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amydiddle-fanfiction · 4 months ago

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10 Years More (Stanley’s Tale)

Stanley Pines is hitting his late 30s. He has lived a hard life on the road and only when he was in his darkest moment in '82 did he finally turn to family to help. Now, after a few years of living with his older brother, he is mostly on his feet. There are still days where he sleeps in his car but he at least knows he can make an honest living and turn to some people when in a terrible bind.

Still the world does change in terrible ways and now Stan finds himself packing up once again to drive towards a person he is sure never wants to see him again just because his mother asked him to. The last time anyone even heard from him was that same year Stan dialed up Sherman's number, who said that the man just decided to fully cut himself off from family forever?

What kind of town was Gravity Falls anyways? Whose to say Stanford even needed help?

Ao3 (THE FIC THAT MAY NEVER BE COMPLETED IS BEING WRITTEN)

Chapter 2

Property of Stanford Pines.

Once Stanley had read those words he was hooked to the handwritten book. Every page held a peek into the kind of life Ford had been living since he last saw him. He had only started to get into the book when his flashlight died and he was forced back up into the house.

Stan was now sat at the old kitchen table with the dead flashlight and the light of the dawn helping him see.

Every word that was on a page Stan held onto tightly. The creatures, the adventures, and the overall strangeness of this town that his brother described he did not want to believe but he knew it all must be true. There was no way Stanford would stay out here so long or make these things up. This was like his brother’s dream place to research, all the weird and the fantastical.

But it was more than the adventures and monsters in this journal. Small things also caught his eyes as he read through the pages. There were codes and scattered symbols all throughout the edges of the pages. He got the feeling they were important but there was no key written down anywhere so he was out of luck. Stan gave a small sigh when he realized he was going to need to find books to help him decode all of it.

That was a task for later; he needed to focus on what he did learn from reading through his book.

He sat back in his squeaky chair in the ruined kitchen and ran a hand down his face. So, what did he know?

Monsters and strange creatures were real and lived in the woods that surrounded the town and this very house. Stanford had been here for around six years before he had disappeared in the January of 1983. His brother had come across this slime ball of a muse that told him to build an interdimensional portal. Ford and his friend, this mysterious ‘F’, had built the portal and were set to test it. This ‘F’ guy tried to put his brother to stop the test but Ford, being the stubborn ass he was, did not listen.

The day before the test the journal was left blank. The only conclusion was his brother and the other guy were sucked into the portal and lost in some other realm. Or possibly obliterated.

Stanley stared at the last page that had been written on; a diagram that he assumed was part of the portal downstairs. Probably instructions on how it was built or how to operate it. He let the ink be lightly hit by the sunlight that was filtering through the dirty window before he closed the book.

“Why couldn’t this have been simple?” Stanley muttered and hid his face in his hands. The book had brought him more problems and questions than answers.

What was he going to tell their mother? He had really wanted to come up here, be yelled at by Stanford, and then yell at his brother to call their mother for once in his life.

Instead, her mission of him coming up here had turned into something impossible. He could not just call her up and tell her that Stanford had built a dumb machine and got sucked into it. That his brother was probably deader than dead or at least lost forever since Stan did not know how to get him back.

Stanley moved his hands and stared at the book in front of him. He did not like to entertain the thoughts that he had come too late. That his brother was lost forever and probably dead. There was even the slim chance that the portal downstairs could still work; all the other machines seemed to be functioning down there even though the house was out of power.

Stan stood up quickly when that thought hit his head.

“It could still work,” he whispered and swiped the book off the table.

He headed out of the kitchen. His feet moved him quickly through the rooms until he was back at the door to the basement. That slim chance of the machine being able to work and bring his brother back caused delusional hope to grow quickly in his heart.

The man took the stairs two at a time ad held onto the side of the elevator as it made the slow journey down. He barely waited for the gate to open before Stan made his way across the room to the main control area of the portal.

“Okay. How do we do this?”

He set the book down on the desk he had found it on and started with his desperate idea.

Stan messed with the buttons and turned dials without really knowing what they did. Without the translations on the Journal’s codes, he was winging it. When nothing happened there, he moved into the main area and pulled on a lever that stood in the middle of the room.

“Come on,” he grit out and pulled on the lever desperately, “Come on. Come on.”

He tried everything that looked like it belonged to the machine to try and get it work or give any sign of life. All these attempts came up negative. The years of sitting dormant had left it without power and maybe even broken after the first failed attempt.

“Work!” He kicked the lever in frustration and the metal dented. “Come on you stupid piece of shit just fucking work!”

He kept up the kicks until the lever fell off. The rusted metal was in no condition for the rough treatment that Stanley had delivered.

The man crumpled to the ground, tears stinging his eyes, and took a deep breath to calm himself down. That little bit of hope that he had fed too much had been crushed in the smallest time span imaginable. He almost wanted to throw a temper tantrum because of the hopelessness of the situation. The one easy chance was a failure.

“Why can’t anything be easy with you, Stanford?” he muttered.

With a deep sigh, he sat up and looked at the portal hopelessly. He could not just sit down here and hoped by some higher power it was turn itself on and work. He was outmatched in the brain department to even begin to tackle this problem.

With another sigh, he stood up and grabbed journal off the desk. Stanley sluggishly made his way back into the elevator and hit the button to bring him back to the top floor. The elevator caught about halfway up but a quick hit to the controls made it move again.

“Gonna have to fix that,” he muttered to himself as the journey continued.

Stan felt more lost and confused than he had ever been in his life as he stepped off the contraption. He moved back up the stairs in a daze with the book clutched in his hands. He stared at the messy room the door was hidden in as if his desperate looks would give him the answers he desperately needed. That Stanford would appear from behind a shelf and scold him for messing with his things.

All Stan got was silence and some dust that floated in an invisible draft. There was no answer given to how he should go about this situation. No answer to if he should even bother to start the portal up. No answer to if his brother was even alive on the other side of that contraption.

The idea of calling his mother once again popped into his head but he quickly dismissed it. He could not tell her this. He would call her eventually, but right now it would be impossible to explain what had happened. Stan could not tell her that he had no idea how to save his brother and break her heart.

“No,” Stan mumbled, “Can’t tell Ma about this. Gotta think of something else.”

Stanley moved out of the cluttered room and hesitantly sat down on the couch next to the coat. The man blankly stared ahead at the television and sighed. He glanced once at the book in his lap before it finally clicked.

He stood up quickly and stared at the journal like it was the first time he was seeing it. The gold leaf on the front reflected his face but Stan’s eyes were not focused on that. They were glued to the number three printed in the middle of the palm.

“Three,” Stan said to himself, “That means there are two more. Two more with the dumb portal’s instructions or something.”

Stan laughed. There was his hope; the journals had to have the other parts of the portal’s instructions in them. He just had to find the other two and he could start working to start that device and, hopefully, save his brother from some unknown fate.

He lowered the book from his face and looked around the dingy living room.

“Okay,” he said to himself in a reassuring tone, “If I was Ford where would I hide my nerd books?”

Stanley closed his eyes and hummed to himself. It had been a long time since he had to do the ‘think like Ford’ trick, usually it was to figure out where his twin had hidden the candy in their room, but he was sure that this would work.

The man moved to the doorway of the living room before he opened his eyes to look down the hallway. He took a breath and moved away from the doorway he had entered the night before and glanced into any room he saw. His feet stopped in front of a door and he looked at the wood with interest.

The door was pushed open enough for him to see that sunlight was coming through a window in there. He pushed the door open more to see what it held. A pleased smile appeared on his face seeing that the room was set up like an office space.

“Bingo,” he whispered to himself and entered the room.

The room was not that special in contents. A sitting area under an open window, a desk, and very few personal items. Books, papers, and other random things seemed to be scattered around the floor. Stan concluded that mess was made from whatever escaped from the busted open cat carrier that sat in the corner.

He was not too focused on the mess as he made his way over to the desk and set his journal down on top of it before he began his search.

Stanley started to go through the drawers to see if he could find another journal like the one he already had. He pulled out blueprints, scribbled on notebook paper, fax sheets, pens, and pencils. He pulled out all the drawers to dump them out to see if they have a false bottom. When the desk proves to have nothing, he moved over to the two bookshelves and scattered novels around the room.

Stan picks up every book and looks them over. If they were not the certain two, he was searching for he would stack them up on the desk. The stack on the desk soon became two, then three, and then half of a fourth when, finally, he spotted it.

Stan dropped the books he was just about to carry over to the pile to reach for his prize. The maroon-colored journal had either fallen or had been flung behind the bookcase. The reasons for its hidden place did not matter to Stan as he pulled it to freedom.

Behind the bookcase the journal had been open and the pages had been stuck folded over. Stan tried his best to smooth them out again before he closed it gently since he sensed the journal’s spine may have been hurt as well.

Despite how careful he was being, Stanley was full of excitement that he had now located two out of, hopefully, three journals. The shining gold on the cover of the journal shone up in the dusty light of the house like a beacon of hope. Behind the number one written on the palm, the material reflected Stan’s hopeful grin.

“Two down, one to go,” Stan said to himself and set the book down next to the third journal and went back to searching the office area.

He picked up the rest of the books on the floor and emptied the bookshelves so he could search thoroughly behind them all. He did not want to miss anything. There had been nothing back behind them but dust and a small flip-note book that was written in someone’s handwriting that was too messy to be his brother’s. Stan had flipped through it out of curiosity and found to his delight terrible jokes and sarcastic comments that surrounded random math equations that made no sense to him.

He set the little notebook down on top of the journals and went back to his search for the second and last journal. The search resulted in the room becoming cleaner than when he had found it. The window was shut, the books put away, and the dirt on the ground had been swept up. Everything was spotless and he had found a few papers in the desk that he believed would be helpful, but he had not found the second journal.

“Okay, makin’ it hard for me I see. I like that,” Stan said to the air, “But two out of three ain’t bad. Plus, I got a whole house to search.”

He picked up his two prizes and carried them back into the living room, setting the books down on the small coffee table. If both were not in the office space he found, maybe there was another room his brother may frequent that could have this second journal. Like his bedroom.

Exactly, all Stan had to do was find Ford’s bedroom and he would probably find the journal tucked under the pillow or something. Hope was not yet lost.

He made his way out of the living room and back into the hall. Close to the stairs and front door he found a close doorway. Trying the handle, felt the door stick to the frame from the years of disuse. Old wood had warped just enough to make this more of a hassle to get to. Stan gritted his teeth and pulled as hard as he could. The door groaning in protest before it finally popped open, nearly sending the man off his feet.

“Stupid door,” he grumbled as he brushed off invisible dirt from his front.

Cautiously he peeked inside the room. The shade was drawn over the window and made the room dark as the night had been a few hours ago. But it was clearly a bedroom. A large double bed sat in the middle of the room; sheet rumpled as if someone had just gotten out of bed. It was a contrast to the pajamas still folded nicely at the end of the bed waiting for the person to arrive.

Stan stepped into the room fully and looked around, not quite sure about touching things yet. It had been years since he and his brother had shared a bedroom but here, unlike the office, this place screamed Ford. The posters still hanging on the wall of nerdy old men that Stan could not name. A jar of unusually shaped jellybeans also sat on wardrobe with a big sticky note on it that said ‘DO NOT TOUCH F!’. The DD&MD box set sitting on top of the wardrobe next to a picture of Ma. A few other family photos were there as well. David at age two with a newborn Sheryl on his lap, Sherman’s wedding, a formal picture of Ma and Pa together.

It almost hurt to see himself excluded if he was not already expecting it. Stan had been gone from his life for so long it was nice to see that Stanford at least tried to be part of Sherman’s a little.

Blinking away the feelings he turned back to the room. His first instinct was to push his hand under the old pillows to see if Ford still hid things under there like he did when they were tweens. Sadly, he came up empty.

He next moved over to the wardrobe and started to rifle through the clothing, not caring as he threw shirts and pants onto the bed. Searching for false bottoms in the drawers just in case his brother was being extra crafty. When that came up empty, he stuffed the clothes back in without much care to fold them and headed to the closet.

The closet was a bust too. Stan even checked the steamer trunk but all it held was old college memorabilia, some photo albums and film reels that he did not look too close into. Under the bed was also a bust.

With a sigh, Stan sat down on the mattress and ignoring the creaking groan the old springs did at being touched after so long. Exhaustion from the long drive and pent-up worry starting to drag down his shoulders.

He knew he still had another floor to check. He knew that half this house was trashed and needed a good cleaning, meaning that the journal could be anywhere.

However, it was hard to be optimistic when a personal thing like that is not in a place you expect it to be.

“Come on Stan, pull yourself together,” he said to himself, “You still got a whole house to search.”

At the thought of that his body almost wanted to collapse. He flopped over backward onto the bed and threw an arm over his eyes.

“It’s gotta be somewhere,” he yawned, “I’ll just rest here for a second and then go into the next room. There is no way it ain’t in the house.”

As he laid there, listening to the dead silence of the cabin around him, he tried to think of other places his brother may have placed something like this. Maybe it was in the attic or down in the basement where the first one was. Maybe he just needed to clean up the kitchen a bit. Course, it could take days to get this house full searched. He might need to get a motel room.

A frown crossed his face at the thought of spending what little savings he had on a motel room he might not even use. Maybe he should just stay here, get some nonperishable food from town, and just fix this place up.

Who knew how long the portal thing was going to take anyway once he found this dang journal. A month? Maybe two? It took Ford and his nerd friend six months to make it from scratch, he may not be the smart twin but he could follow instructions well enough that it shouldn’t take too long.

Right?

#gravity falls #gravity falls fic #stanley pines #grunkle stan #gravity falls au #dimension hoppers au

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royalnugget42 · 4 months ago

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Gotta wonder what Dipper’s bubble would be like if and when it forms…

OH and I bet the bio billford AU happens a lot like gaslit au, where Mabel learns who their other dad is and freaks out.

I keep thinking abt how Bill would deal with it, and like it happens pretty similarly to canon? The kids show up in Stan’s mind and he goes “oh okay, I guess this is normal. Time to terrorize some children!”

And because they’re very consistently in their human forms, he doesn’t notice anything id weird until he’s like “oh hang on these kids are WAY too good at manipulating dreamscapes this isn’t normal”

And he puts 2 and 2 together. These kids are calling Stan their uncle. They look like Ford. They have dream powers. And suddenly he’s realizing that maybe it’s not a good sign that he doesn’t remember the karaoke night…

So after that he spies on the kids to confirm that yep, those are half-Euclidean half-human, has a major parental freak out (they’re probably not eating enough teeth, they’re way too small, they need help with their powers), and starts planning Weirdmageddon 2.0 Family Edition, which takes a lot more work as it turns out.

