Miz coughed lightly. "Sorry about that. I… don't know what came over me… didn't react like this to another Ford I met… but he was around 30 years younger…" She paused. "Oh. I guess I'm not into children."
"...Said the 600-billion-plus-year-old dragon who looks and acts like a kid?" Stan put out there, as he dug into another slice of pizza.
Miz scoffed. "I'll have you know that I'm sort-of-mostly an adult! I'm a big girl!"
Bill not-quite-groaned. "Kid, don't even try that with him. I can't even get him to call ME an adult."
"Because you aren't one, you're a kid," Stan stated simply, which had Bill huffing out a breath and looking a bit annoyed, but also tired.
"Says YOU," Bill said, turning away from them and walking back over to the toaster to retrieve his now finally thoroughly burned toast. He pulled them two pieces out, dropped them onto a plate, and grabbed the lime jelly and pepper up off of the counter. ...The pepper went on first, a fork was used to grab and spread the jelly on after that, everything got cleaned up and put away (fork tossed in the sink, jar closed, pepper shaker pushed back into place), Bill flipped the 'sandwich' closed and hefted it up to his stupid human-ish mouth to take a big bite out of it.
Mabel was rubbing her eyes and muttering, "Wipe away the horror--" Ford wasn't sure he wanted to know how bad he looked through those glasses. (The concept was fascinating -- and he very much needed to know how Bill kept pulling off magic-like things inside the barrier, for more reasons than he cared to count -- but...) The fact that the dragon was now refusing to so much as glance in his direction didn't make him feel very good about how hideous he must appear.
Ford shifted in place awkwardly, before finally making his way towards his own seat at the table. He was unconsciously playing with his hands a bit nervously as he did so, not quite pulling his sixth fingers under.
"Ford…" Stan said quietly, picking up on his twin's distress. And that was enough for Ford to become aware of what he was doing. Ford mentally shook it off, squaring his shoulders, pulling out his chair, and sitting down at the table firmly, as though he had every right to be there and be unembarrassed.
He clenched and unclenched his hands under the table a few times to try and force himself to relax. "Don't feel bad. I'm only wearing these because you're too gosh darned handsome for your own good." Miz commented lightly. Unfortunately, that made Ford tense slightly all over again. But, with the threat of a man-eating dragon wanting to potentially eat him for how 'good' he looked somewhat addressed as not actually being an issue anymore, Ford was less panicked this time. And when the compliment finally registered, he looked over at her with a faint blush of his own, finally remembering his manners. "Uh… thank you?" he told her.
"Don't even think about it, idiot," was Bill's bland and immediate response to Ford's words, before he took another bite of his usual meal-time sandwich.
Mabel finally looked up. "Soooo~" She said as she scooted closer to Miz. "You've never dated before?" Miz groaned and buried her face in her hands. "You sound like Pyronica… she's always trying to drag me to a bar to pick up men…"
"So, you don't want to find yourself a man?" Mabel asked. Miz sighed. "I'm asexual, and most of the multiverse… isn't. And those who ARE, have no interest in romantic pursuits because their species is physically incapable of feeling such an emotional connection."
Mabel made a weird face. "Oh." She frowned. "That… sucks?" Miz snorted. "You have no idea. I've taken a more adult form before and… ugh… most of the people I met were like 'Hey hot stuff~ I'd love to slather myself in butter and have you chew me up~' which is both unsanitary and gross."
"Probably you shouldn't be going bar-trolling with your 'Ronnie, then," Bill put out there. "Trolls in bars who are all into being eaten are a thing."
"Yeah, that's where she met her mate actually." Miz sighed. "She even dragged me along to watch her eat him. To be fair, he was way under her league and needed me to keep him alive long enough for her to--"
"--STOP," Ford said harshly, interrupting her loudly.
"Um… what?" Mabel said, completely confused by all of this.
Bill looked up at Ford, then rolled his eyes. "Right. The prude thinks other-species sexual intercourse is something to never-ever talk about, but Earth stuff is fine?" He turned to Mabel. "Shooting Star, think female praying mantis and mate."
"Oh." Mabel blinked. "Ohhhhhhhh…" She went a little wide-eyed. Dipper made an almost freaked out sort of noise as he belatedly realized what Bill had just implied.
"BILL!" Ford protested. "--What?" Bill said. "Biology!"
"It's perfectly natural for her species!" Miz grumbled. "I mean, there's a species out there who require a very specific type of rock jammed right up their-"
--"we do not talk about other dimensions in this house," Ford said, cutting her off again, looking pale, and not all that well. Miz pouted but closed her mouth. "I think it's interesting."
"...Only the ones that Stanford's already talked about are fair game for me or anybody else," Bill told her, eyeing him. "And I'm betting that HE'D go for the loophole of: 'the dimensions YOU'VE Seen aren't exactly those same ones that HE was in'." Bill ate the last bite of his sandwich, and turned away to face the sink and wash his hands off.
Miz hummed. "Well, if he's so embarrassed by biology, I can tell you about the Pastries dimension. Their economy is entirely baked goods and sweets."
"--Not just biology," Bill said as he dried his hands off, hating that he had to interrupt her. "ANYTHING."
"Anything? Geez, he goes on a wacky space-hopping adventure for 30 years and doesn't want to write down all of it into a book to publish as a hip new Sci-Fi series to make MILLIONS of dollars?" But when Miz looked over at him again, it was clear from how very sick Ford looked at the concept of writing much of anything of that experience down that, no, that wasn't something that Ford was ever going to do.
"....You can censor it?" Miz suggested, and it was clear from the look on Ford's face that he'd mentally rejected that thought as soon as it had registered as well.
"He didn't like it," Bill informed her, as he set up the tea kettle with water. "He REFUSED to like it." Miz looked legitimately confused.
"That wasn't--" Ford began thunderously, shooting up out of his chair.
"I gave you EXACTLY what you wanted, and YOU decided AFTERWARDS that YOU didn't like it." Bill repeated cuttingly, each word nearly bitten off as he said it. "Don't blame ME that YOU DON'T LIKE what you want." He turned away from the stove. "YOU were the one who refused to CALL OFF OUR DEAL."
Ford stood rigidly, fuming in silence, fists clenched at his sides and shoulders straining as he barely held onto his temper. Though if looks could kill…
Bill was glaring at him with a cold sort of anger right back.
Miz shuddered at the taste in the air.
"Sit down, the both of ya'," Stan told them both.
Neither of them sat down. (Bill didn't feel like sitting on the counter, and Ford wasn't sitting down again while Bill was standing and seeming to ignore what he'd heard his brother tell the demon to do.)
Miz looked around. "...Sorry for hitting a nerve?" Mabel sighed and patted her shoulder. "It's… Grunkle Ford is a little…" She struggled to find the right word. Miz raised an eyebrow. "Triggered?"
"Inconsistent." Bill put out there. "The word you are looking for, Shooting Star, is inconsistent."
"Well… since cool stories about space are a no-go, what should dinner conversation be?" Miz asked. Mabel was immediately in her face again. "So you like nerds~?" Miz groaned. "I'm not exactly in the mood for a relationship right now. I'm not ready for that type of emotional investment."
"Thank god." they both heard Dipper mutter. Mabel sent her twin a disappointed look. Miz grinned. "But speaking of cute, single nerds… has Pacifica contacted you recently, Dipper?" Miz asked of him, leading to Mabel giggling and Dipper flushing bright red. "--No. Nope. No. We are not talking about this!" he protested.
"Oh, she's texted me a few times to ask if Dipper's doing anything crazy that she could come over to laugh in his face about," Mabel laughed as she put in her own two cents on the current status of her twin's relationship with a certain local heiress. Miz rolled her eyes. "She really sounds like a Tsundere." Mabel nodded. "I never thought about it like that, but you're absolutely right!"
"Ford, c'mon, sit down," Stan said again, as the tea kettle started to whistle, and Bill turned away from his brother, breaking their glaring contest. Ford grimaced, not quite fighting with himself still at having been presented with Bill's back like he didn't matter... but Ford eventually gave in after a few more seconds and sat back down in his own seat at the table heavily.
Miz and Mabel were gossiping back and forth, giggling as they pointed at Dipper. "Ugh… it's like the girls' sleepovers all over again…" Dipper groaned. Mabel gasped. "Oh! I should call Grenda and Candy so we can all have a sleepover!"
