Work Text:
“You know what it’s like?”
Dipper didn’t even hear her the first time she spoke. He was too busy.
The ochre sunset cast soft beams of light onto the ground, illuminating the young girl's path. This was it, the place where her father had been murdered. Deep within these woods they had found the body, and the culprit had never been caught. As she weaved between the trees, she stopped, coming across a mysterious set of prints in the dirt. But she didn’t have long to examine them. A rustle from in front of her, and she looked up, face to face with none other than-
“Dipper,” said Belle, sticking her socked foot in between the pages of his book.
Dipper squawked unhappily and scooched away from her, trying to smooth out the creases she had made.
“Belle, gross, you’re ruining the pages! I have to return this to the library by Monday and I don’t want the new guy that works there on my ass about a damaged copy.”
“You are such a worrywart, lay off the coffee in the morning. Besides, if this guy stinks I’ll just blow him up like I did the last one, no biggie. Anyways Dipper, you know what it’s like?”
The gears in Dipper’s head came to an abrupt halt as his sister casually spoke about another murder. He blinked at her a few times, inhaling, exhaling, before resigning to close his eyes and scratch at his head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, what?”
“You, I’m talking about you. You know what it’s like?”
“What do you mean, ‘it’? What is ‘it’?”
“You! I just realized what your whole thing is like.”
Dipper had woken up 20 minutes ago and his brain hadn’t really come online yet, although his sister speaking incomprehensible sentences at him wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary. “...Ok, What?”
“It’s like a superhero.”
“What’s like a superhero? Why do you keep saying ‘it’ if you’re talking about me?”
Belle abruptly made a move to stick her foot in his face again, and Dipper was already pressed against the armrest of the couch in fear. “YOU,” she said, petulantly crossing her arms. “How many more times do I have to say it? You’re like a superhero, I just put the pieces together this morning because I was thinking about all those lame old cartoons dad played for us last night. About Terrific-Man and Mr. Amazing.”
“I thought they were cool.”
She snorted. “Of course you did. Anyways, you’re totally a superhero. I mean, think about it. You live this crazy double life, you have all these magic powers, your other self is like, super duper famous, like literally everyone on the entire planet knows who Alcor is, right? I mean we learn about you in class! And yet you have a family, some friends at school, you do your homework and are applying for college - you have to hide your powers and identity from other people so that way you don’t blow your cover!! At this point all you need is a cape!”
“Absolutely not.” The response from Dipper was immediate. It surprised even him with how fast the words were out of his mouth.
Belle stuttered, looking flabbergasted. “What do you mean?? Nothing I said was wrong, that’s like, the whole deal with superheroes! Double life and magic powers! I’m not a complete dweebasaurus like you and dad when it comes to all those old comic books, but I’ve seen the movies, I know how they work.”
“You’re missing a key factor - superheroes are good guys. They do stuff like, I don’t know- save kittens from trees and capture bad guys and… save hot women from falling off of buildings and then make out with them for 20 minutes. I’m a literal demon. What they teach in school is how to avoid me and why I suck. Superheroes on the other hand are so popular and loved because they stand for everything a good person should be. Additionally they are not real.” Dipper rolled his eyes, picking his book back up from where he had dropped it and scowling at the page. It had crinkled a bit.
“And you’re not?” She contested. “You spent 15 minutes coaxing a stray cat off the side of the road last week with a half eaten turkey sandwich, you’re a really really good guy and you - Dipper so help me god I see that look on your face, DO NOT start convincing me that you’re secretly this super evil unholy asshole who just eats babies for fun because you keep trying to do that and I’m not buying it, sorry. You’re a superhero, Mizar is like your sidekick - you gotta deal with it now because I’m not changing my mind.”
Dipper closed his mouth, silently staring down his sister and feeling his irritation slip out through the small twitches of his lips. Eventually he sighed, flopped down onto the couch, and wondered where it all went wrong, all in that order. He still had one trump card left.