He still has time to freak Dipper out a little, but in this version he doesn’t possess him. He really is just checking up on him, not trying to make deals (he does still try to give him a head that’s constantly screaming. Father son bonding rituals etc).

But up until Ford is free, the kids don’t know who their other dad is. They assume the same thing that Stan did, that Ford did it all by himself. UNTIL Dipper reads his dad’s mind and realizes, hey uh. Now that I’m thinking about it we have a lot in common with Bill. And you were “friends” with him. Oh no. Oh no no no.

Can’t decide whether Dipper tells her immediately and she has her crisis about it early, or if she overhears Stan and Ford talking abt it, realizes Dipper knew all along, and has a crisis about it then. Either way is good.

In Bio billford au.

Does bill allow his hench maniacs to babysit Mabel or dipper? Like a scenario where dipper was able.to fallow Mabel to talk to her and then weirdmagedon happens and they are both in the bubble or fearamid and the others take turns watching over the kids.

Also I feel like in weirdmagedon their Euclidian aspects are a lot more noticeable/ powers are stronger and a bit less controlled.

I think Bill would be crazy protective/possessive over twins and Ford. No way he'd let anyone else watch them. That's what bubbles for safe area kids can stay until he's got global weridmageddon sorted and Ford on his side.

Also bubbles also probably equivalent of wrapped kids in bubble rap while powers surge, like safe area for them to experiment/use powers and let them run wild with all the weirdness. Mabelland or whatever Mabel's bubble is all her creation in this (Subconsciously or not) and not Bill's.

The most responsibility henchmachinc would get is to watch bubble and let bill know if any cracks.

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roseverdict · 4 years ago

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More Than He Seems (Part 6)

yall ever get writer's block for a specific section of your story, but you can write all the stuff that comes right after it with ease? yeah that's been me this past month with the second part of this chapter. on the upside i have some more content ready to go! :D

i also tried something new with the chapter upload. i wanna see if i can schedule it to post to ao3 at a later date than when i hit the button, but so far i got nothing. :/

unrelated but i accidentally broke my cat-ear headphones i got for Christmas and yet somehow figured out a way to make them still usable using only duct tape and string, so i'm gonna be riding that high all day >:D

warnings: ford briefly remembers that one time the shapeshifter made him doubt his own identity and has the beginnings of a panic attack, and, of course, a bit more of the usual "stanley swears-a-lot" fare.

Masterpost

Stan blinked awake with a groan.

What time was it…?

He shifted to glance out the window and see if he could figure out how long the sun had been up-

-this wasn't his car.

He pushed himself up and warily glanced around wherever-he-was. It was lit dimly by the light from the window, but it was definitely not his car, if the complete mess of notes and whatsits was anything to go by. And…somehow he'd managed to get his hands on a real, actual mattress? How on earth had he managed that? The last he remembered-

-oh. Yeah. Right. He'd gotten to Ford's place and helped him ward the place against that "Bill" bastard. He'd had a weird nightmare of some kind after, but that was pretty par for the course.

Stan let himself relax against the bed and rubbed at his eyes. He'd have thought a good night's sleep would've helped him feel at least a little bit better.

Instead, his head was killing him.

It wasn't anything he hadn't pushed through before, though, so he just grit his teeth and rolled out of bed. He had to see if Ford had a plan for the way-too-empty fridge, and from what he'd seen over the past few days, he was pretty sure Ford's self-care skills were just as terrible as they'd been back in Jersey.

He slipped his arms into the sleeves of his jacket and frowned. Usually he at least felt a bit warmer with it on. Even wearing the sweater Ford had loaned him over the rest of his clothes didn't help, but he tried it anyway.

Maybe Ford had been neglecting the heating bill or something.

Oh well. There was nothing he could do about it, at least not while he was still in the bedroom Ford was letting him use.

He shivered and picked his way through the mess to the door. Noise from the kitchen told him Ford was up and moving, so he didn't worry too much about being quiet as he poked his head into the room. "Morning, Stanford."

Ford jumped slightly in his seat, but quickly relaxed when he saw Stan. "Ah-! Oh, good morning, Stanley. You slept well, I presume?"

Something in the back of Stan's mind said no, not exactly, but it was overruled by the rest of him saying, "Like a baby. What about you? Bill didn't get in your head overnight, did he?"

"No, he didn't." Ford answered as though the words were still hard to believe. "I actually got multiple hours of restful sleep. Consecutively, even!"

"Good." Stan grinned and sat down at the table. "So, what's the plan now?"

Please say something about food or heating, please say something about food or heating.

"I'm torn, actually." Ford said. "On the one hand, now that the house is effectively cut off from Bill's influence, I have a couple projects that could advance our defenses against him further that really ought to be finished sometime soon. On the other hand, between the two of us, I doubt the meager food supplies in the house will last much longer than a day or two."

Stan frowned, then held up a finger in realization. "Wait, that's two things. There's two of us."

Ford blinked. "…you're right."

"Since I'm not the scientist, I'm thinking…I oughta head out for food?" Stan's suggestion came out as more of a question than he'd meant it to be. Whoops.

"That would probably be best." Ford agreed. "Besides, after the last time I went out, I'll admit, I am rather loathe to do so again."

"Why? What happened?"

"Bill, he…" A shudder ran up Ford's spine as he spoke, his eyes growing wider and wider. "…everyone in the truck stop, he had them all under his sway. The experience was unnerving, to say the least. All of their eyes, yellow and staring at me, watching, watching-!"

Stan gulped. Ford needed to snap out of it, fast.

"Whoa, 'kay, Stanford, look at me." Stan reached across the table, his hand hovering unsurely over Ford's arm. "Bill can't get to you in here, remember? You're safe."

Ford nodded frantically, clenching and unclenching his fists for a moment before taking a shaky breath. "Right. He can't get to me. I'm safe. I'm safe."

"Yeah, there you go." Stan tried to keep his voice soothing. "Alright, so you're definitely not on grocery duty. If Bill tries that on me, I can handle myself, but…this is just me spitballing here, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure he can."

Ford blinked and stared at him. "…we are still talking about the same Bill, right?"

Stan held his hands up placatingly. "Look, hear me out on this. He tricked you into trusting him, which led to him being able to possess you, which meant he couldn't possess you beforehand, yeah? What if he's able to screw with your mind, too? Make you see stuff that's not there, like, say, an entire truck stop full of possessed people? Seems more likely to me than him getting his weird little triangle fingers in every mind on the planet, or at least the ones around Gravity Falls."

Ford lifted a finger as though to correct him, but his words caught in his throat. "I…hm. That's…that's a sound hypothesis."

Stan beamed. "Hoped it was. When I go get food, that can be how we test it. Bill's gotta be pissed at both of us at this point, but he's only got access to your mind, not mine. Either he can sic the town on me or he can't, and I'm betting he can't."

Ford looked as though he wanted to say something, but he changed his mind at the last second. "In that case, to remove as many variables as possible…perhaps you ought to borrow my shape when you go. If I myself am vulnerable, but a look-alike is not…"

Stan held back a grimace. "You sure? From the sound of it, you haven't really had great luck with this sort of thing before." The way Ford had gone ballistic when he'd thought Stan was "Shifty" was proof of that.

"I'm sure." Ford nodded firmly.

"Well, uh, in that case…here goes."

Stan drummed his fingers on the table, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

(Hm. Was this actually the first time he'd purposefully done this in front of someone for more than a few seconds? What had been the odds his brother would be the first person to see him shift?)

The change was subtler than usual, but since Ford was his twin, it made sense. His chin split slightly to match Ford's own, and his mullet shrank back to mirror the way Ford's hair had only grown more fluffy since high school. His gut shrank a bit, as did his shoulders. Was that all? He was a bit scattered with the fact that he had an audience weighing on him, but that was probably all he had to-

Oh, wait. Duh. He still had to make a major change.

Stan focused harder. He'd been people with all kinds of unique facial features before, so adding an extra finger to each hand would be a piece of cake. The extra sensations along the sides of his hands nearly startled him out of the zone, but he managed to finish growing the extra fingers before opening his eyes.

Ford stared at him, caught somewhere between "pale as a ghost" and "full of burning curiousity and questions."

Still using his own voice, Stan did some little jazz hands. "Uh. Ta-da?"

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, where Stan felt more like a specimen than a Stan and Ford looked more like a scientist than his brother.

And then it passed.

"Incredible." Ford breathed. "A completely different mechanism than that employed by Shifty, one that leaves your clothing intact and only alters your physical appearance. And your voice isn't necessarily required to match the form you take?"

"Not really." Stan shrugged. "Listen to this, though." He cleared his throat for effect, then, in Ford's voice, said, "Look at me, I'm a genius with a bajillion PhDs who can't remember to feed himself!"

Ford snorted, almost as though caught off-guard. "Ha, ha. I'm not that bad."

"You sure about that?" Stan grinned, dropping back out of Ford's voice. "You're down to peas, beans, and meat, and there's not much of any of it left."

"…I believe I will plead the fifth this time."

Stan snickered, though he faked a cough when Ford glanced at him.

"Let me get some spare clothes to further complete the 'transformation,' as it were." Ford continued, standing up from the table. "I'll be right back."

"I'll be here." Stan shot off a sloppy salute and watched him head for the hall.

Once he was alone, he grimaced and rubbed at his eyes. Shifting while feeling shitty was apparently an even worse idea than he'd remembered. His body felt like it weighed twice what it should've. Hell, even though he'd just woken up, he felt like he'd probably fall right back asleep any second now.

He slapped his cheeks in an effort to stay awake.

Oh well.

There was nothing he could do about it, at least not until after he got back with food.

〜〜〜〜〜〜

Stanford draped one of his trenchcoats over his arm alongside a pair of slacks. Since Stanley still had the sweater from the day before, he would just have to switch out his pants for Stanford's and throw the trenchcoat on over the sweater.

…Stanford tried not to think too hard about how Stanley had essentially volunteered to paint a target on his back to get their food supplies and put Stanford's mind at ease.

With his free hand, he rummaged through Master Bedroom Miscellany Pile #1 for a moment and dug out one of his spare pairs of glasses. Once Stanley put them on, he would effectively become Stanford to the untrained eye. Possibly even to the trained eye!

Stanford wasn't exactly sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, it had been years since they'd successfully pulled off a twin-switch on anyone, let alone a whole town. On the other, the circumstances of this particular switch were…well, Stanford wished he didn't have to think about the circumstances.

Evidence suggested that over the past decade, Stanley hadn't changed as much as been changed, and not just in the obvious way.

…that was a thought for a later date.

Stanford took a deep breath and let it out slowly before turning on his heel and heading back out to the kitchen. With any luck, Stanley would be able to quickly switch into Stanford's clothes and buy the food they would-

A thought struck him.

Stanley had mentioned some of the things he'd had to do to survive the past ten years during their fight in the basement. At the time, Stanford had been, how could he put it…

(Stanford shoved the memory of his brother's scream into the darkest recesses of his mind.)

…not entirely rational, so he hadn't really paid much attention, but now he wished he had. If he'd paid closer attention, perhaps he'd have an answer to the question of "what had Stanley been through," and by extension, "whether Stanley had left his home or driven it up to Oregon."

Well, it was possible he didn't have to make a big deal of it.

He would simply…put his wallet into the spare trenchcoat's pocket and try not to draw too much attention to the fact that Stanley may or may not be homeless and therefore short on money.

Yes. Perfect!

A plan in mind, Stanford did exactly that before re-entering the kitchen. For a moment, Stanley looked twice as tired as he had before, but then he perked right back up at Stanford's reappearance.

(If that was how Stanford had looked when Stanley first arrived, it was no wonder Stanley had insisted he go to sleep.)

It was probably just a trick of the light.

"Here we are." Stanford announced, handing the bundle of clothes over. "The bathroom is just down the hall."

"Gotcha." Stanley nodded and took the clothes as he headed to change.

Stanford spent the minutes before Stanley's exit from the bathroom preparing himself. Watching Stanley shapeshift in front of him was one thing. In that instance, Stanford could observe the entire process and squash the terror before it became a problem.

Knowing Stanley would walk out, looking well and truly identical to him, right down to the clothes on his back…

"What? I'm not Shifty, y-you are!"

Stanley wasn't the Shapeshifter he'd left in the bunker. Stanley had been a mischievious boy and grown into a criminal man, but he wasn't outright cruel.

"Maybe there's a silver lining? Huh? Treasure hunting?"

…he wasn't that cruel, at least. Besides, Stanley's behavior since arriving had been anything (and everything) but uncaring!

He was only Stanley!

The bathroom door swung open, and Stanley stepped out, looking for all the world like Stanford's doppelganger. He'd pulled the trenchcoat on over his sweater, and he was in the slacks Stanford had picked out, though he only put on the glasses once he shut the door behind him.

Stanford forced down a gasp.

In his own voice, Stanley snorted. "I look like a nerd."

The tension building in Stanford's head all fell away, and he couldn't help a small smile of his own. "Not just any nerd. This nerd, specifically."

Stanley rolled his eyes and dug his hands into the pockets of his borrowed trenchcoat, lifting something up. "Oh, by the way, I think you forgot this in here."

The wallet.

Stanford's mind raced for a moment, but then he came to the perfect excuse. "My memory is fine. It's there because I should be the one to take the financial hit, since we're currently dealing with my problems."

"Oh. Okay." Stanley seemed shaken, but before Stanford could press the matter, he shoved the wallet back into his pocket and gave a noncommittal shrug. "In that case, I think I'm pretty much set to go. Unless you have any last-minute warnings or something?"

"Not a warning, but…" Stanford conceded, "…if you happen across my old research assistant, Fiddleford, could you try to keep an eye on him? We parted on…less-than-ideal terms, and I'm rather worried about his state of mind."

"I'll keep an eye out." Stanley nodded.

"Then in that case, drive safe." Stanford mirrored him.

"Be back in a bit." Stanley flashed him a thumbs-up and shuffled out the front door, and Stanford watched him trek through the snow and down the path.

Wait.

Where had Stanley left the clothing he'd been wearing since he first showed up? He hadn't been holding it in his hands…he must have simply left it in the bathroom.

Stanford poked his head into the bathroom to check, planning to perhaps get a load of laundry started for the first time in far too long before delving into his work-

-but all he saw in the bathroom were his own belongings.

…that was probably alright. Stanley must have simply been layering up in preparation for the winter chill. It was quite understandable, frankly. After dealing with Oregonian snow all day yesterday, spending a sizable chunk of it in a threadbare hoodie, Stanford wouldn't want to repeat the experience either.

Having come to that sensible conclusion, Stanford turned and headed for the basement.

He might get Project Mentem working yet. With a night's sleep under his belt and the promise of unexpired food on the way, he was positive he could figure out whatever had him so stumped.

