Not On The Wheel (Bill Cipher x Reader)

Chapter Twenty-One: Double-Dealing

Y/n was more than relieved to see that Stan was still asleep when she finally made her way back up from the basement.

After peaking her head through the gift shop door to see his figure still laid back on the sofa, she scampered across the room, quickly seeking refuge in her bedroom. She let the door close with a slight slam, waking the man in the process.

Stan simply turned towards the hallway, before shrugging and turning back to the TV. If it wasn't important enough to warrant a shout from Squirt, then it obviously wasn't anything he'd have to worry about. He didn't even realize that she had drugged him, let alone the fact that she had discovered some of the skeletons he'd tried to bury in the basement.

As soon as Y/n closed the door, she slid to the floor, eyes wide and mouth slack-jawed. She felt heavier than usual; a mix of her mind-numbing shock, her ever-clouding fatigue, and the items in her pockets weighing her down considerably. She curled herself into a ball of sorts, drawing her knees close to her body.

"Oh God," Y/n kept mumbling, her mind running in circles. There was so much information she had just uncovered, and her brain was having trouble comprehending everything. Especially given just how mind shattering some of it was.

A portal? She kept thinking, the crystal clear image bubbling to the surface of her thoughts. An interdimensional portal? That's what he's been hiding!? That and the first journal?

In hindsight, Y/n knew that just those two facts alone meant there was much more that the man was hiding, but it was the only thing she could focus on. It felt like she had the entire weight of the world riding on her shoulders, and she didn't necessarily have a lot of people to turn to in order to help ease the burden of knowledge.

In the elevator trip back up to the gift stop, she considered confronting Stan. But then she realized just how terrible an idea that was.

She had long since been suspicious of Stan's behavior: he was a seedy conman, who probably had a number of arrest warrants in different states. Hell, he went to jail in Columbia apparently.

But he was still her Grunkle. Well... he was an adoptive Grunkle technically. At the very least, Y/n was constantly chiding herself to forget that specific technicality.

Either way, their familial relationship— biological or not— had prevented herself from truly being able to scrutinize him as such. He had beyond proven himself to be more than a walking scam, even if he was prone to have sticky fingers or fleece rubes when given the chance.

But now?

Now Y/n was facing all sorts of red flags.

She got up suddenly, flopping onto her bed. Emptying her pockets, she grabbed her Tabloid and opened to the page she had already titled "The Author." Y/n had already scribbled down a quick sketch of a six-fingered hand. She didn't have much to go off on the Author's appearance, and her brain was much too tired to try to create a caricature.

"The Author had to have lived here," she mumbled to herself, quickly jotting down notes. The hand print she had snapped a picture of was a sign in itself, but the portal room was the real proof.

"But if he lived here," she continued, flipping to another page and making a quick, make-shift-timeline. She tried to look at the facts from different angles, but her mind kept circling to one conclusion. Y/n hoped that it wasn't her tired brain hyperfocusing on a singular possibility, but for the moment, there was only theory she could back up with enough facts to prove it potentially correct.

"They had to have known each other."

It was all there. Firstly, Stan had a journal. Y/n knew the Author was trying to hide them— she could gather that much from the messy page littered in large chunks of censored text and doodles of Bill— but from what she deciphered, the second and third were being buried.