Chapter Text
Sunlight spilled over the horizon and through the trees. The source dipped behind the cliffs far, far ahead of them, staining the sky pink. The wispy gray clouds were outlined in strips of red and orange. Motes of pollen, or perhaps they were the beginnings of will-o-wisps-they did seem to glow after all-danced in the thick wedges of dim gold light. Said light bounced off the cracked face of Stan's watch as he uncovered it for the umpteenth time.
“Dammit, where's the bus?” he grumbled.
He had been saying epithets like this for an hour now and every time, Ford replied,
“Language, Stanley.”
And just like every time after, Stan would unload a string of impolite words out of spite. And each time, Ford would grin.
Stan checked his watch again; Ford prepared for the inevitable.
“Shit, Ford, it would have been faster if we picked them up!”
“Language, Stanley.”
“I'll show you language, you little f-”
A low, rough growl carried over through the pines. It was quiet, but deep; when it grew closer, it would shake the air and give the birds a good scare. There was no sign of its owner, but Stan and Ford looked expectantly down the road.
“It may be a logging truck...”
“Shut up Sixer, I know a bus when I hear it.”
Sure enough, the pollen-caked windshield came climbing over the low hill of the horizon line. The chrome front glinted in the dying sun, sending a stronger glare than Stan's watch at them. They shielded their eyes, but no amount of glare or potential ocular damage could keep them from looking through the windshield in the hopes to see their great-niece and -nephew.
The bus came to halt, spewing red dust from its tires and thick black smoke from its exhaust pipe. The air began to stink with the sickly-sweet smell of spent diesel and the acrid stench of burnt metal, but it faded into the background as the old folding doors squealed open.
“Thank you Mr. Bus-Driver-Man!” they heard a familiar voice say.
“Mabel!” Stan exclaimed happily.
Footsteps shook the bus. Stan ran up, his arms wide open. But instead of Mabel, or even Dipper, a large pig squeezed through the door and threw all two hundred pounds into the old man. Waddles began licking his face eagerly, his breath stinking of slop and chocolate ice cream. The pig had doubled in size and weight since the last time they had seen each other. Stan pushed him off with some difficulty. He stood up, brushing off his pants as their twin niece and nephew left the bus.
“Ha haha! Sorry Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said as she wrapped him into a large hug.
“Mabel! Wow, sweetie, you got big!” She grinned. “And where'd your braces go?! You know, I think you aren't really my great-niece...”
“Cut it out!” Mabel said with a grin, slugging him in the arm. He slugged her back, and she hugged him again. Her curly hair brushed the underside of his unshaven chin.
“Hey, Grunkle Ford,” Dipper said, sticking out his hand to shake.
Ford accepted it, then pulled him into a hug.
“Why so formal?” he asked.
“Ha, I guess it's just been a while,” Dipper said with a little chuckle.
“Switch off!” Mabel suddenly yelled.
She yanked Dipper away and hugged Ford for herself.
“Oof! Careful, Mabel, I broke a rib...”
“But that was, like, around Christmas!”
“These things take a while to heal.”
Ford caught Stan's glance, and offered him a small smile. Both twins had grown substantially since their first summer together; it was inevitable, with them being teenagers, but it still came as a shock. Dipper was now several inches taller than Mabel, both a little leaner and a lot pimplier. Dipper even had a small constellation on his right cheek, right down to thin red lines connecting them; that was probably Mabel's handiwork. Even then, it was still them.
The hugs broke apart when the doors squealed shut. Mabel turned around and waved enthusiastically, jingling a myriad of bracelets.
“Thanks!” she yelled as the bus drove off.
She turned back around, brushing a hank of hair behind her ear as she did so. Dipper picked up his blue suitcase.
“Feels good to be off the bus,” Dipper said.
“Yeah, we were getting kinda stir-crazy,” Mabel said.
“Well, forget it! You're in Gravity Falls now! Besides, your room will be nice and roomy...”
“Grunkle Stan, I don't think the attic's gonna cut it...” Dipper said.