#rosie writes #gravity falls #shapeshifter!stan #paranoid ford #stan pines #ford pines #mths #mths update #gf #im very hyped for the next few chapters >:)#stan and ford need to learn what assuming does

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aphantpoet · 2 years ago

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Characters that had better redemption arcs than Zuko:

Disclaimer; while I do criticise the series I do actually like it overall. There are just some things that don’t sit right with me because of the time the show was made in. While I recognise how revolutionary Zuko’s redemption arc was that does not make it immune to criticism.

The first point we need to address is “what am I measuring “better” by?”. That goes into the issues with Zuko’s redemption arc to begin with. Zuko’s redemption has always felt a little shallow to me. He spends most of the series chasing and trying to capture/kill a 12 year old in the name of colonisation and then has a crisis of faith when he realises that the side he fought for no longer served him. He doesn’t address the toxic mindsets he was raised with, he merely changes sides. how I am determining what characters did better is is they made a conscious change in behaviour and mindset. Lets’ get into it, i’ll try to limit myself to three paragraphs.

1. Li Ping/ The Serpent.-Detentionaire

For the uninitiated, The Serpent. was an antagonist in the latter parts of Detentionaire. The series followed Lee Ping, the son of Korean immigrants as he tries to find the culprit who set him up for a schoolwide prank that got him a year of detention. through the series Ping battles rivals, brainwashing and shadow governments, uncovers family secrets and confronts old family demons.

The Serpent [who i will be calling Li to keep thing brief] was apart of said Shadow Government and Lees older brother. He was raised by the Council as a weapon and he encounters Lee and his friends on quite a few occasions.Li doesn’t have many interests that we know of, we know he’s a bit immature and that he loves his snake Priscilla. When he discovers that he was taken by Council not given up he turns on them, getting captured and giving Lee and his friends time to escape. Ther series was canceled so we never get to see where his story goes.

Li changes his actions because when he realises that his biological family did not abandon him he has no reason to fight them and with the understanding of the lies he was fed he’s done being manipulated.

2. Stanley Pines-Gravity falls

When twins Mabel and Dipper Pines are forced to stay with their Grunkle Stan in the mystery shack, they discover that there is more to this sleepy town and in it’s off colour residents.

So spoiler, Grunkle Stanford Pines was laying about his identity. When Grunkle Stan was younger he had a twin brother, Stanford. Ford was the smart one while Stan was the strong one but they were close until an accident with Fords science project caused a rift between the brothers. they meet up years later as adults and Stan is a con man living paycheck to paycheck and Ford has fallen into the supernatural happenings of the town. A fight causes the portal Ford was building to activate and suck him up. Stanley goes on to assume his brother’s identity and try to find the other journals to rebuild the portal and save his brother.

When we meet him he’s still up to his old tricks and he can be harsh sometimes, but he genuinely loves his niblings. In the end he sacrifices his memories to defeat the ultimate evil. He’s a shady guy by all means, but by the time he saves his brother he has more than redeemed himself.

3. Pacifica Northwest- Gravity Falls

In the beginning Pacifica is a bit of a one dimensional bully, she is as Dipper says ‘the worst”. As we see her more however he has a miniature redemption arc. We realise that her parents are controlling and abusive and she genuinely does not know better. During the Northwests ball her house is being haunted by a vengeful ghost that pertifies everyone. Pacifica learns that her family is not that great and decides to break the cycle and let the undesirables in. This frees the ghost and saves everyone.

While Pacifica is a minor character her redemption is set up and gradual and shown in a way that does not obstruct the overall narrative. her redemption is earned through addressing the abuse she suffered and changing her behaviour, even she she cannot change the behaviour of others, she’s only a kid after all.

4. Catra-SPOP

Spop follows child soldiers and childhood friends, Catra and Adora and their pains and adventures on both sides as they make their way back to each other.

Catra is a villian for most of the series. Because we benefit from her direct perspective her abuse under Shadow Weaver, Hordak and Horde Prime is well documented an ongoing and, in her mind, unescapable. Catra does show vulnerability despite this on multiple occasions and it’s usually unaddressed or punished, this creates a cycle of her pushing people away to keep herself safe.When she sets off the portal she doesn’t have any real idea of what will happen, she just knows there’s a chance she’ll also dies and that doesn’t sound too bad. She finally snaps out of it and saves Glimmer from Horde Prime, sacrificing herself to a fate worse than death in the process. Over the rest of season five hse gets closer to the Best friend squad and apologises even saving the world by letting love in.

Catra learns that it is by letting yourself be loved that you become worthy of it. While her actions with the Horde are not good, she knows that. Much like Pacifica, she just does not know a better life or rather feel she deserves one. Catra is only accepted when she proves she has changed beyond a doubt. the choices she makes throughout the series that show the glimmer [hehe]that she might be better underneath come from her. No one makes her give Adora the sword back, no one makes her toast Scorpia in the Crimson Wastes, no one makes her get Glimmer off the ship, no one but her.

5. Amity Blight

When Luz Noceda ends up on the Boiling Isles she meets a cast of characters, among them is Amity Blight. the youngest daughter of the Blight family, abomination prodigy and self important snob. We first meet her bullying Willow Park. When Lux aggress to help Willow cheat Amity calls her out on it, while a bit heavy handed in approach she’s not wrong. They meet again at the convention where she challenges Luz to a witches duel. cue Lilith cheating and the girls bonding a little.

Amity’s actions don’t go far from the realm of petty bullying but as season 1 goes on she starts to gain more depth. Controlling parents, self esteem issues and a surprising gift with kids. She and Luz start to for a mutual friendship and then Amity enters her tomato era. She stands up to her mother and apologises to Willow, they make peace and become friends again.

Amity becomes a better person, which isn’t unrealistic, she’s a kid who unlearns toxic mindsets though finding someone able to see more than the top student. her better qualities come out and she leaves her old friends. It looks like Skara also abandons Boscha, so good for her to.

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bombshellsandbluebells · 4 years ago

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I know I’m a few years late to the Gravity Falls party, but I can’t get over how effectively the Ford reveal flips the switch on Stan’s character. From what little I’d seen of the show on Tumblr before I watched it, I’d always assumed Stan was a pretty one-dimensional sleazy con man. And since it was a series aimed toward kids, I kind of assumed Stan wouldn’t get that much development or story outside of Dipper and Mabel. I figured if he did have an arc, it would be the pretty common “gruff bitter loner guy who doesn’t like people gets kids and learns to love them” storyline.

And for like the first half of the show, this kind of seemed to be the case, aside from the mystery surrounding whatever Stan was hiding in the basement.

And then the Ford reveal / backstory happens and you see Stan in a completely new light.

Stan isn’t a con man because he wants to be. He’s a con man out of necessity - first because he was kicked out of his house and forced to make it on his own at 18, and then because it was helping him work to bring his brother back. He doesn’t just run the mystery shack because he likes to lie to people and swindle them out of their money - he does it because he needed a way to make money and keep the shack while trying to figure out a way to reopen the portal. He has a fake identity because he needed to keep people from snooping around looking for Stanford and the easiest way to do that was to take his place.

All the things that make you think he’s selfish and shady throughout the first half of the series are revealed to be because he’s a desperate, heartbroken man who wants to bring his brother back. He isn’t the traditional gruff guy who doesn’t love anyone until some rambunctious kids come into his life at all - he loves his brother so much that literally everything he does is to get him back. And he lies to the kids in an effort to protect them and keep anything bad from happening to them like it did to his brother.

Great twists / mystery reveals don’t just take the story in a new direction - they cast new light on everything that has come before. And Gravity Falls does that so well.

Just look at one of the first episodes in the series where Mabel makes a wax figure of Stan and Stan appears to fall in love with it and mourns it when it melts, going as far to host a funeral for it. Without knowing Stan’s backstory, this whole storyline just feeds into our view of Stan as a self-centered, ridiculous person. It’s ridiculous he would cherish a wax figure of himself. It’s so egotistical that he would host a funeral for it when it died and get honestly choked up about it.

But then you learn that Stan lost his twin brother and that whole storyline doesn’t really feel like the story of a selfish, egotistical man anymore. It’s the story of a man who felt like he got his brother back again momentarily and then had to lose him all over again.

That’s an effective twist. You can’t learn about Stan’s backstory and then go back and view him the same way you did before it.

#anyways i understand now guys this show is great and super well written #stanley pines #gravity falls #gravity falls spoilers

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dan-despairing · 2 months ago

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Alright, long(ish) post time. <None of which will be new news or ideas but this is my blog and I want to blab about it>

Ford coming back very obviously brings up big and complex emotions for Stan. Emotions that he hasn't addressed or worked on between the thirty years of Mr. Mystery-ing by day and rebuilding the portal by night.

To lay things out clearly, Ford is portal-ed away in the middle of a fight that had been simmering for a decade already; Both men had their own struggles and misconceptions about how well off the other was, partially colored by their own hurt feelings about the perpetual motion machine and Stan's subsequent being kicked out. Even though they have their big blowout fight, the last thing Stan hears his brother say is "Do something, Stanley!" A desperate plea that an audience can assume equal parts haunts him and drives him to be as dedicated as he is to right this wrong.

Here I have to digress just a little to explain my interpretation of Ford and Stan given my view of the characters, their traumas and personalities. As children the Stans were mostly on equal footing in and out of their home; Both outcasts for different reasons and as the one-note bully from S2 E12 surmises they are "lucky they have each other." It's clear in that episode that they feel this sentiment to be true. As they grow up, Stanley seems to be the one who holds onto that while Ford wises up to the reality of oncoming adulthood and what his skills and intelligence can do in terms of rising above his station. (Though personally I don't view Ford as driven by status or opulence but rather learning as much as he can about everything, and status just happens to come with the territory sometimes.)

To sum the Stans up: Stanford is raised as an archetypal Golden Child, taught early that his 'faults' can be overlooked so long as he is the best of the best and the smartest. He internalizes this and eventually believes that he truly is the smartest and the most special. Smart enough to be on equal footing with a Muse and special enough to chosen by one in the first place. (Note that I'm not meaning to paint Ford as full of himself but instead showing his biggest flaw of 'arrogance' is instilled in him by a difficult childhood and is something he uses as a cope for anything he doesn't want to feel or think about / so he does not feel worthless.) He shows awareness in hindsight that he's easily drawn in by flattery, so is Stanley and for both of them it stems from their emotionally neglectful father (and though not explicitly abusive on screen...I have my thoughts about Filbrick.) Where Stanford's need for outward approval presents as overachieving and honing his greatness to get very deserved praise, Stanley's wounds show up in a much more 'clockable' way. While today we know that perfectionism and overachieving is unhealthy, it's still always going to be more palatable to outsiders if your psychological wounds present as 'Being Too Successful' instead of emotionally stunted, having scarcity mindset and being homeless for a decade.

I've said this in another post but I'll repeat it here, Stanley was a normal kid. A little troubled on account of his less than desirable parental situation, but fairly typical. He just had the misfortune of being constantly compared to excellence, both in and out of the home. A Scapegoat. His heart is bigger than his head from the beginning and throughout his childhood he's shown as acting on emotion rather than logic. He views himself and Stanford as a package deal and when that's threatened he acts before he can think. He repeats this mistake when he shoves Stanford into the portal. Both Stans become selfish in their own ways as they age, and never really quite grow up.

When Ford comes home they pick up right where they left off: Fighting. It reverts them both back to the younger, hurt versions of themselves. Stan wanted his brother back but he was hoping for a brother that had been just as doggedly yearning for reunion. He wasn't hoping to be held accountable (at least not at first, perhaps not at all.) However accountability is all Stan gets and it only serves to cut away at the already very shallow and frail sense of self worth he has. This in turn is proof to Ford that his brother has only ever done things for his own interest (destroying the perpetual motion machine so Ford will stay in Jersey, sending him into the portal for emotional recompense during a fight, bringing him back so that Ford can grovel and thank him.) and drives a further wedge between them.

Stan falls back on old coping mechanisms of attention seeking, something he likely did a lot as a troubled kid who was overlooked for a brother he was always reminded was better than him. Dipper and Mabel expressing a fondness for Ford doesn't read to him as just two kids being excited about a new cool family member, or for Dipper meeting an idol, but instead touches Stan as the kids choosing Ford. Just like Filbrick chose Ford. Just like every teacher in their hometown, and some fancy college chose Ford. He tries to hold onto normalcy by running the shop, going on his usual road-trip and telling the kids to steer clear of Ford to keep them close or 'on his side'. Stan eventually becomes that hurt, abandoned child again by lashing out and seeking outside approval to show him he has worth by running for mayor.

He probably can't even admit it to himself but the resentment he's feeling towards Ford is coming from an overwhelming guilt. When Ford doesn't thank him, and tells him that he has to leave when summer ends, it feels to Stanley like the one person who could absolve him doesn't see him as worthy. The last thirty years have been spent hoping for forgiveness or understanding, or at least to be shown that he isn't a waste by the one person whose opinion really means something to him.

Ford meanwhile copes by disregarding his emotions and throwing himself headfirst at what he deems to be the real problem at hand: Securing the rift. Holding the universe together is something he can draw up plans for, making up with his twin and delving into a lifetime of regrets is decidedly not.

Ford also regresses by projecting his younger self onto Dipper. He pries Dip away from Mabel and Stan, unintentionally but still noticeably. He perhaps regrets the years he spent bumbling around with an old boat in childhood with Stanley instead of using every moment to build toward his future. His years out of his original dimension combined with the resentment that has had forty years and a fist fight to build on has seemingly made him forget just how close he and Stanley used to be.

In Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future Ford offers to mentor Dipper, to make use of that brain of his instead of seeing him waste it with a regular high-school experience. Dipper expresses concern about leaving Mabel behind, which Ford waves off with a comment about how charismatic she is (likely hinting at how he viewed Stanley back in the day via the snippets he saw of him on TV. I don't personally believe Ford knew how badly Stan was doing back then).

Dipper says, "We've never really been apart before." And Ford answers with, "And isn't it suffocating? Can you honestly tell me you never felt like you were meant for something more?" I find this line to be another projection from Ford. Maybe during their adolescence he felt stifled by Stan or maybe the reasons listed before have convinced him that he felt that way or should have. In any case, Ford seems completely unaware of how important it is to have emotional ties to other people.(Not without good reason: See again, the being in different dimensions for thirty years + emotionally distant father + two gigantic betrayal wounds compounded with being pushed to a mental health crisis.)

Dipper is still a kid and more than that he still actively loves his sister and cherishes his bond with her. While his future is on his mind he isn't exactly chomping at the bit to completely leave her behind. Something that Ford seems to not see here as the adult is that no matter how tedious the years between childhood and adulthood appear to be, they are integral to who one becomes. So too are the people one is surrounded by in those delicate years.

