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Mabel noticed them first.
A tall, thin guy with dark hair, wearing a dark trench coat, following a guy with green skin around. They appeared to be arguing and Mabel nudged Dipper’s arm until he looked up from his journal. “Dipper.”
“Hm.”
“Dipper!” Mabel reached out and grabbed his chin, physically directing his attention. “Does he look like an alien to you?”
That got his attention. “What?”
“There,” she jerked her own chin towards the two, then looked back at her brother. “Not just me seeing them, right?” Mabel frowned and glanced again. “C’mon Dipper, we need to go talk to them.” She grabbed his hand and started jogging through the slightly crowded sidewalk.
Before Dipper could argue, they were walking just behind the two that Mabel had spotted.
It took a few minutes but the man with the dark hair noticed them. “Uh,” he started walking sideways so that he could watch them. “Hi?”
“So…” Mabel gestured at the one with green skin. “Is he an alien?”
“Unbelievable,” the man with the dark hair made a face. “Unbelievable. The moment,” he turned back to the green-skinned one. “The moment I stop wanting you in a tube for government experimentation, people start realizing you’re not human.” He turned back to the twins. “So…How about we not discuss this on the crowded sidewalk of the town we’re visiting?”
The green skinned one bared his teeth and hissed quietly at his walking partner. “Must we discuss it at all?”
“Yeah, I need to know they’re not going to report you,” he sighed. “How creepy on a scale of one to ten would it be to ask you two to turn into that alley and talk with us about it?”
“Creepy to a maximum but I think it needs to happen,” Mabel grinned at him. “And I might have to call my grunkle.”
“Cool. Fantastic.” The man turned and walked into the alley, dragging his companion along.
Away from the slightly crowded sidewalk, it seemed easier to breathe. Dipper fidgeted slightly, looking up both of the older guys. “So this is my sister Mabel and she doesn’t have a filter on what she says sometimes.” He eyed the green guy. “Please don’t kill us.”
“Who are you?” the green one peered at him, eyes narrowed. Except for the skin color and the lack of ears and a defined nose, he did almost look human. The strange backpack he wore was confusing but could pass as something homemade. “Mabel and who?” his hands clenched and Dipper added a lack of fingers to the list of non-human traits.
“Dipper,” he raised a nervous hand. “I’m Dipper Pines.”
“I’m Dib,” the man wearing the trench coat sighed and put a hand on his face. “it figures. We go someplace new, away from the idiots we live around, and of course someone realizes you’re not human. Especially since I stopped wanting you- Please tell me you guys aren’t going to tell someone.”
“Well, that would be a terrible idea considering our great-uncles are sort of not on good terms with the FBI,” Dipper rolled his eyes, unable to stop himself.
“…Wait, what?” Dib frowned and looked at him closer, pushing his glasses back up his nose and leaning down slightly. “What do you mean, ‘not on good terms’? What did your great-uncles do? Do I even want to know, why am I asking this, how did this become my life?” he pushed his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Okay, so you can tell he’s an alien.” He paused, turning to the green guy. “Didn’t you say something about a mild effect of some sort?”
“Oh, yes,” green guy glared at him. “Anyone not already aware is unable to tell that I’m not human. Mild compulsion aura, keeps people from questioning things.” He grinned suddenly. “Worked on our fifth-grade class.”
“…I hate you sometimes,” Dib turned back to Dipper. “His name is Zim, by the way. Is there anything that would have happened to you to have you already be aware?”
“We go to Gravity Falls every summer,” Mabel grinned at him.
Dipper shuffled and pulled his journal out from where he’d tucked it when Mabel had taken off after Dib and Zim. “Here, I’m going to write down time and date and names. Can we keep in contact with you?” he groaned. “Oh, that sounds weird.”
“Sure?” Dib kneeled down and looked at his journal as he flipped through it, trying to find a clean page. “What is Gravity Falls?”
“A town in Oregon,” Dipper stuck his pen in his teeth, focusing on the book in front of him. “We go there every summer and- HEY!”
Zim had lunged forward and snagged the book out of his hands, nearly growling at one of the pages as he looked at it, flipping through the surrounding ones. “Give us your contact information,” he hissed the words out. “Or I will bring down the wrath of an Irken soldier upon your tiny heads.” He jammed the book back under Dipper’s nose, stabbing a sharp finger at the photo he’d apparently seen as the teenager was paging through his journal. “I need to know why those symbols are in your little town.”
