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Strictly Business	By : Nastyzak Category: +G through L > Gravity Falls Views: 4073 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Fandom is Gravity Falls. I don't own it or the characters and don't get any money for my writing.

Chapter List
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Strictly Business

1
After they returned from the pond, Pacifica felt restless. She changed from her jeans into a white pleated knee-length skirt, added a wide black belt, replaced her hiking boots with ballet flats, and said, “Let’s go out for lunch. The house will be here when we get back. Complete with ghost.”
Dipper offered to drive, but Pacifica said, “In your car? You’re braver than I thought. No, I’ll drive. It’s a nice day, we’ll leave the top down.”
The garage door opened with a tap of her key fob. “Cool car,” Dipper said as the rising door revealed the convertible, as if it were on stage and a curtain was rising.
“Thank you,” she said. “Get in and fasten your seatbelt.”
“Always do.” She got behind the wheel, he climbed into the passenger seat, and they both clicked their belts. Pacifica backed the car into the circular parking apron and retracted the convertible roof, which folded itself and disappeared. “You ought to get one of these for your business,” Pacifica said. “People notice it.”
Well, yes, a lipstick-pink Type F convertible with a black roof was rare in Gravity Falls. “Does it come in other colors?” he asked.
She had closed the garage door with her remote and was tying a scarf over her hair. “You can probably get white and blue,” she said. “To match the cap you gave away. Speaking of which, is your new hat on tight?”
He reached up. “I can hold it on. Only don’t drive too—whoo!”
She took the curving driveway as if it were a racetrack. When she stopped at the road, she was laughing. “Scared you! But I’ll be a good girl from here on.”
“Way to get my hopes down,” Dipper said, hoping he didn’t sound as alarmed as her bust of speed had made him. He removed the khaki cap and held it in his lap. “Where do you want to go?”
Pacifica put on a pair of dark sunglasses. “Out of town. I know some good places up near the Columbia River.”
“Ah,” he said, “you should have told me. I’m not dressed for anything fancy.”
“I’ll tell everyone you’re my garage man, listening for a rattle and I promised to feed you a good meal if you found it.”
“Thanks a lot.”
After a minute more of driving, Pacifica asked, “What do you have on underneath that?”
“White tee shirt and black walking shorts.”
“No good. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.”
Out of the valley, she drove north until they came to a larger town. Pacifica either had visited it before or had an unerring instinct. She made straight for a block of upscale businesses and found a parking slot near what looked like a snooty store, Habilleur. “Wait,” he said. “I can’t go in there.”
“You’re with me,” she replied, as if that made all the difference. As they got out, she glanced at him and her eyes widened in surprise. “I never knew you had that birthmark!”
The wind had blown his hair off his forehead and had mussed it. He awkwardly used his fingers to tidy it up a little. “Got my nickname from it,” he muttered.
“I like it. It’s unique. Well, let’s go shopping!”
Feeling like a wedding crasher dressed in a tank top and torn jeans while all the other guys were in tuxes, Dipper slunk in. A clerk hurried over, his expression far from cheerful. Dipper thought, He’s gonna throw me out.
But a smiling Pacifica waved a credit card. Before the clerk could even ask why they were there, she said, “Oh, good, you’re not busy. My employee here needs a complete outfit, and I hope you’ll be able to fit him without alterations. I’m in a hurry.”
His eyes on the waving card, and looking like a hungry dog spying a steak, the clerk said, “I’m sure we’ll be able to suit you, Miss.”
“You suit him. I’ll supervise.”
Thirty minutes later, Dipper, thinking “Oh my God,” watched the cashier ring up the purchases: Dark gray trousers, black belt, black shirt, a sport coat about the same medium blue as the pine tree on his old cap had been, a pair of mid-calf black socks, and a pair of soft black leather loafers. Pacifica didn’t bat an eye as the clerk rang up $1107.45. When the boxes were placed in the store bags, Pacifica handed them over and told Dipper. “Run along and change. Put your working clothes in the bag.” She gave the clerk a big smile. “I’m sure that will be all right.”
“Oh, absolutely,” said the clerk. He pointed out the men’s room.
In a few minutes they returned to the convertible and Pacifica opened the trunk—a very narrow opening—so Dipper could dump his ghostbusting outfit and boots. “Before you get in,” she said, “hold still.”
She fussed with his hair, twitched his shirt collar a little, and then adjusted the blazer, unbuttoning it and adjusting the way it draped. Then she stepped back and examined him critically. “Worth it, Pines. You clean up well. How does it feel?”
