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videogamelover99 · 24 days ago

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[Gravity Falls] Waking Days Ch. 8: A Nice Day Out

Summary: Bill Cipher is reborn, but not in the way he would have wanted. Stuck as a mortal and relying on those who brought his downfall, he realizes that maybe he didn't lie as hard as he should have. [AO3 Link] Characters: Bill Cipher, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Stanford Pines, Stanley Pines, Jheselbraum the Unswerving, The Axolotl Pairings: past BillFord Rating: T

A/N: Hi! I'm not dead! Just dealing with my move and my new job! From now on, I will switch to a bi-weekly posting schedule until I feel like I can keep up with posting once a week again. It's a marathon, not a sprint, haha. Thank you to @megxolotl and @nexstage for beta-reading. Enjoy!

---

“Wow, that was awkward,” said Bill. “Anyway! You should probably go talk to him.”

Mabel stared at her hands.

“Seriously, who knows what he’ll get up to.” Bill cast a quick glance at the door. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t thought this through as much as he should’ve. No doubt the first thing Pine Tree was going to do, once he got over his tantrum, was go tattle to Stanford Pines. Hopefully, soon it wouldn’t matter. He could get rid of Sarah. He just needed Star out of the picture, and the rift was his. “Aaand you’re not going. Guess this sibling relationship will stay irreparable. Forever.”

Mabel sniffed.

“You’re not…leaking, right? That thing you humans do with your eyes? Cause if that’s the case-”

Mabel looked up at him. She was grinning. “Whaat? Come on, it’s not a big deal. You’re right, we should just talk to Dipper!”

“We?”

She grabbed his arm before he could protest, and hauled him up the stairs. “We’ll figure out the rift thingy later!”

Bill cast a mournful glance at the door to the storage room. He needed to get to that rift.

—

“Ah, nothing like kicking it back and drinking something terrible that’ll cause a problem later. Right, Ford?” Stanley leaned back against the hard plastic chair of the cafe and took a long sip of his milkshake.

Ford nursed his cup of coffee Stan had switched out for decaf while he thought Ford wasn’t looking. He smiled. “You were right. I was going at an unfeasible pace. The break was…much needed.”

“Of course I’m right. The world’s not ending today. Your friend over there give you a timeline?”

“Nora isn’t sure herself,” Ford said. “The only way to predict anything is by watching the rift. And even then, it could be months, if not weeks until…” He shuddered.

“Hey, what did I say? You don’t gotta think about this stuff now.” Stan shoved the milkshake in Ford’s face. “Here! Make some terrible choices and relax.”

Ford took the milkshake. It was overly sweet and frothy. The silly straw was certainly a choice. Not to his taste, but Bill would’ve…

Ford shook his head.

Why did that thought have to come up now?

—

Soos ran out to see if he could catch the hot dog cart across the mall, and Melody took the opportunity to sit down at the table over, where- Nora was her name? Where Nora was picking at the basket of fries in front of her as if they were going to eat her.

“Hi,” said Melody.

Nora blinked up at her. She looked…not quite there. “Hi.”

“I’m Melody.”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh. Right. Psychic powers.” This was getting awkward.

Melody took a fry and popped it in her mouth. Stan said she was an alien, right? Maybe she needed a demonstration.

It did the trick. Nora picked up a fry and finally put it in her mouth. Her brow furrowed with surprise. “These are good.”

“Right? It’s one of my top ten favorite places ever.”

“You know, you might be onto something,” said Nora. She took another fry.

“So, what’s it like being an alien from another dimension?”

The other woman shot her a look. “What is it like being a human from this dimension?”

“I don’t…know?”

The corner of Nora’s lips twitched slightly.

Melody laughed. “Fair enough.”

Melody’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it, despite Nora’s glance. It buzzed again. And again.

Angry, Melody pulled it out and pressed the power button.

“What is that?” Nora asked.

“Oh! It’s a cell phone.” Melody held it up, eager to change the subject. “We use it to-”

“I know what a cell phone is,” Nora said, not without irony. “I meant the messages.” She squinted at the screen. “Who is excelsior21?”

“No one!” Melody quickly hid it. The phone only buzzed again.

‘Doesn’t seem like no one,” said Nora.

“Okay, so maybe it’s someone! Someone who might or might not be my ex?” Why was she spilling her guts like that to a literal stranger? There was something in Nora’s demeanor that made her a little too okay with it. She quickly glanced at where Soos had been sitting, then turned back to her phone and glared at it. Suddenly, she couldn’t help ranting. “I hoped he would just get the message and go away! But he won’t. I tried turning it off, but-” It kept turning itself on again. And Melody knew why. She really didn’t need this ruining her day.

