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ckret2 · 1 month ago

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Chapter 88 of human Bill Cipher, in a stunning role reversal, helping the Mystery Shack not get imprisoned: somehow, he's managed to seductively femme fatale his way into stealing secret files from a government agent.

However nobody is thinking about Bill's relationship with that guy this chapter.

"I'd love to stay the night, but I didn't plan for it—all this really took me by surprise!—I don't have a change of clothes, or my toiletries—and I have half a dozen medications I need to take, you know, the kind the doctor tells you ya can't skip..."

Powers insisted he couldn't let Bill walk home—not this late, not after all their talk about about how threatening the town was—but Bill couldn't afford to let Powers know he was more than just an occasional daytime visitor to the Mystery Shack. So Bill gave him directions down an overgrown forest road until they reached a footpath forking off into the shadows, indicated the dark silhouette of the old, abandoned Corduroy cabin barely visible between the trees and claimed he was staying with some people in that cabin for the summer, and insisted Powers didn't need to get out of the car, Bill could walk to the door himself.

He gave Powers his burner phone's number. If he called it—and if Bill's plan worked, he would—and the Pines overheard, he could tell them he'd stolen the phone when he'd escaped over the weekend. Bill wouldn't be surprised if they confiscated it and only handed it over when Powers called. He'd have to tell his girls they couldn't use that number and ask for a fresh burner phone; but hey, that was what burners were for.

And then he got out of the car, walked to the door, knocked firmly on the abandoned cabin's door, and said, "Hey, lemme in." After a moment, he added, "I'm talking to you, peeking through the keyhole. Let me in, you little creep."

A child ghost opened the door a crack, peering up in trifold wonder at the living person who had—one—seen him without a seance—two—through the door, and—three—spoken to him directly. Shyly, he asked, "Do you wanna be friends with—?"

"No." Bill walked through the ghost. "Shut the door."

He proceeded to ignore the child ghost, warmly greeted a dream hipster spirit who was surprised Bill could see him, and shot terrible puns back and forth with the hipster for a couple minutes until, through the walls and the trees, he saw that Powers had driven off.

"Finally," Bill muttered. He poked a finger in the dream hipster. "Hey, lemme out, would you? I think the kid in the corner's gonna start leaking extoplasm if I ask him for another favor."

The dream hipster—a desiccated human spirit with an eyepatch and a fedora—said, "Do it yourself. Moving doors takes a lot of psychic energy. Especially with this." He flexed a gloved hand with a wide array of cutlery strapped to the fingers.

Bill decided not to point out that the spirit had two hands. "Wow, great idea! Got any experience lifting curses?"

"No?"

"Then get the door."

The hipster opened it—with a big show of effort that Bill was pretty sure he was playing up. "Who was that, anyway?" he asked, nodding toward the leaving car. "Friday the 13th?"

"No, he—what?"

"A bad date." The hipster let out a croaky laugh. "I came up with that myself."

"Yeah, I can tell." Bill swept past the hipster without so much as a thanks. "Best date I've had since I died, actually! But it doesn't have much competition. Never date in a psych ward." He turned back to the hipster—who was giving him a confused, expectant look, like he was sure Bill was setting him up for a joke but didn't get it yet—and said, "If you see Raina, tell her Bill said hi."

"Who?"

That was what he'd expected. He sighed. "Well—if you ever do run into her."

He waved farewell to the hipster and the deeply haunted cabin, and began the long walk back to the Mystery Shack.

####

Powers had apparently claimed the car the agents had gotten from Gleeful Auto, but the other two agents still had the car they'd come to town in; and Bill saw it lurking by the Mystery Shack. He was sure Trigger and Dale thought they were slick with their black car and tinted windows; but Bill saw them as clearly as if they were standing in the open in broad daylight. But looking through the car made pain shoot through his exhausted left eye—that was what he got for running around without an eyepatch all day. He rubbed his eyelid as he tried to figure out what to do about the agents.

If they told Powers that Bill was staying here, it could ruin everything. But they had a clear view of both the gift shop door and the back door, and nobody would be up at this hour to let him in by the museum or floor room doors. He could sneak in through his secret roof route, but that would let the Pines family know he could get in and out without their assistance.