"That isn't safe with Bill here." was Ford's near-immediate response. It took him only a moment longer to resituate his glasses and add, "You could perhaps sleep over at one of their houses though, instead?"
Mabel bit her lip, and glanced over at her Grunkle Stan.
"Ford, the kid did fine on Summerween," Stan said, looking over at him and Ford turned a glare on him
"Oh, yes," Ford said caustically, "A few hours on one night with almost complete supervision and immediate consequences sure to follow. Surely we can trust him with--"
"--Ford," Stan said warningly.
"You said it yourself, Stan," Ford continued on, looking his brother directly in the eye. "You don't care about anyone else."
There was silence at the table for a moment.
"How badly do you think of your own brother?!" Miz turned to Ford with a horrified look. "Do you… are you SERIOUSLY sitting there, looking at your own BROTHER and telling him that you believe he would allow harm to come to Mabel's friends?!"
"Shooting Star and Pine Tree, Question Mark, Red, and Melody," Bill listed off, as he poured himself a cup of hot water. "They're part of the agreement I have with Stanley. Protected. That Stanford is somewhat protected because of the strings of consequence from Pine Tree and Shooting Star." They all took priority; Candy and Grenda, that monster, weren't even on the list, just barely dangling off the edges of it by a few loose strings, though Bill had never confirmed that with them. He glanced over at Miz. "That Stanford is obsessed with Deals and contracts."
"You break them all the time!" Stanford pointed out with a righteous anger that had never really gone out. "Don't pretend that you care or are doing this for any other reason than to--" He stopped talking when Stan stood up and put a warning hand on his shoulder, but only just.
"...so ...the man who hates Deals and doesn't even want to complete his side of it, still puts stock in them? And from what I've SEEN, it was YOU who broke your Deal, not Bill," Miz mused. "--No," said Bill, correcting her before Ford could even begin to protest. "That wasn't what happened. And he doesn't put stock in them. He never has." He took a sip of his tea with almost zen-like serenity.
Miz looked confused. "I'm obviously missing something here." She looked back and forth between Bill and Ford (twitching a little when she saw the Toby-fied Ford).
Bill sighed and lowered his cup of tea to about chest-level.
"He let me into his mind whenever he was asleep, if I wanted to be there, to use his body to do whatever I needed to do to help him," Bill told her. "That part of our Deal was a bit cyclic, in terms of each of us getting what we wanted." He looked up at that idiot Stanford. "The addendum was the problem." He looked back at her. "But I did agree to it." Miz tilted her head, wanting to learn more so she wouldn't repeat the same mistakes once she got to meet her own Ford.
"The problem," Bill said almost ponderously, "Is that in the Mindscape, and in the way that I do Deals, the words are really the out," he told her, looking down at his teacup. "The actual Deal, each side of it, isn't the words, it's the set of thought-concepts behind those words. The words are the bare minimum, and the trick, to get out of whatever you need to get out of, or complete whatever you need to complete. And, if all else fails, ha," he shook his head. "I always make sure I remember to want to include the three-times-call-it-off for ending it, so I can always use it when I need to, whenever I want to, even if I don't always TELL my 'clients' about it. And I can get away with that," Bill told her, "Because nobody I've ever made a Deal with has ever thought of it as being actually never-ending, 'no matter what'." He looked up at Ford, capturing his gaze for a moment. ('Until the end of time.' Ford himself was frozen in place, feeling a little like he was caught struggling in a spider's web. --It was only just occurring to him now, listening to Bill talk, that he'd never actually asked Bill how Deals actually worked.)
Bill looked back to Miz. "Deals between demons and others aren't ever made between two sides that can actually trust each other to keep up their side of it, without being locked into things like that," Bill told her. "--If they did, they wouldn't be making a Deal in the first place; they'd just make each other a set of promises and be done with it. Deals have almost no flexibility at all to them, even if you know exactly what you're doing." Bill let out a sigh and made a 'waving off' motion with his hand a bit. "And that's the problem with Deals here, you see. They're meant to force the resolution that each party wants, even if they change their minds later. Each side can feel whether what the other is offering is what they want, or if it's something that they're opposed to instead, before they agree. And that's the part that ISN'T a trick," he told her. "When you shake hands and agree with giving what you're offering, and taking what's being offered to you... at least at the beginning of everything, when you first make that Deal… you HAVE to MEAN IT."
"Interesting… your Deals work differently from mine." Miz tilted her head, a gesture that looked eerily similar to some of the head tilts that Bill sometimes made. Ford twitched. "For me, I can twist the wording right up until I shake their hand, sometimes they catch on and will make me reword it, but most of the time, people don't really pay attention and I can do whatever I want."
"Because you're there in person," Bill told her. "And probably plugged into the karmic cycle, from what I read that you wrote. But I made all my Deals in the Mindscape," he told her. "Twisting words might be good for the out, but the actual DEAL that you have to be 'okay with' and MEAN to complete at the time that you agree to it… is VERY clear, when you do things there, between minds, whether you want it to be or not. --It can't NOT be."
He paused for a moment to take another sip of tea -- in a motion that really looked more like something someone would use to kick back a shot of vodka. Then Bill turned and set the empty cup down in the sink, just so. "And when that Stanford Pines made that Deal with me, what he wanted -- what he added to it -- wasn't just that he wanted me to be HIS friend," Bill told her. "He wanted me to WANT to be his friend." Bill turned to look at her, and there was something of a fury in his eyes. "And that Stanford's definition of a 'friend' ISN'T mutual. Not. in. the. least."
Miz looked horrified. She turned to Ford, who looked shell-shocked in general at the moment. "You… you fucked with Bill's free will?!" She was disgusted. "No, that's-- he-- he could have said no." Ford even looked panicked for a moment as he blurted that out, before he realized that, yes-- "He could have said no!!" Ford repeated angrily, and was only growing angrier by the second.
Stan, on the other hand, didn't lose that look of blank shock. "Kid…"
"It's fine," Bill said, waving it off with a hand. "It all worked out. I'm out." He gave Stanley a grin. "It's fine!" (Dipper and Mabel exchanged looks at this.)
Miz was glaring at Ford now. "Even I'VE never fucked with someone's free will! That's like… the lowest thing anyone can do-"
"--He chose it, freely!" Ford spat back at her, but he was more than a little wide-eyed as he turned back to Bill, because it wasn't as though he hadn't immediately understood the implications of what Bill had just said, when he'd said it -- that Bill had been literally unable to stop wanting to keep to their deal on his own, once he'd agreed to it and shook hands with him on it. He'd been unable to stop trying to be… and he thought friends were-- but demons thought 'friends' were-- "Why didn't you just say no!?!" Ford not quite shrieked out at him. But all Bill did in response to Ford was simply to look over at him and blink at him. "Because I was getting out," Bill told him. Ford, still wide-eyed and now at a loss for words, looked like he had no idea what Bill was talking about.
All that really registered through all of the shock, to Ford, was the fact that he'd been able to tell when Bill was lying for a very long time now -- and right now, he was certain that Bill hadn't been lying about anything he'd just told them at all.
"Kid," Stan said slowly. "I got a question for you."
Ford froze in place where he was seated for a moment, craning his head to look up at his brother, and Bill looked over at Stanley as well.
"....Yes?" Bill said almost suspiciously, because he'd learned what that particular tone meant was coming from previous uses in the past, and he'd never liked the questions he'd gotten after that, yet.
Stan took a moment, to figure out how he wanted to put what he wanted to say. "What do you think would have happened if, when you and Ford were all buddy-buddy," and Stan ignored the sound that came out of Ford at that, "You'd told him that, y'know, you were stuck in a really horrible place, and you needed to get out of there, or you were going to die?"
Bill blinked at him.
"What?" Ford said, and then he seemed to realize-- and he went absolutely dead pale. "I-- I--" Miz face palmed. "Bill was trapped in a decaying dimension. If you're so smart, use your damn head to realize what that means!" But Ford hardly heard her. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that...
"...Oh, Axolotl," Ford said, his voice as hollow as a ghost. "I would have said yes." He sounded absolutely horrified at the very thought. "I-- I would have--" He turned even paler. "...Breathe, Ford," Stan told his brother, turning to him and rubbing that hand on his brother's shoulder across both shoulders. He hadn't meant to freak his brother out. That wasn't--
Bill was looking back and forth between them, uncomprehendingly. Miz sighed and reached over to gently take Bill's hand. "Brother, this is one of those… human things. You see, for most humans, if they hear that someone they are friendly with is in a dangerous place and need help, they will help them." She sighed. "If you told Ford the truth, that you wanted to escape your decaying dimension, he would have gladly helped you out."
