Work Text:
For millions of years, it had been routine.
Like clockwork, lights went out at the same time each day in Theraprism—if there even was a day in such a place—and all inmates were expected to stay put in their rooms in some facsimile of sleep. It formed good habits, to hear the authorities tell it, and those imprisoned there were in dire need of good habits to improve their lives.
Of course, Bill Cipher had found the whole thing pointless. When so many of your residents were extradimensional entities who were far too advanced to need something as basic as sleep, why bother with the whole farce at all? It made as much sense as the three square meals of indistinguishable slop a day, the bathing schedule, and the designated activity times. But in the same way he did every single pointless thing mentioned, for as much as he complained, Bill laid down and pretended to rest each “night”, because he really didn’t have a choice.
Being out of there, confined by authorities to a human body no less, didn’t change much. Without even trying, he fought off intended functions of his new body—the flesh he was confined to wanted to sleep. Drowsiness prickled at the edges of his borrowed mind, but even with that, the cocktail of medications he had to take, and the perpetual haziness that muddled his thoughts no matter what he did, he could not simply lay down and rest. The feeling was too alien to him.
The clock said it was something like three-thirty in the morning, and the house was dark and quiet. Bill had long since given up on trying to rest and was up and pacing the room. He still couldn't bring himself to open the door and go out; he’d been following the same therapy schedule for an amount of time incomprehensible to humans and the rules still felt difficult to break, even for him. The terms of his release hadn’t been set in stone, and he couldn’t ever be quite sure that the moment he stepped out of line, orderlies wouldn’t pop out of nowhere to bring him back. Or maybe he’d gone so mad that his mind had cracked wide open and he was making all of this up, and he’d never left in the first place.
With the way things had been going for him, it had to be whichever was the worst possible option was true.
Besides, he had to be at least a little quiet when he moved around at these hours—he wasn’t alone, here. Stanford Pines was fast asleep, and despite mocking him for his old man bedtime hours earlier Bill couldn’t help but look at him enviously now, fast asleep because that was just how humans worked. He’d long since grown restless trying to curl up at Ford’s side with his eyes shut, as if his brain would finally get the hint and he’d be asleep if he did so long enough—the way he hadn’t been able to for all those millennia.
Time seemed to stand still at these hours, and a long time ago Bill would have been bored to tears. He still hated it, really, but he no longer found it in himself to do anything and everything he could to relieve his boredom. Being chaotic was too much effort. And besides, he was supposed to be better than that, according to every banal therapy session he was forced to sit through. They’d won; his days of running wild, free, and unfettered were behind him.
Well, maybe this would be the sleepless night where he finally ventured out into the rest of the house. He could always look for something else to do, or at least have a bigger area to pace in. Didn’t humans like to watch TV when they couldn’t sleep? On second thought—the TV would be too much for him right now. Not because the electronics might go staticky and, as the ever-present and ever-helpful Theraprism staff loved to remind him, he had issues that still needed to be addressed and addressed and addressed again after all these years, but simply because bright lights would hurt his eye. Really! That was the only problem he’d have for it.
Or maybe having free roam of the house would be too much for him, he realized with a sinking feeling in one of his human organs as he crossed the room to the door and put a hand on the doorknob. The first thing that popped in his head was that the rooms behind were big and empty.
Bill grimaced. There was being pathetic, he thought, and there was that. Had being confined to the same few areas in therapy left him that bad off? Had someone succeeded in fettering him, the person who took pride in always doing what he wanted? It was all so incredibly stupid and left him disgusted. Just for that, he was going to run through the house, and probably ransack the cabinets while he was at it—
The door creaked loudly as he opened it, and he flinched.
“Did something happen, Bill?” Behind him, it sounded like Ford was stirring. It felt like he’d done something wrong, and he didn’t even know why. Stupid therapy. Stupid him for ever getting caught and sent there, in the first place.
“Haven’t you ever heard of oiling the hinges, Sixer?” Snide as they were, there was no venom to his words. “Nothing happened, I’m...” He trailed off, unable to come up with a remark. “...I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Once again, he cringed at himself. The damned pills and advice—borderline lectures—on how he should be nicer and more considerate to others or he was only going to keep hurting himself were working, judging by how he felt like he’d been caught red-handed. All for simply opening a door.
“Can’t sleep?” Ford asked him.
“What? No, it’s not a big deal.” Bill shrugged. “I’m just doing what all you humans do in the middle of the night! Getting a drink? Using the bathroom? You know this stuff way better than I do.”
“I don’t mean anything by this, but—” Bill turned to look at Ford as the other man spoke, frowning at direction this was taking. “I don’t think you’ve actually slept since you got here.”
It felt like an accusation. “And how’d you figure that, did I elbow you too much or something?” Stepping back to lean against the doorway, Bill looked petulant, his back against the frame and his arms crossed. Behind him, the cold air from the rest of the house rushed to prickle at his skin. “Look. I’m trying not to bother you or anything, okay?” He hung his head and mumbled that last part. When others could forgive him and he could forgive himself, he’d been told, everything would be better. Trite platitudes he normally wouldn’t care about—after all he’d already forgiven himself, it was everyone else with sticks up their asses calling his behavior unacceptable—only, when that was the only thing anyone was saying, it ended up hammered into his head. “Sorry,” he ended up saying.
The apology was heavy on his tongue. Maybe it’d never get easier; a distant part of him still resented how much he had to grovel and beg. But on the other hand, he only had to remember he was out here and not in there. One misstep was all they’d need to take him back. Or not even that, if he bothered Ford too much he’d be made to leave, and how would he fend for himself then? He had to apologize for that, if nothing else.
But Ford didn’t seem to have been thinking of making him leave, or even notice he’d apologized. “Are you sure? I’ll stay up with you, then.”
