Chapter Text
Being a siren, in Stan’s humble opinion, really fucking sucked.
It was bad enough that Stan had gotten his ass beat and then tossed off a pier into the ocean by the last gang he had pissed off. It was even worse when he started to transform into some kind of fish creature as soon as he touched the water.
He had scales all over him now, a shimmering blue-green color, and razor sharp teeth and claws. His ears and eyes were now distinctly fishlike. He had gills now, which meant that he couldn’t spend more than a few minutes outside of the water anymore.
And the goddamn merman tail instead of legs. Can’t forget about the merman tail.
He had assumed for a while that was what had happened. He had been cursed to become a merman by some person he’d pissed at some point off over the years—probably in an event totally unrelated to the gang that had left him for dead in the ocean. Stan was just that good at pissing people off. It had probably just been a rare spot of good luck that the curse had prevented him from drowning and given him enough strength to escape his bindings once the initial shock wore off.
It had taken nearly every other sea creature, mythical or otherwise, rejecting him and swimming away in fear to figure out what he was. A siren. The type of sea person who ate other sea people. And also non-sea people. As their main diet.
Everyone was super confused that Stan found this upsetting for some reason. Like not wanting to eat people made him the weird one, for some reason.
Those first few weeks had been hard. He couldn’t even try to make headway on breaking the curse, because he couldn't leave the water for more than a few minutes. The only time he had tried, he had ended up having to drag himself back up the shore into the ocean while he air-drowned. Daily survival became his first priority. At first, Stan had hoped that he could link up with some other sirens while he figured out what to do, but it turned out that other sirens sucked too. Not only were super unhelpful about answering his questions, but they were also extremely territorial, sometimes to the point of violence. They had no helpful suggestions for how to survive beyond basically saying “get over your weird phobia of eating people, new guy.” Which was not super helpful, in Stan’s opinion.
So the other thing about sirens: they hypnotize people. The other sirens called it enthrallment. It was basically the main thing they did. They didn’t go out and hunt their prey for the most part. They sat and waited for their prey to come to them, drawn in by whatever form they forced their prey to see. It was pretty gruesome.
Stan had watched the whole process from a distance once, and afterwards he felt like vomiting. Could fish even vomit? He didn’t know, but he still felt like it. He felt even worse when the blood in the water had drifted his way, and he had felt a pang of hunger so strong he nearly started swimming towards the carnage. He swam away fast after that. He wasn’t going to start killing and eating people. He couldn’t. But he knew he couldn’t just subsist on whatever (non-sentient!) sea creatures he could hunt down. Which he wasn't even that good at, anyway. Fish were fash, and small, and slippery. He needed a better option.
Not too long after that, as it somehow always did for Stan, things somehow got worse. Stan was kidnapped. Fish-napped. Whatever. Apparently, there was a viable market for kidnapping “exotic supernatural creatures” and selling them to the highest bidder, or at least that was what he had figured out from listening in on the conversation of the two “monster hunters” who had captured him. He had been sitting on a rock near the shore, munching on a raw fish and enjoying a few minutes of sun while he tried to figure out what to do next, when a giant net had suddenly pinned him to the rock. Then they had tranquilized him and then dragged him on board their boat.
Unsurprisingly, two so-called monster hunters wouldn’t listen to Stan’s arguments that he wasn’t really a siren, he was a human being, and you guys don’t want to be human traffickers, do you? But as soon as he really got into his argument, the guys had hit him with a second dose of the tranquilizer, and the last thing Stan heard before everything went dark was one man talking to the other: Remember, he’s a siren, idiot. You can’t look at him or listen to anything he says, you’re going to get enthralled.
Admittedly, Stan had been so panicked that he hadn’t even thought of trying that. But afterwards, he never got a chance to. After that conversation, the two men studiously avoided eye contact with him and only came into the same room as him with industrial-style noise cancelling headphones.
At some point while he’d been really out of it, Stan had been stuck into a glass aquarium that he barely fit in, not even big enough to fully stretch out in, and then loaded up what he had to assume was the back of a truck. He had thought about breaking the glass immediately, but even if he could, he would suffocate without access to water. His previous testing had revealed he could last at most six or seven minutes before he seriously started to struggle outside of the water.
