40Residue
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Bill Cipher watched as one Stanley Pines screamed at a broken portal. The man was at the end of his rope, or nearing it. Aboveground, the sun was slowly but surely lighting up the sky.
Stanley Pines was Important. He didn't have the fez yet – and to be honest, Bill had no idea where he'd even get such a thing but this was Gravity Falls – but he would, some faraway day. He'd wear it and be Mr. Mystery, owner of the rundown shack that somehow managed to squeeze money out of people. It was a pretty good business, too. Somehow.
There were a lot of somehows involved concerning Stanley.
Sixer had never mentioned his brother, though there were times when he did think about Stanley. Bill knew, had been in the gullible scientist's head more often than not for a short while back there. Stanley, as far as Bill could tell, was a complicated matter for Ford. The feelings were complicated, their past was complicated, and even their eventual reunion was filled with so many unspokens that they couldn't help but have a brawl right in front of an active portal.
Alright, so a lot of that last part was more Bill's fault than anyone else's. And it would be a lie to say that he hadn't influenced the Pines family's lives somewhat even right at the beginning. But the players had all acted their parts beautifully and now here they were.
With little left to do, as the work was now being done for him, he waited. He watched. He felt the small warm rush in being near Stanley, as well as the irritation and old hurt that came along with it. Ford's emotions – the guy really didn't know how to let the past go – even after all these years.
The feelings clung to Bill like ink stains on a white shirt. Dirty. Maybe even faintly nauseating. But the feelings also demanded that he stay close to Stanley and, after some futile weeks spent on the opposite side of the world, he did.
Brothers. He tasted the word and flinched away from it.
Disgusting.
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"Why do you do it?"
"I ain't answering a floating triangle in a top hat."
Bill fought down the urge to smite Stanley Pines straight across the mindscape. "Humor me, then."
Stanley merely poked Bill, a contemplative look on his face. Exasperation bordering the edge of fondness rose up inside Bill even as he batted away the offending hand. Honestly, humans these days had no respect. "You sure are a lucky potato, you know that, Pines?"
Stanley couldn't quite hold back his snort.
"Yeah," Bill pressed on, "Y'are. Everyone, even your genius brother had to summon me. But you? I'm visiting you for free."
If only because the feelings itched like a rash that refused to go away.
"You worked with Ford?"
…Of course, that was what the big oaf processed. Oh, well. Stanley Pines didn't have failing grades in high school for no reason after all. Not that he was stupid – well, not entirely; a smart man would dismantle the portal or leave Gravity falls and never come back, not spend more than half his life fixing the damned thing – but Stanley had a one-track mind that was … well, a bit of a hamper sometimes.
Stanley Pines looked on Bill with frankly justified suspicion. Birds of a feather should at least be able to recognize one another, shouldn't they? And it wasn't as if Bill had never spoken like this to another human but the utter distrust in Stanley's face made something in him bristle.
This … this was going to be a problem.
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"That part isn't supposed to go there."
Stanley yelped, dropping the wrench and a mechanical piece that he probably wouldn't even be able to pronounce the name of, considering Ford took it during one of his raids of the alien spacecraft. "Gimme a bit of warning before you drop in, won't you?"
Bill shrugged off the reprimand, replying, "Be careful with those pieces; there ain't anything else quite like them in your entire world and they'll break if you put them in the wrong places."
Stanley scowled at him, running a hand through his greasy and honestly overlong hair. "Well, genius, if you know so much, then why don't you just give me a hand?"
"Sorry! But unfortunately, I can only exist as a projection outside of the mindscape. All I can do is guide you. Unless…" Bill trailed off suggestively.
"No."
Ah, well. It was worth another try. Bill had made the offer of possession quite a few times now, but Stanley was definitely shrewder than Ford had been about the idea of having some omnipotent being take control of his fleshy and very breakable form.
Bill peeked over Stanley's shoulder. The man was still wearing his winter clothes, the exact same ones he had first arrived with. They'd been washed since then, but Stanley seemed to have a strange aversion to borrowing any of Ford's items, gingerly using as little of the house's contents as humanly possible – with the exception of Sixer's various liquor stashes, anyway. In any case, he'd need some new clothes come spring. And how was he going to pay the bills at the end of the month? Bill had checked the man's wallet over and he knew for a fact that Stanley only had a few pesos and cents left in the nooks and crannies of his belongings. Definitely not enough.
