Case 36: Courter in Yellow

Over Whelming Confrontation(36)

Dipper POV

With the paperwork laughing at me from my passenger seat and Bill's words in my head I practically flew from the hospital to the shack. I wanted my sister's opinion badly, the people on my team wouldn't look at the signs I found the same way I know she would.

About 5 minutes into my drive was when my phone finally started to ring, the caller ID appeared on the screen in the center of my dashboard.

I ignored each one.

Within 5 minutes my car was parked in my personal parking space and I was through the doors of the shack, unlocked for a slow flow of customers that stopped by simply because the door was open.

"Dipper?" Melody stood up from behind the counter, "What are you doing back here so early?" I didn't have the extra brain power to explain to her while be-lining it to my sister.

She, after I came crashing through the front door, asked me a very similar question. "Dipper? I thought you were at work? The hell you doin here?" She stood quickly from the couch coming to meet me halfway.

I, fix on her, missing the two people who turned and leaned over the back of the couch to look at me. "I need you to look at something for me and I didn't want to do it over the phone." I was already holding the clipboard out for her.

She reached for it right as one of the two made himself known, "So you could leave early!" Bill smiled widely at me.

His smile, normally unnerving, had somehow turned contagious, and it was hard to keep it from spreading to me. "I am still on the job, I just needed a fresh pair of eyes." I sighed, the excuse sounded lame even to me.

Mabel was already flipping through and skimming each page, her eyes also skipped between me and Bill for a moment. Unfortunately I seem to not be the only person his smile affects, for one had overtaken her face, "Wellllll there's a loooot of papers here and I'm no doctor or detective so it's gonna take me a minute to read all of this." She looked back to the couch looking for the other person, Pacifica, "Darling? Could you come to order lunch with me? I'm starving and this is going to take too long to go out." With that she bolted to the kitchen.

"Mabel, wait! You can't show her anything on those papers!" I shouted after her.

"I know!" She slammed the kitchen door behind her.

I stared wide eyed at the door, my ears ringing lightly from the sudden lose of sound. Slowly, like a horror movie scene, my vision widened to the rest of the room. Bill had silently moved, as if by teleportation. He stood now, leaning against the back of the couch, his grin turned shit-eating.

My knees felt suddenly like jello, sense I'd seen him last I'd gone diving into his past and I now know more about him than he'd ever told me. On top of that this information about him felt like pins under my skin, pressed into my veins with the accusations of my coworkers. "Bill I-" I couldn't form the rest of a sentence to follow. I have so many things that I want to say to him, to ask him, yet so many of it I never want him to know I'd done.

His smile dimmed slightly, his eyes started to search me. I couldn't tell you who moved first but suddenly his hands gripped my shoulders and mine found their way to his chest.

"Steady, steady, don't want to make two hospital trips in one day." His voice reverberated under my hands with the small jest and chuckle. I could feel his fingers curl into the fabric of my coat.

"Sorry, I'm fine, just got overrun by everything from today. It's been a lot." Slowly I forced feeling back into my legs, but with doing so made my arms shake, as if I only have an ounce of control left and I can only pick one part of myself, leaving the rest of me to shake and crumble under weight I hadn't felt in a long time.

Bill must have felt it too, why else would his fingers tighten on my shoulders and why would he step closer.

My thoughts started to race faster and faster, I tried to catch them, to grab on to even just one to understand it. I shake my head as if the physical movement would shake one free or jar all of them long enough for me to think around them. But it didn't work.

Bill, who felt miles away now, pressed his forehead to mine, "What's going on in there?" His tone was lowered into a whisper, but to me his voice reverberated through my skull. I looked at him, the best I could at least, so close I was really just looking at his nose, his cheeks, and his lips. I watched his mouth as he spoke next. "Dipper talk to me."

Moving the control, my legs felt weak again and I leaned further into Bill as I answered him, "I'm sorry, I'm just very overstimulated." I wanted to say more but my mind and my throat clogged with words I can't identify and can't voice.

Shifting control again, I pushed away from him suddenly feeling electricity from his touch. I forced past him trying to touch him as little as possible on my stumble to the couch. He didn't reach for me but I could feel in the air that he followed close behind, when I sat down he sat down close to me without touching me.

No longer having to worry about staying up right I could focus on regaining my thoughts well enough to voice them. "I need a minute." I sighed, dropping my head on the top of the back cushion.

I could see him now sitting awkwardly, he looked almost uncomfortable. Like he couldn't fathom what was wrong because there were no physical signs.

We sat like that for what felt to me like an hour, but I knew as my mind cleared slowly, it could only have been a few minutes.

I took slow deep breaths, counting off in my head;

                  Five things I could feel, where my socks cut off in my shoes that I'd not gotten the chance to take off, the weight of my wallet in one pocket and my phone in the other, the creases in the pillow under my neck, the curl of my hair pressing against my ears.

                 Four things I could see, directly in front of me the TV was paused on an old episode of duck detective, below it a shelf of Stan's favorite oddities that he doesn't sell in the shop, hung photos no doubt from Mabel, a couch side table overflowing with old cups that needed to be washed.

               Three things I could hear, Mabel and Pacifica walking around the kitchen, my own thundering heartbeat, Bill breathing(which I was trying to match).

               Two things I could smell, my own sweat, Bill's cologne.

              One thing I could taste, iron. I must have bitten my cheek or tongue too hard at some point, maybe recently, maybe in the car.

Bill waited impatiently at my side, the whole time fidgeting with his hands as he stared at me like something was deeply wrong and it was his job to fix he just didn't know where to start. I had the feeling that if it's taken me any longer to calm down he would have started asking questions, or maybe gone and got Mabel to deal with me.

Adjusting myself to better sit up and face him, "Sorry that hasn't happened in a long time." I breathed, flexing my fingers in my lap as happy to feel in complete control of them again.

"What was that?" He'd posed it like a question but his tone was too harsh, too forceful.

"I just got too overwhelmed," Bill gave me the impression that he'd never had a panic attack or seen one before. "I used to have them, panic attacks I mean, as a teenager but I haven't had one in a very long time." I felt like a kid talking to the school counselor.

His head tilted, "So why'd you have one now?"

That was hard to answer, how to tell him that it was an overload of information about him that caused it. So instead I posed a question for him, but it probably wasn't any better than the answer I had for him.

"Are you a serial killer?"

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Has it been a long time? Ahahah ah ah maybe- Ok so that's my bad, and I do feel bad because I know long waits between updates makes readers lose interest but for those who are still putting up with my nonsense thank you for reading! I promise exciting stuff will happen soon!