in the gathering evening, smug and maybe a little relieved. “That does it for you, huh? Swindling lesser demons?”

“You, caring,” Ford corrects him. “Even if it’s just to prove a point.” Bill hums, grazing his teeth along Ford’s jaw. “You did it for Stanley, or at the very least for me,” he adds, and Bill chitters, a sound that’s half-voiced and half-projected. It’s eerie, one of the latest ways he’s been experimenting, and so utterly Bill that Ford loves it. A week of drought has turned him desperate for it.

“You really thought we were gonna leave you, huh? We’d kill each other without you, Fordsy.” Ford really doubts that’s true anymore, but Bill knows damn well that it does something to him, being needed. “You shoulda seen him—Fidds. I thought I was gonna have to bully him into doing the sacrifices, but he slit their throats without even flinching. Shoulda known he knows how to dress an altar.”

Ford makes an endeared humming noise. It gets his blood up, in its own twisted way, to be sure, but—“You’re deflecting.” Bill tries to get his hands under Ford’s shirt and Ford pins them, up by his head. “This was your plan, Bill. And it’s one of the most touching things you’ve ever done for me.”

Bill hisses, tossing his head discontentedly. He’s never been great with sincerity, so Ford’s not expecting it when the next thing he says is, “I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s fine.”

“No, it’s—” A buzzing, annoyed noise. “I’m not…used to…giving a fuck.” He grits the words out, like they’re fighting with him. “Whether I’m…good enough.” He’s dropped to almost a mumble by the last two words, such that it takes Ford a moment to process them. “Feels like no matter what I do around you lately, I’m just—guessing.”

Ford remembers what Fidds told him awhile ago, when he was still barely speaking to Bill, unfathomably angry with him, yet missing him constantly. That love—that any feeling—as a cocktail of physical and hormonal processes is new for him. Approval-seeking, Ford guesses, is a part of that. He knows it as a thing the body craves. “Maybe it’s good for you, to guess a little bit,” Ford says, “but you’re doing just fine, all right? It’s me who needs to just…be reasonable. And remember you can’t exactly read my mind these days.”

“What am I to you anymore, Sixer?” Bill studies him in the dim light of the room, staring in a way that Ford once considered unique to Fidds, something that always made him feel scored open, seen through. Maybe that’s why he’s just always assumed they both know what he’s thinking unless proven otherwise.

What does he say to that? The answer changes every day. My muse. My greatest mistake. Someone I can’t live without. Under my skin. “Someone I love,” he says. “My partner.”

“Pedestal’s gone, hm? No more altar?”

“Do you even want it anymore?” Ford rubs circles against Bill’s wristbones because he looks sad, almost, for a second before he smooths it over.

“I don’t know.” The words are quiet, almost a whisper, and Ford realizes all at once that Bill probably never knew you could have one without the other. Love without worship. Reverence without fear. Devotion without imbalance. There’s a question in Bill’s eyes, which meet his for a moment and then dart away: Do I get to keep you without it?

Ford lets go of his wrists, cradling his face in both hands. Bill scrunches up his nose, likely about to protest the tenderness of it, so Ford speaks quickly. “I love you more now that I can love you honestly,” he says. “But take it from Fidds—hell, take it from Stanley—my love is imperfect. That’s just how it is. I’m still learning to show it—to give it properly.”

Bills hands come around his wrists. Tense, then release. Tense again, release again. Kneading like a cat. “I never knew why, but I was jealous of it.” He mutters the words into the base of Ford’s palm, his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance. “Didn’t get it until I was—in here.” His eyes snap back to Ford’s, almost sheepish before turning defiant, as if he’s just realized he was speaking aloud.

“Well, you have it now, my dear.” Ford leans in so their foreheads are touching, and Bill makes a half-riled, half-pleased hum, rolling his neck so his face presses into Ford’s palms.

“Quit with the schmaltz,” Bill says huskily, “and get back to what you were doing a moment ago.”

“Is that an order, or a polite request?”

“If you want me to say ‘please,’ you’ll have to try harder, Six.” Bill narrows his eyes, and Ford hums consideringly, letting his hands slide down to the sides of his neck.

“Hmm. Do I need you begging? I’ve got a god in the palm of my hand, I think I’ve already won.” He feels Bill’s pulse jump under his fingertips. Interesting. Bill has always gotten something out of being trapped, pinned down, though he’s always been reticent about admitting it. Bill gives a little growl, noticing Ford noticing, but a moment later he’s letting his head fall back, situating his neck more firmly in Ford’s palms. Like something given over. He smells of blood and Nevada winter, heady, and Ford bends to kiss over his throat, between his own fingers. Fidds’s hand in his hair, but Bill’s grip. Everything Ford could ever want, more. Exactly what he deserves. His mother would have seen the symbolism in it—life held between his lifelines, freely given. And it’s not in so many words, but he feels it, too, a charge in the air, a weight to the moment.

