#ford asks

He gets pain all the time from his various issues and it makes him super cranky some days, but he doesn't tell anyone and he doesn't try to help himself, so he just sulks around by himself all day and takes it out on others without really meaning to do so.

But you know why he's doing it. You can tell that he's hurting somewhere, and you're aware that he won't admit to it for whatever reason. So, you have to delicately try to convince him to go along with your plan to help him, whilst trying to convince Ford that it's his idea in the first place, otherwise you know for a fact that he'll refuse.

You have to tell him that his glasses are wonky, that they don't sit level on his nose and that he won't be able to pour out his samples equally while he works, which will in turn affect his results. And he doesn't believe you initially, but every time he gets up to do something, you over-fill one of his beakers just a touch, and when he comes back to sit down, you draw his attention to the 'mistake'.

Ford becomes even more frustrated. He gets himself worked up. But you soothe him, and you tell him "Give me your glasses, let me see if I can figure it out for you," and he does. He trusts you to be his eyes for a moment.

So you put on a little show of trying to level them out, even though they're perfectly horizontal already, and you slide your fingertips underneath the arms to fiddle with them. But while you're there, you let your touch come in little concentric circles and your adjustments move into a very light massage.

You assure him that you're checking for abnormal movement in the arms that might occur from him moving his head, but Ford shivers and relents, even though he wants to go back to work. The glasses tilt more and you use the excuse to inform him that they're definitely shifting, so you take them off completely.

And Ford complains, because of course he does, but he doesn't actually stop you. He stays perfectly still, and your fingertips work gently into the indentations that the tight arms have left behind.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, you massage the space behind his ears until his eyes fall closed of their own accord and as soon as they do, you take it as silent confirmation that he's accepting your command of taking a pause in his work.

You move to stand behind him and from there, you begin to rub up the sides of his head. Your fingers work into his hair, halfway between the reddened marks of his glasses' arms and the edge of his hairline above them, and Ford gradually starts to relax.

His breathing becomes slower and his shoulders lower as the tension begins to drain from them. He sits back in his seat and his hands fall into his lap, all soft breaths and gentle hums of enjoyment. You don't say a word; you're far too focused on giving him the nicest scalp massage of his life, and he doesn't seem to care enough to notice that you're tricking him into having some time off.

Eventually, it turns into a full on head massage. You run your fingers all throughout his thick hair and drag your nails carefully across his scalp (mindful of his plate scar), and he enjoys every second.

He tilts his head back like he's a lap cat, relishing in the contact, and practically purrs beneath your hands. The furrow in his brow lessens and his facial muscles ease up, and he seems to calm down.

"It's okay to admit that you're in pain, you know," you murmur after a while, running the tips of your index fingers over the spot behind his ears in tandem. "I can't help if you don't tell me."

Ford mumbles something indistinct, a groan of "I can take it" and you smile again, though it's a little sad around the edges. He's often like this, too hard-headed to admit when he's struggling and too proud to accept that might be in need of another's assistance.

But that's alright. You know him well enough to recognise when he's misbehaving and you're capable; you can step into save him from himself if he needs it. If he won't take care of himself then you'll force him into it without allowing him to realise that that's what you're doing.

It's better that way, anyway. Like this, you know he'll actually get some relief. If you leave it up to him, he'll tell you that he's done what you've advised without actually doing it. He's his own worst enemy, and you don't mind making sure he's cared for.

And as is his nature, Ford's willingness will disappear as quickly as he's let it come about.

He allows you to keep it up for a solid twenty minutes or so before he seems to come back to himself. He sits upright in his seat, his consciousness returning, and clears his throat.

His hair sticks up in all directions and when he looks at you, he'd appear maniacal—if not for his hooded eyes and flushed cheeks. Those give away the relaxation that has crept into his body and they tell you that his pain has passed, smoothed away by your loving touch.

"I should get back to work," he says, his voice slightly hoarse. "I have— there's a mountain of samples to study, I can't afford to get behind."

"Sure," you reply softly, reaching up to smooth down the bird's nest on top of his head. "But I was wrong. It's not that your glasses aren't level, I think the arms are too tight. See how much better you feel without them now?"

Ford regards the pair where they sit on the table, a look of contemplation on his handsome face. "I could've sworn that I measured them correctly before I altered them, but.... Perhaps you're right."

You know you are. But Ford is the type of man who has to come to his own realisation about these things. Far be it from him to take anyone else's word at face value before his own.

"Change them before you do anything else," you advise gently. "You're not going to get the work done if you're distracted by pain."

And of course, he doesn't. He doesn't have the time to leave his studies and fiddle around with his glasses all evening instead of counting out griffin cells for the thousandth time, but you hadn't really expected him to anything of the sort.

Instead, you return to keeping him company and you watch with fond amusement as he uses his glasses like they're a lorgnette instead. His dark eyes are magnified even more so though than usual when he holds them at a slight distance from his face, but you don't mind his clever adaptation.