Dipper needs Mabel as much as she needs him, and luckily they do both eventually realize that despite the outward forces at play.

Stan isn't the most responsible adult and since he's pretty stunted himself he doesn't always behave in the most mature ways. What he is, undoubtedly, is devoted to his family. When Mabel is broken up about getting older he offers her some words of comfort, maybe words he wanted to hear when he was young and scared about losing his brother. Maybe if someone told a teenage Stan that growing didn't mean he had to grow-up or that no matter what he'd have his brother through thick and thin, things would have ended differently all those years ago.

i have so many thoughts and feelings about Stan's big emotions and how he regressed post-Ford returning......

#gravity falls #stan pines #ford pines #dipper pines #mabel pines #long post #kind of just a ramble i feel like there's more to say as well

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anistarrose · 4 years ago

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Summary: Winters running the Mystery Shack are difficult, but two unexpected guests improve Stan’s day.

Characters: Stan Pines, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Ford Pines

Relationships: Mabel Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines

Happy Holidays, @halogalopaghost! I'm your Secret Santa, here to mash together a couple different prompts through the power of time travel (and Mabel)!

***

It doesn’t take Stan many years to learn that winter’s no good for the rural Oregon tourist business.

Granted, he can hardly blame the tourists — he has to drive on Gravity Falls roads himself, much to his disgust. Between the paved, plowed streets that always turn slick with ice where you least expect them, and the winding gravel roads that you might as well ignore when road and wilderness alike are under identical four-inch blankets of snow, he knows no gallery of fake haunted paintings or taxidermied coyote’s ass is worth the trip in these conditions.

He’s on his third winter in town, now — not counting the first, worst one he arrived at the tail end of — and if there’s a right way to run a business this time of year, he hasn’t found it yet. He always scrapes together just enough to pay his bills, thanks the occasional local who wanders over to purchase a seasonally appropriate if overpriced snow globe — but he’s lucky if he breaks even in December, and knows January through March are a lost cause before they begin. He’ll make it back within the next year, sometimes even before summer ends, but it stings to know he’s about to fail at his one goal for the next three to four months straight, and there’s nothing he can do to change it.

It might sting less if he had another way to spend these winters — if he had a good reason to formally close the Shack for a few months, like an experienced business owner making a grounded and responsible decision. But he can’t even search for Ford’s journals in this weather — he’s learned from his mistakes, his countless brushes with frostbite, throughout those cold, desperate months in the wake of the portal shutting down.

He’s useless right now, and worse, this season’s shaping up to be the bleakest yet. His usually-scammable neighbors have already lined their shelves with winter knicknacks from Mystery Shack visits past, and the bulk of Stan’s meager sales have come from shivering out-of-towners who’ve never tried to take a Pacific Northwest road trip in December before, and probably won’t be keen to try again.

What seasonal merchandise hasn’t he sold yet? Bumper stickers for miscellaneous holidays, maybe — but neither timely bumper stickers nor the usual selection of tchotchkes will convince people to visit the Shack in the first place, under these road conditions. He can’t even walk around selling merch door to door, for the same reason he can’t look for the other journals — he’d freeze to death, presuming he could make it through the snowdrifts to somewhere worth visiting in the first place. Even with snow chains on the Stanmobile’s tires and a bucket of salt in her trunk, grocery runs alone are perilous enough.

Damn it, Ford, he thinks, why couldn’t you have gone missing in Florida?

He could always do what he does best and lie, maybe — send out word that there’s free hot chocolate or something with every purchase at the Mystery Shack, and hope that people hand over their hard-earned cash before they pick up on the false advertising. He might draw in some local customers that way, and even if he loses their trust for the next few months, they always seem to forget about his cons eventually — as if he never scammed them, and they’ve never so much as heard the words caveat emptor.

He’s just about to dial the local paper’s number on the phone, hoping to flatter Toby into letting him run another ad for free, when he hears a telltale knock at the gift shop door. The bell atop that door doesn’t ring, which means that despite the hostile winds and snow they braved to get here, his visitors are still out loitering on the porch — or so Stan thinks for a moment, before it dawns on him that he doesn’t even remember unlocking the door this morning. He’d just been that pessimistic about even seeing a customer.

“Hello?” someone calls — a fairly young voice, probably approaching the tail end of puberty. “Are you there, uh…Mr. Mystery?”

“On my way!” Stan shouts, throwing on his fez and bolting for the door. His neighbors in Gravity Falls might forget and forgive a lot, but he doesn’t want to risk the wrath of a parent whose teenage kid froze to death on the local grifter’s doorstep, so he unlocks and flings open the door as fast as he can. “Welcome, travelers! Prepare to be baffled and bemused by our mind-boggling boreal mysteries, here at this last refuge at the edge of the Arctic we like to call the Cryptid Cabin!”

His visitor — no, his two visitors — both blink slowly, proving to at least be baffled, if nothing else. Both are bundled up in what Stan assumes to be several sheep worth of wool garments, lovingly knitted into sweaters, hats, and scarves.

“But you call this place the Mystery Shack,” the girl speaks up, and the boy nods.

“Yeah, and we’re nowhere near the Arctic! This is Oregon, not Alaska!”

Stan groans — the only customers he might see all week, and of course they’re teenagers. “Look, punks, business is slow these days! I’ve had a lot of time to think about a seasonal rebranding, and not a lot of chances to workshop it, alright?”

The teens’ expressions instantly soften, and the girl exclaims: “Well, you can workshop it with us!” She grabs the other kid — her brother? — by the hand, and pulls him into the gift shop.

Maybe Stan’s judged them too quickly — he’s still not thrilled to have strangers pitying him, of course, but he’ll take it over strangers mocking him any day of the week.

“Dang, you’re right,” the boy comments once inside, and face-to-face with shelves of untouched merchandise. “It really is empty in here in the winter.”

With little light coming in from the windows, and a flickering bulb overhead that will soon need replacing, the often-bustling room is now dim and eerie — aside from the junk food wrappers on the floor, which Stan hastily kicks under his desk.

“Look at all the lonely snowglobes in need of homes!” the girl pipes up, swiping a glass-encased antelabbit off the shelf and giving it a hearty shake. “Good thing I’m here to adopt this lucky little guy — how much is he?”

Stan takes a second to run the numbers — the maximum amount of money a teen would have on hand, versus what Stan needs to charge to make a profit — and replies: “Twenty-nine ninety-nine and nothing more. We don’t do sales tax here, ‘less you’re a cop.”

“Bet there’s a lot of other taxes you don’t do, either,” the boy snorts, rummaging through a shelf of hats until he unearths one with the old Murder Hut logo on it. “Aha! Now here’s a collector’s item!”

“Oh, did you come here before the rebrand and forget to grab a souvenir?” Stan asks. He doesn’t remember these two, but it’s been a couple years since he painted over the last Murder Hut sign — and they do seem pretty familiar with the building, not to mention Stan’s whole… business model.

“Oh, uh, that’s a funny story, actually! Real funny!” the boy stammers with a whole lot more trepidation than the topic should’ve warranted, and looks to his sister for help.

Sure enough, she steps in. “We lived here for a while — in Gravity Falls, I mean! Not here in the Shack, obviously — wouldn’t that be ridiculous, if we lived in your house for months without you knowing? Could you imagine —”

“That is to say, we still visit sometimes!” the boy supplies. His eyes are a whole lot more fixated on the snowglobes than with anything in Stan’s general direction. “You probably don’t remember us — we weren’t in town for very long, or anything…”

Stan sighs. They’re lying, obviously — but hey, there’s no cops in the Mystery Shack, and he doesn’t have a dog in whatever fight compelled the duo to spew this bullshit. He’ll keep an eye on the cash register, of course, but these kids are tolerable company when they’re not being suspicious as hell — so if they want to invent a bad cover story for a low-stakes tourist trap visit, more power to them.

“Well, the hat’s vintage, so that’ll be double price. Twenty bucks,” he announces matter-of-factly, and the boy groans — but there’s a smile behind it, like he’d expected this and now he’s just playing along. If there’s one thing Stan’s willing to believe, it’s that these kids have been to the Mystery Shack before.

“You’re a highway robber, old man, and I’m the coward who’s gonna let you get away with it,” the boy declares, and Stan can’t help but laugh. The kid reaches under several layers of sweaters to pull out a wallet, with a blue pine tree embroidered on, and miscellaneous charms of fantasy characters hanging off a chain on the side. Stan doesn’t recognize any of them, but they still tug at his heartstrings, because he can tell they’re the exact kind of nerdy references Ford would love.

He does take note of the pine tree design, though — it’s generic enough that slapping it on some shirts and hats wouldn’t quite be plagiarism, and in Stan’s eyes, those are always the best souvenir designs.

The kids put their money forward, hovering awkwardly as Stan rings up their items — the girl busies herself attacking a loose string on her brother’s scarf, nimble fingers tying it back in its approximate place, while the boy twiddles his thumbs and stares at the snowy, gray scene out the window. At the moment, only light flurries fill the air, but tomorrow night promises a blizzard… and Stan, grump with a soft side that he is, can’t help but hope that if these kids are really on vacation, then they aren’t planning to drive anywhere tonight.

With it being winter, and him running the business that he does, he doesn’t have much charity to give — but, if he’s going to play along with his customers’ little lie, then he should probably at least bring up the topic.

“You’re not hittin’ the road any time soon, are you?” He makes eye contact only with the green illustrated presidents in his hands, so not to come across as overly invested. “Weather forecast says tonight’s gonna be a doozy.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us?” the girl coos, because apparently both parties here are damn good at picking up on each other’s lies. “That’s so sweet — but you don’t have to be! Our great uncle’s waiting for us in town, and he’ll… well, let’s just say he’s planning to bring us back home before the blizzard hits.”

“He’s, uh — he lived here back in the seventies, so he knows what he’s doing,” the boy adds. “On the roads, that is. Mostly.”

“Well, you two take care,” Stan tells them, hastily adding on: “So you can come back when the weather isn’t terrible and buy more keychains, that is.”

“Oh, we will.” The boy grins, sharing a conspiratorial glance with his sister. “Maybe don’t count on it being next year — or the year after that, even — but you can count on it.”

“Well, uh…” Stan stops himself, resisting the impulse to divulge things he really shouldn’t. “You just shouldn’t count on me running this place forever. Be sure to get your novelty cryptid pins while they’re hot, y’know.”

He’s never really wondered what he’ll do with the Shack when he gets Ford back — and yes, he has to believe that statement deserves a when, not an if — but he figures the Shack’s fate will depend more on Ford’s own whims. If reality lands somewhere between the nightmares of Ford wanting him gone and the fantasies of finally sailing around the world, if Ford doesn’t hate him but still wants to spend more time with Important Science Experiments than with his brother, then Stan could see himself returning to a mediocre life in his moderately successful tourist trap… but with the search for the journals still coming up empty, Stan can only try not to think about the future, and accept that he’ll just cross — or burn — that bridge when he comes to it.

“Okay, Mr. Mystery,” the girl suddenly declares with a tone that frankly reminds Stan of his mother, “you look like you could use a pick-me-up!”

“What?” It’s starting to freak Stan out how well she can read him, and there’s no telling whether it’s just a sharp intuition, or something significantly more Gravity Falls-y. “If I look tired, kid, it’s because it’s December in Oregon, I haven’t seen the sun in a week, and I am tired. Only pick-me-up I need is for you to get out of my hair, and let me go back into hibernation like nature intended.”

“Okay, but counterpoint: you hear us out,” the boy insists. “We’ve got a little something up our sleeve to really light up your winter —” He winks at his sister. “Don’t we?”

“You bet we do!” She pulls a bag of marshmallows out of not her sleeve, but her backpack, and grins. “Prepare to be amazed and astounded by the natural wonders of this town, and also the miracle that is processed sugar and gelatin!”

“Are you imitating my sales pitches?” Stan asks, dumbfounded. “And do you carry those on you at all times?”

“In winter in Gravity Falls, I do!” the girl replies, already heading for the exit with her brother. “C’mon! If this doesn’t put a smile on your face, nothing will!”

“We all know you’ve got time to spare, Stan,” the boy adds, cracking open the door. “Get a move on!”

“Spare time doesn’t mean I’ve got spare limbs to lose to frostbite,” Stan grumbles, but follows them anyway. There’s something captivating about these little punks — not so much this mysterious phenomenon they’re trying to sell him on, as if they could really out-charlatan Mr. Mystery himself, but rather the way they’re not put off by his frigid facade. They see right through him, showering him in alternating kindness and acerbic wit.

Stan can’t help but wonder if their uncle’s kind of like him — tired, bitter, and pretending to be indifferent, but secretly soft on the inside, like a marshmallow that’s burnt on the surface but melted within. It would explain why they’re so good at calling him on his shit — but then again, Stan and this mystery guy can’t be too alike, because if Stan had a niece and nephew like these two, he’s sure he’d be living his life a whole lot differently.

He exits the Shack, and all his questions are immediately replaced with new ones when he sees the teens just hurling marshmallows towards the edge of the woods. The wind’s in their favor, so some of those sugary little fuckers fly far.

“Okay, so I’ve already got a couple concerns,” Stan tells them, shivering. “First off, what the hell?”

“It might take a couple minutes before one shows up,” the girl admits, as if it’s a totally reasonable stand-alone explanation for whatever the hell’s going on here. With about a third of the marshmallows now blending into the snow on Stan’s lawn, she and her brother stop with the throwing, though they still hold onto the bag. “Our grunkle theorized that they move slower in winter, to save energy — oh wait, never mind! Here comes one now!”

“Sorry, what? And where?” Stan squints out into the woods, terrified to lay his eyes upon a woodland monster these kids just lured to his doorstep — but all he sees, at first, are a few wisps of smoke dispersing in the wind above the trees. He’s not even convinced it’s smoke, really, because these aren’t the right conditions for a fire — but to his surprise, he glimpses an orange light within the woods, glowing steadily brighter until the trees and bushes around it are all casting faint shadows.

When it steps into the clearing, Stan realizes he has seen something like it before, albeit only from the overcautious distance he tries to keep from all anomalies. It’s an otherwise normal campfire perched on wooden, spiderlike legs, and it melts a path in the snow as it trots forwards, then lowers itself to the ground to absorb the first of a dozen marshmallows.

It lets out a satisfied little sound — a low, steady crackle that sounds almost like a purr — then scampers up to the next morsel of food to repeat the process.

“It’s called a Scampfire!” the girl explains, beaming. “There’s a bunch of them out in the woods, and they’ll always wander over if you leave out enough campfire food — especially sugary stuff! Isn’t that cute?”

