A/N: This was a pretty light-hearted ask on the Transcendence AU blog, but I turned it into something a bit heavier through the process of writing it. OF COURSE.
Gravity Falls belongs to Alex Hirsch.
For as long as Bentley could remember, his life revolved around his father's one true passion: The Alcorian Myth Cycle.
As a child, he had been read bedtime stories where Alcor took children on their wildest adventures in exchange for a tub of ice-cream, where his wife Mizar would act as a mother to those who had none. Where their daughter, Gliese, would run hand in hand with children of all descents while her guardian, the Woodsman, would shelter them from all harm.
As a young tweener, Bently devoured crime-fiction and thrillers based on Alcor's one ally and old flame, the Huntress Wenda, tracking and discovering the monsters that threatened humanity, even when they turned out to be monsters themselves. He was given a giant holo-poster of Wenda, back-to-back with Alcor the Dreambender and Mizar the Gleeful, fending off the encroaching darkness.
As a teenager, however, he entered the public school system. Within days of his introduction to the rest of society at large, he came to the realization that all the books his father had printed and bound for him, all the works he illustrated and all the art he created concerning the Alcorian Myth Cycle were lies.
Alcor the Dreambender was a demon, believed only by the most insane to be a protector of children and by the rest to be a terrible force of evil against humanity and all allied with it. Mizar was his sister, but she was also his wife, and their controlling romance unsettled Bentley. Wenda wasn't their friend, Gliese was a horror of fire and mercilessness, and the Woodsman was an agent of vigilante justice that saw no shades of grey between the white and black.
So the next time Bentley saw his Dad obsessing over the Alcorian Myth Cycle, he found the courage to speak up.
"That's not how it goes, Dad."
His father looked up at him, wide-eyed behind his lenses. "Not how what goes? Oh, the base text I'm using?" He tapped a holographic version of the genesis of the Alcorian Myth Cycle, Twin Souls. "It's a lot better than the translations you can find online! Transcendence-age English is quite difficult to read on its own, but I'm finding that going from the original source is quite helpful!"
Bentley was quiet, and then crossed his arms over his chest. He'd worn his favorite, most bolstering neon orange shirt today, and he was glad of it. "Well, Twin Souls isn't how it goes either."
"Eh?" His dad turned around in his orthopedic chair, hands encased in their stress-reducing wrist-gauntlets. "Oh, you mean the stories themselves? Well, scholastic research indicates that they were probably more highly-popular with the masses and were likely referred to as 'bodice-ripper romances' rather than literative romance, but there's bound to be a kernel of truth in this."
"Twin Souls is gross." Bentley had tried reading one to prove his classmates and teachers wrong, but he hadn't gotten but two chapters into an opensource translation before he had to skim the rest.
His dad grimaced and glanced to the side. "Well, yes, in some ways. But you cannot deny that it has inspired more research into the anomaly that Alcor the Dreambender is, in addition to producing the possibility for the existence of the Alcorian Myth Cycle! It's all quite fascinating."
Bentley felt a rush of irritation. "It's wrong. Alcor isn't like that. "
"Um," his dad was looking just a bit concerned, and his words came out more hesitantly. "There's…there's actually no evidence that it is necessarily wrong. Again, we do not have much proof for or against his temperament, only that he is quite odd when it comes to demons. That being said, we do not have much proof against concepts played with in the Alcorian Myth Cycle; in fact, one researcher believed that Alcor was actually originally human, and this nature is what his contrariness comes from. That's actually interesting, I wonder if I—"
"Alcor is a powerful demon who is capable of horrors never before imagined," Bentley said, teeth gritted. "Not a creepy gnome-aggregate wannabe, not a former human, and definitely not something that people should be getting the wrong idea about!"
"Bentley, I—what's wrong?" His dad stood up and reached out to place a hand on Bentley's shoulder. "Is everything okay with school? You've been moody lately, and—"
Bentley stepped back, hands fisted around the synthetic material of his sleeves. "You're what's wrong! It's all your fault!"
