Wow, Okay, so again, I got so much positive feedback on the last chapter? I'm actually so happy that you're all enjoying my trash fanfiction! Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this chapter- I'm not too happy with how it turned out, and I apologize in advance for any grammar mistakes or any mess-ups in general, because I have a feeling that there's probably a few in this chapter, but hopefully you'll like it!
Chapter Three
As soon as the flustered man in the pine-tree hat had left the shop, Bill Cipher, Starbucks worker by day, Youtuber by night, broke out into a wicked smirk that immediately attracted the attention of one of his co-workers. A tall woman with long black hair, whose name Bill could never quite remember, walked over to him, a frustrated look on her face, calling out a warning to the blonde-haired male.
"Bill, for god's sake, stop flirting with the customers." Bill shrugged nonchalantly, indicating exactly how little intention he had of obeying the instructions.
"I was hardly flirting with him. Just making an observation." The black-haired woman simply glared at him in a way that simply stated 'I'm not even going to bother', and walked away again, earning an even wider grin from the blonde.
Bill was used to receiving the same sort of reaction from many of his co-workers, no matter what the situation. After all, the blonde was Starbuck's professional asshole, as his name-badge read, and it was honestly a miracle he hadn't been fired yet. When he wasn't flirting with customers, he was talking back or insulting them, and the fact that he'd managed to keep his job for longer than 2 months was probably a contender to be the 8th wonder of the world.
Even if he did get fired though, it's not that it would matter. He had the potential to make a lot of money, but if he did that, people would get curious. People would realize things. Obsessive fans are always the best at figuring things out. Starbucks was just a way of wasting time, nothing more than a cover story, then as soon as his shift would end, it would be back to his room, back to his recording equipment and back to doing what he did best.
Youtube had started off as a hobby for Bill, however now, it had almost become his safe space- somewhere he could say what he wanted and do what he wanted, and nobody would ever know that it was him.
For all the internet knew, mIndscape could be anyone.
As his shift of work drew to a close, Bill stretched his arms above his head, the joints making a cracking noise, the long-haired employee who had scolded him earlier sending him a disturbed look as he proceeded to twist and make cracking noises with the joints in his neck, arms and fingers. Oh how he loved making people feel uncomfortable. He untied the apron he wore and shoved it back into his bag, which he then picked off the floor and slung over his shoulder, waving at the other workers behind the counter before sweeping through the door and out into the street.
Walking along the street and back to his apartment, Bill hummed lightly under his breath, hands swinging by his sides. He always seemed to walk with a spring in his step when he left work- the people around him would probably just pass it off as him being happy to be heading home, however in reality, it was Bill's way of keeping himself psyched up, keeping himself awake. He ran on a small amount of sleep the majority of the time, and it would be no good if he looked or sounded tired on any of his videos.
As soon as Bill got back into his apartment, he dumped his bag on the bed, kicked off his shoes and got straight to work, pulling a yellow sweater and his bow tie out of his draws, throwing them both on over the shirt he was already wearing, then reaching to the back of the draw and fishing out the most important element of his videos. The mask.
The Illuminati mask had started out as a joke- his brother had bought it for him for ironic reasons, and he'd decided to wear it in a video, just to see how many people he could confuse. However, the mask had grown on him, and had pretty much become one of the quintessential parts of his videos- the thing that everyone recognised him for.
Mask on and clothes checked in the mirror, Bill then moved into his 'recording room', which was essentially a large cupboard-under-the-stairs-type structure that was built into the wall when he'd moved into the apartment, that he'd taken the shelves out of and installed his computer and recording equipment into, so he could record in peace without risk of anyone finding his stuff.
Logging onto his computer, Bill flicked instinctively onto skype, scrolling through his messages. Despite the fact that the youtuber was very selective about who he chose to share his skype details with, he seemed to have picked the people who were least afraid to spam him with messages, as he came back to see 8 messages from 'Kryptos', all of which were written in some sort of code (Bill decided not to bother answering those) 5 from '8 Ball', a long stream of complaints about Bananas, 3 from 'Pyronica' about accidentally setting fire to a desk, and one missed call from his brother Will. That was the only one that Bill decided would be worth responding to later.
