The second half of May arrived way faster than it seemed. At the Pines twins' bedroom, Mabel is already in a packing mood for her next vacation.
Dipper is noticing her eagerness when he sees her already making decisions from her wardrobe. "Sis, we still have time... We're not leaving until around two weeks from now."
"But I'm so excited! I can't stand idly, I have to decide which sweaters and headbands I wanna bring! It's less to be concerned about later!" Mabel then leaves out, unexpectedly. "Then I'll be able to help Sammy with his stuff!"
"Wait, wait... What do you mean, when...?" Dipper points out, a little concerned about her possible disappointment... "We don't know yet if Samuel will be able to join us..."
Mabel scoffs a little at this. "Oh, please... There are no doubts to be had about that!"
Dipper gives off a confused look, causing her to explain her logic.
"You really think Sammy's parents won't be convinced to accept? Between Grunkle Ford, who has his approach of being a responsible adult, and Grunkle Stan, who has this talent of making people feel at ease with him... You think they won't be able to get them to approve?"
"Um... You might have a point..." Dipper admits, but then, he lets out. "I'm a little worried about Bill going with us to Gravity Falls. Of course, I wouldn't object, since that'd mean not allowing our friend to join. And I have a very good trust of him, but I can't help it..."
His sister is annoyed by that, but she completely understands where he's coming from. "Bro-bro, think about everything that happened, especially lately... It's very clear that he has no bad intentions anymore. I'm totally sure of that! And we promised we'd help him be at ease!"
Her brother then asks her what's bothering his mind the most right now. "The stuff with Alan makes me nervous... Not you...?"
Mabel loses her smile a little bit, but then she speaks seriously with optimism. "I'll be honest... If it was Bill acting alone, I'd share that concern... But the fact that Sammy is fully on board with it makes it different to me... Even if your trust of Bill isn't 1000%, do you really, really believe that Samuel would do the wrong thing?"
Dipper stays mute for a moment...
"Do you think... maybe... Bill might be... rubbing off on Samuel a little...? I kinda fear that..." As he let it out, he looks at Mabel and evaluates the weight of his own statement. "No, it doesn't make sense... Samuel would never do something cruel..." He then realizes. "Thanks for listening, maybe I just needed to let these thoughts out of my body..."
Mabel nods. "I get it, Bro-bro!" She gently and half-teasingly rubs her brother's hair. "I'm proud of you for letting sense be in that head of yours!"
He giggles for a second before gently pushing her hand away, before she adds. "Besides... I'm sure anything that Samuel could've learned from Bill was something positive..."
Dipper thinks about how his friend seems to have turned a little more protective of his friends, ever since he made that deal to try and protect them from Bill's wrath. As well as how he seems to be trying to be braver and less of a pushover, trying to help his friends with their predicament and speaking up his mind a lot more... It gives him a little smile.
"You're most likely right. Sorry I bothered you, you should return to your packing. I might start planning a list myself..."
Mabel jokes around when she hears that. "Ugh, a list just for stuff you bring on vacation...? At some point, Nerd Alert is too repetitive to describe you..." She goes back to choosing her clothes.
Dipper frowns a tiny bit, but doesn't complain at all. He knows that there's genuine sibling love from her behind all the mocking statements.
Later in the evening, when Dipper is alone in the room, he can't help but grab the box where he put the souvenirs from their previous summer. Whenever he grabs the envelope and everytime he opens the letter... Knowing that what's going to happen soon is true... He is loving the feeling it gives him inside... A mix of eagerness and heartwarm that he doesn't want to let go of.
That same evening, Samuel overheard his parents being in the process of negociating about letting him go in vacation with his friends. He doesn't want to get involved, as the process makes him nervous. He's in an odd situation mentally, where he has been hearing positive things, but he also wouldn't want to get his hopes up too much...
When he enters his bedroom and closes the door, his very pensive and troubled demeanor doesn't go unnoticed.
"Uh-oh, looks like Fuzzball got his thoughts in a tangled ball!" Bill observes playfully before floating closely. "What's the matter, flesh sack?" He asks, with some genuineness behind the sarcasm.
