#no mabel just thinks its SO COOL

[235uranium]

lost the post I meant to rb but tattooed ford >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[sideblogdotjpeg]

learned the term "knitworthy" from the patreon comments . anyway. the polycule does NOT respect the fiber arts grind

[mbat]

also tbh if i ever did make a relativity falls au where mabel was the author, i wonder how different the concept would be between bill staying as a man or if i made him a woman instead

i just feel like a small change like that would affect how the whole thing felt by... a lot

[thegirloffans]

I'll do you one better; add Okoye and make it The Falcon and The Winter Soldier style where they have to work together and become friends at the end 🩵❤

She deserves her own disney plus show

[baalzebufo]

oh yeah... redrew my older pines designs + also gideon is here because I like him and will inflict him on everyone. probably in their early 20s here, I didnt think too hard about the specifics. also some headcanons

dipper started testosterone finally so he's got the classic 'shitty little puberty stache' and also hes breaking out w acne bit. wears a lot of denim on denim. him and wendy swap hats every summer its their tradition. he has a bomber jacket with lots of alien and cryptid patches. sometimes he has kind of a mullet going on

mabel regularly chops all her hair off in the mirror with some scissors whenever the impulse hits so at any given point of her life it can be either waist-length or a buzzcut. she got into making kandi and has a bunch of themed cuffs. rhinestones. sparkles. thats a tamagotchi necklace

gideon has embraced his inner cowboy and got some riding chaps ostensibly because he has a motorcycle now but also because he thinks he looks cool. his bolo tie is a replica of his old cursed variant because fiddling with it is a comfort to him. hes got a custom leather jacket with his star embroidered on the back

hes also so tall because. well honestly my headcanon is he has an insane growth spurt in his teens. have you SEEN bud gleeful? he's huge. hes got Big Dude Genes. also honestly i just think its funny if he goes from being knee-high to 6 feet tall in the space of like, 6 months.

(i was gonna add other characters to this but i got distracted so thats for another time)

[pix-writes]

Can you do a finger HCs for Ford pls? SFW/NSFW if you can include both

Ford's fingers HCs (sfw and nsfw below, so 18+)

SFW

Ford still has a little apprehension about his polydactly, some still remark on them or think he's freaky and constant childhood bullying and exclusion is no joke! So whilst he knows that he is not ashamed of them himself, he can't help but be tense at people's first responses to them either. Still has a habit of hiding them by standing with his hands behind his back most of the time.

Mabel's pure acceptance of his hands has undone some more of his insecurities and he definitely lets her paint them on occaision and he likes it a little, it's nice to feel acceptance. And if anyone comments on his hands when they are painted, he can just redirect the conversation to his niece to dodge their questions. Sometimes judgemental people are so focused on the fact that an older man has nail varnish on that the six fingers thing escapes their notice! "My grand-niece did these, she's so talented!"

In a relationship, he loves that you either a) didn't notice his six fingers at first b) forget that he has polydactly c) just thought that they were cool/interesting (a bit like Mabel did). Ford is the best person to hold hands with and somehow he doesn't know this? He has an extra finger space so when he holds your hand he totally envelops your five fingered hand with his! Will definitely gain more confidence about holding hands with you if you say this.

Everyone thought he would be a skilled musician because of his fingers (and that he was always good at physics) but he wasn't that great at it, had piano lessons at school but never did as well as the music teacher thought he should. Did play marching band with a woodwind instrument though. But he did learn this cool trick of rolling dice between his fingers, during his time in the portal ended up getting better at slight of hand, usually to do with shuffling cards (was more of his brother's forte though).

NSFW

Ford has pretty dextrous fingers and is pretty good with his fine motor skills, if you know what I mean! His touch can either be firm or delicate and his hands are also pretty big, being an over 6ft stocky guy, so his hands are likely to swallow yours up in comparison! All of this to say, he's good at fingering you. Is at least slightly aware of hurting you because of his fingers being larger than yours and long, but he also has a lot of patience, will open you up with care and curl his fingers in just the right way to stimulate your g and a spot, in ways you can never quite recreate by yourself!

Likes to see you take three of his fingers whilst his thumb brushes over your clit. Or if you're male, to see you take his fingers whilst he also has his other hand wrapped around your cock. Likes to run his hands all over your body, and thread his fingrs through your hair, if he can.

His extra finger does give him a little greivance though, he has learnt over time to do hand massages on himself, to help with some of the cramps he gets when he writes for extended periods of time, and that sort of thing. But it means he can do the same to you on your hands or feet, maybe you can also encourage him to massage your shoulders a little! His fingers can help dig into those knots and its pleasurable, will either get you in the mood or it can be something he offers as aftercare.

[year2000electronics]

what do u think of relativity falls... o.o

I LOOOOVE IT especially with the 2024 resurgence, people are coming up with some REALLY fun variations on it!! a lot of swaps seem like theyd be set in stone, right, but just like how i think that gideon is better suited as a mabel equivalent in reverse falls, ive seen people have a LOT of fun justifying why they do certain swaps! like ive seen ones where abuela is the soos equivalent and others where lazy susan is, ones where candy is the fiddleford and ones where pacifica is the fiddleford its neat

i also noticed a lot of people are toying around with dipper and mabels role in the au and questioning just how much one twin would steal the other's identity, like what that entails- ive seen trans interpretations of it one way or both ways are all ways and I LOVE THEM ALL. ive even seen people make mabel the ford equivalent and IT MAKES SENSE SOMEHOW?! cant you just imagine a badass old lady travelling the multiverse? isnt it COOL??

idk whether i like mabel as the stan or mabel as the ford better though, because ive always had such a soft spot for zany grauntie mabel and her getting to bond with the stans its so cute.

heres an Old Dipper and Old Mabel just impromptu... dippy would have to look like a cross between indiana jones and a ghostbuster i know it

i do have to say, though, my current favourite new addition to relativity falls has to be with the fact that nobody really knew what to do with bill before, he was left mostly the same, but ive seen people saying that his parents would replace him in the story and OH MY GOD IM IN LOVE WITH THAT CONCEPT.

the idea of scalene and euclid being a tag-team of like, killer demons who have a touch of interdimensional baby fever so they keep trying to pseudo-parent the stan twins and spoiling them rotten while chastising dipper and mabel like terrible parents who spoil your grandkids. its kinda a crazy fun vibe

[scottingmysummers]

KNUCKLEHEAD

-a Stan Pines angst one shot-

words- 1378

(A/N: very rusty on my fic writing so take it as u will 😁 also leave me and my obsessive use of metaphors alone)

‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋

Stan hadn’t smoked in years. When he first arrived in the sleepy little pacific northwest town, after the incident, he gave it up to keep the appearance of his brother. Cold turkey was tough, or maybe it was just the stress, but either way he was sick as a dog for weeks until the withdrawal had its fill of wracking his body. But now he sat on the back porch of the shack, a cheap and aged cigarette between his fingers. He was surprised he could even find the pack- he had tucked it behind a loose baseboard in his office and even covered it with his rug for good measure.

The worn couch hugged his hips, the fabric rough underneath him. He had spent many nights out here, listening to the birds, mind replaying the last time he saw Ford. The way his six fingered hand reached desperately for him, the way he screamed out his name, the echo of the book hitting concrete. He memorized every part of the scene- the calluses on Ford’s palm, the way his beard was disheveled, the broken test dummy in the corner. The deafening silence that followed was the worst; He heard it in his sleep. The crackling of the broken portal, his heart pounding against his chest. Burnt flesh and fear, the weight of his actions settling on him like a bloody crown of thorns.

He blew out smoke. His eyes followed as the cool night air wafted it up into the stars. For a moment, he was ten years old again. The sand of the New Jersey beach was cold, and Ford was explaining how matter is not created nor destroyed. Everything is made up of atoms that have been around for millions of years. When you think something is gone, it’s essence lingers always, never truly leaving. That simple memory stuck in his mind. He would still give anything to sit on the beach again, his only care in the world was what he and Ford would have for dinner and what they would do tomorrow. Together.

Even with Ford’s return, everything was..different. Stan didn’t know what he expected, but this? Ford was the same loser he grew up with, but he was worn. Serious. Whatever he went through in that portal messed him up, and part of Stan ached that he didn’t get the portal finished sooner. Maybe he could’ve saved his twin from his fate.

“Stanley?”

Stan coughed out smoke, holding the cigarette to his side and squinting to see who was standing in the dark doorway. He half expected Soos or Mabel, tensing once he saw Ford. Stan leaned into the couch, lounging and acting like it didn’t matter at all that Ford was there. They had fought every single night about something- about Dad’s funeral, about the shack, about the kids. Their relationship was a frayed cord, ready to snap at any moment, and Stan’s hands tore from trying to keep the ends together.

Stanley gave a grunt, taking another drag of his cigarette. “That’s the same brand Mom smoked,” Ford mused, standing still in the doorway. Stanley lifted his fingers to look at the cigarette. He hadn’t even realized. “Huh. Guess it is.”

“…May I sit?”

“Knock yourself out.” Stan shrugged, scooting across the couch. His chest was tight underneath his worn muscles, but he blamed it on the nicotine.

Awkward, tense silence filled the air between them, The wall was thick- another reminder that the twin they both once loved was lost to time and circumstance. “Can we talk?” Ford broke the silence. Stan gave a nod, keeping his eyes trained on blades of burnt grass by the edge of the splintered porch.

Ford took a deep breath, tapping his fingers on his leg. His posture was perfect, his back stiff and upright. It pissed Stan off; It was just another way Ford was better than him. “…How did you put together the portal like that?..”

Stanley was caught off guard by the softness in his brother’s tone. He hadn’t heard that since the day before he was kicked out, all those years ago. The catalyst to his wasted life. His jaw tensed and he brought the cigarette back to his lips, speaking through smoke. “What, didn’t think I could do it?” he huffed back, not even looking at Ford.

Ford’s silence was all he needed to know. Of course Ford didn’t think Stan could do it. He was the dumb sibling. He was a con man and a mistake, the bottom of the barrel scum while Ford was the genius. The air of superiority that floated around his twin put a sour taste in Stan’s mouth. Stan put the cigarette out on the bottom of his heel, just like their mom used to do. He was a Mama’s boy always, even when he was literally dead to her.

“Shit, It wasn’t hard to do. You aren’t as groundbreaking as you think, Poindexter,” Stanley lied with an eye roll. Teaching himself advanced physics and high level science was the hardest thing he had ever done. He had to actually apply himself for the first time in his life, and it was all for Ford. Everything he did was for Ford.

He felt Ford tense beside him. Was it annoyance? Frustration? Disappointment? Stan could no longer read the shell of his brother. “That's..incredibly impressive, Stanley.” Ford murmured, picking at the skin of his fingernails. A nervous habit, though his stoic face betrayed it.

“Yeah, whatever. You gonna thank me now?” Stanley leaned his head back against the couch, arms extended over the back. He couldn't help the bubble of rage that filled his chest at Ford’s inability to answer. So simple, two words to justify the three decades Stan relentlessly spent cooped up in that basement.

Stan scoffed, pushing himself up from the couch. His joints ached, his age only helping fuel his rage. “Of course not. Stanford Pines doesn’t thank anybody.” He hissed. Ford’s expression darkened, sitting up a little from the couch. “That’s enough, Stanley.” He warned, “I told you how dangerous it was bringing me back.”

“I saved you from whatever hell you were in! And you can’t even pretend to be grateful?!” Stan’s voice raised, and he was sure the twins could hear the argument. In this light, Ford looked just like their dad. In a blink, Filbrick Pines was glaring at him through his bushy grey eyebrows.

Stanley blinked rapidly, dispelling the thought. He clenched his jaw. “I’ll show you dangerous!!” Stan roared, pulling up his sleeves. Ford stood up in response, a vein in his neck bulging. “Stanley, you knucklehead, you’re going to wake up the kids!!” The word was like a trigger. Knucklehead, knucklehead, knucklehead. His dad’s favorite word to describe him. It filled his bones with a heat he hadn’t felt for 30 years. He gave his life to Ford, and this was how he repaid him?? With snide remarks and side eyes??

Stan’s hands gripped his brothers shoulder before he could think- he was never good at doing that. His fist collided with the nose identical to his. The punch was filled with years of rage and emotion. Ford stumbled back, hand over his face and blood dripping through his fingers.

You could cut the intensity with a knife. Stan stood, panting, hands clenched. Ford deathly silent. Moments passed like that, wondering how their relationship ever became like this. How did the two boys repairing a pirate ship turn into two men glaring at each other in the darkness.

“Goodnight, Stanley.” Ford huffed out, holding his bloody nose. He shoved him with his shoulder as he walked past, disappearing into the shack that used to be his own. “Pfft. Yeah. Run away like you always do, Stanford! That’s always worked out for you!” Stan yelled back. He sat back down on the couch, huffing and rubbing his bruised knuckles. The birds continued their chirping, and the sounds of the forest resided around him. He put his head in his hands, unable to stop the hot tears of frustration. Ford wasn’t the same- hell, neither was he- but was he really that bad?

Maybe he’d be the same fuck up knucklehead forever.

[phi8]

Recently rewatched Gravity Falls with its resurgence online, and I was itching to give my take on an older Mabel with an absolute unit of a Waddles (who is a regular farm pig after all). To go along with this, I also wrote some fanfic: a letter from Dipper to Mabel, about his return to Gravity Falls years after the show. Read it on AO3 or below!

Dear Mabel,

I hope everything is going well back home!  I miss you already, but it’s so good to be back in Gravity Falls too. A  lot has changed since our summer here.

The first week of my internship at McGucket Labs has been amazing. McGucket has really transformed Northwest Manor into a fantastic campus (though he still insists everyone call it “the Hootenanny Hut”)! There are so many  brilliant scientists and engineers here, and most of them have a refreshingly open mind about the nature and use of all the weirdness you can find in Gravity Falls. My experience with all that stuff is already paying off big time. Yesterday some PHD dude asked for my opinion on practical applications of necromancy (I told him it was a bad idea)!

Candy says hi by the way! It’s funny, for me this internship is all the way across the country, but for her it’s practically in her back yard, even though we both got that scholarship. Also, she tells me Grenda is more or less officially part of the Austrian aristocracy at this point? Apparently she and that Marius duke guy got engaged, did you hear about that?? Turns out I’m completely out of the loop with your friend group.

Candy and I have been hanging out with, of all people, Pacifica and Gideon. Can you believe it? Pacifica works at Corduroy Lumber these days. Probably in some misguided sense to get back to her roots, but I think it’s doing her some actual good. Working with her hands has been teaching her valuable life lessons I guess. It makes it a bit weird if Wendy also comes hang out, because she’s technically Pacifica’s boss – but you know Wendy’s cool about that.

Gideon is still running the Tent of Telepathy, so, not all winners. But he’s turned into a more lovable kind of swindler I think, like a younger Stan. He’s honestly kinda funny now (except that he’s taller than me). Wendy also told me he has a thing for Pacifica, and once she did, I couldn’t unsee it. He’s all over her! Pacifica hasn’t noticed, even though they spend a lot of time together. Or maybe she just hasn’t deigned it with a reaction... Either way, both of them are a ball to go for a drink with, whoda thunk.

You also have a lot of hugs from Soos, Melody and the baby (Stan Jr is sooo cute). (Yes, I asked. Melody promised to make you godmother of the hypothetical next child. You owe me.) The Shack is as charmingly ramshackle as it was back when we were here, but Soos finally got the old man stink out. I’m staying in Grunkle Ford’s old secret office because our room was converted to baby chamber. I still haven’t gotten the Bill murals completely off the walls and I have no natural light down here, but I spend most of my time at Northwest Manor the Hootenanny Hut anyway.

Or in the woods! Being back here really was a good move for my Youtube channel, there’s so much more supernatural stuff here than in California, and people are loving it. (I saw you liked my last video, thanks!) I’m currently tracking down what I think is the actual Gobblewonker. I analyzed some detritus samples from the lake, and there were feces from a large reptile present. From what we know, none of the dinosaurs in the mine were aquatic, so my current hypothesis is that it’s an unrelated creature. Especially since, according to my research, the Gobblewonker story dates back at least a century. I also gotta show Ford some of my findings. You know they’ve come across some aquatic monsters in the Bermuda Triangle. (Have you also been getting his mails with scans of the fourth journal? Truly fascinating stuff.) Either way, I’ll keep you posted, and you’ll be able to watch the result online.

Give my love to mom and dad, and Waddles a tummy rub! Awkward sibling sign off, Dipper

PS. Along with the photo’s in the envelope is that stuff you wanted. Be safe with it! There’s a reason it’s illegal in the parts of the forest controlled by the gnomes. But also have fun, I have it on very good authority it’s the good stuff.

[fangirlingpuggle]

reading your entire prism pines au bc its so cool !!!!!! and as a fan of addams family esque shenanigans i was thinking. what if they all just ruled the world together. what if evil :) what if. what if they just took like a few chosen mortals and made everything weird for funzies. idk i have brain fog so bad all the time

Thank you so very much! I am so glad you like the AU.