His dad's glasses fizzed and sputtered, the blue holographic corrective lenses adjusting to the different light exposure. Bentley reflected that he'd only seen newer models at school, and asking about them had only brought up sarcastic questions and disbelief.
Suddenly Bentley really couldn't stand to be in the same room, and turned on his toe, crossing the two feet from his dad's office/living room/dining room into the hallway and slamming the door behind him. For a moment, he stood in the cramped space, breathing harshly and knees shaking. Then, he shook himself and continued to his room, opening the door and dropping his off-brand MagiOrb School Supplies bag on the ground.
He closed the door, then slid down it, frustrated and confused and upset all at once. Bentley put his hands over his mouth and then let out a low-pitched screech, drawing in on himself until he felt like he would never move again, his muscles locked into place; a living rigor mortis.
Funny how that was preferable to ever leaving his room again.
"Rough day?"
For a moment, Bentley didn't even realize that somebody had spoken. It took him a while longer because of the static ringing in his ears to realize that somebody had spoken in his supposed to be empty room.
Alarmed he lifted his head and pressed himself against the door, and found himself staring into gold irises on black sclera.
"Huh?" he croaked, because there was only one demon who had that particular coloring and Bentley had never ever actually summoned Alcor the Dreambender in his life.
The demon grinned, two sets of too-sharp shark teeth gleaming white in the MagiTech lights, and gripped the brim of his floating top-hat. He tilted it and leaned on his cane, still standing on the thin air just inches from Bentley's bed. "Alcor the Dreambender! Pleased to make your acquaintance again, Bentley Josh Farkas."
Bentley blinked, then pushed himself back up to his feet. He glanced over to his writing desk, stacked high with holo-book readers and inundated with old-school scrapbooking material. He might still have that adhesive-spray, maybe he could snag one of those pre-made anti-demon runes and attach it to the demon.
He looked back, only to shriek and push himself against the door again. Alcor's face was right in his, eyes wide and almost manic-looking. Under his bangs, Bentley noticed in the way that distraught people always observe, there looked to be the beginnings of an odd sort of marking.
"Nah-ah! I mean, you could try, but I wouldn't even bat an eye." The demon made an odd noise, like a giggle but with more reverberation attached, and his eyelashes suddenly turned into flapping bat wings. "Haha! See? Bat an eye!"
Again, Bentley screamed. This time, however, he fell to the floor and stared up at the demon, wondering what he had done to deserve this and wasn't it enough he was being picked on incessantly at school?
"You're being picked on?" Alcor drew back and his eyelashes went back to normal eyelashes. He drew his legs up underneath him and lay his cane across his thighs. "Hmm, that's not…ideal. But hey, all the other Mizars turned out well, even if some were bullied!"
Mizar?
The world screeched to a halt and Bentley felt a cold pit of nausea build at the bottom of his stomach. Mizar?
Alcor sighed and placed his chin on his palm. "Though I do guess that not all Mizars are the same; even Mabel had issues for a bit, though she never wanted me to scare them off. Hey! That's an idea! You wanna give up a treasured object? I think I could swing some bully haunti—hey, you okay? You're looking a little…" He uttered a word, filled with eldritch terror and booming aftereffects, and shook his hand in a so-so gesture.
With a gurgle of despair and hopelessness, Bentley James Farkas keeled over in a dead faint.
Being at school the next day was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he didn't have to deal with his father awkwardly hovering and asking inane questions that used to be brilliant. He also didn't have to hole himself up in his room, which had become remarkably less safe-feeling once he'd discovered that a demon could just waltz in.
It was, however, still a curse because it was school, and he'd already been labeled either a demon-loving freak or a morbidly naïve know-nothing. In fact, Bentley had been purposefully bumped into twice, his lunch table avoided by everybody, and was given calculating stares by five of his six teachers. The Preter-studies teacher was a blind empath, so he didn't give off that 'I'm-watching-you-vibe' the others did and therefore didn't count.
