Chapter Text
When Stan had woken up in the morning, he thought it’d be the same as any other day. He did not expect to only get through half of the day before suddenly tumbling ass-first into a rip in the fabric of the universe. Maybe that was the whole surprise Mabel had been going on about.
Of course, he should’ve known that the day was going to be weird when he woke up to see Mabel staring at him from the dark corner of his room. It had only been red flags from there.
“Gah! Geez..." Stan grumbled as he took notice of the small silhouette in the corner, one hand gripping his blanket as a shield while the other went to his nightstand in search of his glasses. “Mabel? What the—”
Mabel bounced out of the corner, flicking the lights on as she did. Stan let out a small hiss as the bright light attacked his vision.
“Howdy, Grunkle Stan!” She said cheerfully, as if she hadn’t just been watching him sleep. “Do you know what day it is today?”
“The day I put locks on my doors?” Stan muttered, mainly to himself, as he put his glasses on.
“No, silly!” Mabel flounced over to his bed, swinging her arms like pendulums before bopping him on the nose. “Bwop!”
Stan sighed, too tired to even come back with a response to whatever Mabel was getting at. He really wasn’t in the mood for a guessing game, at least, not when he literally just woke up and didn’t even have coffee yet.
“Aww, c’mon! You’re not gonna guess again?” Mabel pouted, crossing her arms. “You’re no fun.”
“The three month anniversary of getting Waddles or something equally as st—”
“Nope!” Mabel cut him off, popping the ‘p’. “It’s Grunkle Day!”
Stan blinked and rubbed at his ears. He opened his mouth as he attempted to fabricate a response.
“Now, I know what you’re gonna say! ‘There’s no such thing as Grunkle Day, Mabel’, but I created it and now it is a thing, so there! Happy Grunkle Day!” Mabel exclaimed, throwing a handful of glitter around the room as she twirled.
“Uh, okay. Happy Grunkle Day or whatever.” Stan mumbled while he slipped on his loafers and stood up, taking satisfaction in the way his joints snapped and cracked as he stretched.
“Hey! That’s not a good attitude to have on Grunkle Day!”
“This is how I am every day, and I’m not gonna break my streak any time soon, kid.” Stan hesitated at the doorway. “But thanks for the fancy holiday.”
“Oh, this is only the beginning, Grunkle Stan! I’ve got a big surprise for you and it’s gonna blow your socks off!”
“Alright, kiddo.” Stan patted Mabel on the head before he made his way into the kitchen.
Dipper sat at the table, looking a little worse for wear with his signature hat and vest missing while his hair splayed in multiple directions. Stan glanced at him before deciding to make himself a cup of coffee. He’d sure as hell need it today if Mabel had anything to do with this new holiday of hers.
“I see you’ve heard about Grunkle Day then, huh?” Stan asked, gesturing towards the boy’s appearance with his empty coffee mug. “You look like you’ve been run over by a truck, yeesh.”
Dipper only nodded, eyes glazed over and unseeing as he idly poked at his cereal. Stan filled his mug with coffee and sat at the rickety wood table, taking a wary glance at Dipper before shrugging.
They sat in awkward silence, Stan occasionally taking a sip from his coffee as he scratched at his back. Dipper periodically itched at his head, and Stan watched as flakes dandruff drifted around like the snow in his overpriced snow globes. Yeesh, the kid had quite a dry scalp.
“You’re picking that up afterwards, got that?” Stan said, gesturing towards the mess of dandruff.
Dipper looked up at him, and his eyes looked haunted, as if Stan’s demand had brought up unwanted flashbacks.
“Did you know,” Dipper started off softly, like he was in a trance, “that you can buy twenty five pounds of glitter, no questions asked?”
Stan didn’t know how to respond to that. But he suddenly had a feeling that maybe it wasn’t dandruff that was falling out of Dipper’s hair.
“Well, I do know my fair share of buying bulk of questionable objects. Remember, I did get my hands on a pack of industrial sprinkles.” Stan jammed his thumb behind him, pointing at the empty box that was currently being shoved into a trash can by Soos. “It’s a good thing those sellers don’t ask questions, ‘cause I don’t have answers.”
Dipper blinked, and it was like life had come back to him. The haunted, glazed over look was gone, but his overall disheveled appearance remained as he let out a small chuckle.