“Like I’ve been shopping with my mommy,” he said. “At least you’re not making me wear a two-hundred-dollar tie. Seriously, I can’t afford clothes like this.”
“Consider it a gift.”
“I can’t reciprocate at this level,” he told her as they got in and belted up.
In an airy voice, she said, “Oh, bring me a handful of daisies and we’ll call it even.” She started the engine but then hesitated. “Daisies? Why did I even say that? Don’t do that, they make my eyes water. My God, I don’t even know why I’d even—anyhow, don’t worry about it. You should see my clothing bills.”
They drove on in the sunshine—almost like a summer day, a return of warmth before fall brought in freezing temperatures and frequent rain—and Dipper enjoyed the ride. They cruised up to the Columbia River and Pacifica took him to another fancy place, a restaurant named Chez. It had valet parking. As they headed to the entrance, Dipper asked, “Why do all the pretentious restaurants and stores have to have French names?”
“It’s just putting up a front,” Pacifica said. “In France they’d think calling a bistro Chez Maurice was stupid.” At the front lectern, she told the hostess, “We don’t have a reservation, but any table for two would be fine.”
“I think we may have something,” the woman said, eyeing Pacifica’s clothes and making the same kind of ka-ching smile that Dipper’s gruncle Stanley always did. She rang for a waiter, who hurried over. “Table twelve, Armand,” hostess said.
“This way, please.”
Dipper guessed where they were heading and unobtrusively took a couple of twenties from his wallet. As they got close to the table—just outside the kitchen doorway—he said, “Armand, I see the restaurant’s not crowded. Perhaps a table for two a little farther from the kitchen traffic?” he passed the two folded bills to the waiter, who made them vanish.
“Ah, yes, how about the one near the window there? It has a lovely river view.”
Dipper turned to Pacifica. “Do you approve, Princess?”
“It is magnificent,” she said in flawless French. “Merci, Armand.”
The waiter held a fixed smile. He obviously had no idea what Pacifica had said. Once the two were settled and the waiter had brought them water and bread, Dipper glanced at the menu. This was one of those places that didn’t bother with dollar signs decimal places. Trout Amandine, 55. Bouef bourguignon, 62. Like that.
“You realize I don’t have this kind of money,” Dipper said.
Pacifica fanned his concern away with a flit of her hand. “It doesn’t matter. But if you want, I’ll give you the receipt and you can write it off as a business meal.”
“I feel kind of rotten about this,” Dipper admitted. “Like I’m way out of my league here.”
Pacifica raised an eyebrow. “The restaurant? It’s just good, not anything grand. Or did you mean me?”
“Both,” Dipper said. “But mostly you. We don’t look like we go together.”
“Forget the leagues. I’ll decide who’s in the minors and who’s in the majors,” Pacifica said as she glanced back down at the menu.
“Which one do you put me in?”
She gave him a teasing smile over the top of the menu. “That depends on how you handle your bat.”

2
They had driven for lunch in late morning. Pacifica put off their return as long as she could, but before eight that evening they started back for the Falls. “Want to stop somewhere for dinner?” Pacifica asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dipper said. “Huge lunch.”
“Me, too. Maybe just a small salad at home,” Pacifica said. She sounded uncertain, a little low in spirits.
“You’re worried,” he said.
“Oh, it shows?” For a few minutes she drove silently. They had put the top back up—it was far from cold, but the evening air was on the cool side. “Yes, I’m worried about the ghost and about having to back into that room tonight. How about you?”
“I’m not looking forward to it,” Dipper said. “But if we want to banish Lina, I think we’ll have to do it on her ground.”
“What if that—naked seal-girl thing comes at us again?”
Dipper looked out at the trees they sped past. “About that, I’m going to start by drawing a larger and more powerful protective circle. And I want you to stand outside the doorway while I—”
“I’m going in with you,” she insisted. “So draw that circle big and strong.”
“It might be better if I—”
“Who’s paying for this?” snapped Pacifica. After a minute, she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m sort of wound too tight right now.”
“I know. I’m scared, too,” he said.
“Peace, all right? Because I really, really enjoyed today, and I want us to see each other when this is over.” When he didn’t reply for a few minutes, she asked, “No, huh?”
“I didn’t say that.” Dipper sighed. “Pacifica, for now let’s keep it business. You’re crazy rich and you broke away from your controlling parents, and you need help right now. I know all that. I enjoy being with you, and I respect you. Only—well, buying me stuff, paying for the meal—makes me feel sort of insecure.”
