Bang, bang, bang! Pepper knocked hard on the wooden maroon door. A man had just finished moving in yesterday. She hadn't gotten a good look at him because she didn't want to spy, but she knew it was a young man with a lot of smaller boxes and no furniture as far as she could tell. Butterflies flew around in her stomach as she waited for him to answer. In her mind, she yelled at them to sit still.
After a few intense seconds of waiting, the entrance finally opened. Pepper didn't know what she had expected, but the man that stood in front of her was not it. He had an unkempt mess of yellow hair on his head, and wore an unevenly buttoned yellow flannel with black pants and black socks. One thing a little out of place about him was the large black top hat set on his head. He had a bandage covering one eye, a cast on one of his hands, and several cuts, scrapes, and bruises over his skin. They all looked fairly fresh.
Pepper paused for a second and blinked before saying anything. "Hi, I'm Pepper, welcome to the neighborhood!" She finally said, with fake enthusiasm. The man leaned against the door post and crossed his legs.
"The name's Bill Cipher," he said, trying to sound cool. Pepper could tell he was pretty young to be living alone in a mid-sized house.
"You look a little young to be living on your own," Pepper voiced her thoughts. Bill raised an eyebrow.
"So do you. What are you...seventeen?" He said, squinting in fake observation of her.
"I'm twenty-two," Pepper laughed. Bill's mouth fell open in shock and he slipped on his socks, desperately trying to catch himself. This only made Pepper laugh harder at him.
"Hey," Bill said. "Not funny. I could have reopened one of my cuts."
Pepper stopped laughing. "I'm sorry. You're right."
"Eh, it's fine," Bill assured her. Pepper still felt bad about it, though.
"I don't mean to pry," Pepper began, "but what happened to you, anyway?"
"Long story," Bill said. "Really, really long story. It'd take the rest of the day to tell. And I don't have time for that."
"Hmm. Well it was nice meeting you," Pepper said. She waved goodbye to him and left.
Pepper didn't see him for a whole two days after that. It was only after she pulled into her driveway after a day of work on Tuesday afternoon that she saw him again. Well, before she saw him, she heard him.
"PEPPER! IS THAT YOU?" He exclaimed. The sound was coming from his backyard. Pepper rushed to the fence separating their yards.
"Yeah, it's me," she said. "What's wrong, Bill?"
"I seem to have fallen into a sticky situation," he said. "You have a car, right?"
"Yeah..."
"Well I need you to drive me to the emergency room."
Suddenly Pepper became very worried. She rushed out of her backyard and into Bill's, shocked to see him lying on the grass with his leg bent at a weird angle and several of his cuts and scrapes bleeding. The bandage around his eye had also come loose and had started to leak fresh blood. Pepper dropped her keys, and quickly picked them back up.
"What happened!?" Pepper exclaimed, rushing to his side.
"I may have fallen off the roof," Bill shrugged, as if it was an everyday occurrence. He didn't seem to be in any pain, either, despite all the bleeding, and his leg. Pepper noticed his hands were behind his back.
"Here," Pepper said. She grabbed his arm and put it around her shoulder. She was slightly taller than him, but supporting him all the way to her car would still be no easy task. As soon as both hands were out from behind his back, he collapsed on the ground and yelled in pain. Pepper wasn't sure what to do.
"Bill...?" She asked.
"I'm fine," he struggled to talk. Pepper took his arm again and helped him stand on the leg that actually looked alright. Slowly, he hopped to her car, leaning on Pepper the whole way. Pepper couldn't help but wonder what he had been doing on the roof. And he was wearing the same clothing as two days before, but this time with shiny black shoes instead of socks. He'd seemed pretty normal at first, but now she wasn't so sure about him.
Pepper dumped him in the back seat of her car and let him lay down. He put his hands behind his back and sighed in relief, as if that brought him comfort. She started the car and zoomed out of the driveway, heading towards the hospital slightly above the speed limit. If she got a ticket for this she was making Bill pay for it.
"Thanks for doing this, Pep," Bill said. "I hope it's alright if I call you Pep. You look like more of a Pep than a Pepper to me."
"It's fine," Pepper said. She switched on the radio and a random song came on. She didn't know the name of the song or the artist, but it had a lot of acoustic guitar and she liked it.
"I have no idea how he wasn't screaming in pain before we gave him the medication," the nurse explained to Pepper. "He's got bruises and cuts all over, plus he further injured his already broken wrist. And there's this nasty burn on his back. Do you have any idea what happened to him? He refuses to tell anyone."
"Well, just today he fell off his roof," Pepper said. "But he's looked like this ever since he moved in two days ago. I'm sorry, I can't help you."
"That's too bad," the nurse said. "He's pretty young, too. I'm a little worried about him. If we let him out before he heals all the way he might re-injure himself."
"Nah, I'd keep a close eye on him," Pepper promised. "Can I see him?"
"He's a bit loopy from the medication, but yeah."
As soon as Pepper stepped into the room Bill was in, she knew something was wrong. He was just sitting on the hospital bed, foot elevated, frowning and staring at the wall. Even when he had been in the back of Pepper's car, he'd been faking a smile. In the few hours Pepper had known him she'd never seen him frown. It was weird. But as soon as he noticed her, the frown vanished.
"Pep! Heeey there," he said. He did sound quite loopy. "This pain medication really works, way better than magic. Man, I'm sleepy." He yawned. Pepper wondered what he meant by "magic". It was probably just the medication speaking for him.
"Hey, Pep, I know you just got here, but would you mind if I took a nap? I didn't get any sleep the past three days. Not even a minute of shut-eye," Bill said. Pepper was surprised but didn't react outwardly. Now that she thought about it, she could use some sleep as well. Stress was hard on her, and that afternoon was certainly stressful.
"I don't mind," she began. "Actually, I'm going to go home and take a nap myself. I'll come back and visit you later."
And with that, she left.
