Bumpy Ride

Overcrowding sucks. Bus breakdowns suck. Road construction sucks. But somehow, a bumpy as hell, teen-crammed bus ride to school is way better than either of the twins could’ve expected.

-Or-

When you write porn for your friends and they insist you post it.

Oneshot Older teenage Dipper and Mabel discover their shared weirdness on the most memorable bus trip of their lives.

As always, feel free to let me know what you think.

It was a tuesday, first day back to school after a long weekend.

“Ugh. Not long enough” was the thought resonating in the bones of every single student returning to school that day. The twins just happened to have an extra dose of that when their bus finally arrived. They’d all heard the rule that if the bus was more than fifteen minutes late, they could go home. Just their luck that it showed up at the fourteen minute mark.

“Oh shit. Laaaame!” Crowed Mabel. “We could probably just hide, maybe she hasn’t seen us yet.” The prospect of a free skip day dropped out through the bottom of her day and she wasn’t taking it well.

“I wouldn’t count on that….shit. it just got worse though, look.” Dipper, motioned for her to take another look.

“What the hell!? What’s going on?” As it pulled to a stop she could see clearly every single seat on their morning bus was full; packed even. As the door slid open the elderly driver, who Mabel was positive must’ve driven Abraham Lincoln and the western Pioneers to school, gave them their answer.

“We had three busses break down. Y’all’re gonna have to double up. Getcher seats quick-like though.”

Mabel grimaced, trying to add up the popularity/social group calculus before the acceleration knocked her over.

“Butt, turbo Lame. There’s no room. What’re we supposed to do?” She asked, to no one in particular

“ya’s gonna have to double up’r somethin’. It ain’t gonna be forever, now come on an’sit down, we’re late as it is.” The front-most seat only had one other occupant. His name was Chad or Brad or something. Begrudgingly he moved his backpack onto his lap.

“Okay Dip. It looks like we’re doubling up.” Since he was in front of her anyway, he took the seat and wedged his bag in place just under it.

“Well, at least it’s just you.” She sighed, resigning herself to a cramped, noisy, uncomfortable trip, and plopped down on her brother’s lap. Thankfully at least for them, they were the last stop on the pick-up route. And it would just be another twenty minutes until they got to school. So at least they wouldn’t have to triple up.

The road, apparently sensing the slight improvement to her mood decided that some fresh road construction would be just what the doctor ordered. The right front tire plowed over a hunk of asphalt just then. It felt like she was thrown into the air, and she would have landed in the aisle if the space weren’t so cramped. But Dipper caught her and, eventually their hearts settled down.

“Hey, can you try to keep me steady, Dip?” She asked, and in response a pair of hands rested on her hips. However, chunks of asphalt don’t just appear from nowhere, and a moment later the comparatively smooth ride was replaced with a freshly torn up road.

A school bus wasn’t the most gentle ride even on the best of days. Theirs transformed into an unbalanced washing machine when it hit that stretch of road. They rattled and shook, and could hear pebbles clinking into the undercarriage as they went. Dipper tightened his grip, practically clamping his twin to his lap. It helped, but the construction crews were tearing up miles of asphalt ahead of them. Even with his hands welded to her sides she seemed unbalanced. Mabel was leaning forward against the barrier in front of them for support since she didn’t seem to be able to hold herself up straight after more than a minute of bumps and rumbles.

The ride was making Dipper uncomfortable all around. Of course it was cramped and loud, but having a constant weight pressing into his crotch wasn’t helping other matters. He hoped she hadn’t noticed and tried to adjust how they were sitting

“Hey, c’mon Mabes, lean back.” He gave a little tug, and she flopped back against him like a ragdoll without resisting.

“Are you okay?” He asked, forgetting his other concern for a moment.

“Mmmm- mmhmmm” came her somewhat ragged response. Barry, or Jeff, or whatever his name was popped in his headphones and turned towards the window. Whatever was going on with her wasn’t his problem, apparently. But it was rapidly becoming Dipper’s. Her legs and back stiffened and she leaned back into his chest, while her butt pressed into his lap. There was no way she wasn’t going to notice that.

He froze stiff. There was still a possibility that she wouldn’t know, or that it was just a fold in his jeans. Until she pressed into it again, sliding herself over the lump. That confirmed it.

“I-it’s not-” he whispered, panicking into her ear.

“Put your hands back on my hips.” She interrupted with a hint of desperation in her voice. Unnerved by the response, Dipper did so immediately,

“S-sure, sorry.” After all, bodies just did things on their own, he knew that, she probably knew that too, he reasoned. And as his mind tangled in a jumble of explanations and excuses, Mabel’s body acted. Though she barely needed to do anything with the rumbling beneath them. She ground herself into him, into his lap. He held on for dear life. No one had ever done that to him, much less his twin sister. But the sensation was amazing, and if it worked for her too, he didn’t object.

She eagerly gyrated her hips and slid herself across him in every direction. He hoped only she could hear the little sounds she was making, the heavy breathing. He looked around. There must’ve been fifty people on the bus, and at least two hundred different conversations. Mabel never cared about what people thought, but they were in front of everyone. All it’d take is one person to look over, to notice what they were doing. Hell, Derrick with his headphones in might still realize. But even he was starting not to care. Why hadn’t they ever done this before?

Before he could think anything else, the Bus turned off from the construction and up the approach to their school. Conversations changed. Everyone would be clamoring to get off and stretch their legs. If the two of them didn’t get themselves together and stand up first, all ten thousand of them would walk past and see.

“Hey, I think this is our stop” Mabel chirped, seemingly unaffected by what they’d just done. Could it have been his imagination?

“Yeah, seems that way,” he tried. Mabel worked her neck around, then her shoulders, stretching as she did.

“ ‘bout time though, right? Jeeze, I thought I was gonna die.”

“Yeah.”

Each class seemed to stretch on for days, not that he could remember anything that happened. Dipper’s mind was a bit preoccupied. Just as his last class was letting out for the day, though, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out to check, and found a text from Mabel. She hadn’t said anything all day, so he sure wasn’t going to. It read “hey, saved you a seat.”

His heart skipped a beat when he saw who the message was from, and another when he read it.

“Calm down, calm down” he commanded himself. Though it was another body part that he was trying to dominate with his will. He didn’t stand a chance.

There were obviously fewer busses in the parking lot than usual, so they hadn’t gotten replacements yet. For some reason, it didn’t bother him. Well, aside from all those skipped heartbeats. It was a mystery how he maintained all that blood pressure with that going on every time he thought about his sister. The bus was already half full by the time he made his way onto it. It would’ve taken him a minute to find her if she hadn’t been waving and calling out to him. Mabel was sitting in the farthest back seat on the left, and most of that seat was taken up by an instrument case.

“Yo, Mabe, what’s this? There’s no room for me.”

“It’s a trumpet or something. French horn? I dunno. I’m just borrowing it from my friend Tracy.” Confusion crossed Dipper’s expression, but he learned years ago to deal with that emotion around his twin.

“You’re borrowing it even though you don’t know what it is?” She scooted herself out, along with the instrument case and beckoned him to sit towards the window.

“Yup. Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged and slid in and followed her lead.

Dipper’s internal assumptions were thankfully confirmed for him when Mabel did the ‘movie theatre scoot’ in front of him and blocked off the rest of the seat with the case and their backpacks. The shoulder straps were hooked in the crook of her arm. Then she took up her seat in his lap with a playful wiggle of the hips. But she surprised him again with how cool she played it. Above the barrier of theirs, she was just regular Mabel, chatting with him about nothing, but filling what would have been silence with the sheer force of her personality. But where no one could see, she’d give him a more than playful shift of her weight.

The bus was packed full a few minutes later. A short while after that the fleet moved out, lining up to pull onto the main road. By then no one was much paying attention to the twins. Mabel’s demeanor shifted; only Dipper could’ve ever noticed. She stood very slightly and snaked a hand between them, dragging his zipper down. She caressed him through the opening, aiming him in the right direction before taking her seat again. He did all he could to keep his face straight through it all. She smirked back at him and began slowly tugging her skirt up, pulling it between them. He had to bite his lip to keep from shuddering. He didn’t succeed entirely, but no one seemed to notice. Or at least they didn’t care.

There was barely anything in between them physically. And just that morning, before they got on this very same bus they had been brother and sister; as close as they thought they ever could have been. He was entirely and profoundly wrong. With Mabel’s skirt hiked up, the only thing in their way were a couple pairs of underwear. He could feel the slick moisture of hers as she slid herself over him. His body, almost without his urging it, pushed upwards into her.

His mind raced, dozens of thoughts firing off at once. She changed in the hours they were apart, transformed into someone else; and it was getting to him too. She wasn’t just his sister anymore. Dipper had never been more excited, more turned on by another person. She didn’t fit the same space in the world anymore. Before she was ‘Only Mabel’. Just that morning her body was only just that. But now? She was different. He was different too, but her hips, the curves of her body, her neck… he wanted every part of her like never before.

And Mabel immediately seized what she wanted. She had band class in first period. So either she had been carrying that thing around all day, or else just been thinking about it that long. She made a plan, followed through with it, and got what she wanted. And his compliance wither wasn’t a factor, or she knew damn well he’d give it to her. He wanted her, needed her.

Then the bus clattered suddenly back onto the uneven paving. Dipper immediately wrapped his arms tight around Mabel’s waist, holding her in place. Their bodies, along with everyone else’s, vibrated. But their’s vibrated together. Mabel clenched her teeth to keep from moaning, pushing into the seat in front for for support. Her twin rattled beneath her, putting her massaging shower head to shame (well, almost). Dipper’s embrace made her feel secure.

They were given a brief reprieve when the driver pulled up to drop off the first batch of riders. When she came to grips with her surroundings she took in the unfamiliar view out the window. And while quite a few others had left the back, the seat in front of them was still occupied, and one of the girls in front of them was grimacing at her.

“You’re pushing on my seat. Are you, like, okay?” she sneered.

“Oh!” Mabel let up her grip. “Sorry! I get real bad motion sickness. I was trying not to- Huhhnnnggg” her eyes rolled back for half a second as she seemed almost about to heave before regaining composure. She laughed nervously, “S-sorry about that! I’m probably f-Fine now.”

The two girls made horrified expressions and ducked doen in their seat, obviously hoping for to be able to change seats soon.

Mabel pinched her brother’s thigh. She’d rolled with it, but his decision to roll his hips and press into her clit nearly made her lose her composure. Dipper chuckled slightly and whispered softly,

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it.”

She responded by running her nails across his leg in a conciliatory gesture before wriggling her butt firmly into him. His grip tensed as the bus rattled on down the road and he moaned a low hum into the back of her neck. By then they’d already stretched the limits of what fabric could contain. The part in Dipper’s underwear was threatening to loose him at any moment. Some other hypothetical Dipper could worry about that. At that moment all either of them could think about is how good they felt.

They clattered along past a few more bus stops. The back of the bus emptied out quickly. The threat of motion sickness probably helped. The girls that had been sitting in front of them were both gone. One got out at her stop, but the other simply moved to a different seat. The back half of the bus was fairly sparsely populated, but the last three rows belonged only to them. Mabel was feeling bold. She leaned into her grinding some more, only easing up during stops. She turned her head to speak. It wasn’t a whisper; she just lowered her voice so only he could hear.

“Having a good time?” she purred. He attempted a response, but only managed a groan at first.

“Hnnggg…Oh my god Mabes,” he gasped.

“Did you want me to stop?” a small hint of concern colores her voice. He paused to think, taking in their situation, and the new paradigm of their relationship.

“Fuck no. But I wanna talk about it later, okay?” Dipper kissed the back of his sister’s neck.

“Mmmm, tingly” she giggled, “okay. It’s a deal. Love you, bro.” He could practically see the little heart emojis floating around the words that her inflection put there.

“Love you too” he smiled, contentedly leaning his forehead into the base of her neck.

Interrupting his reverie, since they were on smooth road again, Mabel slithered a hand between their legs and freed him from the gap in his undies. He seemed to swell in her grip. She ran her thumb over the back of the head, savoring the shudder reverberating through her back. As she parted her panties to one side abd rubbed him against her slick wetness manually she couldn’t believe it’d taken them so long to try this. Her body greedily ground back into him. She had a toy back home, bought online with a gift card and hidden in her room, but she would gladly replace it with her twin. Mabel allowed herself a low, throaty groan. She bet he fit perfectly inside of her.

She got her answer moments later when the bus hit a bump in the road and he slipped from her grip. They both let out a sharp yelp of surprise. There were a few turned heads, but when the twins failed to entertain further, they were ignored again.

“Dipper!” Mabel gasped under her breath the moment no one was looking. The tires clattered across a few more bumps. Mabel sank down entirely around her brother. She could’ve believed the driver was hitting every bit of debris on purpose.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to” panted Dipper as he started lifting her off of him.

Even as he did, she rolled herself into him again, allowing herself to take him deep once more. His grip slackened and she leaned her arms and forehead against the empty seat in front.

“M-mabel-!” All their bags were allowed to slump to the floor. She didn’t care who else was around or where they were.

“our stop-” Her hips pumped Inexpertly but eagerly. Mabel bottomed herself out onto him again and again. Dipper patted high insistently. He was trying to say something.

“I’m-” he panted. She wasn’t slowing down. “Oh fuck, I’m- Mabel, our stop is next- I- oh fuck-!” more, she needed just a little more. She was so close.

Dipper sensed he wasn’t getting through to her and was slightly panicked. Their stop was next. He squeezed her breast to get her attention, trying his best to guess where her nipple was. She bit down onto the sleeve of her sweater as a shuddering moan escaped. Her entire body quivered in his lap, and the hot, urgent feeling in his belly was too much to ignore. Her body bucked, sliding around him again and it was too much to take. Using all his strength and willpower he lifted his sister off of himself and shot the last of his stamina into the folds of her skirt. It was only then that she peeked back at their surroundings.

“Jizznuggets! That’s our stop!”

Mabel hopped over onto the seat and quickly adjusted herself. She patted down her hair, straightened her skirt and panties to make sure it all sat properly. The brakes hissed and the slight feeling of everything falling forward one last time rose through her belly. Her legs were still trembling, but she could deal with that. They gathered up their bags and Mabel gave one final scan of her brother and caught his fly down.

“Dip! XYZ, Come on!” she whispered. Shock and terror danced in his eyes for half a moment before nodding his thanks and zipping himself up. Their hearts raced as they trudged down the aisle one after the other, hoping they’d been low key enough. Just to be sure, Mabel forced herself to walk slower than she wanted to, hunched over as though she were carefully cradling her stomach. It seemed to work since disgusted girl number one held her bag up like a shield.

The door creaked shut behind them and the massive engine roared to life again as it headed off down the road. Nobody shouted out the windows at them, so the twins shared a sigh of relief before really looking each other in the eyes for the first time since everything had changed between them. They shared an identical blush. Dipper cast a glance around the neighborhood, finding their cul de sac empty.

“So…we just did that, huh?”

“Any regrets?” Mabel asked, her heart beating in her head. He smiled from each to ear.

“Uh, maybe the execution, but otherwise? N-” her lips crashed into his, wrapping her arms around his neck.

None of their neighbors were outside. Thankfully for them most of them weren’t even home from work because it took them quite some time before they surfaced for air. Stars twinkled in Mabel’s eyes.

“Can we do it again?” He looked shocked that she would even ask.

“I might need a juice box and a snack, but hell yeah. Did you think I’d say no?” She stuck her tongue out and licked the tip of his nose.

“Nah. Pretty sure you’re…hey…are you my boyfriend now?” despite what they’d just done her blush deepened. He held her around the waist and smiled.

“Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.”

“Awww yis. Which is good, cuz you gotta take responsibility for this.” Mabel took a step back and lifted her skirt up, flashing her thighs and panties. Her panties were just a little more pink since her thighs were starting to pale again around the sides. But it was probably the extra large, globby stain on the underside of her skirt that she meant to draw his attention to. Though he noticed that last.

“Hey, hey, put that away.” He chuckled, adding a moment later “until we get inside at least.”

“What’s wrong, Dipper?” She mocked with a silly voice, “don’t you love us!?” Mabel held the blob as close to his face as she could get. He rolled his eyes and pushed her away.

“Okay, okay. That’s enough of that.”

“Give us a kiss!” she shot back in the same voice.

“Oh no. I’m not gonna do that. You’re gonna have to let me work up my courage before I do that.”

“Oh, good to know, I’ll remember that.” Mabel giggled, moving back in close. With half-lidded eyes she intoned “just so you know, I don’t need to work up my courage. “ before licking her lips. “Oh, hey, look who’s ready to go again.” Dipper practically carried her and all of her luggage home, grateful to have the next few hours to themselves.

milky-morty:

Here’s a Mabel lewd.

Who is the guy? I mean… do you have to ask?

Source: milky-morty

The Melon Incident

Okay, wow. This was supposed to be at best a 1,000 word ficlet. A Drabble. But it turns out that when I take like a month to write something it turns into 7,510 words instead. It’s maybe a bit weird for some, but just read to the end, okay? Trust me.

Oh, and please feel free to comment. Authors live for comments.

Dipper’s shadowy form paused in his door frame, peering out into the darkened hallway. His eyes, already adjusted to the darkness, scanned left, then right; ears pricked up, searching for any hint of movement. Perhaps an unnecessary precaution, there were only two people in the house at that moment. The Pines parents had set out just the night before on a vacation getaway to the Caribbean. The twins were alone for two weeks with no supervision. Any teenager’s dream scenario. As far as teenagers go, they’re better behaved than most, but even they have desires. Taboo desires.

His door slid shut, the knob turned as it was pulled so it wouldn’t make a click as it closed. Years of sneaking out at night for midnight snacks and late night adventures and investigations were programmed into his feet. They tread on a specific, relatively silent path, sneaking past the creaky, noisy floorboards, until they reached the landing in front of Mabel’s door. An ear placed to against it listened past the rhythmic sound of Dipper’s heart pounding in his ears. Slowly, carefully, his brain sifted out the noise to home-in on Mabel’s equally loud, in-time snoring, until it was the only sound in the world.

That sound was the metronome by which his body kept time against from then on. Slipping past her door, each step was taken in time with the crescendo of the nasal din, to cover up any noise. The stairs down to the first floor of the Pines family house were just as much an obstacle as the fifteen feet of hallway, so agonizingly, but stealthily traversed. Each one of them had two or three danger spots. Normally, Dipper’s choice would’ve been to tread only on the very edge of each step. But that would’ve taken too much patience. Instead, the bumpy, slightly carpet burn-y path was taken, sliding down the stairs like a human bobsled.

His body was softer than one might expect, even after years of hiking and adventuring, and later bruising was definitely a possibility; but with the sounds of sisterly snoring somewhat out of earshot, it was deemed worth the risk. Though the soreness in the back of his head, from hitting each step on the way down might take a while to subside. In the kitchen, on the top of the fridge, and under the lip of the cabinets mounted above it, was a carefully folded sheet of paper. It’d been hidden there earlier during the day. Even through probing fingers accidentally bumping the note almost beyond reach, it was retrieved with a relative minimum of hushed cursing. Paper was easily destroyed, with no electronic trail left for anyone to find. Normally Dipper was somewhat less cautious with his internet history, but no one was around at the time to complain. It wasn’t a long list, but the mind has a way of inconveniently forgetting little details, or remembering them in the wrong order. Especially nervous minds.

Said note was unfolded and skimmed over several times as the various tools it indicated were pulled from the kitchen drawers, accompanied by whispered narration.

“Okay, let’s see… vegetable peeler, knife… oh! Paper towels, uh, this thingy, aaaand…” Cautiously, the fridge door was pried open to minimize the sound of the seal breaking and bottles clinking together. Plastic containers packed with leftovers, a six-pack of brightly colored sports drinks, and meals planned for the next week or so, materialized from the depths, one after another, stacked on the counter until at last a head-sized melon, excavated from the chilly recesses, joined the rest.

“Internet says that the outer skin can be irritating. Soooo we find a good spot for the hole and cut a slice off. Here is probably good.” Inexpertly, a roughly circular patch was shaved off of one side. “Next step, we uh…use this thing..” With some level of mild bewilderment, a cylindrical, metallic tool, with teeth on the end, which the internet identified as an apple corer, (though it looked like it belonged on the surgical tray of a movie villain’s torturer lieutenant) was pushed into the soft melon flesh. With a little manhandling, a plug of orange fruit was extracted, mostly in one piece, and promptly devoured. Not so much to dispose of the evidence, but the rest of it might’ve been inedible once the deed was done. Give or take a bit of curiosity.

“And step, uh, whatever…” Eyes scanned over the instructions a few more times, some trepidation was keeping the information from being absorbed readily until they were read out loud. That was the problem with thinking faster than one can read. All the words tend to pile up at one end.

