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Dipper’s not used to seeing himself from this angle.
In mirrors, he only ever glimpses his front—maybe a side profile, if he really turns his head and strains his eyes, but never his back. It’s disorienting, and part of his mind insists that it can’t be him: it’s just someone who looks exactly like him. It’s his long-lost doppelganger. It’s Mabel stepping up her impression game.
It’s a demon wearing his body.
Standing—floating—here and looking at himself from the back makes Dipper’s head swim, his skin crawl. He can count the wisps of hair curling at the nape of his neck.
Then his body turns around, and the effect is both immediately and profoundly worse.
“Well, well, well!” His own face sneers up at him, eyes yellow and inhumanly bright. “Thanks for the ride, kid! Gotta say, I didn’t think you had it in you.” Bill looks him up and down. “Then again, there isn’t much of a you to speak of anymore, is there?”
“I— you—” sputters Dipper. He can’t tear his gaze from how his nose crinkles above his—above Bill’s—grin.
Bill tsks. “No empty threats for me now? No pleading? Sheesh, way to rile a guy up and leave him hanging. What, this your first time having your body inhabited?” His expression softens deliberately, mockingly, though the eyes stay narrow and delighted, and Dipper had no idea his own face could look so predatory. “Aww, don’t worry, kid. I’ll be sure to make it special for you.”
Dipper’s mouth works soundlessly. He realizes, hysterically, that even though he and Bill and face-to-face, he can’t feel Bill’s breath on his skin. He can’t feel anything.
“Whoops. Your horrified face reminds me: I almost forgot to do this!” Bill spins on his heel, sweeping the laptop off the window seat, and brings Dipper’s foot down on it. For a single heart-stopping moment, all that happens is cracks spiderweb across the screen.
Bill frowns down at Dipper’s leg thoughtfully. “Huh. Thought this thing would have more juice. Jeez, kid, did no one tell you to pay your veggie tax?”
Then he stomps on the laptop again, and again, and Dipper is powerless to do anything but watch in horror as it smashes to pieces against the attic floor.
Too late, he remembers how to speak. “Stop!” he manages to cry.
Bill looks from the twisted remains of the laptop to Dipper. “Well, shoot. Wish you’d said something sooner, Pine Tree,” he sighs, but he’s still grinning—he’s getting a kick out of this, the psycho. “Consent is key and all! Now, all I have left on my itinerary is finding the journal. C’mon, kid, spill. Where’re you keeping that ol’ thing?”
Dipper’s frantic brain slows, seizing on the one thing he can control about this situation. “Like I’d tell you,” he spits. “You stole my body!”
“Woah-oh-oh! Stole? Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Yes. It’s my body and I want it back!”
“Well, ’fraid you’re just gonna have to go on wanting, Pine Tree.” Bill knocks on his chest with a fist, and Dipper swears he feels a corresponding pang below his sternum. “This baby’s mine for the time being, bought and paid for”—he winks at Dipper—“by yours truly!”
“Then good luck finding the journal,” says Dipper, drawing himself up and planting incorporeal hands on incorporeal hips. “I’ve hidden it somewhere you’ll never find it.”
Bill squints up at him. Dipper wants to squirm, uncomfortable under such intense scrutiny, but he forces himself to glower back, and after a moment, Bill nods, as if confirming something to himself. Then he shrugs. “I believe you!”
“And I’m serious, I don’t care what you say, I—” Dipper pauses. “What?”
Bill waves a hand. “There are plenty of hidey-holes in that forest of yours. I’m not gonna check ’em all one by one. I’m a being of limitless energy, not a being of limitless patience!” He scratches the inside of his elbow absently, a disquieting smile playing around his lips. “Guess I’ll just have to find some other way to convince you.”
“I’d like to see how you do that. You need my body in working condition, and it’s not like you can hurt me like this.” Dipper waves a hand through a rafter to demonstrate, suppressing a shudder at the feeling—the absence of feeling—as he phases through the wood.
Bill’s smile, if possible, gets even more unsettling. “Maybe I can’t hurt you. But trust me, I can make this half-existence much more uncomfortable for you.”
He runs fingertips delicately along his upper arm, wrapping a more solid grip around the wrist—and by the time Dipper catches on, Bill is roving his hands over his body.