“Oh,” Dipper looked at the photo, then up at Zim. “That’s a ship that crashed into Gravity Falls a couple thousand years ago, I think. My great-uncle discovered it, wrote about it in his journal. It nearly got him killed one time.”
“Yes,” Zim stabbed at the photo again. “It would do that since it is a warship belonging to the greatest enemies of the Irken empire.”
“…I think you might need to talk to our grunkles,” Mabel looked up at Zim and smiled. “You guys should go to Gravity Falls at some point in time. Just…Bring bug spray and don’t go too far into the woods. Stay on the path. Gravity Falls is a weird place but it’s awesome!” she reached into her bag and pulled out a business card. “They own and operate a place called the Mystery Shack. If you call ahead of time and arrange to get a personal tour of the area, they’ll show you some of the creepier stuff. If you wait and let us talk to them first, they might actually show you the things that would scare other people!”
“Huh,” Dib took the card, then turned it over and handed it to Dipper. “Here. Write your names and number and email here, I guess. Haven’t seen Zim react like that to something in a long time.” He waited until Dipper had, then took the card back and tucked it into his pocket. With that done, he took Dipper’s pen and wrote his own contact information in the journal, under which he wrote the date and time.
“We’re not going to tell,” Dipper shook his head. “It would put a lot of people we care about in danger and neither of us wants that.”
“Good,” Dib stood up and put a hand on Zim’s shoulder. “We should get going, we’re supposed to meet my sister somewhere.”
“We’re supposed to meet his boyfriend at the bus station,” Mabel grinned. “You guys should definitely call our Grunkles though. We can talk to them tonight and make sure they know to expect it.” She grabbed Dipper’s sleeve and started dragging him off, her grin growing even bigger at the way his face flushed red. “Bye Dib, bye Zim!”
Once they were on the street again, Dipper covered his face and began walking faster, his journal under his arm. “Mabel!”
“What?” she shrugged. “It’s the truth! Besides, he was clinging really close to Zim. I sense love in the air!”
“Mabel, they seemed barely able to be around each other without sniping,” Dipper groaned a little. “Do you really think they’re in love?”
“…Dipper,” Mabel made a face and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “For someone dating a guy, you know surprisingly little about it. Different types of romance,” she stuck her tongue out. “You don’t really interact with the community, so I guess you don’t really know…”
“What, and you do?”
“Well duh!” Mabel snorted. “I’m dating Pacifica. Of course I interact with the community. You stay home a lot and don’t go to any places like I do.”
“You’re a lot more outgoing than me,” Dipper tugged his bag off of his shoulder and shoved his journal into it. “…Is that bad? What if that actually upsets Norman, what if he-”
Mabel whipped around in front of him and put her hands on both of his shoulders, stopping him mid-step. “Dipper. Listen to me. Norman is all about the nerdy quiet life with you. He likes the quiet unless he’s really in the mood for a bunch of people and then his ability to deal with it drains, like, really fast. He’s like you. You’ll probably go on a bunch of dates that involve quietly spending time together. It’s cool, it works for you.”
“Well-”
“Nuh!” Mabel patted his cheeks, then held his head between her hands. “Your dates with him will be things like quiet walks in the woods together. He likes watching you get all excited about figuring something out. You’re both introverted dorks and that is okay.”
“…What do you and Pacifica do together on dates?” Dipper met his sister’s eyes.
“We go to the mall,” Mabel grinned. “We go to different stores and she likes buying me things and I like taking her to different little shops she won’t go into without me. She likes the fancy places and I like the ones that smell like old lady houses. Antique stores and thrift shops…She gets a little nervous but she ends up liking them.”
“Oh.” Dipper frowned a little, his hand twitching towards his journal again, like he wanted to take notes. “So it’s not necessarily normal to go on dinner dates and go to parties and stuff. Right. I should have…Should have realized.”
“You were just overthinking it,” Mabel patted the top of his head and went back to his side, slinging an arm over his shoulders. “It’s okay, Dipper. Just figure things out together. He’s crazy about you and you both like time together and you both like the quiet. The best dates for you might be alone in a room together with a laptop each and a steady wifi connection. Show each other things you find online that remind you of each other.”
“Oh.” Dipper looked as if a revelation had been had.
“See? Different types of romance, bro-bro. Your sister’s gotcha covered though!” Mabel grinned at him and they continued walking.