Sammy breathes, trying to get the worries out of his stomach, before he starts answering. "I think I'm quite anxious about a few things... Mainly the whole issue about me possibly not joining my friends for vacation, and..."
Bill got a fleeting concerned stare for a very brief moment before he cuts him off with a confident speech, clearly wanting to change the subject. "Now now now... Why would you get your mind busy with such things...?" The triangle seems like he wants to be in charge of the situation, and with a bit of a recent change in behavior when it comes to his powers, he seems to want to take control with more than just words...
Bill extends his hands to successfully alter the scenery and provides Samuel with a fancy chair that came out of nowhere, while Bill also gets his own.
Being greatly confused about what's being set, Samuel is looking for words, but Bill manages to cut him off with a hint of playfulness. "Don't get your mind busy in a bad way... You need to relax... And I know a way..." He snaps his fingers and makes a drink with red liquid on it appear on the boy's hand, which he also get... As he can pretty much guess what's intended to be said, he continues. "There's no chance your parents will find out... I got the door locked and it'd only take a snap of my fingers to hide everything... Oh, one final thing..."
He finally uses his magics to change Samuel's attire to be the Bill-like suit that he got for his birthday. Bill stares with amusement before talking in a slightly manipulative tone. "There we go... Now I want you to... just relax... and slow down from unpleasant thoughts..."
Samuel doesn't object due to how heavy his mind is, and looks at his drink in confusion. "Is that even something I should be drinking...?"
"Of course it is!" Bill marks a pause before saying. "I hope you'll enjoy the taste of sheep blood!"
Hearing that causes the boy to almost gag of disgust, and Bill lets out a laugh. "It's raspberry juice, silly! I didn't think you'd fall for that, Fuzzball!"
His human vessel feels genuinely annoyed at him for the first time in a long while, and starts complaining. Then Bill asks a genuine question. "Oh, but that reaction allowed you to think of something else, didn't it...?"
"Uh... You're right..." Samuel can't deny that point... Smelling the drink's aroma, he realizes that the former statement is right too. And he does feel genuinely good in the attire Bill got for him...
"Now then, isn't that a nicer thing to do...?" Bill asks genuinely.
"I gotta say... Yes..." Sammy lets out a slight smile.
"Don't you have nicer things in your mind too...?"
"Um..." The boy thinks, and then notices the cane that the triangle gave him alongside the outfit, resting against his chair. It does spark a question. "Yes, actually, there's something I've been meaning to ask... ... How do you do that cane twirl thing...?"
Bill starts floating, letting his drink float too, and makes his cane appear. "Oh, this...?" He demonstrates. "It's not much, really... I'm sure you could do it."
Samuel stands and tries with his. After a couple of attempts, he already got the swing down. "Wow, you were right. You make it look so cool that I expected it to be a lot more complex..."
Bill takes the praise with pride before adding. "It's not much... This, however..." He does it again, but this time, he alternates between his fingers while the cane twirls. "Neat, uh?" Seeing the stunned look on the human's face, he approaches and adjusts the bowtie as a way of showing some affection. "I can teach you if you want it that badly! You'll need to beg, though! Hahah!"
Sammy can't help but be a little amused at the condition. After some more talks, he brings up quickly something to get it out of his system...
"Bill, I know you mean well in this case, but are you sure that we're not going too far with Alan...?"
The triangle groans of annoyance at this a little bit, but he figures that it might be wiser to answer and be done with the subject. "You shouldn't worry about it at all... I have everything under control..." He suddenly sounds more sinister. "And in order to make it as satisfying as it should... You gotta toy around a little... Let it build slowly... Make it ripe for the taking... And then, when you finally get to the goal..." He lets out an excited cackle.
"O-Okay... Thanks for answering..." Samuel tries to ignore all of his concerns and then return to a more innocent topic, for lack of a better term...
He takes the sketchbook that Dipper gifted him, which he has used himself to draw. But once in a while, when he's alone with Bill, he gets to a more specific kind of activity with it.
