you doodle him on the edges of paper when you're supposed to be doing anything else. (regardless of anyone's artistic skills, it's not difficult to draw a triangle with a top hat and an eye, is it?) and in this world, you are hardly the only one who likes him, who, perhaps, ships himself with him, who thinks about him a lot. who makes drawings and writes or reads fic. you don't think it's all that unusual.

in a stroke of luck or, depending on how you look at it, the exact opposite, the universe's idea of a cosmic joke, you are the one to catch bill's eye. (it's, after all, much easier to infiltrate the dreams of someone who already has you on their mind. makes sense, doesn't it? a tentative, wavering link had been formed already.) there, in your dreams, he tells you what to say--triangulum, entangulum. meteforis dominus ventium. meteforis venetisarium--and the next morning, you remember it clear as a memory.

you do it. for funsies. why wouldn't you? you don't expect it to actually work. he's a fictional interdimensional demon. why would it work? but much to your surprise, and horror, because surely a screw must've gotten loose for this to be happening, one of your little doodles has life blown to it. as a response to your summon, a tiny little bill cipher darts across your paper, alive but still confined.

(you've given him an in. now, he only has to take the crack you've opened for him, dig his fingers in, and tear it open.)

oh, he'll be funny! he'll be exactly what you thought of him. perhaps he even voices a line of dialogue you swore you wrote down somewhere days prior. yes, he's read whatever you wrote or read, whatever you looked at. he's keeping it himself for now. it's not easy to inflate his ego further, but you might have succeeded. rather than a meatbag, bill first looks upon you with the eye of someone presented with a puppy. fundamentally lesser, but capable of being something with the right training.

he urges you to make a deal with him and the promise he'll act out whatever fantasy you've been cooking up in that brain of yours, even if it's gross and weird and physically impossible!

he'll warp your dimension to make all of it possible!!! it's great!!! don't worry about it!!!!!!

…you don't do it. you don't touch the paper. you've seen the show, and you aren't stupid. bill nearly balks. he'd expected you to be the easiest mark of all time, but he suppose he forgot that even puppies have teeth. that's fine. he can work with this. because even though you have not let him in yet, and you refuse to shake his hand through the paper, you don't seperate yourself from him just yet.

you could oh so easily take the piece of paper he's on and throw it in the nearest shredder. or set him on fire. in you, he recognises lingering curiosity, and the excitement at having stood out, at being chosen, in one way or another. it's not hopeless yet.

he can play a bit of a longer game, then. he's been at this for a long, long time. he'll tolerate the paper he's on being folded into a little square and tucked into your breast pocket, granting him a view of your life and the world you're living in. (all the time, his hunger grows.) your decision not to throw him away ends up being your downfall. spending so much time with bill, letting him joke around with you, complaining about your problems… it takes a while for you to realise that, for a while now, he has not been speaking out loud anymore, but instead through your mind.

a connection that cannot be cut has been formed in between two of you.

on bill's part, he had thorougly expected to be bored. but perhaps it's your genuine interest in him, not the things he's offering, which he does not often see. (he's been down this road before. won't end well. but...) the sheer mundanity of your life that makes him wish he could twist and turn it all around. or just a random alignment of the stars. the heart doesn't always follow logic. in this scenario, at some point, bill realises that he has become genuinely invested in you, too. and at that point, you'll never manage to slip away. he's already dug in his heels in your mind far enough. you had no adequate protection.

The sound of your letterbox piques your interest and you set down your cup of tea to investigate. You weren’t expecting anything in the mail? Sitting on your doormat is a chunky-looking envelope and you can’t help but smile knowing exactly who it’s from. You pick it up and realise it has some weight to it.

You open the envelope and pull out all the different things. A thick whad of written pages, a map of Gravity Falls that he’s put coloured dots on, no doubt to correspond to various parts of the letter, a page of handcrafted puzzles he thinks you’ll enjoy. He’s even drawn a few pictures for you, the anomalies he’s spotted and been able to study that he thinks you'd find cute or cool. Also in the bundle is a cute postcard of the sleepy town. 

Stanford Pines loves to ramble, more so on paper. 

You prepare yourself another drink as you get comfy in your armchair and start to read over the many things your long-distance boyfriend has sent you. His handwriting is always beautiful, even when he’s in a rush or writing so much that it almost falls off the bottom. 

There were so many pages to get through and you loved every single one. His excitement was always palpable and as much as it made you miss him more, it made you happy to know he was thriving and doing what he wanted.

You reached the last page and you couldn’t help but grin. He wanted you to move out there and be with him now that he was mostly settled. You gripped the page and felt your heart beat faster. It would be a big move but it was to be with Ford. You also longed for the thrill of adventure and getting to explore the strange world of Gravity Falls together? You wanted that, wanted to be with him again.

You started to write back to him, saying you’d sort out things before coming to join him, you’d let him know when you were on your way so he could prepare. You posted the letter and couldn’t feel happier, the promise of a new start and the next level of your relationship with Ford.

–

As time passed, you grew worried about Stanford. It had been almost a month since you’d gotten a letter from him, since he’d invited you to join him. He wouldn’t pick up his phone, it was left to ring and ring and ring. The last time you’d tried it had sounded like someone had picked up and put it straight down.

You kept sending letters, hoping to hear something from Ford.

Every day you felt the unsettled feeling in your gut grow. Did something bad happen? Did he just not love you anymore? You were packed and ready to go, maybe if you showed up at his door, you’d finally have the answers you were desperately looking for.

That morning, a letter came. Small, flat, the envelope was crumpled and creased.

GF:

"Hey, what do you draw all the time?"

You flinched, covering your doodle page as you glanced up at GF, your heart beating

"Huh? Oh, uh, random stuff-"

She just rose a brow, putting a hand on her hip before peeking at the sketchbook

In a blink of an eye, she snatched it from your hands, looking it over

She then flushed slightly, laughing

"You draw me? Aw honey, that's so sweet! You make me look really good!" Endless compliments from her-

BF:

PICO:

"Beep?"

You glanced up as BF put his mic on the seat next to you, tilting his head at you

"Ah, what I draw?...Nothing much, ha!"

You just covered your sketchbook with a red face, looking away

He just huffed, grabbing his mic and tapping your head

You brought your hands up to swat him away, which gave him a chance to grab your sketchbook

"...B-BEHP? BOP BEEP!" He thinks they're really good and gets a bit too excited-

"Yer always focusin' on that book of yours, what do ya draw?"

You glanced up as Pico spun his gun in his hand, peering cautiously at your sketchbook

"Ah! Just. Random things-"

He just narrowed his eyes at you, muttering "Bullshit." before grabbing it from you-

He's skilled at snatching things after all-

He flipped through the pages, looking through them before letting out a chuckle