#bill works at lazy susans diner

[yonevea]

First meeting

This is like-- old art and I lowkey hate it 😅

[nightingale2004]

Gravity falls Hcs: Throughout the years, pt. 1

The town of gravity falls continues to remain normal, but still has its weird strange flair

More and more tourists come and go from Gravity Falls Oregon, especially after Weirdmageddon

Tyler is still mayor and going on strong

Dipper and Mabel still visit Gravity Falls every summer, and they remain close with their friends from Gravity Falls

Mabel, Grenda, and Candy's friendship still remain strong as they all grow up (since they got phones and computers, they text and videochat 24/7)

Dipper and Mabel have their troubles in school, especially after what they've been through, but no matter what, the pines twins stick together through thick and thin

Dipper is still not so popular, but he found his people, and he managed to create a "Dungeons, dungeons and more dungeons" club in school

Mabel is still to this day an arts and crafts master and also a master of knitting and clothing designs.

When Mabel was granted access to the world of the internet. She made her own business website showing the clothes she made, along with making video tutorials on knitting, art, and making wax figures

On one of twins' birthdays, great uncle Ford and Mabel gave Dipper three journals so he could find his own discoveries and adventures and write them in the journals (Dipper loved the gift and takes great care of them.)

Mabel still never misses a scrapbook-ortunity

Wendy and her gang of friends are still hanging out and still close (they've slowly started to treat Thompson nicer)

Robbie and Tambry are still together and are getting married (Wendy is Robbie's best woman and Tambry's bridesmaid)

When Soos got married, everyone was there, and it was all very emotional. Especially for Soos who cried at his own wedding more than anyone

When the pines twins come to gravity falls over the summer or the holidays, the townspeople all know their name, give them endless hugs and high fives, and it's pretty much the happiest moment for the townspeople

Old man Mckgucket still invents, but this time, it's for the benefit of town.

As time went by, Fiddleford started fixing his mind little by little with his son's help. He is also slowly rebuilding his relationship with his son and Stanford

When Mabel and Dipper's parents met with the Stan brothers, they demanded an explanation. Stanley and Stanford came up with a very believable lie involving Stanley owing a bunch of debt to dangerous men, and then he faked his death to get them off his back with Stanfords help.

Bill Cipher's statue is still in the woods of Gravity Falls, and everyone makes sure that people, including tourists, go nowhere near the statue out of fear

Stanley slowly starts remembering everything, but he asks his family and Stanford for clarification on memories that are a bit of a blur

Every time the Pines twins come to gravity falls, it's always a new adventure, and Candy, Grenda, Wendy, and even Pacifica started joining them on their adventures

Soos named Stanley the grandfather and the pines twins as the godparents. Melody wanted to protest, but she could never say no to Soos

Wendy found a girlfriend and still helps out at the shack, but now she is working as either a lumberjack or working on construction

Since money was tight for the Northwest family, Pacifica took a job at the diner thanks to lazy Susan, and now she earns her own money to help out, and she FaceTimes Mabel and the girls a lot

Pacifica gives Mabel fashion and design tips

Sev'ral Timez still lives in the woods and somehow managed to mate and multiply with nature. Now there are mutant hybrid Sev'ral Timez children running around Gravity Falls

Ivan or Toot-Toot McBumbersnazzle is traveling around the world to find his song that is in his heart, and so far, he has released a few Banjo songs but not many

While living in California was nice, Waddles, after some time, was no longer aloud to live with the Pines twins family, which broke Mabel's heart but Soos luckily volunteered to take in Waddles after he convinced Melody to be on board which Mabel immediately was happy about

Sheriff Daryl Blubs and Deputy Durland are married and have adopted a boy together

After the weirdmaggedon, everyone has their trauma, and everyone deals with it in their own way, but the town who went through it all go through the healing together or with those that they trust

[starrysymphonies]

Some designs and doodles I’ve made for this Gravity Falls AU I’ve been thinking about!! More info under the cut bcs god knows it’ll be a ramble

The meat of this AU takes place in the next summer after the show ends!! Bill is summoned (jailbroken) out of the Theraprism by Xgqrthx the Unpronounceable (or X from now on)

Except this time, instead of putting Bill in a goofy ass orb, he sticks his consciousness in a homunculus body and decides he’s gonna take all of Bill’s magical power!! He also casts a spell on Bill that makes him obey any orders from X (no I didn’t take that from Ella Enchanted what are you talking about hahahahahahaha) mainly so Bill doesn’t like. Main him immediately. Because that was his first plan of action.

Bill eventually escapes, and is homeless for a bit, before Lazy Susan picks him up like a stray cat and lets him stay at her house in exchange for him working at the diner, to which hijinks ensue

The little story ideas I’ve made up in my brain mainly focus on Bill interacting with the townsfolk of Gravity Falls and kinda learning about humanity and what it means to be human and care for other people just through osmosis and observation and actually like, being in a place to receive that kindness. He and Pacifica become friends since they’re coworkers, and they go on their own supernatural 22 minute long adventures

Bill is VERY intent on not letting the Pines family know he’s back, at least not until he’s back in his normal body!!! Cmon, think of how embarrassing it would be if he met them again and he was in this weak flesh prison!!! He needs to be in top form for his revenge (spoiler alert he does not get revenge)

This au was mostly made out of my insatiable urge for any redemption arc, but also because I think exploring the parallels between Bill and Pacifica would be so interesting

[anon55mystery]

Ideas for a GF Lost Legends sequel or well midquel.

1). We get a story that features Ford working together with Dipper and Multi-Bear!

We learn more of their friendship and their interests.

Multi-Bear meets Ford! Him, Multi-Bear, and Dipper become an unlikely trio!

They all work together to find something or someone in The Crawlspace about Ford's past. Maybe also some information of The Oracle!

Also maybe some more flashbacks of Ford's childhood and maybe Multi-Bear shares some of his childhood memories too.

Also their love of the group BABBA and their hit song Disco Girl!

2). The second story can be about Pacifica working at Greasy's Diner.

After her parents lost their mansion for pledging their alliance to Bill. Pacifica has to find work to pay off her parents new house.

While at the start, she's her usually bratty and spoiled self. She slowly learns how to be nice and compassionate to others. Also because her, and her parents aren't wealthy anymore, no one is cowering before her.

Even when Pacifica is mean to her at first, Lazy Susan is is still cheerful and polite towards her, she even lets her stay at her place when her parents are "busy" wallowing in pity.

We also learn a little bit of Lazy Susan's past and why she's nice. Also her becoming Pacifica's grandmother figure.

3). A reconcile story of Old Man McGucket and his son.

We get flashbacks of what's his childhood like and what type of people his family were.

His friendship with Stanford, him giving an axolotl, and more of their friendship during college.

Some flashbacks of him when he was healthier, and his relationship with his son Tate McGucket, along with is ex wife Emma-May.

Maybe even some tension between Ford and Tate for understandable reasons.

4). A story of Wendy during high school, and still having adventures after The Pines Family left Gravity Falls.

She's still the awesome laid-back, rebellious teenager, we know and love, but this time we learn a bit more about her childhood and who her mom was.

We see the relationship between her dad, her younger brothers, and her mom before her disappearance (I like to think she disappeared when Wendy was twelve. Also I believe in this theory)

In the flashbacks, we get to see her dad training her and her brothers for an apocalypse, and her awesome fighting skills!

The origin on how she met Tambry, despite being complete opposites. Also her eventual friendships with Nate, Lee, Robbie, and Thompson.

We also see she still goes on adventures without Soos and The Pines Family. Sometimes she goes on adventures with her friends or brothers.

Maybe even while she's ditching school during a boring trip at the museum, she finds a something about her missing mom.

[videogamelover99]

[Gravity Falls] Waking Days Ch. 4: The Stranger

Summary: Bill Cipher is reborn, but not in the way he would have wanted. Stuck as a mortal and relying on those who brought his downfall, he realizes that maybe he didn't lie as hard as he should have. [AO3 Link] Characters: Bill Cipher, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Stanford Pines, Stanley Pines, Jheselbraum the Unswerving, The Axolotl Pairings: past BillFord Rating: T

A/N: This was one of my favorite chapters to write (Bill and Mabel just...work so well off each other, I wish they had more screen time together). Thank you to @megxolotl and @nexstage for beta-reading. Enjoy!

---

Free-floating through the mindscape, Bill tried to find Cashier Girl’s boss, Sarah Wheatfield. 

Of course, there was no cleansing ritual. Bill didn’t know what the heck was up with the weird static in Cashier Girl’s mind, or how to get rid of it. Likely it was a symptom of a latent psychotic break, brought on by a glimpse into his dimension, but hey, that wasn’t his problem. The ability to make deals was as powerful as it was a pain, and for once, being able to drop the other end of the bargain worked in his favor.

When he finally found Sarah, he wasn’t thrilled.

I remember you, he thought and watched the woman arrange a shelf of T-shirts. She was middle-aged, with braided dark hair and a mole over her upper lip, one she bit constantly in a nervous fervor. Once in a while she would reach up and rub at her necklace, a rough string threaded through a tacky pink crystal. 

She’d made a great backrest for his Throne of Human Agony, but this also meant that she probably remembered him. 

No way of talking to her through the mindscape. She’ll know who I am.

He could take on another form if he wanted. He could look like anything he wished in the minds of humans, but he couldn’t risk some too-observant idiot connecting the dots. Best-case scenario, it’s a fit of horrified, traumatized screaming, which would be fun to watch, but not very useful. Worst case scenario: a quick trip to the town’s resident paranormal nerd. And the last thing Bill wanted was for Stanford Pines to know he got some of his power back.

He watched her fold T-shirts, fuming and trying to come up with a plan, when he felt something tugging at him, like a hook sinking into his middle, right underneath the bowtie.

“What? No, not yet!”

It didn’t matter how much Bill struggled to stay asleep when his body was waking up. It yanked him straight out of the mindscape, back to a dirty park bench with two children staring him down. 

“Have a nice nap?” Dipper asked. “Come on, it’s getting dark.”

Mabel sheepishly held out a hand. Bill scowled at it, before pushing himself up, ignoring the pout he received. “Like a cacophony of ten screaming toddlers with their feet cut off.”

“Why do I keep talking to you?” Dipper wondered out loud, looking slightly nauseous, “You never have anything good to say.”

—

Greasy’s Diner was crowded with a dozen or so people, and it was pretty damn unusual at this time of day. No one paid him any attention, which was good. People didn’t know the Pines were harboring a chaotic space demon, and it better stay that way. 

Stan managed to squeeze in between the Valentinos and find a place to sit, just as someone in the center of the big group of people cleared his throat. 

It was a well-kempt man in a pristine white suit. A gleaming, expensive-looking pen poked out of his front coat pocket, and the greying sideburns in his dark hair only made him more good-looking.  This man could’ve walked off the cover of a Business for Middle-Aged Men!

The man spoke in a soft, kind voice. “Hello, everyone! I’m glad so many could make it at this hour. For those who don’t know, hello! I’m Mason Jewels, the town’s new tourism consultant. I just wanted to get a better picture of the difficulties the small businesses of Gravity Falls are facing. Who wants to start?”

“Ooh, me, me!” Lazy Susan, standing behind the counter, raised her hand eagerly.

“Yes, you first, my dear.”

“Well, hi. I’m Lazy Susan,” she waved at the crowd.

“We know who you are!” Someone yelled from the back.

“As for difficulties, well…” She frowned for a moment. “Well, you see after last summer…”

“Nothing happened last summer!” Manly Dan bellowed from a booth. His wide frame took up most of it.

“Yeah, it’s the Mayor’s Nevermind All That Act!” someone else said.

“What happened last summer?” Jewels asked.

“Never mind all that!”

“Oh, right,” said Lady Susan. “After all that, I keep getting customers of the more…unnatural variety.”

Jewels frowned. “Unnatural variety?”

“Yes! Those little gnome men. And that bear with many heads. Not that I don’t like the business, but, well, this place is meant for human-sized guests,” she fretted with her hair. “And I don’t have the money to fix any more walls.” She pointed at a giant boarded-up hole behind the counter. A slight breeze came through the gaps in the boards.

“I see,” Jewels jotted something down in the little notepad he was carrying. “And the, ah, bear destroyed that wall?”

“Oh, no, he’s a peach! It’s those gnomes. One of them tried to get me to marry all of them, and they thought getting a ring the size of a minivan would do it. Couldn’t get it through the front door, so…”

Stan let out a laugh, then chocked it down when someone glared at him.

Jewels, for his part, seemed to roll with it. Either this man encountered gnomes numerous times in his career, or he was writing a note to send Lazy Susan to a mental hospital. “I see. Perhaps we can suggest some ideas on how to mitigate this issue?”

Manly Dan raised a hand.

“Yes?”

“Run ‘em outta town!”

“Oh no, I couldn’t,” Lazy Susan protested.

“Yes? Mrs. Valentino?”

“I, for one, found a nice cup of tea and a polite conversation went a long way. One of those bull-men had recently, ah-”

“Gone belly-up?” her husband suggested.

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Valentino giggled. “And all of his friends requested funeral arrangements. They were very loud, and, well, bullheaded, haha. But after a few calming cups of tea, they were sweethearts. One even cried right in front of us.”

“Aw,” Manly Dan wiped away a tear. 

Stan rolled his eyes. 

“Yes, perhaps discussing better arrangements with your new patrons would be beneficial,” Jewels said. “What do you think?”

“I could try,” said Susan, scratching her head. 

“Anyone else?”

Stan raised his hand.

The man’s bright blue eyes fell on him. He looked surprised for a moment, almost like he recognized Stan. He better not have seen one of the wanted posters. 

“Yes? Stanford Pines, is it?”

“Stanley,” he corrected. “Anyway, aren’t you a business expert? What’s with the support group nonsense?”

“I’m just here to better understand the situation of all my clients,” Jewels replied, polite as ever. His voice started getting on Stan’s nerves. “What about you, Mr. Pines? I’ve gotten up to date on every business in this town, including yours. Any problems at the Mystery Shack you are currently facing? You are welcome to share if you like.”

“No.”

“That’s not true,” Lazy Susan piped up. “Yesterday-”

“Okay, there is…one.” Stan folded his arms. “But he ain’t exactly easy to get rid of.” 

“Troublesome customer?” asked Jewels.

“Worse.”

They were all looking at him. Damn him and his mouth. He couldn’t exactly come clean and admit he was housing that demon, of all things. Mayor’s Act or not, the panic that would set in would be a huge mess. “There’s, uh, this guy we’re letting stay at the Shack. He ain’t easy to get along with. He makes everything worse for everyone and then acts like he owns the place.”

“I’ve got a cousin like that,” Farmer Sprott piped up. “Why don’t you get rid of him?”

“...He’s got nowhere else to go, I guess.”

“Aw,” said Lazy Susan.

“Hey, don’t make it sound like we’re doing him a favor. If I could get rid of him, I would,” Stan muttered. 

“That is commendable, Mr. Pines,” Jewels said. The gleam in his eye caught Stan off guard. He stared at Stan for a few moments longer, before clapping his hands together and turning to the rest of the townsfolk. “Well, you can see how our problems affect more than just our business. They create stress and fatigue, and suck away our energy.”

Stan grunted.

“There are ways to mitigate that stress,” Jewels continued. “The tourist wave is yet to start. By then you will all be busy. But before you go, I would like you all to have something.” 

With that, Jewels opened his suitcase and took out a black velvet bag. He reached into the bag and presented…a set of crystals.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” said Stan. 

The rest of the townsfolk seemed captivated as Jewels presented each piece. Stan meanwhile, was starting to put his own pieces together, as he held his free crystal in his palm. 

Mason Jewels was a con artist, plain and simple. 

—

By the time they got back, Seven Eyes was already gone, but Bill could tell she’d been there by the ionized air left behind by the dimensional scissors. Which was for the better. He had no interest in dealing with that. He didn’t want to see her.

Things took on a routine. Sixer avoided him in the most I don’t care of course I’m over it! way possible by hiding in his lab. Stanley came back from whatever it was old men do on their days off, a tacky new-age crystal in his hand, and Bill found it hilarious that the two-bit con artist had gotten swindled.

Bill had taken his usual spot on the couch when Mabel suddenly appeared next to him and produced her sketchbook. “We need to talk about your progress,” she said very seriously.

“You know,” Bill remarked idly. “That ‘I can fix him!’ attitude ain’t gonna do you any favors in your dating life.”

She ignored him and flipped back to the page with the drawing of his badness level. “Maybe we’re going at it the wrong way.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. Can I sleep now?”

“You’re not taking this seriously. That’s the problem.”

“Sure I am! I’ve done all those things you asked me to! And don’t forget your end of the bargain.”

Mabel sighed, defeated. “Do you really like being a jerk that much?”

“I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, so listen close.” Bill lowered his voice for the dramatics of it. “Everyone on this planet, everyone in this reality, and all the other realities, they’re all jerks. Every last one of ‘em!”

“That’s not true,” said Mabel.

“Oh please,” Bill rolled his eyes. “You think people do things out of the goodness of their hearts? You think people are nice to each other just because? It ain’t how it works, kid. The big wigs up top invented ‘morality’ to get suckers to fall in line and feel bad about themselves every other opportunity. And those suckers? They do things not because they’re good, but because they feel good. That’s why you humans can’t even decide what religion to follow or who gets to die in prison. Morality is a scam.”

Mabel looked at him for a long time. “That’s a really sad way of looking at it,” she said finally.

“It’s not how you look at it, kid. It’s how it is.” Bill shrugged. “The sooner you realize it the sooner you’ll be free of all those guilt-generating shackles society’s put on you.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mabel. “I think you think that because it’s easier.”

“Whatever,” Bill flipped over on his side and pulled the blanket over his head. 

Mabel didn’t move. He heard her scribbling furiously in her sketchbook.

He closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. 

—

He couldn’t. Bill squirmed on the couch, restless, unable to calm down, and unable to tell why. This body was supposed to want to sleep, and yet despite how tired he felt, he still lay awake, hours later, staring at the ceiling, where the blue translucent light of the water tank cast long wavy shadows across its surface. 

The Axolotl was silent.

Mabel had fallen asleep, sketchbook still in her lap. Her head had fallen forward, her hair brushing against Bill’s ankles. 

Frustrated, Bill sat up and watched her. Shooting Star, the only Pines he was sure could have caused as much chaos as he did. Right now, she looked less like a catalyst of sugar hallucinations and glitter and more like any other human thirteen-year-old girl.

He should draw on her face.

Bill reached for the marker still held loosely in Mabel’s hand. She gasped lightly in her sleep. The sketchbook fell from her lap, onto the floor.

He uncapped the marker.

Then Mabel sobbed and shuddered, her body twitching. She curled up into herself.

Ah. Nightmare.

It must be the one about the pig again. Bill watched her shoulders rise and fall with rapid, panicked breaths, marker still hovering inches from her cheek. All of a sudden drawing on her face didn’t seem that appealing.

In fact, not a lot of things seemed appealing at the moment. Mabel Pines worked best as an unapologetic little brat, not whatever this pathetic excuse was.

It’s not like he owed her anything.

But he didn’t like it.

Fine. The kid would get one freebie, on the house. Bill laid down on the couch again and closed his eyes.

This time, sleep came quickly.

—

Mabel Pines’ mindscape was just like he remembered, except it was on fire. 

Crackling flames rose high above him, and Bill watched, floating in the center of it, as the inferno engulfed a giant cast of colorful characters, all screaming in pain. So not the pig one. This one was way more fun.

That’s when he heard the laugh. His laugh.

Bill looked up.

It was kinda surreal, seeing his own monstrous, spider-like form hovering over the glittery town of Mabel’s dream. Hey, she’d at least gotten his good angle! Bill should be flattered by the accuracy. He admired the screaming and the sights just a little longer before he remembered what he was here for in the first place. Right, find Mabel. Bill tore his eye away from his dream self and scanned the crowd.

There. Through the screams and the roaring flames and his own laughter, he heard it. Mariah Carey, entirely in meows. 

He floated up to avoid the crowds and followed the sound of her voice. He watched a glamorous hot dog run by, screaming because one of its eyes was on fire. Oh man, that’s why you don’t carry extras, that was hilariou-

He found Mabel.

She was sitting on the ground of some tiny gross alley, her knees scraped and bloody. Her sweater was singed. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her hands over her ears as she sang as loudly as she could.

Bill felt something in his center pull and twist, like someone had stabbed his eye with a hot-iron poker. Suddenly none of it seemed funny anymore. It was like-

His thoughts all turned to static. Don’t think about it.

Bill snapped his fingers.

Instantly, the fire and the screams cut out. Bill ran a haphazard hand through Mabel’s surface thoughts and threw the first pleasant one he could find over the mindscape. Pink, fluffy white clouds floated underneath their feet, resembling pigs, above which was a kaleidoscopic sky of bright stars. 

Mabel raised her head slowly and uncovered her ears. She looked around her own mindscape in disbelief. 

Bill was out before she could see him. You owe me, kid.

—

“Morning, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel grinned over her cup of Mabel Juice. 

“Morning, Pumpkin,” Stan’s usual demeanor gave way to a smile when he saw his grand-niece. 

“Eugh,” next to Mabel, Bill made a face. Trust even Fez to be annoyingly sappy first thing in the morning.

Mabel elbowed him on the side before clearing her throat. “Grunkle Stan, our not-so-esteemed resident has something to say to you.”

She gave Bill a look. Bill returned the look with another look, one that spelled he would rather pull his eyeballs out than do what she wanted him to.

Stan, for his part, looked unimpressed. “What’s his problem this time?”

Bill caught her elbow before it met his side again. He gave Stan a pacifying smile. Or, at least, his best attempt at a pacifying smile. In reality, he was thinking of more and more creative ways to rearrange Stanley’s body parts.  “Look, my bad. For the glue thing. For real this time.”

Stan still looked unimpressed. “And?”

“...And the shampoo.”

“And?”

“And that time I filled your room with geese.”

“And?”

“And for setting the toaster on fire. That one wasn’t even intentional, I swear.”

Stan grunted. “Not buying it.”

“Hey, I’m stuck here, in this awful, impractical human body. And you’re stuck with me. So why don’t we let bygones be bygones and make our mutual existence here less miserable? How’s that sound, pal? Also, is that a new undershirt?”

Stan stared Bill down. Bill smiled innocently. “...This is a new undershirt. Finally, somebody noticed.”

“Looks great on ya, less stains than usual. So, what do you say?”

Stan scratched the side of his face. “Look, I ain’t gonna pretend like every other word that comes outta your mouth isn’t a sugarcoated lie. But…alright. As long as I don’t get another toaster fire or…birds in the house. I’ll lay off.”

“It’s a deal, Fez?”

Stanley’s face made a funny little dance. “Don’t even start.”

When Stan left, Mabel took the opportunity to wrap her clingy little arms around Bill’s middle. “See? I knew you could do it!”

Bill squawked but resigned himself to his fate. If only she didn’t hug so tight, he couldn’t breathe. “Yeah, yeah, don’t make it a habit.”

“Well, this Mabel is proud of you anyway.”

Bill watched her skip away. He didn’t give what he’d seen in Mabel’s head yesterday much thought. 

As far as he was concerned, he got one of them, hook, line, and sinker. 

---

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[ckret2]

Also, are you planning on giving Lazy Susan some love at some point? 🩵

Probably the next time we have a Pacifica arc! Pacifica's mother was a pageant queen, married rich as a trophy wife, and has taught her daughter that looks are everything and she's doomed to a life of misery if she isn't beautiful. Lazy Susan is literally everything Pacifica was taught to dread becoming: a fat old unmarried waitress with a facial disfigurement who can't do makeup well and lives with six cats. Inside Pacifica's head, that's not just the Worst Fate Ever, it's such an over-the-top exaggerated parody of the Worst Fate Ever that she didn't think anybody lived like that.

But outside of Pacifica's head, Lazy Susan is just a totally normal lady, content with her job and her cats and her life, singlehandedly keeping the local diner running due to an overwhelming itch to fix and tidy things that are out of order, giving away free treats to her favorite customers, and making weird jokes.

She's not a pity story, she's not a "somehow... in spite of her looks... she finds a way to go on with life... so brave..." story, she's just. Some lady. Doing fine. Perfectly cheerful. Well-liked by everyone who knows her. She trained Pacifica as a waitress and taught her about the regulars' preferences. She thinks everything Pacifica's parents taught her about looks and money and marriage is "silly."

She's the first normal well-adjusted female role model Pacifica's ever had. That's gonna be very valuable.

Also, depending on how things go, Lazy Susan might meet Slender Man. Still working on that plotline.

Anyway, once Bill is allowed to go places, Lazy Susan's gonna be tickled to see another gal in town who can only use one eye. It's not a lot, but it's something to relate over. (Bill will not be pointing out that last year she called him weird for having one eye.)

[orangebugsoup]

need need need need OMG they would fit so well together!!

just think about Bill meeting the Lords in Black! or maybe Mabel trying to "fix" Paul's dislike of musicals by loudly singing at him!

Ford would have a field day in Hatchetfeild I think. He'd just be off (maybe with Dipper) looking for the Ape-man, or they some how learn about Lumber-Axe and scour the woods. or they get their hands on the black book (would either end horribly or fantastically, which entirely depends on how careful they are)

I know Lazy Susan wasn't mentioned, but I think she'd fit in at Miss Retro's (maybe I'm saying that because she works at a diner and Miss Retro's is a diner, but Miss Holloway seems like she could mesh well with everyone.)

Speaking of Miss Holloway, I think Mabel would love her. Her cool hair, her love of music, the fact that she has a love interest, everything!

Soos & the younger twins would probably like Toy Zone a lot, that's all I'm saying. Stan would probably make friends with Frank pretty quickly, as their love of money is equal in strength. But they probably wouldn't be too close, as Frank is a little too selfish and doesn't have a lot of respect for other people (Stan sees him be a little mean to Lex and decides to keep him at arms length, maybe idk)

wow lot of text, but the beast was released for this one. two hyperfixations at once, hell yeah

I need more hatchetfield and gravity fall fans to make crossovers. Those two worlds fit so well, and I see hardly anything about it.

I want the pine twins (smol) visiting their cousins and inviting their gruncles.

I want the pine twins (large) to enrage Lynda at the boating society because their boat isnt 'up to code' (looks rich and fancy) and Stan waving a stack of cash at her while Ford misses the implications and goes into full detail about how their ship is actually legal and up to code despite the governments best attempts (he made it himself and used every loophole Stan could find when doing so)

I want dipper and mable meeting the gang at hatchetfield high. I want Stan to punch max for trying to bully the twins! I want them meeting grace chastity and getting bad vibes! And meeting Deb and Alice!

I WANT DIPPER TO FIND THE BLACK BOOK!!!!

just!!!

PUT THE PINES IN THAT FUCKED UP LITTLE TOWN!

[rhodochrosite-love]

WOW everyone who commented on my Wirt birthday post are amazing!

Here’s the au I’ve been working on where it started off as just a Ford Pines self insert, but turned into very interesting idea!

Stanley is kicked out and Ford goes to Backupsmore, while Penny stays in Jersey to help pay off her childhood home’s mortgage. All in the early 1970s.

Ford is awarded a doctorate 3 years ahead of schedule, and prepares to move to Gravity Falls, Oregon in 1973.

In the same instant, Ford gets a call from his parents and after he tells them he’s moving to the northwest, they inform him of Penny living with them. Shocked, Ford is conflicted. Should he go to his sweetheart? He couldn’t imagine what could’ve happened that made her stay in his parents home… After consulting with Fiddleford, he quickly travelled back to Jersey to confront Penny.

Penny explains that she couldn’t take care of the house like she thought she could, what with her book-keeping job as well as her secretary position AND the pressure from it all really weighing her down. She couldn’t help her home anymore so she turned to the only people she knew left in Glass Shard-- Filbrick and Caryn Pines. She had been pulling her weight with buying food, despite Caryn’s pleas to rest whenever she could and her job offers.

Ford listened and took her side. He said he was moving out West to Oregon and had wanted her to come with him. He missed her dearly and could clearly see she needed to get away-- Jersey is no place for a princess.

She accepts in a heartbeat at the thought of living out there, alone with her sweetheart amongst the wood.

1972-1979 Penny and Ford start a life of adventure in Gravity Falls up in their cabin in the woods, catalouging new anomalies every day! After such a hard time, Penny adores the relaxing atmosphere and spending time with her boyfriend after 3(ish) years.

