Chapter Text
He was completely wrong, and he didn't know it.
Dipper thinks high school has kept them busier than he ever imagined.
What had started as mostly separate classes had turned into seeing his sister, if he was lucky, on weekends. Unless either of them had some extra activity going on.
He had never really thought about it that carefully. Getting up, seeing her at breakfast, exchanging a few words—it all happened automatically. She was simply another part of his routine.
The walk to school. Passing each other in the hallways, maybe three times a day, sometimes only once, and many others just catching sight of her walking in the opposite direction.
The routine of checking her locker, going over her schedule while only half listening to her. After all, it was always about some other day.
Class after class, book after book, assignment after assignment.
Lunch with their separate groups. He had his study group, the people he often went out with to conventions or whatever other activity someone suggested during the week. At first, he admits, he used to make excuses. But after enough insistence, he eventually started joining them more and more, realizing that he wasn't as much of a social misfit as his own head had convinced him he was.
And Mabel...
She had always been a spark, with all her charm. Talking to anyone came easily to her, and, in her own way, she believed there was no such thing as a truly bad comment. Or maybe she simply knew how to disguise them as good ones and walk away from trouble.
Whenever he happened to see her from a distance, he could watch her become the center of whatever group she was with, a huge smile on her face as she showed someone something or simply carried on a quiet conversation.
Always smiling around everyone.
The routine was always the same.
Wake up, breakfast, school, home.
Except when he stayed behind with one of his study groups, or when his sister asked him for a ride for her and her friends.
Most of the time, he had possession of the twins' only vehicle. Truthfully, Mabel had never been particularly interested in driving. She was much more comfortable being the passenger—playing with the music, staring out the window, or simply leaning back against the seat with something to eat or drink in her hands.
Dinner meant waiting for their parents and going through the same questions that reinforced the routine.
How was your day?
Always the same words.
Always the same answers.
Everything exactly the same.
A few hours of studying. Homework in the late afternoon. Almost never with his sister, since even the few classes they shared made it difficult to work on anything together when it came to school.
He feels like, throughout that entire year, there have only been a couple of days when they actually had time for just the two of them.
But, after all, isn't that what life is supposed to look like as the years go by?
Little by little, each person starts doing their own thing. They become so busy that they grow distant, while still knowing that the other person is only a hallway away. They know the other's room. They know their phone. They always know where to find them.
Dipper isn't sure that, when they promised they would never grow apart, he understood that this was what it would eventually become.
He is surrounded by books, several pages of notes and crossed-out calculations scattered around him. Some of them look like complete failures.
Truthfully, his mind is somewhere else.
He knows that in only two years, high school will be over, and college is already looming over him.
Questions about adulthood keep creeping closer.
What does he want to do?
Where would he rather go?
How far away from home?
At some point, he thought about talking to Mabel about it. Maybe figuring out a distance somewhere in between, or simply waiting to see what she had in mind.
They didn't want distance or time to become a barrier between them and whatever they chose to do later.
He keeps crossing things out on the pages, letting time pass.
He isn't entirely sure how honest he was when they talked about it.
He isn't entirely sure how content he is with his life as it is, either.
Sometimes, like right now, the silence of an empty house, surrounded by the same assignments and waiting for the same things to finish the day, makes him wonder if this is really what was expected of him.
Sometimes he wants to do something more.
Sometimes he thinks it would have been better to have taken a different kind of education, to have had the chance to stay with Ford, or simply to have done something different.
But he always runs into the same wall.
The one that ties him to what he has.
It isn't guilt.
But it isn't necessity, either.
It's something else.
Like a needle at the back of his neck, bothering him, keeping a strange ache there, something that burns without quite being painful.
A feeling that isn't uncomfortable, exactly.
But he can't put it into words.
Dinner has become another jumble of everyday conversations.
He still has to finish all the work he couldn't concentrate on that afternoon, but the scrape of a chair pulls him out of his thoughts as he stares down at his plate.
His sister excuses herself, saying she still has too much homework and will finish it in her room. She picks up her plate and heads upstairs.
No matter how many times he thinks about that moment later that night, he can't remember her face.
It's as if she moved so quickly that everything was hidden behind her hair.
Halfway through the night, while he lies awake, he thinks he hears her walking down the hallway outside.
But he doesn't want to look.
He doesn't want to find out that there is nothing there.
Because somehow, he feels like he's losing his mind over a small conversation they left unfinished months ago.
After all, he needs to calm down.
He's Dipper Pines.
He's always felt like he had everything under control. Like he always had a Plan A, B, C, all the way to Z.
He's just a little tired.
Exam week is next week, after all, and, to be honest, he's already a little behind.
His sister probably is even more behind, even if she refuses to admit it.
They should let themselves have Saturday before the sheer amount of notes and assignments crushes them.
Like old times.
Just the two of them.
That is his last thought before he finally falls asleep.