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The French had always pissed him off. Something about their smug little vowels and that habit of acting like they invented art and bread and fucking sunlight. And yeah, alright, maybe he’d been unfair. Maybe he’d leaned into the whole "obnoxious tourist" routine one too many times, flicking off overpriced cafe menus and complaining about the metric system.
But right now?
Right now, with the Côte d’Azur sun pouring over them like melted gold and the sea glittering like a goddamn magazine spread…he was starting to think he’d been a little too harsh on France.
A little.
He still wouldn’t say it out loud. He had his pride.
The winery didn’t help. It was the kind of place ripped straight from a film where no one had jobs and everyone had perfect teeth. Stone walls curled with ivy, lazy as sun-drunk serpents. Wrought-iron chairs looked too delicate to sit on without a permission slip. The breeze carried a mix of jasmine and sea salt that somehow managed to make him feel underdressed, even though Ford had practically wrestled him into that linen shirt.
And of course, there was music. A trio of tragically handsome twenty-somethings doing unspeakably smooth things to jazz chords. All that ambiance: perfect, curated, excessive, and none of it mattered.
Not when Ford was across the table, looking every bit the forgotten poet someone had just kissed back to life. His cheeks were flushed from wine and sun, hair slightly mussed, wine glass swinging in his hand like it was guiding air traffic, eyes blazing with whatever Mediterranean trivia had hijacked his frontal lobe.
It was a hell of a shift from their last stop. Scrabbling through the mountains of Margeride, two overripe hamsters on the trail of some supposedly mythic beast, only to learn the infamous Gévaudan was just a mangy wolf with anger issues. Ford had tried to romanticize the whole thing, something about lycanthropic hysteria and folk memory, but Stan had mostly been pissed about the mud.
And the lack of indoor plumbing.
So when Ford had breathlessly announced their next stop was a "boutique enological enclave"—whatever the hell that meant—Stan hadn’t fought it. Sunshine, wine, and food you couldn’t pronounce? Fuck it.
Definite upgrade.
“…and what most people forget is that the ancient Phoenicians were critical in bringing early winemaking to the western Mediterranean,” Ford was saying, chin high, pink staining his lips and the tips of his ears. “Some of the earliest rosé varietals can trace their lineage—”
Stan clapped him hard on the back, making Ford sputter mid-sip.
“Sixer, I didn’t come here for a goddamn TED Talk. Save the lecture for when I clean the bilge. Or at least wait until I’m too buzzed to argue with you.”
Ford snorted, trying not to choke on a mouthful of wine. “I’m providing context!”
“You’re providing a goddamn lullaby.”
Rosé didn’t usually do it for Stan, but the sun had been beating down all day and the drink was cold and light and tasted like something that would’ve made him gag twenty years ago. Hell, he remembered when he thought wine was for stuck-up art teachers and rich pricks with yachts. Now look at him. Pink booze in hand, lounging in the south of France with a flushed Ford ranting about ancient seafaring commerce like it was foreplay.
He watched a waiter glide past with another tray. Tiny baguette slices stacked with anchovy, olive tapenade, and something green he couldn’t name. Stan snagged two before Ford could wrinkle his nose.
“Eat it,” Stan said, already chewing.
“I don’t like olives.”
“You liked tarantula.”
“That was different. That was in the name of science.”
“And this is in the name of not embarrassin’ me.”
Ford made a strangled noise, part groan, part begrudging amusement. But he took the bite. Chewed. Even swallowed. Small miracles.
“You’ve gotten pushier in your old age.”
“And you’ve gotten worse at pretending you’re not halfway toasted.”
Ford stiffened in that scholarly, insulted owl way of his, posture snapping upright. “I once had a drink on a Level-Two neutronium colony. This is…” he held up his glass with a flourish, sloshing pink near the rim, “Pedestrian. ”
“Uh-huh.” Stan leaned on his elbow, watching the pink creep across Ford’s cheekbones. “That why you’re startin’ to go all rose-colored yourself?”
