trash - Freeform

Dipper’s heart is beating so fast, he feels he is going to throw up any second while his brain is still reeling from the attempt to process what is happening. Great uncle Ford is lying flush against him, his chest warm and firm against Dipper’s back, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s also too much, tightening his throat with excitement and embarrassment, and Dipper is glad that Ford can’t see his flushed face. Though he wishes he could see Ford’s, to see a hint of what he’s thinking - does he like it? Or is he amused by Dipper’s lack of experience?

Just as Dipper fears that Ford may be concerned or even deterred by Dipper’s inability to speak and how tense he was, maybe thinking that Dipper was scared rather than anxious, Ford puts an arm around him to hold him tightly. And Dipper relaxes into the touch, slightly curling himself into the protective embrace.

“Breathe”, Ford tells him, resting his hand on Dipper’s sternum, all six fingers splayed across the small chest. Dipper’s heart skips a few beats and his stomach flutters helplessly at the touch of  the slightly rough fingertips brushing over his exposed skin, and for a moment, Ford’s instructions don’t even register at all.

“Dipper, it’s alright”, Ford says, his voice low and gentle and so unnervingly close, “You’re with me. Now, take a slow breath.”

Dipper nods uselessly, and takes a shaky breath. As he exhales, he slowly relaxes into the embrace. It feels unreal to be so close to his great uncle, almost like a dream, but also safe and warm. Dipper closes his eyes, letting his breathing be guided by the slight pressure of Ford’s hand against his rib cage. Carefully, Dipper finally dares to break the spell and move his arm, to very gently trace over Ford’s wrist and the back of his hand, following the tendons and veins to circle the gnarled knuckles. It’s not just curiosity that guides his movements - he really wants to show Ford he likes this, hoping that they can stay like this a little longer.

Then Ford shifts against him, and warm breath ghosts over the back of Dipper’s neck, and Dipper shivers in his arms. A noise escapes him, soft and helpless, when Ford’s lips brush his skin, so hot and wet yet slightly coarse and chapped. Dipper is frozen in place, finely tuned to every little detail as his brain is overclocking and his breath quickens.

“Dipper”, Ford murmurs against his neck, and Dipper feels like he’s burning up beneath Ford’s hands.

“G-great uncle Ford”, he manages to get out, not sure what he wants, but overwhelmed and desperate all at once, “Can I-”, Dipper tries to clear his throat to no avail, the words are still stuck, “Can I turn around?”

There’s a pause in Ford’s movements.

“I just really want to see you”, Dipper hurries to explain. His words are suddenly coming out too quickly and stumbling over each other, but he finds himself unable to slow down. “Actually, I- I’ve been thinking about it a lot- and I’ve been wondering-” God, Dipper wishes he could bury his face in his hands right now, or even better, bury himself while he’s at it, but now there’s no other way but to push through. He takes a shallow breath and confesses: “About kissing you. I even dreamed about it - a lot.”

Just the thought of sharing a first small kiss while Ford holds him like that makes Dipper crave to turn around, to cuddle closer and hug him tightly, to bury his face in Ford’s sweater and escape these confusing intense sensations.

“But I am kissing you right now.” There’s amusement in Ford’s tone, but Dipper is more concerned with the sensation of his lips tracing a wet path up the side of his neck, teeth teasingly scraping the sensitive skin just behind Dipper’s earlobe. It makes something hot and foreign pool low in Dipper’s stomach and it does not feel bad, not really - but then it’s too much all at once, and he does not know if he can take any more without bursting into tears.

Dipper whines, writhing in Ford’s arms. “Please, Great uncle Ford, I can’t!”

For a dreadful second, he fears that he must have said something wrong, because before Dipper knows it, he’s lying on his back and Ford is above him.

“I apologize”, Ford says, and somewhere in his panicked haze, Dipper is relieved that he sounds lenient and not mocking at all. “It’s been a while since I last could indulge in another person’s company like this.”

Dipper’s heart swells at that and when Ford bows down to plant a kiss on Dipper’s mouth, Dipper holds onto him, his fingers running through Ford’s thick, curly hair.