The triangle is delighted. "Ah, so you want me to show some more of that Spooktacular imagination, don't you?" Seeing the boy nod, he adds. "Okay, but let's make it a little more interesting... If you really took a liking to this stuff, then I want YOU to try your hand at it! You're up to the challenge, Fuzzball?"
Taken aback, he still answers. "Um... Sure...".
With that statement, Bill magically provides him a desk as a support, and he's genuinely intrigued to see him take the assignment...
Sammy finished a sketch and shows him with some eagerness, but he also lacks some confidence. "What do you think...?"
Bill takes the sketchbook, stares and wants to be encouraging, but he can't help but find it lacking. "It's fine and all, but... Surely, you could do way better than that... I mean, come on, where are all the sharp fangs?"
Somehow, the way the triangular companion expresses it doesn't make him feel bad, and instead makes him want to continue his efforts. As Bill planned, this twisted form of bonding is something he needed to get his head off his current worries.
By the next Friday afternoon, the end of the second to last week of the school year, it appears that Bill's idea has been working wonderfully. In the span of less than two weeks, Alan went from being a smug and always confident guy who always had the spirit and ways to twist any situation to his advantage... to gradually becoming a hugely nervous wreck since he got that big scare. And ever since, he's felt kind of... haunted, inside... He's been having some very weird and worrisome nightmares about his life crumbling apart. But not just nightmares...
While most of the class noticed that Alan had started acting... really weird... Once the final class of the day is done, he's along the two classmates that have backed him up the most.
He's talking to them, awfully distraught. "Guys... You must believe me... I keep having weird things happening to me... Like... some kind of visions..."
"Visions, uh...?" Says one of them. "That sounds really hard to believe..."
"Like what...?" Asks, the other.
He explains, sounding really scared. "It's like... I see something happening in front of me for fake... And then, it turns out to happen for real once I get back to my senses... It's so weird!"
"Really...? Are you sure you're not making things up...?"
Alan freaks out, trying to make them understand that he's sincere. "YES! I..." Just like that, he appears to have one happening right now. And he's taken out of the vision in a split second. "Guys, it just happened...!"
The two of them are very doubtful, however. "For real? What was it about...?"
"It was, um..." Alan turns around in fear and notices Samuel coming for him. This makes him let out a very quick reaction of fear.
Samuel approaches (or so he believes to be Samuel...) to say. "Hey guys! Just thought I'd let you know, I hope you have a good week-end! Byyyye!" He leaves quickly enough.
Alan freaks out. "This was the vision I just got! That this guy would come here and say that to us! Do you believe me now?"
The two of them don't take it any seriously at this point.
"Really? Isn't that one of the most basic things to say...?"
"It seems like you're making this stuff up..."
Alan yells at them. "I'M NOT! You gotta believe me!"
"Why are you even scared of this guy? What could he even do to you?"
"I... You see, he..."
Politely, the two prepare for leaving him behind, with one of them saying. "Gee, Alan... You're so... freaky... and weird... You clearly have some issues that would be best to get fixed..."
"B-but... but..." Alan is left with nothing else than his growing anxiety about Samuel and the Pines twins, getting bigger and bigger every day... He leaves for home, incredibly uneasy...
From where he is, Bill is talking to himself. He excitedly rubs his hands together in delight. "How beautiful... As expected, all it takes is a couple of little bumps, and that very fragile confidence is near its beautiful collapse..." The triangle is feeling like he is back on top, having absolute control at the palm of his hands and manipulative spirit once more. And it feels very envigorating to him, to a point where he can't keep it to himself...
"Heheheheheheheh... Hahahahahahahaha... HAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Author notes: I don't really know what to say. Just a small, mostly chill chapter until we get some big things one after the other. Even then, it took a little longer than it should have to get it out. Oh well.
I think I'm a little hesitant at showcasing torment in an extended fashion. So it seems that I mostly downplay Bill's mental games with what I write, but it is indeed a regular thing he's been doing since he basically got an open gate to Alan's mind. Hopefully it makes an impact even if I don't showcase it too much with the amount of text I dedicate to it.
Thanks for your patience. Thanks for reading!