Stan just had to wait for the right moment. But the right moment never seemed to come. By the time he woke up from the tranquilizers, something in him told him that they were miles from shore. So he let them drive. The two guys fed him irregularly, and mostly in pet store fish pellets, which was both humiliating and not at all enough nutritionally speaking. He was starving, scared, and something inside him told him that he was countless miles from water, and only getting farther.
It was hard not to dwell on his own misery in that little tank. What if they sold him to some kind of freak show? To a scientist who wanted to cut him up or do experiments on him? To some fucked up hunter who wanted a trophy on the wall? He had nothing to do but dread.
But slowly, something changed. Stan didn’t know exactly how he knew, but something in him told him that he was getting close to a body of water. He just had to wait. So about four days into the drive, when that feeling in his chest told him that the time was right, Stan had used his claws and fists to break the glass, and then struggled to the floor of the truck, trying his best to avoid the wet broken glass that now covered the floorbed of the truck. He pulled himself to the door of the truck, was relieved to find it wasn’t locked, and then threw himself out.
It was bad. Stan knew as soon as he hit the ground that he’d be bruised for weeks, or worse. But nothing felt broken, and there was only a little bit of glass stuck to his tail. So he dragged himself forward, towards where his heart told him that there was water. Luckily, he only had to drag himself for a few minutes before he saw the shoreline of a lake, and he gratefully threw himself in and could breathe again. Then swam to the deepest part of the lake, and then he carefully started to pick glass and rocks out of his tail.
As he found out over the next few days, it turned out it was a public lake in Oregon. Called Gravity Falls Lake, named after the nearby town. Stan had never heard of it. Not the greatest place for a siren to live—the open ocean had been a good deal that he hadn’t even known he had. In the ocean, it had been easier to hide and easier to find food. But at least he could breathe, and there were enough fish that he wouldn't immediately starve.
But there weren’t really that many fish, unfortunately, and Stan still wasn’t that good at hand-catching them, though his skills had improved a little. He still needed a better option, and a lake had significantly less options than the ocean.
The better option, Stan had found, was to lure in boaters, and then while they were enthralled, steal their lunches.
Most of the people on the lake were casual boaters, out with friends or family. Stan tried to go for people fishing alone or for small groups—he had a hard time enthralling more than one person at a time. So he tried to go for single fishermen, mainly. The first time he did it, he was sure it wasn't going to work, up until the moment the fisherman's eyes glazed over and he started... heading over Stan's way and flirting with him?
So, for most people he encountered on the lake, it was a hot lady. That was fine, he supposed. They would probably be pretty disappointed if they could see the truth and found out that he was really a fish dude. Although, for some people, it was a hot dude. Which Stan didn't really mind. He’d done enough Hunky Drifter Catalogues to get it. They would probably also be pretty disturbed that he was really a fish dude, although maybe some of them would still go for it?
So, when he first started doing it, he assumed everyone saw a hot babe whenever he was enthralling people. Gradually, though, he was starting to realize that they weren’t. The things they muttered didn’t really make sense if it was only that.
The sirens who actually deigned to talk to him and didn’t immediately try to throw him out of their “territory” had tried to explain it to him once. A siren showed people what they desired. Which, yeah, for a lot of people, was a hot babe. But for other people, it could get a little more... obscure. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure what people were mumbling about as he rummaged around their boat looking for lunch. Paying off their mortgage? Getting a book deal? Finally finding appreciation from their family after years of being taken for granted? How was that even being shown to them in a visual way? Stan didn't understand it, but luckily he didn't need to understand it to do it.
It was sort of fascinating, actually, to see how diverse people’s deepest wishes actually were. There wasn’t really anything he could actually do with the information considering he still couldn’t leave the lake, but it was neat to know. Hearing enthralled boaters mumble their deepest desire was kind of like having a conversation.
…yeah, he might be a little lonely. Whatever. Other sirens were jerks. Normal people ran away screaming when they saw him unless they were enthralled. He didn’t need them. He didn’t need anyone. He definitely didn’t feel jealous of all the happy people he saw all day everyday, out boating with friends and family members who loved each other. He definitely never thought about any boat-related dreams he had once had when he was young.
Stan had everything he needed. He had an open lake. He had the fish hunting. He had the avoiding the other lake monsters. He had the stealing people’s lunches. He had the dealing with the constant, almost gnawing weight of his hunger that nothing but the fresh blood of a kill seemed to be able to fill.
