sleep-away camp
Ford Pines takes a nap.
At some point, something in Ford’s brain clicked.
Or perhaps something in there snapped off, or spontaneously repaired itself, or some other metaphor. The point was: Ford’s relationship with sleep was always… contentious. He was happy to ignore the siren call of slumber all throughout his life.
After all, there were so many things to do awake. Plots and schemes to conceive of with Stanley, books to read, projects to plan, homework to do, extracurricular work to do as well. Then in college the homework and projects doubled. Ford had too many thoughts filling up his head to fall into sleep easily. He’d be kept awake by random passionate bursts of banjoing from the other side of the room anyway, so staying awake on his own terms seemed mightily appealing.
Gravity Falls corrected his sleeping habits a tad; he put in effort to be healthier in those years, realizing that if he wanted to do effective field work and catch some of the bigger anomalies, he would need strength and an alertness of the mind to manage it. He got a rather regular amount of eight to ten hour nights those first few years.
Though even then, he still struggled to actually get to sleep. He had spent over twenty years sleeping next to another person. It made the perfect quiet of his room in the cabin rather… lonely. He always expected snores and shuffling and murmured sleep-talk that never came.
Eventually his nights in Gravity Falls filled up with night-time stake-outs that absolutely couldn’t be held in the day for various reasons. He always had work that left him writing deep into the night somehow. He wasn’t making excuses, he would reassure himself, that was simply how the chips fell.
And then, Bill.
Bill had him sleeping much more, actually, seeing as he was a dream demon. Ford slept and slept and slept in hopes of seeing his muse more often.
And then, Bill.
Sleep became a foreign concept, a horrific all-consuming foe to be beaten back. Things didn’t get much better after being dragged into the portal. If it wasn’t Bill tormenting him in his dreams, it was the threat or wild creatures or, later, random people hoping to catch a wanted man out cold to hand him to the highest bidder.
And then he was home and then Weirdmaggeon came and passed and then he was busy with Stanley, with the kids, with working out how to live in only one world once again and how to finally dig up an old buried dream and let his mind settle. He had spent too long on the run to sleep well even then, his brain leaping into action at the slightest movement or mutter near him. What if it was an enemy? What if this was it for him this time?
What if he died before he could atone for what he had done?
Out on a boat on the open sea, Stanford Pines wasn’t dead yet. That was a miracle, frankly. He wasn’t dead or wanted dead and he had his brother at his side as they sat on the deck.
The sea stretched far more infinitely than the hundreds of other dimensions Ford had seen, rocking the boat gently. They were taking a break from the arctic for the moment, so the sun high above was managing to warm them even with the thin mist over the sea.
It was a beautiful day; and that beautiful day slipped away from him like the mist skimming over the sea, his eyes shutting without his accord. He settled into one of the chairs secured to the deck and was out like a light between one blink and the next.
He woke up hazily some time later, blinking up clearly at the colorful thing over his head—an umbrella, he managed to place. A big one meant for using at a beach to shade yourself, sent by Mabel at some point. It had been awkwardly taped to the chair at some point to shade him, though his legs were left out half-way down the calves.
That didn’t matter to him really. What mattered were the implications, ones that slowly came to him as he woke up.
He had gone to sleep in one easy slip, not impatient waiting, no active attempt to quiet his thoughts. Stanley, at some point, had moved about him while Ford was sleeping, even going so far as to open a huge umbrella and tape it upright, and at no point had Ford woken up in a startled jump. When he had woken up, it had been a lazy, slow return to consciousness, not an immediate snap into awareness.
An opening door and the shuffling of feet alerted him to the fact that Stanley was returning to the deck. He came into view with a bowl of pretzels.
“Oh, you’re up,” he said easily. “Conked out there for a while. Don’t blame me when your legs start peeling like oranges.”
Ford blinked. “How long was I asleep?”
Stanley shrugged. “Eh, almost an hour now. Tried to get you up a little while ago, but you waved me off.”
Ford didn’t recall that at all. He would’ve been sure he’d been asleep the whole time.
An hour… that explained how well-rested Ford felt. He hadn’t slept like this since—well, since long before the portal, he was sure. He couldn’t remember the last time waking up had felt so pleasant.
He’d had a perfectly normal nap, unplagued by his overactive brain or the lingering twitches his experiences had implanted into him or any recollection of waking in between.
And it had been fantastic. Ford felt fantastic, swaddled in the lingering drowsiness but secure in the knowledge that once he was up he’d feel refreshed.
He did indeed get up, rooting around for one of several sets of fishing poles they tended ot have lying around the deck. He didn’t enjoy fishing the same way Stanley did, but he was in a good mood. It was hard not to be in a good mood.
Naps were a constant after that. On the sea, with Stanley nearby, he could slip into sleep with astonishing speed, knocking out for as long as needed—though rarely over an hour. Stanley would simply observe with bemusement as Ford fell asleep at the kitchen table, laying on the deck, in his study, in the cramped storage room. Ford had been able to settle his body into something approximating rest on the run, but these naps were genuine this time, and genuinely enjoyable.
Stanley joked about it to his face and on calls with their family, threatened to mess with him and at times stuck stickers sent their way by Mabel on him for his own amusement, but Ford rarely found himself bothered, and Stan rarely attempted to wake him up until he was ready to wake up.
Back in Gravity Falls, he found that the sea wasn’t entirely necessary for his naps. The constant thrum of chatter from his family and their friends was a welcome exchange.
Ford slept. Often he woke up with stickers tacked onto his clothing or Mabel and Dipper pressed near him. One would occupy themselves with knitting or reading, and the other would snore away next to him, like clockwork.
He had never felt more refreshed. He had no desire to go back to constant sleepless days and nights after everything.
