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When Stan went above deck, the first one awake, he wasn't surprised to see Miz (in her child form) already cooking something on the frying pan over the camping stove, humming to herself. The door of the sandcastle was not only open wide, but had been 'enbiggened', allowing Stan to see inside where Bill was lying among some pillows and blankets near the entrance. Miz herself was seated close to the sandcastle, in clear view for Bill to see. The kid looked asleep though.
"Morning," Miz greeted without looking up from whatever she was making. Stan grunted out a, "Mornin' Miz," back to her as he walked over, kind of half-curious to see what she was up to. "This is for Bill," she hummed out as she pointed at the frying pan, and Stan looked into the pan to see what exactly she was making for her brother.
It was a pile of vegetables.
Yep. That was definitely a thing that the kid would eat, right there. No mushrooms or anythin' else in sight; just water and veggies. Stan glanced up at Miz.
"Hey, dragon-lady," Stan said, "Got somethin' to ask ya, yeah?" He waited until she looked up at him before he continued. "If you want to go off cookin' stuff for the kid whenever, that's fine. But at least let me pay for the goods you're buyin' to use to make it all, yeah?"
Miz frowned at him a little. "But I can just make everything from sand," Miz said. "You don't have to pay for anything!" She wagged her tail; she liked being able to help! She was even saving Stan some money this way!
"Yeah, I know you can, kid," Stan told her, sitting down in front of her for the moment. "But that ain't really the point." At her confused look, he said, "Look, doin' this sand-stuff tires you out, and then you've gotta eat a lot more. The kid don't like that, and I ain't so sure that that's a great thing for ya, too. Besides," Stan said, sweetening the pot, "If you get the veggies from the supermarket with my money, then every time you go over there, you get to see more veggies that are a little different from each other, right?"
Miz thought about it. "Oh." Her tail wiggled a little as she frowned. But then she tilted her head at him. "...Why do you really want me to not do it?"
Stan gave out a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. "Because you're kinda undermining me with the kid, here," he told her flat-out. "I'm supposed to be giving him food, clothing, shelter, and schooling. If you're doin' it for me, and I ain't takin' care of you completely -- which I ain't doin' yet, for him," because she was the kid's family, "-- then I ain't holdin' up my end of things."
Miz blinked. "Ooooooooh…" she said in understanding. "So you want to be the dad?"
Stan snorted. Hell, no! "No, kid. I want to keep my promise to the kid. It's one thing if you go off doin' it once in awhile," Stan said. "But it's a whole 'nother thing if I ain't coverin' you as part of it; not completely." Stan shrugged. "The way the kid thinks, if I'm not feedin' you enough to cover what you're usin' up making that food that you can cook for him, I'm not actually helping him, or you, out. --And I ain't so sure that you workin' yourself into half-starving yourself every single day is such a great thing there, either," Stan told her next. The kid sure wasn't all that sure about it; if anything, the kid was worried about that whole thing with her, still.
Miz nodded. "Okay. So I just do my thing sometimes and you do your thing more times." That was fine. And if she really got hungry, or her powers started acting up because of too many things falling on one side or another for her 'good' vs 'bad' meter, she could go off and deal with that on her own.
"Yeah," Stan said. "If by 'more times' you mean lettin' me cover you. And, y'know, maybe try and lay off on all the weirdness-magic stuff a little more. When was the last time you did that, anyway?" he asked her. "Just, y'know, took it easy and didn't use it all that much?" Because Stan was honestly wondering at this point… "Do you gotta use it, or something?" He scratched at the side of his cheek. Seriously, she was so different on this stuff than the kid, that it was really making him wonder...
Miz rubbed her arms. "I feel itchy if I don't. I'm pretty sure my powers and brother's powers work somewhat differently from each other." Bill certainly didn't seem to get restless and uncomfortable from energy build up.
"Itchy," Stan repeated with a frown. "Like… scratchy? Like you gotta scratch at yourself, or somethin'?"
Miz frowned. "Like I gotta tear myself open. Using up energy lessens the feeling. But then I get hungry, so it's just a weird balance of being filled with energy without going over…"
Stan's eyebrows went up. That sounded like… Oh hell, that didn't sound good.
Miz shrugged. "Getting unhappy makes the itching worse. But if I'm happy, it's just a little bit of discomfort, and I use up my power with small things here and there often enough it's not a problem."
The next words out of Stan's mouth were, "You haven't told the kid this, have you."
Miz sighed. "I have a lot of issues," she pointed out. "I know I do. But it's… not that bad. I think some of this discomfort is because I can still remember being human and not having these feelings as a human, so this feels weird for me. Or maybe I'm translating it in some odd way through my perceptions of what these sensations are. Like, maybe the human part of me equates this buzzing of energy as an itch from inside me."
Stan let out a breath and rubbed a hand across his face. "Miz. Kid. Listen to me for a second, okay?" he told her. Miz gave him her full attention. "You need to talk to the kid about this," Stan told her. "I may not get half of what the kid says sometimes," Stan explained, "But the kid? He's all about 'efficiency' with what he's doin', but he also talks a lot about 'balancing' energy out," Stan let her know. "He ain't real happy with how you keep getting yourself stuck in this cycle-thing with the eating." Stan frowned. "I don't think the kid would be pushin' you so hard on this stuff if he knew there was a reason you were doin' it. And if you tell him about this 'issue' you're having here, he can probably do somethin' for you," Stan said. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. "I dunno. Whatever whole translating problem you're having, here. Didn't he just help you with something like that last night?" With the tasting thing? Weren't those kind of the same thing, feeling or not feeling something that was off from when she'd been human?
Miz looked even more uncomfortable now. She glanced back at Bill's sleeping form. "Well, the other part of it… is because this isn't my own Dimensional Set. So it costs more energy to do stuff, and I'm still adjusting to the difference, and probably overestimating how much I'm using or generating."
"Yeah," Stan said, "But that just means it's only gonna keep gettin' worse if you keep on doin' the same thing here, ain't it? That's just gonna get you into trouble," he pointed out to her. "Maybe you don't think this stuff is all that big of a problem, but the kid sure does, and I ain't so sure that he's wrong." Stan frowned at her a little bit. "Maybe make up a list for us, yeah?" At her odd look, Stan said, "Y'know. Of all the stuff that ain't so great that you don't like. Stuff you wish wasn't a thing? --Kid's practically screaming to be your fairy god-triangle or somethin', here," Stan said with half a rueful smile at her. "Seems to make him happy when he can help you out, and you seem happier, too." It sure as hell made the kid more manageable; kid was a lot easier to handle when he was relaxed -- Miz, too.
Miz nodded. "I guess, I got used to the discomfort, so doing stuff to fix it just didn't occur to me…"
Stan nodded at her. "Yeah, I kinda got that. Not so sure the kid has, yet." Otherwise, Stan would bet that the kid would've asked her -- if not outright grilled her -- on anything and everything that made her 'uncomfortable' by now. "Might as well get the kid to help you with this stuff, since he's wanting to do it," Stan shrugged.
Miz then frowned at Stan. "Aren't you like that with your back pains?" she asked skeptically.
"Huh?" Stan said, a bit thrown by the change in subject.
Miz huffed. "You're in pain all the time, and we can help, me, brother or even that Stanford. But you don't want us to help you fix it."
Stan pulled a bit of a frowny-face and looked away from Miz for a minute. "Look, Miz--" he began.
Miz's expression was very skeptical.
