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Bill looks at him through the rusty bars, his head cocked at angle, his eyes thoughtful when they should be sad – when they should be full of the same roiling, horrible emotion that Stanford’s heart is, somewhere far enough that he barely even feels it.
It has been too many years to count, since Stanford last laid his eyes on his love.
Bill leans against the bars, his human flesh in goosebumps, and smiles, slow and beguiling.
“You came,” he says, so tenderly, and shatters every resolve it took for Stanford to come down here.
*
Salt water keeps splashing into his face, the cold seeping through his soaked clothes, and he struggles to stand on the slippery rocks as the waves keep crashing into him. Stanford tilts his head back, and laughs: the ship he was on dumped him on an unhabitated island near Barbados, but the ocean, the ocean is glimmering with a hundred shades of emerald green, and he’s never seen anything this beautiful. His heart feels like it’s about to burst.
“I love you!” he shouts and barely hears his own voice over the wind.
The waves mellow out slowly, and the sun shines warm against his skin. It feels like a kiss.
*
“You look different.”
“Do I? Do I, Bill?”
“Is it a new haircut?”
“Bill –“
Rustling. Soft laughter.
“No – come back here. Come. Come here, you – you’ve become a monster, haven’t you?”
“It takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Bill?” Pause. “You’re right where you belong. Rotting.”
“Don’t be cruel, Sixer – c’mon now – “ Whispering. “Don’t be cruel. I’ve missed you. Look at you. Oh, Stanford Pines…”
“Don’t –“
“Let me look at you –“
“I said, don’t!”
Pause. Heavy breathing, a single heart beating.
“Do you still love me, Stanford?”
*
There’s a trick to it – bow your head down, untangle a net for a couple of minutes, and then, without thinking of it too much, become aware of someone watching you.
Whenever Stanford turns his head to look, there’s no one there.
The sailors laugh at him, and the captain is obviously using him for busywork to make him earn his keep on the ship, but Stanford doesn’t care – he has his hammock and his little corner for his books and his drawings, and every night he sits with his stub of candle to update his journal. He shouldn’t be as happy as he is – he should be miserable, sunburnt and overworked, callouses on his hands and feet, the taste of salt permanently on his tongue – and yet, each night he falls asleep to the gentle rocking of the waves, and each morning the sea greets him with the dance of the sunrise on the waves.
Now, if he could only figure out who keeps spying on him.
Stanford stays on the deck, long after most of the crew has gone to sleep and ignoring the chill spreading to his bones, keeps the lanterns lit and practices looking from the corner of his eye. It’s not easy – his spectacles don’t cover those areas, and the image is blurred beyond proper recognition.
He stands, with an unconvincingly casual stance, facing the sea, when he catches the movement, and his heart starts beating faster. The world becomes still for a moment, the light of the lantern blurring as his eyes water, splitting into two – and finally he can make out a pair of yellow eyes watching him with intense scrutiny.
There is a sound, like footsteps made out of the sound of waves crashing against the sides of the ship, and then someone whispers into his ear, their breath warm like the gentlest summer breeze.
“I like your sketches. Keep drawing me.”
Stanford sucks in a shuddering breath, and gives up, closing his eyes.
“You -?” he chokes out.
“You know who I am,” the voice whispers, fondly. “You said you loved me.”
*
“You’re fickle,” Stanford says, coldly. “Fickle and cruel, Bill. You were cruel to me.”
Bill is standing at the far corner of the cell, his eyes giving light in the dim room, his head resting against the blackened wood.
“Yes,” he says simply.
“Then how could you ask –“ Stanford sucks in a sharp breath – his face is monstrous, dark grey, tentacles sliding against one another. He continues, lowly, to be both sides of the conversation. “You could, because you never loved me – because you were curious, because I was an amusement – they wish to release you. I wish you to release me, Bill.”
Bill turns away, rests against the bars. His hair is matted and tangled, his clothes in rags, his human body small and weak, but he smiles like a shipwreck into the darkness.
“When they release me – boy howdy,” he says softly. “Sixer, do you remember what they did? Do you remember – how they put me in this pathetic singular body?”
Stanford swallows.
“Yes,” he says, hoarse. “I remember that.”
“As fickle and cruel as I am, I am going to be crueler to them, Stanford. I am going to be darkness and eternity. I am going to be the wind that howls as they draw their last breath – Stanford, I am going to make them pay!” Bill’s voice rises in the end, crackling and mad as he turns to Stanford, his eyes wild and joyous.
Stanford stares at him, his love, and wills himself to hate him.
*
The ceiling of the underwater cave ripples with lights. Stanford lays back down on the cool stone and watches them, silent and respectful, like a god-fearing man, familiar tenderness taking a hold of his heart.
“Do you really love me?” a voice to his left says.
“No,” Stanford says, his mouth curling. “I changed my mind just now, sorry.”
Cold water splashes over his face, and he sits up, spluttering and laughing.
