#to think mabel got so much hate back in the day...

[fairy-of-divorce]

Thinking back to 'Not What He Seems', possibly my favourite episode in the entire show (not super original, I know) and Mabel Pines is so special to me. No other character in the show could make the right call in that moment except her. She is the polar opposite of 'trust no one' mentality, the one Dipper picks up from Ford's diaries and the one Ford himself picks up from Bill Cypher, the main villain of the story ��� which should tell you all you need to know about how good of an advice it is. 'Trust no one' is the reasoning behind every mistake and every wrong choice the characters make that almost lead the world to ruin. But even when everything screams at her to take that route, Mabel rejects it. And that is how she wins.

[sincerlyus]

Reverse Falls!!

Soo this is my take on Reverse Falls!! I don't really know which are the original designs or which are the new personalities that each character adapts, so I made my own headcanons!! :3

It should be noted that there are characters who do not change personalities with anyone, but rather their personalities are more exaggerated or are opposite to the originals. Or (in the case of McGucket) their relationships are different so they change their way of being progressively.

EXPLANATION TIME:

This is quite long, I'm going to explain the personalities of each one and how they relate to various characters. Credits to: hours of daydreaming and Google Translate  (TW: child abuse, emotional and physical abuse, homophobia, classism. I don't know if there's anything else, just in case)

Pacifica Northwest: Outgoing and very expressive. She didn't know Gideon very well until her parents sent her to Reverse Falls. She likes to knit, draw, and has a lot of stuffed animals. She has a lot of hair, and likes to do different hairstyles every day ("to be innovative"), cries when she has to cut it. She is very affectionate with Gideon and tries to get him out of his shell. She is a little insecure, but likes to see the positive side of things. She gets along very well with Bud, although sometimes she feels he is a little weird. Symbol: Llama (on her sweater)

Gideon Gleefull: Insecure, has little self-confidence, very skittish and anxious. Has a habit of chewing when he is thinking, like OG!Dipper (chewing on pens, his shirt, etc.). He didn't really know how to talk to Paz at first since the first time they met they were very little, what was she going to say?, was a "Hello" enough?, a handshake?, a complicated handshake?, was she going to ignore him? Paz simply gave him a big hug when she got off the bus (+ gave him a sweater she made on the way). Symbol: Telepathy star (in his hat)

Bud Gleefull: Ultimate scammer. Very friendly and funny, although sometimes a little intimidating. Bye Hawaiian shirts. Very patient with Gideon. He is basically the “cool uncle/dad”. He put Paz to work the day she arrived, although he became attached very quickly and gave her family privileges (he does the same with Gideon).

Mason “Dipper” Pines: He is still very insecure but is able to feign confidence when standing on stage with his sister. He still has a lot of passion for science, he is not very affectionate, he holds back his emotions as he does not want to look vulnerable, especially in front of Stanford. He has a lot of respect for Ford (or rather, fear), being his apprentice he sees him more as a teacher, a superior figure than as an uncle; however he has very little respect for Stan, threatening him and making fun of him. He does not usually use his amulet much, only to practice tricks or in his shows. He has a very distant relationship with his sister, similar to that of the Stan twins. They have many disagreements, but they still have each other's back, especially when Ford is aggressive with one of them. The most sincere relationship he has is with F, although he still treats him like an employee, knowing that he was one of the brilliant minds behind the portal he respects him. Sometimes he discusses theories and shares discoveries with him (although he is embarrassed to think that his only "friend" is an employee of his uncle). Once he met Gideon and Paz, he was able to show his more fragile side and be himself, although he doesn't consider them completely friends (that changes post-weirdmageddon). Symbol: Pine tree (a small pin)

Mabel Pines: A spoiled brat, basically. She's very charming and friendly on stage and with guests at the Pines' many parties, but she's very whiny and selfish behind the scenes. She's not at all affectionate, to the point that she hates physical contact, especially if it's from townspeople. She resents her brother a lot for being Ford's "favorite" (he doesn't really have favorites, he's just less strict with Dipper because he's useful to him). She's Stan's spoiled child, giving her what she wants when she wants it (they have a nice relationship actually, Stan being one of the only ones who comforts her when she's sad). Instead of knitting, she likes to design her own dresses and accessories for shows and parties (her guilty pleasure is arts & crafts, since it's a very "childish" activity for a Pines). Obsessed with Paz, but learns to respect her limits throughout the story. Symbol: Shooting Star (a small pin)

Stanley Pines: He basically swaps personalities with Bud, runs the Telepathy Tent, is very friendly, and is scared of his brother and the twins. He never gets involved in Ford's experiments, having a very tense relationship with him. He loves the twins very much but knowing the power they have with those amulets he prefers to go along with them and not question too much what they ask (he knows when to be firm but the one who really has an impact on them and can make them see reason is Ford). Symbol: Oyster(?? (on a necklace)

Stanford F. Pines: Did you think OG! Ford was a jerk? Well now he's twice as much! He doesn't have an ounce of empathy in him, he's very narcissistic and only cares about his projects and his image. He doesn't care at all about the twins, only seeing them as a way to make money, demanding the most out of them, and he doesn't hesitate to use violence if any of them get out of line. He's very distant with Stanley, speaking to him very dryly (or rather, barely speaking to him at all). He's almost a hermit, living in his laboratory, not letting the townspeople get to know him; although unlike OG! Ford, he cares a lot about how he presents himself in front of the public, taking care of his image and clothing. He's very demanding with Mabel, as he feels she's nothing more than a spoiled child, the image of the Telepathy Tent along with her brother. He is a bit kinder to Dipper, as he realizes that he has a brilliant mind for his age (though not more so than his own), so he includes him in many of his experiments and research if he proves useful; but excluding that, he is just as insensitive as he is with his twin, mistreating him if he does not comply with what is due. His relationship with McGucket is kinda weird: although they were friends in college, the power that Bill/Will offered him completely consumed him, being abusive to F, forcing him to work long nights, keeping him awake by force. He only sees him for his use: his great skill with mechanics (which Ford does not have, although he hates to mention it). Although he was in love with F while he was at Backupsmore, he currently has no romantic feelings towards him, considering him an employee, his assistant, nothing more. He has internalized homophobia (a gift from Filbrick) and classism, so he hates to remember when his relationship with F was one of equals, friends. It disgusts him to think about when he would get so emotional around him. Symbol: Six Fingered Hand (the diaries)

Fiddleford H. McGucket: He is still the brilliant mind he was in his youth, but stress eats him alive. He started to age very quickly thanks to it. He invented the memory gun to try to forget all the horrible things he witnessed or that Ford made him suffer, but his boss doesn't allow him to use it too much since it can damage his mental health and erase knowledge, making him less efficient and useful. He doesn't have a very deep relationship with Stanley, since he practically lives in the lab where Ford forces him to work, but they are able to talk whenever F has a break (almost never). He can't stand the twins too much, not only because he feels that they are very annoying, but because the simple presence of children in his day to day life reminds him a lot of Tate, with whom he no longer has contact. Everyone knows about the abusive relationship he has with Stanford, they are not indifferent to it but they try not to mention it or get involved in his affairs (practically out of fear of Ford).  Throughout his stay with Stanford he started developing an emotional dependence on him: not only did he make him feel that he was useless without him, but he uses violence on him when he is not fulfilling his duty, causing F to blame himself when this happens (What did he do wrong? What can he do to improve?). This got to the point where he started to hurt himself when he did not do something right. Ex: hitting himself when he noticed that his leg was bouncing in front of his anxiety (something that bothers Ford a lot), pulling out clumps of hair in front of the stress of not being able to achieve something, biting his nails, scratching himself, hitting his head (imagine Dobby from HP). Such actions and the mixed feelings he had towards Ford, made him develop masochism, enjoying when he inflicts pain on himself and when he is the victim of Ford's physical and psychological abuse, he clearly hid this for a while since it would look very unprofessional on his part.  Eventually his boss found out and used this to his advantage, being quite sadist himself (he enjoys watching or inflicting pain and/or humiliation on others, in this case, he gets sexual pleasure). So every time Ford needs to let off some steam, vent his frustrations (or is just horny), he uses Fiddleford to fulfill his fantasies, making F's wishes come true as well. He basically uses him as a sex toy, and F doesn't complain, having suffered so much emotional manipulation, he even considers himself lucky that his boss wants to be with him like this, even if it's NOT healthy. Symbol: Spectacles

Bill Cipher: I don't like the idea of ​​changing his name, so Bill stays. He's still the same chaotic demon as in the original series, but this time he's been tricked by Ford into working for him and doing his bidding. He's also forced to do the twins' bidding. We already know that Bill can change his shape and color, so I think all of his shame and self-pity manifests itself in his appearance, turning blue over time (any strong emotion makes him change his appearance). He manipulates Gideon and Paz, making them feel sorry for him so they'll do his bidding (it doesn't work, clearly). The people he has the most contact with are Ford and Fiddleford, as they spend most of their time in the basement where he's locked up.

So that's it. I don't really know how this timeline would work, considering the portal and the journals, but I just wanted to have fun with the character designs and relationships (I feel like the weirdmageddon would happen sooner than in the original timeline). If you want me to go deeper into certain relationships or characters, let me know!!(≧▽≦) I'll see if I can go deeper into the relationship between Ford and Fiddleford that you guys liked so much (you guys really like toxic yaoi, huh??). I'm thinking of making a fanfic or smt to explain their day to day life in the lab and how Ford invited F to work with him (SPOILER: it didn't go well...).

That's it ig, LIKE AND SUSCRIBE!!!1!!1!Σ(°ロ°)

[ckret2]

Chapter 84 of human Bill Cipher getting a day pass out of being the Mystery Shack's prisoner: so it turns out Bill and Pacifica have a lot in common! And it's not weird at all! It's—it's very normal. Their childhoods were so normal.

(Since this entire chapter is from the point of view of a character who doesn't know the person she's talking to is Bill, a PSA for those of y'all who missed it. Thanks.)

####

"Okay, that's as much as I can do to help your hair without deep conditioning it," Pacifica said. "Now let's talk about styling it."

They were back in Pacifica's office, with Goldie seated in his folding chair and Mabel sitting in Pacifica's desk chair (slowly spinning it back and forth) as Pacifica lectured them. Pacifica had given Goldie a spare t-shirt to dry his hair with (you could never have too much spare clothing on hand when you were dealing with farm animals), but he'd just loosely wrapped it around his hair and promptly ignored it.

Pacifica said, "You've got this issue where the weight of your curls pulls the top of your hair down and makes it flatten out near your scalp—but your hair's all the same length, so it really flares out near your shoulders. It's called triangle hair and it is not a cute look."

Goldie and Mabel bit their lips and exchanged a look, and Pacifica got the distinct impression that she'd accidentally reminded them about some inside joke she wasn't part of.

Trying to ignore the feeling that she was being left out of something, Pacifica cleared her throat and went on. "So, uh—you can fix it with like, layering your haircut and stuff? But. I don't actually... know how to do that." All her knowledge of curly hair and its care—much less fashionable haircuts—came from fashion and beauty magazines, which covered things like shampoo and flattering styles but assumed you'd leave the actual hair-cutting to the professionals. "So. I can get your curls presentable, and I guess we can figure out a way to pin it that looks nice? But that's the best I can do without an emergency salon trip."

"You sure we can't leave the triangle hair?" Goldie asked innocently. "I think it's cute. It really feels like me." Mabel clapped a hand over her mouth and snorted.

Pacifica raised her brows. "Do you want to feel like you, or do you want to get the guy?"

"Right, of course," Goldie said. "I almost forgot what's really important!"

Pacifica passed Goldie her phone. "Here—I wasn't sure what kind of look you were going for so I saved a few pictures of curly hair styles, let me know if you like any of these." She searched through the collection of makeup on her desk for the bobby pins and hair ties she'd picked up earlier. "The trend this year is for slicked-back styles, braids, and buns—but your curls are so pretty, I'd hate to hide them." 

Mabel leaned halfway across the desk to try to see the pictures too; Goldie's held out the phone to meet her halfway as as he scrolled—and scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled. He said, "Good job narrowing down the list to a modest two hundred pictures."

Pacifica said, "Excuse me for wanting you to have options."

Mabel pointed. "Awww, look at that one with all the little butterfly hair clips!"

"It's like butterflies are eating her brain."

"And they look adorable doing it."

"Too juvenile for me. It looks like something Prisma the fairy would wear," Goldie said. "You should wear it."

Mabel's eyes lit up. "You've got to help me make fifty butterfly hair clips."

"You got it." He closed out of Pacifica's pictures, opened up the browser, and awkwardly typed in a search. "Hey, Alpaca, look at this one."

That was the second time he'd called her that. "Do you actually know my name?"

"Rapunzel." He held up a picture of some seventies movie star with thick, feathery hair that fluffed out around her face like the wings of a panicked swan trying to take off. "Think you can pull this one off?"

Pacifica grimaced. "You'd look like my mom." Except even worse and more old fashioned. (She kept that part to herself.)

Flatly, he said, "Oh no, how will I ever convince a male that I'm a prize worth winning if I literally look like a trophy wife."

That would be just about the only part of Goldie that looked like a trophy wife. (She kept that part to herself too.) "And we'd have to give you bangs."

As she suspected, Goldie grimaced and flipped to another image. At least he knew bang weren't for him. "How 'bout this one?"

It looked like a solid helmet of hair, with the ends uniformly curled outward like the embarrassing forced-whimsical hairstyle of the minions of an insane chocolatier. "Ew. That's about the only thing that could make you look even worse than you already do."

"Pacifica," Mabel said sharply. "Be nice!"

"Sorry!" She'd kept so many parts to herself that she didn't have any spare room to keep that part. "I can't do it, anyway. It would need a flat iron and a curling iron, and I don't have either."

"Can't we get some?" Goldie asked. "Any drug store should have 'em, it's a fifteen minute walk to—"

"I don't use them," Pacifica said sharply.

Goldie's stare was like a heat lamp—or maybe that was just self-consciousness heating up Pacifica's face as he scrutinized her. But after several long seconds, Goldie's gaze turned off her face. She quietly sighed in relief.

"Okay," he said. "Then this one." He showed her another picture. It had curly shoulder-length bangs, which wasn't really in style but fine, but behind them was a bouffant shaped like a deflating basketball with a wilting palm tree sprouting out of it.

Pacifica cringed. It was, unfortunately, doable. A note of pleading in her voice, she asked, "Are you really into this look? Really?"

("I think it's pretty," Mabel muttered.)

"Oh, no way!" Goldie said. "Look at that mess! That's way too much effort for a 'do that looks like she did it drunk in the dark in under two minutes."

(Mabel looked at Goldie like he'd personally betrayed her.)

"But," he went on, "it's what our guy is into, and that's what matters here. Right?"

Pacifica studied the picture dubiously. "You're sure?"

"He went through puberty in the 70s! When his libido opened its eyes for the first time, this is what it imprinted on."

Pacifica bit her lip. Well. At least Goldie didn't think it looked good, but. "Can I at least improve it a little?"

"Oh, please!"

She picked up the comb again and grabbed a couple of bobby pins. "No promises, but I'll do what I can."

Pacifica talked a big game, but in truth, she knew a lot more about the theory of hairstyles than she did about actually styling hair. You don't have to film a blockbuster to be a film critic. So at that point, all she could do was experiment with Goldie's hair as she attempted to approximate the picture he'd shown her. She circled around him as she worked—putting in pins, taking them out, occasionally asking him his opinion.

But although Goldie had previously been a non-stop chatterer, the moment she'd started working on his hair, he'd fallen silent.

He only glanced in the hand mirror she'd given him when she prompted him, and then only to give one-word answers—usually "fine." His shoulders were as tense and his mouth as tight as Pacifica's had been the first time she had to wash alpaca poop off the bottom of a boot. And Pacifica had nearly vommed, so, that was pretty serious.

Why? It couldn't be pain. Pacifica had gotten all the knots out of his hair earlier—and even when she wasn't using the comb, it was like she couldn't even move a lock of his hair without him wincing. She kept wanting to apologize even though she was just doing what he wanted her to.

There was something going on here. It wasn't just how uncomfortable he was with being touched. There was also the way he did an awful job of washing his hair even though he knew how to perfectly well. And how he'd rather let Mabel brush his hair into a frizzy mess than comb it out himself. And beyond all that, the first thing Pacifica had ever learned about him was that he'd gotten his hair melted off and needed emergency help to grow it back. "You... really don't like your hair, do you?"

"I like it fine. It's gorgeous." He was speaking through gritted teeth, and he had his legs crossed with his feet under his thighs, palms up in lap, eyes fixed on the blanket Mabel had made, as though having a staring contest with the triangle creep would help him endure the torture without flinching. "I just—don't like messing with it."

"Which is fine," Mabel cut in. "Because I like brushing it!" She quickly amended herself: "Combing it. We've got like a symbiotic relationship going on."

"Yeah! Star girl's my personal stylist! She does my hair and makeup. I wouldn't deprive her of that honor!"

Pacifica nodded slowly. Right—all that, and he was defensive about not taking care of it.

Not embarrassed because he didn't take care of it, it dawned on her; embarrassed because he couldn't take care of it. She had a sense for those sorts of things—a middle school queen bee had to develop that sense—because that was what you targeted if you really wanted to humiliate someone: something that they couldn't help. That was it, wasn't it? He'd said he was apathetic about his body; he didn't care that his hair was messy. Because if he did care that it was messy, he would have done something about it. Unless he couldn't. Like, a mental block.

As she tried for the eighth time to gather the bulk of his hair into an updo that looked sorta fun and casual without looking stupid, she turned over everything she knew about him—about his hair, his apathy, his shame... the things he'd said to her the moment they met, before they even got started.

It wasn't a logical deduction so much as it was an instinct, and just looking at Goldie it seemed impossible; but still she said, hesitantly, "Your mom made you do pageants as a kid, didn't she?"

Mabel sat up a little straighter, confused; but Goldie turned around to stare at her, dumbfounded. "How— What—makes you think that?"

Oh please. He wasn't fooling anyone, it was all over his face. "You're so weird about your hair. It's obviously trauma from your mom."

Beneath his sunburn, Goldie's burned cheeks somehow managed to flush even darker. He gaped at her, wide-eyed and terrified, like she was a psychic who had just told him how his own parents had died. He croaked, "What?"

Pacifica burst out laughing. "Oh my gosh, you should see your face! Listen, you're clearly familiar with pageant life. And I saw so many curly girls getting their hair mauled by their moms half an hour before going on stage. I don't blame you for being weird about touching it! I had it easy—" she flipped her naturally straight hair, "—but even at that, I can't stand using a flat iron to this day."

Goldie relaxed, apparently reassured that Pacifica hadn't read his mind. He settled back in his seat. "Oh, I dunno, I find the smell of burning hair comforting! It reminds me of home!"

"Ha! Okay, yeah, you do get used to it after a while." She started attempt number nine to gather up his curls. "I wouldn't have guessed when you came in. You don't look like a... I mean... you know. No offense."