“Nah, you couldn't stay there anyway,” Stan said dismissively. “Not like you'll want to stay with a baby.”
They followed their grunkles to the car.
“Baby? Oh my gosh, what baby? What baby?!” Mabel exclaimed, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. She gasped. “Soos and Melody?!”
“You betcha,” Stan winked.
“Oh my gosh we have to see them right now!”
Stan laughed. “Calm down kid, you can see them tomorrow. You've gotta check out this place. Since Soos took the Mystery Shack, we've been holing up with McGucket.”
“Whoa!” Mabel exclaimed.
“Seriously?” Dipper asked at the same time.
As they drove to Northwest Manor, both sets of twins exchanged stories of their adventures. Dipper fell silent after a little while, feeling his stories were sub-par to his grunkles' adventures of fighting naval anomalies out on their boat, but Mabel told of school, boys, and drama like it was just as daring as punching one-eyed squid or encountering a school of sirens. If they were disinterested, it never showed. Stan was even happy to share some of his high school stories. The anecdotes were peppered with brief exclamations of surprise when Dipper or Mabel saw some new business or a closed building, or some person from their last summer there. It had only been two years, but each time they acted like it had been a decade since they visited the isolated Oregon town. Well, perhaps decade was too strong a term, as Mabel actually unbuckled her seat belt, climbed over Dipper, and shouted out the window at Candy and Grenda when she saw them. The three shared a ten second conversation ending with an ear-bleeding. “I'LL CALL YOU GUYS WHEN I GET BACK! WHEN I GET BACK!” It felt more like a simple summer vacation then. Even Stan's car was more or less the same. There were a few more dents and a lot less paint, but it still groaned and wheezed when it took hills and the brakes squealed a little too loudly for comfort.
Even Northwest Manor had barely changed. The peacocks were gone, and the large bushes bearing the initials of the rich family were overgrown to green blobs. The stone deer were more worn than they remembered, and the short trees lining the cobblestone pathway were thick and untrimmed. Many of the windows were dark, giving the place a foreboding look. The first few stars started to twinkle in the periwinkle-tinged sky.
As they neared, the spiked gate swung inward. The brief burr of the motor was briefly heard before Stan accelerated and drowned it out with the rackety roar of the engine. Branches stretching over the path scratched away the red paint.
“Dammit, I told him to trim these!” Stan swore.
Mabel gasped as Ford reflexively said, “Language, Stanley.”
“What? You're sixteen now, you've heard swears before!”
“We're fifteen,” Dipper corrected.
“Fifteen, sixteen, same difference,” Stan shrugged.
Ford quietly reached forward and turned the steering wheel just so, straightening the nose of the car. Stan slapped the hand away. He took a sharp left, and drove the car into the connected building with glass walls at thirty miles per hour. Everyone gripped the leather seats tightly as the brakes squealed, and the car stopped short of the wall by three inches. A beat-up pick-up truck was parked next to the scratched red convertible.
“Ahh, garage smell!” Mabel exclaimed as she stepped out. She took a deep breath. “Ooh, it smells like roses!”
Dipper took an experimental sniff.
“Huh. Yeah. Wait, how?”
He looked at some of the shelves; where there weren't potted plants, there were empty clay pots and bags of fertilizer.
“Guys, there are plants here. Is this a greenhouse?”
“Well, it was,” Stan said. “Now it's a garage.”
“They were rich enough to build a greenhouse but not a garage?” Dipper asked skeptically.
“Oh, trust us. There's a garage,” Ford chuckled.
They went inside. The carpet in the hall was mussed and slightly askew. Other than that, not much had changed.
“Wow...it's gonna be so weird staying here now!” Mabel exclaimed. “Which one do you think is Pacifica's old room?”
“Why on earth do you wanna know?” Dipper asked, hitting her shoulder.
They stepped into the foyer. The marbled rug was gone, replaced with something scratchy and green and definitely not something one would buy in an antique store. The chandelier was dusty, the candles worn down to nubs and never replaced. A large, stuffed bear was now on display near the front door; umbrellas and hats hung from its claws. The walls near the grand staircase were covered in framed photos of various sizes. Most of them were framed pictures of McGucket and his son, though quite a few were of Stan and Ford from their anomaly hunting. The biggest change was a huge banner still wet with paint hanging from the ceiling, and the group of people standing right below it.