C. 1976 Penny can’t help but begin to think about the future with Ford, and tries to decide whether or not they should marry. In her heart she knows she wants to, but in her mind she feels as though Ford wouldn’t be as on board for whatever reason. After speaking with Susan (Lazy Susan) and Lana (Wendy’s mom), her newfound friends, she decides she has to speak with Ford!

After being avoided most of the day by her beloved (due to him being very distracted by the mystery of the Hide-Behind, and eventually their unavoidable run-in with it. emotional scenes with Penny’s annoyed tone) At the end of the day, Ford admits over dinner that he was avoiding her for the whole day due to his nervousness. After being asked why, he tells her that… “I’ve been fascinated by anomalies my whole life-- the Hide-Behind, the Gnomes, the Eyebats, that UFO theory I’ve still got stuck in my head--” “Stanford, please.” “--Even I, as normal as I may seem, my six fingers made me who I am today! … But… “ Ford reaches in his coat’s pocket, and pulls something from it and places it on the dinner table. “You, Penelope Wright, have been the one thing that’s done both for me-- Fascinated me, baffled me, cherished me, twirled me ‘round and ‘round again ‘til I was dizzy with delight.” “Ford, what’re ya sayin’?” “Penny, dearest... “ He reveals the item, it being a ring with the sweetest red gem in its center shaped like a rounded heart. Penny sniffled, “The apple… Stanford, you’re such a prince!” Before he could utter those four simple words, Penny kissed him breathless. When she pulled away, he was flushed from his ears to his nose and asked her then, whispered against her lips. She said yes, and then many times that night.

C. 1977 Bill realizes his plan is being challenged by this engagment! He had never thought of Penny to be a true problem until now, what with the now foretold probability of the wedding and children as a distraction! Bill makes a deal with Lana to guide Ford to the cave in which Bill was scribed by the natives in exchange for a long life. Ford summons Bill and to no avail, nothing happens until Ford falls asleep.

It was then Ford dreams about Bill and begins to work with him to open his dimension to study the weirdness of Gravity Falls and beyond.

With the new development in the mysteries, the wedding is delayed and Ford and Penny become very busy in their new findings with Bill’s help.

C. 1978 Fiddleford McGucket is employed as the head engineer in building the Portal to the other dimension. Upon hearing the news of Stanford’s engagment, he hoorah’d and congradulated his old roommate.

C. 1978-1979 The portal has been built, as well as the bunker and the second level of the basement. Fiddleford begins to despise his creation and begs Ford not to follow through with his plans and instead publish his findings and settle down properly with Penny. Ford declines and they move to test the portal the next day, Jan 18th 1979.

Jan 19th 1979. Fiddleford gets sucked into the portal, but then gets rescued by Penny and quits the whole she-bang.

Jan 20th, 1979. Bill sees that he has to manipulate Penny, too. She’d been taking Fidds’ side, and since she’s very close with Ford, it’s necessary. He enters her dreams and states that if she make a deal with him, he can make him see reality again. To Penny’s knowledge, Ford’s been driven to madness with his paranoia and struggles to see the light. Bill says that he can fix everything. If he ensconced a baby in Penny’s womb, one that’s both her’s and Ford’s completely, he will see the light again. In return, she has to take a hike. She makes the deal, and he ultimately sends her away. Confused, she cries. But when Bill explains that he basically makes her pregnant with a baby of a man that ‘doesn’t love her anymore’, and literally told her to ‘take a hike’. Embarrassed and humiliated, she flees into town and stays there, leaving Bill to torment Ford to his isoceles heart’s delight.

Sometime in October, before the 22nd, 1979. Penny gives birth to little Walter in Sacred Hirsch Community Hospital. At this point in time, Ford has been thrown into the portal by accident and Stanley has taken his place, in the process of making money for the new Murder Hut.

1980. Penny interrogates this new so-called Mr. Mystery, thinking he’s Ford. She rips at him, accusing him of neglecting her and hurting her. A lot of anger comes out, as well as sadness and despair and raw misery when she says that he no longer cared about her, and she doubted he ever had in the first place. When Stan pulls her to the side and finally looks her in the face clearly (before he was frantically looking around the room, his hut full of customers), he recognizes her faintly as Penelope Wright, the girl Sixer was in kahoots with back in Jersey. He sees her and the now crying baby she’s holding and connects the dots, and is flabbergasted that he’s an uncle! Well, he was already an uncle but that was for Shermie! Penny argues that it was a mistake. Little Walter was the making of a demon named Bill Cipher, and she never should have trusted him. Stan then takes her down to the basement and shows her what he’s done.

1981. Penny gets a job as a waitress at Greasy’s Diner with a little help from Lazy Susan.

1982. Penny needs to start fresh. Despite the fact that she’s got a job and is living with Stanley with a 3 year old Wirt (despite being named Walter, his first word was an attempt at ‘squirt’, which was a nickname given to him by Stanley. Everyone simply calls him Wirt now), she misses all the adventure from when she had Ford. Realizing she’s missing Ford, that son of a bitch that fell into a hole so deep he couldn’t climb out, she needs to get away. She saves up money from her Greasy’s job and now the Mystery Shack (unofficially hired. Stan just says that she’s always rearranging and flipping stuff over and it happens to look nice so he gives her some funds. She’s tried to refuse the money before, but he intensly insisted that she take it.) and moves to Arizona. Teary goodbyes are made and she hugs Stan the tightest of all, telling him to keep in touch.

1983-1994. Walter “Wirt” Wright is living in Arizona with his mother, Penelope Wright.

C. 1985. Greg Universe visits town and performs a live gig and seduces Penny. After a couple of succesful dates, they end up having unprotected sex. Not long after, he leaves town for another gig in Delmarva, doing gigs along the way. She ends up falling pregnant and struggles to comprehend the consequences.

C. 1986. Gregory Wright is born.

C. 1994. Halloween night, Wirt and Greg experience an adventure in The Unknown.

1999. Mason and Mabel Pines are born from Randy Pines and Kathy Pines

(2003. Steven Universe is born from Gregory “Universe” DeMayo and Pink “Rose Quartz” Diamond. Everything that happens with Steven is seperate from Dipper, Mabel, Wirt, and Greg.)

Update - Summer 2012. Penny takes a vacation to Gravity Falls and visits the Mystery Shack. She marvels at Dipper and Mabel and exclaims their cuteness. Mabel likes her when she’s given a butterscotch, but Dipper can’t help but question her motives. She seems awfully close with Stan and gets along well with everyone! Is she hiding something?

All is well until Dipper catches Penny trying to steal Journal #3, and he fights with her over it in his bedroom. Penny falls down and cracks something, making her scream. Stan rushes upstairs and takes Penny away, giving Dipper a nasty stinkeye. He tries to argue that she was trying to take his Journal, and Stan reacts by taking it himself.

Stan and Penny argue in the basement, saying that Dipper should have the Journal back. Stan tries to argue that he shouldn’t, but gives in. After making photocopies, Penny gives it back to Dipper. At first Dipper is skeptical, but awes when she tears up in front of him about it.

“Wow… You really care about the author, don’t you?” “Yeah, we were close…” She sits down beside him, opening the Journal to the Gnomes. “I remember the first time we saw the gnomes together… They tried to take me as queen!” “No way! They took Mabel as queen two weeks ago!” DIpper interjected, to which Penny laughed. “That explains this, then!” She pointed her crooked finger to the words; “Weakness: LEAFBLOWERS!” They both laughed.

At the end of it all, Dipper trusted Penny infineitly more. He was also more curious, as she knew the author. She wouldn’t give him a straight answer, however. Just saying he reminded her of her own son, Walter.

Penny stays in Gravity Falls until the Twins’ Birthday is over and they’re heading off to California.

August 22-25 2012. Weirdmageddon takes place. Penny serves as a scavenger and is found by McGucket and taken back to the Mystery Shack to be protected. She joins in the fight to defeat Bill Cipher, and when everyone’s in the Fearamid, it’s the first time Penny’s seen Stanford in nearly 33 years. He begins by saying hello, and saying he missed her. Before he can say anything further, she hugs him tightly, saying that he can apologize later. He prepares to retort, but when seeing Fidds’ face in response, he quietly hushes and hugs her back.

August 28 2012. Ford apologizes for how he acted and what he had done to her, like he always should have. She tells him about their son Wirt and he’s shocked. She tells him the deal she made and how she moved out of the state. After that conversation he hugs her tight and says she never should have gone through that. If he were a better man back then, she wouldn’t have had to make a deal to have a baby.

The same day, Mabel secretly arranges a wedding for her Grunkle Ford and new ‘Grauntie Penny’. Stan is on the sidelines for the whole occassion, but finally takes his brothers side as the Best Man. Mabel is the flower girl and Dipper bares the rings, while Susan is her maid of honor. Stanford promises to protect and cherish her for as long as he lives. Penny promises to care for him and heal him when the times arise. They smooch after some crazy heartfelt vows, thus they are married.

October 15 2012. Penny and Ford celebrate Wirt’s 33rd birthday. Wirt still isn’t used to his dad but comes around when he sees just how quizzical he is. They’re so alike it’s crazy!

November 2012. Penny joins Stan and Ford on the Stan ‘O War II.

(just to keep track-- in 2020 Wirt is 41, Dip and Mabs are 21, Greg is 34, and Steven is 17)

Mans that’s what I have! I’d love to hear anything from y’all about this!

[dubsdeedubs]

An Outreached Hand [7/?]

Summary:  On a cold winter’s day in 1982, Stan Pines shows up at his brother’s door with two cats tucked in his jacket and no heartbeat in his chest.

[AO3]

Notes: I actually posted this like two days ago but didn’t make the Tumblr post for it till now.  Probably says a whole lot about how distanced I’ve been asojioda

There's someone staring at him from across the diner. A waitress, to be more precise, squinting at him suspiciously under heavy purple eyeshadow, a sharp twist to her expression that even his tired mind can read immediately as 'trouble.'

Ford's fairly certain that he has never met her in his life. But then again, his life hasn't been entirely his for several months now.

Lady over there's giving ya a real stinker of a look.

He can't help but start at the echo of Stan's voice in his head. It's... not something he's used to, hearing his brother in what used to be the domain of someone - something entirely different.

He thinks maybe it's something he will ever get used to.

You stiffed her on tips before or what?

Now that Ford thinks about it... no, yes, he had made a visit to this establishment once before. He's sure of it. It had been shortly after Fiddleford had left him, and around when Bill had decided to up the ante where psychological torment was involved. The memory of being surrounded by a dozen pairs of yellow-slitted eyes flashes before his mind's eye, and he grimaces despite himself.

Had this woman been there for that disaster of an attempted breakfast? Did she remember him from his frantic escape?

Not for the first time, he's thankful that for all of his brother's abilities, he either could not - or did not at all want to - read Ford's thoughts.

His left hand lifts itself up and flicks his nose, hard.

Ford flinches, more out of surprise and confusion than any real pain. It takes him a moment to make sense of what had just happened.

"Stanley -"

'Stanley' yourself, his brother says flatly, entirely unamused. You've been sitting for a full ten minutes in this place without moving a muscle. Have ya ever heard of ordering food when you're in a restaurant? Or is that something hermit scientists don't do?

Ford bristles. "I know perfectly well how to order food, I just haven't done it yet because the waitress has been staring at me for the past -"

He blinks, looks again.

In the span of this extremely distracting exchange, said waitress had disappeared entirely from his view.

Ford's mental alarm bells go off almost immediately.

He had long held suspicions about the local townspeople, which were only exacerbated by the recent appearance of mysterious hooded figures around town. And, considering that Bill was perfectly able and entirely willing to manipulate other people to get to him, being around anyone at all was a security breach of the highest magnitude..

The waitress had seen and recognized him. She must have noted that he was here, vulnerable and out in the open without any of the defensive measures he had set up around his home.

There is just one reason he can think of for her disappearing so immediately, and that was to share that information with others.

He knew this was a terrible idea, Ford thinks, heart racing.

He knew, but his brother just wouldn't listen to logic and sense (but why would he, when for all Stanley must have thought, Ford was just being paranoid? Because he couldn't know, not about the extent of Bill's powers, not about what had happened to Fiddleford, not about everything that Ford had been manipulated into being a part of -)

Ford needed to leave, the sooner the better. There was no telling how much time he had left before they - whoever they was, whether the hooded figures or a pawn of Bill or something he had not even anticipated - used his vulnerability to their advantage. He had to -

"Are those wild animals in your coat, mister?" Says a voice right behind him, far too close for comfort.

Ford jolts forward with a sharp noise of surprise that he refuses to call a squeak.

When he twists his head back, eyes wide, the waitress is staring back with a scrunched Look of deep disapproval. He thinks somewhat stupidly that the heavy magenta eyeshadow added magnitudes more to its power.

For a moment, his brain just doesn't process the words.

"Wild - wild animals?" He repeats.

She points down at the two furry heads poking out from the neck of his old trenchcoat.

Mabel - he thinks, it's not nearly as easy to tell the two apart as cats than as children - offers a single cheerful meow.

Ford stares down at them, speechless. He... had entirely forgotten they were there. How had he forgotten about two live animals tucked inches away from his own body?

"We don't allow animals in here," the waitress says with a frown. "Got a sign on the door and everything."

She points at it for emphasis. He stares after her finger for a moment too long, expression slack.

The waitress squints at him. "You alright there, mister?"

Ford, Stanley says flatly, you're useless.

Just like that, his mouth stretches into an entirely unfamiliar kind of grin, slow and flirtatious, the kind of expression Ford doesn't think he has ever made in his life.

"Sure I am, sugar," Stan says smoothly. There's an easy confidence to his words that's enough to make Ford feel just a twinge of envy. "I would ask ya the same thing, uh -" He squints at the messy scrawl on the woman's name tag. "- Susan. But I gotta say, it looks to me like you're doing just fine."

He winks. Ford cringes.

The waitress - Susan, he reminds himself - stares at them for a long moment, looking very flustered. Understandably, Ford thinks to himself, considering that from all appearances, he had switched gears from 'confused' to 'Casanova' at the drop of a hat.

"See, I think there's a little bit of a misunderstandin' here."

"How so, mister?"

"This is a family diner, yeah?" Stanley says. He gestures at the door. "Says it right there. 'Greasy's, for the whole family.' Right above that sign about wild animals."

He squints. "Why - why do you have that sign about wild animals anyways?"

Susan blinks. "Well," she says after a moment, "whaddaya know, it sure does!"

"So thing is. These two here, they ain't 'wild animals.'" His brother pauses, for what Ford highly suspects is just for dramatic emphasis. "They're family."

Her eyes widen. Her jaw drops.

Stan leans in closer slyly, going for the kill. "And this can't be a family diner if the whole family can't eat, right?"

In the privacy of his own mind, Ford lets out a deep sigh. This... was entirely ridiculous. It spoke magnitudes about Stanley that he had thought it would actually work. Everything else aside, they had snuck two full-grown cats into a dining establishment in their coat. There were - there were rules against these things, he was sure, rules that he doubted a waitress would -

"Oh hon," Susan chirps, and slaps them on the back hard enough that they choke on their own spit. "Ya should have said somethin' earlier!"

In the span of what feels like a second, the woman's demeanor had transformed entirely. Easy understanding had replaced suspicion on her broad face, and there was a new friendliness to the way she held herself.

"For a moment there, I figured you were one of those characters that come in marrying woodpeckers and kissing raccoons -"

"One of those -" Ford chokes. "Marrying what?"

"- but I can tell now, you're nothin' like 'em. Heck, I can already tell what you are!"

A chill goes down their back, and he doesn't know if it's from him or Stan. Maybe it doesn't matter.

"And," Ford says slowly, with a tone of vague concern, "what is - that?"

"A kindred spirit, handsome!" Susan winks like she doesn't know how to.

"...Oh."

Aaaaaalright, Stan announces, I did the heavy lifting. You're on your own now, Sixer.

Wait -

Somehow, he can tell that his brother is studiously ignoring him. Ford sighs.

"Family! What a perfect way of puttin' it!" Susan gushes. "You're right, why keep 'em cooped up in there? Let your kitties stretch their legs!"

"Are - are you sure that's alright?" He starts to ask, an eyebrow raised. "The sign -"

"Oh hun, this is Gravity Falls," She scoffs. "Just about everyone around here has seen much, much worse in this diner, I bet ya."

That... did absolutely nothing to ease his worries. Ford nods dumbly, more than slightly alarmed by the casual revelation.

The cats stretch out on the diner table, low and lazy. Which... probably wasn't hygienic, but considering the stains and flecks of unknown substance already present when he had sat down, he supposed a few animal hairs wouldn't do much worse to the establishment's bacterial ecosystem.

Mabel, or at least he thinks it's her, looks between him and Susan. She gives him the feline version of a wink. Ford looks at her in horror.

"What are their names?" Susan asks, drawing close, a soft expression on her face. "Your sweet little fur babies."

"They're my niece and nephew, actually," he corrects quickly, edging away, and realizes too late how odd that statement came out without the benefit of context. "But, ah. Dipper and Mabel."

Susan doesn't seem to mind the slip-up, however. In fact, judging by the extra sparkle in her eyes, that only seemed to endear him to her even more.

"Well, my oldest is Mr. Snookums," she says conspiratorially. "He's getting up there in years, maybe just a year or two older than your kitties here. And then there's Mittens, except she's the kind of lady that likes ta put a twist on things, so lately she's been trying out something new. Look, I've got pictures!"

Ford blanches.

It's after noon when Ford peers through the window of the local grocery store with an air of dawning apprehension. No one inside but a lanky teenager with a stunningly large cranium, manning the cash register with an almost physical air of general rebelliousness.

Ford swallows. "Stanley, are you sure it's fine to, ah -"

Relax, poindexter, his brother groans. I take the kids everywhere I go, and I've never run into any trouble.

Very carefully, Ford wonders if that was less about the actual regulations in place and much, much more about nobody wanting to tell a certain casually terrifying individual that he needed to leave his pets outside.

Besides, bringing the cats worked out fine in the diner, right?

"That doesn't count," he retorts immediately. "That woman was - she was obsessed with cats, Stanley, I didn't even know half the things she was talking about., and we talked for two hours."

Hey, I'm not seeing how that's a bad thing.

"Two. Hours."

Hell, I didn't even know the 'not having a collarbone' thing. I mean, it's not like the kids would have known about that. Though, Stan says thoughtfully, that definitely explains some of the crazy places they've gotten into over the ears.

"If you enjoyed it so much," Ford snips, "perhaps you should have spoken to her instead."

Nah. By the looks of you, Sixer, you haven't talked to another human being for a loooong time. Better a nice lady with a whole lot to say about cats than, uh. Mr. Potato Head inside there.

"Stanley."

What? I call it when I see it. Guy's head is disproportional.

Ford lets out a long sigh, and carefully does not admit that his brother was right about Susan. The social interaction had been overwhelming and occasionally bewildering, but it had been - a comforting sort of normal, in a way that nothing in his world had been for a very long time now.

Just chatting with a waitress in a diner about the best way to brush a cat. Nothing like his angry confrontation with Fiddleford, or the conversations he had with Bill that just thinking about made him reel with self-disgust. Nothing like everything that had happened since his brother had shown up at his door, just yesterday.

He walks into the store with his back straight, carefully ignoring the furry ears rubbing against his chin.

Then just as Ford steps over the doorway, there's a loud welcome chime.

He flinches, and jerks back with so much force that he knocks over the store display right next to him.

The cardboard figure hits the ground with a too loud thwap. The teenaged cashier glances up at him, a strangely intense look in his eyes.

"Apologies," Ford says stiffly, and awkwardly moves to stand it back up.

What the hell was that?

"I didn't expect the sound," he admits reluctantly.

"Who are you talking to?" The teenager asks, an odd look on his face. His voice is an entirely unexpected baritone, one that fits his craggy face but is strange with his frame.

"No one," Ford says, a bit too quickly. "Just - ah, just wanted to hear the sound of my own voice -"

Ford, shut up and just keep walking.

He does clumsily, and almost trips over his own feet. The cashier's stare feels heavy on his back all the way.

So. Grocery shopping. You want some of uh. Eggs, or something? Cheese? People buy cheese, right?

"...Stanley?"

You're on your own for this, pal. Look, I'm dead. I haven't had to eat for a long, long time. Thank God, because from what I remember hunger was uh.

A long, telling pause.

Not fun at all.

Ford looks up, and then even further up at the cans and boxes that line the shelves and seem almost to reach up to the ceiling. There's oats, then organic oats, then something about added sugar or reduced sodium and -

"I'm a bit rusty with grocery shopping myself," he confesses.

What, Stan says skeptically, you would rather eat out, now that you've got a college degree and big science money?

"Stanley, I told you, that's not how research funding works. I can't just spend that money on anything I want - "

Ford cuts himself off before he can go on the whole rant. He has a sneaking suspicion that telling his undead brother about the intricacies of research grants and scientific stipends was pointless.

"No," he says instead, voice clipped. "I just didn't eat."

His brother goes quiet at that. ...Well, all I know how to buy is food for the kids, and as horrible as I'm guessing your eating habits are I doubt you wanna get cat food -

Ford coughs. "Yes, not cat food would be good."

...You want stuff that doesn't go bad quickly, right? Canned stuff would be good for that, you can probably figure out how to fry bacon or something for the extra protein. Hell, you know what, eggs aren't a bad idea. And maybe some uh, green stuff. Vegetables. Spinach, kale, whatever.

"Stanley -"

Eh, what do responsible adults eat? Hell if I know.

"Stanley, that's - a great deal of food," he says carefully.

That's the point, Sixer.

"The issue is, ah. I can't afford all of that."

There's a long silence.

You can't - afford all of that, Stan says blankly. Like, you don't got enough money for it?

"Y-Yes, that's usually what it means to not be able to afford something -"

But you have money, his brother argues uncomprehendingly. You went to college, didn't ya? Isn't that what going to college is for?

Ford blinks, entirely thrown off-guard. "No, that's -" He starts off weakly, and then goes quiet with sudden realization.

He had been away from his family for years now, keeping the bare minimum of contact. So it had been easy to forget, surrounded by other college students and even more educated professors, that his household had always held a very fundamental misunderstanding of what higher education entailed.

Filbrick Pines had lived his entire life working for a living, and the idea of putting effort into studying something with no direct financial reward was entirely disjointed from his reality. Ford had smiled (grimaced, if he had to be entirely truthful) along with his father's loud boasts about how his boy was going to make the whole family rich, that his college admission meant they were all set for life.

It had been easier then to just stay quiet. Though, of course, that just meant the inevitable fallout was just that much more explosive.

But Stanley hadn't been there. He had left home long before Filbrick realized that Ford's research grants weren't free money, before the big argument that had ended with Ford admitting that no, his studies weren't going to make them rich, not any time soon, and no, that was never what college was for. Not for him, and he had gotten his degree for himself, not anyone else.

Which meant, this whole time, his brother had thought -

"Going to college didn't make me rich," Ford says at last. "It was... almost the opposite, really. Backupsmore gave me a full scholarship, but I had to take out loans and work on the side to eat and pay for textbooks. I got money to come out here for my research, and I suppose it's a large enough amount as a lump sum. But I need to justify all of my expenditures to the committee that approved me, and..."

He smiles wryly. "As it turns out, research scientists don't prioritize 'quality of life' too highly."

...Huh.

The words had come out almost terrifyingly easy, and it hits Ford suddenly that it's the most he's told his brother about his life in their years apart in... well. Very possibly ever. It's an odd feeling, one that comes with something like regret and slightly more like panic.

But mostly like relief.

Geez, Stan says suddenly, you could've just said so earlier. And here I thought you were stuck on an actual problem.

"An actual problem," Ford repeats blankly. "So you're saying this isn't an actual problem."

Sure. We can just steal.

A beat.

"You," Ford says, horrified, "want to do what?"

His voice cuts off suddenly, entirely out of his control.

You wanna say that any louder? Stan groans. Trust me, Mr. Potato Head doesn't want to care, but keep shouting about robbing this place and he's gonna have to.

"Don't call him tha - Stanley, I refuse to steal," Ford hisses under his breath, entirely scandalized.

Eh, suit yourself, his brother mutters casually, too casually. There's a loaf of bread down your shirt, by the way. And half a dozen oranges up your sleeve.

He freezes. "How did you - when did you -"

Don't ask questions you don't want answers to, pal.

"Stanley."

Stan hesitates, then sighs.

Look, I didn't have to eat, but I had to feed the kids somehow. And it wasn't like I was getting any kind of real job, with how I look. You figured out a way to make the system work for you, and guess what? So did I. Maybe it isn't as pretty. Or as legal.

He's quiet, for a moment.

...But it works. So shut it, alright?

Hearing that makes Ford's mouth goes dry. For the second that day, it hits him just how thankful he is that Stan can't hear his thoughts.

"Alright," he says hoarsely. "Do what you have to do."

"There's something wrong," Ford says quietly, about thirty minutes after they leave the store with something like a week's groceries stuffed in various pockets and folds.

Not about the stealing. The cashier - 'Ivan', as his name-tag introduced him as with an unfitting cheerfulness - hadn't looked twice at him when he paid for a single carton of eggs to keep up appearances. He hadn't seemed at all thrown off by his meager purchase, or even the two cats peeking out from the neck of his coat.

But there was a strange intensity in the way he had stared after him as he left, It reminded him of the looks the townspeople had given him on the streets that morning, how some of the other diner customers had turned to glance at his table as he talked to Susan and ate an uncomfortably filling breakfast.

"I'm being watched."

What, like right now? Stan says skeptically.

"No, this - this whole day. People have been staring at me. Following my movements."

Ford, you haven't showered in a week, you've got two full-grown cats hitching a ride in your coat, and as far as everyone's concerned you've been talkin' to yourself this whole time, Stan says flatly, sounding distinctly unimpressed.

"Still -"

Honestly, Sixer, I would be shocked if people weren't staring at you.

That... was true.

But...

For just a moment, Ford hesitates, ready to argue -

- and doesn't.

He lets out a sigh. He's tired, the bone-deep exhaustion and general stress of the past several months hitting him all at once.

Ford... doesn't want to think, can't think. Not right now.

"You're right," he says at last. "Let's go home."

They do, but it's Stan who pilots their body for most of it.

He's the one who gets the groceries put away and cooks an omelette that turns into scrambled eggs somewhere along the way, on a range that sputters and dies before the liquid gets all the way solid (Ford scarfs it down anyways - he's facing a host of much more immediate dangers than salmonella.) He piles firewood that Ford had completely forgot he still had into the fireplace, and struggles to light the flames with a box of soggy, year-old matches.

It ends with him curled up on the least destroyed armchair he has, moth-bitten blanket clumsily draped over himself, two warm bodies snuggled in and purring on his lap.

Somewhere distantly, he wonders if, just maybe, he had forgotten something.

With the fireplace roaring just a few feet away and the feeling of soft fur under his hands, Ford doesn't even notice when he falls asleep.

[crewhonk]

Pacemaker Princess

Billy Hargrove X Reader

Warnings: Swearing (i think), a little bit of nsfw, its cute

Summary: A series of snapshots from Billy and Y/N’s relationship. How they met, to their first night together, to their first date, to the last night of season 2.

Masterlist

To say you were a normal teenager would honestly be the last term someone would use to describe you. You were beyond smart, beyond beautiful, beyond kind and beyond having a normal heart. You’ve had a heart arrhythmia since you were small, and it had landed in the hospital a handful of times because your heart was beating too slow or too fast or not enough. When you were fifteen, you had a major surgery and had a pacemaker put in, and while you had a to-go cup circle poking from the left side of your chest, you take it any day if it meant not collapsing and coding in a bleak hospital room. 

So here you were, Halloween night in Hawkins, Indiana 1984 at Tina’s Halloween Bash, sipping what someone screamed ‘Pure Fuel’ in your face before stumbling and falling out of the house onto the patio, staring out over the sea of drunk, sweaty toddlers enjoying their time.

“It’s a mess, isn’t it?” Someone crooned in your ear, reaching across you and dipping his red solo cup into the maroon concoction. 

“Truly a Roman tragedy,” Y/N laughed, sipping her drink and glancing up at the Keg King himself Billy Hargrove. You would have thought that your heart stopped, but you had a pacemaker for that. “What do I owe the pleasure of your company, Mr. Hargrove?”

“I saw a lonely girl, putting who-knows-what into her body and figured she shouldn’t do it alone.”

“Oh, the chivalry… I’m quaking in my glass slippers.”

“And what would be the princess’ name?” He smiled, turning fully to her and bending down slightly so Y/N could hear him a bit better.

