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He wakes up tucked into a comfortable bed with a pounding headache and a pervasive sense that something is wrong. When he opens his eyes and sees the opulent room around him, that feeling only intensifies. He can’t quite recall where he’s supposed to be, but it’s certainly nowhere quite so fancy-shmancy. He’s not quite sure who he is, but he’s not the fancy-shmancy sort.
He should probably know who he is, right? That seems sensible. He should figure that out.
He sits up, shrugging off a thick duvet. His head swims, vision spotting for a moment before it clears. The air is a little cold, but it’s tolerable. He’s wearing a large sweatshirt, and as he looks down at his hands, he realizes he’s old. His fingers, blurry even at this distance, are nearly skeletal, swollen around the joints, skin pale and paper-thin, spotted with a hundred small scars and age spots. He pushes the sleeve up, admiring the body he seems to occupy. There’s a thick scar along one arm, and as he runs his fingers over it, he feels something strange beneath the skin. He checks it against his other arm, and yes, there’s something wrong with that one that isn’t wrong with the other.
Or maybe it’s the other way around…? No, he’s fairly certain the unscarred arm is the normal one.
He runs a hand down his face curiously. There’s only a few stubborn wisps of hair still on his head, but he’s got a pretty impressive beard underneath one heck of a big nose.
He rolls his sleeves back down. The room is a little cold. The window across the room is cracked just slightly, letting in chilly morning air. The sun hasn’t quite risen yet, but when it does, it’ll shine right through that window. He usually wakes up before it does.
So he’s an early riser, and his room is on the east side of whatever building he’s in. He’s old and he broke his arm at one point. He’s also pretty darn sure he’s a he, now that he thinks about it, and that’s something.
“Fiddleford?” a voice says gently, accompanied by a light knock on the doorframe.
He— Fiddleford, is he Fiddleford? What a ridiculous name— freezes like a deer in headlights. Without waiting for a response, the person at the door opens it.
He’s tall, somewhere around 60, and very handsome. Fiddleford— yes, that’s him, he’s Fiddleford— does not recognize this man, but a strange flurry of emotion is stirred at the sight of him.
Anger, betrayal, terror, concern, affection, all at once, suffocating in their strength. It’s all so confusing, but he focuses on the fear. It’s not the most powerful, but it is the most understandable reaction to having a stranger in his (his? is it Fiddleford’s?) bedroom. He does not know this man and he does not know why he’s evoking such a powerful emotional response from him and he does not know where he is and why this man is here.
“Who’re you?” Fiddleford demands shakily, and there’s a southern twang to his voice that this stranger does not possess. He draws the blankets back up to his chest like a shield, backing himself up against the headboard. “Where am I?”
The man, who had moved to enter the room, freezes. The gentle expression on his face gives way to confusion, then alarm, then concern.
“Fiddleford, it’s me, Stanford,” he says, stepping closer. Fiddleford flinches, pressing himself tighter against the headboard. The name sends a shiver down his spine.
“I… I don’t reckon I know you,” Fiddleford says, nearly a whine. Does his voice really sound like that? It’s terrible.
“No, I don’t suppose you would, at the moment,” ‘Stanford’ says, soft and heartbroken, “but please, believe me when I say that I mean you no harm.”
“I… I dunno that I do,” Fiddleford mumbles, watching him like a hawk.
Standing there looking like a wet dog, this man does not cut a particularly intimidating figure. There’s a bulk to his shoulders and chest that implies strength, but he’s hunched over, hands fluttering awkwardly. They’re big hands, wide, with one more finger than Fiddleford’s. His own hands tingle, a phantom sensation of warm, thick fingers between his own. He clenches his hand into a fist to squash the feeling.
“If you really don’t wanna hurt me none, how ‘bout you stay over there and answer my questions?” Fiddleford says sharply. As sharply as he can with his voice shaking, anyway.
“Of course,” Stanford agrees, keeping his hands in view as he steps out of the doorway.
His eyes flick towards the open door, looking away from Fiddleford for the first time since he’s entered. He looks like he wants to close the door, but he doesn’t.
The door opens out into a long hallway, and even if he can’t see the entrance from where he’s sitting, he knows it’s that way.
He glances at Stanford. Stanford stares back, brows furrowed, eyes wide.
“Do you mind if I sit?” Stanford asks, gesturing with one hand toward a cushioned wooden rocking chair in one corner, the wall behind it lined with bookshelves. A well-loved quilt is thrown over the back of it, and a banjo leans against it.
Part of Fiddleford prickles possessively. He doesn’t recognize anything in this room, not really, but they’re his. He doesn’t have much, what he does have he needs to protect.
But that doesn’t make much sense, does it? Isn’t this his fancy house?
No, it can’t be. Whoever he is, he doesn’t belong in a place like this. This must be Stanford’s house. He doesn’t know why or when or how, but Stanford must have dragged him here himself.
What does he want from him? He’s a frail and confused old man. If he has— had— any skills, he doesn’t remember them now.
He was smart once, wasn’t he? Was he? He certainly isn’t now, not when he’s taking advice from the small, scared animal burrowed in his chest.