"Hey, I ain't bein' a hypocrite here," Stan complained at her. "It's one thing to be makin' things hurt less for a little while, so I can't feel whatever. But that ain't actually fixing anything. --The kid might help you find a way to make things feel like they itch less? But he ain't gonna leave it at that," Stan told her. "Kid ain't stupid. If that 'itching' of yours means that you're actually injured or something there, that somethin' worse is wrong? Kid'll want to fix that, not just make you stop feeling it." Stan looked pretty grumpy as he said next, "It ain't the same thing with me. I'm gettin' old. I go doin' something stupid, I'd better feel it in the morning, or I'll just keep goin' on makin' things worse."
"Cells can be repaired. You can be old and NOT in pain. It's EASY." Miz pouted. Her friends were still living creatures, they were old, but they weren't AGED. There was a difference!
"I'm old, I'm wearin' out," Stan told her. "This is normal. Don't make any sense tryin' to fix it. You'll never end up stopping." Stan scratched at his cheek. "I ain't some kinda well-tuned machine here." Not anymore. "You can't just go off 'fixin' my back, and everything's fine." He let out a sigh. "That's like…" he frowned, searching for a way to put it. "...The whole broom thing. Wearin' a broom out after usin' it too long. You go off and replace that broomstick head with stainless steel brushes? And the stick handle part's still made of wood. That's just askin' to break, when you try to go off doin' stuff that head can handle, but the rest of it can't." (Because if his back felt better, Stan knew he'd probably end up doing something stupid, and hurting an arm or leg instead, pulling muscles and who knew what else. He wasn't seventeen anymore.)
"So then that handle breaks," Stan told her, "And then you gotta go off replacin' that, too? And then you've got a whole new broomstick, there," Stan complained. "Kid goes off tryin to 'fix' me?" Stan added, "He'll want to do it 'right' the 'first time', probably," and Stan wasn't so sure about that one, let alone the kid's idea of 'fixing' anything at all. Let alone him. (And who the hell knew what Ford would think of that… not that Ford was any better, with all his 99-year lightbulbs and food pills and junk.)
Miz thought about it. "Well, I think he just wants to keep you," she pointed out, not noticing Stan's slight grimace at her choice of words.
"Uh…" Stan wasn't sure what to say to that, other than... "Not on a mantlepiece somewhere," Stan put out there (after a good long pause at what he should or shouldn't say). At least, the kid better not be. "I ain't lookin' to be turned into gold. Or stone." Stan remembered that throne of human statues on the TV during that Weirdmageddon mess. And how Ford had been left perched there in all his 'golden glory' there on that armrest, right on top of it.
"Naw, nothing like that." Miz scoffed. "He likes you being you. Alive and aware and able to go about being you."
Well, that just made Stan feel uncomfortable. "Yeah, sure. But for how long," Stan huffed out, half-joking, because people usually got tired of him pretty quick. Stan still didn't really get that about the triangle; hell, he was half-expecting the kid to outgrow him, eventually, once he got the kid some better standards.
Miz gave Stan a smile. But she didn't say anything.
...And that had Stan looking at her. "What?" Stan said grumpily.
"He likes you." Miz said simply. "He doesn't want to lose you, or the Agreement."
"What, not ever?" Stan said with a huff, but he really only meant it tongue-in-cheek. Because hell, that was "Kind of the whole point of the thing, yeah?" -- holding it for the kids, and Ford, so that they didn't have to worry about the triangle bein' all, y'know, demon-y on them -- but...
...then Stan remembered what-all the kid (and the dragon lady) had said about bringing people back to life, the rolling-back-time thing; the whole nine yards.
'You're mine. You want to be mine!'
There hadn't been any limits there. Not for time, not for distance; no, nothing. And Stan was prepared to stick around forever if he had to, to keep his family safe from him, sure, but...
...he hadn't thought about the 'making them younger again' thing past the kids getting too old, growing up away from home, if they'd had to end up staying here too long. He hadn't really thought about the kid maybe doing that to Ford… or to him. Not beyond getting them back to the way they'd been when they might've tried to escape him now. Not to... make him any healthier that he was already -- but, hell, 'healthy' at his age? He'd have to be ten years younger than he already was, to...
...to look the same age as Ford was now. Stan blinked. Because that was...
Could the kid could make him the same age as Ford again? Or... even younger?
Oh, hell. Wasn't that something Miz had said she'd done to her friends?
And the triangle demons were learning from each other. They listened to each other. So even if the kid hadn't thought of that before he and the dragon-lady had 'adopted' each other...
Stan stared off into the distance as all this really dawned on him. ...And he really wasn't all that sure about any of it. (Getting younger? --Aches and pains and dentures be damned, he'd earned his old age, and his retirement, damnit. He wouldn't want to go through all that again… not any of it. Hell, no.)
Miz was raising an eyebrow at Stan before going back to her cooking. "I'll tell brother I'm having trouble with balancing my energies," she conceded to him. "I know he worries, I like knowing he cares. But I feel kinda bad about making him worry all the same. Like how sometimes one would want to keep their issues to themselves, because one wouldn't want to upset the people around them, I guess."
"Only issues I keep to myself are my comic books under my bed," Stan told her gruffly, but he got what she was trying to poke at a bit, there -- he was old, not slow. "There's stuff I don't want you talkin' about to the kids because it would hurt 'em," he stressed to her, "But your brother ain't the same way. Even if it does… make him 'hurt' a little bit about something goin' on with you, I'm pretty sure 'hurt' on the kid is just another kind of 'angry'." Stan shrugged. "He'll go after the problem, and side-step the pain. --Probably hurt worse if you go on and don't go telling him, once he finds out later," Stan put out there. "Just hit him all-at-once later, when he figures it out later. --'Cause you know he will eventually, and then he'll be all 'why didn't you tell me?' and junk with you, yeah?" Stan said. "You don't want to be doing that to him, now, do ya?" Stan asked her with a bit of a smile on his face, as he reached out and patted her on the head.
"I don't…" Miz mumbled, but... "It'll just take forever!" she huffed. "I've got several billion years' worth of issues! It'd take a lifetime just to even talk about it all!" Heck, she wasn't even sure what all of it was anymore.
"Kid's a couple hundred billion years older than you," Stan pointed out to her, leaning back again. "Plans on living forever. What's a lifetime or two, when you're talkin' infinity? You've got time, right? The both of you?" Even Stan figured he could handle that kind of math. "If you've really gotta bounce to another dimension for awhile to talk... " Stan frowned a little. "I ain't so sure about having the kid go off on his own, spend a year or two just talking with you and then bouncing back to us just five minutes from when he left," the kid was big on 'five minutes' for some reason; Stan would've thought the kid would go for three, "But if you two need some time? We can work somethin' out." At least, Stan figured they could. (Might take awhile, though.)
Miz looked surprised at that. "You'd let him go? Like… off on his own?" And the idea of bringing brother home with her was just so TEMPTING. She had to push down her urge to just snatch Bill up and take him. Keep him forever and ever...
"I don't want him goin' off and getting himself killed," Stan told her firmly. "Or gettin' into fights he can't win, and pulling them back to the rest of us, maybe getting the kids killed on top of that. --Ford don't like the idea of him runnin' around at all, but I just don't like it unsupervised. Kid listens to me; we've talked about this before," Stan told her, "And so far he's been lettin' me talk him out of the stupid stuff. But if I'm not with him…" Stan sighed, "Right now, that just goes right out the window. ...I don't know. If I can figure somethin' out for him to touch base with me, or somethin'? Then I'll figure something out with Ford. But that a whole 'nother thing there, that we're gonna have to figure out for the agreement," Stan told her. "Boundaries. When to run. When not to. How to keep himself outta trouble that he really can't handle. I don't like the idea of somebody not havin' his back," Stan told her, for more reason than one, "And, uh, no offense, but you've, y'know. 'Got issues'," Stan told her. "I ain't so sure the two of you can handle things all by yourselves. --Hell, you had enough trouble tellin' Sixer 'no', right here and now, last night, and he's practically a pushover," Stan pointed out. "And if I wasn't here, kid would probably just would've gone off torching him without a second thought, for pissing you off even a little." And Stan wasn't about to have the kid start falling back into old bad habits again -- not if he could help it. That'd just make things harder for him, later.