“Our great uncle figured out this amazing trick when he used to live here, and he passed it down to us!” the boy adds, practically bouncing up and down in place. “If you leave them a trail of food, they’ll follow you around until you run out — which means they can clear your driveway, warm your hands, even save your car if you drive into a snowbank! Or help you make s’mores, of course.”

“Our grunkle says he even skipped paying his heating bill a couple winters,” the girl adds with a grin, “but I dunno if we can recommend that in good conscience.”

As the scampfire draws a closer, continuing to purr as it consumes more of the sugary trail, the boy slaps a handful of marshmallows into Stan’s palm. “Give it a try!”

Stan’s not thrilled about bringing a fire onto the wooden porch attached to his wooden house, even as cute as said fire is, so instead he tosses his ammunition at something much more disposable — the golf cart, since if this one croaks, he can always just steal another from the insufferable rich family up on the hill. His aim isn’t great — he blames his cold fingers — but exactly one marshmallow lands right in the cart’s driver seat.

The scampfire breaks course from its path towards the Shack, clearing a path through the snow before it crawls into the cart, absorbing the final morsel and curling up atop crossed legs. Nothing explodes, and in fact, a few of the icicles on the awning start to melt, dripping water into the patch of bare muddy ground surrounding the cart.

“Huh,” Stan mutters. Dozens of harebrained schemes flash before his eyes — if he could find a slingshot, or even better, some kind of cannon to mount on the cart’s front hood, then he’s sure that with practice, he could entice some scampfires to clear a path through any snowdrift…

But no matter his exact solution, it’s a way to get into town consistently. He can finally go door-to-door selling knickknacks, instead of sitting in the gift shop every day and hoping some poor soul would get bored enough to brave the roads and visit. He can actually work out a way to line his pockets even in the winter, instead of constantly waking up from nightmares about getting foreclosed on —

“See? They get food, and we don’t freeze — classic mutualistic symbiotic relationship!” the boy declares, and his sister gently socks him in the arm.

“Nerd!”

“Hey, you knew that too! We’re in the same biology class!”

It’s familiar, but the kind of familiarity that Stan doesn’t treasure anymore. It’s more like the kind that he hides in the basement or in boarded-up rooms whenever he can, and grins and bears with a heavy heart when he can’t, like every time he looks in the mirror or hears someone call him Stanford. He comes so close to asking these teens if they’re twins, because he figures the answer can’t be worse than wondering — but the question dies in his throat, and he tells himself it’s for the best.

“Is your uncle who invented this trick the same one who’s waiting in town for you?” he asks instead.

“Yep!” replies the girl. “He probably won’t get worried about us for like, ten or fifteen more minutes, though — I’m sure he’s got his nose buried deep in a book right now.”

“Do me a favor and let him know he’s a lifesaver,” Stan says. “Also tell him I’m glad he moved out, because he sounds a little too smart to fall for the fake monster wares that I peddle.”

The kids exchange a look that Stan can’t even hope to comprehend, though he’s damn sure it’s worth a thousand words to the two of them. Twins or not, he’s getting an “inseparable” kind of vibe from these two, that’s for sure.

“I’m not sure he’d like the Shack at first,” the brother muses, “but I’ve got a hunch it would grow on him.”

“He does like cryptids — sometimes even fake ones!” the sister chimes in. “Oh, shoot — we still need to grab a souvenir for him! I knew we were forgetting something!”

“Huh.” Stan throws a few more marshmallows in the direction of the woods, and the scampfire stumbles off the cart before trotting along on its merry way back to the forest. “I can get you something, no problem — I don’t call this place a gift shop for nothing, y’know. But for the love of Paul Bunyan, let’s talk about it inside.”

He’s not great at mental math, but he doesn’t have to be to know he owes a lot to these teens and the mysterious uncle he might never meet. Hell, even forgetting the business perspective — he can actually look for the journals in winter without risking frostbite, if he gets one of his fiery neighbors to tag along. Even if he finds nothing, even if he only winds up with more failures to contend with, he’d rather rule out locations than be useless to Ford for months at a time.

None of this weird family that he might never see again, these three benevolent strangers that he can only put two faces to, could possibly know how much they’ve just changed for him — and he can’t tell them, as much as his oversized heart promises he can trust these snarky kids who remind him so much of himself. But he does owe them, so when he reenters the gift shop, he goes straight for a seldom-opened and never-advertised box of knickknacks that he has no intention of charging them for. It’s got the dimensions of only about two side-by-side shoeboxes, so he lifts it onto the counter with hardly a grunt, and opens it up.

“Got lots of goodies in here — mostly stuff that I made or, ahem, acquired in bulk, so they never quite sold out by the time everyone and their mother in town had already bought their own. Take a gander.”

He knows that gander will reveal some Murder Hut-branded shirts with the words written on in marker, plastic six-sided dice with a different cryptids pictured on each side, cheap whistles purported to attract Bigfoot, cheap flashlights once advertised for attracting Mothman, exactly three cool rocks that Stan found in the woods… and the pièce de résistance, a little wooden Mystery Shack-shaped music box, which chirps out a pleasant tune when Stan flips up the roof. That last one’s a rare knickknack that Stan really put effort into personally crafting, back at the height of last winter’s monotony, through cannibalizing parts of premade music boxes and sticking them into brand-new shapes — but he couldn’t sell them for enough to be worth the cost of making more, and could never sell this last one at all.

“Oh, wow!” the girl gasps, clearly delighted. “How can I even choose between —”

“No, take it all. It’s on the house — but don’t you dare tell anyone about this, you hear me? I’ll know if you blab, ‘cause people will start asking me if they can get free crap, too, and I don’t wanna hear a word of that nonsense.”

“Free stuff at the Mystery Shack?” The boy narrows his eyes. “Are you feeling okay, old man?”

“Kid, stuff only goes in the Free Bullshit Box when I can’t sell it anyway.” Stan crosses his arms with a huff, even though he’s technically telling the truth. “The only catch is take it before I change my mind.”

A sudden spark of recognition in the brother’s eyes morphs into a grin on his face, and he nods. “Oh, we will. Don’t worry.”

“I think our grunkle will love this! Especially the dice,” the sister adds. “Hey, maybe we could give all this to him piece by piece for Hanukkah! There’s enough here for a new surprise every night!”

“Whoa, there is! Man, the look on his face the first time we bring out a Bigfoot whistle is gonna be great —” The boys eyes dart to the watch on his wrist, and he coughs into his hand. “But we should probably get a move on, huh? Don’t want to get caught in, y’know, the blizzard tonight.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Stan returns the lid and hands the box over. “You, uh, need a ride back to town? ‘Cause being a man of mystery and all, I know this neat trick to clear a whole road with just a bag full of marshmallows —”

The kids both start cackling, so hard that the box almost escapes the girl’s hands, and Stan laughs with them — not because he thought his joke was that funny, but because the kids’ laughter is absolutely priceless. The isolation’s definitely getting to his head and his heart, but he’ll take whatever reprieve he can get.

“I think we’ll manage on our own,” the boy finally wheezes out, “but thanks for the offer, Mr. Mystery. Thanks for everything, really.”

“See you later!” his sister adds as they leave. “Don’t let the feral gnomes bite!”

“You take care, too,” Stan replies, not nearly as loud — but he figures that the kids can read his lips. They can read so much about him, and know so much about the town, that he’s honestly a hair’s breadth away from assuming they’re two more anomalies from the woods themselves, just in more recognizable shapes than most…

Though if Stan’s honestly considering that theory, then more of Ford must’ve rubbed off on him than he likes to think about — which is to say, it’s a good a reason as any to stop thinking about it. What or whoever they were, the duo were actually pretty tolerable for teenagers, and Stan’s pretty sure they didn’t put a curse or whatever magic mumbo jumbo on him — because if they could manage that, they could definitely tell some less conspicuous lies, right?

He kinda likes the idea of one goddamn supernatural force in this town that’s actually benevolent, actually watching his back when his mood’s at its bleakest, and coming to his rescue with — no, he’s dropping that train of thought. No baseless hoping, just letting himself down easy before he gets up.

It does occur to him, several minutes after the gift shop door swings closed, that Hanukkah has already come and gone this year. Which probably just means the kids are prepared to hide that box for another twelve months… but maybe, when Stan finds the other journals, he’ll double-check for entries on helpful teenage cryptids who can’t lie. Just to be sure.

***

Mabel, Dipper, and Ford barrel into the living room so suddenly that Stan almost drops his mug of hot chocolate. They’re all covered in a ridiculous amount of snow, considering how briefly they were just outside, and Ford looks awfully delighted for someone whose glasses are someone whose glasses have just turned opaque with fog.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel shouts. The cardboard box in her arms has seen better days, but she’s cradling it like an infant. “You’ll never guess when we just were!”

Dipper points a gloved finger in the air. “You mean, when we just — oh wait, did you already —”

“Yeah, I beat you to it this time!” Mabel pumps her fist. “Anyways, Grunkle Stan — you’ll never guess who we just visited!”

#gravity falls #stanley pines #mabel pines #dipper pines #stanford pines #gravity falls secret santa 2020 #rosalia writes fic

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nikxation · 4 years ago

Text

A Close Encounter

Summary:

All Stan knows is that, if you see huge red eyes staring at you from the brush, look away, turn around, and run as fast if you can, assuming it’s not already too late.

So, when he finds himself face to face with a creature easily three times his size with glowing red eyes, he realizes he may be in one of those “too late” kinds of situations.

Notes:

Written for @buggy-mars for the 2020 Secret Santa exchange! You wanted mullet Stan angst, so here ya go! Hope you enjoy! And Happy Holidays!

Find it here on AO3.

Beware of glowing red eyes in the woods.

It’s one of the first things Stan learns when he starts making his presence more known around the small town of Gravity Falls, though he learns it mostly through indirect means (because while Ford had been here for over a decade, Stan has barely been here a month, and asking questions might draw a certain amount of suspicion and scrutiny that he can’t afford).

Most people would call it eavesdropping, but he likes to think of it as “directed listening” instead.

It’s hushed, frightened whispers in the back booth of the diner between two buff-looking guys holding steaming cups of coffee in shaking hands.

It’s the short exchange of words between two woodsmen as they pass each other in the street, one warning the other away from a certain area of the forest for the day.

It’s a woman sending her kids to go play and warning them to be careful even as they roll their eyes and run off, young and invincible against the dangers of the world.

Of all the things he’s heard, the red eyes seem to be the thing that everyone, without exception, knows to steer clear of at all costs.

Something about visions of nightmares or poisonous quills or just pure, unadulterated terror, he’s not sure. They don’t talk about it in as many words, circling the topic like two boxers in the ring, sizing one another up, neither willing to make the first move, to say the wrong thing, to admit too much. They dance around it, never getting close enough to give him any solid answers before jumping to another subject altogether.

All he knows is that, if you see huge red eyes staring at you from the brush, look away, turn around, and run as fast if you can, assuming it’s not already too late.

So, when he finds himself face to face with a creature easily three times his size with glowing red eyes, he realizes he may be in one of those “too late” kinds of situations.

~ ~ ~

The sleet is coming down hard as Stan trudges through the melting snow, shovel in one hand and worn map in the other as he aims towards another area of the woods that he hasn’t already scribbled out in pencil. The sun is finding its way down towards the treeline, which means he doesn’t have a lot of time today before it gets too dark to be able to effectively hunt for the other journals. Plus, he has more tours to prep for tomorrow, so he’ll have to make sure he leaves himself enough time to get everything set up again for that. But he plans to take advantage of whatever dying rays of sunlight he can.

He feels dirty, zipped up tight in one of Ford’s jackets that fits him a little too tight in the arms, one he found in some back closet when he finally started going through the man’s things. But there’s only so much he can do in a worn-out hoodie in this weather, and he has more important things to worry about than how wrong it feels to be wearing his missing (not dead) brother’s clothes.

At least his hair is keeping his neck warm, so this god-awful hairstyle is finally good for something other than looking terrible.

He looks down at the map again, glancing back up to see if he can find some kind of marker he should have left for himself to know where he left off, whether it be a slash in some tree bark or a pile of rocks in the snow. Based on the map, he should be getting close to something, but at this rate, the trees are starting to thin out as he makes his way into more rocky and mountainous terrain, so he can’t quite remember what he should be looking for.

A glance back down at the map, and he realizes that the sleet has begun to smear the ink and graphite on the page. He curses under his breath, shoves it into his pocket, and looks around frantically, spotting a shadow in a rocky face that might just be a cave that he can duck into for a moment, long enough to get out of the wet cold for a moment and reorient himself to his surroundings.

He was right in assuming it was a cave, finding himself in a small dark cavern that doesn’t seem to go more than a few yards deep and a few feet above his head. He doesn’t bother getting out his flashlight to check that assumption; at the mouth of the cave, he gets enough light to see what he needs to see, and he needs to save as much battery power as he can.

He also doesn’t plan to stay long.

It’s quiet save for the pitter-patter of the sleet on the hard ground and the sound of his own breathing echoing around the rock walls.

The map is a bit soggy when he pulls it back out, and he tries his best to hold it as gently as possible to stop it from ripping or falling apart on him. He knows he could get back to the house from here without it, but it’s his only record of his search, and he’d hate to have to start from scratch. Which is why when one of the corners flops down and tears itself, he curses again, this time a bit more forcefully as he tries to hold the paper back together, willing it to not get any worse.

It’s at that exact moment that something behind him shifts, the sound of scratching on the rock followed by a low, animalistic growl that makes the hairs on his neck stand completely upright, his whole body going rigid.

The possibility occurs to him that maybe the cave was deeper than he thought it was, or that maybe, just maybe, there was something big in the way stopping him from seeing all the way back.

It also occurs to him that maybe it wasn’t his own breathing that he had been hearing.

His whole body is frozen stiff as he waits to see what happens next, too afraid to turn around, too afraid to make a run for it, trapped in place like a deer in headlights.

He hears the thing stand, claws scraping against the stone ground as it does, footsteps heavy as it slowly moves forward, closer to him.

He should run. He should really run. Running would be a very good idea.

There must be a disconnect somewhere in his brain because no matter how hard he begs his legs to run, they stand frozen in place, trapping him in the mouth of this cave as whatever is behind him lumbers closer and closer with each breath.

And then it stops, everything falling deathly silent again, and he can all but feel the thing standing behind him, and everything in him is screaming to get the hell out of there right now, but he still can’t move.

Stan doesn’t know how long he stands there waiting, probably only a handful of seconds if he had to guess, even if it feels like an eternity. He swallows slowly, his heart slamming in his chest, in his ears, as he finally gains enough control of himself to turn, ever so slowly to see what exactly he’s dealing with here.

