trying something new with my writing, so i'm not too satisfied with this one sigh but i'll just leave it here
warnings / mild depictions of gore, (mentions of) eye gouging, tough love
It was hardly that he was afraid of them - possibly indebted to them, yes. Their intimidation tactics, though, were far from unpracticed, he found himself admitting moments after their initial meeting—from the lidded glares to the thorough depictions of blood and gore in their threats, both were a little too well acquainted with cruelty. More often than not, he found himself trying to avoid situations that involved dealing with them in hostile frames of mind; demon or not, mortals had strange ways about them, ways that even the most unnatural of creatures seemed weary of. The shortness of a lifespan makes people seize the moment in ways that should not be sought after.
He ran a leather gloved finger under the healing cut that lined his lower eyelid. It was a thick tear in the skin, stretching in its breadth from nose to temple, that she had made and used to remove - gouge seemed more appropriate - a once functioning sight organ. The stitching was novice at best, uneven and swollen under knotted thread, wound still tender, damp and yawning in its bruised yellow frame. The stitching itself had been hard to do with the tunneled vision of a single eye - but it was a necessity if he wanted to keep the body in okay shape until his worn out spiritual energy could contribute its share. The bleeding remained constant at intervals, tied with blinks and tears, his pain ever-present; the healing process, he found, was more painful than the moment of infliction. It was a mortal form of regeneration, he assumed, but the pain and energy taken to regenerate an eye was more than his beaten form could accomplish. Any supernatural tasks in such a body were taxing.
The eye had grown back slowly, and the pain it took to do so was unbearable. He was just thankful that he'd gotten as far as he had with only minor blackouts. His fingers removed themselves from contouring his face, blinded eye blinking back in the mirror, as his palm reached out to paint over the sight of a whitened iris with gentle strokes. Disgusting, he sighed with a thick swallow, repulsive.
"I thought you might be here," the voice was monotonous, footfalls light and slow, "if I didn't know any better, I'd call you vain with how often you stare at yourself in the mirror."
His breath hitched in his throat at the sight of the figure behind him, slowly poking its way into the frame of the washroom mirror. His palms fell to the edges of a spartan sink, foul with greens and blues and yellows and coats of unmentionables. Fingers tightened as his eyes fell off the edges of the man, humbled to trace the slight tears in his evening gloves. There was something about Dipper Gleeful that made it hard to look him in the eye.
The man was nothing like his sister—yet he was everything like her, and no knowledge of years helped Will understand him. He had stood and watched as that witch carved into his face, still and stoic, his face an impeccable mask of practiced indifference—if once could even refer to it as a mask. Dipper was a factor in everything that caused him misery, even by staying idle in the framework. He gave his sister the power and the support in silence and obedience, and Will wasn't sure why the man did it. It was most definitely not out of love, or fear—and Will was young, so young and new to human dynamics to understand what else could possibly drive a human to do anything at all with such industry.
But then there were moments when they weren't in her presence, moments where - despite his lack of zeal - Dipper showed him something close to, but not quite, humanity. A palm through powder blue hair when he sweat out his fever, or a mindless brush of the lips against his temple; never quite a kiss, and never laced with any emotion save instinct. There were moments like these, when they were alone and Dipper would actually speak to him.
"Sorry," Will's voice was low and a little hesitant, swallowing the worry in his chest. It was almost pathetic how human this form made him - how susceptible he was to such mundane emotions such as fear.
"Mabel was asking about where you were. She wan't pleased."
When is she ever, Will knew better than to answer aloud. She saw and heard everything that went on within this godforsaken tent. He let out a strangled hum, letting his eyes - or what remained of them - slide closed. "I'm sorry. Did she need something?"
Dipped droned, and Will could visualize him cock an indifferent head, "not particularly."
Ah, she needed something to vent her shit onto.
"Well, I'll see to that immediately. I was cleaning my wound," he lied easily. It was easy to lie to Dipper. Maybe it was because the man didn't care - about anything - or maybe it was the courage that came when Will wasn't looking him in the eye. He wasn't sure, but in either scenario, Dipper did not care enough to point it out. "It—it's all swollen." He breathed in frustrated disgust.
"Yes."
Will sighed; Dipper wasn't one for words. He was not the unnaturally intelligent one, and he was hardly the alpha twin - Dipper was simply an uncaring bystander to the volatile, capricious nature of his sister. "How long ago?" How angry is she going to be?
"An hour at best. Have you been cleaning your wound for an hour?" It was cynical. Yes, Dipper was not intelligent, per se, but dear Ra, was the boy observant.
