Bentley had left the living room when Dipper and Torako began roughhousing, their elbows coming dangerously close to his head. Why Torako insisted on hand-to-hand training with a demon that could overwhelm her in less than a second, Bentley didn't understand. He'd even asked.
"Well, if you surround yourself with super talented people," Torako had said through gritted teeth, blocking a clearly lazy slap from Dipper, "you're bound to get better faster!"
"Not so sure about that," Dipper drawled, sliding a foot forward and tapping Torako's exposed stomach. "You're certainly not proving that rule."
Torako let out a strangled noise and then, instead of retreating, twisted to the side and lashed her left hand out in a loose fist, clearly aiming for Dipper's nose. Dipper had then blurred and Bentley had actually yelped when he dove over the side of the couch just before Torako was tossed into it, limbs akimbo.
"Guys!" He'd howled, legs up on the edge of the couch, elbows smarting from slamming into the carpet. "Watch it!"
Dipper grimaced in his direction, but was cut off with a cushion to the face. Torko guffawed, deep and low even as she remained sprawled on the couch. Bentley rolled to his feet and gathered his school things; this half of Freshman year was harder than the first semester.
"You," Dipper all but purred, and when Bentley glanced his way, his dumb brother's sleeves were suddenly rolled up above the elbows and his toes were only barely dragging on the floor. "Are a couple millennia too early to even consider challenging me."
Torako arranged herself into a lazy sitting position, feet on the ground, arms flung over the back of the couch. She'd tilted her chin up, and by the way Dipper twitched, Bentley wasn't sure that he should leave the room. "Ah, but if it were a couple millennia ago, you'd probably still be a sweaty dumb preteen kid and I'd pin you no problem."
"Are you so sure?" Dipper said, eyes widening and grin stretching and that was Bentley's cue to very slowly creep over and break this party up because—
Torako tilted her head just a bit, and then she stood, chin down and arms loose. "You're going all predator, by the by. You wanna take it a bit slower?"
Bentley let out a sigh as Dipper blinked the hunter out of his eyes. He stood as Dipper settled back onto the floor, his shoes vanishing as he did so.
"Yeah." He stepped forward, tapped her arm with blunted claws. "So, like I was saying earlier—your left arm tends to move out too much when you strike with your right. It leaves you open."
Bentley nodded to himself. "Hey, guys, I'm going to go into my room; if you need to, you can push the couch further into the kitchen."
"Will do! Thanks Ben, sorry about almost flying into you," Torako called over her shoulder, moving her left arm in and then out, as if trying to familiarize herself with the position it should be in.
Dipper didn't call out farewell, but he was too focused on tsking and nudging Torako's limbs with his fingers. He seemed more concerned with how she wasn't being accurate than anything else, which is why Bentley could shove down the unease from earlier. If Torako could handle it, she could handle it.
Bentley shut the door behind him and settled in at his desk, putting the issue out of mind.
Less than thirty minutes later, instead of the usual thudding or taunting or laughing, Bentley heard a crack, heard Torako let out a long, raw scream. Before he realized it, Bentley was on his feet, the MSS clattering on the top of the desk, stylus rolling off the side, and he tripped over the chair in his haste to get out the door. He hit the ground with a bang, let out a cry at the sudden pain in his knee, and wasted precious seconds pulling his foot from between the back of the seat and the cushion of it.
"Torako?" He yelled, pushing himself to his feet and staggering the first few steps at the throbbing in his knee. "Tora? Dipper?"
Torako's screams started to morph into bursts of sobbing, then quiet, then whines, and all over again. Bentley had never heard her cry like that, not even after the game where she came off the field after playing half an hour with a sprained wrist and broken thumb. He swiped the bedroom door open, fell into and then pushed off the doorway to half-run, half-limp into the living room.