“I didn’t know superheroes were killing and eating people’s souls nowadays.” He muttered. “And their limbs and blood and bones and stuff. And like, uh…” Dipper waved his arms around, as if the rest of his sentence were somewhere in the air. “An entire cow, all at once.”
Belle, for some insane reason, did not seem perturbed by that statement in any way. She just shrugged. “I dunno, I mean - we don’t know what Mr. Amazing does in his free time. He could totally have like- a whole underground cannibal ring happening. That’s where he gets all his superpowers from. He just has this basement that’s covered in blood and guts and bodies. He gets away with it because he’s rich and paid the police to not tell anyone. If you want my opinion I think he’d keep the eyeballs in a jar and the tongues get turned into tongue burgers. Then eyeballs go on top like an olive and it gets garnished with the fingernails-”
“You are legitimately so gross. I’m going to throw up.”
Belle started laughing dumbly, pleased with her victory. “Says the guy who ate people before. By the way, how does that taste?”
“I will unironcially pay you money to stop asking me these questions.”
“Twenty dollars for the shirt you ended up lighting on fire last week.”
“Done. It’s in your bank account. Now let me finish my book, I beg.”
Flopping onto her back, Belle broke out into another round of giggles, kicking her feet in the air like a gleeful child rather than a 17 year old senior in high school. Her glasses were askew across her face, but it looked like she had no intention of straightening them out. Saturday morning, and neither of the twins had anything to do, and no plans to be made. Lionel was most likely still asleep, or else he would have checked in on them by then. Dipper, out of force of habit, briefly consulted with forces human beings didn’t have the knowledge or senses to comprehend, reaching out gently to the bedroom. Yep, still asleep.
Belle was staring at the ceiling with an intense expression now, and Dipper decided against peeking into her thoughts to see what could possibly be so interesting it was having her scrunch her face that hard.
He had more important things to do, anyway.
A rustle from in front of her, and she looked up, face to face with none other than a man she never would have expected to see at this place. How was he here? He left for a business trip two days ago. Unless…
She pointed a finger at him, a gasp tumbling from her lips. “It’s you, but it can’t be!! You said you were-”
The man only smiled. “So gullible you are, my dear. Yes indeed, it is me! Your-
“I KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE BUT FOR REAL,” Belle shrieked, sitting up abruptly. Dipper did not scream.
“Belle, you’re going to wake up dad!!”
She looked way too excited to care. “That one movie!! About the kid with the superpowers, and whenever he activates his thingymabobber he says something stupid and then gets struck by lightning turns into this giant buff guy! Do you remember that one, we watched it at the theater last year!”
“What, Kazam?”
“YEAH it’s like that!!!! You turn into an adult when you’re Alcor and you go back to being a kid again when you're Dipper so that way no one would ever know who you really are.”
Dipper actually considered this. “Ok yeah, I can see that. Counterargument though, the kid from Kazam is a kid pretending to be an adult. I’m an adult pretending to be a kid. My whole “Alcor” thing is closer to my true form than this.”
“Ok fine but you know what I mean. You’re reverse Kazam, but also not really.”
“Yeah we can go with that.”
“So you ARE a superhero, then?”
“…Fine, sure.”
Belle fistpumped so hard Dipper was sure she must have sprained something. He took the five seconds his sister was preoccupied to sneak a glance back at his book.
The man only smiled. “So gullible you are, my dear. Yes indeed, it is me! Your worst nightmare, the one you never would have expected, the man on the sidelines yet the mastermind of the whole operation! I am-
“I have another question actually.”
Dipper closed the book and threw it on his bed. He’d finish reading it when he was dead apparently.
“Do you consider yourself 17 or 142? You have like three birthdays, I don’t know what you think your actual age is.”
“I mean, I-” Dipper tried to find the words, but all that came out were noises at first. “It’s… hard to explain. Both, I guess? This human body, my life with you - Dipper Sterling is 17, but Dipper Pines is 142.”
“Ok ok let me get this straight: Dipper Sterling is 17, Alcor is…” She did five seconds of mental math. “...130, and Dipper Pines is 142 and also 12 at the same time.”
