#bending over backwards to excuse the actions of a pathetic damp man

[impishtubist]

Talking (or writing) about Remus Lupin’s crimes against Sirius and Harry isn’t slander 😂 You can’t call something slander when it’s literally canon.

[canaliculi]

Take me somewhere nice (4/?)

Gravity Falls

Bill/Ford

M: slow loving romance between two best buds

Bill edges Ford towards the creation of the portal.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

I can see the beauty in the mess

“You should’ve SEEN this ‘pyramid,’ IQ – talk about YUCK! It was like the guy had never even HEARD of an EQUILATERAL triangle, let ALONE spoke to one NIGHTLY basis! And- HEY!” Dark fingers snap just before his face, close enough that the tip of Ford’s nose is flicked during the action. Ford himself snaps out of his daze and jerks his head back. “ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”

The truth is unpalatable; no, Ford has not been listening. The man flushes and shifts in his seat, clears his throat while his mind races for excuses, for answers, for anything other than the high pitched, blank whine that sounds eerily like the heart monitor of a patient flat-lining. He shakes his head and the sound is cleared, but Bill is still hovering in front of him, arms crossed over his front, eye scrunched with annoyance.

“Uhhh….” So far so smooth. Ford sighs. “No, Bill. I wasn’t. I’m-”

A frustrated sound from Bill cuts him off, his muse throwing his arms in the air. “What is WRONG with you lately, huh? You’ve been doing this whole SPACE-OUT-and-IGNORE-my-MUSE thing a LOT!” The glowing triangle begins to circle around him, inspecting him.

“I-I’ve just been distracted,” Ford says, voice croaking and heart pounding in his chest. Pounding so hard it might crack his ribcage, but his more immediate fear is the idea that he has finally pushed his luck too far; his muse is going to abandon him here and now. Bill is seeing how unworthy Ford is to be his chosen with every loop around him – can probably see it written in his disheveled hair and the bags beneath his eyes, in the hunched slope of his neck as he slouches forward.

“‘Distracted,’ he says,” Bill echoes with an eye roll. He comes to a stop in front of him, and then smooth black fingers touch the tip of Ford’s chin and guide him to straighten and look upwards again. Ford follows, though his eyes remain downcast and lost in the hidden arms of shimmering constellations. “WELL! I can BELIEVE that! But what’s that GOOPY little BRAIN of yours all WRAPPED UP around?”

Ford’s eyes flick up, looking at his muse almost guiltily. You is the only answer to Bill’s question, and Ford’s mouth feels dry even to think about saying it aloud. His dreams – his personal dreams, the ones he doesn’t share with anyone – have been plagued, utterly dominated by thoughts of his muse. The first - kneeling with a trapped tongue, mouths sliding together while damp fingers tangle in his hair to drag him close - seems to have sprung some spigot within him, unleashed a torrent of suppressed longing that bleeds into his every waking thought, that make him almost fearful to sleep at night.

His worst fear is that these idle fantasies will begin to bleed into this place, the mindscape he openly shares with his muse. Bill is still staring at him, no longer glaring but eye wide and blank, pupil shivering back and forth in tiny and precise twitches. It’s an odd expression, and it takes Ford a moment to realize that the muse’s strange mannerisms are because Ford has placed his hands on Bill’s back plane, and his fingers are already running along the shallow, even crevices between each brick, like he’s done this a thousand times.

Well, in a way he has – in his own mind.

Letting out the most dignified yelp of surprise he can muster, Ford spasms in his armchair, hands moving to fly off the triangle’s warm surface. They’re only an inch away from the glowing gold before a pair of smaller hands are pressing them back down, sharp pin-prick claws scratching puffy red lines across his skin. Bill has four arms now, identical in every detail save for one – his newest set is on backwards, the matte black color of them making it look like an optical illusion, the way they bend the wrong way to hold Ford’s hands flat.

“Bill! I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“You SURE know your way around an ANGLE, huh?” Bill says, his expression softening, eyelid drooping. Ford can hear his own thought process grind to a halt.

“W-What?” Every muscle in Ford’s body is tense and bunched, trembling in minute waves. Any movement might break this moment, cause the avalanche of disappointment he knows is coming to tumble. Bill lets out a chuckle and the claws of one dark hand trace delicately down the side of his face.