Probably, Bentley thought as he shoved his MSS into his bag and headed to his last class, because empaths typically had this touchy-feely way about them. Plus, Mr. Myeong was blind, so it's not like he could pinpoint as frighteningly well as the other teachers.
Bentley wondered if he could loiter somewhere after his mandatory MagiTech class just to avoid going home for as long as possible. Maybe the library; he could read up on this stupid obsession of his father's and compile all of the contrary evidence to Dad's theories. He would go during MagiTech class, but the school would probably think he was off doing dangerous demon things.
He grumbled and sidled into the classroom ten seconds before the bell.
"Cutting it close aren't you, Mister Farkas," Ms. Hu drawled, raising her eyebrow and tapping her finger on the holographic display board. "Take your seat."
He nodded, fiddled with the strap of his MSS bag, and picked his way to the back of the classroom. It was silent, but he could feel everybody staring, and the sound of the bell's soft chimes legitimately made him jump.
Somebody snickered. Bentley stared at the laminate flooring and felt his cheeks burn with shame. Moments later, he slid into his desk and pulled out his MSS with soft, ginger motions. Hyper-aware of his own actions, knowing that people were staring at him without looking up to confirm, Bentley thumbed the MSS on and prepared to take notes. He hunched in on himself, half-listening to Ms. Hu.
"MagiTech is the hallmark of our collective islands, created, as you all know, in the aftermath of the Disaster of 2048 nearly a millennium ago," she said, and the lighting in the classroom changed, more thin holographic blues and faded lime greens. They lit up his MSS in stripes and shadows, and he pulled the sleek touchpen out of its side compartment to begin taking notes and drawing diagrams.
"Here is the most basic of MagiTech forms: the ancient, original MagiOrb 1.0, an opensource piece of MagiTech capable of being created by nearly any individual. This technology is the basis of current MagiTech, including your MagiOrb School Supply tablets."
Bentley went to glance up through his dyed-yellow fringe at the holographic board and nearly let out a shriek. As it was, he emitted a strained gurgle that evoked odd looks from his nearby classmates.
Instead of seeing the technical schematics of the MagiOrb 1.0 (which was taught more for semantics than real application) being shifted through in three-dimensional form by Ms. Hu, all Bentley saw was Alcor the Dreambender's upside-down form.
"I haven't seen too much bullying going on today," Alcor mused, staring Bentley in the eye in a way that had the boy squirming in his seat. "But hey, your human feelings are probably more sensitive than mine."
Surreptitiously, Bentley tried to simultaneously ignore Alcor—nobody else seemed to be aware that an emotionally corrupt demonic entity was floating in front of Bentley Farkas's desk and above Marissa Castellanos's head—and attempt to get a better view of Ms. Hu's presentation so that his notes were at least somewhat accurate to the class lecture.
Instead, Alcor just floated up so that he was still eye-level with Bentley. "You look a bit smorple around the edges; you wanna talk about that? Hey, did you think about my offer last night for less bullying in exchange for treasured childhood heirloom slash object?"
With a growl of frustration and fear, Bentley slapped together a quick banishing sigil on his notes and tapped his pen against the finished picture twice. It rose a centimeter above the rest of the screen, and Alcor let out a grunt, as though he'd been socked in the gut. He flipped over mid-air and looked at Bentley as though the kid had stabbed him in the back.
"What was that for?" he all but squawked, but Bentley put aside any distant observations about how Alcor the Dreambender was not exactly living up to his evil reputation in favor of finally being able to see the diagram on the holoboard long enough to sketch a messy approximation.
Ms. Hu continued from where she left off. "…according to the reasons I told you. For all its pioneering ability, the MagiOrb 1.0 is likely the least of the sister islands' collaborative inventions. Who knows one of our own island's creations?"
Up in the front, somebody raised their hand and waved it enthusiastically. Unfortunately, Alcor the Dreambender had shoved his face in Bentley's, and the latter felt a wave of irritation.