“The, uh, pressure can be, bad, I guess, unless you cut a ninety degree hole, perpendicular to the first. I’ll take your word for it, dude. I guess you’d know better than I would? Never actually been inside a person, or, uh, a cantaloupe.” One, very cautiously drilled out hole later, the device was prepared as instructed, more or less. No one had actually uploaded any pictures to the forum. And that was an image search too far.

“Oh!” then, more quietly, “Oh.” The last step popped into Dipper’s head. “Supposed to be better warm, though cold might still be…let’s do warm first. I might only get one shot at this.” Remembering once again the value of stealth, the melon was cautiously placed in the microwave, and the door just as quietly clicked shut. As the motor hummed, and the melon slowly spun in circles, the anticipation made Dipper’s cock swell up and make a tent in his pajamas. Had he been wearing anything with a zipper when the household went to bed earlier, it would have practically burst open.

“Haha, I’m gross” came the inner thoughts.

Fifty-nine seconds later, before the alarm could go off, the door was popped open; and the hole was probed with a finger to make sure it was just right, instead of skin-seeringly hot (Or just gross and mushy). Until just then, the need for silence, and of course nervousness from lack of experience, had made the mission seem much more daunting than it really was. But the ticking clock of a slowly cooling ‘companion’ actually brought some steel to Dipper’s spine. The ‘rents were gone, after all. And the kitchen was apparently far enough away from the snoring where it seemed almost silent. The neighborhood was asleep too. Waiting until Two A.M. was probably the wisest precaution. By the time morning came around officially, the whole adventure would be a memory.

Dipper’s pajama pants hit the floor of the kitchen with a soft thud. His phone, having been somewhat forgotten in a pocket, was retrieved a second or so later.

“Okay, Gallery, gallery, oh, here! Oh-hoh, yeah, this’ll do nicely.” The folder labeled ‘Tax Prep 2016’ on Dipper’s phone, actually did have a few photos of some tax documents. Though, they were all downloaded from the internet. The vast majority of images it contained were taken during the twins’ previous visit to Gravity Falls. Time, and hormones had been very kind to their friends. They were set to return to Oregon just after their parents returned, and they’d stay there through August. The thought, if anything, was that much more arousing, scrolling through the semi-candid shots from last year. That was when Pacifica had imported a private beach for them to lounge around at.

Surviving Pacifica in that slinky white two-piece, held together with gold rings at the sides (that were probably real gold) was one of the greatest challenges in Dipper’s short life. But to have also had Wendy there with them? She had a mossy green bikini bottom, made to look like it was tied at the sides with small bows. Her top was plain and black and looked like a sports bra. By all accounts he should have died of embarrassment. His crab-wise walking, idiotic babbling, and insisting on always staying in waist-deep water should’ve been the end of him. Maintaining quiet crushes on so many friends took a toll.

Mabel, was gracious enough to cover for him. Or at least, she decided not to point out exactly what he was covering up. Which was generous as far as siblings go. Though, there were photos of her in there too. Her bathing suit had been a more modest, navy blue one-piece with a pleated white micro skirt. Dipper of the past had correctly observed how amazing it made her butt look. There were about as many of her as either of the others.

It didn’t throb and pulse like all those muscly werewolf novels and movies said; or so the thought went, as his hand reached almost unconsciously for the bulge in his nethers. Squeezing and stroking through a pair of boxer shorts wasn’t going to be enough though. Those shorts hit the floor a moment or so later. It’d be pointless, to take it back upstairs. Especially after all the effort to stay quiet, and over all that carpet. Nah, good ol’ linoleum was easy to clean. One last reflection from the guidance of ‘Internet’, was that apparently no butter or lube was necessary. That was another thing the movies got a little wrong.

“Besides, who butters a melon? It’s still warm at least” said the errant thought. The hole was a little smaller than it looked like it needed to be, but gentle pressure made it give way. His body shuddered from the new sensation as it sank down around his shaft. The novels were right about a few things this time; although none of them had actually involved a melon.

”-Mabel! Wh- What the F-!? Naked! And, and- Get out of there!” Mabel’s own voice shrieked at her from the entrance to the kitchen. She jumped, shocked to be caught orange-handed. Though she managed to stay stuck inside of it. Their eyes met, both stunned into a temporary near silence. They were both breathing too hard from shock for it to have really been silent. Mabel, with Dipper’s voice was the first to speak.

“By ‘get out’… did you mean-?”

“Of both!” He yelled, before realizing what time it was. Even if they were alone, there were neighbors.

“Okay, okay, fair, but…” Eyes implored, attempting her signature hurt puppy look. “I’m sorta, y’know?” Mabel’s eyes blinked rapidly.

“Are you seriously- It’s my body! You can’t just- is that my phone!?”

“I feel like that got a bigger reaction than the other thing.” Dipper Charged. There was a counter between them though, and even in his body she was faster.

“Crud! Plan B! Public nudity attack!” She was out the door before even finishing the sentence. Dipper was stunned for a moment; his sister’s strategies were unpredictable at best.

“Damn it!” Her body deftly vaulted the counter and bounded out into the backyard. Muscle memory that wasn’t his own carried him to take a flying leap off of the heavy wrought iron railing just outside the door.

“Naked guy on the loose! Naked g-Ooof!” Mabel’s own body cannoned into her from behind, causing the two of them to tumble over each other. They rolled end over end until Dipper, for the first time in their lives, came out on top, pinning his stunned twin and sat heavily on her/his stomach.

“Shhh! Keep it down!” Dipper hissed, covering her, or rather his own, mouth with one hand, while holding up a finger to her lips in the traditional sign of ‘shut the hell up or we’ll both get in trouble’. Of course she licked that hand, but she kept quiet as he yelped and wiped the hand clean.

“Okay” he whispered aggressively, “A; eww. B; what the hell? How did- we don’t even have that carpet anymore! C; what the hell!? You gotta ask before borrowing my, uhh, stuff!” He finished with a whisper-shout, though the last complaint felt half-hearted. Mabel seemed to contemplate the questions while Dipper’s body finished catching its breath.

“Two favors.” Mabel blurted out.

“Wh- huh?” He managed, confused by the exclamation.

“I’ll tell you how I did it, and trade in two of the favors you owe me,” she explained. Dipper seemed to really consider the offer. He looked off into the middle distance, running through the sibling calculus to figure out if it was a fair deal. The Pines twins had a novel way of solving disputes. It was always the two of them against the world, (or possibly horrors from the next world over) so staying mad wasn’t something either one could really do when it came to the other. So instead they had an extensive tally count of the various favors or deals they’d come to. Two favors was the standard bargain for when one of them messed up fairly badly. It was also usually a prelude to an apology.

“No deal.” He responded as flatly as he could. These negotiations were a serious matter, after all. “The way I see it, after the thing with Gompers, we’re sitting with you having two ‘you-owe-me-ones’. Two brings us up to even. So I want three.”

“Woah, woah. I don’t see how that counts.” She countered. “You totally coulda gotten a sympathy date from that cute nurse! I feel like really, you owe me one for that.”

“Hell no I don’t! I wasn’t single at the time, so it was just embarrassing for no reason! Who the hell mails a goat? Honestly.”

“Ugh, okay, fine. ‘Three I-owe-you-ones’ and we’re even?”

Dipper had to think about that one. It’s true that she fucked up, but smooth negotiations made him suspicious. She wasn’t supposed to give in that easily. Mabel caught the hint of indecision in her own eyes and jumped back in, before he could make a counter offer.

“AND, I’m willing to cash in a single one of the bets you lost being nullified,” she paused for effect, “I’ll let you keep those pics you took.” ‘She probably cheated to win those bets’, he thought, before really processing what else she’d said. That struck home.

“I- what pictures?” He tried, futilely. He knew it too, and looked away. Even though it was his own eyes looking back at him, the very Mabely presence behind them scored a point, and he couldn’t meet them straight on.

“If there’s more, feel free to let me know, I just found the ones from last Summer. It seems like a certain someone, not naming names, got all hot and bothered and took like a hundred pictures of my butt.”

“o-Oh… “ There was no use denying it. When she switched bodies with him she got his cellphone, and his thumb print. It was all right there. “Sorry.”

“Me too…oh wow, I’m even cuter when I blush.” Not only did Mabel have no shame, but what was worse, was she knew it.

“And you were right about this too.” She gave into that and let Dipper’s hands caress her butt. He yelped again and shot bolt upright.

“Hey! You can fondle yourself in your own body!” He caught what he said and slapped a hand over the traitorous mouth that said it.

“You mean like you do when you’re thinkin’ about me?”

‘Fuck!’ He thought, ‘how did she turn this around on me!?’

“Can you forgive me?” His thoughts screeched to a halt. She’d been teasing him seconds before, but she managed real sincerity. Even if it was in his own voice.

“I do.” He couldn’t help it. The words just fell out of her mouth before really even thinking about it. Thinking quickly, he added “I shouldn’t….but I do.” Maybe he’d spent too much time in her body, or maybe they looked more alike than he realized. When he turned eyes back to her, to his face, he saw her face. She might have done things without thinking, but he really couldn’t stay angry about it.

“So, since we’re on good terms… ya ever wonder what it’s like?” She asked. He blinked, trying to run through the possibilities.

“You mean, like, with a melon?”

“Not that exactly.” She responded patiently.

“Then, doing…y’know, stuff, as the uh, opposite sex?”

She didn’t respond. Instead Mabel just let him keep talking. It wasn’t what she’d meant, but since he’d mentioned it, she’d like to know what he thought. He tried looking back into what he was allowing himself to think of as her eyes, but the open, honest curiosity in the gaze made him turn back away. He took the empty silence confirmation to his question.

“I …I mean, yeah.” He would have blushed if it was possible for him to feel more embarrassed. “That’s natural though, right? Imagining what it’s like in…a different body?” He couldn’t help but glance between their current forms. “But I haven’t even really used mine.”

“I thought you and pigtails had…?” She trailed off, but she filled in the blank by making a circle with the thumb and index finger of one hand, and gesturing with an in-and-out motion with a finger of the opposite hand. He turned to see what she was doing, and immediately shook his head.

“No. And she has a name. It’s Becca. And she was more interested in getting her homework done for her.”
“Dude, that’s a classic porn set up! ‘Oh Dipper, I’m so grateful. However can I pay you back?’” Mabel chirped in a falsetto, before responding to herself in a mock version of Dipper’s voice. “Gee, becky, I’d love to get all up in your guts.”

“Ugh! Eww, Mabel.” He recoiled slightly. “No. She had a boyfriend for that. She was very, very clear about that. In far too much detail, actually.”

“That’s even more porny! Is he packin’ a whole salami? Did you touch it? Oooh, did you ‘experience’ it?” She asked, excitedly. He took a deep breath and counted to three silently before responding.

“A, apparently so, B, no I did not, and C, I wasn’t exactly offered a… I wouldn’t have minded if she was opening up because she thought I was gay, but I -Look, can we not talk about this anymore? Nobody’s really into me. I get that. I tried. I’m not really eager to keep thinking about it. It’s always ‘aww, you’re like a brother to me, Dip.’ or whatever.” The last statement hung in the air for a few heartbeats before Mabel responded.

“That’s fine. I wasn’t actually asking about that anyway. Well, I did, but that’s not what I meant.” their eyes met. “I mean…did you ever wonder what it would be like…?” He didn’t look away this time. At least in part because she never finished the question. Through all the thoughts swirling in his head, part of him was vaguely aware that there was something he was sitting on that was pressing into his butt. Well, it was Mabel’s but he was wearing it at the time. A second thought rolled lazily into place as he realized that the melon was laying in the grass, several feet away from them, smashed open on one of their mother’s tasteless, and frankly terrifying lawn gnomes. ‘When did my throat get so dry?’ he asked himself, as he settled on what she might have meant.

“I-in any case, uh…” He scrambled to try to remember what they’d been talking about, every detail. “In any case…I ..oh, uh, If you were asking about the o-opposite sex stuff, I think that’d be …I mean, I kinda want to experience stuff with my own body before getting…” he groped for words “uh, experimental?”

“Dip.” Mabel smirked. “Come on. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I can’t… I can’t just assume things. What if I’m wrong? What if something I think is a signal is just, I dunno, a joke or whatever?” His borrowed body sagged as he reflexively recalled the times that it very much was someone’s idea of a joke. Mabel rolled Dipper’s eyes at him and placed a hand on her abdomen, giving a firm push as she shifted underneath the weight. The sudden, jerky movement made him lose balance for a moment, before he could steady himself there was a pressure on one of his borrowed wrists. Confusion replaced his gloom for all of about a second before he realized what Mabel wanted with the hand. He grabbed onto it. If anybody had asked he would have said it was just a reflex, but sitting there on top of his own body, fingers wrapped around the cock that his sister had borrowed from him blotted out that self delusion.

“See?” Mabel chirped, “a girl you’re all hot for is grabbin’ yer junk. You still can’t tell me no one’s into you.” Temporarily stupefied, his vision darted back and forth between where their bodies met, and the increasingly Mabel-like expression of his own face. Dipper’s mind raced to rationalize the position they found themselves in, and why he’d sat there for so long. He’d forgotten to breathe until the need to do it insisted hard enough that he remember. What he didn’t do was let go. He found himself rubbing at it just under the head with the pad of Mabel’s thumb, tracing lazy circles.

“Is this real?” Dipper asked, blinking away some of the fogginess in his mind.

“Mmmm, you should know, bro. You grew it yourself.” Mabel shuddered. Melon or no, the experience was a totally new one to her.

“No, I mean, you really want to, y’know, be with me? Not just…It’s not a trick?” Despite himself, and the question, he didn’t stop. Instead he traced its length over and over with the same light touch. Goosebumps raised up all over his body. Instead of answering with words, she leaned up until they were nose to nose. In almost slow motion their heads turned to the side as she drew him into a kiss. It didn’t matter if she was wearing the wrong face, or if he was too for that matter. It was clumsy, with the occasional clink of teeth, and arguably far too much tongue, but it was their first. Even as Dipper tried to draw back, he found himself dragged into a second round.

Eventually Mabel released him so they could both surface for air. They sat panting at each other, butterflies exploding like firecrackers in their bellies, for some time. Smiles broke out on either side, like flowers blooming, and that gave way to giggling.

“What do you think, Dip? Did that feel like a trick?” Mabel gasped, still catching her breath. Dipper shook his head. Or at least he allowed himself to think of it as his own for the time being. “Good.” She grinned wide. “Cuz I’ve been wanting to do that for years… You dumb, sexy idiot.” She added after a moment. Dipper couldn’t help but think ‘what? Make out with yourself?’ but his heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t want to make himself a hypocrite after all.

This time it was his turn to surprise her with a push, as he shoved her back towards the ground and slide back on his belly, his face between her thighs. His hands felt just the right size, but they looked smaller than normal. He reflected on that as he wrapped one around the back of her erection, running his tongue up the shaft, lingering at the tip before nibbling the underside of the head a bit. It looked bigger than he remembered it seeming. Though he assumed it was at least because of his new perspective. His twin clutched the grass in her fists as she struggled to hold in a loud moan at the brand new sensation. She’d dreamed about them in that position before, but not that she’d experience it from the other end. Not that she was objecting.

He knew exactly where the most sensitive parts were, and used them to torment his other half. Once it was slippy enough, he took as much of the length between his lips as he could without choking. Though, he learned on his way down to the base that Mabel apparently didn’t have much of a gag reflex to speak of. He let it slide rhythmically back until the rim of the head was between his lips, then back down, letting his tongue press up into the underside. Mabel was practically burying her heels in the soil, wanting to feel more of the warmth of Dipper’s mouth engulf her. She shuddered with the tingles of pleasure that her brother’s lips were giving. It was just too much.

“Oh my god, Dipper.” She panted. “You’re- fuck,” came another shiver, “really- good- at- Oh fuck, ho- how do you hold it-” Before she could get an answer, or even finish the question, a white, hot feeling of joy shot out from her body. He’d been expecting it though. She was trying the right thing though, he thought, tensing up before the last moment of release.

“Glad you like it” He said, breathily as he pushed up to his knees, wiping at his chin. He’d never been able to work up the nerve to sample his own ‘medicine’, but he’d thought about it before. It wasn’t as salty like it said all over the internet. Mabel shot up and locked him in another kiss for a solid few seconds before he could break away. “Hey, hey! More of that later, but I need oxygen now.” Mabel’s face split with a wide grin.

“Sorry, couldn’t help it. I had to get a taste before it was all gone.”

Dipper blushed, but even as he did, he gave one more little squeeze at the base, milking the last dribble out. He scooped it up with a fingertip and held it up for her to suck clean; which she did, with gusto. She made sure to return the same nibble that Dipper had demonstrated before, as a sign for things to come.

“That was my first blowjob,” he said, on the edge of sheepishness. “Glad you liked it.” Mabel let an expression of disbelief flash across her expression. It was hard to believe that, despite having dreams about her first time with her twin, that anyone could be that naturally talented without practice. Though it was his body. If anyone would know how to work it, it’d be him. She made a mental note to talk to him about that later. Forefront in her mind was the sudden grogginess she was feeling.

“Jeeze, why am I so tired suddenly?” A knowing smile cracked Dipper’s face.

“Yeah. That’ll happen after, uh,” he paused noticeably before deciding to try speaking plainly with her. “Y’know, after you cum.” He felt like an idiot talking that bluntly around Mabel. But to his surprise, she didn’t jump all over him for it. ‘I guess we’re going to have to figure out this new paradigm’ he thought to himself before concluding the thought with a shrug. “You get used to it. Let’s go inside and get you some electrolytes. I’m pretty sure we’ve got some croco-ade in the fridge.” He pushed up from a crouch and offered Mabel a hand up. She took the hand and immediately pulled him off balance. He flailed and crashed into her on the way down. His other hand clamped over his mouth to cut off the shriek of surprise. Though a muffled ‘Mmbll! Whht thh fck!?’ managed to leak out as she rolled him onto his belly.

“Uh-uh, bro-” She caressed the back of a thigh, slipping up the back of the night-shirt he was wearing, cupping his butt; “you don’t get away that easy.”

“C-come on, Mabel, quit messing around,” Dipper complained weakly. “I don’t wanna get caught out here.” Ignoring his complaints, she bit him on the ass, making him squelch a high pitched squeak.

“No one’s gonna hear us.” She reasoned, as she helped him into a kneeling position, sidling up behind him. He knew that she was probably right. Their yard had a fairly tall privacy hedge all the way around, and all the nearby houses had their lights out anyway. ‘But still…’ went the last thread of reason, before it snapped in two.

Just then, Mabel had snaked one hand up his body to roll an apparently very sensitive nipple between thumb and forefinger. The other hand found its way down in the other direction, stroking him through the panties he was wearing. They’d already soaked through, and were in danger of leaving a spot on the night shirt. That was half the reason he’d wanted to go back inside. He’d wanted to get out of the sopping undies and hide them. Even after what they’d just done, he felt like he was using her body wrong. Like somehow he was perverted for being so utterly turned on that he’d turned her underwear into a swamp. Those thoughts melted away into nothing with a little pressure from her fingers.

“You aren’t the only one who knows how your body works.” Mabel whispered into his ear before giving the lobe a nibble. He wanted to complain how unfair it was that his sister’s body seemed like one big erogenous zone. Instead he whimpered as she slipped a finger inside. The buzz and whir of nervous thoughts were a distant, foggy memory. His twin was nibbling and sucking her way down his neck. There was no way it wouldn’t be covered in hickies the next morning. And every time she squeezed a nipple, she hit it exactly right to make his spine feel like it was melting. His hips moved all on their own, pushing into the electric tingle of pleasure. A second finger and joined the first in a sort of ‘come here’ motion, up inside of him.

Dipper surrendered himself to his sister. Anything she wanted from him he would have given her in that moment. Normally if she’d ordered him to ‘bend over for me’, he’d have argued. But that night he did as he was told, resting his cheek against the cool grass, thankful that it’d been mowed recently. He didn’t even complain when he was pretty sure she’d said “gimme dat pussy”. He just spread his knees as she slid the panties down his legs, lifting one knee, then the other. Dipper didn’t expect for her to ball them up and stuff the mass into his mouth, but he couldn’t argue. It would keep him quiet-ish, after all.

The thought occurred to Mabel that it might be vain to find the view before her as sexy as she did, but she didn’t care. She loved herself, and it wasn’t even really herself in front of her at the moment, which made it even better. She did hope, however, that her sibling would love it as much as she did. ‘Later though,’ she reflected as she pushed those thoughts back. The fingers that’d been ‘gettin’ busy with Dip’s downstairs’ were slippery, and just a bit sticky before she sucked them clean. They went right back where they’d come from though. Dipper seemed to shiver, and his legs wobbled a bit as she brought him closer to the edge. Her tongue took the place of her fingers as she buried her face into her brother’s backside. Even as he fought to keep his moans quiet, she pressed the tip of them against his puckered pink butthole. He tensed up for only a moment before relaxing again, trusting her touch completely. It sank down to the second knuckle with barely any resistance.