He opened his mouth to shout Torako's name the first step, managed the first two syllables with the second, but the last fell out of his mouth in a small, quiet breath as he looked at the two figures on the ground. Tora was curled up, tears running down her face and her left hand clutching her right forearm, which was bloody and shaking. Dipper was crouched over her, fingertips red, and when he turned to face Bentley his mouth was smeared with blood, like he'd pressed his face into it and Bentley felt that same buzzing, numb sensation that he had two years ago in the warehouse. His mouth dropped open, he clenched his fists and he felt a dull, dark ache begin to settle in his gut.
Bentley had just begun to think why did I ever think this was a good idea when Torako met his gaze, eyes somewhat frantic. They widened and she cried, "No! No! I told him to go harder he-ooooh shit shit shit that hurts, that—" she let out a high-pitched scream and gritted her teeth.
"Dipper?" He asked, and he hated the way that it came out trembling and afraid, the way his shoulders twitched between straight and hunched. "Dipper, what happened?"
"I didn't mean to," Dipper said, holding out his hands, still crouched before Torako. "I—her arm was there and I forgot that she—that people are—I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to Bentley I swear, I promise, I swear, I—"
"Then why is her blood on your mouth?" Bentley said, voice an octave higher, torn between stepping forward and stepping back. He looked down at Torako, who was taking shallow breaths, and shuffled forward.
"It—it was a deal," Torako said. "To fix—Shit this hurts, why does it still hurt?"
"Not enough blood for the nerves," Dipper said, eyes wide and bright and frightening but familiar. "I—I can't get all of it up without the—you know, and I don't want to make things worse, and it would hurt to suck more blood and I don't want to make things worse, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry Bentley, so sorry Tora, I—"
Bentley took another two steps forward. Then another, and he dropped to his knees by Torako. From between her fingers, he saw the gash and the jagged edge of skin but no bone, no torn muscle. He pressed his shaking hands to his forehead and let go of the weight in his gut.
"Okay," he breathed, just over Dipper's mumbled litany of apologies. "Okay. Do you—Dipper, what do you need?"
"What?"
Bentley stared at Torako under his palm, between his arms. He shoved one sweater sleeve up, offered it to Dipper. "Do you need blood to fix Tora the rest of the way? Energy? Candy, ice cream, something?"
"Dumbass, we don't need ow ow ow shit—one person bleeding's enough." Torako curled further in on herself, but kept her eyes on Bentley.
"No," Dipper mumbled, gently pushing Bentley's arm back at him. "No, don't—this is my mistake—"
"—and mine," Torako said, nudging Dipper with her knee. She winced and bared her teeth, breath coming in whistles between them.
"—not yours. I'll fix it, I can fix this."
"You get sick when you do big things without deals," Bentley said. He extended his arm to Dipper again.
"Butt out Ben." Torako shifted her hand off the wound, and blood started to well faster without the pressure. "And turn around. Dipper, I can handle it."
Bentley looked to Dipper, who was staring at the wound and trembling. Bentley bit his lip at the expression on his face; it wasn't often that he remembered that Dipper and Alcor really were the same person.
"Are you sure?" Dipper said, but already his hand was reaching towards Torako's, crackling blue fire arcing between his fingers one moment and gone the next.
"I—" Torako sucked in a breath, and let out a long, strangled cry. She sucked in another breath, then said, "Just get the fuck on with it!"
"Whatever blood is necessary for repairing the wound," Dipper said, growling reverb under the guttural consonants, along the edges of the hissed syllables. He glanced at Bentley, then returned his attention to Torako. "I'll use the materialized form of my stomach to gather first from the surrounding areas, and should more be necessary, from the wound itself."
"Only me," Torako said, and twitched her fingers towards Dipper's. "Only my blood. Bentley, turn around."
Bentley sat back, twisted to place his back towards them even though there was part of him that strained with do not trust, with he's going to hurt her again but he knew Dipper, he knew Dipper, and so he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and brought his knees up to his chest and tried to drown out the noise behind him.
He still heard snapping flames, heard Torako's whine and cut-off whimper, felt the air change and it was all he could do not to bolt. It might have lasted five seconds, maybe ten, but it felt like at least half an hour just sitting there, staring at the sunspots on his eyelids and reminding himself that if he could see them, he wasn't back there again.