“Fordsy, have you been holding out on me?”

“I-I don’t know what you mean, Bill.” His whole face feels hot, the tips of his ears burning. Panic is still thrashing in his gut like a wild animal, and he wants to curl in a ball and hide himself away from the all seeing eye, but he stares, wide-eyed and dumb, because this isn’t what he was expecting. He was expecting Bill to laugh at him, to mock him, to throw him out and wish him well in his endeavors, because he was never coming back.

Instead Bill meets his gaze, and the pads of small, soft fingers trace over his lips. Ford shudders.

“Is there something I don’t know?” Bill asks, and he’s so close the small synapse between them feels alive and sparking with heated potential. “Something you’re keeping from me, smart guy?”

Those fingers follow the dip of his bottom lip and then the bow of his upper, slow, again and again, and each pass sends delicate tingles through his body, to the tips of his feet, to his fingers, to his stomach that feels fluttering. Ford presses his hands harder against Bill.

“I have been keeping something from you,” he admits, surprised and embarrassed when his voice comes out a throaty whisper. The words on his tongue make him dizzy – or maybe it’s just the feeling of his lips brushing back along the warm skin of the black fingers still hovering over them. “Bill, I-”

Can’t stop thinking about you. His eyes creak open and Ford’s waking urge is to throw his pillow across the room in frustration.

Another dream.

Bill radiates heat. In most circumstances it’s a pleasant sensation, an almost buzzing warmth that settles on his head or shoulder and sends little prickles shivering out from their point of contact like cracks spreading across an otherwise unblemished plane of glass. In other circumstances it feels smothering, hangs wet and heavy across him while making him aware of the awkwardness of his own limbs, the sudden dryness of his mouth.

“You’ve been quiet lately, Sixer.” And mouths open in the sky and lick at him. “Primitive notion of fiat currency for your thoughts?”

“I’m dreaming,” Ford says, and it comes out stern until a tongue has parted the bottom button of his shirt and is lapping, wet and warm, directly up his flesh. When his hands rush to pull it away, mouths bite at his wrists and forearms to keep him still.

“Yup!” Bill’s drinking tea. “Is that a problem?”

“It’s getting to be-”

“Tired? Redundant? Clichéd?” Bill stretches out his arm, and with a casual twist of his wrist, is pouring his tea over Ford’s head. The man scrunches up his face as thin rivulets of the liquid dribble down his forehead.

“All of the above?” His arms are still held captive, teeth applying a pressure that stays shy of breaking but Ford can swear he feels a tension behind them, a bear trap quivering in readiness to snap.

“Well whose fault is that? Not MINE!” Bill lets go of the teacup, but it remains in its tilted position, still spilling out a tea that had been glossy brown but now, when Ford catches glimpses of it, looks like a dark night sky thick with clustered stars.

“I know whose fault it is,” he says. He laments, more like; this is crumbling around him in a way he’s never been equipped to deal with in the first place.

“How about we try a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT?” Ford’s getting absolutely drenched and the mouths are chewing at his sleeves, gnawing on him. Two dark hands land on either side of his face, and their fingers crook to press at the line of his jaw, at its hinge, at the far end of his cheek bones. “What would I do if I were here?”

Ford licks his lips, catching tea that tastes biting cold and seems to lash him with electricity. Fat globules of the tea hang in the air around them, suspended on invisible strings. Black speckled with shining things, they seem to bracket Bill as though they were under the pull of some cosmic sway, tiny fluctuating universes floating in lazy tandem. He swallows, and squirms under the wriggling ministration of mouths across his body.

“You would leave.”

“BZZZT!” A huge red X replaces Bill’s pupil. The brash light refracts off the bubbles of tea around them, reflecting in a kaleidoscopic and garish array. “Try again, IQ, and this time actually, you know, TRY!”

“You would be disgusted. Disappointed.”

“BZZZT!” Red X.

“You would mock me.”

“That hurts, Sixer.”

Ford scoffs. “You’re not real.”

“And YOU’RE projecting!” Bill brushes Ford’s wet bangs away from his face. “But you’re right – I would mock you. A little.” And then drifts closer. “But that’s not all I’d do.” And then drifts closer. And then-

Another dream.