He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to eat people. He would genuinely, truly rather starve. And that was a very real possibility, unfortunately. There were only so many fish in the lake. He spent most of his day hunting already. And, still, he was hungry all the time. Eating a fish or two barely helped lessen the urge anymore. He needed something substantial.
He needed—nope! He wasn’t going to let himself think about it. Thinking was the path to doing, and as long as he was still Stanley Pines, he wasn’t doing it.
So that’s how it was. Stan was lying on a rock in the middle of a lake, staring at the sky, trying not to think about how hungry he was, when he heard another boat approaching. He maneuvered himself around in the boat’s direction. It was a small thing. Single engine, not very fast, probably wooden and cheap. Not a great sign for a big lunch, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He still wasn’t totally sure how to activate “enthrall mode.” Probably something he could’ve learned if other sirens hadn’t been such jerks. Luckily, the singing part seemed to be optional.
Which was great, because Stan sucked at singing. Usually he just got up a rock, struck a pose, and kept staring intently in the direction of the boat until he was noticed, and thought really hard about enthralling them. That usually seemed to do the trick. Once the boat was in boarding range, the people inside were usually pretty susceptible to his influence. He could tell them to do pretty much anything.
Stan had wasted more than a few afternoons making tourists do dumb poses after he’d scarfed down their sandwiches. It didn’t seem to do any lasting harm. He wasn’t really sure if they even remembered it after the enthrallment wore off naturally and they left. Probably not, considering the number of repeat customers he had gotten over the past few weeks. They probably just figured that they had ate their lunch and then forgot about it.
But usually, he just told them to stop the boat, asked where they were keeping their lunch, made a little idle conversation, and then sent them on their way. He felt a little sorry for them sometimes, especially the ones with kids. He hoped they just went home afterwards, and no one had nightmares about giant fish men with razor sharp teeth stealing their potato chips.
Ugh. Stan was getting soft. He knew it. It was just hard, sometimes, to be around all these happy, normal, well-adjusted people, a lot of them families, just having a normal day at the lake. He had forgotten for a long time that happiness like that even existed, and now it was being shoved in his face every day. Normal people, living normal lives. The fact that the world wasn’t all betrayal and pain and loneliness and how quickly you could run when things got bad.
The little single engine boat was getting closer. He could see in the distance the silhouette of a single man. Again, not really a great sign in terms of lunch. He preferred bigger groups, who, while they were more difficult to enthrall, would hopefully pack a big lunch and lots of snacks. Hell, he’d even take a solo fisherman at this point. Stan was hungry enough that he wasn't above eating bait. It was just protein when it came down to it.
The man in the boat was getting closer now, slowing as he approached Stan’s rock. His vision outside of the water wasn’t exactly amazing now as a siren, not that it had been the best even before. But… the man in the boat was looking kind of familiar. He squinted his eyes as the man got closer. What was it? Something about the hair, maybe? Kind of curly, and fluffy, like he hadn't bothered to brush it in days. And underneath the glasses, the face-
Stan made a noise very much like a squeak. (It definitely wasn’t a squeak, though. He was just surprised, that was all.) Because underneath the glasses was a face almost completely identical to his own, at least before he’d been turned into a siren. Stanford was staring straight at him. He was a little older than the last time Stan had seen him (curtains closing, a look of pain and betrayal on his face), but still clearly recognizable as his twin brother.
His eyes were glazed over, an absent smile on his face—clear signs of enthrallment. Stan stared at Ford in horror for a few moments. He had just enthralled his brother. Oh, God. He hadn’t meant to…
How was it, out of all the lakes in the world, Stanford had to come onto his? What were the chances of that? And what was he even doing here? He glanced down into Ford’s boat. There were a few science-y looking instruments that Stan couldn’t even guess the purpose of, and a small cooler. In Ford’s lap, there was a journal, with a six-fingered handprint on the cover.
Sweet Moses, Ford was still writing his dumb diaries. Sorry, “scientific research journals.” He always used to get pissed off when Stan called them diaries.
Stan examined his brother closer. Could he snap Ford out of it? He had never tried to before. Ford’s gaze didn’t follow him as he slid off the rock and swam closer to the boat. He just stayed straight ahead, his eyes glazed over.
“Stanford?” Stan tried, leaning over the edge of Ford's boat. “Uh, sorry about this. I didn’t mean to, uh, hypnotize you.”