(Besides, he wasn't sure he could do that trick when he was awake. It only worked when he could convince himself the trap doors to the roof were "lids," and it was easier to lie to himself with the help of the altered mental state of a dream; and while the floating practice he'd gotten during the eclipse had helped him figure out how to make inanimate objects float, he still couldn't fully ignore gravity's pull on his own flesh without tapping into the mindscape.)

Nothing for it. The agents in the car would just have to discover Bill was staying here.

Even though it was almost one in the morning, the lights were still on when Bill reached the back door. He only had to knock once before Stan flung the door open. "Where in the world were you?!"

"I just love how you ask that like you think you're entitled to an answer! It's adorably presumptuous." Bill walked past him, rummaging in the folds of his umbrella as he did.

"The agreement was��dinner, not for you to run off with—"

Bill unwrapped a wad of papers from around the umbrella's shaft and shoved it in Stan's face. "Guess who got the agents' case file! Everyone congratulate me on what a good spy I am."

From the living room, Ford said, "I'm sure you've already congratulated yourself plenty."

"I'm just getting started. Where's my hood—? Ah." Bill found his hoodie hanging on the coat rack and gratefully pulled it on for the first time in two days. "Hey Stanley, didja know Powers used to work for the IRS? Criminal Investigations."

"I knew there was something I didn't like about him," Stan muttered. He wandered into the living room distractedly as he flipped through the pages. "Weather records, some kind of mumbo-jumbo about power grids... background checks on half the town... local FBI operations, military stuff... surveillance records? Yeesh!" He dropped heavily onto the sofa.

Ford leaned over to read over Stan's shoulder. "There's no way Agent Powers just gave this to you."

"No, but he showed it to me." By the time he wandered into the living room, Bill had already pulled on his eyepatch and one glove, re-covering his flesh in yellow and black as fast as possible. He heaved himself up on top of the TV, crossed his legs, and tugged the other glove on. "He didn't expect me to walk off with half of it, though!"

Stan's brows rose progressively higher with each page. "This is the kind of stuff guys like him get disappeared into secret military prisons for leaking. What the heck did you do to get him to cough this up, sleep with him?"

"What kind of a question is that?" Bill asked. "Of course I did."

Stan lowered the papers. He and Ford both stared at Bill. Stan asked, "Is it weird that I respect you more now?"

Ford elbowed Stan. Stan grumbled, fished around in his pocket, and shoved a ten in Ford's hand.

Oh, now his wayward student has faith in him. "Anyway, enough about my hot date. More importantly: I have a plan to get him off our tail for good. Get a photocopy of that file and go wake everyone up. We need to be done before dawn."

####

Mabel and Dipper's eyes were still 3/4 shut as they trudged down the stairs. Bill saw them and shouted, "Hey, star girl! You'll never guess who I ran into at Greasy's! I don't suppose you happened to know that blondie's working there."

That got Mabel's eyes open. "Maybe I did," she said, as coyly as she could while stifling a yawn. "And maybe I told her all about your date."

"Is that why you wanted me to go to Greasy's! See if I ever take any suggestions from future you again." Smart kid. She'd be a terror someday.

"So tell me all about it!" she gushed. "Do you like him? Did he ask you out again? Did you kiss?"

"Ha! He gave me a lot more than a little liplock."

"Like what?" Mabel asked breathlessly, as Stan shot Bill a panicked look over her head and Ford mouthed, don't you dare.

Bill slapped the stolen papers down on the table. "Like a fat wad of government secrets, howsabout that!"

As Dipper and Mabel looked through the papers, Bill claimed a chair in between them—elbowing Dipper out of the way as he did—and said, "He was dying to tell the pretty blonde all about his work. If loose lips sink ships, then this guy's the Bermuda Triangle."

"Is there anything we can use to get rid of him in here?" Dipper asked.

"Nope, just some juicy blackmail material on the neighbors. We should get a copy of the file! But I didn't bring it home for the intel."

"Then what did you bring it home for?"

Bill grinned. "Bait."

