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Ordinarily Bill enjoyed a good old-fashioned explosion, regardless of whether it happened to claim a few insignificant lives or not. There was just something glorious about the destruction of an entire structure in a puff of flame that unfolded with all the graceful ceremony of a blooming flower, and the faint melody of cries from within its heart was only icing on the cake.
This explosion was different.
The dilapidated drugstore went down with a roar, not so much blossoming as collapsing in upon itself, bowling them over as they fled the scene and sending Dipper sailing through the air; it took a split second’s effort to teleport directly in front of him to help break his fall just before he hit the cracked pavement. The impact rattled the demon’s teeth and caused him to bite his tongue (human bodies were fun but so damn fragile), but he had little time to savor the sensation before the two of them were assaulted with a soul-shattering wail from the flock roasting alive in the wreckage behind them. As fitting for creatures that now only marginally resembled human beings, the sound was unnatural, tainted with shreds of psychic energy that merely irritated him but made Dipper shudder. The baleful cry lingered, arcing up into the clear afternoon air - and potentially alerting any other roosting flocks in the area that their brethren were in distress.
Bill really didn’t feel like tangling with a horde of telepathic, hiveminded zombies again. It hadn’t been fun the last time, and he severely doubted it would be any different this time around. There was also the matter of the dazed, trembling young man in his arms, attempting to catch his breath. His Pine Tree appeared to be just a little on the scorched side and in need of a touch of medical attention. Stupid fragile humans. Stupid psychic zombies.
This really was shaping up to be the least enjoyable zombie apocalypse he’d ever been involved in.
With a heavy sigh, he levitated Dipper into the air while standing up, then positioned the human at his back carefully. “Grab on, kid. Let’s get you out of here.”
Dipper complied immediately, resting his chin in the taller man’s hair, and with that Bill hastened back to the hiding spot they’d chosen for the night earlier, deep in the still smoldering wreckage of the town once known as Gravity Falls.
Prior to its untimely destruction (perhaps for good, this time), the town wasn’t exactly overpopulated, and this factor proved to be a lifesaver in the aftermath of the events of earlier that week. Unchecked fires had taken their toll on quite a few structures, and the streets were sprinkled liberally with abandoned cars, the blackened husks of totaled vehicles and the occasional twisted framework of bicycles, but there were still a few buildings left standing.
Some of them were now clearly nests of the small flocks that roamed the wreckage from dawn until dusk, but Bill and Dipper had been lucky enough to find the remains of the Gravity Falls Gossiper headquarters free of either zombies or other survivors. The front of the building was collapsed, but it was easy enough for the two of them to clear some of the boards aside to access the rest of it. Their entrance remained disguised behind a small section of the roof of the tavern next to it, but Bill made a point of putting up a ward dissuading any beings from approaching, be they living, dead, or somewhere in-between.
They didn’t encounter anyone else along the walk back to the place where they’d spent the past two days, and Bill was glad. Dipper clearly wanted to meet up with other survivors, but he could’ve cared less about dealing with any additional human beings aside from his own. Ordinarily the young man clinging to his back would have insisted on searching for signs of life in the buildings that remained stable enough for people to camp out within, but today he remained silent, still trembling slightly. They were half a block away from ‘home’ when Dipper finally spoke again. “Literally everything about that was awful.”
“Yeah,” Bill agreed. “But you took out an entire flock. I’m proud of you, kid. I think I’m gonna cry or something.”
“You aren’t the one with potential third degree burns,” Dipper muttered darkly.
Despite the extra expenditure of energy, the demon made the decision to teleport the two of them inside instead of trying to drag his injured human through the makeshift crawlspace. The effort left him breathing heavily for a few seconds, during which Dipper let go and landed on his back with a sharp cry of discomfort. “Shit!”
Bill groaned. “Try not to kill yourself, Pine Tree. That’s my job.”
“Or…” Dipper wheezed, struggling to flip himself over, “Or the zombies.”
“Nah, you’re mine. They can’t have you.” After a few deep breaths, the demon quietly muttered the incantation for the ward; once satisfied with the building being sufficiently protected he turned his attention to Dipper, who was now lying on his stomach, making a pitiful sound that was both enticing and made him long to incinerate another handful of zombies for having the mindless audacity to harm his human. The source of Dipper’s distress was obvious - a fairly large burn hole in his trademark vest and the shirt beneath exposed blistered, reddened flesh. There was a joke there about trees and fire but Bill was too tired to actually put it together. Damn fragile humans. The phrase was becoming a mantra at this point.
