Wow I managed to drag myself out from the void and get this trash written. I'm so sorry that this chapter is late! I kind of lost inspiration again, and I wasn't able to get back into the swing of writing till a few days ago. I'm so sorry if this chapter isn't the best- it's more just a sort of filler-ish chapter, so it probably isn't the most interesting. I apologize in advance for any out of character-ness, and for any grammar mistakes, but I hope you enjoy reading it!

Chapter Ten

It took approximately ten minutes for Dipper to start panicking about the date he had been given the responsibility of planning. He was clueless about what Bill would enjoy doing- the blonde had rarely given any hints to what he did in his spare time, talking in a secretive manner as both Bill and mIndscape, something which had never truly bothered Dipper, up until this point.

He walked back to the Mystery Shack, still slightly flustered, and a little shaken, as a result from the prior events, all the while thinking desperately about the sort of thing he would plan for the date. He wouldn't usually make such a deal over something so trivial, however he wished to make a good first impression to Bill, and was unwilling to leave any opportunity for things to go wrong. In all honesty, Dipper had no idea what he was doing. I didn't want to risk making the date too plain, in the worry that Bill would find him uninteresting, but he also wished to avoid doing anything too outlandish in case the blonde thought he was trying too hard to impress him. As soon as he returned at the Mystery Shack, he headed straight into the office area and flipped open his computer, opening the word document that seemed to sit perpetually in the background of the desktop, a constant reminder that he had to write at some point. Inspiration had finally hit the brunet, and to take his mind off his current situation, he allowed words to flow onto the screen, the room silent aside from the steady tapping of his fingers upon the keyboard.

He didn't look up from his computer for about an hour, finally finishing up the chapter that had been sitting half written upon his computer for a number of days, then, stretching out his fingers to loosen up the tension in them, he headed into the kitchen and searched through the cupboards, making himself a pot of instant noodles to eat. He sat in the office to eat them, now unsure of what to do with his time, not having tours to run that day, and not able to spend his time talking to mIndscape, or Bill, as he should probably call him now, as he usually did on his days off.

Wanting to take his mind off the prospect of having to plan the date for later on that night, Dipper pulled out of his notebook full of ideas for videos, flicking through it to try and find a spot that he hadn't filmed at yet. He eventually settled on recording a short script that he had written about the colony of rare bats that lived in one of the caves. Pulling Journal number Three out of the draw in the desk, he flicked to the page on the bats, the handwriting in it mostly belonging to Ford, with a few scribbled notes of his own down the side, scanning over it to check the accuracy of the facts he had written, before grabbing his recording equipment and heading out, dropping the journal into his bag and swinging out of the door.

The rush of air and feeling of freedom that came with it was a welcome sensation for Dipper, who, having spent the past few days only leaving the Mystery Shack to run tours, was glad to have some time to walk around at his own pace without a crowd of tourists following after him. He already had some footage of the bats on his laptop, which him and Mabel had shot a few years ago on an infrared camera that Mabel had 'borrowed' from Pacifica's family, so he didn't need to do much actual filming, just talk a little about the bats and their habits. Dipper ran the script over in his head one last time as he approached the cave that the bats often resided in, before planting the camera tripod into the ground and setting it to record.

The recording process went smoothly, very little going wrong, which surprised Dipper, especially since a cluster of nerves had begun to gather inside of him about the date, which he had about three hours left to plan. Forcing the thought to the back of his mind, Dipper picked up his camera and tripod, which was partially submerged into the mud, and headed back in the direction of the Mystery shack, hoping that inspiration would strike him on the walk back.

However, no such inspiration came, and, with one hour left till he had agreed to go and collect Bill, he gave up, and grabbed his phone and a leaflet for a restaurant nearby that Grunkle stan had evidently picked up at some point, and dialed the number into his phone, planning to book a reservation for that night. He had pretty much given up on trying to organize anything fancier than that for now, and, once the table was booked, he decided to focus more on his appearance. Based on how he seemed to dress in his videos, Dipper could guess that Bill was definitely one to dress up in a fancy manner, and the brunet figured that he might as well make an effort to at least put some semi-decent clothes on.