Ooooh all evil AU...humm think i'd be uber chaotic, can see evil Ford and Bill going for multiverse overtaking dimensions and kids chilling on earth Mabel in star form having sky being complete Mabel land only evil and then Dipper inside endless eldritch forest finding all the secrets, like the gravity falls weirdness turned up to the max.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

blorbos are how we are coping with current events

so uh. here’s a few nice lighthearted gravity falls headcanons for you all (and yes there is a lot of ford centric ones here. no negativity about him on this post, please. preferably not about anyone else featured here either)

-both stan twins are trans. shermie was the first one they told about this, and he’s been immensely supportive of them. he started referring to them as ‘boys’ whenever he could, especially when filbrick was around (‘you boys ready?’ and stuff like that). even though the twins haven’t seen him in a while, and his relationship with ford is a little strained, they both still feel safe around him

-shermie’s daughter, the mother of the mystery twins, is transmascfem. they’ve always been much closer to her than to their father. it was her idea to get a cat, and she let the niblings pick it out. they collectively named it ‘smoky’

-both mystery twins are trans as well. as soon as he knew, stan made damn sure they were aware of his support for them. mabel told ford she was trans before dipper did, and he made sure they both knew he would support them as well

-the stan twins get a ship cat with polydactyl and name him icarus. he was supposed to work as pest control, but ford babied him too much so now he’s just there for emotional support

-upon figuring out how cellphones work, ford took an immense liking to the camera function. he frequently sends stan and the niblings pictures of anomalies, animals, or just cool stuff he finds

-stan keeps his cool when being insulted, but absolutely cannot stand it when the same happens to his family. type of guy to go ‘ok’ when you tell him he sucks, and then turn around and threaten to murder you when you say the same to ford or the niblings

-gideon is an exception. gideon crossed the line with mabel and now stan can’t help but get irrationally angry every time he sees or hears him

-ford isn’t as good at math as people tend to thinks he is, and he is. so anxious about someone finding that out

-ford has maladaptive daydreaming disorder, and so does mabel

-ford initially bought the painting in the attic of a ship in a storm because it reminded him of stan

-melody and soos got a tabby cat and named it metronome. soos chose the name because it was similar in theme to ‘melody’ and cause he thought it sounded cool. melody calls the cat ‘bloop’ and at this point it probably thinks that’s its actual name

-mabel uses exclusively edible glitter due to all the pets in her life (waddles, smoky, icarus, metronome)

-mabel helps pacifica realize that she’s transmascfemneu. this makes pacifica think about things a lot, and eventually she ends up in a qpr with mabel (featuring candy and grenda as wingmen)

-wendy is bigender and enby

-ford nearly cried the first time stan made pancakes after the portal

-it’s become a running bit to call ford anything but his name and at this point he’s just given up on correcting people and chosen to embrace it

-robbie’s first name is actually robin. his friends started calling him robbie when he came out as trans and the name just stuck. he’s still very attached to ‘robin’ though and has no problem being called that as well

-stan repaired his old winter jacket, though he doesn’t wear it any more. ford sometimes does

-because stan runs hot and ford runs very cold, ford has a tendency to come up to stan and hug him under his coat. stan is fine with this, despite his grumblings about ford just doing it to steal some warmth

-ford experiences cuteness aggression to the max, while stan really doesn’t at all. icarus has experienced both threats of being eaten/crushed and ford screaming into his fluff

-icarus has separation anxiety with ford

-stan doodles on ford a lot. the only rule is nothing on his face and do NOT touch the neck tattoo (destroyed as it may be from weirdmaggedon). yes, stanley, the all-star one. get that smug smile off your face- stop laughing-!

-ford’s sleep schedule has significantly improved since getting icarus. this is mostly because he sometimes falls asleep while waiting for icarus to move off his lap (can’t move til the cat does, y’know how it is)

-stan loves loves LOVES sunny cloudy days. they remind him of running across the beach with his brother, and watching the niblings throw water balloons at each other, and hearing his twin laugh as he tells jokes on the stan o’ war ii

-stan had ford custom engrave his lighter. he thinks it looks cool as shit

-ford has made several smoke bombs for stan. he has no clue what he keeps using them for, but he likes building things, so he doesn’t mind

-mabel has set up three music playlists for the stans. one only for ford, one only for stan, and one that’s visible to both where they can both add music

-mabel introduced ford to breakcore and noisecore. she was very surprised that he liked the two genres

-ford is agender and anattractional

-stan’s favorite smells are cinnamon, bergamot, and saltwater

-stan made sure to always have supplies to make brownies and hot chocolate on the ship in case of them need some mood lifting

-ford has a plaid weighted blanket. the cat laying on top of him every night also helps

-ford made sure stan got a good mattress that would work with his back before they set sail. stan argued with him the entire time, but he has been waking up in less pain since then

-ford always ends up hogging the blankets in any bed. more cover = better in his unconscious mind. stan doesn’t really mind too much, but he would like to keep at least one blanket some time

-ford makes a startlingly good seagull impression

[astro-b-o-y-d]

Triangulum - Chapter 6 - Strife of the Party

(Content warning; contains blood, gun violence and other potentially-upsetting themes. Reader discretion is advised)

— — — — — — —

Calling the walk to the bunker uncomfortable would be the understatement of the—Century? Millennia? Googolplex? Going off previous experiences that might rival it, Bill could vaguely recall a memory about five-thousand years back where he had dared Keyhole to ask Pyronica out on a date, despite them both knowing about 8-Ball's insatiable crush on her. A dare that Keyhole had responded to with a hesitant “I dunno, Boss, that seems kinda dangerous…” before reluctantly attempting it anyway.

Regardless of the exaggerated length of time—or any hypothetical superior understatements that might’ve left Keyhole with burn marks around his keyspot and Bill a giggling mess of schadenfreude—it was still an uncomfortable walk. Not only was Bill once again bound by unicorn-hair rope, but he didn’t even have the luxury of being tied to a chair this time. He simply dangled in Ford’s grasp like some kind of cheap luggage bag as the two of them trekked deeper through the woods towards their destination.

Bill tensed against the binds that restrained him. Speaking of which—

The bunker had been one of Ford’s more interesting projects, brought on by Bill’s own half-truth of a Dimension of Weirdness that lay parallel to the current one. His so-called assistant—Bill thought with as much metaphorical venom as he could muster—had suggested the idea, as a means of keeping themselves safe from any strange beings from said parallel dimension, while also granting them the ability to study such beings at a safe distance.

Clearly it had all been for naught; there was no way some half-baked hole in the ground and a few dozen gallons of liquid nitrogen would be enough to restrain anything that might’ve poured out of the Nightmare Realm—whether it was one of the lesser creatures, any of the Henchmaniacs, or even Bill himself.

Although the idea of someone like Zanthar being squeezed into one of those tubes was humorous enough to get an internal chuckle out of Bill. He sure would’ve at least let them try, if for no other reason than giving the big guy some enrichment—

“We’re here.”

Ford’s words pried Bill from his thoughts as the two of them came to a stop before a tall oak tree. To the uninitiated, it would appear to be an ordinary tree without any special characteristics to differentiate it from the rest of the surrounding forest.

To those who knew better—

“So tell me, Poindexter—” Bill began, his gaze traveling up and down the trunk. “How do you plan on reaching the lever with me in your hand?”

Ford didn’t respond, a hand pressed to his chin as he also stared at the tree in studious thought. After a few seconds passed without any answer, Bill let out a cackle. “Haha, you didn’t even think of that, did you?”

Despite Ford’s expression souring further from the mockery, he kept his attention fixed solely in front of him as he silently contemplated his options—

“Grunkle Ford!”

—until the sound of another voice spun him around, just in time to see Mabel stepping out from between a pair of trees. “Woah, you got here fast!” she said, breathing heavily as she slowed to a stop before them. “I mean, I guess you built the bunker, so it makes sense that you know all the best shortcuts to get here super quick—”

“Oh heeeeey, Shooting Star!” Bill interrupted cheerfully. “Thought you were busy prepping for the big party tonight?”

Upon being addressed by Bill, Mabel’s initial excitement vanished in an instant—a twisted glare in his direction taking its place. “Wendy and Dipper are prepping for it in my place!” she insisted, arms folded squarely across her chest. “And it’s gonna be so cool and awesome and amazing and you’re not invited!”

“Color me wounded,” Bill said with playful sarcasm. “Also wow, you really left Pine Tree to take care of party preparations? That’s like dropping a blobfish in the Sahara and expecting it to do anything else but shrivel up and die!” He tilted his head with a grin. “But hey, watching him flop around helplessly in the scorching desert sand would probably be twice as funny! Haha!”

Much like he had done with Bill’s previous tauntings, Ford kept his gaze fixed on what was in front of him—or in this instance; who—with the only reply he could muster up for a few minutes being several blinks of sheer confusion. “Mabel,” he finally managed to vocalize. “What are you doing here?”

Despite the ire she had directed at Bill, her smile was genuine as she turned back to Ford. “Oh! I’m here to help you get into the bunker!” she explained, tilting her own head to one side to peer around him towards the waiting tree. “I figured you’d need an extra hand to reach the lever, so you could keep yours on Bill!”

“He~ey, just what we were talking about!” Bill piped up, flashing his teeth at Ford. “Wow, can’t believe she thought about that before you did! You must feel pretty dumb right now, huh?”

Mabel shook a finger at him. “You shut up, it’s an easy mistake to make! And…and since I did think of it, that just means he actually has someone to help him do it!”

Ford continued to stare at her in wordless bewilderment, his emotions darting in as many different directions as his thoughts. Anger and irritation towards Bill’s…well, general existence, concern over Mabel interacting with him—terrible idea all around, he had to put a stop to it as soon as possible—

“Anyway yeah, like I said: I’m here to help you get into the bunker!” Mabel’s voice continued through Ford’s internal struggles. “Or just generally help you in any way I can, since Dipper, Wendy and I also thought you could use someone else to keep an eye on Bill while you work on all the techy-tech stuff in the security room.”

She gave a casual shrug. “I mean, it’ll be hard to keep an eye on him AND dismantle all the dangerous walls that wanna squish you at the same time, right?”

“Hey now, that’s a good point!” Bill said. “I didn’t even think of that second one, which probably means Sixer didn’t either~!”

He shifted his gaze back towards Ford with a delighted little wriggle against his restraints. “And I know I wouldn’t mind the company~! I’ll bet she’d be a lot more talkative than you were last night!"

“Nuh-uh!” Mabel insisted. “If you think I’m gonna talk to you or listen to anything you say, you’ve got another thing coming, you…you—”

A huff as she crinkled her brow. “Well, I could say the word I wanna say, but I don’t want to overuse it! But the point is you’re a massive jerk and a dummy and I’m not gonna listen to you or talk to you!”

While she stuck her tongue out in Bill’s direction—to which he responded with a sarcastic “That’ll show me.”—Ford’s grip on the rope tightened. Okay, enough thinking; he had to speak up. “Mabel, I appreciate you wanting to help me, but this isn’t a game,” he said, tone rigid. “Dealing with Bill is—”

Ford’s voice hitched in his throat as he forced himself to not make eye contact with the bundle in his fist, one whose wicked grin was assuredly widening further by the second. “—I think it would best for the best if you returned to the Shack.”

At Ford’s answer, Mabel’s tongue slid back into her mouth with a quick little ‘thwip’. “I know it’s not a game,” she insisted. “That’s why I want to help! Having someone around to help you will make things so much easier!”

“Psh, do you realize who you’re talkin’ to, kid?” Bill asked. “Pretty sure you’ve gotten several up-close-and-personal looks at the last guy who tried to help him! Haha, pretty sure that hillbilly jerk regretted getting his memory back when he remembered why he tried to get rid of it in the first place!”

He tilted his head. “Oh, no—wait, forgot about your pathetic brother and all the ‘help’ he provided last year! Sorry, he’s just soooo unmemorable that his presence always slips my mind—”

As Bill droned on—followed by a passionate scolding from Mabel in return—Ford forced his attention from them and back towards the waiting lever near the top of the tree.

As much as he hated to admit it, Bill had been right about him not thinking ahead and planning out a way to reach the lever once they’d arrived at the bunker. How could something that important have slipped his mind? He was lucky that Mabel had shown up when she did, otherwise he would’ve had to come up with another solution.

But that brought him to the main question—would it be wise to accept her help at all?

The last thing he needed was for her, or anyone else in the household to interact with Bill too closely. But she had raised an excellent point—if he let her take care of reaching the lever, then he would be able to keep a hand on Bill. She wouldn’t have to go near him or interact with him, which veered him closer to the side of approval.

Plus, Mabel was a strong girl for her age. A thought that sparked a warmth in Ford’s chest, one comforting enough to alleviate his concerns for a brief, few seconds. She was a Pines, after all—strength was practically baked into their DNA. And such strength, such heart, it was near identical to—

“Hey, you know, if the cat’s outta the bag on that bunker plan, I might have somethin’ that—”

“ No , Stanley.”

His shoulders tensed as a familiar Stanley-shaped cloud of guilt began to overtake his thoughts, one with an even-more-familiar Bill-shaped cloud baring its fangs closely behind. Fangs as menacing as the teeth that the real Bill continued to flash up at him with threatening delight. “You’ve gone awfully quiet there, Sixer. Got something you’d like to share with the class?”

“Grunkle Ford?” Mabel added with a look of concern.

With an exhale to banish such thoughts for the time being, Ford looked back at her again. Mabel was offering assistance, assistance that he—unfortunately—required. There was still the issue of her second request to address, but overall the pros seemed to outweigh the cons when it came to accepting her help for at least getting him into the bunker.

Help that she might’ve not had to offer at all if he had simply taken up Stanley’s earlier offer instead but—

“Alright, Mabel,” he finally said aloud, interrupting his own thoughts before they could fully take shape. “If you can get me into the bunker, it would be very appreciated.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bill chimed in with flat look, one that quickly morphed back into a look of amusement. “And notice how he didn’t actually confirm if you could come down to the bunker with us~! Guess he doesn’t appreciate you that strongly, Shooting Star!”

Mabel glared at him, before casting a hesitant look to Ford. “Do I have to go back after I’m done? I mean, don’t you still need someone to keep an eye on Bill after that?”

“We can discuss any further involvement on your end once the bunker’s open,” Ford said with a firm tone.

“Translation: he’s already decided that the answer is ‘no’, but he doesn’t want you to keep asking,” Bill piped up.

His remark earned another glare before Mabel turned back to Ford. “You promise we can talk about it afterwards?”

After a brief moment of hesitation—one too short for either of them to comment on—Ford finally responded with a nod of his head and a reassuring: “I promise we’ll talk about it. But in return, you have to respect whatever decision I make in the end. Is that fair?”

Mabel’s features scrunched with consideration, before her smile returned. “Alright, well, I guess that’s better than nothing,” she said, before snapping a glare at Bill. “And don’t you say anything else, or I will use that word I wanna use against you!”

Bill rolled his eyes. “I add an addendum to my earlier statement; color me wounded and threatened.”

An exaggerated huff was her reply as she turned to face the tree, tilting her head upwards. “Alright, the lever was that one branch waaaaay up there, right?” she asked, keeping her gaze lifted as she approached the trunk.

“That’s it,” Ford confirmed. “Do you think you can reach it without issue?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t help but notice that in all of Shooting Star’s braggadocio-ing, she has yet to mention how she actually plans to get to the lever in the first place,” Bill pointed out, followed by a wink in her direction. “Of course knowing her, I’ll bet she’s got some brilliant idea up her brightly-colored sleeves. Am I right~?”

Mabel crossed her arms with a sour look, but it was only a moment later that her features brightened again. “Actually, yeah, I do! Literally!”

With a grin, she reached inside her sweater sleeves and pulled out the rolls of streamers she’d stashed there earlier. “Ba-boom! Three rolls of Pink Mab-urple!”

Both Ford and Bill stared at her—varying levels of confusion present in their features—until their silence was broken by a cackle from Bill. “Haha, wow, she’s actually lost it!” he said, then corrected himself with a condescending look: “Oh, I mean—yes, Shooting Star! Please feel free to use paper-thin streamers to try and scale a tree! By the way, when you fall, be sure to aim for the nearest sharp rock you can find as a landing zone!”

“I’m not gonna use them by themselves!” Mabel insisted, and began to unravel them in her hand. “I’m gonna use them at the same time by braiding them together, ‘cause they’re stronger that way!”

“Braiding rope together does in fact increase its strength and durability,” Ford mused thoughtfully. “I suppose the same could possibly be applied to something as flimsy as paper streamers, if you use enough of them. Where did you learn that, Mabel?”

“Oh, I’ve been braiding hair since I was, like, five,” she said proudly, hands working away at weaving the streamers together. “Sometimes it was a braid train, sometimes I was just bored in class and messing with my hair for fun, sometimes it was with a braiding kit I got one year for my birthday…”

“Seventh one, right?” Bill guessed. “Gift from one of the girls in your class—said she got it for you in the hopes of ‘helping you fix that rat’s nest you call hair?’” 

He rolled his eyes. “Pretty rude of her to say when Mommy Dearest was paying out of house and home to take her to the fanciest salon in town every month to get her pretty blonde hair curled and rebleached.”

“I knew she wasn’t a natural blonde!” Mabel said with a look of vindication—

—one that vanished in an instant as she cast a nasty look towards Bill, before promptly turning her attention back to the streamers in her hand. And after a few moments, she finally held up her efforts for Ford to see; a decently-length braid of the streamers combined. “Ta-da! Streamer braid!”