Miz nodded. "Fair enough. I'm fine on my own, but that's mostly because I don't really care when bad things happen to me. But brother would be upset. And if I got hurt, I wouldn't be there to help him if anything else happened."
Stan nodded. "And the kid ain't too good at thinking up other options when it comes to you, sometimes," Stan put out there, too. "You know, the kid didn't even think of the whole Door thing with you and the portal getting back, yeah? That wasn't just him putting on a thing for Ford," Stan told her. "He really couldn't even think of it." Not yet. "Kid's got blind spots. He ain't used to thinking this way, with you, here. --I don't want the kid freezing up if he goes off someplace with you, and I ain't there to snap him out of it." Stan frowned. "That means 'planning' for him, here, while I'm around to help him out with that stuff. We'll need to talk things out, so he don't get blindsided later," if it was even going to be a thing at all.
...And Stan wasn't putting it past either of them that it was going to be a thing. He had a feeling that the two of them were going to end up wanting to go haring off on their own, sooner or later -- just like they had after the niblings when they'd all first arrived in this dimension, here. They hadn't waited two seconds for him and Ford to get their bearings; they'd just gone rushing off without them both. And that had been a big-ass blinking red warning sign, right there. (So he figured he'd better put something in place with them first, before they were already away in a completely different dimension than the rest of them, and in the middle of deciding whether to come back or not on their own. Because then? The kid just might end up changing his mind about the agreement and everything else while he and his kid-sister were away from them, talking about who-knew-what to hell-knew-who.)
Miz thought about the 'touching base with him' idea for a moment or two, planning ahead, and then made a decision. "I'll modify my Com to be able to call your phone… if you have a cell phone I can modify? I can connect with Bill's through my blog, but there's a time lag…"
"Sure." Stan reached in his back pocket and pulled out his cellphone, then handed it over. "Be careful with it," he told her. "The kid did something to it, so that I can get at some weird laggy blog of his that he's been writing to on that thing, too. Just in case. --I ain't real sure about what he did to it," Stan told her, as he took it from him. "Something about making it 'unique' so things could get 'beamed' back and forth to the thing. You screw that 'uniqueness' thing up, the beaming thing stops -- whatever it is he set up can't find it," he related to her, not quite word-for-word from what the kid had told him.
"Transdimensional adapter." Miz mumbled as she turned the phone around in her hands. This wasn't like her own Com. Whatever her brother had done to it didn't seem to have changed the phone itself much. She scanned through the changes Bill had made. Increased amplitude, signal strength, the battery was being bypassed right then and the charge was coming from… huh. He hadn't actually gotten rid of the power use, he'd just set it all up to act like it was always plugged into the wall. He had something rejuvenating the battery itself intermittently, too. And then he'd also... this was really good work actually. Bill had worked with what was there, and he hadn't actually made that many changes to the base hardware or software at all. Whatever was getting beamed in was pretty much using the same hardware -- the antenna was even still original; Miz was going to either have to change that to make the adapter work, or create her own and… "I'll add my Com ID number. Save it in your contacts. You can show it to Brother later so he can put it in his too. There'll still be some lag, it just happens, but we can text." Stan nodded at her, as she thought over all this.
Miz looked over this setup one more time, and then decided to go her brother's route; she grabbed a chunk of air and sand particles and made a small external adapter with a USB connector on it, thinking that it could 'plug-and-play' into the charge port and let the phone connect to things that way. That way, the transdimensional adapter was almost identical to the one that she'd set up for herself but separate (with hers, she'd integrated it into her own Com completely). Now she'd just need to set up an app and a driver in the smartphone O/S that would let the rest of the smartphone recognize it, and… okay, maybe she should really make an actual adapter board for the USB part, so the USB interface could talk to the adapter instead of having to connect to the alien hardware directly. Doing a direct connection between the smartphone and the alien tech would risk the external adapter maybe frying the phone if the voltages went a little too high on that end (because they kind of tended to do that sometimes with this adapter model), and... um...
...how did she do that, exactly? Miz blinked, then Flickered, looking for information on how to actually program this USB-adapter-part thing (using a human programming language, even!). Uuuuuh she was getting bored just linking all the codes together. This is why she normally left the manual programming work up to Hectorgon, it was so boooooring~ but she powered through the input and pressed the Call button to see if it worked. Her Com buzzed. "Cool. It works."
Stan took his phone back with a lopsided smile, looking the screen over. "Thanks, kid." He figured giving him a way to call her (when the kid was probably with her) was as good of a first step as any. He slid the phone back into a pocket, and Miz went back to her cooking. Stan (for his part) turned to the crate next to him, looking for the breakfast goods he'd need to cook for the human contingent on-board the boat, but he still watched Miz with half-an-eye as she cooked.
Miz mashed some strawberries into a pulp and added those to the pan as well. It sizzled and hissed, the juices being cooked out as the water was extracted from the fruit to seep into the veggies and boil around them. She placed a cover over the pan to let it steam cook on top of the dry roasting from earlier.
"...You are gonna make up that list for the two of us, right?" Stan reminded her, just in case. She seemed to bounce between things a bit more than the kid, and she didn't always seem to come back to them on her own like the kid always did.
"Yeah, list of everything wrong with me, got it." Miz shrugged.
"Hey, none of that," Stan chided her, looking over at her. "Things of stuff that's uncomfortable, or worse, that you don't like. Never said 'everything wrong with you', or whatever."
Miz nodded, pulling out a notebook from her school bag to begin writing while she waited for the food to finish cooking. "Sorry, just… I get down on myself a lot…"
Yeah, Stan had kinda noticed. "Maybe add that one to the list," Stan said. "Some of this stuff could be a therapist thing for later, maybe." Stan sighed. "...I'm thinkin' the kids took you to the market yesterday?" Stan asked next to try and change the topic to something a little lighter now, because the last thing he needed was a depressed demon on his hands. And hey, those certainly looked like the fruits and veggies he was used to seein' at the store whenever he went. "What all did you find to look at over there? Anything good?"
Miz nodded, brightening up a little bit. "I got lettuce, kale, spinach, corn, cucumbers…" and she continued naming off everything she had scanned while Stan shoved himself over a little more, to really be able to dig around in the nearby cooler to get out the rest of the stuff he was going to need to make breakfast for everyone else, once Miz was done cooking. He just let her ramble on, with half an ear on what she was sayin'; she wasn't hurtin' nobody. "...paprika, basil, cinnamon, pesto…"
Stan pulled out the pancake mix. Should work fine for breakfast. "...white vinegar, brown sugar, vanilla…" Stan was probably going to wake up the kid to have that talk soon, before everyone else woke up. "...mozzarella, feta, swiss, parmesan…" What Stan wasn't as sure about was whether he should try and tell the kid to put up one of those filters to keep his kid sister from listening in on the whole thing, or not.