Torako sighed, something thumped onto the floor, and the feeling of impending death vanished. Bentley did not pull his hands from his eyes, kept staring at the shifting colors, the silence ringing with the phantoms of Torako's cries, until Dipper tugged his shirt and said, "It's okay, it's gone. It's okay."
Bentley let his hands drop, rested them on his knees, and let Dipper pull him around to face the two of them. Torako was sitting against the couch, the carpet clear of blood, her clothes the way they had been when he'd left the two of them to mock-fight, but her eyes were puffy, wet. She smiled at him, and it was all kinds of wrong.
"Hey, you okay?" She asked, as though she weren't still rubbing her right forearm, as if there weren't a long scar glinting between her fingers.
Bentley rose to his knees, crawled over, and extended his hands. He avoided her gaze, and eventually shifted, tugged her hand from her arm and extended the latter. Bentley cradled it in his hands, only half-aware of Dipper hovering over the both of them. Tracing the scar with his eyes, he saw that the skin was mottled green and yellow, blood vessels only partially healed.
He looked up at her. Slowly, carefully, with memories of waking up scared of every unexpected motion in the corner of his eye clear in mind, Bentley lifted his right hand, slid closer, and pulled her into a hug.
"Are you okay?" He asked, and for a heartbeat, for two, he thought she would shrug it off. Then her left hand was grasping his sweater, her face in the crook of his neck, and Torako was shaking, crying.
Her arm trembled in his hand. Dipper was absent from the air beside them, guilt tugging on his end of the bond. Bentley pressed Torako closer, and closed his eyes.
It was an eternity later, when Torako felt like her lungs had nearly climbed out of her throat from sobbing (a dim part of her says they've probably gotten awesome abs) that Bentley murmured against her cheek, "Hey, do you want to lay down?"
If she weren't feeling so shitty, Torako probably would have burst from affection. She nodded against Bentley's shoulder, his small, small shoulder, but didn't say anything. Even the thought of speaking made her eyes burn with tears, her throat tighten, her nose close up.
"Okay," Bentley said. "Do you want help?"
She nodded again, opened her mouth to quip about being carried like a princess, then closed it again. She didn't feel it. She hurt. Her heart hurt, her arm hurt, her head hurt, and so when Bentley wrapped his gentle arms around her sides to her back and carefully lifted her to her knees, and then to her feet, Torako bent over to press her face into the top of his head. Tears didn't blur your vision when you had your eyes closed.
Step by step, they moved from the living room—vicious in how clean, how bare it was of the accident—to the bedroom, lights already on low, bed carefully made that morning by Dipper, that absolute dumbass, such a dumbass that she—
She stopped, took a breath, her arms draped down over Bentley's shoulders. He paused. His head moved as though he were going to tip it back, but he stilled. "You okay?"
Torako shook her head. "Keep going," she said, and was that fragile soft thing her voice? Part of Torako marveled that she could even make a sound like that anymore; she hadn't voiced that kind of weakness in ages.
She hadn't felt that kind of weakness in ages.
Bentley hummed, and after a moment he began to lean forward, ease them both towards the bed. Torako took a deep breath and moved her legs, the effort of bending her knees and lifting her feet taking almost everything she had.
"Is it always this tiring?" She mumbled. "Crying."
Bentley let out a huffing chuckle. "Yeah."
"It sucks." Torako stumbled, pushing Bentley forward. He leaned back, stopped them from falling, and waited for her to resituate herself so that she wasn't trying to push Bentley onto the bed.
He hummed again, and turned in her arms to face her. He lifted his arm up, cradled her cheek and brushed the skin under her eyes. She looked down at him.
"Yeah," he said, his gaze flitting between each of her eyes. "But having someone around helps."
And suddenly there were more tears in her eyes, her chest hurt from all the love that wanted to burst out, and she pulled him closer to her. The words were caught in her throat and she bent over and pressed her face into his head and tried to show him what she meant, show him how she felt through the way her palms pressed into his shoulders.