Mabel’s tongue danced around the inner lips as Dipper seemed almost unable to control his hips, bucking into the sensations; the finger slid easily as deep as it could go again and again, bringing little moans and whimpers from her brother. She’d test to see what he could take, grabbing a handful of his ass and pushing the tip of a thumb in. There was a slight hesitation, but it too pushed its way in easily. By then he was rolling his hips back into Mabel’s touch, begging for just that little bit more each time, edging closer and closer by the second. He let the gag fall from his mouth to beg.

“I want-” He panted breathily, “I- I want- Nnnnggg.” Mabel knew how to take a hint. She withdrew her face and thumb and slid her body over his. Even as she made to whisper in his ear again, he could feel her pressing up into his entrance.

“What is it you want?” Mabel asked, with all the confidence in the world at her command. He shivered, goosebumps speckling his skin as he fought for composure. “Tell me.” she prodded again, allowing herself to slip ever so slightly inside of him.

“G-god, I-” He inhaled sharply, “Fuck me- Please” She held the shaft in her hand, slicking it across her folds, waiting, letting his desire build. “Please” He managed again. “I don’t- I don’t have any- mmm- any condoms” he finally managed, hoping desperately that it wouldn’t stop her.

“Luckily, you’re on the pill” she intoned. “Say it for me again. I want to hear it.” Mabel said, knowing how difficult it’d be for him, as she slide the tip of the head across his clit.

“Oh god-” He managed, “Please- fuck me, Mabel.” She responded with one last half whisper. one that she knew would send him over the edge before sheathing herself inside of him.

“As you wish.”

Dipper’s entire world was the feeling inside of him at that moment, seeming to explode outward and inward at the same time. The body he was in, his for the time being, had experienced what he was feeling before. But for him, it was like fireworks below his belly. His body tightened up, and with each thrust Mabel seemed to grow bigger and bigger. He lost himself in the sensation, drunk with pleasure, his body collapsed, barely supported by wobbly wrists and knees. He could tell that her breathing was more labored by the second. Her legs were shaking too, the rapid, regular thrusts taking their toll. She seemed desperate to cross the finish line with him. And with a plaintive moan and one final thrust, she did; filling him with a warm sensation.

She came in waves, even though he’d brought her to that peak earlier. She tensed and pulsed inside of him until no more waves crashed against his shore, and she pulled out to collapse next to him. Their fingers hands interlaced together. Their bodies were hot, even against the cool grass below them. When she’d finally caught her breath, they embraced with a passionate kiss. They could taste each other on their lovers’ tongues, but that was incidental. They knew there was no turning back, but they wouldn’t need to. Neither of them wanted to. It was a kiss that gave them visions of their future together, as pure and loving as any other. It was one they’d waited their whole lives for, and would use the rest of their lives to enjoy.

When they’d finally pulled away from the embrace, Mabel was the first to speak.

“We, uh, should probably get back inside, huh? Before people start waking up.” The atmosphere was different. The magic didn’t vanish, it was still all around them. But it was going to be cold, damp, sticky magic before too long.

“True” Dipper grinned, as they gather their clothes, “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep though.”

“Who said anything about sleep?” Mabel’s eyebrows wiggled.

“Oh. That’s…yes. But can we switch back first?”

“Ooh, kinky.” He rolled his eyes as her eyebrows seemed determined to fly free on their own and possibly to start a new life as very suggestive caterpillars, wiggling at the slightest innuendo. On his way back inside, Dipper scanned above the fence, just to reassure himself that no one had seen them. His mind was already swirling with plausible excuses if someone had. He put it aside for later consideration. His twin was probably a better liar anyway. They’d think of something.

Ever the diligent one, once they were in the kitchen, he wet and folded over a bunch of paper towels for each of them to get cleaned up. Mabel gave herself a basic rub down, before racing upstairs. It was just as well, Dipper wanted to heat up some food for them, and he’d had a bit bigger of a clean up job anyway. He’d almost finished by the time an out-of-breath Mabel came loping back into the kitchen, clutching something in either hand.

“Jeeze, bro-” she huffed and puffed, “you- gotta get- in better- shape. Whew, oh man, it’s hard to breathe in this body.” Dipper patiently finished up and gathered the paper towels, tossing them into their own trash bag, which he’d make sure got processed separately from the other trash. He suspected they’d forget some small detail and get caught up on it if he wasn’t careful. Once Mabel could finally talk without panting, she cleared her throat for his attention.

“Ahem!” Dipper responded with a raised an eyebrow. He was used to her body now. If she wanted to be theatrical about it, that was her business.

“Yes?” He said, finally, when it was clear she wanted him to play along.

“Behold! These are the Stones of- uh…shit, I have the notes somewhere. The Stones Of…! Ehh, I’ll remember later.” She held in either hand, a small, black river rock, speckled with tiny silver metallic inclusions. They looked, he thought, as if you could hold one up to the night sky, and it’d fit right into place among the stars. He took a glance out the window, curious to see if he could even see that many stars in their part of the world.

“Thinking about stars?” Mabel interrupted.
“Yeah, how-?” She put up a hand to silence the oncoming question.

“It was the first thing I thought of too. Like, they kinda feel like you’re supposed to be thinking that when you see ‘em. Ya know?” He did. The same thought told him that if he did hold one up to the night sky, he’d better not let go.

“Okay, so how do these work?” He barely finished the question before she suddenly reached out and touched one to his nose.

“Bink!” He blinked in surprise, but didn’t object. She held it out and dropped it into his hands, then she touched the other one to herself, on the shoulder.

“One touches you, and the other one touches me. Oh! Something about lovers, and star crossed something or other. That’s the name. Star Crossed…something. Anyway, once they know who is who, we just gotta-” She took several large steps backwards into the living room. “Get far enough away…” Another step.

And suddenly Dipper found himself in the living room, staring through the doorway at his sister. His very naked, smiling sister.

“-And then zap! We switch places. Well, kinda. See? It’s magic!” Reflexively, unable to help himself, he looked down at his hands, turning them over a couple times in his examination. They were his, of course; not that he’d been expecting any different. The questions or ‘where?’ and ‘when?’ and ‘seriously, Mabel, where the hell did you get these? I don’t remember them from the journal, and I remember every page’ of course flashed across his mind. He was dying to ask. He’d ask later.

“So…how many days do we have together?”

“The rest of our lives? I hope.” Came Mabel’s all-too-honest, immediate answer. If either of them were still medically capable of blushing, Dipper certainly would have. He crossed the threshold and scooped up Mabel under the butt, peppering her with kisses. She squealed.

“As you wish” He stage whispered into her ear. She squealed again.

“Wuv! Twue Wuv! Wove conqwews awwl” she teased back, before Dipper rubbed his hand over her face.

She responded back through the face pats and giggles.

“I’m the Westley in our relationship. You can be Buttercup….maaaaybe the Albino.”

“Rude!” He Chided.

“Wude!” He rubbed her face again.

“Okay, okay, I get it. But for real, Mabel; I Love you.” His smile was radiant. He’d always added in his head ‘No, seriously, you have no idea how much’ whenever he’d told her that in the past. She returned a few of his love pecks, then rested her cheek against his chest.

“I Love you too, Dipper.” She’d managed to return the same emphasis, as if saying ‘yeah, me too, you dumb butt.’ Neither of them felt like joking about ‘mawwiage’. They’d cross that bridge eventually. But not just then. The, until then, forgotten microwave dinged. Their burritos were probably molten hot. They could wait.

“Hey…” He tapped her on the back, causing her to gaze back up at him. “Did you plan all this?” Dipper asked in a tone of honest curiosity. A contemplative look crossed Mabel’s face before asking;

“Do I get extra points if I say yes?” He shrugged noncommittally. “Ehh. Fair. Not really? I was….kinda just curious and horny. And I really wanted to fool around with you. I had lots of other plans. Like, joining one of ‘those websites’ you’re on.” The air quotes were practically visible even though it was just the tone of her voice. “And, I dunno, trying to post something that’d get your attention while also pretending I didn’t know you were there? Walking in on you in the shower had crossed my mind. But you scream pretty loud. So that was gonna wait until later this week. Letting you walk in on me in the shower was one I tried for a while. But just leaving the door unlocked apparently wasn’t a big enough hint. I couldn’t be all ‘Hey, I’m gonna be wet and naked in the other room. And not that you need to know, but the door is practically wide open.”

“But that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d say.”

“Hey, you can’t blame a girl for trying out the whole subtlety thing. Though, apparently it doesn’t work!” Mabel huffed.

“I…can’t really fault your logic. I’m as bad at picking up hints as…well…”
“It’s fine.” She rolled her eyes. “You can say it. As bad as I am at dropping them?” He nodded. “I’ll remember that for the next time I’m trying to seduce my twin. Maybe I’ll try jerking off in a few pairs of their underwear first, and then never ever saying anything about it.” She responded with a raised eyebrow and some uncharacteristic sharpness.

“I….okay, you got me there. Though I don’t know…” The eyebrow went higher in response to his unfinished thought. “I don’t know. I want to say ‘maybe next time I want to fuck my twin I’ll take it out on an innocent fruit’ but somehow that did actually work…and also I don’t see any fruit around right now.”

“Why, Dippuh Pines, I do declare” Mabel responded in what was possibly the worst southern accent possible, “did you just hit on lil’ ol’ me?” He shrugged. It was a new experience for him, after all. “I could find you a banana” she responded with some more of that sharpness he was also going to have to get used to. “I know you know what to do with one of those. Oh! I think I’ve gone and given myself the vapuhs!” She wilted dramatically with the back of one hand on her forehead, while she fanned herself with the other. It strained Dipper’s grip to hold onto her. He let go. Mabel thudded into the ground. Though her ‘fainting spell’ had been so dramatic that she was less than a foot off the ground anyway.

“Hey!” He rolled her eyes even as he offered her a hand up.

“Why don’t we go upstairs?” Dipper motioned with a sideways head nod. “Being naked in the living room is fun and all, but I am actually kinda tired.” Mabel wrapped both of her arms around one of his.

“You wanna cuddle?” They rubbed their noses together, and Dipper responded with an ‘mmmhmm’.

Before they could head up, Dipper pulled his arm away and rushed around, making sure the windows and doors were shut and locked. He tossed their soiled laundry in the wash and set it to go in the morning, then scooped up the food that was still out and shoved it into the fridge; and the insistent beeping of the microwave reminded him to get together a paper plate with their post-midnight snacks. The flurry of activity now over, he sauntered back over to his sister and offered up his arm. She grinned and gladly snuggled into him as they made their way back upstairs.

“Hey Mabel, You did something right.”

“I’ll try not to let it go to my head.” She’d drag him into her room when they were at the top.

Some idiot: “Hey, Alex, how do you feel about pinecest?”
Alex: “never heard of her. Ship what you want. Just leave me out of it.”
Alex: ….
Alex: “Don’t ship my number mutants though!”

Hang Sesh

@jredbaron96 I hope this is fluffy enough? Maybe not. I know it took me a while but here’s what I’ve been writing for a few months now in response to the lovely gift I received. I’m still working on more since theirs was not the only gift I got.

Also @mrdaxxonford and @sprucepinecest helped me get my ideas into place.

Summary, people like summaries, right?

Wendip (And a bit of a long one at 8,223 words)

Wendy’s spent all day helping her brother move into his new dorm. And it just so happens that a certain someone that she hasn’t seen in a while attends the same school. She wants to visit, but would it be weird? maybe.

“Okay, Haus” Wendy grunted in effort as she pushed a huge crate into the entryway closet with her foot. It slotted in like a tetris piece, with barely any clearance on either side. “That’s the last of your random anvils or whatever.” Her middlest brother, picked her up in a bear hug and gave a knowing chuckle.

“Oh come on, you know I need that stuff. And I couldn’ta done it without you.” Despite having shot past her height and weight class two years prior, he meant it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know” She rolled her eyes and flexed both arms as sarcastically as she could. “Phenomenal cosmic power, itty-bitty living space; kinda like this.” She swept the dorm room with a hand. “Are you and Petey really gonna be okay in here?”

“Don’t worry about it, we got it handled. But anyway, were you gonna go see Dip? He’s in the next building over, I think.” Her smile faded for a fraction of a second, but to any of her brothers it might as well have been a grimace.

“Woah, okay, forget I asked” He said, holding up both hands as if to say “I’ll drop it.”

“Ugh, it’s not even anything. I just- it slipped my mind and I felt like a jerk for it, okay? It’s no big D.” He seemed satisfied with the answer and proffered a bottle of water out of the mini fridge.

“That’s cool, you wanna grab lunch or somethin’? we could invite him along if ya want.”

“Pfft, nah, I’m nasty and sweaty. I gotta drive back to town and get a shower.” He reflected on that a moment and gave his own pits a sniff and winced.

“Okay, yeah. Same. I’ll see you next weekend though, right?” She nodded and took a swig of the water and wiped her arm across her brow.

“Later, dude” she shot him a finger gun and dipped out into the hallway. The truth was, she hadn’t forgotten for a second that her brothers just happened to go to the same school that Dipper did. Not while she was hauling the world’s heaviest luggage, not while packing it, not on the drive over, and not for the weeks leading up to the move. She could have called or texted him. Hell, she could have sent him a PM on any of a half dozen websites. He and his sister were two of her best friends in the world, and she hasn’t seen Dipper in person in years. “This doesn’t have to be weird” she kept thinking to herself, even as she was making her way back down the hallways and down the elevator. She was behind the wheel of her pickup before her surroundings really registered with her.

“Shit, what am I doing?” She asked herself out loud and clicked on her turn signal. She’d been so busy convincing herself that it shouldn’t be weird, that her body, on autopilot, decided to chicken out for her, and started driving to the exit. Getting herself turned around, Wendy pulled in a guest spot behind the building and threw the gear into park.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck. Why am I being like this?” Wendy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m probably just worried that he still has a crush, right?” She reasoned, trying to get her head around the trepidation. “Like, that would probably be weird, but he’s a good kid. He never makes it weird for me…probably just nerves. Okay, let’s do this.” Once she worked up the nerve, she loaded up her texts and checked her conversation with Mabel and looked up his room assignment. Wendy still wasn’t sure if Mabel had let it slip because the conversation was casual, or if she was doing her ‘doctor hookup’ thing again. It didn’t really matter, she thought, since it got her to his room bloc just the same.

“Besides” she continued under her breath “he’s probably not even gonna be in his room. Cuz I’m a psycho that just pops in for random visits without checking…” Once she was satisfied that she was properly chilled out on the outside, with her very most nonchalant expression, then waited another thirty seconds, and knocked on the door.

“What’s up, Craig? You forget your ke-Augh!?” Dipper yelped in shock and leapt back from the door. “Woah, Wendy? W-what’re you doing here?” He stammered, half in awe, taking a few steps back to welcome her in. Wendy tried to hide a chuckle behind her hand as Dipper obviously walked his gaze up and down her body before he could master his expression and keep his eyes on hers. Though, he couldn’t stop his face from reddening noticeably.

“Wow dude, still on that hair trigger, huh?” She slapped him on the shoulder as she entered the dorm and took the room in. There was a little kitchenette, with small appliances to match. The living space was pretty much the rest of the room with Dipper on the right and the roomie on the left. As messy as Dipper had been as a kid, he always made room for books in his clutter, so the dedicated shelf space was a dead give-away. Aside from that it looked like a matter of just not tangling up each other’s’ floor laundry, lest they risk tighty-whitie cross contamination.

“Hah, uh, sorry, yeah” he coughed and cleared his throat. “It’s good to see you” he managed, without stuttering or stumbling. “What, uh, what brings you by? Today. Uh, y’know, here. It’s really good to see you.” Not so much without the stumbling that time. Wendy kicked at an oversized beanbag chair to make sure it was safe and plopped down on it.

“Oh, just helping ma bro move into his dorm. He’s starting in the summer semester.” She was vaguely aware that he probably knew that already.

“Oh, ha, cool, cool. I’ll have to hang out with him some time.” He chose not to make eye contact just then, leaning awkwardly on the countertop. He definitely knew.

“Sorry for not texting before I stopped by. I’m all nasty from carrying around his spare engine blocks and hunks of dark matter up and down stairs all day. I honestly felt sorta like I had to run home and clean, but it’d be rude if I just dashed out. So I thought it might be okay to stop by for a little while? Maybe we could grab a drink and catch up on the, uh, past couple, y’know, years…”

For the first few minutes the tension between them saturated the awkward question and answer session. They tossed casual small-talk back and forth for a bit. Dipper stood stiffly in one position or another until he grew uncomfortable and had to change it up. Wendy swore she heard the beanbag make an exceptionally convincing fart sound, so she had to keep shifting around so he wouldn’t think it had been her. They talked about meals they’d had, movies they were looking forward to, or had already seen. He was fairly excited to see The Revengers: Battle of the Ouroboros. For Wendy’s part, she’d already missed too many of the lead-up movies and didn’t feel like going back to catch the rest until they were on Webflix. She considered joking about asking him to give her a more complete education on the films during an especially long Webflix and chill session; but the moment passed and the conversation moved on. She’d over-thought it, and it would have been awkward to go back to it after a minute for a half joke.

She glanced out the window during a lull in the conversation and came to a decision. It was pre-dusk in the summertime. The sun could take hours to set, and she really didn’t have to be anywhere that day. He didn’t seem to think she smelled bad, and it also wasn’t so late that she’d have to leave for home any minute. Actually, she didn’t really feel like leaving. It was nice catching up with an old friend and the atmosphere was actually way more chill than she’d built up in her head. The sky outside the window was a beautiful peachy yellow orange haze beneath a turquoise canvas. Pink rimmed clouds suffused the scene like little ice cubes bobbing around a giant mixed drink. Hell, it didn’t even smell ‘bachelory’ in the small apartment.

Wendy glanced around, and while it was true that there was more laundry visible than carpet, Dipper’s side at least felt like more of an “organized mess” with piles of t-shirts and underwear, apparently clean, just never put away. Though he did have a suspicious clutch of air freshener cans stashed on a thin shelf next to his bed. Without getting closer to inspect it, it also looked like he had a paper towel roll with a dryer sheet rubber banded to one end. She’d have to remember to talk to him about that later especially. It was by then that she realized Dipper had stopped talking. Without thinking, her mouth filled the silence for her.

“So, Dip-man, any college flings yet?” She punctuated the question with a wink. A blush is what she was expecting, but instead Dipper’s expression flashed to something else for a moment, sadness, shyness maybe? Though he recovered quickly enough and made a swatting motion with his hand.

“What? Me? No way. Nah, College is just, like, waaay too busy, amiright? Pfft.” Though, he chose not to look her in the eyes.

“Huh, yeah.” Wendy continued on, “So, subject change it is then, you have anything to drink in this place?”

“What?” Dipper’s eyebrows flew to the top of his brow. “Huh? In the dorm? No, no, of course n-” he trailed off at the look of sheer sarcastic incredulity on Wendy’s face. He chuckled and rubbed at the back of his head, blushing slightly and looking away in embarrassment. “Okay, yeah, too obvious. Sorry, the, uh, roommate is kind of a party boy and he’s almost gotten us kicked out like three times. Which is totally bull by the way, since it’s all on his side of the fridge anyway.” Dipper huffed. “It’s not like I even drink any of it.”

Wendy placed a hand over her mouth to cover up her ever widening smile at his pout.

“Not a fan of beer, I take it?” His face tightened in a grimace.

“Euch. Beer, Vodka, whatever. I tried, but it all tastes like hand sanitizer. Freezer burnt hand sanitizer.

“Heh, well I’m sure he won’t mind if I take a look at least.”

“Go nuts.” Dipper added “I doubt he’d even notice.” She shrugged and slipped out of her socks and shoes for comfort. The off white apartment refrigerator was on the smallish side, with the freezer on top, so the top of the main door was only about rib level with her. She popped the door open and was unsurprised at the clear division inside. The top shelf was tightly packed with Tuckerware tubs full of left-overs, sandwiches and cheese in plastic wrap too. The bottom was almost entirely filled with bottles, save for a single Styrofoam take-out container. There were vodka and rum bottles in the back and in the door, beer carpeted most of it, but there was a lot to take in.

So Wendy figured she’d have a little fun and surreptitiously hiked the waist of her jeans up and bent at the waist as she perused the selection. Sure enough, after a faux wiggle of indecision, bouncily shifting her weight from one knee to another, she peeked a glance Dipper’s way to see if he’d noticed. It’d be less fun if he hadn’t, after all. She didn’t wear tight fitting jeans for it to go unnoticed. To her total lack of surprise, he was transfixed with the sight. She considered again blurting out “Gettin’ a good look at my butt over there?” but in truth, it did feel nice to be desired. Not that there was a lack of that back in Gravity Falls; though she’d already been courted by most of the twenty-somethings that lived there, and she didn’t feel anything for anyone back home. So she figured she’d give that to him a little while longer. He was really nice for getting a self esteem boost. Though she’d forgotten to even pay attention to sorting the drinks out and dropped into a more comfortable crouch.

