AN: Here's the prequel no one asked for. Enjoy!
After the final school bell rang, Dipper wasted no time getting out of his seat. He had exactly 30 minutes to drop Mabel off at home before going to his job at a café downtown. He worked there on Wednesdays and Fridays, while Mabel took Tuesdays and Thursdays. No one wanted to work on a Monday – which was okay since the place wasn't opened on Mondays.
Dipper managed to clock in five minutes early. He put on his apron, which was all they had as far as a uniform. Everything else was up to your own discretion – Dipper even got to wear his hat. It was identical to the one he'd gotten in the Mystery Shack his first week in Gravity Falls. Wendy still had his old one for whatever reason.
"Hey, Dipper," his boss greeted him. His boss, Mike, owned the café and like to go in to work there every day to personally keep an eye on how things were running. He was very laid-back, though, hence the lack of much a uniform. He also made sure to learn all his employees' first names. Needless to say, he was well-liked and respected.
"Hey, Mike. How's it going?"
"Not too bad. We don't have many people here, yet, but someone was just seated at one of your tables."
"Okay, thanks," Dipper said, going forward onto the main floor of the café. He saw the back of a blond head at a table for two (set for one) in his area. He walked around the table to face the customer and said, "My name is Dipper and—" Before he could finish the practiced intro, he saw the guy's face. He had a triangular shaped patch over his left eye. The three angles that Dipper had memorized since he knew triangles had angles were staring him in the face. Predictably, there was a similarly familiar eye stitched onto the patch.
The other guy was looking at Dipper like he'd just found the answer to the meaning of life. He noticed how Dipper was looking at him and asked, "Are you my Pine Tree?"
"What?" Dipper asked, confused both because he'd been in a bit of a daze and because it was a weird question.
"My Pine Tree," the blonde said. He pulled his left wrist above the table and showed it to Dipper. There was a black outline of a pine tree on the skin there. It was an exact match for the one on Dipper's hat.
"I think I might be," Dipper said, showing his own wrist. There was a black outline of a triangle, but inside that triangle was a single eye, much like the one on the blonde's eye patch. He'd spent so long looking for someone who might be represented by such a symbol, only slightly worried by the speculations of his classmates that maybe his soulmate was a member of the Illuminati.
The other guy stood up and pulled Dipper into a tight hug. "This is so great! And to think I was planning to leave town soon! I could have missed this! I'm Bill, by the way. Bill Cipher. It's so great to meet you." Bill had pulled back by now and was taking a good, thorough look at Dipper. Dipper gave Bill the same treatment.
Bill was taller than Dipper, but for once he didn't mind being the shorter one. He had tan skin and blue eyes – or rather, one blue eye. He was dressed in a yellow t-shirt and dark wash jeans, all of which fit him perhaps too well. He held himself in a confident way, but not so much that he appeared cocky. If Dipper had to use one word to describe Bill, his soulmate, it would be devastatingly attractive. Okay, so that was two words. No one asked you.
"So, how would you like to join me for my late lunch?" Bill asked.
"I'd love to," Dipper said, not even registering that this could be considered a date, "but I'm sort of working right now."
"Forget it," Mike said from nearby. "I take it this one here's your soulmate?"
"Yes," Dipper said. Mike hated the word 'sir'.
"Well, if you ask me, that's a good reason to have a paid day off. Sit down, order some food, and I'll bring it out to you. It's on the house – call it a gift – so order what you want."
They did, and they both enjoyed lunch. Conversation didn't come completely natural to them just because they were soulmates, seeing as how they were still strangers, but they got to know each other well enough. Dipper was a little surprised to learn that his mate was a mage, but he was a little tiny bit excited about it, too.
Dipper had learned that Bill was traveling around the west coast, looking for somewhere to settle down, and was therefore staying in a hotel, so he invited Bill to come over to his house for the rest of the afternoon. Bill happily accepted.
"So, my parents aren't home," Dipper said. "They decided to take a second honeymoon since me and Mabel are 16 now and can drive ourselves anywhere we want to go."
"You're 16 years old and your parents left you and your sister completely alone? For how long?"
"About a week."
"That seems a little extreme," Bill said.
"Well, these are also the parents who have no problem sending us off to Oregon every other summer without calling to check on us once. They're not bad people, but we aren't close to them and they sort of instilled it in us to be independent from a very young age. It's not as bad as it sounds, trust me."
"Right," Bill said. He wasn't sure if he wanted to agree that it wasn't that bad or not.
When they walked in the door, Mabel was there almost immediately. "Oh, it's just you. I thought it was someone breaking in. Your shift doesn't end for another couple of hours."
"Mike let me off early. Mabel, this is Bill, my soulmate who I met at work today."
Mabel squealed at a pitch Dipper didn't know humans could achieve. "That's so cool! Tell me everything!"
They caught her up on most of the afternoon. Bill hit it off with Mabel really well and Dipper was feeling quite lucky with who he got as a soulmate. Time passed by without their notice. By the time they realized how late it was, there was no point in having Bill drive all the way to his hotel. Dipper asked him to stay the night, and it was no fight to get Bill to agree.
AN: If you have time, leave a review to let me know what you thought. Thanks for reading!