“There’s plenty more where that came from!” he says – neither young or old, his hair wild and constantly fluttering in the wind, his eyes like the reflection of moon on water. “Y’know, the ocean – pretty big place, you might have heard of it –“
“All right, all right!” Stanford says, laughing, but gets splashed anyway. “I love you,” he says, helplessly, trying to wipe his spectacles on something. “I adore you – I simply can’t live without you, I love your seaweed –“
“Steady on now,” he says warningly.
“I’m sorry – the fish, I love fish –“
“What kind of an ocean do you think I am?” he demands, mock-indignant, and wave rises from the pool of water, utterly drenching Stanford’s attempts to dry his glasses. Stanford yelps, and snatches his satchel, tossing it to the dry ground.
“Be careful!” he implores. “My sketches are in there –“
“Oh,” the personification of the ocean says, sitting back on his haunches, docile all of a sudden. “Will you draw me again?”
“If I’m allowed,” Stanford says shyly – suddenly he finds it hard to even look at him directly.
He smiles, slow and knowing, and Stanford feels heat rising up his cheeks, warming him thoroughly.
“Make me look good,” the ocean says, and settles against the rocks, his hair spreading out like a halo of seaweed.
“Aye,” says Stanford, and hears a snort. There is a moment of busy silence, as he draws out his paper and chalk, settles down, begins sketching the outline.
“Tell me again – tell me again how you love me, Stanford Pines.”
*
The metal lets out a complaining creak, and Bill’s face is so close, his breathing fast and gasping, his fingers – Stanford can feel them – holding onto Stanford’s coat with a death grip. He supposes he can’t blame Bill – not when his clawed hand is wrapped around Bill’s throat.
Bill’s flesh is soft and malleable, his skin spotted and flawed, his lips chapped – this close, Stanford can memorize every single detail of Bill’s personal prison. He wants to mar it – he wants to tear Bill into pieces like wet paper, to stomp him out of existence, to turn the ocean into a dead body of water, where the wind and the chill and the salt are just components and never reminders. He wonders what would happen if he would kill Bill now – whether Bill would be free, or dead in his rotting, nameless body.
Bill’s mouth jerks, and then smiles, with a hint of teeth, and Stanford tightens his grip. He’s crying.
He lets go.
*
Stanford wakes up one night to the sensation of soft lips on his cheeks and a whisper in his ear.
He sits up. The ship creaks, and groans, and sways, and most importantly – the floorboards are covered in water.
Someone shouts in the distance, the ship groans again – louder, this time, like a death rattle. The crew springs out from their beds and hammocks and into action in a sudden flurry of lights and running.
“Go up,” a voice whispers.
Stanford hurries up to the deck – he doesn’t know what’s going on, the darkness swallowing all the details out at the sea, but the ship is not at the right angle. The captain is shouting orders – they’re trying to salvage the situation, but it doesn’t look good, and a few of the men are readying the boats. He stands in the eye of the chaos, barefooted, his heart hammering in his chest, and doesn’t know what to do.
“Jump into the water,” whispers the voice.
He plunges into the cold, black darkness before he has time to think about it. As he surfaces, he hears shouting – but it grows strangely distant. He turns to look and sees the ship, sinking speedily, the waves coiling around it like tentacles. He hears screaming as the lanterns go out.
Stanford treads the water, trembling and gasping for breath. He doesn’t know how long he’s been swimming. Time blurs into nothing, into one kick after another, and he’s so cold.
A boat sidles over to him, riding on a wave, and a hand reaches down to pull him up. Stanford grasps it blindly, barely feeling his own, and is hauled aboard.
“There you are,” Bill says, soft and satisfied, as Stanford shivers and coughs at the bottom of the boat. “Did you think I forgot about you?”
“Y- y- you –“ Stanford starts, gasping, grateful and terrified. Bill looks at him for a long moment, his head tilted, before it seems to occur to him that Stanford might be cold. He leans down, and plucks up a blanket – the same one that Stanford used back in the ship.
“I have your drawings,” Bill says, swaddling Stanford. “And your books.” He tilts his head back, laughing. “The sea takes care of its own! Get it?”
“Why,” Stanford starts, his voice small and shivering. “Why did you sink the ship?”
Bill smiles at him slowly, and makes Stanford feel exactly as small and stupid as he feels when he gazes into the vast horizon of the ocean.
“Because I felt like it,” Bill says, just like that.
Somehow, Stanford accepts that. He tries not to think about it too much.
Bill sits down, watching Stanford with all of his focus. The ocean stills, and then grows quiet - the clouds drift away and the stars fill their world with light.
“Say that you love me,” Bill says, his voice a soft splash of water.
*
“Of course I love you, Bill,” Stanford says hoarsely. “I will always love you.”
“And you will have me,” Bill is soft and tender, now, which makes his words cut that much deeper. He reaches through the bars, his dirty hand caressing Stanford’s chest.
“And I,” Bill says. Stanford feels as if he could drown. “I will have you.”