“I’m sun-kissed.”
“You’re sun-fucked.”
Ford opened his mouth to argue but snorted instead. A real one. So sudden it startled both of them, wine sputtering in his glass. He tried to cover it with a napkin, missed, and ended up dabbing at nothing. Stan didn’t say a word. He just watched, smug and steady, as Ford’s flush deepened down his neck, across his collar, soaking into the open V of his shirt. He could’ve kept going. He had more jokes lined up. Ford always made it easy. But there was something better than teasing him. Seeing him soft like this. Loose. Vibrant. The years had peeled away for just a minute and left the kid underneath still grinning about some myth no one else cared to remember.
So Stan leaned back in his chair and let it settle. The view. The heat. The sound of Ford’s laugh still ringing under the jazz band’s gentle chords.
They clinked. They drank.
And twenty minutes later, they were wobbling down the pebbled path toward the cab stand. Ford stumbled once, tripped on a root or a loose stone, and Stan caught him by the waist.
The driver gave them a wary once-over and rattled off something in rapid French. Stan, unfazed, slipped into the worst Parisian accent he could muster. “Mon ami, take us to ze... port, oui? Très magnifique bateau, très home sweet home!”
The man squinted, clearly unimpressed. “Which port?”
“Vauban,” Stan chimed. “The big one with the boat that definitely looks way too expensive for us.”
“Ah. Américains,” the driver muttered and gestured for them to get in.
Ford mumbled something about Gaulish architecture as he slid in beside Stan, but whatever it was turned into a sigh and a hiccup halfway through. He dozed off five minutes in, head thunking against Stan’s shoulder. Stan didn’t shove him off.
Port Vauban gleamed in the twilight, sharp and polished as a knife. Rows of boats stood in formation—some with the discipline of soldiers, others lounging with the indolence of sunbathing aristocrats. Theirs—technically Ford’s, though he’d insisted it was “for both of them”—waited near the far end. Sleek. Subtle. Modest in the extravagant, calculated way only the rich managed. A couple of dockhands glanced their way as they stepped out of the taxi. Stan ignored them.
Ford blinked blearily at the water. “It’s moving.”
“It’s the sea, genius.”
“No.” Ford squinted, eyes tracking the way light skated across the waves. “It’s philosophical.”
Stan stopped walking. “Moses. You’re done. You’re absolutely cut off.”
Stan led him up the gangplank, the soles of his boots thudding on metal, the slight thrum of the stabilizers whispering up through the soles of his feet the second they stepped onboard. That soft, nearly imperceptible hum that always said, here. Home.
Ford groaned, muttering something venomous in what might’ve been Latin or a slurred attempt at Italian. He sounded betrayed. By the grapes, probably.
He looped an arm under his brother’s ribs and half-dragged him toward the cabin, muttering, “Come on, genius. We already survived the vineyard. Don’t go faceplanting before I get your shoes off.”
“I’m perfectly capable of remaining vertical,” Ford sniffed, almost noble in his indignation.
Right up until he tripped over his own foot and had to catch himself on the railing.
“You're entirely capable of eatin’ shit in three languages, that's what.”
The door caught on its latch. Stan swore, kicked it open with his hip, and hauled them both into the narrow warmth of the cabin. It smelled of wood polish, salt, and the faint trace of Ford’s cologne—a stupid little thing Mabel had gotten him for Christmas, something earthy and too expensive. Now it clung to the cushions, stubborn as a ghost.
It was quite nice.
He guided them past the galley and dumped Ford into the settee with the elegance of a felled tree. Ford landed with a pained groan, his head rolling to the side, hair mussed, cheeks flushed.
“Stanley…” he mumbled.
Stan kicked off his own boots with a grunt. “Yeah?”
Ford blinked at the ceiling, solemn, as if it had delivered him some great prophecy. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”
Stan crouched down with a sigh, tugging at the mess of knots Ford somehow managed to tie into his own laces. “Yeah, well, neither was the time in the Amazon, and I still got that tick bite on my ass. What are you jammerin' about?”