"You're not supposed to be crying more, silly," he murmured, just into her collarbone. He must have been on his tiptoes; bending over wouldn't have put his face that far up her body. "C'mon, the bed's like decimeters away. Let's go."
Torako nodded, breathless with love and exhaustion and utter feeling. She loosened her hold on Bentley, let him walk them both to the bed, and crumpling down onto it was the best thing she'd done all day, even next to teasing Dipper, watching his eyes widen and narrow and the grin, the faux-horrified gasp, the breaking the tearing the pai—
She pressed her eyes further shut. It wasn't his fault. Not entirely. She'd goaded him on, forgotten to look for the widening of his pupils and the way his shoulders rose just a bit, the tiny snarl to his lips that said he wasn't quite thinking human anymore.
Torako opened her eyes when she felt Bentley trying to tug her further up the bed. "Hey, you'll like having a pillow more," he said. "And being under blankets. Blankets are good. Blankets are great."
She mumbled sounds that had no meaning, but helped Bentley drag her up, sat as he pulled the covers up, and stared down at her right arm.
Somehow she'd never seen her own bones like that before. White, glistening with blood, snapped open in the air for the first time, for the only time, muscle torn and frayed. And there it was, safe beneath the skin again, muscle reknitted, refused, the only sign that something had ever happened the jagged scar and the mottled bruising under her skin. She stared at the skin, the veins under it, and had to close her eyes again.
"C'mon, Tora," Bentley said, his hands on her face again. She looked at him, his earnest eyes, the worried tilt of his eyebrows, the uneasy smile. "I never offer to be giant stuffed animal, but look! Here I am! Let's get under the covers, go to sleep."
She blinked, shutting her eyes longer than necessary. "Don't—don't' you have homework?"
"It's Saturday," Bentley murmured. "I can do it tomorrow."
"You hate doing that," she said. "Go—go do your—"
Bentley rolled his eyes. "This is more important. You're more important so c'mon, I pulled the covers down and got your favorite pillow."
He tugged on her shoulder, all careful hands and soft shoulders. She let him pull her down, pulled her legs up and let him arrange the blankets around them. Torako opened her arms and he settled there, carefully tangling his legs in hers, pressed against her chest, nose even with her collarbone.
It was quiet in the room. The lights were dim above and all she could hear was her breathing, his breathing, felt his breath against her skin and he was so warm and there that she didn't know why it wasn't enough.
"Love you Bentley," she murmured, tried to fill the silence with truth. It echoed there as he nodded, murmured back that he loved her too, and then she realized what was missing.
She thought about it. Thought about if she could handle it, could handle Dipper being there again. Her arm still ached, still throbbed with the memory of breaking, of splitting, of burning fire and screaming, but there was just enough silence in the room that it was too much and she already couldn't imagine Bentley without Dipper, her without Bentley without Dipper, and how—how had she not realized this before? How had he come so close, in just over a year of knowing her?
Torako didn't open her eyes when she asked Bentley. "Can you…can we call Dipper?"
He didn't freeze against her chest, but she felt how his breath faltered, the way it stopped, then let out, and he inhaled deep and long. "Are you sure?"
She nuzzled his hair. Her eyes ached. "Yeah."
"Okay," he said, and he pushed his forehead into her shoulder. A heartbeat later—okay, maybe three or four because hers was going a bit faster—and there was a quiet pop, Dipper materializing on the other side of Bentley, all the way at the edge of the bed.
He looked between each of them, twisting his hands and wings fluttering. "I," he murmured, low enough that Torako had to strain to hear. "I—are you sure, I can go out and leave you alone if you want me to, I wouldn't blame you, I hurt you and—"
Torako yawned, rolled her eyes even if it felt a little forced, even if something in her tensed. She tried to smile, thought she did pretty well. "Shut up and stay on Bentley's side of the bed. It's fine. It's not—it's not right without you here."
Dipper continued to look stricken, unconvinced, and she huffed.
"Bentley, get your dumb demon brother to lay down."
He hummed, then flopped over so he wasn't so snuggled into her. He looked to his left, patted the bed. "In. Bed. Now. It's feel-better cuddletimes."