“Can I see it?”

Melody hesitated, then handed the phone to Nora. The alien woman inspected the device and pulled something from her pocket. “I can trace where they’re coming from and shut off any messages from that cell tower for you.”

“Like hacking?”

“Better than hacking.” Nora pulled out a small, tube-like device. A hologram erupted from it of some kind of network. “It’s magic.” She spread her hands in emphasis.

At the word “magic”, Melody shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Nora didn’t seem to notice, pulling out a piece of chalk and writing something on the table. The hologram flickered, then shifted, coming up with strange symbols. Nora frowned. “Well, I know where it’s coming from.”

“Where?”

“That direction,” she pointed down the hall to the nearby row of shops. “Three hundred feet away.”

—

Dipper stormed out of the store, almost running into a lady with a dozen shopping bags under her arm. He found a more secluded corner to pace.

What was Mabel thinking?! Bill couldn’t be trusted! He’d thought he’d gotten through to her, over and over again, but apparently, that wasn’t the case! She’d sided with Bill! Why?!

And the rift…how long has it been there? Were there others? Did Bill make them? What was Dipper supposed to do?!

He needed to tell Grunkle Ford. Dipper stuffed his hands in his pockets and hurried to the exit. His left hand closed around a scrap of paper, and he pulled it out without thinking.

16 degrees C to 18 degrees C, no higher than 24 degrees C.

Bill’s stupid riddle. Dipper crumpled it into a ball and launched it at the nearest trashcan, only to miss. The ball bounced off the lid and fell in front of a large, red-haired man exiting a nearby store. He looked down at it, and after a moment picked it up.

Dipper hurried over. “Sorry, man.”

The man looked down at the note. “You got a terrarium?” he asked.

Dipper froze, hand hovering inches away from the note. “What?”

“Oh! You’re a fish kind of guy, huh?” The man handed him back the note. “That’s tropical water temperatures, dude, gotta be expensive.”

He pointed his thumb at the store behind him which Dipper realized it was a pet shop. The guy had a small bag full of water in his hand. In the bag was a tiny silverfish.

“Oh, that’s not-” Dipper looked back down at the note. A realization started forming in the forefront of his brain. Degrees C wasn’t a code or a riddle. It was literal.

Bill had given him this riddle knowing he was going to overthink it. Dipper had two sudden, contradicting urges to either hug this man or go back and strangle Bill.

“Oh man, oh man, you have no idea what you just…” Dipper settled on shaking the man’s hand for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Then he bolted for the pet store.

—

Stanley’s stomach did not agree with his milkshake. He bolted for the bathroom and Ford was left staring out into space, having nothing else to do. Soos had been gone for a while, and the girls had disappeared. He hated boredom, a sure sign of his mind being idle and unoccupied, wasting time on the mundane, and yet he was too tired to move from his seat. Ford watched the milkshake slowly liquefy in his cup and wondered idly if he could invent unmeltable milkshakes. Now that would be…commercial drivel. He must truly be sleep-deprived.

It took him almost a minute to realize the two people coming out of a nearby store were his niece and his worst enemy.

It took him twice as little time to cross the food court.

“What are you doing here with Mabel?” he demanded.

“Woah there!” Bill took a step back. “Ever heard of personal space, Fordsy? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were eager to see me.”

Ford sputtered. His brain was so fried, he froze on coming up with a good comeback.

“What are you doing here, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asked.

“I was- Stanley- They-” Ford left embarrassment to creep through the haze his thoughts were covered with. This was not how he planned this confrontation to go. “Bowling.” He said lamely.

Bill was grinning smugly. He wished Mabel wasn’t here, just so he could punch the demon in the face.

“I love bowling!” said Mabel. “Wait, no, gotta focus. Grunkle Ford, there’s something you should-”

“Yikes,” said Bill, looking Ford up and down. “You look like hell, Sixer, and I mean that from the bottom of my nonexistent heart. A smidge of bad news and you’d explode where you stand!”

Ford forced himself to ignore him. “What is it, Mabel?”

“Uh,” said Mabel. “Nothing! It can wait. Probably.” She put a concerned hand on Ford’s arm. “We were just…shopping! Super not important! Bill didn’t even make anyone cry today, nothing at all to worry about.” She grinned innocently.

