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They have the RV for one more night before Stan puts it back in storage. At least, so he says.
Stan’s victims have wreaked more than just havoc among the Shack — they’ve wreaked the temper of a man too old for his own games. They’re ultimately the ones that feel the heat of it, an endless tirade of watered-down curses and a snide wisecrack that “he’s seen worse.”
A weekend ‘Revenge Trip’ that’s evoked a revenge trip out of them, it comes complete with its own spray-painted headache and enough yarn to supplement Mabel’s hobby for months.
He’s too exhausted to deal with it. Stan shrugs out some sort of defeated remark before collapsing into the living room chair for the night.
It’s only after his snores fill the house that Dipper slips out of it.
The screen door shudders and slams behind him a little harder than he intends it to, a boom loud enough to make him flinch, but apparently not enough to send Stan rushing out to investigate. It takes Dipper three yanks against the handle of the RV for him to realize that for all his complaining, Stan wasn’t exhausted enough to not lock it.
It takes him ten seconds to make a decision. It takes him twelve to scale up the side of the vehicle.
The roof of the camper isn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, but it’s a step up from the ground, and a luxury compared to being gnawed on by wolves. The air out here’s cooler, crisper. The few stars he catches are brighter than the glow-in-the-dark ones Mabel’s stuck to their ceiling. It’s a welcome change of scenery.
His mind’s been wandering too far to be caged beneath the attic’s roof tonight.
When he rubs his fingers together hard enough, he can still feel the thin layer of dirt coating them. There’s a box of pictures buried deep beneath one of these trees, Dipper can’t remember which — a good thing, maybe, so he won’t go digging up every single one of them. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s fumbled around in the dark.
‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is the only source of consolation that will do him any good at this point.
The road trip’s done more than just put a few things in perspective. It aches when he thinks about it.
Three days. Three whole days he went without thinking about Wendy once, yet it’s the moment back on the Shack’s soil that the thoughts are back with a vengeance. They’ll put knots in his stomach, but can’t do anything to erase what he knew for absolute truth.
Yes. He moved past her. He had to, with all that’s happened with the convenience store. The fair.
He had to after that afternoon in the woods, where he laid his beating heart on the ground for her to see.
He had to — and he did.
But this road trip’s thrown everything into question. What happened this weekend? Chatting up several different girls fully knowing it would come back to bite him? He feels slimy just thinking about it, the fact that he’d even told Stan it wasn’t a good idea, then still followed through with it.
This wasn’t the way to fix things. He’d smother the flames however he needed to, moving forward…but it eats him alive knowing he’d toyed with a few hearts in the process. He can’t take that back. These things fester so much easier when you’re alone, the lingering wonder of when all of this had started to feel so heavy…
Below him, the door to the Mystery Shack gives a high whine that pulls him back to the present.
Angling his head in the direction of it, he raises an eyebrow.
Nothing. Putting his thoughts on pause, Dipper listens for more of it. And sure enough, the slow, deliberate squeak of the hinges being drawn out tells him they’re trying to be sneaky.
Curiosity gets the better of him.
Rolling just as stealthily onto his side sit up, he walks on his knees to the edge of the roof. Over the side, Dipper spies the door he came out of — still closed, still still, even as the metallic sounds start up again, echoing out, and detectably closer to him. He swears he feels the RV rock just slightly.
Then nothing.
Puzzled, he leans over the rails to scan the side of the RV. ‘Grunkle Stan…?’
“BOO!”
And before he can register the shriek rings out behind him, he registers that it’s frightening enough to lurch his body dangerously close over the edge. Like it plays out in slow motion, the air leaves his gut when he topples too far. Panicked, he claws for a hold of the safety bars back beyond his reach, and crapcrapcrap,he’sfalling—
Dipper braces himself for the drop that never comes.
From seemingly nowhere, a hand snap to the band of his shorts. In a blink, another links beneath his arm as an abrupt stop to his fall. Suspended between life and death itself, he dangles like a rag doll against the side of the RV.
“Whoa-whoa, hey! I didn’t mean to go all Humpty Dumpty on you.”
Oh.
Without so much as breaking a sweat, Mabel pulls him effortlessly back to the safety of the rail guards, and he’ll scramble for a hold of them the second he can. Scurrying to the very middle of the roof, he dives back under his blanket.
Even safe and sound on the most stable part of the roof, his legs tremble with newfound phobia. The sky tram instilled more than just a healthy fear of heights.
“Mabel, are you trying to kill me?!” he blurts, clutching a hand to his chest. Beneath it, he feels his heart thundering, rushes of blood that leave him a little more lightheaded with every beat. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t think that through!” she says, waving her hands wildly in apology and cracking a nervous grin. “I just saw you come out here a while ago.”
When the terror passes, Dipper exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and slumps back against his pillow. Bringing an arm over his eyes, he makes the mindless attempt to try and block it all out again.
Seconds tick by. It’s the chirps of the crickets before it’s the sound of the roof shifting with her weight, and Mabel seats herself against one of the guard rails.
