Chapter Text
Belle came home to a demon on her bed. Alcor - not Dipper, Alcor - was lying coiled up around his schoolbag, claws sinking into her pillow and glitchy brickworked wings spread to their fullest extent, drooping off the side of the mattress and brushing against the floor. A low, distorted growl emanated from him.
At first she thought he might’ve gotten a whiff of yggdrasil, but when he looked up his pupils weren’t blown wide. No, they were small, and bright, and angry.
He stopped growling when he locked eyes on her, but the anger kept smouldering. It would have been an intimidating glare - if it was on anybody else, she might’ve been scared - but Belle couldn’t help but recognise that as the same sulky expression he had on after their dad refused to let him drive underaged: “I’m sorry, Dipper, I know you can drive, but I really don’t think I’d be comfortable letting you behind the wheel before you can see over it.”
(And stars, Dipper’s outraged voice going “I’m not that short!” and his face… Belle found herself snickering at the memory.)
She set her bag down on the floor and wandered over to him now.
“Hey, Dipper!” She gave a little wave. “Me and Oni missed you at lunch today! What happened, some kinda summons?”
His growl rattled the pictures on the walls. Belle made a face.
“Oof, sounds like a bad one.”
“I̺̘̰t̢ ̨w̯̣̙̤̰̰a̸̖̩͎̯̻s͓̗͓ ̮b̥̝̣a͖͔d̳̳.” Alcor looked away. ”F̼̟͎̰̭̹̝o̧̝̫r̴̼̜ ͓ț̦͈̖͉͚̗͟he̩̬̘̘̠m̯͓͚͉̟͕͡.”
The reverb in his voice - it shook through her chest, and she paused for a moment to grimace at how weird that felt. Then she shuffled closer, and nudged one of his wings. He lifted it up, and she crawled in next to him, smiling when a second later his wing came down again and enclosed the two of them in a comfy little cuddle.
And for a moment, it was quiet, and despite whatever had happened to Alcor, it was nice. It was peaceful. Her brother kept sinking his claws further and further into the pillow, but he was careful to keep his grip on her gentle; his wings felt soft and warm, and whatever his brickworked body was made of, it was nice to feel leaning against her.
She leaned in right back, and rested her head on his shoulder, and slowly, so slowly, colour started to return to his form. He still looked like Alcor, not Dipper, but his hair was brown again and his clawed hands, now playing with a zipper on his backpack, looked less like void and more like normal, human skin.
Belle smiled at that. They stayed like that a moment longer, then she leaned in closer, and finally broke the silence.
“Hey, bro,” she said. “You know you’ve still got that ketchup stain from lunch on your shirt?”
“What?” Alcor looked down, and groaned at a little red smudge. “Oh, for god’s sake, really? That means I had it during the whole summons!”
"Hah! Don’t worry, it’s a tiny stain, I’m sure they didn’t notice.”
“But I can’t go showing up to summons with dirty shirts! I’ve got a reputation to uphold!”
“Says the dork who uses the washing machine once a year.”
“Wha- no, that’s- that’s completely different!” Alcor spluttered. “Washing clothes is a waste of time, I have stuff to do! A-and besides, I can just use some quick magic to- are you holding your nose, Belle?”
“Ewww, it smells like stinky brother in here!”
“Seriously? I’m not even human right now! Belle, I’m not even in a body right now, I can’t… oh my god, Belle. You’re the worst.”
“Love you too, Mr Stinkbender.”
They both laughed at that for a little while. Alcor trailed off first; he started fiddling with his backpack again, his smile slowly fading from his face. Belle nudged him, and he tried to bring it back when he looked at her, but the happiness was gone.
“Hey,” she murmured, quietly. “Do you, uh, wanna talk about that summons you had?” His expression darkened; quickly she added: “You don’t have to, of course you don’t have to, but I just thought-”
“No, no, yeah, I want to talk about it! Thanks, I want to talk about it, it’s just…” He rubbed his forehead. “Frustrating. Very frustrating.”
She made a face. “Yeah, I bet cultists are not fun to deal with.”
“It’s not even that the cultists are annoying! They are annoying, and summons are annoying, but…usually I don’t mind them too much?” He laughed at that, but it doesn’t sound happy. “I actually…kind of like them a lot of the time. I like getting summoned, I like getting sacrificed to, I like making de̢a͝l̕s… but that’s, uh, that’s its own problem.”
Belle watched him as he sighed, and let his hands flop down on the pillow.
“No, right now I just wish they’d stop trying to summon me during school hours.” He curled his lip. “Like seriously, I’ve put it in my answering machine when I want to be summoned but there’s always gotta be that one cult who’s decided they don’t have to follow the rules!”
“That’s so rude.”