"Well, duh, you can't tell now." He gestured at himself, "I lost my good looks. What I wouldn't give to have my old body back..." He sighed wistfully.

Pacifica held back a snort. Oh yeah. More than anything else he'd said so far, that convinced her he really was a former pageant kid. In her experience, every single pageant mom trying to relive her own beauty queen glory days through her daughter said things exactly like that.

Mabel said, "Aww..." She stretched a hand out toward Goldie, couldn't reach him across Pacifica's enormous desk, and with a grunt heaved herself up to lay across the top—knocking over a couple of the cosmetic supplies Pacifica had set up in the process—so she could pat his shoulder. "There, there."

"Thanks."

She slid back into her seat. "Did you really do pageants? You didn't tell me that." A note of betrayal crept into her voice.

"I didn't tell her either—" he jabbed a thumb at Pacifica, "—but here we are!" (Pacifica shrugged unapologetically.) "I've got a lotta backstory you're still catching up on."

"Well, yeah, but—you said you just did..." She grasped for the right words, and settled on, "build-y stuff with pageants."

"I didn't say that," he said breezily. Mabel scowled at him; but shot a look at Pacifica, and just sat back without saying anything, arms crossed, her feet audibly kicking at the inside of the desk. 

He didn't seem as stressed about his hair while he was talking, Pacifica noticed. (Maybe that was why hairdressers were so chatty? Or maybe just because it was kind of weird to stick your hands in someone's hair for an hour in total silence.) She asked, "Which pageant systems did you compete in?"

"None you'd have heard about," Goldie said. "They weren't on this continent and it was like a trillion years ago." Before Pacifica could pry about which continent, he added, "Hey, fun fact! Didja know that the first beauty contest in Oregon was established here in Gravity Falls?"

"Pff, duh, of course I know that," Pacifica said. "It was established by the town founder, my great-great grandpa."

"Close, but no," he said gleefully. "It was established by the real town founder."

Pacifica grimaced. "Him? The crazy undead guy without pants? Ugh, no wonder we're the only pageant with a mandatory bird calls category."

"The first three competitions were actually won by birds! They only added a fashion category to balance out the birds' unfair advantage at birdsong. Quentin resigned from the judges' panel in protest."

"He should've taken the dumb birdsong requirement with him," Pacifica muttered. "They make the kids pageant do it too. I had to get a private tutor to learn how to whistle."

"That sounds fun, though," Mabel said. "I can do bird song! Grunkle Ford taught me some. Listen to this!" She let out an admittedly impressive moo.

"Not a bad cowl call," Goldie said. "You woulda killed it at the accompanying bird costume requirement."

Mabel gasped. "I can make feather wings. Hey, do you think I could compete?"

"Not unless you move to Oregon."

"Aww."

"We can still make wings, though," Goldie said.

Pacifica had never had to deal with the dumb bird costume requirement, thank goodness. That only started in the teen brackets. Which made her wonder—"How old were you when you quit? Pretty young, right? Like, no offense, but if you need teenagers to do your makeup..." If Goldie was living as a guy now, it'd make sense if he didn't wear makeup day-to-day; but if he'd stuck with pageants past like age ten, he would have at least learned how to do his own makeup.

"Ha! You're right. I started when I was young enough that my mom could dust glitter on my butt without getting weird looks! I quit around... equivalent to third or fourth grade in the States? She wanted me to keep going—so I said, 'You want me to perform? Fine then—I'll put on the best performance you've ever seen.' And that's exactly what I did!" Thoughtfully, he added, "But for some reason I didn't win the talent portion. I guess the judges weren't impressed that I could play the piano and set it on fire at the same time."

Pacifica cracked up. "Okay wow—I retired during the talent portion too, but how you did it is way more exciting. The year I was aging out of the 9-11 bracket, I kinda had a meltdown on stage over losing to some girl with a hula hoop? Yeah, I did not win supreme that year."

"You shoulda won talent just for that scream! You hit some impressively high notes." At Pacifica's odd look, Goldie said, "Saw it online."

Figured. That was probably coming back to haunt her in ten years. "It's weird. There's like... two ways pageant girls go—er, girls or guys or... whatever."

"Whatever," Goldie agreed.

"Yeah. Either they make it part of their identity? And keep up the makeup and fashion and everything, sometimes stick with pageants as teens or start modeling professionally? Which is what I did. Or they totally burn out, don't want anythingto do with the beauty industry, and just, like, wear sweats forever."

With a faint air of wounded pride, Goldie said, "It's the bedsheet sarong, isn't it."

"No offense! I'm just saying."

"I'll have you know it's laundry day and Jesús stole my clean clothes instead of my dirty laundry." (Pacifica decided to forgive him for the weird fish smell.) "You're looking at me at a low point, kid. I was actually a pretty snappy dresser up until... lllast summer."

Hearing Goldie call her kid gave Pacifica a little jolt of surprise. For a moment, she'd forgotten she was talking to somebody with an age; she'd started to feel like she was being visited by the immortal Spirit of Washed-Up Former Pageant Children. As if he'd died and stopped aging the same time he retired. "What happened last summer?"

Goldie looked at Mabel. "Yeah, what did happen last summer?"

"Um." Mabel froze. "He... lost it all in a... um... overseas parrot circus venture! Yeah—all the trained parrots escaped before the opening night of the circus and he lost all his money."

Goldie let out a shrill cackle. "I like that, I'm keeping that."

Okay, got it, it wasn't any of Pacifica's business. "I think... this is the best I can do with your hair." She stepped back. "Unless you want to pick a style that doesn't suck."

He gave himself a cursory glance in the hand mirror, immediately lowered it, and said, "Sucky style's fine!"

"Don't say that, you look so beautiful," Mabel said. "You look like a babysitter!"

"Well, it doesn't get much better than that." He dropped the mirror on the desk. "What's next?"

####

Next—finally—was the part they'd actually come here for: the makeup.

"Okay, I tried to get around the eyepatch while I was doing your hair, but you've got to take it off for this part," Pacifica said.

He groaned, but muttered, "Fine, I've put up with this tyranny so far," removed it, and looked at her with his previously-covered eye squinted against the light—which was the point at which Pacifica realized that he had eyepatch tan lines... around his other eye. How???

There was no fixing that before tomorrow. She bit her lips, shut her eyes, pressed her hands together, and took in a deep breath. Okay. She could handle this.

"Why do you even wear this?" She tossed the eyepatch to Mabel—it was one of those cheap costume pirate-y looking patches. "Is this one of the Mystery Shack's gimmicky touristy things? Both your eyes work! And wearing an eyepatch when you obviously don't need it is just tacky."

"I've got a neurological condition! Seeing through two eyes messes up my depth perception," Goldie said. "I get migraines if I don't keep one covered! Which is admittedly the most fun thing you can do to your brain without involving narcotics, but it makes it hard to keep down lunch!"

"Oh," Pacifica mumbled. Maybe she should just get to work before she shoved her foot any deeper in her mouth.

She started by slapping aloe vera on as much sunburned skin as she could reach, handed over the jar with strict instructions to apply more in the morning, and gave him an emphatic lecture on sunburns and sunscreen and skin damage that petered out when he cheerfully started telling her about skin cancer statistics. She changed the topic when he started listing his favorite kinds of skin cancer.

She stripped off the nail polish that Goldie had apparently gotten during one of Mabel's sleepovers, and repainted it with, at Pacifica's insistence, something more "mature." (She vetoed Mabel's suggestion to paint little hearts. She vetoed Goldie's request for gold. She gave him the choice between white French tips, pale pink, or solid red. He chose red.)

She hadn't anticipated that her customer would be in such dire straits that she'd need to shave him, so she didn't have any supplies for that; but she also ordered him to get his legs as smooth as the surface of a balloon as soon as he got home—"And do you think there's any chance this guy you're after will see your pits?" "He already has!" "Hm. Okay. Yeah, uh, get those anyway."—and informed him that she would report him to the police for vandalism if he "shaved" using whatever depilatory cream he'd previously used on his hair.

As she finished plucking his brows, she said, "Okay, I think you're finally in decent enough condition for actual makeup." She stepped back, took in his face, and said, "Barely." She grimaced. "I wish I'd bought a concealer with better coverage. I didn't know the situation was so bad."

To his credit, Goldie had taken her criticism (and occasional looks of horror) like a champ. He simply drawled, amused, "The body rituals of the Nacirema are as elaborate as they are bizarre."

She picked up a couple of the foundations she'd bought and held them up next to the eye that had been protected by the eyepatch tan line, trying to determine which one was a closer match for whatever his skin tone was when he wasn't burned. "Who're the Nacirema? One of the tribes that used to live around here?"

"They're still in the area. Look 'em up."

Pacifica thought the darker foundation was closer; she tested it on his inner arm to be sure. "So, how much makeup do you already know how to apply? Any?"

"I can do mascara, eyeliner, and mascara."

"Riiight. Okay, both of you pay attention to what I'm doing." She evicted Mabel from her desk chair and dragged it around in front of Goldie's folding chair. "Because I will not be coming over to do this tomorrow, so the two of you will have to repeat this yourself. Here." She handed Goldie a mirror so he could watch her work.

Mabel hopped up to sit on the desk next to Goldie. "You have one hundred percent of my attention!" She immediately looked away from Pacifica at the makeup brushes laid out on the desk, picked up a fan brush curiously, and started dragging it up and down her arm. "Ooh. Tickly." 

"Emphasize my eyes," Goldie said. "They're my best feature. You can forget about everything else, but my eyes have to look good."

Pacifica looked at his eyes. Pacifica really looked at his eyes.

There was something wrong with his eyes.

She decided to stop looking at his eyes. "Okaaay, great great great, you've got suuuper long lashes, that's fantastic. We can totally draw attention there. You don't even need fake lashes. And you've got nice big prominent eyes. Kinda bulgy, but that should be easy to hide with eyeshadow. I'm thinking maybe a smokey eye?"

"What about metallics? Like gold?" Goldie asked innocently. "Kind of a retro 'secret agent villainess' look, don't you think! It'd bring out the yellow in my eyes!"

Pacifica said, "You do not want to bring out your jaundice."

"Don't tell me what I want."

"No gold eyeshadow," Pacifica said. "Period. If you want to experiment with color, we can try a smoky eye in burgundy. Burgundy is hot this year."

Goldie muttered something about welcoming a bottle of burgundy right now, then said, "Fine! Burgundy."

(As Pacifica looked through her makeup palettes for the burgundy, Bill leaned over to Mabel and whispered, "Do we have any leftover gold eyeshadow?" Mabel nodded and winked. Bill winked back.)

"What about the rest of your face?"

"Skip it."

"I'm not letting you go bare-faced aside from your eyes," Pacifica said. "But we can do a natural makeup look."

"That's so boring," Mabel said. She was dragging the fan brush over her lips now. "If it looks natural why's he wearing any makeup at all?"

Goldie said, "Because humans are insane about the most uninteresting things."

As Pacifica worked her way through the foundation, concealer—she decided his sunburned skin had enough of a sun-kissed glow that she could skip bronzer—and contouring, she said, "You are... really good at holding still when you try." He'd gone completely still, like a statue. A statue that was making direct eye contact with her soul. She felt a bead of sweat slide down her neck. She wasn't sure he was breathing.

"He's super good," Mabel agreed. "It's kinda creepy."

"Thanks!" And just like that, he was smiling and alive again. "I do a lot of meditating! Gimme a focal point to watch and I can go like two billion years!"

"You didn't learn from...?"

"Pageants? Ha! No way, I was the wiggliest little demon you've ever seen. It drove my mom nuts when she was trying to do my lashes. She used to say 'If you love me, hold still' to keep me in place—but you know how contrary kids are when they're mad! Eventually I got fed up and said, 'Well then, maybe I don't love you!' And she didn't speak to me for three days." Goldie laughed. "Ahh, I had the most dramatic mom."

"Wow, my mom would kill me if I ever tried something like that—especially if it was in public where people could see us," Pacifica said. "She hired makeup artists so I'd struggle against them instead of her. Your mom did your makeup? Did she ever hire anyone?"

"Nooo way. We ran our operation on a razor-thin budget to maximize the profits from my winnings. The name of the game was efficiency!"

"My mom's sure wasn't," Pacifica said. "(Shut your right eye, I've got to get your eyeshadow.) We went through like, fifty makeup artists or something. Sometimes more than one while prepping for the same pageant." She lowered her voice a tad, "A couple times when the makeup artist was a creep, I messed up my own makeup just so Mom would fire them."

"Ha! Suckers. Yeah, that's probably how it woulda gone if my mom had handed me off to a makeup artist. I was not afraid to sic her on adults! We didn't have any hired help when I was that age, but the principal was terrified of her. And if another kid at a competition was getting on my nerves, I'd go crying to her that they pushed me and oh, man, she'd come down on their parents like the asteroid on Chicxulub."

"Me too! There was this girl in third grade who was so... I don't know, just—" she pulled a face, "eugh, you know? I complained to mom about her and got her family blacklisted by the whole town. They had to move out of the state just to get a job."

Goldie laughed loudly. "Now that is impressive!"

Pacifica's gut shifted uncomfortably. Was it? "Other eye now." She didn't speak for a moment as she tried to get both eyes matching. "Actually... it was... kinda scary?"

She'd asked her mom if she could puh-lease get this girl out of Pacifica's class. She'd just expected the girl to be switched to another teacher.

Instead, over the next few weeks, she heard about the girl's mother losing her job, then her father. Her older brother got kicked out of the local Future Lumberjacks of America chapter. One day the girl came to school in tears after being cut from the softball team. A couple months later, the girl's friends—the two that hadn't drifted away from her as her family became pariahs—threw her a tearful goodbye party during lunch with a mall-bought cookie cake; and the next day, she was gone forever.

After that first time Pacifica had complained about her classmate, her mom had never once mentioned the girl or her family. She never asked if Pacifica had any more trouble with her. Not even when they left town. It was as though, after her mom ground them under her heel, they were beneath her notice. Just four crushed ants.

But Goldie was staring at her, frowning in confusion, like she didn't make any sense. "What—scary for the other kid?" he asked. "Sure. It's supposed to be, isn't it?"

Pacifica didn't reply for a second. I'm afraid of how good she was at doing exactly what I asked her to do without realizing I was asking for it—that sounded stupid. Finally, she said, "Don't wrinkle your face like that, I haven't set your foundation yet. It'll make it cake up."

"Your moms sound insane," Mabel said. While they'd been swapping stories about their childhoods, she'd been staring at them, chin in one hand, chewing on the fan brush's bristles. "Were you guys tortured growing up?"

"Pfff, what? No, of course not!" Pacifica said. "My parents would never. You've only seen my mom's worst side, she's not really that bad. I mean—not to me. She's horrible to poor people, but that's different."

Goldie said, "Yeah, my mom was my biggest defender! If anyone tried to hold me back, she'd rip them a new one."

"But—forcing you to do pageants until you have a breakdown?" Mabel said, glancing between Goldie and Pacifica, mouth twisting up like the words tasted sour. "Guilting you into wearing makeup and attacking other parents and stuff? That's nuts."

"It's not like that," Pacifica said automatically, then tried to figure out what it was like.

"Now we're calling a kid's temper tantrum a breakdown? You've got a future career in propaganda, star girl," Goldie said wryly. "It's a mom's job to bring out a kid's potential, right? Sure, it drove me nuts at the time—but kids don't want their potential brought out, kids are lazy!" He shrugged, "Yeah, my parents weren't perfect—they didn't really 'get' me, they held me back from reaching my full potential because they couldn't see what it was—but I'd never have gotten on the road to unlocking my potential myself if they hadn't put me on the right path as a kid."

Pacifica nodded. "Totally! That's just normal mom stuff! My parents are exactly the same—they don't get my alpaca business at all—but there's no way I'd be running a business at thirteen if my mom hadn't pushed me to be the best I can be. Or supporting my alpacas through modeling if I hadn't learned how to present myself in the pageant system. Even mini-golf was just a hobby until my parents got me a coach and started taking me to competitions."

"And I wouldn't be the huge success I am today without those early lessons in public speaking!"

Mabel shot Goldie a meaningful look. He pointed at her. "Don't say a word. I've had a bad year, you can't judge me by that. Anyone could've lost their parrots in a freak accident."

"And some kids had it way worse," Pacifica said. "Some parents would hit their kids or scream at them for messing up their routines or getting distracted? Those girls never lasted long, you can tell if a contestant's just going through the motions because she's scared. I was never treated like that. My pageant coach taught my parents to use a 'warning bell,' when they rang it that was my warning to stop goofing off and focus on practicing or listen to them or whatever. They'd pay me in chocolate if I got back in line."

"Ha!" Goldie smacked the desk, "Oh wow, that's hilarious! Pageant coach Pavlov. My parents would have loved that when I was in the toddler competitions."

"Right?!" Pacifica laughed. "Now I'm like, wow, I used to be bribable with a piece of chocolate? Kids are sooo easy to manipulate."

"But hey, it's a good life lesson: the occasional reward and the fear of punishment is a lot more effective at keeping people in line than actual punishments."

Pacifica nodded thoughtfully. "Wow. That's so insightful."

"See?" Goldie beamed at Mabel. "Pageants teach kids all kinds of useful things! Ambition, poise, charisma, self-confidence, social skills..."

She grimaced. "Yeah, but... all the restrictions and pressure and trauma and stuff? That really sounds bad."

"I think you're just bitter that you can't enter the birdsong contest."

She kicked his arm. "I'm serious!"

He pushed back her shoe and waved her off dismissively. "It only sounds bad to you because you were never in the pageant world! It's got its own rituals and expectations, of course it looks weird to outsiders."

"And everyone judges pageants so much more harshly than other competitive sports—which is what pageants basically are," Pacifica said. "Like, pageants and competitive mini-golf took just as much practice, just as much coaching, just as much time and money—but in real life, knowing how to make myself look presentable and talk to adults has helped me way more often than knowing how to knock a ball into a hole. Mini-golf only saved my life once."

"Charisma will get you everywhere," Goldie agreed. "It's the most effective form of mind-control you can do without psychically rewiring someone's neurons."

"Basically! But getting a medal at the Sportlympics has everyone talk about how skilled and hard-working and dedicated you are, and getting a tiara in a national pageant gets people who have never even watched a pageant calling you a bimbo. Like, what?"

"Blatant double standards!" To Mabel, Goldie said, "Both your parents work in Silicon Valley. Their priority is intelligence and grades instead of looks and charisma, so that's why you and your brother get pushed in school—but it's all the same! Parents push their kids to be successful whatever way they know how."

Mabel stared into space. "Huh." She fell silent, gnawing on the fan brush's handle—pondering whether her parents worrying about her so-so grades was comparable to the pageant moms desperate for their daughters' straight hair to be straighter and curly hair to be curlier.

Smugly, Goldie went on, "If anything, the pageant circuit was more useful than school. I—"

"(Stop moving around, I've got to do your other eye.)"

Goldie obediently leaned forward and shut his other eye. "I went from pageants straight into public speaking. I had an entire career before I was out of school. Everyone loved me! I was a natural in the spotlight!"