Dipper stammered and stuttered, and finally Torako just about rolled over onto Bentley and pulled Dipper down onto the bed. He let out a little shriek and his wings fluttered in every direction, and she rolled back so that she wasn't suffocating Bentley anymore.
Bentley stared at her. "Really."
"Cuddletimes," Torako said, and she settled Bentley back into her arms. She caught Dipper's eye, and said, "Bentley's agreed to be actual cuddle friend. Wanna share?"
"I'm not a toy," Bentley grumbled, but without any bite. He extended his arm towards Dipper again, and this time, Dipper took it.
"You want me to stay on this side?" Dipper asked.
After a moment, Torako nodded. She didn't know how—she didn't want to think about what she'd do, how she'd react if she found him behind her, not so soon after the accident. Her arm throbbed. Her eyes ached. And Dipper nodded, lay down clutching Bentley's arm, and closed his eyes so that she didn't fall asleep to him watching her.
It helped, but even as Torako fell asleep, some part of her was watching, waiting for his hand to blur and for her bone to snap and for his eyes to be hungry, alien again.
Dipper didn't come back until they called him, told him to stay. He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve being allowed to curl up next to Bentley, to lay his hands so close to the arm that he broke, that he snapped and shattered. And in the morning, when he pulled himself out of his doze, when Torako woke up and noticed him from across Bentley's head, he knew he deserved the flinch, the widening of the eyes and the sharp inhale of breath as she matched his face to her pain.
There's a part of him that loves it, loves that this human knows her place, knows how easily he could snap her in half, and shows it. He shifted closer to Bentley, tried to ground himself in his warmth, in the weight against his arms. He blinked up at Torako, and made himself as small as he could, as unassuming and unfrightening.
A moment later, she drew forward, laid her left hand, the unbroken arm, on Bentley's shoulder. She did not touch him, light and joking and good-humored, as she had yesterday. "Sorry. Sorry. I was just. Startled."
Dipper shrugged. "No. It's fine."
Except it wasn't, because that part of him that had never gone away, would never go away, was still there, still watching and preening and full of savage satisfaction at the way she kept her distance.
Torako had thought that maybe she'd stop jumping every time Dipper accidentally snuck up on her by the end of the night. It wasn't like her arm hurt that much, like there was literal blood to pull out of the carpet by placing their Magic Carpet Cleaner (that, oddly enough, ran on no magic at all) over it for a few hours. It wasn't like he'd meant it or had pursued her with the intent of breaking her arm.
But the next day, the next morning, she woke up, stumbled into the kitchen, and when getting her mug down from the top shelf, had turned around to see Dipper sitting on the table, kicking his legs and holding a physical book in his hands.
She didn't know she'd shrieked and dropped the mug until she was on the counter, mouth-open, and shards of ceramic were skittering across the floor.
Something odd flashed in Dipper's eyes when she looked into them. It was gone quickly, his expression contrite, shoulders hunched and wings tucked in, but it had been there. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry I didn't realize you hadn't seen me."
Torako uncurled off the counter, carefully placed her feet where there were no shards. "Nah," she said. Her voice shook. She coughed, began again. "Nah, it's fine. I'm the one who's apparently blind, haha!"
Her laughter sounded fake. When she looked at Dipper, that awful, pre-brooding-phase face was settling and she knew nobody was fooled.
She looked down at the shards. "I'll go get the broom," she said.
"No, no, it's my bad, I'll go get it—don't move, you'll hurt yourself." By the time she looked up, Dipper was gone, the book landing with a soft thud on the table. Torako looked down at the shards on the floor, of her favorite mug. It seemed ominous to her for one terrible moment, like it was supposed to represent their relationship, that it had been hurt to the point it couldn't be repaired anymore.
Then she narrowed her eyes at the fragments of ceramic. "You're just a dumb broken mug," she muttered. "Not a metaphor."
"What's a metaphor?" Dipper asked, out of nowhere, and Torako stopped herself from flinching. She'd wanted to. She'd felt the thrill of fear, surprise, but she'd be damned from letting this happen.