“Y/N Y/L/N.” She said, taking his much larger hand in hers. He traced patterns on the skin on the back of her thumb.

“That fits. A cute name for a cute girl.”

“It’s not cute enough for beautiful?” She bantered, pulling her hand away and wiping the clamminess on the leather of her pants. “It’s okay. I’ll make you think its beautiful.” She grinned, pulling him into the living room where the music was the loudest.

“Come on, Princess. Do I look like someone who dances?” He resisted. 

“If you squint.” She laughed staring to move her shoulders to the tune of  “Twist of Fate” by Olivia-Newton John. Y/N wasn’t a dancer either, to be honest, but she was funny— and the way she had a lazy grin on her face most of the time at school, or the way she goofed off tonight continued to hold Billy’s attention. “Okay, buddy okay. We’re home.” Y/N muttered in the (much heavier and much drunker) boys ear. “We’re home, but your gonna need to help me get you inside, medically I’m not supposed to be lifting things as heavy as you.” She ranted.

“Mmmm. I don’ wan’ go home.” He slurred, putting more weight on his own feet.

“No, you’re staying at my house. Mom and dad aren’t home, and it’s four in the morning so I wasn’t about to plop you on your front doorstep for the Demagorgon’s.”

“Dema-dema what?” He slurred tripping through her door.

“Just a joke, you probably wouldn’t understand.”

“Either that or it jus’ wasn’ funny. But that don’t make sense be-cause you’re a pretty funny girl. Pretty and funny jus’ to clarifyyyy. There’s too man’ stairs. Stairs are dumb.”

“Okay, hotshot,” Y/N said throwing him on her bed and turning to get a wipe from her vanity to clear off the beer and spit from his chest.  When she turned around he was literally passed out, snoring and spread eagle on her twin bed. 

“You’re gonna continue to be an issue, aren’t you.” She swore under her breath.  Y/N then untied her prince charming’s combat boots (because apparently, he was a sexy G.I. Joe), fluffed an old quilt over him, and turned off the lights. 

_______________________________________________________________________

“Good morning, beautiful.” Rob Lowe whispered, brushing back your hair and playing with the heavy diamond necklace on your neck. Y/N just moaned happily and stretched out more on the soft bed of roses. “Hey, dummy. Wake up.” With that, Y/N tumbled from the safe confines of her rose-bed and onto the gaudy orange carpet of her sitting room.

“What the hell, man?” She groaned into the floor.

“It’s ten, and your house is too warm to even think about leaving and I’m hungry,” Billy said, nudging her side with his toe.

“What are you, five? You can’t make toast?”

“You brought me into your own home, I’m technically company.”

“Hello ‘Technically Company’, I’m Dad.”

“Bite me.”

“At least take me out on a date first, Hargrove.” ~~~~~~~~~~ Later that week, Billy Hargrove took Y/N Y/L/N on a date. Not to one that was at some cheap diner in town that ended in dirty car sex, but a date that took place an hour outside Hawkins at a shiny new bowling alley with real good fries and smooth strawberry milkshakes. 

On the ride home, the pair of teens drove home in the dark to the soft sounds of ‘Rock in a Hard Place’ playing softly. Billy’s hand rested on the bottom of the steering wheel, barely guiding the car while the other held onto Y/N’s hand. 

Y/N’s head rested on the back of the seat and she had a small smile on her lips. Billy swore that when he moved to Indiana, he swore that he wouldn’t think about falling in love with any of these mid-east American cows. But, there was a girl at a Halloween party who wore cheap leather pants and a showy top with a natty blonde wig and heaven help if his heart didn’t stutter when he saw her so when she was able to not drool over his shirtless torso and stay aware enough for banter he knew he was in trouble. She reminded him of the ocean— powerful, undiscovered, untamed and he didn’t want to tame her. He wanted to practice and work around her and surf whatever waves she gave him because she was the only thing that reminded him of the home he knew. 

They say that home is where the heart was, and boy was he getting ready to move in. ___________________________________________________________________

When Y/N showed up to Billy’s window one night full of bruises and tiny cuts littering her torso and arms, Billy could have actually shit himself. He pulled her through the window and carried her over to the bed tucked to the furthest side of the room. He ran across the house he lived in searching for the med kit as quiet as possible as to not wake Neil or Susan and returned to the room where Y/N had already taken off her shirt and bra.

“Woah,” He said going to cover his eyes. “I’m um. I’m sorry do you need me to give you some privacy?”

“No, William. I’m sure you’ve seen boobs before. Not a big deal.” She grunted. She took the med kit from the boys shaking hands and opened it up, seeing what she had to deal with. There were some colored bandages and come antiseptic and some wound tape. “Babe? I need you to clean my wounds, I can’t. I’m too weak.” And he simply nodded, avoiding looking at her chest or eyes.

“Y/N/N, what happened, baby?” He choked, tears welling up in his eyes. 

“Baby,” He whispered.

“Legally, Bill. I can’t tell you.”

Something flashed in his eyes. Something angry and sad and betrayed. “Do your parents beat you?” He growled. “I swear to God, Bear. I’ll fucking kill them both.”

“Billy. No, nobody is hurting me. My parents are too soft on me honestly. It’s good to get kicked in the ass occasionally,” she coughed into her elbow. “But love, I actually cannot tell you because the government will find you and Hopper will kick my ass. I’ll tell you when we’re sure its over, but until then I can’t.” He looked away and pulled the antiseptic-soaked cotton away from the wounds. “Baby. You have to trust me.” Y/N reached over and pulled his chin to make him meet her in the eyes. “Do you trust me.”

“I trust you.” He croaked, leaning in and resting his forehead on he shoulder, making a point to avoid any marks. He peppered kisses over her collarbone, and down her chest, making sure to kiss every mark lightly like a mother would kiss her child’s knee. She sighed softly at his actions— he hadn’t pushed her to do anything beyond what she was comfortable, and sure, she had begged to give him a blowjob (he was very excited emotionally and physically when she asked), but he had never done anything to her because it had just never come up and she never needed anything. 

“You’re beautiful.” He whispered. “So beautiful.” Laying back on his bed, she pulled him towards her and he laid himself over her gently. Y/N opened her eyes when she noticed that Billy had stopped— he stopped moving and breathing and now she was worried. A teen boy so close to his girlfriend’s boobs for the first time stopping is nearly unheard of. 

“Babe? You okay?” She whispered, running her hands through his hair. “What’s this?” He said. Billy had trained his eyes on your visible pacemaker, tracing the edge of it with his finger.

“It’s my shitty heart. It doesn’t work properly so a bunch of doctors decided to put an old lady machine in me.” She laughed, playing with the ringlets at the nape of his neck. He sighed and looked at her, wonder in his eyes. 

“You’re so cool and I think I’m in love with you.” He smiled.

[yonevea]

Blank Slate Au!

I think my human bill would work at Greasys Diner and him and Lazy Susan would get along

[princessofthedarkrealm]

Stroke of Midnight- Chapter 10 (Pennywise x reader)

You glanced up at the clock for about the tenth time in the past hour. It had been a good while since you had been this anxious to get off of work. You shook your head. “Why didn’t I just tell him to meet me here?” you scolded yourself under your breath. You took a deep breath and grabbed a stack of books to shelve. Several minutes later, you were reaching up to one of the tall shelves when you heard Mrs. Stout’s voice.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m looking for Y/N.”

You lowered your hand, the book you were about to shelve still in it. Your heart was pounding as you slowly walked around the shelf. You saw him from behind, standing in front of the circulation desk, but you still recognized him.

Mrs. Stout pointed at you. “Here she is right here.”

Roman turned. His face lit up when he saw you. “Hiya, girly.”

“Hey,” was all you could say as you tried your best to calmly walk towards him. “How did you know I work here? I don’t remember telling you.”

He shrugged. “I asked around.”

“Not too long, Y/N. You know our policy on visitors.” Though Mrs. Stout’s voice was serious, you could tell your boss was trying to hide a grin.

“I won’t.”

You quickly took in Roman’s full length. Today he was wearing a white shirt under an open casual black jacket with jeans.

“You’re uh… here early,” you said.

He shrugged again. “I thought we could hang out for a while before practice.”

You glanced at the desk. Mrs. Stout was sitting at the computer, typing.

“I’m still at work.”

“That’s alright. How much longer do you have?”

Your stomach let out an embarrassing growl. Roman glanced at you questioningly.

You grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, I didn’t eat much for lunch.”

“Oh well we can go get you something then. After you get off. Where do you like to eat at?”

You tilted your head at him, your grin widening. Was he asking you out?

“Um… yeah sure we can go eat at the diner.”

He smiled at you. “Great.”

“I get out of here at five,” you told him. You glanced at the clock. It was 4:35.

His smile softened. “Then I will wait.”

Your stomach flip-flopped.  He really was cute, you thought. And considerate. A patron had walked to the desk. You gave Roman one last smile and went to help them.

**********

You and Roman casually walked down the sidewalk towards the Rocket, Derry’s popular diner.

“So how long have you been working at the library for?” he asked.

“Several months. I just graduated last summer and started working there not long after.”

“And you’ve been at the theatre for how long now?”

“Almost two years. I started as an understudy the summer before my Senior year.”

“And you like it there?”

“I love it. I feel so comfortable up on stage. Playing in all those roles.”

“It looks like a blast. I know I had fun last night.”

You smiled at the memory. “Yeah it was fun.”

“And then tonight we get to do it again.”

Your grin widened at the eagerness in his voice.  You nodded. “Yep.”

Roman put his arm out to stop you. “Look, we don’t have to practice at your house if you’re not comfortable. I know you just met me.”

You sighed. “No, it’s alright. I’m fine with it.”

“Are you sure? We can always go to the Neibolt house,” he added with a chuckle. “There’s a lot more privacy, so that you don’t have to worry about anyone watching us. I’m sure the rooms are bigger too. Or we could do it out back in the grass.

“I’m sure that would be a fun and easy spot to dance in,” you said with a laugh. You both started walking again.

You remembered the day that you had been at the Neibolt house with Pennywise. Had that already been four days ago? You could almost still feel his tongue against your legs, licking at your wounds. You wondered what it would feel like to have him lick you somewhere else.

You stopped short and let out a shaky gasp.

Roman’s brow furrowed, a look of concern on his face. “Are you alright?”

You furtively glanced around you, like you would see Pennywise staring at you from somewhere. “I’m fine,” you replied.

You were going to take off again when your mind was filled with a lewd image—Pennywise’s head between your legs as you lay there naked, your head thrown back in ecstasy as he licked you.

Your heart started pounding. You didn’t know where that thought had come from all of a sudden, but at that moment, all you wanted to do was find Pennywise and bury yourself in his passionate embrace, to feel him buried within you. You placed your hands on the outer upper parts of your thighs and squeezed.

Roman put a hand on your shoulder. “Are you sure you’re alright? Your face looks flushed.”

Your face was indeed burning. You took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. I guess this heat’s just starting to get to me.”

“Well let’s get you inside then.”

The tenderness in his voice touched you, and you quickly dispersed of the lurid images that had just taken over your brain.

You didn’t even notice the woman who was hanging up a new ‘Missing’ poster.

**********

“Are you gonna get anything to eat?”

You and Roman sat at a front table. You idly glanced at the menu, although you had already decided on a burger and chocolate shake.

Roman was staring down at his own menu.  “No thanks. I’m fine, princess.”

Your head shot up. “What?”

He glanced up at you. “I’m fine. I already ate.”

“No, it’s what you called me.”

Roman glanced sideways at you and pursed his lips.

“You called me princess.” You folded up your menu. “Someone else calls me that too.”

Roman grinned at you. And once again you were reminded of certain clown. You opened your mouth to answer, but the front door opened. You glanced behind you. Aunt Susan walked in with Bill and Georgie. You waved when you saw them. Aunt Susan smiled and waved back. She and the boys walked up to you.

“Well hello, you two.” Aunt Susan was all smiles.

You stood up to give your aunt a hug. You went to hug Georgie, but he slowly moved away from you, his eyes glued on something.

“Georgie?” You asked.

“Oh he’s just being shy,” said Aunt Susan. “Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, this is Roman.” You pointed at Roman. “Roman, this is my Aunt Susan.”

Roman stood and shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He sat back down and waved at Georgie.

You glanced down at your nephew. He was staring at Roman with a confused, terrified look on his face. Apparently Bill noticed also, because he too was staring back and forth between the two.

You met Roman’s gaze. You stared at him with your eyes narrowed. He smiled and you hesitantly returned the gesture.

Why was Georgie staring at Roman like that? The boy had never seen him before. Or had he?

**********

You slammed the front door a little harder than you intended to. "Sorry," you mumbled.

"That’s alright," Roman replied.  He took in his surroundings as you hung up your keys. "So this is where you live?"

You shrugged. "It's home."

The two of you stood facing each other. The only sounds were the clock on the kitchen wall and the low hum of the refrigerator.

"So you’re still not talking. You were quiet the whole ride here."

You strode up to Roman, your eyes narrowed, and studied him. Really studied him-- the curvature of his lips, his bit of a lazy left eye, even his posture.

You shook your head, your eyes not leaving his. "I should have known. The whole time I should have known. Even looking like this, Georgie still recognized you."

Roman was quiet for a moment. “And you’re shocked that I am capable of this?” He gestured at himself.

You crossed your arms. “I don’t know what you’re capable of anymore, Pennywise. Last night I was supposed to dance with Chris. He wasn’t there, but you were. Or rather, Roman was.”

You strode past him into the living room.

“Of course I showed up. I couldn’t let something like this go bad for you,” he said defensively.

You whirled around.  “And Chris’s accident? I guess that was just a coincidence.”

You saw the muscles in Roman’s jaw tense. “I didn’t hurt Chris.”

“So you just wanted to scare him? Like you did Jessica and Regina?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Roman shot back. “I was just watching him. He must have seen me and got scared.”

He took a step towards you, but you backed away.

“You know I would never hurt you right?”

“But you’re not afraid hurt other people?” Your voice was ice. “You could have killed him, Pennywise!”

“I know that!” he shouted. “Do you think I wanted that? Do you think I’m some kind of monster?”

You brought your hands up by your face. “I don’t know what you are,” you yelled, your voice cracking.

"I can smell the fear on you, baby girl. I need you to not be like that right now."

"I am not afraid. I'm..." Your put your hands on your temples. "I'm freaking out." You were shaking violently now. You choked out a sob. "I don't know how to deal with this."

Roman closed the distance between you and grabbed your arms. "Y/N, please."

His voice was so desperate, so sincere it made your heart wrench.

"Y/N, have I ever hurt you? Have I ever done anything to cause you discomfort or pain? I have only done everything that I have done for you because you are so, so special to me."

He gently pulled your arms away, revealing your now tear stained face.

"I need you to trust me. Please."

You turned your face away from him. Another tear fell. "How can I trust you if I don't even know what you are?" Even your voice was shaking.

Roman sighed deeply. "I'm from somewhere else. Let's just leave it at that for now."

You snorted. "So are you an alien or something? Are you going to beam me up into your UFO?" You rolled your eyes. "That's ridiculous."

Roman smirked. "No more ridiculous than a girl believing a frog will turn into a prince."

You narrowed your eyes at him. Roman put his arm on your waist and grabbed your hand.

"No more ridiculous than a fairy godmother who turns pumpkins into coaches."

He placed your other hand on his shoulder and turned sideways, taking you with him. You gave him a small grin as you let him lead you into a waltz around your living room. 

"Those are just fairytales, Roman."

"Well then you better start believing in them, my dear." Roman spun you around, then you turned back to face him, a mischievous grin on his handsome face.

"Because you're in one."

@hoe-for-daddywise  @honk-honk-bitches  @fuck-the-clown @wtf-it @dallonweaksme  @floatingwithpennywise  @lesteefightme  @penny-trash  @guttinqteeth  @booklover2929  @red-balloons-and-popcorn  @unidash  @destiel-lover321 @hello-helianthus 

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 47

Yeeeee you guys all seemed pretty excited about this one and I’m really glad to have it finally finished for you guys to read seeing as how I’m super excited about it too! It has a lot of interesting parts in it, so I can’t wait to see what you all think of it! Enjoy!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/169117963199/universe-falls-chapter-46

Chapter 47: Society of the Blind Eye

ESYSKFURS WJ KUWEWEE FLQ UVKE EDS EMF FXWEB NYF KYYF AUZC RTIK HYGZO AT NFMX'E VZBPIZ PVFURP?

Seeing as how Greasy’s Diner was one of the few general eateries in Gravity Falls, it often stayed open rather late into the night to accommodate the offhand insomniac customer. Even so, it did close eventually every night, and every night Lazy Susan dutifully closed the diner up before heading home. It was business as usual as she cheerfully swept the floors, emptied the register tills, beat the possums out of the dishwasher, and chased Old Man McGucket out from under one of the tables. With all of these average tasks completed, the waitress locked the restaurant for the night, blithely bidding it farewell as she began to head home to tend to her multitude of cats.

“Good night, diner!” she exclaimed brightly before doing the same to the surrounding woods. “Good night, trees!” Her string of warm goodbyes continued even as she passed by the group of gnomes, stacked upon each other’s shoulders, trying to reach a still-warm pie sitting on the diner’s windowsill. “Good night, tiny men stealing my pie.” Lazy Susan stopped dead in her tracks immediately after saying this, a shocked gasp escaping her as she spun around to face the thieving gnomes again. “Wait, what?!”

“Lift with your knees,” Jeff commanded his tower of tiny accomplices, unaware that the waitress had caught them. “No, your knees! If I go one more hour without eating, I’m gonna resort to cannibalism.” The gnome leader paused, briefly, noticing the still quite stunned Lazy Susan standing nearby before he casually tipped his pointy hat to her. “Ma’am.”

Needless to say that upon seeing such an alarmingly bizarre sight as actual, living gnomes of all things, Lazy Susan’s first reaction was to let out a panicked shriek of fear. The gnomes themselves hardly reacted to the waitresses’ terror as she hurriedly backed away, trying to make sense of the impossibility standing right in front of her. “M-magic little men! What does it mean?! What do I do?!” At that moment, she fortunately managed to bump into the payphone near the diner, and she didn’t hesitate to scramble to dial 911 amidst her palpable distress. “Yes, hi, I’d like to report something” she began frantically as the dispatcher answered on the other end. “I’m at Greasy’s Diner. You won’t believe what I’ve witnessed! It’s unbelievable! Its indescribable! It’s-”

Lazy Susan was abruptly cut off as two sets of hands suddenly grabbed her from behind. She barely even had time to let out another fearful scream before the pair of robed figures covered both her mouth and her eyes as they began to forcibly drag here away. Their leader nodded in approval as they passed by him, before he followed after them himself, leaving only a graffiti insignia of a single eye crossed out on the wall behind him. “It is unseen…” he proclaimed darkly as him, his cronies, and their unwitting target disappeared into the darkness of the night.

“…Welp, back to pie!” Jeff concluded in the aftermath of what him and his fellow gnomes had witnessed. Still, they hardly cared about its ominous implications as they made off with their prize, all of them more than eager to devour it whole. “I was this close to eating you, Carl.”

With the laptop busted seemingly beyond repair and the bunker devoid of any further tangible clues, Dipper had found that he was largely back to square one when it came to his search for answers about the author of the journals. Still, despite the roadblocks he had faced, personal and otherwise, over the past several weeks, he still saw that search as a necessary one, for both the sake of uncovering the mysteries of Gravity Falls, as well as potentially rescuing Lapis from her aquatic imprisonment. A goal that, regardless of the pain he had been put through in his reckless attempt to achieve, he was still striving towards as intently as ever.

Of course, seeing as how his last venture in this search had ended in such momentous disaster, Dipper had wisely decided against going it alone this time, which was why he had ask Steven and Connie to help him sort through all of the clues and leads he had gathered thus far. The trio congregated in the attic, Connie already scribbling away on a notepad as Dipper carefully examined the detailed photo board he had put together concerning the author’s unknown identity. “Alright, author,” he muttered to himself, stepping away from the board as he absently chewed on the end of a pen. “Who are you? Who are you…?” Dipper’s concentration was abruptly broken as the pen he was gnawing n suddenly snapped, resulting in a messy spray of ink all over his face. “Ugh! Not again,” he groaned in disgust, tossing the ruined pen into a bin of other pens that had met the same fate.

“Uh… Dipper? How about instead of snacking on pens, you snack on one of these?” Steven offered with a smile, holding out a plate of cookies he had brought up from downstairs. “They’re a lot sweeter, and way less inkier! That’s a guarantee.”

Dipper let out a somewhat exasperated sigh as he cleaned the ink off his face and took one of the cookies before turning back to his collection of clues. Steven couldn’t help but smile a bit as he handed the cookie plate off to Connie, a wave of contentment washing over him as he thought about how normal this all felt. With Dipper thoughtfully mulling over the mystery of the author, Connie working through her own theories on paper, and Mabel having promised to bring more snacks up in a few minutes, the young Gem was more than happy to see them all working together again. In a way, it was almost as if the sword training debacle, their struggle against Bill, and even the hand ship invasion had never even happened. Like nothing had changed at all. And after all of the upheaval of the past several weeks alone, that was something that Steven was more than happy to hold onto.

“You know, you guys,” Steven began with a warm smile, wanting to spread this happiness to Dipper and Connie as well. “This is… really nice. These last few weeks have been pretty rough, what with those Gem mutants in the Kindergarten, and the invasion, and that whole thing with Bill-”

“Um… Steven?” Connie spoke up in a small whisper, her expression filled with sudden concern as she looked over at Dipper. Upon the mention of the dream demon, he merely glanced down disdainfully, clearly not wanting to be reminded of such a sore subject, though Steven didn’t initially notice this as he continued blissfully.

“I guess I’m just glad that we’ve been able to move past all that,” the young Gem remarked, still smiling, though it quickly fell as he looked over at Dipper. “…R-right?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, we’ve ‘moved past it’,” Dipper remarked, feigning dismissiveness and complacency, though his tone was still somewhat bitter as he muttered his next statement. “Of course, we wouldn’t have had anything to move past if none of it had ever happened in the first place…”

Steven’s upbeat manner diminished completely upon hearing this as he instead instantly regretted even bringing any of it up at all. In all honesty, he should have figured that, even weeks later, the entire possession incident would still be quite a sore subject for Dipper, even despite his apparent progress in recovering from the wounds it had left behind both physically and emotionally. As much as it worried the young Gem to think so, those were wounds that ran so deep that they might not ever completely disappear, no matter how much time and healing passed. And despite his sincere sympathy, regret, and devout desire to help Dipper, to help all of them really, move beyond the pains of the not too distant past, Steven had no idea where to even really start with such an immense endeavor.

All the same, the newly solemn atmosphere was soon broken through as Mabel blithely barged into the attic, message in a bottle in hand as she hurried over to greet the others. “Hey, guys! Guess what I got!”

“Um… a dirty green bottle?” Connie ventured with a small, joking smile.

“It’s a bottle message from Mermando, remember?” Mabel explained, still smiling fondly at the thought of her former infatuation. “He was part fish, part shirtless guy, and by far one of the hunkiest, least creepy guy I’ve crushed on this summer! What if he wants to get back together?!”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Mabel…” Dipper said rationally. “I mean, the guy does live in the ocean and the chances of you two actually, you know, being together seem kind of-”

“Too late! Hopes are way up!” Mabel interupted as she rushed to get the letter out of the bottle and read it aloud. “‘Dear Mabel,’ So far so good! ‘It is with a heavy heart-’ So far so good! ‘-that I must inform you I’m getting married?!”

“And… there it is,” Dipper remarked with an already sympathetic frown upon noticing how suddenly distraught his sister was by this news.

“‘In order to prevent an undersea war… arranged marriage… queen of the manatees’?!” Mabel frantically read, growing more distressed and heartbroken with each word. “And she’s so beautiful!” she wailed upon looking at the picture Mermando had enclosed of him and his new, rather unsightly bride. “This can’t be happening…”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mabel,” Connie said comfortingly. “We all know how much you liked Mermando.”

“But look on the bright side,” Dipper attempted to encourage. “You’ll get over him eventually.”

“That’s not the point,” Mabel huffed as she pulled out her summer scrapbook. “On my first day here, I made this page for summer romances because I thought I was going to have so many sweeping relationships! But look at my luck so far: turned out to be gnomes,” she pointed to a picture of ‘Norman’, who had indeed ended up being a stack of lovestruck gnomes. “Child psycho…” she continued with apt disgust as she nodded at Gideon’s picture. “Made out with his own hands,” she went on, pointing at a picture of Gabe and his puppets. “And now with Mermando out…” Mabel sighed as she scribbled the word “failed” above the page’s title of “summer romances”, a claim that rang true, as every single one of her relationship attempts had ended in nothing but heartbreak thus far. “I wish I could just forget about them all forever…”

“Aw, don’t count yourself out yet, Mabel!” Steven encouraged as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “The summer’s not over yet! There’s still plenty of chances for you to find that special someone. In fact, I bet it’ll probably happen when you’re least expecting it!”

Mabel looked over at the young Gem at this, her cheeks filling in with an almost invisible blush as she met his warm, sincere smile. A smile that she almost returned, until she took a second look and saw Connie sitting right next to Steven, and rather closely at this. Much closer than she was to him, in more ways than one. “Y-yeah…” she muttered, looking away dejectedly. “When I’m least expecting it…”

“Hey, if its any consolation, my summer mission hasn’t been a huge success either,” Dipper said, turning back to his photo board full of dead ends and incomplete hints. “We’re still no closer to finding out who the author of the journals is. And honestly, at this rate, it feels like we’ve barely made any progress at all!”

“Well, we do have some clues…” Connie interjected, glancing back at her notes. “Like the fact that he probably has six fingers and that he supposedly disappeared over thirty years ago. But other than that… yeah… we really don’t have a whole lot to go off of.”

“Well, we would if the laptop wasn’t smashed…” Dipper added, hesitantly glancing over at the brutalized laptop sitting on the desk nearby. Despite its current uselessness, he still decided to hold onto it, much like how he had held onto the torn scraps of the pictures of himself and Lapis. After all, even aside from sentimental value, he never knew when either of those things might become useful again. “But without it, we’ve lost just about any lead we might have had for finding him…”

“Wait a minute…” Mabel mused as she took a casual look through the bottle Mermando’s message had come in at the laptop, noticing something that none of them had before. “Dipper, look at this!”

“Through your bottle?” Dipper asked dubiously.

“Just do it,” Mabel rolled her eyes as she handed the bottle over to him.

While still skeptical, Dipper did as she said, peering through the end of the bottle as it effectively magnified some of the laptop’s smaller features. Most notable of those being a small metal plate screwed to the undercarriage of the machine, engraved with the name of its inventor. “‘McGucket Labs’. As in… Old Man McGucket?!”

“Isn’t he that crazy old hillbilly that lives in the junkyard downtown?” Connie asked, just as confused as Dipper was. “He built that laptop?”

“Well, he did build that Gobblewonker robot,” Steven pointed out. “And it actually worked pretty well. Until Opal shot it in the face with one of her magic arrows.”

“But wait,” Mabel interjected with a dawning realization. “If the laptop was McGucket’s then… you guys don’t think…?”

“No, he couldn’t be,” Dipper quickly refuted, though as he took another look back at his compiled clues, his tune gradually started to change. “It wouldn’t make any sense. Unless….” He trailed off as he began making connections that had previously seemed completely arbitrary, such as the laptop’s label reading “property of F” and McGucket’s first name: Fiddleford. Connie got up to join in on this, correlating the six fingers on the cover of the journal to the fact that McGucket’s right hand was continually bandaged up, almost as if one of his fingers had somehow been chopped off. Mabel and Steven also ended up collaborating, adding ties between clues and facts until nearly everything seemed to point towards one person and one person alone: Fiddleford McGucket.

“No way…” Dipper muttered, completely awestruck by what had never, ever seemed anywhere remotely possible until now. “So that means… Old Man McGucket wrote the journals?!”

“You know, I gotta admit that out of anyone, he was probably the last person I would have suspected…” Mabel remarked, rather taken aback herself.

“Same here,” Connie agreed, checking over the clues again to see if they checked it, which, against all logic, they somehow did.

“Oh my gosh, you guys, just wait until we tell the Gems!” Steven exclaimed with an excited smile. “They’ll totally freak out when they hear we’ve found out who the author is! Heck, maybe it’ll even jog their memory and they’ll remember helping him write the journals!”