"Really?" Pacifica said dubiously. She could buy that he might have been a competitor as a kid, but honestly, he seemed pretty creepy to her. Enough confidence could carry you pretty far, but...

He rolled his open eye. "Don't take that tone with me. It was before you were born! And like I said—I've lost my looks. I used to be..."

He trailed off, staring down at his nail polished hands like he didn't recognize them.

He muttered, "I used to be so much better than this."

Mabel reached out and rubbed his upper arm comfortingly.

Sometimes Pacifica caught her mom staring in a mirror, studying her face with an expression somewhere between nervous and depressed, gently touching her fingertips to the thin lines beginning to appear around her eyes and mouth as though she were examining gruesome wounds. Her mother had always said that looks are everything; and even though she didn't talk about her feelings directly, from the way she sometimes snapped at Pacifica to keep up her skincare—moisturizer, sunscreen, hydration, don't frown too hard—Pacifica thought maybe she wasn't worried about Pacifica's face so much as her own.

Goldie only had the faintest traces of the start of wrinkles, unnoticeable if Pacifica hadn't just spent the past few minutes plastering foundation on his face. She wondered how old he was. She wondered whether he had the same fear her mother did: that his body was letting him down, slowly dying all around him.

You don't go through the child pageant world without learning two things: everyone wants you to look and act older than you are; and the older you get, the less anyone wants you.

"I've got to do your lips," Pacifica said, picking out a couple of options: a red so bright it was nearly orange (totally in this year), a nice glossy nude that ought to be a close match to Goldie's natural lip color. "Did you want to stick with the natural look, or...?"

He glanced up from his hands at the offered lipsticks. "What the heck," he sighed. "Let's make it red."

Pacifica nodded. "Pooch your lips out for me, like this." And that was the last they spoke for a while.

####

(Here's your regular TBOB report: no actual plot was changed due to TBOB. I added in a few lines referencing it: the imagery of Priscilla grinding normal people beneath her heel is meant to be reminiscent of Pacifica's giant nightmare on TINAWDC; the "meditating" for specifically two billion years is a direct reference to the barber pole, although I'd already headcanoned that Bill can meditate/dissociate for absolutely vast quantities of time; I already had dialogue where he goes on the importance of charisma and how much everyone adored him as a kid, but I tossed in another sentence or two about charisma just because of how strongly he emphasizes it in TBOB; and originally I had dialogue where Bill went on about what big supporters his parents were, even though he privately feels like they didn't get him—all I changed was deciding to make him admit to some of those feelings out loud, since it's something he says outright in TBOB. I've imagined that he tends to swing between "they were the best/they were the worst" based on how he's feeling at the time with no neutral ground in between—whiiich lines up pretty well with what TBOB gave us.

And unrelated but I spent way too long researching makeup & hair trends in the 70s and in 2013. I had no idea orange lipstick was hot for a while. My idea of doing makeup is painting my nails once every six years.

Hope y'all enjoyed, and I'm looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts! I've been eager to dive into this aspect of Bill's backstory and Pacifica's POV for a while.)

[darlingdaisyfarm]

𝑯𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒚 𝑽𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆'𝒔 𝑫𝒂𝒚

a/n: happy valentine’s day, my beloveds!!! i love all of you so, so much. like, so much. if i could, i’d send you all glitter-covered valentine’s cards and the biggest, warmest hugs. i hope today is kind to you, whether you’re spending it with someone, treating yourself or just chilling. you deserve all the love in the world. Bill’s and Fiddleford’s parts are coming bit later, but in the meantime, i hope you enjoy Stan and Ford. take care of yourselves, and remember: you are so, so loved 💖

𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒍𝒆𝒚

the first thing Stan does on valentine’s day is complain. “ugh,” he groans as he gets out of bed, rubbing his back. “it’s valentines and i wake up feeling like i got hit by a bus.”

you raise an eyebrow when you see him coming downstairs to the kitchen. “you say that every morning, Stan”

“yeah, but today it’s worse. i swear.”

you tilt your head, thinking. “i could give you a massage?”

just one simple innocent offer and Stanley Pines, full-grown conman, ex-criminal, self-proclaimed tough guy, goes absolutely red. “uh—what? no, i don’t need—” he coughs, turning away. “not like—i mean—“

you smirk. ”so that’s a yes?”

“that's a no!” he grumbles, turning away and heading out of the room, all red and embarrassed.

later, after hours of pacing, making frustrated noises and trying to convince himself that this is a stupid holiday and why does he even care, while also trying to figure out how to ask you on a date without looking like a complete idiot. . .

Mabel is busy hanging out with Candy and Grenda, so he turns to Dipper, which is a mistake.

Dipper, who was in the middle of reading Stanford's journal, looks up at him. “so, essentially, grunkle Stan, what you need is a multi-step plan.”

Stan is horrified. “a what?”

“a plan,” Dipper continues, flipping to a fresh page. “a strategic approach. first, we gather data. then, we make a list of optimal date locations. i’m thinking greasy’s diner, because statistically—“

Stanley just groans, dragging a hand down his face and that's when he realises something. he’s overthinking this. he’s sitting here, talking to his nerd nephew, listening to plans and lists, when he’s never needed a damn plan before in his life. what the hell is he doing??

“okay, nope, nevermind. kid, i’m just gonna take ‘em to a diner.”

“wait, what?” Dipper frowns. ”but you need a PLAN!”

”the plan is the diner.”

“wait, grunkle Stan! i was getting to the part about psychological profiling!“

so that’s how Stanley Pines ends up standing in front of you, very awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. “uh. you, uh. wanna go to greasy’s with me. for a date. or whatever.” the moment the words leave his mouth, he wants to die.

and now he wants to die much more because you just smiled at his words and nodded. “yeah. . . yeah, i’d love to!”

the date is going great, which means Stan wants to run. you are too beautiful. it’s pissing him off. especially when light catches your face, when you laugh, when you keep tilting your head while listening to him ramble about whatever, even though he’s pretty sure he’s not making sense.

his heart is pounding. “soo, uh, you, uh. you ever been arrested?”

in response he gets a full-on, unattractive, choke-on-your-own-spit kind of snort from you, what makes him look so proud of himself.

“okay, ice broken,” he thinks. “we’re doin’ great. yeah.”

Stanley hates himself for it but you are too beautiful and funny. and it is ruining his life. he’s sweating. literally sweating. he tries to make small talk and immediately forgets how to speak like a human being.

he’s gonna run.

he's gonna find some dumb excuse, say he left the stove on, pretend to trip and fall out the window. but what he doesn't know is that he's not the only one who's nervous, you’re both so awkward it’s ridiculous. Stan keeps tugging at his collar. you keep fidgeting with your hands, stuttering and avoiding eye contact

suddenly, even to yourself, you stand up. “non specific excuse!!” after announcing that, you flip the entire damn table over and run out of the diner.

Stan watches this happen in slow motion and, without thinking, he jumps up, pointing at you.

“now that’s my kind of person!" he yells to people at the diner as he runs after you.

you’re both running through the empty gravity falls streets, laughing so hard you can barely breathe. when he finally catches up, you both collapse against a wall, panting.

“i can’t believe you just did that, wow!” Stan wheezes.

“well, i can’t believe you chased me,” you shoot back.

you’re both just grinning at each other like idiots. Stan looks at you and damn, he’s so in love it’s stupid.

𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒅

there’s glitter in your hair and Ford notices this first, because there’s glitter everywhere, on the floor, on the couch, on him.

“Mabel,” he says slowly, lifting a sleeve coated in shimmering specks. “what exactly have you done?”

Mabel, who is sitting across from you, shrugs, completely unbothered. “we're making valentine’s day masterpieces, obviously.”

you grin, lifting a small, glittery pink heart with messy writing scrawled across it. “see? Mabel’s making some for her friends. im just helping her!”

oh, damn, that adorable smile of yours. . . Ford clears his throat, though his ears turning noticeably pink. “oh. well. that’s very sweet of you.”

before you can say anything, he disappears into the kitchen, leaving you and Mabel alone together.

some time pass and what started with nail polish, somehow escalated to homemade friendship bracelets with Mabel telling you about all boys she met in Gravity Falls, avoiding Gideon's name, you smile at her because that girl looks so cute cutting out ridiculous little shapes with her tongue sticking out.

“you think waddles would like a card?” Mabel asks, tapping her chin. “or do you think pigs don’t understand the concept of romance?”

“i think waddles would eat the card,” you reply, flicking a bit of glitter at her.

“you are so right!”

suddenly, you hear very familiar voice from the kitchen. “no— waddles!! no! bad pig! shoo! go away!”

Mabel screeches so loud your eardrums nearly rupture. “Ford and Waddles interaction?! i need to see this!”

you dont even have time to react as she launches herself across the room, screaming your name over and over in excitement.

“off the counter! off the counter now!”

you're a curious person, so when you finally peek in you see Ford half-bent over the kitchen table, trying desperately to shield something from Waddles, who is aggressively attempting to munch on a piece of paper.

“uncle Ford!” Mabel yells, “why are you yelling at my baby??”

Ford jerks up. “i—i. . .”

Mabel’s eyes catch sight of the now slobber-covered valentine’s day card and she gasps again, so loud you cover your ears.

“OH. MY. GOSH.” she whips back toward you, pointing dramatically. “go. go away. go to the living room and act like nothing happened!”

you want to stay here longer, trying to see what is going on there, but Mabel keeps pushing you. “do not question me, just go!”

Ford looks mortified. you, very confused, decide to listen to Mabel and back out. when you sit down on the glitter-covered floor, you still hear their voices, because Mabel just doesn't know what does “talking quiet” means.

“oh my gosh, uncle Ford!” from the kitchen comes the unmistakable sound of a chair scraping across the tile, a very panicked grunt, and what is possibly the sound of an envelope being hastily shoved under something. “i knew it! you were making a valentine’s day card!! oh my GOSH, i knew it!! i knew you had a crush on—“

“MABEL!!”

“i can’t believe this, holy llama socks, you’re actually doing something romantic!”

“shh!! keep your voice down!! what if—“

“what color was the glitter? tell me right now. was it pink? was it gold?! it was gold, wasn’t it?!”

there’s a very long pause. then, Ford mutters, “. . .it was gold.”

Mabel squeals. ”uncle Ford, you have to give it to them, please please please!”

“i can’t do that!”

“ughh, why not?!”

Ford sounds so exasperated you can picture him running both hands down his face. “because that is embarrassing! i. . . Mabel, i can't do that.”

”but you wrote them something sweet, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU??”

“Mabel, sweetie, please.”

“you are so lucky i have a strong sense of mystery, uncle Ford, i would never, ever reveal your deepest secrets. no matter how much they might want to know. even if they asked very nicely. even if they bribed me with candy. even if they looked so, so beautiful today!”

and god, Mabel acts so suspicious for hours. she side-eyes you at dinner, she hums conspicuously when Ford walks past, she does wiggly eyebrows. it’s a whole thing! but she doesn’t tell you why, and by the time the day winds down, you nearly forget. . .

until later that night, when the house is quiet, you find a folded pink valentine’s day card tucked neatly beside your pillow.

the front has a little hand-drawn equation that you don’t totally understand, but something about it makes you smile.

the inside reads, in Ford’s impeccable cursive handwriting:

“of all the possible realities, i’m grateful to exist in this one with you ♡ ”

and underneath, a little scrawled postscript “p.s. please ignore the bite mark on the corner. i had to fight for my life against a pig today.”

[gay-dorito-dust]

I saw the Dad! Stanley, could you make the Dad! Stanford one? Like how his reaction come back after 30 years saw Reader already become responsible adult

-🐈‍⬛

Ford kept a picture of you -his life’s greatest achievement- in his pocket at all times during his time in the multiverse, reminding him of who he had waiting for him back home when he felt as though he was at his limit.

Being a father was never on the docket but the moment you entered his life he dedicated himself to raising you as best as he could, even going so far as to do extensive amounts of research in preparation for any and every vital moment of your life.

You had became a pivotal part of his life and made everything he did even more important for he was doing it for you and the future you’d live in. He wanted you to grow up prepared for anything and everything life would throw at you, along with how to handle yourself for the inevitable day where he couldn’t be with you anymore. (He hates it as much as you did)

He commemorates everything you did and dedicated parts of his journals to you and your growth or things that you did that made him laugh. (You wore his coat once and Ford was fighting the demons within him known as cuteness aggression because of how it swamped your tiny form.)

An excerpt:

‘They look at me like I’m something and I’m worried that one day they’ll grow up and not view me as such when they see what I’ve done when they slept soundly in their crib, but all I do, I do for them.’

However this desire to watch you grow and be apart of your important developmental stages would be cut short when he fell into the portal when you were just 8 years old.

His last words before the portal closed entirely to Stanley were: ‘no! Y/n! I haven’t done everything I’ve wanted to do with them yet! Go trick or treating with them on Summerween! Go Fishing! Watch them grow up! Stanley, don’t leave them alone, they really hate being alone!’

And raise you Stanley did as he would try his hardest to keep your memory of Stanford alive and well, thinking it was the best he could do after accidentally taking his brother from you. He’d even make a whole album for when Ford comes back from the day he fell into the portal.

Stanley didn’t miss a single moment to capture you doing something adorable (dressed up as a paranormal detective for the summerween he took you out on) or similar to Ford himself (becoming curious about about the mystery of Gravity falls after an incident with a bunny demon and even making a series of journals yourself)

Stanley made sure to capture every little thing he could from you helping him run the shack, to you making your first friends, your little experiments on how much food Soos could stuff in his face without getting full. Which was fun until he always threw up.

You were so much like Ford it hurt Stanley to look at you sometimes because all he could see was his brother in you that he had to look away sometimes, and he knew that Ford would be so fucking proud of the person you grew up to be but also knew that he would hate himself for not being there for it all.

So when the day came when Ford finally retired home, his first words as he stepped out of the portal were; ‘where’s y/n?’

Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Stanley could only watch as you, a full grown adult of 38, stepped forward with tears in your eyes when meeting face to face with the man who raised you before his brother took over, reaching out to him whispering ‘dad?’

Ford was shocked to say the least when he looked over at this adult calling him dad, only for his brain to work fast and connect the dots as he pulls out the picture of you as a child from his coat pocket and made the connection that you and the smiling child in the picture he held close to his heart were one in the same.

You were now all grown up and he wasn’t there to see it happen with his own eyes, something that broke his heart into a million pieces knowing that he never got the chance to see it himself! The coat that hung off of your frame was his, he could clearly tell but it didn’t swamp your form like it use to, it suited you and the makeshift journal Ford saw you had clutched in your hand and knew you were his child in more ways then one.

You had his curiosity and his need to understand the unknown to great but sometimes dangerous depths, god he missed you so fucking much, his sweet child and his sweet child you’ll always will be in his eyes as he watched as you quickly walked towards him and hugged his frozen form tightly as you wept in his shoulder.

‘Dad.’ You said. ‘I’m all grown up.’

Ford chuckled weakly as he too found himself unable to keep the tears at bay, ‘I can see that sweetie pie,’ he said as he held you tightly against him. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to see it.’ He adds knowing that this will be one of his life regrets until the day he died, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use this time to catch up with you and learn all about you all over again.

‘It’s okay.’ You reassured him, clinging onto him as though he’d disappeared again. ‘It’ll give me an excuse to talk your ear off about all my expeditions, my theories and my thoughts on everything that’s been going off here.’

‘They really are cut from the very same cloth as you.’ Stanley told Stanford as he watched you tuck Dipper and Mabel into bed that night. ‘They’re smart and even graduated from a prestigious college at the top of their class, they were even valedictorian just like you back in highschool, but they came back to gravity falls because they wanted to dedicated themselves to helping me in getting you back.’ He adds as Stanford looks at his twin with tears in his eyes.

‘And I wasn’t there to watch them walk across that stage…’ he mutters and Stanley pulls out a photo that he had taken during your graduation ceremony and gave it to Ford who could only smile weakly as he took you in. You had blossomed so much when he was away and it broke Ford even more when he realised that he knew little to nothing about you now.

‘I’m such a terrible father.’ He tells Stanley who grips him by the shoulders and looks him dead in the eye.

‘Hey! You are not a terrible father, they love you so much that they stay up late at night trying to decipher you work in hopes of finding a lead so that they could have their father back in their life. So don’t you dare say that about yourself when they’ve nothing but miss their father for the past 30 years!’ Stanley scolded him just as you walked into the hallway after bidding dipper and Mabel goodnight.

You heard them but decided not to speak up about it, after all today had been quite emotionally exhausting and all you wanted to do was sleep. ‘I’m going to bed, good night dad, good night uncle Stan.’

‘Hold it you.’ Stanley said as he walked over to you, pressing a kiss to your forehead, pulling away as he smiled at you. ‘Night pipsqueak.’ You smiled back before looking over at Ford, wanting to go to him and Stan could see the conflict in your eyes and pushed you towards his twin before retreating to his room.

‘So I was thinking that we could go monster hunting…you know like father and child. I’ve been trying to track down this dragon like creature that’s said to live on the highest mountain of gravity falls since its conception.’ You said awkwardly as Ford smiled at you and placed a hand on your shoulder.

‘I’d be glad too sweetheart, you don’t have to ask me to spend time with you because I’ll always want to spend time with my child.’ He replied and you couldn’t help but smile widely as you hugged him tightly again. Needless to say you and Ford made up for lost time in quick succession as you both ran away from being burnt alive by the massive dragon that was originally thought to be a myth.

[tinfoil-jones]

Question:why is Jerk Ford like this? From what I understand nobody seemed to have bullied him at all so did he just come out of the womb and thought "I'm gonna be a menace to everyone and everything"? That would be so funny-

There's a lot of reasons why the other Fords hate Jerk Ford.

Like, a lot of reasons. You don't get called "Jerk Ford" for no reason.

But one of those reasons is that any given version Stanford Pines is going to be defined by his scientific curiosity, and interest in finding the answers to mysteries.

The frustrating thing about Jerk Ford? They cannot, for the life of them, figure out why he's such a jerk. There's no real answer and they hate that.

Nothing particularly bad ever happened to him compared to other versions of himself. Bill didn't traumatize him, he got over any feelings of betrayal from his brother, he was mean to people before they could try to bully him as a kid, and Fiddleford never started a cult.

He's not even evil. He doesn't want to kill people, take over the world, or even be renowned in the scientific community. He just wants to be a petty b***h to everyone.

And he doesn't lack empathy. No, he has empathy, but what makes him a jerk is that he chooses not to use it.

Guilt, doubt, shame, and fear are just words to him.

Canon Ford? Canon Ford hears about him for the first time and asks himself "Surely he can't be that bad? He's just another me at the end of the day." And then it turned out, he really was that bad. So I don't think they would have interacted much. I do imagine this exchange happened, however:

Canon Ford: Why are you SUCH A JERK? Jerk Ford: This can't be the first time you've looked into a mirror.