Or by now, perhaps they should be classified as nightmares. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Ford berates himself as pathetic as he drags himself to a sitting position. His body is slick enough with sweat that he feels a chill when he tosses his sheets off. It's driving him crazy; these dreams haunt him on a near nightly basis, leaving him aching in the morning and desperate to expunge this obsession from himself. As if he could debride himself from the inside out and flush out whatever strange element has built up inside him, has turned his muse into an object of fantasy.

It doesn’t help that his current research has been utterly fruitless. So far his efforts have turned up, to be precise: zip, nada, and nothing. If there is some common source to the weirdness of Gravity Falls, he’s been unable to find it – and Bill has remained relentless and vague on the matter.

”No LUCK in the SPACE SHIP, huh Fordsy?” The triangle had appeared while Ford, still unshowered and exhausted, lay flopped in his arm chair, a practical treasure trove of scientific wonderments wrenched from the bowels of the ship at his side.

“I found a cryogenics lab,” was his mumbled reply. Bill’s eye widened and he zoomed down to the pile, flickering back and forth over top of it to view it from all angles.

“So you did!” Ford cracked open his eyes and Bill was floating in front of him. Ford was barely able to spare a thought on how anything could look so excited just floating in the air. “Wanna know how it WORKS?”

Even with all his muscles tight and tender, his stomach hollow from the unplanned extension to his trip, a burning in his eyes that begged him to sleep for the next day or two, Ford perked up. Fatigue whittled at his bones, disappointment laid across him like a heavy living thing, but he sat up just a bit straighter.

“Would you tell me?”

“Well, under NORMAL circumstances I WOULDN’T; but FOR YOU I can make an exception or two!” His cane materialized in his hand, and he mimed tapping Ford on the forehead with it. “Now UP! And grab that WHRILIGIG down there – hey, don’t look at me like THAT, I didn’t name it!”

And every avenue Ford has followed since has yielded the same results. His muse has turned up, frequent as an unpredictable sun, and most nights Ford can even hold himself together enough that nothing seems amiss. Even with this issue he’s been dealing with, being around Bill is, easy. Fun. Exciting. Interesting. He never feels more alive than when he wakes from one of their meandering conversations, like all the synapses in his brain are firing at once, like the possibilities before him truly are endless, like he could just reach out and grasp his wildest ambitions.

If, sometimes, he flinches away from one of Bill’s casually, overly-friendly touches, well, that’s not the worst thing in the universe (except for the way Bill stares at him afterwards, looking like he was snared somewhere between suspicion and wonderment). Or if he sometimes finds himself without words, or his mind wandering, or his dreams constantly revolving around one particular being. It’s manageable, Ford tells himself.

Manageable.

Somehow, this has all gotten tied together with his search for this leaky faucet of strange-ity. Logically he knows that figuring out the puzzle Bill has set so graciously before him won’t end the purgatory he’s designed for himself – in his moments of clarity, he is even able to admit that solving it and earning his muse’s praise could, in fact, only worsen whatever illness has taken hold of him. But try as he might, he can’t shake the association, so even as he sketches new findings, new mysteries and weirdness, a desperation has been settling deep into his core.

Ford has felt himself winding tighter and tighter over the recent weeks, pulled taut both by his work and his private obsession (scoff here, because obsession is hardly the right word for it), and his only form of release somehow, inexplicably, is the very same entity that has caused both of his other sources of stress. Maddening, at times. But as much as it galls him to admit it, science is filled with many more losses than wins, and both serve as opportunities.

However, in the scheme of the past month and a half, Ford is in slightly better spirits today, even accounting for the ceaseless dreaming. Because today, he has come up with a new place to search.

The cavern looms before him, a pitch black hole in the bright daylight, looking darker still by the bone white trees that flank its sides. It may have been ominous if not for the fact that Ford already knows precisely what was inside. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Nothing terrible has ever dwelled within this cave. He places his hand on the rough bark of one of those slim trees, and he traces his fingers along the rough and gnarled whirls disrupting its surface.

The trees are interlocked in his mind with Bill, with the confusing rush of their first meeting, and all the rushes that came to follow it. His fingers pause. The bark is coarse beneath his fingertips, and cool to the touch. Not like Bill at all, who is smooth heat and sharp, keen edges. Being here alone is enough to cause his heart to quicken ever so slightly, to inspire the tickling sensation along the back of his neck that he knows is only his own mind’s doing; Bill isn’t around to be watching him, and Ford tries not to give a name to the sinking feeling that admission inspires in him.

