Chapter Text
"Dipper ," Mabel whined, tapping on the keyboard impatiently. Why was her brother taking so long? This was important! “Hurry up!”
"I'm coming!" he called back from the hallway. "I just need to grab the thing!"
Mabel was about to object at his slowness but instead squealed at the familiar sound of a call finally ringing on the laptop.
"DIPPER, SOMEONE'S READY!"
"Who is it?"
Mabel grinned, reading the custom label they'd given the account -- "Mystery Shack".
"IT’S SOOS," she yelled back, clicking the little green call icon. The picture flickered to life on the screen and she smiled to see not only the new recently-christened Mr. Mystery, but Wendy and Melody crowded around the camera as well.
"Woah, Gravity Falls to Dipper and Mabel," Wendy said. “You’re not showing up on the screen.”
"I gotta start the video," Mabel replied, clicking it and grinning as her face appeared in the corner of the screen. "Dipper's still coming," she added. "He had something he wanted to show Grunkle Ford."
"Have they called you yet?" Soos asked nervously. "The Mr Pineses haven’t called us yet. They're like, five minutes late!"
“I’m sure they’re fine, Soos,” Mabel said, wishing she could pat him reassuringly, the way she used to over the summer, through the computer screen. Fortunately it seemed like Melody was doing something similar. "It is like, two in the morning over there or something."
“I mean, now that we’re all tuned in I think, we’re the ones that gotta do the calling,” Wendy said. “I’ll see if I can get them to pick up.”
She leaned in closer to the laptop, sticking her tongue out as she focused.
Dipper walked into the room then, dragging a book in with him and breaking into a huge smile when he saw the laptop screen.
“Guys!” he said. “It’s so good to see you!”
Wendy laughed, leaning back in her seat having accomplished sending her call. “It’s been like a week, Dipper.”
“A long week,” Mabel said. “We started school …”
“Oh come on Mabel, it’s not that bad yet.”
Mabel rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well if I have to make up another story about ‘what I did over my summer vacation’ that won’t keep mom and dad from letting us go back for fall break I might scream.”
There was laughter on the Oregon end of the line as she cleared her throat and announced. “What I did over my summer vacation was… THE APOCALYPSE .”
But any further joking around was interrupted by another screen flickering to life as the final line picked up the call. Wendy and Mabel both let out little cheers as the dimly lit faces of Stan and Ford appeared in the grainiest of the three video qualities, frowning slightly at each other.
“C’mon, pick it up!” Stan was urging. “What’s taking so long?”
“Stanley, the last time I attempted a conversation via video screen the controls were telepathic ….”
“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel shouted waving. “Hi! Hi! We see you!”
“Kids!” Stan shouted back, face lighting up in a grin as Ford smiled more softly and leaned back, satisfied that he’d managed to establish the connection. “Heck, everybody! How you guys doin’? Things okay at the Shack, Soos?”
He saluted. “Right as rain, Mr. Pines!”
“Heh, rain. We’ve been getting a lot of that out here.”
“Is that why the video’s all bad?” Mabel asked. “You guys look all fuzzy, and I’m not just talking about Grunkle Ford’s sweater.”
"We're fine, we're fine. Signal's just really spotty out here."
"I'm working on that," Ford said quickly. "I only just learned about wi-fi."
As if on cue, their screen crackled with lag and the picture froze.
"How's Iceland?" Dipper asked excitedly when their great-uncles came back into focus. Mabel grinned at how excited he looked, even just to hear about it.
"Cold!" Stan replied, grinning back.
"It's not that bad," Ford said.
"Oh yeah and how many blankets were you holed up in last night? Next to the space heater?"
"That wasn't my fault!"
"You put on three pairs of socks. Three."
Everyone else in the call looked amused at the bickering until Stan turned back to the camera.
"Ford fell off the boat last night," he said, and his brother's face flushed in embarrassment.
"Ohmygosh Grunkle Ford are you okay?"
"Yeah, Mr. Ford the water's like, way cold up there, isn’t it?" Wendy chimed in with concern.
"Just a loss of dignity, girls. Stan made sure of that."
"Not sure what you're referencing but it had better be the fact that I dragged your soggy.... that I dragged you inside and made sure you didn't freeze out there. Heh," Stan said, clapping a hand to his twin's shoulder. He turned to everyone else "Don't worry, I'm keeping an eye on him. In case he goes and leans over a railing again because he thought he saw a fancy sea horse."
"Faxaskrímsli, Stanley."
" Extra -fancy sea horse."
“ Anyways , ” Ford coughed, seeming to want to move on. Dipper seemed to grab the lull in conversation as his chance.