“Then that’s who we’ll go ask first,” Dipper said with apt resolve to finally put this longtime mystery to rest. “Let’s go!”

“Am I blanchin? Girl, we blanchin. I live up in a mansion. Am I blanchin? Girl, we blanchin, I live up in a mansion.” Soos sang along to this rather repetitive rap tune playing on the radio as he swept up in the gift shop, not noticing Wendy’s growing annoyance with the song until she could no longer remain quiet about it.

“Ugh! Soos, can we please turn that stupid song off?!” she groaned, slamming a fist down on the counter. “I can’t get it out of my head!”

“Oh, you mean ‘Straight Blanchin’ by Lil’ Big Dawg?” Soos retorted with a smile. “It’s the catchiest song of the summer!”

“What even is ‘blanchin’?” Wendy asked with a harsh scowl. “Rappers can’t just make up words!”

“Rappers are visionaries, Wendy,” Soos countered. “If they told me to eat my own pants, I would do it.”

“Eat your own pants! Eat your own pants, yeah!” the song blared, and of course, the handyman readily followed along with it.

“Guess I have no choice,” Soos shrugged blithely as he began to unzipper his pants and chow down. However, before Wendy could talk him out of it, the kids rushed into the shop, all fueled by the adrenaline of their newfound lead.

“Soos, Wendy! We need to go see the Gems and Old Man McGucket!” Dipper hurriedly informed, effectually asking them to come along.

“We’ll explain on the way!” Mabel added, booking it after her brother towards the door.

“For now, let’s just say we discovered something huge!” Steven exclaimed, running backwards until he happened to trip. Fortunately, Connie caught him before he could fall, eliciting a small chuckle from both of them. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Connie nodded before beckoning Soos and Wendy again. “Come on, you guys!”

Not even needing to ask anymore questions, the pair was immediately on board with whatever unknown mission the kids had in mind, so they wasted no time in running out after them, past a very confused Stan.

“Hey, what about work? Kids!” the conman shouted after his employees, though he paused in disturbed bewilderment upon turning to catch the fleeting sight of them. “Why is Soos eating his own pants?”

The Gems’ peaceful afternoon of putting together new stools for the kitchen’s island was abruptly interupted as the kids burst into the house, all of them more than excited to unveil their latest development. “You guys! You guys!” Steven shouted, stars in his eyes as he ran over to his guardians, the others not too far behind. “The most amazing thing just happened, you’ll never believe it!”

“Now, Steven, what did we talk about overexaggerating things?” Pearl chastised gently.

“But he’s not overexaggerating!” Connie protested.

“No, he’s not,” Mabel agreed readily. “Cause we just found out who the author of the journal is!”

“What?!” Pearl and Amethyst exclaimed in shocked unison, while immense, silent surprise crossed over Garnet’s expression as well.

“Well, what are you waiting for?!” the purple Gem asked, just as eager as her teammates to get these long awaited answers. “Spill it! Who is he?!”

“Yes, by all means, tell us!” Pearl nodded vigorously. “It’s about time we find out who this mysterious, seemingly all-knowing “author” is!”

“Go ahead,” Garnet advised more calmly, nodding to the kids to make the anticipated reveal.

“Ok, so this might be a little far-fetched,” Dipper began somewhat tentatively, hoping that the Gems would hear him out on this. “But based on every clue we’ve gathered thus far, we have reason to believe that the author of the journals is none other than… Old Man McGucket!”

Upon hearing this, the Gems’ shared interest immediately fizzled out into confusion and doubt, which were things they had no qualms about sharing with the kids. “Huh, looks like Steven was right,” Amethyst remarked, crossing her arms caustically. “I really don’t believe it.”

“Oh, I get it!” Pearl exclaimed with an amused chuckle. “It’s a joke! There’s no way someone as outlandish and scatterbrained as that wild hillbilly could have written something as collected and articulated as the journals! Very funny, kids. You almost had us going there for a second!”

“Uh, actually, Pearl, they’re not joking,” Wendy clarified as Soos nodded his support. “Even if it does seem pretty out there.”

“And you have proof that McGucket wrote it,” Garnet assumed as she looked to the kids again.

“Y-yeah, we do!” Dipper assured, pulling out the broken laptop. “His name is on the laptop we found in the bunker and everything! And he easily would have been around over 30 years ago to write it.”

“Is the thought of you guys maybe working with him ringing any bells?” Connie asked curiously. “At all?”

“Uh, not really,” Amethyst shook her head.

“Mostly because it’s a rather absurd notion…” Pearl muttered dubiously.

“But is a notion we can’t dismiss, at least not yet,” Garnet interjected, placing steady hands on both of her teammates’ shoulders. “The only way to for sure is to go talk to McGucket ourselves.”

“And if he really is the author, then maybe you guys will remember working together and you can all be friends again,” Steven said with a small smile. Of course, the Gems merely exchanged an uncertain glance at this, none of them really wanting to dash their encouraging young ward’s hopes. But even if McGucket was indeed the author, none of the three of them had any intentions of rekindling whatever “friendship” they might have had with him way back when, for reasons that had little to do with the hillbilly personally and everything to do with the nature of the journal itself. So much of its contents concerned them, and they didn’t seem to have the faintest idea about how all of that comprehensive information was either gathered. Really, what the Gems wanted most now were answers; answers about the past that could hopefully, finally lead to certainty in the future.

Without any further ado, the kids, Soos, Wendy, and the Gems all headed down to the junkyard, knowing that they were McGucket’s favored stomping grounds. Oddly enough, there were no apparent signs of the hillbilly as they arrived, but the Gems in particular were rather tense and alert, all three of them aware that this meeting could change everything. Either that, or it would be nothing more than a rather bizarre waste of time.

“Old Man McGucket, are you here?!” Dipper called, glancing around the mountainous piles of trash for the supposed author.

“Here, hillbilly-billy-billy!” Soos exclaimed louder, as they drew closer to McGucket’s shack in the middle of the dump.

“I still can’t believe we’re following through on this…” Pearl murmured, clinging close to Garnet as she narrowly avoided stepping on any stray bits of garbage.

“Me neither,” Amethyst said as she munched on a stray shoe she had found. “How could that crazy old McGucket guy and author dude be the same person? Pretty sure that guy doesn’t even know what a book even is, much less how to write one.”

“Like I’ve said before,” Garnet spoke up, her tone firm to balance out her teammates’ doubt. “Before now, we didn’t even have any guesses about who the author could be. Even if this new lead seems unlikely, it’s the only one we have. And that alone makes it worth pursuing.”

While Amethyst and Pearl were still rather hesitant to buy into the possibility of McGucket being the author, they heeded their leaders’ advice and held their peace on the matter. At least for now.

As the group finally arrived to McGucket’s ramshackle shack in the center of the junkyard, they found that it was in the middle of being vandalized, as Nate and Lee graffitied the words “McSuckit” onto its side. “Ha! This is hilarious,” Nate chuckled as they finished up their prank.

“Took an hour to think of this, but it was worth it!” Lee laughingly agreed, though the levity was cut short as McGucket suddenly emerged from his hut, having overheard the noise, prompting the teens to flee from the scene.

“Get outta here, ya salt-lickin, hornswaggling…” the hillbilly trailed off, his anger dissipating into dejection as he turned back to the insult painted onto the side of his dilapidated home. “‘McSuckit’… They got me good…” McGucket was quick to perk up, however, upon noticing the group of kids and Gems standing nearby. “Visitors! Come, come!” he exclaimed brightly, leading the way into his shack. Its interior was expectantly a disaster, with trash and spare broken down mechanical parts strewn all over as the hillbilly’s racoon wife scurried about freely. Even so, McGucket hardly seemed to pay this any mind as he instead cheerfully entertained his rare guests. “Pull up some rusty metal! You’re just in time for my hourly turf war with the hillbilly that lives in my mirror. Quit starin’ at me when I bathe!” he shouted at his reflection in the nearby metal bathtub.

“Somehow I find it hard to believe that he was the one whom Rose trusted with so many of her best kept secrets…” Pearl muttered to Garnet, the doubt and disdain in her tone clear.

“You can drop the act, McGucket!” Dipper exclaimed boldly as he pulled out the journal. “I know you’re the author. You studied the mysteries of this town and wrote this book!”

“Yeah, and you filled it with all kinds of personal junk about us,” Amethyst added, her hands on her hips. “Speaking of which, I don’t think you have a lot of room to write about my room bein’ a mess when your place is pretty much just as bad. Kudos to you on that though, I’d party in a mess like this.”

“Anyway, dude, you’re the genius Dipper’s been looking all summer for!” Wendy got back on track.

“Er, genius?” McGucket questioned with an uneasy frown that was quick to turn remorseful. “I’m no genius… I’ve never done nothin’ worthwhile in my life. Everyone knows I’m no good to nobody. I can’t remember what I used to be, but I must’ve been a big failure to end up like this.”

“Wait, so… you’re saying you lost your memories too?” Steven asked, glancing over at the Gems as he said it.

“That seems a bit too ironic…” Pearl remarked, looking to McGucket with newfound suspicion.

“I-I swear… I don’t know nothin’ about no book or mysteries or any o’ that there flimflam…” McGucket said, fretfully fiddling with his long beard. “Sorry to disappoint ya kids…”

“But… but your name is on the laptop!” Connie argued intently.

“Unless that’s supposed to be some other McGucket,” Soos shrugged. “But there’s probably about… only one dude in Gravity Falls with that name, maaaaybe two, tops.”

“Well, what about this book?” Dipper asked, presenting McGucket with the journal. After all, he wasn’t about to forget about his only possible lead on the author so easily, especially not when it felt like he was starting to get so close. “Are you sure you didn’t write it? Here, take a closer look.”

McGucket shook his head once more as Dipper started flipping through the journal’s pages, none of them apparently registering in his already sparse memory whatsoever. “I told you, I don’t recall. Everything before 1982 is just a blur. Just a dim, hazy-” The hillbilly abruptly cut himself off as the journal landed on a page featuring the dominating image of a single eye crossed evenly through its piercing pupil. McGucket let out a shriek of raw terror upon so much as catching a glimpse of it, and he fell to the ground hard, scrambling away from the journal as his manner grew frantic and erratic. “The Blind Eye! Robes—the men! My mind! T-they did something!”

“Wha—who did?” Dipper asked, just as taken aback as the others by this sudden outburst.

“I… I don’t recall…” McGucket admitted, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

“Oh, well isn’t that just incredibly convenient?!” Pearl exclaimed, a hint of accusatory hostility in her tone. “I mean, what are the odds that this elusive author we supposedly worked with years ago just so happens to be an amnesiac garbage-dweller who can’t even remember anything important at all? Ugh, I knew this would be a waste of time.”

“Pearl,” Garnet interjected, silently commanding the white Gem to calm down before she turned back to McGucket. “You mentioned something called the Blind Eye. What is that?”

“I… uh, I don’t… they… i-it was…” the hillbilly trailed off, placing a hand on his head as he seemed to lose himself to a longstanding yet unknown panic. “I don’t know!”

“Aw, you poor old man!” Mabel said with genuine sympathy. “No wonder your mind’s all loopy. You must have been through something really intense.”

“What if McGucket learned something he wasn’t supposed to know, and someone or something messed with his mind?” Dipper theorized. “If that’s the case, then we have to get to the bottom of this!”

“Well, I guess we gotta if we ever wanna figure all this journal junk out, huh?” Amethyst asked, glancing to her teammates.

“Yes,” Garnet nodded resolutely. “It’s not entirely clear, but I can see that looking into all this will lead us to answers of some kind, though its hard to say exactly what those answers might be right now.”

“And even if you aren’t the author, then at least maybe we’ll be able to help you get your memory back,” Steven said to McGucket with a supportive smile. “So no matter what, it’ll be a win-win!”

“Think, dude, what’s the earliest thing you can remember?” Wendy asked the hillbilly.

“Uh… this, I reckon,” McGucket took a newspaper clipping he had pinned to the wall down, one that pictured him lost and disoriented in front of a rather familiar building in town.

“That’s the history museum!” Connie exclaimed, pointing the building out.

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Dipper asserted, knowing that it would be the best place to start looking for clues that could very well finally led to the missing piece of this intricate puzzle they had all been searching for.

Eager to follow this newest lead, everyone rushed to pile into Soos’ truck and head over to the museum. However, as soon as the handyman turned the ignition, they were all instantly met with a song playing over the stereo that set Wendy off the moment she heard it.

“Are we blanchin’? Girl, we blanchin, I live up in a mansion.”

“Ugh, Soos!” the cashier groaned in frustration as she hurriedly ejected the aggravating CD and tossed it out the window. The others all looked to her in surprise at this, particularly Soos, which was why she was quick to make a terse, rather stilted apology. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

“Can you guys believe it?” Steven remarked to the other kids with a bright smile. “The four of us are finally back in action, solving mysteries and rewriting history again! Isn’t it great?”

“It will be great if we can jog McGucket’s memory and he actually turns out to be the author after all,” Dipper remarked rather dryly, his attention mostly focused to combing through the journal for any further clues.

“And hopefully we can do all that without running into that Blind Eye thing he mentioned, whatever that is,” Connie added just as seriously, already examining a map of the museum on her phone for anything out of place.

“Y-yeah, but… we can still have fun doing all that, can’t we?” Steven asked, suddenly apprehensive as he glanced back at the Gems, whose expression were all also rather somber and tight.

“Fun?” Dipper repeated with something of a scoff. “Steven, come on. This is serious, our biggest break towards finding the author yet. We have to focus on that first. Especially considering what happened the last time we let ourselves get distracted…”

“R-right…” Steven said, his smile finally falling completely as he let out a small sigh as he leaned his head against the window. Dipper and Connie didn’t notice this, and the young Gem didn’t blame them for it; after all, he knew exactly why they both had every intention of pushing themselves so hard with this important mystery. Still, that didn’t make him feel any better about one of the underlying reasons in particular about why that was.

Mabel, on the other hand, had taken notice of Steven’s sudden melancholy as she sat right next to him, and while it did worry her, another part of her saw it as an opportunity. One that, largely without thinking, she decided to try and take. “Uh… hey, Steven?” she spoke up, trying her best not to come across as flustered.

“Yeah?” the young Gem replied in an absent mutter.

“W-well… I was just wondering… if maybe you and me could, uh… if we could…” Mabel trailed off, her cheeks blushing brightly as she let out a small gasp of realization. “Oh my gosh, I think I finally know how Dipper felt about this whole confession thing…”

“What was that?” Steven asked, having not heard her last muttered statement.

“Oh! Uh, I was just…” Mabel finally gave up with a small sigh, deciding that now really wasn’t the time for this, especially as she spared a quick glance over at Connie sitting on the other side of her. “I was just, uh, thinking that you and me should take Dipper’s advice and be more, um… serious and focused about this author mystery, is all… Y-yeah, that’s… that’s totally what I was gonna say…”

“Oh… Ok, then…” Steven frowned, both confused and downcast as he went back to staring out the window, not noticing Mabel’s clear frustration with her own nervousness. Usually, she had no problem with this sort of thing, but this instance was entirely different than anything she had ever felt before. If she was perfectly honest with herself, these feelings in general were rather foreign to her, at least to the extent that she had been experiencing them for the past several weeks. Which was likely why she was having such a hard time admitting them to anyone really, but especially to the young Gem and in a sense, even to herself. After all, she had already failed at this so many times already; what would good would throwing her heart out on the line again do her, especially since she knew there was such a huge chance that it would be thrown right back?

The rest of the ride was rather silent until the group got to the museum, which was, for some reason, closed for the day, Fortunately, they were able to find easy enough access inside through an open window, and as soon as they all made it inside, Garnet held her teammates back for just a moment, to make sure that they were all clear about what exactly their mission was.

“Remember,” she cautioned, her voice quiet but firm. “Our main mission is to fill in the gaps between us and the author. We don’t know what we’ll find here, so we need to be ready for anything. And if we learn something that we don’t like… then we’ll just have to deal with it and move on from there.”

Amethyst and Pearl nodded in affirmation of this, both of them knowing just as much as Garnet did that today’s investigation could very well change everything they thought they knew. But all the same, they were quick to rejoin the others in starting their search for clues.

“Alright, everyone, keep your eyes peeled for anything suspicious,” Dipper advised as they all spread out throughout the main hall.

“So would this exhibit on these groady old caveman forks be considered suspicious?” Amethyst asked, casually infiltrating said exhibit without a care.

“Uh, that’s not really that suspicious, Amethyst,” Connie remarked, raising an eyebrow. “Its just… weird, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’ll say so,” the purple Gem agreed, grabbing one of the wooden utensils. “How the heck did humans used to eat with these lame things without getting mad splinters all up in their mouths? They should have just used their hands to chow down, like a civilized person or whatever.” With that, Amethyst downed the ancient fork with one gulp, much to the startled surprise of everyone watching. “Huh, kinda woody but other than that, it’s not too bad.”

As the investigation continued, Mabel found herself rather disinterested with it as she heaved a morose sigh, something that Wendy too notice of as she paused her search to check up on the younger girl. “Mabel, are you ok? You just walked past a cat without petting it,” she pointed to the nearby taxidermy mountain lion, which Mabel had barely even spared a second place at.

“Oh, Wendy, everything I look at reminds me of my failed romances…” Mabel pouted, nodding to several of the nearby exhibits. “That formaldehyde heart, that romantic diorama. Even this poster of my most recent crush,” she said, looking up to a poster advertising one of Gabe’s puppet shows before disdainfully pulling it down only to reveal an old poster for Sev’ral Timez underneath it. “Oh come on!”

“So, your last memory was here,” Dipper said to McGucket as the hillbilly meandered about. “Anything coming back?”

McGucket frowned as he looked around the museum, quite uncertain though it was clear he was making a genuine effort to try and remember something, as difficult of a task as that often was for him. “Er—well, I-”

“Guys, look!” Soos cut in, pointing down the museum hall. At the end of the corridor, obscured by shadows, was a vague human figure, one that was quick to further into the darkness upon being spotted.

“Whoa, who was that?” Steven asked with apt alarm.

“Everyone, after them!” Pearl commanded, already running on ahead. The others followed suit, chasing the shadowy figure down the hall, tracing their path all the way to a room lined with a myriad of images of eyes. Yet as they all piled into this room, the unknown figure was seemingly nowhere to be seen at all.

“Well kettle my corn! He vanish-ified!” McGucket exclaimed, aghast.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Dipper shook his head, confused. “Where did he go?”

“Hm…” Garnet mused, looking over the eyes covering the walls and remembering something the hillbilly had mentioned earlier. “The Blind Eye…”

“You don’t think this could be it, do ya, G?” Amethyst asked, slightly disappointed. “Just a room filled with a bunch of creepy old eyeballs?”

“This better not just be it!” Pearl remarked hotly. “That would make this whole thing even more of a wild goose chase than it already is! You!” she spun around to face McGucket. “We brought you all the way here, so I think its about time you start remembering something or else!”

“I-I… I’m tryin’,” the hillbilly said, clearly intimidated as he shrunk back a bit. “But its mighty difficult to recall just ‘bout anything when I feel like all these eyballs are a-watchin me…”

“Wait,” Dipper interjected, tracing path of nearly pupil in the room right back to McGucket. “They are! Move aside.”

The hillbilly did so, casting a nervous glance at the rather impatient Gems as he did to reveal a central stone tablet, one that carried a carving of yet another eye, yet much like the one in the journal, it was crossed cleanly through. The way it was set up, it almost looked like a switch, and as Dipper gave it an experimental push, that proved to be exactly what it was as the wall started to peel back to a short staircase that led into mysterious darkness down below.

“Whoa, a secret passageway!” Connie exclaimed, amazed. “This just took on a whole new level of cryptic! And that’s saying something, seeing as how it was already really cryptic to begin with.”

“What’s down there?” Pearl asked, looking to Garnet for answers, which was something the Gem leader didn’t really have as she instead simply shrugged point blank.

“We’ll have to be stealthy,” McGucket noted with newfound resolve. “I’ll hambone a message if there’s trouble.” He did so, slapping his arms and legs in a rhythmic message that was lost on everyone else.

“I… have no idea what that means,” Dipper admitted with a frown.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Amethyst asked daringly. “Let’s scope this sucker out!”

Seeing as how the group was unsure of what they’d find below the museum, they made sure to take care to keep quiet as they descended the staircase down below. As they reached the bottom, the sound of deep, unified chanting soon became apparent amidst the narrow, candle-lit corridors. They all remained on high alert as they followed this chanting, which only grew louder and more ominous with each passing second until they reached a thick scarlet curtain. And as they collectively peered out what lay beyond this curtain, they were met with by a sight that none of them had been expecting.

A large, wide open room laid before them, once again lit only by candles sconced on the walls. At the room’s center rested a reclined leather chair, one with restraining straps attached to the armrests and body. But by far the most sinister thing about this already alarming setup was the multitude gathered around this chair in an organized circle, all of them wearing crimson, floor-length robes with hoods that concealed their faces completely. And as they assembled for their unknown purposes, they continued their Latin chant, unsettling the hidden group watching them from behind the curtain. “Novus ordo seclorum. Novus ordo seclorum.”

This continued chant continued as the apparent leader of this gathering stepped forward, the familiar crossed-out eye symbol adorning his robe as he held his hands up to quiet his followers. “Who is the subject of our meeting?” he asked, his manner cold and authoritative.

“This woman,” another one of the robed men announced, escorting a familiar, albeit blindfolded figure into the room. Her identity only became clear, however, as he pulled the sack covering her head off, revealing a very confused, disoriented waitress underneath.

“Lazy Susan?” Mabel whispered, exchanging a bewildered glance with the other kids at this. After all, what could the usually kindly, albeit a bit dimwitted waitress have to do with this foreboding group of robed figures?

“What is it you have seen?” the leader asked Lazy Susan as she was sat down in the reclined chair.

“Speak!” the other members echoed, startling the already anxious waitress quite a bit.

“Uh, w-well, I was leaving the diner,” she began unsteadily. “And I saw these little bearded doodads. And I was like ‘bwaaa?!”

“There, there. You won’t be like ‘bwaaa?’ for much longer…” the leader said with faux sympathy as he opened up a wooden box one of his compatriots presented him with. He pulled a strange looking device out of it, one that was clearly some kind of gun or blaster, though it was rather archaic and bizarre in its design. A large lightbulb was fixed to its front, and on its side was a dial used to input letters, though overall its purpose was initially unclear. As the leader began to dial the words “little men” into the machine, the other members all pulled their hoods down, none of them bothering to even acknowledge Lazy Susan’s barrage of curious, nervous questions.

“What is that gizmo? It looks like a hair dryer. Are you guys barbers? I-” the waitress cut herself off with a sudden scream as the leader pulled the gun’s trigger, a burst of electricity zapping Susan squarely against her forehead. The blast held her paralyzed in its thrall until it finally died out, leaving her slack in the chair for a moment, her eyes blinking slowly and unevenly as she recovered from what looked like a very horrific experience.

“Lazy Susan, what do you know of little men?” the leader asked, hands held behind his back as he set the ray gun down.

“My mind is cleared, thanks to the Society of the Blind Eye,” Lazy Susan reported almost robotically, much to the satisfaction of said society members.

“It is unseen!” they all proclaimed in triumphant unison, their mind-erasing mission complete for now.

“Oh my gosh! They just wiped Lazy Susan’s memory!” Dipper exclaimed in a stunned whisper, just as shocked as all the others at such a disturbing sight.

“They should have wiped off that awful mascara,” Soos joked, trying to lighten the mood, though his attempt wasn’t well received by Mabel or Wendy.

“I think she looks beautiful!”

“She’s doing the best she can, Soos!”

“Whoa… touched a nerve there…” the handyman frowned, glancing away fretfully.

“So uh, I guess this whole mission just got a lot more serious, huh?” Amethyst asked, rather apprehensive in light of what they had just witnessed.

“I’d certainly say so…” Pearl muttered, somewhat shaken by the implications of all this as she gripped the edge of the curtain a bit tighter.

“Lazy Susan, how do you feel?” the society leader asked the waitress as a few other members helped her out of the chair.

“I feel great!” the waitress remarked brightly as she began to be led away. “I can’t even remember what was wrong, or what I’m doing here, or if I’m a man or a woman!”

“Your memories will be safe with us,” the leader said solemnly as he removed the glass tube from the ray gun, labeling it with Lazy Susan’s name. “Buried in the Hall of the Forgotten.”

“Into the Hall of the Forgotten! Into the Hall of the Forgotten!” the other members chanted as the leader sent the cylinder off through a vacuum tube, one that carried it up to the ceiling and out of the room.

“Good chanting, boys!” the leader exclaimed proudly. “Have you been practicing? Either way, meeting adjourned.”

“Unsee you later,” the society members bid each other farewell as they began to disperse.

“Unsee you later!”

The group behind the curtain waited a moment or two to make sure all of the society members had left, and upon Garnet’s cue that the coast was clear, they all emerged to investigate things further. “Amazing. A secret society of evil mind erasers!” Dipper remarked, both amazed and unnerved. “I’ll bet they erased your memory a long time ago, McGucket. And maybe even all of your memories about the author too!” he theorized, turning to the Gems.

“But… but that’s impossible!” Pearl exclaimed, looking to the nearby memory gun anxiously. “If we ever had a run into this so-called ‘Society of the Blind Eye’ in the past, then certainly we would have remembered it!”

“No, we wouldn’t have,” Garnet clarified. “Not if they used that gun on us.”

“So, uh… what are we supposed to do now then?” Amethyst asked.

“Well, if we can find where you and McGucket’s memories are hidden, it could be the key to unlocking all the mysteries of Gravity Falls! And then some…” Dipper mused, ever mindful of his own personal reasons for wanting to find these long awaited answers. “Alright. Mabel, Wendy, Connie, you three stay here and make sure those robe guys don’t come back.”

“Whoo! Girls club!” Wendy cheered, exchanging fists bumps with both Mabel and Connie.

“Steven, Soos, McGucket, we’re gonna go find that Hall of the Forgotten,” Dipper continued with apt resolve.

“Meanwhile, we’ll try to track down some of those society members,” Garnet said readily, her hand clenched into a tight fists. “And if they won’t give us answers willingly, then we’ll make them.”

“Yeah, now you’re talkin’!” Amethyst exclaimed rowdily, already summoning her whip. “Time to beat up a bunch of creepy, robe-wearing nerds!”

“W-we’re not actually going to utilize any physical violence against them!” Pearl assured as her and the other two Gems began to head off. “Unless, of course, they refuse to deny us access to memories that are rightfully ours, in which case we might consider it…”

“Well, dudes, I guess we should-” Soos was cut off as his hat was suddenly sucked into one of the nearby vacuum tubes, sending it off to where all of the memories the society collected were supposedly sent.

“Quick! After that hat!” Dipper exclaimed, already running after it as McGucket and Soos followed quickly after.

Steven started to join them, though he did stop short briefly upon taking another glance at the memory gun sitting on the table behind him. The example of its use they had all witnessed had been frightening to say the least, but there was no deny that gun was effective at clearing away any and all memories of harrowing experiences. And while the idea was just a small, fledgling thought inside the young Gem’s mind, he couldn’t help but wonder if it could be used to erase other kinds of memories as well, including those of pain, remorse, fear, and sorrow. If it could destroy all thoughts of past regrets, from a perilous invasion that ended in heartbreak or an ill-fated puppet show marred by wrongly-spilled blood. If it could do more than heal the long-lasting scars of the past, but instead make it as so they had never happened in the first place.

All the same, Steven’s initial musings on the matter were cut short as he was abruptly thrown right back into the moment thanks to Connie. “Uh, Steven? Aren’t you going with them?” she asked, noticing the young Gems rather awestruck expression as he stared at the gun.

“Huh? O-oh… oh yeah,” he blinked, shaking his head clear of such thoughts for now as he hurried after Dipper, Soos, and McGucket, but not before calling back to the girls. “Good luck, you guys!”

“R-right back at ya!” Mabel called back with a smile that was just a bit too wide, though thankfully neither Wendy nor Connie seemed to notice.

The Gems remained swift and silent as they made their way through the society headquarters’ labyrinthine halls, all three of them ready to summon their weapons at a moment’s notice if need be. Needless to say they were all rather tense, and they had every reason to be; after all, it truly did seem as though the Society of the Blind Eye could possibly be behind their string of missing memories concerning the author. And yet, despite how close they apparently were to getting answers, they couldn’t help but be mutually anxious about it all the same. None of them really knew what they would learn if they truly did recover their supposedly lost memories, but if anything was clear, it was this: reconnecting the faded pieces of their past would either answer all their questions, or create countless more.