“Oh, sweet!” She called out, giving him a chance to snap out of it before she looked back to him “He’s got a bunch of hard lemonades in here! Are you still addicted to that pine-orange concentrate?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, the frozen stuff. I mean, I wouldn’t say addicted, per se, but there’s a couple cans in the freezer. You want me to make you some?”

“No, no, sit! I’m gonna make you something. I bet you’ll like it. Way less-hand sanitizer-y this way.”

“Okay” He replied and sank back down onto his seat, a bit doubtful. “If you say so, then I’ll try it.”

Sure enough, after rummaging through his cabinets a bit, Wendy found one of those old tuckerware pitchers from the 70’s that every kitchen seems to have. After picking out the cleanest looking of the wooden spoons, she got to work and mixed up a slush with the pine-orange concentrate and doctored it up with two of the hard lemonades, and a shot of coconut rum. At that point it was still sweet and cold enough to pass muster. Though, she’d probably add a dash or two more to her glass since her tolerance was no doubt much higher.

There was also a ziptop bag thrown in the back that was packed full of little plastic three ounce bottles of rum, vodka, schnapps and the like. They were probably party favors from a kegger. She gathered up eight of the ones that looked the best to her. Ostensibly it’d be for adding to her own drink so Dipper’s could stay low proof. Though, to her mind, there was no way she was leaving without at least lightening their load by six or seven more mini-bottles. Partyboi probably wouldn’t notice five or six…or a dozen missing. And if he really was the boozy washout type, she could probably flash a bra strap at him if he showed up and he’d forget all about the liquor. The art of the mooch was one of her specialties, and dudebros were easy marks.

Wendy snatched two glasses out of a cabinet. They looked to her eye, like they’d lived in a pizza chain for a decade or so before someone pocketed them. At least they matched. She handed him one of them and poured out two doses, his being the smaller of the two.

“So, you ever had a drink like this?” He took it, shaking his head with a sour expression, already anticipating the taste. “Oh, come on. It’s not bad, I promise.” She took a swig out of her own, almost as if to prove it wasn’t poisonous. He was hesitant at first, and the after taste from the first tiny sip had him wrinkling his nose. Wendy barely tried suppressing a giggle at the cute expression. “Funny cute” she corrected herself mentally. After a few more tastes, he seemed to get used to it.

Dipper never put his cup down for too long. It seemed to give him an aura of confidence that he lacked when she first stopped by, it a was nice change. Knowing him, he probably felt like he was rebelling against authority and was getting a real rush from it. They slipped easily back into conversation, and before long they were laughing and hitting each other with their best stories, one-upping each other whenever possible. Mabel was great ammunition on Dipper’s side. That girl is crazy.

Wendy shrugged off her flannel shortly into their conversation. She’d stayed pretty far ahead of him when it came to drinking, and was feeling a bit flushed. The only difference the alcohol seemed to be making in him was that he got way worse at hiding where he was staring. That, and that he didn’t seem to have any idea that she could see him talking to her chest. All things considered, she didn’t mind. ‘Good for him if he can still see sexy in this sweaty mess. Dork.’

“Hey, Dip-dude, it’s, uh, kinda hot in here. Does the AC kick on at night, or what’s up?” It was at least half true, she noticed, it didn’t seem like the school was forking out an awful lot of money to keep the place air conditioned.

“Oh! Yeah, sorry, they keep saying they’re getting it fixed soon, but I feel like they coulda done that during the last semester break. It’s part of why the duder spends so much time out of the room. It gets, uh, pretty hot in here with two bodies up and about. When he does make it back, it’s usually like one or later. Somehow there is always another party” Dipper prattled on as he got up to adjust the room for cooldown. He positioned the room’s big box fan in front of the open window and directed it towards Wendy. “Better?”

“Ugh, maybe in a bit. It’s balls outside too.” She bemoaned. “Hey, uh, we’ve known each other a long time, I could be all ‘polite company’ or whatever, but this thing is pretty uncomfortable” she tugged in her bra strap. “Do you mind if I…”

“Oh! Uh, no, yeah, go ahead. I mean, I’m all comfy in my all-day-peejays, so it wouldn’t be fair to expect you to wear so many, layers, right?”

“Mmhmm” she responded, already half-way done rolling her eyes, though she did suppress the chuckle as she reached one arm over and one under to undo her bra strap. Then she thought better of it and a predatory smile crossed her features. She could get it herself, or she could have some fun. “D’ya mind giving me a hand over here?” She half turned away from him and moved her hair out of the way. She gave a slight nod to indicate what she meant “I’m a little sore from today.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, I can do that.” She left it up to him. He could pull her tanktop up to undo the latch if he wanted. Though apparently he was hesitant to touch her directly, even if it was just her back, and he started pinching at the straps through her shirt. Though to her surprise, he got it after a couple attempts. “Th-there we go. Got ‘er.”

“Hooyeah!” She rolled her shoulders and neck before pulling the bra out through one of the arm holes before tossing it over to her shoes. “Good to have the girls free again, thanks Dip.” She still wasn’t sure what her motivation was. Her back was still turned to him, and she couldn’t very well stay that way forever. ‘Okay, so what’s the end goal here? It’s fun to watch him squirm, but is that all this is? I wish he’d just pulled the tank up…fuck, okay, I guess that should be my clue…’ She did a mental inventory of her feelings in the moment. ‘I wonder how he feels?’

“So, what were you saying about sprinkles?” She shifted in her seat to face back towards him.

Sure enough, he was shifting about, trying to adjust himself as he sat. His eyes were searching around the ceiling rather than actually looking at her. Though, she could see that the gears started turning when she asked the question. He’d just been regaling her with the time he and his roommate stole an actual gallon of rainbow sprinkles from the kitchen. He figured out where he’d left off without too much thinking. She was actually surprised that he went out of his way to be so sneaky and cracked open all of the skills he’d learned from his great uncle. It was easy to think of him as the more shy or repressed twin, but compared to Mabel, most pop stars were reserved. Wendy made a mental note to try to stop remembering him as the squishy, non threatening, softboy.

She listened intently as he narrated the twists and turns of the mission. Apparently there had been some mix up with the cards their meal vouchers were stored on. An entire semester’s worth of food money had been erased in a clerical error. So, to get revenge, Dipper and party boy, as Wendy remembered him, broke into the kitchen while the staff was distracted elsewhere.

“So, to understand the next part, I gotta ask, did Mabel ever tell you about her ‘all-you-can-eat trench coat’?” She shook her head. “Okay, so long story short so we can get on with it, cargo pants have lots and lots of pockets. She made a trench coat into a giant cargo cape, more or less. So that way she could snag literally all of the deserts from a buffet. I kinda made a jury rigged version with hot glue and old take out containers.” They stuffed everything they could into his awkward sounding theft-suit, grabbed whatever felt heavy, and ran for it. They nearly got caught several times, per his retelling, and once they got back to the room they realized that one of the tubs they grabbed was absolutely filled with sprinkles. Another one had gravy, and mashed potatoes in the third.

Wendy giggled at the way his face crinkled when he described how he dressed up mashed potatoes for different meals over the next week. Though, she was beginning to turn the corner on having a fan pointed directly at her.

“Hey, uh, you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but the seasons last like ten minutes in here. You mind if I stick my legs under your blankets to warm back up?” She could feel her cheeks flush, and immediately sucked on her lips, already regretting even asking. If it was a race to see who could stress out and over think things, between her and Dipper, it was difficult for her to gauge who was really worse. If her cup was a little heavier she could have downed some liquid courage-

“Oh, yeah, sorry, no problem.” He responded, his entire face as red as her cheeks. He sat up to clear the various socks, papers, and miscellaneous college detritus off of his bed. Ever the pragmatist, he had three layers of blankets. A thin sheet, a plush comforter and a knit blanket let him blow the max air at himself all night. She eagerly wriggled under the far side of his covers and glanced back towards the window.

“So, since I’m making myself comfortable, you wanna put on a movie or something?” She motioned towards the thirty-two inch monitor on his dresser.” I think it’s probably best I don’t drive right now.” He followed her eyes and nodded.

“Oh shit, yeah, we sorta let time get away from us a little. Dude, I’m down for movie night. What’re you in the mood for?” Dipper opened the top drawer and withdrew two binders full of dvds and laid them out in front of her. “Comedy? Horror? Hey, what’re-“ He paused in confusion as she kept wriggling under the blankets and kicking over the binders. He got his answer a moment later when she withdrew her jeans and tossed them over by her shoes.

“You’ve got like seventeen blankets,” she smirked, “I figured it’d be weird if like, halfway through sorority massacre twelve I got too hot and had to take ‘em off. What would you think of me?” Her expression was perhaps a little more sincere than she intended, since he nodded in response.

“Oh yeah, that would, uh, that’d be weird.” When he seemed to pause in contemplation she interjected again.

“You could slip under here with me. Toss on some shorts and get in here.” He nodded again, more shakily. For some reason his pants had become somewhat uncomfortable since she’d come to visit. He stuck his foot into one of the piles of clothes around his bed and withdrew a pair of basketball shorts with his toes. To Wendy’s surprise, he pushed the dvds back in front of her and zipped around to the other side of his dresser-cum-tv stand to change. ‘Oh, changing in the same soon as a girl, huh? Somebody’s come a long way’ she thought to herself.

Once they decided on ‘Alien Mercenary Four’ and programmed in the settings and subtitles Dipper settled down on top of the covers.

“Hey, what’s this?” Wendy demanded, motioning at his legs. Instinctively Dipper crossed one over the other.

“H-What? No, I mean…what do you mean?” He stammered.

“Ugh, c’mon dude, the blankets’ll be all tight across my legs like that. Get all comfy under here with me. Pretend like you know me or somethin’ dude.” She knuckle tapped him playfully across the shoulder and patted at the space between them. That space was at least as wide as one of her legs. His bed wasn’t the biggest, seeing as it was a dorm room. But he was practically falling off the bed to give her the space he assumed she wanted. She thought it was sweet, but dumb. Even if they weren’t ‘childhood’ friends, she was a girl in a tanktop and undies under some blankets and asking for company, so she wasn’t looking for personal space. Though, it really shouldn’t have surprised her. Even when he was blatantly crushing on her and they’d hang out in her old room, he practically had a heart attack the first time he touched one of her bras.

He shrugged and seemed somewhat abashed about it then snuggled in next to her. She scooted closer to him so her leg was resting against his.

“I promise you won’t get cooties” she chided. They shared a chuckle and he hit play on the remote.

The movie was damn near incomprehensible, but not because it was foreign, or because it was the fourth movie in the series, and she hadn’t seen the other three. It was actually the original film in the franchise. The sequels were numbered five, six, and seven just the same, which tended to add to the confusion. The ‘Four’ in the title had actually been mistranslated from the word for ‘death’ in the title of the original comic it was based off of. The company even encouraged the mistranslation once it happened, Dipper had explained, because they felt it seemed like the company was successful if it had enough money to fund a four movie series. Paradoxically people actually bought more of the sequels, since ‘Five’ played out as a new origin story.

She’d actually heard of the series before due to her love of crappy cult classics, which the Alien Mercenary series became, but she’d never seen them before. They were famous in their circle for its quirky direction, ridiculous practical effects, the sheer cheese factor, and the accidentally funny acting. The reason it was incomprehensible, well, at least one of the reasons, was because it was an utter mess. Badguys and goodguys seemed to switch sides about halfway through, and the gangsters that were bankrolling them all were actually possessed by ghosts. It was virtually impossible to keep track of sober. Though, she hadn’t been trying too hard. She couldn’t stop juggling a decision in her head. And he was sitting right next to her.

Plain and simple, as far as she was concerned, she was too sober. Getting a little more of the devil’s fruit punch in her might’ve helped swing the pendulum one way or another, but both the mini liquors and her mixed drink were on the other side of Dipper. ‘Wouldn’t be a bad move’ she thought to herself. ‘I could reach past him pretend like I don’t notice…nah, that would be dumb. I don’t need to get drunk. I could just reach over and grab it…’ She was hardly a virgin, and it wouldn’t be the first time she initiated with her partner, but with him it was different with a capital D. The longer she procrastinated, the more she hears her own heartbeat in her ears.

Wendy took in a long, slow breath, centering herself, and let the tingles work their way down to her toes as she relaxed. She could still hear her own heart more than anything, so she rested her head on Dipper’s chest and slid a leg over one of his.

As they lay there, bodies intertwined, doubt creeped in through all of the cracks in her confidence. ‘Maybe I’m reading the sitch all wrong. I’ve been making all the moves here; and if I’m being honest, I think I knew I was going to before I came over. Could be he’s grown out of his crush and I’m just…embarrassing myself here. Thinking back, that might be what kept me away for so long. I guess I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. And the consequences of the other thing…’ It was just then, of course, in the split second of doubt that it took to have the thought, she realized the hand placed on Dipper’s chest had slipped a bit. Her palm was flat on his lower belly, and he seemed to be producing a hell of a lot more body heat. Which was in stark contrast to his posture; he was practically frozen stiff. And as clammy as he was, she could tell he was as nervous as she was. There was no clue as to whether or not he realized that, though.

‘Fuck the consequences. Wait, shit, do I even have a condom on me? Fuck! Okay, I come to terms with wanting to sleep with Dipper, I haven’t seen the guy for years, and I left the damn raincoats in my truck. Okay, I gotta stop being stupid.’ She slowed her breathing and mastered her anxiety. Once she was feeling calm and cool, she pushed herself up to look him in the eye.

“Hey Dip, can I ask you something?” Her tone as flat and poker-like as she could manage. He made to answer her, but croaked instead. He cleared his throat a few times before attempting a second go.

“Yeah, of course.” He managed, returning her direct look.

“Do you wanna have sex with me?” She learned a long time ago that being clear, direct, and getting to the point quickly made a person seem confident, even if they weren’t. It was her instinct; even when she was unsure of herself. Hell, especially when she was unsure of herself. Confident people get honest answers.

“N-no!” He blurted out.

“No?”

“Shit, sorry, instinct, I mean, yeah, obviously.” He couldn’t look her in the eye after that admission. He seemed to immediately become interested with the ceiling texture. Though he braved on. “I mean, I haven’t stopped wanting to. Since, y’know, before I even- Okay, and that red bathing- I, well, I, what I mean is- Okay, yes. I do… and I hope that’s the right answer?”

Wendy’s lips cracked into a wide smile, even as she tried to suppress it so he wouldn’t feel like she was laughing at him. ‘I’m half- okay, more like mostly naked, in his bed, and he’s still intimidated by me? God Dipper, you are-‘ Instead of thinking her thoughts, she decided to give his kind of unguarded honesty a try.

“Dip, you are too freakin’ cute. But, like, not in a bad way. I mean,” she took a breath to think ahead by a word or two. “I mean that you’re cute, dude. Like, sweet, and maybe kinda hot.” His eyes asked ‘Really?’ pretty loudly. “Yeah, dude. Did ya think I forgot how to maintain homeostasis? I’m, like, all kindsa naked over here.” A flush filled her cheeks and for once, she broke eye contact. “So, y’know, don’t be so surprised that maybe I wanna get me some too.” He was shocked into silence long enough for her mouth to keep talking for her. “Can I ask a different question?”

“Yeah, shoot” he responded, almost automatically.

“What would you want to have happen afterwards?” After a few breaths she added “No wrong answers, dude. I promise.” He furrowed his brow in concentration, clearly taking the question seriously.

“So, you mean like, if we…what would change afterwards?” Wendy considered for a second and gave a half-committed nod. Not exactly what she meant, but she’d been wondering the same. He sat in place and concentrated for half a minute before answering. “I’m honestly at a loss.”

“Really?” Not exactly the hopeless romantic answer she’d expected.

“Yeah, sorry, I’ve- I mean, we both know I’ve had a, well, had a thing for you, since forever.”

“Mmmhmm, I seem to recall your thing.” He winced, but grinned.

“Okay, point for Wendy. Well, it’d sorta depend on what you’d want.”

“Oh come on” she shot back “It’s okay to be honest. I just want to know where you’re at…maybe bad timing on my part, but, I mean it. I don’t wanna know what you’d agree to because you think it’s what I’d want. Just honesty, okay?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “That’s true. Sorry-“

“Besides” She interrupted, “hearing that kinda thing is sexy.”

“Okay, well” he cleared his throat for a moment more to think; “I guess to start, I’d hope we could spend the rest of the night together, just you and me?” Her eyebrow raised slightly at his questioning tone, so he pushed on more directly. “I think it would be nice, y’know? If you left right after and we didn’t talk about it, that could feel weird. Like, what would we be? Friends with benefits? Dating? I, uh, I don’t really have a whole lot of experience with that, either way. So, uh, I think I’d like to talk about that. That’s probably what you meant, huh?” That earned a minute nod from Wendy. “I think, I’d like to go on a date.” The tone of his voice picked up just a bit, but didn’t quite become a question. “I think, yeah, anything we do will be fun. And bare minimum we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Really good friends, learning new stuff about each other, seeing another side we hadn’t explored before.”

“Oh yeah, we’ve got a couple other sides that need exploring.” Wendy interjected, with a playful grin and a wiggle of her eyebrows. It was practically patented Corduroy deflection, but he took it for the joke it was meant as and pushed on. “Plus, y’know, it’s always a good chance to do-” Dipper cleared his throat. “-other activities, if it goes well?” He drifted back towards insecurity and began studying the knit pattern on his sheet. Though, after a moment he was able to recover enough to search her expression to see if she’d liked his answer. To Dipper’s gratification, she was obviously considering it.

“Alright. Let’s say we do that.” Wendy pulled the blankets aside. He seemed to flinch into a crunch for a half a second, probably trying to hide his erection. Apparently he’d side-stepped that thought though, and he lay in place. She bit her lip, drinking up the sight of him straining against his shorts. She threw a knee over him and his eyes nearly bulged out of his face. “Tell me about those ‘other activities’ you were talkin’ about.” She intoned, leaning over him, her hair, a red curtain framing both of their faces.

Dipper’s eyes almost seemed to glaze over as he smiled; her scent filled the space around him. He drew in an obvious breath through his nose while his hands ran down either side of her body, settling on her butt.

“I wish I had something smooth to say, but I’m just completely dumb struck by how sexy you are.” He admitted, after a good squeeze. “So I’m kinda behind the curve since I’m so amazed we’re even here right now.”

“Oh damn, Dip. That wasn’t your ‘something smooth’? Shit, son, keep looking then.” Satisfied well enough with his response, Wendy sat up to get a better view of his face and lowered her butt onto his lap. As she moved, his hands migrated naturally to her hips while she nestled down, wiggling a bit as she did. His fingertips dug in slightly in response, gripping her firmly.

“Did you ever think we’d be like this?” She punctuated the question by undulating her hips, grinding herself against him, his length trapped between them.

“Mmmm, I’d say ‘not in my wildest dreams’ but, uh…there were definitely some dreams.” She responded with her hips, rubbing against him as he spoke. “I had always fantasized about, nng- and I gave it a lot of thou-“ He inhaled somewhat more sharply as she put her back into it for a second, derailing his train of thought. Quite deliberately, she pressed herself down against his hardness and ground in circles into him. She closed her eyes and nibbled on her lower lip as her body reacted. The circles gave way to sliding back and forth over Dipper’s bulge, faster and faster, pressing her hands into his chest. She raked at his shirt with her nails as her breathing became more and more ragged.

Dipper was lost in the ecstasy of the moment. It was all he could do to surge his hips upwards in time with her. As she was pulling hers back to roll into him again he pushed back. When he hit it just right her body shuddered for a moment and she came back again harder, faster, practically bouncing as she did.

The cheap frame and downright elderly mattress of Dipper’s creaked and squeaked in beat with their rhythm. At the point her fingers were clutching the fabric of his shirt, pulling it tight, both she, and the creeks slowed drastically. Her body was tense, and each movement seemed like it took more and more deliberate focus. Her voice was a breathy whimper with each breath, timed to the crest in her slide along his length.

Wendy shifted her weight to her knees and she straightened her back pushing her chest out a bit. Dipper’s hands were firmly on her hips, helping support her. She picked up her pace as vigorously as she could handle, but this time the movements were incredibly concentrated. She focuses her efforts on a small and very sensitive area. Each little thrust bringing her closer and closer to the edge. The clothing between them was sopping wet and slick. Until one, final, ragged push from Wendy came, partnered with a long, sultry moan. After a few more breaths she turned her attention back down to him.

“Do you have these fantasies about me often? Is this how you thought it’d go our first time? ”He nodded in response to the first question and pushed himself up into her some more. His face was as red as a thermometer, but even as shy as he was, his body knew what to do.