A physical fight is possible; the MAB-3L dimension from Lost Legends showed several alternate versions of Mabel interact without destroying the dimension, so we're gonna act like 'you'll collapse the entire dimension if you interact with an alternate you' isn't a thing. However, Jerk Ford is a hater, not a fighter. His mouth is always writing checks the rest of him can't cash. Canon Ford could absolutely beat his a** if he wasn't so good at getting under your skin and escaping when you're too upset to pin him down.

And Jerk Ford has always been like this. He was like this growing up. He was like this straight out of the womb. Even as a baby he was a jerk, he'd be that baby who would cry on an airplane flight just to stop as soon as the flight ended.

Stan has never known his twin brother to be any different, he knows he's a jerk to everyone except him, so he tries to minimize the damage. He insists that even though Jerk Ford is an a**hole, he does care he just struggles to show it. But no one so far has believed him, not even their family.

Hell, the reason Filbrick didn't kick Stanley out this time around is because Jerk Ford told him "You know, without Stanley around, I don't have any reason to hold back."

"Hold back? You're the biggest menace in all of Glass Shard Beach, and you expect me to believe you've been holding back?"

"Are you going to take that risk, Pa?"

(He didn't take the risk, they'd been banned from so many places already because of Jerk Ford)

[pixeltwix]

Alone Together Au (except it’s the other half left behind)

In which both Stanford and Fiddleford fall through the portal and both Stan and Emma May work together to bring them back (even with two people it still takes thirty years, oops)

Together though they keep a marriage of convenience so that the town doesn’t suspect anything odd of them. Everyone still thinks Stan is Stanford and Emma May simply says she got a divorce from her old husband and remarried

“Come one, come call, to see the awe inspiring ability of Madame Mystery! Only 30 bucks a pop, and there ain’t no refunds, the spirits hate refunds~“

Emma May works as a sort of telepath and psychic medium in the mystery shack before the Gleeful’s rolled into town. Her true inspiration however is from the twins mother, Caryn. She recalls all of her tricks and swindles she watched the woman do when she was younger and was happy to apply them for herself <3

All together though her get up resembles much more of a fairy godmother type appeal than anything else (which Mabel loves)

Even though Stan and Em were friends in the past it was still undoubtedly difficult to yknow, pass as a married couple at first.

Eventually they pulled it off effortlessly in public, but there’s still a lot of emotional turmoil behind closed doors. Em missing her actual husband desperately and Stan having to juggle that, Tate’s bitterness towards him, and the fake identity

They don’t hate each other or anything though, quite the opposite, they feel they’re the only support the other has after Tate moved out to live by the lake. Ultimately at the end of the day while it seems they’re just a ‘bitter old married couple’ they’ll be the first to back each other up

Emma May acquired a pretty nasty scar after the portal incident, so she began to style her bangs over her eyes to prevent anyone from seeing them. The only one who occasionally does is Stan, but when you’re working into the ams on a portal you can’t comprehend it’s hard to care too much about said scar

But this doesn’t stop Dipper from speculating what she could be hiding under the bangs

“I don’t know, but I reckon it feels like the end of the world.”

In order to convince Stan to come to Gravity Falls, Em sends the postcard copying Fords handwriting to bait him to Oregon. Once he shows up though he’s shocked to find his brother actually didn’t want to see him at all and it was instead her who wants to talk

She promptly explains she needs backup confronting Ford and Fiddleford because while she can get through to Fiddleford she worries no one can get through to Ford. Her last resort was asking for Stans help

Things do not..go very well though. Ford and Stan still fight, Fiddleford tries to break them up and accidentally gets shoved alongside Ford. Meanwhile Em is the only one close enough for Stan to actually grab hold of before the portal shuts off and the two are left alone together

And then the last silly detail atm regarding Tate

Little dude ✨hates✨ Stan

He blames him for his father falling through the portal and he absolutely detests the ‘uncle/friendly paternal’ type role he tries to fill as he grows up

He can’t help but feel bitter towards his mother as well considering she was so quick to marry Stan as well, even with the context of the situation, even if it was just on paper, even if he knows they’re working to get the two back. It still felt like a betrayal

Once he was old enough he moved out to live by the lake where he eventually opens his tackle shop, but fishing isn’t exactly the only job he has

Knowing Tate is potentially even more intelligent than his father he found the memory gun when he was around the twins age, made himself leader of the society of the blind eye as he’s ‘the heir’, and promptly continues to run the cult in the bg as he feels it’s what his dad would want him to do

[talekinesis]

Random Gravity Falls Headcanons

Stan

This guy smokes to help deal with the stress of everything. He picked up the habit after he was kicked out by his father and hasn't quit since. He used to be a chainsmoker but after getting to look after the kids for the summer, he drastically cut back and is actually thinking of quitting altogether because he wants to be around long enough to watch Mabel and Dipper grow up

Actually a pretty decent cook, it's just baking he sucks at. With cooking you can sort of eyeball the ingredients and add more or less depending on your own personal taste, but with how strict baking is with its ingredients, he never really picked it up. He's only baked a cake twice in his life, once for his mom when he was a kid, with the help of Ford, and once for the kids' birthday (it was lopsided and runny and they decided to just go out for pancakes instead)

He can play the guitar really well. He had to teach himself how to play when he was young and homeless, playing for tips. He still has his original guitar and occasionally, on a good day, will get it out and play it. He played it once for Mabel, who, for once in her life, actually sat still and listened

Part of his daily routine is kicking gnomes out of the trash because they keep trying to eat leftovers. He just bats them off with a broom like they're raccoons

He grew up a huge mama's boy since she was the only supportive parent he had. After he got kicked out of the house, he called her from a pay phone a couple times to ask to come back home and to wish her a happy birthday. To this day he still makes it a point to get a cupcake on her birthday since he can't celebrate it with her, and sometimes he'll tell the kids stories about her, like how she would have loved Mabel since Mabel has all these different unique sweaters, and his ma used to collect different, big, unique earrings

Stan coaches Mabel in boxing, and actually helped her discover a passion for it, he attends all of her matches. He even taught her a couple illegal moves that she can't use in the ring but can use in real self defense

Even in his early 60s, he still thinks it's funny to bother Ford as if they were still kids. He'll randomly snatch his glasses off his face (forgetting that he also wears glasses and Ford can retaliate), he'll just start copying Ford and repeat what he says, he once even dressed up as Ford, but it didn't last very long because Ford wears a much smaller size of pants, and Stan has a bit of a gut on him. He changed after about five or ten minutes.

He's a die-hard fan of Chappell Roan

He's actually the more responsible of the Stan-Twins. He breaks laws sure, but he always makes sure everyone is fed and safe. He's like this close 🤏 to putting Ford and Mabel on leashes when they go out because they have a tendency to run off

"I'd like to make an announcement to the store, I lost someone." "Oh, did your kid run off?" "My 60 year old brother, yeah. No he doesn't have a cellphone."

Has a biological kid out there somewhere but the mom cut him off. I just think the scene where he said, "Scary movies are great, the girl cuddles up next to ya... next thing you know you gotta raise a kid.. And your life falls apart.." sounded too much like he was speaking from experience and not as a hypothetical. He wants so badly to be a dad though and regrets not keeping contact. (let me know if I should make an oc for this :] )

Ford

He can't eat doritos or any triangle shaped chip because one time Bill hid inside a chip bag just to startle him

It took him a while to adjust to this dimension's laws of physics. He was frustrated for a while that he couldn't just leave his coffee floating in the air. He broke three mugs and one of them was Stan's.

Despises pickles as if he held a personal grudge against them. He hates them an irrational amount, and even gets irritated with Stan for just having them in the house. He acts like a child about it too, arms crossed and everything. "Here, Poindexter, you want me to take the pickles off your sandwich? Like a child?" "Don't bother, the meal's ruined >:( "

He gets sucked into those soap operas that Stan watches, and will sometimes watch from the doorway or over his shoulder. He won't admit it, but Stan knows.

He lights his face on fire because he saw someone else do it in a different dimension where that was normal

Unlike Stan, he's actually amazing at baking (he likes to follow precise measurements and instructions) But sucks at cooking. Caught a pot of water on fire.

When he first discovered the shape shifter, he kept it as a pet because he found it cute, but ended up letting it go when he found out it had a human-like sentience and could speak. But for a while he raised it the same way Mabel raises Waddles, putting it in little shirts, hats, and just absolutely adoring it

Used to play 'Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons' with a group in college as the DM, and it was the first time he actually had a friend group. The other players loved the way he set things up

Doesn't like alchohol. At least from this dimension, he got used to alternate dimension alchohols that tasted way better, so when he came back to Earth everything tasted way too strong and almost like dirt to him so he just quit

Used to know a little banjo since Fiddleford taught him but forgot it while in other dimensions

Used to babysit Tate on occasion and sucked at it

He also used to babysit Shermie and *also* sucked at it. He'd have to pass him off to Stan if he got fussy or started crying since only Stan and their mom could calm him down

• Used to play David Bowie in his lab and would occasionally lip sync or dance to it. Even when traveling dimensions, he'd introduce David Bowie music to the people, creatures, and beings he met, until he lost the cassette tape and was devastated

Mabel

Allergic to chocolate and makes up for it by eating way too much of other candies. She still tries to eat it though because "Maybe I'm not allergic anymore," but Dipper has to stop her. Stan even makes it a point not to keep chocolate in the Shack when they visit because he knows Mabel is a heathen with little self preservation. It's not epi-pen bad, but it will burn and itch her throat and get her coughing (Ford will use chocolate substitutes when baking for her and Dipper)

She likes to tell people that she and Dipper were originally two of three, and that she ate their triplet in the womb to become stronger. This is not true.

She wants to be a big sister really bad and sometimes that comes out onto Dipper despite him only being 5 minutes younger, much to his dismay and protest

She found a passion for boxing after Stan taught her how, and even asked her parents to let her start doing it as a sport, which she got really into. Coincidentally, after she picked up boxing, Gideon suddenly left her alone completely. Future Headcanon: She grows up to box professionally and one day even faces Grenda in the ring, but there's obviously a mutual respect between them. They agreed ahead of time that if they ever had to face each other, neither of them would hold back and it would be a fair match. Even after there's a winner, they meet up afterward and go out for dinner with Candy, who posts their matches to social media. Waddles is her mascot.

Mabel makes even more friends when she returns home from Gravity Falls because she takes Waddles for walks on a leash and it's a pretty good conversation starter

She is convinced that if she eats all the ingredients for a cake, she'll have successfully made a cake in her stomach. Once again, Dipper has to physically stop her from doing this. Ford does too, the first time he heard her say this (through a mouthful of flour) he went, "That certainly is an interesting theory, Mabel, but no-"

Dipper

Let's get it out of the way, I really like the 'Trans Dipper' headcanon. It just fits really well and I, as a trans person, can relate to him a lot

I think he knows how to dance a little because his mom taught him and used to take him to 'Mother-Son' events

He secretly keeps a tally of how many times Mabel rolls herself out of bed because it always wakes him up but he also kind of thinks it's funny because she just sleeps through it. Even if they don't share rooms back at home, he can always here the distance "thunk" of his sister hitting the floor. The tally isn't a sheet of paper, it's a small notebook with multiple pages filled in

He sometimes gets the courage to try and roughhouse with Stan, who is always on board but purposely takes it easy on the kid because he's like "baby bird" fragile

Dipper was the one to break the news to his Grandpa Shermie that Stanley was still alive and Stanford was actually missing for 30 years with Stan taking his place, almost giving the poor man a heart attack. (Shermie ended up booking a flight to Gravity Falls to yell at his brothers in person because that's not a conversation you can have over the phone)

Dipper was the one to introduce Stan to Chappell Roan by accident, but now they listen to her if they're in the car together

his DD&MD character is a female orc fighter named Yotula and he got very excited to info-dump about her to Ford (who was equally as excited to listen)

Has an odd addiction to chocolate milk. He makes a glass of chocolate milk at least once a day. Twice if it's been a rough day. He actually gets a little upset if he misses his daily cup of chocolate milk, its just routine. Stan one time made an offhand joke that since Mabel's allergic, Dipper has to consume twice as much for the both of them, but Mabel took that seriously and now to her its just the truth.

[cosmicdahlias]

Fuck Me Like You Hate Me

a ford x reader fic

MINORS DNI

You’re so tired and overworked from trying to prevent Weirdmageddon. Ford proposes some much needed stress relief.

warnings: rough sex, choking, slapping

okay so full disclosure the title is ripped from a seether song, i’ve been rediscovering the music i listened to as a teen and i was immediately inspired.

You sat hunched over your desk, going over the journals. You were reviewing every possible way to prevent and stop Bill. You hadn’t properly slept in days, working yourself to the point of exhaustion until your body gave out and forced you to sleep. You stared at the rift, how could such a small thing be such a looming threat?

Ford descended the stairs with a fistful of unicorn hair, seems like Mabel’s quest was successful.

“Afternoon, y/n, how are things goi-“ He stopped, a look of concern spread across his face. “Oh honey, you look so exhausted.”

He came up behind you and began massaging your shoulders. “You need a break, burning the candle at both ends won’t do you any good.”

Your brow furrowed. “Ford, how can you say that? The whole world, no the universe is at stake.”

He turned your chair to face him. “And what good are you to the universe if you’re too exhausted to even keep your head up?” He said taking your cheek in his hand.

You leaned into his touch, covering his hand with yours for a second before the grave reality at hand set back in, you shook your head.

“Ford, I- we don’t have time for this. What if Bill-“

He kissed you hard. “Forget about Bill for just this moment, focus on me, only me. Listen, you’ve been so overworked and stressed out. I can sense it immediately from across the room. And I think I have a solution. Use me, let out all of that pent up emotion out on me. I know you need this”

“Ford, seriously, I can’t. I really need to go over the journals.”

He took your hands in his. “Stardust, I love you, but I need you to fuck me like you hate me.”

You blushed. “Ford, no, what if I-“

“Hurt me? Baby, there’s not a thing you could do to hurt me.” He chuckled.

You weighed the pros and cons. No, you couldn’t. Preventing Weirdmageddon was your top priority. You refused to let yourself be distracted, not even for a second.

“I’m sorry, but really I need to get back to work, you should too.”

You turned around, returning to the task at hand.

He cocked and eyebrow and crossed his arms. “What? Are you scared?”

You buried your face into the pages, electing to ignore him.

Ford let out a huff. “Fucking say something, come on!”

You put up a hand, a clear signal that you were too busy for this.

“Don’t be such a cunt.” He said, knowing full well how much you hated being called that, but it worked. You turned around in your chair, holy fucking shit you wanted to tear him apart.

“Excuse me?”

He could see that he got to you. “Ohhhohoho, you don’t like that, do you? What are you gonna do? Are you just gonna stand there and take it?”

You stood up, knocking your chair to the floor. You seized the collar of his trench coat, pulling him into a furious kiss. You felt him smirk against your lips, he had won.

You broke away, grabbing his wrist and basically dragging him up the stairs, leading him down the hallway to his room. You passed by Stan, who laughed his ass off when he saw your face.

“Oh geez, what’d ya do this time, sixer?”

“Shut it.” You seethed through gritted teeth.

“Whoa, touchy. Guess you’re in for it now.” He said, patting Ford on the back.

You slammed the door behind you, pouncing on Ford. You practically ripped his clothes off and they scattered to the floor. You shoved him onto the bed and you began removing your clothes. You looked down at him, still seeing red.

He wanted you to hate fuck him? Fine, you were going to rock his shit so hard that he wouldn’t be able to see straight for months. You sat next to him on the bed and spat in his face, his cock twitched wildly.

“I like this side of you. I should call you a cunt more often.”

That did it. You reeled a hand back, slapping him in the face. It barely registered.

“You call that a slap?”

He raised his hand and brought it down sharply on your ass, you yelped.

“THAT’S a slap.” He growled.

You reeled your hand back for a second time and struck him hard on the face. His head snapped to the side, he blinked a few times, vision blurry.

You gave him a second to recover before moving to straddle his face.

“Are you gonna sit on my face? Do it, fucking smother me.” He growled.

You sank yourself down on him and he took your clit in his mouth.

“That’s it, grind on me.”

He wrapped his hands around your thighs, trying to pull you as close as he could, eating you out like it was his last meal. You bucked your hips as he lapped at you. He loved this, he loved having his mouth on you, the way you bucked your hips against his tongue. He could spend all day between your thighs if you’d let him.

Your breathing became shallow, you were close. Ford took notice, quickening the pace of his tongue.

“That’s it, cum on tongue, cum on my fucking tongue.”

You grabbed a fistful of his hair, grinding yourself desperately on him, feeling yourself cum on his face. You threw your head back in ecstasy, moaning loudly. He tightened his grip on your thighs, trying to coax a second orgasm out of you. You rocked your hips as you came again.

You slid yourself off his face, sitting on his hips, his cock pressed against your ass. You looked down to see his stubbled chin covered in your cum, god he looked so hot like that. You leaned down and kissed him sloppily, licking yourself off him. You reached your hands down and pinched his nipples, tugging them hard. He moaned loudly and his cock throbbed on your ass.

You hovered yourself over his length and sank yourself down onto him. He reached his hands up to grip your waist and started to buck his hips into you. You seized his wrists and pinned them above his head, you weren’t going to let him have control, not this time.

“I knew if I pissed you off enough that you’d get like this, you’re such a slut, riding my cock like this. You- mmf.”

You covered his mouth with your hand. He seized your wrist and pulled it off of him.

“What’d you think that was gonna do? You wanna shut me up? Make me. How’re you gonna do it, huh? How’re you gonna do it?”

You slapped him hard across the face.

“Oh yeah? You think slapping me is gonna work? Because I’m still talking.”

You pulled yourself off of him and he whined at the loss of your pussy around his cock. You picked his belt up off the floor, returned yourself on top of him, sliding him back inside you and slipped the belt around his throat.

“Are you gonna choke me? Do it, fucking asphyxiate me.” He growled.

You pulled the belt, it dug into his neck. He managed to choke out a moan.

“Not so talkative now, are you?” You taunted.

He nodded submissively. It wasn’t often that he showed you this side of him, opting to be the dominant one, but god you loved having him under you. You pulled down the belt, temporarily loosening your grip. You leaned down and bit hard on his neck, he whimpered loudly.

“God I love when you hurt me like that, stardust.”

You tightened the belt again, his cock twitched wildly inside you.

He tried to speak, but with the belt the words were unintelligible, you released your grip again.

“Can I cum in you?”

“Grammar, Ford.” You teased.

He chuckled. “May I cum in you?”

“Good boy, that’s better.”

You picked up your pace, giving him the ride of his life.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum, dear god you feel incredible.” He said, breathing ragged.

His moans were deafening as he came inside you, filling you with his cum.

He laid his head back on the pillow panting, words failing him. All he could do was look at you, god you were so beautiful.

He reached up, cupping your cheek. “Feel better?”

“Regrettably, yes.”

“See? I told you that you needed this. Next time don’t be such a cunt.” He teased.

You slapped him lightly.

“That was very much deserved.” He chuckled.

You pulled yourself off of him, removing the belt from his neck. Ford laid on his side pulling you into a spoon, sighing deeply. You laid with him for a moment before the anxiety over Weirdmageddon returned.