Bill rubbed at his eye. “Uh, I dunno if you wanna do that,” he said. Despite the lack of chastisement, the shame curling in his chest left him sick. In fact, in some ways he hated the silence more than he hated criticisms of his behavior. At least then he knew there was something wrong with him because someone had said it. Feeling that something was wrong with him because he was upset over nothing was far, far worse. “I said I was sorry, okay? Can’t you go back to sleep?” And before his mind caught up to words, feelings, and actions, he stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut.
Out in the hall, Bill sunk to the floor, his knees cradled to his chest. That outburst hadn’t even felt good, but it’d nonetheless slipped out. It’d been as they always liked to say disapprovingly in Theraprism—he couldn’t get a handle on his emotions. It was something he needed more work on.
The hallway was cold and the oversized t-shirt and thin pajama pants he was wearing was hardly protection against that. That’s why he was shaking, he told himself. The tears dripping down his face were harder to explain. He could only think of how stupid he felt, sitting against the door like that. Being himself was no longer fun, so why couldn’t he just be normal?
Pressing his face to his sleeve, he wiped away the few silent tears he’d shed. He didn’t think he’d get any entertainment out of it anymore, but Bill could resume his plans to ransack the cabinets to cheer himself up. At least going through the motions would be better than moping in the hallway. He prepared himself to stand—
—but behind him, the door opened. “You know, you’ll catch a cold sitting out there like that.”
Bill looked back, startled out of his thoughts. Ford had gotten up and now stood in the doorway. He’d turned the lights on, and he had a book in hand.
“I...dunno if that’s how that works,” he replied, blinking up at the other. “Didn’t you guys learn that colds are caused by germs, already?”
“Either way, it’s cold out here. Why don’t you come back in? You don’t have to sit in the hall all night.”
“I, uh...I’m fine out here, Sixer,” Bill started to mutter. “I’m doing perfectly fine out here. It’s not like I have anything else to do, anyway.”
“It’s alright,” Ford said, leaning down to touch Bill’s shoulder. “Let’s just go back inside. I’d rather read than go back to sleep, anyway—I have a lot of scientific discoveries to catch up on, and there’s not enough time to look at everything.”
Bill glanced at Ford’s book. As far as he could tell, it was some kind of physics publication. At least he could always count on Stanford Pines to be the kind of guy who would read a thing like that for fun. He wasn’t quite the same person he’d been decades ago anymore, the person who’d believe anyone—even entities from another dimension—if only they’d praise him enough, but some things never changed. That was one of the reasons why he’d always be Bill’s favorite human; the thought almost put a smile on his face. He had a stupid human brain and was haunted by his long confinement, but at least he still had that.
“Yeah, that sounds about right for you,” was what he said in reply. Standing up, he allowed Ford to take him by the arm and lead him back inside the room, where they both laid down. Bill ended up smushed against Ford’s side, soaking in his body heat, the blanket tucked around them both. Much calmer now, he was content pressing his face to the other man’s side and letting his mind wander like a guttering flame. Unfortunately, he was back to the same dilemma he was before—laying with Ford, not sleeping—but at least he could listen to pages turning and pretend he was getting some rest.
“You know,” Ford said after a while, “this reminds me I have a trick for getting to sleep. I never really got to try it myself, but theoretically it should work.”
“Still trying to get me to sleep, Fordsy?” Bill asked. “I told you, I don’t work that way.”
“You won’t know until you try it, now will you?”
Bill scoffed, rolling his eye. “What. I mean, I’ll try it, but is that the kind of corny stuff you tell those kids? I’m not impressed, because I’m way—what the?!” He yelped as Ford all but scooped him up and deposited him half on his chest. “I could use a little warning before you manhandle me, thanks!”
“If you can’t sleep, maybe listening to my heartbeat would help,” Ford went on. “And if it doesn’t work, at least it’ll give you something calming to focus on.”
“...Organ noises, huh? You sure know how to sweet talk me,” Bill replied. He didn’t know how much the advice would help him, but it was nice enough to put an ear to Ford’s chest and listen to the steady beat of his heart. Ford kept his arm around him, and Bill pondered if the solution to his woes was as simple as asking Ford to stay up and hold him instead of going to sleep himself. Certainly, making him do so would be a simple matter. Even after all these years, he still had Ford wrapped around his finger. It’d explain how he’d managed to stay. “So,” he began, nodding at Ford’s book, “you learn something interesting in there? Or is it all stuff you’d have discovered yourself?”
“We’ll see about that,” Ford said. Absently, he stroked Bill’s side as he read. “Like I said, I missed out on so many things that happened in this dimension.”
Bill wanted to bring up how many things he’d missed, but he was approaching the kind of exhaustion where his mind was beginning to fail him at stringing words together. “Fordsy, I’m tired,” he managed to say—he hoped he wasn’t whining.
The hand that’d been at his side began to pet his hair as Ford said, “It’s alright, Bill, go to sleep.”
“Mhmm.” Bill tried, or at least he was sure he did. He had his ear to Ford’s chest, and he listened to the blood pumped throughout his body. It was nice, being that close to him. He hated remembering what he’d wished for when he laid in his room in Theraprism all alone, but at the moment, the place seemed so very far away. He hoped it stayed like that. Shutting his eyes, he tried to put those thoughts out of his head. His beloved Sixer was by his side—he could hear his heartbeat and feel him there. What more could he ask for? Well, a lot, but at this point, he was too tired to care.
Wasn’t the human circulatory system grand? It produced such soothing sounds for him to listen to...
Thump, thump...
When the sun began to rise, the morning rays found Bill Cipher fast asleep, pressed against Ford’s side.