Would Ford even recognize him like this? He was pretty, uh, scaly, at the moment. Would he be afraid? Stan felt a little sick at the thought. What was Ford even seeing right now? He didn’t really want to think about any of his brother's “desires.” Seriously, gross.
He waved his hand in front of Ford’s face. Tried to snap his fingers, which was actually kind of hard with all the scales and the claws. Ford seemed to come back to awareness a little. He blinked, then his gaze snapped back to Stan’s.
“Greetings!” Ford said, excitedly. “Are you a siren? Can I interview you? Erm. I mean, my name is Dr. Stanford Pines! I’m working on a study and it would be a really great help if you could answer a few of my questions!”
“…what?” Stan said, blinking. He withdrew a little, swimming the short distance back towards the rocks, giving his brother a baffled look.
Ford seemed almost manic, his eyes wide. Was his brother on something? He had flipped open his journal and was scribbling something in it. “Where did you come from? Reports of your presence on the lake only began to come in over the last month. Did you migrate here recently?”
“Uh,” Stan said. “You could say that.”
What was Ford even talking about? Had his brother had apparently become some kind of monster hunter? He’d heard from Ma last time he talked to her that Ford had graduated college sometime last year. So his brother had gone to school and gotten a fancy degree, and then became… a monster hunting scientist.
Hunting after a man-eating predator. In a tiny wooden boat. By himself.
Wait, what was he talking about? Of course Ford would do that. This was exactly like his dumb cryptid-loving brother. Ugh. His brother was the stupidest smart person Stan had ever met. Ford would probably have loved being turned into a siren. He would be overjoyed to find out that there was a siren right in front of him who would be willing to answer all of his dumb, nerdy questions.
If only said siren wasn’t Ford’s life-ruining twin brother.
Could… could Ford seriously not tell that it was him? It was literally impossible for him to have forgotten what he looked like. They were identical twins, for Moses’ sake. And Stan could still see his own reflection in the water. It was the same, really, except for the scales.
…okay, on second thought, maybe the scales were really that distracting. It was possible. He could look at his own reflection in the water, but he still didn’t really know how bad this all looked from the outside.
“So how does it work?” Ford said, excitedly.
“How does what work?” Stan repeated dubiously.
“Your powers! I was clearly under some kind of hypnotic suggestion as I approached you. I thought I saw—well, it doesn’t matter. Let me see…”
Huh. Was Ford getting out of the boat?
“Hey there!” Stan said, putting a hand up in warning. “Watch where you’re stepping.”
The tiny boat lurched dangerously as Ford stood up. But he didn’t tip the boat over. Instead, in one swift move, Ford hopped off the boat and onto the rocks where Stan had been lounging. Stan scrambled up the rocks to keep his distance, but Ford followed him.
“I just wanted to make some closer observations for my sketch,” Ford said, sitting down on the rocks. "Don't move."
Stan stared at him in shock, and, huh, his eyes were a little… unfocused still, weren’t they? A little glazed over, even if Ford was able to track his moments now. Ford could move on his own, could write things down in his diary, but he wasn't really acting like himself. Was his brother still partially enthralled?
Stan felt a pang of fear. If his brother hurt himself now, when he was this out of it, it would be Stan's fault and no one else’s.
“Hey, buddy, how about you get back in your boat now?” Stan asked, his eyes darting around nervously.
Ford was still scratching someone down in his journal. His voice was distant when he answered. “Just a minute. You’re so fascinating to look at up close. How do your gills work?”
“Uh. To be honest, I don’t really know. Sorry.”
“Would you be interested in allowing me to conduct a full examination? I could take you with me back to my lab!”
Jesus. Stan didn’t care if this was his brother. He wasn’t letting anyone dissect him in their creepy scientist laboratory.
“I can’t leave the lake,” Stan said, carefully.
There. That was a good excuse. It even had the benefit of being true.
Ford nodded. “Hmmm, yes, of course. Because you can’t be out of water for that long, I assume. I could create some sort of mobile transfer device…”
Stan snorted. “What, like a giant fish tank on wheels?”
He tried not to think of the tiny aquarium those monster hunters had stuck him in. That was in the past. He couldn’t afford to dwell on it.
