Another Form, Another Time (Bill Cipher x Reader)

Chapter 4

The mouse of the computer in your bedroom clicks and swerves under the oppression of Bill's finger. You let him borrow it since the other computer is almost always occupied, and Bill claimed to have really needed it.

"Hurry up - we have to leave for the bus soon."

"Uh-huh..." he mutters with disinterest, without sparing a glance at you.

You give him a look of feigned annoyance before going back to cleaning out your backpack. A pale hand of yours sifts through your luggage, pulling out papers and checking if you need them, crumpling up ones you do not. The reason why you are cleaning out your backpack is because finals are coming close, and making your luggage lighter and easier to dig through for things you need will help a little and give you peace of mind.

Bill turns back to you with a swivel of the chair and a stare from those golden eyes and slit pupils of his, "Hey, come here."

"Hold on," you neatly stack some papers you need and slip them back into your backpack, sandwiching them between binders to help keep them flat and from getting crumpled.

He sighs, his muscles laxing as he sluggishly leans his head on the top rim of the desk chair in an almost unnatural position with a neck crane reminiscent to that of an owl, watching as you fiddle with the decaying backpack zipper, it getting stuck when you try to zip up your backpack every now and then, "You can finish that later."

You briefly glance at the clock before taking your focus back to the zipper, "No, we have to leave in forty minutes." You get more harsher with the pulling of the zipper, before leaning down to inspect it, picking at the underbelly of the zipper with your finger to check if there is something lodged in it.

"That's plenty of time. You're already dressed anyway," he knows what you are about to say so he injects a retort before you can speak up, "and you don't have to clean it today - you can just finish whatever you're doing tomorrow if you run out of time," he gives you a reprimanding look, "and don't forget your end of the deal."

You look to him, then back at the zipper, before sighing and giving up with a look of defeat on your face, "Alright... what do you want?" He motions his head to the computer screen, prompting you to approach. He gets up from out of the chair and you take the hint as you plop down, a squeak escaping from the movement of the chair in response to the force you gave into it.

"Look through these and add them to this 'wishlist' thing." It is a website of high-cost housing, but they all seem to be in Oregon - a completely different state.

"Why are you having me look at houses in Oregon?"

"Just look at them." He needs more ideas to be fed in your brain so that more is added into your dream house the next time he has the two of you revisit that lucid dream. The more information he has on your interests, the easier it will be to win you over and make you clingy to the high life. Of course, he is very in-the-know with your interests and hobbies, but not even you know your preferences on things you have never thought about much before - like housing.

"Why not do this after school?"

"I need to be somewhere after school."

"In the 'mindscape'?"

"Exactly, so just do what I tell you." He picks at the raised skin around his nails as he talks, his nerves irritated at the peeling of skin as he picks and pulls at the flaps, turning the skin around said flaps red.

"You could have had me wake up sooner to do this, you know."

He laughs, "Yeah right - you are one of the crankiest wakers I have ever met. You would be too busy yelling at me and trying to go back to sleep to look through there."