Chapter Text
Bill Cipher sighs down the barrel of the ray gun held towards his chin, staring at the angrily quaking white knuckles of Stanford Pine’s six fingered hand. From the corner of Bill’s eye, he saw the man’s other arm was held protectively out to block his grand niece and nephew from getting any closer to their past nemesis; the menace that had once personally threatened to destroy their family, their universe. Stanley steps up to swiftly wrap his arms around the two teens, drawing them backwards and away despite their protests and worried glances in their great uncle Ford’s direction.
“Wait, we can help!” Dipper insists.
“We can take him!” Mabel agrees, pushing against her grunkle’s wide arm. Stanley doesn’t budge, and Bill finally raises his gaze to meet Sixer’s.
Rage. Fear. Determination. Easy enough to see. Bill looks away, past the pointed gun, down the handle of the mop in his hands and towards the damp floor. …Right.
“Uh-” At the sound of Bill’s slightly unfamiliar and more human voice, Stanford lunges ever so slightly forward, and. Slips. “-Fu-” dropping the mop and curving his arms out to steady the man, Bill moves his head just enough to avoid Ford’s gunshot, fired reactively to the demon’s sudden shift. The ray blast shatters the nearest triangular window, and the crash of broken glass compounds the tension in the room. Ford flinches out of Bill’s hold like he’s burning, pointing the gun towards his old muse once more, expression poleaxed. A brief silence descends.
“...My dudes?” Soos interjects from the doorway, “We have got to talk.”
…
“Horse- manure!” Stanley barks, but Soos’ expression remains calming, neutral.
“No really man, Bill’s been helping out around the shack since the big glowing lizard dropped him off, they said something about therapy and community service? With pretty sick rhymes! So I walked him through some stuff, and now he’s doing great.”
“Giant sparkly rap lizard??” Mabel wants details, while Dipper is frowning near as heavily as Ford. Melody walks around the kitchen handing out cool glasses of lemonade, as if this whole situation was part of what passes for an unremarkable day in Gravity Falls. She even walks over to the far corner of the room Bill was leaning awkwardly into, offering him a beverage with the ease of habit. He dips his head listlessly in tepid thanks, before downing the yellow liquid with ungraceful motions and carrying it wordlessly to rinse in the sink. The Pines watch quietly as Bill places the used cup into the dirty dishwasher, and returns to his allotted corner without complaint.
“That’s…” Dipper murmurs uncertainly,
“...Super weird,” Mabel nods along, and Bill arches the brow over his lidded empty eye socket, otherwise impassive to the critique. The younger twins shrug at each other, and Ford’s hands dig deeper into his pockets. Stanley notes his brother’s motion, and huffs in exasperation.
“It’s all bull,” the ex-con man reiterates, “There’s no way he isn’t planning something.” Bill absently turns his empty hands over each other, scratching at his own lightly greyish-green skin, and Ford finally speaks.
“Regardless of Bill’s motives, if it was The Axolotl that brought him here then his situation is at least somewhat legitimate, and he's been temporarily left to us. Meaning, we can’t just kill him.” Soos’ mouth falls into an o at the presumption of murder as an option, Melody sighs and shakes her head. Stanley opens and closes his mouth at Ford’s dark tone, but accepts the explanation with a sigh.
“That’s…ugh, fine. But why does he look like… that?” Stanley gestures Bill’s way, and Soos recovers enough to shrug.
“I dunno, I guess he’s some sorta zombie now?” Bill’s hands still, nails digging harder into his secondhand flesh. “It helps him reach stuff, so-”
“-That, and it’s supposed to make me fit in.” Everyone in the room turns to face Bill as he answers flatly, in a dull voice. “I can’t have a form built to handle my power, and I have to stick around here. So.” Raising an arm slightly into the air, Bill wavers a half hearted jazz hand. “Ta-da.” Bill locks his eye with Ford’s, and they stare for a good minute as words buzz around the kitchen table, neither wanting to be the first to blink. Somewhere into the second minute of this standoff, Bill tilts his head sideways, closing one eyelid and opening the other as his single yellow eye slides from left to right. Ford doesn’t break the staredown even for a moment. Faintly, for a second, Bill smiles. And Ford looks away.
…
“...Dipper?”
“Yeah, Mabel?” In the dark of their room, Mabel shivers under her blanket.
“I can’t sleep.”
“...Me neither.” Too many thoughts were running through the sibling’s heads, too many memories and worries and conjectures to count. The old house creaks in the night, and the two of them tense, hands going automatically for their nearest serviceable defense.
“He sleeps in the basement storage, right?” Mabel hisses, and Dipper whispers an affirmative back. “Then… “
“...It’s probably not him,” Dipper decides, relieved. “Actually…it’s probably Soos’ abuela headed to the restroom.” After listening for the sounds of plumbing from the walls, the two sigh in relieved exhaustion.
“Goodnight, Dipper,” the girl murmurs, still clutching her new scrapbook too tightly.
“Sleep well, Mabel.” the boy’s hand hasn’t left his pocketknife.
Rooms below, Bill Cipher tosses and turns restlessly, covers kicked aside. His skin feels clammy, his chest is tight. His eye burns, so he jolts his head down, dropping it onto his tongue and holding it there, for the darkness.
But even the darkness fails to soothe his senses, and rather returns his mind to the… unpleasantness, of theraprism’s isolation ward. Shuddering at the memory, he spits out his eye and returns it to a socket, blinking to the dimness of his starry themed night light. A floorboard creaks outside Bill’s makeshift room, in a way he hadn’t grown accustomed to, and he can just make out the sound of hushed speech, but not the words themselves. There is a shuffling, settling, and then creaking that grows more distant. Bill rolls his eye, but doesn’t quite have it in himself to be insulted that he was under watch.
“I know you’re there~” he sing-songs, to which he hears an answering growl,
“And you know why.”
“Ah, Fordsy. You did miss me.” Now even his stomach was in knots; dammit, chumbo. Why can’t Bill have nice things.
“Don’t call me that.” Bill opens his mouth to retort- and then closes it, nodding to himself with a purposeful sort of finality.
“...Alright.” Neither man speaks after that, and even when Stanley takes his shift, Bill remains wordless and awake.
He actually does know the truth, Bill thought. About why he can’t have nice things. He had listened eventually, to the rambles within the theraprism; and if he'd learned anything, it was that he hadn’t been a nice thing, himself.