#priority 1 is calm ford down priority 2 is find a quiet place to freak out for a while about almost dying again

[billford-dump]

Bill and Ford getting into a fight, first verbal, then physical, and then it escalates and suddenly Ford isn't fighting because he's angry, he's fighting for his life because it's kill or be killed and he's so far from home and earth and his brother and everything familiar-

Bill is... Well, no real human could ever come back from something like that. But Bill, impossible as always, sits up from the pool of blood and pushes the pieces back into place and grimaces as they rearrange themselves to where they belong, and he says he's sorry.

Ford isn't a naturally violent person. He doesn't like to fight, or hurt people, but thirty years have brought some feral part of him dangerously close to the surface, ready to be unleashed at a moments notice. Bill didn't mean to push that far, thought he could predict Ford's limits better, but he was wrong. He admits it, and apologizes, even as his body knits itself together with the power he can barely use anymore and blood stains the floor and his clothes and fills the air with a metallic smell.

Ford hasn't lost control like that in years, since even before he came back. He's gotten close, gotten animalistic, but never completely lost it like that. He's scared, but Bill isn’t upset, Bill says I'm sorry and I love you and it's... not fine, but a little bit more okay than before.

Bill isn't quite as okay as he says he is, physically or emotionally, but at that moment Ford is terrified of himself and he needs Bill to be okay. And Bill, for all his rage and bitterness, still cares for this pathetic, dangerous old man. He can pretend, at least for a little while.