The living room table had been dragged to the middle of the room so the entire household—Bill, the twins, the bigger twins, Soos, and Abuelita—could cram around it together in their pajamas. Once everyone had gathered (and Stan had confiscated the file from Dipper and Ford when they got too into reading what the government's surveillance efforts had revealed about the Valentino family), Bill said, "The plan isn't too complicated." He tapped a pen on a paper on which he'd scrawled out the steps, complete with badly-drawn doodle of the agents leaving town in a well-drawn car. "But it'll require a forged document, a threatening letter, a hoax video, a distraction, picking multiple locks, and breaking into the museum, the motel, and the police department—all before dawn. All right?"

The group thought that over, and then one by one nodded in acceptance. "Doesn't sound too strenuous," Ford said.

"It sounds fun!" Mabel said.

"Almost too fun," Dipper said, squinting at Bill. "What's the catch."

Bill grinned. "This family's terrific. Okay! Who here has the deepest voice and the most convincing fake British accent?" He glanced between Stan, Ford, and Soos.

Soos shook his head. "Nope."

Stan elbowed Ford. "Hey. Do your impression of the constable."

"What?"

"From Duck-tective. Do the constable."

Mabel and Dipper smiled at Ford expectantly.

Ford grimaced, but sighed, cleared his throat, and said in a sheepish faux British accent, "'It seems what we have here is... a false duck-otomy.'"

Mabel, Dipper, and Soos snickered. Soos said, "Ah, never gets old."

Ford looked at the ceiling and muttered, "It makes more sense in the context of the episode."

Bill looked oddly irritated that Ford's impression had been decent. "Right. Fisherman, how's your accent?"

"Uhh... Lemme see." Stan cleared his throat. "''Ello 'ello, I'm the Prince of Wales, wot wot. Uh... blimey, mate?'"

Bill shuddered. "Nope, you're out. Questiony, you're sure you've got nothing?"

"Dude, I get the craziest stage fright when I have to act," Soos said. "In middle school? We had to do this school play? And we did this sassy modern retelling of 'Jack and the Beanstalk'? And they wanted me to play the giant, because I was like, six inches taller than anyone else? But—"

"You froze up so bad they had to cast you as the beanstalk. I know, I was there." (This statement deeply unsettled Soos.) "But you've been running this crummy tourist trap for the past year! You give gullible parents and their earwax-eating brats six tours a day! You've gotten over your stage fright by now!"

"Oh, that's totally different." Soos's eyes widened. "Wait. Is it different? Oh no—"

"You're out." Bill sighed heavily. He reluctantly turned back to Ford. "Okay, Sixer, lemme hear yours again. This time make it more nasal and try to sound evil."

"What?"

"Nasal and evil! C'mon, Sixer, we're burning moonlight."

"Is there a point to this?!"

"Yes!"

By this point, Ford was more than a little miffed. He'd spent enough time in school dealing with teachers disappointed in him for being the only kid in class with the answer to the question (as if that was his fault instead of the other students'), and he didn't need it out of Bill. But he looked at the ceiling again, and, with an air of corny over-the-top menace, grudgingly said, "'It seems... that what we have here is... a false duck-otomy.'"

Mabel and Dipper cracked up. Stan smacked Ford's back and said, "Hey, if they ever need someone to play the constable's evil doppelgänger..."

"Shut up."

Disappointed, Bill said, "Okay, that was great. You're hired."

"Exactly what am I being hired for?"

"I know how eager you are, but wait your turn, I'm handing out jobs." Bill pointed across the table at Abuelita. "Dolores. Distraction. We've gotta get past the suits in the car without any of them knowing we left the shack."

Abuelita nodded slowly. "Do you want them alive in the morning?" Soos stared at her.

"Unfortunately, killing them might just make things more complicated," Bill said. "So try to keep it nonlethal."

"If you insist."

Bill pointed, "Mabel! You're in charge of all document forgery."

She pumped a fist in the air. "Yes."

"You'll need this." Bill slid her a scrap of paper with the key to a substitution cipher. "Stanford, you can't do your part until star girl's finished hers, so you're her expert on historical accuracy. But this isn't your art project. You're a consultant only. Let the artistic genius make her masterpiece."

"Fine," Ford sighed.

Mabel beamed at him. "Look at us! Arts and crafts buddies!" One corner of his mouth tugged up.