“I can’t spill all my secrets at once though,” he responded, “I gotta keep you coming back for more.”

“Just one little one?” She wondered if he’d be able to come up with anything to say. She was better at the false confidence game than he was, and as she could feel, he was under a lot of pressure at the moment. He shifted around under her and, perhaps accidentally, hit her with an especially energetic thrust through the thin layers of fabric between their bodies.

“I…think about you every day. I mean, not just that, though I am in the sorta time in my life where-“ Wendy interrupted him with a hand on his chest as she rose to stand up.

“Okay, this is not the best time, but that thing you did a sec ago reminded me how much I’ve had to drink tonight.” She shifted from one leg to another, back and forth. “ Please tell me you have a bathroom”

“Oh! Yeah, sorry, right by the door you came thr-“ Before he could finish she bolted off and called through the bathroom door, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, Dip! I’ll be one sec!”

“Note to self. Bathroom breaks before intimacy” He narrated to himself, while simultaneously reaching for his phone. He made a quick entry into his ‘theory of dating?’ document and set it back down. He deleted the question mark and capitalized ‘Theory’. He’d probably have a lot more to add by the end of the night. There was a flush and the sound of a door clicking open just as he finished that thought.

“Hey, that was pretty quick” he called over.

“Hwhuwazzat?” came a drunken, slurred response from the door to the apartment. A slur that was very much not the voice he’d expected. In an immediate, whirlwind response, Dipper channeled his panic into sweeping Wendy’s clothes under the bed and throwing a cover over himself.

“Shit. Uh, hi Craig. I mean, did you have a good time? I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.” He near-shouted, loudly and obviously, towards his roommate, hoping he wouldn’t be the only one to hear.

“Oohyeh. Fsher. I’m yes” Craig responded, nodding deliriously before stumbling over to the fridge to extract a breakfast burrito. He managed a series of gestures and sounds that Dipper wouldn’t be as generous as to describe as language, in order to explain the events of the evening. From previous experience with his roomie in that state before, Dipper puzzled together that the party he’d been at was raided by the cops. Instead of locking up several dozen college kids for the night, everyone was sent packing, even Craig, who had passed out on the floor over there. He wished that just that once the campus cops could have been a little stricter with the drunk tank policy.

While Craig was gesticulating on some tangent about the people at the party, Dipper noticed out of the corner of his eye, the bathroom door crack ever so slowly open. Wendy peeked out enough to see that party boy wouldn’t be able to see her. The microwave was far enough into the kitchen to give her some cover. She couldn’t see Craig, and he couldn’t see her. When she realized she had Dipper’s attention she gestured wildly for him to get her clothes for her.

He nodded back to her. His roomie was so blitzed that the microwave burrito was winning. He’d pushed the wrong buttons to set the time and was struggling to fix it. Dipper sighed, lamenting his evening. Quickly, and quietly he scooped up and deposited her things in front of the bathroom. Because of the sudden interruption the only thing Dipper really had to hide had most definitely faded.

Once he’d finally gotten the “fruckin’ robot oven” as he put it, to start cooking his meal, their unwanted interruption collapsed onto his bed and passed out. Just to make sure the ding didn’t rouse him, Dipper popped the door of the microwave open and ducked over to check on Wendy.

“Hey,” he whispered into the door; and waited for a response from her. As best as he could make out, he could hear the sound of rustling clothes. So he tried again a second later, just a bit louder than before. “Hey, Wendy.” This time she heard him and turned the handle to crack the door. “He’s asleep for now. You can come out.” She popped her head out and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

“I hope we both wanna pick up right where we left off…” She trailed off, making the statement into a question. Dipper nodded vigorously.

“I’m sensing there’s a ‘but’ coming.” He responded with a light hearted smirk.

“You can do more than just sense it, but yeah. I think maybe passed out fratboy is a bit of a mood-ruiner? And I hate to say it, but it is actually kind of a long drive.”

“Yeah. That’s true” Dipper sighed. Somewhat dejected, but he swallowed that down. She couldn’t very well sleep over with the dorm just then.

“But there’s definitely a next time in my mind. Should we make it an actual date?” He perked up then.

“Yes!” He shouted, completely forgetting Craig for a moment. Thankfully he just rolled over and continued snoring. “Sorry.” He tried again, lowering the volume drastically. “Yes, though. I would love to go on a date with you, Wendy.”

“Hehe. Cool. Good.” Her grin beamed happiness. She was excited about whatever museum he would find to take her to. If it turned out to be boring she could always suggest a movie marathon at her place, after all. She slung her bag over her shoulder and indicated with a tilt of her head that he should join her outside of the apartment. After making sure it was unlocked, he followed her out and closed it quietly behind himself. Once it’d clicked, she pushed him back against it and leaned in to nibble his ear lobe. She let her free hand wander down his chest and stroked his attention. “Check your phone when you get back in.” She purred a sultry tone. “I trust you were already gonna be thinkin’ of me tonight.” She gave him a squeeze to punctuate her point.

“Mmm. How’d you guess?”

“Don’t let Craigery get ahold of it either.” Wendy warned half heartedly. “But you knew that already.” His expression painted a picture of explicit agreement with an almost incredulous smirk, saying ‘As if!’. She guessed he might be a bit grumbly with the dude in the following days. She pecked him on the cheek. “Oh. And next time? You can tell me exactly what you’ve been wanting to do to me all these years. I’m so excited to hear about it.” She released her grip and planted a parting kiss on his lips.

“Look forward to it.”

“Oh. I will be.” She turned to leave and received a smack across the rear and yelped. “Mmm. You’d better be ready to back that up!” She called back over her shoulder as she walked down the hallway.

Once she’d turned down another hall, Dipper slipped back into the apartment and into the bathroom to replace his basketball shorts for a new pair. He emerged to see his roommate, munching on a cold burrito. He waved at Dipper.

“Dude. You are the worst.” Craig looked down at his dinner, then back up to Dipper.

“Yeah, probably.” He responded, before turning his attention back to eating.

“Ugh. Don’t worry about it, man. Just, just eat your- mine actually, but whatever, just enjoy it. I’m gonna go make a phone call.” He thrust his feet into a pair of sandals, plucked his phone from the charger and tucked his keys into the pocket. Once he was out in the hall he managed to make it a whole seven feet before checking his texts. He’d definitely be thinking about her later. But there was one thing he had to do first.

By then it was actually pretty late out, and the evening air was relatively crisp and refreshing compared to the dorm building. He slipped around one corner, and then another, until he was in what was considered the rear of the complex. There were no windows or doors nearby, so he could have a private conversation without being overheard. He’d sent a text before coming outside, and just as he settled against the wall, the ding of the response seemed almost uncomfortably loud in the quiet evening air. Though, he told himself, it was probably just nerves. His thumb hovered over the phone call button for what must have at least been a minute before he could gather the confidence to press it. Though, of course, it started ringing before he could.

“Hey…. Yeah, I was just about to. You beat me to it.”

…

“N-no, not exactly. I mean, mostly, but we had our clothes on…are you..? I’m sorry if you’re mad.”

…

“Yeah, but your feelings still matter.”

…

“I love you too. It’s just, it’s one thing to say it in words, but to …I mean, to really do it is something else. I mean, we’re really doing this now.”

…

“No, but she did send me some.”

…

“She- no, I can’t! She trusts me. Besides, I’m like eighty percent sure that if you asked-“

…

“Okay, well, not like that.”

…

“Maybe I’m a little scared…”

…

“I… Yeah. I will.”

…

“…Yeah, honestly. I do.”

…

“Yeah, I have, but-“

…

“The moon is a bit far.”

…

“I guess. We already knew it’d be a few years. It was so much easier to hide it when we were younger.”

…

“Oh man, let’s not even revisit that.”

…

“Yeah…Okay. I think I’m good now. I’m still kinda scared, but…excited?

…

“Oh are you?”

…

“B-but I’m outside right n-“

…

“I…”

…

“I mean, honestly I’m not disagreeing, just…”

…

“Oh my god, Bel.”

…

“Love you too. Goodnight. Thanks. Sleep well, and uh…I will.”

Courage

“Bwahahahahahahaaaaaaa!” Bill, hands wriggling for lack of anything else to do with his physical form laughed maniacally up at the sky while Mabel was helpless to look on. “Stupid Shooting Star! Now that Pine Tree has lost my game you’ve got no choice but to hand over the portal key!”

“Don’t do it Mabel!” Dipper banged uselessly on the walls of the floating pink bubble he found himself trapped in. The spherical walls echoed back like a rubber duck caught in a piano’s strings. “He’ll never let us both out of here! You’ve got to run! Get back home! I-I love you! There, I said it! please, just go!”
Mabel made to reach out for her brother, to press her palm against his bubblegum prison, but even as she did it was cruelly ripped away as the demon lifted the bubble ever higher into the air.

“You’ll never win, Shooting Star! Only an act of true courage could have saved him, and you’ve got nothing left! Anything you do to save him will just be another thing you’re selfish about! He gave himself to save you and if you negate that sacrifice I win anyway! Aaaaahahahahahahahahaaaaa! You mortals are so predictable!” The triangle cackled, spinning slightly in the pseudo space he was floating in.

Just then Mabel realized the trick and snapped her fingers. A standing bath tub and floating shower head materialized next to her. Bill’s one eye opened wider in surprise before narrowing to glare down at her. She simply returned his look with a contemptuous smile. Another snap of her fingers and a shower head floating in mid-air appeared inside of the tub’s invisible walls. She stepped inside and pulled the curtain around herself.

“What are you even doing!” The demon barked, floating over the opening over top of the tub to get a better look, only to have shampoo squirted into his eye. “Why is it always the eye!? Gaaughh!” His legs kicked and flailed, sending him floating backwards as his stick figure hands clutched at the offended orb.

Mabel’s hand calmly reached out through the curtain a moment later to drop her clothes on the ground. Dipper could only stare in wonder at the scene unfolding below him. Though he found that with Bill’s concentration lacking he was actually falling not unlike a balloon that’d lost too much of its helium, gradually to the sandy island in their combined dreamscape.

“Mabel, what are you-?” The sight of her underwear piled on top of her skirt and sweater ended whatever he may have been thinking about rather abruptly. His heart skipped several beats when the curtain parted again slightly for her arm to emerge and place her shoes and socks next to her clothes pile. That arm, he knew, was connected to a very exposed and very naked Mabel. ‘Well, arms are no big deal, b-but the rest of her…” his internal monologue stuttered.

Then suddenly the squeak of turning metal caught his attention, followed a half-second later by the sounds of water and another squeak, felt very much in the pit of his stomach. The second one had very clearly been his twin getting hit with a sudden stream of cold water.

“Oh my god, Mabel! You turned on the water while you were already in the shower!?” He recoiled in second hand horror. Even as he did the world began shaking and crumbling all around them. Bill was shrieking in horror as he disolved, evaporated, sublimed, and turned into a static mess all at the same time, cursing his fate. “An act of true courage” Dipper turned back to the shower curtain with awe.

And in the blink of an eye the bubble was gone, the dreamscape had vanished and there they were back in their high school, as empty as it was when they’d first broken in. The eye bats and tongue-salamanders were long gone.

“Hey, uh, Dip? Little help?” Mabel’s question snapped him out of the fuzzy haze and into reality to see her crouched down, one arm wrapped around herself to shield from prying eyes and the other reaching for her clothes that were just out of reach.

“Oh! uh, yeah, sure thing” He bleated, half turning his head and half closing his eyes to reach down to help. His hand recoiled for a moment when he realized they were touching something far too silky and lacey to have been her sweater. He yelped and threw the whole mass of stuff to his sister. He could only hope she was blushing as hard as he was, and that she didn’t realize what his bubble bound confession meant.

Just Business 2 – Dooper

Here’s Part 2 of Just Business where the twins’ secretary Cynthia was introduced. I wrote this so that it can hopefully be read and understood as a oneshot. The goal is for each of the chapters to be their own semi-noir vignette in the lives of Dipper and Mabel, paranormal hunters. I have to thank @equilateral-asshat for helping with the editing process. It’s just shy of 7500 words. I hope you enjoy it!

The wheels of the black, ’96 impala kicked up rocks and dirt, creating dusty clouds as Mabel skidded across one country road and onto the next. The back seat of the car filled with yaps and barks as the little pink animal carrier, carefully belted into the seat, leaned from one side to the other.

“Great. It’s still barking,” Dipper groaned. “I can’t believe you want to bring that thing home with us!”

“Relax, it’s-” she spun the wheel, hitting a lump in the field with the trunk of their car, “-totally cute! And you know it’s harmless, bro.” She rammed another one of the creatures head on, cutting it roughly in half. “Besides! If we don’t take care of Lil’ Dooper, who will?” One more fibrous thump on the hood sounded out before Dipper responded.

“You named it!? After me!? There is no way that thing is stepping one foot into our house!” Mabel simply rolled her eyes as Dipper’s reaction.

“Just calm down and grab your axe, Dip. There’s a few left. We can talk it over with Cyn. Let her cast the deciding vote?”He hefted the heavy blade in his hand and huffed.

“As if you haven’t already texted her…” He grumbled, though the last comment sent over his shoulder was clearly only the last blow thrown in retreat. His mind wasn’t in it anymore. If he let that distract him on a hunt he wouldn’t be very good at what he did.

One last controlled spin, and three more lumps fell to the skidding wheels and metallic bulk of their car. The very moment the gear clicked into park Dipper’s door flew open and he bolted out, axe swinging, severing limbs and lumps left and right. ‘And he is good at it’, Mabel thought peacefully, as her brother seemed to move through space as if he were in an action movie, every movement choreographed to put him exactly where he wanted to be. Monstrous white claws slashed at him, only to find empty air where he once was. Mabel was out the driver side door only a moment after her brother, taking a quick moment to look back into the animal carrier. Dooper yapped excitedly.

“I’ll be right back, buddy!” Mabel called through the open door, before kicking it shut. Then the twin machetes she’d had sheathed across her lap emerged without a sound, and she danced into the fray alongside her own twin. Mabel herself was like a manic pixie death squad, or a whirling dervish of death; though she’d been born at least twenty years too late to have ever called herself the latter.

The serious, laser focus of her brother’s expression counterpoised Mabel’s. He deftly dodged a swinging hook or claw to hack at its bearer’s back, then taking out its legs, only to deliver a final crushing blow with the weight of his instrument smashing down on a creature’s face. She chose instead to slash apart any and all of the creatures around her by never slowing down. A monstrous hand turned into confetti in half a dozen slashes before it could get anywhere close to her.

Mabel made her way through the stragglers that crashed like waves on her brother’s rocky and unforgiving shore, and slammed the other door closed as well. The precaution proved unnecessary, however, as a quick head count, especially of those rolling free of their former owners, saw more monsters on the ground than were still up. Suddenly, in her moment’s distraction, two rows of pale white teeth managed to clamp down around one of her blades. The machetes were ground to a cruel edge, but were wide enough for the thing’s jaws to really bite in and grab hold, even if the mouth they belonged to were in the middle of getting a Glasgow smile.

“Dipper!” Mabel called out as she released her grip on the machete, rolling to the side. As she sprang back up, the back of her opponent’s body exploded out through its chest as an angry axe caught it in the back. Without losing too much of her momentum, she turned to the downed creature and stomped down hard on the handle of her weapon, completing the decapitation.

“Watch yourself!” Dipper chided over his shoulder, though there was no anger in the shout.

“Hey! You left your door open! I had to shut it!” She took one final swing with all her might and cleaved her last target down the middle, leaving it staggering for a moment before finally collapsing.

“Sorry, you’re right,” he panted out, eyes darting from lump to lump. “You got a head count?”

“Sixty-Three.” A squelching sound at her feet reminded her to finish off the twitching mass, which she did with another stomp. “Sixty Four. Counting Those?” She motioned over to the farmhouse a hundred or so yards away. There was a collection of white lumps, riddled with buckshot. “I’d say at least… seventy-eight?”

“Not good enough,” Dipper grunted, gazing across the fields for any sign of movement. “Fourteen per row, six rows, that’s eighty-four. So we’re off by six. That’s not enough for a paycheck.”

“Hey, how big do you think the Fraggles are around here?” Mabel quipped offhandedly. He simply rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the count, hacking little X marks into the ones he had already counted, just to be sure.

Dipper marked off each of the bodies as he went, making sure to only mark the heads with an X where Mabel had separated body from face, adding them to the count they’d established last in the car to confirm the total. Though it took him a moment or two longer than he’d imagined, it wasn’t as though the bodies were well uniform. While one might have looked like an evil white carrot, stretched out and tall, the next could have been a rutabaga, lumpy and dumpy. He found that Mabel was right on target, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from triple-counting again while they were in the clear. Mabel, meanwhile, busied herself with widening the search little by little, keeping in sight of her brother. She didn’t have to look very long, though, just downhill from the farmhouse she found the last of the creatures.

“Whoop whoooop! We got a hit, Dip! It’s the last one!”

Dipper’s brow furrowed and he scrabbled up the dirt track road.

“Hey! Don’t get excited, there’s supposed to be six! Don’t go running off on your own-” Before he could finish, he’d caught up with her and was able to see what the fuss was about. Cresting the mound of dirt and grass to stand next to her, he spotted an enormous lump attempting to eat one of the apple trees in the valley orchard beneath the hill. The thing was distant, but easily as tall as one of the trees.

“Well, shit. Guess that’s the rest of ‘em-”

“Boss Fight!” Mabel interrupted with giddy joy, hopping in place.

“Oi,” her brother groaned. “Okay, okay, I know you’re excited, but-”

“I already checked! Look, see the two legs it’s standing on?”

“Mmhmm,” He agreed.

“Okay, well it’s really four, they’re super thick because it’s actually two pairs fused together to support it’s big ol’ head. So we’ve got four, two coming out of the back makes six, eight with the two on the left, and two more in front like weird, knobby leg-boobs.” One by one she squinted and pointed out each pair of legs sticking haphazardly out of the lump at odd angles. By the time she got to the ‘leg boobs’, she was holding both hands in front of her, pretending her index fingers were tiny legs, kicking them about.

“Okay, okay, good work, but there’s still one left. That would be twelve legs,” Dipper countered.

“True, but maybe he ate the last one, or it wandered off, or is right around the corner. I say we take out Grandpa Lumpy down there and do a quick sweep. Who knows, maybe we miscounted before? If they can grow together like that, then maybe one of them was a conjoined twin and we didn’t know. Or maybe it didn’t even pop up at all; but also we should check the cabbage patch once we’re done.”

“W-What?” Taken aback by the sudden swerve in the conversation, Dipper was genuinely stunned for a moment, until the Mabel translation circuit ticked over. “Oh, because if you’d expect to catch monsters sprouting out of the ground, there’s two places to check, right?”

“Pet cemeteries and cabbage patches, cuz hell if those things aren’t the scariest toy I’ve ever seen.” They repeated in unison, quoting their great-uncle Stan from just after their last movie marathon a couple summers back.

“Alright Mabes.” He finally relented, the mention of family softening his features into a warm smile. “We gotta talk to him after all this is done anyway.”

“Hey, don’t yell at him, he didn’t know,” Mabel pouted, her eyes losing a bit of their twinkle from their moment of reverie a second before.

“Oh, I know. I just figure that he could carve a replacement for us. El museo de los antiguos aztecas definitely doesn’t need a real, and active artifact sitting in the display room. It’s just volcanic rock, right? I’ve seen him do more with less.”

“Why, you crooked so-and-so!” Mabel’s brightness redoubled, and she was already imagining the future, job complete, paycheck in hand, and a terrycloth bathrobe awaiting her back at home. “I’m gonna have so many mimosas with fancy champagne!”

“Uh…huh…” Dipper side-eyed her. She looked positively charged with energy, excited to get a move on. “Okay, whatever, just keep your eyes open. That thing is big. No telling what that could mean. We should probably go back for the crossbow… …Mabel, are you payin- God damn it, Mabel, were you even listening!?” He shouted over to his sister who was already excitedly charging downhill, machetes flailing wildly as she attempted her best Zinga Warrior Princess cry. It came out more like a gargling mastiff with a yodeler caught in its throat.

Mabel always got a sort of thrill when she ran with sharp objects. Something in the toddler part of her brain really jumped at the chance. So when she went careening downhill she felt a few moments of unadulterated, childlike joy. Then she came blade to back with the enormous vegetal mass. Maybe her young adult brain could have taken a few more moments to truly process the bulk of the obstacle in front of her. The blades bit in, but not more than a few inches. Pulling them out was a bit of a struggle in and of itself, even if the thing wasn’t trying to turn to face her. Neckless, it stomped around in a half circle just to try to face her, while she, bouncing on one foot, did her best to pry her weapons loose.