Will knew better than to lie again. This mortal body could only take so much before collapsing, and collapsing alone would only yield some other grotesque consequence. He opened his eyes, "not particularly."
"Does it hurt?" He couldn't help but smile at the dead-apathy that laced the statement. If he tried hard enough, he could almost pretend that the man cared about him. That was all it was though, a game of pretend - because even Will wasn't naive enough to mistake morbid curiosity for worry. Dipper may not even be fascinated at all, maybe it was a forced attempt at pretending to human because god knows that isn't the natural conclusion people come to when they speak to him. Sometimes I feel as though even I am more human than he is.
"It's fine." Will spoke with a finality he didn't possess. It was not authoritative, it was feeble; a small plea to let the conversation drop faster than a man on the gallows. Trembling fingers reached forward, grabbing the roll of gauze that was set by a filthy looking bar of soap, cracked down the middle and stained in grey. His knuckles and joints throbbed as he unraveled the translucent fabric, their color shifting against skin and bone in a nauseating shade of darkened wine. The torn gloves hid little from his sight. Licking his lips, he held the bile tight in his throat.
"Give it here." Will's eyes widened, flitting to the mirror. Dipper's arm was stretched towards him, palm opened with long, bare fingers curled at the tips. His eyebrow was raised.
"That's really not necessary, I've been doing this for almost a week no—" Dipper hadn't cut him off, but Will's voice died in his throat when the man hadn't reacted in the slightest. He hadn't retracted his arm or his offer. With a heavy heart - a mortal idiom that seemed too real in that moment - Will turned around, resting the small of his back against the filthy sink. He wanted to be as far away as possible from the Gleeful boy, but the small stall seemed far too narrow in its size to allow for such a thing. He placed the roll in Dipper's outstretched palm.
Even with one eye and dimmed light, Will couldn't help but marvel at Dipper in such proximity. The man was without a doubt lovely in every way, from the length of a sharpened nose to the dip and swell of full lips; even his lidded eyes, pale and flat with disinterest had Will's breathing in a tight knot, lungs suddenly too swollen in his chest to function properly. He'd seen this boy grow - from a short child with a knack for giving him miniature heart attacks when he showed up unexpectedly, to a man who towered a decent handful of inches above his own human form.
"It's bleeding again." Dipper pointed out obviously, running his thumb across the gash. Will winced when the other began pressing down on the wound, blood trailing out in dollops from behind stained thread. The liquid wove itself into the creases between Dipper's finger and thumbnail, braiding down a knuckle when he pressed especially hard. Will's eyes slipped shut as he did his best to rein in the whimper that threatened to rise from in between his split, bruised lips. "Are you going to cry?"
"Do you want me to?" It was strained, and pleading.
"I'm not sure," the only modulation in Dipper's voice was a quaint hum, his finger loosening its press, "you're pretty when you cry."
He brought the bloody finger pad to his lips, sucking lightly before Will's fingers shot out to wrap around his wrist and drag it away. "That's—that's unsanitary, you really shouldn't do that!" His voice was a little pitched, high in panic but low in sound lest someone overhear. Nothing about Dipper's expression spoke of amusement, but Will couldn't help feeling that he was. Dampened by burgundy and saliva, Dipper reached out his thumb, tracing a thick red line across the demon's lower lip, to high on the opposite cheek bone.
"You're very pretty when you cry." Dipper removed his thumb in favor of trailing his index finger along the lines of Will's teardrop tattoo, one that rested high on his cheekbone, a pale ivory smudged in blood. "You should do it more often. Is that why you have this?"
I think I do it too much, "Uh, no? It just sort of appeared, I suppose."
"You suppose?"
"I don't really remember." He could've lied. He could've said it came with the possessed body, but even Dipper knew his body was one he'd manifested himself. "I just—woke up with it one day. It's hard to explain, I mean, lots of things are, ya know? What're tears even made out of—transparent body ink? water? why're they salty—shouldn't it burn? It's one of those things, aha, ha," Will touched the back of his neck, looking to the side while silently cursing himself for rambling. He was just thankful that Dipper didn't seem to mind it as much as Mabel did. He was surprised at the tender touch that pressed a square of gauze onto his bleeding wound, patting gently.
"Close your eye." And he did, obeying silently. He felt Dipper lean forward, reaching behind him to grab the antibacterial, chest inches away from Will's nose. He could smell the incense and smoke that lined the royal blue shirt, and it wasn't supposed to be as comforting a smell as it was. The moment hadn't lasted, and the contact - however brief - was missed. Instead, a burning sort of sensation followed after as Dipper pressed the alcohol lined fabric to his wound, dabbing it twice before securing it over his eye with something unseen. Will didn't know what that was or when Dipper had even cut the fabric from the roll. Unsettled, he opened his healthy eye, looking up at him curiously when large hands went carding through his hair, fiddling at the back.