A compromise is still a win in the complicated world of caring for Ford.

When he first came back, he'd regularly sleep fully dressed (with his shoes on too) so that he was always ready to get up and go at a moments notice. But as he settled into the knowledge that he was safe, he invested in matching sleep sets/pyjamas because they're a luxury and it makes him feel nice. You will get to see more of them in the new fic.....

He doesn't like wet foods. It's a texture thing. Caused him all sorts of problems in the portal and he'd force himself to wolf down whatever was available if he was starving, but now he's back he won't eat things like soup or stew or yoghurts because he doesn't like how they feel in his mouth. There are exceptions but they're rare.

He hates jelly/jell-o. Absolutely loathes it. Will go on and on about the evils of it because see above.

Ford loves sweet things in general. I think that's canon, but I like to imagine that he adds sugar to stuff that doesn't need it. He's got a bad diet in general to be honest.

He composes piano pieces in his spare time. Sometimes he'll hear a note in the way someone speaks or hums a song, or he listens to the birds in the forest, and he makes it into a tune for himself. He'll turn it into a full piece if he gets time.

He talks to animals/non-verbal anomalies as though he's talking to people. He'll have whole conversations with them like they can answer him back and if they meow or growl, he'll take that as them replying. Sometimes, when no one is around, he baby talks them too. He absolutely never does it in front of others and he'd deny it to the ends of the Earth if he ever got caught.

He never gets sick, but if he does then he turns into The Worst Person Ever. You know how they say men always act worse when they're unwell? Well, Ford is like that times ten. He doesn't know how to cope with it because he likes to power through. His brain wants him to work but if the flesh is unwilling, it drives him mad. He's super sulky and cranky.

Insane driver. I covered it briefly in DD, but he's just nuts. He isn't a bad driver, he's excellent actually, but supremely fast and impatient. He puts his Bronco through hell and limps it back to Stanley to get it fixed up. He'll complain the whole time like "I didn't even do that much! You fixed it last week, there's no good reason why it shouldn't be able to keep up!" and Stan is like listen man you can't tank this thing at full tilt while you're riding the clutch and burning rubber. Ford just doesn't get it. Stan hates him for it.

Horrible cook, even worse at making tea and coffee. This will come up in the next chapter of Fordian Slip. Everyone says 'cooking is just science' but that pisses Ford off. It is not science. If it were, he'd be amazing at it. It's witchcraft, and a type of witchcraft that he's unfamiliar with too. Because, again, if it were regular witchcraft then he'd probably be pretty good at that too.....

Hates horses. Stinky, flighty and unreliable. Don't get him started on them.

I know people think of him as being very straight-laced all the time, but I think Ford enjoys using recreational drugs on a very rare occasion. He used them in the portal once or twice and he smoked weed at college. He doesn't enjoy slowing his brain down when he's using it, but he does enjoy slowing it down when it's his enemy. If he's struggling with his mental state, he might be partial to a joint or two.

Further to that point, I think he's a very mellow stoner. He calms right down and becomes agreeable/relaxed in a way that it's impossible for him to be when he's sober. He gets sillier and giggly. Very cute. He's smoked with Stan before.

If he is in a relationship, he's more tactile. Not in an overt way, but in his own secret way. He'll press his ankle to yours under the table, he'll find an excuse to touch you as he passes by, he'll pick invisible bits of lint off your clothes. Just any excuse to touch you. I think he's touch starved, so he doesn't know how to ask outright for the contact and he'll come up with excuses to get what he wants.

He can dance. Not in the same way Stan can, but more classically. Waltzing in particular. One of the universes he landed in used waltzing to communicate, so naturally, he learned. He's never done it properly, but he can.

He likes finding new music. He's not really one for watching lots of different movies but he picks up on the soundtracks and he asked Mabel to show him how to use something like Spotify, so he can find them whenever he wants to have something on.

Ford keeps several secret spots in the forest mapped out for himself that he doesn't share with anyone, and when he's feeling low he takes himself to them. Sometimes, he'll tell the family that he's going out to do work but he'll just walk into the forest and be in nature alone for hours doing nothing. He isn't looking for samples or on the hunt for creatures. He just wants to be reminded that he's on the right planet. He does it at night, too. Lays in the grass and watches the stars, maybe he'll even take a telescope. It's nice to be reminded that he's home.

Disorganised because he desires closeness, but he finds it incredibly difficult to trust anyone and gain that closeness. His history has proven to him that placing that trust typically backfires in a spectacular way, so he's resistant to lowering his guard enough to try.

Ford has a hard time reconciling/controlling his emotions and that prevents him from really understanding them. He doesn't like to examine those feelings because they're often uncomfortable or leave room for error, and he just doesn't want to engage with that. With things like romantic love, it's also quite new to him in MtB which means that he doesn't even recognise that's what he's experiencing at times and it causes him a lot of stress/confusion. He'd rather refuse to look at that side than he would try and figure out what it means. He's scared of it.