He pulls his hand away from the tree and ventures closer to the cave, lighting the lantern he’d bought solely for this purpose. Daylight can only illuminate so much within the cavern – a short few feet before the shadows begin to creep further and further in – and Bill’s section of the hollow is far beyond that point. Ford marches in fearlessly. It must have been months since he last visited this place but the pathway to Bill’s carving is entrenched in his mind. He’s always been gifted with navigation.

And it helps that the cavern is a single path, winding arduously down into the ground but never splintering or branching out.

Ford still isn’t sure what he’s looking for - you’ll know it when you see it, smart guy was the helpful answer Bill had finally been coerced into providing him, and that was only after Ford had spent almost a week camping and mapping out the geographical center of the woods. Also, you maaay be taking things a touch too literally, but what do I know? Oh that’s right – everything! I know everything!

The darkness crowds around him, pressing in almost like a physical force, threatening to swallow the tiny flare of light he holds aloft. It is utterly still inside in the cave and the air smells stiff and stale, a room whose door has stayed locked for too long. There are no sounds aside from his own muffled footsteps, not even accompanied by the hollow backtalk of an echo. It’s hard to keep track of time down here, but it’s either a lifetime or a minute later that the tunnel widens out into the yawning dead end wherein lies the effigy that changed his life.

He walks over to it first, the crude rendition of his muse scrawled across the red clay earth and surrounded by prostrate forms. Bill Cipher. Did he go by that even then, or does his name change to remain a pun in every language? Knowing his sense of humor, the answer is probably the latter. Ford’s stomach twists a bit – does he not even know his muse’s true name?

Ford reaches his hand out, but stops short of the mural, fingertips hovering just shy of the ancient markings. Even if he never intends on leading anyone else here, even if he has already documented these paintings in detail, he can’t deny the historical significance of this place in regards to the aboriginals that once inhabited the strange woods of Gravity Falls. Even if some part of him wants to see the yellow outline surrounding Bill’s form smeared across his fingers, even if some part of him wants to smudge a thick black line across the shakily written incantation that roused Bill from ancient memory.

Sighing, Ford drops his arm to his dangle limp at his side, and then drops to the ground in a heavy plop. He shuffles around so his back is pressed against the stone wall, well below the inscriptions. He sets the lantern on the loose dirt floor and the enormity of what he is doing and searching for crashes in like a clumsy bird of prey. What is he even doing down here, what is he looking for? Disgruntled, Ford kicks a booted foot against the ground, sending up a spray of old dirt and a fine cloud of dust to hang in the torchlight.

His mind wanders as he stares off into the dark. Dark that reminds him of the pitch black of Bill’s limbs, a shade so thick and absorbing that Ford could believe all light, every color could be lost within its depths. Which reminds him of those selfsame limbs splintering and bending at too many angles, to clutch at him and to envelope him, to move in rippling mirages and rest at the small of his back or tangle in his hair. Reminds him of thin black fingers clasped around his hand, warm and silkily smooth, yanking him off the ground or pulling him free from riotous waters. He remembers see you real soon and an outsider’s perspective and from his own yearnings, why don’t you do something and his chest burns and aches in the empty cavern.

He thumps the back of his head against the rock wall behind him and hears ringing in his mind but that’s not all I’d do. His fingers clench in the dirt and gather up fistfuls of grainy earth in each hand. It shifts between his fingers like sand and he lifts one hand and watches a small, steady stream of it flow out from his clenched fist. What am I doing here? he wonders, and then out of the corner of his eye, he spots a golden glint amongst the plain brown backdrop.

At first he is content to write it off as a trick of his mind, as the light from his lantern bouncing odd off a rock with sharp and crisp edges. But Ford focuses on it, and staring, the glint doesn’t fade out or diminish in any way. He leaves the lantern where it rests and shifts forwards, until he is running a hand across smooth and forgotten gold. Again and again, he cards his fingers through dirt and over the strange projection. It doesn’t scatter into the foggy fragments of dreams and slowly Ford becomes more and more excited.