“Perhaps,” Ford said thoughtfully, and oh God, he sounded serious, didn’t he? Stan didn’t care that it was his brother. He wasn’t getting captured again. He had barely survived the last time. And the idea of his brother being the one to poke and prod at him and feed him fish pellets was painful. Ford looking at him with no recognition was hard enough. Ford not even treating him like a human being… Stan shook his head to dismiss the thought. He wasn’t going to let that happen. No way in hell.
Ford got up again, looking surprisingly contemplative for a man who was at least partially being enthralled into compliance. Then he swayed, almost like he was drunk, and Stan’s heart dropped. Maybe Stan could just fully enthrall him again and put him back on his boat…
Just as Stan was moving in to try to steady his brother, Ford cried out. Stan’s heart rate tripled. Stan saw what happened in slow motion. Ford had tripped on the rocks, falling onto his hands and knees. A long line of blood now ran down his lower leg.
Ford looked really out of it now. He sat back on the rocks, staring down at his injury like it didn’t quite make sense to him. He let out a soft noise of pain, and with it, Stan felt his heart break a little.
“I don’t…” Ford said, softly, clutching his journal close to his chest in a protective way. “Lee? Where… where am I?”
For a moment, Stan's mind went blank with shock at hearing his old nickname from his brother’s mouth. But Ford wasn’t really talking to him, of course. His eyes had become unfocused and hazy again. He wasn’t even looking at Stan. He was just talking to whoever he was seeing in whatever vision the enthrallment was giving him.
Probably it wasn’t even Stan he was talking to, in the vision. Lee was a pretty common name. Yeah, that made sense. Most likely, it was a different Lee entirely.
“It’s okay!” Stan tried to keep the panic out of his voice, and didn’t fully succeed. “Don’t worry, Sixer! Don’t move. I’ll take care of you.”
He swam over and desperately searched through Ford’s boat for a first aid kit, and sighed in relief when he found one buried among all of Ford’s science junk.
“Sorry, sorry, shit, please don’t move,” Stan said, but Ford just kept staring straight ahead.
Ford was still very pliable as Stan tended to his injury. His lucidity seemed to have vanished after he’d been hurt.
“Lee,” Ford slurred as Stan propped up the injured leg. He smiled in Stan’s direction, vacantly. “Missed you. Missed you so much."
“Sure, Sixer,” Stan muttered. Ford was just talking nonsense now. But at least he wasn’t frightened, or in too much pain.
He reached for iodine, which was kind of difficult with scales and claws all over his hands—this would sting, but the lake probably had tons of nasty shit in it. He didn’t want his brother's wound to get infected.
Ford barely flinched as Stan cleaned and dressed the wound, seemingly totally uncaring about the sharp toothed predator in his personal space. It made sense, in a twisted way, that the enthrallment would increase as the prey became more injured. After all, who wanted a meal that started to fight back as you got the first bites in? The thought put a chill down Stan’s spine.
Another even more disturbing thing: Ford’s blood smelled good. Like, really good. Fancy steak dinner good. Stan felt another hunger pang as his body registered the smell. And then he felt so guilty for thinking about his brother that way that he squeezed his fists shut, digging his own claws into his hands. It hurt, bright and furious and immediate. Good. Hopefully his appetite for human flesh would fade for the time being.
Stan wasn’t eating anyone. But even if he was, Ford would be the last person on earth that he ate. He would start munching off his own arm before he even thought about touching Ford.
Ugh. He needed Ford gone, now, while he collected himself.
“C’mon, back to the boat with you,” Stan said gently, leading his brother back to his boat, more carrying him than leading him as he plopped him back in his seat. Ford looked around, still dazed, and he didn’t move.
Stan studied Ford’s boat again. Hmmm. Ford’s cooler was still there. He felt another hunger pang.
Well. He doubted that Ford would miss a few sodas and a sandwich. He made Ford drink a water bottle and eat a peanut butter sandwich first, though. He did this by setting them directly into Ford’s hands, and then saying, “C’mon, Sixer, gotta replenish those red blood cells.”
“Hmm,” Ford said slowly. “I suppose so…”
And then they ate together. It was nice. Kind of like when they were kids during the summer, and they would take their lunches together on the beach. Ford still had that kind of scary blank look on his face, eating and drinking robotically. But it was still his brother, by his side for the first time in years. Still right there, real, and close enough to touch.