“Damn it, you are NOT going to eat Lucy and Ethel with your butt! Or whichever part of you this is…”

She stumbled backwards a few feet once the thin metal instruments popped loose. Then it hit her, not literally, not yet. The thing was at least fifteen feet tall, and looked like a giant head on two stubby little legs. Stubby only by comparison though. It wobbled as it moved, seemingly clumsy, thinner down below, and widening as it grew taller, the face that she was expecting was a mess. At least four mouths, strewn about the front of it bellowed a roar while eight beady eyes rolled around and eventually trained on her. It didn’t look so clumsy then, stomping towards her with malice in its various face parts. ‘One’ of its ‘arms’ was just like the legs that supported it, two that had grow together, thick and stubby, but it looked like it could crush bricks in its pale white hand. Another was skinny and long, as if it might have been one arm growing out of the other. While dodging a swing from it Mabel thought she might’ve seen fingers sprouting out of the elbow joint.

“You are one big-ass ugly radish.” As if responding to the insult, the thing shrieked at her, swiping with each of its arms, the legs kicking in opposite directions to keep it balanced. The reddish hue made it obvious that this one was more ripe than its siblings, dirt still clinging to its lower half told her that it must have emerged last. ‘Lucky us’ She thought, rolling under a long swing from its extended arm to try to hack at the limb with her machetes. They practically bounced off. The flesh, if it could be called that, was much woodier and more developed than the creatures she’d dispatched so easily before.

“I’m gonna call you Grandpa Lumpy!” She exclaimed, pointing a blade at it. “What do you think of that?” Predictably, it didn’t like that anymore than anything else she said, and charged again. If she was hoping it would stumble over its own feet and topple like an overbalanced, top heavy toddler, she was mistaken. A slash from its long arm missed her but gouged slashes out of the nearby apple tree.

“Mabel! Move away!” Came a shout from the hill. She was leaping to the side even before she fully recognized her brother’s voice. At the end of the tuck and roll she popped up to see a red hot ball crash into Grandpa Lumpy’s enormous head with a sizzling crack. The smoke trail lead her eyes right to where Dipper stood, loading another flare into the single-shot gun and firing again, this time aiming for one of the mouths. “Go to the car and get your crossbow!” he commanded. “I’ll keep it busy! Just go!” Another sizzle-crack signaled the round making contact with the vegetal monstrosity. Mabel hesitated only for a moment, looking back and forth between the monster and her twin before running off.

The beast bellowed again at Dipper, shrieking anew with each stinging bolt. Forgotten, it stepped on the first flare that’d bounced off, steaming and popping as it burned into to the woody heel. The bright red glow seemed to block out all other light, making the monstrosity appear even angrier and uglier than it already had been. Dipper tossed the flare gun away and hefted his axe in both hands. The rounds took time to load and there was nothing to distract it now. He wouldn’t get a second chance to shoot it before the thing charged.

“Shit, I was hoping you’d be more flammab-Shit!” As he backed away, sizing up his opponent, a heel was stopped by a rock jutting out of the dirt path, and the momentary lapse in focus was all the thing needed. It was on him in an instant, much faster than he would have judged. All he could do was blindly swing his axe and hope to hit something. It bit deep in between the eyes and mouth of one of its several faces, but that was the end of his luck. The eyes went dark but the easily half ton of bulk hit him. Its long arm hit him in the side and sent Dipper flying.

Static filled his senses after the impact with the ground. Then an iron grip had his right arm, pinning it painfully into the ground. He couldn’t yet focus his eyes but the shadow the thing cast over him darkened the sky from where he lay.

“F-fuck you, Grandpa Lumpy” Dipper croaked out as the hot breath steamed inches away from his face. If he was going to be eaten by a giant radish he could at least be shitty about it.

“Get off by brother you big, red, asshole!” came Mabel’s war cry, charging in from the side a half second before she flew through the air, plowing into the oblique of the thing, plunging a pitchfork in just under the long arm. The metal tines of the fork split open the face hidden in its armpit, and the gangly, but surprisingly strong limb went stiff. From Dipper’s perspective, the tableau was in slow motion. His twin’s body crashing into the top heavy beast tipped it a bit, but even through his blurry vision he could see that it wasn’t enough. The broad, stocky feet dug into the dirt, bracing it against the impact. But the thick, ropey fingers that clamped his arm like a vice loosened ever so slightly.

He had barely half an inch of slack but it was enough. Immediately his arm shot down to where his revolver was holstered at his side. He had to twist his hip and shoulder painfully to reach it, but even as the top of the monster wobbled back to re-balance the snap of his holster was undone. His fingers wrapped around the well worn wooden handle of the old gun, sinking into the slight finger grooves worn into it by time and use. Acting on instinct alone he aimed for the bulbous knobbly left knee.

The slug tore through the joint, exploding out the other side, and even as the recoil was jolting his arm, sending pain radiating through the spots where the fingers had gripped him he pressed the hot muzzle into the thing’s arm and squeezed the trigger. Time suddenly seemed to play in regular speed again as he Dipper finally took a breath he didn’t know he’d had knocked out of him. Blinking away the stars and blackness he fought his way to his feet again as the monster crashed into the ground, leg shattered into splinters. He could feel his heartbeat in his head, gasping for air even as his sister screamed defiant bloody murder.

Her machetes thunked and smacked into the woody flesh, hacking triangular wedges out of the flailing arms. It kicked, struggled, and shrieked, but more and more of its body faded to grey as the signals failed to reach the slivers of finger and hand felled under her relentless blows. By the Time Dipper’s ears worked again he realized she wasn’t just screaming. Tinnitus from the shots forced him to pop his ears over and over but the sound of his name was unmistakable. She was crying, and cursing the thing for trying to kill him. The arms and legs on her side of the body were already motionless but she was quickly reducing them to stumps. Shakily, he called out to her.

“Ugh, Mabel-Mabes! Back up! Ear plugs!” Chest heaving, eyes glittering with moisture, she turned to him with to see that he was okay before understanding. He could see that she had when she jumped back and covered her ears. He dug into his pockets for the linty foam plugs, pushing them into each ear before leveling the revolver at the thing. His third shot sank deep into the ‘forehead’ where it seemed none of the vital bits were, but then a calming hand came to rest on his wrist. His sister gave him a reassuring nod, and with her help guiding his aim he put the next three rounds, one after the other, in between the glowing dots of light of Grandpa Lumpy’s eyes. The kicking and shrieking stopped as the last of the glow faded, finally dead.

Pain shot through his arm as his twin wrapped him in a desperate hug and hoisted him off the air.

“OhmygodI’msosorryIthoughtyouweregonnadieIshouldn’thaverunoffI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry!”

“Mabel!”

“Please don’t be hurt or angry! No, you deserve to be angry, I should have had my crossbow. Oh god, this is my fault!” He winced as she buried her face into his chest where he apparently had another bruise he was unaware of. His legs kicked as he fought for breath until she at last relented, setting him back on the ground, sniffling and taking a step back, looking horrified.

“Oh god. I’m so stupid. You must be really hurt. God, I just fucked up everyth-“ He interrupted her with one of his own hugs, even if his ribs did scream in protest.

“Mabel. You saved my life. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be experiencing some kind of vegan nightmare, okay?” He brushed her tears away with his thumbs as the dark humor of the situation finally made her giggle at him. Dipper kissed her forehead then pressed his own to hers, coming nose to nose with his sister. “You saved my life. I’m not mad, and I love you. Okay?”

“Okay” She agreed, after a moment, sniffling and brushing her arm across her face. “Okay…” Mabel took a deep breath and allowed herself to let him go, stepping away. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah” He nodded, turning to his gun and grimacing “Though I didn’t want to have to use this. I had it loaded with the silver rounds. Stupid of me. The damn bullets cost five bucks a piece. So there’s thirty dollars down the drain if I can’t fish the bits back out. Though I could always melt down some of my old quarters.” Dipper sighed, surveying the scene, mapping out everything that’d just happened, one detail at last clicking into place. “Hey, Mabes. I’m confused. I saw you run off that way-“ he motioned back up the path on the hill where their car was. “-but you came from that way.” His hand swept over in the direction of the orchard, where there was a rundown old barn at one end.

“Well….yeah…” Mabel turned her eyes down to the dirt, kicking up a mote of dust as she did. “About that; the doors were locked, and you have the keys. I sorta panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I coulda busted in the window and unlocked the trunk, but that would have taken so long. I couldn’t leave you alone out there. So I grabbed a pitchfork and hauled ass.” She turned back up to him with a smile, perhaps remembering the adrenaline rush. “I couldn’t lose you, Dip.” He breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling the soreness in his ribs even as he did. Though one detail was still bugging him, Mabel could tell instantly thanks to the way he furrowed his brow and chewed on his upper lip for a lack of any nearby pens.

“But…” He looked from one side of the scene to the other “Where did you-?”

“Pfuh, Dip. It’s a farm. Where aren’t there pitchforks? But really, I’m sorta shocked at you for missing one detail.” Her own lips disappeared into a mischievous, if a bit distracting, smirk. She wiggled slightly with excitement too, which came with its own distractions for Dipper.

“Oh? And what have I forgotten?” Dipper raised an eyebrow, feeling as though he were biting a baited hook. Mabel half skip, half bounced over to him to boop him on the nose before making her way back over to the thoroughly dead Grandpa Lumpy and waved for his attention, as though she didn’t already have it. She presented with her hands the giant hulk as though she were a model on The Price is The Price or Wheel of Money. Then Mabel drew his attention down, to where a tail would be growing if it’d had any kind of predictable anatomy. There were a series of misshapen pale roots sprouting out from it. They snaked along behind and along the ground past the tree.

“Shit, how could I have missed that?” He thought, even as his hands worked unconsciously to load chamber new rounds into his gun, snapping his eyes down for a moment to check his work before snapping it back shut. Mabel pulled up the roots, tiny little hairs and tendrils clung to the ground even with the creature dead, small bits of dust shot up when one of the little crawlers was unearthed with a pop. Yanking up easily more than twenty feet of tendrils as she went, Mabel disappeared behind the apple tree that Grandpa Lumpy had apparently been trying to eat. She popped out for an instant to stick out her tongue and hold up a finger as if to say ‘wait right there’ so he did. With a grunt and some strain she tore out the last few feet of vine and emerged triumphantly with what looked like an ill-tempered rutabaga at the end of a rope.

“Tadaaa!” Mabel presented her catch with a small flourish. Two stumpy little legs dangled beneath the body, which also happened to be its head. The final radish had a face like a jack-o-lantern and two small green leaves were folded flat atop its head, looking for all the world like a toupee. It spun slightly as it kicked, dangling upside down by its root. “Lookie! I got the last one!” she beamed triumphantly, the terror of just a few minutes ago long forgotten.

“Huh, so you did” Dipper mused, strolling over to reclaim his axe. “We’d better finish the job so we can get the hell outta here. I’m gonna be too sore to move if we don’t.”

“Awww, c’mon, Dip! Lil’ Turnip-Head doesn’t even have any teeth!” She implored him, dangling the cranky vegetable in front of his face. “See? No teeth! Ooh, strong grip though.” Mabel tested her claim by placing a stick in its mouth, which it immediately chomped down on. It wasn’t strong enough to bite through, though it clung on for dear life. The look he gave her wasn’t a glare. There was no anger in it, merely exhaustion.

“You named it.”

“Hey! You can’t be mad at me for this one. It’s so obviously a Lil’ Turnip-Head you’d have come up with it too! And besides,” Mabel’s grin turned feral, like something they might’ve seen on their Great Uncle. “Maybe they’ll pay extra for a little one. They could totally charge twenty bucks a head to see ‘The world’s most evil root vegetable!’ and I think that’s worth at least another, what, hundred bucks for us?” He could only shake his head and laugh.

“Lemme guess, if they don’t want it, you get to keep it?”

“It’s only fair!” she shouted back, like a child caught buttering up a parent for an allowance bump.

“Okay, okay, it’s only fair. But I’m studying this one and the other one before I make any promises, okay?” She was already bouncing up and down in celebration before he decided he was done talking. A swift chop of his axe severed the roots from the base of the giant radish. Briefly the bouncing ball of fury his sister was dangling seemed to stiffen up and then relax, losing most of its former rage, seeming more confused than irate. “Huh, well that’s something.” Their eyes met, and small nods and eye gestures cultivated over their lifetimes were like a brief conversation that only the two of them would have understood. With a final nod Mabel hacked off enough of a line to give herself a decent leash as her brother coiled up the rest over his arm. As he did with every hunt, he occupied himself with clean up duty, working with a hum in his voice.

His sister secured a bushel basket and lid to drop Lil’ Turnip-Head in and joined her brother. While he busied himself with collecting samples from their quarry, she grabbed the car keys from him and transported whatever he thought might’ve been important to its own bag, in the trunk. He even managed to pry out four of the silver slugs from the creature, though the other two were gone for good.

Then finally she joined him with a pair of shovels as he descended on the radish field. It was clear enough which one that was. Dozens of craters littered the field where the menagerie of floral fiends had emerged. What they were looking for was buried just a foot deep in the center. Dipper thanked a few of the deities he was aware of for their luck that the farmers had decided to test the artifact in one of the smaller fields. Apples, corn, and indeed even Cabbages outnumbered the radishes by the hundreds. It’d be hard to keep that from the government’s Paranormal Affairs Department. Or whatever they called themselves. If they had any idea what Dipper and Mabel were doing, it’s unlikely they’d be getting paid for their assistance.

They hacked through dead roots that clung to the stone to unearth a surprisingly heavy slab of elaborately carved volcanic rock. Which just so happened to look remarkably similar to another one that just so happened to find itself in their trunk, though that one hadn’t been decorated yet.

The real one was stowed safely inside several layers of burlap and secured inside an ancient looking wood and iron chest, runes carved all over it. When the lock clicked shut the air seemed to taste slightly different, and sounds felt a little more familiar on his skin. The strange senses a relic hunter needs to develop may be difficult to describe, but there was no doubt that the magics felt safely contained, and that was enough.

A second silent eye conversation took place between the two when Mabel’s hand came to rest on a lumpy burlap sack. He thought for a second and nodded to her. With a return nod of her own she took it and began reaching in to scatter chunks of pumice and bits of turquoise, pyrite, and amethyst around the field. Dipper felt reservations about any kind of dishonesty with customers, but ones that were this careless with such powerful works of magic could do with a little dishonesty. When she was done her work, the last of their tools were stowed away and they turned to ‘the hard part’ of the job.

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

“Hell naw I ain’t payin’ ye any more! You come in here makin’ a ruckus and thrawin’ shitall over, you got some nerve askin’ fer more!”

“Again, sir, we’re not asking for any more than was in the agreement, that, may I remind you, you signed. “

“Shyet, you want yer money? G’wan out’der ‘n look. That field you’n’her tore up is gonna cost me at least that much ta re-till! You can fuck on off te back wherever’n the hell you came from then.”

“Fine. I was being nice, but you leave me no choice. My ….associates will be by shortly to finish collecting. Assuming you’re still alive when they get here, of course. If you’re not I’m sure we’ll get a settlement from your estate, what with the contract having been fulfilled, services rendered, but no record of payment.” Dipper turned to leave, motioning with his head for Mabel to follow. She gave an overly theatrical shrug of her own and made to follow.

“Now just what’n’the fuck’r you talkin’ ‘bout? You thre’tn’n me?”

“No, of course not. There’s no need to.” Dipper tossed over his shoulder as he descended the wooden stairs, red paint peeling and flaking off of every surface. He walked a few more steps before giving them a mirth filled expression. “You see, we haven’t told you how to keep it from spreading yet. Do you grow pumpkins? I figure those’ll look pretty cool as homunculi. Corn is outright- well, have you seen The Step-Children of the Corn? Surprisingly accurate.”

“Though it’ll probably be the cabbages that getcha!” Mabel just couldn’t resist.

The unmistakable click of a shotgun stopped them dead in their tracks.

“I think maybe y’all’re jus gonna tell me how to do that before’n ya get outta here so quick like.” Before either of them turned around Mabel seemed wracked with a bout of insane laughter. She clutched at her face to try to stifle it, but to no avail. Frustrated, the farmer fired the gun once into the air and cocked it again, aiming between the two of them. “Ain’t gonna ask agin.” Though his voice wavered a bit; neither of them had flinched when he fired, and that fact was hard not to notice.

“Put that away before you embarrass yourself even further, you dolt.” Came Dipper’s eerily calm reprimand.

“Besides, that thing better be loaded with silver if you expect it to do you any good.” Mabel’s head steadily rotated around to face him, bearing long ivory fangs he hadn’t seen before, and eerie purple eyes. “You really should …” she trailed off, allowing Dipper to pick up her sentence seamlessly.

“-Be more careful who you sign contracts with, Mister Cooterville. They might just-“

“Come back to bite ya!” Mabel hissed into his ear. The moment he turned his attention back to her brother she slid right beside him to place a steel fingered grip on the gun, pointing it harmlessly into the air.

“Shyeeet! Fine! Fine! Y’all c’n have yer money! Jus’ get offa my property’n never come back! …A-and tell me how ta get rid o’ whate’er y’all were yappin’ ‘bout a minute ago!” He relinquished the grip of his firearm to stumble inside the door frame, where he noticed Mabel paused, glaring and hissing at him. He fumbled in a basket near the door, and to Mabel’s pleasant surprise, pulled out a wad of assorted bills, tossing it to her. “It’s all there o’course. I was only funnin’ y’all before. I-it’s all there, like I said. I promise.” She quickly flipped through the money, giving it a sniff as she did, then glaring back at the farmer.

“Who all’s at the door?!” Came an elderly female voice from inside. A quick adjustment of her focus and Mabel could see a shadow on the far inside wall, of a woman in a rocking chair.

“I-it’s them folks what come and drive off all them…” he stumbled over the word “Hom-monkey-lies! They piled ‘em up out front!”

“Oh, that’s nice! Y’all can come in fer a spell and have you some tea! Lemme put it on!” He turned back, his face a blanched rictus of terror to a smiling Mabel.

“That’s alright ma’am! Thank you!” She shouted at the top of her lungs. “We appreciate it, but we really gotta get going!” A small brown pouch hit the farmer in the chest just as she stepped back. She ejected the rest of the shells and scooped them up before dutifully running a cloth along it to remove any of her fingerprints. The last thing they needed was a crazy redneck putting the barrel down his own throat only to have the cops find her prints on the gun, after all. She tossed it into the hedge near the front door and turned, waving as she strode down the porch.

“You’ll want to gather up all the little bits of monster you can find in one place. Get all the kosher salt you have and make a circle around the pile. Also, the ritual stone you buried out in the field, dig it up. If you’re lucky they shattered it into a million pieces so you won’t have to. Pick up those pieces and smash them even smaller. Build a big fire, if you’ve got a permit for trash burning then you should be good. The smoke is gonna be noxious and terrible. Don’t breathe too much in. And throw that bag in the fire before you start shoveling in monster bits. And you’d better be careful not to smother it. I’ve only got one of those bags.” Dipper’s voice was low, monotone, and precise. He didn’t raise it to be heard, but rather expected it to be heard regardless.

“Or you could make three tons of the nastiest radish coleslaw on earth!” his sister quipped. Then calmly, as if nothing that’d just happened mattered in the least to him, Dipper opened the car door and paused for a moment before climbing in. This time he did call out. “By the way, the receipt is in your pocket. Have a good evening. And be kind to your wife…we’ll know if you’re not.” The cranky old hick nodded in response and jumped as Mabel popped up beside him, dangling a miniature monster in his face.

“Hey! Didja wanna buy this thing!? He could totally be a sideshow attraction!” She added dutifully “you could make back all your money in no time! …A simple no would work.” He cowered and shielded his face by throwing his arms across it when she’d asked. She simply shrugged, stuffed Lil’ Turnip-Head in a chicken cage that she decided just then to steal. “Oh well, your loss!” She called as she skipped her way to the Impala.

Dipper lingered just long enough to see the Farmer discover the folded pink sheet of paper in his pocket, and drop it as though it’d just bit him. While he chose to restrain his reaction, Mabel lowered her window and gave her best witchy cackle while her brother spun in a donut to kick up an obscuring wall of dust and dirt before pulling off in the direction of the main road.

“Holy shit, Mabes! You coulda gotten shot!” The adrenaline rush of the moment was gone. They’d both dropped the act before the farmhouse was even out of sight.

“Oh Welax Di’er” Mabel said, as she plucked the fangs loose and placed them back into the makeup kit. She’d wait until they were on a nice steady highway, or stopped at a drive through before attempting to remove the lenses. “It was fine. We scared the piss out of him so bad that he wouldn’ta been able to hit me anyway. Shame he didn’t want a new pet though. Guess we’ll have to keep him.”

“Uh, yeah, speaking of which. I think we’d better take …the other one, for a walk next chance we get. Good thing it’s getting dark. I don’t need people seeing …that, do its business looking the way it does.” A happy, yappy bark rattled the animal carrier in the back seat. “Oh good. It knows when we’re talking about it.”

