Work Text:
By the time the museum guards show up, Ford is already halfway out the door, knapsack stuffed full of spare machinery parts. Dipper is close behind him, carrying nothing, even though Ford swears he had a pile of scraps in his arms just a moment ago. Perhaps he owns one of those personal pocket dimensions he’s seen on sale.
“You’re under arrest for breaking and entering,” snaps one of the guards. The security guards in this dimension wear lab coats, for some reason, and he wonders if lab safety regulations are tighter here or if lab coats are just a popular choice of clothing.
Instead of asking them, he merely says “We aren’t breaking and entering. All that we’re doing is just visiting the science museum after its regular hours.”
“This wing is restricted to employees only,” says another guard.
“Knowledge should never be restricted.”
“Yeah, alright. Put your hands up, you two.”
He sees Dipper nervously raise his hands out of the corner of his eye, but Ford’s sure that he has something up his sleeve. He had been resistant to the idea of him tagging along at first, but he’s proven to be quite the smart and resourceful young man.
Resourceful or not, though, he can’t afford to put his faith in strangers. He raises his blaster, set to the stun setting. “Oh, I’ll put my hands up, all right.”
Then he fires.
-
“Were you really just going to let yourself get turned in?” Ford asks Dipper as they run toward the exit, because it’s not like there’s a better time for it.
“I could’ve— I could’ve got out of there anytime. Just thought there was no point. You’ve always got a plan, you know? Better to let you handle things.”
Ford didn’t know whether to be concerned or touched that Dipper trusted him like that. “That’s extremely inadvisable, my boy, but… thank you anyway.”
“My boy?” Dipper raises his eyebrows questioningly, but he’s grinning. “I’m older than you.”
He hadn’t intended to say the term of endearment at all. He had no idea how it happened or where it came from. Dipper’s response was equally baffling— the man appeared twenty-seven at most. Perhaps humans from different universes age differently, or he had gotten caught in the Do-Over Dimension for some time. There’s too much going on to question it further. Ford glances behind him, spotting the guards catching up, and has an idea.
“Take this,” he says quietly, slipping an object roughly the size of a large coin out of his pocket. “It’s remote activated, I have the control. When I trigger it, it’ll release a thick chemical vapor that, in addition to providing cover, I’m fairly sure has paralytic properties on the residents of this dimension.”
“So it’s a smoke bomb?”
“It’s not a smoke bomb. Or, well, it’s not just a smoke bomb. I just need you to toss it at them when I tell you to.”
He’d do it himself, but he’s the one with the knapsack and he needs to put as much distance between himself and the guards as possible. It’s safer in the long run to give it to Dipper. Either way, he’ll be out of there.
“Of course,” Dipper says, slipping the device between his fingers. For a second, the movement reminds Ford of the summer when he was eleven and his brother tried to teach himself coin tricks. “Why don’t we just drop it and wait for them to catch up? We’re all running anyway, they’ll get here eventually. They probably won’t even see it, it’s so tiny. And it basically blends into the floor.”
Ford had not considered that. “That’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, and we won’t have to separate. It’s better for us to stick together.”
“Are you worried you’ll get into trouble without me there to keep an eye on you?”
Dipper laughs, high and slightly grating. “No, I’m worried about the opposite.”
Ford frowns. It was true that Dipper had gotten him out of a number of scrapes in their few weeks together, but he was sure that he would’ve been able to get out of all those scrapes on his own eventually. “What happened to you’ve always got a plan?”
“Yeah, well, sometimes plans don’t work out.” Dipper slows for a second and flips the device high into the air, letting it hit the ground with a clatter. “That’s when I come in.”