It’s telling him to run.
The man, Stanford, he said something, didn’t he?
“Huh?” Fiddleford breathes.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” Stanford repeats, patiently.
“… go ahead,” Fiddleford allows. “Careful with that there banjo.”
Don’t provoke him! the scared animal squeals, but Stanford just smiles at him. The concern— fake, he’s tricking you!— remains in his eyes, but there’s a soft, kind curl to his lips. He looks fond.
“Of course,” Stanford agrees, gently repositioning the banjo so it’s leaning against the wall instead of the chair. “Now what did you want to ask me?”
Fiddleford watches him. He’s leaning forward, templing his hands, and his eyes do not leave Fiddleford.
“Well, uh…” Fiddleford glances around. “First things first, just what is that?”
Fiddleford points away from the door. Stanford, that gullible son of a gun, falls for it, following his finger to frown at the bookcase.
Go, go, go, hurry, he’ll hurt you if he catches you, the scared animal says, and Fiddleford agrees.
He scrambles out of bed, and his balance tilts, vision going dark for a moment. He comes back to himself on his hands and knees, and he doesn’t know how long he was out but he needs to get out. Stanford isn’t blocking the way to the door yet, so Fiddleford scampers on four legs towards the opening.
“Fiddleford!” Stanford gasps, and he steps in front of him, hands extended.
He can’t stop himself before he’s crashing into Stanford’s legs, and a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. He doesn’t think, just reacts, and he twists his head to bite at Stanford’s wrist. His teeth— of which he has very few, he’s realizing— catch on the sleeve of his sweater. Stanford doesn’t back off though, he just secures him with his other hand.
“No!” Fiddleford yelps. “No, no, lemme go!”
“Fiddleford, please,” Stanford nearly begs, but his firm grip doesn’t falter, “I don’t want to do this but we’re on the second floor, you’ll hurt yourself on the stairs!”
“No! No no no, stop!” Fiddleford sobs. He hears the words, but he doesn’t register them. “Lemme go, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Something familiar scratches at the back of his head. Yellow eyes, skin so pale it was nearly transparent, large clawed hands, men in uniform and scowling townsfolk.
A crowded room that always smelled like coffee and tobacco and damp, a couch beneath a stained glass window, caves and campfires and constellations.
His head throbs painfully, and the thoughts leave his head as quickly as they came. Stanford’s grip shifts, tightens, and Fiddleford struggles until he feels his wide palm on the back of his head, pulling his head into the crook of his neck.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m sorry,” Stanford soothes. His neck is right there. Even through his sweater, he could hurt him. The scared animal demands that he do so, but he knows this man. He doesn’t know why, but he does, and his tired old body aches.
“Stanford…” he whines, and the name tastes familiar in his mouth. Without thinking, he buries his nose in his shoulder as he goes limp against the larger man. He smells like sweat and coffee. “What… what’s goin’ on?”
He sighs. Fiddleford can feel it against the top of his head.
“You’re having a memory lapse. It’s a side effect of a device you invented,” he explains, stroking the thin hairs that cling stubbornly to the back of his head. “I have yet to help you through one, but I have plenty of experience with my brother’s. I… I could get him, if you’d prefer.”
“Brother…” Fiddleford echoes. He knows the meaning of the word, understands its importance to this man in particular, but he doesn’t know why.
“Stanley, my twin brother. He was… affected by the same device, so he has direct personal experiences with its consequences,” Stanford elaborates, voice strained. “Besides, your relationship with him is less… complicated than our own. It may be best—“
“No!” Fiddleford fists his hands into the back of Stanford’s sweater. “Please, I don’t…”
I don’t want you to leave, I don’t want to see anyone else, I don’t want to bother anyone, I don’t… Fiddleford doesn’t know what he means, but Stanford hushes him with a gentle noise and lets it go.
“Let’s get you off the floor, m— Fiddleford,” Stanford says.
What had he been about to say? Fiddleford has bigger concerns, but the curiosity claws at him.
“Mm-hm,” Fiddleford agrees, and for some reason, instead of moving away to stand up, his body curls closer to Stanford’s.
Stanford takes this in stride, carefully repositioning Fiddleford in his arms. With an ease that’s a bit irritating given his apparent age, he stands up with Fiddleford held against him. His stomach swoops with nausea, and he squeezes his eyes shut, burying his face further into Stanford’s neck as he lets out a soft whine.
Stanford replies with a soothing, wordless noise from deep in his throat. Carefully, he sits down on the bed and releases Fiddleford, keeping himself between him and the door. Fiddleford wiggles out of his lap, but stays close beside him, shoulder to shoulder. He still doesn’t know this man, doesn’t know if he can trust him, but his body seems to think he should. Or maybe he’s just that lonely, so lonely that he’ll seek comfort in some home invader or kidnapper that possibly gave him brain damage.
“So,” Stanford begins, clearing his throat, “what is the last thing you remember?”
Fiddleford tries to think back, but everything beyond this morning was a blur. Thinking about any of it too hard sent a painful pulse through his already aching brain.