"Hey! I've been nothing but nice to you, why did you even do that to me? Was it the bat-eyelashes? Man, Mizars usually get a kick out of the bat-eyelashes—or wait, was that just Mabel?"
Bentley swallowed and felt the blood drain from his face.
"That's correct!" Ms. Hu allowed. "One of the greatest inventions of Minte de Daos, the Ramirez Adaptor allows traditional modes of magic to work in tandem with more contemporary MagiTech. While the exact workings are quite complex, it operates off a set of basic concepts very similar to those we covered in class earlier this year."
"You okay? Um, you're going white in the face and I'm a bit fuzzy on the details but I don't remember that being a very good expression to have." Alcor poked him in the cheek.
Inside, Bentley let out a terrified screech. In reality, however, he just gripped his stylus tighter and attempted to write out some shaky notes on the Ramirez Adaptor.
Alcor pushed his forehead uncomfortably close to Bentley's and said, "You're still pale. And really really smorple. Also your pupils are really wide. That's...what emotion is that?"
Alcor rested his head against his Mizar's and threaded his hand through her long, silky, ebony dark curly tresses. His eyes, like gold sparkling in cider in a glass held up against the starless night sky, looked into her own molten chocolate pools. "You look so…what emotion is that?"
Bentley gurgled out loud; it was a soft, depressed thing that felt about a million times louder than it really was. He leaned to the side as unobtrusively as he could, and the lecture went on.
The demon pushed his clawed hand up under Bentley's bangs and against his forehead. It felt like a normal hand, and that beyond anything else made Bentley's legs lock with fear because he couldn't tell the difference and because something in him was settled at the pressure and the implications of that were even more terrifying. "You don't feel fever-warm, but your heartrate is escalated. Hmm, last I checked, it was healthier than that…"
"Your heart is beating so fast," Alcor purred, stroking his talons down the side of her face. She shivered, and looked around at the other students, all oblivious to the invisible-to-everybody-but-her demon caressing her sweet soft skin.
"Oh, Alcor," she murmured, low enough that nobody noticed her trembling arms and quivering lips. "Alcor, I—"
Jerky, Bentley reached out and scrawled 'stop stop stop please' on his MSS, barely able to see the blurring words. He didn't want this, he didn't want this demon so close to him and he could hardly breathe from the helplessness crawling up his gut and fisting its iron hand around his heart. He didn't want to be Mizar, Alcor's trophy 'mate' or 'wife' or whatever she was called in that damned book he'd read bits of.
And then there was the growing feeling of familiarity, the faint stirrings of fondness and happiness that felt alien to him and it felt like Alcor was trying to control him and he didn't like it.
Alcor, thankfully, paused and withdrew, opening and closing his mouth. Bentley couldn't see his face, consumed with fear and feeling his stomach turn and clench, and it was hard enough making sure he didn't collapse into tears in the middle of class.
"Oh," the demon said suddenly, and had Bentley been in a better place he would have read the obvious surprise and horror in the other's voice. Alcor pulled back in a sharp, thin motion. "Oh. I…oh no. I. I'll. Okay. Later."
The demon left with a small, understated blip that left Bentley with the promise of another meeting on his mind. His legs shaking, he stood from his desk, stomach roiling in fear and dread and relief all tangled into one messy knot.
"Mister Farkas?" Ms. Hu asked, and he'd honestly forgotten she was there. He looked up at her, and her next question died on her lips. Instead, she strode to where he was barely standing, his desk clattering with how much he was shaking, and leaned down to his level.
"Do you need the nurse?" she murmured.
He opened his mouth to let out an affirmative, but all that emerged was a small, pitiful whine. Immediately, he snapped his mouth shut and nodded.
She, very slowly and gently, tucked her arm around his back and placed her hands on his shoulders. "Miss Farthington, you're in charge of the class. Everybody please stay quiet—Mister Farkas, I'll take you to the nurse's."
He was only dimly aware that he was being led out of the classroom and that the room probably erupted into chatter at his departure. All he could think about was Okay. Later. Okay. Later. Okay. Later.
