“Um, Alcor, can I –”
Toby broke off awkwardly as his voice abruptly skipped up several registers. Cheeks flushing, he cleared his throat and tried again.
“Can I ask you – *cough* *erh-hrm* – can I ask you something?”
Dipper looked warily down at the fidgeting, squeaky-voiced teenager from his current position floating in the middle of the living room, surrounded by a large collection of pillowcases, paper sacks, and plastic jack-o-melon pails all overflowing with a diverse selection of candy. The handful of Yumber Jacks he’d been about to eat paused halfway to his mouth.
“…Yee-eeeees…” he answered cautiously, reluctantly shunting the candy in his hand back to his storage vault in the Mindscape, followed by the rest of the holiday confectionary. He straightened up out of his lounging position in the air, giving Toby a look that he hoped accurately conveyed how important this had better be to be worth interrupting his candy-indulging time.
(He always got good deals around Halloween and Summerween, particularly from kids who had earned the ire of the various Summerween Trickster-like creatures that had started popping up off and on since the Transcendence, wherever terrible off-brand candy was a thing. The hefty price in real candy that he was able to demand for getting rid of them always kept him well-stocked for most of the year.)
Toby fidgeted uncomfortably under Alcor’s gaze, scratching the back of his neck and shuffling his feet awkwardly.
Lord knew if the boy moved any more than that, he’d probably trip over himself.
To say that puberty was being unkind to Toby would be like saying that nitroglycerin was mildly sensitive to fire. It had taken a while for that particular train to hit – he’d always been a tiny kid, but all through middle school he’d barely grown at all while his peers were shooting up around him, and he’d been one of the few boys going into high school whose voice hadn’t even started changing. Dipper had even at one point (purely out of a mild clinical curiosity, not some sort of completely unwarranted concern over the kid’s health) glanced into the future to confirm that the kid was just a late bloomer and there were no medical issues.
But once it did hit, hoo boy, the puberty train had slammed into Toby with a level of devastation much more akin to a puberty meteor.
His voice had become a squeaky nightmare, cracking almost every other sentence. His face, minus the burn scars, was splotchy and dotted liberally with acne (and naturally Toby had turned out to be allergic to an ingredient in most acne creams, and was unwilling to make a deal to fix the problem magically because “it’s not really a big deal” and “everyone else goes through it, so kinda feels a bit like cheating?”) And jeez, Dipper thought he had had a sweating problem – the kid was running up the house’s water bill from showering almost every day out of self-consciousness.
(And that wasn’t even getting into Toby’s early panicked attempts to manage his sudden new body odor. Dipper still hadn’t run out of teasing ammunition from the Perfume Incident.)
He had finally hit something that could at least charitably be described as a growth spurt, though he was still one of the smallest kids in his class. The increased height, mostly in his legs, made him gawky and clumsy, prone to injuring himself from slamming into furniture, tripping over anything and everything in and off his path, and smacking his head on obstacles he used to be able to just walk under.
Somewhat in conjunction with this, he had also developed an attitude. Of sorts. If one was prepared to relax the definition of the word to include “still unfailingly polite and soft-spoken to people, animals, plants, spirits, and any other at least semi-living thing, but rants and swears at furniture, doors, pavement, cooking implements, uncooperative magi-electronics, book plotlines, etc., with an almost demon-like vehemence and utilizing obscenities that sometimes Alcor had never heard before. (And still apologizes afterwards.)”
Watching Toby stumble through this stage of life, part of Dipper was sympathetic.
Another part (not entirely the demonic one) found it hilarious. Yeah, he knew it was petty, but he had pretty much given up by this point on being able to truly hate the kid for his past life (not that he liked him, no, definitely not, just didn’t hate him), and, well… he deserved to take some sort of pleasure in Bill’s soul’s suffering, damn it!
Presently, the body of said soul was still looking at his feet and hesitantly opening and closing his mouth instead of asking whatever was on his mind. Dipper scowled and crossed his arms impatiently.
“Spit it out, kid.”
Toby flinched, and finally started talking in a rush. “Um, okay, well, see… we were playing at Bridget’s house, and, uh, she and Jared got to talking about, um, this movie they both wanted to see, but they couldn’t order it onto her JuvView storage ‘cause it was, uh, rated R… and, um, so then they started talking about trying to hack her parents’ OmniView account and watching it from there…”
Dipper held back a grin. Yup, that was his Pole Star.
As done with everything as he’d been when Toby had found not one, but two friends with the souls of his original family (because of course), Dipper was honestly glad the boy had some good friends that he could spend time with outside of school. It meant that he could get the kid out of his hair on a regular basis, not to mention keeping him well-adjusted and less likely to turn evil later on. (He hadn’t at all been concerned with Toby being lonely and too shy to socialize with other kids his age.) Sure, Bridget and Jared dragged Toby into shenanigans on occasion, but nothing they couldn’t get out of with Toby’s help, and their occasional forcing of Toby out of his comfort zone had actually seemed to help toughen the kid up a little over the years.