Only a moment, though, before Bill, ever impatient, elbows him, pushes him stumbling to the bed. It’s gone, lost in a push-and-pull of body against familiar body, but always in reach, these days, even when he’s angry: a disbelieving, penitent sort of wonder that he should be here at all. That he should have this, pyrrhic victory though it may be sometimes.

*

In the morning he wakes beside Bill alone, and they drive to the hospital to get Stanley. Bill waits outside. The hating hospitals bit wasn’t an excuse. Stanley’s scammed his way out of the wheelchair escort long before they leave, up on his own two feet through sheer stubbornness and a little bit of malice, and Ford steels himself for the inevitable.

“The fuck is up with his eyes, Ford?” And there it is.

“The alcoholism finally got to me,” Bill says, with a dramatic sort of sway.

“Don’t be awful,” Ford chides him. Then takes a deep breath. This is his penance, after all, the natural consequence of his omission, which Fidds is leaving to him and Bill to deal with, as is his right. “So, Stanley, this is…Bill.”

“Bill the guy who fucked you over,” Stanley says bluntly, narrowing his eyes at Bill. “The guy you shouldn’t have trusted, the one Fidds got in a fight with and got hurt—that Bill?”

“That’s what you went with, Sixer?” Bill raises one eyebrow, then the other.

“I was light on the details,” Ford says snippily, unlocking the truck. “Ah—Bill, backseat. We talked about this—”

“Yeah, yeah, pneumothorax privilege,” Bill grumbles, wedging himself in. Stanley, still outside the cab, gives Ford a deadpan stare that promises brotherly mockery until the end of time. Ford sighs.

“You didn’t tell me Bill was a lizard-person shapeshifter,” Stan says. “Where the hell is the real Fidds?”

“He’s more of a demon, actually. They, uh. Share a body now.” Ford drums his fingers on the door of the truck. “The ‘getting hurt’ part was actually Fidds trapping Bill so that he couldn’t—well. Exact his plans for world domination.”

“Huh.” Stan narrows his eyes. “I believe your exact words were ‘paid the price,’ because you’re a drama queen—”

“Stanley—”

“—so is that, like, awkard for Bill? When you and Fidds, y’know—?”

“Stanley.”

“Oh my god.” Stan rubs a hand over his face. “You’re screwing both of them, ain’t you?”

“Canwenot,” Ford hisses, “do this in the parking lot.” Where a cop is conspicuously waiting to ensure we leave Reno for good.

Stan barks a laugh. “Whew! Here I’ve been thinkin’ I’ve got issues! My god, Stanford.” At last, he gets in the passenger seat with a labored grunt. Ford shuts the door behind him and hustles into the driver’s seat. Stan swivels to look at Bill, who stares back at him with naked curiosity.

“You realize,” Stan says, as they pull out of the lot, “that this is exactly what Republicans think all the gays are doing.”

“Get it all out, by all means,” Ford mutters under his breath.

“I think they all should be,” Bill says. “Twice the fun.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Stan exclaims. Oh, god, they’re going to be insufferable. “Wait, Stanford, you’ve been banging the guy who was gonna end the world?”

“Technically Six was also going to end the world,” Bill interjects, “he just didn’t exactly know it at the time.”

“He’s harmless now,” Ford says petulantly.

“That’s not what the district attorney would say,” Bill answers smugly.

“Oh, shit, that was you? Oh, consider my judgment suspended on that front, then,” Stan says. Now, hang on a minute. “We’re all good. For now. But don’t think I won’t punch you to smithereens if you try that again.”

“As if you could.” Bill continues posturing, but Fidds is back now, his blue eye catching Ford’s in the rearview mirror, an unspoken you’re off the hook now. “Stan, good to seeya again,” Fidds says. “Bill’s still yammerin’, but if you wanna hear him, you’re gonna have to shake our hand, I’m afraid.”

“I forgot about that,” Bill grumbles. “Too much time with just you two lunatics for company.”

“You don’t gotta do anything you don’t wanna,” Fidds tells Stan. “In fact you might be better off just leavin’ it.”

“Hell no,” Stan says. “Misery loves company, right? Put ‘er there, cowboy.” He shakes Fidds’s hand. Bill instantly projects a loud cackling sound, together with something monkey-like in the background, and all three humans flinch.

Well. That’s about it. All of Ford’s various fumbles are now laid out, spilled between the four residents of this truck. It’s sort of like being relieved of something very heavy that he’s gotten used to carrying, to the point he doesn’t notice it anymore. All of his dirty laundry spread out on the floor. And it feels—it’s almost good. It could be good. Even as Stanley gives Ford a sly look that tells him he’s winding up his next horrible joke at Ford’s expense, Ford feels—settled, in a way he hasn’t been in…oh, years? Since meeting Bill, maybe. Or since leaving Fidds after graduation.

Like the past isn’t waiting to sneak up on him, like the future isn’t scary. Like the day could be empty and planless and he’d still feel fulfilled. Like they might all come through just fine.