“Gems,” Garnet stopped suddenly as they began to pass by a closed door, one that was more than enough to peak some interest.

“It’s locked,” Pearl reported, trying to wedge it open to no avail. “I suppose we’ll just have to-”

The white Gem was cut off as Garnet’s gauntlet crashed into the door, breaking it apart easily. “Well, I guess that’s one way to get in,” Amethyst chuckled, hopping inside the rather small storage room. At first glance, it didn’t seem like there was anything of note to be found save for several boxes filled with spare society robes. However, as preceptive as always, Garnet approached the far end of the room, which was largely concealed in darkness until Pearl followed suit, her gemstone casting light upon something that made all three Gems gasp in shock.

The entire wall seemed to host a wide array of old documents and newspaper clippings, some tracing back as far as almost thirty years ago. Regardless of their age though, almost all of these clips contained common themes: reports and coverage of Gem monster attacks, of the Crystal Gems themselves fighting off such attacks, of the town suffering mass damage from those attacks. The Gems themselves recognized every single one of the instances hanging before them, though they were still quite surprised by them all, especially seeing as how they weren’t the only things there. A myriad of notes was also tacked to the wall, filled with all manner of disparaging accusations and insults towards the Crystal Gems themselves: “Crystal Menaces!”, “Gravity Falls isn’t safe with them around!”, “Disaster Magnets!”, “Are they even of this Earth?!”, “Alien Invaders?!”, “Some ‘protectors’ they are!”, “They must be witches!”, “They’ll bring destruction upon us all!” and so on and so forth, seemingly without end. All of these notes had been arranged in such a way that they formed the society’s ionic eye symbol, its center being a picture of the Crystal Gems, one that included Rose Quartz herself that had been crossed through in dark red ink. A perfectly obvious testament to what the Society of the Blind Eye clearly thought of the Crystal Gems.

“W-wha… what is all this?” Pearl asked in a shocked whisper, taking a small step back as she looked to this unnerving display with wide eyes.

“Uh, I think its pretty obvious what this is, P!” Amethyst exclaimed in sudden defiant anger. “It’s proof that those ‘Blind Eye’ chumps, or whoever they are totally jacked our memories! All cause they hate our guts for some reason, which is like, whatever! Obviously they don’t know how awesome we are and how we save this town’s butt like, pretty much every day!”

“G-Garnet, what do you make of all this… this slander?” Pearl asked, gripping the Gem leader’s arm tightly. Garnet herself still seemed quite taken aback by what they were seeing, her jaw still dropped and her expression unreadable as she glanced around again. Her gaze finally stopped, however, upon the newest article of the collection, one that pictured the hand ship’s approach on Gravity Falls just a few weeks ago. The Gem leader was still silent as she pulled it off the wall, and when she finally did speak, her tone was soft, solemn, and most of all guilty.

“They… they’re right,” she said, not bothering to glance up. “The only reason Gem monsters attack Gravity Falls is because we’re here. We’ve known that for years now. Our presence puts this town in danger nearly every day.”

“W-well… b-but we always do manage to fend the monsters off and keep the town safe!” Pearl protested fretfully. “It’s what Rose wanted us to do! She… we… Oh, what would she think of all this? An entire society dedicated to ridding people of their memories of anything out of the ordinary? Including us? She would have hated it…”

“S-so… they’re trying to erase people’s memories of Gem stuff,” Amethyst said, still shaken and upset. “And that’s super messed up, yeah. But what about our memories? Why would these guys even go after us in the first place if they want everyone else to forget about us? And why would they only get rid of our memories of author dude and like, nothing else?”

“Maybe they wanted to get rid of the memory of him even more than us…” Garnet theorized, putting the picture down.

“Of McGucket?” Pearl asked incredulously. “But he’s completely harmless! Well, aside from that fact that I’m fairly certain that supposed ‘racoon wife’ of his is rabid…”

“What if he wasn’t so harmless before those robe dudes took his memory?” Amethyst wondered worriedly. “What if he was some kind of threat to them, so they messed his brain up and made him go totally nuts? And… what if they wanted to do the same thing to us only they didn’t make it that far?”

“B-but… no,” Pearl shook her head, refusing to believe it, even though the evidence was starting to add up. “Rose would have never allowed something like that to happen! She would have put this Society of the Blind Eye nonsense to a stop the moment she heard about it! U-unless…”

“Unless they erased her memories too…” Garnet mused, looking back up to the wall of accusations before them. “The shapeshifter… When we were in the bunker, it mentioned something about us having ‘gaps’ in our past… And it questioned whether Rose had those same gaps or not.”

“W-well of course she did!” Pearl countered, flustered for the sake of defending her former liege. “She must have! Otherwise, she would have known about all this. She would have told us!”

“Would she have?” Amethyst asked, an anxious frown crossing her features. Pearl initially prepared to counter back that Rose indeed would have, but her words faltered as she looked back to the wall of clippings again. Specifically, at the photo of their happy, smiling, stalwart team, standing together, tarnished by the blood red X crossed over it by the society. Rose had had many enemies in her time, from the highest elites on Homeworld, all the way down to mere Gem foot soldiers who loathed her stance to protect the Earth. But that was back during the war. For practically the duration of their time living in Gravity Falls, the Crystal Gems had faced no severe opposition to their presence there, save for perhaps Gideon, but the Gems saw him as only a minor aggravation at best. But this, this was nothing less than complete and utter malice on the part of the Society of the Blind Eye towards them, malice that had most likely led to several important memories being stripped away from them, if not more so. But, in the eyes of the Crystal Gems at least, Rose Quartz was infallible. She had never been defeated by any foe before, to any degree. Certainly, there was no way she would have never let herself fall victim to a group of mere humans with an archaic memory erasing ray gun, even if the rest of them had. So why, then, would she have never filled in the gaps for her teammates? Why would she have let memories that bore at least some significance fade away into nothing?

And most of all, why would she decide to keep things that way, even after she was gone?

With the boys and the Gems gone, the girls found themselves with little to do as they remained in the meeting hall, keeping a tentative eye out for any stray society members. Mabel and Wendy sat on the steps leading into the hall as Connie stood a few paces away, practicing some maneuvers with the blade Pearl had entrusted her with for this mission. It wasn’t an incredibly eventful way to pass the time, but at the very least, it was something.

“Whoa, Connie, you’re getting pretty good at swinging that thing around,” Wendy remarked with an impressed grin upon watching the younger girl pull off a deft technique.

“Thanks, Wendy,” Connie returned her smile. “Pearl’s been teaching me and Dipper some pretty advanced moves lately, and it’s a good thing too, seeing as how we’re basically dealing with a sinister mind-erasing cult here.”

“Correction: they’re an evil, mind-erasing cult that totally needs to invest in some new robes,” Mabel added, sticking her tongue out. “The look like they’re all in some kinda demonic choir or something. A few more colors other than that overdramatic blood red would totally spruce things up!”

The girls all got a good laugh over this lighthearted suggestion, though the levity was soon broken as a sudden rattling crash sounded out from somewhere down the hall. Upon hearing it, Connie was instantly on the defensive, her sword held out in front of her as she poised to listen once again.

“What was that?” Mabel asked with a curious, concerned frown.

“I don’t know, but I’m gonna go check it out,” Connie said, resolved. “You guys stay here, I’ll be right back.”

“You got it, ‘Miss Knight’,” Wendy smirked, sending Connie off with a salute before she disappeared into one of the headquarters’ many halls. Only a beat or two passed after she left, however, before Mabel let out the long sigh she had been holding in, flopping down to lie on her back with an exasperated groan.

“I just don’t get it, Wendy,” she began, still caught up in her earlier dejection. “I hug a lot, I can burp the alphabet, I have scratch and sniff clothing, I’m the total package! So why does every boy leave me?”

“Pfft, who cares?” Wendy asked with a shrug. “Boys are the worst. You shouldn’t get hung up, man.”

“M-maybe I come on too strong, you know?” Mabel wondered, sitting up.

“Well, what’s your opener? Pretend I’m a boy.” At this, the cashier tucked most of her hair under her hat, though she did leave enough to make herself a fake mustache with it. “Mm, testosterone,” she quipped with a manly spit before Mabel dove right into her incredibly enthusiastic pitch.

“Hi! I’m Mabel! I’m 12 and own a pig! Wanna get married?!” she exclaimed loudly and exuberantly, a bright, beaming smile dominating her features.

“Honestly, that was perfect,” Wendy chuckled, amused by her excitability as she let her hair fall down once more. “Like I said, just don’t let all those sour crushes get you down, dude. You’re way better than like, all those loser guys, if you ask me.”

“Ugh, that’s what I keep trying to tell myself,” Mabel groaned. “But its so hard when not even one of them has worked out at all! I mean, I have so many failed romances now that its getting hard to keep count of them all: there’s Norman, Gideon, Sev’ral Timez, Mermando, Gabe, Steven-”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” Wendy interjected, looking to Mabel with stark surprise. “Who was that last one again?”

Mabel flinched, covering her mouth as her face flushed red with a bright red blush over her accidental slip up. “Uh… n-no one! It was no one!”

“Nuh uh, man, I heard you,” the cashier remarked with a knowing grin. “You totally said Steven! Since when have you been crushing on him? You gotta spill all the details, dude.”

“Mmm…. You promise you won’t tell anyone?” Mabel asked hesitantly, knowing that if there was anyone she could trust with this information, it was Wendy.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” she assured, pulling of her signature zipping lips motion.

Mabel still didn’t jump right in, mostly out of nerves more than anything else. It was bizarre, really, seeing as how she had been vaguely aware of these feelings for quite some time. But only now was she finally admitting them out loud, not just to Wendy, but to herself. “I guess… it all started when me and Steven fused… We had such a great time together, to the point that… neither of us really wanted to let go. I-I sorta felt like I would have been really happy just staying with him forever, you know? And… in a way, I guess I still kinda feel like that…”

“Aw, Mabel, that’s super sweet,” Wendy said with a sincere smile. “But if you’ve felt like that about Steven for this long, then why don’t you just tell him about it already?”

“Ugh, cause it would make things super awkward!” Mabel exclaimed, frustrated. “Steven’s not just some random guy of the week, he’s Steven. He’s one of my best friends! If I told him I had a crush on him and he turned me down, then it’d ruin like, everything! And not to mention, he’s already…” She trailed off as she glanced over at the hallway Connie had headed down, shaking her head as she decided to leave it at that. “N-never mind…”

“Dude, don’t worry about it being awkward,” Wendy advised, placing a steady hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “Steven’s like, one of the most chill people ever. I’m sure he’ll understand. And even if he says no, it won’t really change anything. Chances are you’ll both just forget about it and move on with your lives eventually.”

“Forget…” Mabel repeated, her eyes widening with realization as she glanced over at the memory gun sitting only a few feet away. “Wendy, that’s it!” she exclaimed excitedly, rushing over to the device as the cashier followed in confusion. “I just need to type ‘summer romances’ into this thing, and I won’t feel bad about them anymore! And I bet if I do, it’ll even get rid of that silly old crush I have on Steven too! It’s perfect!”

“Whoa, hold up, Mabel,” Wendy cautioned, concerned. “We don’t even know what that thing does. You could accidentally erase, like, learning how to read, or breathe, or-”

“Or one of those terrible summer songs you can’t get out of your head?” Mabel suggested with a broad smile, instantly quieting the cashier at the promising prospect of forgetting the incredibly aggravating ‘Straight Blanchin’ once and for all.

Dipper, Steven, Soos, and McGucket had narrowly avoided being spotted as they raced after the handyman’s hat, in the hopes that it would lead them to the mysterious Hall of the Forgotten. And, seeing as how they had a definite path to follow, it didn’t take them too long to find it. It was a large, sparsely lit room, much like the rest of the society’s headquarters, but its defining feature were the countless glass tubes contained within it, staking almost all the way up to the ceiling. There were hundreds, probably thousands of them, all encompassing the memories the Society of the Blind Eye had taken away from innocent people over the years. An alarming, yet awe-inspiring sight, to say the least.

“Honey fogelin’, saltlickin’ skullduggery!” McGucket exclaimed upon taking in this incredible sight.

“Man, you have got to teach me some of those old man swears,” Soos remarked, impressed by the hillbilly’s vernacular.

“Look at all these tubes!” Steven remarked as they walked into the room itself. “How are we ever gonna find McGucket’s memories in all this? Or the Gems’?”

“I know, right?” Dipper agreed, just as daunted by this seemingly impossible task. “No wonder nobody knows in Gravity Falls seems to know anything about the supernatural. These guys must erase the memories of people all over town!”

“Dudes, what if they’ve even erased some of our memories, but we forgot about it because our memories were erased?!” Soos exclaimed with a gasp. “Wouldn’t that be totally nuts?”

“Y-yeah… it would be…” Steven muttered rather apprehensively. He took pause, however, upon noticing yet another memory gun lying on a nearby table otherwise laden with tubes. His earlier uncertainty returned to him at the sight of it, especially as he looked around at all the stolen memories surrounding him. The Society of the Blind Eye used that gun to strip people of their pasts, though their purpose in doing so was by all accounts unclear, but it was easy to assume their motivations weren’t too ultraistic. But just because the hands using it were sinister, didn’t mean the memory gun itself necessarily was. There had to be beneficial uses for it, uses that the young Gem had already considered, uses he thought about as he took a tentative glance over at Dipper, remembering well just how hard of a time he in particular had had of things immediately following that disastrous puppet show, knowing that the memory of that dark day still haunted him, even weeks later. And yet, that painful memory could so easily disappear, for all of them really, with just the mere pull of a trigger. It would be so quick, so easy, so harmless, and so ultimately helpful for helping all four of them finally move on. Which was why, without drawing any attention to himself at all, Steven slowly and silently grabbed the memory gun and slipped it into his backpack, with an idea in mind but not enough courage in his heart to act on it just yet.

“Whoa, check this out,” Dipper spoke up, calling everyone over to what was clearly a viewing machine for the memory tubes. He had managed to find one with Robbie’s name on the label, and so, unable to shake his curiosity, he inserted it in the machine. The screen went live, showing the angsty teen strapped to the chair in the meeting room amidst being interrogated by the society.

“Yes, Robbie, what is it you have seen?” the leader asked somewhere offscreen.

“So I was attacked by this magic kung fu guy that was throwing, like, balls of fire at me,” Robbie began recounting a familiar tale. “I kicked his butt though.”

“Robbie, speak honestly.”

“…I was saved by a 12 year old and a lady with a square-shaped afro…”

From there, the society was quick to wipe the teen’s memories of the encounter completely clear, resulting in the screen abruptly going black as a result. Of course, this was only more proof that the society had been clearing the town of their memories of the alarming or the paranormal, but that they did so to seemingly any extent, both massive and mundane. And seeing as how they had apparently taken so many memories already, it was clear their intentions were to keep the people of Gravity Falls in the dark about the magic and mystery that surrounded them at every turn.

“I still don’t get it,” Dipper remarked, glancing around at the immense collection of memory tubes filling the room. “We know what they’re erasing memories of, but why are they doing this in the first place? What would they have to gain from-”

“Looky, fellers!” McGucket cut in, excitedly pointing up to a memory tube that, fittingly enough, had his name on it. “It’s those words what people call me!”

“Oh, dude, your memories!” Soos grinned. “We did it!”

“Great, now all we need to do is find the Gems’ memories and we can put a rest to this mystery once and for all,” Dipper said with pleased resolve as McGucket headed for the shelf his memories were sitting on.

“Grabby grabby!” the hillbilly exclaimed blithely, climbing onto the shelf and retrieving his tube. “I got it!” However, what McGucket, or any of the others failed to notice, was that as soon as the tube was removed, the discreet electrical chip that had been positioned underneath it began blinking. And as a result, a sharp alarm suddenly began to blare throughout most of the museum, one that startled the entire group as their stealth was completely compromised. “Ah! The alarm in my brain is a-ringin’ again!” McGucket cried as he fell off the shelf.

“Halt! Who’s there!?” the distant shout of a society member sounded out from somewhere down a nearby hall.

“Oh no! Run!, dudes” Soos exclaimed, already leading the way out of the room. Dipper and Steven were quick to follow suit, though it was clear they had already been spotted by a member who was now on their tails.

“Get back here!” the member shouted after them, not noticing as McGucket managed to tuck away behind the large statue at the back of the room as he chased after Soos, Dipper, and Steven. Fortunately, no other members seemed to be hunting them down as they rushed through the headquarters’ narrow halls. Not too long into this chase, however, the young Gem happened to remember the weight of the memory gun in his backpack, and, given how things had just drastically changed, he realized that it would either be now, or never. And so, without any warning, Steven suddenly grabbed Dipper by the arm and pulled him into a nearby shorter hallway. Dipper was about to question the young Gem on this, but he was quick to assume what Steven had apparently been thinking as the society member ran right past them, not spotting them at all as they tucked away out of sight.

“Nice thinking, Steven,” Dipper said with a smile, though he was quick to prepare to move on ahead. “Now, we should probably go find the Gems so they can help us-”

Dipper cut himself off abruptly upon hearing the familiar sound of a memory gun sparking up, prompting him to stop dead in his tracks and turn around to see the last thing he could have ever expected. Instead of a society member, the charging memory gun was in Steven’s hands as he pointed it directly at him, with the clear intent of firing it. Yet despite this intent, the young Gem’s face was awash in worry, regret, and most of all fear, emotions that were all quick to amplify the moment he took in Dipper’s expression of immense shock at this unexpected twist.

“S-Steven, what… what are you doing?” he asked, scarcely able to believe what was happening.

“Dipper, I… Y-you…” Steven trailed off, taking in a deep breath to steady himself before continuing, though he still held the memory gun up all the while. “Listen. What happened to you a few weeks ago, that whole thing with Bill, i-it… it was terrible. A-and so was most of what came after it. When I stood there and watched him possess you, the only thing I wanted to do was go back in time just a few seconds to stop it from ever happening. And while I know I can’t do that, I… I feel like this memory gun might be the next best thing.”

“Wait, so… you want to erase my memories of Bill possessing me?” Dipper asked, deeply unnerved by this news. “Steven, that… that’s crazy!”

“No, it isn’t!” Steven argued with a small, wavering smile. “Don’t you see, Dipper? It could be like none of it ever happened, especially if Mabel, Connie, and I get rid of our memories of it too! It could help all of us finally move on and feel better!”

“How would it make us feel better?!” Dipper asked hotly. “Steven, that thing is dangerous! You saw what it did to McGucket; it made him go completely insane! And what about the Gems? It’s the reason why they can’t remember even a single thing about the author of a book that’s filled with information about them! Do you honestly think that gun would make anything better? Because the way I see it, it would only make things so much worse!”

“Not if we only erase our memories of Bill!” Steven protested, though his adamant tone was quickly starting to waver. “Dipper, you got hurt really badly, in so many different ways. All I want to do is help you finally forget all that pain because you didn’t deserve any of it in the first place. W-wouldn’t the chance to make it all go away be worth a few lost memories?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Dipper said, trying his best to remain calm and rational amidst one of his closest friends pointing a memory-erasing gun right at him. “Steven, if you erase all our memories of Bill, then we’ll be completely defenseless against him the next time he shows up, which he will eventually, I know it. And even if he didn’t, you’d still basically be undoing all the progress we’ve made in getting over it, which wouldn’t be fair to any of us.”

“B-but… but we wouldn’t have anything to get over if I just… i-if I…” Steven trailed off again, guilty tears starting to well up in his eyes.

“Steven, I’m not going to try and stop you,” Dipper sighed almost wearily, even though he could have easily stopped the young Gem if he really wanted to. It would be as easy as simply drawing his sword, and yet he didn’t. Mostly because some part of him, however small, that was still plagued by the pain of nightmares and remorse, might have actually wanted him to pull that trigger. “But I do want you to ask yourself this: if you go ahead and do this, how would it make you any different from those Blind Eye people?”

Steven paused at this, a very soft, tearful gasp escaping him as he briefly considered this question. By all accounts, he was intending on using the gun on Dipper largely without his consent, before moving on to do the same to Mabel and Connie. He wasn’t giving any of them a choice, much like the society didn’t give its victims any choice, all because he thought this was the right way to go. Because he believed this would help, regardless of the risks it might bring about. Because he thought it could, at least in some small, fleeting way, help ease the load of guilt and sadness off his own shoulders and finally make things right.

Except no. The only thing this would do, was make things all wrong.

As torn apart by conflict as he was, the young Gem’s finger still rested lightly on the memory gun’s trigger, even though the decide itself had begun shaking in his trembling hands. No matter how hard he tried to force himself to swallow his palpable fear and regret, he found that he simply couldn’t, especially as he met Dipper’s soft, sad, and surprisingly almost accepting gaze. Still, even despite that, Steven had barely just begun to squeeze the trigger when the tension of the moment was broken through completely.

“Steven?!” Connie’s shocked exclamation instantly caught the attention of both boys as they turned to see her standing at the other edge of the hallway, sword in hand. “Dipper? W-what’s going on? What are you doing with that thing?!”

“C-Connie!” Steven gasped, tears still streaming down his cheeks as he abruptly lowered the memory gun. “I-I… I wasn’t… T-this isn’t what… I-”

“I-it was my idea!” Dipper suddenly interjected, maintaining this course even as both Steven and Connie looked over at him in apt disbelief. “I… I guess I was still feeling kinda torn up about the whole Bill thing, a-and I figured that memory gun would be a good way to just forget about it once and for all. So… I asked Steven if he would… you know…”

Connie’s expression was still wide-eyed and incredulous as she looked to Dipper, but all the same, she still let out an appalled scoff in response to such an apparently hazardous idea. “Dipper, I know what you went through because of Bill was awful, but… that memory gun is really dangerous. We really shouldn’t be messing around with it.”

“Yeah, that’s… exactly what Steven told me,” Dipper lied, feigning guilt. Guilt that the young Gem refused to let him take.

“W-wait, Connie, no,” Steven shook his head, wiping his tears away. “Dipper wasn’t the one who-”

He never got to finish as suddenly, out of the shadows of the hallway, three pairs of hands emerged, each of them abruptly covering each of the kids’ eyes before they could even see who their assailants were. “W-wha-? Who’s there?!” Steven asked in apt alarm as the memory gun was starkly ripped out of his hands.

“Let us go!” Connie growled, swinging her sword out broadly as Dipper struggled to draw his amidst the hands already pinning his arms down. “Or else!” Her threat went unfulfilled however, as her blade was subsequently knocked out of her hand. With all three kids left essentially defenseless, the hands restraining them were quick to whisk them off, dragging them all back to the main meeting hall and an unknown fate.

As the society members rounded up all the kids, they failed to track down all of the intruders to their headquarters and among the ones they missed was McGucket. The hillbilly had indeed had the wits about him to tuck himself away just out of their sight, his memory tube still tight in his grip as he peeked out from behind his hiding place. True, the key to restoring his long lost memories lay right in his hands, but he couldn’t very well take that key in good conscious while the ones who had done so much to help him find it were in trouble.

“Oh, you’ve really tarred up now, Fiddleford,” McGucket lamented to himself fretfully. “This is all your fault… Oh wait! I know! I’ll go get them three shiny women!” With this newfound idea in mind, the hillbilly prepared to emerge from his hiding spot, though he stopped short another brief moment upon glancing down at his beard. “Why does my beard have a bandage? Does that even make sense? Why has no one pointed that out?”

While still confused, McGucket was quick to shake this momentary distraction off as he headed off, scuffling his ways down the halls. However, like most everything else he tried to do, the hillbilly had something of a hard time focusing on this task of finding the Gems. His already frayed and scrambled mind could barely stay on any tangible, rational thoughts for too long before it dove right back into the dense fog of forgetfulness he was so used to. But this was a serious situation, one that could have a very dire outcome if he wasn’t vigilant with this search. Which was why he did everything he could to force himself to buckle down and focus, to keep his flighty mind grounded, and remain on track, despite how much of a challenge that was for him. Yet in the end, his hard mental work paid off as he eventually passed by the room the Gems were still congregated it, its door hanging wide open as they continued investigating the photo collage on the walls for any further clues.

“Hey! Ladies!” McGucket exclaimed, frantically running over to them. “I need ya’lls help!”

“Oh, great…” Pearl grumbled, rolling her eyes as they all turned to face the hillbilly. “Just what we need right now…”

“What’s the problem, dude?” Amethyst asked, crossing her arms as she watched McGucket anxiously shift back and forth on hi feet. “Did you find a beehive in that big hat of yours?”

“No! I-its… I… Aw, hornswaggle! I done went and forgot!” McGucket exclaimed, his slipping memory a result of mentally spending himself so much moments ago.

“Of course you did…” Pearl remarked dryly, turning back to the clippings. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re in the middle of something actually important here…”

McGucket frowned as he glanced down fretfully, unsure of what to say or do to get the Gems to hear him out, much less what they were even supposed to be hearing him out about in the first place. He turned to leave them to their business, but he stopped short upon glancing up at the wall of clippings, catching sight of the photo at the very center of the board. And as he spotted the pink haired figure in that picture specifically, the hillbilly stopped to stare, his jaw dropping in awe at the striking familiarity of her warm, smiling face. The kind of familiarity he had not been acquainted with in years.

“I… I remember her…” he began, almost in a daze as he stepped forward. The Gems all glanced back at him, confused as he took his hat off in almost a solemn show of reverence.

“Who?” Garnet asked, even if she already had an inkling of who he was talking about.

“H-her,” McGucket nodded up to the pink Gem’s image, still clearly trying to recall the details. But in the very smallest of ways, a vague, broad picture had started to emerge from the fog, one that he forced himself to cling onto as he continued. “I… I think her name was… o-or at least I called ‘er… M-Miss… Miss Quartz…”

“R-Rose Quartz…” Pearl whispered, her eyes widening with shock. “You… really did know her… Then that… that would mean… I can’t believe it… You actually are the author?!”

“I-I don’t know ‘bout all that…” McGucket shook his head. “But I do know I know her! O-or at least I used to, way back in the bygone days…”

“What do you remember about her?” Amethyst ventured, exchanging a tentative glance with the other Gems.

“Not too much…” the hillbilly mused. “B-but I reckon she was big, and pink, and pretty, and… and she had a voice like sweet honey, and boy howdy she was smart too! She always had somethin’ nice to say, no matter what the occasion. But I wasn’t really as close to her as…” He trailed off, his brow furrowing in confusion as the gaps in his memory returned, gaps that, despite his bout of recollection, he was unable to fill in.

“As who?” Pearl pressed, growing more curious by the second about the secrets her liege had supposedly left behind.

“I… I can’t quite recall…” McGucket frowned. “But there was someone else, I know there was. I just ain’t got any recollection of who…”

“Ugh, someone else?!” Amethyst groaned, exasperated. “How many other people were involved in this whole journal biz?”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Garnet shook her head before looking back to the hillbilly with respectful sincerity. “What matters is that we finally get to the bottom of these missing memories. All of our missing memories.” She smiled somewhat at this, something that McGucket returned as a sense of familiarity passed between them, one that had been long forgotten, but was just starting to come out of the darkness and back into the light. “McGucket, we need you to try to remember what you came here to tell us. I have a feeling that whatever it was, its important.”

“What I was gonna… oh!” McGucket gasped, realizing that calming down had led to the clarity he needed. “The young’ins are in trouble! Them Blind Eye folks are after ‘em!”

“What?!” the Gems exclaimed in startled unison at this alarming news.

“Well then we gotta go and save them!” Amethyst exclaimed intently. “If those creepy guys get their hands on them, their memories are as good as janked! And I’m not about to be the one tryna explain to Greg and Stan why Steven and the twins don’t remember them.”

“Then let’s go,” Garnet ordered, already heading for the door. However, before the Gems could leave, McGucket happened to stop them with a sly, barely even manic grin.

“Hold on a second, ladies. I got me an idea…”

Despite their struggling, the kids, Soos, and Wendy found that they were largely outmatched by the sheer number of society members, which had made their capture relatively easy. Mabel and Wendy had been apprehended first, seeing as how they had been on guard in the open in the meeting hall itself and Soos had been caught just before Steven, Dipper, and Connie. The society could tell that their young captives were all quite resilient, which was why they had taken the precaution of tightly tying all six of them to a large beam in the meeting hall, as all the society members gathered around to watch their intruders be punished.

“You should not have come here,” the leader began ominously as he stepped forward. “We do not give up our secrets lightly.”