"No, he wouldn't," Bill told her, pulling his hand away from her slowly. "He didn't care about me at all. Nobody does," he told her, like that was obvious, just a fact of life. But then he tilted his head at her, and blinked for a moment again as he remembered 'little sister' -- a sister would care about him -- and he straightened up a bit. (Ford, on the other hand, looked like he was having trouble breathing where he sat. He was still stuck on the idea of what would have happened if Bill had done that back then.)
Miz sighed at Bill. "Ok, it's… a human thing. If you had said 'Oh gee, I'm kinda dying the longer I stay here, please help me get out,' he WOULD have said yes. Humans pack bond to things super easily."
Yes, Bill knew that. He'd taken advantage of that on several occasions! (It was HILARIOUS, really, how stupid they all were for continually giving in to their biology and falling for that!) That wasn't the issue; the issue was…
"But I wasn't dying there." Bill looked at her oddly. "I could have stayed there and kept collapsing dimensions into it to get more space and time to work with. I would have survived for as long as I wanted to, as long as the stupid lizard kept spinning up dimensions for me to break. I just needed to get OUT."
Miz sighed. "But you were in a place that was dangerous. You needed help. And at that point, Ford would have been happy to help you." She paused before glancing over at Stan. "What was it that Stan called it… presentation and packaging?"
Bill frowned at her, looking frustrated. He hadn't needed that for mind-to-mind things in the Mindscape; he had been able to read thoughts and respond to them perfectly well! He gestured at Stanford.
"Just because he acts like he thinks he would have let me out back then, doesn't mean that he actually would have done it!" he told her. "He's INCONSISTENT. --I'd tell him to do things, and he'd do something else," he told her. "I'd tell him to slow down, he didn't need to go that fast, and he'd just speed up. I'd tell him to put up more shielding around the lab, and he'd leave it out. I'd TELL him NOT to listen to Glasses, and what did he do?" He turned his head and glared at Ford, who was holding his head in his hands where he was sitting, muttering to himself, with the rest of his family beside him, quietly talking him down.
"That's just 'cause he's stupid." Miz said blandly.
Stanley frowned at where this seemed to be going and turned to the kids, who both looked equal parts angry and horrified by what Miz had just stated outright as though she thought it were a fact. And Stan had a bad feeling that this was only going to get worse. "You two should go up to your room," Stan told them both under his breath. "Work on that slumber party idea." Both of them knew what he was doing -- they were smart kids -- and both of them looked ready to argue with him stubbornly about it, even with him giving them both the same look he'd given them when the zombie apocalypse had happened, when he'd told them to go upstairs then. So instead he broke down and tried something different this time. "This… isn't gonna go well," he levelled with them both.
"Then make them stop," Dipper told him, sending a long look over at Bill and the 'dragon lady'.
"--Prideful, impatient, thinks he knows better and too stubborn to take the advice of other people because he thinks he knows best," was what Miz said next.
Stan clenched his jaw. "Yeah, maybe Bill might do that, if I told him 'stop'," Stan told Dipper -- though at this point, Stan knew even that one would be an uphill battle, and a bad idea. (The kid had started out trying to stop Miz; technically, Bill had taken Ford's side in this, even if he was screwing it up and doing it all wrong. Telling the kid to stop now wasn't a good idea; it'd leave the kid thinking he shouldn't try to defend Ford the next time something like this happened. ...Hell, the kid probably would have realized by now what he was doing and stopped on his own, if the other one would just stop already.) "But that one ain't stopping." Stan grimaced. "You got any ideas on that?" Dipper grimaced as well. --Yeah, it was pretty obvious that him and his sister didn't have any ideas for how to stop a literal dragon, not without basically attacking her with grappling hooks and guns and trying to run her off, and that wasn't gonna end well. "I don't want either of you down here hearing things Ford isn't gonna want you to hear, and he's gonna need you upstairs waiting for him with a hell of a lotta hugs when all this is over."
"--YES!" Bill told Miz. "And what do you THINK would have happened if I would have told him that? What Stanley just said, when he's like that?" He waited for her response.
"Go," he told them, "He ain't ready to move yet, and you two ain't carrying him upstairs." (And Stan couldn't just drag him away himself; he needed to keep an eye on the kid, and who knew what would happen if the human-demon saw them leaving the room and tried to follow them.) To Stan's relief, levelling with the two of them actually worked; they both looked at each other, then they both looked up at him and visibly backed down. ...They looked pretty disappointed in him, but they did still back down.
Stan still watched to make sure that they both left the room and really went upstairs, though. And Stan didn't miss how Mabel still glanced between them all before biting her lip and getting out of the kitchen. Dipper followed, giving Ford some worried glances, and something more of a glare up at Stanley as he went, and, well, yeah, he probably deserved that for letting things get this far.
"He would have thought of how much of a hero he would be, how noble he would have been, to rescue his 'muse'," Miz responded back to Bill, and neither of them had even noticed that the kids had left. (That was when Stan knew that this was going to be really bad.)
"No!" Bill told her, irate. "He would have done THE OPPOSITE! Because THAT'S WHAT HE DOES!! That's what he DID!" he snarled out at her.
"No. He acted the way he did, he betrayed you because he thought you betrayed him first, and the next 30 years and even now, was his pride and spite trying to hit you back where it hurts to hide the fact that you hurt his feelings." Miz sighed. "I could be wrong but from what I've seen in your interaction here, that's what it seems like."
("Breathe, Ford," Stan told his brother again, as he felt his brother's breath hitch through the hand he had on his shoulder. He moved it to Ford's back. "Just breathe." He hoped that his brother would speak up and defend himself, but right now? It didn't look like that was gonna be happening; not today. He was too stuck inside his own head and inside of the coulda-woulda-shoulda's and coulda-gones to get as loud as he probably needed to outside of it. ...And trying to stop the kid right now, when he was actually trying to correct his little sister in her thinking of Ford as badly as she did, would be a mistake. It might help Ford out now a little bit, but in the longer run? Correcting the kid on things he'd said or done only really worked on the kid after the kid had decided that he'd finished doing something; any time Stan had started to try calling him out in the middle of whatever never really worked. It was too fluid for the kid, and a problem, because Bill always thought that he would have gotten wherever Stan was talking about on his own, in just a little bit, if Stan hadn't just interrupted him, the little...)
"I," Bill told her, "Gave him EVERY LAST PIECE of that portal. I gave the math to him outright. I seeded his dreams with the rest. He KNOWS that it came from me," Bill informed her. "ALL OF IT came from me!" Bill exclaimed. "And his PRIDE," he spat out, glaring at Ford again, "Would have had him REFUSING to have me come here, because he would not have wanted to share the credit," he told her with a flat sort of anger.
Miz made a frustrated sound before taking a deep breath and continuing. "That's because he's selfish. He's got a huge self-esteem issue that he tries to hide by pretending he's better than everyone else because if he allowed himself to acknowledge it, he would spiral into depression, self-loathing and all that fun stuff. So he feels a need to take all the glory for himself as a way to make himself feel like he's worth more than being the 'freak' that everyone saw him as when he was a child." Miz said patiently.
"Which is half the reason he acts the way he does," she continued. "He liked it when you praised him for being smart, it fed his ego. Then he finds out you only approached him for the portal and he started thinking that all the nice things you said to him were a lie, because in his mind, if someone lied to him ONCE, betrayed him ONCE, then they were now his enemy and couldn't be trusted." She pointed at Stan. "Like FUCK, the whole issue with Stan breaking his stupid science fair project was something he refused to let go for over 40 years. He held onto a PETTY grudge on his own BROTHER, who had spent their entire childhood protecting him from the people who insulted him, and after this ONE incident, he rejects Stanley for over 40 years out of pure spite."
"Yes. No. Your logic is flawed," Bill told her. "He's selfish. He doesn't care about anyone but himself." He hesitated for a moment. "He cares about Pine Tree and Shooting Star now," he self-corrected, for clarity. "Maybe. --Not the point, he didn't then," he told his little sister, who was clearly having trouble parsing the current and past situation. So he was going to have to help her with it, straight-through, step-by-step. "He is selfish. He cannot be selfish and WANT to help me. He would NOT do it. --He might have said so at first," Bill told her. "--Maybe."