“Yeah, maybe. It’s just...there was so much, Grunkle Stan. What did she do with all of it? Where did she even get the money to buy it?”
“Anything’s legal when the cops aren’t around!” Mabel replied as she sauntered into the room, causing Dipper to jump and slosh some of the milk in his bowl onto the table.
“You’re also picking that up.” Stan said flatly.
“M-Mabel! Are you saying that you stole the glitter?” Dipper gawked, standing up and pointing an accusing finger at the girl in question. “Mabel, you’re— you’re just as bad as Grunkle Stan!”
“Hey!”
“What? I’d never steal! I just promised the guy that he’d get to meet Sev’ral Timez; he seemed happy enough with that.” Mabel shrugged, glitter falling out of her sweater sleeves.
“Do you even know where Sev’ral Timez is?”
“Vaguely.”
“Mabel!”
Dipper had a mixture of frustration and exasperation etched onto his features as he scratched at his forehead. He glowered as more glitter flaked off and drifted towards the ground.
“Okay, okay.” Mabel said, putting her hands up like a burglar caught in the act. “I can see that you’re upset, and that’s understandable. But don’t worry, I’m actually gonna pay him back!”
Dipper took his attention away from the glitter he was glaring at and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“With what money?”
“I’ve been doing some odd jobs to scrape up some money! I just helped Lazy Susan at the diner a couple of days ago! There’s a lot of stuff to do with all the rebuilding after the whole ‘almost the end of the world’ thing, you know!”
“Then what was with the whole ‘anything’s legal when cops aren’t around’ and ‘I’ll pay him back with Sev’ral Timez’ comments?”
Stan felt like he was in a fever dream. Maybe he never truly woke up; it would explain a lot of the recent events. Whatever it was, Stan didn’t care enough to dwell on it, and instead opted to drink his coffee as he watched the scene in front of him unfold.
“I like to be spontaneous!” Mabel accentuated the point by throwing more rainbow glitter around herself. “But if Sev’ral Timez does show up, I’m definitely gonna pay him back that way.”
Dipper dragged his hand through his glitter infested hair before he pinched the bridge of his nose. He let out a huff of air.
“Alright, I guess that’s...better than what I had previously thought. But that doesn’t mean it’s right!” He added on hastily as Mabel gave him a cheeky smile.
“Don’t you worry, bro-bro, Mabel’s got it all under control!”
Mabel then proceeded to cough up a wad of glitter, in a way that reminded Stan of a cat and a hair ball. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever seen, but he certainly wasn’t in a rush to bear witness to it a second time.
“Did someone say glitter?”
Stan recognized the voice before Ford had even stepped into the room. He took one look at the childlike glee written on his brother’s face before sighing. He had yet another wacky invention he wanted to show off, and it had something to do with glitter. Great.
“You could work on your entrance a little bit, Sixer.” Stan muttered into his coffee cup as he glanced ruefully over the brim at his brother while he pulled out something that looked like a cross between a gun and a leaf blower.
“Oh my gosh, Great Uncle Ford! You got it done already?” Mabel rushed over to him, bouncing up and down like the floor was a trampoline. “You’re the best Grunkle ever!”
Stan’s frown deepened into a scowl as he watched Mabel gush over the ‘glitter bomb 2.0’ while Ford explained what had happened to the first version of the godforsaken invention.
“You see, a person can get very,” Ford paused, rubbing at his eyes underneath his thick frames, “frustrated when their invention doesn’t work. And that combined with lack of sleep and lack of coffee— well, it just doesn’t end up well. Anyways! Here you go, Mabel, a glitter gun as requested.”
Stan couldn’t quite stifle the laugh that bubbled out of his lips as Ford handed Mabel the gun, because his nerdy brother that worshipped all things science— the brother who was upset when any invention of his got broken, whether it was by him or someone else— had actually lost his temper with a glitter gun of all things. Stan was definitely going to sneak into Ford’s lab just to see the remains of the stupid thing.
“What’s so funny, Stan?” Ford asked, tilting his head in that owlish manner of his.
Stan never got a chance to answer, because suddenly the room exploded with glitter. Stan felt it acutely in his nose and in his mouth, and he tried to open his eyes only to be met with a burning sensation as the glitter seeped behind his eyelids.