"Nothing," she said, turned around. "Here, pass it o—hey, what the hell is that, that's not a broom."
Dipper blinked down at the old thing in his hands. It looked positively ancient. "But this—this is a broom. You use it to sweep stuff up."
Torako huffed. "A broom is used to suck things up. Doesn't even look close to being so 31st century."
"Fine," Dipper said, scowling. "Where's the 'broom' that's not actually a broom?"
"Uh, closet by the bathroom. It's about this big," she held her hands out at shoulder-width, motioned so that Dipper would understand it was kind of spherical. "Hurry up, I don't want to stand here forever."
Dipper groaned, but there was a quietness, a carefulness about the way he spoke, how loud he was, and was it just her or did he look less pointy than usual?
Torako narrowed her eyes, but decided to let it pass as he left. She looked down at the shards, glinting in the light, scattered. Even if the universe was trying to make it a metaphor, she was Torako fucking Lam, and she made it a point to be as contrary as possible.
"Bring it on," she whispered, and pressed her right fist into her open left palm. "Bring. It. On."
After three days of Torako alternating between being jumpy and tense and frustrated, and Dipper constantly shrinking in on himself and keeping everybody at arm's length, Bentley had apparently decided it was time to stage an intervention.
"You two," he said, pushing them both down onto the couch. Dipper curled up instead of sprawling out, "are going to sit. And talk. About feelings."
Torako gasped, pressed her hand against her chest. "Feelings? Actual feelings? We have to talk about them? Oh, the horror!"
Dipper slid the smooth side of his claws against the upholstery of the couch. "It's fine," he said, because it was. He'd accepted that if Torako ever got used to him again, that it wouldn't be the same, that it would take a while. He'd messed up.
"No it's not fine. And yes, Torako. Because the two of you apparently can't carry on a conversation by yourselves to let each other know where you are. Now, hmm, Dr. Rothlisberger said this was fine to use, so…"
Then Bentley reached down and pulled up one of the convenient piles of fabric that Dipper had been wondering about. Underneath were sigils, arcing around so that they would, hypothetically, circle around the couch.
"You wouldn't," Torako said. Her eyes were riveted on the large sigil between the chain of similar, repeating sequences extending under the clothes.
Bentley stared at them. "Talk. I'll let you out in a few hours. Until then…" He pulled a stick of chalk out of his pocket and made a looping curl through the center of the sigil. It glowed, as did the other visible sigils, and suddenly clothes and blankets were shunted to either one side of the circle or the other.
Dipper looked at the chain. Looked up at Bentley. "It'd take me maybe fifteen minutes to get through this. Max."
The smile Bentley gave was so sweet that Dipper pressed himself into the couch. "Oh, I know that. But you'd still have to deal with Torako for those fifteen minutes, and you know how bored she gets in close quarters."
Bentley turned away, humming a little to himself. Dipper slid off the couch, moved to the edge of the circle. He felt anger curl in his gut—a mix of how dare he, I am strong, he has no right to chain me and she's scared of me how could he do this to her how could he—and he pressed one hand against the film of energy trapping them in the space together. It didn't hurt.
"Bentley," he hissed, chest thrumming. Bentley stopped, but didn't look back. His shoulders were tense. "Get us out of here."
When Bentley turned around, his hands were shaking, but there was the most stubborn expression on his face; his chin tilted up, his mouth set in a thin line. "No."
His hand started burning, tiny blue flames licking the barrier, the creases in his knuckles. Dipper narrowed his eyes. "Bentley—"
"She's not scared of you, Dipper," Bentley said, and he crossed his arms. "Well. A little. But not as scared as you think and you both need to sit down and talk."
Dipper blinked, drew his hand back. It stopped flaming. Behind him, Torako was oddly quiet. "Huh?"
"And Torako didn't realize—not really, not yet, she gets you but she hasn't had five years of experience like me—that you thought she was scared that much. So. Both of you. Talk. Tell you what, I'll give you an hour. If you haven't talked, I'll keep it up even longer." Bentley bit his lip, then nodded. "Yeah. So. Talk."