Bill shook his head and continued. "But it would NOT have taken him very long to realize EXACTLY what would have happened once I was OUT of that portal and HERE. --Because I am BETTER THAN HIM and HE KNOWS IT. --Yes, he has a 'huge self-esteem issue' and yes he 'needs to take all the glory for himself' and he would KNOW that HE COULD NOT DO THAT if I was HERE WITH HIM, because he CANNOT HANDLE IT." Bill explained to her. "And I wasn't able to THINK clearly when that whole 'oh, you BETRAYED ME' thing went down," he informed her, rubbing the side of his hand against his right temple. "Because I KNOW what friends are SUPPOSED to be like, and HIS idea of 'friends' was more like a sibling he could treat like they were FAMILY instead, taking and taking and taking and never worrying about having to GIVE ANYTHING BACK to, who you NEVER had to care about or want to do anything for in return, so when HE was all 'you betrayed me' and angry, I couldn't THINK anything but that he didn't MEAN it, because if I had BELIEVED that, then I WOULDN'T have WANTED to keep BEING HIS FRIEND," Bill fumed.
"Instead, because of that STUPID DEAL," Bill spat out at her, "I KEPT THINKING that he would want to let me through," Bill told her. "That it would be a nice surprise for him if I did, that he would LIKE it and BE HAPPY once I was actually there, why would I even need to say anything to him about it when I didn't know how long it would take to make the PORTAL work properly, why would he even CARE if I used a 'Rift' I'd designed into those equations and plans as a shortcut, THAT would just mean that I would be there FASTER, he LIKED FASTER, CLEARLY I had been wrong about him not wanting me to be there before, OF COURSE he would want me there, we were 'FRIENDS' and I would be MORE USEFUL TO HIM there. --HERE. And--" Bill came to an abrupt stop, panting slightly, looking like he had a horrible pounding headache going.
Miz sighed and turned to Stanley. "Well, what do you think, sir? He's YOUR brother. Though I will say, if what Bill says is true about what Ford thinks a sibling is supposed to be, I'd say you're a goddamn saint to put up with him."
(Ford was still in the process of taking deep breaths. He'd been hearing what Bill had been saying for most of that, but hadn't quite had the strength to leave the room. The hand his brother had on his back had been helping, though. Stanley wasn't tense at all.)
Stan just eyed Bill and said, "What do you want from me, dragon-lady? Kid's insane. That stupid deal thing just made him more insane. He can't even think about it properly without looking like his head's gonna explode," he said, gesturing with his free hand at Bill. "And I know he was trying to get around it any way he could to hurt him while it was going on. --Hell, the kid'll even tell you that, if you ask him. He told me." He frowned her.
"But hey, you want my two cents, right? Well, here it is. --The whole thing was messed up, start-to-finish, and my brother didn't deserve what happened to him. Nobody did anything like even listen to that triangle demon a trillion years ago, or a billion years ago, or a million years ago -- or whatever, pick a time -- or even think like trying to help him get his head halfway screwed on straight, outta that place and maybe even a little less crazy, might be a good idea, so he wouldn't be making a bunch of big old weird problems for any of us or anybody else later. So what." He looked over at Bill. "The kid's here now, he's out now, all the deals he's ever had are off, and we'll figure out where to go from here. He's got the wrong idea about a lot of things, but that's why I'm teachin' him stuff," he said, and the last was far more directed at Bill then at her.
"--And you're making things a hell of a lot harder here than they need to be," he told her, looking not real happy with her just then. "You think I wasn't working either of them up to working their way through this? Getting them to figure out exactly what the hell went wrong, so we won't do that again ever? --You ain't helpin' here, tryin' to force the kid through this," and hurting his brother in the process, but it was clear that the dragon-lady didn't care about that, so he didn't even bother go bring it up for her to scoff at or argue about -- like the kid usually did about all things Ford. Besides, Stan had enough problems with the fact that… "He's not gonna believe you, even if he listens to you. --Look at him," Stan said, jerking his head towards Bill. "You think he's doing anything but hearing you?" He looked at her with no small frustration, and with the way Stan's jaw was clenched, he looked like he wanted to punch something, or someone.
Miz shrugged. "Sanity's overrated anyway." She sighed at the look Stan gave her for that comment, then she looked legitimately apologetic, not meaning to cause such a huge argument. "Well, I think this is one of those situations where no-one is in the right. Sorry for messing up your plan. I'm kinda a 'just confront the issue head on' sort of gal. I'm gonna leave you to it… sorry…"
Stan barked out a laugh. "Right. Force the stubborn knucklehead and the stubborn triangle kid to confront each other head-on on something and expect them not to dig in their heels that much harder, then go ahead and run away when everything gets too hard and doesn't work all that well for you. Great plan, there. --Think I'll stick with the kid's plans instead," Stan told her with a dark and bitter sort of almost-amusement, and a glare. (Because hell, at least the kid tended to double-down on things and try again a different way, approaching things from a different angle, instead of just giving up on things and running away. It was one of the very few things he almost actually respected about the demon: the kid didn't ever give up. If Bill wanted something, the kid went for it. Even if he was a damn little jerk.)
She sighed again. "Is there a… better topic of discussion that would be more friendly in this situation?"
--The hell? Was the demonic dragon-lady really just brushing everything she'd just done here off, like it was nothing? "...You want to try and help? --Take the kid back upstairs and get as chatty with him as you like." he told her. "Let me deal with the fallout here on my own. Pretty sure you've done enough damage for the night." He pressed down on his brother's back with just a bit more pressure.
Miz nodded and got up to take Bill's hand. "Come on big brother, I can tell you about that dimension I found in which Bill Cipher is an actual Bee…" She led him out of the kitchen. "It's kinda crazy, you know there was a college-aged Dipper there too…"
Bill let her drag him upstairs, but he wasn't saying anything.
"Stanley…" Ford said to his brother softly, almost tremulously.
"No," Stan told his brother. "You're not like that. They're both wrong about you. --I told you, kid's got an idea of you in his head that just doesn't match--"
Bill and Miz didn't hear the rest of it, as they vanished up the stairs to the attic.
---
"--kid's got an idea of you in his head that just doesn't match who you really are," his brother told him, and Ford felt weak. Sick. He was shaking slightly in place.
Head still bowed, Ford clasped his hands together in his lap and pressed them together. He focused on his breathing, trying to suppress his shivers.
"...I know I'm not… like that…" Ford said quietly, closing his eyes. 'Stupid, prideful, impatient, thinks he knows better … too stubborn to take the advice of other people because he thinks he knows best … betrayed you because … you hurt his feelings ... self-loathing … take all the glory for himself … the freak … fed his ego ... held onto a petty grudge on his own brother, who had spent their entire childhood protecting him from the people who insulted him … out of pure spite.' If it had just been Bill… it would have been easier to say 'no, that's not me'. It was harder to hear it from someone else. But the dragon-girl had almost certainly constructed her present understanding of him from tainted information from Bill, so…
"That's not the problem," he quietly told his brother. What he was like, who he really was... was far worse than that...
"Ford," his brother told him gruffly. "You wouldn't have let the kid through." Ford flinched, but opened his eyes and looked up at Stan, smiling weakly, though it pained him to do it.
"Stanley, I would have," he said, feeling horrible about it. "I was a fool. I was completely fooled by him back then." He felt bile rise in his throat as he admitted. "I would have willingly let him out. Gladly, even." He swallowed hard. "And then…" Weirdmageddon, except half the Zodiac hadn't even been born yet. There would have been no stopping him. And without the metal plate in his head to keep Bill from getting into his mind, the equation for the universal theory of weirdness would have been Bill's for the taking, and then...
"--No, you knucklehead," Stan ground out at him, sitting down on the side of the table, and leaning down to peer at him almost straight into his face. "You would have said yes at-first, and changed your mind later before it got that far." Ford stared up at him, feeling a vague horror that his brother had just repeated what Bill had-- "Because the kid wouldn't have been lying to you," Stan told him next, rubbing that firm callused hand over his shoulder again. "You would have known what he was actually like. --You wouldn't have been okay with him coming through if all he was gonna do was rip up and destroy the place. Even I know that, and I'm just a--"
"You are not a dumb, old--" Ford started to say, then had to stop, because Stan teased him about that every blasted time, about how he wasn't 'old', huh? And who wasn't a 'con-man'? It left Ford turning his head away from him slightly, fighting the weak smile that threatened to break out.
