Work Text:
i.
He remembers exactly how he met Norman Babcock.
Even then, he felt like he was burning.
In the woods, on a cold evening, on the summer he turned sixteen. There were green floating figures dancing in the sky, and there was a boy whose eyes were glowing and whose mouth was quirked into a smile.
He shouted at him; he tried to get his attention. “Hey! Hey!”
In hindsight, he shouldn’t have done that. Because everything disappeared. All that was left was a boy with a wide-eyed look on his face. Dipper stared at him, stared for a long time.
He most certainly needed to introduce himself.
ii.
It’s written in his journal: the steps to make the bones of a dead man talk.
He’s never been able to do it, not until he met someone who could easily perform the steps without so much as a drop of sweat.
Dipper’s scared out of his wits, of course.
It clacks, moans, says unintelligible things. It’s angry, but it cannot stand.
Dipper is scared but he’s laughing. Laughing hard. Laughing like he’s never laughed before. Norman doesn’t laugh, only smiles, looking deeply amused.
A week is how long they’ve known each other, and Dipper is already a hundred percent sure Norman is a keeper.
iii.
“Whenever there’s a full moon, and you see five stars aligned, separated from all the rest, you listen. Listen carefully.”
That is what Norman tells him, while they’re standing on the roof of the house Dipper’s grown to love.
Dipper watches Norman’s arm gracefully lift itself, and he watches Norman’s finger point upwards.
“There. Look up there.”
He has to squint to see it.
“She’s coming.”
They stand in silence. Dipper closes his eyes and tries to concentrate.
“Do you hear her?”
Dipper does hear it. He hears a laugh, and then what sounds like a xylophone, except it isn’t. He opens his eyes to see dust, spreading through the sky, confusing the stars, making them move away from each other, making them give way for new stars.
He sees her: The girl waving from the stars, the girl who is a star, the girl who Norman says is a friend of his.
Dipper is left dumbfounded, eyes wide open and mouth agape.
iv.
Norman shows him the most wonderful things.
There’s this place, a long way from Gravity Falls. It’s full of tall trees and bushes teeming with flowers, blue, red, pink, green.
Norman holds his hand, tells him he should concentrate.
Dipper shakes his head. “Can’t do it,” he says. “Can’t see what you see.”
Norman tells him to try harder.
They walk through the trees, Norman holding Dipper’s hand, Dipper not knowing where he’s being taken.
He tries and he tries. Norman’s grip on his hand tightens, and he knows he should try even harder.
They stop, at a place where the trees stop to give way to a small clearing. Norman smiles, slightly, almost like a smirk. He turns to Dipper, lets go of the hand, takes Dipper by the cheeks.
“You have to try harder,” he says, as he places their foreheads together.
He tries and he tries and he tries and he tries.
And he feels Norman’s breath on his face.
“There.”
Dipper starts to see yellow. Not green, but yellow.
Everything starts moving – the flowers and the leaves and the branches. They’re all yellow and gold and translucent. He gapes at them all, disbelieving, holding on to Norman’s hand.
“Pinch me,” he says.
Then he notices something, at the corner of his eye. A table, with people, or at least yellow, translucent, jovial emulations of people, wearing tunics and large dresses.
They’re having tea. And biscuits. Which were, as it turns out, not yellow.
Norman pulls on his hand, telling him that they should join them. Dipper says nothing. He only screams what the fuck in his head, because this is too unbelievable, too surreal, too much.
v.
Fire out of nothing.
Water out of thin air.
Light from nothing but thin, callused fingers.
These are things he’s allowed to see.
And he doesn’t know how to handle them.
vi.
He’s floating, face up, on a lake, wearing nothing but red board shorts. He stares at the sky, at all the clouds coming and going.
Norman is on the dock, watching, sitting with his feet dangling down to the water.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to get in there with you?” Norman asks.
“No. I want to do this. By myself. For once.”
He’s determined.
Any minute now, there should be a pair of arms wrapping around his torso. Any minute now, there should be a creature coming to pull him down.
He looks at Norman, looks him in the eye.
“You weren’t lying about this, were you?” Dipper asks.
“No, I wasn’t.”
He believes this, because it’s Norman who says it, and Norman has never let him down.
He believes this, even though he knows that it’s Norman these creatures love, not him.
He believes what Norman says until nothing comes.
And then he stops believing, for a moment.
vii.
He doubts, sometimes. But most of the time, he’s sure. He’s sure that Norman is who he wants.
Because he can’t let go.
It’s as if he’s taking the world and he’s swallowing it, whole, without warning.
Norman. It’s all thanks to Norman, who he can’t help but follow. Norman whose footsteps he wants to trace, and kiss, and tread on forever.
“Do your eyes ever hurt?” Dipper asks him, out of the blue, one day.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do your eyes ever hurt? From seeing too much?”
He’s serious with this question, because he wants to know what it feels like. He wants to figure out exactly what it’s like to be Norman.
He’s gulping, Norman is.
“Maybe—A bit.”
Ah.
“That sucks, dude.”
“Yeah—“ He pauses, looks away from Dipper and down to the ground. “Tell me about it.”
viii.
The first time he’s kissed, it feels like hell on earth.
But in the best possible way.
In the woods, on the grass, against a tree, on the day he turns seventeen, while they watch for any dwarf tribes that may pass by.
He waited for this for a whole year.
And now he has it. He has it, and he’s burning.
He manages a limp hand onto Norman’s craned neck. He manages a breath. He manages not to break down and cry.
ix.
He doesn’t know how many more times he’s kissed after that. He’s lost count.
Today, though, he’s kissed a total of ten times.
One when they’re on a picnic table, eating lunch.
One when they’re on a bridge, waiting for the ghost of a girl in a silk dress to float through the river.
Three when they’re inside the shack, watching an episode of who-knows-what.
Five. Five that lingered. Five when they’re on bed, naked, Dipper rubbing the small of Norman’s back, Norman shivering, sweating, making sounds that makes Dipper burn even more.
x.
It’s funny.
Norman isn’t there when he wakes up, and Dipper almost has a heart attack.
Of course, all he has to do is go downstairs to see that Norman hasn’t left. He’s always just sitting somewhere, maybe drinking a cup of coffee, maybe reading a book, maybe looking at pictures of all the people who used to live here.
It really is funny.
The screams in Dipper’s head die down. He breathes in and out.
Norman is by the kitchen counter, coffee cup in hand. He raises it to his mouth, stops when he sees Dipper, smiles, laughs a little.
Dipper doesn’t know what to do with this feeling, and he knows he never will.
fin.