“I suppose I should have taken your age into consideration”, Ford continues, breaking the kiss rather abruptly and ruffling Dipper’s hair in a way that suddenly feels oddly dismissive. “After all, you are still just a child.”

His breathing is shallow and unsteady. You savor that feeling of the slick skin trembling beneath your touch and give him a moment to adjust to the pain before you grab the medical alcohol and pour it over the cut. Dave yelps and you have to apply some pressure with your hand on his chest to keep him down on the futon. "F-fuck!” He sucks in a hissed breath and his head hits the pillow. Drawing air in between his clenched teeth, Dave tries his best to hold it together. That means he doesn't wriggle around anymore, but you can still feel the tension in his body. Beneath your hand, his chest is quivering from his shaking, labored breaths.

Man, you haven't even started yet, and his heart fluttering like crazy. "Stop flailing around, this needs to be done with some accuracy", you tell him when he flinches as you press your fingers on the cut to hold the skin together. It's not even a deep cut. Kid's been lucky and has gotten away with a small scratch.

He's getting better at evading your attacks, you note with some satisfaction. You decide pizza later and a movie he’s not yet legally allowed to watch would be fitting a reward. It's important to give the boy some positive reinforcement. You straddle Dave to keep him perfectly in place, because it's tricky enough to keep some pressure on that slippery bloody skin and you never know if the lil guy won't jerk back in pain as soon as the needle pokes him. Not that you necessarily expect that. Kid's a Strider and even if he's still got a long way to go on the path of irony, he's already made the first baby steps.

So you position the needle and wait for just a little unnerving moment, and that’s all it takes for Dave to completely tense up. The needle breeches the skin easily but Dave is suddenly all frozen up, his fingers digging in the futon and his knuckles as white as his face. "Ever heard of local anesthetics, you bastard?" It's kinda cute how he tries to be snarky when his voice is shaking like that. "Do I look like a doctor to you, kiddo?", you retort, completely deadpan. There'll be no handholding here, the kid knows the drill. And apparently, Dave finally accepts that there is no way around the procedure, no matter how much he squirms and complains. He leans back, giving in to your guiding touch and prepared to face the needle. Very slowly, Dave takes a deep shaky breath, his fingers clenched on the blanket beneath him and his gaze now fixed on the ceiling. "Ready?", you ask, and you can feel the muscles of his stomach tense beneath your fingers.

"Shit", he murmurs, his cheeks as white as the bed sheets.

You give him a smile that could be anything but reassuring. "That's the spirit." You are at the tenth stitch and almost finished when without warning, the tension leaves the boy's body. Just a second ago, he was all trembling skin and tensed muscles, but all of a sudden, he goes limp beneath you. You don't need to see that his head has rolled to the side and his eyes are half-closed, just a bit of white peeking through between the lids, to know what's going on.

6. His great uncle’s pulse was thick under his fingers, under the slick, black tongue pressing against the carotid artery right beneath Dipper’s palm.

7. Some nights, Bill was a subtle presence, supporting, inspiring and endlessly stimulating.

8. Sometimes, Atem closed the collar around his neck a little tighter when he got dressed in the morning.

9. Most people did not matter.

10. Black latex covered his body, a stark contrast to the stainless white bedsheets.

11. It was a most unusual, yet not unfamiliar sight - Kaiba kneeling on the stone tiles before him.

12. Seto is ten when he first holds a gun in his hands.

13. "You are starting to disappoint me, Yugi.”

14. The room was only dimly lit by the light of the setting sun, but the two opponents had been too absorbed by their game to notice.

15. For the first time in ages, Atem dreamed at night.

16. “What's the matter, Kaiba? You don’t seem to be at your best today.”

17. For a few months after the mess that had been Battle City, they had all but forgotten about Kaiba, even though it was hard to ignore the ever-present Kaiba Corporation.

18. “So you’ve come for me again, Kaiba?”

19. The forms of monsters were moving all about him in the dark, lurking, waiting for their turn.

20. Alois had never been to a house like this, with rooms dark and tall, windows framed with heavy curtains and electric lights flickering in every room and hallway.