Deciding that skype was a lost cause, Bill flipped back over to youtube, deciding to check up on the comments and subscribers he had gained over the day. As expected, there was nothing new- an unnecessarily large amount of 'Illuminati confirmed' jokes, Lots of the typical 'Will you reveal your face any time soon?!' comments, and a few hate messages, which he took screenshots of so he could go back and laugh at them later. Scrolling through the icons and usernames of the new subscribers, Bill found himself on the verge of falling asleep, however, towards the end of the list, an icon caught his attention, the familiarity of the person it displayed startling to him. Clicking on the username, 'Journal Number 4', Bill found his suspicions confirmed. The owner of the channel was, indeed, Pine Tree.
A slight spark of panic struck Bill. Had the man in the Pine Tree hat figured out who he was? Had he recognized him in Starbucks then subscribed to him as a way of telling him that he knows who he is? Scrolling quickly back through the list of times that people had subscribed to him, Bill let out a relieved exhalation. Pine Tree had subscribed before seeing him in Starbucks. It was just a coincidence. No different to the other people in Gravity Falls that Bill knew watched his videos but had no idea that mIndscape had probably sold them coffee at some point.
Laughing quietly to himself, the sound muffled by the mask pressing against his face, Bill clicked back onto Pine Tree's youtube channel, deciding to have a quick look around it before getting back to actually producing some video content. From the looks of it, the channel was fairly new, with only one video posted only a few hours ago as content. However, it was, indeed, still a video, so naturally, Bill decided to watch it. Clicking on the video title 'Floating Cliffs?' lead the blonde to a video of Pine Tree, standing up on the hill that reared up out of the ground at one end of Gravity Falls, the backdrop of the cliffs behind him most likely stunning to anyone watching who didn't get to see them every single day. In the video, Pine Tree, or Dipper Pines, as his name turned out to be, explained the phenomena of the cliffs and how they were formed, something which, admittedly, Bill didn't know before watching the video. Pausing the video as Pine Tree walked towards the camera to alter the angle of it and give a better view of the cliffs, Bill surveyed the man on the screen up and down with a scrutinizing gaze. He hadn't really taken much note of the brunet's appearance when he'd been mocking him earlier, so now was the perfect opportunity for him to get a proper look at this newcomer to the town.
The first thing that he spotted, that he didn't notice in the shop earlier was the fact that Pine Tree had tattoos up both of his arms, complex spirals and patterns of keys and locks and triangles looping around his arms and disappearing into the sleeves of his shirt. The next thing was the way his hair flipped out from underneath the hat he wore, looking as if it had never made contact with a brush before. Next he pressed play on the video, and watched through it some more, observing the way the small smile on the brunet's face seemed to call out his awkwardness, then the way that his glasses seemed a little too big for him and slipped down his face, and the way that he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly while he was talking.
Bill wasn't going to lie. Pine Tree was pretty cute.
Bill sat back in his chair and yawned widely, before leaning over and clicking the subscribe button on Pine Tree's channel then scrolling down and commenting on the video too.
'NICE VIDEO- THOSE CLIFFS ARE PRETTY NEAT. I WONDER WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THEY BROKE AND FELL' Like the mask, Bill's use of caps lock had started out as irony, but eventually just became regular procedure on his channel. The Blonde-haired youtuber smirked to himself behind the mask. He'd taken a liking to Pine Tree, and he knew that this would be one way to catch his attention. Peering up at the calendar that he had pinned to the wall above his computer, Bill took note of the video he had scheduled for that night. Another gaming video. Shrugging, and pulling up the game he had planned, Bill stretched his arms, feeling the joints pop satisfyingly, almost wishing that there was someone in the recording room with him so that he could see the disgusted expressions on their faces, then flicked on the camera and voice recorder, and began to play.
