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Ford’s cock was out.
This wouldn’t necessarily be an out of the ordinary occurrence, depending on the context. There were a lot of scenarios where that line of thought might make sense: while taking a shower, while going to the restroom, while ‘passing the time.’ His current situation, technically, could also be counted under another perfectly normal reason to be completely nude:
While investigating.
Normally this was done fully clothed, of course. In most scenarios, it made sense to have some layer of protection when documenting the oddities and wonders of Gravity Falls. Ford wouldn’t consider himself the most comfortable with his own body, but he wasn’t so put off by it that he wasn’t more than willing to put aside modesty for the sake of finding previously unknown species of life just hiding within the woods.
So his cock was out. His chest, too – all of him, actually, bare in the middle of nowhere, with only trees and local wildlife to cast judgment on him. Which they most likely would not; this is a more natural state of being for most animals, and despite what the occasional stranger in the shared dorm showers might have said, he was not near as hairy as a bear.
A shame, honestly, that fur was replaced with clothes through the thoughtless and bumbling actions of evolution. Ford cannot help but mourn how much more efficiently time could be spent if not constantly fretting over how many layers to wear, and if they were in style.
Ford breathes in. He breathes out. This particular investigation will take time and patience, which Ford has in… moderate amounts. He’s been improving on the patience front at least, thanks to the guidance he has been receiving over the past year. He takes another deep breath in, closing his eyes and tapping into that meditative knowledge. He’s not looking for company, but if he could just clear his thoughts, it might help the time pass by more–
“Hiya, Smart Guy! How’s it hangi– WOAH!”
Ford yelps, whipping his head around. There’s nothing, except the leering eyes of birch and a sudden prickling heat in the back of his mind. He instinctively moves to cover himself and grimaces with the knowledge that the action is just about pointless.
“I guess you, eh?” Bill’s voice rings through, bright and tingly in the canals of Ford’s ears.
Ford closes his eyes in anticipation of the bright flash he knows he cannot block out. It does nothing, of course, the explosion of light heralding the arrival of his Muse tinkling unimpeded behind his eyelids. It is human nature to try, anyways, and the attempt earns a loud laugh from the triangle.
“Hello, Bill.” Ford gives a strained smile, blinking his eyes open to view the forest around him, plus one additional hallucination of a Mr. Bill Cipher floating as though only inches from Ford’s face. He sighs, moving his hands away from his crotch and resting them on his hips. “I apologize for my current state of undress, though to be quite honest, I’d be shocked to learn any of this is new for you.”
“I’m WOUNDED!” Bill mock-grips at his chest, as though shot by some invisible assailant. “You think I would spy on you?”
“Does it count as spying if it is, and I quote–” Ford raises his hands in emphasis “–the ever present all seeing eye of God?”
Bill’s eye quirks into a smile, and Ford swears the knotted whorls in the trees follow. The air seems to bear down upon Ford, and he feels a chill of excitement and fear shoot down his spine.
“Depends on how open you make yourself to that eye,” Bill hums.
Ford runs a tongue along his teeth.
“Now, not that I don’t enjoy the show, but what can I do ya’ for?” Bill leans in on the top of his cane. “Or should I say, do ya’ Ford?”
Ford snorts, rolling his shoulders in order to roll off the nerves. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t actually anticipating you arriving.”
“Aw, buddy, you don’t gotta lie to me – you CAN’T, ACTUALLY!” Bill pokes at Ford’s hair, doing that funny little trick where Ford feels it, despite the fact that Bill isn’t really there. “Besides, I’m all cozied up in that hole in your brain you got just for me.”
“Well, I won’t lie and say I don’t usually hope for your presence… current circumstances aside.” Ford makes a half-hearted nod to his fully exposed hardware. “I suppose that subconscious desire must have slipped through without my meaning to. Apologies for the false alarm; it’s been two months so I wasn’t expecting–”
“Aw, Fordsy, two weeks without your Muse really feeling like two months?” Bill ruffles Ford’s hair.
Ford marvels at the tingling sensation of fingers running across his scalp, still struggling with accepting how much of reality is just perception and how malleable perception actually is. Ford instinctively raises a hand to touch at the phantom limb, a strange sort of static pulsing under his skin at the disconnect between what is real and imagined.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s been two months, Bill – it has been.” Ford tilts his head, catching the slight bit of shock on Bill’s face that disappears as quickly it appeared. “Does time work… differently where you’re from?”
