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“Wanna see if I can jump from that branch to the one over there?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Too late.” Bill was already scrambling to climb up the tree despite his brother’s protests.
Will frowned at his twin as the blonde made it to the tree branch in question, nearly slipping and falling before he even got to do the stunt he set out to do. Bill grabbed the branch to steady himself, sitting down and letting his legs dangle off the edge as he grinned wickedly. “Well, since you dared me.”
“Nobody’s daring you!”
He jumped anyway, lunging to grab onto the other branch. His fingers nearly made purchase but missed by an inch, and Will was running over to him before he even hit the ground.
It wasn’t too bad of a fall, and it certainly wasn’t unanticipated, but Bill still swore anyway as his legs crumpled beneath him on the ground. Will dropped to his knees and forced Bill’s hands away from where they clutched on to the wounded appendage, eyeing it up. On the surface, both his knees were scraped, but Will was sure that it hurt even worse underneath.
“Stop trying to touch it,” Will murmured, swatting his brother’s hands away from where he was attempting to poke at the blood forming from the scrapes. He went to dig in his messenger bag, sure he had bandages somewhere. He was used to this.
“Jus’ hurts,” Bill muttered, but he didn’t sound too upset about it.
“You knew what was going to happen, dummy!”
“Pain is hilarious.”
Will rolled his eye. When he found a bandage and ripped the plastic off with his teeth, Bill frowned and mumbled something about how he didn’t need to be babied, but he didn’t protest when Will secured it over the wound. He did the same to the other leg, and Bill endured it with little complaint.
It was only when Will pulled him to his feet that Bill let out a hiss of pain, and he made a mental note to better check his twin's knee back at the cabin. Since it wasn't twisted in an unnatural way and there was no bone protruding from the skin, he counted himself luckier than he had been in the past.
Will pulled his brother's arm around his shoulders, supporting as much of his weight as he could. As they limped back to the cabin, Bill muttered something incomprehensible that was almost a 'thanks,' and Will smiled.
-----
"Bill, it's not funny! Give it back!"
"Gotta catch me!"
Will scrambled to take the book back from his brother, who held it just out of his reach. Despite them being the same height, Bill had longer arms, which came in handy for tormenting his twin with games of keep-away.
He tried to push Bill at his middle in hopes of knocking him off his feet, but the blonde jumped back at the last moment and Will had to chase after him. When he stumbled over a tree root and nearly face planted, Bill didn't even look back.
"Hey!"
Both of the twins froze in place, their heads snapping over to the source of the noise. They were so deep in the woods that they never would have expected to run into somebody else out there, let alone somebody who would bother to actually confront them.
The sound came from a girl with long brown hair and wide eyes. She wore a pink sweater embroidered with a shooting star and a matching headband, and even when she pursed her lips and planted her hands firmly on her hips, it was hard to take her seriously.
"I don't tolerate bullying!" the girl declared, her voice ringing out in the clearing. "You!" She pointed at Bill, who was uncharacteristically quiet as he stared at her in shock. "Give him his book back!"
Will couldn't help the nerves settling in his stomach, and he slowly inched ever-closer to his brother as Bill and the girl stared each other down. The blonde crossed his arms over his chest, one hand still grasping the book, and glared at the girl. She returned the stare with an equally intense one of her own and didn't even seem to notice when Will nervously clutched onto the back of his brother's shirt.
Will had no idea how long they stared each other down before the girl's eyes were widening and she snapped her fingers, blurting, "Oh! You're twins!"
Bill rolled his eye and Will grasped tighter onto his twin's shirt, tensing up a bit when the girl suddenly skipped happily over to them.
"I'm Mabel!" she announced, shoving one of her hands out in a grin. Bill warily returned the handshake, eyeing her up.
"Bill Cipher," the twelve-year-old answered, sounding hesitant. He pointed back to his twin behind him and continued, "Oh, and that's Will."
When Mabel smiled directly at him, Will loosened his grip on Bill's shirt a bit but still didn't let go. "Nice to meet you," the girl said chipperly. He offered her a weak smile.