“Great-Uncle Ford! I wanted to show you something!” He said excitedly, pulling out his book and pointing at a line in it. His face dampened slightly when he realized it was pointless to try to actually hold up the sentence in the low camera quality their grunkles were getting on the boat. “Ah, well,” he rephrased. “Tell you about something. I was doing some reading about Birkeland currents and it sounds like you guys might be just in time for a huge-- ”
“--Auroral event?” Ford said immediately, breaking into a grin. Mabel was happy to see that her brother was beaming back at the camera. “You’re absolutely right, Dipper, I hadn’t even considered that!”
“'Auroral' like the aurora borealis?” Melody asked, curious, and Ford nodded.
“We should get a fantastic show,” he said still smiling.
“Ahh!” Mabel said, leaning into and gripping the screen. Dipper dodged slightly to get out of her way she leapt forward in excitement. “Auroras are like space rainbows! Grunkle Ford, send us pictures! Please please please -- Grunkle Stan, make sure he takes pictures!”
“We are gonna take so many pictures, kiddo,” Stan said, and she flopped back into her seat contentedly. “And we picked up a new sketchbook for this dork,” he said, elbowing Ford in the ribs. He gave a small “oof” sound, but smiled back, “so you might get something else too, you know?”
“Stanley, I--”
“--Artwork! Artwork! Artwork!” Mabel chanted, pumping a fist in the air. “Grunkle Ford, we are the family artists . This is an important responsibility!”
He grinned back. “I’ll send you something the first time we put together a package, Mabel.”
“Eeeeeee!” she shrieked, and Stan rolled his eyes at Ford.
“That was gonna be a surprise, Sixer! Geez…”
“It’s still a surprise,” she reassured him, “I’m surprised. And excited.”
“For the record, you all are getting one too, Soos,” Stan added, sighing. Ford was now just sheepishly rubbing his neck, apparently harboring some regret about spilling the secret.
There was a simultaneous “Thank you Mr. Pines!” and “Rad!” as Soos and Wendy spoke at once.
“You say that now, I’m gonna have to find something super weird to send you,” Stan taunted.
“The weirder the better,” Mabel challenged, leaning back in towards the camera.
“Oh yeah? What if we mail you a squid?” he grinned, leaning in as well.
“Grunkle Stan, how would you even wrap it?”
“You can send potatoes through the postal system,” Dipper said offhand, and everyone turned to give him a funny look at regardless of their screen. “What?” he said. “You can!”
“...We’re gonna send you a potato,” Mabel said.
“Not if we send you a potato first . Ford, we got any potatoes?”
“I don’t believe we do.”
“Drat.”
“Potato race!” Mabel shouted.
“Woah woah woah,” Wendy said, waving her hands in front of her. “Who’s gonna send us a potato? Dipper you can’t just throw that out there and not follow up.”
“I am going to personally address you a potato,” he replied, smirking at her.
“Okay okay,” Mabel said, “so that’s a potato for Wendy, a potato for each grunkle…”
Ford threw his hands up in the air, “We don’t even have a mailbox !”
“I mean,” Stan said, “we’re gonna be here a little while for you to check out your nerd stuff. We can get like a P.O. box or something, right?”
“I think you mean…” Mabel said, giggling before she could even finish “...a POTATO box…”
Everyone groaned.
“This is Ford’s fault,” Stan said, “Every single bit of this is Ford’s fault. How do you feel about dragging our entire family into potato-fueled chaos, Sixer?”
“ My fault?”
“If you hadn’t let it slip that we were already putting together packages for everybody…”
“But Grunkle Stan, we’re excited about the packages!” Mabel said, and everyone nodded in agreement.
“Totally hyped,” Soos agreed, and Ford smiled at them all softly.
The conversation probably would have gone on a little longer if the Stan-o'-War's video hadn’t suddenly frozen completely in the middle of Stan's laughter, audio starting to crackle to the point of being barely understandable.
“.....Looks…..rough patch…” Stan’s gruff voice finally came through. “....because we’re……. rain?”
“I’ll try………... amplify transmittance……calls in future,” Grunkle Ford chimed in, and even though she doubted they were getting any video back, Mabel waved at the screen profusely.
“Call back soon!” she said. “Really really soon!”
“We’ll send you an e-mail to figure out the time!” Dipper added.
“Goodb…. kids…..!”
“And……..W...... and Soos!”
The frozen video screen cut-out with a log-off noise, and everyone in the call just sort of looked at each other.
“We can stay on a little longer, though right?” Mabel asked.
“Absolutely, dudes,” Soos said, laughing, “We set aside the whole evening.”
And so the five of them dove right back into conversation, catching up on even just the single week they’d spent apart. Mabel watched as Soos animatedly explained some ideas he was thinking about adding to the tour, as Wendy and Dipper got into a very brief but heated pun war, and as everyone laughed just over the simple joy of being together -- because really, it did feel together -- again. And she smiled. The summer might be over, but their family (their GREAT BIG LOTS-OF-PEOPLE-FAMILY) was just getting started.
Now she just needed to go grab some potatoes.