“Yeah, it’s all kind of dumb. The only age that really matters right now is 17, with you. All the rest is pointless when you know I’m just going to live into infinity and beyond.”
Belle was silent, and for the first time that morning, the look on her face was pensive and somewhat sad. She picked at her nails, and before Dipper could ask what was wrong, she blurted out her question.
“Will it ever not be infinity? Like, will it end? For you, I mean?”
Dipper stopped breathing momentarily. This conversation did not go where he was expecting.
“I…”
How could he answer that, when it was something he barely knew the answer to? Something he tried his best constantly to never think about because everytime he did his mind would start feeling like it was about to split? It was always there, the truth of his existence looming like a shadow, but he could never make eye contact with it or acknowledge its presence, lest it pull him apart at the seams. Lest it destroy the life he’s living now by putting it all into perspective.
He swallowed a lump in his throat, hoping there wasn’t any visible fear in his expression.
“I don’t know.” He answered honestly. “If it does, it will be after so many years have passed that they don’t have names for how big those numbers are anymore. Why are you asking?”
She watched him for a moment. “And are you… ok with that?”
“I’m going to have to be, aren’t I?” He couldn’t help himself to a small resigned smile. It was so pathetic in his attempt to reassure Belle that she started smiling in response, all wobbly and with tears in her eyes. And before both of them knew it, they were smiling for real, laughing at each other’s misery as a handful of tears fell down their cheeks.
“Oh god, bro,” she said, sniffing and wiping her eyes. “You can’t just say stuff like that, now I’m gonna be sad forever.”
“My forever’s gonna be way longer than your forever, so I’m gonna beat you in the sad competition.” Dipper knew his eyes were red and glassy. It probably looked really stupid and unbecoming of the world's most powerful entity alive, but who cares - if he was on top of the food chain, he made the rules anyway.
“Nuh-uh! No no no!” She stood up on the couch, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “I will reincarnate until the end of forever with you, mark my words mister. I am the great and powerful Mizar, and I will hunt you down and tackle you with hugs and kisses forever and ever and ever. And when the world blows up in a jillion years I’ll reincarnate as a star, and we can be stars together, and I’m gonna be SO UNBEARABLY sad when the Earth blows up, that when we are stars I’ll lean over and tell you that you owe me twenty star-dollars for my star-shirt because I was a way sadder star than you.”
Dipper was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. “I’ll hold you to it. For twenty star-dollars, in exactly a jillion years. I’ll mark my calendar so I don’t forget.”
“You better not! If you forget that means I automatically win! And I don’t care how many lives I’ve lived, I’m not going to forget that.”
“Ok, Belle. I believe you.”
“Good.”
Belle toppled onto him, and for a while they were content to simply hold each other in their arms, listening to each other breathe. It was easy to calm down after that - they were real, and they loved each other.
He wouldn’t mind this being his forever. He could probably make it his forever eventually. At one point he’d have enough power to keep dominion over time itself, right? He could bring everyone back. He could make everyone stay.
How selfish of him to even consider that. He didn’t even deserve this now.
“I can hear you thinking,” she quietly said. She had that odd tone of voice she would always get when she wasn’t saying everything. Dipper squeezed her tighter, burying his face in her shoulder, like it could scrub his thoughts out of his head.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Too late. That train has already left the station, buster. Choo choo!” She punched him in the arm, and he laughed.
“Tell the train it’s left with no cargo and needs to come back because I’m fine.”
“We should get you an award for liar of the century. I’ve known you for 17 years; I can read your face like a book. Right now you’re moping and blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault. I don’t care how bad of a person you think you are, you are never going to be one. You need to get out of your own head and trust me for once.”
“Belle, I’m not a person at all. That’s the problem.” She smelled like bubblegum and artificial strawberry, and all he could feel against his cheek was her soft pink sweater. “It’s not fair to apply human standards of morality to me, because no matter how you try to spin it it never works out in my favor. I don’t want you to worry about something like that. If you think I’m good - if you think Dipper Sterling is good - that's all that matters.”