"I also have a twin!" the brunette continued, gesturing vaguely behind her despite there being nobody there. "So I get it! Twins being twins." She grinned, then looked behind her and frowned. "Speaking of, where's my twin?"
Will let go of his brother as Bill shot him a confused glance over his shoulder. He eased away from the other boy, only to jump in alarm as the girl shouted, "Dipper!" off to the side and then ran over and grabbed their hands.
She grasped Will's wrist in her right and Bill's in her left as she dragged them off with her. The twins exchanged a startled glance as Bill frowned and started, "Shooting Star, I don't know what you think you're doing, but-"
Bill broke off as a boy came running from somewhere deeper into the forest, looking worried. “Mabel, what’s-” He spotted her dragging the twins behind her and slowed to a stop, frowning. “Who’s this?”
Mabel tugged them up to the boy who was obviously her brother and loosened her grip enough that the boys could tear their hands away. Bill crossed his arms over his chest, huffing, and Will resisted the urge to grab onto him again as he eyed up the boy in front of them.
Like Mabel, he had chestnut-brown hair, but his was covered in a blue and white hat depicting a pine tree, similar to the ones they were currently surrounded by. He wore khaki shorts, an orange t-shirt, and a blue vest, and he was clutching an old book to his chest. He eyed the twins warily, and Will was sure that he was trying to pick out the best way to get his sister away from the two strange boys she met in the woods.
Will wondered if this happened often. He knew all-too-well about having to protect a reckless sibling.
They reintroduced themselves to the boy, who identified himself as Dipper Pines. Mabel planted herself next to her brother, who seemed to try and put himself a bit in front of her in a protective stance. He still seemed wary of them, but relaxed a bit when he noticed the book that Bill was holding.
“Oh, you like faeries?” he asked, a look of genuine curiosity on his face as he gestured towards the book.
Bill frowned, then looked down at what he was still holding. “Oh, nah, it’s his,” he replied, shoving the book against Will’s chest and making the blue-haired boy hmmph in surprise as he clutched at the thing.
Dipper smiled at him, a real smile- something that Will hadn’t seen from anybody but his brother since he was a young kid. He wondered if his mom had ever smiled at him like that before she left. Probably not.
“So, you like supernatural creatures, then?” Dipper asked, and Will started when he realized that the question was being directed at him and not his brother. He could tell that Bill was smirking at him without having to look over.
“Oh, uh, y-yeah,” Will stuttered, looking down at the book again before returning his gaze to the other boy.
“So do we!” Mabel chimed in. She grabbed the book that her brother was holding, ignoring his protests and thrusting it out towards the twins. “We found this journal documenting creatures that live in these woods!”
Bill took the journal eagerly, and when Dipper shouted angrily and moved to grab it back, the blonde held it out of his reach just as he had been doing to his brother a few minutes before. He flipped through the pages and moved to avoid Dipper’s grasping hands, laughing. “Calm down, Pine Tree, I just wanna look.”
Will frowned at his brother, unsure if he should intervene, as Dipper echoed, “Pine Tree?” incredulously.
As the boy continued to attempt to take the book back, Mabel slid up to Will and slung an arm around his shoulder casually. He bristled, heart leaping into his throat, but she just leaned in and stage-whispered, "Looks like love is in the air," as she watched the two boys.
Based on how the other boy looked about ready to kill Bill, Will couldn't really tell how she came to that conclusion, but as his brother actually looked to be having genuine fun as he threw his head back and cackled, he couldn't find any reason to object.
-----
After that, they found themselves spending more and more time with the Pines twins.
While Will was still unsure about befriending them, Bill seemed to jump on the opportunity. Or, more accurately, he seemed to jump on the opportunity to torment Dipper. Once Bill had found out how easily riled the other boy was, it became his new favorite activity to get under his skin.
That didn't mean he tormented his twin any less, though, and while Will never expected to be relieved by that, he was glad that his brother didn’t forget about him.
It took weeks before Bill convinced him that it was okay for him to open up his shell and warm up to the other twins. While he began to genuinely enjoy the time they spent with the Pines, venturing through the woods and searching for the creatures in Dipper's journal, he was hesitant to trust anybody new.