If Toby had to be friends with souls he knew, he had thought begrudgingly, at least it was two that Dipper trusted. They were of course different people than they had been, but Bridget had the same fire and passionate charisma that he remembered so fondly in Acacia, and Jared, well… no amount of different life experiences could change the fact that his was one of the most loyal and trustworthy souls Dipper knew.
(Besides, at least it wasn’t Mizar again. Okay, fine, so Ian hadn’t ended up being that bad in the end, but Dipper would still be perfectly happy if, whenever and wherever Mabel was reborn next, her new self and Toby never crossed paths.)
“…um, and then I, uh, said that we probably shouldn’t, and that I wasn’t allowed…”
Damn right you’re not allowed, Dipper thought, nodding in approval. The kid had bad enough nightmares as it was, he didn’t need a bunch of gory body-horror punch-fest movies making it harder for him to get peaceful sleep. (And, uh, putting Evil Ideas into his head.) Not that Dipper was really a huge stickler for human society’s rules, but Toby was only fourteen, for pete’s sake!
(…Wow. He’s a teenager now. Where did the time go?
(…Not that Dipper was feeling nostalgic about the kid’s childhood or anything crazy like that. He was just annoyed at all the time and energy he’d invested in the kid already, and was looking forward to the day when he could finally kick him out.
(…Yes, that was clearly what these feelings were.)
“…um, but Jared and Bridget both said that the movie wasn’t violent, it was just a comedy, and that it only had, uh, language and –”
“So, what, you want my permission to watch it with them even though their parents would probably ground them for life and/or suffer simultaneous fatal heart attacks and haunt their houses as adult-movie-hating ghosts forevermore?” Dipper interrupted, smirking at the thought. Not an un-intriguing notion, actually… and it wasn’t like Toby didn’t (somehow) already know all the swears anyway…
But no, no, that would be wrong, probably. Right? Yeah, yeah, definitely, morally wrong. Besides, have to play the responsible par- guardian, after all…
“…Why would you go straight to…? …uh, no, that’s not – *erhm* – that’s not what I’m asking,” Toby said, looking vaguely nauseous at Dipper’s scenario. “What I was getting to, um, is they… they said the movie was rated R for language and, uh, ‘sexual content’?…”
Dipper’s grin slid off his face like rainwater on a window.
“And I didn’t really know what that last part meant so I asked, and then both Bri and Jared looked at me funny and asked if my d– if you had given me the, uh, ‘the Talk’? Whatever that means… And I said no, and they both got these weird grins and Bri said we could do something else but told me when I got home I should ask you about, uh, where babies c–”
“No.”
Toby blinked. “Uh… what?”
“No,” Dipper repeated. His tone was calm, matter-of-fact, and that of one addressing the universe in general as much as the confused boy in front of him. “No. Nope. Nuh-uh. No. Line, drawn.”
“Huh…? Is it… something bad? I just… what does it have to do with bab-”
“Heavens, is that a summoning?” Dipper interrupted again, cupping a hand to his ear. “Oh, oh, yup, it is, welp, looks like I have to leave right now and not come back for an indeterminate length of time, sorry Toby.”
“But…what? I’m so confused,” Toby squeaked helplessly.
Dipper hesitated before blipping away to safety, Toby’s lost yet earnest expression holding him back. He frowned as he looked down at the boy, examining his options.
On the one hand, he supposed the kid did need to learn the facts of life from somewhere. And if he hadn’t been enlightened at school already, where else was Toby expected to go for answers? Dipper could at least make sure he got the facts in as accurate and uncomplicated a form as possible, in a safe, familiar environment.
On the other hand, NO.
As Dipper pondered, Toby hunched his shoulders and looked at the floor, muttering, “Uh… s-sorry, I… never mind, it’s no big deal. I was just curious.”
Aaand there was that face.
Dipper fought down the put-upon growl that built up in his throat. Okay, okay, fine. I’ll give you something, kid, just enough with that look! “One sec,” he told Toby with a raised finger, before shifting into the Mindscape.
A moment scanning his mental card catalog, letting his omniscience guide him to what he was looking for, then a quick flight through the vast corridors of his meticulously organized mental library, filled with all the thousands upon thousands of books Dipper had gathered or been given in deals over the past millennium, (and a brief distraction when he spotted that copy of Montana Martinez and the Corps of the Expired he’d picked up a while ago and ooh he’d been meaning to read that…), and… aha!
The demon grinned as he pulled out his acquisition from the shelf, looking over the cover. Yup, the perfect solution to his problem.