She gave both ends a firm tug, to confirm that the braid would hold. “With this, I can get up the tree and to the lever!”

“How quaint,” Bill taunted. “Now why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and give it a go? Just remember; aim zone, sharp rock!”

“Go ahead, Mabel,” Ford said in a more encouraging tone. “Just be careful, alright?”

With a nod to Ford—and another irritated raspberry at Bill—Mabel approached the tree and looked up towards the waiting lever. It wasn’t too high—probably about halfway up the tree’s actual length—and a fall from that height wouldn’t cause much more harm than a few bruises. Maybe even less if she aimed for one of the nearby bushes—and not towards any rocks, Bill!

Despite all that, Mabel couldn’t pretend she wasn’t a teensy bit nervous.

Taking great care to focus more on how smug she could be to Bill about her success and less on the task itself, she wrapped the braided streamers around the tree and began her ascent up with slow, careful steps up the side. 

It was a struggle at some points, supporting her own body weight against the force of gravity. But hauling a heavy pig around for almost a year seemed to have paid off in Mabel’s favor, for it wasn’t long before she was in reaching distance of the lever. Despite how close she was, however, she kept her hands firmly on the ends of the braided streamers. She couldn’t exactly let go of them, otherwise she’d just fall back to the ground. Not a huge issue if she aimed for a bush, but she was pretty sure that Wendy had pushed the lever up with her axe last year. And how was she supposed to push the lever up if she couldn’t—

Oh, wait!

She shifted herself to cast a look back down at Ford—

—nope, bad idea! Way too high and she was suddenly remembering the brief period of time last year when she had a fear of heights!

She snapped her gaze upwards again with a deep, shuddery breath. Alright, this was fine—she could just talk to him without looking down! “Grunkle Ford?” she called, keeping her attention focused squarely on the branches above. “Does the lever only work if you push it up?”

“No, it should activate the stairs regardless of whether you push or pull it,” Ford called in return. “The lever was specifically designed in such a way that we would be able to either trigger the mechanism from the ground with a well-aimed shot of a crossbow, or simply climb up and pull it if we happened to leave said crossbow back at the house.”

“‘We’, he says,” Bill piped up. “And yet I have no memory of being included in that conversation.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

While they continued to bicker—or rather, Bill replied with some annoying remark while Ford fell silent again—Mabel turned back to the lever with a look of determination. Her initial theory confirmed, she bent her knees and launched herself upwards, grasping hold of the lever with one hand while the braided streamers fluttered off with the wind.

Sure enough, the weight of her body was enough to pull the lever completely downwards, and a rumbling noise suddenly echoed throughout the wood as the tree began to follow suit and descend down into the earth.

Luckily for Mabel, it eventually descended far enough for her to drop back to the ground without issue or injury, and both her and Ford—still clutching Bill tightly—stepped back in time for the tree to reveal the stairwell down to the bunker’s entrance. “Good work, Mabel,” Ford said with a proud grin in her direction.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re all so impressed,” Bill said sarcastically, before he batted his eyelashes at her. “Now hows’about you scurry on back to the shack while ol' Fordsy and I spent some more quality time together~?”

Ignoring him completely, Mabel cast a hopeful look to Ford. “Since I did such a good job, can I stay to help you with Bill?”

“That’s right, Sixer, you did promise her you’d talk about it after she was done,” Bill reminded him. “Don’t tell me you were actually trying to trick her into doing your dirty work and planned on sending her back to the shack with her tail between her legs this whole time!”

Ford had barely processed Mabel’s sharp reply of “Stop pressuring him!” before the concerns from before engulfed his mind once again, thoughts once again dancing around wildly as he attempted to figure out the best course of action.

He had promised Mabel, and he had no intention of breaking that promise. But Bill’s constant poking and prodding about the issue had raised a completely new concern in Ford’s head—was Bill deliberately trying to get him to turn down Mabel’s request?

Bill was a master at manipulation, and one of the many tools at his disposal in that regard was his ability to isolate someone. To convince them in any way he could to cut off any outside help, whether it be a lab partner, a family member, or anyone else who might potentially help them poke holes in his plans.

Maybe Bill was either trying to torment Mabel to the point of making her give up and return to the Shack, or annoy Ford to the point of sending her back himself—in the hopes of being trapped down in the bunker alone. 

Or perhaps the opposite was true and he was actually attempting reverse psychology—pushing hard in one direction to the point where it looked suspicious, forcing them to veer in the opposite direction. Another cherished tool to one skilled in the art of manipulation.

But why? Either way, what was his goal?

The answer to the former theory was obvious; Ford would have to keep Bill in the first room while he deactivated the security system. And with no one to keep an eye on him during the long stretches of time while he worked, Bill would be granted a large window of opportunity to escape his binds. A task that would probably be easy to accomplish for someone with Bill’s omniscience—Ford could vaguely recall one of Bill’s older stories about assisting Harry Houdini during his golden days.

As for the latter—with how little Ford had budged on giving him information throughout the past day, perhaps he was turning his efforts to someone more willing to talk. And while Ford loved and cherished Mabel dearly, even her mere presence here had already revealed more to Bill than he needed to know.

Sure, Bill’s jabs towards her could simply be chalked up to his usual Bill behavior. Perhaps he was simply bored and desperate to stir up trouble with the only method available to him at the moment; his words. 

But naturally, such observation was simply that—observation. And Ford could observe and theorize all he wanted, but he wouldn’t get anywhere unless he addressed the concern that had hoped to ignore in favor of focusing on the task at hand. The major concern that had loomed over his thoughts since the second they had found that strange, cackling child between the birch trees the previous evening.

What was Bill planning now that he was back?

The obvious answer was another attempt at Weirdmageddon, with ‘revenge on Ford and his family’ following closely behind. Outside of that, Ford had mostly focused his efforts into finding some way to get Bill out of their hair first rather than coming up with any clear answers. If he had succeeded in getting rid of Bill, finding those answers would no longer be necessary.

But his failed attempts across the past day and current interactions Mabel had unfortunately brought Ford to an inevitable conclusion—he had fallen right into a trap by not considering further possibilities sooner and was now forced to make a choice with two concerning, unpredictable outcomes.

Granted, such outcomes could always have minor and otherwise harmless results. But at the same time, he was dealing with Bill Cipher. A master of making fire-and-eyeball-spitting mountains out of molehills, whether they be literal mountains or metaphorical ones in the form of a person’s mind.

Regardless of his choice here, there was a good chance that he would not favor the outcome while Bill could twist it to his own advantage—

“Uh, hello? Earth to Ford? Thought you were gonna have a talk with her?”

Bill’s voice and the shrill laugh that followed pulled Ford back to the conversation, just as he continued with: “Like I said before, I’m all for the idea of letting her stick around.” He raised an eyebrow at Mabel. “But the real question is; are you willing to miss that big party of yours, Shooting Star?”

“I’ll miss a hundred parties if it means helping Grunkle Ford stop you!” Mabel said, shaking a fist at him before turning to Ford. “I’ll miss a hundred parties if it means helping you stop him!”

“Let me help you put that pointy jerk twenty feet back under the ground, and make it stick this time!”

His grip on the rope tensed as Stanley’s words washed over him once again. Whether or not this was truly a trap on Bill’s end was still uncertain. Perhaps Bill actually wanted him to let Mabel stick around and keep watch. Or perhaps he wanted Mabel to return to the Shack, and hoped his taunting would be effective enough to push Ford to that decision.

Regardless of whatever choice Bill actually wanted Ford to make, Ford knew which one he was going to make.

“I did promise we would talk about it,” he finally said aloud, mostly to Mabel. “I am impressed with how you managed to reach the lever all on your own. That was very impressive.”

Mabel waved him away with a humble smile. “Psh, I don’t deserve all the credit,” she said, once again holding up the rolls of streamers in her hands. “Pink Mab-urple did all the hard work! Although I guess it was named after me, so maybe I deserve MOST of the credit—”

“Regardless of how grateful I am, I still think it’d be best if you went back to the Shack. I can handle everything else from here.”

The words escaped Ford’s mouth as he spun back to face the entrance of the bunker.

“Wh—but Grunkle Ford!”

He could hear the sad faltering in her tone, one that gripped his heart tight. He was grateful he had turned around, he knew she’d have more of a chance to sway his answer if he had kept looking at her. “I said we could talk,” he continued, keeping his eyes forward. “And you agreed to respect my decision.”

“But—”

“I’ve given you my answer, Mabel,” he said, more firmly this time. “Please listen to me.”

Even with his back to her, he could clearly visualize the heartbreak in Mabel’s expression. Heartbreak so similar to the way Stanley had looked at him earlier when he had turned him down as well. Heartbreak he could—he would—apologize for later.

But for now…

Without another word, he disappeared into the depths of the bunker stairwell, leaving Mabel to stare at the tree alone.

— — — — — — —

The wooden steps creaked beneath Ford’s feet as the duo descended further underground, the sliver of light from the entrance eventually fading into darkness behind them.

At any other point, it would’ve been a great opportunity for Bill to crack a joke at Ford’s expense. In his current situation, however, one major concern had been lingering at the back of his mind throughout the entire trek to the bunker, interrupted by both their arrival and Mabel's sudden appearance.

In a matter of hours, he’d be stuck in one of the cryogenic tubes with no way out.

Put on ice, left to rot—and unable to play Birdbrain’s dumb game.

“You mean you haven’t figured out what’s happening yet?”

His brow furrowed as his thoughts drifted back to Tangy, and their visit in the Mindscape during Ford’s little fairy dust stunt. Oh, buddy, was he gonna need some time to sit and unpack all of that!

First of all, that sneaky jerk was clearly keeping tabs on his progress from wherever they were now. And much like invading someone's personal space, omniscience was only fun when he was the one behind the metaphorical screen. 

Bill Cipher wasn’t supposed to be the one to be on guard from an unseen entity behind the scenes. He was supposed to be the one to bring panic to others! To strike paranoia into their hearts and send chills down their spines. To make them glance worriedly over their shoulders—out of fear of being watched—as they trudged through the dark woods alone.

Barring that, Tangy had started to tell him something about his current vessel before Ford’s transfer spell had cut the conversation short. Something about his wrist?

He gave his arms a light tug against the rope that kept them bound at his sides. Welp—not like he could investigate that further at the moment, but it was definitely good to keep in mind.

In the meantime, he had to keep his focus on the matter at hand—getting out of Ford’s grasp before he was reduced to nothing more than a fleshy popsicle. 

A goal that would’ve been far easier to accomplish if Ford had actually let Shooting Star keep watch over him.

As tempting as it was to be left alone for hours on end—maybe with the occasional check-in from Ford at most—Mabel serving herself up on a silver platter had just been too good an opportunity for Bill to resist.

And it had taken all of his self-control to bite back his anger at Ford’s decision to actually send her back to the Shack. Come on, he had practically giftwrapped that bit of bait for Ford and had had the gall to go and turn it down?!

Granted, even he knew it was a stretch to outright ask Mabel to free him—heck, the only way he had gotten anything out of her last year had literally been through someone else. But that motor-mouth of hers was a liar’s goldmine; a treasure trove of information to exploit. It was one of her best qualities if Bill had to come up with a list—maybe second only to her overwhelming love of fun and her high levels of selfishness that resembled his own.

Even if she had no desire to cut his ropes herself, there would’ve still been plenty of ways for Bill to guide her hand towards the goal anyway.

But nope, Ford had to go and ruin that for him. Yeesh, either he was losing his touch or the old man was getting too wise to his tricks. Probably the latter.

He winced as the faint light of the overnight room finally came into view, shortly before Ford reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped inside. He lingered in the doorway for a moment—sadly Bill was clutched in Ford’s left hand, making it impossible to get a subtle glimpse at his expression and gauge his thoughts—before he continued onwards towards the old, dilapidated mattress near the wall.

So Sixer planned on leaving him there, huh? Alright, fine, Bill could work with that—no, wait, he was heading for the weapons locker first.

The possibility of torture crossed Bill’s mind for a fleeting moment; he definitely wouldn’t put it above Ford, and would—admittedly—almost respect him for resorting to such levels of cruel revenge. But the thought was dashed almost as quickly as it had appeared when Ford reached for another rope instead.

Nope, he was once again going for the excessive rope route. Ugh, just when Bill thought Ford had completely sunk to the bottom of the disappointment hole, he had pulled out a metaphorical shovel and was determined to dig lower.

Rope in hand, Ford moved to the mattress and let Bill’s body drop to it with a light thump—his free arm immediately wrapping around his legs before Bill had time to react, while the other hand quickly tied the rope around them. It was pointless to struggle, but that didn’t stop Bill from attempting it anyway until his legs were properly bound in place. And once Ford was satisfied, he rose to full height again and moved back to the weapons cabinet.

Oh, maybe this time he would fetch a weapon of sorts—wrong again, he was simply setting a moonstone on the shelf before slamming the cabinet door shut and moving to the opposite side of the room with a vial of mercury in hand.

At this rate, Sixer would hit the other side of the disappointment Earth with how deep he kept digging.

While Bill slouched unhappily against his restraints, Ford finished placing all the necessary ingredients before heading towards the large, red button near the door to the stairwell. And after a press—one that cause the entire main room to rumble as the above-ground entryway likely ascended back into place over their heads—he crossed the room to the tunnel entrance without so much as a look back at Bill.

“So you’re just gonna tie me up and leave me here for hours on end while you play mechanic in the next room, huh?” Bill asked aloud. “Better hope I don’t yell at the worst moment possible and scare you! One wrong step and it’s kersplats-ville!”

His remark did give Ford some pause, but after a moment, he climbed into the tunnel and pulled the latch shut behind him. Leaving Bill to lean back against the wall in a silent huff as his eyes scanned his dimly-lit surroundings.

Well, if he only had a few, precious hours to come up with an escape plan, then he needed to cherish every second of it and start brainstorming. Sure, maybe he didn’t have an easily-exploitable chump on hand to help in his endeavors.

But if the events of the last day had taught him anything, it was that no matter how dire the situation and no matter how hard Sixer tried to fight against it—lady luck always had a hand at the ready for Bill Cipher.

That, and maybe he could bust out a few of those tricks he’d taught ol’ Erik back in the day.

— — — — — — —

Despite Ford’s insistence to return home, Mabel remained where she stood for a few seconds longer. And after those few seconds of staring down at the darkened entryway where her great-uncle had gone, she turned away, took a couple of steps towards the direction of the shack—

—before she changed course for a nearby stump.

Hey, Ford had told her to go back to the shack—he hadn’t specified when she should go back. Not that she wanted to go back anyway, especially after Ford hadn’t actually kept up his end of the deal! Okay, yes, they’d kinda-sorta talked about it like he’d promised. But that wasn’t the same thing as talk-talking about it! Just because she still wanted to help him didn’t mean she couldn’t be a little annoyed about that!

After seating herself upon it with a stubborn harrumph, she fished her phone out of her pocket and flipped it open. Once her screen brightened, she brought up her list of text messages, gaze bouncing between the two most recent conversations.

The first was Dev—with a series of new texts he had sent while Mabel had been occupied with cleanup and decoration planning:

[ET Cutie <3: Hey, Mabel! Sorry I had to dash so quick for breakfast, hope you guys are having fun!] [ET Cutie <3: Also hope your Great-Uncle Stanford’s also not too busy with his work stuff to hang out!] [ET Cutie <3: I don’t care if he’s one of the most influential scientists in the field of supernatural and paranormal study, I’ll fight him for not spending time with the spe-] [ET Cutie <3: -cialest, prettiest, most amazing girl in the world!] [ET Cutie <3: Sorry, ran out of room in my first text.] [ET Cutie <3: …Please don’t actually make me fight him, you know I can’t fight.] [ET Cutie <3: …Please don’t actually make me fight him, you know I can’t fight.] [ET Cutie <3: Shoot, why did that send twice?] [ET Cutie <3: Whatever, you get my point. Love you! <3 <3 <3]

Mabel’s mouth curled into a smile—albeit one not entirely happy—as she hugged her phone to her cheek, before moving her attention down to the next group of texts. This one had been between her Dipper, their most recent exchange about two days old:

[Bro-Bro: Mom says we’re gonna be leaving for Gravity Falls around seven, so we’ve gotta go to bed early tonight in order to catch our bus.] Dipper had messaged to kickstart the conversation.

[Mabel: Is that code for ‘Time to leave Dev’s and come home?’] She had asked in return.

[Bro-Bro: You know it is.]

[Mabel: No prob, I was about to head out anyway!]

The conversation had been paused for a minute or two before she had sent her next text:

[Mabel: Actually, they also wanted to walk me home and talk to you about something.] [Mabel: One of your nerd club-type somethings.]

[Bro-Bro: It’s probably about their plans to try and snap some sky whale pics while they’re down at the coast.] [Bro-Bro: They mentioned wanting to borrow my camera last week.]

[Mabel: Or maybe they wanna just say goodbye to both of us at the same time before we’re gone for three months.]

[Bro-Bro: Either or!]

