Chapter Text
"Got your gloves, Mabel?" Wendy asked, the golf cart cruising along at a leisurely pace. The girls had work to do, but neither was in all the big of a hurry.
"Check." Mabel wiggled her glove covered fingers.
"Good boots?"
"Check." Mabel plonked one of her heavy booted feet up on the dash of the golf cart, followed by the other. "And check."
"Sleeves?"
"Boosh." Mabel's sleeve covered arms came next. It was another warm day in Gravity Falls, but had yet to hit sweltering levels. Hopefully, it was going to stay that way.
If it did, it was probably a good thing Mabel and Wendy had a task of their own that took Mabel away from Dipper during. Sweet sugar, no boy should look that good while all hot, sweaty, and gross. Mabel would have tried her hardest, for Dipper's sake, but there was no way she would have been able to prevent herself from staring.
It was more than a little weird now. Yes, Mabel didn't have to hide her thoughts, and her only somewhat creepy staring at her brother, but at the same time she had to hide it. Oh, sure, she didn't have to conceal it from Dipper, but she had to make sure she did from everyone else.
Luckily for her, Mabel had always been known for her overly affectionate nature. Every single person they had befriended knew that, while in Mabel's presence, you were at risk of an unwarranted hug or touch of some kind. Had her ignoring of personal space gotten her in trouble a few times? Yes, but that was beside the point.
More to the point, thanks to this little aspect of her personality, nobody batted an eye when Mabel would spontaneously throw her arms around Dipper in an embrace nobody noticed was a little too long, a little too tight, to be for somebody just her brother.
Other gestures had to be hidden, buried deeper than the earth's core. Such as the way Mabel embraced Dipper from behind and, while nobody else could see her do it, plant a kiss to the back of his neck. He'd turned the most adorable shade of red when she did that the other day.
Dipper was her boyfriend, and she was his girlfriend. Mabel absolutely loved how the words rolled off her mental tongue. Much like her actions the night she confessed to him, the words just sounded… right.
Something else that surprised Mabel was that nothing had really changed. Yes, she and Dipper were a couple, but life carried on as it always did. The world kept spinning, nobody fell into the sky, dogs still barked. The only thing that did change? The twins alternated who's bed they were sharing since neither felt like sleeping alone after that first night. This, and Mabel unleashed her full arsenal of romantic gestures in private.
Mabel couldn't help but wonder if this was what perfection looked like…
"Ground control to Mabel." Wendy snapped her fingers in Mabel's face, snapping the younger girl out of her thoughts. "Can anyone read me?"
"Captain Mabel, here." Mabel beeped, throwing in a few static noises for extra oomph. "Signals breaking up, come again?"
Wendy was full on laughing now while she climbed out of the golf cart. "Ahh… I've missed you dorks."
"Like you're one to talk, miss Queen of the Dorks." Mabel giggled mischievously.
"Hey!" Wendy glared daggers at Mabel, her face twisted in a deathly serious expression. Although, it was sort of ruined with her lips struggling to hold a smile back. "We agreed to never speak of that in public."
"Aww come on." Mabel followed the redhead out of the cart toward their goal. "I think it's great. Plus, it's always fun seeing Dip get knocked flat on his butt while he plays Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons."
"It's a fun game, a lot more fun than I thought it'd be." Wendy confessed. "And it's somethin' we can all do together. That's always awesome."
"Don't think that's the only thing I noticed." Mabel said.
"Oh?"
"You get a bunch of his references, like, a lot more than you used to."
"So?"
"Has somebody been studying nerd culture?"
"Okay." Wendy sighed, a faint flush the color of her hair gracing her neck. "I am going to tell you this in confidence, woman to woman, okay?"
"Okay!" Mabel was never one to turn down juicy gossip, even if she couldn't spread it.
"Your brother talks about all kinds of stuff all the time, and I kinda… feel stupid when I don't know what he talking." Wendy explained. "I mean… you guys are like, some of my best buds. So, yes, I've been looking some stuff up."
"You really are the coolest!" Mabel grinned. "Ice ice Wendy!"
"Don't think your brother had noticed, though."
"Nope, he's a little dense." Mabel said, remembering the night of her confession yet again. She remembered that night quite a bit. It was a happy memory, after all.
"Okay." Wendy's voice turned serious, actual serious. "Back to business!"
"To business!" Mabel deflated the tiniest bit when Wendy shot her a look.
"I've been working on this for a bit off and on." Wendy retrieved a chainsaw from behind the seats of the golf cart. "Probably won't need this, but I figured we'd bring it along anyway."
"For the zombies?"
"No." Wendy rolled her eyes before pulling off a woodcutting axe from where it was tied to the side of the vehicle. "This is for the zombies."
"Oooh!"
"Anyway." Wendy motioned to the path that had been cut through the woods. They'd followed it part of the way until the foliage became too dense to drive the golf cart through. "I've cut most of the brush and smaller limbs free, but we need to get it off the road and into piles. We want to be able to see into the woods a bit, though, so spread the piles out and don't make them too big."
"Roger." Mabel flashed a thumbs up and, alongside Wendy, got to work.
In no time flat, Mabel already understood why Wendy wanted to make sure she was wearing the proper outfit. Even with the heavy gloves, Mabel could feel the sharp points of pine needles and other pieces of wood sticking into her hands. Wait… were these pine trees? Maybe… cedar? Cedar had needles too, didn't they?
Bleh… woodcraft was Wendy's territory, not Mabel's. Far as the female Pines twin was concerned, if it had bark and looked vaguely… woody, a tree was a tree.