At first, it’s just another drop in the well of cold terror that Dipper’s mind is devolving into. At least, until Bill brushes his hands up his sides, and Dipper jerks involuntarily.
Hold on. He felt that.
It was faint, like someone dragging a feather over his skin, but it was there, and hope dawns on him as he realizes that he must still be partially tethered to his body. Then hope turns to trepidation, because Bill’s eyes—the one part of Dipper’s stolen body that is unequivocally, one-hundred-percent Bill—are on him, grin wider than ever at his reaction.
This is his plan?
“You know,” Bill says conversationally, as he skims a finger along Dipper’s cheekbone, over the bridge of his nose, and Dipper flinches at the tickle of it, “I can keep this up for however long it takes. I can just keep touching, and touching…”
Dipper grits his teeth. “Go ahead,” he grinds out. Seeing Bill molest his body is unnerving, but if Bill thinks that’ll be enough to make him reconsider, he’s got another think—
Bill lightly strokes a finger up Dipper’s fly, and a gasp escapes Dipper of its own volition. The brush—it can’t even be called a proper touch, really—is casual, and if Dipper didn’t know better, he’d say innocent enough. Just another part of the human body that Bill doesn’t understand. Except Bill is staring straight at him, a weight to his gaze.
Bill’s tone darkens. “…and touching.”
Horror, cold and shivery, pools in Dipper’s limbs. “No,” he breathes.
“Remember, you can make this stop whenever you want!” says Bill, working a hand under Dipper’s shirt. Against his will, the muscles of Dipper’s stomach jump at the sudden warmth. “All it takes is the whereabouts of one measly little book. Whaddya say?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Dipper snarls, or he intends to; on fuck, Bill toys with one of his nipples, and it comes out low and breathy and far more suggestive than he’d think his own voice capable of sounding.
Bill shoots him a sunny grin. “That’s the plan, kid!”
Dipper squeezes his eyes shut, taking quick, shallow breaths. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. This is just another nightmare, and soon he’ll jolt awake on the roof again. But it’s hard to be in denial when he can feel the phantom tingle of Bill’s touch.
It’s like his body’s a voodoo doll, transmitting sensation to his disembodied soul, except instead of sticking him with needles, Bill is— is lightly dragging his nails over the skin above Dipper’s beltline, and that’s not fair; Bill isn’t supposed to know about the human body. He isn’t supposed to be able to easily pinpoint places Dipper didn’t even know were sensitive in the first place.
The sensation moves down along his leg, and Dipper squirms unconsciously. He tries to lean away from the touches, but it doesn’t seem to matter how far he is from his body: he can still feel Bill’s fingers, his fingers, ghosting up his inner thigh.
He cracks his eyes open and almost yelps. Bill’s watching him, looking right at Dipper as he toys idly with his zipper, gaze laced with amusement and something heavier.
“Last chance! Feel like talking yet?”
“Feel like giving me my body back?” snaps Dipper, by some miracle managing to keep his voice steady.
Bill’s grin widens. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
The sound of Dipper’s fly being undone in the quiet attic is deafening. It’s the only warning Dipper gets before Bill is slipping a hand under his waistband, and then Dipper’s gasping, thighs leaping together. It’s the weirdest sensation: he can feel the warmth of the hand hovering over his crotch like it’s his own—it is his own—but when his hands fly down instinctively to protect himself, they’re met with nothing.
That’s all it is, he tells himself, even as he mirrors the furious pink flush spreading across his body’s cheeks and nose. A feeling. It can’t hurt him. It’s just a fee—
Bill closes his hand around Dipper’s dick and gives it a quick stroke, and a groan escapes both of them at the same time.
Bill blinks and lets out a startled puff of air. “Huh,” he says, expression twisting wryly. “Sensitive much?”
“Stop,” says Dipper desperately. It sounds far too much like begging, but then again, that felt far too much like pleasure.
“Hmm. That doesn’t sound like ‘I’ll tell you where the journal is, Bill’ to me.” On the next stroke, Bill applies a little extra pressure on the underside of Dipper’s length, and Dipper feels his dick twitch; knows Bill feels it, too. The knowledge that Bill is aware of exactly what he’s doing to him makes Dipper’s face heat up. “Care to try again?”