“Um… well, I reckon I remember wakin’ up this mornin’.”
“You… you don’t remember anything?” Stanford says, voice tight. Fiddleford looks down at his lap, twisting his hands together anxiously as he nods. “Okay… okay. I don’t— this has never happened with Stanley, but that’s fine! That’s… that’s fine.
“Your name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and you were born the second of five siblings on a hog farm in Eastern Tennessee. You have an older sister, two younger sisters, and a younger brother, as well as countless cousins. I swear you changed the number every time we talked.”
“I didn’t change the number just for the heck of it, my aunts and uncles just kept havin’ kids,” Fiddleford argues. “That’s what happens when you’ve got seven uncles and nine aunts of varying ages.”
“You remember?” Stanford says, delighted.
Fiddleford blinks.
“Oh. Yeah, I suppose I do.”
“Fantastic! It’s working then! What else do you remember?”
“My siblings, we used to be real close, loved ‘em to death and I reckon I still do, but after I got married—“ Fiddleford stops, heart stuttering in his chest. All the comfort his mind had tricked him into taking in the other man drains away in an instant, and he scrambles away from him. He hits his back hard on the headboard. “My wife! Emma-May, where’s my wife!? My son!?”
“They’re okay! They’re fine, I promise I haven’t done anything to harm them!” Stanford holds his hands up placatingly, but his expression falters slightly. “At least, not directly, and not in the last thirty years…”
“Then where are they? What are you talking about!?”
“Emma-May still lives in California, I believe, but…” Stanford sighs, “the two of you got divorced approximately thirty-one years ago.”
“… oh,” Fiddleford says. It really isn’t a surprise. Emma-May, the poor darling, was bound to catch onto him eventually.
… catch onto him? About what? What was he hiding from her? He looks at the man sitting in bed with him and knows that he is related.
“Why? What happened?”
Stanford winces.
“It’s not really my place to say, but… I took you from them. We met in college, do you remember?”
“… the McGucket/Pines Hologram Conjecture Theory,” Fiddleford says.
He remembers it, remembers the heat on his face from embarrassment and tears, remembers the taste of coffee and cola, the equations scribbled on paper and sticky notes and windows, the weight of this man’s arm around his shoulder, their wide grins. He remembers the excitement, the joy, the affection. At some point, he had loved this man.
So that’s what it was.
“Exactly right!” Ford agrees, and his smile now is so much more restrained, but twice as affectionate. “After we graduated…”
“You moved to Oregon, I went back to Tennessee. Reconnected with Emma-May, and we got married, but…” Fiddleford frowns. He knows Emma-May, knew that he loved her in some sort of way, but… but he didn’t do it right. Always too reserved, too awkward, too distant. He couldn’t love her how he was supposed to.
“I called you up to Oregon, to Gravity Falls, to work on a project.”
“A polydimensional meta-vortex,” Fiddleford agrees, heart twisting at the words, “and I did it. I left them both, easy as that.”
Ford remains silent for a long moment, watching Fiddleford with palpable guilt.
“I don’t think it was easy. You visited when you could,” Ford says eventually, and his hand flutters as if he wants to reach out to comfort him, before it falls in his lap.
“It wasn’t enough,” Fiddleford sighs. “I left her, and she made sure it stayed that way.”
Ford nods, ashamed.
“And we did it, didn’t we? We made… we made the vortex,” Fiddleford continues, voice shaking. He remembers breathless terror, even if he can’t quite recall what made him feel that way, can’t recall what he saw beyond a single massive eye. “That’s why I’m like this.”
“Yes,” Ford agrees, voice thick. For all his bulk, he looks like a scolded child. How was he ever afraid of this darling man? “Though you were its inventor, I was the one to drive you to create the memory gun.”
“None of that, darlin’,” Fiddleford soothes, and even though his head throbs with every thought and memory that flows through it, reaching out to him is easy as breathing. He takes Ford’s hand, threading their fingers together. Ford flinches, but Fiddleford holds tight, squeezes his hand gently. “I made it, I decided to use it on myself, I got addicted to it. Now you aren’t one to take credit for other people’s work, are ya?”
Ford smiles, even as his eyes remain pained.
“We’ve done this before,” Fiddleford muses.
“We’ve been doing it a lot, ever since I came back to you,” Ford agrees. “I still struggle to believe I’ve earned your forgiveness.”
“Ain’t something you really had to earn, hun,” Fiddleford soothes, and he wiggles closer to Ford now that he knows who he is, now that he knows that his body’s instincts to trust him were right. “I had enough of being angry and scared, and I certainly had enough of forgettin’.”
Things still don’t make a whole lot of sense, and his head hurts like no tomorrow, but he knows he’s safe here, with this man in this house. Ford pulls him closer and presses a gentle kiss on the top of his head.
“Are you alright, my love?” Ford asks, soft and sweet.
“Hurts,” he says vaguely, curling into the man.
“I know,” he soothes. “I should get you some water and painkillers.”
He tenses as if to move away, but Fiddleford shakes his head, burying it in his chest.
“Later,” he mumbles. “Just stay with me?”
“Of course.”