They worked their way down the path clearing limbs and smaller logs. All of the larger pieces of wood were already taken care of some other day. As they cleared more of the path, they brought the gold cart up behind them.
It was tiring work, and the heat was building up, but Mabel didn't mind. It felt good to be active and in the great outdoors with the fresh air, something she never learned to truly appreciate until she and her brother came to Gravity Falls.
What Mabel appreciated more than the great outdoors, was the company. She hadn't understood just how much she'd missed Wendy, too. Mabel barely even noticed she was working as hard as she was, too distracted she was by talking to the redhead while they went about their business. In fact, one could say Mabel was having a blast cleaning up forest debris.
At least until Mabel asked about Wendy's love life since the previous summer.
That was when things got… interesting.
"Well… there is this guy…" Wendy had the faintest wisp of a smile, but this disintegrated upon noticing what she'd said, and to whom.
"Oh, my gosh!" Mabel squealed, her hands coming up to slap against her cheeks. An action she regretted immensely. She'd forgotten about the sticky sap, pine needles, and assorted tree residue that had been coating her gloves. A coating she'd just transferred to her face. "Bleh!"
Wendy didn't miss the opportunity to laugh at Mabel's expense. In fact, she embraced it with both hands and then some.
Prying her gloves off her face, Mabel tried to wipe some of the gunk off with her sleeve, but this only succeeded in making the mess worse, in addition to spreading the joy of it to her clothes.
"Stupid sap…" Mabel grumbled before her face lit back up. "Come on, Wendy! Give me details, here!"
"Well… I… umm…"
"Details!" Mabel screeched, rushing to Wendy. "Who is he? What's he like? What do you like about him?"
"Whoa!" Wendy's hands game up to hold Mabel back, or at least she did partially. Her gloves were just as messy as Mabel's but the redhead put her slightly cleaner wrists on Mabel's shoulders to hold the shorter girl back. "Slow down. It's nothing."
"Nothing my foot!" Mabel grinned. "Wendy, we've been coming here for years, and not once have you had a boyfriend, not since that whole Robbie fiasco. And I know for a fact that you're not hung up on him. And you've never expressed interest in anyone!"
"That's because… no, we are not talking about this." Wendy caught herself mid slip-up, her mouth clamping shut with a click of her teeth.
"Aww, come on!" Mabel pouted. "Isn't this part of what girl friends are for? To talk about boys?"
"It's…"
"Besides, you and this mystery guy aren't together, are you? Maybe Mabel the Matchmaker can give you a little help?"
"No way!"
"But…"
"I said, no!" Wendy hadn't meant to sound that harsh and mean, her tone quickly shifted to one much softer. "Sorry, didn't mean to yell at you. It's just something real personal, and I don't think you'll be able to help much."
"Can you at least tell me something about him?" Mabel knew cracking Wendy was like cracking a diamond with your bare hands. Smash and yell all you want, it was going to go nowhere. Maybe with a little more… finesse, she could get some information. "I mean, he's caught your eye, he must be something."
A younger Mabel would have then taken this information, and tried gathering more from other sources, and formulated a plan to pair Wendy and this unknown boy up. Mabel was no longer that girl. Much like her brother, she'd done some growing up, too.
Besides, no means no, and Wendy had made her no clear. Mabel would still like to help, but if Wendy didn't want it, Mabel couldn't forcer her to accept it.
Didn't make a dent in the terrible force that was Mabel's curiosity, though.
"Oh, he's something, alright." There was that smile again, the same one Wendy hid so fast a second ago.
"Tell me about him?" Mabel asked again, much gentler this time.
"I've known him for a while, but it feels like far longer than that." Wendy said, retrieving a water bottle from the golf cart in the process. Taking a swig from the drink she continued. "So many boys take one look at me and see the freaky or weird lumberjack girl. If not that, then it's some version of 'hot redhead'."
"To be fair…" Mabel said slowly. "You pretty much are a hot redhead. But he doesn't look at you like that, does he?"
"No." Wendy was full on beaming now, her eyes on Mabel, but her thoughts obviously elsewhere. "It's like he looks at me and sees me as… as…"
"Beautiful?"
"Yeah, that."
"Aww…" Not even the coldest hearted person, something Mabel was as far from as one could get, could deny that look on Wendy's face was anything but adorable. "Every girl should be looked at like that."
"He's a bit dorky at times, but he's got a great heart, and loyalty to a fault. He's funny, and laughs at my horrible jokes. Yeah, he can be a little stupid and makes bad decisions but his heart is usually in the right place. Man… saying this all out loud sounds like some bad cliché…"
"Clichés got that way for a reason." Mabel added. "But, question of the century. Why not ask him out?"
"No. Noooo… bad idea." Wendy waved her arms. "Very bad."
"But why?"
"Just trust me. There are… reasons. Maybe in the future some time, but right now it would be a bad idea."
Hmm… Mabel rather liked the sound of this guy. If Mabel wasn't with Dipper, and Wendy wasn't carrying a torch herself, Mabel might have even been interested, but she wasn't. She had far better already at home. If Prince Charming here and Wendy got together, Mabel would bless the heck out of the relationship.
While Mabel had no intentions of forcing the relationship, or meddling, but that didn't mean she couldn't observe and offer advice to Wendy. If would be a breaking of the close girl friend code if she didn't.
First, she needed to learn Mr. Perfect's identity… but until then, she listened to Wendy go on and on about this boy she had eyes for.