Roleplay

His eyes widened again and he didn't know how to respond. If he didn't currently need the air so much, he probably would have held his breath. As it was, he tensed a little and immediately regretted it. Was she hallucinating?

"Pi, I-I'm Dot. Do you th-think I'm Bill?"

She'd only ever looked at Bill and Stan like that. And was she running her fingers through his hair? Now he was even more confused.

She frowned a little at his question.

Where did that come from?

"You have blue hair and different eyes and came home bleeding profusely," she enumerated, the smile she wore showing that she wasn't scolding him or anything, that she wasn't all that serious with her answer but still so goddamned sincere. "Well, Bill and pretty much everyone else had done the last one, all times obviously unpleasant. What a family we have."

Her cross-shaped pupils bore into his hyphen-like ones.

"Can you..." she paused to swallow rather audibly. "...can you promise me to be more careful from now on? I might not show or say it, but I still care about you, okay?"

Because Dot was already so mature whereas Bill still had tendencies to act like an excitable child from time to time. It was...harder to approach the former and treat him like how she did her other boys with how he carried himself as someone so independent and firm.

And that was a mistake on her part that was almost a lost cause.

"...I'm not lying, baby. I do care."

If only Bill had known Pi's opinion of him ... well, perhaps it was ultimately better for everyone that he did not.

Something in his chest eased when he heard Dot speak, however thick and clotted his words, around the blood still filling his mouth; but the words ...

"Do you th-think I'm Bill?"

As though Bill were the only one that mattered. He shifted around Dipper, gripping him so tightly—You're not getting away that easily, his boy had said, and was apparently suiting action to words; Bill felt a flare of pride, clear as a bell across their heightened bond—to wind his fingers into his hair.

I did this. I made Matrix think he wasn't worth spit. This was my fault, and if he sicced Stanford on me—so what? Maybe I deserved it. Maybe, so that I wouldn't hurt— His slitted cat's-eye flickered to Dipper, although his demon's thoughts were curiously opaque, like window-glass glaring in the setting sun.

... someone irreplaceable, it would have been better ...

This thought, alone, was enough to make Bill stiffen his resolve not to return to Dot any of the pain and bleeding he had stolen from the memory-demon. Instead, he pressed the heel of one slender, long-fingered hand to the righthand side of his breast, shortened his breathing, and smiled, generally, between Dipper and Paz.

"M'fine," Bill said, in sunny tones. "Never been better. Well, except for the damn cough, but I had that before, so ..." He cleared his throat; the sound was like ripping velvet, thick and edged with something that might have been a gurgle.

Tears gathered in the corner of Dot's eyes.

"W-what... You... You do?"

He'd never known. But if she did care...

"I'll..... I'll try."

*

"Come on, please use some of that goop stuff?" Dipper pleaded. He doubted Bill would be able to resist that voice.

Sure, he felt bad about trying to manipulate Bill on purpose (that might have trickled down the bond, but he wasn't sure) but his demon needed it. If Bill insisted that he was cute...

Eh, why not use it?

If Bill had been in any condition to do more than curl a little more tighter, a little more protectively, around Dipper, to keep from—


Lost in his vision—sitting cross-legged and staring vacantly, his eye fully dilated as he stared across a vista no one else here could see.

Although Bill tried to swat, to kill it, it evaded him with supernatural ease. Magic mosquitos, Bill reflected glumly. Great ...


When had he begun to cry? Something warm and wet dripped into Dipper's hair in the moments before he lifted his head, to try his hand at the manipulation his demon found so worryingly effortless, the fluid too thin to be blood.


"O-okay," Bill breathed, shivering. Haunted would be one way to define his expression; terrified would be another. "Goop, sure. Whatever you say, kiddo." He tightened his grasp around Dipper, although—to the boy, at least—there seemed no comprehensible reason for it.

Stan very briefly fantasized about strangling everyone in the room, before deciding that it didn't make him feel any better. Then he thought about simply getting up and slitting his throat, and that worked a little bit better. He let out a slow breath, "Alright then, you two," he pointed at Paz and Dipper, "Get Bill back upstairs, and if I see any one of ya three anywhere but the attic without a good reason, I'm grounding your butts and locking you up there."

"Pi," his eyes flickered to his demon, as he stood up stiffly, keeping Mabel in his grip as he did so, "We're taking Dot to the couch in Soos' break room. Him and Mabel will sleep down here for a little while, Sunshine can take her bed." He glanced down at Mabel and tried for a grin, "Sleepover with me 'n' Pi sound alright Pumpkin?"

Finally he turned to Ford, and glanced at the table still covered in now chilled food. "Ford if you would-"

Ford stood with a sigh and waved him off, "Yeah I got it, I'll take care of everything here." Stan sighed, tossed the nanites at Paz, who caught it and offered it out to Dipper before looking back down at Mabel. "Alright then. You good to go?" His eyes caught the note and feather that Sigh and dropped and wondered if anyone would question it if he groaned. He made a note to snag it before Ford saw it, seeing as his brother had enough to worry about for the moment.

"Sounds like a plan, old man."

She turned back to Dot then, smiling softly at him. Her hand moved out of his hair to brush a few stray bangs from his forehead, her fingers leaving a gentle, slightly ticklish trail on his skin.

"And of course, I do," she answered, moving her thigh so that her other hand could hold his head up. "You're so....mature, Dot. I was unsure if I'd come off either too naggy or weirdly clingy in your eyes. Maybe I should've stuck around a little closer, huh?"

She cupped his cheek, her thumb stroking the outline of the bone in tender sweeps.