Feeling quite accomplished, Dipper shifted back to the corporeal world, where Toby was still waiting. “Here you go kid, knock yourself out,” the demon said as he unceremoniously tossed the book to the boy.
Toby barely caught the book before it could bean him in the head, then fumbled it and tripped over his feet trying to grab it, falling on his face with a squeaky yelp.
Dipper rolled his eyes as he floated down and helped the kid up.
“I didn’t mean that literally,” Dipper scolded as he waved a hand and healed Toby’s new bruises – an act that had become so routine lately that he barely noticed he was doing it. “Anyway, if you still have questions after you’ve read that, you can ask me later. And by ‘later’ I mean never.”
With that, Dipper hastily blipped out of the house, his last view of Toby being the confused look on the boy’s face as he looked at the book in his hands:
WHY AM I SWEATY?
Your body explained in horrifyingly uncomfortable detail.
26th CENTURY EDITION. (Updated with new material by the acclaimed author of Why Don’t Unicorns Like Me? on the common magical influences on puberty in the modern era.)
Dipper actually did have a summoning waiting – before Toby had come home he’d been laughing at the man’s steadily increasing frustration with the answering machine – so he went ahead and teleported in that direction, preparing his usual smoky entrance and changing his appearance to something more intimidating before materializing inside an amateurish summoning circle in the man’s basement. His mind was still on the kid, however.
He was pretty sure he had made a safe decision. This way Toby got the relevant information, while Dipper didn’t have to be directly involved, everyone wins, right? Surely that book was as good as any? Okay, it was about half a millennium or so out of date, but it wasn’t like human bodies had evolved much over the centuries in that regard.
Still… now that he was thinking about it, the memory of when he acquired the book came back to him with all the clarity semi-omniscience brought. The preteen boy who had summoned him had practically begged Dipper to take it as soon as the demon had requested a book with an emotional connection as the price for fixing the boy’s grandfather’s memory problems. The deal hadn’t required said connection be positive, so it had fueled the deal perfectly well, but the look on the boy’s face as he pulled out the book from his closet… like he was flashbacking to a time when he had stared into an abyss darker than Alcor’s soul…
As if in response to Dipper’s ruminations, a vision of an event even further past, one he had not been present for, suddenly played before his mind’s eye: Grunkle Stan, getting on in years enough to actually need his 8-ball cane as more than a prop, ushering a confused-looking twelve-year-old Hank to sit next to him in his armchair, a sly but paternal grin on his face as he went on about “think it’s time you and me had a man-to-man talk, kiddo.” He pulled out a book that Dipper recognized as an earlier edition of the one he had just left Toby with, and, hand on Hank’s shoulder, opened his mouth to speak…
…only for Mabel to spring in out of nowhere, slap the book from his hands, pull a bewildered Hank into a fierce protective embrace while keeping herself between him and Stan, and snarl, “Keep your filthy words away from these sweet virginal ears, old man!”
…Huh, Dipper thought Maybe… not the best book for this? But maybe Mabel was just being overprotective… I mean, it’s not like she ever would have gone near that book when she was that age, how would she know…
Someone beneath him coughed. “Um… Lord Alcor?…”
Dipper started, looking down at the hesitant face of the man who had summoned him, realizing that he’d just been floating silently in the circle for the past minute while lost in visions of the past. He shook his head and directed his attention to the situation at hand.
“Oh, right, sorry, W̕͏̪̪̯̻̘̭̞͎͖H҉̟̲̙͍͚̠̠̀O̳̻̞͈͎ ̡̩̤͎̣̖̠̜D̢͈͔͎̦̤̥̗͝Ạ̥͕̜̬̫̪̻̬͝R̨̨̝͓͟È̵͔S̨̰͖͔͇̫̠̣͢͝ ̸̱̖̰̗S̸͚̦͎̞͕͈͢͞U̶͍͙͈̲̻M̠̩̘͔M̘̦͉̳̤̠O̹̣̥͕͎̕ͅN̖̫̜͔̤͚̼͖ ̷̤̳̭͙͟͝ͅA̴̧͍͇̼̱Ĺ̵̢̝̱̗C̶̦͔̹͓͇̲̼͟Ò͇̞̭̭͘R͇̳͘…̡̣̣̜”
A good few hours later, within which Dipper:
1) listened to some apparently famous rugby player try to justify why Alcor should make his son more athletic and meddle with his mind to make him interested in sports (“I heard you like kids, right? This will be good for him, he’ll be so much happier later on…”);
2) easily got the idiot to accept a deal worded as “I’ll make your son just as strong and skilled as you,” and proceeded to reduce the man’s strength and sports talent to that of an un-athletic eleven-year-old boy (“He’s exactly as strong as you, now! And just cause I’m such a nice guy, you can have this in perpetuity, no extra charge! Ahahaha!”);
3) spent some time lounging in the Mindscape basking in the afterglow of a good deal-twisting (especially with how nice – er, not-cruel – he was being to Toby lately, his demon side had been niggling at him for a while to screw someone over);
4) on a whim, glanced into the future to learn how things would work out, and seeing to his mild surprise that the aftermath of his deal would actually help bring the now-former sports star and his son closer together – the man would come to understand his son a bit better, and through his early efforts to get his old physique back would inspire his son to adopt more healthy exercise habits, over the course of which the two would start to bond; and
5) ruminated on how bad and demony it may have been that he hadn’t bothered to check the positive or negative consequences before screwing with the guy (…Naaaaah…);
…and Dipper felt it was probably safe to return to the house.