Not when he still woke up abruptly nearly every night, gasping and crying from nightmares reflecting on when their mother left them and only falling back to sleep when Bill hugged him tightly and whispered to him that he was never going anywhere.
Will was glad that he wasn’t the only one wary of making new friends, however. Whether it was because of Bill’s vaguely-threatening antics or because of internalized paranoia (Will definitely heard the phrase, “Remember the gnomes, Mabel?” more than once), Dipper didn’t warm up to them immediately. Will had once walked into a conversation in which Dipper was moving his hands frantically when he talked and exclaiming about how Bill and Will were definitely demons, and that normal people just didn’t act like they did.
Will didn’t let it hurt his feelings. He was sure that Dipper was just trying to protect his sibling from harm, which he could relate to. When he relayed the encounter to Bill later, the blonde had been absolutely over the moon. Will wasn’t even surprised when Bill began to make pointed comments around Dipper that heavily hinted that they were born in some sort of Underworld, or something, just to watch the other boy bristle.
After that, Will never heard another peep of a demon theory out of Dipper’s mouth.
Halfway through the summer, the Pines twins invited Bill and Will to sleep over at the Mystery Shack for the first time. Bill was quick to agree for the both of them while Will was starting to question what sort of responsible guardian would allow two strange boys to sleep over in the same room as his great niece.
The Pines had shoved them between them on the couch and turned on a marathon of old black-and-white horror movies. They had ordered a pizza and filled several bowls with different kinds of chips, which the Cipher twins eyed hungrily and with excitement. They weren't used to having so much food readily available. The only time they ever got junk food (or something similar) was when Bill picked up an extra shift at Greasy's and Lazy Susan let him bring home a box full of pancakes.
They didn't tell the Pines this, of course. Dipper and Mabel didn't need to know that they lived in a cabin deep in the woods that they had found abandoned one day. They didn't need to know that they never had electricity and very rarely running water, and that they only ate because they were occasionally able to pick up odd jobs at some locally owned businesses that took pity on them.
It was better if they didn't know. Bill would die before he'd allow the Pines to pity them or view them as lesser.
They watched the movies and chattered quietly, and Will felt surprisingly safe wedged between his brother and Mabel. When the chipper girl asked if she could braid his hair while they watched the show, Will couldn't find a good excuse to say no. His hair was hardly long enough to braid, falling just to his chin, but Mabel didn't seem deterred. After a while, the feeling of fingernails combing through his hair was relaxing.
Her finger snagged onto the elastic holding his embroidered eyepatch in place and she murmured a quiet, "Sorry."
"It's okay," he hummed in response, shooting her a reassuring smile.
He could tell she was itching to ask, so he saved her the stress and just casually murmured, "I was born with one blind eye."
Mabel nodded, accepting that answer without question. There was no pity in her eyes, no prying look, and for that, he was grateful. He was already anticipating it when she opened her mouth and started, "What about-"
"I stabbed myself in the eye with a fork!" Bill interrupted cheerily, leaning around Will to grin at the girl. Mabel's smile faltered but just slightly, and Bill's beaming face looked about ready to split in half.
"Why would you-" Dipper broke off, sighing heavily. "Y'know, at this point, I'm not even sure why I'm surprised anymore." The boy pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back, making Bill practically cackle.
"He wanted to match," Will muttered quietly. Bill slung an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, grinning. He rolled his eye but melted into the touch nonetheless.
When they retreated to the attic that night, Dipper and Mabel offered up their beds and they assured them that they would be fine sleeping on the floor. The Pines twins argued, saying that it was the courteous thing to do, but they didn’t know that Bill and Will were used to sleeping together, huddled up on a beaten-up mattress, and therefore they would sleep much better laying next to one another.
That night was the first night in a long while that Will didn’t have any nightmares.
-----
Bill and Will turned thirteen a month before the Pines twins, but they hadn’t in a million years expected the others to remember. They made their way out to the Mystery Shack like they had nearly every day that summer and blinked in confusion at the decorations hung up outside.