Then he left the room for real, swiping the door shut behind him. Moments later, they could hear music playing; it was his instrumental homework playlist.
"Well," Torako said, tapping her fingers along to Ode to Niagra, "we're not seeing him anytime soon."
Dipper ran a finger up and down the shield, felt the energy vibrate through his claw and into the knuckles. "…Are you really not scared of me?"
Torako snorted immediately. "What? You? Scared of you, Alcor the Dorkmaster? As if!" But her colors were tinged with deep, bruise-like blues, hovering on the edges of her aura. There were wisps of dark, violent cyroon darting in them, between them, bleeding heavy purple into the bruise-blues.
"Yes you are," he growled. The blues spiked, and moments after that the cyroonbubbled, bulged, purple spreading in the blue. Underneath the aura, Tora was digging her fingers around the edge of the couch cushion, deep furrows in the fabric where she was gripping it.
"Maybe a little," she said—murmured, really—and unclenched the cushion. "A little. It's. I'm not frightened, just startled."
He stared at her, the way her shoulders were hunched and the bruise-blues and cyroons and purples faded, dulled against the grey-green-noorlow seeping over them. Dipper sighed, deflated, and spread his hands quietly. "It looks like you're scared."
"A little," she repeated. "Frustrated with myself. Frustrated a little with you. But I'm not terrified, and having you act like this, like a wilting sad-faced flower, is dumb and throws me off guard even more when you remember to be you."
"Oh." Dipper's arms fell back down to his sides. For a few moments, he stood there, staring at Torako sitting, Torako sitting there staring at him. Then she sighed, unfolded herself a little, and patted the couch next to her.
"C'mere, you big baby."
The sunlight slanted into his eyes from the window. He crossed the space to the couch, climbed onto it. Torako grumbled, then pulled him closer so that his head was on her shoulder, his ribs against hers.
"Let's talk," she said. "Bentley's right. We need to clear some things up. You want me to go first?"
Dipper blinked at the space before them, at the glowing sigils on the floor. Then he nodded, tried to relax against Torako's side.
She leaned her cheek against the crown of his head. "I was terrified then. You broke my arm. That hurt, and something in me has labeled you predator, yanno? I guess. I guess it's not easy to push that away after all."
Torako sighed, warm breath passing over his bangs, through his bangs and brushing his forehead, brushing his birthmark. Dipper closed his eyes, waited for her to continue.
"I'm trying, though," Torako said. He focused on the words, how she said them. "I think I might have underestimated this, but I'm trying. I'm going to keep trying. You're still a pretty good friend, for a demon."
He huffed in amusement. "That's not hard to do."
"Fine, you're a pretty good friend for having only known you…what, a year now?" She pressed her cheek into his hair, twisted her face so that she could press her lips to his crown, so that her neck was open wide open, he could hear it, the pumping of blood, and Dipper thought about how easy it would be to—
Dipper stopped that thought in its tracks.
"Just. You and Bentley are my best friends, and really, Bentley doesn't come without you. I wouldn't want it any other way, so I have to figure this out. We have to figure this out, I guess."
Dipper opened his eyes, anchored himself in the reality of the room, in Torako pressed up against him. Torako, who didn't have the connection that reincarnations of the original Gravity Fallers had and liked him anyways, loved him in that friendlove way that made him think that being around humans with their short lifespans was worth it.
"I liked it," he said, quiet. He looked down at his hands, one between their legs, the other in his lap. "Part of me, at least. Liked it."
"Breaking my bone?" She said it without any judgement, just quiet curiosity. Torako and quiet had seemed like antonyms once, but now, here, hip to hip and head to cheek, he couldn't believe they were as contradictory as he'd once thought.
"Yeah. And your fear. Like, it was right. I'm—" Dipper swallowed. "I'm not human. Not anymore. That is part of me now, has been for millennia. It's something that doesn't go away. I can't stop it."