The thread had ended there, likely due to Mabel having tucked her phone into her pocket at the time to head home, hand-in-hand with Dev as she’d promised. Another smile tugged at her lips again—one that was unable to truly mask the wistfulness that was starting to overtake her features—as she typed out a new message:

[Mabel: Hey, Bro-Bro! So some good news!] [Mabel: I managed to get Grunkle Ford into the bunker, and he actually seemed pretty happy about it!!] [Mabel: Plus I did it by using streamers to scale a tree, which I think is a-PRETTY cool, if I do say so myself!!] [Mabel: Speaking of which, please send me pics of the Shack covered in streamers once you’re done!! I wanna see that beautiful mess of color that looks like a rainbow just died on the roof!!!!]

Before she could type out another reply, her phone buzzed as a text from Dipper came through:

[Bro-Bro: Morbid, but yeah, sure, I’ll send you some pics once we’re done.] [Bro-Bro: Does this mean Ford let you stay and help with Bill?]

[Mabel: Yeah, see…that’s the bad news.] [Mabel: He let me open up the bunker, but he didn’t let me go down with him.] [Mabel: I even pulled out the ‘he can’t watch Bill if he’s busy with the security room’ card and everything!]

[Bro-Bro: Aw man...] [Bro-Bro: So what’re you going to do then? Come back to the shack?]

[Mabel: I dunno, I still don’t want to leave him here all by himself.] [Mabel: Plus TECHNICALLY, he told me to return to the shack.] [Mabel: He never said I had to go back to the shack NOW!!! >:)]

There was a beat or two before Dipper’s next text:

[Bro-Bro: …You’re gonna sit outside the bunker and wait for him, aren’t you?]

[Mabel: Yeh-huh!] [Mabel: Now THAT’S a loophole dodge!]

[Bro-Bro: Cool, cool, so we should just go ahead and do the streamers for you then?]

[Mabel: You have my full permission! Again, dead rainbows! Morbid and horrible, but it gets my point across!] [Mabel: And I’ll let you know if anything changes out here.]

[Bro-Bro: Alright, keep me posted.]

[Mabel: Only if YOU keep me pic…ed. Send me pics is what I mean.]

[Bro-Bro: …I mean, I already said I would, didn’t I?]

[Mabel: Yeah, but I couldn’t resist the pun!]

Mabel lowered her phone to her lap again, but it was at least half a minute before Dipper sent another reply and she raised it again to investigate:

[Bro-Bro: Wendy also said to let us know if you need anything else.] [Bro-Bro: She knows sitting out in the middle of the woods without something to do can get SUPER boring.] [Bro-Bro: Plus the food situation’s kinda nonexistent unless you’re willing to kill something.]

Barely ten seconds had passed before another pair of additional texts followed:

[Bro-Bro: And while I know you are…just PLEASE let us bring you some chips or a sandwich or something.] [Bro-Bro: We can do that, Mabel. We can bring you actual food.]

Mabel’s laugh echoed through the woods as she typed:

[Mabel: No need to worry there! I got my Sneaking-Snacks-Into-A-Movie-Theater outfit on!] [Mabel: Complete with twelve hidden pockets full of snacks AND my licorice hair tie!] [Mabel: I’m set for HOURS!]

She lowered her phone again to reach up for one end of said hair tie, giving it some slack so she could pull it towards her mouth. The tip had barely passed her teeth when another text came through:

[Bro-Bro: PLEASE tell me you’re not going to chew on it again.] [Bro-Bro: Mabel, your hair is going to get SO gross!]

Keeping the end in her mouth, she mashed out a reply:

[Mabel: It’s fine! I’ve got extras in one of my pockets, so I’ll just eat this one and replace it with a new one instead of sticking it back in my hair!] [Mabel: Problem solved.]

[Bro-Bro: Alright, but if you want something other than pocket snacks and hair-flavored licorice ropes, let us know, alright?]

[Mabel: You got it, Bro-bro!]

With that, she let her phone rest on her lap again, her smile from before all but gone as she looked towards the bunker entrance again.

The tree was still half-submerged—and from her spot, she could just barely make out the top step of the staircase that lead down into the earth.

Hmm.

After tucking her phone back into her pocket and pulling more of the licorice rope into her mouth, Mabel stood up and hurried back towards the tree to peer down into the stairwell again. As she’d expected the door was still wide open, leading down into the waiting darkness.

And leading down to a jerky triangle and a Dr. Grunkle in need of assistance.

She nibbled on the end further with a thoughtful look. Once again, Ford had told her that she should go back to the Shack but he hadn’t specified when she should go back.

Nor had he said that she wasn’t allowed to go down into the bunker at all. Or—as a completely random, hypothetical example—sit in the stairwell and wait for him to be done with his work while doubling as a guard for the exit, in case Bill tried to make another escape.

…Hypothetically, of course!

The rumbling from before started again, causing her to take a few wobbly steps back from the edge while her gaze snapped up to the tree. Sure enough, it was shaking with a loud, creaking sound, a likely indicator that it would shortly be rising back to full height.

Her attention fell back to the doorway and staircase, the latter of which was beginning to retract back into the earth from the bottom upwards, while the doorway began to lower at a much slower speed than when it had originally opened.

Slow enough for someone to perform a pretty cool action stunt and dive inside just before it closed, if they moved quickly enough!

Shoving the end of the licorice further into her mouth with a look of determination, Mabel bounded down the remaining steps that had yet to retract and leapt down the rest of the way into the pit when she reached the last one. Keeping her momentum going, she barreled towards the waiting doorway that was lowering more and more by the second.  

And just before it could slam completely shut, she rushed though with all her might and landed hard against the concrete platform inside. Leaving the door to lock in place behind her, taking the last bit of light from the outside with it and leaving her completely shrouded in darkness.

While the room continued to rumble around her—the tree likely rising back into place outside—Mabel pulled herself to her feet with a sneeze from the kicked-up dust, causing the licorice to fall back against her hair and stick in place. With a grimace, she reached up to remove it completely and tossed the uneaten part to the floor before reaching into her pocket for a fresh one.

As she wrapped it in place around her hair and the rumbling around her finally stopped, she cast a look down the stairs towards the waiting bunker below.

The waiting bunker, aforementioned great-uncle in need of assistance, and that jerky—

—aw, heck with it—dumbass triangle.

She chuckled to herself as she silently creeped further down the steps, hand slipping back into her pocket to retrieve her phone. Mmm, no that still didn’t feel right. Oh well, she could always try again later!

— — — — — — —

“‘Change of plans, Bro-Bro, I’m gonna get a closer look at the situation.’”

“What does that mean? New roll.”

From his side of the roof platform, Dipper reached into the nearby bag of streamers for a fresh roll. “I dunno,” he said, tossing it at her. “Probably that she’s going to—oh, no wait, she sent a pic.”

He held up his phone for Wendy to see, and she peered closely at the screen. “Looks like a whole lotta nothing…”

“According to her, it’s the bunker stairwell,” Dipper explained, pulling his phone back to type out a reply. “Guess she raced inside before it could close, so now she’s gonna spend the whole day in there waiting for Ford.”

“Wow, she’s actually in it for the long haul, huh?” Wendy said. “I know the two of you have grown a bit since last year, but spending an entire day waiting for Dr. Pines out in some dusty old bunker seems more like a you thing, doesn’t it? Unless I’ve missed something across the past nine months or whatever…” 

She arched her arm back and swung it forward again, keeping a tight grip on the end of the streamer as the rest went sailing over the roof to the other side. “Oh, niiiiice,” she said proudly as she let her end gently flutter down to the tiles in front of them. “Bet that one flew clear into the woods—new roll.”

On request, Dipper tossed a new roll of streamers over to her before setting his phone down. “No, you didn’t miss anything,” he said. “It’s kinda weird to me too. But like she said earlier, one of her big things this summer was to spend more time with Ford. So I guess that counts as quality time, in the Mabel-est definition of the word.”

He shrugged to punctuate his sentence while Wendy unfurled the roll and repeated her previous action of tossing it over to the side of the roof. “Still…can’t believe she’s really going to miss out on a party like this,” she said.

“You don’t know if she will,” Dipper pointed out. “Ford could finish dismantling the security room, deal with Bill, and come back with Mabel before the party even dreams of starting.”

“Pretty optimistic theory for a guy who doesn’t believe a house can be lifted away by balloons,” Wendy said. “New roll.”

“Once again, never said I didn’t believe it could happen,” Dipper reminded her as he tossed her a roll. “I just said it’s gotta prove itself first!”

With a laugh, Wendy started unfurling the roll before taking aim at the chimney. “Hey, maybe we should try that will Bill instead? Tie a bunch of balloons to him until he flies up and out of our lives forever?”

“I mean, there are actual balloons designed to carry people,” Dipper pointed out. “But I guess with how small he is now, the right number of party balloons could probably get the job done.”

His words trailed off with a lingering discomfort, one he feebly attempted to mask by reaching for the tree-bearing journal he had set beside him on the platform. An action that gave Wendy pause mid-throw—the end of the streamer slipping from her hand and causing the entire thing to miss the chimney completely and sail onwards over the top of the house. “So, uh, you wanna talk about all that mess?” she asked. “Mainly the whole ‘him looking like you’ thing?”

“Not in the slightest,” Dipper said, flipping to the page he’d been working on. “With Stan and Ford being how they are, and Mabel being how she is,��someone’s gotta keep a clear head about all this Bill stuff.”

“Mabel being how she is?” Wendy questioned.

“I mean, you saw how she was acting earlier,” Dipper explained. “All stressed out about Bill and Ford and Stan. Plus she’s been acting kinda weird about Bill in general, even before we got back to town.”

He lightly tapped the edge of the pencil against the page. “Did you know she hasn’t even told Dev about what happened? Like not just about Bill coming back, but about Weirdmageddon in general? She even asked me not to say anything about it, and like…that’s fair, I don’t feel like getting into that mess with him either.”

Another shrug. “But I dunno, it feels like there’s more there than just her being worried about Mayor Tyler’s Never Mind All That Act.”

“Psh, if that’s all she’s worried about, she shouldn’t be,” Wendy assured him. “It took all of two weeks for Tyler to give up trying to keep that act in effect before people started planning out Bill costumes and decorations for Halloween.”

Her smile felt into a look of annoyance. “He does get really uppity about is people getting too close to the statue, though. So naturally a lot of my classmates started daring each other to sneak off and go shake its hand.”

“Did you do that?”

Her smile returned. “Kinda wanted to, but after the convenience store thing last year, I wasn’t in the mood to test my luck with ghosts. And with Bill actually being back now, I stand further by that choice.”

Dipper let out a weak laugh. “Well, like I said, I feel like there’s more to Mabel acting how she is than that,” he continued. “Which circles back to the whole ‘With her, Ford and Stan acting how they are, somebody’s gotta keep a clear head about this Bill stuff’ thing.”

He began to scribble something down in the journal as he spoke further: “Plus hey, it’s not the first time he’s piloted around a body that looks like me. Like I was telling Stan and Ford earlier, I don’t think he’s gonna top what happened last year—”

“Last year? What happened last year?”

The two of them exchanged a look. “Oh, did we not tell you about that?” Dipper asked. “Yeah, he possessed my body last year on the day of Mabel’s big puppet show. Stuck forks in my arms, poured soda in my eyes, said a bunch of creepy, ominous things as me—”

“Ugh, seriously? That was him?” Wendy asked with a grimace. “No wonder you were acting so weird that day! I thought something was screwy when you started cackling wildly to yourself in the car, but I also kinda figured you were just super sleep-deprived.”

“Yeah, it was a whole thing,” Dipper said, waving her away. “But the point is, I’m no stranger to him looking like me. It’s weird, but…I’ll be fine.”

The scribbling stopped for a moment, his trembling hand around the pencil a clear contradiction to his words. One that Wendy met with an unconvinced look before she moved her gaze towards the bag of streamers.

After a moment in thought, she cast him another grin and flicked her thumb towards the large sign that read MYSTERY [S]HACK. “Hey, you wanna see who can get a streamer inside the A on the sign first?”

She winked at him. “We can always pretend it’s Bill’s big, stupid eye and that the streamers are…I dunno, something that’ll really hurt if it gets caught in a big, stupid eye?”

A small smile of his own tugged at the corners of Dipper’s mouth, before he set his journal aside again and pulled himself to his feet. “I mean, I guess if he was still the size of a building, streamers would probably be enough to cause some serious irritation to that fucker’s cornea.”

“Heyyyy, nice f-bomb drop,” Wendy said encouragingly. “How’d it feel?”

“Honestly, solid six-out-of-ten,” Dipper added as he followed suit. “Felt good, but kinda unnatural putting it right next to the word ‘cornea’."

“Eh, you’ve got all summer to smooth it out. TWO rolls!”

— — — — — — —

Every twist of a wrench or disconnecting of a wire helped to keep Ford grounded as he toiled away at the intricate mechanisms behind the security room.

He’d stated it plenty of times in the past, but Fiddleford had really outdone himself with the bunker’s construction. Such brilliant craftsmanship had always been the man’s forte when it came to inventing; it was one of the reasons Ford had sought his help in the portal’s creation.

His grip on the wrench in his hand tightened as he twisted it a bit too hard, resulting in the current screw he’d been unscrewing to fall out of its socket and to the floor with a light clatter.

With a sigh, he reached down to pick it up before rotating the small metal object over in his hand. Yes, Fiddleford back then had possessed such a brilliant mind, one with so much hope and potential.

“Haha, pretty sure that hillbilly jerk regretted getting his memory back when he remembered why he tried to get rid of it in the first place!”

And what had Ford done to repay him for all that help? 

Insulted him, belittled him, disregarded his warnings about Bill, and left him to burn countless holes into that brilliant mind. All with the same gun that he had used to burn a hole in Stanley’s mind.

Frowning lower, he stuffed the screw into the jacket pocket where he’d stored the others and moved on to the next one. If it wasn’t Fiddleford coming under fire as a result of his actions, it was Stanley. And if it wasn’t Stanley, it was—

“I think I’m gonna kill one of ‘em, just for the heck of it!”

The threatening memory echoed through Ford’s mind, stilling him out of sheer instinct as his gaze moved to the tunnel. Mabel’s surprise appearance had admittedly been such a bright beacon of relief after the past day’s agonies, and his appreciation for her help had been genuine.

But any concerns he might’ve had regarding Fiddleford or Stanley were increased tenfold when applied to the kids. 

As he’d initially stated before, Mabel was strong. Strong as Stanley, strong as those Pines genetics coursing through her body. But she was also Mabel. Spirited, bright, wonderful Mabel, who wore such a vulnerable heart on her brightly-colored sweater sleeves. 

A heart that Bill was desperate to plunge a knife into just as soon as the opportunity was at his fingertips.

With another sigh, he once again pocketed the removed screw and moved to the next one. No, it was for the best that he’d turned down Mabel’s help. What if he’d actually agreed to her offer and she somehow got hurt while attempting to guard Bill, like so many others who had helped him in the past?

Sure, he had waxed several pages of poetic retrospective in his old journal about how important it had been to seek help from others, but at what cost? The compromisation of his loved ones’ well-beings? Was it truly worth extending a hand in his time of need if it meant any one of them would be caught in the crossfire again? Especially since he still had no idea what kind of tricks Bill had tucked up his sleeve this time around. 

Clatter clatter, went another screw to the floor.

Nor did he have a clue as to whether or not his current plan to restrain Bill would actually succeed.

Clatter clatter.

And what if his current plan did succeed but he failed to come up with anything better? What if his family had to spend the rest of their days with a ticking time bomb hidden down here, with only a thin layer of liquid nitrogen to keep the danger at bay?

Clatter clatter. Clatter clatter.

Not to mention, there was still Bill’s current appearance to take into account. Why did he look so much like Dipper? Had the resemblance been intentional, or had he been telling the truth the previous day when he claimed to not be aware? Did it actually matter in the long run, or was it just a random happenstance?

Clatter clatter. Clatter clatter. Clatter clatter.

Question after question, theory after theory, concern after concern piling on to of him and dragging him further down—

BANG!

The end of the wrench was slammed hard against the wall, and Ford exhaled as much stress with the impact as he could possibly release. 

He had to stop spiraling, to remain focused on the task at hand. Whether his current plan was a temporary solution or not, it would still keep Bill out of the way long enough for him to think of something more permanent. As far as he could tell—and as much as he had deduced as much earlier with his fairy dust stunt—Bill had no actual means of leaving his current body.

Regardless of how powerful Bill was, he couldn’t do anything while trapped inside a weak, human body, one with no clear immunity to being flash-frozen.

And as for the vessel’s appearance…

His gaze shifted over to the tunnel again for a brief second, before he lifted his wrench again and moved on to the next screw.

No, it didn’t matter who Bill looked like or what he had planned. Once this was over, none of it wouldn’t matter.

Once this was over, Ford could breathe again. The kids would be safe again. Stanley would be safe again, everyone would be safe again.

Clatter clatter…

He just had to stay focused for a little bit longer…

— — — — — — —

The morning gradually shifted into afternoon, late afternoon, and eventually the bright, blue sky faded to the deep pinks and oranges of sunset.

“Good evening, Gravity Falls! This is Shandra Jimenez reporting to you live from the Mystery Shack, where we’re only a short while away from the biggest party of the year!”

And with the end of day came the beginning of the party, along with nearly everyone from town.