Two red eyes look down on him from scarcely a few feet away, and that’s all his brain can register outside of “big” and “huge teeth” and “run goddamnit run!”. But he still can’t move, and the thing lets out another low growl, this one much more pointed than the last, a clear warning. But his bones are somewhere between Jell-o and stone right now, his throat tight like he’s trying not to breathe even though the thing is looking right at him and it’s too late you should have run when you had the chance—

Its eyes flash, the sudden shift from burning red to bright yellow jolting him like a bucket of cold water to the face, and he has no idea what to make of it, and he’s still stuck in place right in front of this thing that’s making no moves towards him, his eyes locked on it like he’s waiting to see a reaction from it, waiting for it to make the first move.

And then, the yellow fades, the eyes returning to that same unnatural red, and he gets the vague feeling that something happened, he’s just not sure what, as the thing takes a small step back from him and just… stares.

It’s something of a stand-off, and he gets the impression that, whatever it just tried with the little glowing eyes trick didn’t quite work the way it expected. That this thing that could kill him with one lazy swipe of its arm (leg? Hand? Paw? What the heck even is this thing?) has yet to make an aggressive move against him for whatever reason and has done nothing but stare at him, and he has no idea what to do with that.

And this, whatever this is, feels fundamentally different than even a few seconds ago. And he’s not sure how that even makes sense given that he’s dealing with some hulking creature and not anything remotely human or rational. And yet, he swears the thing went from trying to intimidate him to… studying him? Like it’s reassessing how to handle him?

He must be losing his damn mind.

The thing regards him for another excruciatingly long moment before breathing out what sounds suspiciously like a hmph and then taking a step towards him. He braces, arms coming up, his legs still unhelpfully locked into place as he expects the attack to finally come. And the thing pauses, its hackles momentarily raising and a quiet growl rumbling in its throat for barely a second before it settles, pushes past him and…

Leaves.

It just… leaves.

In the dying sunlight and falling sleet, Stan gets his first full glimpse of the massive creature as it climbs free of the cave and stretches back out, easily towering over the cave entrance by many feet. Its whole body is covered in course hair that almost resembles quills, mushrooms of some sort growing from its back and shoulders. It stands up on its two hind feet (its claws are almost as long as his arm holy shit), seems to finish stretching itself out, drops back to all fours, and then dashes off into the woods and disappears into the darkness.

It takes him a minute to fully process what happened, for the adrenaline coursing through him to finally die out and the weight of the fear and relief to settle in. It’s enough to make his legs finally give out from under him as he sinks to the hard stone floor, the reality of how close he was to death worming its way into his bones like an old forgotten friend.

And yet…

A strained laugh breaks free from his throat, the sound oddly choked as he leans back against the rock wall behind him, his chest aching something fierce.

He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he just had an encounter with the creature the entire town is afraid of, and he made it out unscathed. He’s sure of it, in the same way that he’s sure his brother is alive somewhere, an unquestionable kind of feeling deep in his bones that’s the only real thing he has any faith in anymore. He knows that, somehow, he got lucky, and that thing let him be for whatever reason. He doesn’t know why or how, or what the yellow glowing eyes thing was or why it seemed to not really care about him after that (then it took a step back, so was it afraid of him? No that’s not possible, why would it be afraid of him?).

He sits there a while, lost in his own head, wondering what exactly he’s missing, why the entire town is afraid of something that ultimately decided to leave him alone. Wondering whether it was luck or something else entirely.

He doesn’t have an answer.

He’ll probably never have one, if he’s being honest with himself.

It’s well after dark by the time he musters enough energy to stumble back to the empty house that isn’t his, peel off the soggy coat that doesn’t fit him right, climb into his makeshift bed on the couch, and fall into a restless sleep to the sound of the heavy tapping of sleet on the windowpane.

#pinesbrosfallswrites #stan pines #mullet stan #gravity falls secret santa 2020

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thereareeyesinsidethetrees · 2 years ago

Note

If Ford thought about it for long enough after the fact, he supposes that should have seen it coming from a mile away.

Gravity Falls was always a quiet town on the surface. You'd never think something was amiss, with the way (most of) its citizens acted cheerful and welcoming. Folding their laundry, grabbing drinks, running their errands, you'd never assume each and everyone of them lived through hell a year ago. They were good actors that way. It could almost be seen as... safe.

But as Stanford has learned over the years, a lack of excitement did not mean he was in the clear.

A normal day this noon was going to be, and Ford was set on this notion. He had been sent into town to purchase groceries, but alone at the display of Stanley's plain laziness. While he was lounging in his personal armchair and watching old black-and-white reruns, Ford was encouraged to visit civilization alone. He only agreed due to his budgeting freedom, because Stan seemed to have forgotten Ford needed restraint when it came to those places. All those years with nothing, now with everything. (A foolish mistake, Stan would learn.)

Gravity Falls Grocery Store is even quieter than the street it was on. Large and untouched, one could roll their shopping cart through the colorful aisles with eyes closed, and would bump into no one. Ford doesn't roll, of course, but he does walk fast. The sooner he leaves, the sooner he can head to Greasy's Diner, to pick up a sweet pie for their dinner tonight. Ford fills up his shopping cart nicely, so no one else will need to head to this place for a good month or so. The freshest of fruit, the crispest of boxes, he can't help but pick those. He had an eye for those things.

As Ford almost rounds off his trip by scanning the candy aisle for a nice pack of jelly beans, his day takes a slight turn. This neon aisle is nestled in the middle of the rest, right by the eight cash registers. Only two of them are on duty during noon—a pair of elderly teenagers, with matching green uniforms and teenage atmospheres. The left is a tall blond boy who looks to be more than interested with his co-worker, while the right is a shorter girl with all of the heat in her face.

"Yep, just moved to town," the cashier on the right, brushing her blue-streaked brown hair aside, says. "My mom really wanted the 'chill vibes' of towns stuck in the middle of nowhere."

The cashier on the left chuckles, casually leaning forward over his station's conveyor belt. His voice is somewhat familiar to Ford, but it's what he's saying is the thing that gets him to pause. "Yeah, this place is anything but chill. Like, have you seen the place? One time, some really huge guy named Pubetor broke into our school and wanted to fight the principal. It was wild. And don't even get me started on last summer, because that? Could've been the best summer ever, if it weren't for the end."

Ford's hand rests lightly on the largest pack of The Fish's Fish-Shaped Jelly Beans he found in his area. He isn't sure why he's so hesitant to leave—Weirdmageddon was an understandable event to warn a newcomer about. Maybe it was how the subject had been worded. The apocalypse was not to be taken lightly, but teenagers took many things that shouldn't be light as light. It can be ignored.

Ford shoves the jelly beans into his cart and stands just far enough to be hidden from the pair. "Like, it was bad," Blond Boy is saying. "The sky exploded, my friends got turned to stone, I turned to stone, the whole town got turned to stone—it was a lotta stone. We're not even supposed to talk about it."

"Yikes," Blue Streak winces. "Now I get why my mom wanted to be here so bad. So you're just supposed to… keep living? Pretend it never happened?"

"Yep," Blond Boy confirms, nestling back into his stiff chair once more. "Except for the dudes who saved us and stuff, we just think it never happened. Don't tell anyone I told you, though. It's stupid law or something."

"Got it," Blue Streak says, also turning back to her post. Neither of them say any more.

He isn't panicking. Of course he isn't. This is stupid. Under a quarter of his age, making him question his entire sense of self. This is stupid. Ignore it, Stanford.

As silently as he can, Ford leaves the aisle. Looking straight down into his filled cart, as if revising everything he has in store. He glances up so he doesn't crash—Blond Boy's eyes flicker in recognition, and Blue Streak keeps her attention on an open magazine. As Ford looks closer at Blond Boy's name tag, it reads the name Lee.

"Mr. Pines!" Lee says a little too loudly, startling his co-worker off her seat. "We were definitely not breaking the law just now. How's things been with the brain, dude?"

Ford tries not to flinch in confusion at the sad cover-up. He always forgets that everyone in town knew about Stan's sacrifice, but not about who made it happen. "Stanley is doing well. I'm assuming you've mixed us up again?"

Lee begins to scan the items placed on the conveyor belt as he continues talking. "Riiiiiight. Sorry… Doctor? That's you."

"Yes," Ford replies rather stiffly. "I'm the other twin."

"Dang. Sorry about that, doctor dude." Though the teens are separated by both two conveyor belts and Ford's cart, Lee whispers to Blue Streak conspiratorially. "This's one of the dudes who saved us and stuff I talked about."

The girl nods in little awe. Ford pretends not to hear that.

The process is rather quick, but only because of Ford's mind thinking back to two minutes ago. Law? It sounded like the town had a mutual agreement to just… pretend last summer never occurred. But that was absurd! Ford must not have heard all of the context. Maybe the boy meant another law, one obscure and only mentioned to impress the dyed haired girl. It had to be, because if they all really did agree to…

"93.78," Lee says with slightly gritted teeth, like he's had to repeat it multiple times.

Ford almost forgets to mutter a thank you before walking away. He shakes his head of the alarming thoughts, swiftly taking the three bags to hook upon his arms. He doesn't see Lee or the dyed hair girl waving him goodbye, or what they start to whisper excitedly when he leaves through the automatic doors. The sheer concern of it all has clouded his mind completely.

Ford could not be crazy. He didn't spend forty-two years with that eye lurking over his shoulder for his home to dismiss it like a sham.

heheheh. I know exactly where it's gonna go too lol. if you wanna add anything/have criticism/anything of comment I'd like to hear it. this is the Very First Draft. :}

Gotta say, you really know how to build anticipation!

I like that Ford sort of spaces out. Not entirely sure why- just a little thing I like seeing, I suppose. Of course, there’s a lot here that I like, but I’m not great with words. I think it’s pretty good so far!

Also, question: did everyone decide not to tell specifically Stan and Ford about the law? Because- wow, Mayor Tyler really is the worst at decision making isn’t he

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orangeoctopi7 · 4 years ago

Text

Spiderstan AU Chapter 12

RESEARCH

No one was in a good mood the next morning. Stan was still nursing a huge headache as he recovered from the last bits of Gremloblin neurotoxin. Ford was still cross with Stan for endangering himself and Fiddleford the previous day, as well as a bit distracted thinking about what Bill could possibly be sending him. And poor Fiddleford had obviously not slept a wink last night, although whether that was due to discomfort from the broken arm or anxiety after the Gremloblin attack was unclear.

“Are either of you feeling up to retrieving our supplies?” Ford asked as they all poked at a breakfast of instant oatmeal.

“No.” Stan grumbled into his bowl, pinching the bridge of his nose, as though he could draw the tension out from behind his eyes.

“...Fiddleford?” Ford asked when his friend didn’t respond. The inventor looked up with a start.

“Wh-what?” he reacted as though someone had just threatened him.

“I just want to know if you’re feeling up to going back up the hill and retrieving the supplies we had to leave behind.”

McGucket fidgeted with the sling that was holding his broken arm in place. “N-n-no, no I don’t think so.”

Ford frowned with concern. “Alright. I should be able to manage on my own with the amulet of levitation. Stanley, could you at least take Fiddleford to the hospital, so you can get a professional to set it and provide a proper cast?”

“Waste of money, if y’ask me.” Stan grunted.

“I didn’t ask you.” Ford hissed. “Fiddleford, I suppose it’s your own choice whether you want to go see a doctor or not.”

“No! I’m not crazy! I’m not seein’ no shrink!” his friend snapped.

“...I meant for your arm.” Stanford clarified, after a moment of stunned silence.

“...Oh. R-right…. Yeah… r-reckon I oughta…”

“Look, buddy, if you don’t wanna go to the hospital, no judgement here.” Stan assured the inventor. “And if you do wanna go, I’ll drive ya, just don’t expect me to come in with you.”

“They don’t charge you for sitting in the waiting room, Stan.” Ford rolled his eyes.

“No, but if I ask for a cup of water, they’d probably add it to your bill.” Stan countered.

Ford stood and grabbed his coat, along with a small turquoise stone set in a brass broach. “Well, you two work out what you want to do. I’m going to go retrieve our things.”

“Try not to get yourself killed while you’re off on your own, ok?” Stan called after him as he left.

“I’ll be fine, mom!”

Stan and McGucket just sat chewing their oatmeal for another moment or two before either of them spoke again.

“So, uh, just to be clear, did you want me to drive you to the hospital, or…?”

“Oh, I reckon I should go.” McGucket nodded, more confident this time. “Mainly ‘cuz this make-shift cast an’ sling Stanford made fer me ain’t ‘xactly comfer’ble. A professional one’ll prob’ly be better protection, too.”

“Alright, we’ll go in a minute, just lemme finish eating.”

“While we’re out, I think we oughta talk ‘bout Stanford’s, uh, mysterious friend.”

Stan grimaced. “Yeah. I think that thing was here again last night. I was too out of it to go check, though.”

“Does it show up every night?” McGucket asked anxiously.

“Nah, I only felt it a few times while you were gone.” Stan informed him. “And two of those were during the day. I dunno what that thing’s deal is.”

“That’s ‘xactly why we gotta learn more ‘bout it.” the inventor. “It don’t seem like Ford’s gonna be very forthcoming with information, so we’ll have to start askin’ around the town.”

“How do we do that in a way that, y’know, doesn’t make people think we’re crazy?”

Fiddleford flinched at Stan’s words, and he needed a few seconds to regain his composure.

“Like I said before, lots’a Native American artefacts round the valley have that one-eyed triangle on it. I’m sure if’n we just ask people if they know what it is or where it comes from, act like we’re jus’ interested in the history, that won’t turn no heads.”

“Yeah, cuz I’m sure people will believe a guy like me is just interested in history.”

“Why not? Nobody here knows you ‘cept maybe as Ford’s brother, if they don’t just mistake you for ‘im outright. It ain’t that hard to believe.”

Stan opened his mouth to argue, but Fiddleford had a point. Maybe this would work.

* * *

After dropping Fiddleford off at the hospital, Stan started asking around about the yellow triangle thing. While most folks at least recognized the symbol when Stan drew it, no one really knew where it came from or what it was, other than something associated with the illuminati. Nobody knew about its connections to local Native American folklore. Stan supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised, it wasn’t like he expected the hospital receptionist to be an expert on Native American history.

Thankfully, Fiddleford’s checkup didn’t take too long. Stan had just wrapped up a conversation with an old farmer when the inventor stepped back into the waiting room, wearing a new cast.

“Any luck?” McGucket asked as they climbed back into Stan’s car.

“No. Shockingly, none of these yokels know anything about our mysterious visitor.”

“Hmmm, I reckon we’ll have better luck researchin’ at the library.”

Stan groaned loudly.

“What’ve you got against libraries?” Fiddleford asked, like an insult to the library was as bad as a personal insult.