“Whatcha doin’ out here anyway?”
“…Stargazing.”
Not his smartest answer.
His arm slips off his eyes as if to sell it to her, but it’s as he does that he recalls how cloudy it is tonight. The stars pepper the sky much more radiantly in the lightless forests, even if the patches of clouds masked quite a few of them.
So barely stargazing. Dipper cringes at how fake it must sound.
“We uh…didn’t really get a chance to on the road trip.”
“Pfft, well I didn’t even get my invite.”
The roof creaks as it shifts with her. In his peripheral, Dipper sees her crawling over. She settles in to lie opposite beside him, her flats coming up just past his waist. Wordless, he lifts the blanket covering him to haphazardly throw half of it over her too.
Stargazing (well, cloudgazing) hadn’t been on the agenda — for this trip, or even for now — but the indulgence of it is far more appealing as a late afterthought. To feel the youth he often forgets he has.
“Well, it’s a good thing they’re just as pretty from the Shack, huh?” Mabel murmurs from the other side.
He nods, fully knowing she won’t see it. They really are.
It’s the epitome of peace he’s felt in a long time.
The world’s beautiful when it’s dark. There’s so much hidden, and somehow, everything feels lighter. The forest buzzes to life with the nocturnal, and for as calming as it should be, Dipper finds himself becoming more unsettled as the seconds pass.
Mabel hums like everything’s fine — giggles when something lands on her nose that makes her sneeze. Cottonwood puffs or lady bugs either way, she’s happy, her delight as genuine as the smile he imagines she’s wearing.
It’s a sincerity that softens up his insides — then again, that might just be the endless churn in his stomach.
But there’s something honest about how this night has started to play out, and the more it does, the more compelled he feels to talk it over. Mabel’s self-made matchmaking status, however absurd, has proven to hold some ground.
Without thinking it over any longer, he stirs their silence.
“Hey Mabel?”
“Mhm?”
“Do you think…”
Then pauses. Backtracks. Whatever train of thought he’d gone into this with derails just as quickly, reluctance that steals whatever words he’d been forming.
No. This was a bad idea.
“…Actually, never mind.”
“What is it?” she presses, nudging his side with her knee. He can hear the smile in her voice. “C’mon, tell me.”
“Nah, it’s nothing. Forget it.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Like really nothing.”
“Pleeease?”
He bites his lip. She’d pester him all night at this rate (quite literally all night — she’d kept him up well past four in the morning from her slumber party), but this couldn’t sit with him forever. He’s a little more healed with those pictures and notes out of his possession, but it does so little to temper the words still resting on his tongue.
Maybe she’d understand this time. He’ll let the words slip out before he has the chance to change his mind.
“...Do you think I’ll end up alone?”
It’s a few seconds of silence that come between them, and the emptiness already seeps into his chest. He’s already dreading it: the exasperated sigh, the eye rolls, the moaning of how sick she is of hearing about it. How he needs to get over this.
He’s already regretting opening his mouth, fully expecting her to lecture him.
But she doesn’t.
From the corner of his vision, Dipper sees her rise up to stare him down. Her voice is more sympathetic than he expects it to be, no hint of the biting tone it carried when she’d first found the box under his bed.
You’re always someone a little different in the dark, he supposes.
“…Dipper, I thought you said you moved past Wendy. What’s gotten into you?”
“It’s not about Wendy anymore.”
Only half a lie. For as many times as he’s told himself that he’s come to terms with this, there are still the impulses he can’t fight where she pops into his head. It’s still a grieving process, in the quieter moments.
Dipper joins her to sit up too, circling his arms around his knees and resting his chin atop it. But he doesn’t look at her.
“At least…I don’t think it is.”
“Then why are you still thinking about this?”
She poses it like it’s so easy to answer.
Yet…
‘No one could like me’ flits through his mind unprovoked, and it’ll tighten his throat as it does.
They always manifest like this.
It’s an impulse that shoots right through him. And that conviction comes with its own demons, and they came long before this summer.
But the form it takes in his head is too heavy to voice out loud. Not like this, not tonight. Opting for keeping their tone light, he waters down the thought when he casts his gaze upward, keen on not looking her in the eye.
“This whole weekend’s just kind of been an eye opener, y’know?” he says, exposed. “All that’s been proven to me is that I can’t talk to girls without being something I’m not. And I can’t even do that for more than a few hours.”
Never mind a lifetime. Dipper tightens his grip on the blanket.
“And I know it won’t be Wendy. It won’t be Emma Sue or Candy either…” he trails off, glancing the smudged phone numbers on his arms, “…but who’s to say that it won’t be anyone?”
She doesn’t say anything, at first. Even if she never does, in its own feat, he feels a little better just getting it off his chest.
He was destined for better. Deep down, he knows that.
When he finally looks Mabel’s way, he finds that hard pressed line in her mouth. Finds her eyebrows knit in sympathy, seemingly at a loss for words at the outpour. But he knew that look, the one she always wore when she weighed over her words very, very carefully.