“Surprise!” Mabel shouted as she and her twin burst out the front door of the Shack, waving her arms. Dipper followed behind her in a much quieter manner, grinning and offering them a small wave.
“Wha… what?” Will stuttered, staring at the balloons and the obviously homemade banner that spelled out, ’HAPPY BIRTHDAY [B/W]ILL!’ in bright purple letters. Bill was uncharacteristically quiet, but Will knew it was just because he was taken aback at the gesture.
“Do you not like the banner?” Mabel asked with a frown, her hands beginning to smooth down her hair nervously. “There wasn’t enough room to fit both names, so…”
Dipper also looked worried, his brow creasing as he nervously exclaimed, “Oh, man, you guys don’t hate your birthday or something, right? We kinda dropped the ball on that one for somebody else, too.”
They didn’t get the chance to say anything else, because Bill was surging forward and pulling both of them into a hug. Will watched the Pines’ eyes widen before they smiled and hugged the blonde back, and Will nervously crept up and joined in. He felt Dipper’s arm tighten around him as he pressed his face against his brother’s back, and for the first time in a while, he felt safe.
Dipper gave Bill the skull of some creature that he had found deep in the woods. It was vaguely humanoid, and that seemed to make it all the better for his twin. Will found it morbid, but Bill was practically bouncing up and down in excitement as he mused out loud about where he was going to put it (Will paled at the thought of some creature’s remains watching over them benevolently every night).
He gave Will what was apparently one of his favorite demonology books (quite ironically, as that was what Dipper had once suspected them of being), and the blue-haired boy’s heart surged. He had never really told anybody, not even Bill, but demons were actually one of his favorite subjects to read about- he had no idea why, but they had always fascinated him. He had no clue how Dipper knew, but he couldn’t thank the boy enough.
Mabel made them both sweaters. They fit the normal color scheme that that the twins stuck to- bright yellow for Bill, and pale blue for Will. They both had one single eye stitched onto the front, but the eye on Will’s was drooping and looked a bit more sad. Both had bowties embroidered under the eyes and a brick-like pattern on the bottom. When they tugged them on over their collared shirts, they fit perfectly, and Will had never felt more at home.
------
Like all good things, their time with the twins came to an end when the summer did.
They went with Dipper and Mabel to the bus station, but it wasn’t the same. Their other friends were there too. Bill and Will didn’t have any other friends.
“I wish we could go to school out here,” Mabel lamented to Will when they had finally managed to get the twins alone. Bill was currently talking to Dipper, making some comments that caused him to laugh and the other boy’s face to turn bright red.
“You’ll be back next summer, though, right?” Will asked worriedly, frowning. “Promise?”
“Of course!” the girl exclaimed, eyes wide. She looked offended at the idea that they might not come back.
While Will knew deep in his heart that his fears were misplaced, it wouldn’t have been the first time that somebody in his life promised to return and didn’t.
He and Bill finished saying their goodbyes to the others. They stayed there until their bus drove off, and Bill didn’t make any jokes when Will’s hand slipped down to grab onto his brother’s.
-----
School started a few weeks later, and like most years, Will had to fight to get his brother to attend.
He knew that Bill would never actually stop going despite all of his claims that he would. He worked too hard to get them into the public school in the first place to end up not going.
The school couldn't know that they were homeless, parentless. They would be thrown into foster care in a heartbeat, and they had seen what happened to kids in the system. They'd be separated, thrown into different homes with irresponsible adults who probably only signed up to foster because of the social security checks that came with it.
So Will allowed his brother to do some devious, slightly-less-than-legal things to forge paperwork and get them enrolled for the school year. They started the eighth grade with a heavy heart and wishing they could skip ahead to the next summer.
Their first class of their first day was math- of course. Though they knew they'd just go over course materials and probably play some cringe-worthy icebreakers, the twins were dreading it. They retreated to the back of the room, taking seats next to each other in the last row.