“Nothin’, libraries are great, they’re some place I can go for air conditioning or heating and just sit around for a few hours without raisin’ a fuss. What I ain’t a fan of is researching.”

Fiddleford chuckled and shook his head. “Well, lucky for you I’m plenty experienced in that department. S’pose you could chat with the librarians while I do the book research.

The library was nearly empty, considering it was the middle of the day on a Wednesday. Of course, that meant the librarians weren’t too preoccupied to answer some questions. One helped Fiddleford search the catalog for books on the local tribes’ history and folklore, while the other talked to Stan.

“Ah yes, you see a lot of this figure in ancient art.” The librarian nodded. “Many people erroneously assume it’s a Freemason or illuminati symbol, but it actually becomes much less common after European contact.”

“Why’s that?” Stan asked.

“Hmm, I’ll admit I don’t know. We haven’t got access to any recordings of local oral tradition. Although I’ve heard many Native American communities are starting to tape that sort of thing. If you really want to know the original story behind that symbol, you should go to the original source!”

“Yeah, cuz I’m sure they’re eager to share the story with some random white guy.” Stan rolled his eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure as long as you’re respectful, they’d just be happy someone is taking an interest. Warm Springs Reservation is only about an hour and a half drive from here, they’re a confederation of Tenino, Wasco, and Paiute tribes. They have a museum, you should go pay them a visit.”

Respectful wasn’t usually in Stan’s vocabulary, but he supposed this case was an exception.

Seeing as the librarian didn’t have much more info for Stan, he contented himself with browsing the library’s comics section while Fiddleford did his book research. The nerd took much less time than Stan had been expecting.

“This library’s collection of local Native American folklore ain’t what I’d call extensive.” Fiddleford shook his head, “I was only able to find a couple of tangential references to the thing. All I got is it’s associated with knowledge.”

“Hmph, no wonder Ford’s buddy-buddy with it.”

“What ‘bout you, did the librarian have any more info for ya?”

“Not really, but she did recommend I go visit the nearest reservation and check out their museum. Not a bad idea really, ‘snot like we’ve gotten any info from anyone else. Plus, I bet they’ve got a casino!”

“That’s not really gonna help us figure anything out.”

“No, but it’ll help me blow off steam. Besides, Ford’ll be suspicious if I suddenly wanna visit a Native American museum. I’m coverin’ my tracks.”

* * *

Thanks to Ford’s photographic memory and stopping to get directions from a passing gnome, the young researcher was able to find their gear and carry it back to Fiddleford’s truck in just a few hours. Retracing his steps brought back memories of their hike, both good and bad. That night around the campfire had been nice, talking about their plans for the future, joking with Stan… but then the next morning, he’d overhead his friends talking behind his back.

“...And while you were on vacation, he kinda implied he wasn't up here alone before you moved in. I think this has been going on for a while. Maybe even years. Did you ever notice anything weird right after you moved in?"

"Other than that creepy triangle symbol everywhere? Not really…"

Ford grit his teeth, and the levitating objects in front of him wobbled. Didn’t they trust him? Even if he couldn’t tell them about Bill, couldn’t they at least understand that he was just doing what he could to further their research? Why did they automatically assume Bill was dangerous?

“...They could have at least asked me…” The researcher muttered under his breath.

“WELL, THEY COULD HAVE, BUT WE BOTH KNOW YOU WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GIVE THEM A STRAIGHT ANSWER.”

“Bill!” Ford startled in surprise.

“HEYA SIXER, THOUGHT I’D COME KEEP YOU COMPANY WHILE YOU PICK UP AFTER YOUR BROTHER’S MESS.”

“Thank you, Bill, I appreciate it.” Ford smiled gratefully.

“HEY, WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR! NOT LIKE THOSE JERKS WHO LEFT YOU TO DO THIS ON YOUR OWN.”

“Well, that’s not their fault. They’re both still recovering from the Gremloblin attack yesterday.”

“SO, WHAT’S EATIN’ YA, SIXER? BESIDES YOUR OWN BODY’S METABOLISM SLOWLY BURNING ITSELF OUT.”

Ford sighed. “I just wish I could tell them about you. It’d make things so much easier!”

Bill tisked. “THEIR REACTION TO MY HELP AT THE ALIEN SHIP IS PROOF ENOUGH, THEY JUST WOULDN’T GET IT.”

“But if I had a chance to explain--”

“WE’VE ALREADY DISCUSSED THIS, FORDSY. EVEN IF THEY DO TAKE YOUR EXPLANATION SERIOUSLY AND DON’T THINK YOU’VE FINALLY LOST IT, ARE YOU REALLY NAIVE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THEY’LL JUST GO ON SUPPORTING YOU? WE BOTH KNOW WHAT STANO’S LIKE WHEN YOU’RE ABOUT TO MOVE ON TO SOMETHING BIGGER AND BETTER. AND FOUR-EYES ALREADY ADMITTED TO YOUR FACE HE’D RATHER BE WORKING ON HIS OWN PROJECTS BACK HOME WITH HIS FAMILY. YOU REALLY THINK HE WOULDN’T TAKE THE FACT THAT YOU’VE GOT ME AS A SIGN HE’S OK TO PACK UP AND HEAD BACK HOME?”

“N-no, he wouldn’t… I still need his help!”

“HMMM, MAYBE YOU’RE RIGHT. MAYBE HE’D HELP HIMSELF TO YOUR PRELIMINARY RESEARCH AND PUBLISH IT HIMSELF FIRST.”

“Fiddleford’s my friend, he wouldn’t do that!”

“OH RIGHT, I FORGOT! YOU TWO ARE SUCH GOOD FRIENDS YOU’D NEVER LIE TO EACH OTHER OR TALK BEHIND THE OTHER’S BACK!”

Ford did not have a good rationalization for that.

“I’M JUST SAYING, STANFORD, BE CAREFUL WHO YOU TRUST!”

* * *

Stan and McGucket were helping themselves to a late lunch when Ford returned with their equipment.

“So you went to the hospital after all.” Ford observed, nodding at Fiddleford’s new cast.

“Oh, yep…” Fiddleford answered. The inventor still seemed anxious and distracted.

“How long did they say you’d need to wear the cast?”

“‘Bout a week…” Fiddleford tapped his foot nervously.

Ford frowned. “I was hoping we’d be able to start connecting the hyperdrive to the portal tonight, but I supposed Stanley could help lift the superstructure.”

“Mmmnope.” Stanley declined. “I’m headin’ out to the casino tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“To gamble, genius, what do you think I’m gonna do at a casino?”

“No, I mean… why do you feel the need to go to a casino?”

“Have a little fun, make a little cash.”

“...Is this because I still haven’t gone grocery shopping?”

“What!? No, for cryin’ out loud, Ford, I just wanna go out and spend a night on the town!”

“On a Wednesday?”

“Yeah, that’s how you beat the crowds! I figure I deserve a break after fighting a monster and getting poisoned!”

“Oh…” Ford deflated. “... that’s fair. But… you’re coming back afterwards, right?”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, your latest specimen isn’t gonna fly the coop.”

Stanford frowned at his brother’s comment, but didn’t offer a retort. Instead he set about fixing his own late lunch. “So yet another day goes by where we make no progress on the portal project.”

“Stanford, I know yer eager to make your mark and get answers, but there really ain’t any reason we can’t take another day or two!” Fiddleford assured him. “There ain’t no ‘Weirdness Rush’ yet.”

“Perhaps, but one thing I’ve learned over the last six years here is that it’s far too easy to get distracted by every little fascinating thing one comes across here. If we don’t stay focused, we could easily keep putting it off until it just never gets done. I prefer to strike while the iron is hot.”

“Well, you keep striking iron, Ford.” Stan waved him off. “Tonight, I’m hopin’ to strike gold!”

* * *

After Stan left, the two scientists spent the night going over calculations and carefully inspecting the hyperdrive. Ford was disappointed they wouldn’t be able to start hooking it up to the mechanics of the portal just yet, but it was the kind of delicate mechanical work he only trusted McGucket with. He wished he had some more manual work to preoccupy his mind tonight. The young researcher had a hard time focusing on his calculations; his mind kept wandering to his brother.

If Stan won the jackpot, he’d be able to support himself. He wouldn’t have any more reason to stay here and work with me… Would he even come back? Would he even bother telling us?

Ford sighed with frustration as he realized he’d just read the same equation three times over. He really needed something to keep his hands occupied while he worked. He reached over to McGucket’s desk for what he often did when he needed something to keep his hands busy, and picked up his friend’s Cubics Cube. He raised an eyebrow when he noticed it still hadn’t been solved since the last time he scrambled it. He’d never seen Fiddleford leave it unsolved for more than a few hours. He glanced over to see the young inventor also seemed to be having trouble focusing on his work.

“You can’t concentrate either?” Ford asked, noticing how Fiddleford’s knee kept up a steady pace of 2 kbps, but his eyes stayed fixed at the top of the page he was supposed to be checking.

Fiddleford startled at his friend’s words. “S-sorry, jus’ tired. Didn’t sleep well last night.”

Ford offered him a sympathetic smile. “I don’t imagine so. I’m sure you’ll be on the mend soon enough though.”

“Mmm.” McGucket hummed noncommittally. “And how ‘bout you, what’s keepin’ you from concentratin’?”

The researcher hemmed and hawed for a moment before he finally settled on an answer. “I suppose I’m a bit concerned with Stanley. I know he’s staying here because he’s got nowhere else to go, and I’m happy to give him a place to stay, but if things go well for him at the casino tonight… why would he stay here if he suddenly acquires the means to support himself?”

McGucket huffed a small chuckle and rolled his eyes. “It’s like I keep tellin’ ya Ford, you oughta be tellin’ him this stuff, and not me! If’n you really want him to stay, then you gotta be honest with him!”

“I-I am!” Ford insisted, willfully ignoring the fact that he was not, in fact, being honest about Bill. That didn’t count. He’d tell Stan if he thought Stan needed to know.

The inventor just rolled his eyes again. “Mama was right, can’t be honest with others if’n ya ain’t honest with yerself first.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean, ya lost yer temper with me the last time I brought it up!”

Ford scoffed. “I am not under some deluded hope that if Stan stays, it will magically solve our issues.”

Fiddleford nodded. “Yeah, it does seem like you two are past that point. Now you’re just wantin’ to keep him around ‘cuz he’s your brother and you’ll miss him!”

The atmosphere of the room instantly went cold, and the pages of calculations in Fords hands crinkled as his grip tightened. “I would absolutely. Never. Try and keep Stan around. Just because I would miss him.” He enunciated through clenched teeth. “I… I simply… I have his best interests in mind! And the interest of my research! But I’m not trying to keep him here! He’s free to leave! He--he’s free to pursue other interests!”

McGucked raised his hands placatingly. Obviously, he had touched a nerve. “I’m sorry, I misspoke! I jus’ meant to say you care about him is all!”

“Of course I care about him! When was that ever in question!?”

Fiddleford gave him a steady look. “When ya went more than ten years without talkin’ to each other.”

Ford flushed. “It’s not like Stanley ever reached out to me! And I was the one who had a regular address and phone number! How was I supposed to talk to him, when he was always traveling!? Even our mother never got more than the occasional postcard!”

“I’m not sayin’ yer brother’s blameless in this, Ford, I’m jus’ sayin’ you could stand to actually let him know how you feel!”

“I don’t even know how I feel half the time!” The researcher burst. He was stunned by his own words, and took a moment to collect his thoughts and calm down a bit before continuing. “Stanley’s my brother, and he was such an important part of my life growing up. Of course I care about him. But the things he’s done-- the things he still does-- the way he ignores what I want because he thinks he knows best-- it infuriates me! So I suppose you could say my feelings for him are… complicated.”

Fiddleford nodded. “Family’s always complicated.”

Ford scoffed derisively. “This is considerably more complicated than the average family squabble.”

McGucket laughed. “You’re right about that! Well, if it makes ya feel any better, I’m pretty sure Stan ain’t gonna run out on ya tonight, even if he does win it big at that casino. He’s got unfinished business here, after all.”

“That’s an odd way to refer to our continued studies of his powers, but I suppose you’re right.”

* * *

The parking lot for the Warm Springs History Museum was completely empty. Not that the casino lot across the way was packed, but it at least had a few cars parked near the entrance. Stan worried the museum might be closed, but he saw the light was on, and the door was unlocked.

There didn’t appear to be another soul in the building. Stan wandered around from one exhibit to the next, looking for anything that might be related to Ford’s mysterious benefactor. Stan wasn’t really all that surprised that he didn’t find anything. Finally, he rounded a corner and found the gift shop. A teenage girl who was probably supposed to be the cashier sat in front of a small TV. It was clearly supposed to be playing a VHS that the gift shop was trying to sell, but instead an Itira 3600 was hooked up and playing Brick Break.

“Uh, ‘scuse me?” Stan cleared his throat and knocked gently on the counter.

The girl didn’t glance away from the screen, eyes carefully following the bouncing pixel as it broke through another line of bricks. “Yeah I know you’re there I can see your reflection on the screen. We close in like ten minutes, just grab whatever you want and I’ll ring you up once I clear this level.”

“I’m not here to buy anything.”

“Then you better turn around and head back to the casino, ‘cuz bricks ain’t the only thing I can break.”

“I don’t want anything from you either!” Stan assured her, waving his hands innocently. “I just got some questions about, uh, tribal history.”

“That’s what this museum is here for, sir.” She answered flatly.

“The thing I’m askin’ about isn’t in the museum, trust me, I checked.”

“We got history books too.”

“I doubt it’s in there either. Hey, if you’re too busy, is there someone else I can talk to?”

The girl tisked and tilted her game controller. “Yeah yeah, just a sec. I just got one more line at the top.”

Stan rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers on the counter impatiently. He supposed he couldn’t blame the girl. This was probably a very boring job. He knew most people who came this way were probably more interested in the casino, not the history of the people who had to run it just to make ends meet.

The girl finally cleared the level and put her controller down as the new level loaded in. “Ok, what’s your question.”

“Ok, this might sound stupid, but can you tell me more about what this thing is?” Stan pulled a pamphlet off the counter and drew the triangle with the eye. “I think it’s usually yellow?”

The girl raised her eyebrow in surprise when she took in Stan’s drawing. “Oh… that. You don’t see anything about that in here because that’s associated with… I guess the best word for it would be curses?”

Stan’s heart skipped a beat. “R-really? The little research I did on it beforehand said it was associated with knowledge.”

“Yeah, cursed knowledge.” The girl told him. “I’ll admit, I’m not super familiar with it. It’s kinda really ancient. When Nathaniel Northwest swindled us out of our land in Gravity Falls, we were relative newcomers. All the other tribes in the area believed the valley was cursed, because of that thing.”

Stan gulped. “What, uh, what’d it do?”