“No,” Ford said. His voice dropped, quiet. Unsteady. “It was supposed to be serious. ”
Stan froze mid-knot, fingers curled around one of those nerdy hiking boots Ford insisted on wearing even to a damn winery. His buzz caught up with him all at once—a warm curl behind his ears, in his throat, wrapping around his ribs with a slow press.
“Serious?” he echoed.
Ford groaned and slapped a hand over his face. “You’re ruining it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re ruining my last working knee. These laces are welded on.”
Ford’s fingers flexed, twitching against the cushion like they wanted to grab something but couldn’t figure out what. Then: “It was timed. Practiced. Sunset. Dessert. I had a line, Stanley.”
Stan snorted, trying to keep his own voice casual, though something low and coiled was shifting in his gut. “What, like a toast? Confessing you’re a spy? A vampire? What?”
“I was going to tell you I love you.”
Stan blinked once. Twice. His whole body went still, as if moving might send the floor tilting out from under him.
“…Huh?” he croaked, Pulitzer-winning.
Ford sat up with all the grace of a corpse dragging itself back to life. Hair wild. Face flushed, raw with truth. “It sounded elegant in my head. Maybe even funny. I wasn’t supposed to be— this. Rambling. Drunk. Undignified.”
Stan’s heartbeat somewhere behind his ears. “You practiced?”
“Of course I did!” Ford snapped, then collapsed back into the cushions, disgusted with himself. “You think I’d do this impulsively? It’s not some juvenile crush, Stanley. I love you. I’ve known for years. I built half of the route of this voyage around places that made me feel brave enough to say it. That and the rift data. But mostly the brave thing.”
Stan stared, words lodged under his tongue. He didn’t think about what “love” meant, not at first. Because the last time they said something that raw, that naked, they’d been kids, hiding under a blanket fort in New Jersey, whispering promises about sticking together no matter what.
So he thought maybe that’s all this was. Nostalgia.
Except now Ford was looking at him with hunger, not history. Not nostalgia. The kind of gaze that wanted, not remembered. Stan dropped the boot like it bit him. Rubbed his face, hard, until fireworks popped behind his eyelids. “Oh.”
“I’ve dissected this,” Ford pressed on. “The ethics, the taboos, the implications. You’re my twin. I know exactly what that— this —means. I could draft you a fucking dissertation.”
“You’d make a graph for incest?” Stan said faintly.
“Several graphs,” Ford corrected.
Stan barked out a laugh, too loud, too sharp, because his whole face was on fire now and it was laugh or collapse.
“I planned it,” Ford continued, “I planned it because I figured, worst-case, you’d hate me. But if I got the moment right—if I got you smiling in the sun with a glass of wine...maybe, just maybe, I could say it and still have you laugh it off. Pretend it was nothing.”
“I could never hate you,” he said. Stupid. Earnest. The kind of thing you don’t say when you’re buzzed and kneeling in front of your brother like a confession booth. But it was true. Even now, when Ford might be making a joke or totally out of his gourd, it was still true.
Ford was staring up at the ceiling fan, the one Stan had promised to dust off two ports ago and never got around to, not because he forgot, but because he didn’t care. Ford hadn’t brought it up either, just occasionally glanced up like he was mentally filing it on a list of Stan’s minor sins to address later with a sarcastic post-it.
It was always…domestic.
They needed water.
He needed water. He needed something cool and plain and sane to put in his mouth before he said something…well he doesn’t even know what.
Stan stood, joints cracking, knees pissed at him as usual, and crossed to the galley. He shoved and opened the little cupboard. Grabbed two cups and filled them from the chilled tank. One slipped, tipped sideways like it was drunk too, and dumped half its contents across the counter in a slow, wet smear.
He didn’t even wipe it up. He was too busy rearranging everything inside himself, stacking memories and instincts and maybe-love into a shape he didn’t recognize yet.