In this new silence, the sigils hummed, powerful. Dipper wondered, in the back of his mind, how Bentley had managed to create such a powerful, self-sustaining prison with just sigils. Then something whispered to him about chains and circles and the power found in seals to protect verses seals to contain, and he understood more.
"I'm sorry," he said, small. His hands seemed a little smaller, he fit in more against Tora's side. "I'm sorry."
She sighed, poked him in the side. He squirmed and let out a burst of involuntary laughter. "Hey, quit getting sad-younger on me. Look. I get it; you're a demon, even if you were human once. It's amazing, really, that you're not more jerkfaced about things. And maybe I should remember that you have those thoughts."
Dipper nodded, pressed his face into her ribs. He grew smaller. Younger. "Okay. You—you sure?"
"Man, I think I half-knew this might happen someday. You're a powerful being with instincts that aren't exactly squishy-human friendly. And we fixed it, okay?"
"Not all the way," he said.
Her ribs expanded in a huff of air, and she tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up, saw that she'd pulled her right arm over, had laid it bare, open to him. The scar shone white, ropey where there should be smooth skin. He hunched his shoulders.
"It's fine," Torako said. "Take it. It's fine. It's not killing me, is it? I'm not bleeding out, am I? Touch it. It's real. It's there. But it doesn't define us."
He tucked his lips into his mouth but didn't bite down; that would only end poorly for him, and probably Tora as he'd be bleeding all over her. Then Dipper, slowly, like it would bite back at him, reached out a hand and placed the fingers against the scar.
It was bumpy under his fingertips. If he moved up and over a bit, he could feel her heartbeat, could feel his claws against her skin and how easy it would be. Dipper took a deep breath, returned to the scar. He wrapped his hand around it—it looked young, maybe thirteen, twelve, fourteen, whatever those numbers meant—covered it, hid it from himself and hid it from the world.
Then, he pulled it closer to him, pressed his lips against it. Tora's breath jumped, her shoulders stiffened, but she let out a shaky breath and relaxed. "It's okay."
He left his lips there, left a sliver, a tiny sliver of his power to coat it, to act as sort of a good-luck charm—if demons could impart good luck. Then Dipper looked up, at Torako's eyes, and lifted his hand to her cheek. She didn't flinch.
"I can't promise I won't hurt you. Or Bentley."
"But you'll try, right?" Torako said. "You'll try, just like we're trying."
He nodded, felt his chest hurt. "I'll try."
With a smile, she ruffled the hair on top of his head. "That's all we ask. We're in this together, you know?"
Chest aching with affection, Dipper found that couldn't take it anymore. He climbed into Torako's lap, guided her face down, and pressed his lips against her forehead. She was his. She was his, his, his, and no creature would dare harm her because she was his and she was Bentley's and she was precious.
Mine, he told himself. Mine, he told the world. And when he pulled away, there was his mark, his eye, shining over the skin of her forehead and proclaiming that anybody who messed with her would mess with him.
She blinked down at him. "What was that for?"
Dipper shrugged, laid down against her. He was smaller than usual, so he may as well take advantage of it. "Just you. Do you think we could take a nap?"
"But demons don't need naps, do they?" She asked, her voice traveling through her chest and into his side, his shoulder, his chin. He just nestled his head more under her chin.
"Please?" he said. After a moment, she huffed, and he felt her wrap her right arm around him, felt her shift so that her feet were tucked under the arm cushion of the sofa, cradling him.
"I suppose," she said. "This works."
Dipper closed his eyes, and while he did not sleep, he listened to Torako until she did, until he was calm enough to enter a stasis of sorts, a way to block out the world and his thoughts and just rest.
Even then, she was warm against him, around him, under him, and Dipper wrapped himself in love he hadn't felt in a long, long time.
Bentley, true to his word, came by an hour later. He took one look at the pair curled up on the couch, and had to stop himself from grinning too wide. Without another thought, he interrupted the chain, disengaged the sigil, and then crawled onto the couch.
The sun slanted down across their legs, their chests, and it was just warm enough that he fell asleep quickly, that they stayed asleep until the sun no longer shone through the glass.