"Stanley," Bill said. "You're breaking into the police department to steal a file."

"Yes! All right! I'm on it!" Stan cheerfully left the room.

Stan came back into the room. "A specific file, or... whatever I can find...?"

"I'll tell you where to find it and give you the code to the safe." Bill pointed at Dipper, tried to summon up his name, and said, "You. You're making a couple deliveries. Your part comes after almost everyone else, go get some sleep."

"Good." Dipper immediately left the table to head back upstairs.

Soos raised a hand. "What's my part?"

Bill nearly told him he only needed Soos's truck for the important people, felt Abuelita's stare like a laser, and said, "Getaway driver."

"Nice!"

Ford raised a finger. "You still haven't told me what you want me to do." His voice strongly implied that the fact Bill wanted it didn't mean Ford would.

"Oh, right," Bill said. "You're breaking into the museum so you can roleplay as a spy movie villain."

Ford stared at Bill. Then, quietly, trying not to sound too hopeful, said, "Really?"

"Would I lie to you?" Bill clapped his hands together, "Okay! You all have your parts—now let me explain how this is gonna work."

####

Yawning as he blinked off his sleep, Trigger said, "You're sure the woman at the door was the one Powers asked out?"

Dale nodded. "That was her, all right. I'd recognize her anywhere. Lovely hair."

Trigger checked the clock. It was past one. He'd expected to get a few more hours of sleep before being woken for his watch shift. "I thought she was a tourist? What's she doing at the Mystery Shack past midnight?"

"No clue. Very strange."

"We should tell Powers about it."

"Is it urgent enough to wake him, do you think? Or can it wait until—"

They fell silent as the shack's back door opened again, spilling light out onto the porch. One of the house's residents—after a hasty conversation, they concurred she was probably Mrs. Ramirez—came out and shuffled down off the porch.

"Is she coming this way?" Dale murmured.

"Shhh! We're in a black car, maybe she won't notice us."

She walked directly up to the car and knocked on Trigger's window.

Holding perfectly still, trying not to move his lips, Trigger whispered, "Stay quiet. The windows are tinted. Maybe she'll think we aren't here."

She knocked a second time.

Dale said, "Don't be silly." He leaned over Trigger to roll down the window and smile at Mrs. Ramirez. "Hi! Can we help you?"

Politely, Mrs. Ramirez said, "Hello. Are you two here on a stakeout?"

"Uh..." Dale looked at Trigger, who just sighed and shrugged, and said, "Yes, ma'am, we are."

"You will be here all night?" she asked. "Do you boys need anything? Juice, soda? Coffee? We have leftovers if you haven't had dinner."

The agents exchanged a surprised look. Dale said, "Well! That's very kind of you, Mrs. Ramirez. If it's not too much trouble for you, I wouldn't mind a coffee."

Trigger grudgingly nodded. "Coffee."

"Okay. How would you like it? Cream, sugar?"

"Black's fine for me," Dale said.

"A little milk, if you could," Trigger said.

"Is 2% okay?"

While she kept the agents distracted, Soos and Stan snuck out to Soos's truck and headed into town.

####

As Mabel sat at Ford's desk drawing, Ford asked, "That isn't how the map originally looked, was it?" It had been years since he'd seen the map to what the children claimed was Trembley's tomb—and he'd thrown it into the Bottomless Pit along with Journal 3, so they couldn't consult it now—but he was sure he remembered the original "map" had looked like Bill, with an elaborate secret code written inside of the triangle. Mabel's recreation in progress, even folded up into a complicated flap-covered square, looked a lot more map-like.

"Nope," Mabel said. "But Agent Powers doesn't seem like a very silly guy. I need to dumb it down for him."

"I suppose he probably isn't the kind of person to fold a century-old map into a paper hat." He continued rummaging through his bookshelf. He'd already provided Mabel a copy of the museum's floor plan, and now he needed to find a photo of the town graveyard.

"It's actually harder to make an easy secret map than a hard one," Mabel said, like a master puzzle maker explaining her craft. "For a hard one, you can do the trickiest things you can think of! But for an easy one you have to explain how it works, without being there to explain how it works, and you can't let them figure out it's being explained to them."