You moved to get up. “Okay I really need to get back to researchi-“

Ford pulled you back against him. “I know, I know, but just stay with me for a while, please.”

You huffed, but knew this is what you needed. You began to feel drowsy, you tried to fight it, but felt sleep overtake you.

-

When you awoke an hour later you both got dressed and went to make your way back downstairs, passing by Stan again. He smirked.

“Heh heh, sorted things out did ya?”

Ford rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Stanley. I can always count on you to be mature.”

[orpheuswasmine]

More Amnesia Bill AU

Amnesia Bill! I think it is a really bittersweet idea. I imagine they were going to do their ritual thing to get rid of him but after the ritual fails they opp on trying to kill him. Fortunately, no one can really bring themselves to kill him, since he’s so lost and confused about everything. Genieuly helpless and everyone just takes pity.

I said in my last post he would remember some things via dreams and shit, but I think the only thing he would remember in the start would be his parents. Can you imagine Ford mentally preparing himself to kill Bill, just to hear him talk about his parents so suddenly? I don’t think he would say a lot, but just like, “I was close with my mom. I don’t know where she is,” or something like that.

More about the whole regaining memories bit by bit, I swear up and down he would have a meltdown in the middle of the night because he regained the memory that HE DESTROYED HIS DIMENSION. Even though he keeps getting told it’s just a nightmare, it definitely wasn’t just a nightmare, he’s reliving the worst of the worst every night.

Slow a burn story. I fw the whole enemies to lovers but in this case, it’s a one-sided enemies shit. Ford (and everyone else as mentioned in the last post) hates Bill—Ford shows it, whether subtly or outright, he leans more into the subtleness of it all. After a while, he does realize Bill is genuinely powerless and not faking shit. He would be more sympathetic, but he definitely will still harbor the animosity for a while; however, Bill definitely fell in love during the time Ford was more sympathetic to him.

The start between them is like, Bill wanted to be friends with Ford because he seemed to know him like the back of his hand. Bill doesn’t have romantic feelings for Ford in the start, rather just this kind of desperation to cling to anything or anyone that can help him remember something, anything. Ford definitely didn’t like him, and any time Bill tried interacting with him, he either ignored him or walked away. Avoidance is key, but he can’t avoid the man forever. Eventually, they start to talk—more like Bill does the talking—Ford becomes a lot more invested whenever Bill talks about his memories. There were definitely times he got a bit worried Bill would remember their time together.

Bill's continuous nightmares would get so bad, Ford decided to stay with him for a night.

Last post, I said Mabel would be the only one to believe Bill, loosely. She shows her sympathy to him early on, but she’s still super weary of him. he helped him settle in a bit and when he needed to cry and tell someone about a new memory he regained, he’d always tell Mabel. Like his parents. A small conversation like this perchance?

“I wanted to show them the stars, that’s all I wanted. No one knew what I was talking about then. I wonder if they can see the stars now.”

“I’m sure they can now—hey, maybe they see you right now? I bet your parents would be happy to see where you are right now.”

“You reallY think they can see me?”

“Oh definitely. With your looks and personality, how can they miss you?”

While everyone is weary of Bill and lowkey trying to get rid of him, Bill is enjoying his time bonding with Mabel, even if she sometimes slips up and shows her suspicions towards him.

Bill's relationship with Stanley and Dipper is really rough. Like, genuinely, they don’t hide the fact they don’t like him, especially Dipper. Bill could be sweeping and then Dipper is in the back praying for his downfall. Dipper definitely shuns him and on some bad days, he does lash out at Bill. I don’t think their relationship would get super better over time, rather, I think it would become something like tolerance. As much as Dipper hates him, he doesn’t really have much of a say in what happens. He doesn’t show his hate toward him too much, occasionally they can have a decent conversation, but when push comes to shove, Dipper will definitely lash out at Bill again.

The same can be said about Stan, though I do think he would somewhat come around to like Bill. Not by much, just a bit. Just like Dipper, he would lash out, but he took a more teasing approach towards Bill, knowing it would definitely annoy the demon. Even if it went over Bill’s head, he definitely sensed him getting really agitated about it. He messes with Bill more so, his way of letting out his hate for him. Bill can tell Stan doesn’t like him, but he rather have to deal with stan’s antics than to be ignored all the time.

That's all for tonight gang BYEE

[thefallenangel2008]

Hey, ok, so like, hear me out. Drag Queen Stan, yeah? Yeah. Ok. Stangst. So what if Stan actually hated drag? Not because of the crossdressing thing (alright, he probably felt embarrassed, when you think about the time period he grew up in), but because whenever he did drag he provided sex services, considering Drag Queens back in the day would typically be hookers (pls correct me on this one if I'm wrong!!!). Therefore, he associated crossdressing with sex work, something he hated. So he stopped doing drag. Because he hated it.

Anyway, that makes me sad. So! One time Mabel asked him to play princess with her and have a princess tea party. Princess dresses included. Seeing her puppy eyes, he agreed with a heavy sigh. So he wore the dress (he didn't ask how she got the right size). And as he spent time wearing that stupid dress and having a tea party with his niece, Stan realized that huh, he actually didn't mind the dress as much as he thought he would. He actually felt rather pretty in it.

[hkthatgffan]

What's a (non controversial) opinion about Gravity Falls that you have changed in your view of as you have gotten older or from hearing other takes about it in the fandom?

I've had various small changes in opinions here and there, but I think the biggest change in opinion I've had with Gravity Falls since I first watched it is my opinion on Stanford Pines.

I'll be frank, I didn't really like the guy when I was new to the show. I think it was a mix of some badly timed events that helped in making that the situation for me at the time. Remember, in 2017 the GF fandom was a lot different...for all like 3 of us who still probably were in it at the time and hadn't converted our accounts into SVTFOE fan pages, lmao. When that shitty Mabel video dropped and the fandom was in hate mode on her, I was of course on the defense side. And back in the day I was mainly on GF Amino and later Instagram. So, I didn't have the overall more open minded and differing opinions view as I do now. GFA was full of kids like me who were new to the show and probably more obsessed with making OCs, Bill Cipher and just didn't care about the greater show (I wasn't like that but I think you can imagine what GFA then was like and it makes me wonder why I never quit that app sooner, lmao). So, I didn't have exposure to the altering views folks had on Ford.

What I saw in my limited GFA world was Mabel haters and often times they were folks with Ford pfp's going on about why everyone was defending Mabel while not saying anything about Ford. I even got into a fued once with some Ford fan who was hating on Mabel and that just left a bad taste in my mouth. That combined with other aspects of my early GF fandom debates made me have an opinion on him where, while I didn't hate Ford, he was my least favourite within the core characters. I think it really started to change for me when the GF fandom started to grow in popularity again around the 10 year anniversary and I was seeing more and more content here and there. That and also me being more active on Tumblr, which led me to those missing opinions and takes on Ford I didn't as much have in my limited GFA/IG sphere.

It's no secret that Tumblr Gravity Falls is a lot different about their take on Ford...in that he's a more discussed, liked and fiercely defended/debated character. That's not to generalize it of course, as there are many different takes on here given how diverse Tumblr is compared to other parts of the fandom, but it's more or less the accepted opinion within a majority of the Tumblr GF community that Ford is more liked of a character and better understood. I think Hana said it best when we were chatting once (or maybe it was in a video) on how many in the Tumblr GF fandom are older and so, have more experience in the fandom, real world experience and understanding to have more developed opinions and so, they see these characters in ways younger fans like me don't as much or probably will when we're older and get it the same way others here do.

Now, that's not to say I agree with every opinion out there about Ford on here...I mean, I don't agree on every opinion about even Dipper and Mabel and they're my favourite characters. But, having more time to understand and hear out fans and also just me getting older and dealing with real life experiences that made me better get his character have improved my understanding and opinion on him. Maybe it's my own fear at the realization I'm getting older and now as old as many GF fans on here were when I joined and new fans the same age I was when I was new, but it's led to me taking more time to hear out people and given every opinion heard a chance and to decide from it if I agree with it or not. And Ford has benefitted from that, given as I said, I sorta better understand why fans love him.

The Book of Bill too does a good job on that, given a lot of what we see with Ford in it is how much Bill Cipher tormented him and the effects it had overall on his life. He's a man who dealt with toxic people and experiences and came out the other end a better guy and one who was able to move past that for himself and his family. And I've been through similar shit in the past myself in parts of my life (not demonic demon level bad but just moving past awful people I've run into over my life). And that makes him relatable in a way. He's less the guy who I hated for trying to split Dipper and Mabel apart and more the guy who went through hell and back and grew in the end from it.

I'm not gonna say I fully get Ford still. I may still have aspects of his character I don't yet get or maybe things about him others may disagree with me on. I've seen even within the Ford community differing opinions and approaches people have to him and it's not really an avenue of the fandom I'm interested in getting into or even feel I'm qualified to talk about (I'll leave that to the GF fandom veterans on here, lol), but IMO, I have a better perception of Ford now than I did 8 years ago or even as recently as 3 years ago.

The older I've gotten, the different my opinions and interests in Gravity Falls have become. When I was new it was all about exploring and AUs, then fanfics and the more angsty side of lore and content fans made, then diving into theories and merch and nowadays, more so behind the scenes aspects and learning all I can in the obscure side of the show. And in that time I also feel my opinions I had have changed too. And Ford is a good example of that.

Moral of the story, there's always more you can learn from the fandom about a character. I went from not caring much about Ford, to loving the depth and lore about him and seeing him in a new light that I previously never did. And I think that's what we all in time should be able to achieve. I've seen Mabel haters come around to love Mabel...and I did the same, but with the author of the journals.

[persevereforahappyending]

Luck Runs Out |Part 10|

Pairing: Mabel x Reader

Summary: When your luck runs out you unknowingly drag Mabel back into the life, she's so desperate to escape.

Warnings: None?

Word Count: 2.4k+

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Epilogue

Mabel paced around her apartment. You had just left not too long ago, left to go meet a bunch of drug dealers who would put a bullet in the back of your head the second they got what they wanted. She hated you; you were a selfless self-sacrificing asshole. She didn’t know what to do with herself, she would never know for sure if you were alive or dead, she’d never know if you suffered. You almost kissed her, she wanted nothing more than to close the gap, but you pulled away, going that extra distance would have meant something, she didn’t think she could handle it meaning something if you were just going to go off and die.

She kept glancing at the clock, every minute felt like hours. You might not have even been on the boat yet, you had to walk, so there was a chance you were just getting to the dock. Mabel kept glancing at her keys, it would be so easy for her to hop in her car, drive down there and pull you into the safety of her vehicle. Doing that would just mean, she, you, Charlie, and anyone else connected to any of you would be in danger.

Unable to take the unbearable silence Mabel grabbed her keys and jumped in her car. She turned the key and just sat there, the sun had just begun to rise, the rest of the world still wasn’t awake yet. She smacked her steering wheel until the palm of her hand began to sting. She really hated you for what you were making her do. She let out a scream that turned into more of a groan and let her head flop onto the steering wheel. Mabel lifted her head, putting on the familiar emotionless expression she used to always use before flipping on her turn signal and pulling out of her parking space.

Mabel drove, her surroundings a blur as she passed them. She didn’t even bother turning on the radio, her thoughts were solely filled with you. God, she really hated you, she hadn’t known you for very long and yet you had effortlessly worked your way into her heart. Part of her really wished she had met you before, then maybe the two of you could have been something, maybe the two of you could have lived out each of your dreams. Part of her felt that way, the other part of her was glad she met you when she did. If she had met you before, she probably wouldn’t have given you a chance. She would have written you off like every other dealer she’d known, like she almost did.

She glanced out the window at the condo complex and she parked her beat up red car on the street. She sighed, looking up at the tall building, even if she got her dream job, she still wouldn’t have even been able to dream about living some place so nice. The doorman glanced at her, wrinkling his nose as she yanked open the door to the lobby but didn’t otherwise so much as attempt to stop her. Mabel glanced around the fancy lobby as she waited for the elevator, seeing the leather couch and chairs by the window that didn’t look like they had ever been sat in.

Even the elevator was fancy, soft music playing as it lightly hummed, as it took her to the floor she wanted. A robotic female voice lightly crackled through the speaker, informing her when she arrived at the floor, then told her to have a nice day. When she stepped out, she looked from side to side, seeing a handful of doors stretched out on each side. As Mabel made her way to the correct door, she noted how the space from one door to the next was bigger than her entire apartment.

Mabel let out a sigh, shaking her hands as she put her game face on. She raised her hand and knocked on the door, her knock sounding louder than ever as it echoed through the quiet hallway. Mabel looked down the hall as she waited for an answer, the amount of people living in the building, and she doubted any of them knew each other. She wasn’t friends with her neighbors, but they all knew each other, these people probably couldn’t pick their doorman out of a line up let alone tell someone his name.

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes when she finally heard the click of the lock being slid out of place. She knew the condo had to be big but that didn’t mean it had to take three minutes to answer the door. Mabel had a snarky remark at the ready, but the words quickly died in her mouth when the door opened.

“What are you doing here?” The doctor asked, glaring at Mabel. He stood in his doorway, using his body and the door to block her from seeing into his place.

Mabel stared up at the doctor, her mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. “What the hell happened to you?” Finally left her mouth.

The doctor’s face looked like it had been beaten in. There were dark bruises around his eyes and cheeks, his nose was smashed, he had a split lip and more bruising. He somehow looked even worse than you. Mabel might not have spent much time with the doctor, but she had never seen so much as a scratch on him. People begged to work with him, they bent over backwards to please him, he wasn’t some lackey on a random gang's payroll.

“Come to get an up-close look at what your little friend did?” he sneered.

Mabel furrowed her brow, she didn’t have any friends, she definitely didn’t have any that knew the doctor, besides Charlie, but she knew there was no way he had done that. “Y/N?” Mabel’s eyes widened.

“Nearly broke my fucking hand,” he said through gritted teeth.

He held out the hand he had originally hidden on the side of the door. Mabel’s mouth dropped open. The doctor was a surgeon, his hands were basically everything. His right hand wasn’t in a cast or even wrapped up, but Mabel could still see the impression of a boot. There was bruising all across the back of his hand, if whoever stepped on it had pressed down just a bit harder then surely, they would have smashed his hand completely.

He pushed off the doorway, leaving the door open as he walked back into his apartment. “Or did you come to finish the job?” he called out.

Mabel slid her foot forward, almost crossing the threshold into his apartment. In the hallway she was safe but if she crossed into the apartment anything could happen. Before she could think through her decision and why it was a bad idea, she stepped into the apartment.

“What happened?” she asked again. She looked the doctor up and down, he was favoring his left leg as he made his way to the kitchen island to poor himself a drink, despite it not even being eight in the morning yet.

The doctor spun around, drink still in his hand, tilting his head as he watched Mabel. “You don’t know?” he asked, letting out a humorless chuckle.

Mabel could only shake her head. You visited the doctor, but you had barely even met him, she didn’t know how you could possibly know where he lived or worked. You beat the shit out of him, Mabel hadn’t even seen people who were late on payments suffer such a beating. Maybe you knew the doctor from before, because clearly this was personal for you. Mabel didn’t think you were much of a fighter, not in that way, but she hadn’t known you very long, so many the truth was she didn’t know you at all, maybe this was exactly who you were.

“Your friend,” the doctor spit, Mabel could hear the disgust in his voice. “Paid your debt.” He chuckled loudly, sloshing his drink as he waved his arms around.

“What?” Mabel whispered, her eyes widening at the implication of those words.

“Your debt,” he said bitterly. “Paid off!” he threw his hands in the air, sloshing more of his drink, not that he seemed to notice. “Warned me to stay away from you,” he pointed at her. “Completely paid everything,” he pointed across the room. Mabel followed his finger to a duffel bag next to his couch. “Said if I ever contacted you again, they’d kill me.” He threw his head back, downing the rest of his glass.

Mabel ignored him as she walked to the duffel back. She held her breath as she slowly unzipped it. She pushed the bag apart, her eyes landing on stacks upon stacks of money. She brought a hand to her mouth, the only way you could get access to that much money that quickly would be if you used your savings, the money you had been saving to get a sailboat so you could follow your dream.

“When?” Mabel asked, turning back to the doctor.

“Yesterday,” he said, shrugging. “Had to use my vacation time. Now, get out,” he pointed towards the door.

Mabel didn’t need to be told twice; she was out the door before the doctor could pull himself away from the kitchen island. On her way down to her car she kept trying to figure out how you knew about the doctor. Mabel had never told you about her debt to him let alone mentioned how much she owed him. She didn’t tell you because though you were the one he was helping it wasn’t your problem, she was the one who called him.

Based on the timeline you had visited him before going to see your boss. You grabbed your life savings and paid Mabel’s debt before you went to try and save the life of her ex and his friends. You really were selfless, god she really hated you. When she got in her car, she turned her key and sped down the road, already knowing where she was going. If you thought you could just go off and secretly pay her debt and then go get yourself killed, you were wrong.

Mabel sped down the street, ignoring most traffic laws, she didn’t have time to stop at things like red lights and stop signs. She slammed on her breaks when she got in front of her destination. She got out of her car, slamming the door before she started her march up the walkway, to the house she had become very familiar with in the last year.

“What are you doing here?” Charlie asked, coming out the front door before Mabel even got to the first step. “Did something happen? Are you okay?” He rushed down the steps, reaching his arms out as if he were going to touch her but stopped before he could.

“We’re going to rescue Y/N,” Mabel said.

“What?” Charlie took a step back, his eyes widening.

“Call Tommy,” Mabel gestured impatiently. “We don’t have a lot of time, they’re probably already on the water.”

“Are you insane?” Charlie held out his arms, his eyes darting all around Mabel’s face.

“They paid my debt.” Charlie scrunched his eyebrows before his shoulders relaxed, his mouth dropping open at the reveal. “I can’t just let them die.”

“What do you expect to do?” Charlie asked softly. Mabel clenched her jaw, it took everything in her to not snap at Charlie, she knew he was just looking out for her. “These guys are bad news, you said that yourself. What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know!” Mabel ran her hands across her face and through her hair. “But I can’t just do nothing! Please,” she begged, looking up into Charlie’s eyes.

Charlie held her gaze, his eyes searching for something before they widened slightly as if realizing something. Charlie nodded but there was a small frown on his face. “Okay,” he sighed. “Okay.”

Charlie called Tommy from the car. Mabel didn’t waste time as she sped her way down to the docks. She caught Charlie out of the side of her eye as he argued back and forth with Tommy until he tossed his phone onto the dashboard when the conversation was over. Charlie had his elbow resting on the door and his head propped up in his hand. He looked focused, his eyes never leaving the road.

“Tommy letting us take the boat?” Mabel asked, she quickly flicked a glance at Charlie, trying to gauge his reaction.

“Yeah,” Charlie sighed. “He’s already there, we’ll be ready to go as soon as we arrive.”