"You'll overload the system if you do that."
Stanley grunted but kept going. Finally, Bill shoved himself right up in front of the man's face and said, "Stanley. You. Will. Destroy. The house."
He blinked. "Huh?"
Bill closed his eye and counted down from ten. When he found the patience to look at Stanley again, he opened his eye. "If you attach that to the circuitry, it'll overload the system and cause the portal to explode." And amusing as the thought was, that would just screw everyone over. More importantly, it would screw Bill over and he didn't think he was ever going to find anyone quite as willing as Stanford to build an inter-dimensional portal on an unknown being's say-so.
He tried not to think of Stanley burning into ash within a fraction of a millisecond.
Anyway, new tactic: "When did you last get some rest?"
Stanley waved him off as he opened up a new panel to check out. "I sleep just fine."
Bill narrowed his eyes and wished he had lips to purse. Instead, he settled for the next best thing.
It took Stanley a few seconds to realize that the world had faded into monochrome and that he could no longer manipulate the delicate machinery he was trying and currently failing to fix. When he did, he jumped up, swearing wildly in two languages.
"You can't do that!"
"You'll find that I very well can," Bill replied coolly, folding his legs as he leaned back against empty air. "Especially if you're already exhausted."
Within the confines of the dreamscape, Stanley continued to curse and rant but in the real world, his body snored.
Inwardly, Bill smiled.
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In one world, Stanley Pines died of suffocation in the trunk of an abandoned car. In another world, he was beaten to death before his fingers, teeth and any vaguely valuable possessions were removed from his person. But in this world, the world where he actually managed to live long enough to push his brother into an inter-dimensional gateway built for a demonic being older than human history, he was currently trying to buy groceries. 'Trying' being the operative word, because there was only so much you could buy with two cents.
"I like this," Bill said, ever the lingering ghost. Sometimes, Stanley wondered if his presence was some sort of karmic punishment the world was dishing out on him. Hah. Bill was so much worse than the universe could ever hope for. "You, me, stealing loaves of bread from the local convenience store. A modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, that's what we are."
"Shut. Up."
"C'mon, Stan! Don't want people thinking you're crazy, now, do you?"
Stanley ground his teeth. It was true; unless he wanted to get thrown into a mental ward, he had to keep his mouth clamped tight to keep from snapping at Bill like he could have done back at Ford's house. And Bill, the little bastard that he was, was having too much fun with this.
"Hey!"
Stanley turned around at the voice, annoyed expression melting away into something defensive, guarded, wary, hunted. The nervous smile didn't reach his eyes as he nodded at the person approaching him. He wasn't in any danger, none of the people in Gravity Falls were of particular concern at the moment, Bill knew that. But Stanley didn't. Stanley was afraid.
"I know you," the local man muttered. "You're … that researcher out in the middle of the woods!"
Stanford Pines was better known than he thought he had been. Well, he might have known that if he'd bothered talking to any of the locals once in a while but the past was the past and since the man in question was running away from some very angry desert creatures at the moment, the point was a little moot.
"Uh…" To his credit, Stanley was quick on the uptake. "Yeah! Yeah, I am."
And thus, Mr. Mystery was born.
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If, in between the times he was with Stanley, Bill would disappear for a few hours before inevitably returning, neither of them mentioned it. If, during those few hours of separation, Bill visited a cult in the making, he never dropped a hint. And if he terrorized those people for weeks on end with some choice warnings and a few nightmares, then no word escaped the town of Gravity Falls.
The Society of the Blind Eye officially did not exist.
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"Hey, Bill."
"Yeah, Stan?"
They were in the basement after a long day of business. The Murder Hut was a pretty good source of income this time of the year – at least, it did well enough to pay the bills as well as help pay off Ford's ridiculous college debt. It would be years before Stanley would be able to get even close to clearing the loaned money, what with the interest rates being how they were. Stanley had been more relaxed after opening up the tourist trap; maybe it was finally having a defined, legal purpose for every day that brought him out of his shell or maybe it was the lack of financial worries or both. In any case, he was, if not completely well, then looking a little better.