Bill wrapped up the recording about an hour later, before standing up and stretching once more, shaking out his cramped legs and flipping the mask up to rest on top of his head. The mask was fairly easy to wear, however spending over an hour with it covering his face was always a strain. He then left the recording room and headed into the kitchen, rummaging around the cupboards and refrigerator, pouring some leftover pasta from the night before and sticking it in the microwave to reheat. Despite having very little time to do so, Bill always made sure to keep a healthy eating schedule, often making a lot more food than he needed to so that he had a stock of leftovers for the days when he had less time or motivation to cook. Jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter, Bill swung his legs slightly as he ate the pasta. He left the bowl in the sink as a reminder to clean it later, then flipped the mask back over his face and headed back into the recording room to start the long editing process for the video. He always started with the voice filter, layering and pitching his voice to create an echoing tone, then flipped through the footage he took, selecting only the best sections until he narrowed the hour of filming to about 7 minutes of video content, then fitting it all together. It took him a few hours, but, by the time it was 10:30, Bill had a fully-produced video, ready for exporting and uploading.
Setting the video up to export, Bill flicked back onto his youtube tab, grinning to himself as he noticed that Pine Tree had replied to his comment. The blonde let out a snort of laughter at how awkward the brown-haired male was when it came to responding to him.
'Oh wow okay I didn't expect to actually get to talk to you oh gosh I'm actually quite a big fan of your videos, but I'm sure a lot of people tell you that and you're probably fed up of hearing it so I'll not say that okay I'm sorry. I'm glad you like my video though- and, if the cliffs fell, I'd expect that the direction they fell would greatly determine the effect of that. If they fell away from the town, then there would be a lot of debris and possibly structural damage close to the site of impact, but hopefully nothing too bad, but if they fell onto Gravity falls- then let's just say that there wouldn't be much Gravity Falls left to speak about. Wow, I'm so sorry I'm rambling I'm just going to be quiet now okay.'
Bill found it endearing, how awkward the brunet was, and affirmed to himself that making him embarrassed would be something that he would enjoy doing. Plus the fact that he had actually bothered to answer his musings rather than just pass them off as insane rambling was pretty nice of him. Either he was ridiculously polite, or was used to some pretty weird shit. Based off the fact that he seemed to be living in the Mystery shack, it was most likely the latter. Bill decided that Pine Tree was definitely worth sending a reply to.
'IT'S ALL GOOD. YOU SEEM PRETTY INTERESTING, SO YOU CAN TALK TO ME IF YOU WANT. AND THE STUFF ABOUT THE CLIFFS FALLING WAS INTERESTING TOO. THANKS FOR EXPLAINING AND GIVING ME MORE WAYS THROUGH WHICH I COULD CAUSE MASS DESTRUCTION.'
After responding to Pine Tree, Bill decided that he wasn't going to get anything done by sitting around and waiting for his video to export, so, after quickly sending an apologetic message to his brother for not calling him back, he headed out of the recording room and into the main room of the apartment and flopped out on the couch that sat there. The Blonde flicked through the TV channels for a while, then headed back into the kitchen, pulling some ingredients and equipment out and dropping it out onto the counter. Throwing together the ingredients for pancakes, Bill picked up his phone from the pocket of his jeans and turned the volume on, setting it to play some music while he cooked. Dancing around the kitchen slightly, Bill cooked pancakes until he'd ran out of batter, then threw the dirty equipment into the sink and turning the tap on so that it would steep in the warm water until he could wash it properly. The youtuber then placed the pancakes into the fridge for the next morning, keeping one out for eating. Bill ate the still-warm pancake as he walked back into his recording room, his steps moving in time to the music that still played softly from the kitchen, noting that the exporting process was almost complete.
Sitting back in his chair, Bill pulled up the menu that would allow him to upload the video, and, once the familiar ping that indicated that the video was ready sounded into the recording room, he submitted it, selecting the file and typing in the description and title box, choosing a thumbnail and leaving it to upload. Checking the time on his computer, 11:50 pm, Bill rubbed his eyes and pulled the mask off completely, closing the door to the recording room, planning to leave the video to upload overnight, then he would wake up at 3:30 to submit at his designated video-posting time of 3:33 am, then sleep again until he had to go out to work.
The things he did to keep up the triangle theme.
Well, I hope that you enjoyed reading the trash, and I'm super sorry if it's bad!