Ford sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You need to stop indulging him.”

“You’d know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

“Oh, be quiet!”

—

Dipper went through 6 terrariums and a dozen fish tanks and found several tanks with a water temperature within the range of the riddle. Most of them were tropical fish. Dipper tried to rearrange the names of the species, going so far as to compose several anagrams, but none of them made any sense.

He came upon a tank in the corner of the store and stopped. Inside the tank was not a fish, but a large pink amphibian, about the size of Dipper’s forearm. It floated at the bottom of the tank and looked like a frilled, smooth-skinned salamander. Its little eyes met Dipper’s own. For a moment, it almost looked like it was smiling at him.

Dipper checked the thermometer on the inside of the tank. 17.5 degrees Celsius.

“Interested in our axolotl?”

A woman in a nametag came up behind him. Dipper almost didn’t notice her, too busy staring at the creature depicted in countless tapestries and paintings in the oracle’s shrine. The that had a god-like significance to so many of the aliens they’d met. A creature they knew nothing about, but that felt so familiar. ”Um, could you tell me if this is accurate?” He held up the crumpled piece of paper.

The woman took a moment to read it. “It is! Looks like you’ve done your research. That’s so this little guy stays in a safe environment, temperatures too cold or too warm mess with his metabolism, which can be fatal. You wanna keep the temperature in that range, and not go over 75 Fahrenheit, or 24 Celsius if you wanna be scientific about it. We have two more of these guys if you want to take a look at them. Oh, but it looks like our little William likes you!”

Dipper looked back down at the note, then the axolotl. He noticed the tag attached to the bottom of the tank with a name scrawled in permanent marker: “William”.

I’m definitely strangling Bill next time I see him.

The axolotl let out a few air bubbles, almost like it was laughing.

—

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Melody.

“Yes, well, I don’t think your stalker is going away anytime soon,” said Nora. “Luckily, there’s plenty of ways to scare him off. I plan to use only the mildly painful one.”

This was turning into a disaster quicker than Melody expected. She had the sense that Nora was more powerful than she looked, but that did little to reassure her. “Look, not that I’m not super grateful you’re willing to stand up for me even though you barely know me-”

“I know more than you think.”

“...That’s kind of creepy?”

Nora shrugged, unbothered.

“Okay, but listen, you clearly don’t know about this, so trust me, it’s better if you just leave it alone- What are you doing?”

Nora stopped and bent over, sticking her head in a plastic topiary bush. “Found you,” she sang.

And Melody watched as this tiny woman dragged a grown man out of the bush.

—

The human man didn’t look like much by Nora’s standards. He had pale skin, shifty eyes, a mane of shaggy, barely-kempt hair, an oversized trench coat, and a nervous demeanor. He held an old leather suitcase close to his chest, having clung to it even as he realized he had been discovered.

“Hi~,” said Nora. “Having a nice day out? You must be.”

Behind her, Melody gasped. “Lukas?”

“Melody!” The man stood up, brushing invisible dirt off his coat. He puffed his chest out, and at his full height, he was not even a head taller than Nora. Still, her own lack of height in this new form irritated her. “I can explain.”

“This’ll be rich,” Nora muttered.

“What are you doing here?” Melody asked cautiously.

“I can explain,” Lukas said again. “I- I just needed to talk to you! But you were never alone, and I-I can’t just say what I need to say in front of…” He looked down on Nora with such disdain, that she was surprised by his audacity. “Some random hicks.”

“You have an intriguing taste in men,” Nora remarked.

“You should leave,” said Melody.

“Wait! Please! Just listen, I met this guy, and he’s some kind of a relationship guru? And I know now, that if we just talked, we could-”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

Something in the man’s demeanor changed - less pathetic and more angry. “You have to hear me out!”

“Actually,” said Nora, producing a small piece of chalk from her pocket. “She doesn’t.”

She drew a circle with the chalk in the air. The circle expanded before striking the ground as if pulled by a giant magnet, completely encircling the man. He let out a startled yelp as the air around him grew jagged, splitting off into dozens of golden fractals.

“Now, where should I send you?” Antarctica should be great this time of year.”

“Um, Nora?”

“Relax, it’ll be near a research station. He’ll have a whole sixty seconds before he freezes to death.”

The circle spun, growing smaller and smaller, the fractals along with it. A teleportation spell wasn’t terribly complicated, but it did make for a lovely show.

The circle grew small enough to touch the man’s toes - and promptly shattered. The fractals vanished.