“Sure, let’s go with that.” Bill waves a hand dismissively. “Hey, not that I don’t love these little chats, but it’s a bit DISTRACTING with the hog out. What’s with the PORK, BUDDY? We hosting a luau out here?”
Ford’s face squishes up with a large grin, laughter bouncing through his shoulders as he tries to deal with his Muse’s way of phrasing things. He can feel his cheeks heat up, and he covers his mouth to try and assuage the grin.
“There’s a–“ Ford breathes out around the last few chuckles. “I’m investigating some claims I’d been over-hearing from the local teens, near the Dusk 2 Dawn. There seems to be a cryptid of some sort which only comes on a full moon…” He smiles, leaning into the absurdity of his next words., “…Wwhile you are out with a full moon.”
“INTERESTING!” Bill chirps. “You usually in the habit of going out butt-ass naked in the middle of the night based on what some teens say?”
“Not normally, no.” Ford scratches his head, looking up, eyes catching on the stars peeking out from behind the tree canopy. “By all rights, this seems to just be your average hazing ritual, but, well… so is Bloody Mary.” He misses the slight flinch from Bill when saying that name. “So, you know… something something asses and assumptions.”
“Guess we got plenty of asses out tonight, EH? EH?”
Ford rolls his eyes with a smile, taking a few steps into one of the clear paths into the spot he’s been standing in. “Over there.” Ford points. “I’ve set up a few traps. Tripwires that trigger nets, back-up contingencies in case the nets don’t work.” He runs a hand along his mouth. “A few guns scattered here and there in case things go very badly.”
“Kid, we’re talking about a discount backwater haunted house folk story – how bad you expecting this thing to be?” Bill leans on his side, crossing his legs as he floats along Ford’s peripheral.
It’s a very silly visual for a being of light and energy, ostensibly the closest Ford’s ever gotten to communicating with a god. It’s cute, and he still struggles with the fact that god is cute. Or god can be cute, anyways – Bill can be very inconsistent on that front, and Ford’s only been lucky enough to be privy to the more disturbing elements of Bill’s presentation on very few occasions in the Mindscape.
The discrepancy makes him think of a lure on a much larger predator. Like a Venus flytrap or an angler fish.
Ford does feel like a very small fish, sometimes.
There’s a comfort in that he isn’t sure how to interrogate.
Ford coughs, certain Bill has been listening into those thoughts based on the slow, curling smile of his eye. He still struggles with the whole… complete lack of mental privacy, but it’s a relief knowing that it’s pointless to try and make up a more normal reason for him to be looking for this particular hoax.
“I am out here looking for this thing because it has a particularly odd pattern of behavior,” Ford says, throat a bit dry. “Generally, acts of terrible violence are common for this sort of childhood folklore. Death, maiming, the usual.”
“Oooh, the GOOD stuff!” Bill tacks on, kicking his legs in the air aimlessly.
Ford’s smile crinkles the ridges of his nose, but he does not dignify the joke with a response.
“This entity follows in this same pattern of violence – however–” he tucks one hand behind his back, using the other to raise a finger, invoking the image of Sherlock Holmes during one of his more exhibitionist deductions. “This entity not only flays your skin, but it collects it and makes a ‘dapper suit’ out of it. Now that wording is very important here, Bill – nearly every single account of this thing has it making a ‘dapper suit,’ that it then makes you wear before you die. That’s the part I want to understand more than anything.”
“What, you interested in this guy’s tailoring techniques?”
“Honestly?” Ford frowns, pressing his hand to his mouth as he begins to tread a circle in the long, damp grass. “Deeply. How in the world would that process go? If the blasted thing has just skinned you, how does it keep you alive long enough to have made a suit you then wear? How does it skin you? How does it make the damn suit? You’d think it’d be carrying around a tailoring kit, but no one has ever described that, and that baffles me. I really want to chat with it, after I’ve ensnared it and dragged it back home for further investigation.”
“Well, personally, I LOVE the energy!” Bill grins. “Real ‘lamb on an altar’ stuff you got goin’ here – ready to get SKINNED ALIVE for the sake of science!”