He left Ford in his boat after he was finished eating, though he made sure to watch from a distance to make sure his brother made it safely back to shore. Which he did, about twenty minutes or so after the enthrallment wore off. Strangely, Ford kept looking around the boat, as if he couldn’t quite understand what had just happened.
Or like he was looking for someone.
Whatever. He would probably never see Ford again. Stan tried to ignore the pang that thought sent through his chest. It was just what made sense. Even if his brother was some kind of monster hunting scientist, (what did Ford used to call it? Crypto-zoo-something?) he certainly wasn’t dumb enough to come back to a siren’s hunting grounds after being successfully enthralled and then injured.
Yeah. There was no one that was stupid or suicidal enough to come back after having an up close and personal encounter with him.
Stanford had come back to himself completely by the time he made it back to the lake's shore. He grinned to himself, sitting on the dock, writing down notes quickly so he could get all his observations down while they were still fresh in his mind.
Wow! The siren had actually been receptive to his questions. That had never happened to him before. Usually when encountering the paranormal entities that lived in Gravity Falls, even the ones that understood human languages, they either ran away, rejected him, or violently attacked him.
His interviewing technique must have improved! All that practicing with Fiddleford must have really paid off. Speaking of Fiddleford, he would be so excited to learn that Ford’s trip had been a success. Fiddleford had been so worried beforehand about Ford getting eaten, so Ford hadn’t even mentioned that he was going out to look for the siren today—now he knew that there was nothing to worry about. All in all, it had been a very successful day of field research.
He glanced down at the bandages covering his leg. Well. Even that was a sign of success. It confirmed that the siren in the lake didn’t have any hostile intentions toward humans. Just as he had suspected when he had first heard about the strange reports of boater’s lunches going missing while on the lake. For whatever reason, this siren didn’t consume human flesh, which was inconsistent with the available research on the subject. Further investigation would be required.
He was a little embarrassed that his hypothesis on his own immunity to the siren’s hypnosis had been completely incorrect. Ford had assumed, since he had never really been interested in romance or sex, that whatever visions of beauty that the siren would conjure up in his mind would hold no sway over him.
But it wasn’t a vision of beauty he had seen as he approached the siren. It was a face, as familiar as his own. It was of a boy, no older than 17, looking just as he had been the last time Ford had seen him. The false Stanley had smiled at him, had called him Sixer, and for a moment all the years of loneliness, all the years he had been without his twin vanished.
It was hard to think about even now. Had the siren revealed some great truth about him? Was what Ford really wanted, deep down, deeper than his ambitions, deeper than his dreams of widespread recognition and success, was to be with his brother again? He tried to tell himself it wasn’t true, but it was hard to summon up his usual righteous anger after that vision of Stanley had been right there in front of him. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t need his twin and he didn’t miss his company either. It felt like a hollow lie even in his own mind.
So. Fine. Perhaps he missed his brother, despite Stan’s betrayal, despite the fact that even all these years later, Stanley had never once reached out to apologize or to even see how he was doing.
For a moment, Ford wondered what the real Stanley was doing right now. An image of that seventeen year old boy who had looked up at his window with desperation all those years ago flashed in his mind again. But… that wasn’t what Stanley would look like now. He would look like… Ford caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the lake water.
Yes. Stanley would look a lot like that now. Ford looked away from the water quickly.
He… he couldn’t think about Stanley right now. He needed to focus on the siren. The odd thing was, even after the siren had snapped him out of the hypnosis, he had reminded him of Stanley too. His voice had sounded like Stanley’s, just a little gravelier. And he had looked a little like his brother too.
It was surely just a lingering effect of the hypnosis. It was probably best not to dwell on it.
After all, he needed to make plans for when he returned. He wondered if Fiddleford could get started on a mobile tank big enough for an aquatic humanoid today.
Ford found himself smiling again as he left, a new determination in his steps. First contact had gone very well, all things considered. Now he needed to continue to build trust and convince the siren to allow him to do further tests. He would need to redouble his efforts to win the siren's trust. He would never do experiments on a sapient being without their permission, obviously. He wasn’t that kind of scientist. But he felt like he had established a good foundation to build trust. And surely the siren must be interested in learning more about their own biology.
For whatever reason, possibly a side effect of the hypnosis, Ford felt like he knew this siren. Like he could trust him.
He really needed to ask him his name the next time they met.