"--Hey, Miz?" Stan interrupted, because he'd just realized something in all of Miz's rambling. "There a reason you didn't say 'peppers' or 'pepper' or anything?" Because she hadn't, not the actual fruit, and not the spice neither; she'd mentioned 'lemon pepper spice' kind of randomly, but nothing else involving 'pepper'. Stan had really only noticed because she had said 'salt' at one point, but hadn't followed it up with 'pepper' next like anybody else would. But the kid liked pepper, so leaving that out specifically had had Stan paying attention, wondering when she'd finally get around to saying 'pepper' as part of her spices-aisle list. ...Except she hadn't; she'd gotten past listing off spices, and when she'd gotten to the fruits, that had made Stan realize when she hadn't mentioned peppers then, either.
Miz winced and looked… guilty. "I don't like peppers," she said bashfully. Stan couldn't help but let out a bark of laughter -- because, heh, that was kind of funny, almost.
"But it's one of those healthy veggies or somethin', right?" Stan couldn't help but tease.
Miz whined. "But they taste gross~ they're all… green tasting…" She waved her arms around, struggling to find the words to explain why peppers were bad. Stan just let out a laugh again.
"But what if the kid likes 'em? Or your friends?" Stan teased. "He doesn't like salt or sugar, but he does like pepper." It was one of the few things the kid ever added to his burnt-to-hell-and-back toast, when he ate it. "And maybe your friends might like the veggie kind. --Thought you liked knowin' stuff," like the kid did. "Just in case?" he grinned at her, then gave her a wink, and he let out another good-natured chuckle as she straight up pouted at him for it. "I'll scan some next time I go to the store…" she mumbled, and Stan let out another chuckle, and patted her on the head again. She really was tryin' to be a good kid for her brother and her friends.
Then Stan looked away from her and over, as the noise outside finally had the kid stirring a little inside the sandcastle, himself. "-ic, mrrrr. mmrmM?" The kid rolled over -- from his side onto his back and then back again -- and blinked blearily. He rotated his head around oddly, pushing against the floor with the side of his head, and... his eyes sharpened almost immediately as his gaze fell on Miz. --And then the kid relaxed again, slowly going almost limp in place. Huh.
Stan watched as Miz turned towards her brother and waved. "Morning big brother~" she chirped out. She turned back to the frying pan and stirred the vegetables around a little more before she seemed satisfied. "I made you breakfast," she told him, pulling a bowl out of nowhere that Stan could see, to scoop the roasted vegetables into.
Stan noted that even with the limits of no added salt or butter and whatever, Miz's vegetable mix actually looked kinda not all that bad. The veggies were all a little black around the edges, but not that 'really badly burnt' black like the kid always did with his toast; it just looked to Stan like the things had been cooked pretty thoroughly. (Miz had roasted them quite professionally, actually.) If anybody asked Stan, he would eat it, but he wasn't completely sure that the kid himself would. The stuff smelled kinda sweet almost, and 'no added sugar' and most sugary kinds of things were pretty solidly on the kid's 'no' list. (Stan was pretty sure honey was on the 'no' list, too, with the faces the kid had made over it before.) As Stan examined the bowl more closely, trying to figure out if Miz had accidentally messed up and added any sugar to the mix or not.
"I used the natural water and juices inside the strawberries to boil the veggies in, so they have a bit of flavor to them and aren't burnt to a crisp despite the high temperature and longer cooking time," Miz told Bill, as he spider-crawled his way out of the sandcastle; she sounded incredibly proud of herself and her cooking feats. (Yeah, okay. Stan figured that might explain it, then.)
Bill, for his part, smiled at her and patted her on top of her head. "Thanks sis." Bill tilted his head at her. "Have YOU eaten yet?"
Miz nodded. "A seagull tried to steal some food earlier so I ate it." Stan did a double-take before letting out a sigh and getting back to mixing his pancake batter. Miz said she didn't like to eat 'people', so Stan was hoping he wouldn't have to ask for clarification on the topic of… yeah, no. He'd better just ask her, "Uh, dragon-lady. If a human ever tries stealin' food from you, you ain't gonna eat them for it, right?"
To Stan's relief, Miz just huffed. "I won't eat them, but I would be pretty unhappy. Might scold them for it. But if they were hungry and didn't have their own food or any way to get their own food, I'd share."
Stan nodded, and said, "Yeah. Sounds like a plan. Think I'd rather get a scolding if I accidentally grabbed the wrong fish outta the cooler after fishing, if you came back with your own catch, too," he told her, to try and set her thinking about 'accidents' a little bit, too. Then Stan turned to the kid -- who was sitting down, examining the bowl that his sister had given him (staring at it, then doing something at his wrist?) before grabbing a fork and starting to eat it (with no complaints, but not exactly exclaiming over the taste there, either; not that the kid had ever done that, that Stan had seen).
...Yeah, he was gonna have to do this with the both of them, wasn't he. Stan let out a sigh. Hell, last thing he needed was the kid thinking Stan was trying to keep secrets from each of them, or telling the two of them different things.
"Kid, it's later," Stan started off with, "And we need to talk." Once he saw he had the kid''s attention, he said, "What was that whole 'helping' thing with you and the teach about?"
Miz looked over at her brother curiously.
Bill looked up at Stanley. "He was interesting, and he wanted to know. It wasn't going to be a waste of time to try and tell him anything, and beings like him are fun. They actually LISTEN to me. Properly. --I like to help them learn," Bill said next, before shoving another forkful of veggies into his mouth and chewing.
Miz looked back and forth between the two men before she Flickered to see what they were talking about. She stilled. Oh. "Oops…" She suddenly realized that their art teacher was probably doing something similar to what had happened with their physics teacher and Bill...
"...'Oops'?" Stan said next, moving from staring at the kid like he'd never seen him before, to looking over at Miz with a frown. "What 'oops'." He glanced between the two demons. "You seen something like this before, Miz?" Stan tried, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Miz ducked her head in guilt. "I think I might have done something similar to brother… but with the art teacher…" She checked quickly, Flickering to see how that poor woman was doing… oh, she was sleeping in her office… covered in charcoal dust… ah… at least she DID seem to have gotten some food and sleep? Though that was more because she had some snacks in her office and then she passed out...
"We are both very inspiring!" Bill said, quite happily, before he took another bite.
Stan ran a hand over his face and stifled a groan. ...Okay. Okay. So this was apparently a 'thing'. With the both of them. ...Thanks, Ford. Great warning there. Center of your world and everything, doing everything he wants because now that's whatever you want to do, hell.
...Damnit, what exactly had Ford said? Hell, it had only been a few weeks ago. His memory wasn't that bad. They'd been in the kitchen, he'd been about ready to fall asleep in his chair, and Ford had said… he'd said...
"He makes you feel like you can do more, be more. It's an addictive feeling.
...Oh. Oh shit.
"I'm almost THERE!" -- "I need to finish!" Holy shit. "Bill is addictive."
Stan looked out, and away, out across the beach, and he felt a chill go down his spine. Because Ford had literally straight-up told him. His brother had told him weeks ago, and he hadn't heard--
You'll want to 'work with him' more. Want to spend more time with him. Want to do more, for him."
--Like the teach had wanted to just keep going, and going, and going until he dropped?
"You're almost there." -- "I can't! I can't just STOP--"
Goddamnit.
"And before you know it, he'll be the driving force in your life, in everything that you do. He'll be the one directing what you're doing. You likely won't even realize it at first.
...and Ford had been so adamant about it.
And that teacher hadn't realized what he was doing to himself.
...And Stan hadn't understood any of it.
Hell, did Ford even blame the triangle demon for any of it, like he should? 'It's what Bill is' didn't sound all that different than...