The thing was, the revelation wasn’t… disturbing. He wasn’t freaked out. That was the worst part. Or maybe the best? He just felt warm. Soft all over, like his insides had turned to honey and seafoam and maybe something a little more dangerous underneath.
He took a sip. It was cold, and crisp. Good. Would’ve cleared his head—if the last five minutes hadn’t already snapped reality clean in half.
Behind him, Ford’s voice, quieter now. “You don’t believe me.”
Stan froze, cup halfway to his lips. “I—what?”
“You think I’m just drunk,” Ford said, voice cracking again. “That I’ll forget. That this is... nothing.”
Stan turned just in time to see Ford rise and stagger. He wobbled once, and Stan reached out, steady on instinct, pressing the unspilled cup into his hand as if they were trading peace treaties.
Ford took it, set it carefully down on the counter behind Stan. His fingers brushed the wood, then curled into fists at his sides.
And suddenly, Stan’s back hit the galley island. The wood was cool through his shirt, the edge sharp against his spine. Ford stood close enough that Stan could count the lines at the corners of his eyes, the way they deepened when he blinked.
“I mean it,” Ford said. His voice shook—not from wine, not from nerves, but from something heavier, older. “I meant it years ago. I just never… never found the moment. And now you won’t believe me because I ruined it.”
Stan opened his mouth, but Ford steamrolled through.
“You matter, Stanley. You—God, you—” He exhaled hard, as if the words had to be pried loose from somewhere deep in his gut. “You make the world bearable. You make me bearable. You’ve always been the reason I kept going. I just—”
He was dizzy. The confession had crawled inside him and started pushing things around.
“Don’t say shit you’ll regret,” Stan rasped, voice low, fingers curled tight around the counter’s edge. “Don’t say this if it’s—if it’s not—”
Ford scoffed. “Regret? Don’t be dense, Stanley.”
It happened too fast to clock who moved first. One second he was upright, trying to remember how words worked, and the next, Ford’s lips. On his. Hot. Fumbling. Greedy with years of silence and forgetting how mouths were supposed to fit.
Their noses bumped. Teeth clicked. Ford’s breath tasted of honey, sour fruit, and salt, and he sighed—some soft, fluttering huff. Stan froze. One heartbeat. Two. Brain static hissing this is happening? Then he folded. Collapsed into it.
He kissed back.
Grabbed Ford by the waist, yanked him forward so their hips knocked, arms sliding up under that stupid expensive shirt. It’s linen, Stanley! Fingers grazing warm skin and sinew, curling right above his belt. The kiss turned ugly. Sloppy. Good. Stan groaned, low and guttural, when Ford’s teeth scraped his bottom lip—not on purpose, just clumsy, desperate—and then one of them made a noise, something halfway between a moan and a fuck-me and Stan didn’t know who it was but he felt it all the way down.
When they finally broke apart, gasping, flushed, it was obscene. The slick strand of spit still linking them. Ford watched it break, eyes hungry, unreadable. Then licked his lips.
Stan watched that, too. Felt his cock twitch like it hadn’t in years. God help him. He was getting hard from a man licking his goddamn lips. His brother licking his lips.
And, okay. Yeah. Sure. Maybe societal norms existed for a reason, but Jesus, those norms had clearly never watched a man like Ford press him into a kitchen counter and sigh like that.
And Ford, sober—if he did remember this and didn’t bolt—would probably have the gall to bring up some multidimensional footnote. In some timelines, this is permitted, Stanley. In others, we’re not even related. Technically, we’d be considered mirror-union compatible—
Stan didn’t give a shit. He liked this timeline. This dimension.
Ford leaned in again, and kissed the corner of his mouth. Softer this time. Then his cheek. His jaw. Slow and reverent, like he was mapping him by mouth. Every breath made Stan shiver.
Then Ford pulled back, eyes wide, pupils blown, and asked, “Do you believe me now?”
Stan was breathless. Stupid with it. He laughed—short and sharp, half-laugh, half-bark, helpless—and kissed the corner of Ford’s eye. “Yeah,” he said, voice graveled to dust. “Yeah, I believe ya.”