It’s hard to make out what this tip of it represents, but Ford digs with bare hands in the raw earth, carving deep gouges into the cavern’s floor. Without knowing the full shape of the object, there is no way of saying where or how to dig, but Ford presses on, heedless of the grime accumulating under his fingernails, almost frenzied by the fervor he brings to his actions.

His mind races with the possibilities – what could it be? This must be something - Bill said he would know it when he saw it, didn’t he? Slowly he excavates, revealing flames, perhaps? A hand, grasping a scroll, a dull and finely cut gem, and arms leading to a familiar sloping side that brings him to an abrupt halt. Ford leans back, loose mounds of dirt packed together in careless piles all around him.

A statue of Bill. Well, perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised, considering the apparent nature of the cave, but why would it be buried here? Why have they warned so heavily against summoning Bill? Ford could admit that his muse was strange but Bill has as yet displayed nothing except the most gentlemanly manner. And a surprising sense of humor to boot.

“Whatcha UP TO, IQ?” Ford jolts, startled out of his thoughts by his muse’s piercing voice and impeccable timing. Bill’s projection dips down and Ford watches his small black fingers phase through one of the piles he’s made. “Digging in the DIRT! A little OLD FASHIONED, don’t you think?”

“Bill!” Ford brushes his hands against his jeans. It hadn’t really bothered him before, but Ford notices now, of all times, how sweaty he has gotten, how much dirt is really covering his hands and clothes, is probably strewn throughout his hair or swiped across his face. “I, uh, yes. I was digging.”

Bill bursts into laughter. “You guys have SHOVELS now, right? Or did I DREAM UP that little bit of human INGENUITY! Cause if SO, BOY do I have a SURPRISE for you! It might LITERALLY blow your mind!”

“I know what shovels are, Bill,” Ford deadpans, which only causes Bill to launch into another fit of laughter. He adjusts his glasses, feeling silly.

“Awww, hey, come on Sixer, don’t get all WEIRD on me,” Bill says. His muse floats closer, and even without touch Ford can feel the phantom sensations of his warm hands across his skin. “Or better YET – DO! I like weird!”

I like weird. It isn’t a phrase that Ford would have expected to find comforting, but something eases in his chest. Of course, Bill is only saying this because he doesn’t know how weird Ford is.

“So, you decided to spend some time scooping up DIRT in the dark, huh?” Bill continues, drifting away to survey the underground chamber. He comes to a pause before his own mural. “Nice ARTWORK down here!”

“I was looking for the epicenter of weirdness,” Ford says. Bill’s bricks reverse as he flips back around, his expression oddly blank.

“And? Did you FIND it?”

Ford sighs. “No. There’s- no.” A large part of him wants to admit that he has no idea what he’s doing, what he’s looking for – that he’s exhausted every angle he can think of, that this was the last idea he’d been able to come up with. Ford clenches his jaw tight and says nothing.

“Huh. Too bad!” Bill’s projection drops to sit on his shoulder and Ford straightens his posture. “And what made you wanna look around in a PLACE like THIS?”

“You, Bill, to be honest,” Ford says. “You might be the single strangest creature I’ve yet to encounter in these woods. It seemed to make sense that the highest concentration of weirdness would serve as the catalyst for the rest.”

“Hmmm.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ford can make out Bill scrunching up in his eye in thought. Then Bill hops off his shoulder, expanding slightly in size as he moves to hover before him again. “Not a bad THOUGHT there, Fordsy – not bad at all!”

“Yes, well, obviously not a correct thought, either.”

“Well I’M suitably impressed – you’re MUCH closer than you THINK, Sixer!” Ford’s immediate answer is to scoff, but then Bill’s words seem to process and he freezes, staring wide-eyed at his muse.

“I-I’m close?”

“Yup! You’re CERTAINLY on the right TRACK, just not looking at it from the right VIEWPOINT yet!”

It feels like his brain might overclock itself – he was right! Maybe he hasn’t slotted it all together correctly yet, but he has the pieces, at last. Something about this place, maybe the incantations? Some kind of carryover from the ancient rituals practiced here so long ago?

“Aww, there’s the brainiac I KNOW and LOVE!” They both pause. “Uh, you know what I mean! No more DOOM and GLOOM, right?”

“Was I that obvious?” His heart is hammering in his chest, and Ford hopes that that, at least, isn’t obvious.

