Work Text:
Dipper wasn’t doing anything important at the moment, just refreshing his Grumblr dashboard over and over again, so when he got a summons from his personal circle, he had no excuse to ignore it.
“Oh, hey, what is i-”
Dipper paused, noticing there was absolutely no one in front of him. A pair of strong arms then seized the opportunity to grab him and pull him backward.
“Aaah! Who- oh, it’s just you, Mani.”
Mani merely tossed a piece of fabric at him.
Dipper glared at her. “What was that for?”
“I need your help, Dip. It’s for cosmetology school.”
“Oh, yeah! This another chemistry quiz thing?”
Mani glanced at the floor, sheepish. “Actually, I... lost my makeup dummy-”
“Want me to steal you a new one? I’ll do it for the Skagway ice cream bars in your freezer!”
“Oh, no. I was actually thinking,” said Mani, evil grin already forming on her face, “of using you instead.”
“Oh, heck no, Mani.”
“It’ll only take an hour-”
“Maniya Sanyal, don’t you dare, I swear to all the stars in the freaking sky-”
“Please?”
Dipper pouted at her for a bit before relenting. “Ugh, fine.”
Mani grinned. “Great! Now,” she gestured to the fabric thing haphazardly draped on Dipper’s head, “put that on.”
“What- why? You’re not cutting my hair, are you?”
“No, I just don’t want to get makeup all over your fancy suit.”
Dipper gave her a pointed look. “You know I can just clean it up with a snap of the fingers, right?”
“I’m pretending you’re a normal non-demon customer. It’s part of the grade.”
“Right, because yanking them out of their summoning circle without warning and forcing them to be your makeup dummy is standard customer procedure. Definitely.”
“Stop it and get over here, Mr. Sassbender.”
“Really, Mr. Sassbender? Is that the best you can do? My name isn’t Mr. Dreambender or anything, Dreambender’s a title.”
Dipper floated over to the chair-mirror that he remembered helping her set up earlier in the year and sat down, still talking.
“Of course, there was that one time in Noring, I pretended my name was Alcor T. Dreambender? Like, Alcor was my first name, T. was my middle initial, Dreambender was my last name. I just walked around town, full demon, and literally no one questioned it! It was so funny! And then there ended up being some sinister plot going on with this cult and this magic copier machine and-”
It was now Mani’s turn to glare at Dipper. “This story sounds very interesting, and I’d love to hear it some other time, but can you please hold still?”
“Ugh, fine,” Dipper grumbled.
Mani looked at his face for around five minutes, muttering things about cool undertones and face shapes that Dipper, quite honestly, did not understand one bit.
“I didn’t know you had to put so much thought into makeup. Usually, I just slap on whatever I like.”
“Well, if you’re trying to be professional, then, yeah, you have to put thought into it- hey, can you change the eyes? I don’t want my teacher knowing I summoned a demon just to use him as a makeup dummy.”
Dipper complied, switching the eyes to a shade of brown that was just slightly off. Mani pulled out her Magi-Orb and snapped a picture of his face, before going to fetch the makeup.
“What- but you didn’t do anything yet!” Dipper plucked his eyes out of their sockets and stared at his face. “Did you do anything yet?”
Mani responded without lifting her head from the makeup bag she was searching through. “I need a before picture and an after picture, dummy. That was the easy part.” She looked up at him and grimaced. “Put your eyes back.”
~•~
Thirty minutes and several bouts of screaming at eyeshadow applicators later, she was finally done.
“I know I said to hold still, Dip, but did you have to stay completely still the whole time? You weren’t even blinking! It’s unsettling!”
Dipper, full face of makeup intact, was perched on the chair arm, looking Not Even A Little Sorry. “I’m a demon. Unsettling is in the job description.”
Mani poked him in the chest. “Stop it.” She turned around. “Now, where the heck did I keep my Magi-Orb?”
“Second drawer on the right.”
“Right.” Mani grabbed her Magi-Orb from the drawer, positioned the camera at the best angle, counted to ten under her breath, and just as she was about to take the picture…
Dipper floated off the chair and out the window. Not that the window was open or anything, he just phased through the closed window.
Mani opened the window to shout after him. “No, come back! I’m gonna get a zero if I don’t submit a picture of the finished makeup!”
“What do you mean, “come back”?” She turned around, quick as a whip, to find Dipper sitting on the chair arm as if he’d never left. “I’m right here.”
“You piece of utter shi-”
“Nope! This fic’s rated G, you are not swearing at ten-year-olds.”
Mani just stared at him. There was no other way to make sense of whatever he just said.
“Come on, take the picture!”
She took the picture. “Okay, now give me your feedback. Do you like it? Was I good and professional?”
“Oh, yeah. It was great. Excellent customer service. Best I’ve ever had,” said Dipper, being a lying liar who lies.
“Shut up.”
“I’m telling the truth!”
“No, you’re not.”
“Okay, fine. It was… okay. The makeup looks really good. You weren’t the most professional, but you… tried, I guess.”
“I tried? Is that the best you got?”
“Yeah. You tried! Want me to get you a gold star? I’ll get you a gold star.”
Mani sank down into the warm, squeaky embrace of the chair, only half-listening to Dipper chattering on about gold star stickers and memes and something called Comic Sans that was apparently an abomination that didn’t belong on this Earth. She deserved a nap.