“One day you’ll have all the money you need or want,” Pacifica said. “You’re good at what you do. Don’t begrudge me because right now I have more.”
“It’s not even that,” Dipper said. “It’s not envy. Think of how it were be if we changed places. I was a rich guy with a mansion—”
“It’s not a mansion. It’s just a big country house.”
“To me, it’s a mansion. All right, imagine if I was rich with a big expensive house and a great expensive imported car and you didn’t have anything in the bank and were living in a friend’s attic and you were trying hard to make an honest living. So rich Dipper comes along and offers to hire you, gives you a few hundred in cash, then insists on picking out and buying your clothes and your meals—how would that make you feel?”
“Pretty good, actually,” she said.
Dipper sighed. “I think if I were a girl and some guy did all that, I’d feel like a whore.” “Whoa!”
The car swerved all over the road, fishtailing, and for a moment Dipper thought they were about to spin out and crash. But Pacifica got it under control, turned under the old mine railroad bridge, and then braked and hauled the car over onto the shoulder. She turned a furious face toward him. “Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that to me!”
“I didn’t mean you!” Dipper said. “I was just trying to—”
“Shut up. Don’t talk to me until we’re home.”
Less than half an hour later, they were. Pacifica parked the pink convertible in the garage. Dipper got out, went around, and opened the door for her. “I didn’t mean—”
“Not right now,” she said, no longer sounding angry, but terribly stressed. “Get your work clothes.”
She popped the trunk and he fished out the bags and his boots. She waited for him, closed the garage door with her remote, and they went in through the front door. In what must once have been a broom closet, Pacifica checked out an array of monitors on the walls. “No intruders,” she said. “There never are.”
At the foot of the stairs he said, “I’m going to the guest room and change out of these clothes. Meet you—”
“My house,” she said. “My rules. I’m going with you. I’ve seen guys in their underpants before.”
“I guess I deserve that.”
She shook her head. “When I get scared, I get bitchy. But that word you said—don’t use it tonight. When we, you know, summon the ghost. Maybe it’s something about the ghost, about how she sort of got in my head out at the pond. When you said that, it ripped right through me.”
“I won’t say it again,” he said.
So they went up to the spare bedroom—the ghost had apparently not disturbed it, everything was in place, and the bed still had not been slept in. Dipper asked, “Should I hang up these clothes, or—”
“They’re yours, I gave them to you. Oh, you mean right now. Closet’s right there, and there are hangers in it.” She sat at the small desk. “Go ahead, change.”
“All right.” He removed and carefully hung up the blazer, then the shirt. He kept his undershirt on. He sat on the edge of the bed to remove the shoes—really comfortable, and light as air—and then took off the socks and trousers. He was wearing gray boxers, so he really shouldn’t feel any more self-conscious than his gruncle Stanley, who rarely wore anything else around the house.
Pacifica had come up so silently that it startled him to turn and see her next to him, holding out the coveralls. “Uh—thanks,” he said, taking them from her.
He stepped into the legs and shrugged into the sleeves, and before he could start with the zipper, Pacifica leaned forward and said, “Let me help.”
She reached between his legs and found the tab, way back there. “It really does go all the way down,” she said. She tugged, it, zipping it along. Her hand brushed his balls and as she started up the front—
“Oh, I see you do like me a lot,” she said, giving him a naughty grin. “I may have to stuff this in so I won’t circumcise you.”
“I’m already, uh—Jewish dad, you know. Sort of mandatory.”
“Interesting,” she said. She left the zipper at less than half mast and leaned into him. Her right hand reached down to stroke the bulge. “I know, keep it business. But damn, Dipper, we like each other. Let’s find a way to come to terms. With our feelings, I mean.”
“As soon as this is over,” he said. “Uh, if you keep touching me—”
She sighed and zipped him the rest of the way. “What now?”
“Now I go draw the circle,” he said. “Then we wait for midnight.”
“We wait downstairs,” she told him.
“Sure,” he said, thinking that rooms with beds in them might give him distracting ideas, and maybe she was feeling the same way.
Because the valley’s electric grid often went down in winters, Pacifica kept a few battery-powered lanterns in closets both upstairs and down. She got one of these and Dipper went into the haunted room, switched it on, set it on the floor, and very carefully chalked a double circle, an eight-foot one inside a ten-foot one. This time he used the strongest cabalistic symbols he’d ever read about in the space between the circles.
“That reminds me of the Bill Cipher thing,” Pacifica said from the doorway.