"Did you work on this with Ford?"
Stanley was flipping through the journal – he only had the first one, thank goodness – almost absentmindedly. He had already read the thing cover to cover and gleaned all of the information he could from the pages. It was still only a third of the information he needed to fix the portal.
Bill floated over to peer over Stanley's shoulder. His eyes landed on a page about … unicorns. Ah, yes, the unicorns. Ford had been so disappointed when he'd met them. "I'm afraid not, kid. He spent a few years out here before we met and he already did quite a bit of research by then." Heaven forbid that Stanley ever find the third journal. No, that information was meant for another Pines in another generation. And just as well. Ford had written quite a lot of … unflattering things about Bill there.
That journal would stay in its hidden little hole in the woods for the next thirty years, just as it should. Maybe forever, even.
"But you did work on the portal together?"
"Yes…" Where was Stanley going with this?
"How much more damage is left to fix, do you think?"
Ah. Well. That was … a complicated question. To someone who knew what he was doing, it would only take a week or two – maybe a month, at most. But for someone like Stanley… "I dunno, kid … it could take a while."
Bill was screwing himself over by being this blatantly involved, he knew that well enough. If the portal was fixed now, then Ford would come back with the rift but without anyone to actually wreck its container. And without anyone to wreck its container, Bill couldn't tear their dimension open and rule their universe. And if Bill didn't somehow get into this world, then he would be stuck in a rotting dimension with his – er, friends, if that was what they could be called.
In one world, Bill let Stanley toil away for the next three decades until the correct players came along to dance upon their puppet's strings.
But in this world … in this world, Bill Cipher looked at a recently clean-shaven Stanley Pines who had just had his mullet chopped off at the barber shop. He looked at the disappointment in the kid's eyes, saw the heartache of the next three decades. He saw guilty, sleepless nights, a bright life wasted away. And, fully knowing the ramifications of his actions, he placed a twiggy black hand on Stanley's shoulder.
"But don't worry," Bill promised, "I'll help ya out, buddy. As much as I possibly can."
He didn't need a handshake.
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Stanley Pines was dead.
A small note in the newspapers, that was all it earned. To be fair, he didn't have a lot of friends by that point in life. But he did have Bill. He had the Murder Hut – well, it was the Mystery Shack, now, much more family-friendly, apparently, something Bill didn't fully understand – and he had … not much else. His car? Yes, he still had his car.
'Stanford' Pines held the funeral, buried the casket. And Bill watched as Shermie Pines, five years older than the twins, wept over an empty grave.
Their parents were nowhere in sight.
Stanley stood awkwardly, the host of his own funeral, as he tried to comfort his eldest brother.
It was one of the most pathetic events Bill had ever bothered attending. Still, he stuck by Stanley's side, never leaving the man's shoulder. He listened, silent, as the two brothers interacted for the first time in more than ten years. The reassurances Stanley told Sherman weren't the empty ones Bill was familiar with – these were sincere words, not empty platitudes; they were words beyond the grave. Words of the mourned.
If Sherman noticed anything out of place, then he was too distraught to mention it.
For a moment, Bill thought Stanley would take the six-fingered gloves off and confess, but the kid was strong through it all. Or foolish. Certainly, this would one day be a regret; Bill couldn't see a way the entire situation wouldn't wrong once Ford came back. But it was the road Stanley chose and Bill watched, somber, as the entire scene unfolded.
The ride back to the Mystery Shack was uncharacteristically quiet.
But finally, Stanley reached over to the passenger's side, opened the glove compartment and pulled out an old cassette. He fed it into the audio system – he could afford one now, and wasn't that a treat? – leaned back, and put his eyes on the road.
An old song filled the car. It felt … nostalgic.
"My bro and I used to listen to this song all the time when we were kids."
Ah. One of Ford's emotions again, then. Bill should really start disentangling himself from those. They were getting meddlesome. Well … more than meddlesome – and it already started a while back.
"Did he ever talk about me?"
Bill looked away.