“Who are you bathrobe wearing freaks?” Wendy asked harshly as she tried pulling out of the ropes.

“Why are you doing this?” Connie demanded just as fiercely.

“And what’s with your creepy British accent?” Mabel asked the society leader in particular.

“Well, I suppose we are just going to erase your minds anyway, so…” the leader nodded to his followers, who complied with his orders as they removed their hoods, one by one, revealing a host of surprisingly familiar faces.

“Toby Determined?”

“Mr. Fryman?”

“Bud Gleeful?”

“Mr. Smiley?”

“That farmer guy?”

“Creepy dude who married a woodpecker?” Soos finished this barrage of stunned exclamations. “How’s that marriage goin’, by the way?”

“Oh, great, great,” the man chuckled nervously, glancing at the woodpecker perched on his shoulder before dropping his voice down to a whisper. “Not great.”

“But you’ve never met me before. And if you had, you wouldn’t remember,” the leader said, finally removing his own hood. Sure enough, he was completely unfamiliar to all the kids, with a gaunt, rather grey face, a crossed scar over his right eye, and interestingly enough, a bald head adorned with a complex set of tattoos replicating a phrenology map all over. “I am Blind Ivan, and we are the Society of the Blind Eye! Formed many years ago by our founder… our founder… Does anyone remember who he was?”

The society members took pause at this, all of them trying to come up with an answer to this question until they inevitably found one. “Huh, well, what do ya know?” Mr. Smiley shrugged, grinning blithely as usual. “Guess none of us remember.”

“We have been usin’ that ray on our own brains an awful lot,” Bud added just as casually.

“Why would you guys do all this?” Dipper asked petulantly. “What do you have to gain?”

“As you have no doubt discovered,” Blind Ivan began to explain, hands behind his back. “Gravity Falls is a town plagued with supernatural strangeness. The kind of strangeness that can drive any normal mind to madness. No one knew how to stop the things that went bump in the night, so our founder invented the next best thing: a way for us to forget. We took it upon ourselves to help the troubled townsfolk by erasing the memories of the strange things they’ve seen. Now the people of Gravity Falls go about their lives ignorant and happy, absolved of the dread of the dangers that lurk in the shadows all around them thanks to us. And as a perk, we help ourselves forget things that trouble us. Everyone has something they’d rather forget. In fact, your own sister was about to use that ray on herself. Isn’t that right?” he asked Mabel with a knowing smirk.

“Mabel? Seriously?” Dipper asked, incredulously looking over at her.

“Heh, I was thinking about it, ok?” Mabel shrugged with an awkward laugh. “I wasn’t actually gonna do it… Ok, maybe I was…” She bit her lip, especially as she stole a quick glance at Steven.

“Uh, Dipper, I don’t think you really have a lot of room to talk seeing as how you basically asked Steven to do the same thing for you,” Connie pointed out, not harshly, but still rather disappointed.

“What?” Mabel, Soos, and Wendy all asked in unison as they looked to Dipper, genuinely surprised by this news.

“Oh, uh… y-yeah, I guess I kinda did?” Dipper admitted, still keeping up his former ruse up.

“W-wait, no,” Steven tried to clarify once more, rather overwhelmed by guilt that Dipper had chosen to take the fall for his own mistake. “He didn’t-”

“Enough squabbling!” Blind Ivan interjected impatiently as he grabbed the nearby memory gun. “You children have seen quite enough. But worry not; very soon it will all be come unseen…”

“And how is that your call, huh?” Wendy asked defiantly. “In fact, why do any of you weirdos get to decide what memories people keep and which ones they don’t. This whole thing seems pretty rigged in your favor if you ask me.”

“Yeah, don’t you see? This thing is ruining lives!” Dipper added just as boldly. “What about Old Man McGucket? He lives in a hut and talks to animals thanks to you. Don’t you feel bad about that?”

“Mmm… maybe a little…” Blind Ivan considered briefly before promptly shooting himself with the memory gun. “But not anymore! Now…” he began inputting the word ‘summer’ into the device. “You won’t be telling anyone else about what you’ve learned here. Say goodbye to your summer…”

Needless to say that the entire group panicked as the memory gun was aimed at them, charging up with the power to delete their entire summer from their minds altogether. “Guys, if we’re gonna forget everything, I got some stuff I wanna get off my chest,” Soos began anxiously. “Mabel, for half the summer, I thought your name was Maple, like the syrup. No one corrected me!”

“I only love some of my stuffed animals, and the guilt is killing me!” Mabel cried, knowing that she could have easily admitted something much more personal, but she figured it would be best to let those feelings be buried in the past.

“Sometimes I use big words but I don’t actually know what they mean!” Dipper admitted tightly. “I mean, I’m supposed to be the smart guy. If I’m not the smart guy, then who am I?!”

“One time I got an A- in science and I never told my mom about it!” Connie exclaimed guiltily. “She’s a doctor! If she ever found out I preformed less than perfectly in science of all things, she’d completely flip out!”

“Ok, I’m not actually laid back,” Wendy took in a sharp breath. “I’m actually stressed like, 24/7. Have you met my family?!”

Steven was the only one of the group to hesitate in this round of confessions, but in the end, his remorse won out and prompted him to finally speak the truth before anyone could stop him. “C-Connie, I was actually the one who wanted to erase Dipper’s memories about the whole, uh… puppet show thing. A-and yours and Mabel’s too…”

“Steven!” Dipper exclaimed sharply, having not wanted the young Gem to admit this.

“You wanted to what?!” Connie looked over at Steven, completely appalled.

“Wait, what happened again?” Mabel frowned in confusion, completely lost about this news.

“Oh, stop being a bunch of babies,” Blind Ivan rolled his eyes at this melodrama, more than ready to fire the ray at the frightened group. However, just before he could, something that was nothing short of a miracle happened. And, bizarrely enough, that miracle came in the form of a loose canon hillbilly.

Out of seemingly nowhere, McGucket dropped down from above, landing squarely on Blind Ivan and knocking the memory gun out of his hands. Of course, the kids were pleasantly surprised by this interruption, but they were even happier to see that the hillbilly wasn’t alone as the Gems suddenly emerged from the shadows of the room, their weapons ready as they confronted the startled society members.

“All of you! Stand down!” Garnet ordered as Pearl rushed over to cut the kids free. “Or else.”

“You three!” Blind Ivan exclaimed in outrage as he pulled himself up to stand again. “The Crystal Gems… By far our greatest adversary in keeping the minds of this town clean from thoughts of disaster, seeing as how disaster follows your group around like its attached to you at the hip! Gravity Falls would be much better off if your kind was forgotten about completely… in fact…” The society leader smirked darkly as he reached for the memory gun, but before he could get it, Amethyst was quick to snatch it away from him with her whip.

“Sorry, baldy,” the purple Gem smirked, keeping a tight grip on the gun. “But we’re not gonna let anyone around here forget about how awesome we are!”

“We raided the mining display for weapons!” McGucket informed the newly freed kids, presenting a cart full of what they had nabbed. “Now fight like a hillbilly, fellers!”

The kids heeded him as they were all quick to take what they could from the cart, including pickaxes, banjos, taxidermized animals, and Soos even managed to find a display block on dysentery. “Oh nobody better mess!” the handyman exclaimed, holding his ‘weapon’ out threateningly.

“They know too much!” Blind Ivan shouted to his followers. “Don’t let them escape!”

While the society members were quick to attack, kids all steadily defended themselves against them now that they were armed with their unorthodox weapons. “Get this song out of your head!” Wendy proclaimed, bashing one member in the head with a banjo.

“Dysentery’s gonna get you, dawg!” Soos warned, chasing another member through the hall with his dysentery plaque.

“I’d watch out if I were you,” Connie smirked as she fended a member off with a stuffed rattlesnake, aptly terrifying them. “I’ve heard rattlesnake bites are pretty deadly.”

As this scuffle continued, everyone managed to hold their own, including the Gems, who did use some restraint with their weapons as they kept the memory gun out of the members’ reach. In the midst of this chaos, however, Dipper happened to spot a familiar, rather important tube lying on the ground just a few feet away.

“McGucket’s memories!” he exclaimed with a gasp, rushing for it only to be blocked off as soon as he had grabbed it.

“Not so fast, kid,” Fryman said, his arms crossed as he kept Dipper from getting the tube back to McGucket. Fortunately though, a vacuum tube was right next to him, giving him a another option.

“Mabel, catch!” Dipper shouted to his sister on the other side of the room, shoving McGucket’s tube into the suction. Mabel did so, grinning triumphantly as she nabbed it, only the farmer to try and snatch it away from her a moment later.

“Give it up, girl,” he warned as she held it away from him, though she had a sly idea as she looked to the vacuum tube once more. “You’re no match for the unstoppable power of-” The farmer cut himself off as Mabel pointed the suction tube at his robe, which was quick to come flying off as a result, revealing that he was only wearing his underwear and nothing else. “That’s right. I don’t wear nothin’ under my robe. Not gonna apologize for that. Maybe ya’ll should apologize for bein’ a bunch of prudes.”

“Ew!” everyone exclaimed in disgusted unison at this unsavory sight.

“Welp, time to erase that forever,” Soos quipped, holding up the memory gun Amethyst had just handed off to him. However, before he could do anything with it, Blind Ivan finally reclaimed it, not hesitating to point threateningly at Dipper as he caught the memory tube Mabel had tossed back to him.

“Give me that tube,” the society leader growled, clearly tired of playing games.

“Never! These memories belong to McGucket!” Dipper protested firmly, shoving the tube back into the suction tubes to get it away from Blind Ivan.

“The society’s secrets belong to us!” the society leader countered as they both raced after it in the hopes of securing it once and for all, even as it zoomed across the ceiling and into the Hall of the Forgotten. They were largely neck-and-neck in the chase for the memory tube, until Blind Ivan ended up intentionally tripping Dipper, allowing him to claim the coveted tube first. “End of the line,” the society leader scowled, pointing the charging memory gun at the defenseless boy before him. “By tomorrow, this will all seem like a bad dream. Say goodbye to your precious memories…”

“No!” Dipper gasped, fearfully, unable to really bear the thought of losing his memories of the Gems, of Steven, of Connie, of Lapis, even as he braced himself for the inevitable blast. One that, much to his surprise, never ended up hitting him as someone else took the brunt of it instead. “M-McGucket?” he flinched upon noticing that the hillbilly had jumped in between him and Blind Ivan at just the right second. “You… you took a bullet for me…” McGucket didn’t get a chance to respond as he was blasted by the memory gun once more, much to Dipper’s apt alarm. “Oh my gosh! Are you ok?!”

The hillbilly paused, blinking away the ray’s effect for a moment or two before letting out a hearty laugh. “Ok as I’ll ever be!”

“W-what?” Dipper asked in confusion, surprised as everyone else was as they all rushed into the room to see what was happening.

At the same time, Blind Ivan continued shooting blast after blast at McGucket, startled that it seemed to have no apparent effect on the hillbilly as he continued approaching him steadily. “Why… isn’t… this… working?!”

“Hit me with your best shot, baldy!” McGucket challenged with a wide, wild grin amidst the successive round of memory blasts. “But my mind’s been gone for thirty-odd years! You can’t break what’s already broken!”

“Wha—no!” Blind Ivan growled hotly, still trying in vain to wipe the hillbilly’s mind. “This is impossible! You can’t just be immune to-”

“I reckon I can!” McGucket interupted, finally snatching the memory gun away from the distraught society leader. “Say goodnight, Sally!” With this, the hillbilly abruptly headbutted Blind Ivan, knocking him out cold just long enough to allow the Gems to finish apprehending the rest of the society members. With the entire group captured, the kids didn’t hesitate to tie them all to the same pole they had formerly been restrained to, all of them quite pleased that they had gained the upper hand against the sinister society and their mind-erasing agenda.

“Unhand us!” Blind Ivan demanded upon regaining consciousness as him and his fellow society members tried to break free. Their attempts were quickly stopped, however, as Garnet stepped forward, cracking her gauntleted knuckles to keep them in check.

“Yeah, it isn’t so fun being tied up, is it?” Mabel asked with a smug smirk before turning to the others. “Hey, you guys wanna draw on their faces?” Despite protests from Blind Ivan on this, Mabel proceeded to do just that, crossing out his tattoo that read ‘knowledge’ and writing the word “butts” over it.

“Hey, stop that! Its not funny!” the society leader clambered angrily, especially as the kids and the Gems all got a good laugh out of it.

“I dunno, dude, its pretty funny,” Amethyst chucked.

“It’s like, objectively funny,” Soos agreed with an amused nod.

“Now, before we put an end to this horrid little society of yours…” Pearl began, her spear at the ready as she addressed Blind Ivan coldly. “We still have one final question for you: where are our memories?”

“Your memories?” Blind Ivan shook his head incredulously. “You fools, we never took any of your memories! We were only ever interested in eradicating the townspeople’s memories of you and your so-called ‘Gem monsters”. What good would erasing your memories do for us?”

“Wha—but… nah, man, you guys gotta have them,” Amethyst contested. “We saw that whole room of newspaper clippings you keep around just to bash us! So quit your lying and tell us where our memories are!”

“He’s not lying,” Garnet suddenly spoke up, looking down intently.

“Huh?” all of the others looked to the Gem leader, surprised by this revelation.

“He’s not…” Garnet shook her head, placing a hand against her temple as her future vision refused to comply with her. “I-it… its foggy, but… I can tell. Our memories, wherever they are, aren’t here.”

“So… they weren’t the ones who took your memories about the author away?” Steven asked with a confused frown.

“But if it wasn’t them, then… who did?” Dipper added, just as bewildered by this ongoing mystery. “And why?”

Garnet sighed, looking between her two aptly disappointed teammates first, and then to the worried group of kids. “The truth of it is… we don’t know… For all we know, they might not have been erased by one of those guns at all. But its safe to say that something happened to make us forget the truth. And even if we didn’t get that truth here today, we’re not going to stop looking for it until we find it. Right, Gems?”

Pearl and Amethyst paused, both of them frowning as they looked to their leader with initial uncertainty. They had wanted to finally get answers, to finally piece together the puzzle that was this part of their past so much, that the thought of having to wait much longer for those answers seemed almost unbearable. But as it stood, their memories were still lost, still unknown and forgotten; which meant that the most they could do now was keep moving forward, in the stalwart hope that the missing pieces of their past would return to them soon enough. “Right,” they both agreed with small smiles, resolved to do just as Garnet had said and keep searching until they finally found what they were looking for.

“This isn’t over!” Blind Ivan cut through this moment with an angry threat. “We’ll have our revenge! We’ll never forget what you’ve done!”

“Oh, I think you just might…” Dipper smirked as he fired the memory gun up, entering ‘Society of the Blind Eye’ into it as the subject. And, with a mere pull of a trigger and a flash of light, the mind-erasing society was, ironically enough, completely erased.

Of course, all of the former society members were somewhat disoriented upon having their minds wiped of their original purpose for being at the museum. So the kids had been quick to come up with a convenient guise, one that even ended up helping McGucket out as they escorted the society members out.

“Thanks for visiting the museum for Gold Miner Appreciation Night,” Dipper grinned as he stood alongside McGucket, who happily held his hat out for solicitation as the passing former society members dropped money into it. “Be sure to tip the gold miner on the way out.”

“I’m sorry, but… what’s my name?” Blind Ivan stopped short at the door, far more confused and lost than any of the other society members. “Where am I?”

“Uh oh… might have gone a little overboard on him…” Dipper noted worriedly.

“Well, remember, he did try to erase all our memories,” Connie said, hands on her hips. “So I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.”

“Your name is Toot-Toot McBumbersnazzle!” Mabel quipped to the former leader brightly, handing him a banjo. “You’re a traveling banjo minstrel, with a song in your heart and funny tattoos on your head!”

“,,,Yes,” Blind Ivan, or rather “Toot-Toot” said with a wide grin of acceptance with this. “I am Toot-Toot McBumbersnazzle! Cheers!” And with that, the former society member walked off, plucking away at his banjo happily, his former ill intent completely forgotten.

With the society members all gone and the threat they had posed eliminated, everyone decided to head back into the museum with the same intent: to finally uncover the secrets that lay hidden within McGucket’s memory tube. They all gathered in the Hall of the Forgotten, eager to see exactly what and who the hillbilly used to be, but even so, McGucket himself was quite anxious as he glanced down to the memory tube in his hands.

“Uh, Mr. McGucket?” Steven spoke up with a small supportive smile. “Aren’t you going to put your tube in that machine so you can finally see your memories? You know, find out who you really are?”

“I-I… I’m not so sure…” McGucket frowned, still uncertain. “What if… what if I don’t like what I see?”

“We’ve come all this way,” Mabel encouraged warmly. “You gotta at least take a peek. Go on.”

The hillbilly let go of his lingering reservations as he took in a deep breath, inserting the tube into the machine to see what hidden past it contained. As the static on screen cleared away, it revealed a much younger version of McGucket, who, by all accounts, looked much more scrupulous and put-together than he currently was. This younger McGucket was keenly dressed, with a suit jacket, tie, spectacles perched on his nose, mostly neat light brown hair, and no unkempt, overgrown beard in sight. Yet even despite this, his expression was still tight and deeply unnerved as he spoke to the unseen screen before him.

“My name is Fiddleford Hadon McGucket, and I wish to unsee what I have seen.”

The group watching all let out a shared gasp of surprise upon seeing this younger version of the hillbilly, and to learn that he had apparently willingly wanted his memories erased. Though none of them were more stunned than McGucket himself as he took a small step forward, awestruck as he listened to what his younger self had to say.

“For the past year, I have been working as an assistant for a visiting researcher,” Young McGucket said, his tone and expression still quite serious. “Along with the help of four magical, extraterrestrial women, he has been cataloging his findings about Gravity Falls in a series of journals. These women, the ‘Gems’, and I helped him build a machine which he believed had the potential to benefit all mankind, but just as easily could be used to bring about great destruction.”

Upon hearing about this unknown machine, Dipper was quick to turn to one of many cryptic pages in the journal, one that held what he assumed to be at least part of some kind of blueprint for a mysterious device. More than likely, they were one and the same, but even so, then what could such a supposedly dangerous machine even do? And more importantly, did it even still exist somewhere?

At the same time, the Gems all exchanged a bewildered glance upon hearing them be mentioned directly, though what bothered all three of them more was, once again, the sparse details McGucket provided about this machine. Certainly, there was no way they had been a part of constructing something that could put humanity in such apparent danger… could they?

“I decided to quit the project,” Young McGucket continued, wringing his hands anxiously. “But I lie awake at night, haunted by the thoughts of what I’ve done. I believe I have invented a machine that can permanently erase these memories from my mind,” he said, holding up the memory gun, of all things. “Test subject one: Fiddleford.” At this, he fired the gun off, the screen going to static as a result. As it cleared once more, a much happier McGucket appeared, clearly absolved of his horrific memories. “It worked! I can’t remember a thing!” The screen cut once more, with McGucket still quite ecstatic over his new invention as he held up the society’s iconic eye image. “I call it the Society of the Blind Eye. We will help those who want to forget by erasing their bad memories!”

As static cut in once again, the next shot of McGucket showed him much more disheveled and distraught than before, the lab setting behind him in a complete state of disarray as he twitched almost endlessly. “T-today I came across a colony of little men, very disturbing. I would like to forget seeing this.” The inventor used the memory gun on himself again, cutting to show that some time had passed. His hair had begun to grey and wither, his arm was held in up in a cast, and dark bags had formed under his eyes, which had begun to take on a glazed, blank state. “I-I accidentally hit another car in town today. I feel terr-bibble—terrible! I’ve been forgettin’ words lately. I wonder if there are any negative side effects to-” McGucket was cut off as the scene cut again, this time to show that he was in a rundown motel, his mental and physical state steadily declining even more as he had finally started growing his thick white beard. “I s-saw somethin’ in the lake, something big!” In the next shot, his beard was even longer, his manner wild and untamed and a wide manic smile on his face as he put his large hat on. “My hair’s been a-fallin’ out, so I got this hat from a scarecrow! Hey, are my pants on backwards?”

The tube cut to one last memory, this time showing McGucket as he was in the present, living in the mess of the junkyard as he cheerfully ran about, insanely chuckling and speaking in absolute gibberish. “Yroo Xrksi! Girzmtov!” he laughed, using his fingers to form the shape of a triangle over his eye right before the memories cut out into nothing more than static completely.

With this show of memories finally over, a solemn silence feel over everyone in the room as they all looked to McGucket sympathetically. There was no question that the hillbilly had fallen far from the seemingly promise beginnings he once had, into the depths of insanity and instability he was famously known for. And the worst part of it all was that he had instigated that fall himself, out of the best intentions that had turned into the worst of situations.

“Oh, McGucket…” Mabel was the first to speak up, her voice soft and somber. “We’re so sorry…”

“Aw, hush,” the hillbilly said with a wave of his hand as he retrieved his memory tube. Surprisingly enough, a small smile was on his face as he turned back to the group, even despite everything he had just seen. “You kids helped me get my memories back, just like ya said.”

“But… did you want those memories back?” Connie asked, concerned.

“After all these years, I finally know who I am,” McGucket mused, still smiling as he looked down at the tube. “Maybe I messed up in the past, but now that I’ve seen what happened, I can begin to put myself together again. And I hope you ladies can do the same when you find your memories,” he said to the Gems with a smile of solidarity.

“Thank you,” Garnet said with a cordial nod.

“Yes… we’re… sorry about how we might have treated you before…” Pearl rubbed her arm guiltily. “We just… really want to get to the bottom of this, once and for all…”

“Aw, its all water under the bridge,” McGucket cheerfully quipped. “And don’t worry, I’m sure ya’ll will figure it out eventually!”

“Yeah, and maybe once we do, you can tell us about all the crazy stuff we used to get up to, since we all apparently used to hang out back in the day,” Amethyst remarked with a playful grin, eliciting a genuine laugh from all four of them.

“So, wait,” Dipper interjected at this, still somewhat confused as he looked between the journal and McGucket. “You aren’t the author, but you worked with him. Do you remember who he was?”

“Its… beginning to come back…” McGucket acknowledged. “But I need more time. And reading glasses!” The hillbilly grinned as he grabbed a pair of said glasses that was fortunately sitting on the nearby table before letting loose a hearty spit. “Heck! I got some rememberin’ to do!”

“Uh… speaking of remembering…” Steven spoke up apprehensively, addressing Dipper and Connie in particular. “Dipper, I’m sorry about what happened back there with the memory gun… I guess I just thought that it could finally help us all forget about… well, you know, but… maybe forgetting about it isn’t really the right way to heal from it…”

“You’re only getting that now, Steven?” Dipper asked with a small, joking grin. “Man, and I thought I had to learn that lesson the hard way.”

“Heh, yeah…” the young Gem let out a small, awkward laugh. “So… are we all good?”

“Well, Steven, I’m not gonna lie, what you wanted to do to all four of us was… kind of messed up,” Connie said, crossing her arms. “But your heart was in the right place, just like it usually is. So I guess I can’t be too mad about that.”

“Thanks,” Steven nodded warmly. “And you, Dipper?”

“Yeah, we’re good too, Steven,” Dipper said, still smiling. “Just as long as you promise to never try to pull something like that again, no matter how bad things get, ok? Because, no offense, that was a pretty bad idea…”

“Yeah… it really was…” Steven admitted, though he still couldn’t help but crack a growing grin. “But I promise.” Unable to contain his happiness at this debacle being resolved, the young Gem couldn’t help but pull both Dipper and Connie into a tight, unexpected hug, one that surprised them both, but they were quick to return it all the same.

As the three of them continued to talk, and the Gems kept on discussing the matter of the still-unknown author with McGucket, Mabel found her sights landing on Steven from afar, though he didn’t seem to notice. Wendy, on the other hand did, which was why she decided to address her, knowing exactly what was on her mind. “So, Mabel, you still wanna erase those failed summer romances?” she asked with a knowing grin.

Mabel paused at this, taking a quick glance over at the memory gun lying on the table nearby before letting out a small sigh of acceptance. “You know, nobody likes having bad memories, but maybe its better to remember the bad things and learn from them than to go all denial crazy trying to forget them.”

“And what about your feelings for… you know who?” Wendy asked, dropping her voice down to a whisper.

Once again, Mabel hesitated, casting another longing glance over at Steven as he laughed along with Dipper and Connie. “I… I guess I’ll just have to deal with those feelings as they come,” she shrugged, hoping that would be a task easier done than said.

“That’s some real mature junk right there, Mabel,” Wendy grinned, nodding in approval.

“Yep, Miss Mature, that’s me,” Mabel smiled proudly before turning to the others. “Hey, you guys all wanna help me vandalize this picture of my jerky ex-crush?”

Everyone was quick to agree on this, all of them grouping close to doodle on the poster of Gabe Mabel had found earlier. When they were done, no one say any point to linger in the now-defunct society’s headquarters any longer, and so they all piled into Soos’ truck to head home for the night.

“Hey, you know what?” Wendy remarked to Soos with a grin as she got into the passenger’s seat up front. “Going on this big adventure actually made me get that stupid song out of my head.” Of course, she was quick to remember it again as the very first song that played on the radio as the handyman turned the ignition on was none other that ‘Straight Blancin’. “Oh come on!”

“So, the author wrote all this,” Dipper informed McGucket as he let him leaf through the journal, still trying to glean whatever sparing bits of information he could get. “Does any of it ring a bell for you?”

“Hm… It’s all so familiar…” the hillbilly mused, adjusting his newfound glasses as he peered over the time-weathered pages, pages that he had likely seen before while in the author’s employ. The piece of the mysterious blueprint at the center of the book in particular struck a chord with him, but exactly what kind of chord that was, he couldn’t quite discern yet. “It’s almost like I can remember…”

Unbeknownst to any of them, the realization of those very blueprints rested under the Mystery Shack itself, in the form of the machine that Stan had been pouring the past 30 years into bringing back to life. And with the information he had gathered from journal 3, the conman was growing ever nearer to its reactivation, something that he couldn’t help but revel in as he stood before its brilliant, basking light.

“Alright, you’re getting closer,” Stan said to both himself and the machine with apt resolve. “Every day its getting stronger.” As if to prove to this fact, the machine burst with brief power, ripping the conman’s notepad and mug right out of its hands and into the clarion glow at its center, never to be seen again. “Hah! Yes!” he exclaimed, satisfied by this result. He was less satisfied, however, by the stray pipe that had gone flying from one of the rafters, only to strike him against the back of his hand hard, resulting in a sizable cut. Stan was quick to bandage this injury up, hardly even paying it much mind at all as he looked back to the fruits of his labor, all the more eager to see the very soon coming day when it would all finally come together.

“Hmph, it’s ‘dangerous’, she said,” he rolled his eyes at the recollection of what Rose Quartz herself had told him over thirty years ago. “If that’s so, then why’d you build the dumb thing in the first place, huh, pinky?” he asked the replication of the pink Gem’s gemstone fixed to the bottom tip of the machine. “Well, I don’t care if its dangerous,” Stan continued pointedly, looking back to the vast light ahead. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’m gonna pull this off, and no one’s gonna get in my way!”

The conman’s stern vow echoed throughout the room, all the way back into the lab, where his picture of Dipper and Mabel still remained, their bright, blissful smiles almost serving as something of a testament to the immense secret their uncle had been keeping from them all summer.

A secret that could only remain as such for so much longer.

Next:

[sevralships]

“Reunion”

(Shoutout to @handleonthescandal for conceptualizing fem!dippin’, an AU where the Pines triplets consist of Fem!Dip, Mabel, and Tyrone. When I recently had the good fortune to spend some time with @dddippinsauce and @equilateral-asshat outside of cyberspace, it was hard to keep the dynamic far from our minds. This fic is dedicated to the two of them ‘cause they’re the bestest chicken nuggets around).

It’s been nearly ten years since the Pines triplets were all together in Gravity Falls for any length of time. They are finally all together, for only a weekend, and Mabel finds herself tempted to pick up right where they left off. Angst, fluff, smut. TW incest. Fem!Dippin Pinecest. NSFW. 11,200 words (ooh what a nice round number!)

Fic below cut, enjoy!

