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It was early May when Stan got the call. Honestly, it was pure dumb luck that he'd been around to hear the old phone ringing that night in the first place. He had been on his way down to the basement to slave over the big, dumb, looming machine for the millionth time when the landline began ringing incessantly around damn near midnight.
Grumbling and mumbling, Stan picked up the phone and sighed out an annoyed, “Listen pal, before ya say anything, I’m not buying what yer sellin’.”
The answer was immediate, but noticeably hesitant. “Uh, hello? Uncle Stanford?”
Every nerve in Stan’s body jerked in pure panic at the voice. He stood up straighter and cleared his throat a few times. Shit, it’s been years since I’ve had ta do this, he fretted. When was the last time? When Shermie’s grandkids had been born? No, no, he’d been railroaded into a thanksgiving or two after that. Had it been that one Hanukkah in ‘05? Okay, alright, you got this. Beep boop! I am a nerd robot! Quantum physics! Calculus! Graph paper! I do extra credit for fun!
“Oh! Hey— uh! I mean hello,” Stan spoke in a good enough (maybe a bit too gruff) imitation of his brother's voice. “How have you been?”
There was a long pause on the other side of the line. Stan felt his brow furrow and twirled the phone cord anxiously around his finger. “Kid?”
“I’m, uh,” his nephew exhaled. He sounded tired. He sounded old . Which couldn’t be right. He wasn’t any older than thirty. Or was it forty? “I'm not doing great.”
“What’s the problem?”
Another sigh. “My wife and I, um— you remember my wife, right?”
Stan remembered his niece-in-law fairly well. She always seemed to be nice and accommodating. She grounded his nephew in the way a Pines man needed to be grounded. The lady hadn’t minded letting Stan, by all accounts a very estranged family member, hold her newborn twins the day after they’d been born. She’d even been kind enough not to comment on how wet his eyes were at the time because of all that damn hospital dust floating around.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he said. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“Ah, kinda?” His nephew chuckled but there was no humor behind it. Stan hated how familiar that laugh sounded. “We’ve been going through some, uh, stuff .”
… “Stuff”. Way to make it sound ominous. He sure shared Shermie’s flare for the dramatics… On second thought, he sorta shared that with Stan too. And Ford. At least, when Ford had been younger, of course. Although that rambling journal of his sure had enough dramatics in it to suggest that he’d never grown out of it. Much like Stan hadn’t. Not that it was a bad thing, he literally made a living out of it.
“What kinda stuff we talkin’— erm, I mean, what are you talking about?”
If his casual slip back into his real voice startled his nephew, the kid didn’t let on. Maybe he was too distressed to care. That thought alone was enough to twist Stan’s insides in an extremely unpleasant way.
“We’ve been having… problems and well, our son caught us the other night in the middle of a fight and… we can’t… we don’t want to do this with them here, you know?”
Stan blinked, gripping the cord tighter in his hand. Flashes of screaming matches and the sound of broken glass echoed in the darkest parts of his mind. He heard someone distantly crying. High pitched childish sniffles and sobs. He couldn’t remember who had been making them.
“Yeah, I can respect that,” he mumbled, before a wave of confusion washed away his inconvenient trauma enough to realize that he had no idea where this conversation was going. Did men nowadays call up their uncles to discuss marital issues? What had happened to shoving your feelings down until you couldn’t feel anymore? It's nature’s medicine! A try and true method that those shrinks try to tell you is “damaging” or “not good for your mental health” or whatever other hippie bullcrap they’re selling these days. It’s always worked for him and he’s doing great.
“Wait. Why are you calling, again? Sorry to say but I’m not really qualified to help you out with anything involving marriage and whatnot—”
“Sorry, sorry, right. I probably should’ve led with that,” his nephew’s voice rattled with anxiety. “Sorry, my mind is all over the place.”
Stan opened his mouth to tell him he didn’t need to apologize but the kid barreled on.
“Summer’s coming up and my wife and I want to try counseling. But, we’d really rather the kids not be here for that, so we were wondering if you’d be willing to, uh, take them for a little while?”
Stan blinked. Then he blinked again. “Take them?”
“Take care of them. Let them stay with you? For the summer, I mean. Not forever. Obviously not forever but… yeah.”
Stan felt his blood turn ice cold and his heartbeat drummed loudly in his ears. Take care of the kids? I’ve never even been around those kids for that long.
“I— I don’t… listen, kid, why’re you asking me?” Stan asked, struggling to keep his impression up. “Why don’t you ask your dad? I’m sure he’d love to take care of them for a while.”
“Mom and dad are traveling around the country this summer,” he explained, sounding a bit resigned. “They’ve been talking about it for years. There’s no way we’d ask them to cancel it for us now.”