"Heh," his brother said anyway, and Ford adjusted his glasses as he turned back towards his brother to gave him a long, narrow-eyed, 'I know what you're doing there' look.
"C'mon," Stan said to him, clapping him on the shoulder. "Who's gonna listen to what a couple of demons think of you?"
"Couple of--" Ford blanched and straightened in place. "That man-eater is a--" ...Oh, Axolotl. He should have known. Of course the only sort of 'person' that Bill would truly be able to make friends with, and argue with on equal footing without things coming to blows would be another demon. Of course she was a demon. He should have realized it sooner, from her behavior; it was completely characteristic of, and entirely consistent with--
"Relax," Stan told him, "The kid's riding hard on her… well, mostly," as if this were a reason to relax instead of panic!
"Stanley, I told you what demons are like!" Ford flatly reminded him. Had he forgotten somehow? Or simply discounted-- "You yourself do not want Bill talking with his Henchmaniac demons, because--"
"--they were a bad influence on him," Stan said, and Ford stared up at him in disbelief, because... Stan thought they'd been a bad influence on Bill?!? "This one cares about junk like free will, and used to be human before she went all demon or whatever, however that works."
"Used to be--?! That's not--" possible!, Ford almost blurted out, except that demons had to come from somewhere. --But how did that explain her being supposedly more than 600 billion years old? Their own universe was only a little less than 14 billion years old as it was (...and really, in retrospect, that and the talk of Deals really should have been a big clue as to her actual classification).
Unless… --There was that theory that when the universe ended, it would restart again from the beginning, wasn't there? If she could travel between different dimensions -- and Stanley had indicated that she had done so to leave last time via a 'doorway' of some sort (one that had not quite shown up properly on the Shack's security footage) -- she could have left one of the previous iterations of this universe for other dimensional waters, as it were, and kept on dimension-hopping until...
At the time, Ford had discounted what Stan had said about what he'd thought the 'door' had been as either some sort of bragging posturing from the dragon, or the dragon herself not actually knowing how it worked, confusing entirely separate dimensions with pocket dimensions, or a different layer of reality. But it would explain quite a lot if she had: Ford hadn't been able to track down any information about her or her companion after the fact. She'd seemingly vanished into thin air afterwards.
"Ford, she's the dragon-lady that the kid met last time, but she's also the used-to-be-human-demon that the kid's been writing to on his phone," Stan told him, and yes, thank you, he'd realized that once Stanley had said she was a human-demon. He'd even become suspicious earlier when Bill had talked about reading things from her; the confirmation hadn't been entirely necessary. He gave Stan a hard look.
"Stanley, you have no idea how dangerous demons actually are," he informed his brother.
"Yeah, I remember what all you told me," Stan said. "But she ain't here to kill anybody. She's here because she's trying not to be killed."
"That's even worse!" Ford insisted. "That means that some demon even worse than her is after her--"
"--and we've got both her and the kid here to handle it," Stan told him and Ford scoffed at this. Bill would hardly be a help under such circumstances. --Even if he weren't almost entirely suppressed with Stan currently holding his weirdness energy reserves from him, Bill would have no reason to help them, or keep any demons at bay, should they come calling. He'd just laugh about the whole situation, finding it hilarious to watch. Unless…
Ford paled. "--Stanley, you did not make a Deal with him to allow him the use of his full set of powers if--!!"
"--Damn right I'm letting him," Stan said, leaning back to cross his arms and cut him off. "The kid don't want anybody jumping in here, messing around, any more than we do."
"Counterpoint: Weirdmageddon," Ford all but spat out at his brother, with no small frustration. "And this new demon who is already here right now!"
"The dragon-girl--"
"Oh, I thought she was supposed to be a human-demon," Ford corrected him nastily.
"--human-demon-whatever," Stan said, not missing a beat, "Ain't running around killing anyone. And I've talked out why the kid brought those 'friends' of his through that rift thing the first place with him already, Ford. --Why do you think none of them are here, right now?" he told his brother, feeling frustrated that Ford seemed to keep almost willfully missing the damn point. "It ain't like he can't create portals wherever he wants; you know that now," Stan said, speaking of the 'anti-Bill' and the dimension with the 'nice' Ford. --And damn if Stan hadn't almost lost the kid to that Ford over something as stupid as asking after if the kid was 'doing well', offering for the kid to visit and stay if he wanted, brushing off the kid's past so long as he wasn't planning on collapsing their own dimension, and handing the kid what the kid had thought was a good cup of tea.
The asshole had hit on damn near everything Stan had offered the kid, and he'd done it near-flawlessly on-sight. Stan was pretty sure that the only reason the kid had come back with the rest of them after the 'visit' had been that they were his Zodiac -- not that Ford -- and probably the idea of the constant annoyance of that 'anti-Bill''s presence if he did stay there… and the discomfort Mabel had been feeling over there. (Leaps and bounds there, between the two of 'em, really.) Stan wasn't so sure that the 'learning' thing he had going with the kid had even passed the threshold, of the kid thinking about it as a possible plus he might want to keep, when the kid had been weighing the pros and cons, making his decision -- and Stan had been counting on that one a lot, with how the kid had seemed to (if you asked Stan, tried really too damn hard not to) act about it before. Stan had hardly had a chance yet to start thinking of ways he'd maybe have to change up his strategy with the kid...
"Just because we haven't seen him do it yet, doesn't mean that he hasn't, or he won't," Ford pointed out, frustrated himself at what he believed to be his own brother's blindness to the obvious.
"Ford, I'm pretty sure you could have every gizmo you could think of trained on that kid 24-7 and still not be convinced that he wasn't up to something that maybe you just couldn't sense," Stan told him.
"--Because he's up to something!" Ford told him adamantly.
"Yeah, he's 'up to' staying here and--" Stan cut himself off and rubbed a hand across his face. "Look, I'm gettin' tired. Can we just… pick this up tomorrow?" Stan asked of him.
"I'm sleeping with the kids," Ford said staunchly, almost half-expecting an argument from his brother about how he supposedly didn't need to. But he did need to. Somebody did. The blasted demons were only one flight up stairs above them. They could probably shoot things through the floor at them, if they wanted… Or pull up the floorboards and drop things on them. (And that was assuming that Bill did not decide to go for some sort of magical thing that seemed perfectly capable of working inside the house, despite how the barrier was supposed to be stopping those sorts of things from working entirely!) Ford had no idea what they could or could not do up there, and how far that might extend to the rest of the house if Bill got creative...
(Ford had to stifle a shudder.)
"Good," said Stan to his plans to guard the niblings for the night, and it was at least slightly gratifying, that Stan thought-- "Maybe they'll be able to get you to fall asleep sometime before 2am." --well, nevermind then.
Ford stood up from his seat, and they glared at each other for a bit, before Ford turned and strode away, heading for the stairs. Ford was determined to keep the niblings safe, even if Stan wasn't-- able or willing to take the proper precautionary measures.
Stan kept sitting on the edge of the table, arms crossed, watching his brother go. Once he'd heard his brother was mostly up the stairs, and out of sight, Stan's shoulders slumped and he sighed.
Stan took a bit of time to clean up the kitchen and the remnants of the meal, then turned out the light and headed for his own bed.
---
"So there I was, just trying to get a taste of the honey, because, like, it's honey from a BEE demon, how could I turn that down right?" Miz babbled as she tried to distract Bill from their conversation earlier. She felt bad, she didn't mean to upset everyone. She'd done the same thing when she met Seb's brothers. She couldn't help but try to cut in and force them to confront their own issues, even if it hurt them. She briefly wondered if that made her a bad person. It definitely made her a hypocrite, but she already knew and accepted that she was a hypocrite.
She absently played with her tail as she spoke. "Bee Bill shows up and he's PISSED, like, livid. Screams at us and he was just… huge, like, the size of a whale or something. So I start freaking out and we're all running away before Seb turns around and goes all monster form to start fighting the giant bee like this was some kinda Kaiju movie…" She paused. "Um… I'm sorry for butting in between you and Ford. I… didn't mean to upset everyone… not deliberately at least…"
Bill, who was lying flat on his back on the floor next to her, with no real expression on his face, just let out a long sigh.