They made it halfway down the hall before he fell to his knees and threw up his breakfast of rice and beans all over the tiled floor.
Later, Bentley found out, did not necessarily mean when he came home. It didn't mean the morning after, or that evening after, or even three days after. The silence and lack of 'demon suitor' was welcoming.
It was also unfortunately screwing with Bentley's head.
He woke up in the mornings, slowly at first, as was usual for him. Then the hair on the back of his neck would tingle and he would shoot up and turn the lights on, snapping his fingers almost violently. For about five minutes he would lay on his bed, back pressed against the wall, breath coming shallowly as he took everything in in his room, from his old Alcorian Cycle books boxed up and shoved under the desk to the cheap LED wall-insert clock that was always about ten minutes fast. Then, he would slide out of bed, gingerly and ready to leap back onto the platform bed as soon as he could. When nothing attacked, he straightened the sheets and pushed the bed up into the wall.
Were it during the week, the rest of the day would be spent jumping at shadows, at the hovering janitorial bots humming through the hallways, at people who would brush by him without paying him a second glance but intruding just far enough into his bubble that he would notice. If it was the weekend, he alternated between spending time with his father so that he didn't feel alone, and spending all day cooped up in his room working on his scrapbooking project so that his father didn't notice how jumpy he was. He was already concerned due to the school calling him at work because of Bentley's episode, and Bentley was reminded how very good his father was at noticing little details.
"Bentley, why do your eyes keep darting to the far corner?"
"Bentley, are you expecting anybody to come in through the window?"
"Bentley, you're going to strangle that poor fork if you don't let up on the pressure!"
All the while, Okay. Later, echoed through his head, keeping him up at night and pressing down on him during the day, and all Bentley could do was pray to whatever higher power there was that Alcor the Dreambender had forgotten his promise.
The Twin Souls saga, from what he'd managed to swallow down in between bouts of disgust and horror and paranoia, wasn't deeming that very probable.
Two weeks, five days, and six hours after Alcor had murmured Okay. Later,Bentley stepped into his room to see the incarnation of terror and darkness sitting on his desk, looking through his collection of Alcorian Cycle books. It looked familiar, and he couldn't stop part of himself from feeling at ease with the image of Alcor thumbing through a novel.
Bentley froze in the doorway. Alcor looked up.
Against his common sense, Bentley bolted back towards the kitchen and his father, hoping that maybe maybe maybe Alcor wouldn't follow.
"Wait!" The world turned gray, and Bentley paused only briefly in confusion before pushing forwards in a blind attempt to escape an awful fate as the worst demon of all time's bride.
He'd taken only a few more steps before there was a snarl behind him and a yank on the back of his shirt that had him choking for a moment before being lifted up into the air by taloned hands under his armpits. A small, disturbing corner of his self registered the sensation as safe and protected and he just wanted Alcor to stop putting thoughts in his head.
"Oẖ̢̳̪ m̰̖ͅy̷̦̙̩̟ ̮̥g̴̝͕o̺̭ḍ͜ ͖̞͔̱w̶̗o͙͇̭̫̻̲̮u͎̣͈̘͙͓l̝̫d͔̟̘̬͍̬̟ ̸̱͎̩̟̜y̢̻͖̣͔͙̹o̘̞̼̪͉̫̰u͇̜͕ ͇j̝u̴͉̝͈s͔̱̟̩͈̫͇t ̞̭ͅḷ̘̘͝i͏̲̩͍̟s̗͇t̤e̡̼̮̭͚͔n̫̠̫̮͖̪ ̝f͡o͟r ̣͚̜̠͡a̛ ̖m̘̹̝̘͟ͅͅò̥̰̠͍̰͉m̴͕e͢n̨͓̪̰͍͎̦͈t̝̥̙̺̯̖̀ ͇͝b̗͓͍̖̘̺èf̤o͖̤͇͙r̝̝͎͓e̙ ͢r̵u̪̤̹̳n͏͙͚n̨̤̭i̪ng̱͉̦̦͇͖͝ͅ ̦̰̬̯̪͝o̪̙̩̜f̼̜̜̩̳̣̣f̨̘͍̲̥̣̞?" The words were hard to make out above the rumbling overtones in the demon's reedy tenor, and something in Bentley shriveled up in horrified fear.