Her contemplative gaze softens when something about it clicks with her, and she leans back to plant both her hands against the roof.
“Yeah alright, you’re not some lady’s man. So what?” Mabel counters, keeping her gaze towards the treetops. “You don’t have to be. You’re a lot of other things.”
He shrugs, unconvinced. “…Like?”
“…You’re really gonna make me spell them out, huh?”
She asks it rhetorically, but. Yes he is. If he’s blind to his own redeeming qualities, it’s no more obvious than right this moment. Because there are a handful of reasons he’s laying out here tonight, and it’s her guess to pick and choose why that is.
Mabel has her answer either way. Shooting back up to sit criss-cross, Mabel raises her hand in front of him, counting his graces one by one.
“Well for starters, you’re really bright. Like the smartest person I know,” she begins, earnest. He can feel her eyes on him. “Have you seen yourself solve a math problem? Like at the fair, when you drew all those squigglies and diagrams on the popcorn popper? That was so cool!”
Somewhere deep inside, he feels something, and he figures that’s a start. Alright. He’ll give her that.
Finger number two.
“Call me biased — and let’s be real, super biased — but you’re all-around wonderful. I really mean that.”
That one catches him a little more off guard. The honesty of it. If she’s using it as a catch-all just to end this conversation, it’s working, but he’ll raise his head at her kind words, too drawn by the way she says it. As hyperbolic as her compliments can get, the amount of compassion Mabel funnels into it tells him she doesn’t mean it disingenuously.
“You made Candy a whole pamphlet just to say sorry. That was the sweetest thing ever. Heck, I probably got cavities just watching it!” she gushes, winking. Then, pointing a finger gun at him, “and hey: girls dig boys with big hearts. Take it from me.”
Mabel punctuates her pep talk with the biggest, widest smile possible. Infectious as they are, it’ll reach him without fail, and he’ll mirror it back to her. It comes nowhere close to the radiance of hers, but it’s enough to let her know he’s touched at the exuberance.
His sister’s mission to hold a tally disintegrates when she lets her hand fall away, folding them both in her lap.
“…So I guess what I’m trying to say is…don’t try to be whatever it is Grunkle Stan was trying to make you into. Look how that turned out, amirite? Sticky situation, if you ask me.”
It pulls a chuckle out of him, and her too. Darlene really was a nightmare.
His laughter wavers, and so will hers, but even then, he can still hear it ringing. When Mabel looks at him again, there are stars in her eyes, as if she plucked them right out of the sky herself.
“You’re the best bro I’ve got. You’re amazing, just how you are right now. So try an’ just be that, okay?”
‘Bright…and wonderful.’
It seems so simple. So much simpler than what he made it into.
“Yeah…”
And there’s a beauty to the simplicity of it. Dipper feels the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Her sudden flood of admiration truly makes him realize how much he’s not used to this.
Still trying to grasp at her heartfelt sentiment, Dipper brings a hand to clamp over his other arm. She won’t see the blush as it fills his cheeks, so it’s only in this moment he’ll let himself be bashful.
“…Thanks Mabel.”
“No problem-o! I am world’s greatest matchmaker after all!” she chirps, grinning. In the dark, she fumbles for some square of his blanket, unannouncedly licking it several times before grabbing for his arm. “Now come here and let me get all these numbers off. You’re not gonna get any new honeys with your exes literally written all over you.”
And their tender moment will be lost then and there. Horrified, Dipper recoils against her touch, angling his arm up and out of her reach, but it takes everything in him not to smile.
“Eww, Mabel, that’s gross!”
“What? It’s just spit!”
“That’s my blanket!”
“Oh, so you’ll go weeks without a shower, but this is where you draw the line? You’re not foolin’ anyone!”
“You’re so nasty—”
“—and you’re gonna get ink poisoning, so sit still!” she commands, yanking him closer. “Give me five minutes. I’ll fix you up.”
Mabel’s five minutes turns to fifteen. Fifteen to an hour, an hour to three. There’s an awful lot to do on camper roofs, Dipper finds, but more than enough to bury the ill thoughts for good. Between mimicking the owls and Truth or Dare or Don’t, time loses the both them as they lay spread out beneath the nighttime sky.
When sleepy notions sink in their bones, it’s Dipper who yawns first at the end of the night. But it’s before he drifts that Mabel suddenly lets loose a small screech that keeps the drowsiness at bay. Her glee is apparent when she acknowledges his namesake’s constellation, a happenstance she forces him to sit up for when she points to it.
They waited out just long enough for the clouds to scatter.
For several minutes longer, they’ll sit side by side, arms around shoulders with his blanket draped over them both. Leaning against one another, they watch the sky as it flickers, a brilliant collection of specks against an ocean of navy and grey.
“Yeah, just like that...” Mabel whispers all of a sudden, squeezing his shoulder, “bright and wonderful.”