“Mabel!” Dipper shouted, his voice cracking right between the two syllables.
“Haha, someone’s going through puberty.” Mabel giggled from the depths of a pile of glitter.
“Okay, now Mabel, if you press the blue button next to the trigger, it should engage the vacuum.” Ford explained calmly, seemingly oblivious to state of the room.
“Of course you installed a vacuum. You and your stupid foresight.” Stan mumbled as he spit out glitter and dusted it off his shoulders.
“Wow, so that means that it’s technically a self cleaning glitter gun! That’s amazing, Great Uncle Ford!” Dipper exclaimed, and Stan could hear the drumming of his fingers on the table as he contemplated something. “Do you think that— that maybe you could teach me how to make one of those? Minus the glitter.”
“No, absolutely not.” Stan replied, watching Mabel struggle to vacuum up the pile of glitter she had emerged from. “We do not need another one of those abominations in the house. It’s gonna ruin my merchandise if it already hasn’t! That’s what’s putting food in your mouth right now, kid.”
“Yes, I can teach you how.” Ford answered, barely batting an eye at Stan.
“Hey! Did you not just hear a word that I said?” Stan grit out, balling his fists.
“I did.” Ford replied simply, short and to the point. “I just chose to ignore it.”
“Well, you’ll have to ignore your hunger pains too if you keep making these destructive toys!”
“Toys? They’re— they’re not toys, Stanley—”
“Of course you care more about the fact that I called your precious projects toys and not that we need to limit damages so we can feed ourselves. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but money doesn’t grow on trees!”
“Well, technically money does grow on trees. At least it did in dimension—”
Stan slammed his hands on the table, effectively cutting Ford off.
“Moses, Ford! Enough with all the nerd talk! You need to wake up and see that not everything’s about you! Maybe you can survive on coffee and spite, but these kids sure as hell can’t, and they’re more important than some nerd project!”
“For your information, Stanley,” Ford spit the name out like it would poison him, “these so called ‘toys’ are for the children! And might I remind you, this is my house that you are currently living in, and my name that you’ve dragged through the mud with all the schemes you’ve been up to since you pushed me through that portal, so if anyone needs to wake up and realize the world doesn’t revolve around them, it’s you!”
The vacuuming that had been going on in the background switched off, and Stan noticed both Dipper and Mabel staring at Ford with wide eyes. Of course it was Ford, it was always Ford. Stan felt his face heat up.
“It was an accident, Ford, an accident! And it’s not like I’m the only one to blame! Who even built that godforsaken thing in the first place, huh? Who’s the one that caused the literal end of the world!”
Stan knew he was going too far. He knew how guilty Ford felt about it all and how much he had struggled with coming to terms that it wasn’t all his fault, that he could let others help him and that he didn’t have to do it all by himself. But Ford was picking at old wounds, wounds that had never been properly treated when they were fresh, and so now they were all twisted up and infected and they hurt even though they should be healed. He wanted to make Ford hurt as much as Ford was hurting him. So he had gone for the jugular.
Stan watched as a mixture of raw hurt and guilt painted his brother’s face, and he realized that Ford had always been much more of an open book with his emotions. Stan felt the exact same hurt and guilt, albeit for different reasons, but his poker face remained completely intact. Maybe that was due to all the poker he had played over the years, or maybe it was because he had learned that his parents didn’t give a shit if he was upset.
Ford, on the other hand, got ice cream and ‘it’s gonna be alright’ whenever he got bullied, and sure, Stan never knew what it was like to be picked on for being an anomaly, but that didn’t mean his feelings were less validated. At least, they shouldn’t have been less validated.
Stan stood up, upset at himself for intentionally hurting his brother, because at this point he should be done with all the petty issues between him and Ford, they had survived the end of the world and they should be over that stuff. And yet they weren’t. They were grown ass men and they were still at each other’s throats for issues that were pretty insignificant compared to the bigger picture.
“Look, Stan, I—” Ford began, and his voice was strained, as if whatever he was saying was physically hurting him.
“Listen up,” Stan announced as walked towards the door and slipped into his suit, his voice gruff and emotionless, “you guys are gonna clean up this kitchen, and it better be spotless by the time I come back. Spotless, you hear me? Have a good Grunkle Day with Ford.”