“Oh, don’t be such a meanie butt to our son, Dipper!” Mabel stuck her tongue out at him before turning to the back seat to coo into the cage. Dipper counted himself lucky that she didn’t seem to notice him pale, his heart skipping a whole rhythm section at the mention of ‘their son’ until of course, it occurred to him what she meant, snapping back to reality. “Oh god, fine, yeah, we’ll stop back near the motel. There was a diner right next to it that looked like a real ‘no questions answered, so don’t fuckin’ ask’ kinda place. We oughta be able to pick up a quick to-go order there and get going. Gonna be a long drive home.”

“We’re not gonna stay another night in the no-tell motel?” She cooed, pretending for at least the tenth time on their trip to pretend not to know what the phrase meant. She’d enjoyed being forced to sleep in the same bed with him. Not that she was prepared to say that out loud. Dipper chose to ignore the comment and simply answer the question.

“I’d love to, but I don’t think we’d get the same room and I don’t know how much bleach I have left.” She smirked. It was true that he’d whipped out a black light and scrubbed the entire room, even the TV before he’d let her sit down on the bed. “No offense, but I don’t really want to spend a night in a hotel room with those two” he motioned with his thumb, “in a motel with a no pets allowed policy. He isn’t exactly the silent type.” Two excited yaps answered him. “And I’d like to actually find out what kind of lesser demon he is. I don’t want to wake up with a proboscis in my neck.”

“Pfft. You worry too much, but fine, yes, I agree. We’ll even get our friend in the vet’s office to examine him. Y’know, check for chips and whatnot.”

“There is no way anyone paid to put a chip in you.” Dipper glared down at the small creature in the dark of the parking lot. He’d walked off to one side under a copse of maple trees so Dooper could do his business. His lip curled up in disgust as the creature insisted on meeting his eyes. “Does it have to be my face?” He demanded, only to be met with an excited yap. And indeed, a smaller, chubbier version of his own face looked back up at him, sitting atop a pug body.

When the twins had discovered him wandering around the fields earlier in the day he looked just like an exceptionally ugly dog until Dipper rescued it from one of the radish monsters. Then, suddenly, in a warping of skin and bone, it had his face, and an immediate attachment to the twins. Though, of course as his sister cooed and doted on the thing, she found he could change more of his body. An off-handed remark from Mabel about ‘how cute crows feet are, and how they’re basically the same feet stick figures would have if they were real’ caused the little demon to sprout two pairs of crow feet, and he clicked them happily on the ground as Mabel squirmed with joy.

Over the course of several other ‘off-handed’ comments she’d made He wound up with an even more exaggerated version of Dipper’s face, with eyes that seemed too big for his head, a bunny tail, and what she willingly described as a “body like if a potato wanted to look like a panda and also a raccoon.” The result was a chubby, fluffy little personal nightmare for Dipper. ‘At least the colors match’ He thought to himself, horrified by the idea that it might’ve wound up a patchy multi-colored monstrosity.

Mabel had, of course, elected to be the one to put their order in at the diner, leaving him in charge of their new ‘pet’. Though that gave him time to Call up Cynthia and leave her a message. His pocket buzzed with a response text.

“You know, for a demon that won’t tell me how old she is, she picked up on texting way too quickly…”

‘As far as I can tell he’s harmless. AND ADORABLe OMLG! He’s probably a prey species that got pulled through from another dimension thanks to the ripples created by the artifact. The little ones get through easier, and they tend to defend themselves with shapeshifting, trickery, or smell, when they’re that low on the totem pole. Trust me, you’d know if he was the second or third. Even the tricky ones aren’t that bright. Looks like you’re stuck with him =3’

“God damn it. I needed you on my side here.”

‘Oh, and if the other one acts up just carve a golem sigil in its head. It’s literally a vegetable, Dip, relax. If you wake up with anyone nibbling on your bits it’s either me…or…well…maybe you should stay away another night. You never know ;D’

“…Huh…well, yeah, maybe another night wouldn’t be so bad…”

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

“Oh my god, yes!” Mabel squealed, bouncing up and down “what made you change your mind!?” She pleaded, setting down the take-out on the front seat of their car.

“Well, Cyn told me we probably don’t have much to worry about, and I figure we can put down some newspaper in the bathroom. It won’t smell any different, and he seems to only bark when we-“ as if on cue, Dooper yapped and wagged his entire body excitedly “-talk about him, or feed him” He motioned towards his sister’s hand as she tossed some left-overs she’d snagged from an empty booth before leaving the diner into his crate. “He might even be kinda cute after a little while, assuming you stop giving him these crazy ideas. I mean, he looks kinda like that weird cereal mascot from the eighties. All he’s missing is the antlers-” He knew it as soon as the words left his mouth, but of course, the raucous laughter that bellowed out of his sister was proof enough.

Looking down, Dipper saw that he’d indeed sprouted a fresh pair of antlers, while he was inside the animal crate. The tips of the antlers poked through the cheap plastic. “God Damn it.” A satisfied bark resounded in the container. It was all he could do to take a few slow, deep breaths. Mabel was folded over on the ground, clutching her sides. ‘It would be worth it’ Dipper thought, ‘when she tosses an arm and leg over me in the middle of the night…’ He wasn’t going to do much sleeping anyway. He might as well enjoy the stay in the no-tell motel.

Pinecest confirmed

Thanks Dana Terrace XD oh god, I love this.

Pinecest confirmed

Just Business

Okay, clearly there’s a gremlin living in my brain that keeps pulling the “Hey! Here’s a new fic idea!” lever, when he taped up the “omg I need to update that one fic” switch so it doesn’t even work. That- I don’t think that was cogent. OH WELL! Here’s a new fic for you. Speaking of gremlins and other such creatures. I felt inspired to write a fic with another kind of creature of the night. Enjoy the cryptic preview, and the fic. NSFW

Oh! and comments are always welcomed. Figured I’d put that out there in case anyone was feeling it, but not sure.

Dipper ran his fingers idly through his sister’s hair, letting his nails glide along her scalp. He savored the sensation of her nuzzling back into his touch. He had the advantage of knowing her their entire lives. Being a twin and knowing what made him feel good seemed to give him a small advantage. Her cheek pressed into his bare chest and she doodled little circles in his skin with the tip of her finger. The waves of her long, gorgeous hair seeming to blanket the two of them. To his mind, all was well with the world. They’d just changed their relationship forever.

Admitting his feelings for her felt like taking a sledgehammer to the chest, but he’d been right to do it. Hell, they just had sex, but the satisfaction of knowing she loved him back just left him searching for metaphors that didn’t feel trite. Puzzle pieces might’ve worked if not for every couple with faded matching tattoos. He could say they fit like a hand and a glove but that seemed too…sexual maybe? There was much more than that. The thought came as he found his eyes trailing up her legs. They seemed longer than he remembered; or was it just that he’d never quite seen that much of them before? They shifted along her silky sheets, clearly loving the feel of it against her skin. He couldn’t help but stare.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Came the voice down by his belly. Suddenly realizing that he’d stopped playing with her hair to admire the scene, Dipper tried to pull himself back the moment.“Uh, I dunno. Nothing? Just taking it all in, being here with you. Like this, I mean.”

“Hmmm.” The ends of her lips curled up into a wry grin. “Well, you musta been thinkin’ about something nice, or else this really does have a mind of its own.” The sensation of Mabel’s hand wrapping around him, newly hardened, was a wonder. Her skin always seemed a few degrees cooler than his, but now her skin felt like silk. Despite still recovering his stamina he felt more excited than he could remember being being since he was a kid, thinking about Wendy in her red bathing suit.

“Or were you just trying to poke me in the boob?” She continued. “That’s okay, Dipdop. You’ve got the rest of our lives to mess with ‘em if you like. I’m glad it’ll be you.”

There was a moment of silence between the two of them. Her eyes mirroring everything that he’d been meaning to say for years. Why didn’t he remember her having those gold flecks in her eyes? They were beautiful, just…not what he remembered. It was probably the lighting.

“Hey.” Once again he snapped into the moment. It felt hard to concentrate, though. He settled on it being ‘just the momentum of the situation’.

“Y-yeah, Mabes?”

“I love you.” Her gaze already told him that, but actually hearing it? Of course she’d said it before, but never with so much weight behind it. It was like he was finally whole. The rest of his life would be different, better. He fought hard to not think that ‘life was at last worth living’. She deserved better from him, and she’d get it. Even if it felt true.

“I love you too, Mabel.” The sight of her face wavered just a bit as a touch of moisture came to his eyes. He wiped it away, hoping she hadn’t noticed. If she had, she wasn’t saying anything, which was unusually kind of her.

She must have been in an especially generous mood. Running her hand along his length, pumping it a few times, she locked him in a stare. The word that filled his mind was definitely ‘hungry’. She licked her lips, seeming to read his mind. Nibbling her knuckle, she lingered just a moment, to ensure she had his full attention. Then before he really knew what was happening she’d engulfed him down to the base. He had no idea she could even do that, or where she learned it. He thought better of asking. Then slowly, gradually, like a lollipop, she let it slide back out, giving the tip a kiss. To drive the point home she nuzzled her cheek against it, keeping that gaze on him. After a couple heartbeats, seeming satisfied with whatever she saw in his eyes, her lips parted for him again. He had no idea where she’d learned to do it, but it felt almost like her tongue was curling around his length as she did.

Despite being on his second wind, Mabel’s indescribable, wonderful mouth made him feel inches from the finish line. He clenched and tightened down every muscle that felt like it might allow him to last just a few moments longer. Then suddenly there was the touch of cold air on his wet skin.

“No, no, lover. Not like that,” she purred. “You’re all tense. That won’t do.”

“S-sorry,” Dipper stammered, slightly panicked that he’d disappointed her. “I- Just, it felt so good, I didn’t –I don’t want you to think-“ A finger on his lips silenced him.

“Shhh, Dip. I’ll show you,” Mabel assured. The two softest hands he’d ever felt in his life cupped his cheeks before creeping up to his scalp. Her nimble fingers slid through his hair. In the span of a few moments all of the tension he had no idea he was holding onto started melting away. His entire body seemed to turn to jelly as he gave over control to her. His neck, his shoulders, his entire body felt a cool wave run through him, bringing up goosebumps as the ripples passed through.

“Mmmnngg, god Mabel, I want to-“ Dipper made to sit up, and as quickly as he did a hand on his chest pushed him back over onto the bed.

“Nope. You lay down, Dip. You let me do this for you, okay?” He could only smile and cede all control over to –well, to his sister. He took a deep breath and nodded, laying back fully. Then, more smoothly than anything he’d seen her do before, she was on top of him in a single fluid motion. She slid her hand between them and warmth filled his world again.

She gripped him between her thighs, flexing her lithe body to grind herself against him. He gaped at the sight of her riding him like that, gyrating her body in ways he’d never seen before. Her chestnut locks tousled about as she picked up her pace. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her own hands, at first exploring her own body, rolling a nipple between thumb and forefinger, unleashing a lusty moan as she did. She didn’t hold back on the volume either, calling out for whatever deities might’ve been drifting b at the time. It seemed over the top to him, but the idea that he could have contributed in some small way to that sound made him feel powerful. Then her hands fell to his chest, scrabbling for a grip as she pumped her hips. The grip her thighs held on him was intense, but the burn of her nails raking his skin, and the utter ecstasy of being inside of her sent shivers through his body.

“Don’t you dare tense up on me,” Mabel cried out in another carnal moan. He wanted to, so much. He had to keep feeling this. But he was hers, so he’d do as she said. Dipper rolled his head from side to side, squinting his eyes shut. His ears pricked at the breathy little sounds his twin was panting out. It sounded like she was close too, like she could go off at any second. He was only distracted for a moment by what felt like a snake curling around his leg, but a look from her told him to ignore it. ‘Doesn’t matter’ he assessed silently. If she wasn’t bothered then neither was he. Just as his body shuddered on reflex, she spat a command as her claws dug into his skin once more.

“Dipper! Look at me when you cum. Say my name!” The pain from her grasp gave him pause for only a second as his body shot through with his climax.

“Maaabel!” He cried as his eyes shot open.

“Cyn!” He cursed a moment later. At the peak of his pleasure he shot into the waking world, only to find her riding him just like in his dream. No wonder.

“Sleep well?” She purred, really purred. The low rumble in her belly reverberated in his body where they were still attached.

Dipper struggled furiously to bend his mind to comprehend the current reality he found himself in, blinking in what looked like the fuzzy image of his secretary Cynthia straddling him. Her skin was just a bit redder than any human would be without falling asleep in a tanning bed, and her hair literally seemed spun out of gold. It was hard to mistake that sight, and it helped clue him in. Of course, the pair of horns sprouting from her hairline and following the curve of her scalp around, points emerging just under her long, doe-like ears, might’ve also been a hint. Somewhat more belatedly he realized the pressure still wrapping itself around his leg was her tail.

She must’ve caught him looking down to confirm, or else she could still feel his thoughts, as the serpentine appendage began to uncurl from around him, allowing some circulation back in his foot. He flexed his toes, not having realized until just then that his foot had been asleep. The scales, and the way she moved it really did give the feeling that a snake had been strangling the life out of his calf until just then. The sudden feeling of Cynthia tightening up around him brought his attention back up.

“Oh, have I got your attention now?” She smirked, smiling with her eyes at the sight of him struggling with the final chime of her morning alarm call.

“Yeah. I think that’s safe to say-yeouch!” The last of the cobwebs burst into flame and so did the searing lines across his chest and stomach when he tried sitting upright. “Damn, Cyn, you really dug in this time!” He made no move to extricate himself from her grip, or to crawl out from between her thighs, instead collapsing back down onto his mattress. She’d made it a semi-regular event to wake him up this way ever since she started ‘working for’ his and Mabel’s private investigation/monster hunting agency. But this was the first time she’d actually hurt him doing it. At least the fact that she didn’t want to get paid in money did actually help them make rent every month.

“Oh, I’m sorry, ‘Dip’” she pursed the nickname teasingly “let me fix that for you.”

She pulled her hair back in a move that was surely designed by some devious magazine photographer to arch as much of her back as possible to make sure her breasts were unquestionably the first thing in his line of sight. The movement to follow, however, is what made him clench his fingers into his bedsheets. Her body almost seemed to ripple in some belly dancer move where she pulled body away from his. It was probably his imagination, but he thought he could hear an audible pop as they finally separated. Maintaining the eye contact that’d been her signature in his dream as she leaned down to lap at one of his scratches, steam rising from his skin as her long, nimble tongue passed over it.

The disturbing hot and cold touch left barely visible scars in place of where a fresh cut had been. As a distraction he tried gleaning information from her hazel and gold-flecked eyes, to figure out if she’d intended this all along. He got the feeling, however, that they were taking something from him, his will to fight or run, his danger sense. Though being aware of the feelings, the passive hypnosis her gaze could transmit, Dipper was able to blink away the haze. So many mind-altering effects first thing int he morning probably wasn’t good for him.

“What have I told you about staring down a succubus, Dipper?” Her tone was still sultry, though it managed to take on a mildly concerned edge. “You’re strong willed, but not all of us are as benign as ‘Sinful Cynthia’.” She clearly fought back from dropping air quotes on him. “You go looking for trouble so you need all your focus.” To some, her cautioning may have sounded like a threat, but he knew better. Demons and their contracts are inseparable, and it was actually her who volunteered to sign. Her employment contract forbade her from purposefully injuring or leading to injury either the Pines twins or their clients. Including keeping their secrets, which was important to know in their line of work.

Ever present was the memory of when he and his twin actually Hunted Cynthia down for one of their customers. Demons, vampires, werewolves and the like were present small populations outside of Gravity Falls. Just often enough to give them a steady stream of income, one of them would run in with humans. Hunting demons, exorcising ghosts, curing lycanthropy and the like was their day job just as much as performing background checks on people for their mundane P.I. work. Cynthia had been one of their targets. Some human had managed to see through her glamour, put two and two together, and hired professionals to deal with her.

They had her dead to rights too, and seven times out of ten those situations ended with an exorcism or banishment of some kind. Another two times would have ended with one of their silver, cold iron, or obsidian daggers serving their function. But then there was the tenth time out of ten. The time where neither side wants to hurt the other. Yes, Cynthia was a succubus, which is a type of demon but the even the Count on that kids’ show was a vampire. He didn’t go around eating any of the kids or guests on the show. Incidentally him being actually, literally, cursed into being a felt puppet, didn’t hurt matters as far as throats went, but Cyn was, all things considered, an innocent. Just a demon living in the human world, going about her …er…business.

Though, the idea of her innocence was furthest from his mind when, just as she was cleaning up the last of the gashes in his skin, she turned to him with a question.

“What does it feel like knowing the actual, literal, woman of your dreams has her bedroom across the hall from yours?” Of course, the gut instinct reaction was to deny it, as it had been in the past when someone asked; but she’d been in his head more than once before and denying it would just insult her. Instead, he let out a breath and tuned out the bizarreness of his current situation.

“Are you sure you’re not evil?” He decided to shoot back getting a wink and a smile in response.

“Chaotic neutral at my worst” she jested in return.

“Really? Cuz you’ve been my own personal wake-up call a lot lately.” She gave him a wounded look.

“Hey, I only respond to what your body is putting out into the ether. It says ‘Oh no, Cyn! I’m going to have this wet dream without you! Won’t you please help?’ So naturally I oblige. Besides, you knew what I was when you two graciously decided to share me.” She practically moaned the last two words out. It was true also that her arrangement wasn’t solely with Dipper. Two young, attractive, and single people that also happened to know about magic and demons? She could feed off of that energy like a tick. Helping them relieve their ‘single person woes’ just wound up making it easy payment to render. He was also keenly aware that his protests were only half hearted when she tried sharing stories with him. Stories about what She and Mabel had been up to There was definitely some curiosity there, even before she’d taken the complete tour inside his mind.

“If only she knew what you dreamed about.” She teased through a sharp looking grin as she turned, seeming to head for the door.

“No! Definitely no!” Dipper’s outburst had no menace or anger in it, which brought out a giggle from the demon.

“You know,” turned to him over her shoulder as she slinked away to slip on her silky nightgown, “she never complains when mine’s the first face she sees in the morning. I thought it was pretty nice, or do you prefer one of these?” She passed a hand in front of her face to make the illusion easier to cast. By the time her palm crossed in front of her nose she was already changed. In front of him was the human face she wore in her role as their secretary. Vaguely California tan with dark roots and dangerous curves. He could fill in the tight white blouse and pencil skirt from memory. Her hair doing itself up in a chopstick bun all by itself helped. Her makeup even faded into place, with a moment of concentration. A touch of blue eye shadow and dark red lipstick completed the whole look.

But Cynthia only showed that face for a moment before the hand passed again and it was Pacifica Northwest in a high ponytail. Images of Paz in her tennis skirt came to mind next. The kind Cyn had apparently worn while wearing Paz’s image in his last dream about her. She became Wendy next, even seeming to grow taller for the role. Each freckle popped into place while her hair let itself down again in a cascade of red.

She’d worn both of their images in past dreams, but lately, and far more frequently she’d donned another. Facing him last was his sister, right down to the freckle on the inside of her ankle that she thought no one knew about. He didn’t know if all the other ‘details’ only just barely concealed beneath Cynthia’s sheer nighty were true to life, or simply a recreation pulled from his own psyche. Though it occurred to him just then that if Cynthia was telling the truth, she’d seen the real thing for herself.

“There it is. That look.”

He shook his head and blinked momentarily, shaking his mind clear from the effect seeing his twin’s nearly nude body in front of him. That had to count as a mind-altering effect. Definitely not good first thing in the morning.

“What look? What’s my look?” pawing at his face, he felt confused by Cynthia’s own displeased tone, her emotive ears having drooped; but could his expression be that out off-putting?

“You look downright glum, chum. I’d think you’d be thinking ‘Woah, how awesome is this? The sexy chick that lives in my house and knows my secret kink and probably my search history is totally willing and able to roleplay that with me.’ Or something to that effect anyway. That was the hint, sitting rather bloated in the middle of all of this by the way. In case you were wondering. But when you see me like this you always look like- like that.” She half grimaced, gesturing towards him.

He turned away from her for a moment to examine the shapes in the carpet, and think. He came up after about a minute of genuine consideration. Probably only really able to think about it because of the question. Cynthia, luckily, was patient enough to wait for his comment. Lucky also that she’d put on her true form by the time he looked back up.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the mutually beneficial nature of our arrangement. I wasn’t exactly going out on dates very often.”
“Or at all.”
“Or at all. Also truthful. A little hurtful, but truthful.” He considered. “But anyway, then you come along and, well, I mean…”
“What you mean is, I AM a succubus, am I not?” She asked with obvious amusement in her expression, running her hands all over her body.

“Well, no, it’s that you don’t mind sharing what comes along with that with me. And you’re a friend.”