Will couldn't help the involuntary step forward he took, pressing closer to the man. It must have been some Stockholm Syndrome that caused a strange submissiveness to take hold of his limbs, but it wasn't something he was able to help, especially when Dipper's fingers fell from his hair to the indented curl of his nape, tugging him forward sharply. It was a sudden move, but only slight, across a short distance that allowed Dipper's nose to line the length of his own, thumb brought up to stroke the fabric over his eye.
An eyepatch.
Will's eye lidded, breath falling short as he stared at the bottom half of Dipper's face, allowing the man to trail his nose upward, nuzzling him. He wondered whether it was his own sick imagination or god's sick reality, but an entity of some sort helped him feel the hollow mumble of beautiful that was breathed against his face. Will's eye fluttered and rolled to a close, a sated hum escaping him. Yes, he was forever in-debt, and forever grateful for this man; the man who understood his insecurities and remedied them without him having to use a stuttering tongue to articulate pain or pleasure. Two palms rose to cup his neck, just high enough to break the line of his jaw, before tugging him forward into Dipper.
The kiss was a soft one, a meaningless one - as was everything with Dipper Gleeful. A press of moving lips that sung in gentle, wet parts of air, soft noises breaking the dim atmosphere that seemed to fold around them, a parody of a lovers' exchange. Will's pale lashes knit his eyes shut, allowing the darkness in his mind's eye to curl into the darkness behind his eyepatch, no sight save the blindness that did more poetic justice to the situation than he would've liked to admit. For a twittery, easily rattled individual, his body held its stillness like virtue, instead, allowing nothing but short ending nerves to light and burn at the long fingers that ghosted over the column of his neck—a thousand little brushes.
One of Dipper's hands fell, from shoulder to chest to the dip of his abdomen, fingers pressing into his pelvic region, pushing Will back into the ceramic sink. He hissed, teeth clenching to break the kiss—it hurt, his back, his stomach, and although untouched, his eye. Given a moment to recover was all he had before Dipper fell into him again, the taste of pomegranate gum spreading over the back of his teeth. Persephone's irony, he thought, trying not to break down into an emotional mess. With every press closer, every heave of his chest that brought them nearer, left Will out of air, out of mind and straight out of options. Soon the pleasure washed out, fingers wrapping around thin thighs to heft him onto the sharp lip of the sink, without regard for comfort.
Dipper's teeth held onto Will's lower lip with abandon, piercing skin and drawing red as he drew back. Will gave a choked cry, fingers gripping into the sides of the sink as he was pulled forward. Dipper released him at the gentle sound, using his thumb to smear the blood along Will's lip. Whether it was the lighting or not, he didn't know—but Dipper held a ghost of a smile.
Absolutely deranged and absolutely absent.
Will looked up at the sight, feeling an idle tear slip out the corner of his closed eye, brushing the stained tattoo as a red tear fell from his lips onto the white tile. It was involuntary, that violent sob that tore from his chest, his lungs caving in, emotions strung on a thin thread between sanity and rationality. His neck craned back, torso rocking as wail after loudened wail broke surface, his own palm coming up to rub and claw at his face, nails tearing at his own skin, smearing tears and wiping at blood. How pathetic could one get, he wondered, how vile and dependent did one have to be to fall in love with his own demons—with a sick, sick man, who was never taught how to pronounce the word, much less understand it. His heart, unnatural to the law of life, throbbed and swelled in the confines of his chest, it made it so hard—so, so hard to breathe.
Will didn't need air to survive, but this body did and it hurt.
Dipper's monotonous lull shushed hum, hands holding his face in place. Will voice was raw, hiccuping and gasping on his own tears—disgusting was the one word he deemed fitting for himself. This anxiety and self-loathing were the epitome of his love, this is what he had to give: nothing—not that he would ever get anything in return. Fingers brushed at his face, and he couldn't help but hold the palm to his cheek, leaning into it, hungry for any form of physical contact.
Dipper's smile was small and distant as he leant in once more, tongue tracing the blood from the bottom of his chin upward to his lips. Will pretended he didn't hear Dipper when he spoke. He also pretended his heart didn't break for the millionth time when he was left alone in a dimmed stall, with nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the hissing of a flickering lightbulb as idle company.
"Yes, you're so pretty when you cry, my love."