A/N: Gravity Falls (c) Alex Hirsch, and this (like every other gf work I post) is a Transcendence-AU fic.
As with every time Alcor blipped into the material world, Bentley had to squash down his urge to jump and find somewhere to hide. It had been months since their unfortunate misunderstanding when they'd first met, and although he was lacking in his ability to 'human,' so to speak, he hadn't made any move to hurt Bentley or his father.
It was just annoying when Alcor teleported into his room when he was asleep, because he always, always woke up when Alcor did this and no amount of 'please I am a young teenager who needs his sleep please let me sleep I want to be much taller than my father one day I need the sleep' would convince him to cease and desist with this particular habit.
"Alcor, why," he asked, tongue thick with sleep. He turned his head to look at the clock on the wall and groaned, getting ready to snap the lights on. "Alcor, it's 6:50, why are you waking me up an hour before I need to be oh my god what."
Alcor the Dreambender was floating over him, nose just inches from Bentley's and golden pupils engulfing almost the entire sclera. He stared at Bentley and didn't say a single word in the half second it took for Bentley to nope the hell out of that situation.
With a strangled yell, Bentley kicked the sheets off and rolled off the bed before pushing himself under it, taking solace in the fact that Alcor couldn't float so close to him if the bed was there. He stared up at the bottom of the bed, at the mattress frames, and for the next few moments, it was quiet. Quiet enough that Bentley started to think that he'd maybe just hallucinated the demon.
And then the bed went up.
Bentley stared up at Alcor. Alcor, pupils blown and face blank, floated mid-air, wings twitching. Neither moved.
Finally, Bentley shifted up to lean on his elbows. "Um. Alcor?"
Alcor did not respond except to tip his head to the side and narrow his eyes. A questioning rumble purred out of his chest, and Bentley had never seen the demon like this. It was distinctly unsettling.
"Alcor?" His voice broke halfway through the word, and he grimaced in embarrassment. In the next moment, he was nudged up into a sitting position and then being lifted by the back of his Space Nation Valkyrie shirt.
He yelped and flailed, but a grumble that vibrated down the fabric of his cloth stopped that pretty quickly. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, Bentley realized that Alcor was literally carrying him around with his mouth, like some…some…some giant mother cat.
When he looked back down, there was a giant pile of blankets and pillows, most of which he was pretty sure he'd never seen before and why were they in his bedroom now? "Alcor?"
The demon set him down, more gentle than Bentley knew he could be, and then settled down beside him. Bentley watched as the demon patted and formed the nest to his liking, huffing and purring every once in a while. Figuring that Alcor was preoccupied with whatever he was doing, Bentley made to slowly back out of the nest.
Immediately, Alcor's head swiveled in his direction, and Bentley froze. His wings flicking behind him, Alcor stared into Bentley's eyes until the boy carefully resettled where Alcor had put him. The demon let out a sharp huff and turned back to reshaping that same pillow for the billionth time.
A minute passed like that; Bentley stared at Alcor as the latter made odd decisions about where to put things and what composed a blanket nest (sweaters, to Bentley's knowledge, did not usually feature nearly so prominently), and Alcor made odd noises and nitpicked. Eventually, Bentley felt his exhaustion creeping up into his eyes and he flopped down, keeping his eyes trained on Alcor just in case. He was acting weirder than normal, and that wasn't easily said.
Bentley's eyes had just drooped closed for the third time when he felt Alcor push and prod him up into more of a sitting position. Cracking his eyes open with a sleepy moan, he looked over at the clock. 7:15
He was mulling over the pros and cons of just sleeping an additional thirty minutes when Alcor literally draped his stupid tall body over Bentley's.
Despite several months of decidedly non-Twin Souls behavior, Bentley stiffened, his heart leaping up into his throat. "Alcor?"
As if in answer, Alcor wriggled up more into Bentley's lap and curled around his right side, nestling his chin in Bentley's hair and doing something Bentley could only call clinging.
"Alcor, what are you doing?" Any vestiges of sleep left him completely.
Alcor purred, and the vibration rumbled from his chest into Bentley's side. His hands tightened around the boy's upper arm and shoulder, and his calves pressed harder against Bentley's legs.
Bentley took a deep breath in, and let it out in an effort to calm himself down. When he took the next breath in, he yelled, "DAD. DAD. DAAAAD."