Mabel nodded, opting not to say anything else. Charlie called Tommy and he was willing to come with her and help try and save you. Charlie’s mood was close to how it was after they broke up. Mabel couldn’t be sure what Charlie saw when he looked into her eyes but whatever it was it seemed that he finally accepted that they were truly over and that she was ready to start moving on.

Mabel whipped into a parking spot, slamming on the breaks as soon as she could. She didn’t even look to see if she was between the lines before she jumped out of the car and ran down the ramp to the docks. She heard Charlie right behind her as they rushed to the boat, seeing Tommy on the deck, Nunes, and Costa beside him. Costa grabbed her hand, helping her onto the boat.

“This is stupid,” Tommy said, locking eyes with Charlie.

Charlie shrugged. “We can’t just do nothing.”

Tommy rolled his eyes, adjusting his hat before flicking a glance at Mabel then back at his brother. “You better have a plan,” he shook his head.

“Figured we’d gameplan on the way.”

Tommy grumbled something incoherent before making his way to the helm. Charlie tapped Mabel’s arm, nodding at her to follow along. Mabel joined Charlie, Costa, and Nunes around a table behind Tommy and began planning out exactly how they thought they could save you while also taking on a bunch of drug dealers.

Tommy put in the location they found originally and used weather patterns to determine where and how far you drifted from, giving them a solid area to start heading towards. With Tommy at the wheel, they began making their way to your location, Mabel was just hoping she had moved fast enough and that you wouldn’t already be on the ocean floor by the time they got to you.

[ckret2]

Chapter 58 of human Bill Cipher in a quantum uncertainty state between being and not being the Mystery Shack's prisoner:

Everything you've wondered about how Bill survived his execution.

Let's rewind a couple of days.

####

Friday, 11:00 p.m.

"Welp," Mabel said, "I've got the rest of summer to try to get the whole story out of him! Goodnight, Dipper!"

Dipper's stomach flipped with guilt. "Yeah." The rest of summer. Mabel left for Portland in the morning. "Goodnight."

He lay down, pulled his sheet back up, and stared at the ceiling.

####

Friday, 11:04 p.m.

It took less than five minutes before the guilt won.

Yeah, no, nope, nuh-uh, Dipper couldn't do this. Not to his sister. He rolled over and hissed, "Psss, hey. Mabel."

"Hm?"

"Listen," Dipper said. "I hate Bill, okay, but I care about you, and also I think Bill might be part of a prophecy, so, because of that—I... There's something I need to tell you."

####

11:15 p.m.

Bill hadn't even had time to start dreaming before something dragged his mind back into the waking world.

There were white points of light as he passed through the hazy twilight of half-sleep. Those lights were his eyes. Lately, every time he started to wake up, he'd been seeing his eyes in the distance.

This time, there was one right in front of him, so bright it almost blinded him. He thought he could see something in the light.

He touched it.

And then he woke up, laying on his cushion bed as usual, watching as Mabel slid out of her room, crept near, and knelt beside him. She shook his shoulder. "Hey, Bill. Wake up."

And then he woke up—which was strange, considering he'd just done that—and stared at the dark inside of his hoodie.

He pushed back his hood. There was Mabel, crouched next to him, just like he'd "dreamed." Huh. Well done, Cipher, it seems you've just learned a new trick.

He tamped down his excitement; he could figure out what to do with this trick later. For now, he had a higher priority. "'Sup, kid?" He pushed himself up on an elbow, roughly flipping his hair out of his hood so it wouldn't keep tickling and choking around his neck. "It's the middle of the night." He yawned and mumbled, "Not that it makes a difference to me, but..."

"Shhh! We've gotta stay quiet," Mabel whispered. "I need to get you out of here. They're gonna kill you."

He sat bolt upright. "All right," he said. "You have my attention."

####

Dipper refused to say how, but according to him they'd synthesized just enough fuel for one shot with their fancy quantum whatever gun, and they couldn't make any more. They planned to execute Bill once Mabel was gone.

Mabel could just open a door for Bill and let him escape in the middle of the night—but that had dangers of its own. Bill would have to travel to a hiding place on foot—and his shoes were crap for hiking—his feet were also crap for hiking—and he'd only have until the adults started waking up and realized he was gone. Even if he kept moving all night, the adults would probably be able to cover the same amount of ground in a couple of hours, he'd probably inadvertently leave a trail a mile wide, and the forest's local supernatural population would definitely snitch if one of the Stans asked if they'd seen anything.

Plus, it wouldn't be very hard for the adults to figure out that Dipper had cracked and Mabel had helped Bill escape, and then everyone was in hot water.

They needed a way to cover Bill's escape to make it harder for the adults to pick up his trail, to give him as much time as possible to get some distance from the shack, and to delay Mabel getting in trouble. ("And Dipper," Mabel said. "Sure," Bill said unenthusiastically.)

But if they could, it would be best if they found a way to ensure the adults never even thought to look for Bill, Mabel never got in trouble at all, and the Quantum Destabilizer could never be fired again.

It was possible, Bill said. It wasn't guaranteed, but it was possible. They had a good chance. A very good chance. In fact, never mind, he'd decided it was guaranteed, they'd pull this off easily.

All they had to do was fake his death.

He knew a way.

####

11:45 p.m.

Dipper was stirred out of a drowsy near-sleep by the door creaking open and a couple sets of footsteps shuffling in. He rolled over and squinted across the room.

Mabel was quietly collecting craft supplies—pens, papers, her small starter sewing kit she used for repairs. Bill climbed into the loft to grab some musty pillows and blankets that had been stored for years in a cardboard box.

"Mabel?" Dipper mumbled.

Mabel put a finger over her lips. "Hey Dipper," she whispered. "You can go back to sleep, we'll be up in the loft."

"Doing what?"

"Scheme-y stuff. Don't worry about it." She flung her arms around Dipper, whispered, "Thank you," and ran across the room to grab her backpack and the height-altering flashlight.

Dipper glanced toward the loft. Bill was waiting at the top of the ladder, a dark vaguely-triangular silhouette, only his eyes visible as they reflected the dim light like a cat's. Dipper had had more nightmares than he could remember about waking to find Bill hovering in the dark above him.

Bill's gaze flicked from watching Mabel to staring at Dipper. They made eye contact. Bill didn't say anything.

Then Mabel climbed up the ladder, supply-stuffed backpack slung over her shoulders. Bill gave Dipper one last silent look, then turned away to follow Mabel to the back of the loft.

Dipper rolled over and tried to fall back asleep.

####

The plan was to create a dummy that looked like Bill to take the Quantum Destabilizer's shot in his place, while the real Bill got as far from the shack as the weirdness barrier around town would allow.

Bill told Mabel that the dummy didn't need to be complicated: he had an enchantment that could make it completely convincing. All he had to do was write out a spell and leave the paper over the dummy, and anyone who looked at it would be convinced it was really him in the flesh.

Similarly, sneaking Bill out of the shack didn't need to be complicated. They could shrink Bill down and stick him in Mabel's backpack, and all she'd have to do was come up with an excuse to get out of the car and set him free before they left town. 

The hard part would be the choreography of the whole thing. They needed Bill to put in an appearance that morning, to prove it really was him walking around; and then go somewhere that Mabel could hide him away without anybody noticing; and then ensure that nobody would see the Bill dummy until they were safely out of range, just in case. "The enchantment's pretty good," Bill said, "but the more people see it and the longer they get to look at it, the less potent it gets. And all it'll do is make the dummy look like me—it won't be able to walk and talk. It's best if the only person who gets a good look at it is my executioner."

The word executioner made Mabel shudder. It would probably be Ford, wouldn't it? She knew he thought he was doing the right thing. She knew it wasn't the first time he'd tried to destroy Bill. She knew she'd been fine with it last summer. She even knew that Bill would be okay. But all the same, she wasn't sure how she'd look at Ford the same way.

Once they had the dummy set up somewhere away from the family's prying eyes, they had to discourage everyone from trying to approach "Bill" until they were ready to kill him. And, ideally—just in case the executioner tried to speak to Bill or the enchantment otherwise failed—they should stage it all in a way so that no one would think Mabel had been involved in the escape plan.

The solution was obvious.

"I live to cause drama for no reason," Bill said. "I upset mortals recreationally. Can you act?"

"Can I act? Pshhh!" Mabel flipped a hand dismissively. "Maybe you were too busy badly impersonating my brother to watch, but last year I kind of staged an entire puppet show performing and singing as every character."

So it was a plan: they would stage a fight.

They were sitting in the very back of the attic loft, behind stacks of forgotten boxes and abandoned junk, beneath the meager light of the loft's window. Bill didn't need the light. He had a pen and paper and was writing out his enchantment's spell while they talked, long lines of inscrutable text. It was so dark that Mabel couldn't even see what language he was writing in, but that was fine; Bill had said that if she read his spell—if anyone read it—it would break the enchantment.

"Whoops," Bill said, "yeah, afraid I missed your whole show! I was too busy backstage trying to avoid your friends and looking for a way onto the catwalk."

Mabel shook her head in disapproval. "You would have liked it. There were live pyrotechnics and lasers and fog machines and a giant tentacle monster war and seventy-four songs and puppets!"

"I'll admit, sounds like a killer show. How about gore?"

"There was a whole song about my love interest getting his legs chewed off in the war," Mabel said. "The sock puppets don't have legs, but everyone knows your own imagination is a lot scarier than anything you actually see."

This kid could have a brilliant artistic career as a serial killer. "That's familiar. Is this war based on that 'cats versus the giant octopus' dream you keep having?"

"Yeah, and you'd have known that if you'd actually watched the opera! Too bad you missed the whole thing," Mabel said. "I guess you were just too busy being evil to appreciate the simple joys of a good, clean, non-villainous puppet show."

"Oh no, I can't believe my actions have consequences," Bill said flatly. "What would I ever have done if you hadn't enlightened me."

"Died, probably."

Bill glared.

"You know! Like you did last summer? As a consequence of your—"

"You shush."

Bill shoved Mabel away when she started to laugh, and held the enchantment up between their faces so he didn't have to look at her. He read his work over, then folded the paper in half and half again. "Hey, maybe you can put on an encore presentation sometime." Bill carefully inscribed four symbols in a square on the folded paper. "I promise I'll laugh at the jokes and fake cry at the sad parts."

Mabel shuddered. "No way. I'm never touching that show again. Too many bad memories."

"Awww, how come?"

Mabel stared at Bill.

Bill said, "Oh, right."

"Yeah," Mabel said coldly. "Thanks."

Bill shrank back. He leaned against a cardboard box, not sure where to look, drumming his fingers self consciously on the floorboards. Trying to figure out the right thing to say to make it better.

"Hey," he said. "If you ever change your mind about reviving the show... can I play the reverend again?" He grinned.

Mabel wadded up a paper and chucked it at Bill's face.

####

They agreed that scripting out every bit of the argument would make it sound too fakey; and anyway they were going to do this on no sleep and with no time to practice, if one of them forgot a line mid-argument it would ruin their entire plan. Bill said he was great at improvisational acting (which Mabel suspected was his way of trying to make "great at lying on the spot" sound good), and Mabel was a pro at getting into character for pretend games, so this should be easy. They just needed to choose a few topics they could realistically argue about.

So they started making a list of things that would totally infuriate each other.

"I can't think of anything that would make me furious," Bill said. "Outside of something serious like a murder attempt, anyway. I'm an even-tempered triangle! I don't sweat the small things!"

"You got sooo mad when I forgot to tell you about my Summerween plans."

Bill grimaced. "Right," he muttered. "That." 

Teasingly, Mabel asked, "Are you still grumpy I made plans?"

"I was not grumpy you made plans. I wasn't grumpy at all! I just would have appreciated if I'd known sooner, I planned my whole evening assuming I'd have somebody around to open doors—"

He saw Mabel's increasingly amused smirk, stopped himself, held up a hand, and said, "I'll save it for tomorrow morning."

Mabel wrote down the idea beneath four ideas she'd already scratched out. She'd temporarily removed the crystal from the height-altering flashlight so she could illuminate her paper while she wrote. "The concert will definitely come up tomorrow morning! And you can act like that's the first time you heard about it."

"Sure, no problem. We haven't talked about the concert where your uncles could overhear, have we?"

"I don't think so."

"Then that's perfect. I can pretend to be mad you didn't tell me." Bill forced a smile. "All right, your turn." He rested his elbow on his knee and his cheek on his fist. "I realize that, apart from the unfortunate meat suit, I'm the most flawless person you've ever seen—" he ignored Mabel's raspberry, "—but for the sake of argument, just imagine something you might get mad at me for."

"Um... insulting Dipper?"

"Now that sounds fun. But no, can't risk it, he'd be too tempted to jump into the argument," Bill said. "Besides, what if I said something you agreed with?"

"What! Why would I agree if you insulted my brother?"

"He smells like a sweaty ferret and when he has a crush he turns into a creepy little stalker."

Mabel laughed. "Yeah, he does. Okay, um..." She went silent for a moment, tapping the butt of her marker on the paper. 

She stopped tapping; and then quietly said, "I'd be so mad if I thought you were trying to keep me from hanging out with my friends."

"Oh, I could do that easily." Bill reviewed his wording, decided a human could take that as a threat, and quickly amended himself, "Could pretend that I'm trying to do that easily. You know I'd never, but hey, the adults here are ready to believe the worst about me—"

"You promise?"

"Sure I promise!" He processed the question after he'd already answered it. "Hold on—you think I'm the kind of person who would do that?" He was, but he didn't want her to see him that way.

She shrugged, looking down at her idea list again. "You've done it to other people."

"Name one!"

"Grunkle Ford and Old Man McGucket."

Oh, of course. That snitch of a backstabbing ungrateful ex-student, bane of Bill's entire miserable postmortem existence. Had to find as many ways as possible to make Bill look bad, didn't he. "All I did was tell Stanford that hick was a coward and a flake. I didn't make him do anything! If he agreed with me, that's on him." Bill crossed his arms irritably. "And Specs was a coward and a flake. Is it a crime to be right?"

"But you ruined their friendship on purpose, didn't you."

Bill tried to find a graceful way to wriggle around the direct accusation that excused his actions without contradicting whatever she might already know. "Did not," he said.

Mabel frowned at him.

Bill averted his gaze. "So! That's great. Trying to keep you away from your friends. Something I've never done to you but would be a really good thing to fight about. What else."

Mabel sighed and looked over her list again. She wrote something, scratched it out; started another line and scribbled it out; and then said in exasperation, "Your morals are terrible."

Bill had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep his sudden laugh from waking Dipper. "You've got too many morals, it's your biggest character flaw. How many does one person really need, two or three? That's an easy topic, arguments about morality can drag out for hours!"

"We probably only need to fight for like ten minutes, right?"

"Sure. List done! That's everything we need."

Mabel heaved a sigh of relief. She read over the list, glanced at the flashlight she was reading with, and said, "I should get extra batteries. It'd be the worst if we got you way out of the shack and then the batteries died while you were still small."

Bill wasn't sure about that. Being so tall for weeks on end felt awkward and wrong. His limbs were always in the way. He bumped into things he should have been able to slide between. The more time he spent in this body, the more he wanted to spend a month at the size and thickness of a greeting card. He joked, "Hey, I don't know; it'd be easier to hide..."

"Yeah, and easier to get squarshed." Mabel turned off the flashlight and picked up her backpack. "I'm getting batteries."

While Mabel was downstairs, Bill picked up her list to see what topics they'd found to argue about so far:

Weirdmaged

Making me think you were Blendin to get the

Kitten fists meow meow

Almost killing me

Not sharing Summerween plans

Trying to make me kill myself by

Ruining Glove Story

Insulting Dipper

Insulting Waddles??? (too lovable!)

Weirdm

Mabeland Isolating me from everyone

Spray painting your eyeball

Weir YOU'RE TOO EVIL!!

I'M TOO NICE!!! ♡

He reread the list, feeling his guts writhe and twist involuntarily.

Yeah. Those were all the things he'd decided not to bring up, too.

At least they were in agreement on what they didn't want to talk about. That was true friendship, right? Friendship didn't mean never hurting each other; it meant mutually agreeing never to talk about it again.

He read the list a third time.

####

A spare pair of Bill's black leggings and a pair of black socks would serve as half of the decoy body, stuffed with old bedsheets and half a pillow that Mabel had sized up with the flashlight so it was closer to Bill's actual torso size. For the time being, the top half of the decoy was constructed out of a flannel shirt; Bill would have to put in an appearance downstairs in his hoodie, and then they could quickly go upstairs and put it on the decoy to complete the look.

He'd miss that hoodie almost as much as he missed his own face. But it was a small price to pay for his life.

"I don't know," Mabel whispered, inspecting the dummy with the flashlight from near the edge of the loft. "It doesn't look super convincing. It's kind of lumpy all wrong." She knelt by it and tried to poke the fake thigh into a slightly more convincing shape.

"Don't worry about it," Bill whispered, waving the folded paper with the secret spell written inside. "The enchantment will hide all that. As long as the dummy looks mostly human at a glance, no one will notice anything."

Mabel gave it one last worried look, but nodded and turned off the flashlight.

####

Mabel crept out of the office and eased the door shut. "Got it," she whispered, holding up a faded black umbrella. "Are you sure you don't want a better umbrella, though? Some of the spikes are broken and I think it's supposed to rain today."

"The other humans will be less likely to notice a broken umbrella going missing," Bill said. "Anyway, this one saved my life once. I'll take it."

"Then that's the last supply we needed to pack," Mabel said, sighing in relief. "It's still a couple hours until morning. Should we get some sleep?"

Bill considered it, and shook his head. "No. Better not."

Sleep scared him. Sure, he endured it when he had to—he had no choice—and, under the circumstances, although it was a close call, he grudgingly preferred sleeping to dying of sleep deprivation; but he kept it at bay as long as he could, sleeping irregularly, infrequently, and briefly. Knowing it was necessary didn't make the fear go away.

It was the helplessness of the whole thing—knowing that, once his mind had shut off, anything could happen around him, anything could happen to his body—and not only was he ignorant and defenseless, but he was also powerless to wake himself up any sooner than his tyrannical circadian rhythm dictated. He lacked even the power to think about waking.

If Mabel hadn't woken him tonight, he might have slept through his own death. 

He continued, "What if we sleep in and don't have time for the fight? I'd be doomed." Bill didn't even have the luxury of an alarm clock.

"Oh—good point," Mabel said. "So we should probably do something to keep us awake."

"Right," Bill said, wracking his exhausted brain for an idea. "Overdose on caffeine?"

Mabel was quiet for a moment. "If this works, it might be a long time before we see each other again," she said. "You'll probably have to keep hiding until Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan leave town in the fall. And by then summer will be over, and I'll be back in California..."

She was right. If they pulled off this plan, he might never see Mabel again. It wouldn't exactly be safe to ring up the Mystery Shack. Sure, sooner or later he'd find a way to restart Weirdmageddon, and then he could invite her into his gang... And she'd join, wouldn't she? Of course she would. He just needed a chance to talk to her about it away from the closed-minded killjoys in her family that were holding her back. But until then...