"You have to make it obvious without making it obvious you're making it obvious."

"Ex-act-ly. Hey, Grunkle Ford, when I'm finished with the map, is it okay if I use your coffee for paint?"

"For...?" Ford gave her a baffled look. "I suppose, but why coffee?"

"Staining the paper with coffee will make it look old! Super advanced art hack!"

"I see." Ford had the sneaking suspicion that the map smelling like coffee would somewhat ruin the effect; but all right, he wasn't the arts and crafts master who'd been put in charge here.

"Ah, here we go." He pulled out a book he'd filled with historical photographs of the town, flipped through it until he found a yellowed black-and-white picture of the graveyard, and set the book down on the desk by Mabel.

She gasped in delight. "Wow! Vintage scrapbooking!" She flipped through a few more pages. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised! Your journals are basically nerdy scrapbooks with a lot more words than normal. Did you take these pictures, Grunkle Ford?"

Most of the pictures were taken over a century ago. He felt old. "Er—no. I mostly got them from old newspapers in the library."

"Oh. That's fine! Collecting newspaper clippings is a respectable scrapbooking technique." She rearranged her map-in-progress to conceal the museum map within the paper's folds and reveal a blank canvas, and began drawing the graveyard. "Lots of scrapbookers do it! Moms whose kids are in the news, conspiracy theorists, serial killers..."

Ford supposed he was one of those things. He set his coffee mug down by Mabel's workspace. "Let me know if you need anything else." He retrieved the video camera from the worktable at the back of his study—Bill had said they'd need it at the museum—and, while he was back there, remembered he hadn't returned Mabel's sleepover video yet. He ejected the fresh tape he'd made for her.

As he carried it to her, she began to hum.

Cold terror shot up Ford's back. He'd grabbed Mabel's arm before he even realized he was moving.

She flinched. "Hey—?!"

As soon as he registered what he'd done, he let go and pulled his hand back. "Sorry!" He didn't even know why he'd done it. To stop her? To try to protect her? From a song? What had he been thinking?

Stupid question. He knew exactly what he'd been thinking: he's in her head.

"Sorry," he said again. "I just... Where... did you hear that song?"

She was leaning away from him now, shrinking into her chair. (Was she afraid? Had he scared her?) "Bill told me about it," she said.

Ford's stomach flipped. "Why?"

"It was a few days ago when he had to escape, and we didn't know if he'd be able to come back, so... he told me... to listen to the song, to remind me that we'd meet again..." Voice small, Mabel asked, "Is it a—bad song?"

Even as his heart still thudded against his ribcage, Ford felt guilt creep over his shoulders. He forced himself to swallow. "No, it's—the song is fine. Just... I'd appreciate if you didn't sing it."

Mabel said uncertainly, "Okay."

"I'm... sorry." Ford backed away from the desk, sat heavily in an armchair, and dropped his face into his hands to rub his eyelids. "It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong."

He could hear Mabel shift nervously in her seat. When he looked up, she'd reluctantly gotten back to work, dipping a paintbrush in Ford's coffee and smearing it around the map. Quietly, she asked, "It's something Bill did, isn't it?"

Ford took a deep breath in. "Bill decided serenading me was the best way to welcome me to his Fearamid. Right before he—demanded I tell him how to escape Gravity Falls."

Mabel stopped painting. "He didn't tell me that part."

"I suppose he wouldn't have."

Slowly, she asked, "Were you locked up? Somewhere you couldn't escape?"

What an odd question. "Er—yes. In what he called his 'penthouse suite'."

"Alone?"

"More or less. It was just the four of us: Bill, myself... two humans he'd turned into chairs..."

"Did he try to..." Mabel's words faltered for a moment. "Um... you know, like... win you over?"

Ford's stomach sank more with each question. "Ah."

The kids knew that he'd been Bill's prisoner, and that Bill had tortured him for information. That was the only thing he'd told them knew: he tried to torture it out of me. They were old enough to hear that much. They hadn't seen any wounds—Bill had made sure of that, effortlessly erasing Ford's wounds so he could inflict them all over again. But the kids had seen the singes and stains and tears in his clothes. They'd seen how jumpy Ford was the next few days; how he'd winced at aches not from the torture, but from how his body tensed and knotted his muscles in response to the fear and the memory of pain. They'd probably even been able to smell the torture, if not on him then on his clothing.