They settled in before class started, Bill leaning over and pushing up the sleeve of his canary-yellow sweater to show Will a cut and ask if he thought it was infected. Will frowned; it probably was. He peered at the wound, ghosting his fingers over the other's arm. He hardly even noticed when the seats in front of them were taken.
"I'll see if I can swing by the nurse's office after school today and snag some disinfectant," Will mused, turning his brother's arm over and inadvertently looking for any more wounds that his twin may not have told him about. "I hope it's not too late..."
"Will."
His eyes flicked up to his brother, who was staring ahead with wide eyes and slightly parted lips. Will looked forward as well, and his breathing caught.
"Please tell me you're actually here, Pine Tree," was Bill's initial comment when the Pines twins broke the staring contest to grin at them.
"Well, as I haven't actually found anywhere in the journal that describes how to project yourself from-"
"Nerd," Mabel crowed, cutting her brother off as she leaned forward on her elbows placed on Will's desk.
Will was still gaping, now resisting the urge to surge forward and hug his friends. Other kids had filtered into the classroom now, and they already thought that the Cipher twins were weird enough without witnessing an odd show of affection from said twins to the new kids.
"How are you-" Will broke off, gesturing towards them and then around the classroom.
Dipper smiled at him. "There's not a lot that parents can do to argue with twins who’ve set their minds on something."
Will wouldn't have known that, but he nodded nonetheless, and he couldn't stop the relieved smile that quirked at the edges of his lips.
He glanced over at Bill, who already had a devious grin creeping onto his face. "Oh," he cackled, and Will didn't miss Dipper narrowing his eyes, "We are going to have so much fun this year!"
-----
School felt different when they actually had friends.
They only had three classes with Dipper and Mabel, but those three classes flew by. When the teacher would try to assign groups of three for projects, Bill would make some off-handed, threatening comments until they coincidentally changed their minds to allow groups of four.
Bill and Will first found themselves staying the night over at the Mystery Shack every weekend like they had in the summer, but it quickly developed into several times a week until they started leaving clothes and toiletries in the bottom drawer of Dipper's dresser.
It had taken the twins' great uncle Stan quite a while to get used to the Shack's newest sometimes-residents. This probation period he seemed to enforce was extended after Bill lit himself on fire and nearly burned the Shack down with him.
Eventually, he seemed to resolve that they weren't too bad for teenage boys. He was wary of Will, probably thinking that he was hiding something bad under his quiet exterior, and he was definitely wary of Bill, but he still started to set five plates at the table for Saturday morning breakfast without question.
Will had thought that Dipper and Mabel might have been good influences on his brother, but instead, their presence only seemed to fuel Bill's antics. When Bill let loose a swarm of locusts into the school hallway and earned himself a month of detention, Will had a sinking suspicion that he had been trying to impress the Pines.
Dipper, of course, had not been amused, but Mabel had applauded the blonde's determination to wreak havoc.
There was also the time that Will woke up to Bill combing hair dye through his hair, trying to make his look as golden-blonde as his brother’s. That was the first time in a while that he had gotten genuinely angry at his twin, ignoring all of his half-assed explanations about how he wanted to play a prank on the Pines twins to see if Dipper and Mabel could tell them apart when they were truly identical (somehow Bill didn't seem to realize ahead of time that they wore eyepatches on different eyes).
Luckily, the hair dye had been cheap and came out after a few thorough washes, but Will still didn’t think that his pale blue hair had returned completely to its natural color.
He couldn’t stay mad at Bill for too long. His brother may have been a jerk at times and was definitely too chaotic for his own good, but Will wouldn’t have traded him for the world.
Will tried to pretend that Bill growing gradually closer to Dipper didn’t bother him. He pretended not to mind when Bill came home with his hands covered in blood because he had ripped the teeth out of the mouth of a dead deer he found in the woods, claiming that he wanted to make the teeth into a necklace for Dipper. When Dipper actually wore it- only under his shirt and only outside of school, as he didn’t want to get sent to a psych ward any time soon-, Will had to try even harder not to be bothered by it.
You’re not going to lose him, he told himself, even as he watched Bill drop ice down the back of Dipper’s shirt and the younger boy subsequently begin chasing him around to get him back. You’re not.