Around him, Alcor shuddered and made a distinctly displeased noise, deciding to drape one of his wings on top of the both of them in a gesture that felt too much like laying a blanket over a sleepy couple and Bentley didn't like it.
Moments later, the door slid open and his father appeared in the doorway. "Bentley? Bentley? What's wro—ooooh. Um. Is. This looks okay?"
"Dad." Bentley said, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks. "Dad this is not okay why."
His father coughed and took a step into the room, a traitorous smile on his face. Alcor's pliant form tensed. "Well, he did say that he didn't want to bang you. This doesn't look like banging, just some platonic cuddling. It looks comfortable, even."
"Dad." Really, if he could erase that conversation (and some of the ones thereafter) from his brain, he would with no hesitation. "Help. Please."
As soon as his father took another step forward, Alcor half-rose off Bentley and flared his wings, hissing and probably baring all of his teeth, if the look on his dad's face meant anything.
The coward took a step back, hands raised and laughing a bit nervously. "It's fine, I won't do anything except…I guess call the school and say you need the day off."
On any other day, that would have meant a day to relax and take care of himself. Bentley didn't think he was going to be able to sleep much like this.
Bentley groaned and tipped his head back, Alcor still poised possessively over him. In fact, it wasn't until after his dad let himself out that the demon cautiously resettled himself on and around Bentley, who was just too done to care.
"What's even gotten into you?" Bentley mumbled, staring at the ceiling and wishing he had one of those cool sky-holograms so that he could at least browse constellations or something.
Alcor started purring again.
"Like, you're weird normally, but this is abnormally weird. And—you smell funny. Do demons smoke narcotics?" If he could have, Bentley would have looked at Alcor's eyes.
Instead of listening to whatever odd soul-bond-thing they had, Alcor just started nosing Bentley's hair. It felt sort of nice, and Bentley felt himself starting to be a bit drowsy again, cocooned as he was.
"This better not be a periodic thing," he protested anyways, even as his eyes slid half-shut and he started to mumble. "I don't think I could handle this on a regular basis."
The purring intensified. Alcor was rubbing his face against Bentley's head in long, regular motions. Bentley was about to disregard it when he realized that there was something wet on top of his head.
He put two and two together very, very quickly.
"Are you licking me?"
Alcor just kept doing that thing, and Bentley realized that yes, yes, the feeling was exactly like licking. In fact, a string of saliva dribbled down the side of his face, just barely skimming the side of his ear and Bentley decided that no, he was not putting up with being groomed by his stupid demon overseer.
He grabbed the closest pillow with his mostly-free arm and then swung it over his head, praying that the trend of being unmutilated by Alcor would continue.
Alcor yowled and suddenly Bentley felt much lighter than he had just a fraction of a second ago. He sat up and saw Alcor, sitting on his butt and rubbing the side of his face, eyes wide with betrayal and confusion. There was a hair sticking out of his mouth, one that Bentley recognized as his own by the distinctive black-blonde coloring.
He almost felt bad.
"No," he said. "No. No licking. I—you look zapped as hell so you won't understand me, and I guess that snuggling isn't usually your thing, but no. No licking."
The demon let out a plaintive mew, trembling at the end even as he held his clawed hand to his face and stared at Bentley with those wide, wide eyes.
No, he definitely felt bad.
"No licking," he said, weaker than before. Those eyes were really killing him. "That's…that's gross. I don't like it."
Alcor almost visibly deflated, and he averted his eyes to the ground. His wings twitched and shuffled behind him. They were drawn up, Bentley noticed, in a way that he'd never seen them before. It made him look smaller.
Bentley flopped back down onto the stack of pillows, reclining but not quite laying. "I hate you."
There was a questioning, still pitiful-sounding mew from Alcor. Bentley groaned and flopped his arm in what he thought might be a 'come over here fine' gesture.
Apparently it worked, because just a moment later, he was enveloped again, Alcor purring even louder than before and wing pulled up over the both of them. The demon nestled his chin on Bentley's head, but made no motion to spread his saliva all over Bentley's hair.
Maybe he did understand Bentley's 'no licking' rule, Bentley thought, being lulled to sleep by the purr-machine nestled up against him and the warmth trapped in by Alcor's wing. This wasn't so bad. It was actually kind of nice.
Bentley fell asleep.
And he woke up again three hours later, sans Alcor-blanket and with a head of saliva-coated hair. He really should have expected this.