Behind Shandra and her broadcast, Lazy Susan came ambling up the pathway with a fresh pie in each hand and a delighted wink to the cameraman filming everyone’s arrival. A wink that unfortunately made her drop one of the pies as she reached up to manually wink her bad eye for dramatic effect—

—only for a small gnome to grab it just before it hit the ground, and hurry back towards a suspiciously-lumpy guest in a trench coat.

From further up the driveway, Manly Dan came charging towards the Shack with the Manotaur herd—all of whom were carrying large kegs of meat beneath their bulging, muscular arms. Behind them trailed a group of various other residents of recognizable nature. And perched above the party atop the old MYSTERY [S]HACK sign were the flocks of Eyebats and Woodpeckers from the previous day, all settled comfortably to watch the festivities below. The irises of the eyebats shifted about as they eyed each new guest come up the driveway, while one of the woodpeckers—the petrified Woodpeckerpecker from the day before still settled on its back—pecked curiously at the streamers that now decorated the roof.

And that was only a small percentage of the guests who soon crowded the grounds of the Shack. A crowd that Dipper peered out over from his spot atop the porch railing, pencil and journal clutched tightly in hand. “Let’s see, gnomes are here,” he mused, the scribbled words following his speech. “Lazy Susan…Shandra and her cameraman whose name I don’t know…”

He cast a smile to his left. “Wow, Soos, you and Melody really invited everyone, huh?”

From beside him on the porch itself, Soos let out a laugh. “Right? I mean, I guess we kinda overdid it with the invitations. But we couldn’t help it, dude! Everyone was just that excited to see the Pines family again!”

“As they should be,” Wendy added from his right. “You guys are, like, heroes and stuff.”

Dipper smiled wide at this remark, but his expression slowly sank as he turned his attention towards both the boat and the forest itself at the edge of the yard. “Ugh, if only I wasn’t the only member of the family actually at the party for us…”

The sound of the door opening behind them turned all heads to Melody, who had just stepped out onto the porch with a tall stack of paper plates in hand. “Is Mr. Pines still out on the boat?” she asked, kicking the door shut behind her. “He’s been out there all day! Has he even eaten anything?”

“I brought him some food and a change of clothes earlier,” Soos assured her. “But he just grabbed both from my hands and slammed the door shut behind him. Didn’t even give me a chance to see whatever big, secret project he was working on!”

“Secret project?” Wendy asked.

“I dunno if that’s actually what he’s doing,” Soos explained with a shrug. “But y’know…spending all your time somewhere isolated for hours on end, and not telling anyone what you’re doing? Seems kinda secret project-y to me.”

“Speaking of projects, although this one’s not really secret,” Melody said. “Could you help me carry these to the table, Soos?”

“Oh yeah, no problem!” Soos said, and rushed to assist her. “Although if we want it to be a secret project, you could always ask me in a secret language next time! Like maybe write it out in the alien goblin from Housebound!”

“Not a bad idea,” Melody agreed. “Although you said the name of the franchise out loud, and now anyone who heard you—” She tilted her head towards Wendy and Dipper with a smile. “—would be able to turn to the source material for ways to decipher our code.”

Soos slapped a hand to his forehead. “Aww, you’re so right, babe! Didn’t even think of that!” he said, then looked back at the teens as well. “Hey dudes, don’t even think about looking up Housebound and the well-crafted, original language the creator made for it!”

“Not my ballpark, Soos,” Dipper assured him.

“I will immediately forget the name of the show once this conversation ends,” Wendy added.

“It’s actually an online comic,” Soos corrected. “Although it’s more of an experience than a—”

“Soos?”

“Haha, right, plate time.”

Both Soos and Melody let out a laugh as they divided the stack of plates between them two of them and made their way towards the tables in the yard. Leaving Wendy and Dipper free to turn their attention back towards the edge of the property. “So, what do you think the old man’s been up to all day?” Wendy asked.

“Not sure,” Dipper replied. “Wonder if he’s even aware that the party’s started. I doubt the boat’s soundproof, so he can probably hear everyone outside.”

With a chuckle, Wendy leaned closer and gave him a light nudge with her elbow. “Yeah, unless he pulled his whole ‘switch off my hearing aids’ stunt to try and ignore ‘em. Again.”

Her amusement was only met with a light knock of wood to skull as Dipper sadly propped himself against the nearest support beam, causing her to raise an eyebrow. “What’s wrong, dude?”

“Ugh, I dunno,” Dipper said. “I wanted to be excited for tonight, but that Stan thing’s just kinda reminding me how he’s still out there on the boat with no sign of stopping—”

After straightening himself out again, he moved his journal and pencil to one hand so he could pull out his phone. “And how I haven’t gotten any new messages from Mabel in a while. Which probably means her and Ford are still stuck at the bunker, also with no signs of stopping…”

He sighed. “It’s just kinda hard to really get into the spirit of a party for our family when a whole three-quarters of us aren’t even here, you know?”

With a frown, Wendy propped her arms further over the porch railing. “Hey, come on, what happened to the optimistic attitude from earlier?“ she asked. “The one that said maybe they’d get back in time?”

She gave his arm another nudge, this time with her fist. “And the one that managed to get a whole roll of streamers stuck up in the letter A?”

A smile teased the corners of Dipper’s mouth, but disappeared before it could fully form. “I dunno, earlier we still had hours until the party started,” he explained. “And now it’s here and—as far as we know—nothing’s happened and Bill’s still around. “

He cast a look out at the crowd of party-goers again. “But I guess you’ve got a point: the impending stress of the guy who tried to destroy our entire dimension isn’t anything that can’t be dealt with through the old-fashioned method of pencil to paper as I take attendance of everyone arriving,” Dipper assured her. “Well, that and—”

He snapped a few, quick pictures of the scene with his phone. “Pictures for Mabel,” he explained to Wendy, readjusting the items in his hands so that the journal was situated back on his outstretched legs. “One that doubles as a reference for a later sketch, since I promised I’d add some to my journal for Dev to look at once we're back home! I’ve already started w—WOAH!”

With neither hand available to balance out his weight and his legs kicked out in front of him, Dipper wobbled atop the railing for a split second before his entire body tumbled backwards. Wendy moved to try and catch him, but her efforts only resulted in her snagging his journal out of mid-air—leaving its writer to fall to the wooden porch with a hard thud.

Despite the fall leaving him flat on his back, Dipper stared up at her with an embarrassed smile. “Nice catch...”

“Maybe limit things to pics now and journal later?” Wendy suggested, half of the journal clutched in one hand as she reached to help him up with the other. “Or maybe don’t do it while you’re sitting on a railing?”

“Heh, good call,” Dipper said, pulling himself to his feet before holding out his own free hand. “Maybe I’ll save it for the couch that we just have sitting out here, for some reason.”

She held out the journal for him to take back, although the page that she had accidentally opened to while haphazardly grabbing it gave her pause. A pause that made her pull the book back from him and hold up to her face to investigate further.

“Wh—hey, Wendy, come on,” Dipper said, reaching for it with more urgency. “Give it to me!”

Despite his insistence, she continued to stare for a few seconds before turning it for him to see: “Hey, Dip, what’s this?”

It was a recent page, one he had written earlier in the day. The beginning paragraph implied that he had been writing it while they had decorated the roof, but the main part she was addressing was a picture scribbled down beneath his words.

Not a picture of the decorated rooftop or any small pieces of streamers taped to the inside of the book, but an eerie sketch of Bill in his current vessel.

Dipper stared, his body language shrinking a bit. “You know, just…keeping track of what’s happened since we got here…”

She raised an eyebrow and flipped through the next few pages, most of which revealed more uncomfortable feelings about the events of the past day. “You sure you don’t wanna, like…talk about this stuff with someone?”

“Positive,” Dipper said, quickly snatching the journal back from her hands. “Like I said earlier, I’m fine and it wouldn’t be the first time I had to deal with Bill looking exactly like me. Or someone else in general looking like me!”

He flipped to a new page. “We’ve already covered all the puppet show stuff, but that wasn’t the only time! There was also the Dippy Fresh thing, and all those paper clones I made at Stan’s party to try and dance with you—”

“...Yeah, don’t think we covered that last one, dude.”

The journal was snapped shut again as a look of horrified realization overtook Dipper’s features. Before he could come up with any sort of believable explanation, however—

“Dipper! Wendy!”

The two of them looked over to see Tyler waving at them from across the yard as he hurried towards the porch. An action that made Wendy wince in disgust as she turned back to Dipper. “Okay, so listen: I know you’re having a time dealing with all this Bill stuff and family stuff—just stuff,” she said. “But—”

“You wanna get away from Mayor Tyler for reasons you don’t wanna talk about?” Dipper guessed. “And you want me to keep him distracted?”

“You do that and I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that last thing you said, nor will I question you about it later,” she assured him. “And I’ll also drop the Bill stuff that you clearly don’t want to talk about either.”

“Deal.”

After an exchanged thumbs-up and their trademark ‘zip-the-lip’ sign, she leapt over the far railing and onto the other side, disappearing out of sight just as Tyler came strolling up the steps. “Good evening, Dipper~!” he said with a laugh. “Do you know where Wendy went?”

“Not a clue,” Dipper said loyally. “Why, did you need to talk to her?”

“Oh, I just wanted to say hi,” Tyler said in his usual-cheery tone, before his features sank. “It’s so rare for us to cross paths these days, except when old Danny Man sends her with one of the Manotaurs on an errand to my office~!”

“Is that right?” Dipper said, casting a glance back towards the direction where Wendy had gone. “Well, uh—I mean, she never said she was leaving, so maybe you’ll catch her around the party at some point.”

“Oh, very true~!” Tyler said, the delight in his expression returning. “Maybe she’s just gone off to shoot the breeze with the rest of your family?” 

He pressed a hand to his chin. “Come to think of it, though I haven’t really seen either of those handsome great-uncles of yours since I got here!” he said with a wink. “I know one of them’s spent the past few decades doing some fancy footwork around all those other dimensions or something, so don’t try and tell me he’s afraid of an old-fashioned Gravity Falls shindig!”

“Uh…”

While he’d anticipated that the topic of his other family members would be brought up in conversation—especially at a party about them—Dipper hadn’t had a chance to come up with a proper excuse about their absence—

“Hey, Mayor Tyler!”

Both Tyler and Dipper turned to see Soos approaching from the direction of the tables. “Glad you could make it!”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world~!” he said delightedly. “Dipper and I were just talking about Stan and that brother of his, and how I’ve yet to see either of them here!”

Soos opened his mouth to reply, but upon seeing the silent desperation in Dipper’s features, he instead hurried up the porch steps to drape an arm around Tyler’s shoulders. “Oh, Mr. Pines? Uh, yeah—he’s not here at the moment,” he said quickly. “He’s working on some, uh…big, fancy surprise for the party! And Dr. Pines is helping him out with it~!”

Dipper’s eyes widened as he pulled Soos away from Tyler for a hushed conversation: “Soos, what are you doing?” he whispered. “Not only is Ford not doing that, but he’s not even letting Stan help him!”

“Uh, I don’t know, dude!” Soos whispered back. “You weren’t saying anything, I panicked!”

“Yeah, well, now he’s going to expect a big surprise from them later!” Dipper pointed out. “Are we don’t even know if Ford’s going to make it back in time for the party!”

“Woo-hoo, the way you two are whispering, it must be quite the surprise!” Tyler said brightly. “Either that or something’s gone terribly wrong, and you’re about to make an excuse so you can leave and go take care of it~!”

He let out a giddy chuckle. “Haha, I’m just kidding! But either way, I just wanted to pop by and say hello, give my howdy-dos and all that! Can’t wait for this night to really start kicking off~!”

“Haha, right,” Dipper said with a nervous chuckle. “But uh, speaking of leaving, I actually do have to go find Mabel about something—”

“Oh, Mabel!” Tyler said happily. “That’s another face I’ve yet to see! Heh, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say all you Pineses are hiding from your own welcome-back party!”

“Psh, yeah, that’d be silly!” Dipper said, before hurrying to the porch steps. “I’ll be back!”

With that, he hurried down the steps and rushed off into the crowd, leaving Tyler alone with Soos on the porch. He shot Soos a wide grin of his own, accompanied by a thumbs up. “Great party so far! Can’t wait to see more of it!”

“Aw, thanks, Mayor Tyler!” Soos said. “Uh, we’re not like…breaking any noise rules or anything so far, are we? Not bein’ too loud or too…I dunno, party-ful?”

With an amused chuckle, Tyler reached over to pat his shoulder. “Soos, I’m the Mayor of the town, at a party to celebrate some of the most important people in town! I’d be more upset if anyone tried to come to me to complain about the noise! Heck, I'd probably have them arrested for being a giant party pooper!”

He pressed a hand to his mouth with a giggle before turning back to the crowd. “Oh, but you didn’t hear that from me~!”

With a wave, he disappeared amongst the partygoers and left Soos standing by the porch with a content smile. “Good to know!”

— — — — — — —

It was only once the last few screws had been pocketed that Ford allowed himself to lean back against the wall with an exhale of relief. It had taken almost an entire day’s effort, but he’d successfully deactivated the parts of the room that would activate the security system.

And just for good measure—

With the toe of his boot, he gingerly pressed one of the buttons on the floor and waited. When it was clear that the walls weren’t going to crush him into a fine paste, he let out another breath and finished gathering up his tools.

The difficult part was over for now. All he needed to do was get Bill to the other side of the bunker, and it’d all be over.

— — — — — — —

Okay, so maybe the tricks he had tossed Houdini’s way were easier said than done.

In his usual form, such escape attempts would’ve been mere child’s play for Bill. Just a snap of his fingers and the ropes would’ve turned into something like snakes, overcooked spaghetti noodles, or even something as simple as a pile of hair. Hey, not all of his tricks had to go the extra mile in terms of wackiness; sometimes all you needed was a pile of hair from an unknown—probably unwilling—participant.

In a powerless vessel he was still inexperienced in piloting, however—he was left with nothing more than several wasted hours of failed attempts to wriggle free of his rope binds.

Yeesh, maybe he should add ‘rope’ to the list of things he had plans to snap out of existence once he was out of this stupid vessel and back in his own body. Right behind ‘ears’ and potentially above ‘ruddy shelducks’, depending on whether or not Birdbrain was actually just stringing him along further.

He gave up on his most recent attempt to free his limbs and slumped against the wall with an irritated sigh, while the creeping realization that had plagued him throughout the day began to overtake him once him again. It was only a matter of time before Ford finished deactivating the security room.

Once he got him to the main chamber, escape would be near impossible by that point. At this point he had to cut his losses with the uncut ropes and come up with another idea, or at least a way to get Ford to postpone his little ice queen stunt.

Well, when all else failed, there was always his usual method to fall back on; his words. 

No matter how hard Ford had tried to hide it, Bill had done a pretty successful job at getting under his skin. Sure, while it had been Stanley’s fist to leave what was likely a visible shiner around his right eye, Bill had a feeling that Ford would’ve gladly swung that fist in his place. And while it hadn't been a fist, Ford had sure been happy enough to wave his precious little gun around every time Bill so much as breathed at him wrong.

Point was, even someone with only one functional eye could tell that Ford’s patience was paper-thin by this point.

Such anger could be useful to Bill to some degree if he could find the perfect way to take hold of it and steer it in the right direction. But his silver tongue would only get him so far if he didn’t know the right thing to say. Just the right thing that would allow him to further burrow himself under Ford’s skin like a parasite.

Maybe he needed to approach the topic in another sense. Alright, what did he need Ford to do right now? Keep him out of the cryogenic tubes? It was a start, but he also needed a way to—

A faint creak in the staircase corridor drew his attention to the darkened doorway, a spark of hopeful curiosity flickering in his eyes. While his attention had been mostly drawn to trying to free himself, he hadn’t missed the occasional sound of light footsteps or the faint crinkle of a wrapper in the darkness that waited just outside of the room.

Once was a happenstance, twice a coincidence that could probably be chalked up to rats or mole men—

But three times pointed to the idea that little Shooting Star had disobeyed her beloved Great-Uncle’s orders and had spent the whole day lingering around in the bunker stairwell.

Okay, enough with the party tricks—time to shift courses back to his original plan.

“If you’re trying to go unnoticed,” he called, “I’d recommend gluing giraffes to your shoes! Did you know those suckers are actually pretty quiet? Haha, maybe you can go the extra route and use horse glue to get the job done! Because they're...they both anima-you get it!”

Sure enough, a sharp gasp could be heard from just beyond the doorway, followed by the slapping sound of a hand to skin. “Wo~ow, you’re really bad at this,” Bill called again with a laugh. “Come on, Shooting Star, you might as well show yourself if you’re not going to be sneaky.”

The silence lingered for a few seconds, and Bill rolled his eyes. “Okay, well, you can’t just not make any sounds now,” he said. “You know I know you’re there. You can try all you want to trick me, but we both know who’s superior in that line of work—”

“You’re superior in the line of work of being a jerkface!” a voice finally muttered from the stairwell.

“There she is,” Bill said smugly. “Lemme guess, you’ve been here since ol’ Sixer turned down your offer to help? That’s a long time to wait, isn’t it?”

“I’m not talking to you!” Mabel insisted with a vocal ‘harrumph’. “I’m just gonna sit and wait for Grunkle Ford to freeze you! And…and then we’re gonna go back to the party together and he’s never gonna have to deal with you ever again!”

“Thought you said you weren’t talking to me.”

“I’m not!” she said, then after a pause. “...Starting now!”