Dipper and Mabel went home to California over winter break, and the two weeks passed by slowly. Bill and Will both used the free time off of school to work extra shifts at Greasy’s and at the local grocery store to save up some extra money. At night, they would huddle close under a thin blanket in desperate attempts to stay warm. On the rare nights that Gravity Falls got snow, they missed the Mystery Shack’s heat more than ever.
When school started back up, the school work got harder. When both of the Cipher twins struggled in science, Mabel stepped up to the plate as an excellent tutor. Bill excelled in math, and when Dipper begrudgingly asked for help with it, the blonde crowed that Dipper would owe him a favor down the line and excitedly thrust his hand out to shake on the deal.
With all of them helping each other in school, they spent even more time at the Shack than they had before. They ended up sleeping over at the Pines Residence three or four nights a week.
It seemed like an oddly long time before Dipper finally pressed, “Are your parents seriously okay with you guys staying over here so often?”
Will’s hands stilled on where he had been pulling a textbook out of his bookbag.
Luckily, Bill stepped up to the plate, shrugging the question off and just replying with, “They don’t care either way.”
It wasn’t technically a lie, but Will still flinched.
It was nearing the end of the school year the first time that the Pines twins caught them working at Greasy’s.
It was a Friday night, and one of the very few in which they hadn’t gone directly to the Mystery Shack after school. They had been asked to work that night, which they normally had off. Will didn’t hear it, but he was sure that Bill had spun some story to the other twins about how their parents wanted them home, or something. He also must have told them to expect he and Will to show up around eleven, since they got off work at ten-thirty.
It was a busy night- date night. They waited and bussed tables like their lives depended on it, and based on how their checks were the only thing that got them through the week, they kind of did. By ten-fifteen, the crowd had dispersed, and the diner was empty save for them, Lazy Susan, and an elderly man sitting at a corner booth sipping his coffee with shaky hands.
Bill was bussing and cleaning off a table. Will sat down at the counter and talked quietly with Lazy Susan when she asked him about school.
The bell above the door rang, and Will’s heart practically stopped when he caught sight of Dipper’s familiar pine tree hat and Mabel’s neon green sweater. They paused when they were just a few steps in the door, eyes going to Will and then immediately flicking over to Bill, who took a moment to look up.
He looked at the twins, and then down at himself with a Greasy’s apron tied snugly around his waist and hands clad in rubber gloves as he scrubbed down the table. He dropped the rag on the table and stood straight up, and Will jolted to his feet.
“You guys work here?” Dipper asked with a frown. Mabel seemed to get over this quickly enough and rushed over to the pie display case to look at the now-scarce selection, not even paying mind to her brother.
Will looked over to his twin for an answer. He wasn’t sure what the best response was. Dipper and Mabel still didn’t know about their living situation, and he and Bill had agreed that this was the best thing for now. He wasn’t able to lie as easily as Bill, and he sure wasn’t able to come up with an answer on the spot to explain why two thirteen-year-olds were working late at night (or how they had even legally snagged that job in the first place).
Bill’s face flushed a deep red almost instantly, and Will could tell that he was burning in shame. So, it didn’t really surprise him when his brother quickly moved over to push past Dipper and hurry out the door, breaking into a run before the wood could even slam shut.
There was a collective gasp from both the twins and Lazy Susan. Will shot them all apologetic glances before running after his brother without even bothering to remove his apron or nametag.
That was the first time since the beginning of the school year (save for winter break) that they didn’t spend Friday night at the Mystery Shack, and their stomachs were suffering for it the next morning without Saturday family breakfast.
The Pines twins never brought it up to Bill again, but Dipper cornered Will a week after when their respective twins ran off on the path ahead of them in the woods. “Hey, man,” he started, trying to sound casual, but Will could tell that there was an interrogation coming.
He shrunk back on instinct, trying to remember how his brother lied so well. “Yeah?” he asked weakly. His voice shouldn’t have trembled on such a simple response.