“St-stah—” Dipper swallows thickly around something disturbingly close to a moan as Bill runs a finger over his slit, then again and again, until his hand is slick with pearly precum that he spreads down Dipper’s dick in teasing strokes. The sensation is overwhelming. “Stop, please, just… just stop—”
His hands twist in the hem of his shirt. Even though he knows touching himself will accomplish nothing except drawing Bill’s amusement, the urge is still there, because Bill’s grip is just barely too loose. He’s sure he’s biting his lip hard enough to bruise, but he can’t feel it—not like he can feel Bill’s gaze as it drags over him, lingering on the tent now prominent in the front of his shorts.
“Enjoying yourself there, Pine Tree?”
Dipper groans. “You know I’m nn-nah-not.”
Bill chuckles. “If you say so!” He starts up a steady rhythm, slow and languorous—enough to make a wire draw tight, tight, tighter in Dipper’s gut, but not enough for it to release. Incorporeal as he is, there’s nowhere for Dipper to hide his obvious hard-on. His failing self-control is on full display to Bill in every twitch of his hips he can’t quite stifle, every time he bucks into the grip; he doesn’t want this to feel good, but his selfish, traitorous body loudly demands the pleasure Bill keeps just out of reach.
He screws his eyes shut again so he doesn’t have to see Bill watch him writhe. But not being able to anticipate the touches makes them all the more intense, and he’s forced to peel them open again. He’s aware that his face is doing something, nose scrunched up against the pressure low in his stomach, but Bill’s eyes are locked on him like it’s fascinating—maybe gauging his reactions
“Give up?” There’s something strained in Bill’s voice, and Dipper tries to let it roll off his ears. He curls his toes and remains silent, and Bill gives a shrug that seems ever-so-slightly less casual than before, resuming his ministrations.
It’s maddening. Dipper can feel as the tension builds back up in his body, but he can’t do anything about it, can’t even feel it when he caves and presses a desperate hand to the front of his shorts. It’s a small consolation that Bill is starting to look wrecked, too—his eyes are half-lidded, breath hitching every time he swipes his thumb over the head of Dipper’s dick.
Dipper takes a shaky breath, assessing the situation. Bill’s teasing himself, keeping Dipper on edge, but that sword cuts both ways, and Bill doesn’t know Dipper’s body like Dipper does. If he gets too close to the edge, he won’t know when to pull back. But there’s nothing Dipper can…
Bill twists his hand just so, and a moan bubbles from Dipper’s throat. Bill’s grip tightens minutely.
Realization settles into the pit of Dipper’s stomach like a stone, temporarily cooling the heat flaring there: whether Bill knows it or not—Dipper’s guessing not, or he wouldn’t be doing it at all—he likes to hear Dipper.
And, gross as the thought makes him feel, that’s something Dipper can use.
The next time Bill slides a finger along the underside of Dipper’s dick, Dipper doesn’t try to muffle the sound it wrenches from him. Bill’s hand pauses, and for a moment, Dipper thinks, he read my mind—he caught on already—this is about to get so much worse.
But then Bill slips his other hand under Dipper’s waistband, and Dipper can’t see what he does, but suddenly there’s the feeling of light fingertips tracing over his balls. It’s a good thing Dipper’s weightless, because his knees go weak, and he’s sure that if he needed them to stand, he’d be on the floor right now.
“Don’t,” he whines—and, if the gentle tug that earns him is any indicator, Bill enjoys that just as much as the moans. It makes Dipper feel dirty, the knowledge that Bill’s getting off—getting them both off—on his feeble protests.
“Damn, kid,” pants Bill. His grin has long since faltered. “You should see yourself.” He chuckles, lower and huskier and less maniac than his usual laugh, and Dipper hates that Bill Cipher has a sex voice. Hates that it sends a shiver of anticipation down his spine. “Oh, wait. You can!”
He gestures to himself, and unwittingly, Dipper takes in his body. Bill has his head tilted back, his pale throat working as he pants for air from between parted lips slick with spit, and the outline of his straining dick is clearly visible through the thin fabric of his boxers. With the shameless way Bill’s eyes flutter as he pumps Dipper’s dick, he looks like the poster child for sex.
Hand still moving, Bill meets Dipper’s eyes. “Well? Like what you see?”