Nora stared at the remains of a spell she’d cast a dozen times before. “What.”

“I should’ve told you,” Melody said quietly.

The man shuddered, looking straight at her. Then he chuckled nervously, pulling a pendant out of his shirt collar. It was covered in protective sigils. “That’s not gonna work,” he said.

With that, he popped open his suitcase.

—

“Hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going?!”

“Being physically around you for more than five minutes at a time is giving me a headache.”

“Oh, you’re such a drama queen!”

“Stop following me!”

Ford realized that at this point, half of the mall was staring at the two of them yelling at each other. He was too tired to care. Seeing Bill now had only made Ford agitated and angry. He didn’t know whether to get away from Bill as fast as possible or turn around and throw him off the escalator.

Mabel ran to catch up with them, trying to reassure some of the gawkers. He didn’t want to make a scene in front of her, but Bill…Bill!

“After all of what happened you have the audacity to barge into our lives again-”

“How many times have I gotta tell you that I DID NOT ASK FOR THIS! You’re the one who put me on house arrest, Fordsy!”

“Why couldn’t you just stay dead?” Ford moaned.

Bill scoffed, as if genuinely offended by the remark. “Stop acting like you’re so miserable about it, we both know-”

That’s when a bolt of cartoonish lighting struck the ceiling above their heads.

Sparks erupted from the fluorescent lighting before half of the panels burst from the power surge. People around them shrieked and ran for cover. Ford turned to see a disheveled-looking Melody sprinting towards them.

“Melody! Are you alright?” Ford asked when she came to a stop. Mabel put a reassuring hand on her arm.

“So, uh…” said Melody, looking at Mabel. “You know how I said I dated a magician once?”

That’s when, from around the corner came a literal tornado. It shot more cartoonish lightning bolts, shattering a nearby storefront and making Ford’s hair rise from his scalp from all the static electricity. “Is that-?”

“Yeah.”

“And you-?”

“Yeah.”

“Girl,” said Mabel. “That’s messed up.”

Melody put her face in her hands. Ford felt a pang of sympathy.

Nora appeared on Ford’s other side, seemingly out of nowhere. Her hair seemed the worst off, strands of it sticking out in all directions. She seemed genuinely angry, which Ford had rarely seen. “Okay,” she said, “I was a bit too lenient. When this is over, I’m sending him to Mars.”

“Looking good, Seven Eyes,” said Bill.

“Bite me.”

They heard cackling from inside the tornado. Ford realized a person was floating in its epicenter, perfectly safe and balanced in the air despite the rippling winds. It was a man of average, disheveled appearance, in a long trench coat that floated around his body rather theatrically. He held a suitcase in one hand. The other he used to gesture dramatically.

“Listen closely, mortals!” the man bellowed. He must’ve cast a spell to amplify his voice because it sounded like it was coming out of a bass-boosted speaker. “I am the great wizard Excelsior! My magic power is great and vast. Many fear me, many more ask ‘How does that magic trick really work?’”

“You sure know how to pick ‘em, kid,” said Bill. Melody did not look up, looking like she wanted to be part of the magic trick that vanishes her from Earth.

“I have come to reclaim my lady,” he said, gesturing at melody to a nonexistent audience. “And I will not stand some mediocre wanna-be magician getting in my way!” he pointed an accusatory finger at Nora.

“The Sun,” Nora said calmly. “I’m sending him into the Sun.”

“Melody doesn’t want you!” Mabel yelled into the tornado. It was remarkable how such a small girl could muster that much oxygen. “She’s got someone else! Someone that’s way nicer than you!”

The tornado vanished. The Great Wizard Excelsior (simply thinking of the name caused Ford psychic damage) floated to the ground, his coat fluttering around him. Gone was the confidence as he hunched in on himself, reeling as if from a blow. “You found someone else?”

“Yeah, and they’re happy together, you big jerk! So beat it!”

Excelsior stared into the middle distance for a moment. “I didn’t want to use this, you know,” he said, ominous.

He popped open his suitcase and pulled out a strange, heart-shaped contraption. It resembled a locket with a chain attached to the edge on top, and yet it was as big as Ford’s fist.

Nora and Bill gasped.

“Where did you get that?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding-”

The wizard opened the locket. Inside was a

White.

Blinding.

Light.

---

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#gravity falls #bill cipher #flat dreams #pengychan #human bill au #fanfiction #the book of bill #vee's writing #a different form a different time #waking days reboot #doodledrawsthings

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