The girl put on her best storytelling voice. “Well, a thousand years ago, there was an old shaman called Modoc the Wise. He and his people worshipped that being. Until one day, Modoc learned its terrible secret. Modoc warned the people that the being they’d been worshipping was a liar, and that it would lay waste to the valley. But before he could tell them any more, the being drove him mad, and he slaughtered half his tribe before lighting himself on fire to try and stop it!”

Stan paled. “So, uh, this guy’s really bad news, huh?”

“That’s an understatement, but yeah.” The girl nodded. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“Uh, I live in Gravity Falls. I’ve just seen this thing on a lot of stuff, wondered what it was.”

“Ah, well, have fun living with the knowledge that your hometown is cursed!” She smiled viciously at him. “Now, it’s closing time. Are you gonna buy something or not?”

* * *

Stan tried to take his mind off things at the casino. His superhuman reflexes made him a whiz at the slots, but he had learned in the past that winning too much tended to draw unwanted attention. Of course, Stan was too busy trying to process what he’d just learned to pay much attention to his gambling, so it’s not like he could have won it big even if he was trying.

After just half-an-hour, it was clear that his heart just wasn’t in it today. Stan decided to play a round of Craps before he left, just to get in some dice rolling. Then he’d head home.

Careful. He warned himself. Don’t go callin’ that place your home. You know the second you get comfortable there is the second Ford decides he doesn’t want you around anymore.

By the time he finished, Stan managed to leave with about $20 more in his pocket than when he came in, so it wasn’t a bad night, gambling-wise. And he had at least learned something about that triangle guy. It just wasn’t good news. The trip certainly wasn’t a loss. So why did Stan feel like he hadn’t gained anything?

These thoughts weighed so heavily on his mind, that he never noticed the eyes on him as he left the casino.

“We’ve found him.” A shadowy figure spoke into his walkie-talkie.

* * *

PSM WAZF FFY OENKGK KS LELB, TPXLL QAT? YOP HGR’T PQB KEDO TF UVDI GJ YFWY FPV JRZGUUW?

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nataliedanovelist · 4 years ago

Text

GF - Braid Braid

Summary: One day Mabel asks her Grunkle Ford to braid her hair, but ever since he went out to investigate an anomaly with Dipper instead, the fact he couldn’t deliver her simple request plagued him.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, Ducktective, it seems you’ve quacked the case.”

“Quack, quack, quack.”

Mabel laughed as she continually brushed her hair; the show may have ended ten months ago, but she was convinced that Ducktective was real and would never die, so she happily watched reruns whenever she could. She sat in her grunkle’s chair with her case of hair things, having already finished her sweater for the day, and she planned to play with her long hair while she watched TV. She heard footsteps and casted her eyes to her left. Soon an old nerd came into view and she grinned. “Hey, Grunkle Ford!”

“Hello, my dear.” He smiled at her. “What are you up to?”

“Just watching TV.” She then lit up as a brilliant idea came to her and she held up her hairbrush and glittery bag full of hair clips and hairbows. “Wanna braid my hair?”

Ford held up a hand as he smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Mabel, but I don’t know how to braid hair…”

“I can teach you if you want!” The girl offered happily. “I bet you’d be great at it!”

Just then, Dipper came down the stairs called, “Hey, Grunkle Ford! Ready for our mission?”

“Indeed!” Ford gave him a high-six and the boys headed for the door.

“Where are you two going?” Mabel asked.

“I convinced Ford that we should investigate the Hawktopus further.” Dipper answered. “No anomaly is too stupid to look into.”

“We’ll be back by dinner.” Ford promised as he opened the door. “If not, then assume the monster ate our flesh.”

“See ya later, sis!” Dipper called and the boys were gone.

“Bye!” Mabel yelled after them through the door happily, but her happiness slowly went away as sad thoughts occupied her brain. “Have fun. Without me.”

The teenager slumped in the chair, the sounds of the TV unable to penetrate her thoughts. She knew her grunkles loved her very much, but sometimes she wondered if Ford liked Dipper way better than he liked Mabel. She could understand Ford liking Dipper a little bit more than her, because they were so similar, but it sometimes felt like the Sweater Twins only had sweaters in common and that’s it.

The more Mabel thought about it, it was no wonder Ford liked Dipper way more than he liked Mabel. Stanford Pines was an experienced scientist who had been all over the Multiverse, traveling for thirty years, and was as tough as nails and as strong as an ox; no one like that would want to hang out with a girl who likes glitter and make-overs and other girly things. No wonder Ford would much rather hang out with Dipper than her. Mabel didn’t blame her uncle, but it still kinda hurt.

She wished there was something they could both do. Something Ford and Mabel liked to do. Something no one would only be doing to spend time with the other. Mabel loved adventure and weirdness and exploring, but maybe Grunkle Ford only wanted that to be a Dipper and him thing, which was fine! So Mabel racked her brain for anything he would want to do with her, but she couldn’t think of anything.

To get her mind off of it, she went into the kitchen to get a drink of Mabel Juice and then to maybe hang out with Grunkle Stan, play some cards or throw water balloons at each other. She didn’t really feel like playing with her hair anymore.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Hawtopus investigation proved to be more difficult and more enjoyable than Ford had predicted, so after dinner and the kids had gone to bed he yawned into his hand and ventured into his bedroom to take a shower and go to bed. He entered the clean space and slipped off his trenchcoat to hang it on the coat track, and as he did so his eye caught something bright purple and sparkly. He smiled as he saw a bundle messily wrapped with coloring paper and tied up with red ribbon, glitter added for some “pizzazz” as Mabel would have called it.

Ford gently picked up the package and sat on the couch with the gift on his lap. He couldn’t contain the huge smile on his face as he unwrapped the gift. There, cushioned in wrapping paper and on his lap, was a brand new sweater. Ford grinned and held it up for a better look at the new turtleneck. It was blue, his favorite color, and had a beaker with atoms swimming around it, something science-y for him to display proudly on his chest. Mabel had made him a sweater once before, a new red one with a golden six-fingered hand on it, and now he was honored with two sweaters.

He made a mental note to thank Mabel with hugs in the morning. As he stripped for his bath and turned on the shower, he wondered how in the world Mabel found time to do this, to make so many sweaters in such a short amount of time; she seemed to miraculously make a sweater every day! Then his mind toyed with the idea of her working on the sweater while watching TV, but then he remembered that Mabel had been doing her hair and had asked Ford to braid it.

Under the warm water, the old scientist felt like a rock had been dropped in his stomach. He realized he might have hurt her feelings to choose to bond with Dipper rather than her, considering the boys always seemed to be together. Ford was aware that he accidentally showed favoritism in one twin, something he completely didn’t intend to do, and not only had he done so, it had hurt Mabel’s feelings. He had hoped countless messages and phone calls and video chats between summers had assured Mabel that Ford cared about her, but it was very possible that she might need a reminder every so often.

To make it up to her and to reward her for her kindness and patience with a special treat, Ford racked his brain for what to do for her. The only thing that stuck out was the way she had innocently asked her grunkle to braid her hair. Taking into account that no one in the family seemed to do “girly” things with her, at least not nearly as much as she does “boyish” things with the men in the family, Ford made up his mind.

After the shower and dressing in his new sweater, dark pants, and trenchcoat, Ford snuck out of the house to do some research. The library was closed, but Ford had no problem sneaking in and settling in a desk at the dead of night, reading books on the History of Braids and the Origins of Dreadlocks and literally any hair-themed book and magazine the library had; he even read up on hair-dying techniques for whenever Mabel had the desire to try something new.

The books didn’t feel enough. After a quick cup of coffee at a gas station, Ford hurried up the hill for his best friend’s manor. He knocked on the door urgently and waited a minute or two for Old Man McGucket to come to the door, rubbing his eyes with a bathrobe over his green flannel pajamas. “St-Stanford? Whazza matter?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, buddy, but it’s very important.” Ford pressed, his arms full of books and magazines he had borrowed without permission from the library. “I need to learn how to braid hair for Mabel and I was hoping I could use your mobile computer.”

Fiddleford blinked through his thick green glasses and smiled a half-toothy smile. “This is an emergency. Anythang for Lil’ Sweet Tea! C’min, c’min. Want some coffee?”

“That would be great, thank you.”

Long into the night, the old researchers acted just as seriously as they did back in the day, except they weren’t unintentionally creating a gateway to Hell. McGucket dug up some more books from the Northwest’ private book collection in the lounge and Ford used the laptop to do some more recent, or “trendy”, findings. To he and McGucket’s amazement, the internet was full of videos showing exactly how to do all sorts of hairstyles. From coloring hair to cutting it to braids and ponytails, all kinds of hair from straight to messy curls to somewhere in between could be learned to tame with a few clicks on a computer.

“Bingo!” Ford said, readjusting his glasses, and he quickly got to work, just as enthusiastic as he was about earning another PhD or discovering a new anomaly. Fiddleford had a very hard time keeping the smiling eyes off his friend as he watched him get so excited about a feminine activity, one both men had been deprived of due to a lack of females in their lives but were eager to explore.

The next morning, Mabel yawned into her fist and skipped cheerfully down the stairs for a glass of orange juice to start the day. She heard the front door open and close and she was surprised to find Ford coming home. “Grunkle Ford, wh… Aw! You’re wearing your new sweater!”

Ford grinned and nodded. “Yes, I absolutely love it! It’s almost as beautiful as you, my dear. Thank you very much.”

Mabel blushed and drank some juice. “You’re welcome! So, where have you been? Out on a morning walk?”

“Something like that.” Ford said with a shrug. “So, would you still be interested in me braiding your hair?”

Mabel gasped and cried out, “OH, YES PLEASE! I’ll be right back!” And the young girl ran off to get her bag of hair things.

Ford sat himself in his brother’s chair and Mabel soon returned and plopped in his lap when he petted his right leg for her. Mabel gave him the hairbrush to detangle her bed-head and said, “Okay, so it’s easier to start by parting it into sections…”

“Oh, don’t worry, my dear.” Ford said calmly as he brushed her hair lovingly. “I’ve done my research.”

Mabel had on idea what he meant by that, but she shrugged and decided to let him do as he pleased. She had braced her skull for a bit of tugging as it was sometimes difficult to brush tangled hair, but Mabel was pleasantly surprised to find Ford being as gentle as a kitten and brushing her hair so gently she could hardly feel the pull on her scalp, and yet she could feel the knots becoming undone and progress being made. She grinned and said, “Wow, Grunkle Ford, you’re really really good!”

It was a good thing she couldn’t see how red his cheeks turned. “Well, thank you, sweetheart. You truly have very beautiful hair.”

“So do you! It’s so fluffy and cute! After you braid your hair can I braid yours?”

Now Ford’s whole face was as scarlet as a king’s robe. He knew his hair was a bit harder to manage than Stanley’s but he never considered it to be cute or fluffy. “I see no reason why not.”

“Yes! I’m so excited! You really are very beautiful, Grunkle Ford.”

Okay, who gave this young lady permission to be this adorable? There were several dimensions in which it was illegal. “Th-Thank you, Mabel, but really I’m not… B-Beautiful is a more suitable term for wom-”

“Nu, uh!” Mabel interrupted and shook her head only a little bit, trying to be still for her uncle as he brushed her hair. “Daddy says anyone and anything can be beautiful. If a flower or Christmas lights or an animal can be beautiful, then girls and boys can be beautiful. And also girls and boys can be handsome!” Mabel added to drive her point further home.

Ford chuckled and it made his niece’s chest feel warm. “That makes sense. Thank you, Mabel. So, did you feel well last night?”

“Yeah! I had a really funny dream!”

“Oh, what was it about?”

The conversation spilled into swapping stories of past dreams. While Ford’s dreams from the past mostly contained nightmares, he could recall a small handful of dreams that were positive spins on his imagination and he happily recalled them with Mabel. As their talk flowed so easily, like water, Ford detangled all of Mabel’s beautiful hair and then began to braid. He wanted to impress her with something big and elaborate, but he wasn’t confident in his skills yet and this was his first attempt, so he met in the middle and did something a bit more complicated than a simple braid but he wasn’t nearly ready for a boho wedding braid.

With his tongue between his teeth, Ford carefully tied the braid close and held his polydactyl hands away to inspect his work. “Okay, I think I’m done.”

“I wanna see, I wanna see!” Mabel squealed and pulled out a mirror to see her uncle’s work. She was silent with a hard-to-read expression on her face as her eyes fell on her reflection. She tilted her head and the mirror to see the back of her head to see the braid and remained silent.

The braid started as two side braids at the back of her head, but they trailed down and combined into one big, lush braid that hung loosely from the bottom of her skull and trailed down her back. There were one or two times the braid didn’t match the rest of the hair piece and Ford thought the big braid was too loose now that he took a second look at it.

His face fell a little as he was concerned that she didn’t like it and was trying to hide her disappointment. Ford knew he should have interviewed some hairdressers before attempting to do Mabel’s hair, but he had been so excited that he had become reckless, just like always. “I’m sorry, Mabel, I understand if you don’t like it…”

“I LOVE IT!” Mabel had finally conjured up the strength to grin, the wind had been knocked out of her from pure delighted shock, and her eyes were filled with tears and her lips trembled as she admired Ford’s work. “IloveitIloveitIloveitILOVEIT!!!” She squealed loudly and was bouncing in Ford’s lap. “Look, Grunkle Ford, look! You did SUCH a good job! I’m so pretty now! That’s the best braid I’ve ever seen! ThankyouthankyouTHANKYOU!” And she spun around to kiss his cheek and she hopped off of him. “I’m gonna go show Dipper! DIPPER! LOOK WHAT GRUNKLE FORD DID!” Mabel yelled as she ran as fast as she could.

Ford was as still as a statue as his niece’s kind words ringed in his ears like cheerful bells. He wanted to smile, but all he could manage was a tearful look as he used all his might to try not to try, his eyes wet and shiny and his lips pressed together. He chuckled at himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose and composed himself. Soon Mabel was skipping back to him and leaped back into his hold to hug him and nuzzle her face in his shoulder.

“Thank you, Grunkle Ford, I love it.” She repeated.

Ford hugged her back tightly and rubbed circles into her back. “You’re very welcome, my dear. Thank you for letting me braid your hair.”

After one last squeeze, Mabel climbed up the armchair to sit on the back so she was behind Ford’s head. She held out a hand for the hairbrush and said, “Your turn!”

Ford grinned and handed her the sparkly hairbrush and felt himself relax as his scalp was treated to the gentle sensation of his niece brushing and caring for his gray fluff.

#GF #gravity falls #fanfiction #Mabel and Ford bonding #MORE SWEATER-TWINS BONDING #braidinghair #mabel pines #ford pines #nothing but fluff over here people #FLUFF

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