The sight of his own body, so lewdly displayed by someone like Bill, is meant to horrify him. Dipper knows that, rationally—and it does.
But it also floods his mouth with more saliva than he knows what to do with. He finds he can’t look away.
He darts his tongue along his lower lip, a flicker of pink he can visualize all too clearly with his body desperately turned on beneath him. It’s either this or an eternity of torturous half-touches, forever teetering on the edge—or at least, until Stan and Mabel come home and find Bill in his hopelessly worked-up body, at which point all bets are off.
It’s no choice. Dipper’s breath stutters as he swallows his pride and mewls, “Bill.”
Bill’s eyes widen. His grip loosens momentarily, surprised, but now Dipper’s the relentless one. He lets himself whimper at the loss, rubbing nerveless thighs together in a bid for friction.
“I don’t wanna— I c-can’t— I ngh-need it, B-ill…”
For once, Dipper is grateful to hear his voice crack—it makes him sound needy, wanting, hoarse with frustration and ready to burst. It’s closer to the truth than he cares to admit. The flush high on his cheeks isn’t exactly due to embarrassment.
Bill’s breath hitches, and, partly to cling to lucidity against the swirling heat mounting in his gut, Dipper thinks savagely, Like what you see, asshole?
Then his thoughts are dissolving as Bill fingers the head of his dick. Their moans ring out together.
“T-thought you’d last longer,” gasps Bill, and Dipper takes that slight stutter from the silver-tongued demon as a victory. “But I gotta admit— nnh—” He groans, hips twitching. “Shit, kid, your body… you feel so good.”
Dipper whines. His fear and arousal have blended together, fusing into a sharper and more insistent alloy that goes straight to his groin, making his head swim. He’s not so sure he’s pretending anymore. “Please,” he hears himself pant. “Please, Bill, don’t stop, oh god, I’m so cl—”
He still has enough blood flow to his brain to snap his jaw shut around the tail end of that. He can’t let Bill know how close he—they—really are, or he’ll stop, and Dipper’s stomach is drawing tight, and his dick is achingly hard and leaking from Bill’s phantom touch, and Bill must be at least as worked up as him, it’s a wonder he’s been able to hold out this long when all Dipper wants to do is cum, and he needs it, god, he needs Bill to go faster—
He only has a split-second to realize he’s said that out loud before Bill is groaning low and spilling into his hand. Dipper has a moment of relieved clarity, and then the sensation is washing over onto him, his form flickering as his thoughts white out under the deluge of pleasure.
When he comes to, he’s drifting mere inches from the attic floorboards. There’s a heavy, leaden lethargy in his muscles, but he knows the afterglow is all in his mind—like this, he doesn’t even have muscles—and wills himself into a standing position.
He can’t help but check his shorts. They’re perfectly dry, perfectly untouched, still frozen in the moment before he was unceremoniously dumped out of his body, but he still feels a lingering sense of grossness, of wrongness. A stain that goes deeper than his clothes.
Speaking of which…
Bill is nowhere to be seen. Neither is his body.
Dipper takes a breath. He needs to find the journal. He wants to take a shower, to curl up in a ball and cry and cry and spill his insides until he feels clean again, but he can’t cry. Not without functioning tear ducts.
As he phases through the floor, he thinks he feels the ghost of a sensation: a finger, trailing down his cheek in mocking pantomime of a single tear.
He ignores it.
There’s nothing else he can do.
After the show, once Mabel has all her pressing questions out of the way—her What happends and Where were yous—she fusses over Dipper. She was so worried, she says, and plus she heard what Bill said to Dipper—you know, backstage?—anyway she saw Bill wink at Dipper and ask how he was feeling after the hit-and-run and that just got her thoughts spinning and did Bill get his body in a car crash? because, dumb triangle or not, he should know that Dipper isn’t tall enough to reach the pedals; not like her, she is the Alpha Twin for a reason—
Dipper cuts her off with a hand that looks like it requires enormous effort to lift. “I just want to take a shower,” he says, smile thin and watery.
Mabel agrees; he does still have bits of plaster in his hair, after all, though he seems surprised when she points them out.
As Dipper slowly drags himself up the stairs, leaning heavily on the railing, Mabel shakes her head fondly. Her brother is so unobservant sometimes.
He should work on being more like her. Nothing escapes her attention.