“WELCOME BACK!” they exclaimed.
There was a burst of confetti, presumably from one of their pockets. Soos, Melody, and McGucket were clustered under the banner, and broke apart to hug the new arrivals. Mabel managed to catch Melody and McGucket in a hug, but couldn't save Stan from a back-breaking hug from Soos.
“Okay, so, I heard you had a kid!” Mabel exclaimed, finally letting go.
“Oh yeah, who told you?” Melody said. “She's sleeping in the other room. A party's really no place for a baby, but, you know, we can't exactly leave her alone...”
“It's a 'her'?! Can I meet her?! Is she pretty?”
“You wanna see her?”
“YES PLEASE!”
“Damn near give me a heart attack there,” Stan laughed, catching Soos in a half-Nelson. “What's the big idea?”
“Sorry Mr. Pines, but you said the twins were coming back...and well, we just had to see them! It's been two years, Mr. Pines! Two years!”
“Whoa, okay, calm down,” Stan said, letting go. “Don't get me wrong, I miss them, too...”
“OH MY GOD LOOK AT YOUR BABY!” Mabel shouted from across the room.
Stan chuckled. “All right, fine, I'm happy to see them, too.”
“So how'd that scanner work fer ya?”
“Oh, wonderfully.”
“You know, I still can't believe you two were actually partners once,” Dipper said. “Especially after thinking you were crazy for most of the summer.”
“People have been sayin' that a lot!” McGucket replied cheerfully.
“Ha, yes...I was surprised to hear what had happened,” Ford said, laughing sadly. “If I had known that memory gun would have done that...”
“Ah, Ford, don't worry about it,” McGucket said with the air that he had said it far too often before.
“So, uh, what did that scanner do?” Dipper asked.
“Detects deep-sea monsters, alien spacecraft, anything nonhuman in origin!” McGucket said. “Built out of a busted fish scanner!”
“It kept picking up narwhals, though,” Ford said.
“Well, those are anomalies of nature,” Dipper pointed out.
The trio laughed.
The small party gradually moved into the kitchen. It was probably once a gleaming chrome monument of high-tech appliances and lavish food, but nowadays the fanciest thing it cooked was a Thanksgiving turkey. The chrome was dull and stained with food, and the edges had been worn down from whenever someone or something bumped into it. The pantries and cabinets that might have held eclairs or quail now had generic boxed crackers and fresh deer wrapped in tinfoil. Two years of millions of dollars hadn't changed McGucket that much. Pitt colas had been passed around (Ford favoring the stronger drinks on the lower shelf), and stories were now flowing freely. Everyone was clustered around the massive chrome island with a built-in stove and oven. Mabel held baby Maria. She was a little resistant to some of the more graphic stories her grunkles shared, but soon stopped protesting with Melody said it was all right. In between monster-hunting stories, Soos and Melody described crazy happenings at the Mystery Shack and Mabel told about her high school adventures. Dipper and McGucket were quiet. When finally probed, McGucket just bashfully admitted he had no exciting stories to tell; he was catching up with his son. Dipper just listened. Mabel had told most of their stories.
There was a small commotion when Stan bumped his soda into his nose and sent some of it onto his shirt.
“Stanley-!”
“Whoops, heh,” he said, wiping off soda. “What's got you worked up Sixer, we don't have to hoard this stuff anymore!”
“Oh, yes, well...I guess I'm still cautious,” Ford chuckled nervously.
He leaned against the island again, looking at Stan in the corner of his eye. Stan briefly fanned himself with his hand to dry the stain, then took another sip, properly this time. Dipper watched Ford. He kept sneaking glances at his twin, even when things had settled down again. He sipped his own soda infrequently. Sometimes he would tap his fingers against the side. Dipper took his own sip, already suspicious.
“Hey Dipper, tell them about your girlfriend!” Mabel said, nudging him gently.