“You know,” he mused, carefully peeling back the ruined cloth so he could get a better look at the wound, “I gotta say the zombie apocalypse isn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be. I’m honestly a little disappointed.”
The contents of the first aid kit were scanty, down to a few bandages, half of a tube of antibiotic cream, and a small bottle of alcohol. Their paltry supplies were the impetus that had driven the two of them to the drugstore in the first place, but encountering the flock had precluded their attempts at scavenging any food or medical supplies. This wasn’t as much of an issue for Bill - or at least it wouldn’t have been if he wasn’t spending most of his time in a form that required biological maintenance, along with a walking flesh bag of internal organs that had no choice but to attend to those needs.
The flesh bag of internal organs in question struggled to sit up, failing miserably and letting out another pained hiss in the process. “Shit!”
“Watch your fucking mouth, kid,” Bill chided him in a pleasant tone that resulted in yet another expletive from the incapacitated Dipper. He gave the contents of the first aid kit a final once over, leaving the bandages and cream for another time (and there would most definitely be another time). As much as he wished to reserve energy it would be more efficient to simply heal the wound after disinfecting it. He couldn’t carry Dipper around forever, not if he intended to get him out of the town in one piece.
“How bad is it back there?” Dipper’s voice was strained, as if simply speaking were a nearly insurmountable task.
Despite having incinerated a fair amount of creatures in his day, Bill had somehow failed to get a good look at a burn wound up close. It was fascinating, utterly fascinating how human skin crumpled like tissue paper under the right circumstances, wrinkling and blistering at the touch of flame unlike the darkening of necrotic flesh exposed to ice for far too long. Dipper’s wound was no different, bubbles and blood and blisters in a mural of ruin, and he might have been tempted to poke or prod at it if it wasn't his human trembling in agony before him.
“Relatively speaking, it could be worse. You’re not on fire anymore!” He announced, cheerfully.
“That’s not an answer,” Dipper grumbled.
“I thought it was a rhetorical question.” Bill lied. Fondness didn’t negate being the target of his tendency to be an unmitigated ass, and the endearing way in which Dipper reacted to him being a jerk only made him want to continue doing so. However, that fondness remained, generally overpowering his ability to keep it up for too long; his tone was a good deal less enthusiastic as he delivered the bad news. “Also I’m going to need to disinfect it before I can heal you, and all we have is alcohol.”
Dipper visibly stiffened. “Crap.”
“Yeah.” Bill seated himself next to him, pondering whether to cut the cloth surrounding the wound off or attempt to remove his damaged shirt and vest altogether (and wishing the circumstances behind the decision were very different and less life-threatening). The former seemed like the best route to take; with that in mind, he levitated the box-cutter on the floor a few feet away into his grasp and went about removing as much of the charred fabric as he could. “Like I said, this entire experience has been less than satisfactory.”
“Are you…going to leave a bad review?” Even wounded and unable to move on his own, the kid retained his sparkling wit. It made the demon’s stupid heart thing in his chest flutter in a way that he hated.
“Yes,” he decided, resolutely. He wasn’t entirely sure who you lodged a complaint with about a human-driven (and thus unnatural) disaster that left society in ruins, but there had to be some kind of outlet for it. “Yes, I am.”
“This is gonna hurt, and not in the good way.”
Thus far the main problem Bill had faced in light of the current circumstances was maintenance of the blend of energy and magical ability that allowed him not only to assume human guise but knit the much more serious wounds Dipper had managed to sustain since the initial cataclysm, effectively fight off members of the flock en masse when they forgot their place and got out of hand, enacting protection wards, and a variety of other activities that would have been far easier were he not babysitting a meatbag (that he was terribly fond of, hence the effort expended in keeping him alive and, albeit unhappy, at least healthy and relatively sane.)
It was for this reason that he chose to attend to some wounds and the smaller tasks by hand; mending the hole in the kid’s torn vest and shirt would be simpler than replicating the articles of clothing altogether; he personally had no qualms about Dipper going without but even he acknowledged that the zombie apocalypse was not the time to discuss embracing partial nudity as a lifestyle choice.
