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It’s hard to figure out how you feel about someone who you don’t know very well. Harder if you’ve only seen them once in person, and since then have admired them from afar, only knowing what they’re even like as a person through their public playlists or what they put on YouTube. And it only gets harder when you learn that they are already in love with someone else either way.
Dipper had met Wirt in passing during a weeklong trip with Mabel, the Stans, Soos, and Wendy. It had been a tourist town, near Gravity Falls and known for being inspired by Renaissance-Era England. Dipper had spent much of the time writing about it in the journal Mabel had given him at the end of the previous summer, for as much as he loved his family, his inner world always won.
And then he’d met Wirt.
On the surface, he was an apathetic boy who was a bit tired of spending time with his younger brother. But he and Dipper had talked for a while at the town’s ice cream shop, and even in that little interaction Dipper had seen something beyond that. He had a poetic nature, always using more words than necessary but in a way that flowed so naturally. He seemed to take a liking to Dipper and Dipper to him, so the two agreed to stay in touch.
Wirt had forgotten his phone number, but Dipper had made sure to give him his own, expecting Wirt to be the one to reach out. He couldn’t wait—something about the brown-haired boy had captured Dipper’s attention like few had.
Days passed, and then weeks, and then a month without a response. Dipper wondered if Wirt had forgotten, or just not cared enough. Maybe both. He wondered if he could find Wirt on some sort of social media that Mabel had—and though he refused to make an account, he ended up finding Wirt’s YouTube channel and Spotify profile. Admittedly, he felt a bit like a creep, but he tried to rationalise—he was rather good at that.
Dipper could see so much more of that side of Wirt’s personality, the one he’d only gotten to glance at. He was poetic, he was passionate, he was…admittedly, very nice-looking. Dipper, for the first time since Wendy, began to wonder if maybe there was a reason he’d been so drawn to Wirt.
Dipper contemplated leaving a comment on one of Wirt’s videos just to reach out, but he worried. Would he seem like a stalker, or a creep? What if Wirt thought he was an impersonator, catfishing him or trying to scam him? Dipper decided against it.
And then he learned about Sara.
Of course Wirt loved someone. He was only human, why wouldn’t he? And yet this made everything so confusing to Dipper. Truth be told, he didn’t even know if he felt that way about Wirt yet. But then, why was learning that Wirt already liked someone else so earth-shattering?
He wanted to tell Mabel, but he worried that she would think he was strange for it. He knew she would understand the part about Wirt not being a girl—Mabel herself had admitted that she thought she might be bisexual after some recent developments with their friend Pacifica Northwest. It was more the part about how far away Wirt was, literally and metaphorically. They’d only met once, after all.
He’d once read in a book that crushes were something felt from far away, and this was as far away as he’d ever experienced. And if this was a crush, he knew it was best to try to get over it. Yet something kept him holding on, and he wasn’t sure why. He hated feeling this way, but then sometimes he still found himself almost enjoying the pain of yearning. It was a bittersweet feeling.
Sitting alone on his twin bed in the Mystery Shack attic, Dipper slowly closed his computer and took a breath. He wanted to think about Wirt and he didn’t want to think about Wirt, he wanted to tell someone and he didn’t want to tell someone. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore—and trying to figure it out was just making everything worse.