Dipper nearly spat out the soda.
“I don't have a girlfriend!” he stammered nervously.
For the time being, the suspicion was forgotten.
The party finally ended around eleven-thirty when Mabel dozed off while leaning against the sink. She insisted she was fine between huge yawns.
Soos and Melody took Maria back, countering Mabel's protest that it was too late for a baby and she needed to go to bed. Once everyone else had left or gone to bed, Stan led the twins to their room; Stan was particularly excited.
“You kids are gonna love it,” he said. “You each get your own rooms this time.”
“Wait, we do?” Mabel asked, sounding disappointed.
“What?” Stan asked. “You don't want...?”
“No, we just thought we'd be sharing a room like last time,” Dipper said.
Mabel nodded.
Stan was visibly disappointed.
“Well, uh...you kids try it out for tonight, and we'll change it tomorrow,” he said.
“Thanks,” Dipper said. “We really appreciate the thought.”
“Yeah.” Mabel hugged him.
“Heh. All right kiddo, don't cry.”
“I'm not,” Mabel said, but she sniffed anyway.
“All right. Oh, and there's a bathroom...somewhere.” He gestured vaguely down the hall. “I'm hitting the sack, too. Night kids.”
“Good night Grunkle Stan,” Dipper said.
Stan left. The twins looked at the doors leading to their separate rooms.
“Well, uh...this is gonna be weird,” Dipper said, trying to lighten the mood.
Mabel nodded.
“See you in the morning?”
“Yeah. See you, bro-bro.”
They went into their rooms at the same time. Dipper wasn't too concerned about that; both of them were really tired, and Mabel just stopped when she was tired. She would be up before him tomorrow, and would probably wake him up by shoving her new bed into his room.
He opened the door, and shut it quietly behind him. He instinctively locked it; the click was loud in the quiet space. Huge windows overlooked the overgrown topiary maze in the back and the large pool surrounded by the only trimmed shrubbery. Large velvet curtains were bound back by gold-colored ropes. Dipper crossed the room, kicking off his shoes on the round blue carpet, and shut the curtains. He double-checked the locked windows, then surveyed the rest of the room. There was a huge, dusty chandelier, a king-sized bed in blue sheets, and a mahogany desk with a built-in inkwell. A lamp with a bendable neck had been placed on it, as well as a collection of pens and pencils. Dipper smiled. He set his bag on the ground next to it, and dug out his journal and a pen with a chewed top. He turned on the lamp, and took a seat. The seat was a little too hard; he could find a cushion for it tomorrow morning. He uncapped the pen, worried it for a moment, then began to write.
June 1
We finally arrived in Gravity Falls again. Like anything, the place has changed, but you can only get so much of a view from the backseat of a car. The bus ride was uneventful. I fell asleep somewhere in Bakersville and woke up with a huge bruise on my head.
Grunkle Stan & Ford were waiting for us at the bus stop. They took us to the old Northwest Mansion where McGucket lives now, and Soos, Melody, and him threw a small welcome party. We got our own rooms. It's pretty nice, but I do miss Mabel a little. She's only in the room across the hall, though, so it's not like she's far.
I keep thinking this summer is going to be full of adventure like last time, but considering the world was almost destroyed...maybe it's better things are normal. Well, as normal as they can be. I hope to see the Manotaurs again.
Weird thing: Grunkle Stan spilled his soda, and Ford watched him carefully after. Brushed it off after, though. Maybe tired but it definitely happened. Be sure to watch for any sim. behavior.
Dipper recapped the thoroughly-chewed pen and left the page open to dry. He stripped down, threw on a pair of old gym shorts, then closed the journal after a running a finger down the page. He dragged the bag to the bedside, then peeled back three layers of covers and sheets before crawling in. He didn't realize how tired he was until his head hit the feather pillows and he shut his eyes. He was asleep in three minutes.