She groped through the dark to grab at Bill's sleeve. "Dance party? While we still can?"

"Sure, star girl." Where had this lump in his throat come from? "Sounds fun. Dance party."

####

5:30 a.m.

It was the first time Bill had danced since his death.

All Mabel had to offer was Sev'ral Times, upbeat kid's show soundtracks, unlistenable synthesized junk, and whatever was playing before dawn on the radio stations that could reach Gravity Falls; the stained yellow shag carpet and homely plaid wallpaper made him miss the dark smoky rooms and strobing multicolor lights of a real club; he couldn't risk drinking this early in the morning if he wanted to have a head clear enough for escape; and he never forgot that, outside of the living room, the halls were empty and silent.

But he'd danced to music that made his eye bleed and his memories howl and he'd danced to no music at all; he'd danced in millions of crummy makeshift dance halls and night clubs and dive bars that had tumbled into or been cobbled together in the Nightmare Realm; he'd danced when he was so brutally sober that time in all its sharp cruel clarity seemed to have frozen to turn a spotlight on him; he'd danced with his worst enemies and he'd danced all alone; and there wasn't any force on this planet that would stop him from dancing now.

After spending four songs in a row making fun of Bill for attempting to figure out how to puppet a human body into some approximation of a dance, Mabel asked, "What were dances like on Flatworld?" It made Bill internally wince each time he heard it called that.

But he welcomed the opportunity for a break; he leaned back to half sit against the living room table, breathing heavily, arms trembling. "Dif—difficult question." He had to pause to catch his breath. His lungs and muscles couldn't keep up with him; this body was too hard to keep moving, so inefficient, 90% of the fuel that went into it was wasted uselessly. It was already beginning to atrophy in the few short weeks he'd had it, muscles withering from days stuck indoors with nothing to do but sit and stare out the window. He'd been made of pure energy for so long that maintaining all the little systems to keep a flesh body energized—food, water, sleep, exercise, not too much exercise, oxygen—felt like a Sisyphean torture. "S'like asking—'what're human dances like'? There's a—lot of variety."

"You know what I mean!" Mabel was still half dancing, bouncing from foot to foot. Bill wanted that kind of energy. "How do you dance?"

Bill shut his eyes, seeing colors flash behind his eyes—gyroscopic, kaleidoscopic, shapes spinning and whirling in spirals. "I'd show you, but there's not enough room in here for me to do a cartwheel."

"Seriously, Bill."

"I'm being serious! Plus I can't float. It wouldn't look right in a human body." It would look better if he cut his silhouette out of a piece of paper, taped it over a flashlight, and projected the shape onto the wall. "Tell you what—as soon as I'm back in my real body, I'll show you how I dance, all right?"

"Come on, Bill! You're just trying to wiggle out of—"

"Mabel," Bill said, "I can't do those dances in this body."

Mabel's teasing smile faded. "Really?"

"Unless you know a way to dislocate my shoulder so I can slide my entire arm from one hip over my head and down to the other."

"Ew." Mabel grimaced.

"It looks cooler on a triangle." Bill smiled wanly. "But hey, I spent all day yesterday teaching you everything I know—you can teach me something. I haven't used a human body in thirty years! What dances are popular these days, I haven't learned anything new since the moonwalk."

Mabel's eyes widened. "You know how to moonwalk?"

"Sure! It's easy. I figured it out in Stanford's body."

"I don't believe you. Prove it."

Bill pushed off the table. "Oh, yeah? Are you ready to look stupid?" He effortlessly glided backwards across the floorboards. He pointed at Mabel's gaping face as he passed. "What do you think of that?"

"Show me how to do that and I'll teach you every dance I know."

Bill grinned. He loved deals that were unfairly biased in his favor, and he loved it more when he didn't even have to propose them himself. "You've got yourself a deal, Shooting Star." It would keep them occupied for the next hour.

####

6:32 a.m.

About fifteen minutes ago, Bill had warned Mabel that he'd just glimpsed the beforeimage of Ford crossing the living room in the future; and then they'd kept partying, wanting to get in every last second of joy they could before he arrived in the present.

But once Ford was no longer approaching but actually there, seeing his face was like a bullet to the head. Bill had been having so much fun, for a few minutes he'd almost forgotten that today was execution day. 

And it wouldn't be execution day if he had anything to say about it.

Bill demanded, "What's with the sour face?" (Ford's eyes were so dull, his expression so heavy; Bill had never seen him wear that look, not even any of the previous times he'd tried to murder Bill.) "Hey, am I not allowed to dance now?" He squeezed Mabel's hands tighter.

Ford just gave a tiny shake to his head and hurried past them, not even deigning to look at Bill, as though he were telling himself he'd only imagined he'd heard the voice of a ghost.

I know what you're up to, Bill thought at top volume silently in his head. But you won't do it. You won't do it.

He met Mabel's gaze. She gave him a tiny nod. Party was over. Time to get to work.

####

6:36 a.m.

Over the course of the night, Dipper had been woken twice by bursts of quickly-hushed laughter; three times by random bumps and thuds; once by Bill falling off the loft and Mabel's squeal of alarm; and several times by Mabel waking Dipper to ask if it was okay if she gave Bill Dipper's old shoes (so Bill could finally walk in the woods properly), his sleeping bag (so Bill didn't have to sleep on hard rocks under a single sad Pony Heist bedsheet), his "Edible Plants of Oregon's Blue Mountains" booklet (self-explanatory), and several other things he also said "yes" to without hearing properly. It had better be one heck of a prophecy that Bill was involved in, because Dipper was this close to just murdering Bill himself.

When Dipper went downstairs, he couldn't even look at Mabel and Bill—terrified something in his gaze would give the whole conspiracy away. He didn't even know what they were planning. Was dancing in the living room part of it? Was it some distraction? He'd hoped Bill would already be gone by now.

He couldn't meet Ford's eyes either, for the guilt of betraying his trust. He didn't deserve these scrambled eggs.

He couldn't meet anyone's gaze.

He really, really hoped Mabel and Bill had a plan. He hoped it was a good plan. Because whatever the heck they were up to—Dipper was afraid it was on him to prevent Ford and Stan from intervening too soon and finding out.

####

6:49 a.m.

After they'd escaped the kitchen, Bill glanced over his shoulder toward the stairs before Mabel got the attic door closed. "Do you think Ford noticed something?"

Mabel was already running across the room, retrieving her phone charger and phone to stuff in her backpack and pocket, making sure she'd packed everything she needed for her trip—everything except for Bill. "I wasn't looking. Did he?"

"I don't know." Bill flashed one last worried look at the door; but he couldn't afford to slow down, he had a dummy to finish. He hurried up the ladder, took off his hoodie, pulled on a tank top, tried to fish his pre-written enchantment out of his pocket in the same movement, and fumbled and dropped the paper over the edge of the loft.

Mabel had been checking her bag for the concert tickets when a paper fluttered down on her hair. She instinctively grabbed it and unfolded it before she registered the four sigils written on the outside and realized this was the enchantment Bill had said would stop working if anyone read it. She'd reflexively read the first few lines before she could stop herself. She froze. Her gaze jerked up to Bill, eyes wide.

Bill dropped down the ladder, snatched the paper out of her hand so quickly it almost tore, and immediately climbed back up. "I told you not to look." He carefully refolded it.

"Is that...?"

"It'll work," Bill hissed, with an insistence that said he wasn't sure it would work at all.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" He held up the dummy's pillow torso and yanked the hoodie on top of it.

When Mabel didn't say anything, Bill sighed. "Even if it doesn't—this only needs to work until we're on the road. They can't stop us then."

"Bill—"

He shakily inhaled, and then he raised his voice loud enough he'd be heard downstairs. "What do you need to spend all that time around those two brats for, anyway?! What, am I not good enough company for you?!"

They didn't have time to adjust the plan. They were in the middle of it, right now, and the guys expected to hear an argument. Mabel swallowed hard and raised her voice as well. "Not when you're acting like this, you aren't! You're a bigger brat than—than both of—and my friends aren't brats!"

Bill bit his lip, brows drawn in pain, eye squeezed shut, trying not to laugh.

Mabel chucked a sock at him, don't you dare. "You can't say I can't hang out with my friends, that's stupid!"

"I never said you can't!" Bill held the folded paper a foot above the completed dummy, the square of symbols face up, and tapped it twice so it hovered in place when he let go. "Hang out with your stupid friends, I don't care! But two whole days is ridiculous—!"

####

7:02 a.m.

"I THOUGHT you were my FRIEND!"

All three eavesdroppers cringed—Dipper hardest of all. His heart was hammering out of his chest and his t-shirt was at least 50% sweat by volume. Was this part of the plan? It sounded like an insane plan. This couldn't be the plan. It had to be the plan. He'd already prevented Ford from intervening, what if they were really fighting? But what if this really was the plan? 

"WELL! If you're gonna act like this just because I wondered what you're up to, maybe NOT! What kind of fun are you good for, you wouldn't even be into burning a house down!"

Dipper messed up. He'd actually ruined their friendship right before Bill was about to die and Mabel would be miserableand it was all his fault. This fight was real. They were furious. They hated each other—

####

7:03 a.m.

"OH YEAH, WELL—" Mabel faltered as she struggled to think of a fitting retort. "YOU WOULDN'T EVEN BE INTO—into—n-NOT BURNING A HOUSE DOWN!" She cringed at herself, struggling not to laugh.

Bill had been fighting the urge to laugh so hard that his face was turning red. "OHHH WOW, GREAT COMEBACK."

Mabel's voice went shrill with suppressed hysterics. "SHUT UP!" Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she socked Bill's arm. If he made her lose it when everyone was outside listening—

The door opened. "Hey—!"

They both rounded on Stan. "STAY OUT OF IT!" Mabel snatched up a discarded sweater. Stan shut the door just before the sweater hit it.

Mabel quietly wheezed, "Do you think he saw anything?"

"No, n—" Bill had to clap both hands over his mouth and nose to keep silent. Mabel wrapped her arms around him and smushed her face against his chest to muffle herself. They stood there, shaking, until the hysterics passed.

The stress was getting to them.

####

7:06 a.m.

"Fine!!" Mabel lifted the height-altering flashlight. "Then you can just stay here all weekend!"

Bill had on his backpack (Dipper had "agreed" Bill could take his) and was clutching his umbrella. He gave her a thumbs up; ready. "FINE!"

"FINE!" Mabel turned on the flashlight. When Bill was around four inches tall, she turned it off, knelt down, and offered her hand for him to climb on. She stuffed the flashlight in her backpack, carefully set Bill in a sweater nest (how had Gideon flung her and Dipper in a jar so cavalierly? she was terrified of snapping Bill's bones like toothpicks), zipped the backpack and gingerly put it on; and then Mabel was storming out of the room.

"Leave him in there," Mabel snapped, pointing at the door. She was shaking with fear. "He's in TIME OUT."

Dipper glanced nervously at the door, "Um..." He looked so worried. She hadn't had a chance to explain the plan to him.

Mabel glared into his eyes. She summoned up all her mostly placebic Twin Empathy Powers to beam her thoughts into Dipper's brain. Don't. Please don't. If you say anything you'll ruin it.

He raised his hands. "Okay, fine."

Mabel rushed past him to the stairs, trying to escape as fast as possible without jostling her backpack.

####

7:08 a.m.

Buckled into Mrs. Grendinator's car, voice shaking, Mabel said, "Can we just go? Please?" Now, before someone ran out of the shack and waved them down to demand Mabel explain where Bill had gone. Her hands were trembling in fear, clutched protectively around her backpack with its secret cargo. One of her best friends was in there. She couldn't let anything happen to him.

Mrs. Grendinator nodded. "Of course."

As they pulled around the Mystery Shack and toward the road, Mabel glanced toward the attic bedroom window, afraid the adults might have already gone in and discovered their trick; but no one looked back.

Now all she could do was hope the paper Bill had left floating over the dummy would do its job.

####

(Shoutout to the one person who theorized the size changing flashlight could be involved, I'd @ you but I don't want you to see this before you read the chapter. You may claim credit in the notes. Based on the messages I received, one person guessed Mabel got involved halfway through the fight, no one guessed she was in it from the start, and NOBODY guessed Dipper got involved.

For a fun time, go back and read last chapter and this one in chronological order via the timestamps!

But first I wanna hear all your thoughts.)

[darlingdaisyfarm]

Hopefully it’s not too much of an ick for you, but if you’re up to it, would you ever write Ford eating Reader out on their period?

not the disaster you think it is

a/n: hey love, no ofc it's not, im absolutely ok with the whole period thing. i meant to post this a few days ago, but it’s like i forgot how to write or more like i hated every sentence i wrote and couldn’t get past it. anyway, hope this mood leaves me soon. but here we are!! back to Ford being a total freak, as usual, who’s absolutely head over heels for his partner <3 enjoy, i guess?? and thank my period for the delay :/

tags: Ford x reader, nsfw, fluff and smut, gentle sex to rough, emotional rollercoaster for reader, vaginal sex, period sex, oral sex (f receiving), i guess blood play, embarrassment, a lil bit of hurt/comfort, overthinking, established relationship

you think you're about to die of embarrassment, but Ford’s just getting started because sometimes, the worst-case scenario ends up being the best one.

finally, finally you and Ford are alone. do you even remember the last time this happened? no Stan grumbling at the tv, no Dipper hovering around with a thousand questions, no Mabel dragging you away to watch Waddles collapse in the dirt, no Soos excitedly telling you about some strange new creak in the shack’s walls that sounds exactly like a “genuine ghost noise, dude.” no distractions.

what did matter was that you and Stanford were alone, and after the morning you had, there was absolutely no way you weren’t going to fuck the life out of your man.

and god, it’s not like you hadn’t been thinking about it since the second he stepped out of your bedroom looking like that. at first, the missed period had you panicking, your mind spiraling into absolute worst scenarios, but then you chalked it up to stress, shrugged it off, and forgot about it until you saw him. jesus, he didn’t even have to try. you’d made him wear that outfit though, because it was criminal to let him sweat through another goddamn trench coat when summer in gravity falls was like hell had opened its gates and breathed directly onto this weird town, and you weren’t about to let him die of heatstroke just because he was too stubborn to dress appropriately. so you gave him something lighter. and fuck, that was a mistake, because the second you saw him in it, sleeves pushed up, collar slightly undone, his forearms out, his hands, you swore you nearly ovulated again.

but the worst part was when he came running into the shack with those big, dirty, calloused hands holding some kind of tiny, wriggling anomaly he and Dipper had just dug up in the woods, showing it off to everyone like it was nothing, like it wasn’t the sexiest fucking thing you’ve ever seen. all sweaty and flushed from the sun, completely unaware of how fucking delicious he looked, rambling excitedly to Stan, Soos, and Mabel while you had to physically restrain yourself. and you did. you were so good all morning, sitting there, waiting, swallowing down every desperate little urge watching your nerdy man gesturing with those dirty hands as he explained something.

and all you could think was, “i want to eat this man alive.” god, it was unfair how much you wanted him today.

thankfully, Stanley eventually had enough of the science talk. he let out a loud, suffering groan and declared, “that’s it, i’m getting out of here before i have to listen to one more goddamn sentence about anomalous worm lizards or whatever, Soos, Mabel, Dipper, we’re going fishing.”

so of course, there was absolutely no way you weren’t going to take advantage of this moment! it was so rare that you got Ford all to yourself like this that the second the door closed behind Stan, you practically pounced on him.

you had Ford laid out beneath you, his wide back against the mattress, your hands braced on his scarred chest as you rode him like your life depended on it.

and god, you were hungry for it, so desperate. the morning had wound you up so tightly that by the time you finally got him beneath you and finally sank down onto his cock, it felt like release, but still nowhere near enough.

you bounced on him, panting and whimpering, rolling your hips, feeling sweat beading on your skin because it was still summer. and there's no fan strong enough to save either of you. it must be at least 90°F, around 32°C, but it feels even worse and hotter when you have sex. besides, you were the one putting in all the work as your Ford, your good boy, was lying there, being so good for you. looking up at you with little hearts in his eyes, huge hands gripping your waist, trying so hard not to buck up into you too soon because he was such a gentleman even during sex. he wasn’t controlling the pace, you were, and god, he was letting you use him like a toy, groaning so beautifully every time your pussy clenched around him.

yeah, you’d definitely need a cold shower after this, but right now you couldn’t care less. little did you know, though, the shower won’t just be for the sweat.

but that’s a problem for future you.

now, however, your legs start to give out first. despite the pleasure that’s still flooding you in blinding waves, your poor thighs are already trembling and the rhythm getting uneven as you desperately try to keep fucking yourself on him. Ford notices it, even flushed, messy, drowning in you, he watches you like you’re the fucking answer to every equation he's ever scribbled in his journals.

“easy, sweetheart,” he says gently, and then his arms are around you, flipping you over with no effort at all, manhandling you so tenderly. you barely get a second to breathe before he pushes in again from behind and your mouth falls open in a cry. that's deeper. so much deeper like this, and your whole body jolts forward with a ragged moan. “let me take care of you now.”

“Ford, fuck, Ford!” his name spills from you in a gasp just as he starts thrusting, making your toes curl, fingers claw at the sheets, and he just leans over you, grinding into you, murmuring against your ear.

“just like that, you’re doing so good for me,” he groans, kissing your shoulder, “so tight, just keep taking it, beautiful, you’re perfect like this.” Ford rolls his hips, filling you to the brim, keeping you pressed flat against the sheets with nothing to do but take it.

every time he thrusts in, you feel yourself get wetter, making it so easy for him to move and keep grinding into that soft, sensitive spot inside you until you’re crying out, clutching at the pillows. and that’s it. your body breaks as you cum again, shuddering under him as your body jerks with each deep thrust. Ford holds your hips in place while the sheets muffle your screams. he knows your body, god, he knows exactly how to hit those aching spots and how to angle just right, how to drag every last sob and tremble from you until you’re nothing but a pathetic overstimulated mess in his arms. and damn it, Ford loves you like that, clutching at the blankets, so fucked out and trembling, all because of him.

and still, it’s not enough for him. hasn’t been enough all week. you feel it in the way he doesn’t even stop to let you breathe, doesn’t even let you sink down into the afterglow. instead, Ford carefully pulls you onto your back, kissing your jaw and neck, and keeps going, pushing deep into your sore, overstimulated pussy like he’s possessed.

“Ford, s-sensitive, oh god—“

“cant stop,” he pants, hunched over you, sweat dripping down his temple, “just one more. i missed you so much, just let me, i missed you, i missed this,“ he’s so deep again, making your soft walls flutter again, stretched wide around him, and his back, oh fuck, your nails drag down his skin and leave bright red scratches over old scars, painting your love right into his skin as you cry out beneath him.

“so beautiful, darling, so good for me. love you so much, l-love you, mhmm.” Ford's words make you ache in a way you can’t describe and your whole body feel like warm honey, melting under his touch. you pull him closer, wrap your arms around his neck, bury your face against his shoulder as he keeps pounding into you, making love to you like he means it, practically crushing you with his weight.

your thighs tighten where they frame his waist and you're literally clinging to him. his cock slides over your sensitive walls and you still feel so tight, despite how well he worked you open with his fingers before this and the slick mess between your legs. you're drenched, and he knows it by the way his cock nudges inside you so smoothly as you gasp each time he presses flush against your cervix.