Bill rolled his eyes again with amusement. Just as he’d initially predicted, Mabel was such an open book when it came to spilling more information than she should. Which would work very well in his favor if he could keep her talking. “Guess we’ll both have to keep sitting in complete and utter silence then,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “Surprised you of all people managed to do so for the past few hours, actually. If memory serves, you’re quite the little chatterbox of the family, aren’t you?”

“I’m not listening to you,” Mabel insisted. “And just because you can’t see me, I’ll at least tell you that I’m keeping my eyes on my phone! Which I’m told is very rude to do when you’re talking to someone else!”

“Ah, so we are talking,” Bill said with a grin.

“No, we’re not! You’re talking while I’m ignoring you!”

“If you say so,” Bill said. “So…you’ve got a cellphone now? Bit of an upgrade from last year, huh? Who’ve you been texting on it for this whole time? Your dweeby brother?”

He tilted his head in thought. “Or perhaps the latest boy in your long line of romantic interests? Did you write and produce a whole rock opera to ask this one out, too?”

“No! He asked me out first—”

Another sound of a gasp, followed by the slap of a hand to skin. “Uh, I mean—”

“Ah, so there is another boy in the picture, hmm~?” Bill taunted.

“Uh, no—I mean, he’s not a boy all the time, but—! No, I—”

With a frustrated groan, Mabel stepped fully into the bunker room. “Ugh, why are you such a jerkface?!” she asked irritably, glaring at him. “Why do you have to always stick your nose in places where it doesn’t belong, huh?!

“Well, for fun mostly,” Bill said with a nonchalant smile. “Not to mention it’s just so easy to get the answers I want outta people.” 

The smile widened into something more sinister, once again revealing far too much of his gums. “Especially when they’re just sooooo willing to give them~!”

Mabel simply scoffed and folded her arms across her chest. “Ugh, you’re the worst!” she said, then added as an afterthought. “And stop smiling like that! It’s just as bad as when you did it last year!”

Bill’s smile faltered for just a moment out of curiosity. A remark about his vessel’s appearance? Oh, he could physically feel the lightbulb going off in his head at the idea, which doubled as a blaring alarm in his head that practically screamed at him to probe further. “Smile like what?” he asked with another wide grin. “This~?”

Mabel turned away from him with a shudder. “Ugh, stop it! Stop making him smile like that!”

Her hands were slapped over her mouth in an instant—likely the culprit of the slapping skin noises from before—and Bill’s eyebrows shot far up his forehead. Him, she says? So his vessel ran male, did it?

A stereotypical choice on Birdbrain’s part—they must’ve been from a universe with a similar gender binary as humans if they’d taken a look at someone with the name Bill and just stuck him into a male body.

Not that he was complaining—it was all the same shade of gender to him. Still, get a little creative with it, Birdbrain!

Now the real question was; what did his male vessel look like? Did he dare risk another attempt to prod for more information? After all, she was initially the one to pick up on the fact that he didn’t know what he looked like back at the shack. Luckily he’d been able to play it off in such a way that left everyone’s brains nice and scrambled—but he could only get away with the trick so many times before they started growing more suspicious about what he did and didn’t actually know.

Lies were like the seasoning of a conversation—you use just the right amount and you’ve crafted something beautiful and delicious. Use too little and the dish is under-flavored and dull; too many and you end up with a mouthful of garlic powder every time you take a bite of your macaroni.

Hmm, his metaphors weren’t quite as clever today. He’d put a pin in that one for later.

In any case, he needed to tread carefully with what he said next. But on the flip side, so did Shooting Star. She had dropped two hints already and was aware of her blunders, anything further and she might as well hold up a mirror for him—

Hang on.

A mirror…

“Stop making him smile like that!”

“It’s just as bad as when you did it last year!”

His vessel’s height. Ford’s cryptic observations during his examination. The discomfort Pine Tree had experienced at breakfast upon seeing him—heck, the discomfort that all of the Pines had felt whenever they looked at him. 

Discomfort that was so clear in Mabel’s own expression now, as she stared at him with a mix of hatred, fear, and something else he couldn’t quite pinpoint—much like the looks he couldn’t quite decipher. Heh, de-cipher.

Puns aside, if his vessel looked like someone she had never seen before, such an expression should’ve only contained that original hatred and fear. There would be no sign of contradiction behind her eyes, a clear desperation to hate the being before her but one could never truly come to form so long as that being was him.

It was strange, familiar. As if she were staring at somebody who wasn’t actually him, but—

“You…don’t know what you look like?”

Oh.

Oh.

…Oh, that tacky orange idiot had a real sense of humor, huh?! Thought they were SO FUNNY to have— “—plopped me down in a body like this—!”

“You really didn’t know?”

…Wait, had he been saying that out loud?

His gaze snapped back to Mabel, hands now lowered from her mouth as she stared at him curiously. 

Well, shoot.

Before he could drum up a further remark or think up an excuse to explain away his outburst, a loud clanging of metal echoed through the tunnel on the other side of the hatch. Loud clanging that sent Mabel rushing back towards the safety of the dark staircase, just in time for the hatch to swing open and reveal Ford.

Despite letting his gaze follow Mabel towards the staircase, Bill snapped his gaze back to Ford as he climbed out into the room. “Oh, is it finally time to put me on ice?”

As he’d initially expected, Ford didn’t reply to his remark. Instead, he simply turned to stare at Bill for a moment with that same violent, piercing glare that Bill had grown used to receiving across the past twenty-four hours.

Such a strong wall of malice, so desperate to mask all that fear behind his eyes. Fear just as strong as it had been the first time Bill’s eyes had met his the day before. 

Fear, malice, confusion—

Originally Bill had chalked it up to Ford’s uncertainty about how he’d made his grand return from the brink of death. And while that was definitely still a possibility, the information that Shooting Star had unwillingly provided him with about his appearance added another interesting layer to all of those feelings.

If Bill’s theory was correct, then Ford was being forced to stare down at a vessel that resembled his own great-nephew. 

A thought that brought an experimental grin to Bill’s face. Well, if he really wanted to test said theory out for himself… “Come on, Fordsy, didn’t anyone teach you that it’s rude to stare at someone?”

The grin widened to once again reveal as much of his teeth as possible. “Although I guess I’m quite the looker, aren’t I?”

Despite his best attempt to remain composed, Bill didn’t miss the way Ford’s eyes widened the tiniest amount before he grabbed Bill in one hand and turned back to the tunnel entrance before crawling inside.

The sensation of being awkwardly dragged through a small tunnel by his back was even more uncomfortable than being carried like a suitcase through the woods, but even such discomfort couldn’t wipe the grin off of Bill’s face. Sure, he still had no actual means of freeing himself, and still faced the looming threat of being flash-frozen. But as he’d initially suspected, Mabel had provided more than enough information he could use to his advantage—information that Ford had all but confirmed.

Was he still furious about the fact that his vessel apparently resembled some anxiety-riddled twerp who couldn’t tell a goat man from a coat man (a man made of coats)? Sure, but none of that was important at the moment.

What was important was the appearance itself, and how he could tie it back to the information he already had on hand.

His thoughts drifted back to his original remarks after he’d awakened to the end of Ford’s gun. How that violence in Ford’s eyes had only ignited further at even just a mere offhanded remark about Stan.

And not just the violence in his eyes, but the violence in Stan’s eyes, body language, everything. The threats, his hair-trigger temper, the fact that both of them couldn’t go an entire conversation without fighting—

A common occurrence for the two of them, but there was definitely more to it than their usual brand of bickering from the previous year. 

The aforementioned discomfort in both Dipper and Mabel’s expressions at the sight of him, with the added contradicting emotions behind both Mabel and Ford's eyes—

And of course, the recently-received news about his vessel’s appearance.

Stir all that together, and he had a beautiful stew of manipulation that he could force down Ford’s throat, long enough to distract him while he found a way to free himself. 

Still, the latter was absolutely key to confirm before everything else. While Mabel’s words combined with Ford’s faltering expression had been pretty strong evidence, he still needed to make sure he was right before he tried anything.

Not that he had any doubts—he was always right. But hey, using Ford’s family as leverage had worked the year before!

Up until the betrayal, at least.

His expression twisted into that wicked grin as they finally stepped out of the tunnel. And he was always happy to provide Ford with more reminders when it came to who he thought he could get away with betraying.

“You must feel so proud of yourself, Sixer,” he said aloud, as he was dragged across the dark, deactivated buttons of the security room floor. “The whole town’s off having a party, and here you are. Stuck down in some worn-out bunker as you prepare to disappoint me yet again.”

He felt the fist at his back tighten. “Stop talking.”

“Aw, but I’m gonna be flash-frozen in a couple of minutes,” Bill pointed out. “This’ll be the last time we get to talk in a while, won’t it?”

His grin widened as they reached the main lab. “Well, I say a while because let’s be real, you’re never gonna be able to get rid of me! I mean, your zapped your brother’s mind to kingdom come and I’m still here. If that wasn’t enough to get rid of me, what makes you think anything will be good enough?”

“I said stop.”

Ooh, he was getting steamed. Good, good, just what Bill needed. He just had to push him a little bit more, just a little further— “So, what’re you gonna do once I’m gone, Fordsy? Spend more of your time poring through one piece of research after another, trying desperately to find a solution that isn’t just locking me inside someone else’s head and pulling the trigger?”

His voice grew low, serious. “...And what happens if that’s the only option you have? Ooh, what if you’ve gotta trap me in one of the kids’ heads this time around? I know I already said that wouldn’t fool me again, but I’d LOVE to watch their feeble little minds burn to ash—”

“I said STOP!”

The clanging of metal echoed through the bunker as the back of Bill’s body was slammed against the control panel—one of Ford’s hands keeping him in place while the other was wrapped tightly around his gun, with the tip of the barrel pressed against Bill’s temple. “If you don’t stop running that damn mouth of yours—”

“You’ll what, Stanford?” Bill asked, expression neutral. “Put a bullet in my brain? I think we already know by now that you’re not going to do that.”

His mouth spread into a grin—that awful, delighted grin with too many teeth. “And I think we already know why you’re not going to do that, don’t we? Not while I look like this, right?”

He could feel Ford’s grip on the gun tremble, despite the tip being pressed further against his temple. “What, Ford?” Bill continued. “Can’t bear to aim a gun at another family member? Especially not your little paranormal protege?”

Even the dim light of the lab couldn’t mask how pale Ford’s expression grew at such a remark, a reaction that only twitched Bill’s smile wider. Oh, buddy—he got him. “Did you really think I didn’t know?” he continued. “You really thought I’d just be walking around with a body like this for funsies? Come now, Fordsy, you know me better than that and I know you better than that. So let’s not waste our time with this and just skip to the part where you put the gun down.”

Despite Ford desperately trying to keep the gun in place, Bill could feel the barrel trembling against his temple—

—before the tip was pulled away completely as Ford lowered the gun and turned from him in defeat.

Bill’s smirk only widened further as he gave a triumphant little wiggle against the control panel at his back. A movement that came with a light tug of the ropes as they snagged on something behind him—perhaps a switch or a dent in the worn metal casing.

Would it be sharp enough to fully cut through them? From this angle, he couldn’t tell for sure. Was he going to try anyway as he took another Ford victory lap?

As if anyone needed to ask. Why stop now while he had the upper hand?

“Hey, come on, don’t look so down,” he said, taking care to hide his movements as he tried to saw through the ropes. “Gotta hand it to you, IQ, it takes a lot of guts for someone to point a gun at a family member twice.”

He let out a cackle. “Guess the end result here would be waaaay more gruesome than whatever happened to Goldfish, though! I mean, trading a metaphorical hole in the head for a physical one? Yeesh, the cleanup alone would be a nightmare!”

Another cackle escaped him, one that slowly faded into a dry, deadpan laugh. “But I guess it wouldn’t be that difficult for you, would it? After all, you are the expert in destroying those who are just trying to help you, aren’t you~?”

He paused his attempts to free himself and slumped back against the control panel with a groan. “Aww, see—now look what you made me do!” he griped. “I went and did the one thing I said was super lazy last night; repeating a joke within the same millennia! I swear, Sixer, sometimes you bring out the worst in me—”

BANG!

The bloodcurdling sound of a gunshot echoed through the bunker as a bullet met the spot right between Bill’s eyes. 

As quick as it had happened, the few seconds that followed were an eternity. An eternity of pain, pain that only blossomed in strength with each passing second.

And despite the smile that remained on his face, there was nothing but genuine shock in Bill’s slitted pupil, as it shakily moved from the barrel of the gun to Ford’s hand, then up to Ford’s face—

Before eventually falling against its will to the control panel beneath him—deep red from somewhere he could no longer process slowly trickling down into the spaces between the buttons and paneling.

Another second passed. Then another. And another.

And Bill died.

[ultimateloserboy]

im currently in the middle of reading the book of bill and i had to put it down because the nostalgia made me cry a little…

i remember being a kid and never seeing bill as very evil. i knew his actions were wrong but in my innocent little kid brain i saw a guy that deep down just wanted a party. i firmly believed he was misunderstood. i thought that he HAD to have been hurting to be this awful— all i could think was shit like— stop being so mean, mr triangle man! ill have a party with you! you dont have to be awful because i love you!

and i know it’s ridiculous because hes literally just a cartoon villain,,, but ive always held that sympathy for him in my heart even if im older and see him more maturely— a part of me always saw myself in him. to everyone else i was so loud and strange and nobody really liked me… i found stuff that was disturbing or strange to be cool and others disliked me for it. i saw weirdmageddon as the coolest shit EVER!! i knew the way he went about things was shitty but come on man GIANT FLOATING FUCKING PYRAMID??? THAT SHIT WAS FIRE!!!!! i was fully convinced that if he just calmed the fuck down a little with the murder that he could be better—

im very critical of things nowadays, and i hate to defend any character of anything in this way because i hate my own bias, but hes so much different to me.. because i saw him as a child… because i believed he needed love… because if i had met him i wouldve told him hes so cool and he didnt need to be mean to dipper and mabel anymore because he doesnt need to hurt people to be awesome… and sure, that may be pretty unreasonable, but i feel like holding onto that empathy shaped me as a person in some crazy way. i adored him. i adored him so much i wanted him to be better. and even now reading the book, not even halfway done, i still hope he is better. i still believe in him. i still pity him somehow, because i still feel that little kid in the back of my throat.. i still feel that understanding that we are strange and loud and unbearable together…

i know its so fucking stupid but this page of the book got me bad because of the baggage hes holding that i KNEW he had been holding since i was probably like 9… especially with the added context of the axolotl poem..

literally i want to throw up reading this I KNEW YOU WERE HURTING OLD MAN I HEARD IT IN YOUR VOICE I SAW IT ON THE SCREEN I KNEW SINCE I WAS LITTLE!!!!

chat which mental illness symptom is this because its hitting me hard..

[ckret2]

Chapter 21 of honestly everyone's just sorta used to Bill being the shack's prisoner now (title tbd): Stan & Ford have a birthday party! Bill is not invited. He still manages to find a way to be fiendishly evil.

Also featuring: Wendy deciding what she thinks about "Goldie," the shack's mysterious secret "guest."

####

Mabel slid a piece of paper across the gas station front counter, listing a dozen scratch card serial numbers spread across three different games. "I'd like these numbers in these cards, please!"

The cashier gave the paper a dubious look, then looked at Wendy. "We're not supposed to sell the scratch cards outta order."

"Please?" Wendy asked. "Just a little exception? For us?"

"We really wanna play our lucky numbers," Mabel said. "Plus, I had a vision. In my sleep."

She and Wendy gave him their best big-eyed hopeful pouty looks.

The cashier shrank back. "Well..." He averted his gaze from the adorableness that was Mabel, and sighed. "Just this once. But I don't want to see you two in here with your nonsense again." He started unrolling one of the spools of scratch cards, inspecting the numbers. "These'll be over a hundred dollars."

Wendy winced. "Ooh. Mabel?"

Mabel offered three dollars and a quarter. "That's fine! Can we start with 177 from the beach cards?"

She received the card, depicting a pastel beachy scene next to five miniature bingo boards. She confidently scratched off the card to reveal its winning numbers, pointed at the fourth bingo board where she'd just gotten bingo, and said, "That's $200! Our payout, please."

The cashier took the card, inspected the numbers, and stared at Mabel in amazement. She grinned at him. Wordlessly, he opened his cash register, pulled out several twenties, and offered them over.

"Thank you!" Mabel accepted the money and pointed at the paper. "The rest of our cards, please?"

As they left with eleven scratch cards, Mabel handed Wendy three twenties—"Here! For helping!"—and stuck the rest of the change in her pocket.

"Dude. That was awesome. You were so cool in there, like—" Wendy put on her coolest, most unruffled expression. "'Our payout, please.'"

"That's just the kind of rock star I am." Mabel put the scratch cards in her bike's basket. "Thanks for the help, Wendy!"

"Sure, any time." Especially if she got a surprise $60 out of it. "Heading back to the shack?"

"Yeah! I've gotta finish decorating for the party!"  Mabel waved as she took off down the road. "See you then!"

"See you." She guessed that meant she wasn't invited to hang until the party started. Given the touchy situation inside the shack, no surprises there.

She wondered what Goldie had to do with Mabel's interesting trick with the scratch cards. She was sure there was something.