A quick scan of his clothes, all of which were shoved hastily into a single draw, provided nothing promising, his searches only rewarding him with the rare occurrence of a pair of jeans that didn't have mud on them, and a shirt that looked nice, but was admittedly a little creased. A quick glance over at the clock announced to Dipper that he had about half an hour left before he was meant to collect Bill, so he decided to make do with the clothes he had just found, pulling them on and running his hands through his hair in an attempt to force it into submission, however he only seemed to make it worse, and grabbed his hat, forcing it down onto his head and sighing in frustration. He looked completely stupid.

Dipper couldn't remember the last time when he had actually cared about his appearance as much as he did at that particular moment, and felt himself deflate into a slouching position. He contemplated the option of just lying on the floor and never getting up again, however, after reminding himself that Bill would probably be offended if he didn't turn up, he stood up straight again, pulled on a coat and swung his bag over his shoulder, then headed outside , through the forest in the direction of Bill's apartment.

The brunet felt as if he would throw up as he reached Bill's door, the nerves gathering inside of him causing his legs to feel as if they would collapse under him if he took another step. He raised his hand and brought it down shakily on the middle of the door, the sound resonating clearly down the corridor. There were a few moments of silence, then the sound of footsteps, and the door swung open to reveal Bill standing there, smirking.

He was dressed in a pitch black tailcoat, emblazoned with triangular gold buttons, his hair wavy and seemingly brushed through with glitter, as it had a slightly sparkly quality, sweeping slightly over one of his eyes, both of which were outlined heavily with eyeliner, his eyelids coloured with golden pigments that sparkled in the lighting of his apartment. He looked absolutely stunning.

' As usual.' Dipper found himself adding to his original observation.

"So, are you ready to go?" Bill stepped out into the hallway as Dipper nodded, slamming the door behind him, the loud noise of it hitting the door-frame causing the brunet to flinch, and Bill to let out a chuckle of amusement. "So, where are we going, Pine Tree?"

"I just ended up booking a table at a restaurant nearby. I'm not the best at planning things, I'm afraid." Bill nodded in what Dipper hoped was approval, and reached down, taking the brunet's hand in his own and swinging it slightly, the contact of the golden rings that decorated the Youtuber's hands cold against Dipper's fingers. As he walked, Dipper took note of the fact that Bill seemed to be a fair amount taller than he was before, and a glance down at the youtuber's feet confirmed his suspicions- he was wearing a pair of high-heeled ankle boots that looked extremely painful to walk in, but boosted Bill up to Dipper's height, something which the blonde seemed very pleased with. Dipper was slightly mystified by how Bill was even managing to walk in the boots, but didn't bring up the subject, and continued to walk, silently glad that the restaurant he had chosen was both nearby and away from any muddy surfaces.

The two of them arrived at the restaurant in less than five minutes, the conversation between them evidently awkward, Dipper not certain with what to say, and Bill not seeming to know how to respond to what was in the most part complete silence, punctuated only by the click of his heels on the pavement. They took their seats in the restaurant, which was admittedly no fancy affair, merely a simple, fairly cheap destination, and sat in silence for a little while longer, neither of them seeming to know what to say.

"So, things have moved pretty fast in just one day." Bill was the first to break the quiet atmosphere, reaching up and running a hand through his hair. "I haven't done this sort of thing in quite a while." Dipper nodded his head slightly in response. He had barely had time to register the fact that it had only been that morning when he had figured out that Bill was in fact mIndscape; to him it felt like days had stretched past since that point.

"Yeah, things have gone pretty fast. This morning, I didn't even know that you were mIndscape, never mind that you'd actually want to do this sort of thing with me." Dipper gestured at the table, making a note of the candlelight that cast dancing shadows and quiet music playing in the background. Bill's gaze flickered from side to side warily at the brunet's statement.

"You might not want to speak about the whole Youtube thing out loud. There's no way of telling who could be listening to us." The blonde's golden eyes flickered from side to side again, sweeping over the room. The restaurant was small but fairly full, the whole place filled with the buzz of quiet chatter. Nobody was paying any attention to the two of them, but Bill still looked slightly uncomfortable.