I also write him with BPD elements, so he's quite scared of being abandoned and his past dictates that he will inevitably be left and that frightens him a great deal. He doesn't want to risk that, and that stops him from getting too close in anticipation.

His self-esteem is catastrophically low as well and so he doesn't think anyone would want him anyway. He's carrying too much baggage, he's hurt too many people, he 'knows' no one likes him. It all plays off against his desire for closeness and punishes him for it.

The Avoidance element is present alongside all of that.

Ford lives for his work. He enjoys his space. He doesn't want anything to come between that and I think there's some fear there that he may hurt another person with that independence.

He's not interested in someone being clingy or suffocating, and standing in the way of his work would qualify as that to him. Ford doesn't want to spend hours on the couch with someone or go on long dates. To anyone else, that's quality time where you bond and grow closer emotionally and physically. To him, that's time that could be better spent on science. He'll bond through involving someone with his work as opposed to a more socially acceptable route.

I think that my Ford is a horrible communicator of his feelings, too. Because he doesn't understand/process them, he has no idea of how to explain them to others. In turn, he deals with his emotions alone (code for: spirals and represses them) and doesn't like to share that side of him. That comes off as being a bit of a brick wall to others. He doesn't want to tell someone why he's acting a certain way and he'll get upset if that's asked of him. He's extremely immature in that sense.

Ford likes a sulk and a brood. He's a glutton for wallowing. I think it makes him feel noble, personally. He prefers stoicism in the face of others and then wonders why he loses his shit so frequently, and why that spills out to hurt friends/family. He lacks a lot of introspective ability and he's very blind to his ways. Those that are more familiar with him (Stan, the kids, McGucket) have pretty much accepted that part of him, though it frustrates them, and they don't know how to get him to open up more than he has.

MtB!Ford has extreme CPTSD, too. It runs very deep and holds him tight. He doesn't know who he is without what has happened to him, and that makes him very hard to parse outside of that trauma. Because the others are attached to some of that trauma (Bill), they understand the context and can't really examine him without it informing the result. Reader knows him outside of that context and that's why they see him a little differently than everyone else. Ford knows that, and that then informs how much information he'll give them because he doesn't want to taint that purity.

He's a complex little ball of suffering that eats its own tail, basically. Everything is hinged on something else and it's always cancelling out or provoking another part. Ford doesn't have a clue what he's doing, but he won't let anyone help him.

It's always a self-fulfilling prophecy: "I'm bad and I can only do bad" which causes him to clam up and then do that bad by not talking to anyone about what he's really experiencing.

Ford in a white vest, the front of it just slightly lower than it ought to be because the material is a touch too tight over his chest (he really didn't do that on purpose, he's just big boned, he swears), steely chest hair poking out the top and around the bands on his shoulders..... UGH. A hundred points extra if it's one of those slutty little fishnet vests instead.

He's..... idk..... chopping wood in the backyard let's say, preparing for the evening fire he always likes to read in front of (it's 100 degrees out there, he's not gonna have a fire tonight, you know that and so does he, but you're not going to bring that up rn).

You can see each and every muscle group flex under his skin with the swing of his axe; his arms are exposed, the curve of his biceps highlighted by the perspiration that's building on his skin and soaking the fabric. He's sweating and grunting and really he's chopped enough enough wood at this point to see the entire household through the next four winters, but who's going to stop him? You? No chance.

So you observe him for god only knows how long out of the kitchen window and after a solid hour of watching him work up a sweat, he heads back towards the house. He's flushed and soaked (and frankly, so are you), and you scramble to make yourself look busy when he returns to the kitchen.

He greets you and you return it, and you offer him a cold glass of water because "oh doctor pines, you must be exhausted, you've been out there working soooooo hard!" and Ford smirks and says something smart about keeping active in his old age. He takes the glass from you and downs it easily in one go, and the entire time you're watching him not-so-subtly like:

You're both playing games with each other. Ford knows you're watching him (and he's doing very well at playing along, he hopes you're proud of him for that) and you know he's showing off just to get a rise out of you. It's fun to toy with each other in that sense and you're sure that if the temptation were less, you'd be able to keep it up all day, but as it is.... Ford looks too good and you're too tightly wound to let this drag out.

So you politely suggest that if he's so warm, perhaps he ought to cool off with a shower or something, that always helps you when you're feeling overwhelmed.

Ford nods sagely and takes the suggestion to heart ("I think you're right, my dear. I'm awfully hot under the collar this evening.") and just after he's finished his water, he glances over the rim of the glass and looks you up and down. It's after a moment of very blatant checking-you-out that he makes the suggestion that you're looking rather flustered yourself, perhaps you should consider one too.

You agree, but you warn him that Stan has already been on your ass for pushing up his water bills by showering at their place instead of your own, and you'd hate to get into trouble again..... So perhaps this time, you and Ford should share the responsibility and kill two birds with one stone.