####

Bill leaned into the kitchen. "Hey! How's that cake coming along?"

Mabel stopped arranging dozens of candles in the frosting to point at the door. "Out, Bill! Nobody's getting cake until the party!"

Dipper said, "You don't even deserve a slice."

"Agree to disagree!" Bill said. "But if you don't give me one anyway, I'll annoy you about it for weeks."

"He can have a slice at the party," Mabel said. "The cake's big enough." A couple of overcrowded candles spilled off the edge of the cake. Mabel picked them up and carefully stuck them back in.

Bill fought back a laugh. "Are you sure about all those candles? If you light 'em all up at once, you'll burn off everyone's eyebrows," he said. "But unfortunately, you'd also melt the frosting."

"The frosting's already a mess," Mabel said, peering at the barely-visible HAPPY BIRTHDAY STAN & FORD hidden beneath the forest of candles. "But Soos doesn't have any of those number-shaped candles, so..." 

"Roman numerals," Bill said.

"Oooh." Mabel looked at the cake thoughtfully, and started pulling out candles. "How do you make 62?"

"LXII. Fifty-ten-one-one," Bill said, then shot a grin at Dipper—who was glaring at Bill for answering before he could. "Isn't that right, smart guy?"

"Yeah," Dipper grumbled.

"You kids take the credit if they ask about the candles," Bill said. "They'll just get grumpy if they know I had any influence on the decorations."

Mabel carefully tilted the bottom leg of the L just enough to keep the tip out of the frosting, and started smoothing out the rest of the candle-pockmarked surface. "Now I've got enough empty frosting to add some decorations!" Mabel said. "I don't have enough time to draw something complicated. Maybe rainbows?"

Dipper shook his head. "I don't think either of them would be into that."

"Draw gold bars," Bill said.

Mabel blew a raspberry. "That's what you'd want on a cake!"

"No, I'd want me on a cake. Stanley likes gold! Stanford should like gold more, you could help him develop a taste for it."

"No."

Dipper suggested, "Maybe you could draw gambling stuff on Stan's side of the cake? Since they couldn't have their birthday party in Vegas like he wanted." Dipper shot a sideways glance at the reason they had to stay in Gravity Falls. (Bill shrugged. It wasn't like he'd asked the Stan twins to stay in town.) "You could do poker chips or playing cards or—"

"Dice!" Mabel said. "Dipper that's perfect, they both like dice! We can put normal dice on Grunkle Stan's side and nerdy dice on Grunkle Ford's—"

"Oh, that's great! I've got my DD&MD dice bag in the attic!"

"I'll look in the board game closet!"

Dipper and Mabel took off. 

Bill waited until he was sure they were gone.

He checked out the kitchen window for witnesses, then picked up a dozen abandoned birthday candles, licked off the frosting, and hid the candles in his hoodie's hood. Too bad they hadn't left a matchbook out, but Bill knew a fun little trick with an empty aluminum can and a tube of toothpaste that would work just fine.

When the kids returned and Mabel stuffed the remaining forty-odd candles back in their box, they never noticed any were missing.

####

Mabel had put herself in charge of the guest list. Which explained why, along with Stan and Ford's actual friends, all Mabel's friends had been invited; as well as—among other people—the mayor ("he's like the Mystery Shack's best customer, Grunkle Stan!"), Shmebulock ("Jeff said Shmebulock stole the Journal 4 you started last fall, I was hoping he might gift it back"), and the Hand Witch and her boyfriend. ("Whaaat, Grunkle Ford you met her TOO?! What a coincidence! Dipper, did you know he met—oh, you did. I didn't read those pages!") It would have been a lot more awkward if not for the fact that the birthday boys were awed and humbled that so many people had attended knowing they were coming to a birthday party for Stan and Ford Pines, and none of the guests had even been bribed.

When Soos and Melody helped Mabel carry out the birthday cake, Ford laughed at the sight of it. "Did you make Roman numerals out of candles? How clever! Stanley, do you know what Roman—"

"Yeah, yeah. I watch the Football Bowl, you know," Stan said. "Honestly, I was expecting this thing to be covered in candles."

"I almost went that route," Mabel said. "But I thought I'd save that kind of firepower for the Fourth of July."

"Hah! That's my girl."

"Happy Birthday" was sung, candles were blown out, and the party lined up to get their cake. Mabel cut a slice, loaded it on a paper plate, then glanced toward the attic window. "I'll be right back! I've gotta use the bathroom. Don't open my presents until I'm back!"

She trotted into the house, taking the cake, a napkin, and a plastic spoon with her.

####

Bill met Mabel at the top of the stairs and scooped the cake out of her hands. "You're my hero, star girl." He carried it halfway back to his window seat, stopped mid-step, and asked, "You got a piece with my name on it?"

"I got the slice with the 'Birt' and took off the extra frosting!"

"Oh," Bill said. "Heh. That's—cute." And he looked so much like he was trying to pretend he wasn't genuinely touched by the gesture, that Mabel didn't have the heart to tell him she'd only thought of it halfway up the stairs.

He flopped back in his usual window seat post—where, Mabel couldn't help but notice, he had a perfect view of the party happening outside without him. She grimaced. "I'm sorry you can't come to the party," she said. "But you did torture and try to murder the birthday boys... and most of the party guests... and left half of them with lingering trauma..."

"Speaking of, how's your therapist doing?"

"Oh, good, she's good. I think she's gonna write a paper about Mabeland."

Bill fell silent, staring out the window. Mabel almost went downstairs—when he said, "You know, I was the only person who gave Stanford a gift on his thirtieth birthday."

Mabel turned back around so fast she almost tripped on the top step. It wasn't often she got a double dose of Bill lore and Grunkle lore. "You were?"

"He didn't make new friends in Oregon and he didn't keep up with his old friends from college. His parents mailed him a gift, but it got here a week late. So I taught him a couple spells to see the stars during the day and keep rain from landing on him, and told him where to be in Portland that afternoon if he wanted to pick up a free cake from a fancy bakery."

"Aww. That was... nice of you." But Mabel had to hesitate before saying it, automatically wondering what Bill's motives had been for giving the gifts and what his motive now was for sharing this. 

Bill waved a hand dismissively. "Ahh, they were parlor tricks. They're easy, flashy cantrips that impress humans but don't do any harm," he said. "Not much harm, anyway. That night he told me all about how he was the only human to see his zodiac constellation on his birthday. The genius spent all day staring at the sun so he could see the stars!" He laughed.

But it quickly petered out. "And now I'm personally banned from his birthday party. Funny, huh?"

Maybe Bill was trying to get Mabel to pity him; but she kinda thought he was just pitying himself. She patted his shoulder sympathetically. "Losing friends is tough," she said. She paused. "And that's why we should be nice to them."

Bill cracked up so loudly Mabel half expected the party outside to hear him. "Okay, Glory Unicorn! I've learned today's moral about friendship. Get outta here. See if I ever tell you anything again." But he was grinning as he shooed her off.

####

When Mabel came back cakeless, Dipper gave her a dark look, but said nothing.

"Are we opening gifts yet?" Mabel picked up a box and flung an arm around Dipper's shoulder. "You've gotta open this one first! It's from both of us to both of you!" She waved it at Stan and Ford until they took it together.

Ford pointed at the card that said, "To our Grunkles, from your gniece and gnephew!" "That isn't how you spell niece and nephew?" Stan elbowed him.

"Nope!" Mabel said. "But it's how you abbreviate great-niece and great-nephew."

"Ah, I see! Very creative."

"Nice recovery," Stan muttered. Ford elbowed him back. Together they tore off the wrapping paper and opened their box.

Inside were two more boxes, each small enough to hold in one hand—a square one labeled "Stan" and a long narrow one labeled "Ford."

Stan opened his box and pulled out a thick gold chain with a coin dangling from it. Engraved on the coin in sloppy text were the words "#1 Grunkle."

Soos held up a hand. "I did the engraving! First try."

Mabel pointed at the coin. "We made it out of pirate treasure that we have for reasons that we can't talk about! There's a skull on the back!"

They'd hung it from his favorite gold chain. He'd been missing it for a week—and he'd never even suspected the kids. How about that. Choked up, Stan said, "It's—it's great." He took off the chain he was currently wearing, chucked it into the bushes, and put on his gift. "C'mere, you two." He wrapped his arms around Dipper and Mabel.

Soos held his arms out hopefully. Stan rolled his eyes, but waved him over for a hug too.

Ford opened his box. "A pen?"

Dipper said, "It has an ergonomic grip, can take standard ink refills, writes super smoothly—I tested it out myself—makes a very satisfying click, and it's red with gold trim to match your journals."

Mabel said, "I helped pick out the design!"

"... And that's why it's also sparkly."

"I didn't do the engraving on that one," Soos said. "We had a lotta spare pirate coins but only one pen, so. They got it done at the mall."

Ford rotated the pen in his hand until he spotted the (more professional-looking) engraving on the barrel, filled in with gold. "Mine says #1 Grunkle too?"

Dipper said, "C'mon, we're not gonna choose between you two."

Stan said, "Oh, I see how it is! Trying to butter us both up, are you?" He reached under Dipper's hat to ruffle his hair. Smiling, Ford carefully slid his gift into his coat's breast pocket next to his usual pen.

####

When Bill saw that Mabel was back outside, he got up, left the rest of his cake on the window seat, scooted aside a storage box sitting forgotten in a corner of the attic, and pried a loose board from the wall.

He took his stolen candles out of his hood, wrapped them in the party napkin Mabel had given him, and stashed them in a plastic sandwich bag where he'd already stowed a crushed cider can, its edges torn and sharp.

Then he re-hid the bag, fixed the wall, replaced the storage box, gently brushed some cobwebs over the floor to hide the trail in the dust where he'd scooted the box, and turned away from his hiding spot.

To see a gnome wearing a journal like a backpack.

They stared at each other.

"You didn't see anything," said Bill.

"Shmebulock," said Shmebulock.

Bill eyed Shmebulock, the staircase, the window—and then dropped into a crouch, knees and feet spread apart like a sumo wrestler, teeth bared.

Shmebulock cracked his knuckles.

Five minutes later, Bill added Journal 4 to his hiding spot, with a mental note to find a new hiding spot the gnomes didn't know about later.

Unfortunately, Shmebulock escaped with Bill's cake.

####

Wendy squinted up at the blonde shape in the attic window. "You know—all this last week, I kept thinking I saw someone up there. I just assumed it was my imagination," she said. "Guess Goldie didn't get invited to the birthday party, huh?"

"Nope," Dipper said. "And for good reason."

Wendy laughed. "Yeah, sounds it."

Dipper glanced toward his grunkles. At the moment, Ford was opening a cheap set of watercolor paints and giving Mabel an exasperated look. ("I thought we could try them out together! And hate them together!" "All right, that might be fun.") He lowered his voice and picked at his cake. "So. You found out the big secret, huh?"

"Yup," Wendy said. She lightly punched Dipper's shoulder. "Hey—don't look so glum, man. I'm not mad you didn't tell me. There's some kind of family drama and a missing person case involved. I get it—you don't talk about that kind of stuff outside the family."

"Yeah, hah. Right," Dipper said. "So, what do you think of... Goldie?"

Wendy glanced up at the figure in the window. "We didn't talk a whole bunch before Goldie and Stan started arguing about plagiarism," she said, "but I got that she's some kind of wildcard paranormal investigator who gives off insane grifter energy. And seems really mentally messed up from being trapped in another dimension, but like, the kind of messed up that probably makes you fun at parties?" She was already mentally playing Goldie off of her friend group, trying to figure out how well she'd mesh with them. She seemed like the kind of person who'd be into some harmless trespassing and recreational vandalism. "How old is Goldie? She was working on a Ph.D., so that's what, mid-20s? Mid-20s but actually mid-50s after not aging for thirty years? Honestly, if I just met her on the street I would've thought she was like, 15. She does not look her age." Maybe it was the lack of makeup?

Under his breath, Dipper muttered, "You have no idea." He glanced away from Wendy, stuffed a large forkful of cake in his mouth, and mumbled to himself, "How much should I say? Sharing too much could be dangerous, but if I don't say anything..." Mumble, mumble.

Wendy would never tell Dipper how funny it was that he monologued to himself and hoped nobody would notice. Usually she'd politely ignore him, but if there was something dangerous... She lightly elbowed him. "Dipper. Come on," she said. "I can tell something's eating you. You can trust me."

"Ugh, I know, but..." Dipper glanced again at the rest of the birthday party—just far enough to be out of earshot, currently entranced by some thingamajig Fiddleford had gifted the Stans—and let out a heavy sigh. Voice low, he said, "Okay, Wendy, listen. For your own safety, you need to know that Goldie is way worse than whatever you heard about him last night. And I can't tell you why, because of reasons I also can't tell you—believe me, I wish I could tell you, but—don't trust him, okay?" Dipper gave her an earnest, pleading look. "Just don't. He's dangerous. That's all I can say."

It figured that even after Wendy learned the big secret, she'd just find another, smaller secret hidden underneath. Like a matryoshka doll. (She quietly made note of the "he" and wondered if Goldie had been part of the queer scene in the 80s, or if he'd only figured himself out while he was in ghost land.) "I'm assuming he's dangerous for Weird Spooky Paranormal reasons?"

"Yeah," Dipper said, teeth grit. "Yeah, basically."

He wanted to tell her more, she wanted to know more, and she was ready to play 20 questions on Goldie's backstory. Picking through what she'd learned last night for clues, Wendy asked, "Is it connected to Ford's research? All the weird magic stuff he got into?"

"Um." Dipper shrugged uncertainly. "Y...yeah? But... bigger than that?"

"Is it portal stuff." What was the most dangerous thing she knew of that was connected to the portal. "Is it Bill stuff."

Dipper let out an anguished groan, pulled off his hat, and buried his face in it. "I can't tell you more than I already have!"

"Oh my god it's Bill stuff."

Dipper eloquently said, "MRRGHF."

"Okay got it, so Goldie was some kind of Bill groupie or discovered how to summon him or something. Something like that. I don't need to know the details! But he's totally Bill-adjacent."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yep." Dipper nodded emphatically. "Bill-adjacent is... the best way to describe Goldie."

"But Bill's gone, right? So Goldie's like a cultist without a cult leader. Doesn't that mean he's harmless now?" Wendy asked. "Or do you think he's gonna try to cause the apocalypse in honor of his boss or whatever."

Dipper tugged his hat back on his head and straightened it out. "I'm sure he'd try to end the world again if he could, but... we're all still trying to figure out what he can do."

"So, domestic terrorism risk. Cool," Wendy said. "Y'know, I sorta expected to run into a guy like that in the shack eventually, but I always thought they'd be here because of Stan, not Ford." She rolled her eyes. "I'll warn you if he starts talking about ending the world or anything."

"Thanks, Wendy." Dipper glanced uneasily toward the birthday party. (They were still distracted, currently trying to douse the flamethrower on Fiddleford's birthday gift. It was trying to eliminate the competitor gifts.) "Just... don't tell anybody else, okay? If the town finds out that Goldie is—you know—Bill-adjacent..."

"Relax." She pantomimed zipping her mouth. "I'm not gonna organize an angry mob."

She glanced up at the attic window. Goldie was still up there, staring down at the party. He noticed Wendy staring and made a face at her.

She made the same face back, and saw him silently laughing. Okay, he had bad taste in friends, obviously; but Goldie seemed kinda cool in an unhinged way. From what Wendy had gathered, Bill had conned and then betrayed half the people she knew—and if the Pines had only just managed to get Goldie back on this plane of reality, months after Weirdmageddon, that meant Bill hadn't bothered to rescue him when he could, so Goldie was just another victim. Maybe he just needed to be reintegrated into society.

Dipper said, "Hey, Stan just poured punch on the robot and it made the fire worse. Do you think we should help?"

Wendy looked at the fire—and looked up at the fire. She was moving before she spoke. "Yeah, let's do something about that."

They rejoined the rest of the party, and Wendy put Goldie out of her mind.

####

Ford stared at the ring on his left sixth finger.

Welcome back, the Hand Witch had said.

Thirty years ago, he'd met her at a carnival. She'd told him that he'd chosen the wrong allies and would doom himself for it. She'd given him a ring with a blue cabochon and told him that if it ever turned black, there was no hope for him.

He'd dismissed her as a phony palm reader; and, the night he'd decided Bill was right about Fiddleford not being bold enough to follow through with the portal project, the ring had turned black, and he'd thrown it in the lake.

Now here it was on his finger again.

He didn't think her a phony now. Everything she'd told him had been true. And anyway, it was hard to doubt she had real magic when she spent half the party trying to stop two small disembodied hands from escaping her pockets to visit Mabel. 

"Why are you giving this back to me?"

"It's your birthday! And I thought it might be useful."

"For what? Am I in danger?"

"I don't know, I'd have to give you another reading to see." She had pulled a cartomancy deck from her pocket. "Do you want me to?" The card on the bottom of the deck had been a triangle with a snake slithering through its eye socket.

Ford hadn't wanted a reading. He knew now that what he'd called superstition back at that carnival might be a legitimate form of prophecy he simply didn't understand; but he was tired of living his life by signs and portends.

All the same, it was comforting to see that his ring was blue.