"Humans are hard," he told her sagely, glad that he'd remembered to put the sound barrier back to a 'one-way' modality when they'd come up again (...he didn't always remember to do that when it was just him).
Miz nodded. "I've tried talking to a few of the ones in my dimensional set, you know a guy named Blendin Blandin? Time traveller dude?"
"Made a Deal with the one here once, took over his body as a puppet to get the 'rift' from Shooting Star and kick off my Weirdmageddon."
"Ok, well in my world, he's been using his time travel tape to go back in time to attend a musical concert… of which I'm the lead singer." Miz giggled. "Like, this guy is using an important, time travel capable machine to ditch work and listen to me sing. How weird is that?" How did this man not get arrested for misuse of Time Property? Miz really didn't know.
Bill closed his eyes. "I didn't only approach that Stanford for the portal," he told her belatedly, apropos of nothing. He hadn't wanted to say it downstairs before. Miz looked over at him. "What was the other reason?"
"He's part of my Zodiac," he told her, of that Stanford downstairs. He was having trouble even summoning the energy for the anger he should have about it, anymore, and he wasn't entirely sure why that was, either. "He's supposed to be my Six-Fingered Hand." And why he'd never been able to convince that Stanford of it properly, Bill still didn't know. He blinked open his eyes. "He tries very hard not to be, now."
"Wait, really?!" Miz gasped. She… hadn't expected this.
Bill looked over at her. He had a slight smile. "Didn't think you'd noticed," he told her; he'd thought she hadn't used her Eye on him. He looked away and his smile faded. "That cheating lizard really tried to screw me over. But I showed it, that stupid frilly thing." He closed his eyes. "I got him here anyway. Bet it thought I couldn't do it."
"Congrats." Miz said before going over and slowly lowering herself onto the ground next to him, absently clearing away any dust or dirt that might have been there. "You made it out. And… that's good, right?" He was free from the Nightmare Realm, he was stuck in a human-ish form but… he was free.
"It's necessary," he told her. "It was Phase 1." Getting out. He hadn't really needed to celebrate, but it was expected of him; get out, throw a big party! So he'd let himself get into it, enjoy himself a bit. "Stanley says I don't need to do Phase 2. That I'm here, and I don't need to conquer the entire dimension to make it clear that it's mine." He'd really been looking forward to that. The gang had gone out to conquer a bit for him, have some more fun as a reward while still being useful to him by softening everybody up for him a bit. He'd let the rest of them fly off, staying behind; he'd been planning on cleaning up the Fearamid a bit, then just taking a bit of time to relax in something as close to peace and quiet as he'd had in one trillion years and then some. He'd been looking forward to taking his time to decide what he wanted to tackle next, how, and when, in whatever order he wanted to; no constraints. But then that stupid barrier that was up around the town...
Bill let out a breath. "I'm still working on Phase 3. Didn't expect to have to handle all the other Bills so soon. Maybe never. It's put off a few things." He grimaced. "More than a few. This whole stupid..." he raised a hand and waved it down at himself, "...too."
"Oh. Sorry?" Miz looked over, lying on her back beside him. "To be fair, I hadn't expected to find other Bills when I first went through that door. I mean, I kinda knew there WERE others, but I figured I would just be watching them, not…" She waved her hands to indicate the room and around them "...going into their worlds and all…"
"It's fine," he told her. "That Stanford doesn't break all that easily. Bounces back pretty quick, too." he looked over at her. "Don't expect him to be very happy with you, though. He doesn't like being wrong, and he really doesn't like FEELING wrong."
Miz groaned and rolled onto her side. "Ugh...are all Fords such...stubborn asshats?" She really hoped not.
"This one didn't used to be this bad," he told her. "But he's trying to be a Stanford now. --Not a six-fingered Sixer-Stanford Pines," he told her, looking over at her, "A five-fingered one."
Miz blinked, thought over Bill's words, really thought about it. "Oh." She said. "That… sucks…" Because, from what she could tell, it meant Ford was acting… like he was superior, and refusing to admit that he wasn't.
"Depends on your sense of humor," he told her. "They do some pretty stupid things, kill themselves and destroy their planets and suns and all sorts of things out of sheer hubris and 'I'll show them' and 'well of course I'm right', when they're really really not." He smirked, then lost the smirk. "I wouldn't recommend trying to actually talk with them, they're all very insulting." He worked his jaw slightly. "Most of them have a book in their dimensions, Flatland?" He let out a breath. "I made sure that it wasn't written here, or in that other dimension."
Miz nodded. "I never fully read Flatland, but I know what it's about… it… got some things right and most things wrong from what I've read."
Bill nodded. He slowly levered himself up onto his elbows. "Any Stanford I've ever tried to talk with that has read that book… thought worse of me than any other demon I've ever come across that knows what most 'two dimensional dimensions' are like. If they thought of me as anything other than a figment of their own imagination at all."
"...racist? Classist? Dunno what that counts as…" Miz muttered. "Speciest," Bill said. "Closest that this human language comes to it, really."
"Language is weird… words are weird… definitions change and some words that are okay to use now can't be used later…" Miz curled her tail up.
"Definitions aren't even consistent from person to person. It's a mess," Bill agreed. Then he told her the next thing he hadn't wanted to say downstairs. "That Stanford didn't decide to hate his brother on his own."
"Oh. Did you push him into it? Or was it his father who did?" Miz asked. "Seb's dimension had another Bill Cipher, a real jerk, who I think, purposely made his Ford hate Seb. It's a huge mess."
"I figured there was another Bill Cipher there," he said of Seb's dimension. "I didn't push him, exactly. But I did help him make it very easy for himself to dismiss Stanley, not worry about him, not care about him later. --After I introduced myself to him," Bill clarified to her. "I didn't have to interfere at all in anything that came before." He dropped back flat on his back again and glared up at the ceiling. "Really, that should've been the big fat warning sign right there," Bill muttered. "How easy that was."
"...would you like a hug for comfort?" Miz asked. "I generally need a hug when I'm upset."
Bill looked over at her. "Kid," he told her slowly. "I spent nearly one trillion years in the Mindscape with no body, and by the time I figured out exoskeletons I hardly cared that I hadn't felt anything since forever." He hadn't spent much time jumping into puppet-bodies either, on the whole -- not until Stanford. Those thirty years had been an outlier. "You know what it feels like to get grabbed as an energy being? --Guess." Not to mention that 'a bear hug' was the name of an actual physical attack that wasn't much different than a 'regular old hug', in Bill's vaunted opinion.
Miz slowly shook her head. "I never encountered anyone else in the Mindscape who would approach me. And creating a physical body was the first thing Ax taught me...which...if what I'm picking up from you implies, he might have taught me how to be physical to avoid getting touched as a being of pure energy… it must not be a pleasant experience?"
Bill sighed. Her logic really was lacking. "Miz. I wasn't--" He stopped. "I'm not just a being of pure energy," he told her. "I was STUCK in the MINDSCAPE. --There is no touching," he told her. "You can't even touch YOURSELF. Your appendages -- whatever you visualize, whatever -- just pass straight through each other, themselves, everything." He looked over at her. "ANY time anything or anyone could grab me there, it was BAD NEWS for ME. As in, 'CONGRATULATIONS! LET'S SEE IF WE CAN EAT YOU NOW THAT WE'VE CAUGHT YOU, HAHA!' --You get it?"
"...it was pretty oppressive and lonely in the Mindscape…" Miz commented. "I haven't really met anyone else in my Mindscape. From what you say, that… isn't normal? I've seen a few shades here and there but they weren't all that strong or even sapient…"
Bill shook his head. "Mindscape's mostly empty here, too. --Which is the problem," he told her. "Anything that could grab me that I've ever had the displeasure of floating nearby was something that had a body. And was used to needing to eat things. And thought I was a thing that they could maybe eat. --And could have taken a bite out of me, because they were able to grab ahold of me. Didn't happen often, but..."
"That sounds scary...I haven't met anyone or thing like that before…" Miz shivered. "I'm not sure if that means I'm lucky or I just haven't spent enough time incorporeal?"