-

Patterns / trends: I’m laughing really hard at this sentence I’ve noted down when I was halfway through: “Those sentences almost all involve Seto fricking Kaiba what is wrong with me.” 8D It- it’s true. He’s fun to write, I have no excuses. But fret not, past self - they are not ALL about Seto fricking Kaiba. The rest of them is about Ford............. orz

Aside from my love for writing about massive dumbasses, I’m very positively surprised that a fair share of the fics start with dialogue, and if they don’t, they still start in medias res in a hopefully immediately engaging way. I’m also pleased that the more exposition-y starter sentences are short and more to the point, giving the story something of a theme or topic. I should try that more often, it reads nicely, I think.

It shouldn’t be that strange to undress in close proximity. And actually it isn’t - not for Stan at least. There’s not much room on a small ship, and they are used to sharing a room, so there’s nothing new about this. Nothing they haven’t seen yet, nothing they gotta hide.

Except that that isn’t quite true.

Ford is the one who hurries to get his pajama shirt on, to cover this silly tattoo of his, as if Stan would start humming the song at the mere sight of it.

Ford turns his back to him, too, until he’s buttoned it all up, but Stan does not pry. They don’t ask questions like that - it makes things easier.

At least that’s what Stan thought, until he pulls of his shirt and undershirt to throw them over the ladder of the bed and catches Ford looking at him - or rather, at his shoulder, just before the curve of his neck muscles.

“Where did you get that?”, Ford asks.

“Oh, that old thing?” Stan shrugs. “’S nothing. Fell off a ladder, and onto the - uh - stairs. Fell down those, too.”

Not convinced by Stan’s transparent lie and apparently entirely oblivious to his obvious attempt to shrug it off, Ford takes a step towards where Stan is sitting on the lower bunk bed, examining his shoulder more closely.

“And that left you with a scar like this?”, he asks with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, well, I crashed into a- uh-”, Stan starts, but it’s a weak attempt.

“A knife?”, Ford suggests, and before Stan can deny it, Ford’s fingers are tracing the long, thin stripe of padded scar tissue over Stan’s shoulder and he says, decisively, “I’m fairly certain that this is the result of a puncture wound.”

Stan makes a non-committal noise and shrugs. “So, what is this, Poindexter - you’re just going to inspect me like one of your weird freaky magical critters?”

“I’m trying to catch up, Stanley”, Ford insists, and there’s an earnestness to his words that Stan finds it hard to argue with. “And if you won’t be honest with me, at least let me see for myself.”

He does not say ‘I used to know you inside and out’, but Stan thinks it, anyway.

Now they have both their good share of things better left unsaid. In some ways, they might as well be strangers, and it’s weird, not just because it used to be different, but because they are still, despite it all, so utterly familiar with each other.

This is familiar, too - sitting together on the lower bunk bed too small for them both, Stan in his boxers and Ford in his usual dork pajamas.

But it’s also definitely, decidedly strange, with Ford sitting in front of him, closely scrutinizing his bare torso like that, his fingers trailing over the skin, searching.

Stan sucks the air through his teeth when Ford’s fingers follow the arc of his ribs, prodding them when he finds a kink in their curve.

“Careful there, Sixer.”

Ford keeps pressing his fingers right on the spot, stroking back and forth, examining his findings.

“Several broken ribs, I presume? And probably not treated with the proper medical procedures.”

Stan doesn’t care to answer that, but Ford’s hand is warm on his ribs, and even the way he digs his fingers into the flesh to feel the bones beneath is not half bad. With a small sigh, Stan leans his head back against the wall. Might as well let him have this. After all, the old nerd loves analyzing things and being right.

And Ford does appear to be very serious about his quest of documenting all the marks and scars he can find, and stating their presumed origin. More often than not, he’s actually right, in a way that is almost a little concerning.

He’s quiet, however, when his fingers brush over the edges of the burn mark on Stan’s shoulder blade. Maybe Stan is imagining it, but he believes Ford’s touch lingers for a moment, as if he’s debating whether to trace it like the other scars.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he finds a knot of scar tissue right below Stan’s right shoulder and pauses, his fingers pressed to it. His eyes scan Stan’s chest and belly, and Stan starts feeling more awkward by the second. He is just about to wonder whether Ford realizes that this is getting really weird real fast, when Ford’s other hand traces a path down to his abdomen, circling another spot of knotted tissue, half-hidden between dark, curly hair.