The floorboards squealed outside. Dipper shot up, heart hammering in his chest. He didn't recognize his surroundings, and he nearly screamed. If his vocal chords weren't still disused from sleep, it would have come out. The floorboards squealed again as whatever weight was lifted off of them. He remembered he wasn't in Piedmont anymore, but Gravity Falls, and his heart beat slowed down considerably. He checked the ornamental clock on his nightstand: 3:48 AM. No one should have been awake. He almost laid down, but then remembered his first summer here. True, the ghosts had been exorcised out of Northwest Mansion, but there was always the chance of a new specter or some looked-over spirit.
Dipper threw back the heavy covers, and slowly slid out of bed. He dug his camera out of his bag, attached the mike, and switched to night vision mode. He carefully crept to the door, unlocked it, and carefully opened it. The hinges caught, but didn't squeal. Dipper peered out, then stuck the camera through the jamb. When his eyes adjusted and he didn't see anything, he risked opening the door further. This time it did squeak. He froze.
Nothing.
He looked down the hall, both directions just to be safe. When he didn't see anything, he checked the small, built-in screen. A green static version of the hall showed up. He held it close to his face, looking for any errant pixels or anything vaguely human-shaped in the black path of the hall.
Dipper almost screamed from excitement. On his left, walking down the hall, was something large. He quickly followed it, but his excitement turned to disappointment when he saw it wasn't a ghost, but Stan. He shut the screen.
“Grunkle Stan, what are you doing up?” he asked.
Stan kept walking.
“Aren't old people supposed to sleep a lot? It's three-thirty...”
Stan snorted. Dipper stopped, momentarily startled.
“Sleepwalking? Is he sleepwalking?”
“Grunkle Stan?”
Stan snorted again, followed by a slurred,
“You keep your hands where I can see them. I don't trust octopi.”
Dipper kept his distance as Stan half-turned to face a door. The movement was slow, almost theatrical. He reached out a hand and gripped the knob with the same drugged energy
“Ya cleaned up in here. Knew I was coming,” he mumbled.
The door was open wide, but he just stood there. Dipper watched, incredibly confused. They stood for a minute and a half before Stan walked into the room. Dipper followed.
The room had bay windows too, with the curtains thrown wide open. Moonlight turned the furniture light blue. Two armchairs were positioned in front of an empty fireplace. Other than that, it was bare
Dipper stood just inside the door.
“I do a good impression of my brother, huh?” Stan mumbled.
His eyes were half-open, but glazed and far, far away.
“I've heard that before. Something new, please,” Stan answered himself. “You're a real wise guy. I heard that, too.”
“What's going on...?” Dipper asked slowly.
Stan plodded over to the window, and set his forehead against the glass. He seemed to stare at his reflection for a while, a grin playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Wanna hear a joke?” he suddenly asked. “Ugh, no.”
“Okay, I'm leaving,” Dipper said aloud, but he didn't know why.
“My wife keeps missing me...but her aim is getting better!” Stan said.
A strange sound escaped his throat. It sounded like he was trying to laugh and groan at the time. Dipper had enough. He walked right out of the room, not bothering to tread lightly. When he reached his bedroom, he locked the door and pushed a decorative end table in front of it. He ran to his bed just as he heard slow, heavy footsteps outside. He jumped onto it, then off. The floorboards creaked outside.
Then, silence.
Dipper slowly peered over the edge of the bed. The boards in the hall squealed one more time, coming from the distant right. He was gone.
Dipper's heart was still racing, almost breaking the ribs that encased it. He realized he still held his video camera, and tossed it indifferently onto the bed. He walked cautiously over the door, and pushed the end table aside so he could press his ear against the painted wood. When he didn't hear anything, he risked opening it and peeking down the hall.
Nothing.
He locked and barricaded it again, and went to bed. He was a little calmer now. His grunkle was probably just sleepwalking and sleeptalking; all that weird stuff he said was probably addressed to whatever he was dreaming about. That grumble-laugh, though...that was tougher to explain.
“'I do a good impression of my brother, huh?'”
Even under the warm covers, he felt cold. The last time Stan had imitated Ford...no, he didn't want to think about it. Yes, that had happened here, but it was summer now. Weirdmaggedon was over. Everything was normal.
There was no need to worry.