"Bill, it's fine. There's nobody paying attention to us here." Dipper tried to provide words of reassurance, but the youtube still seemed a little uncertain, but covered it up with a wide smirk of sorts.

"You never know what methods the government has these days. For all we know, this table could open its eyes and run off to inform lurking agents of our presence at any moment." Hearing Bill's obscure statements in a tone that was anything less than shouting was odd for Dipper, but he forced it aside and knocked lightly on the table, leaning down and speaking softly.

"Hey, government table, if you don't mind it, could you please stop eavesdropping- it's pretty rude." Bill let out a slight huff of laughter at Dipper's statement, and also tapped on the table top.

"Fuck off, government table." A mother with two children sitting at the table with her glanced across to where Bill was sitting, evidently having heard his statement, and shot him a disapproving look. The blonde made a dramatic show of looking around sharply to fix the woman glaring at him with his golden eyes.

"Fuck." He spoke in a loud enough tone for pretty much the whole restaurant to hear, the challenging note to his voice apparent, and shrugged, a wide smirk decorating his face, then turned back to Dipper placing his elbows on the table and propping up his head with his hands.

"I thought you didn't want people paying attention to you?" Dipper asked in slight confusion.

"I never said I didn't want people to pay attention to me- I just don't want them to figure out the whole Youtube thing. The more people paying attention to me because I'm annoying them, the better." As always, to Dipper, the person sitting across to him was an enigma, a living contradiction- just because Dipper was now aware of mIndscape's identity, that didn't make him any easier to understand. The brunet's thoughts were interrupted as a plate of food was placed on the table in front of him. Glancing across the table, the aspiring writer took note of the fact that Bill seemed to have ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, and forced down a loud sigh. He hoped silently that he had brought enough money with him, otherwise he might have to ask Bill to pay for some of the meal, which wouldn't exactly be the most dignified way to end a first date.

"Excuse me, are you Dipper Pines?" Dipper blinked and looked up sharply to see a girl with short black hair standing off to the side of the table. Bill was looking towards the girl, his boldly lined eyes narrowed slightly, face displaying a slight look of confusion. The brunet nodded, and swung around in his chair to face the girl.

"Yeah, that's me. Do you need anything?" The puzzled tone to his voice was unmistakable as he spoke.

"I just wanted to ask something; you used to talk to the Youtuber mIndscape a lot, right?" Out of his peripheral vision, Dipper could see Bill jolt upright in his chair as if a bolt of electricity had passed through him. There were a few moments of silence, Bill sitting stiffly in his chair, trying to hide the startled expression on his face, the girl looking hopefully towards Dipper, and Dipper, sitting silently, thoughts conflicting inside of him. There was no correct way of going about the situation- every response could cause at least one party to feel bad or embarrassed or angry, and he had no idea about how to respond to the girl's question. Bill, however, reacted for Dipper, and stood up sharply pushing his chair away from the table, the legs screeching across the floor, and walked across the restaurant, returning a few seconds later with a box, into which he put his and Dipper's food, before pulling the brunet out of his seat.

"Sorry, we have to get going." the blonde turned to the girl, his voice harsh, then proceeded to walk towards the door, pulling Dipper along behind him. As soon as they emerged into the cold night air, Bill let out a shaky breath, falling backwards against a lamp-post, resting his head upon it and closing his eyes. The glare from the lamp cast upon him like a spotlight, however, instead of illuminating and enhancing the bold, showy impression that Bill seemed to radiate, it only made him look more vulnerable. Dipper moved over to where the blonde was leaning up against the metal post, but was shooed away as as soon as the Youtuber saw him approaching.

"I'm fine now. I just got a little bit of a shock." Bill unpeeled himself from the lamp-post and stood upright again, raising a hand instinctively to fix his hair, the glitter that laced it shimmering in the sweep of light cast by the lamp above him. "Sorry about that- this really wasn't how I pictured tonight going." Dipper nodded to acknowledge the statement.

"We should maybe stay away from restaurants for a while." Dipper suggested, and Bill nodded in response.

"Sounds like a good idea." He laughed slightly, evidently trying to prove to Dipper that he was completely fine.

"How about we go and eat this back at your apartment?"

"Yeah. That sounds good."

Thankyou so so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the trash!