Dipper could tell Belle wasn’t very happy with his answer, but she didn’t object or try to argue. Instead, she slowly sat up, emotionlessly staring him in the eyes, before abruptly turning away and crossing her arms as if a switch was flipped in her mind.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore, Dipper,” she said, exceedingly aloof. She waved a dismissive hand at him, not even making eye contact with her brother. Dipper would have been hurt by her words if it weren’t for the very obvious exaggerated show she was trying to put on, resigned to only watch as she pretended to be bored of him. “I’m not getting through to you because you’re being the world’s hugest and most pathetic dork, so I want to talk to Alcor now. Go get him for me.”
“...Belle, what-”
“Alcor,” Belle repeated, now looking at him. She swept a hand in his general direction, looking him up and down. “I have some words for the great and powerful Lord Alcor the Dreambender, not for my lame snot-nosed brother, so go get him for me.” A horrifically bad British accent was attempted halfway through her last sentence, and Dipper felt himself doing everything in his power to not choke on his own saliva.
He didn’t need to be told a third time - he knew what she was asking for.
Shedding his human disguise was relatively simple; It was like mentally swapping out avatars. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer wearing the fantasy movie t-shirt and shorts he slept in, nor did he appear to be a nearly post-pubescent teenager. His default “Alcor” persona that he had crafted for himself sat comfortably in its late-20’s age-wise, taller than he normally would have been if he were human. He crossed one leg over the other, his dress shoes glinting in the morning light, and the wings that sat on the small of his back were pressed close to his body, as not to accidentally snag on the couch cushions. He felt slightly awkward now, looking like this in front of his sister, but who is he to deny her request?
He bowed dramatically, trying in ernest to continue the bit she had started. “The humble Dreambender has heard your call, o puny mortal. Your lame nerdy brother has been temporarily moved into the Endless Torture Demension while we converse. He’ll be fine, that’s where I put all my favorite humans.”
Dipper lifted his head to meet Belle’s eyes, only to falter when he caught streaks of uncertainty and confusion zipping through her aura, her act now dropped. For a terrifying moment, he wondered if he made a mistake, that she didn’t want him to do this, he misread her, that she was scared-
And then the moment passed. Belle let out a laugh so hard it was closer to a throat-destroying snort.
Her mouth was wrenched open in a silent scream for a solid minute while she slammed her fist against the couch cushions, tears streaming down her face. Her chest shook with how hard she was trying to breathe, and when she finally was able to get another gasp of air in she shrieked with laughter.
Dipper sat staring at her with his eyes wide, absolutely paralyzed. Her aura showed no signs of negativity, which only mildly reassured him. He could feel his claws digging into the knees of his slacks.
This seemed to only make her laugh harder, clutching her stomach and falling onto the couch.
“Your… Your…” She could barely get the words out. “Your face.”
“My face?” he echoed, absent-mindedly putting a hand to his cheek. Did he form it wrong? Was he missing an ear or something?? He quickly conjured a mirror in front of him with a wave of his hand, looking over himself carefully. Both ears, both eyes, nose and mouth, hair is fine, eyebrows are present…
Belle reached out and snatched the floating mirror, turning it over in her hands as her giggles started to fade away. “Wow, look at that! It’s got a star with wings engraved on the back! Lucy Ann was right, you ARE big on branding.”
“Gimme that,” Dipper grunted, taking it back and subsequently dematerializing it into a short-lived plume of sparkles. He could feel the tips of his ears going red. “What’s up with my face??”
“Nothing, nothing!” Belle said, but he knew she was full of shit from the way her grin stretched across her face. She gently wiped a tear from her eye (and isn’t that funny, they had only been crying out of sadness ten minutes ago) and shook her head.