That was all they knew. They didn't need to bear any more weight from the knowledge of what Ford had endured.

Reluctantly, Ford said, "Yes. He did try to win me over. You know what he's like when he's trying to manipulate someone: he invited me to join his gang, offered me ultimate power, said we'd rule a lawless universe where we could do anything we want and all our dreams would come true, blah blah blah... I turned him down, of course." Mabel's interrogation had started light, but Ford knew what was coming next: and what did he do when you rejected his offers?

But there was a moment of silence; and then Mabel angrily smacked her paintbrush down on Ford's desk. "I knew it! That creep! Ough, I'm gonna..." She shoved back the chair and stomped toward the elevator, stopped herself, and stomped back with a loud groan of frustration. "Get it together, girl! It was a year ago. It can wait. Yell at him later." She dropped heavily into the seat, turned back to the desk, and huffed loudly.

Ford watched her, bemused. He appreciated her righteous indignation on his behalf and was glad she'd stopped asking questions when she did, but... "Knew what?"

"It's—" She shot him a guilty look; then set her jaw, turned away, and focused on the map. "If you don't know, you don't wanna know."

"Why not?"

Delicately, she said, "Because of... Bill bullsoup." She picked up her paintbrush and got back to weathering the map.

All right. There was Bill "bullsoup" he didn't want to share either.

Mabel asked, "Has he... been trying to get you to join him? Since he got here?"

Ford's blood ran cold. He didn't know why. Yes, Bill had tried; and been denied. Heck, Bill had been trying to get Mabelon his side harder than anybody else. So what was Ford worried about? "He has," he said, then corrected himself, "He did. I think he might have stopped. Now that he's no longer under the impression that you and I have a secret cult dedicated to him."

Mabel snorted. "I almost forgot that. He was so mad."

He was. But he'd gotten over his anger at Mabel pretty quickly; in fact, Ford didn't even know when he'd confronted her about it. On the other hand, Bill had hardly been willing to speak to Ford since then. Dragging him out during the eclipse hadn't helped, but... that certainly hadn't started it.

Why was Bill willing to forgive Mabel so easily but hold a grudge against Ford? "He hasn't tried to act friendly since then." Did he just think she was more fun? Had he finally decided Ford was too boring to tolerate when compared to Mabel's glitter and joy? Ford tried to keep his tone neutral as he said, "At this point, I almost feel like he'd rather see me dead than as his devotee."

But then—that wasn't true, was it? Because Bill had saved Ford's life.

But then... since Ford had spared Bill's life, he seemed more furious at him than ever. And Ford couldn't figure out why. It wasn't that Ford wanted Bill to like him any better, of course—of course.

He just didn't understand it.

"Then it's fine, I guess," Mabel said. "If it becomes a 'problem,' I'll let you know. I'm keeping an eye on him." Confidently, she said, "I'll be able to tell."

She probably would, Ford realized. He was beginning to feel like she understood Bill better than anyone else, in spite of how briefly she'd known him.

Ford had felt special once, over thirty years ago, when Bill had shown him the little crumb that had once been his home dimension. But now that he'd seen Bill cover an entire wall with a map of his home planet, its nations, and its nearest orbiting celestial bodies, just for Mabel... Ford was beginning to realize that was all Bill had ever given him: a crumb.

He tried to tell himself he wasn't jealous.

####

While the humans were busy with their assignments, Bill slipped away to his room to hide the envelope Soos had given him, filled with the unused wrappers and the fresh moss he'd harvested during the walk home. On another night, he'd sneak to the roof and lay out the moss to dry during the day—but not tonight, with all the humans awake. Still, it was nice to have some hallucinogenics in the house again.

After his first couple showers, Bill had quickly figured out the bare minimum amount of soap, shampoo, and scrubbing needed to get clean by the humans' standards; but the bathroom was still the one place in the shack where Bill could get full privacy without the humans feeling like they could just walk on in. He needed the humans to keep thinking he needed a full hour so they wouldn't check on him. So when he'd showered the previous night, he'd cleaned off as quickly as possible; sat by the door; focused his gaze on the bare bulb by the sink; and tried to meditate the anxiety away until someone knocked on his door and told him his time was up. The change Soos had made to the door meant Bill could get in and out of it by himself—but it also prevented the door from remaining ajar. It was always closed. With his mind magically blocked off from being able to tell the difference between a door that looked impassable and was impassable, the shut bathroom door made Bill nervous.