“I can read you like a geometry text book, Sixer!” Ford tries not to panic as Bill drifts just a few inches closer. “Not that I NEED to – I mean, it’s not like you’re KEEPING anything from me!” Bill fixes him with an apprising stare and Ford might be a statue with how ramrod straight he sits.

“N-No! I mean, yes, I- no, I’m not keeping anything-” The words get caught in his throat when Bill comes even nearer, and Ford swears he can feel the heat Bill gives off in the mindscape cascading over his face. He swallows and manages to clear the lump. “From you.”

Bill stays where he is, so close. Ford digs his hands in the dirt, remembering his dreams, Bill’s shocked expression, his fingernails scraping lightly over shallow interstices. He almost, almost expects Bill to call him out on his bluff. Obvious. His breathing seems to have stuttered as well, holding his breath deep in his chest like a pregnant pause, awaiting disaster. And then Bill just shrugs and moves away again.

“That’s what I thought!”

All the air rushes out of him in one heavy sigh, tension draining so suddenly that he resembles a wooden puppet with its strings cut for a moment as he recovers, shoulders slumping and limbs limp while his heart still thumpthumpthumpthumpthumps a quick staccato beat below his ribs. When he looks up again, Bill is hovering over his hand-dug hole with his back plane to him.

“So THIS is what you were so invested in digging up, huh?” His glowing form drops a little lower to the ground. “Well I can’t say I BLAME you – humans sure don’t show devotion like they USED TO!”

“Devotion?” The word sticks to his insides like thick sap.

“Yeah, they SOMEHOW got it into their MAMMALIAN, JELLY-BASED BRAINS that I was some kind of GOD! Seemed like it would be RUDE to correct them!” Bill settles lightly on the floor and makes a movement as though he was kicking a tiny spray of dirt back into its proper place, but of course nothing in Ford’s dimension moves. “It WAS kind of cute, anyway.”

“Why did they bury it here?” Ford asks. Bill levitates back into the air and shrugs.

“Oh, you know how HUMANS are as well I do, Fordsy; once you OUTLIVE your USEFULNESS, they THROW YOU AWAY like yesterday’s bad news!” Bill doesn’t sound too upset by the topic, but unbidden, Ford is thinking of his father and classmates. Of Stan. “ESPECIALLY when you’re WEIRD!”

“I like weird,” Ford echoes, and he glances at Bill a moment before dropping his gaze to the still half buried sculpture. “That is to say, you like weird – so do I.”

“I KNOW you do, no worries over here!” Bill is in his face in an instant, a weird tingling, prickling sensation across his scalp as Bill mimics ruffling his hair. “You and me til the END, right pal?”

Ford grins up at him. “That’s right.” Whatever that end may be.

“Hey, how about a little REWARD for getting so close to cracking my PUZZLE! One last HINT!” Bill circles around him.

“Oh – right now?”

“Nah, just the next time you’re in the MINDSCAPE – no hurry! Until then, REMEMBER: the FABRIC of REALITY is only as THIN as you BELIEVE it is!” Bill tips his hat and with a bright flare of light that leaves spots swimming across Ford’s vision, he is gone.

Even awake, their meetings have a surrealistic edge to them, fuzzy at all the corners and as Ford sits alone in the cool, dark cave he almost has a moment to wonder if any of it had ever been real at all. He waits a moment or two, and then once he is sure Bill is gone for good for the day, Ford shuffles back over to the statue and continues digging.

When he finally leaves the cavern, the sky is a smeared painting of pinks and golds, the rich colors seeping down from among the clouds to cast their hue dully against the bone white trees. When he gets back to his cabin, he’s almost panting with exertion, arms aching from having carried solid gold through the woods. When he collapses boneless on his couch, it is only for a minute of rest, and then he is running a wet cloth across the statue, over and over again, until its pristine form is clean and gleaming once more and he can see shimmery reflections glistening in the gem’s facets.

When he goes to sleep, the statue sits on his desk across from him and glimmers in the dark.

When he wakes in the morning and rushes over to his journal, he doesn’t notice how its pupil seems to track his every move. And when Ford, overwhelmed, writes one frantic, jubilant sentence, he doesn’t hear the howling laughter echoing just behind his ear.

The muse has spoken!