A/N: Look, I think i was possessed while writing this one /j. It was like 1 am and I was procrastination on college work, I dunno what happened but this is the ungodly spawn of my imagination mixed with sleep deprivation, caffeine and stress. Enjoy and don't question it too much
Contents: Ford Pines x reader, pinning (lots of pining), I pictured reader in their late 40s to early 50s so there is an age gap but nothing extreme. There's some plot in those holes. uhhh lots of tension and no payoff because im pretty sure I passed out before I got to that part.
Word count: 996
There’s this look on his eyes now that you can’t quite figure out.
Ever since Stanford Pines came back from the portal, ever since weirdmageddon and the end of that fateful summer, something about him fundamentally changed. There’s contempt, relief, sure, but there's more to it, something that he keeps deep in that rattling metal-protected brain of his.
And god forbid sometimes you just want to pick him apart entirely, figure out every detail, note it down, absorb it, maybe then his mere presence won’t entice you, mess you, so goddamn much.
It culminates, as all events are bound to do, right before that year’s summer vacation, you blame the heat.
Soos and Melody took a vacation for themselves, entrusting the shack back to Stan’s less than trustworthy hands, just like old times. Ford slips back into the basement so easily you almost follow him; your mind briefly longing for that nostalgia of being freshly out of college, when you and Ford were easily impressed by the oddness of the world.
You were a prodigy; a good ten years younger than him yet still doing your masters while he did his doctorate, and in the same area with similar themes! Back then, you two were just bright-eyed yet very tired academics… Then Gravity Falls presented itself on a silver platter, and Bill followed through.
You were there, on the day of the portal, or at least, almost there, going back for the thousandth time, expecting no answer to your knocks at the door as usual, only to be met with the fallout of something far worse than refusal.
And then he was back, less jittery, less paranoid and less sleep deprived than he was before at least. But there was that thing in his eyes, that inherent distrust, detachment…? You struggled to find the words and if there’s one thing that you as a scientist can’t deal with is a question that goes unresearched.
So it began; your “research” depended on experiment and to experiment, you firstly decided to get close to your unwilling subject. And you go down the rabbit hole.
You find him in the basement, of course. He’s drawing on loose sheets of paper, some of the discarded pieces lay on the floor, and the cd player by his side is playing just loud enough to muffle your footsteps as you approach him by his right side. “Updating the journal?” You ask, nonchalantly, as if you hadn't obsessively turned each page of his journals before, as if your own handwriting wasn’t squeezed in the first ones before his old muse took all the space left.
Ford just hums, raising his chin slightly, but not his eyes, just to acknowledge the question. “Not really, just trying to get some proportion practice. Looking back, some of my work on the first journal was… Not the best.”
A chuckle leaves your mouth; “If you say so…” You hum, picking up one of the filled out pages that were pushed aside in the table and pretending to look it over as he places his pen down and looks up at you.
“Any advice?” He asks, and once again you pretend to be paying attention to anything but him and his every movement.
“Not really… I think you’re good.” You place the paper back at the table, leaning against it. “Thought you’d be going through your abstract phase by now, honestly.” And you smirk down at him.
He leans back, crossing his arms; “I fear I’m too logical to have an abstract phase, even my craziest dreams have math and science behind them.” And you both laugh, and your curiosity itches more and more every millisecond.
The next words that leave your mouth were planned and inwardly rehearsed, but they come out natural as a summer breeze. “Every tortured artist has an abstract phase, get on with the times, sixer!” It comes out as a joke, it's a test. And suddenly you’re too nervous to stay there, staring at him and waiting for a rebuttal. You push yourself off the table and zipline to one of the bookshelves, reaching towards the back of it, you pull the ‘eureka whiskey’ and the two cups.
He just watches you for a second, then accepts the cup as you pour him one, then one for yourself.
And it’s truly the eureka whiskey, because goddamn you just found something in those eyes.
He takes a sip; “Yeah I guess those portal days would do for some good surrealist pieces at least.”
“I can’t even imagine.” You say.
He smirks, lips inches from his cup. “You can’t…” He takes a sip. “That’s the point of surrealist.” You want his brain under a microscope, you want his breath mixing with yours, you want to never see him again, you want to wake up near him every day.
The curse of science is that in the endeavor to figure out the world, the scientist often loses sight of themselves.
The witty remarks, the planned lines, the psychological strategies, all fly out of you head and you lean back against his desk. He’s leaned further back now and his chair is turned diagonally towards you and he watches with a smile and those eyes. “What did you see?” It’s almost a whisper, because you think he might actually tell you, and that scares you more than anything.
“Too much…” He swallows, sighs, takes a swing of whiskey and rests the empty cup on the desk. “It was very chaotic, honestly that’s all I want to say…” You sigh, pushing yourself up to sit at his desk, and his head tilts as he watches you.
“I’m glad you’re back.” You settle, even though it doesn’t even come near to all the things you want to express. He smiles, and his eyes travel down, landing on your hands, holding your barely touched whiskey glass. You follow his gaze, and chuckle. “I’m more of a whine person.”
for the girlies who understand, I’m out here tying to turn a Almost (Sweet Music) situation into a Would that I situation, but failing and getting myself Francesca’d
soulmate au where aziraphale felt every bit of pain crowley felt when he fell
(a burning sensation, starting at the tip of her wings, going all the way down to the depths of what could be called "a body"
searing pain behind her eyes, so intense she thought she might be going blind
and then, a sudden emptiness, like everything inside him had just turned into antimatter)
and then everything went quiet.
there was seemingly no explanation (the term soulmate dates back to the 1820's, after all, and even after its invention, what it entails is still up for interpretation), but aziraphale still mourned a loss.
the subject came up eons later (a conversation tucked away in a bookshop's backroom, where a demon lounged on a couch while an angel kneeled on the floor next to him, idly tracing patters onto the back of said demon's hand)
"does this mean..." crowley asked quietly, hand trembling in aziraphale's gentle hold.
aziraphale nodded. "i felt everything, my dear boy."
"oh, angel," the demon mumbled, sliding down from the couch and onto the floor.
crowley's hands gripped aziraphale's shoulders, and soon enough, they were tangled in a mess of limbs and warmth, holding onto each other like that, heaven and hell were nothing more than words.
("i'm sorry you had to go through that" hanged heavily from both their tongues, but they both knew, deep down, it wasn't them who needed to apologize)
I’m here to recommend a book to all of my fellow Hozier fans!
- The Unworthy (Las Indignas) by Agustina Bazterrica
It fucking has everything!!! Wasteland setting and crippled nature, only woman characters, cultlike situations and religious imaginery.
Little spoiler : it even has a little digging up your lover from the ground scene so I’m just assuming the writer listens to Hozier too.