Stanley's fingers curled tighter around the steering wheel. "Heh, yeah … I guess he wouldn't."
"He loved you." Bill kept his eyes on his hands, away from Stanley's expression. "He never talked about you … but he loved you."
They sank back into the silence but it was easier than before. Lighter. As Stanley continued to drive, Bill thought about two boys and a boat.
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Fifty years was a blink of an eye to Bill. But it was also enough for Stanley to wither with age. Enough for his bones to creak, for his eyesight to grow cataracts, for Bill to seriously start worrying about the man's health.
"Yeesh, Bill! You looked like you've seen a ghost."
Bill blinked and saw Stanley, a young Stanley with scars but few health problems. The worst thing he had right now was lack of rest. Ever since he'd faked his own death, Stanley had thrown himself into managing the shack by day and fixing the portal at night. It left very little time for anything else.
He was going to spend his entire life fixing the thing. And when he did, Bill would get what he'd been working towards for the last several thousand years.
Bill flexed his fingers. Took in a deep breath. Let it out. "Hey, Stanley."
Eyes lingering on the physics text, Stanley took a few moments to look up. "Yeah?"
Bill looked into his eyes – brown, tired, identical to Ford's but so, so different – and his courage failed him. "...There's an abandoned spacecraft hidden in Gravity Falls. That's where Ford got a lot of his materials for the portal. You're gonna need to give it a visit soon – some of those parts are fried." Of course they were fried; they were never meant to work more than once or twice if they were lucky.
"Of course." Stanley buried his head in his hands and let out a loud groan. "And just when I thought this stuff was starting to get simple."
"Relax, kid, I'll help you through it."
Stanley shot Bill a tired but grateful – genuine – smile between his fingers.
Bill wasn't quite sure he was able to reciprocate.
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"This security system is stupid!"
Mental Note – never take Stanley down to Ford's hidden lab. Or do, if ever he wanted the guy to go completely insane. Or get eaten by the shapeshifter. Was that still around?
Still, watching Stanley dance around the safety measures was amusing and so was pointing out how to get around. It was convenient that the gravity guns could last so long without maintenance, or they might have had to face the very real prospect of having to reinvent technology that hadn't yet been thought of on earth. On second thought, patenting that would probably make Stanley rich for the rest of his life but … that wasn't the point right now.
"C'mon, kid, we're nearly there. Just one more right."
"Good," Stanley grunted. "This place is creepin' me out."
Bill's laughter echoed through the hollow corridors.
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Time passed and the winter chill began creeping back into Gravity Falls. And as it did, Stanley retreated into the Mystery Shack like a bear sinking into hibernation. Little to no tourists passed by at this time of year, anyway, so there wasn't much point in even trying to open up shop.
Bill sat down on the edge of the desk. Stanley had fallen asleep after another late night of studying advanced physics and schematics that Bill had helped him sketch out some days ago.
Celebrating today was one of the last things Stanley wanted to do and it wasn't as if Bill could give anything, but he sat awkwardly beside Stanly on the desk anyway. Gently, he patted the kid's arm.
"Merry Christmas, Stanley." Bill closed his eye and leaned against him, letting himself relax. "Merry Christmas."
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The portal was getting done too fast. Only four years had passed but the work left to be done was … so little. Bill estimated two weeks at most until they could turn it back on.
What happened after … was still up in the air. Bill could take over this dimension, rule the earth. It didn't mean he'd have to hurt Stanley – he could get used to the change. Right?
…Except, there was Ford. Stanford would vilify Bill, tell Stanley the whole truth. That couldn't happen.
Bill wouldn't let it.
But first… "What the heck is that?"
"Cinnamon," Stanley replied as he stirred a thick mixture. "Sixer – I mean, Ford, had a ridiculously large stash in his cupboard and it was still good so I thought I'd whip up some Stancakes."
Bill wished he had an eyebrow to raise. "Stancakes."
"Yeah, they're my special recipe!" Stanley started heating the griddle. He looked … happier than he had in a long while. Much happier. "It's a Pines family tradition to make 'em this way."
Stanley kept talking and Bill watched him cook. Bill relished the relaxed air, the smell of breakfast that he could pick up if he wanted it enough. It reminded him of older times … better times…
Times that weren't his to enjoy remembering.
