Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

    Will Wood and Chris Dunne sat in their recording studio (Will’s living room) and prepared to record the episode of a lifetime. Chris pressed the “START” button on Garageband, and they began recording.

“Hello and welcome, everyone,” Chris announced to their invisible audience, “to Life in the World to Come.”

“This, uh,” Will began, taking a deep breath. “This is a very special episode of the podcast. More of an announcement, really.”

“We know we’ve said this lots of times before-”

“Too many times.”

“...Yeah,” Chris laughed. “Too many times. But we mean it this time. This… is the final episode of the podcast. Ever. And this is an announcement to, one, let everyone know, and two, tell you why we’re leaving. Will, why don’t you start?” 

“Well, a couple months back, we were researching apocalypse-related things and we found… something. Something amazing.” He gestured for Chris to continue.

“It’s called Weirdmageddon, and it happened in Gravity Falls, Oregon in 2012. Now, you might be wondering, ‘Why are you leaving for that?’ Well, we aren’t fucking telling you people, alright?”

“Well- No, we should tell them! They deserve to know!”

“What if they report us to the government, though? They don’t need to know about it.” Will groaned in response to him. 

“Fine. Whatever.”

There was a pause, then Chris spoke up again. “Okay, well, now you look sad. Now I have to tell them.”

“No, you don’t need to. It’s fine.”

“But you look disappointed, and I- I feel like I should say.”

“I mean, you can if you want, but I don’t care anymore.”

“Okay, well… We found this device outside of Will’s house. It looks like a tape measure, but we tested it out, and it’s actually a time machine. So we’re gonna use that to travel back to the time of Weirdmageddon. There, happy now?”

“I don’t care.” 

“Oh, so I just did that for nothing.”

“Yeah.” 

Chris sighed, and Will laughed at his disdain. 

“Anyway… This is the last episode. Thanks to everyone for listening, and… we love you.”

“...No we don’t. W-We don’t know you people.”

“No, we love you. Don’t listen to Will.”

“We don’t love you. We don’t know who you are.”

Chris’ voice lowered down to a whisper, “I love you. You don’t- You don’t need Will’s validation.”

“No-” Will laughed and sighed in defeat. “Alright. Goodbye.”

“Yeah. Bye, you- you bunch of sick pigs.” 

    Chris pressed the spacebar on his computer, ending the podcast for good. He sighed, turned to Will, and smiled.

“Well,” he declared, “guess it’s time.” He pulled the tape measure time machine out of his pocket, and pulled them 12 years back.

Chapter Text

Rob led the rest of the band down the sidewalk as they walked to the nearest cafe. The second to last town for their last tour was Gravity Falls, Oregon, and to prepare for the show, they decided to get some fuel at Greasy’s Diner, seemingly one of the town’s only “good” diners. 

“Rob,” Ross said hesitantly, “are we sure we wanna eat at this place? I’m sure we can just go to the grocery store and make something at the hotel…”

“This is a lot cheaper, Ross,” Zubin answered him. “Also, almost everyone in town is headed to Greasy’s, it must be at least edible.”

“Yeah, but it’s called Greasy’s,” Joe chimed in.

“Well, if you don’t wanna eat with us, you and Ross can go to the grocery store,” Rob told him.

“What- I’m not saying that, I’m just saying that I don’t want all of us to get sick at Greasy’s.” 

“Guys, we’re already here, let’s just eat,” Andrew sighed. 

Right when they stopped in front of the entrance to the diner, they heard a loud thud to their right. All their heads whipped to the nearby alley, where they saw two men rushing out and covered in garbage. One of them, the one with a long beard wearing shorts and flip-flops, spotted the band and rushed up to them. 

“What year is it?” He grabbed Ross by the shoulders and screamed in his face. He kept screaming until the other man ran up and stopped him.

“Chris, stop! Calm down!” He pulled the bearded man, Chris, away from Ross. “I’m so sorry for my friend, he’s a little confused. Of course, he knows the year is…” He hesitated, clearly waiting for someone to chime in.

“...2012?” Zubin said, confused. 

Chris snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. Come on, Will.” He started walking away, but then he stopped and turned around.

“Hey, would you guys wanna join our cult?”

Rob looked to the rest of the band, his brow furrowed. Everyone else looked just as concerned.

Andrew opened his mouth to speak. “Well, we-”

“Yeah, sure,” Joe interrupted. The others turned to him in shock. 

“Awesome!” Chris cheered, then turned to Will. “Dude, we got our first cult members!”

“We should print brochures!”

“Oh, we should totally print brochures!”

“W-Well, actually, the rest of us didn’t-” Rob started, but the two men had already started walking away. When they were out of earshot, everyone turned to Joe again.

Joe looked up at the rest of them. “What?”

Rob smacked him on the arm. “Dude, what the hell?”

“What?” Joe repeated.

“You just got us into a cult!” Zubin whisper-yelled.

Joe shrugged. “It’ll be fine, guys.”

“How will this be fine?” Ross asked him.

“They seemed like nice guys, they’ll probably let us out if we want out.”

“Dude, they run a cult,” Zubin explained. “They probably won’t let us out.”

They could practically see the wheels turning in his head. Suddenly, it clicked, and Joe’s eyes widened. “Ohh… fuss. Guys, we might be stuck in a cult.”

“Oh, you think?!” Rob shouted. 

“Oh God…” Ross groaned, burying his face in his hands. “We’re gonna be killed in a cult that we didn’t even wanna be in…”

“Okay, guys, we can figure this out later,” Andrew said, opening the door of the diner for the others. “For now, let’s just get some food in our systems, and- and just calm down a little, right? Come on.” 

He led the rest of the band in, wary of their new situation and what it could mean for how their final show might turn out.