"Because Bill is… Bill. And so much more than you are, or ever will be."--
Stan grimaced. That one had stuck in his brain for awhile. He'd thought his brother was saying something almost backhanded to him about it all, talking shit about him without meaning to... but now?
"He's been doing very well for a human."
And Ford had flinched at that. The kid had said that, and Ford hadn't looked surprised. He hadn't looked angry. He'd hadn't looked anything. He'd flinched. Not said anything. Not even looked at all like he really wanted to protest it. Just. flinched.
...His brother had flinched, because he'd heard it before.
And Stan didn't want to even begin to think about how many times that had taken, how many times Ford had heard that one, for it to become more than 'too many' times to hear. For it to become so many times that his brother didn't even think about trying to say something about it to the triangle demon anymore.
And Stan had listened to the kid long enough to know what the kid considered a compliment, just from his tone of voice. What the kid said, when he thought he was complimenting you. And that had been the best of anything he'd ever heard out of the kid so far. And that had been when the kid was trying to be 'nice'.
(...And when the kid hadn't really been trying to be 'nice' to Ford anymore?)
Stan glared out at the coastline, and then the ocean beyond it.
"It will feel good, that you are getting along so well. He will make it feel good. He will make you feel good."
...That wasn't just some nerdy scientist talking about his 'partner'. --That was a drug addict talking about his dealer. One who you had to keep coming back to (or else…)
Oh, and Stan would just bet that the triangle had been happy to keep 'fixing up' his brother, now, hadn't he. To keep him dumb and happy. (Glassy-eyed and desperate and staring, like that teach had been.) To keep him going. To drive him to exhaustion, to paranoia, from desperate right over the cliff into desperation-- To get that portal done...
...back then...
...and then Ford had 'woken up'. And become at least a little 'immune'? (He hadn't looked any better than the teach coming out of that classroom, though, just a different kind of bad. Stan had stayed awake long enough to make sure that his brother had and would stay asleep, last night. Because his brother had never been a very good liar. He wasn't--) And then...
"Everything you know will be wrong." -- "He will enjoy seeing your panic, and your despair. He will try and twist you up, and tear you down, and make you hurt, and laugh at you all the while. And then, after he's left you raw and bleeding and wishing that you'd never existed in the first place, then and only then… Then it will start to get worse."
His brother had built up a tolerance to Bill, more or less. And eventually, that drug of his hadn't worked anymore. Ford had (eventually, finally) come to his senses, and come down off of his feverish, fever-dream dream-demon high. And he'd dropped down low. Real low. Real as in, reality-had-up-and-hit-him-in-the-face-finally, low.
Ford had dropped from the stars to the basement bottom-floor, all in one go, and when he'd gone down, he'd hit rock bottom hard. --And then he'd had withdrawal symptoms next, making everything just that much worse. Pain, and paranoia, and blood and bleeding all over that first-floor bathroom, even swipes of the stuff in random crazy places down in the basement, on the chair backs, and desks, and parts of the walls, and worse. ...Except the kid wasn't just some chemical that Ford could've made for himself; he'd been Ford's dealer, too, his one and only source of whatever Ford had thought he'd needed, and-- the demon had laughed at his brother. Ford had said he'd laughed at him--
...and now?
Now, would the demon maybe give Ford yet another 'fix' of his again, if only Ford would just play along with him (again), toe the new (old) line that he'd set... have him break and cross every last line of his own that he'd ever had… and do exactly what Bill wanted, in order to...
"Leave him alone! Take me instead!"
His brother had been scared to death. He'd looked desperate, and scared to death of--
Goddamnit. Goddamnit, Ford. What had his brother thought Stan was going to think of him? That it was his fault? --It wasn't Ford's fault. Stan wasn't stupid. Stan had worked for the mob, and some of the drug cartels, south of the border; he had seen how the worst of them handled their business. How they got new 'customers'. --Hell, how they handled their worst rivals. All they had to do was shoot them up just once, get a couple of guys and hold them down, tie them up and give them just one hit of the worst of the worst-stuff, and...
The first hit was always and only the only one that was... 'free'.
"I told him enough to get him started." -- "I was helping him learn."
...And everything that came after?
Punching the kid off of the side of the boat wasn't going to fix this, though. Stan knew that.
(But damn if it wouldn't make him feel a hell of a lot better, though.)
(The kid deserved far worse for this than just one punch.)
"How many times do you want me to kill him for it?" -- "He needs to die and stay dead."
...And the very next thing Stan had talked about after that had been giving the kid an 'out'. (How the hell had Ford not straight up just murdered him on the spot for that one, Stan didn't know.)
Ford had (actually, somehow) managed to get himself clean -- as clean as he could get himself, with the demon not freaking ever really leaving him alone in the thirty years since -- and then what had Stan gone and done?
He'd refused to do the one thing that Ford thought would kill the demon dead and get rid of him for good. And yeah, Stan was sure that it wouldn't work, that they needed to find another way, but Ford thought different--
Instead, Stan had gone off and tried his damndest to have the triangle demon live in the same house with them, instead.
...And Ford had lost his shit, stopped sleeping, just about stopped eating, and had ended up spending all his time in the basement, trying to figure out another way to get rid of the demon, instead. Of course he had.
(Because Stan wouldn't even let him try to flush the drugs down the toilet, let alone throw them out with the rest of the trash, and hope to whatever god was listening out there but refusing to do a damn thing about anything that it all didn't go off and away, just to boomerang back on them all again later. ...Y'know, like last time, with the statue in the woods, and the kid the way he was now.)
And now…
...They couldn't get rid of the demon, now. Not now. The kid wasn't going anywhere; he simply didn't want to anymore, now that he had reasons to stay. Reasons that Stan had given him. And Stan still had all the same reasons for wanting to keep the kid, too, for wanting the kid to get along with the rest of them, and--
--Goddamnit, Ford. He wasn't that kind of flipping genius, some kind of mind-reader here, to have been able to have read that much that far in-between the lines. He'd been missing the entire goddamn script, here! (A hell of a lot more than just two journals' worth.) --What the hell was he supposed to do, now?
Stan pulled in a breath, and he let it out slowly. And then he did it again. He was fuming, and in-general still (and completely) incensed. And he knew it. And he didn't really want to calm down, was the real problem here. What he really wanted to do was to haul off and just punch the kid in the face, just as hard as he could, agreement and everything else be damned. Even though he knew damn well what would happen next if he--
And as Stan slowly tried to breathe and calm himself down and get himself back away from and off of that ledge, Miz was rolling around on the deck as she worried about what she'd just realized she'd accidentally done to her art teacher at school.
Miz ended up stopping in place on her belly, arms and legs all splayed out, and whined, "I didn't mean to! --I'm gonna go talk to her today." She let out a tired huff. "At least she isn't as bad off as Mr. Harman got. More of a 'found a new obsession' thing, instead of a 'the epiphany of my life and reaching enlightenment' thing." ('Focus, Stanley,' Stan told himself. He had to manage the demons. He had to. For Ford. And the kids.)
Miz groaned, rolled over again, then pushed herself up and leaned back against the railing. "Is this a human thing? None of the aliens I've met have gotten so… into the stuff I've shown them?" she asked to no one in particular, head tilted back and staring at the sky. "Well I guess there was that one guy who was kinda obsessed with wanting to touch me, but that's something entirely different..."
Then she jolted up. "Didn't Sixer want to touch me too? What the heck!?" She groaned and slumped over. "What did I do?" she whined.