There was no happy middle for the outcome. And Bill was going to have to tell Stanley the truth sooner or later, but for now, they were having breakfast. Right now, there was a crispness in the air, a slight chill leftover in the spring. Bill thought about the dimensions, he thought about his friends and Ford, who was a definite wrench in everything he'd built up in the last four years with Stanley. But most of all, he thought about Stanley, who would die if his brother did. He thought about Stanley, who could never fit into the world that Bill wanted to make earth into – who would never accept what Bill was planning, if only he knew the truth of it. He thought about how, in around fifty or sixty odd years, he would no doubt be watching Stanley's actual funeral.
Bill floated through the varying dimensions and felt something inside him ache. Finally, he settled on a destination. It wasn't very far away, considering it wasn't a physical location.
"Stanley."
"Bill! What are you doing here?"
Invading Stanley's dreamscape wasn't something Bill did too often, per the kid's request. And Stanley was just a kid, when he took the unpleasant time to think about it – compared to Bill's own lifespan, Stanley was an infant.
Thinking on these sorts of things rarely made Bill feel at all better about the matter.
"If you could live forever, would you?"
That gave Stanley pause. Finally, he laughed, shaking his head. "Yeah, no thanks! One lifetime of all this is enough for me." He calmed down, turning serious as he registered Bill's expression – he could be a very expressive triangle when he wanted to be, which somewhat impressed Stanley, considering he only had one eye and no mouth. "Something wrong, man?"
"No…" Bill took in a deep breath. The truth. The truth was needed now. "You weren't able to read the warnings in the journal, but there's something you have to know about the portal."
Stanley's breath hitched.
"The world could end if you open it up."
For one whole minute, Stanley only stared at Bill. But then, finally, he threw his head back and laughed. The harshness of his voice, the strained light in his eyes contrasted the sound, made it into a mockery of what it was meant to signify. "And you're only telling me about this now?!" He turned away from Bill, running a hand through his hair. He was only thirty and human, he shouldn't have had to deal with this. Finally, when his voice grew hoarse, he stopped laughing. "I'm doing it anyway."
"Even knowing that you might change the world irrevocably?"
Stanley folded his arms, looking Bill straight in the eye. "I'm not going to abandon my brother to some weird dimension away from earth just because of something that might happen. Who knows? Maybe something might not happen. Maybe everything will be fine. You don't – well, okay, I don't know. The world could end. Everything might change. But I will get my brother back."
Huh. Blind loyalty must run in the family. And then, Ford just had to go and infect Bill with a bit of it. Of course.
The world could end.
…And it all depended on Bill.
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Today was the day.
"Hey, Stanley."
"Yeah, Bill?"
Just a few more modification… If only Bill could slow time down. If only he'd done things differently. If only he hadn't gotten these idiotic feelings; they lost their amusement a long time ago.
"Everything might be different after this."
But for now, Stanley was smiling at him, really smiling, and Bill knew he couldn't take this away. He never did get around to taking down the bounty for Ford's head, though.
"Yeah – different in a good way."
How could he be so sure?
"Yeah."
Bill followed Stanley towards the portal's switch. The machine came alive, glowing bright, whirring loud. The earth shook, gravity disappeared one second and reinstated itself in the next. Earth's dimension was pierced.
A lone figure stepped through, clad in a ragged coat, wielding a gun as he surveyed his surroundings, already carrying the Rift in a disturbingly breakable container. Bill watched, nothing more than a projection, as he approached Stanley. And Stanley, he looked positively radiant at the sight of his brother. He looked younger than he ever had during his and Bill's time working together and as Ford came closer, he opened his arms to greet his family.
Bill looked away. Something inside him hurt.
And then, before Bill, before the open portal, before the machinery that took four years of blood sweat and tears, Ford punched Stanley hard enough to knock him into the ground.
Bill saw red.
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Author's Note: So, uh, as you can see, I've been getting into platonic!Stanley&Bill relationships lately. It's hard to write out, and I don't really feel sure with the style I used. Constructive criticism is very much welcome.
Thank you for reading!