Tonight, he refused to take another shower. All human hygiene took was water and an unnecessary variety of soaps, the soaps were portable and he could get water as easily out of a sink as out of a bath tub. He washed himself up in the downstairs half bath with the curtain, scrubbing hard to ensure he got off all the makeup and any lingering evidence of that evening's tryst.

Then he steeled himself to the task of putting his hair back up.

Usually, Mabel would be more than happy to mess around with his hair, but she was busy with her own assignment. He wouldn't lower himself to asking any of the other humans for help. He'd handle it himself. Just a simple ponytail, he told himself. The kind of hairdo female humans used to convey that they cared about their hair when they really didn't. Easy. Gather it, get a band around it, you're done.

The Pines had removed the downstairs bathroom mirror to ensure Bill couldn't make blades from the glass. Bill wasn't sure if having the mirror would have made things easier—so he could see that the hair was sprouting out of normal human hair follicles rather than peeling flesh��or harder—since he'd have to make eye contact with the horrid misshapen alien beast in the mirror, all pores and nostrils and folds and flaps, and know that was him.

But since there was no mirror, there was no need for him to face the sink. He faced the toilet, lifted the lid and seat—he'd been getting less nauseous lately, but just in case—and attempted to comb his hair.

####

When Ford and Mabel came up, Bill was waiting in the living room, wearing black dress pants with a white button-up shirt under his hoodie, eyepatch flipped up so he could reapply his mascara. "Hey, it's about time! What took you?"

"You can't rush art," Mabel said. "What happened to your makeup? It looked so nice!"

"Agent Bermuda Triangle's already seen it. We don't want to give him any reason to get suspicious." He gestured at his sedate eyeliner, "I'm going for 'office worker who wants people to think she doesn't care about makeup but does care about her appearance.' How'd I do?"

"It looks boring."

"Thanks." He flipped his eyepatch back down.

Mabel handed over her masterpiece and Ford grabbed one half of the magic friendship bracelets before quietly heading out to the car. Bill was reluctantly putting on his half when Mabel caught his sleeve. "Heyyy buddy," she said. "We need to talk real quick."

"Oh, yeah?" A wary look entered his eye. "Then you'd better tell me what about real quick."

"Do you remember what you said yesterday about the best place for a first date?"

Bill frowned, puzzled. "Sure! Get your target somewhere they can't escape from until they love you and serenade 'em into submission."

"And can you tell me what you did with Grunkle Ford when you dragged him to the Fearamid."

"Used his petrified form as a backscratcher?"

"What?!"

Bill aparently realized that was not the answer Mabel was looking for—it was so much worse than the answer she was looking for—because he hurried on to reassure her, "Only for a couple days! Then I took 'im to the penthouse suite! Your uncle got the VIP treatment! I created some nice furniture, gave him a drink, played him a little piano music..." He petered out as he figured out where this was going. "Oh."

"Bill..."

"It's not what it looks like," he said quickly. "Locking people up and serenading them is like offering them their heart's desire: it works in tons of social situations, not just flirting!"

"I knew it!" Last summer, she hadn't even known that Bill and Ford had been friends until Weirdmageddon was over; but everything she'd learned about their relationship since then had been full of this weird jilted ex energy. The creepy stalker book that followed Ford around after Bill died, the weird thing with the omelet the night they captured Bill, the repeated attempts to recruit Ford to his side, the way Bill always got extra bantery around Ford, that one time Bill had told Mabel he'd decided to just believe Ford was his friend until it was true... "You didn't tell me that song was your love song to my grunkle, you creep."

"Wait, wait, wait! You've got this all wrong, kid."

"Don't gimme that! It's obvious. You're totally obsessed with him and always super weird around him. Yooou—" she gave his arm several accusatory pokes, "—have a crush."