“It is! Argh, the school called Dad last week because I’ve been pulled out of so many math classes - usually by some weirdo in a robe who thinks I’ll make him king of the world for, like, some lamb chops from the supermarket. Ugh. Then they act sooo offended when I tell them no, summon me during normal hours… Stupid humans.”
“Gross.” She wrinkled her nose. “Humans are stupid, bro. Sorry you gotta deal with them.”
His head sank down, and he muttered, “That’s not even the worst part, though.”
His voice was quiet. It had an edge to it, a cold hint of that anger from earlier, and Belle didn’t try to respond with some funny quip or sympathetic phrase; she hesitated, then, wordlessly, she slipped her hand into one of Alcor’s hands, and squeezed.
He squeezed back, and a few moments later, he spoke again.
“That’s not the worst part,” he started. “No, the worst part is…what they do to get my attention. What they offer, that I…”
Alcor squeezed her hand, hard. Almost too hard, but she sucked in a breath and let him keep talking.
“...that I can’t resist. Because it doesn’t matter what time school hours are, everybody knows there’s certain things that’ll get a demon to show up every time, and if I don’t answer my normal summons they’re not gonna try and see if they did anything wrong - nooo, they never do anything wrong, they’re special little humans.” He curled his lip. “No, they’re just gonna escalate, they’re gonna go find some other mortal who did nothing wrong and they’re gonna sacrifice that to me and all of a sudden someone’s died just because I wanted to play human for a couple hours and eat lunch with my sister and-”
“Dipper, Dipper!” Belle winced as he squeezed even harder. Alcor blinked, looked down, then let go immediately.
“Sorry, Belle! I’m so sorry!”
“No, it’s all good.” She rubbed her hand. “Sorry for cutting you off there, bro. You keep going.”
“Well, there’s not much more to say, I guess. It just…sucks. I don’t know what to do about it.”
Belle didn’t know what to do, either. Her heart hurt as she watched her brother sink down into the mattress, eyes distant, deep in thought. He played with the stuffing of her pillow for a moment; with a blink he realised what he was doing and he shoved it away.
Then, he sighed, and seemed to come to a decision.
“Belle?”
She tried for a sunny smile. “Y’ello, bro?”
Alcor turned to look at her, but his eyes didn’t quite meet her own. “I think…I think I might need to stop going to school.”
“Heh…” Belle paused as she processed what he’d just said. “Wait, what?”
“It’s not worth it. I can’t put lives on the line just because I like going to school-”
“But-but wait, it’s school! You can’t just not go to school!”
“I can.” He stared past her, and suddenly he looked very, very ancient. “I can do anything I want.”
Belle put a hand on her shoulder. “Dipper, come on. You like going to school; there’s gotta be a way to get around this! You know…what about before you found out you were- uh, before we went to Gravity Falls? You weren’t getting summoned back then!”
“It wasn’t for lack of trying.” Alcor curled his lip at a memory. “So many souls sacrificed to my answering machine - and for what, huh.”
“Well…” she struggled for words. Then, lamely: “You gotta tell Dad, at least.”
“I know.”
“You know, he’d be the one dealing with all the school stuff. You can’t, like, just stop going to school, like you and Dad’d get in trouble for that probably and-”
“I know.” There was a rumble to Alcor’s words, but it ended in a sigh. “I’ll…I wanna think on it more, okay?” He curled up tighter. “I wanna stay in school.”
Belle squeezed his shoulder.
“I just…I don’t see a way to do that, I guess. Not without getting more people hurt.”
She laid down next to him. “I’m sorry, bro. That sucks.”
“Yeah…yeah, it does.” There was a pause, and he nestled up close to her. “It does.”
And with that, they sat together in disquiet silence. Belle hugged her brother, and found it funny to realise her arm didn’t quite reach as far around his shoulders as it usually did. He was slightly bigger in this form, slightly older, and the claws tipping each one of his fingers were black as night and sharp as obsidian.
She traced her own fingers down one of them, felt the pointed edges, and looked up when Alcor let out a short snort.
“What?”
Alcor raised an eyebrow at her. “What are you doing, Belle?”
“I dunno. Doing whatever.” She yawned. “This bed’s making me sleepy, I wanna take a nap. Heh, what about you, bro?”
He didn’t say anything to that. Instead, he rolled over a little, and let his wing drape over her like a comfy blanket. His face nestled into her shoulder, and she smiled at that.
Things were weird, right now. Life was weird with a demon for a brother, and it wasn’t always the fun kind of weird - sometimes, it was this kind of weird. The kind of weird that was hard to think about, hard to solve.
The kind of weird that made Belle want to hug her brother tight and never let go, because he didn’t deserve to deal with this…
So, for a little while, she did. She fell asleep shielding him from the world, and it was nice.
For a couple of short hours, it was simply nice.