Ford's view of the ring was blocked by Stan shoving over the "Get Out Of One Misdemeanor Free" coupon Mayor Cutebiker had given as his birthday gift. "Hey, do you think I'd get in trouble if I made a buncha copies of this?"

Ford took the coupon and inspected it thoughtfully. "If you do get in trouble... a coupon counterfeiting charge couldn't possibly be worse than a misdemeanor, could it?"

"That's what I like to hear!"

It had been a surprisingly long day—and, by far, the best birthday either of them had had in well over forty years. (Was it really that long?) Now they were retired to the parlor Soos and Abuelita had converted into a double guest room, sitting on their beds facing each other as they got ready for sleep.

There was a knock at the door. Ford stood. "Coming—" He opened the door to see Bill's grinning face, a foot from his own. "Oh. You." Ford resisted the urge to step back, in case Bill interpreted as an invitation to come in.

"Hiya, birthday boy!" Bill's gaze immediately drifted down to Ford's coat pocket. "Hey—new pen? I like the sparkle, adds a little pizazz."

"What do you want, Cipher."

"Just to hand this over." Bill pressed a couple of envelopes into Ford's chest, and kept them pinned there with a fingertip until Ford reluctantly took them. "I knew you'd hate getting something from me at your party, so just for you I waited until all the festivities were over. You're welcome."

Ford studied the envelopes. They were two pieces of yellow construction paper that had been folded into envelope shape, and written on each one, in lurching crayon text that drifted up and down, was "Stanford" and "Stanley". "You made cards?"

"You're flattered."

"I most certainly am not."

"'The lady doth protest too much, methinks.'" Bill shrugged. "Hey, they're your birthday gifts. Toss them in the fire if that makes you happiest. You just might wanna open them first—you know, to make sure I didn't write a fire-activated explosion spell on the inside."

Stan grabbed his envelope out of Ford's hand and eyed it in deep suspicion. "And why did you make these?"

"Because it's your birthday. Come on! Why am I explaining this, it's your species's ritual."

"I mean why are you doing it? We all hate each other. We're planning your execution, here," Stan said. "So what's your angle?"

"What do you need my measurements for, you pervert."

"ALL right—" Stan stepped toward Bill, cracking his knuckles, and was only stopped by Ford's hand across his chest.

Bill leaned back against the hallway's opposite wall. "Whoa! Consider this a peace offering! You know—'no hard feelings for all the murder, attempted or planned'! I can be a polite house guest, even if I'm not a voluntary one." Bill smiled wryly, "I'm trapped on an alien planet where I know less than a dozen people and all of them hate me. It gets boring." He looked directly in Ford's eyes. "And we've got history. Is it so hard to believe I might want to be friends again?"

This time, Stan had to put a hand across Ford's chest.

Ford said, "You're up to something."

"Is that a statement or a question?"

"Statement."

"Then you don't want an answer. Enjoy your gifts! Or don't, I'm not your boss." Bill waved, and slunk around the corner back toward the living room.

Ford shut the door. He sat on his bed, examined the envelope, and glanced at Stan, who was sitting on his bed doing the same thing.

They grimaced at each other.

"Okay," Stan said. "Is this more dangerous if we do open it or don't open it?" He hefted his envelope in his hand. "This thing's pretty heavy for just a card."

"Is it?" Ford's wasn't very heavy. He turned on a lamp on a bedside table and held the envelope up in front of it, trying to see through the construction paper. "I think he's counting on us to open these. I doubt he set a trap that will activate if we leave it closed—it's not his style."

"So, what do we think. Some kinda hypnotic mind-control magic that's activated by reading it? Or is he just trying to bribe us into liking him better?"

"He probably doesn't have hypnotic mind-control magic. If he did, why would he have spent so long trying to manipulate humans into doing his bidding?"

"I dunno, maybe he's stupid."

Testily, Ford said, "He's not stupid."

"No—listen, I've been thinking about this for months," Stan said. "You spent thirty years hopping between a zillion different dimension, right? If there's already safe portals out there, why'd he spend so long tricking someone into building a crummy one that'd destroy the universe, instead of using one of those? He's gotta be stupid!"

"I've... wondered the same thing about the portal," Ford admitted grudgingly. "But, no—I've seen him use so many roundabout tricks to manipulate minds that if he were capable of overt mind control, I'm sure he'd have used it by now."

"Fine, so mind control's off the table. But we're probably safer if we leave these alone. If we open them, they might be an annoying attempt to kiss up to us, or they might be dangerous." Stan waved his envelope like a fan. "And, we're gonna open them anyway, because not knowing will kill us, right?"

In his youth, Ford had arrogantly looked down on Pandora. "Of course we're going to open them."

They opened their envelopes.

They both contained a sheet of type paper folded in half with nothing on the front and messages written inside. Ford's read, "Stanford– I'd tell you to go to hell, but you'd barely be there long enough for it to be worth the trip. Happy birthday! –Δέος" Charming. Particularly out of the heel who'd just claimed he wanted to be friends.

"Hey, what is this?" Stan held his letter out for Ford to see: "Stanley– You were only the accomplice. I won't hold a grudge. Happy birthday! –Δέος" Stan pointed at the last word, "Is this some kind of curse?"

"A signature. Bill's real name isn't 'Bill Cipher'—it's just one of many nicknames he uses when communicating with humans. And, when writing to people who know him well, he prefers to sign with that nickname. It's pronounced déos." It meant awe—whether manifested in the form of fear or reverence. And it probably was no coincidence that Bill had picked a word that, to the untrained ear, sounded so much like the Latin deus—god.

Once, long ago, waking up to find his own hand had written a letter signed by "Awe" in a foreign alphabet had filled Ford with awe. Now... well, now it looked a little try-hard, didn't it. "Between you and me, I think Bill likes that signature best because it starts with a triangle." In Bill's handwriting, the delta looked unusually equilateral.

"Really fond of his own face, isn't he," Stan said, digging in the envelope for the rest of his "gift"—and he pulled out a handful of scratch cards. "What the...?"

How the heck had Bill gotten his hands on those? Ford checked to see if his envelope had the same—and came out with five pieces of notebook paper instead, still tattered on the edge from being torn out of a spiral notebook, covered front and back with writing—multiple languages, some inhuman, with a smattering of complex sigils and symbols. The first line on the first page read "Spell to Resurrect Fowl (chicken, turkey, duck, etc.—funny at dinner parties!)" Ford slapped the pages face down on his nightstand without reading the next line.

"What is it?" Stan asked.

"Magic," Ford said, voice flat with irritation.

"A trap—?"

"No. Magic for me. Spells I don't know. The kind of knowledge I'd—document in my journals."

Stan processed that. He tossed his scratch cards down on his own nightstand. "Lemme get this straight," he said. "Less than two weeks since he tried to kill us, with no access to the outside world and no resources at his disposal but his stupid wits—without even getting his hands on a freaking envelope—he somehow managed to get us both thoughtful, considerate gifts that are deeply relevant to our personal interests and passions! Is that about right?"

"It seems to be, yes."

"That jerk! I oughta wring his neck!"

Ford nodded in agreement. "I didn't know you're into scratch cards." He tamped down the urge to lecture Stan on the statistical improbability of making a profit.

"See, if even you didn't know, now I'm even madder that he does!" Stan groaned in frustration. "I kicked the habit. Still like playing 'em if I get them as a gift."

"Hmm." That was all right, then. Couldn't lose money on scratch cards if somebody else had spent the money.

They glared together at their thoughtful, relevant, deeply unwanted gifts, trying to decide what to do about them. Stan was the first to let out a resigned sigh and snatch his up. "What the heck. They're already paid for, I'm not gonna throw away potential free money just because it came from him." He fished around in his discarded pants pockets for a quarter. "But I'm not gonna enjoy myself!" He flipped through the cards, noting they were each labeled in a corner from 1/11 to 11/11, and muttered, "Why'd he draw triangles on some of the numbers?"

Well, if Stan had caved into his curiosity... Back into the box, Pandora, and perhaps we'll find hope at the bottom.

"Mabel must've helped him get these," Stan said. "It's the only way. And these cards have glitter and unicorns all over them." He scratched off his first card, and said, "Hey, three bunny faces—how 'bout that? I made thirty bucks already."

"At least it's not a total waste," Ford muttered, skimming the pages before him.

It was a treasure trove.

A spell to uncook food. The cipher to decrypt the Voynich manuscript. A potion to change eye color. A river stone submerged not five miles away that, when dry, hovered. A ritual involving five hours of meditation and a lot of mushrooms that opened up psychic communication with Earth's nearest alien neighbors. An illusion to make the floor look like lava. ("Good for games if you're very bored and oppressed by gravity.") The names of five hitherto-unknown demon nobles, the sigils to summon and bind them, the fields of knowledge and political influence in which they were most helpful, and a few personal tips on how to best to twist their arms into doing a favor. A complicated way to grind glasses that let one see, depending on prescription strength, anywhere from several seconds to several minutes into the future. And on and on.

And Bill didn't just toss down a few mystical-sounding words and move on: in a few terse sentences after each spell, he hinted at the principles that made them work (freely mixing magic, physics, and metaphysics), the people who'd created or discovered the trick (whether human, inhuman, unearthly, or transdimensional), where Ford could go digging to independently verify the information if he didn't want to take Bill's word for it—and what other, greater things someone might use these tricks to do, if only they fully understood how they worked, if only they had the right teacher. Bill had filled the margins, scribbled extra info in red pen in between the rows of black to double the amount of text he could cram on each line. Ford could fill an entire journal just by copying, disentangling, and expanding on everything Bill had packed into this dense five-page grimoire.

Bill had given Ford more in this letter than he had in all the years he'd been posing as Ford's friend—excluding those accursed portal blueprints. He'd shared the kinds of things Ford had always dreamed his Muse might show him. He gave it away like a free sample to entice a new customer. Five pages of deep secrets meant nothing to Bill and his infinite knowledge. He could have done this all along. He only did it now to try to bribe Ford into sparing his life: see what you could miss out on?

As Ford read the pages, his hands trembled in rage.

"—two hundred dollars, two hundred fifty dollars," Stan muttered. "Those are the biggest yet." He waved the scratch cards at Ford. "I don't understand it! That's eight winners in a row! I've made almost a thousand bucks just by scratching these off—that's not luck! How's he do it? What kinda weird alien magic gives you scratch card telepathy?"

"I don't know. I had no idea he could identify winning scratch cards," Ford said. "But I'm not surprised."

Stan shook his head in amazement, and scratched the next card.

Ford crushed the notepaper pages into a ball.

And he smoothed them back out. Bill was a monster, but this knowledge was precious. 

He looked at the Hand Witch's ring like it might tell him the correct course; but no matter which way his thoughts swayed, the gem remained a steady blue.

"This card's a thousand bucks all by itself," Stan said. "I've never won a thousand in my life. There's no way..." He scratched furiously at the last card, revealing symbols patterned after an array of gems and jewelry. "Five hundred!" Scratch scratch scratch— "Times five?! That's—!" He seized up all his cards and quickly tallied his winnings. "That's a total of nearly five thousand dollars!" He let out a disbelieving laugh. "Who needs Vegas? This monster's been better to me than she ever has!"

"Stanley, that's exactly what he wants you to think," Ford snapped. "He's giving us everything we want so we'll be more reluctant to kill him. This is less than chump change to him! Don't forget that his goal—"

"I know! I'm not stupid, I know what he's doing. Lotto numbers aren't worth the safety of the universe. But sh—shoot, Stanford, he handed me five grand for free and I'm keeping it."

"Fine," Ford said. "Fine. I suppose there's no point in throwing it away on principle."

"Darn straight!"

Ford glowered down at his underhanded "gift"—this little glimpse behind the veil into the mysteries of the universe. His whole chest bubbled and burned with rage; but beneath it—twinkling like a lonely star, twinkling like hope at the bottom of Pandora's box—was something he hadn't felt since Bill betrayed him.

Awe.

It was like waking up to a letter from his Muse.

This was who Bill could be—gift-giver, wish-granter, teacher, guide, friend—and he chose not to be. Why?! When this was so easy for him—why did he have to be what he was instead?

This charitable act only made the true Bill look even worse by contrast.

Ford re-smoothed the pages, carefully folded them in half, and stored them back in their construction paper envelope. He'd leave them there until he'd independently researched every one of these spells and ensured they did what Bill said they did and that there weren't any hidden side-effects.

And then he'd see about adding this information to his current journal.

No point throwing it away on principle.

####

(Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, I'd deeply appreciate hearing your thoughts! Thanks!)

[starlightrosa]

Hi hi!!- aghh this is so embarrassing but ykw im breaking my outter shy bubble! Can you make a little Ler!Ford headcannons or a little write prompt scenario or something-? If not its ok!!- i wont be mad!!

Ford is just a big comfort character for me idk why ;^; anywhos have a cookie for coolness!-🍪

Aww hello there, dearest! Don’t be embarrassed, my lovely, I don’t bite!

*chomps cookie* Yum, thanks :3

headcannons for you :)

Ford, I feel, would be a ler leaning switch. He targets Dipper and Mabel most, but sometimes he goes for Stanley.

He definitely once made up a fake entry in one of the journals, explaining a rare sighting of a monster to fool Dipper. That monster being, the Tickle Monster. Gets Dipper every time!

Five fingers all on a tickle spot is bad enough? But Ford has six. So if he finds that tickle spot, his lee is an absolute GONER.

and now for lee!Ford <3

Ford as lee is a bit more common than one would assume. I mean, the guy spent years between dimensions. Who wouldn’t be a little touch-starved?

He prefers softer tickles to rougher ones. But if he’s stressed, he will go to Stanley. His brother is a fearsome tickler, and sometimes you just wanna laugh your lil head off and forget your problems.

Tickle fights with Mabel are common. Sometimes he wins. Sometimes he don’t.

Ford wears a turtleneck and a jacket. I’ve never seen him take it off in the show. It might be cold in Gravity Falls… or Ford is insanely ticklish on his torso and neck areas, wink nudge ;)

I think that’s all I have for now, lovely! Thank you for the ask, a pleasure meeting you :)

[pines4thetwin]

When you mentioned fused stancest I literally could not stop thinking about how they would act if they couldn’t infuse for a while everyone’s reaction to how they function as one person. I would love to hear more of you take on it.

I have so many!! This ended up longer then i expected (Sorry if this isnt what you meant)

So I actually wanted to write something like this concept but the angst is like a parasite and it takes over everything

I think if they got stuck as a Fordley (thats what im calling the fusion) the reactions would go like this:

Mabel is squealing and thinks its so cool and definitely asks to ride on their shoulders. Shes having the time of her life (and even asks if she can try the fusion machine too.) Two grunkles for the price of one and all that but now they are one cooler taller Grunkle.

Dipper hates it. He constantly gets jumpscared. He'll go down to get water and Fordley is creeping around in the middle of the night to get snacks before slinking back down to the lab and dippers like cluching his chest and shaking and sweaty and he really just wants them unfuse already.

Stan would be upset cause why would ford even build something like this. And then he fucked up and now theyre stuck this way. But also he's secretly pleased with the fact that the intensity of his feelings for stan drove Ford to literally create a way for them to be one.

Ford is only too pleased because this is what he wanted. Now he's only thinking that they get to do all the things they love together just like they always said they would do as kids. They'll watch stans shows and do science stuff and he's pleasently surprised with how their minds blend together so well. Even if stan pretends he doesnt enjoy the explorations they go on Ford can feel that he does.

They still work on a way to fix the machine so they can get unfused but only cause stans still a bit pissed at not having a choice in the matter but Ford fully intends to convince him that being one is how they are supposed to be.

Wendy would be like wtf then rapidly compartmentalize and just nod and be like "this is my life now."

Soos looses his mind and fanboys so hard and writes all types of fusion fics and has tea with them to ask how it feels to make his fics as canon as possible. He will also au the hell outta Fordley.

They definitely become an urban legend cause some townie or tourists saw them slinking around in the woods "Seven foot tall, four eyed creature spotted in the woods of gravity falls. Hairless cousin of bigfoot??" And all of the photos are super blurry and you got some people saying it has four arms and debating if it eats humans or only family sized bags of toffee peanuts?

As for specifically with the angsty one i wrote

Ford refuses to let them find a way to fix it cause he doesnt see them being stuck as a problem

Stan is (rightfully) upset and refuses to engage with Ford. Ford eventally coaxes stan to hear him out and they slowly work through their issues cause really what else can they do when their literally stuck together. And then maybe stan realizes that being them isnt so bad and he begrudgingly respects fords audacity (and insanity) to make what he wanted a reality.

And when they do (mostly stan) finally accept the situation, they allow themself to truly start to think of themself as one and i think even the deformites of their unstable fusion would start to shift into a more stable form.

Mabel is lowkey scared of them because of what happened in the lab but she slowly warms up to Fordley. But its only after her grunkles stop fighting. (dont ask how you can fight when you share one body because they do it and they do it easily and she can tell)

Dipper is confused cause no one actually sat him down to fully explain what happened and he's working on context clues only. He's too scared to ask Fordley and anytime he asks mabel she just goes wide eyed and pale. And then one day everything is cool. Like Fordley is still there but he's happier and engaging with the nibs and mabel isnt scared of them anymore and dippers even more confused because nobody has clued him in????

Maybe i should just turn these into fics atp?