“I don’t know… I know that we don’t really know what your situation is, and it’s not any of our business if you don’t want to tell us, but Mabel and I want to help you any way we can.”
Will slowed to a stop, eyeing up the boy in surprise. Dipper stopped too, and when he seemed to realize that Will was getting increasingly anxious, as he offered up a reassuring smile.
“If you… y’know, need money, or something, I’m sure Grunkle Stan could find something for you to do around the Shack. You already spend most of your time there anyway.” The boy grinned, and it was hard not to trust him.
Will could only take it for so long before he surged forward to hug the other boy, who stumbled back a bit at the impact before his hands came up to awkwardly pat Will’s back. The blue-haired boy ignored the stinging of tears behind his eyes and just enjoyed the moment.
Was this what it felt like to not be alone?
-----
Dipper and Mabel returned home to see their parents for the majority of the summer. Over the two months that they were gone, Bill and Will worked vigorously in the Shack.
Stan had been hesitant to allow them anywhere near his place of business, but after a lot of begging (mostly on Mabel’s part, as he had a soft spot for his great niece), he had agreed to let them work in the giftshop.
Bill was not allowed to touch anything, though. Or handle money. Most of the time, he wasn’t allowed to talk to customers, either. For once, his deviousness actually worked in his favor, as he was practically allowed to sit around and do nothing (until Grunkle Stan found a tourist he wanted to scare and ordered Bill to spin some terrifying story about things he had found in the woods, which the blonde did happily and with ease).
Dipper and Mabel had cell phones, and while Bill and Will did not, they still found excuses to use the Mystery Shack’s phone to call their friends and keep them updated on all of the town gossip and all of the supernatural research they had done.
They had a joyous reunion when the Pines twins returned a few weeks before the school year started. This gave them plenty of time to enjoy each other’s presence before they all started high school together.
The first night of the summer that they slept over at the Mystery Shack was also the first night in a while that Will had a nightmare.
Dipper and Mabel were in the dream, but they weren’t Dipper and Mabel. They wore fancy blue clothes, very different in comparison to Mabel’s bright sweaters and Dipper’s always-casual wear, and both had pendants that glowed a blue-green like the one that Gideon Gleeful had used against them the summer before.
They were cold and calculating. Will attempted to speak to them, ask what was going on, and they would just throw him to the ground, kick in his ribs, and laugh about how despicable he was.
Despite this, perhaps the worst part was that Bill wasn’t there to protect him.
He had blood bubbling at his lips, and through it, he weakly asked the not-twins where his brother was.
Not-Mabel grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him up before laughing in his face. Her eyes were a piercing blue and not the warm brown of the twins he was used to. “He can’t save you, William,” she spit. Behind her, Dipper was crossing his arms over his chest and looking bored. “He’s in a different universe now with twins who actually care about him. He’s worth something.”
Will only woke up when his own sobs cut his breathing off in his throat and Bill was panickedly shaking him awake.
“Will,” the familiar voice hissed, and it took him a moment to remember why they were laying on a floor and not their bed, moonlight seeping in through a triangle-shaped window.
His brother’s amber eyes burned into him, his worry obvious, and he threw himself against Bill so hard that it nearly knocked his twin back onto the ground from his seated position. His twin’s arms came up to encircle him protectively as he began to sob into the other’s shirt.
He became vaguely aware of the lamp on Mabel’s nightstand being flipped on before her voice was exclaiming, “Will, what’s wrong?” quickly followed by Dipper’s, “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer, and he was relieved when Bill didn’t either. The blonde had gotten more than used to helping Will through the aftershocks of bad dreams, but he could tell that his twin was probably overwhelmed as he had never seen Will this bad. The blue-haired boy couldn’t get his breathing in check no matter how hard he tried. Every time he thought back to the dream-Dipper’s cold stare and dream-Mabel’s cruel words, he would fall further into the panic attack until he was gasping for air.
When he was finally able to breathe again, he removed his face from the crook of Bill’s neck long enough to look over at the Pines twins, who had joined them on the floor at some point. They both looked extremely worried, Mabel nervously playing with the hem of her floppy disk shirt, and when they saw him watching them, they tried to move closer.