Dipper nodded, grimly; thus far he’d been fortunate enough to have a less caustic antiseptic to work with, but the sharp sting of alcohol on the wound was highly preferable to dealing with an infection. Pain didn’t particularly bother Bill (and if he was honest with himself it was a sensation he could appreciate), but he knew it bothered Dipper, and after a moment of contemplation he devised a shoddy yet sufficient way to ease the discomfort a bit. “Hold on."
Levitating an actual person instead of an object did take a little more effort on Bill’s part but given the state the kid was in it was better than attempting to pull Dipper into a sitting position on his own. Usually he didn’t care for being moved of someone else’s accord than his own, but for once Dipper seemed too concerned with the pain in his back to protest as he slowly rose into the air and found himself being deposited in the demon’s lap as gently as possible. "Bill, what the-”
Bill shuffled beneath him, repositioning himself so that Dipper’s head was resting against his shoulder. “Bite down.”
Dipper sat up, meeting his gaze with an expression of utter bewilderment briefly before understanding the purpose of Bill’s offer. “You sure?”
“Why do you get to have all the fun?”
Dipper shook his head. “That’s weird, man. That’s just weird.”
“Never bothered you before,” Bill commented, uncapping the bottle of alcohol and reaching for a wad of cotton. “Ready?”
The moment the cotton balls touched the wound on his back Dipper went rigid, hissing and sinking his teeth into the demon’s shoulder. The sensation went straight to Bill’s head, leaving him deliciously light-headed for a split second before dropping into the pit of his stomach where it simmered as he forced himself to focus on cleaning Dipper’s wound. The process took a little longer than expected to ensure that the burn was sufficiently sterilized, and after a few minutes (to Bill’s mild disappointment) Dipper’s grip on his shoulder lessened slightly, although he remained rigid at the touch of fingertips roaming over the area with a tenderness reserved for Dipper and Dipper alone, slowly mending layers of damaged flesh, sealing minor lacerations and soothing blisters. He'd never quite been upfront with just what being healed via magic felt like, but during the few times Bill had been forced to apply it to his own wounds it always struck him as a different sort of fire licking at shredded skin, almost unbearable warmth and with a hint of ice inclusive, rather difficult to put into words. He could assume that it didn't necessarily alleviate pain when attending to a job this intensive, given how tense Dipper was despite his back no longer being a wreck; it was then that human ingenuity came into play as Bill finished up with a light application of antibiotic cream before bandaging it up. In the event that there was residual damage that he hadn't been able to deal with or even the slightest hint of sepsis he'd be able to take care of it without it being much of a hassle, but for now he preferred to devote the rest of his energy to upholding the ward while Dipper rested and recovered.
The cream contained some form of pain relief agent which went to work immediately; Dipper sighed gratefully and relaxed where he sat, laying his head against Bill’s chest. “Thanks.”
The sympathetic smile that graced the demon’s face was also reserved for Dipper and Dipper alone. “Any better?”
“Mm.” The brunette murmured; the exhaustion appeared to be finally overtaking him, and he wrapped his arms around Bill’s torso as his eyes slipped shut. “How long can we stay here?”
Bill fell silent, taking stock of both his magical reserves as well as searching for any signs of life in the immediate area around the remains of the building. Given that the ward was active and a constant drain in a couple of hours he’d be forced to drop the ward long enough to recharge somewhat. Then he and his Pine Tree would need to be on guard and readied for intruders - none of which had been the kind Dipper actually wanted to meet up with at the moment. “I’d say this cloaking spell will last at least a few hours before I have to drop it. Need a nap?”
Dipper nodded, sleepily; he either didn’t have the energy to move or needed the physical contact, remaining where he sat and continuing to embrace Bill. Whatever the case, he was sleeping there, and Bill really didn’t mind. “Sweet dreams, kiddo.”
“I really don’t think I…” Dipper muttered, blearily.
“You will,” the demon replied, firmly, running his fingers through his human’s hair affectionately. Just because they were living a nightmare didn’t mean he’d permit his Pine Tree to suffer them while he slept. Instead of the shattered world outside, for the next few hours Dipper dreamed of himself and his sister when they were much younger, watching their grand uncle set off illegal fireworks during the heart of summer, hand in hand.