“I wouldn’t be worthy of revolutionizing the world if I weren’t willing to take a little risk,” Ford sniffs, looking up to face Bill.
There is a beat as their eyes meet.
He feels it, then – a gentle touch on the back of his head, as though he were receiving an approving stroke of the hair. As though he had just said something very right, and Bill was proud, and that thought makes Ford’s mind short-circuit. His ego swells to burst at the mere concept of being worthy of such a radiant being’s pride, and again, there is that sensation of a lure, of something bright and blinding guiding him to–
“What happens if you don’t manage to catch this thing?” Bill says, and Ford takes a few hard blinks to reset his drifting thoughts.
“Either I catch it, or I die.” Ford shrugs. “If I’m dead, can’t hardly be bothered by the whole thing. Plus, I hear I get a pretty dapper suit out of the whole deal.”
Bill laughs, throwing himself back and flipping around in the air a few times from the force. “Welp! Sounds like you got a pretty good plan for dealing with The Tailor! I’m sure ol’ Tay-Tay will be pleased as peaches to chat with a psycho like you.”
Ford blinks, mind lighting up at what seems like a very obvious revelation. There is a swell of embarrassment at not first assuming this muse of knowledge and divine inspiration would know about this cryptid – of course Bill would know – but that anxiety of being an irredeemable idiot who can’t put two cogent thoughts together is tamped down by something far more potent: the excitement of tapping into that same knowledge and divine insight, as is Ford’s right as one of the great minds of this century.
“You know about this creature?” he asks, trying to bite back the excited grin and giddy energy bubbling under his skin.
“Sure do!” Bill leans back with an easy smile, resting his hands behind his top vertex, “I came up with it.”
Ford blinks, letting the words roll over him – then he laughs, loud and unburdened, running a hand through his mist slick hair. He turns the warmth of his gaze onto Bill. “Well, that makes sense.” He tilts his head, eyes softening along the edges, turning to look away, the hallucination of Bill forced along to track with the movement. “I suppose that’s one way to get a man out of his clothes.”
Bill doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Ford catches something in that expression he can’t quite parse.
“I got more direct methods, honestly,” Bill says, and Ford laughs again, a bit louder than intended.
“Well.” Ford claps, turning around and heading down a path opposite of where he intended to lead the mystery Tailor down. “I came out here to solve a mystery, and I suppose that mystery has just been solved and replaced with another: why?”
Bill mimes picking at an ear he doesn’t have and flicking whatever he dug out onto Ford’s glasses with an audible ting.
“Why what?” he asks. “Be specific, IQ – I got a lotta answers for a lotta different whys and I’m not sure you got the time to listen to them all.”
“Fair enough.” Ford steps over a large root, starting to become very aware of how unaccustomed his feet are to plodding along sharp, sticky forest flooring without shoes. “I’ll specify, then: why make up a skin tailor that lives in these woods? Just to scare teens, or is there perhaps some greater cosmic reason that I couldn’t possibly understand?”
“Whaddya THINK, Genius?” Bill smirks, tapping his cane along the rim of Ford’s glasses.
“Personally?” Ford peeks behind a tree, struggling a bit with looking in the dark, the light of the full moon obscured by the dense forest brush. “I think you got bored.”
“BORED! HA!” Bill giggles, leaning forward on his front plane, cutting off Ford’s ability to see anything but his muse. “You think a divine entity of limitless energy and knowledge gets bored?”
“I mean.” Ford blinks, setting his hands on his hips as he looks around. “You’re watching a naked man struggle to find where he put his clothes.”
“CORRECTION,” Bill chirps. “I’m watching a naked visionary who will lead humanity into a new era of knowledge struggle to find where he put his clothes.”
Ford barks out a laugh at that, taking a few awkward steps over to a log which he swears he recognizes.
“Oh, certainly.” He grins, bending over and making sure his clothing didn’t just get knocked off, finding only a giant mud puddle instead of underwear. “I can’t wait to read this entry in the history books.”
“Humble beginnings!” Bill raises an index finger for emphasis.
Ford casts another soft look to Bill, before taking a few steps back to take stock of the situation. His smile drops as he tries to think, frustration beginning to surface.
