A/N: It's never outright said in the story but both Ford and Fidds are asexual in this story, with Ford also being quite aromantic.

This story is also inspired by a conversation I had with my sister in which she didn't really get the logic behind two friends marrying for tax benefits.

1972

"So, why would you want to get married?"

Ford stared at Fiddleford from where he was working on his latest research paper at his desk. "What?" he asked a bit ineloquently.

Fiddleford rolled his eyes and plucked out another chord on his infernal banjo. "Class this morning," he elaborated in a not quite grammatically correct sentence.

"Oh, that." Ford rolled his eyes and returned to his paper. Human Sexuality was an absolutely unnecessary requirement for a degree as far as he was concerned – they weren't in high school any more, damnit – but it was one he had to suffer through nonetheless. "I don't know," he sighed.

"There has to be one reason," Fiddleford contested, acting like one of the hunting dogs on his family's farm that he was so fond of going on about.

Ford sighed, putting down his pencil again and racking his brain for ideas. Stan – his brother – people he had gone to school with had insisted that girls and kissing them were the best thing on God's green earth, but Ford didn't believe that was true. "Tax benefits?" he finally offered, recalling one of Filbrick's many lectures on money management.

The banjo sounds stopped with a noise akin to a car running over a cat's tail. "Tax benefits?" Fiddleford repeated, sitting bolt-upright on his bunk. "Stanford Pines, that is the most unromantic hogwash I have ever heard!"

"It's true," Ford repeated stubbornly. "Married couples receive – "

"I don't give a turd in a pig pen if that's true," Fiddleford said bluntly, paying no attention to Ford's scoff of disgust at the expression. "What about love?"

Love, Ford wondered. Of course he'd love someone if he'd ask to marry them! No one chose to make a life with a person they couldn't stand! He said as much to Fiddleford who stared back at him stonily.

"That ain't romance, though," he said, once Ford was finished speaking. "That's pure pragmatism." He flopped back down on his bunk and started talking, waving his hands in the air to illustrate what he was saying. "Romance is when you can feel that you love someone, way down in your soul. When they kiss you it's like stars behind your eyes and fireworks in your brain. Romance is love, when you'd walk to the ends of the earth for them just because they said so. You know?"

"No," Ford said, wondering vaguely if he was the only one who didn't. "Like sex?" he offered, slightly angry at being so invested in this conversation.

"Lord, no," Fiddleford said, shaking his head. "Romance."

"There's a difference?" Ford asked foolishly.

"'Course there is!" Fiddleford said, lapsing into another bout of poetry that sounded more like something out of Milton than how people actually spoke. Picking up his banjo again, he strummed the first few notes to the Beatles song Ford had never seen the point to. "All you need is love," he sang, looking in Ford's direction.

Ford sighed, settling into his chair and picking up his pencil. As much as he tried, he couldn't focus on the basics of general relativity anymore. "I still don't see the point," he insisted over the twangy song.

2013

Ford approached the lab bench where Fiddleford was working in the newly re-furbished Northwest mansion. "Do you remember the conversation we had in college?" he asked.

Fiddleford turned around and grinned. "Which one?"

"The one where we disagreed," Ford said, attempting to lighten the stone in the pit of his stomach with a joke.

"Which one?" Fiddleford repeated. Holding up a hand, he began to check off his fingers. "There was the one about the sweet tea, the one – or ten – about the banjo, the one about the computermajigs – which you were still wrong about – "

"The one about love," Ford interrupted, feeling uncomfortably like he needed to get the conversation back on track.

"Yeah," Fiddleford said slowly. "What about it?"

"Well," Ford began, wishing Mabel and her "love expert" advice were here with him, "I, ah, may have re-considered my stance on the issue."

"Is that your way of saying you don't think taxes are the only reason two people should get hitched?" Fiddleford demanded with a grin.

The sight of his smile eased the tightness in Ford's chest and he attempted to smile back. "Yes, I believe so," he said.

For all his other talents, Fiddleford had always been exceptional at reading others' emotions and Ford wasn't surprised when his eyes narrowed slightly. "Stanford, what in tarnation are you trying to tell me?" he asked.

Ford brought his hands out from behind his back, his carefully-prepared speech evaporating in the heat of the moment. "Will-you-marry-me?" he blurted all in one breath. "I mean, that is, in suitably platonic fashion – "

The stream of words was cut off by Fiddleford's tight hug. "All you had to do is ask," he muttered. "'Course now we'll also get those benefits you were yammering about thirty-five years ago."

Ford chuckled, still tightly gripping the ring box. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with you," he said, voice rough with unshed tears.