He materialized in the living room to find Toby sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the wall, his expression frozen in a mixture of shock and disgust. He didn’t look up or, uncharacteristically, greet Dipper at all. The book was very pointedly set face-down on the end table.
“I know too many things,” the boy stated to the wall. He finally looked up at Dipper, his expression wide-eyed and helpless, his voice hushed and shell-shocked. “Too many things.”
Dipper couldn’t help snickering. Yeah, yeah, petty, whatever, still hilarious.
“Oh, suck it up, kid,” he smirked at Toby’s mildly hurt look, floating down to settle on the couch next to him. “You want sympathy? Wait until you’ve spent centuries being summoned over and over by crazy hormonal nutjobs with the most unnatural and bizarre fantasies, brought on by centuries of your preferences being misrepresented in stupid books, who then try to make deals to perform or have performed on them just about any and every disgusting, carnal activity the most debased minds could possibly come up with. Then you can talk traumatized.”
Toby’s face turned a marvelous shade of red, while his expression became, if possible, even more horrified.
“They… they ask you to… to do… that?”
Dipper pulled a face, shrugging noncommittally. “Eh.”
“…Wait,” Toby breathed, like he had had a horrible realization. “Books… you mean those books about you and Mizar that I’m not allowed to read… the stuff on the covers… are they… do they have you… are they about…”
Dipper noticed Toby glance at his wings, which he suddenly realized were shuddering without his permission. He quickly stilled them, but the boy blushed even more as though his suspicions had been confirmed.
Toby’s voice and expression were gravely serious as he met Dipper’s eyes and uttered, “…I am so, so sorry.”
The kid sounded so horrified for Dipper’s sake that a sudden warm feeling (which the demon determinedly refused to identify as fondness, because it clearly was not, probably just leftover satisfaction from his earlier deal) rushed through him. He forced himself to tone down the smile that tried to form on his face.
“Yeah, well… whatever,” he muttered. Ugh, that was lame. Subject change, now. “You really should have learned all this years ago, you know. Seriously, I’m going to have a word with your school, what kind of cut-rate educational system do they have that doesn’t assume all responsibility for teaching this topic? The way nature intended?”
“Doooon’t mention nature,” Toby moaned, hiding his red face in his hands. “Nature is gross. Human bodies are gross. I–”
The boy cut off with a start, looking back up at Dipper with a hint of a very specific fear in his eye that the demon had seen all too often over the years.
“Was… was that…” he started to stammer, looking at Dipper with panic…
…before pausing and, to Dipper’s surprise, relaxing himself, the fear in his eye turning to stubbornness. “You know what, I don’t care. If… if that was a leftover Bill thought… well… then he was at least right about one thing!”
Toby looked shocked at his own daring (and embarrassed by the pitch spike at the end that completely mucked up his attempt at being dramatic), but determinedly held Dipper’s gaze, his expression shaky but defiant.
(Well, as defiant as Toby could be, which looked more like a baby animal desperately fighting the instinct to cower before a predator, but Dipper could give him an A for effort.)
Surprising himself, Dipper found he wasn’t really worried at that moment about Bill or Toby actually agreeing with his past life about something. He chalked it up to his deal leaving him in a better mood than he had been earlier. Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t agree with Toby’s assessment.
The boy started to look a little apprehensive, so Dipper put on a smirk and teased, “I’ll grant it’s much more entertaining when you turn red than when Bill did.”
Toby’s face flushed even more, and he flopped back against the couch with an embarrassed groan. Dipper couldn’t help but let out a cackle at the boy’s expression (while steadfastly ignoring how he couldn’t quite tell if his laughter was of the “sadistic-demon-glee-at-enemy’s-misfortune” or “oh-my-god-this-kid-is-so-precious-when-he’s-all-embarrassed” variety).
“Welcome to human adulthood, kid,” he said, reaching out and ruffling Toby’s hair without really thinking about it. “It only gets more crazy from here…”
—-
AN: Going with the hc that Toby is asexual, I imagine it’s shortly after this that he notices he’s not feeling certain things that the book said he’s supposed to, which will lead to Dipper grudgingly giving him that talk.
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