Will couldn’t unsee the dream, and the second Dipper inched nearer to him, he flinched and let out a small whimper.
That was all it took for Bill to move to shove Will behind him, crossing his arms and glaring at the twins despite them having done nothing wrong. “That’s close enough, Pine Tree,” he snapped, and Dipper practically jumped to move back.
Will blinked at his brother. He couldn’t believe that Bill had said that to his crush. He grasped at the back of Bill’s shirt until his twin turned back on his knees to face him and pulled Will into his chest in a tight hug before brushing his lips over his brother’s forehead in a tender gesture.
It took weeks for Will to relax around Dipper and Mabel after that. The next day, he had explained the situation to them and they had understood perfectly, but their understanding wasn’t able to make Will any less uncomfortable when Mabel hugged him. He still flinched away from their sudden movements and stuck closer to his brother’s side out of some now-internalized fear that the dream was actually a prophecy and that he was going to lose Bill to them while Will was left on his own.
It didn’t help that when school started, he and Bill were separated more. They only had four classes together, and only two where they were together with Dipper and Mabel as well.
Two weeks into the school year, Bill was caught trying to blow something up in the chemistry lab. It wasn't really that big of a deal, especially compared to the locust incident the year before, but the principal had finally reached her limit with the boy. Her first move was to expel him, but after a long discussion (Will didn't get all of the details, but he was sure Bill had turned up the devious charm), she broke down to simply a five-day suspension and a meeting with his parents.
That had never been a problem in the past. Bill would forge their mother's signature on permission slips and detention notices, and on the several occasions that teaches had demanded to meet their parents for one reason or another, they had spun stories about them being ill or out of town or too busy with work.
But this time, the principal had been clear: if she didn't speak to a responsible parent or guardian, Bill would be kicked out of school for good.
Bill lamented about this after school from the kitchen table of the Pines Residence. Well, it was more like he ranted. He was playing around with a fork and muttering about how he could take the principal’s eyes out like he did his own, and everybody at the table was too used to this Bill-speak to even be unnerved by it.
While they didn't ask, Will could tell that Dipper and Mabel desperately wanted to know why the Cipher twins' parents could not go in to talk to the school. They had stopped pressing the issue long ago, but Will was sure that they were suspicious about why they had never met the boys' parents, or why they had never been invited over to their cabin.
Will wanted to cry. He didn't know what he would do if Bill were to be kicked out of school. There were no more public schools in Gravity Falls, and Bill would have no way of being transported to one in a neighboring town. Plus, if they skipped out on this parent-teacher meeting, the school was sure to get suspicious and investigate further into their home life.
When Bill's angry rambling finally died down, it was Stan who finally spoke. "Y'know, kid," he sighed, "If you need an adult to go in for ya, I'll do it. No questions asked. I'm not gonna interrogate you about your parents; we all have issues that are better not brought to light."
Bill's head snapped up to stare at the old man. There was no hint of a joke on his face. Will looked over towards Dipper and Mabel, who were exchanging a knowing glance.
"But you, uh..." Bill looked at a loss for words. It was weird to see his face without either a giant grin or a giant scowl. "You have to be a guardian."
Stan shrugged. "You freeloaders already spend most of your time here anyway, eating my food and boosting up the water bill. I'd say I'm practically your guardian already." He frowned. "But if you mean legal guardian... well, not much of what I do is legal, anyway."
Bill and Will must have still looked shocked, for Mabel chimed in, "You're part of our family now, dorks."
Will and Bill exchanged a glance.
He and Bill had agreed a long time ago that it was a risky gamble to even make friends. There was no one in this world they could trust except each other. Accepting new people as family was utter blasphemy.
Everybody who had told them that 'family is forever' was a liar. Family didn't stay just because they were family. People were selfish and cared more for their own self-preservation than they did for others, regardless of bloodline.
By accepting others as family members, they were taking a risk that they would have their hearts broken all over again.
But looking at Dipper and Mabel's smiling faces, Will found it hard to care.