Reunion

Mabel took a break from shoveling bites of syrup-soaked pancake into her mouth to get another look at Dip and Ty. It’d been much too long since they’d all been together like this to let the moment go uncherished, and besides, it was probably wise to give herself a chance to actually chew her food. Next to her, Dipper was happily having a sip of tea, her hands curled gratefully around the warmth of the mug. Mabel had always loved catching Dip in little moments of serenity like this one, serenity being something her high-strung sis too seldom found. Mabel chewed her mouthful of pancakes thoughtfully and looked across the table at Ty. He held a slice of turkey bacon at the ready (having long since agreed to her insistence that they all give up pork as a courtesy to Waddles), his own plate of pancakes mostly emptied. Mabel wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Ty looking at her already, his grateful expression a mirror of her own happiness in sharing such a simple pleasure with her favorite trips.

“Ah!” Dipper gave a small, slightly dramatized sigh of satisfaction as she set down her mug, and Mabel watched Ty’s gaze slide lovingly to their sister. His already sentimental expression gave way to a small goofy smile, “What?” she challenged, her lips curling into a half-smile.

Ty’s smile widened and Mabel’s heart lifted as it always did when Ty smiled that way, “It just feels really great to be home.” He said simply, gesturing to the interior of Greasy’s Diner with the piece of turkey bacon before popping it into his mouth. Glancing around the diner, Mabel couldn’t help but agree. Not a thing had changed in here in the last… was it really going on ten years? The world outside kept changing and demanding different things of them, but Gravity Falls remained eerily and comfortingly the same.

Dip lifted her mug of tea, “Hear, hear!” Mabel lifted her hot cocoa in agreement.

“What the hey does Lazy Susan do to make these pancakes so good?” Mabel asked around another bite, as if the question had not been posed between the three of them thousands of times over the years.

“I’m telling you,” Dip said with a conspiratorial look, “Blood magic. It’s the only force powerful enough to explain this.”

Ty snorted, “You will carry that theory to your grave, won’t you, Dip? I’m telling you,” he said, as he had many times, “She fries them in bacon fat instead of butter.”

“Nooo,” Mabel complained stubbornly, covering her ears with her hands, “It can’t be pork fat, I already gave up bacon, don’t take pancakes from me too!”

“How else would you explain these deliciously crisp edges?” Ty asked, holding up a corner of pancake speared on his fork.

“Blood magic,” Dip replied without missing a beat, “No bacon fat alone could produce such a sinfully tasty pancake.”

Ty snickered, popping the bite of crispy pancake edge into his mouth, “Whether it’s blood magic or bacon fat, I just hope she keeps doing what she’s doing.” He closed his eyes, making a show of reveling in the taste of the pancake, “I don’t want to live in a world without these freaking pancakes.”

“I take it they don’t have pancakes like this outside Gravity Falls?” Dipper said conversationally, already knowing the answer.

“Heck no,” Mabel said, “In Florida most people call them flapjacks and they’re tasty enough but they’re nowhere near ‘sinful’.” There were some things Mabel liked about living in the Sunshine State, not least of all the animals she worked with at a zoo there, but there was no getting used to some of it. She quite liked the word ‘flapjacks’, but they didn’t taste like home.

“The pancakes at the Griddle Houses near me are passable at best,” Ty agreed, the look in his eye implying that he was running through every pancake he’d had since moving to New York, “I don’t think blood magic fits into the franchise policy.”

Dip cupped a hand to her ear, “Do I hear some doubt in your long-held bacon grease theory?”

“Not even a little,” Ty scoffed, “But it’d take more than bacon fat to kick a Griddle House pancake up to Lazy Susan quality.”

Dipper shrugged concedingly and the triplets fell back into a comfortable silence, as they tucked into what remained of their breakfast-for-dinner. Mabel and Ty had both arrived, from Florida and New York respectively, in the mid-afternoon, hungry from traveling and craving the comfort food of their youth. Mabel and Ty each eagerly cleaned their plates, leaving barely a drop of maple syrup behind, but Dipper asked for a take-away box for about half of what she’d ordered. Of course, Dipper could have Greasy’s signature pancakes whenever she wanted, unlike her sibs, having ended up living in Gravity Falls full time.

Not that it came as any surprise that she was the one to wind up here. On the contrary, Mabel thought it would have been stranger to imagine Dipper settling anywhere else. While Mabel and Ty’s respective goals had carried them far and away from the comfort of Gravity Falls and Piedmont, Dipper’s path towards investigating the supernatural had rarely wavered. Mabel had always admired Dipper’s surety and dedication to this one goal, her own wide range of interests and skills leading her down one dead end after another before she had landed on animal care. Ty had struggled similarly with artistic and career attempts, too many of which had been flops. Mabel’s heart gave a twinge, sympathizing with her brother’s rocky path and the deep self-doubt that went with it. Not that Dipper had been dealt an easy hand by any means. It was almost as if being a precocious kid guaranteed you for dissatisfying young adulthood, and Dip was no exception. She did, however, at the very least, have the good fortune of living in Gravity Falls.

The damp autumn evening met them with a refreshing gust as they left the cozy, stuffy warmth of the diner, “Autummmnnn!” Mabel sing-songed, with a little twirl on the leaf-strewn sidewalk, and pulled a deep breath of the clean Oregon air through her nose, letting it out in a satisfied sigh, “Ya don’t find air like that in Florida.”

“Isn’t the air in Florida, like, seventy percent swamp?” Ty asked, wrapping an arm around Mabel’s shoulders.

“Eighty percent, bro.” Mabel said, hugging his waist.

“I dunno,” Dip said, holding out a hand to feel the light, cool drizzle, “Oregon’s swampy air levels are at at least a fifty today, maybe we should have taken the car after all.”

“Oh, hogwash, Dipdot!” Mabel exclaimed, giving the bill of Dipper’s cap a playful flick, “You got your handy-dandy hat, a little spritz like this got nothin’ on you!”

And she was right, for most of the walk. There were very few people out on account of the overcast sky and steady drizzle, and the triplets walked along, hand-in-hand, feeling almost as though they’d gone back in time to one of the summers of their childhood. The leaves were halfway turned, the reds and oranges vivid against the still brilliantly white sky. Everything was dewy and glossed from the mist, giving the world a clean, fresh look. As they walked, they reminisced about adventures with their Grunks, forays into the supernatural wilds of the Falls, and Mabel, delighted by the novelty of the season after a few years in the static heat of the south, pointed out signs of autumn all around them. It was when she pointed out the flock of geese, honking and flying in a symmetrical chevron above, that she noticed the sky had darkened considerably from a luminous overcast white to a threatening soot grey. She said nothing to Dipper or Ty, in hopes that ignoring the portentous sky might convince it to let them reach the Shack before the rain. Surprisingly, this tactic failed and a few minutes later the heavy clouds opened up, pouring cold water down in sheets.

Dipper gave a surprised shriek, the same one she’d made when they were kids and one of her mischeivous triplets would slip an ice cube down the back of her shirt. Ty laughed at the sound, and pulling his sisters along by their hands, broke into a run. Home wasn’t far off by that point and the trips ran the rest of the way, clumsy and laughing, until three sets of feet splashed through the muddy puddles of the parking lot and stamped up the two steps into the welcome shelter of the Shack porch. The rain drummed on the wooden awning that shielded them and the triplets panted with the exertion, exchanging amused looks at each other’s bedraggled appearances, all of them drenched to the bone.

Dipper unlocked the door as quickly as she could, and they stumbled inside. Dipper put leftovers in the fridge, wet shoes squelching, whiler Ty and Mabel eagerly kicked off their own soaked shoes and shucked off socks, “Co-oo-ooold!” Mabel whined, wasting no time in peeling off her purple leggings and sequined beige sweater, and kneeling to rummage through her suitcase in search of dry clothes.

“One of the downsides to the whole season thing,” Ty pointed out and something in his tone caught Mabel’s attention as strange. She glanced at him, finding his cheeks pink and his eyes all but glued to her lace-trimmed lilac chevron-printed undies. She forced her eyes back to the jumbled contents of her suitcase, surprised to uncover a long-neglected jumble of thoughts. After all these years of telling herself that all of that business was in the past, she’d somehow neglected to consider that it might be hard for her trips to forget it once in a while. She blindly grabbed a clean pair of leggings and a shirt from her suitcase and scampered into the bathroom to change. After impatiently slipping into the dry clothes, Mabel stared down her reflection, absently trying to make sense of her mass of unruly wet curls and wishing the flush away from her own cheeks.

That wasn’t what you thought it was, she told herself, staring into her own brown eyes in the mirror, It’s just been a long time since you got into your skivvies like that and you did it without warning. You’re reading too much into it, Mabes. Plenty of people would get weird when confronted with their sister’s nearly naked caboose. Ignoring the fluttering of her own heart should be easy enough, she’d been pushing these thoughts aside for a long time now. No way was she going to squander this short, precious visit with Ty and Dipper getting them all tangled in that nonsense again.

After a few more stern words with herself, Mabel emerged from the bathroom to find Dipper making up the futon that now sat in the living room where Grunkle Stan’s yellow chair used to be. The chair now held a place of honor in the cozy reading nook Dipper had made for herself in the basement, festooned in string lights in a way that surely made Grunkle Stan groan every time he was in town. Despite getting on in years, he and Grunkle Ford were still out sailing the seven seas, determined to squeeze as much fraternity and adventure into their twilight years as humanly possible. Mabel was sorry she wouldn’t get to see them while she was in town, but pleased as punch to know her uncles were making the most of their time together.

She walked over to the futon and grabbed the nearest corner of the fitted sheet, tucking it under the mattress while Dipper did the same to the opposite side. Dipper had changed too, her wet hair wound into its customary braid over her shoulder, her wet jeans and hoodie traded for black yoga pants and a slightly oversized Mystery Shack tee shirt, the old green question mark design from before Mabel had helped to re-brand the Shack during her ill-fated attempt to beef up her graphic design resume. Without prompting, Mabel helped Dip to spread out a sheet and the big knitted blanket she’d painstakingly made for her a few years prior, “Getting caught in the rain is nothing a little cuddling can’t fix.” Dipper said, by way of explanation.

“Such wisdom,” Mabel said, fluffing a couple of the pile of pillows Dipper had scrounged up, “We don’t call you the smart one for nothing.”

“P’shaww,” Dip rolled her eyes, climbing under the covers, “Smart one, my ass. I’m just the most anxious and it keeps me motivated, you know that.”

“Anxiety and brilliance are not mutually exclusive, my dude,” Mabel pointed out, fishing the fleecey polka-dot slipper-socks Dip had given her out from under the futon, “You know--”

“FLOP!” Tyrone announced, as he did in fact flop heavily into the middle of the futon beside Dip. She giggled, and Mabel grinned along. There was simply no resisting Ty’s infectiously sweet and silly antics and she was relieved to see no sign that he might have been distressed by their little moment a moment before. Ty wrestled the blankets out from underneath himself, inviting more giggling from his sisters, before finally getting settled. He rested his head on Dip’s shoulder and she gave his tousled wet hair an affectionate kiss, as Mabel climbed into the futon. She already felt warmer, as if the sight of her two favorite people snuggled up and safe could warm her body as well as her heart. Ty wasted no time in looping his arm around Mabel’s waist and pulling her against his side.

As ever, Ty radiated body heat, and Mabel wrapped her arm around him, her fingers lacing with Dip’s, her body nesting into his side as naturally as if it were designed to fit there. In a way maybe it was, she liked to think they’d all been cuddle buddies since before they were even born. She purred happily against him, squeezing Dipper’s cold fingers, and stating contentedly, “Mmmmm, warmssss…”

“Tyrone Pines, Warms Specialist, at your service.” Ty joked, with a little salute.

“You’re the best at what you do, Mr. Pines.” Dipper assured Ty, her voice not quite sardonic enough to disguise that she absolutely meant it as she nuzzled the top of his head.

“I second that.” Mabel said, burrowing her face into the warmth of Ty’s shoulder. She breathed deep and was comforted to find he smelled exactly the same as he always had. The earthy-sweet smell of his skin was heightened by the lingering dampness from the rain and Mabel risked letting herself sink into the smell. Where her arm was hooked over the comforting squish of Ty’s tummy, her hand rested in Dipper’s, as natural as anything, and Dipper’s thumb stroked her knuckles in the same pattern it had back then.

Back when they were dumb, silly, hapless kids, their hormones raging and their vocabularies not remotely up to the task of describing the tangle of their feelings. She had made a point of putting it out of her mind as much as she could, but Mabel found she still remembered that summer with a startling clarity. It was like a well-loved movie, nearly memorized, that she could watch in her mind as if it were projected on a screen in front of her. It was the summer after their senior year of high school, when the wind through the trees had seemed to whisper ‘freedom’. The seemingly endless drudgery of K-12 schooling had in fact ended, and there was a giddiness to that alone, that the thing that had governed every day of their lives for so long had been defeated. They had all gotten into different colleges, but their minds were not on the more taxing academics in their future, or the looming day when they’d no longer be sleeping under the same roof. No, that summer had been about fun, plain and simple. Fun in all its forms, cryptid-seeking adventures around the town, getting drunk on the Shack roof, concerts, and parties, and long lazy days in bed together. In retrospect, it had been a last hurrah of their childhood together, but none of them had seen it that way then. They’d been seventeen and invincible and looking for fun around every corner.

The first time one of their drinking sessions on the roof had given way to playfully kissing each other, they had all giggled and blushed at how ludicrous and risque it was. They had acted like it was for the thrill, the taboo of it, and Mabel had not voiced the confusion running wild inside her liquor-soaked head. After that day, things shifted, imperceptibly at first. The triplets had never been shy around each other, but Mabel remembered how suddenly they were seeking excuses to touch, excuses to take off their clothes, excuses to act unlike siblings. She could see in cinematic exactness the way the dappled sun through the trees had illuminated Dipper’s eyes as she’d coyly slipped out of her bathing suit while they were swimming in an isolated little cove in Gravity Falls lake. She could feel as if it were happening that very moment the way Tyrone’s lips had felt on her neck and ear at some party where no one knew they had the same last name.

It had been fun, gloriously fun, and delightfully dangerous. Dangerous in a way that turned her stomach to look back on, petrified at the thought of how reckless and stupid they’d been. And more than anything, it had been fleeting. As the end of summer closed in, they’d tried to talk about it a few times without much success. Mabel remembered trying to tell them she was in love with them multiple times, always chickening out, terrified that what sprang from love in her was no more than teenage abandon in them. Ty had poorly explained something to do with hormones at one point, and Dipper had tried to explain her desire to not be as ruled by her anxiety (something that would soon after prove impossible with her rigorous college workload), but when the time came to ship off to their separate colleges, they said goodbye with a million unspoken explanations hanging between them. And for the first time, they spent their birthday in three different states, further apart than ever in the wake of getting closer than three siblings probably ever should have been.

Mabel realized Ty was snoring, and opened her eyes slowly, as if worried that even opening her eyes might disturb him. At some point, Dipper had scooted down in the bed and was tucked under Ty’s opposite arm and her face was directly in front of Mabel’s. The sun had set but there was still a light on in the kitchen so Mabel could dimly see her siblings’ sleeping features. Dipper’s face was uncharacteristically relaxed, the crease that almost always existed between her eyebrows smoothed away by the reprieve of sleep. She was breathing softly, her lips slightly parted, and for a second, Mabel seriously considered kissing her before reprimanding herself for the thought. Neither Ty nor Dipper had ever mentioned the events of that summer since, and Mabel generally took that as answer enough as to whether they had been motivated by the same feelings of love as she had been. Besides, even if they had been, it didn’t matter. It was a long time ago, and it wasn’t like it was something they could pursue, least of all now from three opposite corners of the continent. Ty stirred slightly in his sleep, his grip on both his sisters tightening, pulling them in closer. Mabel’s heart swelled happily, and she let her eyes fall shut again, nuzzling nearer to her triplets and reminding herself as sleep took hold that this was already more than enough cause to be thankful.

The soft music of the rain pattering on the roof and gurgling in the rain gutters, the occasional rumble of thunder, permeated Mabel’s dreams so that waking up was a slow hazy affair. She was perfectly warm, floating in a soft space that sounded like rain and deep breathing, smelled like peaches and cedar and home. She was vaguely aware of the small happy murmur she made as she wiggled deeper into this foggy happy place. The warmth around her responded with a sleepy sigh, and nestled their bodies closer together. It dawned on her that those were arms around her, that against her shoulder was a chin, and against her back was a chest, and against her backside was--

Well, now she was awake. She blinked a couple times, trying to rid the blurriness of sleep from her eyes. A familiar view of half of the Mystery Shack living room greeted her, her arms curled around Tyrone’s forearm, one hand laced loosely with his. It was hard to tell what time it was, the diffused, pale, rainy day light could have been morning or afternoon. Judging by the slow deep breaths that fell warm across her cheek and ear, Ty was still sound asleep. She couldn’t hear any stirring from the other side of the bed and assumed Dipper was still asleep as well. She’d be perfectly happy to keep on sleeping herself. Just in case she’d imagined the startling presence, Mabel gave her hips a small tentative wiggle, greeted immediately by the now unmistakable feeling of Ty’s morning wood pressed right up against her rear end.

She could feel the heat rise in her cheeks, and, for that matter, between her legs. She squeezed her eyes shut, telling herself insistently, it’s involuntary! It’s just morning wood, it doesn’t mean anything! She was pretty sure it was normal for a guy to get an erection in the morning like this, especially if he happened to be pressed against a girl’s butt. Much as she told herself that it had nothing to do with her, the familiar ache between her thighs did not waver. Hating herself for it, she moved her hips slightly again, all of her attention focused on the way he felt. He made a soft appreciative rumble that cut to Mabel’s core, simultaneously wetting her panties and filling her tummy with squirming guilt.

Reluctantly, she severed that forbidden point of contact with him, repositioning herself so that she was lying on her back. She rested her right cheek on the pillow to look at him and was surprised when his eyes met hers. His dark, heavy-lidded gaze was like a magnet, soulful and open. He wet his lips as they stared into each other’s eyes and Mabel had the sense she was looking right inside him. There was longing there that nothing could refute, a desire that ran infinitely deeper than an involuntary physical response. Their still-linked hands rested on Mabel’s belly beneath the blankets and Ty’s thumb slowly stroked the thin fabric of her tank top. Mabel’s breath caught at the innocent touch and she saw the corners of Ty’s mouth twitch towards a smirk.

The quiet intensity of the moment was broken as Dipper stirred. She’d apparently been facing away from Ty but rolled over now to wrap her arms around Ty in a sleepy, enthusiastic bear hug. She made a playful ‘eeeh’ as she squeezed him and nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck. Both he and Mabel burst into wide grins, and Ty turned his head to place a kiss on Dipper’s temple that turned into a loud raspberry. Giggles erupted from Dipper as she tried to wriggle away, her hoarse morning voice protesting, “Noo, in a moment of weakness!”

A tangle of tickling and raspberries ensued before the triplets settled down again, giggles quieting as they sank gratefully back into a horizontal group hug. Dipper didn’t sound much like she meant it when she said, “We should prooobably get up.”

“Or,” Mabel suggested, “We could stay right here forev’s.”

“Hm, an interesting proposal,” Ty said, nodding thoughtfully, “Go on.”

“Well, first of all, we already have the bed all warmed up,” she pointed out, lifting one leg slightly to gesture at the blankets, “It would conserve energy to just keep using these warms than to make new warms.”

Dipper laughed, “Not sure that’s what energy conservation is, but you have my attention.”

“So, what I propose is this.” Mabel went on in a mock-formal tone, “As opposed to going out where it is cold and wet, we stay in here, where it is warm and dry.”

“Furthermore,” Ty jumped in, “In here there are cuddles, and TV, and snacks.”

“Sold,” Dipper said decisively, snuggling her face into Tyrone’s neck, bopping his chest lightly as if with a gavel. Mabel’s heart overflowed to see Dipper this relaxed and silly, a side of her she rarely got to see with their relationship dependent on texts and phone calls. Not that any of the triplets maintained walls between them, but there were just some moments you couldn’t quite have over the phone.

After a couple more minutes of snuggling, Ty gave a dramatic sigh, “Alas, I must leave the comforts of bed.”

“But the warms!” Mabel protested, as Ty disentangled himself from his sisters’ limbs.

“Will have to wait till after I’m done peeing.” He said, giving the bed a last longing look before disappearing around the corner and heading upstairs.

Not willing to risk a moment of cuddle deprivation, Mabel and Dipper closed the gap between them that Ty had filled, enclosing each other in a familiar hug. They’d always been close to the same size, and their arms fit around each other with a pleasant symmetry, their leg placement and head placement complementary. Mabel had always found it strange, on the occasions when she had snuggled with people other than Dipper and Ty, how hard it could sometimes be to maneuver. Where it had always seemed like falling effortlessly into place for the triplets, with others it could range anywhere from tangling awkwardly to feeling like you were trying to squash square pegs into round holes. Dipper nestled her head onto Mabel’s shoulder, “I’m so glad you guys are here.”

“Me, too, sis,” Mabel agreed, kissing the top of Dipper’s head before resting her cheek against her hair, “Like Ty said, it’s really good to be home.”

Dipper nodded against Mabel, squeezing her a little, “Well, it feels a lot more like home with you here,” she paused slightly, choosing her words, “Especially since Soos and Melody have been spending so much time in Portland lately, and tourist season is over again… you’d be surprised how lonely the Shack can get.”

Mabel had to admit she’d never really considered it, but she’d never spent any time here alone. For her, the Shack (and Gravity Falls as a whole) had always been such a safe haven. When she was here, she was with her friends, and her Grunkles, and most importantly her triplets, and that had always made it seem like home. In the summer, the place bustled with tourists, Soos’ kids and their playmates always underfoot. But she tried to imagine what it was like for Dipper, here all year long, through the long harsh winters when the Shack was closed and there were no tourists. Through Soos’ family’s ever more frequent visits back to Melody’s family in Portland. Through the summers when reminders of their shared childhood were around every corner, but her siblings themselves were rarely if ever there, “Aw, Dipdot,” Mabel cooed, suddenly feeling guilty for all the times she’d thought to herself that Dipper had the best circumstances of the three of them, “I didn’t know.”

“Oh, I’m okay,” Dipper insisted, eager to make light of her feelings to keep Mabel from worrying, “I love living in Gravity Falls. I just…” she looked up and met Mabel’s eyes and Mabel was startled to feel her heart speed up at the sad longing look in Dipper’s eyes, “I just want to make the most of having you and Ty here.” Just then they heard Ty’s steps thumping down the stairs and he came back into the room, Mabel’s mind off-balance, trying to make sense of the look she’d just seen in her sister’s eyes. It wasn’t altogether unlike the way Ty had looked at her upon waking.

“D’aww,” Ty said as he grabbed Dipper’s laptop and cord where they were lying on the old dinosaur skull that had long served as an end-table, “You two look so warm and comfy,” he flipped up the corner of the covers and joined them, his tone turning mischievous, “Perfect for warming my feets!” Mabel yelped as Ty’s ice-cold feet touched hers, slipping between her knees to nestle in the warm pocket between her legs and Dipper’s.

Dipper plucked her computer from Ty, leaning partway out of the futon bed to plug it in before opening it and pulling up webflix. They didn’t have to say as much, Ty grabbing the laptop had clearly communicated to both of them what he had in mind. There was fairly little discussion before they settled on something to watch and settled into each other’s arms for the afternoon.

Mabel’s thoughts kept straying from the plot of the movie they had on and carding cautiously through the feelings she hadn’t expected to still hang so heavy in her thoughts. It had been so long and so much had happened in the intervening years, she had been sure it wouldn’t be an issue. Sure, it sometimes cropped up in her mind when she was lying in bed trying to sleep, or when she couldn’t find anything to listen to on the radio in the car, but that didn’t mean she still felt it. But now, here she was, sandwiched between them with her feelings running amok. Being with them again, being in the Shack again, it made sense that it wasn’t too far from her mind, but what she really wanted to know was what was happening in their minds. She’d never really found out back then, and she sighed, accepting that she probably wouldn’t now and would just always wonder if the way they had looked at her had just been a trick of the light.

The afternoon slid by, and they said fairly little apart from on and off running commentary on the movies they were watching. Ty’s stomach started to grumble first, with Dipper joining in close behind. When Mabel’s chimed in, enough was enough and Dipper paused the laptop, “Alright, that’s it, it’s time for food.”

It took a good five minutes to tear themselves from the coziness of the bed and Mabel shivered. The Shack was drafty and her tank top wasn’t really warm enough outside of the blankets. As they walked into the kitchen, Ty must have noticed the way she was hugging herself because he draped his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder, “Warms specialist protects.” he murmured in a sweet, joking tone. She leaned her cheek against his, his stubble tickling slightly as his warmth diffused into her.

In the kitchen, a flurry of food prep began. As usual, Mabel opted to whip up a batch of cookies, settling on snickerdoodles at Ty’s insistence. He was already well along in making some sauce and pasta, while at the opposite counter, Dipper was obsessively arranging a cheese plate, slicing various cheeses and filling small bowls with crackers and olives and anything she found in the fridge and cabinets that seemed suitable. Dipper was softly narrating what she was doing in a silly song, a habit she’d picked up from Grunkle Stan in the periods when he and Ford returned to the Shack between adventures. Ty and Mabel exchanged an amused look as Mabel took another tray of cookies from the oven, listening to the ‘song’ Dipper was singing, “Fillin’ up a plate with cheese, fillin’ up a plate with cheese, want some crackers with that cheeeese? No, sir, I just want the cheese.”

“No, sir, I just want the cheese,” Ty chimed in, bopping his head to the repetitive melody, “No, sir, I just want the cheese.”

“Taking cookies off a sheet,” Mabel added, as she scooped the steaming cookies onto a plate with a plastic spatula, “Have a cookie, if you please.”

Ty’s hand was on the plate at light speed, plucking a cookie from the pile, “All the cookies are for me, all the cookies are for me, all the-- ow! Ow! Hot!” Ty sputtered, upon biting the cookie.

“Oh, no, you okay, bro?” Dipper asked, she and Mabel both darting to his side at once to make sure he was alright.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he waved them off affectionately, blowing on the cookie before taking another bite, “Mmmm, good thing I didn’t burn my tongue too much to taste.”

“Instant karma, you cookie-hoarder.” Mabel said, swatting his shoulder lightly with the spatula.

“No clue what you’re talking about.” Ty said, as Mabel put the last tray of cookie dough in the oven, and he grabbed another cookie from the plate. He gave her a cheeky smile, chewing a big mouthful of cookies as she closed the oven door and turned around. She couldn’t help but grin back at him. Just about no one could match her silliness the way that Ty could.

The triplets managed to carry their three bowls of pasta, towering plate of cookies, and over-burdened tray of cheese back to the futon in one trip, cans of Pitt Cola tucked under their arms. They piled back into bed, tucking the blankets up as high as they could get them to stay, and dove happily into their impromptu feast while resuming the dumb movie they’d been watching. Mabel had been too distracted by her own thoughts to take in most of the first half of the movie, but now that she was playing closer attention, she easily slipped into the rhythm of riffing with Dip and Ty.

Sometime after their food was set aside, apart from the occasional grape or olive from the cheese plate munched on, Ty’s hand slipped into Mabel’s beneath the covers, giving a comforting squeeze. She let her head fall against his shoulder and Dip, noticing the cuddles being initiated, laid her head in Mabel’s lap. Mabel’s free hand stroked Dipper’s hair, about two thirds of which had slipped out of her braid since the previous night. Mabel felt the warm fuzzy feelings her trips always brought out in her begin blossoming in her chest and softly said, “I love you guys so much.”

“We love you too, goober.” Ty said, kissing the top of Mabel’s head.

“We love you so so much.” Dip said, reaching up to give the hand that was petting her hair a squeeze.

It was already nearing sunset and Dipper adjusted her head in Mabel’s lap to gaze out the window as the dim rainy day grew dimmer, “Time’s going too fast,” she observed a little solemnly, “Three days sounded like more when we were planning.”

“Hushh,” Ty said sympathetically, reaching over to take Dip’s hand, “I know.”

“I just don’t want you to go yet,” Dip said, “It’s too soon.”

“We still have tonight, Dipdot,” Mabel reminded, trying to sound more optimistic than she felt. In truth, the deadline was weighing on her mind as well, “And aaaall day tomorrow, and tomorrow night.”

“Even a little bit of Monday morning.” Ty added.

Mabel could feel Dipper’s sad smile against her leg and felt a fierce push to kiss her sadness away, “I know, I shouldn’t be wasting our time together worrying about how we don’t have enough time together.”