So, I’m yer back up, Stan thinks. Unreasonably bitter by the prospect. As if he and his nephew were best buds shooting the shit every night. Maybe it was just the thought of this all falling on him regardless of their relationship that peeved him off. He had distanced himself from the family for a reason. A very valid reason too. Not that it had been all that hard to do; Ford had done a terrible job of maintaining any ties with their family when he’d still been… around. He’d always had a knack for getting lost in that big brain of his, so much so that any normal human interaction would often fall to the wayside in the process. And Stanley Pines as far as anyone knew was dead, so staying away had always seemed like the right choice to make. Better to not risk killing his voice keeping up the impression. Even better not to risk anyone asking about the convenient “surgery” that removed his extra fingers when his hands finally got too fat for the gloves he’d been wearing for years.
The kids wouldn’t know about the fingers though. Not unless Shermie or their parents had told them which Stan doubted they ever would. He also knew for a fact that they had no idea about Stanley Pines, so there would be no questions there either. No. The real problem was currently in the basement underneath the floorboards. Stan had, for better or for worse, fallen into a routine. For the last thirty years, for half the time that he’s been alive , Stan has laughed it up as Mr. Mystery by day, while doing all he could to try and get his brother's portal back up and running by night. After all these years, he still had yet to find the second journal to help turn it on, but he’d taught himself physics for fucks sake and had tampered with that stupid giant metal triangle enough times to know it inside and out better than even Ford likely ever had.
Heh. It was sorta funny in a fucked up kinda way. Mostly not though.
Having kids stay over for a while, that would change everything. He’d have to be constantly on guard to make sure they never accidentally saw him going into the basement. Not only that, but Gravity Falls itself was a fucked-up place. Despite what everyone has ever told him, Stan was, in fact, not an idiot. He’d figured out far too quickly how insane this town was, and the idea of willingly bringing children into its mess felt like a form of child abuse.
But there was no way that he could tell his nephew that. Obviously. Even if he wanted to. Best case scenario, everyone thinks he’s crazy. Worse case, he’s thrown into the looney bin, and he did not want to relive that nightmare ever again, thank you very much.
So, instead of honesty, Stan would have to rely on lying. They were practically old friends at this point.
“I get that, kid,” he said, because despite it all he really did. “But I really don’t know if I can—”
“Please ,” Stan shut his mouth. “Please, Uncle Stan. I have no other… I don’t know what else to do. I need your help.”
Please. The word please was never one of Stan’s favorite words. His Pa used to say it was a form of weakness. No real man resorts to begging, he’d said. The people who toss ‘please’ around are just tryin’ to make you soft.
Stan was of a similar mindset. Saying ‘please’ had never gotten him nothing in the long run. Answering a ‘please’ from other people was also disappointing. He could still see it. PLEASE COME!! sprawled over a wrinkled postcard in bold black ink. He had listened, he had come, and what had he got in return? A brand on his back and a missing brother all thanks to a triangular death machine from hell.
Even thinking about the word still gave him a sorta burning sensation.
And yet.
If this was anyone else, anyone else in the entire damn world , Stan would’ve held strong. He would’ve said no. But if there’s one truth in the world, it’s that Stan has always been weak when it came to his family. Whether it was Ford or Shermie or Ma or hell even Pa, Stan was always the first to cave. Always the first to break and bend to their wishes. It had been like that for as long as he could remember. Crampelter had once taunted him about it, calling him a pushover. Carla McCorkle had playfully teased him for it, claiming that he was a people pleaser. To this day, he did not know which one he considered to be worse. Quite frankly, both were equally insulting in his eyes and he stood by that.
Unfortunately for him, it turned out that he was no different when it came to his nephew.
With a heavy sigh, Stan pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed up a storm in his head .
“How long would you need me to take ‘em for again?”
“The summer,” he said, sounding a lot more hopeful and a lot less upset. Stan hated how happy that made him feel.
“The whole summer?”
“They’ve got an early school year. They start on September 3rd so maybe they could stay with you from June until their birthday on August 31st?”
He phrased it like a question, but it sounded a whole lot like a statement instead.
Three months. Stan had never had to take care of a living breathing thing for that long before. Let alone two children who he barely knew. On the best of days he couldn’t even take care of himself.
Ugh, fucking Shermie, he inwardly cursed. Shermie and his stupid fucking travel plans. What’s there to see out there anyway? Who has ever willingly wanted to travel around the country for “fun”? Masochists?
“Is that okay?” His nephew's reproachful voice questioned after he’d stayed silent for too long.