“Jesus, Ford”, Stan grunts, shifting a little bit uncomfortably. “Give a guy a warning, will ya?”

“Those are gunshot wounds”, Ford says, his eyes still fixed on the scar on Stan’s stomach. Close to vital organs, probably no professional medical treatment - Stan can practically see Ford’s thoughts racing, and he doesn’t want to hear it.

He shifts again, demonstratively. “So I had a bit of a rough stretch. But you knew that already, right? No big mystery here.” With that, Stan puts his hands on Ford’s wrists, shoving them away. “You had your fun, Poindexter. Now how about you stop prodding me and let me have some sleep.”

Ford, as usual, has not actually been listening. “Fine - what about these, then?”, he proposes, and frees his hand from Stan’s grasp to put it right on Stan’s leg. Without any more preamble, his fingers wander to the side of Stan’s thigh, obviously searching for something, until his finger tips find a thin, barely visible ridge.

“Laceration”, Ford says immediately and with astonishing certainty. “It was a bike accident. Because you had to try that stunt with the stairs. We sat in the hospital all afternoon and you kept babbling about hoping that it’d leave a ‘badass scar’.”

Stan thinks he remembers this - sitting in the crowded hallway of the hospital and eating what was left of a bag of sticky Toffee Peanuts. Ford had been berating him, until he had toffee stuck in his teeth and was entirely busy tonguing at it while complaining how much he hated it.

A grin spreads over Stan’s face.

“Ah, yeah, that”, he concedes. “Shame it didn’t leave much of anything.”  

But apparently, Ford is not done with him yet. His fingers have reached Stan’s knee, his thumb running slow circles over the gnarled skin.

“Road burn”, he declares, and there is a small smile on his lips as he elaborates, “You tripped and fell spectacularly when we were running down the boardwalk. Remember how you always had to race me to the beach? Well, you scraped your entire knee open and I had to wash out the sand with sea water.”

Stan cannot recall this incident at all, but when Ford describes it, he does feel reminded of the sight of a bloody knee caked with dirt and the sharp pain of fiercely biting his own lip. Sometimes he wonders if his brain just makes these little bits and pieces of memories up on the spot, if they are just products of his imagination when he listens to Ford’s little anecdotes.

“Burned like hell”, Stan says with a laugh. “But hey, I didn’t even cry.”

Ford looks at him with a raised eyebrow, and Stan quickly backpaddles.

“Or at least I didn’t for the most part, right?” He’s not certain at all actually, but he likes to pretend he is. “Hurt like crazy though.”

Ford’s brows knit ever so slightly, and Stan worries that it might be out of concern. Then Ford reaches up, almost hesitant, and touches Stan’s forehead, smoothing his left brow with his thumb in an unusually tender caress.

Stan stays completely still.

“Torn skin", Ford explains, and there’s a trace of fondness in his tone that seems at odds with his words. “You got in a fight, one against three. But you made it out mostly intact - except for a bleeding cut on your forehead and two missing teeth. You were lucky you still had your primary teeth at the time”, he adds, still slightly admonishing, even if it has been over 50 years.

Stan gives him a good-natured half-grin. “Heh, must’ve looked like an idiot.”

At first, it seems like Ford wants to object, but he can’t hide the smile tugging at his lips. “We both laughed at your lisp for weeks”, he admits readily. “But I knew that I would’ve ended up looking much worse if it hadn’t been for you.”

There’s something in Ford’s expression now when he looks right at him, and it’s actually, genuinely nice in a way that should be comforting, or reassuring at least, but it’s also not what Stan feels he can handle at all.

It’s really, really awkward, too.

Stan clears his throat. “Yeah, bet they thought twice about messing with y-”

Then Ford’s hand slides over his shoulder, the other to the back of his neck, and Ford kisses him, a bit too hard, too sudden, too uncoordinated, clanking their teeth together as Stan opens his mouth to kiss back.

“Stanley”, Ford says, and nothing else. And for a moment, this is good. Just Ford, holding on to him, his fingers digging into Stan’s back, into the insensitive skin of his burn mark. 

“Stanley”, Ford says again, breathes it into Stan’s mouth between kisses, and Stan readily swallows it.