“It’s just…” she snickered in between her words. “Your face is so… conventionally attractive. Like, your skin is unnaturally clear, you have a good jawline, you’re in a perfectly tailored suit with gloves and jewelry for pete’s sake, and your eyebrows are SO well shaped omg. You look like a totally different guy than my acne-riddled noodle-armed brother, but those parts of you are still there - just harder to pick out. It’s like someone stuck Dipper Sterling through the Grumblr sexy-man machine.”
“Are you saying my jawline sucks??”
“No,” Belle replied way too fast. “I’m just wondering why you go to school looking the way you do when you could just look like this instead.”
Dipper threw his arms up. “I’m a supernatural entity of untold power with a reputation to maintain, do you want me to show up with voice cracks and patchy facial hair??”
“Not my question at all, but yes please do that would be really funny. But I’m asking why you deliberately choose to have voice cracks and patchy facial hair and all these small flaws when you could just - look like whatever you want. You don’t need to sleep, you don’t need to eat, you don’t even need to go to the friggin’ bathroom and you still do. I mean if I could never have to do that again that would be awesome. Why does Dipper Sterling look like that, is what you know I’m trying to ask.”
And wasn’t that a question Dipper had been hoping she would never ask.
The gory details of his life, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, Dipper tended to keep away from his family as much as he could. There were certain things they just never needed to know, because it would break the illusion he had worked so hard to maintain. They all knew who he was, but sometimes it was easy to forget, and those were Dipper’s favorite days. One day, when he had come home covered in blood after a particularly bad summons, both Belle and Lionel had been antsy around him for the subsequent week afterwards. It’s one thing to know he’s a demon, it’s another to see it.
There wasn’t anything particularly graphic or terrifying behind the story of his appearance as Dipper Sterling. But it was one he knew Belle would look at him differently for every time she remembered it, and he didn’t want to be the subject of her pity and grief. It wasn’t fair to unload the things he kept to himself on others. He was so tempted to lie, to just make up a story about how it's funny, but…
If there was one thing he learned from the summer of 2012, it was that “trust no one” was total hogwash and did not apply to the people who loved you.
“It’s not that I’m choosing to have certain facial features or whatever you just said, it’s…” He ran a hand through his hair, feeling his little top hat slightly float away to make room. How to even begin. “Look, you know how there’s alternate universes right? The farther out you go, the less like this one you get. There’s a lot of other universes out there that are just like ours with only very minor changes. My human body, it looks like that because… that’s what Dipper Pines was supposed to look like. It’s what he does look like, when he’s older. I just… copied off of myself. Recreated something that looked like him.”
Belle nodded along, her fingernails hooking and unhooking around a few scabs on her arm. “... I never thought of that before. That makes sense, actually. How many Dippers are there in the multiverse, exactly?”
Information flooded Dipper’s head. “Ninety thousand, five hundred and eighteen.”
Belle whistled. “Wow, you could make a whole country with just Dippers in it. Call it Diptopia. Or Dipshithole, depending on whether or not the government offers healthcare. You should do that in a billion years when you get bored.”
“No.”
“Ok well…” She tapped a finger against her chin. “How many worlds did the Transcendence happen in?”
“Eight hundred and fifty-seven.”
“A lot less, then. Guess the whole transcendence thing wasn’t supposed to happen?”
“It’s not really about whether or not it’s supposed to happen, it’s just about what ends up happening. It’s all probability.”
“Well that’s good then - that means there’s a bunch of other Alcors out there going through the same thing. And hey, maybe some of them happened to Mabel or your other friends instead of you - if you could find them, maybe you could keep each other company?”
Dipper suddenly felt weightless with nausea.
“Woah hey hey hey, nevermind, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that Dipper, I’m so sorry.” He felt Belle’s hand squeezing his wrist, her knuckles turning as white as her face. He looked down at his arm as she kept babbling out apologies. Void was slowly creeping across his skin and clothes like an infection, and the claws that were only pointy before looked wickedly sharp. He knew what his face must have looked like to her then.
He closed his eyes and breathed, willing his form to return to normal. Belle had stopped talking, but Dipper could feel her gaze on him. Her fear was potent, as was her guilt.
When he finally looked down at himself again, the void was gone.