“About to be extremely humble endings if I can’t find my damn pants. I swear I left them here.” He scowls, turning around and standing to his full height, genuine anger beginning to twist and merge with the festering irritation. “If it’s those goddamn gnomes again, I swear to fucking god I’m gonna get a big rock and eradicate their entire genus–”
Ford blinks, feeling the rage percolating along his extremities. He sucks it back, looking up to Bill, whose eye is wide and dilated. He is looking very intently at Stanford in a way which makes Ford far more aware of how… bare he is at the moment.
“Apologies.” He clenches his teeth, adjusting his glasses along the bridge of his nose. “I… that was not very becoming of me.”
“Oh, no.” Bill waves, closing the metaphorical distance between them. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
Ford swallows. The heat in his cheeks turn into something he’s not sure he wants to address. He struggles with not knowing what to do with his hands, so he opts to tuck them behind his back and pretend that everything is… fine.
Everything is fine. He’s being too self conscious; an expected failure of the human nervous system. Thankfully, Ford Pines is more than capable of controlling his baser human emotions, as well he better be if he has any hopes of living up to his Muse’s expectations. Which he will. Once he finds his fucking pants.
Some part of him thinks to ask Bill for help with finding them. Another part of him balks at the idea of asking for help with something so beneath a higher being. Another part thinks Bill would get a kick out of it. A final part realizes that Bill is getting a kick out of it. The same part of Ford that remembers this is Bill’s hazing ritual; he’d know it better than just about anyone, and almost every account of this prank involves the victim’s clothes being stolen.
This realization floats like a rock.
“Bill.” Ford sighs, settling his bare ass on the log, resting his head in his hands. He doesn’t have to ask. He can see how brightly his Muse is shining under Ford’s ire.
“WHAT?” Bill giggles, kicking his legs and blinking with a very large and innocent eye. “You couldn’t possibly suspect me? Your Muse? Your divine source of inspiration and guidance?”
Ford flushes at the description, some part of him embarrassed by having his more reverent feelings thrown back in his face – embarrassed a man of science has those occasional thoughts at all – yet more of him is flummoxed by the situation he finds himself in.
“Pranked by a cosmic entity who only graces humanity with its knowledge every few centuries.” Ford sighs, leaning on his arms. “What, did you steal Euclid’s underwear too?”
“Oh PLEASE.” Bill grins. “That little pervert wishes. Sorry, Six, but you’re the only smarty who’s pants I’d steal.”
Ford’s eyes crinkle with incredulity.
“Oh, COME ON!” Bill throws his arms up with a wide smile. “The set-up’s just TOO GOOD! What, you think I’m gonna see you balls out and not complete the process? C’mon, Pointdexter, you and I both know it’s bad form to leave a ritual unfinished.”
“Ah, yes.” Ford runs a hand through his hair, watching the little ticks and pleased movements of Bill. “We wouldn’t want to disrupt the arcane powers of hazing.”
“EXACTLY.” Bill boops Ford on the nose. “Now get trucking, sailor – you’ve got a date with some mud and an extremely impressionable young couple!”
“What?” Ford cracks a smile, hoisting himself to his feet. “Bill, you’ve some strange turns of phrases, but this is just–”
“Hey, would love to stay and chat, but I got some Musely duties to Muse about.” Bill rolls his wrist, and Ford can already feel the pulling absence filling his mind. “See you later, deer!”
“Dear?” Ford flushes, struggling to register the words before Bill bursts into starlight, barely fading away in time to Ford to catch a large, dark mass bounding towards him. Ford lets out an extremely dignified squeal, foot catching on the log behind him as he tumbles backwards, arms cycling in the air in a hopeless attempt at not falling.
He registers slamming into something cold and wet – then the same mass that was barreling towards him flies overhead, the breeze left in its wake brushing against Ford’s now slick skin.
Ford sputters around the mystery substance that fell into his mouth, his tongue tasting silica, calcium, various other decomposed organic materials – so mud, then, he surmises as his eyes trace the path of the thing that had just barreled towards him. His glasses are too caked in wet soil to see through, so he peeks over the rim, making out the form more so than the details, the previously threatening entity becoming something far more recognizable as Ford gains control of his pulse.
A deer. Oh. Okay, yes, that makes so much more sense.