Stan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, then slowly lowered his hand and reopened his eyes to stare at the dragon-lady.
...Well, as murderously angry as he was with the kid for doin' whatever he'd done to his brother and he'd better damn well not try any of it with him ever again, or so help him--, at least Miz realized she'd screwed up somehow and actually seemed sorry about it.
...Hell, she was, wasn't she. She seemed actually surprised (and worried) about whatever she'd done to the art teacher. (He didn't know what was up with the whole 'people wanting to touch her' thing coming up there, though; that seemed more like it was something that would hurt her more than hurting others.)
Bill blinked at her. "You talked to them?" Bill said next. "Good ideas stick. Some ideas stick better with certain species than with others. Usually, it's tied to the biological inputs for how they usually see and perceive things and learn," Bill told her, finishing up with his eating (edible, but more sugary than he generally found pleasing-in-taste enough to 'like'); he set the bowl and fork aside. "You used to be human, so maybe human-inspiration is easier for you?" Bill tried next. "What thought-axes and living-priorities were you centering your discussions around? --You need to be careful about the directionality of the underpinnings to make sure that they flow straight down the pathways properly, instead of getting lost in the neuronal weeds," he told her. "Side-tracks make most beings lose straight-focus. You need to make it as easy as possible for them to keep their eyes on the prize on the horizon, unless they're really asking you for a long-term challenge."
"Well, I mainly tried to give people tips on how to do better what they're already doing." ("That's the horizon," Bill interjected, nodding.) "Humans listened." ("They usually do!") "I taught a few tribes how to make fire. And I do have worshippers… is that bad?" ("No!") "I didn't think having worshippers was bad… none of them got as weirdly obsessed as Mr. Harman though," Miz pointed out quickly.
Then a look of realization came across Miz's face. "Wait. Are the fans for my space idol persona a bad thing? They ARE obsessed, kinda unhealthily so, but humans are like that with idols too. And I'm not the only space idol out there. Isn't that just what happens when you have fans?"
"--Worship is fine," Bill said. "Worship is different! --Though sometimes humans do end up mixing the two," Bill said, but then he got an odd expression on his face. "...Rarely," Bill added after a moment. "It happens, but it's rare for some. Most. --The smart ones usually don't worship anything but pure knowledge," Bill told her. "Beings and demons like us are too concrete a concept for proper worship by them, usually."
Stan looked back and forth between the two demon-kids. He was feeling pretty damn lost by this point. (And still pretty damn angry with the kid, fists clenched at his sides where he was sitting.) --All he'd really gotten out of this so far? Was that 'inspiration' and 'enlightenment' were probably the right words for the two specific things that he needed to shut the kid down on hard, right now, post-haste -- 'addiction' and 'contagious'.
And yeah, Stan knew about the Miz being 'worshipped' thing already, kind of; she'd mentioned it offhand before. But this 'space idol' thing? "What space idol thing?" Stan asked, trying to push it all down. (Which he could do. Hell, why wouldn't he be able to do this? He was a professional con-man. He could do this…)
Miz shifted into Jan, pouting. "I'm a professional singer. Sort of. I get paid to hold music concerts where I sing and dance." He waved his arms around. "I have FANS. Like, those crazy types of fans who scream and faint if I so much as look at them. I'm sure you've seen how Mabel acts around her boy bands?" Jan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "It's crazy how fans get. But I have bodyguards, they keep the crazies from climbing on stage or assaulting me in my dressing room…" He shook his head. "That's not the point," Jan looked at Stan, "Is THAT sort of thing a bad thing? It's not the same as what happened yesterday? But I'm not sure what is acceptable 'obsession' or not?"
"Obsession?" said the kid who had been messing around inside his brother's head for thirty-some years--
Stan couldn't do this.
"--I need twenty minutes, kid," Stan growled out, as he shoved himself to his feet. "Stay here; don't do anything stupid." And then Stan glared down at the kid. "And don't say a goddamn word to Ford while I'm away. Ever. --Until I tell you otherwise," Stan had to add, because of the kid's stupid problem with any 'hard no's. But hell. 'Telling the kid otherwise?' Like that was gonna happen ever, with the way the kid kept--
Stan clenched his jaw, and clenched and unclenched his fists, and stopped himself right there. The agreement was a thing. He wanted Ford and the kids to stay safe. (He could make the triangle demon actually listen to him, and he'd better listen--)
Stan turned and went over to the rope ladder, tossed it over the side roughly, and then he climbed his way down off of the deck and down onto the sand.
And Stan started stomping his way across the beach. (Damn if he didn't want to punch the fuck out of something right about now.)
Jan blinked. "I think Stan's angry." Though he wasn't quite sure why? Something about Ford… and punching things?
"...Yes," said Bill, watching Stanley move off. He frowned. He didn't like that Stanley was apparently angry (with him?) about the fact that he was inspiring other people (who were not him? Or that Stanford? --Well, maybe not that Stanford, if Stanley didn't want him talking about certain things to that Stanford while Stanley wasn't there to hear them...) -- jealous, much?
The four-armed humanoid sighed. Well, Jan's fans didn't seem like they were going through the same thing as what his brother had done to Mr. Harman. That being... nothing, really. Bill had simply given him some ideas for a few cool concepts. Like, the equation for opening his very own viewing portal, in a way that Mr. Harman could have built himself without weirdness or magic, and then on to the workings of the invisible suit that Mr. Harman had seemed... even more interested in than that?… which had led to how the suit had worked… which had led to why the suit had worked… which was based on the fact that the universe was a hologram, and… --okay, yeah, maybe THAT had been the thing that would have broken him? Jan hummed in thought. The knowledge that the world around him wasn't… well, it wasn't like the world wasn't real, just that it wasn't as… real as people maybe thought it was, in the way that they thought it was?
"I think Stan is mad that Mr. Harman got so invested in learning that he neglected his health…" Jan frowned, thinking through what else he'd picked up from Stan's racing thoughts and then translating them into a way that he thought Bill would understand better. "And… how, maybe, you got that Stanford to neglect his health back when you worked together?" That was the most he could really 'get' from what Stan seemed to be thinking. "So he's mad at you for making them so distracted that they ended up harming themselves through neglect?"
"I wasn't distracting them!" Bill complained. "I was--"
And Bill was cut off abruptly as Ford climbed and half-dragged and clambered his way up out of the hatch, stumbling forward--
--and quite literally almost tackled Bill to the deck, wrapping his arms around him and shuddering in place as he practically collapsed right down on top of him.
Jan looked over and blinked. "Um… are you okay?" he asked.
Bill let out a garble of half-strangled sound, starting to shove at that Stanford… until he realized that that was just making the grabbing-him that much worse. ...And that it wasn't actually an attack.
Ford let out a coughing sound, shuddering as he did so. And another sort of coughing-gasping sound.
Rrgh. --Not an attack. It was just--!! Stupid. Bill gritted his teeth and finally managed to twist around in place. He got a single hand up and out, and ran it over the back of that Stanford's head, closing his eyes and ramping up his own internal amplitude as he did so, opening his mouth and vocalizing his hummmmmm.
And then Ford really collapsed. His shuddering almost immediately subsided; he (finally) pulled air into his lungs properly in one hard, long gasp, and then began breathing (and continuing to breathe in) like he'd never breathed in air before, almost.
--In and then out again, finally. And then in and out. And in and out. And...
(...still not letting go of Bill, yet.)
"Worst. Timing. Ever." Bill gritted out, in an overlay over his own modulated vocalized hum, putting up with it all for now… --But he DIDN'T have to LIKE it!! NO, HE DID NOT!!!