"Maybe a little of both?" Bill told her. "As far as I was able to find out later, most of the early ones went after me for the 'challenge' of it. When I started showing that I could kill those idiots off, and wearing exoskeletons I could jump out of but that they had to try and break me out of first to get at me, they stopped being as much of a problem." He grinned at her. "Specialization is a thing. Good at the physical usually means very bad at mental attacks, and vice-versa, vis-a-vis, Bob's your uncle!"
"Well I can promise I'm not going to try to eat you." Miz assured him. "It only happened once and that was only due to sleep-deprived insanity."
"And now you can sleep again!" Bill told her, with a slight laugh. Miz giggled. "Yup! So there's no worry over eating anyone." She sighed. "Which is good. It was… very distressing to realize I ate Will's body…" She whimpered. "I didn't mean to… I swear I didn't…"
Bill reached up from where he was laying and patted her on the head. "I know. I believe you." Miz rolled a little closer to him and carefully placed an arm around his stomach, keeping her movements slow and making sure he could see her coming. She hugged him and just laid there.
Bill didn't stop her. He did, for the most part, appreciate the effort that he could see she was making even if he still found it to feel highly uncomfortable to him. The fact that she was just pushed up against his side, and only laying an arm across him as a bit more pressure, and was not actually grabbing onto him, all made it a lot less of a problem than it had been outside.
It took him a bit to think about this physical configuration, and then he lifted up his arm to lay it down again on her other 'side', along her back. That was a bit… more contained and 'huglike', he had fully reasoned out before doing so. Miz sighed and relaxed. "It's… nice to have a brother again." She commented.
"Never had a sister, or a younger sibling," Bill commented. "Makes me wonder what Liam thought of me." It had been an odd thought at first. 'What should I do? What would Liam do for me if this was me?' And not everything quite fit, exactly.
...One thing that did fit, though, was the idea of Miz not getting in trouble, but Bill maybe getting trouble for her instead. Bill was absolutely certain that there would be a penalty for him later, given how upset that Stanford had gotten at the whole verbal argument they'd had. They'd all only gotten into in the first place because Miz had started it, and kept pushing it. Stanley had been right about that.
"Probably that he loved you. Wanted to teach you about the world, take care of you, make sure you were safe and happy… I know that's what I felt for my younger siblings." She paused. "I'm sorry for pushing, downstairs. I'm… a bit stubborn sometimes…"
"Eh, I know that," Bill said of what she said her thoughts were on Liam. Because that much had always been obvious to him! It was the rest of it that he'd never been all that certain about. "And, ha, I'm stubborn too. I'm never giving up," he told her. "I'm going to get what I want. Eventually." He let out a breath. "So you're pushy. So what. How else are you supposed to get what you want, when no-one else wants to give it to you? Be weird, and do what you want. I don't mind." So he might get a penalty or two from Stanley because he was the responsible older brother to her now, if she did something Stanley didn't like. That was fine. He could handle it.
Miz nodded. "I still feel bad for making you feel bad. And probably getting you in trouble. I'm gonna apologise to Stan tomorrow."
"I'm fine," he told her. "I don't like that your logic seems to be broken, but I'm fine. And it isn't like I haven't gotten in trouble with Stanley before." Bill rolled his eyes. "What would you even apologize for?" he asked her, really not knowing why she'd said that.
"I'd apologise to Stan for making Ford upset, because even if Ford is a jerk, Stan still cares about him and doesn't like it when he's upset." Miz closed her eyes and just enjoyed lying here.
Bill was quiet for awhile.
"That's… true," he said finally. "Stanley… doesn't like it when that Stanford is upset. And... Stanley does care about him." Bill stared up at the ceiling in thought.
"Stan is a good brother. A better brother than Ford deserves." Miz sighed. "He's also a good man." Bill considered this. "...I don't want you having any stupid hormone-sight problems over my Stanley Pines, either," he informed her quite seriously. Miz giggled. "Don't worry. He's not my type." She assured him. "And I have no interest in sex."
"Hm." There was a brief pause. "Then why do you care what they look like?"
"I just enjoy looking at things that I find attractive." Miz explained. "It makes me feel all squirmy inside."
"Ew. Body things." Bill made a face. Squirmy things inside him? Why did people seem to enjoy that? It made no sense to him. "It's a weird sensation. Some people really like it. I think Shooting Star's addicted to that feeling. Since she keeps seeking out boys she finds attractive to get that squirmy feeling." Miz pointed out.
"Well," Bill said. "That's probably better than either of you finding a way to make yourselves feel that 'squirmy feeling' all the time, whenever you want." Bill had Seen what body-addictions did to people. Sometimes, it could even affect their Minds permanently -- even after they'd been pulled out from their bodies into the Mindscape -- if the addiction was strong enough.
Miz thought about other random crushes she'd had over the years. "There was this lizard-like creature I saw from afar once that also set off my squirmy feelings. He wasn't really my type but he had this nice suit and was a very competent man with a nice voice…" She blushed. "I never even spoke to the guy. Crushes are weird," she groaned. "And there was a brief crush I had on this other triangle back when I was in the 2nd dimension because he complimented me once… I don't think my crushes are hormone based, I'm just messed up." She groaned again at the thought.
"I've never felt that way about anyone myself," Bill offered up himself, since apparently they were sharing? "Don't really see the point." Miz shrugged. "It's not for everyone. And there's a difference between crushes and actually liking someone. Crushes are quick things that come and go. Some crushes calm over time and might actually turn into real affection… but I've never pursued it to that point," never saw the point. Admiring someone from afar was the most she'd ever done. It's not as if she wanted to do anything with them, so why bother?
It's not like romance was all that important. It was nice, as a concept, but it's not like she'd ever find someone who would like her back anyway, so it wasn't worth bothering.
She sighed again. "Is Stan mad? I didn't mean to upset him." She didn't like it when people were upset at her. "What should I do to apologize?" Bill let out a slow breath.
"The thing you have to understand about the Pines," he told her, "Is that they don't do apologies. You can say you're sorry to the kids, and they'll take it without blowing you off if you mean it and 'know what you did wrong'," Bill rolled his eyes, "But even they won't actually forgive you or even interact with you without wanting to fight you, unless you either fix it or won't do it again." Stanley was all about behavioral output regulation. That was really what their agreement was all about, as far as Bill was concerned. Bill looked over at her. "They hold grudges. It's a waste of time. They'll never forget." He paused for a moment. She seemed to know a bit of similar history, when it came to him. Why not leverage it? "Think the living ventriloquist dumm-- ah. 'Gideon' and Shooting Star."
Miz nodded. "Ok, I see what you're getting at… I can still try? I never meant to upset anyone… but when Ford said that to Stan, implied that he thought Stan didn't care about other human life… it just made me so mad. You don't… talk about your brother like that! Like… you expect the worst of them… it's not right." Stan did EVERYTHING for Ford, loved him unconditionally, and so what if she hurt Ford's precious feelings when Ford didn't give a fuck about casually trying to hurt Stan all the time?
"Trying is good," Bill said neutrally. "But you should ask Stanley what sort of trying he thinks you should do, before you do anything. With me there. --Don't just say yes to just anything with him, he'll take you for a ride if he thinks he can get away with it." Bill let out an amused huff over the 'you don't talk about your brother like that', though -- because that one, he knew. He'd actually asked, when it had come up before. ...It had been interesting, because about half of what Stanley had said had been wrong, but Bill was actually somewhat sure that Stanley hadn't been trying to lie about it.
"You know, that whole thing about not caring?" Bill told her. "Stanley said that first. That Stanford is angry because what they both mean, and what the other one hears, doesn't really match. --Stanley will ignore all sorts of things that that Stanford would get outraged and jump in on instead. But Stanley would step in if Pine Tree or Shooting Star would be hurt by something, and losing their friends would hurt. Stanley wouldn't really want to do it, but he'd do it. He says he wouldn't, though, because he wouldn't want to and wouldn't do it on his own, not if those two didn't care about it." Bill smirked as he added, "Stanford's just upset at the idea that his sibling doesn't care as much as he does about certain things, when he wants Stanley to care about them more."
"It's still not right that Stan would just… let Ford speak so badly about him." Miz sighed.
"Stanley doesn't care. He doesn't think it's bad," Bill explained to her. "He knew what that Stanford meant. He just doesn't agree with him, even though that Stanford keeps wanting him to."
Miz hummed. "Alright. If Stan has it under control I'll leave him to it… still don't like it though." She laid her head down and closed her eyes. "I'll ask him tomorrow how I can try to make up for this…" She relaxed.