Alcor the Dreambender grumbled something unintelligible under his breath and then floated Bentley back to his bedroom, the walls a deep gray instead of their usual bright red. In fact, Bentley realized in the back of his mind, he and Alcor were the only colored objects in his now grey apartment.
Is it because we really are tied together? Like, is this a soul vision or something? Am I really doomed to that…that kind of life?
The demon set him down in his desk chair and snapped the door shut, and the color seeped back in, spreading from Bentley outward. After a moment, he could hear his father singing in the other room, some old ditty in an old language that Bentley didn't understand.
Bentley stared at the floor and drew his knees up to his chest, hands shaking. His bright green fingernail polish, he noted in some far corner, was chipped around the edges of his nails where he'd been picking at it.
"Hey. Kid. Hey. I might've forgotten a bit about humankind, but isn't it rude to not, y'know, look at your guest?"
He could have said something smart, and would have, if he weren't trying to make himself as small a target as possible. And who knew—if he said something witty, Alcor might take it as flirting.
"Why are you turning even more smorple? What am I doing? Is it the floating?" Alcor grumbled, and then Bentley heard the familiar noise of his bed being retracted from its cubbyhole in the wall. He looked up in horror to see Alcor sitting on the bed, terrifyingly tangible and running a hand through his hair. The floating tophat moved obligingly out of the way, and part of Bentley wanted to laugh at how adorable that was until he realized that it shouldn't be adorable.
"No."
Bentley didn't even register that he'd spoken until Alcor looked at him, and their eyes met. The demon twisted his claws in the bedspread and Bentley's stomach turned at the insinuation he found there. "The…floating doesn't bother you? Okay. Um. Then…why are you even more smorple?"
In response, Bentley shoved himself against the desk and buried his face in his knees, feeling the terror come up to choke him. No no no no no no I don't want this.
Alcor spoke almost immediately. "Oh come on, what did I even do? Like, the last time I saw you I wasn't even myself and you loved me."
You loved me.
Bentley took in a deep breath to calm himself, but when he tried to exhale, it came out as a gurgled litany of "No no no no no no no no no."
"…Kid? Bentley?"
There was a hand on his shoulder and Bentley recoiled violently, tumbling off the chair and onto the floor. "Don't touch me!"
Alcor, amazingly enough, didn't move forward. Instead, he crouched down to be at eye-level with Bentley, simultaneously cutting off Bentley's only escape route. Bentley couldn't do more than strangle his sob as it pulled out of him.
"Bentley? Bentley, what's wrong?"
Bentley pushed himself further into the back corner of his desk.
"Um. I. Bentley? Mizar?"
Don't call me your Mizar! Bentley thought, casting aside the lingering notions of affection and tugging on his dyed hair with his hands.
It was only in the stunned silence afterwards that Bentley looked up and realized that he'd actually said that out loud.
Alcor narrowed his eyes and while some distant part recognized—no not recognized, tried to fool him into recognizing—it as puzzling something out, Bentley just knew it was in disapproval or anger or something and the thought of Alcor forcing him to enter a relationship with him made him feel both sick and helpless.
He felt cornered, both literally and figuratively, and finally reacted.
"Don't look at me like that, I'm not your Mizar I'm never going to be your Mizar and I'm never going to marry you because that's wrong and sick and you can't expect me to and you can't make me and I'm never going to have sex with you ever."
Alcor reeled back, eyes wide in surprise. After a moment, he gurgled out, "Marry? Sex?"
Bentley resisted the urge to clap his hands over his mouth and just wriggled further into the corner. "Never," he swore.