Jan got up to walk over. "What the heck?" He knelt down to examine Ford. (Ford did not seem to notice this, at first.) Then Jan carefully gripped the larger man and pulled him up and off his brother. (Ford flailed and fought him for a moment -- before seeming to wake up at least a little, starting to really get his bearings -- while Bill let out a breath and stopped humming aloud, letting himself cycle everything down once again.)
"What was that about?" Jan wondered aloud as he started to move Ford over to place him back down against the railings.
--And Ford yanked himself out of Jan's hold, shoving himself away from him, eyes wide.
Jan turned to Bill. "Oh wait, Stan said you're not supposed to talk until he gets back," he reminded his brother sheepishly.
"No-he-didn't, and I. DON'T. CARE!!!" Bill said, slowly pushing himself upright again. He was very unhappy at the 'abuse' he'd just received! (And that wasn't what Stan had said anyway! --Bill wasn't going to STOP at just ONE 'goddamn word' -- he had several that he wanted to communicate to that Stanford, and not a ONE of them had been 'damned' by that stupid lizard! --Not that it mattered; stupid lizard couldn't kick him out, anyway! Stanley's worries on that front were completely unfounded! HA!)
(That said…)
Bill turned towards that Stanford and said, directly, pointing right at him, "YOU. STOP HAVING NIGHTMARES WHEN I'M NOT IN THEM!!" Bill proclaimed out at him angrily. "It's RUDE!!!" It had been bad enough when Sixer had been doing it when he had been able to jump into his Dreamscape and take over for them. --That Stanford NEVER managed to dream him up RIGHT!!
"I-- I--" Ford looked something of a wreck just then, hair and glasses all askew, hand up and grasping the side of his head. "You were--"
"--I was UP HERE and AWAKE!" Bill snapped back at him angrily.
Jan facepalmed. "I don't think he's doing that on purpose." He muttered, "Heck, I had a dream involving a Bill who wasn't me or you. He was joining the Avengers and Captain America was taking him grocery shopping when they got ambushed by HYDRA agents…" As he rambled, he turned towards Ford and looked him over. "Are you okay?" he asked Ford again. Seeing Ford so pathetic made him feel bad. Hard to be mad at someone who looked so lost and frantic. Like a sad and freaked-out owl.
Ford was swaying in place. He still had one hand up at the side of his head, and his other hand up at his throat. His eyes snapped over to Jan briefly before going back to Bill. He still looked more than a little panicked, but the original panic and desperation was turning into a panic and desperation of a somewhat different 'flavor' now, instead.
Jan frowned. He was pretty sure that Stan didn't want Bill talking to Ford. But brother wouldn't like to be told to shut up, and really, no one liked being told that.
So Jan looked around for some other excuse to try and keep Bill from speaking. Jan picked up the notebook he'd written some of his 'issues' down on and held it out to Bill. "Hey, ah, Stan asked me to write down some stuff that might be giving me trouble. Do you wanna go back in the sand castle and read it over with me, so we can see about how to address them?" Jan wasn't really looking forward to this discussion, but if it might distract Bill...
"Not yet," Bill said tersely, getting up and dropping down in front of that Stanford in a crouch. (Ford flinched back a bit from Bill, then seemed to brace himself at least slightly against the impending 'assault', as he continued to try to get his breathing under control.)
"What do you need," Bill demanded out of that Stanford, staring him right in the eyes.
And Ford bristled.
"I-- don't want--" Ford began, his panic starting to edge into the beginnings of a mix of anger.
"--Not want! NEED!" Bill snapped back at him, which had Ford flinching and snapping his own mouth shut. "Shooting Star and Pine Tree want you physically and mentally 'fine'!" Bill said next, "For the agreement!" Bill practically snarled out at him next. "What do you NEED?" Ford kept his mouth shut. "More sleep? Dreams-- no. Nightmares-- nightmares. --More nightmares. --Less nightmares," Bill guessed at in a fairly rapid clip, watching his suit's overlay in his field of view, watching the readouts he was getting from the built-in sensors that were picking up on Sixer's 'visible' externally-readable brain waves for… "--No nightmares. ...No nightmares. Fine. --You sleep, arms around me," Bill said, like it effectively closed the discussion, as Sixer himself turned pale.
"I am not sleeping inside that dimensional-pocket of space--" Ford began.
"--DON'T ARGUE WITH ME," Bill said. "I never said 'sleeping inside the sandcastle'! I don't trust you in there with Miz!" Bill said next, sitting back on his heels.
"Wait, brother," Jan pointed out. "I can bring the blankets out here." He waved a hand to float the bedding out onto the deck. Jan tried to give Ford a reassuring smile. "Just breathe and try to calm down okay?" He told him gently. This form's voice coming out calm and soothing.
...Which for some reason had Ford shuddering like it was grating along every last nerve and drawing blood. (The last time that he'd heard a demon talk like that, he'd been in the back of a nearby cage, and then that demon had--) And he looked utterly miserable for some reason that Jan couldn't grasp, gripping at his torso and bending inwards on himself, like he wanted to disappear straight down into the deck.
Jan frowned. Why did everything he try to do to help, just make things worse? Why was everything he did always wrong? Why was he always such a stupid fucking failure-- one of his hands was gripping at his arm, an uncomfortable feeling in his chest.
"Breathing is the problem," Bill told his sister, sitting back and pulling his legs in cross-legged. He was still looking straight-at his Sixer, the idiot. "You had that 'drowning in your own coughed-up insides-rotting blackness' dream again, didn't you," Bill said almost clinically, in descending 'you idiot' tones.
Ford lifted his head abruptly and stared at Bill like he'd never seen him before.
"Again?!?" was what came out of Ford's mouth in sheer disbelief, and that had Bill glaring at him and practically hissing out, "Just because YOU don't remember every last one of your dreams, doesn't mean that I DON'T."
Ford stared at Bill, breathing shakily and still shivering slightly in place. Bill glared at him right back.
"--What else," Bill snapped out at Ford next. "You said I was there? --And you made it up the ladder." Bill seemed to be calming down a bit, though he was still clearly very fixated on his Zodiac still. "That's nonstandard." Bill narrowed his eyes at him. "That wasn't just a collapse-and-melt progression." (Ford shuddered slightly and looked even more sick.) "What. happened."
Ford kept his mouth shut, his eyes going a little dark.
"--Are you really going to make me GUESS?" Bill demanded out of him next, "REALLY?!" his eyes going sharp and even angrier.
"...Go to hell," Ford said quietly, gritting his teeth. He slowly pulled in his knees towards his chest, and glared at Bill over them.
Jan bit his lip. "Um, brother? Maybe… give him some space to calm down on his own?" The mess of thoughts he was hearing -- what little he could hear from Ford through the metal plate in his head -- were a mess. So maybe, getting Bill away from him would help? Whatever nightmare he'd gotten DID involve some mental image of Bill Cipher. And… some kind of dual-thoughts of 'stop' and 'don't stop' or something? Either way, it was fucked up and maybe getting Ford some time to himself would help?
...though Jan wasn't sure why he even bothered to try, it's not like anything he did ever ended well, and people always ended up angrier at him no matter what he tried to do to help them…
"--He doesn't 'calm down on his own'," Bill scoffed, still glaring at said 'him', because that was half the problem right now -- Bill didn't WANT to be 'helping' him just then -- especially not after what he'd said about… -- but the agreement REQUIRED it, and...
Bill turned away from that Stanford and towards Jan, to explain to his sister that, "He only ever--"
And then Bill blinked and stopped when he saw his sister's expression. And Bill sat up straight. His sister looked… distressed? Why? What happened? Why was s/he unhappy?