It felt sweet. Too sweet. This was one of those goddamn romcoms he definitely never watched. The ones Mabel forced on him. This was Music and Lyrics but with salt-stained shirts and old bruises and two dumb bastards who’d crossed oceans just to fuck up this one beautiful thing.
Ford leaned in again, slow, and—snatched the water from behind Stan’s elbow. Took a sip.
“The tannins,” he said hoarsely, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “They really do dry you out.”
Stan snorted. Shoved at him, lightly. “Christ. Just kiss me again.”
Ford didn’t need to be told twice.
It wasn’t new. Kissing men, that is. Stan had years of practice. Some of it for fun. Some of it for pay. Once or twice for survival. There were things a man did when the rent was late and the bar closed early and the only guy left with cash to spare had a smile like a cracked plate and a wallet full of twenties. He never felt bad about it. Not once. But he’d be damned if he told Ford. Ford would twist his face all soft and get that full-body ache of pity like when people watched those ASPCA commercials, and that would kill the mood faster than a knock from the Coast Guard.
And this? This wasn’t survival. This was something warm and stupid and good. Something better than gas station hookups, better than tequila-blurred nights with strangers whose names he didn’t want to remember.
Only thing not better was the damn island counter digging into his spine.
He gasped mid-kiss, tried to say something, but Ford was mouthing at the corner of his jaw now, down to the place under his ear that had him twitching, breath stuttering. “Hh—hey,” he managed. “My knees’re screamin’. You wanna maul me, we’re gonna need a less painful surface.”
Ford hummed against his throat, the sound smug and soft and pleased, like he’d just found the exact button that made Stan shiver. “You say that like it’s a problem .”
“It is a problem, jackass. You want me to throw my back out?”
A pause. Ford pulled back a few inches, face flushed, lips swollen, pupils so wide they looked like little black holes sucking in everything but sense. “You… actually want to?”
Stan tilted his head, gave him a look. “Ford. If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t be askin’. You think I pitch tent for just anyone?” He gestured southward with his eyebrows. “Look alive, genius. We’re both interested.”
Ford moved. Fast, and a little uncoordinated. He grabbed Stan’s hand, tugging him through the galley with a muttered, “This way,” while his socked feet slipped slightly on the polished floorboards.
He hadn’t been in Ford’s cabin much. Once or twice to drop off charts or mumble something through the doorway. It always felt like entering a bear’s den mid-hibernation—personal, private, sacred. But now, as the door swung open, Stan blinked.
It wasn’t the cluttered disaster he expected. It was… a mess, yeah, but a thoughtful one. Organized chaos. Piles of books crossbred with topographic maps. Notes tacked to the wall in three different languages. A half-eaten biscuit hardened into a monument next to a coffee cup that’d been repurposed into a brush holder. The bed wasn’t made. Not properly. Blankets folded back just enough to suggest Ford tried this morning and gave up halfway through.
Stan shoved that mental note onto tomorrow’s list, too. Clean the room. Dust the fan. Keep his brother sane.
He kicked the door shut behind him.
Ford fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, tongue poking out in concentration. It was endearing, or it would’ve been, if he didn’t immediately stumble trying to yank it over his head.
Stan watched with unhidden amusement, folding his arms. “Still drunk?”
“Debatable,” Ford said, voice muffled as he fought with a sleeve. “Shut up and get naked.”
And, well. Who was he to argue?
Stan stripped at his own pace, methodical. Shirt off first. Then belt, pants, briefs. The light in the room was unforgiving, but Ford watched him. Eyes trailing over the curve of his gut, the slope of his thighs, lingering where Stan was thick and hard and proud of it. He felt heat crawl up his neck, not embarrassment, but a kind of wary surprise. Ford wasn’t just staring. He was beaming.
“You’re staring,” Stan said, voice low.
“Appreciating,” Ford said, and Jesus, his cock twitched when he said it, like it agreed.