The demon blinked, and his face turned pale. "W-why would you think I wanted to do that?"
"You," Bentley uncurled a little, frowning. "You're always married to Mizar. And the first books have you having lots of…lots of sex."
They looked at each other for a moment.
"But—the books your father wrote don't have any sex," Alcor mumbled, a bit green around the edges. "Why would we have sex?"
Bentley settled down into a cross-legged position. "Um. The first books about you ever. Twin Souls. They—"
Promptly, Alcor turned around, conjuring a trash can and throwing up into it. It was like watching a waterfall of golden glitter glue.
Either this was a very elaborate act to get Bentley to trust him, or he might not have a demon suitor after all.
"You…don't want to have sex with me?"
Alcor very visibly suppressed the urge to gag, and his wings shuddered, pulling in close against his sides. "N̨̘͛̉͒͑͌̆͞ͅo̵̰͕ͮͣ̈́̐̏͆͞. No. That's. No."
Bentley narrowed his eyes. "Or marry me?"
The demon shook his head violently and disappeared the trash can. "No. Mizars are like siblings to me. Usually sisters. But siblings."
"So why did Twin Souls—"
"Because people are gross." Alcor shivered and shook his head.
After a moment, Bentley pulled himself out from under the desk and climbed up onto his chair. "Why were you stalking me then?"
Alcor's face was blank. "Stalking?"
"At. Well. School, for one."
The demon crossed his arms and pulled his legs up to float midair, his wings shifting a bit as he looked up at the ceiling. "That was…stalking? Isn't that the way to make sure that somebody knows you care about them?"
Bentley stared at Alcor for a moment, and then sighed and rubbed his hands down his face. They were still shaking from the adrenaline. "And you don't want to control me? Own me?"
Alcor's wingsgave a couple of little flaps, and then flared out slightly, the thumb-bits probably touching behind his back. The demon let out a weak chuckle, sharp teeth flashing. In fact, he seemed to grow just a bit younger before Bentley's eyes, looking more in his early teens than in his early twenties. "That's—That's a funny question, because I don't want to, but I. Well."
Bentley felt his stomach sink a bit lower in his gut. "What?"
The demon avoided eye contact, and Bentley noted that his thumbs were circling around each other. "I. Wow I didn't want to bring this up so soon in our relationship but. I own your soul."
Unbidden, Bentley's hand rose up to his heart. "But I never sold you my soul…"
"You didn't," Alcor agreed, still avoiding his gaze, his wingspulling together and fanning out erratically. "But the first Mizar did."
"But…" Bentley trailed off, slowly realizing the consequences. Alcor could make him do anything. Maybe not have sex or fall in fake-love or marry him, Bentley was starting to realize, but he could use Bentley to destroy people, to rip his family apart, he could make Bentley do awful horrible things and.
His vision dimmed alarmingly.
"I don't use it!" Alcor was suddenly in front of him, propping him up. His appearance had shifted again, and Bentley figured that Alcor looked a year or two younger than himself. "I don't use it unless you do something stupid and harmful to yourself and don't you dare be thinking I'll make you have sex with me because sex is gross."
Bentley had that feeling of trust nudge him from the same corner of his mind. He murmured, "All sex?"
Alcor turned a bit green again. "Gross," he reiterated. "Sex is gross. To me."
Absentmindedly, Bentley nodded. "I think," he said, feeling as though the world wasn't quite reality, "I think I need some alone time. To think."
The demon nodded exuberantly. "Yes. Think. I'll just stand in the corner."
Bentley looked up at the demon and thought about the ramifications of being stern. He then disregarded them. "No. I need to be alone. Without you. Without you stalking me or looking at me or being around me."
"But isn't stalking—"
"No." Bentley said, rubbing at his eyes. He'd been so wound up, and now that he knew that he wasn't going to be some forced demon bride, he felt exhausted and relieved and confused all at once. "No. I. How about you come back in a week. Or maybe I will, I don't know, summon you or something."