Jan was gripping his arms tightly, knuckles pale. "U-um… I… I think I ne-need a hug…" He whimpered. He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut and tried not to feel so awful, but he couldn't. Stan was angry, Ford was upset, and if Stan came back to find Ford like this… There would be even more angry yelling. And Jan HATED angry yelling! It ALWAYS made him/her feel--
Time Baby was always angry yelling and it just--
Bill shifted in place uneasily when Jan began shuddering, as he looked over at and watched his sister, where he sat. (And Ford stared.)
And then Bill got up abruptly, and took a few steps over… and dropped down just as abruptly next to Jan. And stopped (though he hardly looked settled, as he settled down in place next to her/him). And then he looked even more uncertain, shifting in place again. (Ford kept on staring.) And then Bill saw that his sister was crying, now. Tears were escaping from his closed eyes, and...
Bill let out a distressed click-clack-chirp-ing sort of sound, and his arms and hands came up almost immediately, then stopped again, hovering near his cheeks. His eyes moved back and forth quickly, as he tried to assess--
Bill's fingers twitched ever-so-slightly. ...And then he moved his hands forward all-at-once, in a smooth motion, to come to rest up against Jan's cheeks, right below his eyes.
"Ah…" Bill said, sounding almost a little bit nervous. "Leaking tears. …Defective vessel?" he tried, almost hopefully, despite the fact that he was (unfortunately) fairly sure that it wasn't just THAT sort of problem.
Jan sniffled. "I'm sorry, I'm just…" He leaned forward to bury his face against Bill's shoulder. (Bill let out a bit of a startled click-chirp, but remained stationary, staying in place.) "I just… want some quiet for a bit, please?" He wanted to stop thinking about how much of a fuck up he was. Having to write them down earlier was bad enough, and realizing that he'd accidentally messed up that nice art teacher was worse, but trying to help keep the peace, trying to help Ford, and just being unable to, was too much. He just wanted people to stop being upset. He wanted to stop making people upset. But he just couldn't!
Bill slowly brought his hands up, in not-quite-smooth (yet not quite stop-motion) fits and starts, to wrap around his sister's shoulders. A hug. His sister had said he wanted a hug, yes? And quiet 'for a bit'? (--How long was 'a bit'? Should he cast a muffling-sound spell? Except that Stanford needed-- UGH.)
Jan relaxed into Bill's hold, breathing wetly and shrank back into Miz. It was easier as Miz. She clutched onto Bill's shirt and not-quite sobbed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"
..."Sorry?" Bill echoed, confused. But… his sister hadn't done anything wrong? Bill looked down at her, then around and about and just about everything, because he wasn't sure at all what to do in order to fix this, let alone what was causing this. --How was he supposed to explode what was making his sister sad if he didn't know what to turn his very destructive and righteous (even by Sixer's standards) anger on! WHAT was he supposed to DO, to make things BETTER for--?!
...Then Bill realized he was looking at Sixer, and immediately turned his head away from him abruptly.
Ford stared at Bill, and at the other demon. And at what Bill was doing just then.
(And how Bill was reacting to the distress he'd just been presented with, here and now.)
And Ford took in a shallow breath (as deeply as he could just then) and managed to ask, quite lowly, of Bill, "...Why did I come up to the deck to you?"
(He never would have expected that Bill--)
(...Had those dreams back then, so very long ago, actually been…?)
Bill clenched his jaw. He pulled in a breath. Let it out.
Ford swallowed. "Bill?"
"--Quiet for a bit," Bill said next, sounding strained to Ford's ears. "Five minutes."
Ford stared at the dream demon incredulously, and nearly told Bill off for it. ...But then he remembered what Stan had said out in the hallway the night before, when... And how Bill had stopped talking then. For just about five minutes.
(...Stan had said something about Bill 'mirroring' them, hadn't he? So what would happen if he didn't...)
(...but what would happen if he did?)
Ford stared at Bill for another long moment.
And then Ford slowly closed his mouth and just watched the two demons. (Quite frankly, he wasn't up for yet another argument with Bill, just then. He felt a little dizzy, almost, and more than a little sick. But attempting to concentrate on something outside himself was… well, it was far better than dwelling on--)
Miz was letting out shuddering breaths herself now, as she allowed her own feelings to play out, converting them slowly into energy instead as she managed to calm down.
She breathed and held onto Bill, feeling his heart beating under her hand where she was gripping his shirt. Beat, beat, beat. Slow and steady. It wasn't quite the same as Xanthar's 'Calm' but it helped a little.
She breathed and relaxed. And she felt drained, even as her energy buzzed beneath her skin. She still didn't know how this worked. She'd always had these odd paradoxical issues. But at least she was feeling… not better, but calmer now.
She wiped her eyes, slowly pulling away from Bill, though she kept one hand on his shirt.
"...sorry…" Miz repeated. "I just… needed a bit of time." She rubbed her eyes.
"How long is 'a bit of time'?" Bill said, still looking a bit strained. "For future reference?" He hadn't been entirely sure about the 'five minutes' covering it. Or that Stanford actually managing to be able to stay quiet for that long, even if Sixer hadn't inexplicably wanted to be a PROBLEM to Bill outright -- like that Stanford usually was.
Miz sighed, sitting up. "Until I stop crying, though, I guess, I can just tell you when I'm doing better. The duration might vary…" She felt a little embarrassed for breaking down over something so stupid.
Bill froze in place for a moment at the 'until I stop crying'.
"Mm," said Bill. "Telling me… is good." Not having a known time duration would make it more difficult to demand a 'silence' out of that Stanford, though. He… wasn't actually certain why he hadn't gotten just a larger argument out of that Stanford for it? Or at least the usual hard 'no'... (Bill frowned a little at this.)
Miz straightened up and glanced over at Ford. "Um, you can ask your question now, if you want?" she asked timidly, hoping that this wouldn't just set Ford off again.
Ford twitched, and he almost snapped at her… but he held it down. The very last thing he needed right now was the other demon beginning to (pretend to?) cry again; they'd be at this all day.
"Sorry I interrupted you two…" Miz said, looking miserable.
...Ford just couldn't take this right now. He couldn't… The demon was acting like an actual person, and... Ford closed his eyes for a moment, on the verge of the beginnings of a headache. He put his head down on his knees.
"...Bill?" Ford said slowly. His breathing was somewhat better, but his chest was aching to the point that it almost hurt, right there, and he still felt like he was on the verge of something in his chest cracking open, and starting to cough up that--
"---Why did you come to me?" Bill restated tersely. "I don't know. --I usually come to you," Bill said, eyes narrowed slightly as he gave Ford a long side-eyed look. "I used to."
(He'd used to.) Ford tried to remember what breathing was supposed to feel like. "Why."
"--Because you're not supposed to have any nightmares that I don't give you, that's why!" Bill snapped out at him, over his sister's head. "You always get them wrong," Bill said, sounding aggrieved, as though he were some maligned party in all of this.
Ford snorted, and shook in place a little as he quickly lifted a hand to cover his mouth, feeling somewhat hysterical as he felt incredulous laughter building up in his throat. ...And then bubbling up (or making its way down?) inside his chest. Because the thought was just… ludicrous. Simply, completely, and utterly ridiculous. Because Bill didn't just believe that he owned 'every thought he'd ever had in his head', oh no. Bill wasn't just content with that. No, Bill felt… that he owned his dreams?! -- no, his nightmares? -- as well?! Every last one of them?