“When we move inside it, it’s really important not to smudge the lines,” Dipper told her. “There. That should help us if anything can.”
They left the room and locked the door. “Nearly ten,” Pacifica said. “Let’s have our salads.”
“You go down and toss them, all right?” Dipper said. “I have one piece of research I’m going to do. I’ll be down in ten minutes tops, I promise.”
She pulled him to her and kissed his cheek. “I’ll wait eleven minutes, and then I’m coming after you.”
As soon as she left, Dipper called Stanford. “I have a situation here,” he told the old man. “It’s about what you wrote in one of the Journals. ‘Never have sex with a ghost.’”
Stanford sounded alarmed. “Oh, great heavens. You haven’t conjured a succubus, have you? If it’s that kind of spirit, she’ll enslave you, steal your will, drain your—”
Dipper cut him short: “No, it seems to be a Category Ten revenge ghost. But it’s female, and it’s expressing, uh, carnal desires.”
“Tell me about it,” Stanford said.
“Real quickly,” Dipper replied. He gave a short but full account of what they knew.
“Lina Findlestone,” Stanford said. “I never ran across the name. But from what you and Miss Northwest have learned, I’d guess she came from one of those repressive 19^th century families. Strongly patriarchal, domineering father or grandfather, resentful and suspicious of female desires—especially among the young. Yes, I can see how a young lady whose life ended suddenly as her womanly nature was just blooming might fail to make the transition to the light and linger on Earth as a ghost seeking fulfilment.”
“Only I can’t, uh, fulfil her,” Dipper said.
“Well, that would be difficult, since she couldn’t manifest an actual body—just the semblance of one. When a ghost appears to lift something, the lifting is done by psychic power, telekinesis, and the arm is only a wispy manifestation. So direct interc—interaction wouldn’t be real. Perhaps instead of that idea, you could use your tongue.”
“What?” Dipper almost shouted.
“Talk her around,” his great-uncle clarified. “Help her understand that she’s no longer in the world of the living. I’m confident you can do it.”
“What if she wanted to, uh, have sex with me?”
“That would be extraordinarily dangerous. While you might reach satisfaction, without a real physical body with nerves and glands et cetera, she couldn’t. She might fly into a rage, perhaps even drag you into the Beyond with her. It would be catastrophic.”
“I’ll try something else,” Dipper said.
God only knew what, though.

3
At eleven-fifty, Pacifica said nervously, “It’s the witching hour.”
“Nearly,” he said. “Well—let’s do it.”
They had been sitting in the parlor listening to music and trying, but failing, to chat casually about the old days. Pacifica seemed as if her nerves were as tight as an overly-taut violin string.
The two of them walked to the second floor and held hands as they approached the haunted room. They waited halfway down the hall, watching the door, waiting.
And inside the room—
Lina had briefly felt a hint of warmth, something she had not done for a hundred years. More. In a fleeting moment, she had sensed without clearly seeing the girl and the boy. The girl was trying to open her mind, and Lina did her best to communicate with her. For a few seconds Lina she had—touched her? No, Lina was still trapped in the bedroom. Her, well, not soul, but her projection, possibly, had flowed into Pacifica’s mind. For Lina that brilliant moment of experiencing reality was like a firework in an unlighted diamond mine a mile deep.
Warmth. Light. A nature that could understand craving, that had known the terror of a controlling man. In those few seconds, Lina had seen, not through her eyes, but through Pacifica’s, a distorted and unstable vision of the grassy spot and the pond and near her—Eddie? It was a boy. Eddie? He wore strange clothing. Could it be Eddie?
Oh, she wanted it to be. Perhaps, if this girl could return to the prison room, if Lina could keep free of the enveloping, evil, slimy darkness that old Jeremiah had left behind—perhaps she could make someone understand.
She hoped she could.
She hoped the boy would be there soon.
The dead center of the night arrived, and power that she did not know how to control surged into her, as it did every night, though she could no longer distinguish any period of time and such transient bursts of strength flowed one into the other, streaks of pale fire in the midst of eternal night.
Lina’s power flared out, and the locks gave and the door flew open—
They approached and came in, girl and boy. Lina tried to manifest visibly.
Already the darkness that lined the walls reached tendrils for her, sought to envelope and restrain her, to coat her nude body with blackness and despair.
She could not avoid them. Whenever she tried to flee the room, they dragged her back. She could not run.
But could she--?
Perhaps.
Lina needed—
A place to hide.
The girl.
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