Stan opened the door and walked outside, taking a deep breath. He shoved his hands in his pockets and sat down on a tree stump bordering the woods.
He wasn’t ruining Grunkle Day, he was saving it by taking himself out of the picture. The twins liked Ford better anyways. He gave them what they wanted, partly because he had no idea how to act around people, let alone children, and partly because he was just downright oblivious.
Stan let out a humorless laugh. At least Ford was oblivious that he was hurting people, which Stan thought was better than, well, himself. He knew how and where to strike to cause the most damage and then followed through with it, knowing full well what the outcome would be.
He should’ve been the bigger person, should’ve walked away sooner before he caused any more damage. He’d been able to do that during the apocalypse easily enough, but there had been bigger fish to fry than fighting with Ford about how to use proper grammar.
Stan felt his fez lift off his head, and he jerked back right in time to see that godforsaken goat that had been frequently stealing his merchandise grab it and run off into the forest.
“Oh no you don’t, you square-pupil bastard!” Stan growled, jumping up from the stump and following the goat into the forest.
“Grunkle Stan, where are you going?”
Stan took a second to glance back and see Mabel appear on the porch, her face stricken. That...that wasn’t his doing, was it? Moses, he took himself out of the situation to stop that from happening, and yet he still managed to screw it up.
“There’s something I gotta do, I’ll be back soon, I promise!” Stan replied as he disappeared into the forest, wanting to erase the memory of Mabel’s saddened face from his mind.
“Grunkle Stan!”
Stan ignored Mabel’s shouts, keeping a close eye on the small brown tail darting through the brush.
“Today’s just gone from bad to worse,” Stan muttered under his breath as he trudged through the forest, “No thanks to you, you stupid goat.”
Stan pushed his way through a bush, eventually finding himself in a clearing. The sun poked its way through the overgrowth, leaving patches of sunlight scattered around the clear space. The goat sat next to a rock in a spot of sunlight, chewing on the tassel of his fez without a care in the world.
Stan inched his way closer, making sure to muffle his steps as he neared the goat. One snap of a twig and it could take off, and Stan really didn’t feel like chasing the goat any more than he already had. He made his way over the backside of the rock, hiding in the shadows and biding his time while he waited for the goat to stop chewing on his fez.
Eventually, Stan got tired of waiting and decided to just go for it. He leapt towards the goat and reached out for his fez.
“Gotcha!” Stan whispered triumphantly when he felt the familiar hat in his palms, “Now let it go you cocky piece of shit!”
Stan yanked, and the goat stood up and proceeded to tug back, and wow, he was actually having a game of tug-o-war with a goat. Stan laughed at how ridiculous the situation was, and he wondered how on earth his life had led up to this moment.
“Grunkle Stan!”
Stan turned his attention away from the goat to see both Mabel and Dipper running towards him, their eyes wide and afraid. There was no way they were afraid of the goat, so what was causing them to make those expressions?
Stan tugged on the fez harder, hoping to make it come loose quickly so he could go and ask the kids what was freaking them out. The goat refused to give up, and Stan groaned in frustration, tugging even harder. If the tassel got ripped off, so be it.
“Grunkle Stan, don’t move! There’s a portal behind—”
Stan yanked one last time, the force of his pull knocking him backwards as the goat let go of the fez.
“What?” He asked, turning his head to look behind him as he fell backwards.
He was greeted with what looked like a piece of the night sky, with all the stars glittering coldly at him from the dark space as he fell towards it. When did that get there? Stan thought he would’ve remembered if there was a rip in the universe right behind him.
He fell into it, and the last thing he saw were the terrified faces of Mabel and Dipper as they reached out their hands to grab him. Then the image of the kids flickered off like a hologram, and everything went dark, and Stan felt himself fall for much longer than he thought he ought to before he hit rock bottom, literally.
He slammed into a slab of rock, the air rushing out of him. That was going to leave a mark. Or two, or three. Stan decided that laying down on the cold stone floor was the best option he could do at the moment because he first had to wrap his mind around what the hell had just happened.
Except apparently he couldn’t even do that, because just then and there, a voice he hadn’t heard in fifty years cut its way through the dark and damp place.
“Stanley?” It was higher than it should’ve been, more breathy and quieter than Stan remembered. “Did you find the Jersey Devil?”
Well, shit.