“mmh, i love you so damn much, you feel so good, holy moses, taking me so well.” Ford's voice is husky as he kisses you between words, pressing his mouth against your temple, your cheek, your lips and sweet heavens, you’re drowning in it, in him, in the way he praises you like you’re the best thing to ever happen to him. and you know you are, because nobody’s ever looked at you the way Ford does.

”fuck, baby—“ you sob, clinging to his shoulders once he finally slows down just enough for your mind to stop spinning. “you looked so fucking hot this morning,” you whimper, biting your lip, “i wanted you, wanted you so bad, you looked so fucking good today, i couldn’t stop staring—“

Ford’s smile is all soft, even as his cock still pulses inside you. “you should’ve told me, gorgeous, m-maybe we’d have done something about it sooner.”

“i couldn’t, there were people, you know we can't when everyone's at home.”

Ford kisses you and whispers against your mouth, continuing moving inside you. “now you can, love, now it’s just us, be as loud as you want, please. . . but so?” he asks again, “tell me, was it the shirt? or the forearms?”

“shut up—shut up—”

“no, no, i’m serious,” he chuckles breathlessly, slightly changing the angle, “you’re adorable when you’re flustered. i wanted you too,” Ford says suddenly, a little softer. “it was horrible not being able to touch you all week. i kept thinking about you, sweet—“

you interrupt him by kissing him for that, you just have to because you can never get enough of his lips. you drag him down into a kiss and breathe him in like you’ll die without it. and Ford groans right into your mouth, he’s louder this time, letting out sharp grunts and drawn-out moans, that gorgeous fucking voice of his breaking with each thrust. you love it. god, you love when he’s vocal, when he lets go and stops trying to hold himself back, when you can hear how good you make him feel and how much he's enjoying this too.

then, Ford's rhythm gets rougher as he straightens his back, holding himself up as he growls out, “sweetheart, can i go rougher?”

you gasp, nodding fast. “Ford, we talked about this, y-you don’t have to ask, just take what you need, please”

“thank you, my love, thank you, you don’t know how much i needed that.” his voice breaks on it, so full of need it makes your pussy throb.

he grabs your waist, lifts you off the bed slightly, holding you there suspended in the air as he slams into your soaked fluttering pussy again and again. and your cunt takes it like she was made for him, squelching wet and hot around his cock as he uses you like a fucking fleshlight, fast enough the bed is creaking beneath you, the headboard knocking.

“Ford— oh, god!” your head tilts back, pleasure spiking, spreading through your whole body. you love this. you love him when he’s this desperate and rough, that means he needed you really damn bad. “yes! oh, my god, yes!” you arch your back automatically, body tensing as he buries himself to the hilt, his cock brushing your cervix over and over, making your thighs spasm and your toes curl. tears suddenly stinging your eyes.

but Ford keeps pounding into you, determined to bring you to your third orgasm now, and it’s all too much, making your clit throb. your brows knit together in that desperate needy expression he lives for, pretty lips parted, chin wet from drool, cheeks flushed and streaked with tears.

“mine, you're mine,” you hear Ford through your own screams and just nod eagerly.

you swear, nothing feels better than Ford's thick cock stretching you like that, fucking into you like crazy, building the sweetest pressure in your gut. filthy sounds echoing off the walls of the room and god, you’re such a mess, sobbing, literally sobbing, with tears leaking down your temples. eyes glossy and unfocused, every inch of your body betrays you, twitching and fluttering around him like you were made to be filled like this.

“so wet for me,” he grits out, “god, listen to you, soaking me.”

you can’t even answer because you’re just moaning as he keeps thrusting roughly and deep into you like you’re just a toy in his hands. his toy. your hands scrabble helplessly at the sheets as your body climbs toward another high.

oh, you think, dazed, this is actually filthy.

you’re wet, too wet. not that it’s ever an issue with Ford because he gets you soaked, dripping and ruined just from his voice alone everyday. the sounds in the room are straight-up filthy, like something out of a fucking porn. slick, lewd noises every time he thrusts in, your cunt welcoming him, spreading your arousal everywhere.

the sheets beneath you are absolutely ruined and your thighs feel sticky and messy.

Ford has to feel it too, how effortlessly he slides in and out, how fucking easy your wet pussy swallows him every time. and he doesn’t stop. your head’s a haze of pleasure, but somewhere, deep in the rational part of your mind, a little warning bell rings and you hate it.

okay, let's think then. you’re wet, and that’s good, but something feels weirdly weird. you feel you're leaking like a damn waterfall, it gets too warm down there too. your moans taper off slightly, not enough for Ford to notice yet, but you’re thinking too much now, caught in a spiral of why is it so much and why does it feel different. your period is one week late. couldn’t be, right? right. . .

just in that moment Ford slides out and you almost yelp from the loss, but he presses the thick head of his cock against your aching clit, rubbing slow, teasing you like he knows you love. you barely suppress a whimper, melting in this feeling, but before he can push back in you open your eyes and whisper.

“Ford, stop.” you feel your stomach twist with nausea before you even look down.

but that makes him freeze immediately. “what? what happened? did i hurt you?” his voice sounds hoarse from all the moans and groans, but concerned still. he sits back on his heels, wide-eyed, hands hovering over your hips.

ignoring his questions and gathering your strength, you look down and there it is.

blood. a lot of it. smeared on his cock, slick on your inner thighs, staining the sheets beneath you.

“oh my god,“ you gasp. no. no, no, no, no. you’re about to fucking die.

Ford follows your gaze, sees the red, and panics. “holy multiverse! are you okay?? did i— was i too rough? fuck, sweetheart, i’m so sorry,“ he looks like he’s about to pass out from guilt, already reaching for you, checking you over like you’re injured.

“no, Ford, it’s not that, i—“ you squeeze your eyes shut, heat crawling up your face. embarrassment punches through you like a fucking bullet. your throat tightens and you barely get the next words out of yourself. “it’s, uh, my period.”

yeah, your period that just ambushed you, right in the middle of the most intense sex you've had in a month, and of course, it would happen now. during the one time you feel gorgeous, needed, good, loved and craved by your man.

silence. fucking silence. your worst fear is coming true now. you can’t even look at him. your hands tremble as you try to close your legs to hide yourself from this fucking shame, but Stanford who's still between them, doesn’t budge.

you’re bracing for it. for disgust, for Ford to pull away, wrinkle his nose and be mad or scold you or run to the shower or something—

“oh. well, that makes sense.”

your eyes snap open. “. . .what?”

Ford’s face softens. “considering the amount of blood that comes out during your period, i'd guess your cycle kicked in just as your uterus was having those strong contractions during climax. its. . . fascinating, really. i mean, maybe the orgasm actually triggered the bleeding? what do you think?“

“Ford, let’s NOT.”

he pauses and smiles. “oh. right. sorry, sorry.”

you exhale shakily, rubbing at your face. “god, this is so embarrassing.”

“why?” Ford frowns.

“why?? Ford, i literally just ruined everything. i got you all dirty and the sheets and— fuck, im so sorry! this is disgusting—“

through all your panicked monologue, you dont even notice Ford looking at you like wants to eat you alive.

your body is still sensitive, but the shame sits heavier than the pleasure now. you don’t even want to look at him. god, you were just bouncing on his cock, losing your mind on him, moaning into the mattress like a fucking animal and now you’re bleeding? how humiliating.

“anyways, this is—“

“not a big deal,” Ford finishes for you. “you're overthinking.”

you glare at him. “of course i'm overthinking, Ford. i just ruined—“

”ruined? is that what you think you did?”

“well, yeah, obviously.”

“sweetheart,” he moves closer, “why do you think that?”

“b-because sex is over now?” you flail an arm vaguely at the mess beneath you. ”we can't just—“

“sex is over?” he interrupts again, tilting his head, genuinely perplexed. because truly, he doesn’t understand the concept.

“uh. yeah. i mean, obviously? normal men wouldn’t want to keep going after.“

Ford’s expression tightens. “‘normal men’? darling, if you wanted a normal man, you wouldn’t be with a virgin who hops dimensions and gets annoyed by bad grammar.”

you stare, feeling the tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from sheer humiliation. “so, you’re not mad you mean? or disgusted?”

“honey, there's nothing in your body that could make me mad or disgusted.” Ford huffs, wiping a smudge of blood off your thigh like it’s nothing but a wine spill.

and you want to believe him, you do, but god, your thoughts are spiraling again. he didn’t even get to finish, because you ruined everything. sheets soaked, mood killed, you were so close and now it’s all gone. and all of that is because of you.

“i still ruined it.” you admit and hate how ashamed you sound. “it was so good and now it’s just—“

“but darling,” Ford cuts in. he leans down, kisses your hipbone, tongue brushing so hot and tender it makes you twitch. “who said anything was ruined?”

“i mean, we can’t exactly keep going.”

“but why? who says i was ever going to stop?”

and it hits you. he hasn’t even finished. not once, he’d been so deep in you, feeling your pussy gripping him like a fucking vice that he didn’t even bother to chase his own orgasm.

you gape. “wait. you’re still—“

“hard?” he chuckles. “yes. painfully.”

“and you’re not mad?” you ask the same thing again, confused.

Ford kisses the inside of your knee. “the only thing i’m mad about is that i didn’t get to make you cum with my mouth first. you think I could be satisfied knowing I haven't tasted you yet?”

“wait, wait, wait, im—“ you start to panic when you realize what Ford is hinting at.

but it's too late because he's already gripping your thighs and spreading you open.

“you know we don't have to—“

”yes, we do,” he murmurs, “yes, we absolutely do.”

honestly, if you think Ford’s gonna let a little blood stop him from eating the prettiest pussy he’s ever seen, sweetheart. . .please, you clearly don’t know how fucked in the head this man is for you.

because after a week of not having your body beneath him, this is nothing.

“but—“

“sweetheart, ive been waiting a week. a week. let me take care of you.”

god. this man, fuck. you want to be mad. really, you do. you want to groan, roll your eyes, throw a pillow at him for ruining your chance to bury your shame in silence. but the worst part is that he’s smiling in that awful, devastatingly gentle smile.

and oh fuck, you cry out, trying to twist away because you dont want to make him uncomfortable or anything, but Ford's strong arms are caging you in. “i love this pussy. love how wet you get for me. i don’t care if you’re bleeding, i care that you’re not done yet, sweetheart.”

“you’re insane,” you whisper, biting your lip.

“for you?” Ford grins against your skin, “absolutely.” and then he’s already lowering, teasing at your folds, unbothered by the mess, more turned on by your shuddering and beautiful whimpers. your blood is barely noticeable compared to the way you leak for him, messy and dripping still, your clit so swollen and sensitive, you jerk as soon as he touches it.

Ford's tongue slides against you like velvet, then circles, and flattens.

fuck, he’s good.

he groans when you grind into his mouth, and the sound rumbles right through your gut. your hips buck, and he holds you firm.

shit. you should’ve never taught him. you should’ve kept the knowledge to yourself, never guided his eager mouth and shown him the way your body sang under just the right pressure, never taken his trembling fingers in yours and said “no, baby, slower, feel how sensitive i am here?”

because now, Ford is using it against you.

he starts slow, tracing that familiar path from the crease of your thigh up to your clit, breathing you in like it’s a drug he’s been deprived of.

you want to scream, cry and curl up into nothing and vanish forever, but Ford is licking right over the spot that makes your legs kick, and you swear he smiles when you do. because he knows your body. knows your pulse, rhythm and your shame and he’s pulling it apart with every flick of his fucking tongue.

“so sensitive already,” his breath ghosting over your drenched folds. “you really thought we were done?”

you don’t even know what he’s doing anymore, only that it’s working. it’s so working. too well, in fact, because you’re not even thinking straight, brain full of static and white noise and the obscene sounds of his mouth devouring your pussy like he’s making up for every lost second of the week you went without.

and he has improved. god, he’s weaponized everything you taught him. the way you showed him to suck your clit gently, not too much, just a little pressure like he’s savoring it. . . yeah. he remembers. that damn freak

each groan against your clit is like a vibration in your bones, each sigh filled with hunger and fucking adoration, because you gave this to him. you taught him this. you trusted him to touch you, to taste you, so now you pay for this. your pussy’s so sensitive, sore from earlier, still fluttering and tender, but he doesn’t stop.

“F—Ford, please—“ you don’t even know what you’re begging for. mercy? more? less? it all blends together. hearing your weak voice, Ford smirks against your pussy and then moans as if the taste of your blood and arousal is some forbidden elixir that gets him drunk on you. “s’too good,” you cry out. “how are you this good now? you damn nerd, oh my god—“

you can't finish your sentence because he flattens his tongue and licks again, so slow, making a long drag from your entrance up to your clit that makes your hips jerk and your hands fist the sheets.

and fuck, fuck, he remembers this too, how you explained him how to circle his tongue just beneath the clit too, where your nerves are raw and sensitive, and now he’s there, swirling soft, teasing spirals that make you shudder down to the bone.

and then he sucks your clit deep into his mouth again, groans, sending vibrations through your entire pelvis, making your back arch and your legs twitch around his head.

“that’s it, sweetheart,” Ford's voice all fucked-up and hungry, and god he sounds ruined, “give it to me.”

his thick fingers slide in without resistance, two of them, slow and fucking perfectly angled, crooking just right, the pads of them brushing over your sweetest sensitive spot in lazy pulses. he’s stroking you like he’s trying to coax something out, and you’re so soaked that the sounds are filthy, wet and too obscene.

you whimper, trying to close your legs but his wide shoulders are there, unyielding, pinning you open.

Ford kisses your clit like he’s in love with it, and you feel your orgasm coming like a storm on the horizon, making your thighs shake violently around his head.

but what kills you is knowing that this is your fault because you made him this good. you trained him. shaped him. built him into this monster of a man who eats you out like you’re the center of the universe.

and now he’s fucking feral with it

you cry out, too breathless, feeling your cunt pulsing around his fingers now that he added third one, your clit is so swollen under his mouth. “you’re so perfect,” Ford pants, grinding his mouth into you, his fingers pumping harder now, “god, you’re gonna cum, aren’t you? let me have it, sweetheart, give me that pretty orgasm.”

holy shit, you cum so fucking hard your body locks up, hips lifting off the bed, thighs clamping around his head, but that doesn't stop him. not even when you sob and beg, not even when your clit twitches and your hands shake, he’s still licking through it, swallowing you down. your pussy squeezes his fingers and leaks, your whole body folds inward.

but Ford holds you through it, tongue slowing to soft kisses, his fingers gently easing out.

“that’s my girl,” he breathes, smiling silly, chin wet with you.

“never knew you were such a freak, Ford,” you breathe, giggling through your tears, your fingers tightening in his silver hair. “i created a monster.”

Ford looks up, brown eyes glassy. “darling, didn’t you read my journals?”

you laugh breathlessly, still dizzy from your orgasm, but then it falters because your gaze flicks down to the blood. the mess. the ruined sheets and the guilt curling hot and tight in your chest.

“do you still love me?” you ask, unexpectedly even for yourself. “after all this. . . i ruined the bed and—“

Ford's heart breaks at that. he’s kissing your thighs before you can even blink, holding your hips like you’re something fragile. “hey. hey. look at me, sweetheart. you didn’t ruin a thing. you gave me you. and i’ve never wanted anything more. blood, tears, whatever. . . you think any of that changes how much i love you?”

you don't even notice how quickly a smile creeps onto your tear-stained face.

“you’re the most beautiful thing i’ve ever touched, and i’d ruin a thousand sheets for just one more taste of you.” and that’s what love sounds like in Ford’s voice.

[gay-dorito-dust]

Heres an idea what if ford and his infant baby BOTH got sucked into the portal? How would ford cope with jumping across the multiverse while trying to raise his child?

I’m going to assume the reader is the baby, so this fic is obviously platonic from here on out.

The man gets grey stress hairs at like 23/25 (no clue how old he is when he got sucked into the portal but I’m going to assume for this)

Ford didn’t mind if it was just him that got pulled into the multiverse, he would’ve found a way to handle it but being in a multiverse full of potential dangers with you, his child? The man is doing everything he can to set you up to survive and one day escape the multiverse and go home, regardless if it’s with or without him.

Ford is putting you first and foremost as you were the future, his legacy and his protege.

It was a daunting task to not only try and survive the multiverse but also dedicate time to raising his own kid, it was taxing on both an emotional and physical level for Ford as he made sure you were kept warm and well fed as possible while leaning himself with little to nothing, but he didn’t mind because as long as you had everything you needed to grow and be strong, that’s all that matters to Ford.

You grew up traveling with bandits, learning to speak 13 languages, read ancient texts, become royalty when Ford was king of the finger dimension for a brief period of time, only for a seven fingered man to take the crown and becoming a wanted criminal in multiple dimensions before you were even twelve. Your childhood was far from a normal one as your memories of home were mainly from stories Ford told you about at night when you were both sat near the fire.

It saddened Ford to know that you viewed home a lot differently than you did the multiverse but he couldn’t blame you. You had near enough spent most of your developmental years running from dimension to dimension, aiding rebellions and surviving say to say that if you both were to ever get home, Ford knew you’d be out of your element as all you’ve ever known was the multiverse and him.

This thought occurred to Ford on many occasions that he blames himself for ever letting you get dragged into this mess because if you didn’t then maybe you could’ve grown up with Stanley and lived a perfectly normal life. You were robbed of a childhood you could look back on in fondness and Ford couldn’t help but believe himself to be the cause as he stays up to watch over you, seeing his child mentally grow up faster then you should be allowed for your age broke his aging heart.

Would you be ridiculed for being weird if you were to ever go home much like he was as a kid? If so then he’d much rather stay in the multiverse for your sake rather than his own.

You had been through a lot and seen more then a child your age should and while Ford will forever be proud of the person you had become. His only wish was that you got to at least experience a portion of your life back home before all this, just so that you didn’t look at everything so weirdly and so alien.

Ford knew that sometimes there will be moments where there’s a disconnect between you two, something he had to accept that as the truth instead of trying to logically fix it, and instead try to meet you halfway in a comforting manner when you start to think that you were too weird for home as you sat on the rooftop of the shack.

‘Won’t Mabel and dipper find me…odd?’ You asked.

‘No of course not sweetheart, they love you and see you as their cool older relative they can trust to keep them safe and happy and seen.’ Ford reassured you with a pat on the shoulder before pressing a kiss to the top of your head. ‘You’ll be loved, so loved my little sharpshooter. I promise.’ He adds as he sees you yawn and instinctively brought you into his side, once again watching over you as you slept peacefully for the first time in a long while.

While Ford hated that you had practically been raised in the multiverse but he couldn’t help but be proud of who you’ve become when you pointed out a flaw in his plans for the quantum destabiliser weapon that he had overlooked. You were going to be okay, Ford knew it.