"I'd rather just crush him," Bill said, with a grimace so convincing Mabel almost believed it wasn't fake. "I'm super weird at everyone, everywhere, 24/7! Stanford wasn't getting special treatment! The only reason I bothered with him is because he was the only person in the world who could get me out of the Nightmare Realm—that's what I was 'obsessed' with. Besides, I'd like to see you get murdered by some guy and not obsess over it a little bit! Trust me, he was just a pawn, a potential Henchmaniac at best! Anyway, all he brings to the table is an off-the-charts genius IQ and bad hygiene—and if that's what I wanted, I could get the same thing out of Waddles, and he's never gone on a thirty-year-vendetta against me—"

"You're doing that thing where you try to distract me by talking a whole lot." Mabel grabbed Bill's shoulders. "Listen. Bill. I'm totally in your corner in, like, life stuff. I want you to be happy. I wanna see you settle down with someone nice!" She tightened her grip. "But my family comes first. Grunkles before... before... um... grungles before triungles. And after everything you put Grunkle Ford through, he's off the list. Got it?"

Something shifted in Bill's face as it dawned on him that he wasn't talking to Matchmaker Mabel. "What a relief! I thought you were about to try to hook me up with that cretin." He didn't look relieved as he shoved her off and backed out of her grip. The way his nose wrinkled as he fought against letting his face twist into a full snarl, more than anything, looked like disgust. "He was never on the list. He's imprisoned me, insulted me, starved me, disrespected me, and murdered me. I'm not interested, I've never been interested, and ohhh—" he laughed harshly, "—has he ever made sure I'm never gonna be interested."

To her surprise, she didn't think he was lying. Maybe lying about how he used to feel—it wasn't that long ago that he'd admitted he was trying to manifest a friendship with Ford through sheer willpower—but he wasn't lying about how he felt now. What had changed?

"Bill?" Ford's whisper sounded too loud in the dark. He'd apparently doubled back when he realized Bill wasn't following, and was now anxiously peering around the corner. "What's the hold up?" Lurking in the dark somewhere behind Ford was the agents' black car, and Ford had his shoulders hunched up as if that could hide him from them.

Bill's eyes snapped from Mabel's face to Ford's without any change in his expression—and his look was so ferocious that Ford actually took a step back. Bill snapped, "I'm coming, keep your pants on," then hissed to Mabel, "Keep your crazy theory to yourself. I'm treated like scum already, do you know how they'll act if they think—"

"I wasn't gonna! I didn't even tell Grunkle Ford—"

"And for the record, being hated is my biggest turn-off. I don't even want to go to the museum with him, much less do anything else." Bill stormed past her. As he hopped off the end of the porch, he turned to walk backwards and gesture at Ford over his shoulder. "But thanks for reminding me how miserable this'll be!"

Ford shushed Bill; and as they disappeared around the corner, Mabel got the sinking feeling she'd made things worse—and Ford would probably be on the receiving end of it.

####

Dale and Trigger were still sound asleep in their car, knocked out by the sleeping pills Abuelita had dropped in their coffee, as Ford and Bill got in the car and headed to the museum.

####

(The first half of this chapter was written pre-TBOB, up to the point where Mabel puts two and two together and realizes Bill put Ford in the Love Cage™. I actually wasn't sure where to take that scene after Mabel finds out about the world's creepiest serenade from Ford, except that she oughta be getting pretty darn suspicious of Bill at that point; and I'd been needing an opportunity for her to confront Bill about her lingering background suspicions; so TBOB explicitly listing that as one of Bill's flirting strategies, when I already had a chapter about Bill's flirting techniques rough drafted, was perfect.

Beyond that, I only added a couple details post-TBOB: the "never date in a psych ward" line

I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this chapter! Next chapter is The Bill & Ford Show, and it's a big one for them, so look forward to that!)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #grunkle ford #ford pines #mabel pines #billford #(not QUITE... but we are creeping there)#gravity falls #gravity falls fic #gravity falls fanart #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher #(also for anyone like 'what the fuck is a dream hipster': he's one of the ghosts in journal 3.)#(he's like if freddy krueger used nightmares to tell bad puns instead of kill people)#(EDIT: now corrected so that Bill doesn't open a door.)

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