No, it really wasn’t okay. In fact, Stan had never been put in a worse position in his life.
Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration because he certainly had been put in the middle of much worse things than this. But it was about the principle! Everything Stan had ever faced since he was a teenager he’s been alone for. Sure he had made some sketchy friends here or there that had his back in a completely transactional type of way, but even then he had only ever had to look out for himself. Nowadays Stan did have a few more people in his life that he could count on one hand who he tolerated. Soos came immediately to mind. The kid had been working for him for almost ten years. He even liked Manly Dan’s daughter Wendy well enough, who he'd taught how to pick a lock and shoplift last summer because she had asked him to.
Yeah, Stan had always seen himself more as becoming a fun uncle that would bail his nieces and nephews outta jail rather than a strong parental figure with “morals” and “values” or whatever they were supposed to have.
His nephew didn’t know about any of that of course. He didn’t know about his preference for being an uncle with no responsibilities. He wasn’t aware of the tough times he’d been through, because Stanford Pines had never been through anything as far as anyone knows. On the outside looking in, Stan seemed like a perfectly suitable caretaker. He had PhD’s, a house he built in the woods, a steady business going for him. He was the brainiac who had gotten into that stupid fancy college place at seventeen before his dumb brother sabotaged it and ruined his chances of ever making it big. The family pitied poor Stanford Pines. He had never reached his full potential and made them all the millions he could have, all because of his own twin brother who as far as anyone knew died alone as a drifter in a car crash.
Not that anyone cared. The only people who had come to Stanley Pines funeral had been his mother and an IRS agent. Not even Shermie had decided to make the trip. Probably had better things to do than to shed tears over his disappointment of a younger brother. Distantly, somewhat hysterically, he wondered what the old geezer would do if he found out his son was asking the wrong Stan to watch his grandchildren for months. It would’ve probably given him a stroke.
No. No one in their right mind would ever send their children to stay with Stanley Pines for the summer. But sending them to hotshot Dr. Stanford Pines? That was a no-brainer. The worst part was that the real Stanford would’ve most definitely said no and hung up on their nephew without a second thought.
“You alright with them working for me at the Shack? I could use the extra help,” he lied. Because Soos was practically a one man show and rarely ever needed any help. But some perfectly reasonable child labor was always nice to have.
“Yes, of course! They’re going to be thirteen soon so it’s about time they got a summer job.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Stan said, tugging and picking at the phone cord. “Just tell me a date and I’ll have the place ready by then for them to stay.”
He didn’t even have a spare bedroom. Well he technically did but that wasn’t the point. Would the attic work? Was it big enough?
“Thank you, Uncle Stan,” his nephew exhaled in relief. “You have no idea how much this will help us out.”
Stan had an idea about it and that was the reason why he was doing it.
“And maybe this will be good for you too.”
What?
“What?” Stan asked. Very much confused on how any of this would be good for him in any way, shape or form.
“Well, you’re all alone up in that big house of yours,” his nephew said matter-of-factly. “Having the kids around might liven the place up for you. It will be nice having them get to know their Great Uncle.”
Nice to know his nephew had somehow inherited Ford’s infamous blunt honesty. Must be genetic.
Standing there in his brother's large, half-empty house in the dead of night, Stan really tried to remember what he already knew about those kids. They were a boy and a girl named Dipper and Mabel. He doubted that Dipper was the actual name sprawled on that poor kid’s birth certificate, but he couldn’t remember what it really was. Mabel was… loud, to say the least. An excitable ball of glitter and sparkles and extremely friendly from what he could recall. Stan liked her spunk, the girl had personality and he had to respect it. Dipper on the other hand was always quiet. Very soft spoken, avoided eye contact, didn’t really do much besides playing video games and reading books. The last time he had seen him, Stan remembered practically balking at the kid because he looked so much like a younger version of himself and Ford that it was uncanny.
The sad truth was that Stan didn’t know his great-niece or great-nephew as much as he might’ve liked to in another life where things had worked out better for him. One where he could’ve shown his face around more often without fear of being found out. But he did know that they were twins, and that fact alone melted a cold part of his old heart that had been frozen over for far too long.
The kids would figure out that something wasn’t right in this town. The woods had literal gnomes that regularly ate out of his trash crawling around in it. It wouldn’t take that long for them to piece it together. And that alone could be enough to put them in danger. But if Stan was an expert at anything, it was twisting the truth. He could protect them from all the chaos and mystery weirdness. He just had to lie good enough, and how hard could that be?
“ Eh , Great Uncle sounds too long for a couple of kids to say,” Stan dismissed, eyeing the vending machine from the corner of his eye. “ Grunkle has a better ring to it, don’t ya think?”