His sister’s heartbeat was racing in his ears.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should… learn when to keep my mouth shut instead of saying things like that. I shouldn’t have-“
“Belle it’s ok.” Dipper’s voice was surprisingly steady, with only the faintest hint of a buzz underneath his words. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I clearly did!” She exclaimed. “You started… it’s like your existence was freaking out. I won’t talk about or ask about all this anymore, I’m sorry.”
“No no it’s fine, you deserve to know. I don’t want to keep anything from you. It’s just… hard. To think about. Um…” Dipper tugged at his shirt collar as he spoke and found that despite being composed of pure energy, his hands were shaking slightly. ”Look, there’s around ninety thousand versions of me in the multiverse. Of those ninety thousand, seventy thousand got sent to gravity falls over the summer. Of those seventy thousand, forty thousand found that journal in the woods that kickstarted everything. Of those forty thousand… two thousand went back home again, alive. And only half of them went back with their sister.”
Belle gently hugged his arm, leaning against his shoulder.
“The transcendence happened because Bill was dying and tried to use my body without a deal as a last ditch effort, which obviously only happened for a small portion of these timelines: eight hundred fifty seven exactly. This didn’t work, and the strength of his death tied to my soul’s death was enough to shatter the barrier around Gravity Falls. But that’s all it should have been. Infinite branching possibilities stemming off of eight hundred and fifty seven timelines, and in every single one of them Dipper Pines died at age twelve. The small handful of timelines as well that used either Mabel or Wendy or Stan or Ford in my place all ended in immediate death.”
He swallowed. “The chance of this outcome should have been zero, but my previous possession with Bill upped the odds to a lovely 1e-59%. There are no other Alcors, and there never will be. All I’m doing now is trying to stitch a dead man’s face to mine and play pretend for just a few moments, to feel what it was like to be myself.”
Absent-mindedly, he felt Lionel wake up in the room over. He hoped his dad didn’t see him like this.
“You know,” Belle whispered into his dress shirt, too low for human hearing to pick it up. It felt a bit damper than normal. “I got really distracted by your face earlier. There was a reason I asked you to be Alcor for me.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that,” Dipper said dumbly. “Sorry, I probably killed the mood. Again. Ugh.”
“Eh, this whole conversation has been cycling on and off depressing junk like that bad tilt-a-whirl that makes me vomit every single time I ride it, and it’s both of our faults. I’m actually happy you’re talking to me about this stuff - we tend to avoid some of the more scary parts, and I don’t want to keep the elephants unaddressed any longer. They’re smelly and covering the room in elephant poop.”
Dipper chuckled despite himself, the movement shaking the unshed tears that had welled up in his eyes. Belle punched him in the stomach.
“I wanted to talk to you, Alcor, because I’m tired of the beef that you have with my brother.” She pulled away, attempting to put that same fake-angry face on, but the sincerity she held for his happiness spilled out the cracks of her mask.
“He’s always talking so bad about you, and it makes me so sad to hear, because doesn’t he understand I love you too?” She put both of her hands on his cheeks, pulling his head down so that way they were at eye level. “Dipper Sterling is neat, and so is Dipper Pines, and so are you Lord Dreambender. But I don’t want to hang out with them all one at a time. Plus, you’re all liars, you know that? Your name isn’t even Alcor, and his isn’t even Dipper. You know your real and true name is? It’s Mason “Dipper” “Alcor” Pines-Sterling the Dreambender and you have three awesome birthdays and are never going to be like all those other lame one-name Dippers and that’s ok because I love you, not them. And I don’t care if you’re a demon, that doesn’t mean fucking anything. Evil is a choice, not a natural disposition.”
Their foreheads were jammed together by now, and she was nearly seething as she spoke, jamming her finger into his chest. “There is only one Mason “Dipper” “Alcor” Pines-Sterling in the entire universe, and I think that that’s something to celebrate, because he will get to experience the entire known universe in his heart over the infinitely many years he will be alive. And there will only be one Belle “Mizar” Sterling as well, and I will sing and dance and love until I die and then come back and do it all over again, knowing that no one has ever done it like me.”