Ford huffs out a sigh of relief, rolling his head to look up at the sky, catching the stars hanging above him as small, blurry dots. The light of the moon filters gently through the tree leaves, swaying against the gentle night wind. He’d like to better appreciate the beauty of the moment, but it’s difficult when feeling mud seeping into cracks he’d rather not have it seep into. He’d lament his lack of clothes, though some part of him recognizes how thoroughly that ship has sailed.
“Bill?” Ford cranes his neck up, straining for any sign of the cosmic muse.
He’d like to say he does not struggle with disappointment every time there’s no response. He does, though. He struggles a lot with it, actually, and there’s a sentimentality there that reminds him more of an old woman at church rather than a man of logic and reason. So he tries to tamp down that emotion and leans on the rational side of his mind to explain that hollow feeling he gets whenever Bill Cipher leaves:
That he simply seeks knowledge, to pursue the truth like any scientist might; so of course he mourns the lost opportunity to learn.
That he is one of the most brilliant minds in several generations and is meant to achieve great things; so of course he is impatient to fast-track that progress.
That he has found a god more tangible than all the other false beings he was raised to worship; so of course he would want for its company.
If for no other reason than to prove god is not so above man.
Lately, though… lately Ford’s not so sure of that last part.
He sighs, kicking his legs away from the log and squelching in the mud, rolling to his stomach to leverage his arms and stumble to his feet. For his efforts, he is rewarded with slipping several times and digging his body deeper into the soft earth, until he manages to get enough leverage to become bipedal once more.
He’s actually grateful Bill wasn’t there for that.
Honestly, as mad as he was about it earlier, clothes almost seem like a redundancy given how crusted he is in brown, wet slop. Reminds him of folks who would paint their bodies as though that were an adequate replacement for an actual shirt. At least with this covering, it was impossible to tell what was a nipple and what was just a wet clump of dirt.
Ford sighs, slipping off his glasses and flicking off the worst of the muck. It barely clears anything off, and Ford resigns himself to having to drive home with less than ideal vision. He slips them on, grumbling under his breath about how much of a pain in the ass it’s going to be to clean off his seats, and turns to–
–make eye contact with two bug-eyed young adults, both hiking in the middle of the night, for some goddamn reason, staring slack-jawed at Ford, just reeking of some god awful strain of weed. He grimaces, though he’s got no clue how that looks for the pair given how they flinch away from him.
Ford readjusts his glasses and holds his hand up in greeting. “Ah, hello – apologies about this. It’s a long story, but I–”
Ford doesn’t get a chance to finish before the pair is screaming and scrambling back the way they came.
Ford takes in a deep breath, holding it in his chest for a good long while, before letting it slip out from his ribs and slowly through his teeth.
He begins the long hike back to his car, wincing with each twig digging into his feet, and hopes he doesn’t get pulled over.
–
It’s several weeks later of radio silence from Bill, though Ford finds himself plenty busy in his absence. The cycle of beginning to doubt Bill’s existence has faded at this point, settling into a sort of faith in his return that Ford might have found himself fighting earlier in the year. Now, acceptance of his current reality sits comfortably in Ford’s chest as he goes about his daily life, eyes catching more and more on the little symbols that remind Ford he’s never really alone.
It’s weird. God is far more capricious and playful than Ford ever expected. He finds himself still a bit pissed off about their last encounter, but looking forward to getting teased about it the next time they meet. Ford has questions and theories, and he feels oddly safe to express them – safe in a way no one has ever made him feel, even with stealing his clothes.
Possibly because Bill stole his clothes?
Ford isn’t sure.
He rounds the corner with his car, filling an empty parking space in a smooth motion with his hand, putting the machine into park before pulling out the keys and stepping out on the gravel pavement. As usual, there’s loud music outside Dusk 2 Dawn and a gaggle of teens chatting and passing around a single bottle of coke like it’s a joint. They’re rambling about everything from life, to school, to parents.
He mostly ignores it, but his ears catch on one thing–
“–I’m not fucking with you, man. If you go out at midnight in the woods, you’ll see the Muck Man, with his glasses and long creepy arm–”
Ford blinks, thinking back to that night in the woods and that clearly inebriated couple, and considers how easy it actually is for a rumor to take hold in a small-town community like this. He laughs, stepping inside the convenience store, looking forward to asking if this is how Bill got his own little myth started as well.