“I don’t think we could ever have enough time together.” Ty said wistfully, and his sisters nodded in agreement, “C’mere, we gotta hug it out.” He held out his arms and Dipper crawled up to snuggle against his free shoulder, while Mabel ducked under his arm. They laid their heads against his chest, and as Mabel placed her hand absently on his thigh to pull herself closer, she could swear she heard his heartbeat speed up. She glanced up at him and this time there was no mistaking the pink tinge to his cheeks. Mabel’s attention was drawn away when she heard Dipper sniffle, a sniffle she’d be able to pick out even in a loud crowded place, the sniffle that belied Dipper losing hold of the reins of something that had been bothering her all day. Ty knew the sound as well as she did and immediately cradled Dipper’s head closer to him, tucking his chin atop her head and cooing soothingly, “Oh, honey, no,” he said, gently, “You’re okay. Just let it out.”

“I’m sorry,” Dipper choked, wiping the tears from her cheeks impatiently, “I’m being so stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” Mabel said, reaching across Ty to rub Dip’s shoulder, “It’s totally understandable. We feel the time passing, too.”

“This is such a dumb way for me to make you spend it though!” Dipper insisted, “We should all be cuddling and having a g-good time! Not managing my dumb emotions…”

“‘Scuse you, Dippinsauce,” Mabel said gesturing vaguely to them, “But we are cuddling!”

“And we are having a good time,” Ty said, giving Dipper a squeeze, “How could we have anything but a good time with our favorite sister?”

“Exactomundo,” Mabel nodded decisively, tucking Dipper’s bangs back from her face, “Tyroni’s got it right. I’m just happy that for once I’m actually here to help make you feel better when you’ve got sads.”

Dipper nodded against Tyrone’s chest, before half climbing into his lap to snuggle closer. Mabel wrapped her arms around them both in a group hug, tucking her face against them as Dipper’s tears gradually slowed. She could feel the wetness of Dip’s tears against her, and adjusted her head slightly so that she could kiss her sister’s reddened cheek. It must have surprised her, because her breath caught slightly which made Mabel smile and kiss her again. She stroked Dipper’s hair away from her face and was surprised to feel Ty press his lips tenderly to her own forehead. She gave him an inquisitive look, noting the blush again upon his cheeks, “What was that for?”

“Being such a good sister,” he said, lightly cupping her cheek for a second. She was about to lean into the touch but he removed his hand, “You take good care of us.”

“D’aww, you big softieee,” Mabel teased, a slightly bashful smile on her lips, “We take good care of each other.”

“Just take the compliment, Mabes,” Dip said, bloodshot eyes peering up at her, “I’m grateful for it, too.”

“You guyssss,” Mabel protested, surprised to feel the tears rising in her own eyes so suddenly, “Why do we live so f-far apa-art?”

At the sound of her voice breaking, Ty tugged her close against his chest, “Oh, man, you guys are gonna make me cry. Get over here.” With surprising efficacy, Ty rearranged them, maneuvering them so that they were lying down again, with Mabel in the middle. Dipper wrapped her arms around Mabel’s waist from behind her, while Ty resumed holding her to his chest, where she let herself cry freely. She wondered in the back of her mind whether this was the right moment, the best chance she’d have to tell them how she felt, but it was no use either way as the tears were coming too heavily for her to have spoken about anything. Let them believe I’m just crying about saying goodbye soon, she thought, It’s still true and it’ll save us all a lot of heartache.

After her tears slowed to a stop, she just lay there nestled between them. She would have been content, were it not for the confession hiding under her tongue. After some time, she gave into the weariness and sleep overtook her.

The hand resting on her hip was warm, so warm it was like it was on fire, burning a hole in her clothes. It must have, she reasoned, because now it seemed that it was on her skin, the fingers curling, indulging the hand’s desire to feel more of her. She was unsurprised to find the hand belonged to Ty, facing her in bed, his tousled hair falling across his brow. That look was in his eyes again, the aching softness she’d seen before. So lost was she in the inviting liquid depths of his brown eyes, she was almost surprised when they closed as his lips met hers. Small explosions went off in her mouth, dancing down through her body, leaving in their wake little magnets that drifted towards him inexorably. Her body met his, not exploding so much as melting. Even as she was kissing him, her hands running up his arms to grip his shoulders, she was also outside of them, watching how naturally they fit together.

Even with this double vantage point, the impossibly gentle lips that found her shoulder still came as a complete surprise. They moved from the round of the joint in, trailing ethereal kisses along the crest and dip of her shoulder sending exquisite tremors to her core. As a hand rose with infinite care to brush aside her hair from her neck, she knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt that it was Dipper behind her. Who else in the universe could handle her so decisively, yet with such care that it could be mistaken for caution? As Dipper’s soft lips found the base of Mabel’s throat, she knew it could not be caution she sensed, but reverence.

She watched their bodies from above while feeling them from within, marveled at the way their bodies were clothed and unclothed at once. She watched her own hand leave Ty’s shoulder to lay lightly but hungrily on the smoothness of Dipper’s thigh. Dipper pressed closer at the touch, her hips flush against Mabel’s behind. It was that touch that awakened Mabel to her own insistence. All this softness and delicacy had lit a fire in her core, and she wasn’t sure how long her own hips had been moving, eager to draw them both nearer and stoke the fire hotter.  Each time her hips moved forward, she could feel Ty’s tantalizing hardness against her, as if through clothed and not clothed at once. That sometime-sense of cloth only tempted her more, eager to really feel him with nothing in between. As her hips pivoted between them, Dipper’s hand traced much too lightly over her hip. She was distantly aware, maybe informed by seeing from the outside, of how her back arched,  how she whimpered into Ty’s unceasing kisses as Dipper teased. The tips of her fingers just ghosted towards the junction of Mabel’s thighs, making the most maddeningly delicate contact with her yearning flesh. Her hips strained more needfully, chasing the whisper of Dipper’s touch along with the heat and hardness that belied Ty’s own need.

Ty’s hand moved from her hip, starting fires all along her side as it glided up her waist, across her ribs, coming to rest in the valley between her breasts. Dipper’s fingers connected with the seat of Mabel’s hunger as Ty’s palm set fire to her heart and she felt blinded by need. Need was all that remained, need to feel them, need to protect them, need to never leave them, need to lead them in this dance until they shuddered with exquisite torment as she did now. The need was too great, much too great.

For a second, Mabel did not comprehend that she had wakened, nor at all that she’d been dreaming in the first place. After all, she could still feel Dipper behind her and Ty before her. She could still feel Ty’s erection straining towards her, her hips dancing hungrily between the two of them. The fire of need still burned in her so hot that she thought she might break. Ty was no longer kissing her, she realized, and it hit her like a slap in the face. When did he stop? She wondered, her mind sluggish, Why did he stop? She opened her eyes, hoping for some elucidation and it hit her like a bucket of ice water poured over her heat.

Ty was asleep, his face only inches from hers on the pillow. His expression was slack, his lips parted slightly as his breath came slow and deep. His eyes were closed, the eyelids flickering slightly along to some dream no doubt purer than her own. The arousal that had burned clean and bright in her gut only an instant before turned suddenly to stinking shame, spitting and bubbling like pitch. Her hips froze, her heart raced unevenly. Tears prickled her eyes and she scrambled out of the tangle of her siblings’ limbs. She couldn’t be around them right now, their guard down, their sleeping faces innocent and calm, their trust so deeply misplaced in her. Mabel managed to make it into the bathroom before the tears overwhelmed her. She shut the door with one hand while covering her mouth with the other. She couldn’t let them hear her, she couldn’t let them know. They had moved on, they had never felt this in the first place. She was the sick one, the one who had felt more than she was meant to, who felt it still as much as she tried not to.

And she was even worse than she’d thought. Humiliation and guilt swelled in her anew at the thought of the way she’d been grinding against them, the way her body had been so eager to use them for her own pleasure while they slept. She sank to the floor, one arm hugging her knees while the other hand still muffled the sound of her sobs. Much as she loved them and they loved her, maybe it had been a mistake to come here in the first place. It was too much. Too much temptation, too much risk that she would lose one of the people she loved most. If one of them had woken, how confused, how betrayed, how used they may have felt. Her heart broke at the very thought of making either of them feel anything but safe.

She cried until her tears were spent and her butt was asleep from sitting on the floor. She pulled herself up shakily and reluctantly met her eyes in the mirror. She looked frightful, her face red and blotchy, her eyes bloodshot, her hair a stormcloud of frizz. Mabel stiffly washed her face with cold water, so cold it made her hands ache, but it felt refreshing to the heat of her inflamed face. She dried her face and blew her nose, and impatiently dragged a brush through her hair until it looked a little more manageable. She brushed her teeth, prolonging her time hiding from her triplets.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom, the sun was coming up and birds were singing. She looked out at the Mystery Shack lawn, carpeted in fallen leaves. The forest blocked the horizon from her view so she couldn’t properly see the sunrise, but she could see the sky pink and mauve above the tops of the trees. The day dawned serene and crisp, the world cleansed and enlivened by yesterday’s rain, but within her a storm raged on. Bracing herself, she turned away from the window to look back at the futon. Dipper and Ty had closed the gap between them that Mabel had left, facing each other with Dipper’s head under Ty’s chin and their hands clasped together loosely between their chests. Her heart ached with love for them and a big part of her wanted to climb back into their loving arms, but she couldn’t. Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back, instead walking into the kitchen to busy her hands and hopefully her mind.

Dipper and Ty would wake to the smell of food wafting from the kitchen. It was unlike Mabel to wake up earliest, but she knew they wouldn’t question it if she claimed it had been to make them breakfast. That was the kind of nice thing she did, wasn’t it? She was feeling so out of sorts that she wasn’t even sure. She made eggs and chicken sausages she found in the freezer, she made a fruit salad from the couple fruits she found in the kitchen, meticulously cutting strawberries into roses the way she had learned in her very brief stint as a baker’s apprentice. She was buttering toast when Dipper dragged her feet into the kitchen, “Mornin’, chef of the future,” she said, her voice hoarse from sleeping. She yawned, “I see you’ve been busy.”

“Couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d make myself useful.” Mabel replied, unable to meet Dipper’s eyes as she filled the electric kettle and turned it on. Mabel hadn’t noticed it before, but it was definitely something Dipper had gotten for the Shack.

“Everything okay?” Dip asked, sensing something in Mabel’s tone.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Mabel responded automatically, pretending the toast buttering required all her attention, “Just a, uh, bit of a headache.”

“Aw, well, hopefully food will help,” Dip observed, but Mabel could practically hear the wheels turning in her sister’s head, trying to suss out what was actually wrong, “We didn’t really eat like normal humans yesterday and maybe you just have low blood sugar.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.” Mabel said, knowing full well that that wasn’t it.

“I…” Dipper started shakily, running a hand through her hair, “Have a bit of a headache myself.” she finished weakly, taking a mug from the cabinet and dropping a teabag in it. Mabel looked at her out of the corner of her eye as Dipper turned the kettle off just shy of a full boil and poured the water into her mug. She hadn’t noticed at first, but Dipper did look a little rough around the edges. She stirred a little bit of sugar into her tea, set in on the kitchen table, and said simply, “I’ll go get Ty up.” and left the room.

Mabel stood in the middle of the kitchen for a second, a slice of toast in one hand and butter knife in the other, unable to move. She heard the groan of Ty stretching in the next room, the muffle of some words passed between her siblings, Dipper’s laugh. I don’t deserve them, the guilt told her. Stiffly, she began setting food on the table, grabbing paper towels and silverware, salt and pepper. She continued bustling around after Dipper and Ty had seated themselves at the table, thinking of more things they might need and frankly, scared to have to look either of them in the eye.

“Hey, Mabes,” Ty said, “Why don’t you hit the pause button and eat something?”

“Okay.” Mabel said, carrying two jars of jam to the table and setting them down by the plate of toast and lowering herself into her chair. She doled food onto her plate automatically, thinking she wouldn’t be able to stomach a bite of it, but was surprised to find just how famished she was when she started eating. Maybe Dipper’s right, she thought against her better judgment, and low blood sugar is most of the problem.

The triplets had spent enough time together over their lives that it was natural for silences to sometimes fall between them. Most of the time those silences were comfortable, sometimes even comforting. It was very seldom that they felt awkward or strained, but the one that fell as they ate their breakfast was tense. Mabel tried to keep her focus on her food, but once the minimum of her hunger was sated the food turned to ash in her mouth and she found herself just moving bits of sausage and egg around her plate with her fork. She glanced around the table at her siblings, found Dipper staring into her tea and Ty smiling wryly to himself.

He laughed suddenly, dropping his fork, getting the attention of both his sisters, “Remember the summer before college?” he asked casually, making Mabel’s breath catch in her throat, “When we’d just laze around and make out all day? I had, like, the most random dream about that last night.”

Dipper put her tea mug back down, and Mabel could swear her sister’s hand was shaking. She realized her own hand was shaking, her fork rattling slightly against her plate. Is he serious? She wondered, how could he be saying this offhand, like it’s normal conversation? She found herself wishing she could be as brave, so it surprised her to hear her own voice, “I had a similar dream.”

“You did?” Ty asked, his eyes searching Mabel’s, giving away his doubt, his hope, and she could have sworn, his desire.

“Y-yeah,” Dipper chimed in shakily, before Mabel could respond, “I… actually, I did too.”

Silence dragged on at the table for a few seconds, but this one felt much different than the last. Ty was the first to break it again, “I… that’s not what I expected you guys to say. Wow, okay.” he ran his hand through his hair, “I was all ready to apologize and for you to be upset but now, I…”

“That summer has been on my mind a lot.” Mabel admitted softly, her heart pounding, “I… didn’t think you guys thought about it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dipper said, turning to look straight into Mabel’s eyes, her gaze insistent, “I live here! Under the same roof where I… where we…” Mabel laid her hand on Dipper’s where it rested on the table between them.

“Sometimes it feels like that was the last time anything made sense.” Ty admitted, “I-I know it didn’t, but compared to the rest.”

“It was the last time we were all together for more than a week,” Mabel said, her voice growing a little solemn, “I didn’t think that summer was ever going to end.”

They looked around at each other for a minute before silently agreeing, all standing up nearly in unison to clear the table. This was not a conversation to be had without hugs, and they all knew it. Upon returning to the living room, they all hesitated for a moment before climbing into the bed, as if they hadn’t spent the last two days barely leaving it. Mabel forced herself to get into it first, lying a little stiffly on her back. Ty and Dipper followed suit on either side of her, although they were all careful not to let their bodies actually touch.

“I didn’t think that summer was going to end,” Dipper said in a measured tone, and took a deep breath, “And I really didn’t want it to.”

“Me neither.” Ty and Mabel said at exactly the same time.

“I wish I’d known how to talk about it back then,” Ty continued, and Mabel hated the sound of the regret in his voice, “I couldn’t say to you two what I couldn’t even admit to myself.”

“What do you mean?” Mabel asked, her heart was fluttering eagerly at the implication, thinking of the things she herself had been unable to say back then.

Ty sighed heavily, running his hand down his face, and Mabel’s heart lurched at the sight of the tears standing in his eyes, “I… god, I remember saying some just dumb shit about hormones and sexual need,” he scoffed, “As if it was ever about getting my dick wet. But I was an idiot, and that was so much easier than admitting how… that it was…” he took a deep breath and held it for a second, before managing to whisper, “That I love you.”

Mabel didn’t realize how close she’d been to tears herself until she heard her own relieved sob. Each of her triplets tentatively put a hand on her shoulder and she could feel Ty gearing up to apologize and she couldn’t let that happen, “I love you too!” she practically wailed, “I love you both and I did then and I do now!’

Their arms closed in around her and she could feel their tears mingling with her own, could hear the soft hitch of Dipper’s crying as she said, “I love you both too, I love you both too.” They held each other and cried for a few minutes of disbelief before Dipper said with a half-laugh, “We’re so duuuuumb.”

Ty laughed too, but Mabel just smiled, “Seriously, I mean,” Ty impatiently wiped the tears from his face, “We talk about everything, why did we never talk about this.”

“I never ever ever would have thought it’d go like this,” Mabel said, her voice still thick with sobs, “You don’t really ever assume your siblings are in love with you too.”

“Well, turns out we are?” Dipper said, a little incredulous and maybe a little giddy, she lightly turned Mabel’s chin towards her and kissed her. God, was it better than she remembered. Probably better than it had ever been, she’d never kissed her knowing that her love was returned.

“We definitely are,” Ty said into her ear, before kissing her cheek, “By some twisted miracle.”

No sooner had Mabel’s lips parted from Dipper’s than she turned her head so that they met Ty’s, still hovering by her cheek. The same explosive unity that had bloomed in her kiss with Dipper filled her anew. She could hear Dipper’s smile at seeing it. A moment later, she knew exactly how Dipper had as she watched Ty kiss Dipper. She had seen them kiss before, sure, about a decade ago and without the heady knowledge that they were all of them in love. They went on that way for some time, passing the same kiss back and forth between them, eyes bright and tears drying on their cheeks.

Mabel and Dipper were kissing again, the very tips of their tongues exploring just past each other’s lips, when Ty said absently, “Sooo about those dreams we had…” They broke their kiss to look at him, to see what it was he was getting at. He was twisting a lock of Mabel’s hair between his fingers and his eyes glinted playfully when they met hers, “What exactly was I doing in your dream?”

Mabel’s mouth grew dry as she considered the question, drawing to mind again each luscious detail of the dream in question, “Well, uhh,” she cleared her throat, feeling her face growing hotter, “You were kissing me, mostly,” Ty nodded, a smile quirking up one corner of his mouth, “And… and you had your hand on me.”

“On you where exactly?” he teased, as Dipper tucked Mabel’s hair behind her ear and kissed it gently, sending a small thrill through her.

“Um, my hip at first…”

“Here?” Ty asked solicitously, laying his palm flat on the hip nearer to him, making her squirm slightly. He smiled, “Funny, it was like that in my dream, too. I was kissing you and slowly,” he did it as he described it, “Moved my hand from here up to here.” His hand came to rest over her heart, between her breasts just as it had in her dream.

“Wait, really?” Dipper asked, curiously, “You did that to Mabes in my dream, too.”

“Your dream was about me doing stuff to Mabes?” Ty teased, his hand resting warm and heavy on Mabel’s chest. She wondered if he could feel the way her heart was battering against her ribs.

“No, no! It was all three of us!” Dipper corrected, flushing, “I was behind her, s-sort of spooning her, while you two were kissing and you did that thing with your hand and uhh…” Ty raised an eyebrow and Mabel gulped, “And I was reaching around her to… uh…”

“Wait… seriously?” Ty asked, and his voice was intrigued and a little husky, “This… is gonna sound crazy, but I think we all had pretty much the same dream.”

“Your dream was like that too?” Mabel asked, and it was Ty’s turn to flush. He nodded. There was a long moment of consideration, of indecision. This revelation hung mysteriously between them as they each tried to shake some sense out of all dreaming the same thing. As much as they would have loved to claim otherwise, always having been drawn to the supernatural, the triplets had long since debunked any possibility of psychic connection between them. Sure, they were pros at reading each other, but no more than anyone would be after so many years together. What were they supposed to do with this information, that this love and desire was not a curse to bear in silence, but something with which they’d all been living? The question was a complicated one, but the answer seemed simple enough, “This is stupid!” Mabel blurted out, grabbing the front of Ty’s shirt and pulling him down into a kiss. He was too stunned for a second, but quickly remembered how to kiss back. Without prompting, Dipper was scooting closer, her hands running over the both of them as she nuzzled and kissed the side of Mabel’s face, her neck, her ear. Her lips just below Mabel’s ear elicited a soft gasp that disappeared on Ty’s tongue. Dipper moved down her neck towards her shoulder and Mabel couldn’t stand it, breaking her kiss with Ty to capture Dipper’s lips again. Mabel turned onto her side to better kiss Dipper, and realized that her hips had begun swaying not unlike in her dream. Her thighs and Dipper’s rubbed against each other with insistent delicacy as Mabel’s hand found Dipper’s waist. New heat surged through her veins as Ty sidled up behind her, pressing himself flush against her, his erection unmistakable against her ass.

Thought gave way to pure sensation, and Mabel lost herself in the sweetness of not holding back. Though frenzied desire simmered not far below the surface, all three of them were content to take it slow, marveling at the peace and freedom of being together. Showing love without restraint and each challenging themselves to create more pleasure and greater oneness. There was no awkwardness, no standing on ceremony, as garment by garment they shed their clothes, no room for such barriers in as sacred a moment as this. They fell into a natural rhythm, one so innate it was hard to believe they’d never followed it like this before. There was no jealousy, no competing, just joy at sharing and creating such joy.

They spent hours a blissful tangle of bodies. Mabel intermittently had an instant of self-awareness, gratitude so immense that she thought she might burst. Once while her fingers moved eagerly in the wet depths of Dipper’s heat, her mouth glued to Dipper’s breast. Above her head, Dipper and Ty were locked in a searing kiss and Ty’s hips grinded against her back. Once again, in the moment Ty finally entered her, guided by Dipper’s hands as she nibbled at his ear. And again, and again, these unbearably bright moments of need and pleasure and closeness.

She had no idea how long it went on like that, before their frenzy cooled and they fell gratefully back into gentle kisses and soft caresses. Dipper was the first to cry, but Mabel and Ty were not close behind. They were not tears of sadness, quite the opposite, they were tears of relief. There was fear and uncertainty and sorrow not far from any of their minds, but in this moment they were locked together in a thankful prayer. When their tears passed, they slept. Not on purpose and not all at once, each drifting off for a couple minutes or hours before surfacing again. Barely a word passed between them, no word able to say the things they felt compelled to say with kisses, and looks, and fingertips traced lightly over skin.

The sunrise brought with it welcome light, gradually diluting the darkness and making it possible to see each other more clearly than they had throughout the night. But it also brought with it the most unwelcome of responsibilities. Tears welled in Mabel’s eyes again, and she did not need to explain to either of them the reason. Though time had ceased to exist to them, lost in the ecstasy of each other all night, it returned now with all the dread of a death sentence. In just a few hours, they’d have to say goodbye again and go back to the agony of being hundreds of miles apart.

Ty was the first to tear himself from the bed, while his sisters tearfully dozed in each other’s arms. He came back fully dressed and sat at the edge of the bed, looking down at them with eyes full of sadness. Dipper sat up, crawling still naked into Ty’s lap to kiss his forehead and wrap her arms around his shoulders. He cleared his throat shakily and said, “Can we… this time, can we talk about this?”

“Of course.” Dipper said and Mabel nodded, “Not talking about it all this time was a really bad move.”

“I love you both,” Ty said, his voice breaking slightly, “But I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here.”

“Me… me, neither.” Mabel admitted, pulling her fingers through her tangled hair, “I… I want this, but I don’t know how it fits into life.” She crawled over to them, laying her cheek on Ty’s shoulder, “We can’t just rush into this or whatever.”

“Mabel Pines wants a plan,” Dipper joked, “That’s how you know this is serious.” They chuckled lightly, the levity and companionship a pillar of normalcy in the mire, “But she’s right. I think we have some big stuff to figure out and they’re not the kind of decisions we should make lightly.”

Ty nodded and sniffled, reluctantly agreeing, “So we still have to leave.”

“Well, I’m not going to make you,” Dipper said, stroking his hair soothingly, “But I think, yeah.”

“At least for now,” Mabel said, and took a shaky breath, “I dunno what’s gonna happen, but can we please all promise we’re not going to go this long before seeing each other again?”

Ty squeezed them both closer as they all agreed, “No way,” he said, “Home is where you two are and good luck keeping me away for long.”

“Like we’d ever want to.” Dip said, sweetly kissing Ty’s temple. She laughed humorlessly to herself, “What a mess we’ve found ourselves in.”

“And there’s no one I’d rather face it with.” Mabel said decisively, thinking of the many challenges they’d faced together over the years. Every muscle in her body was telling her not to get on a plane and leave them, but she realized that every beat of her heart knew she could never truly leave them, even if they parted. She clung to that knowledge, and held them tight, comforting herself that no goodbye between them could ever keep them apart.

[ceslatoil]

Stanford Pines

give me a character and i’ll answer

do I like them: Canon Ford? Definitely– he’s a complex, interesting character with a riveting backstory, a well executed redemption arc, and fab hair. Fanon Woobie UwU babbu did-nothing-wrong Ford? Not so much.

5 good qualities: Intelligence– he’s a smart cookie.

bravery– Both in the face of monsters like Bill, and, by the end of the series, facing his own mistakes and trying to fix them.

curiosity– I think we can all love Ford whenever he’s curious about the world around him.

adorkability/humor– there’s a reason the confused owl meme hast stayed as popular as it had– the puns, the silly quips, his facial expressions? When he’s not deeply embroiled in the show’s story arc, he’s a pretty funny guy.

determination– I think it’s pretty noble of Ford that, whenever he realizes he’s done something wrong, he goes out of his way to set it right, even if it’s not always quite the right thing.

3 bad qualities:

Pride– Yup. Many of his own problems were caused by his own quest for glory.

Emotionally Inarticulate– the other half of a lot of Ford’s conflict is that he doesn’t communicate vital information to his family. No Ford, telling a small child to keep secrets about a potentially disastrous rift from his loved ones is not a good idea; no Ford, refusing to talk to your brother about your problems with each other isn’t helping either of you; No Ford, lying to your best friend about the demon telling you how to build the portal is a very bad idea, No Ford–

Horrible Judge of Character– mostly applies to his younger self; anyone who doesn’t catch on to Bill being a bad guy within a second, let alone a year, might be a little blind.

favourite episode/etc: The Last Mabelcorn– this might be my favorite episode period, I love the story, the backgrounds, Mabel and Co. beating up the unicorns for being jerks, and I really love this turning point in Ford’s character arc– he finally reveals his true backstory to Dipper, which I think is an essential milestone, finally trusting his family with that information. Also “You’re a good person, Mabel,” makes me cry a little bit.

otp: I think I’ll always like Fiddauthor the best of all his ships. I think there’s so much character development we can get from this? Ford and McGucket learning to forgive each other, restoring their friendship and having that blossom into a romantic relationship? I think that’s a golden ending for those two.

brotp: Ford mending his relationship with his brother is what gives me life.

ot3: … none really? Aside from Fiddauthor I don’t really ship him with anyone.

notp: If you come into my house trying to ship this man with his brother and niblings I swear to fucking god I will stop being so polite, get the fuck out of my face before I fucking demolish you.

best quote: “I assure you if there was an owl in here he’d be long dead by now!”

head canon: Basically whenever he’s back in town everybody who’s curious goes to him about advice about paranormal stuff. Lazy Susan starts leaving fresh bread and milk out for wandering fae whenever she works graveyard shifts at the diner, Mabel and her friends make charm bags for one another when they miss each other, Robbie carries a silver pendant around his neck, not because he thinks he can’t take on a werewolf or vampire by himself, definitely not, but that old guy insisted it’s better safe than sorry…

[ancientouroboros]

Chapters: 9/? Fandom: Gravity Falls Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Sherman "Shermie" Pines/Original Character(s) Characters: The Author | Original Stanford Pines, Grunkle Stan | Stanley "Stanford" Pines, Sherman "Shermie" Pines, Jessica Pines, Jacob Pines, Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Bill Cipher, Ma Pines, Filbrick Pines, Jimmy Snakes, Fiddleford H. McGucket, "Lazy" Susan Wentworth Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Generation skip, PONYTAIL STAN, Pines Family Dynamics, Sneaky Protective Brothers, Awkward young babysitter Stan, MySpace messages, Stangst, brotherly shit brothers do, Anxiety, Fist Fights, Blood and Injury, Self-Harm, Demonic Possession, Suicidal Thoughts, Gaslighting, Nightmares, Implied Cannibalism?, Mild Gore, Psychic Ma Pines, Cuban Ma Pines, The Mindscape, BAMF Ma Pines, The horrible clown doll from the original Poltergeist movie, Mild references to criminal acts of public drunkenness, Allusion to abusive relationships, Corporate bullshit, Sorry Stan, Bad Thoughts, Panic Attacks, Mental Health Issues, Closeted Character, Dial it back Ma, Abuser apologizes, it does not go well, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Depression, You know how sometimes you blurt things out in the car?, The Pines Brothers finally have a frank and emotional conversation, Implied Sexual Content, All three Pines Brothers walk into a diner, Ableist Language, Stan really needs to learn how to not be ableist even if he's talking about himself Summary:

The birth certificates read: Stanford Filbrick Pines, born June 15th, 1986; Stanley Aaron Pines, born June 15th, 1986.