She wiped the golden tears off his cheeks with a single thumb. ”You do literally everything with yourself as the last priority because you don’t want to burden us with your existence, like you’re just keeping yourself at bay. It’s time you start being the hero of your own story and start trusting that the people in your life aren’t just keeping you around out of pity.”
Just then, Lionel decided to walk in, rubbing his eyes.
“Hey kids,” he yawned. “Are you two up and- oh woah.”
Belle wrenched her head around to look at him, meeting his awestruck gaze. Despite her face being red and ruddy, she grinned brightly. “Hi dad!!!” Her voice sounded wrecked from crying and sticky with phlegm. “Good morning!!! Me and Dipper were just talking about stuff, don’t worry. Nothing bad happened, he’s just being an angst machine. We worked it out though. All good.”
Lionel’s eyes flit over to Dipper, who cringed in on himself in embarrassment. You could count the number of times Lionel had seen Dipper’s casual adult form on one hand and still have fingers left over; it was something he scarcely ever did. It broke the illusion, it showed that Dipper was a monster masquerading in a child’s body, that he was older than his own dad and not his real son, that-
“Ok, I’m glad to hear it. I was planning on making omelets for breakfast since we have all those leftover eggs in the fridge, but I was going to ask if one of you could run down to the supermarket and get onions because you know I can’t make my famous Omlionels without the onions. Does that sound good? Or do you two need some more time…?”
“No, no it’s fine dad,” Dipper said, frantically wiping his demonic golden snot all over his coat sleeves. “It’s ok. We’re all… we’re ok.”
Lionel looked them all over once more before gently smiling with a soft nod. “Ok. Meet you kids downstairs. Also Dipper: Pick up your socks, kid.“
The door closed behind him with a small click.
-—————~*~*~————-
About a week later, Belle came home from the afterschool art club to find her brother floating cross-legged above his bed. He hunched over a fancy typewriter, with notepads and even a coffee cup hovering around him in a circle, like a weird halo of junk. His eyes were gold on black and his ears were pointed, but funnily enough, he was in sweatpants and a shirt that read “I summoned Alcor and all I got was a lousy t-shirt”. Despite this, he still had a relatively 17-year-old appearance.
“Hey bro, watcha doing?” She said, throwing her backpack onto her bed.
“Nothing much,” he clicked a claw against one of the keys, not quite hard enough to push it. “I finished that book I got from the library the other day and the ending totally sucked. Turns out the butler did it and the main character just got randomly killed by someone else like two days later. She barely even had a personality other than ”being a woman” the whole trilogy, I don’t know why this series was so highly rated. No closure, no satisfaction, and a TERRIBLE way to end the final novel! Anyways I got so mad I started rewriting it.”
“You’re a fanfiction author now?” Belle snickered. “Take tips from me, you know how many Pony Magic Academy fanfics I wrote in middle school, I’m practically a pro!”
“Yeah I know, I remember. But this whole writing thing kind of escaped me, honestly. I’m not pulling from too much of my omniscience because that ruins the fun, but it definitely helps because now I’ve just started nearly redoing the whole story. I gave the main character girl this disease to up the stakes, and she’s going to be the first ever person diagnosed, so she can’t get any help. It’s gonna connect back to the plot twist at the end. The whole thing is going to be more “man vs self” rather than “man vs man”, y’know? Would be more emotionally engaging and relatable.” He chewed on a pen while he talked, the points of his teeth thrashing the plastic in seconds.
“Very relatable,” Belle said sarcastically.
“I was also going to have a supernatural element as well - what do you think of her disease giving her cool abilities? Yes or no? Also could I publish this online or would I upset the fans.”
Belle grinned ear to ear.
“Dipper, that’s either going to be super lame and dumb or completely awesome. Could go either way. Give me your script - we’ll write it together and I’ll make sure it doesn’t suck. You’re lucky to have me, mister - I’m great at rewriting sucky endings.”