They made it to the bed somehow. A miracle, frankly. Stan didn’t remember who shoved who, but next thing he knew, they were a tangle of limbs and skin and heat. Ford landed on him, straddling, grinning like he’d found buried treasure.
Stan let him. Let himself melt into it, hands sliding up Ford’s thighs, dragging blunt nails across the skin just to feel him twitch. Ford groaned low, rolled his hips down, and their cocks rubbed together, slick and aching, and fuck, yeah, okay, this was happening.
Ford kissed him again. Open-mouthed. Wet. Stan groaned into it, hands finding Ford’s hips, squeezing like he was trying to leave bruises. They rutted, clumsy and messy, Ford moaning into his mouth, sucking his bottom lip until Stan cursed.
Then he moved. Flipped them, not gracefully, but with enough momentum to roll Ford under him, Ford letting out a sharp hah! of surprise as his back hit the mattress. His knees screamed in protest. He told them to shut the fuck up.
Ford laughed. “You're going to feel that tomorrow.”
“I feel it now,” Stan grunted, grinding down, their cocks pressing together, trapped between their bellies and burning hot. “Worth it.”
Their cocks rubbed again. Friction sharp, then sweet. Stan rocked against him, hips moving with a practiced rhythm. Ford was clutching his sides, fingers flexing, gripping the curve of Stan’s stomach with reverence.
Stan tensed. Just a little. Didn’t like that. Hadn’t liked his gut in years. But Ford? Ford looked like he was worshiping it. He let his hands roam, thumbs tracing little spirals, mouth open in pleasure. “You feel so good, ” Ford babbled, voice wrecked. “God, you—Stanley—Jesus, I love this—”
Stan’s brain hiccupped. Praise that sincere wasn’t normal. Not for him. Not from anyone. Not real. Except it was. Ford meant it. Every syllable lit him up, a fuse catching fire.
He choked out a laugh. “You’re sayin’ that while I’m sweatin’ on top of you?”
“Yes,” Ford groaned, bucking his hips. “Exactly then. Especially then. I like all of it.”
Something shifted. Stan felt it snap in his chest, down his spine, behind his eyes. He needed more. Needed to hear it again. He reached between them, hand wrapping around both their cocks together, thick and hard and slick with sweat.
He stroked them together, not gentle. Tight grip, twisting just enough to make it obscene. Ford writhed beneath him, chest heaving, fingers scrabbling at his shoulders. Every pump made Ford louder. “So good—don’t stop— please —”
Stan didn’t. He kept the rhythm, faster now, their cocks sliding against each other, friction building.
“I—Stan— Lee, I’m gonna—”
“Yeah,” Stan rasped. “Come on, Sixer. Come for me.”
Ford came with a sharp cry, spilling across Stan’s fist and his own belly, back arching tight as a bowstring. Stan wasn’t far behind, hips stuttering, breath torn out of him in a barked groan as heat spilled thick between them. It took the strength out of his bones, left him trembling and dumbstruck, blinking down at Ford.
They lay there for a minute. Maybe longer. Breathing. Sticky. Heavy.
The bed creaked under them like an old man’s knees. Appropriate.
Stan groaned, rolled to the side with a wet squelch, and muttered, “I’m gonna have to bathe in Voltaren for a week.”
Ford made a sound that might’ve been a laugh or a wheeze, then, without missing a beat, said, “Do you know what’s next on our route?”
Stan blinked up at the ceiling. “You’re actually gonna start talkin’ geography now ?”
Ford propped himself up on one elbow, curls matted to his forehead, sweat glistening on his throat. “Port de Bonifacio,” he said. “Corsica. One of the oldest continuously inhabited places on the island. There’s a limestone staircase carved into the cliff face by the Genoese. I wanted to show it to you.”
Stan turned his head. Looked at him. Really looked.
Ford, naked and bright-eyed, ranting about staircases with come cooling on his stomach and a hickey blooming under his jaw.
Stan smiled.
“Yeah. Alright. Show me.”