Alcor grumbled, and when Bentley looked up at him again, he'd returned to looking like he was in his early twenties. He opened his mouth, probably to disagree, and then he stopped and stared at Bentley's face. After a moment, he deflated, his wings drooping. "All right, kid. When you're ready."
The demon dithered a moment longer before finally raising a hand and shaking it from side to side in what looked to possibly be an archaic form of farewell. A second later, he was gone.
Bentley searched his room for five minutes before deciding the demon was gone. Thirty seconds later, he was out cold, spread out on his bed.
"Bentley? What are you doing up so early?"
He looked up from the couch, where he was scanning the wiki page on theories about Alcor on his MSS. "Couldn't sleep. Went to bed really early, I've been up for ages. I even did the non-compulsory practice questions for all of my classes."
His father was still in his bathrobe, eyes muddled with sleep and confusion. The man thumbed on his hologlasses and tapped his watch. "It's…It's an hour before you go to school."
Bentley nodded. "Yeah. And?"
"Are you going early? You never go early." His father rubbed his eyes and blinked them open; the irises appeared more hazel than brown behind the holo frames.
"…That's not a bad idea," Bentley said. "Sure. Why not."
As he stood up, his father muttered something about miracles and teenage boys and never being this proactive when he was a child. Bentley rolled his eyes and headed to his room.
Halfway out the doorway, however, he looked back at his dad. "Are you…are you still working on that manuscript? You know, the Alcorian Cycle one?"
His dad yawned. "Yeah. I thought that you…"
Bentley scowled. "I know. Twin Souls is still stupid."
"I—I know that it's got some questionable content and that not a lot of it is actually true, but it's the genesis of this entire genre so it has to have some weight, some kind of truth, and I don't think it's fair of you to dismiss it because of its writing conventions and misogynistic, somewhat incestuous undertones, it is a product of its time and—"
Suddenly, Bentley had an idea. He missed talking with his dad—they'd been close before he'd started school and was exposed to the wider opinion on Alcor the Dreambender—and if this Mizar thing really was a sham…
"Hey. Dad. One moment?"
One of the best things about his dad was that, even if he was in the middle of a rant, he always stopped to listen. "—there's really no proof that demon's don't think that way, and yes Bentley?"
"What if," Bentley halted, chewed his words over in his head. "Hey. I have a…an acquaintance, you might say, who knows a lot about this subject. Even more than you do! Would you. Um. Would you like to meet him toni—tomorrow night?"
His father's eyes widened, and some of the sleep disappeared from them. "A classmate? Interested in the Alcorian Myth Cycle in this day and age?"
"Yeah, he's been at school," Bentley said, keeping his eyes focused on his father's and telling himself that no, it wasn't actually a lie, Alcor had been at his school at least once.
"O-Of course! Invite him over for dinner, I'll cook something nice." His dad was starting to smile, the tugging at the corners of his stubble-ridden lips that happened when he started to hype himself up for something. "Oh, I know, I'll work on that manuscript some more, see if I can get it halfway done by tomorrow."
Bentley grinned and ducked his head. "Okay, I'll let him know to come over at school. I'm going to go get my stuff together and leave."
His dad stepped over and gently pushed him to his room. "Yes, yes, do that, have you eaten? I'll get you a bowl of rice, or would you rather have toast?"
"Toast is faster," Bentley said, waving his hand so that the door would slide open. "And I can get to my room on my own, Dad!"
Chuckling, his dad patted Bentley's shoulders. "Ah, okay. That's right. Sorry. I'm just—"
"Excited," Bentley finished, turning around and giving his dad a hug. "Love you too. Now let me change! I'll be out in a moment."
When Bentley looked up, his father was beaming. A moment later, he'd reached out to rustle Bentley's hair, saying, "Love you too, son," before swiveling about and heading down the narrow hallway to their kitchenette, humming one of those old tunes.
Bentley grinned and imagined the look on his father's face when he realized that it was actually Alcor the Dreambender that Bentley was going to invite over for dinner.