"Yes," Bill said, agreeing to everything she'd just said as a whole. "Not without me in the room, though." He would not trust Stanley with his little sister when she was practically going to be begging to make things up to him. Blank checks were a mistake and a half to begin with…
...and Bill wouldn't put it past Stanley to actually know what to do with one. Speaking of which, he should probably start taking care of at least one of those things right then, before Miz could get too much into trouble on it.
Bill got up, gently dislodging her arm. "I need to talk to Stanley. Be right back." Miz nodded sleepily as she curled up and breathed softly, feeling a little tired.
---
There was a knock on Stan's bedroom door later that night.
"Yeah?" he called out. He was almost surprised that it was the kid who he saw at the door opening it.
"Where's your sister?" Stan asked him, closing the book he'd been reading and setting it aside.
"Upstairs in the attic, still," Bill told him, then stopped talking.
"C'mon, kid," Stan told him. "You gotta question for me? Don't go takin' all night."
The kid actually grimaced at him for that. "How bad is it," he said, not looking at him.
Well, that sure as hell hadn't been what he'd been expecting to hear. "How bad is what?" Stan prodded him back. Might as well make him say it, instead of going just halfway.
The kid sure didn't appreciate it much. But he still leaned up against the doorway and said, "How bad is-- are-- things… with Stanford. How is he."
Huh. Well, this was new. Kid wasn't even smiling, or anything like thoughtful. Curious didn't exactly fit. Neutral wasn't right either...
"Not so great," Stan told him. He had no reason to lie about it. Not like the kid wouldn't find out tomorrow morning, anyway. "Why are you asking me this now?" Those last three words had taken Stan not too long to figure out the importance of, when asking the kid certain types of questions.
There was a long pause, which had Stan internally standing up and taking notice, because when the kid usually did that… "You wish Stanford was part of the agreement," Bill told him, and Stan tilted his head back slightly.
"Define wish?" Stan said.
"All things being equal," Bill told him, "If you could have anything you wanted, and everything else would work itself out for you to allow that to happen…" Stan nodded to show that he understood what Bill was getting at, what the kid's definition was, and Bill continued. "You would want that Stanford to be a part of the agreement. Included in it, under you."
Stan pulled in a slow breath. This was getting close to dangerous territory here. He hadn't touched upon this at all when they'd originally made their agreement; he'd stayed away from it completely for a reason. Several. "Yeah, kid. That's true. So?"
Bill's gaze meandered away from his own again. "It isn't just Shooting Star and Pine Tree that have strings of consequence that tie that tightly to him. You do, too."
Stan pulled in another breath. "Kid," he told the triangle demon standing right in front of him in his doorway. "Either get to the point, or save it and stow it for tomorrow. I've got no patience left for you tonight."
Bill turned his head and looked back at him finally, dead-on.
"This isn't going to work unless I leave," Bill told him, and Stanley felt his eyes narrow.
"You leave, you die," Stan told him straight-out.
Bill's eyes narrowed in return. "You going to use the circle on me?" It wasn't a question.
Hell, this kid was an idiot sometimes. "--I won't have to," Stan told him. "You're going to get yourself killed. Or end up wishing that someone would just kill you already, to make everything stop."
Bill let out a short abrupt laugh. "You know," he began, "It's really stopped being funny, the level of self-delusion you seem to have about me."
"Because you're just some 'big bad triangle'," Stan put out there, crossing his arms, and knowing that if they went much further on this, it would get ugly.
At this point, after what had happened in the kitchen that night, Stan was looking forward to some ugly. What he really wanted to do was to haul off and punch the both of them, Bill and Miz, agreement-be-damned.
"I am," Bill told him next. "And so is Miz, which you well know by this point, because you are not stupid," Bill told him, as though the triangle demon thought he needed to emphasize that. "And if you think that that Stanford is not going to wake up after a full night's sleep and have that be the very first thing that occurs to him, just as soon as he wakes up…" Bill trailed off.
"If it hasn't occurred to him already," Stan said, which had Bill narrowing his eyes at him again.
"You wouldn't be acting so calm if it had," Bill said like he was pointing out the obvious, and Stan had to give him that one, as much as he didn't want to.
"Ford's not gonna be doing any better if you're off running around the multiverse, doin' who knows what, instead of stayin' right here," Stan pointed out, himself. "And I won't be able to have your back out there. Which you need."
"I've been taking care of myself for one trillion years without you, or anyone else," the triangle told him. "And I've got my bearings in this body now." He tilted his head at Stan. "You said it yourself -- who's going to know I'm me, if I don't tell them?"
...That gave Stan a hell of a lot of pause. "You're actually thinking that you can run off somewhere and not get yourself found out," Stan worked out slowly. "Lie low." Then he snorted. "Really. You."
Bill shot him a disgusted look.
"Give me a hundred dimensions I can talk about," Bill told him next, crossing his own arms.
"Yeah? Why," Stan said, because why in the hell would he do that.
And, just like that, Bill got a glint in his eye that Stan really didn't like. "Because I'm thinking that only ninety-nine examples of someone not finding me out, when I was directly playing with them for anywhere from two weeks to six months, might not be enough for you," was what the triangle demon who'd tormented his brother for thirty years running apparently thought it would be a good idea to say to him next.
Stan stared at Bill, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end.
"...You're pushing it, kid," what was Stan said finally.
"Am I?" Bill said. "I'm not the only one. --You missed the mark today, Stanley," he was told. "That question of yours didn't hit me, but it sure as hell hit him, didn't it?" Before Stan could even so much as tense his muscles to start to get up out of his bed and head over for him at the door, though, the triangle added, "What were you trying to say?"
"If you'd trusted him in the first place, you never would've needed that deal," Stan bit out at the triangle angrily. (And yeah, maybe Ford would've agreed at first, and then Bill would've given himself away, and Ford would've changed his mind, sure… if Bill had been himself. But a Bill Cipher who could have trusted his brother would've been somebody reasonable enough that Ford would have either liked him because the triangle wasn't planning on causing a big old Wierdmageddon once out, or he would've been somebody that Ford could've talked around and out of doing something horrible like that himself.)
(And even if Bill had gotten angry then, and Ford had gotten in over his head again still… Ford would've still called for him. Stan was dead-certain he could've handled the whole damn thing a hell of a lot better and easier, back then.)
Bill just blinked at him slowly, like a cat. (And that was all Stan needed to see, to know that the kid didn't get it at all.)
Stan was just about ready to lose his temper, get up and get physical with him, at the expectation of hearing any one of the usual combative or dismissive responses he always got out of the triangle when Stan told him something he didn't agree with.
Instead, what he got was the triangle turning away from him and saying, "We'll continue this tomorrow."
...which was what Stan usually said, when he thought they needed to stop.
"Close the door," he snapped out at Bill, as Bill leaned away from the door and started to walk away. Because, damn it and damn him, he wanted a fight.
Stan had expected the triangle to stop and argue with him about the 'command' he'd just given him, get angry, something. But Bill didn't do any of those things.
All Bill did was pause for a moment, then reach for the doorknob.
"We'll discuss the penalties I'll be taking on for Miz's behavior for her, tomorrow, too," Bill told him firmly. And then he closed the door.
Stan stared at that closed door for a very long time.
And then he finally laid back in bed.
"Shit," he cursed, rubbing a hand over his face, because Ford had been right -- he hadn't known what he was doing. Not for the reason Ford had thought, but...
Stan had thought the idea of Bill having a living 'sibling' that the kid could and would trust would only be a good thing. That it would open up the kid more, make it easier for Stan to get him to work with other people, instead of defaulting to just using and abusing them, instead. All as part of getting the kid to 'play' at least a little 'nicer' with them and the rest of the planet.
Stan hadn't considered that the kid might actually take the responsibility of being a 'big brother' seriously, that Bill would start actually acting more responsible and grown up as a result, just a little bit older.
Stan definitely hadn't thought it would be an immediate change, either. He never would have guessed that it would have left the kid more confident about leaving, when the kid might be having to look after someone else as part and parcel of that -- even if it was someone the kid only thought he could trust to talk to him but not contribute in any other way, just a 'support network' of one who couldn't do anything else for him.
And if the kid thought about leaving for anywhere with that other human-demon, together...
This was going to be a problem.
---