Now You See

marypsue:

on AO3

…

“UNTIL THE END OF TIME,” Bill says, and Ford echoes the words, the truth of them spinning his head, turning his thoughts, making him giddy with the weightless ease of it all. Bill’s hand is warm and, though Ford knows this is a dream, reassuringly solid in his grip. The azure flames licking around their clasped hands are like a warm breath from a roaring blaze in a sheltered hearth, like a hot wind across a tropical beach. Like an embrace. The feeling seems to burrow down inside him, filling him up with swelling warmth.

“Until the end of time.”

…

The sores first start showing up a few weeks into building the portal. Small and round and reddish, slightly raised, like little pinpricks or insect stings. Ford thinks they’re acne, at first, dots toothpaste on the ones on his cheek and gets back to work.

There’s a lot of work. The portal is – is like nothing the world has ever seen, is nothing the world has ever seen. It will be entirely unique, something truly novel in a history full of cycles and mirrors and repetitions. It will be a masterwork, in the true historical sense of the word – if he can complete this portal, it will prove that Ford has learned all there is to learn in his chosen field, that he is finally worthy of the title of ‘master’. That he is worthy of his muse’s attentions.  

It is in him like a fire between his lungs.

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