"I will always care, baby. And it makes me happy that you're still here."

Her smile stretched into a warm grin.

"Now, that floor must be quite a pain in your back, hmm? How does the couch in the spare room sound?"

Dipper felt the hot tears soaking into his hair. They weren't repelled, like water from duck feathers, like they didn't matter. Instead, they became a part of him.

As Bill held him closer, he could fear Bill's steady pulse in his chest, slightly elevated due to the emotions Dipper could feel leaking through the bond. Perhaps his demon could feel Dipper's own hummingbird heartbeat in return.

"Okay Grunkle Stan," he said, looking up at his uncle for a brief moment. "That sounds like a good plan to me." But...

"... I don't know how to use it." He sounded a little sheepish as he took the machine from Paz. "Is it an injection...?"

*

Dot smiled too, then, eyes glittering. "Th-thank you." He knew that Pi would know what he was thanking her for. Sometimes... Being cared for felt nice. He leaned into her touch, just slightly. She was right, thought; he had, for all intents and purposes, become an orphan demon, reverted to child size and strength. He had been forced to be more mature than usual, independent, lest someone unkind come and steal him away for some wicked purpose.

Then something flicked inside him and he was seemingly back to his usual self, though with occasional coughs and a raspy voice. "Yes, the couch d-does sound like a good idea. Though..." With his free hand, he plucked at the still-damp blood-drenched clothes he wore.

"Can I maybe wear some of the other clothes Miss Pacifica bought for me?"

Mabel huddled against her Grunkle Stan for a moment longer. She wasn't sure if she could bring herself to touch—

(so much blood, her brother was covered in so much blood, and she knew that bodies were laid out for funerals because of the one or two she had attended with her family, old friends or relatives, but—

but not HER BROTHER, and WHY hadn't Grunkle Ford cleaned him up first, Dipper hated to be dirty unless it had something to do with the paranormal or his research or—)

Mabel gasped, wrenching herself from the memory with an almost physical force, resisting the downward spiral that undertow drew her down into. She stayed in her Grunkle's lap, but reached for Dot, to lightly touch his face—not a caress (she was so scared, so scared), but something like enough.

"D-Dot ... ? Let's, let's get you someplace m-more comfortable, o-o-okay?" Her smile, tremulous with tears, did not reach her wide eyes, swimming with tears of pain and loss and heartbreak and bitter self-hatred.

(Dipper had held his demon, although Bill was covered in Dot's blood—and maybe he had held him, too, after Grunkle Ford had shot him, although Mabel determinedly did not ask—so what was wrong with her?)

---

Bill was not far enough away from the knot of concerned parties around Dot not to be able to overhear Pi's words.

They grated on him like sandpaper rubbed across raw, exposed nerves, cruelty beyond imagining—

You're so ... mature, Dot

—and wasn't that just the way? It was Bill who had run out into the forest after Dot had thrown his hissy-fit, Bill that had brought him back to the Shack although he hadn't been at all certain he had the strength to teleport not just himself but his injured colleague as well—

Bill who had unhesitatingly taken on as much of Dot's injuries as he could bear, and even a little more than that—

And yet Dipper—and Paz, to a certain extent—had been the only ones who had bothered to acknowledge that. And Paz ... well, Paz.

"You don't seem to have much of a problem," Bill bit out, "being clingy to me." Without his careful concentration on concealing the outward indications of his inward hurts, the snarling sibilants of his vicious words were punctuated with fine sprays of too-bright blood, frothy and thick. "Or patronizing. Or condescending—oh, never mind."

Bill wiped his mouth, conscientiously, on the back of one long, slender hand, concluding with a low growl that Dipper would feel thrumming in his demon's aching chest, "You're not worth my time. I've got my job to do. And at least my charge doesn't stare longingly at sharp objects—"

He let the silence stretch out, until it had passed way beyond uncomfortable, and well into harrowing; then he finished, stretching the word out in a verbal coup de grâce, "Guardian."

Then, with nothing further—he had considered snapping an obscenity at Stanley for giving him what he had taken in his present mood as commands, but found he just lacked the heart to make it as blistering as he'd like—Bill tightened his arms around his boy and drew on that coruscating brilliance that represented Dipper's own core of power.

Between one blink and the next—nothing tilted this time, at least, although Dipper would suffer from a maddening ringing in his right ear for several hours—they were free from the blood-drenched kitchen ... but nor were they in the attic bedroom. Instead, around them in all directions, an endless expanse of grass untouched by the least breath of wind; dead stars shone above, too still to twinkle.

"Sh*t," Bill muttered, from his place sprawled more or less facedown in the cool grass. "Didn't mean for this to happen; let my damn mind wander ... oh, well. S'good a place as any, I guess." He patted the ground beside him invitingly, his eye very bright, the pupil dilating and contracting as though his eye was breathing in the light.

Dipper was surprised by Bill's words and surprised by their destination but he didn't show either of those things. He just plopped to the ground next to Bill, still clutching Ford's machine.

He worked at it, trying to puzzle it out as he sat, thigh pressed to Bill's side, staying close in reassurance that he at least was there for Bill. (He knew Dot needed care, between those awful wounds and the quiet, diminished way he'd been walking around lately, but they couldn't just drop Bill. He'd needed help too, after all.)

"I think, since you don't have any cuts on the outside... I have to use this needle thing. Could I inject it around your collarbone so it's near your throat and neck?"

He tried to sound convincing again, but seemed to have lost the ability. Instead he just sounded a bit pathetic.