When it seemed like Dipper had really stopped to leave the air pregnant between them, her eyebrows arched in concern as she lay a hand on his knee.

“Hey, it’s not like I don’t think the pathetic nerdy bit isn’t endearingly sexy in its own way, but you really do seem down. And I don’t want you to tell me that a demon is your best friend, because I keep telling you not to trust demons! It’s so freaking against the nature or the thing to actually care about a human. But you got me, okay? Stop worrying me. It looks bad for my reputation.” He did perk up slightly at that.

“Oh stop. Next you’ll tell me you go to demon-only message boards where the extension is ‘.hell’ and you argue about the best ways to fry a newborn’s liver.”
“Well you can’t eat them when they’re older. Way too bitter.” She threw at him with a half amused, sarcastic tone.

“It’s just, I dunno, it seems masturbatory.”
“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed…” Cynthia allowed herself to trail off while she opened her robe, exposing herself to him “It ain’t exactly masturbation if Sinny Cyn is involved.”

“Oh man, you sound like a nineties rapper like that. I can just see you with one of those high top fades in poofy pants.” Dipper genuinely laughed, hunching over to absorb the blow of the pillow that swung at his head. “Okay, okay. What I mean is, that it feels selfish for me to just take that part of Mabel and lock down a fantasy about us being together like that. Look, I’m sure it’s funny that a human is having this much stress over discovering that he’s a deviant, but that’s just how it is. I like my sister. I want to have- I…” he sighed “I love her. I can’t just pretend like I live in a world where she could feel the same way about me. So please don’t tell her about any of that. Again, it’s probably funny for you, but I’m asking you to just keep that between the two of us.”

The look on his face brought regret to Cynthia’s presence, as if the eyebrows of her aura suddenly turned up.

“She really wouldn’t- Hey, we could always, you know, the three of us together?” She motioned with her hands. “You could ease in to it that way. It could be my suggestion. Just drunkenly blurt it out. Just watch, it would totally work.” Perkier, she seemed to float just an inch off the ground when her tone lifted in recovery and her ears were once again raised and attentive.

“That’s honestly really sweet, really nice of you. But, sex isn’t the endgame.”
“Then what is?” She pouted, frustrated, fluttering back down to earth.

“There isn’t one. I told you. Even if she did go along with it, so what, then I’d have that night burned into my brain forever, and I’d never be able to recapture it. But more than anything, she still wouldn’t love me-“
“-She does!”

“Maybe, but not like how I love her.” Letting out a long breath he started idly dressing himself for the day, picking up underwear that looked pretty new with his toes. “You’re awesome, and sex with you has really helped me in a lot of ways, believe me. But…I’m more than happy to play along with fantasies, even my own, but that’s all it’ll ever be. Just a fantasy. I’m content with reality for now since I get to be with her every day. Work with her, laugh with her. Hell, I couldn’t let her do this on her own. She’s got the reflexes of a caffeinated wolverine, but you know she calls chupacabras capybaras? I mean, that’s a distinct and important difference. Not the least of which being because we get them coming up here every now and then; and knowing the difference between a vampiric lizard dog and a giant hamster? Pretty important.”
“Yes goodness knows you wouldn’t want her killing one of those poor, fat, innocent guinea pig things.”

“Yeah, well, more the Chupacabras to be concerned about. At least billing it properly. But I just can’t see my life without her. If she found out about… how I am, then she’d probably not want to spend a lot less time with me.”

He punctuated his remark by zipping his fly.

“What if I got her killed because she couldn’t concentrate on a hunt?” He concluded, popping his head out of the collar of a shirt that’d probably fallen off of the clean pile. “Loving her means knowing that I can’t have her, and it’d be selfish of me to try. So, thank you for trying to help, but it’s just that I know it can’t be…” He paused not for effect but because he had to struggle with slipping his foot into his laces-already-tied shoe “…And it’s for the best that I try to pretend like there isn’t anything there.”

“And what about your other two sweethearts? Don’t mind pretending to bed them?”
“Well, I mean- The feelings, it’s- Look, I don’t-“
“It’s different because it doesn’t hurt as much that you aren’t with them?” He nodded in response. “Ugh. It’s not just one sex, all of you humans are so difficult. Well, whatever, I tried. Can’t say I didn’t. She’s already downstairs making breakfast. Said she’d wait for you though. Wouldn’t keep her waiting too much longer.” She stood out of his way as Dipper bound out of his room and downstairs with a froggish expression on his face. “Yeah, yeah, don’t keep the little misses waiting…”

Moments later he slid to a stop in the kitchen to see Mabel putting the finishing touches on a pan-sized omelet, folding it over as it slid onto the plate.

“Hey, bro, just in time for num-nums.” She cut the eggy half-circle in two with the spatula and slid one onto a plate for him that already housed some tater tots and half an orange.

“Oh, I thought- I didn’t mean to keep you waiting, my alarm…”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, with ease, pouring some hot water into a bowl of instant oatmeal at Dipper’s spot at the table. “I waited for like a half hour to start when Cyn told me.”
“She told you?” the comfort that they both seemed to have with the arrangement still made him feel a bit bashful.

“Yeah, and I know she likes to take her time, so I thought, one minute for dipper, and twenty-nine for Cynthia.” Mabel stuck her tongue out teasingly at her brother before looking away again, to attend to the food, presumably.

“Well, thanks anyway for the food, you went all out, huh?”

“Part of a complete breakfast, right?” She saluted with a half full glass of milk with some Fruity Bloops still floating in it. “And I just made coffee for Cyn, since-“ She paused to ponder her words a moment. “Since she’s already had brunch.

“Speak of the devil?” Came a comment from the stairs that just dripped with ‘sitcom one-liner’. Almost in expectation of canned studio laughter to follow her down the stairs, Mabel sat silent for an instant before hovering back over to the coffee pot.

“Pfff, you’re too lazy to be a devil, so lemme get you your cup-a-joe” quipping as she moved.

“Why thank you, but I’ll have you know I’ve been working my cute little butt off all morning. I’m bound to develop a bruise on it.” Not one to let the hint that he and Cynthia had just minutes ago been intimate together just stay in the air, Dipper said the first thing on his mind.

“You got dressed quick.” He immediately chastised himself for the implication that left, trying not to look over to Mabel for a reaction. There didn’t seem like there was one, as she calmly finished Cyn’s coffee with the usual ten sugars and a single drop of cream, just the way she liked it.

Mercifully She picked up the thread as she sauntered over to Mabel to retrieve her mug.

“You’d be surprised how useful one of these can be.” Her tail made a slow ‘come-hither’ gesture towards him, which he chose to ignore. Instead he stirred his oatmeal, so he’d have something else to put in his mouth besides a foot. ‘In any case-‘ he thought, ‘she looks like she didn’t notice, or doesn’t care otherwise. So maybe I can pretend like it’s not awkward.’

“Please tell me you didn’t tell him anything” Mabel hissed in a low whisper as she pressed Cynthia’s bat-themed coffee mug into her hands. She leaned in close so only the two of them would hear her, but her gaze darted back between her and Dipper at least three times before she could focus on the woman in front of her. “Cuz he’s lookin’ all shifty, like he can’t look me in the eye.” All Cyn could do is sigh, try to look sympathetic, and take a sip of her morning brew.

“No, I didn’t. He just looks that way. Thought you knew. Grew up with him after all.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m sorry, just, nobody else but Candy and Grenda know and it really freaks me out that even I know. I’m sorry, I know you can keep a secret.” Cynthia’s ears seemed to fall, even with her human face on.

“Mabel, what’ve I told you about trusting demons? You just can’t do it.” The puppy dog eyes that answered her made even Cyn’s veneer crack. “Okay, fine, but you can trust me.” She sighed again, with the strain of the situation, being bound by her word as she was. “Have I told you how difficult you humans are? Because trust me, you don’t know the half of it…actually, you only know half-“ punctuating with her coffee cup “and that’s the problem.” She kissed her on the forehead and turned to leave the Pines twins to finish their breakfast, making her exit to the front office space.

When Mabel sat down at the small kitchen table across from her brother, his expression held a question. He even cocked his head to the side slightly.

“It’s nothing. Just Cynthia is weird. She’s all cryptic and mysterious and she says we’re the difficult ones.”
“Yeah, I think I know how it is. Oh well, at least she doesn’t eat babies. I’m like at least ninety percent sure of that.”

“Well, lucky we don’t have to worry about that…Anyway! Eat up cuz we’ve got a full day of Capybaras ahead of us today!”

“Damn it, Mabel!” when their secretary returned to the kitchen a moment later, her coffee mug having been replaced by a small spiral notebook, Dipper threw frustrated ‘see what I mean!?’ motions at his twin. Clearly she was the difficult one.

“Actually” Cyn picked up “It really is Capybaras today. You said you were open to more kinds of work, and, well, a local rancher just acquired a herd of the things and was looking for hands to help move ‘em in. I got you the job. It’s a full day’s work, plus food, and I hear they have babies~” She trilled melodically towards Mabel.

“Oh my god, Dip! I want a Chupacabra baby! We could name it spot!”
“I’m convinced you’re doing it on purpose now.” Dipper groaned, stuffing a fork-full of ketchup covered tater-tots into his mouth.

Framed

Hey! So it’s been, I dunno, several units of time since I posted the last story. Here’s part 3 of the Wenpines trilogy story that I started like forever years ago.

But hey, here it is. Also Posting at midnight is clearly the best time of the day to put up a fic for a third part of a story about a rarepair (trio)! Sure, this is the best way to get readers’ attention! Well, enjoy, all four of you!

Part 1

Part 2

Days passed and the texts slowed down. Mabel’s messages dried up after her last visit, though Dipper still checked up on her a few times since then. But he wasn’t asking her to come back. Of course. His sister tried to extend that invitation to her but she freaked out on her. The girl was the dictionary definition of sweet, beautiful, and amazing, but Wendy Freakin’ Corduroy just doesn’t have it in her to admit when she was being a psycho. Okay, so she had an emotional…thing, or whatever. But she was over it. She was ready to go back…well…home.

She’d changed out of her work clothes as well as her fake work smile. She sat against the pile of brightly colored pillows in a wear worn pair of old sweat shorts from high school. Though, the elastic had worn out years ago, so she rolled down the waistband. They fit her more like underwear than like shorts, but they were comfy. One hand tucked into the waistband, the other loosely held her remote. The often terrible programming on Gravity Falls cable was always good for tuning the world out. That is, unless you’re suffering through the very same marathon of crap they’ve been airing for the past week. Maybe someone fell asleep at the programming desk or something. It was the same ten episodes of the 90’s cartoon reboot of the original 1960’s Ducktective, Sherlock Holmes in Space and Sherlock Holmes vs The Planet People of Planet Planet (one through three), and Agnes and Ladle’s mystery crew. The latter was some strange cartoon that felt eerily familiar.

Ladle and his twin sister Agnes ran around solving mysteries with the help of their friends Oso (a weird talking bear, or something) and Lizzie the Lumberjane. It gave her the jibblies. It was the same stuff, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Finally she couldn’t take watching the same episode for like the fifth time that week (since reruns ran at night too). Since the show took place during an outrageously long spring break they had the strange premise of a thanksgiving episode that took place in, like, March or whenever. She shut off the TV, threw the remote into the waiting arms of her big plush Pandaduck, snatched up a pack of cigs, and hopped down off her bed.

Her oldest bad habit saw her through more than one heart break, even if her family didn’t approve. Leaning her back against the front wall of her house, she flipped open the little box and reflected. The twins didn’t like her smoking either. Of course they never got too pushy about it; it was just her desire to not disappoint them that’d helped her kick the habit, until now that is. She only realized that she was staring at the cigarette instead of lighting it after a minute or so. She guiltily returned the single cig to the rest of its family in the pack. She could resist that particular vice as long as her other one still had any ammo.

Wendy plucked her jacket from the railing next to her and dug a deltoids tin out of the pocket and rattled it. She popped the lid and a pungent aroma filled her sinuses. The little metal box was designed to contain the peculiarly strong mint smell in which made it a perfect stash. She extracted a half smoked J from it, popped it between her lips and lit it up. After a few minutes she felt just a bit better. It never made her problems go away, but they did seem less important. Though she was gonna have to remember where she got this stuff, cuz it definitely sounded like her life suddenly had a sound track. Wendy tried clearing out her ear with a pinky but the music was just getting louder.

“Take a slide in to the hazard zone!” The song now blasted out louder than ever. It was then that she saw the boombox. An actual, old school 80’s style boom box being held up high by Dipper, who was wearing aviator shades, a bomber jacket over a white t-shirt and acid washed jeans. There he was just walking down the sidewalk, giant metal box held up high as the theme played through.

He set the antique down next to Wendy, but said nothing. She was still surprised enough that she didn’t think to ask any questions when he clicked the stop button just as another song ripped out across the distance. The twins had obviously put some thought into their plan. The hilly, shrub laden neighborhood Wendy’s family lived in had tons of blind corners and dips between the streets to hide in. Vonjon Bovi’s classic anthem ‘Dwellin’ on a Hope’ blared over the relative calm of the sleepy community from about the halfway point of the song.

“Holy shit” was all Wendy could manage when she spied Mabel rounding a corner on the biggest big wheel trike she’d ever seen in her life. It was just like one of those hard plastic, black, yellow, and red ones made for kids, only huge. The leather tassels on the handlebars matched Mabel’s leather jacket, which Wendy could swear was made one hundred percent out of fringe. Her hair looked like a cloud of hair spray and teases curls, she was the very image of Vonjon Bovi himself, though her sunglasses matched Dipper’s. Despite the single incongruity, she could have pedaled straight out of a laser and fog filled music video.

Mabel managed a power slide as she wheels screeched to a halt on the sidewalk in front of Wendy’s dad’s house, stopping just in front of Dipper and Wendy. By the slight cringe in Dipper’s tone she figured Mabel must have practiced that moves a couple times before getting it right. Before either of the twins said a word she took notice of the color scheme of Mabel’s ride. There was a shooting star painted on the rim of the real wheel closest to her and she was pretty sure there was a pine tree on the other one. The entire front wheel was painted red except for the treads where the paint had been scraped off.

“Wendy” Dipper started. She jumped slightly because she’d almost forgotten about him after Mabel’s entrance. “I want to say that there is no third wheel in our relationship-“

“But then we found this awesome big wheel online!” Mabel interrupted. “So we figured it’d make a way better metaphor.” A grin stretched across her face as she applied a decal to the side of the wheel that looked like a bag of ice. “You keep us from spinning our pedals.”

“You guys…”

“We love you” Dipper blurted out before Wendy could say anything he’d regret. “Just as much as we love each other.” He twined his fingers with Mabel on one hand and reached out for her with the other. She accepted, feeling more than just a bit fluttery from the gesture.

“We need you in our lives. You’re our third gunsketeer, the B in our L T“ Mabel added. A flush rose in Wendy’s cheeks and neck.

“I…love you guys too.” She muttered meekly, unable to meet the gaze of her own reflection in their glasses.

She found her hand joining with Mabel too just then, perking her attention back up.

“Seriously, Wendy, we love you. We’d have proposed to your lanky ass if there was some way two freaky-deaky twins could both marry their best friend.”

“And we’re pretty sure you love us back” Dipper concluded, removing his sunglasses, tucking a leg into his shirt collar.

“Thus the big, romantic gesture, eh?” Wendy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You guys don’t really do subtle, huh? Just kinda puttin’ it all out there?”

“Pfft. Subtle. If I cared what people thought about who I love, I wouldn’ta been bangin’ my brother since we were teens.” Dipper, who normally would have been slapping a hand over his sister’s mouth, or cringing behind a bush, seemed strangely calm about her declaration. Though she could have sworn that she caught him cringe just a little.

“Wendy.” Dipper drew her eyes over to his own. “Sometimes the two of us can be a little dense. We’re so different, but obviously there’s the whole twin telepathy thing going on so-“
“Hey!” She managed to crack a smile “You fuckers told me you didn’t have that.”

“Top secret stuff” Mabel replied with a serious look on her face. She even managed to hold it without cracking for about three seconds, which impressed Wendy. “For serial, though, we do sometimes forget that you haven’t been with us with us as long as it feels.”
“-And maybe we forget to say things, like exactly how happy you make us” Dipper finished for her.

“So-”
“Will you-“
“Be our-”

“Third Wheel?” The twins asked at first one, then the other, and finally in unison.

“Jeeze, guys. How could I say no to that?” She pulled a hand back to wipe some tears away before attempting to crush the both of them in a hug. “I mean, what even was this?”
“I wanted to go with fireworks too, but Dipper was all like ‘nooo Mabel, that would be too dangerous or whatever. Bluh bluh bluh, I’m Dipper, I wanna see boobie’” Mabel mocked. Dipper just rolled his eyes.

“It took hours just to whittle down the musical selection to two songs. I actually really liked Oho’s ‘I’ll be gone’ but Mabel said the high pitch would bother the local wildlife. But the imagery is pretty good, huh?”

“Alright, alright, don’t hurt something trying to pat yourself on the back, you dorks.” Wendy planted a peck on both of their foreheads, then their lips. “Really though, thanks for coming out here for me guys.” Dipper blushes and looked down at the sidewalk for a moment.

“Well, I mean, it seemed like you were feeling really down and we know you do that thing where you just bottle up all your stress. We’d be pretty crappy lovers if we didn’t reach out. “ Dipper reasoned.

“Well, thank you anyway. What’s the plan to do with this thing now that you got me?” Wendy motioned at the giant big wheel.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll repaint it and give it to Tyler to use as an official vehicle of office. Everyone knows that small town mayors have to be super quirky. Besides, him and your dad really helped u-“ Mabel’s mouth was covered by Dipper’s hand before she could finish. Though of course she immediately licked his hand and he retracted it.

“So they knew about this whole plan of yours?” Wendy smirked. “I shoulda known. So does that mean they know everything everything?”

“Well, I mean, not like our favorite positions, or the strap-ons or anything, but yeah, pretty much.”

“Oh, jeeze, Mabel.” Dipper blushed. “B-but yeah, they know about the three of us. I mean, we couldn’t exactly keep that a secret from your family forever.” To Dipper’s great surprise Wendy just burst with laugher, with an arm around her stomach when it started hurting.

“Oh man. That explains so freakin’ much. How long do you think they’ve known?” She wiped her eyes.

“Well-“ Dipper started, pausing for a moment to arrange his thoughts. “-They called us the night you moved back over here. Tyler didn’t outright say it, but he definitely knew; but way before that, like months ago, your brother Mikey came to my work and just sorta hung out for a while. Then he came up to me and gave me a cool looking rock and he left. Looking back on it, I feel that must have meant something.”

“Also, not to be too on the nose or anything, but I just got a text from Tyler. He wanted to know if the three of us are back together. He says he thinks you look happy, Wendy.” Mabel awaited a response so she could text Wendy’s step-dad back.

“You know what? I am. Just seeing you guys makes me all warm and junk. And if you really want me back, I think I’m ready to come home?”

The twins looked to each other for a moment then bowled her over onto the front lawn with an embrace, kissing her all along both sides of her face and neck. Though they were cut off by a faint call from somewhere inside of the house that sounded like “Git ‘er! Git ‘er!”

When the three of them were done giggling, and managed to compose themselves Dipper stood up and kissed both of his girls on the tops of their heads.

“I really hate to go, but I have to get to work in like a half hour.”
“Shit, really? You didn’t get the day off?” Wendy asked.

“I tried, but I could only get the morning off. But Mabel has the rest of the day off, plus I’ll bring home dinner when I get off.”

“You’d better, you dork.” Wendy delivered a gentle punch to the arm. “Do me one favor though.”

“hmm?”
“Make sure you’re wearing that outfit when you come home.” She bit her lip, looking him up and down, which resulted in a full blush from Dipper before he turned and ran down the street to avoid further embarrassment. “Yeah! You shake that ass, Pines!” Mabel and Wendy collapsed into laughter when they heard a faint “Git it!” from the house.

It didn’t take long to pack Wendy’s things back into her van. She honestly hadn’t brought that much with her when she left. Tyler packed lunch for the girls and they were on their way. It’s like nothing had changed at all. When they walked into the apartment however, it struck her. The twins had spent money on buying that ridiculous tricycle, but that must’ve kept them from replacing that broken bed. A quick check of her bedroom confirmed it. There was a mattress on the floor and an idea struck her.

“Hey! Sparklebutt!”
“Mmmmmyees?”

“If big dumb romantic gestures are the name of the game, I have an idea, but we only have like six hours and I can only surprise one of you with it, so I need your help. You up for it?”
“Yes ma’am!” Mabel saluted.

“Cool. Step one, we need to empty out my van. I’m gonna give my dad a call to get some supplies. Gideon still runs a bunch of shops in town, right?”

“Uhh, as far as I know?”
“Including that discount mattress store that looks like a giant red bard in the middle of a strip mall?”
“I haven’t kept tabs, but I think I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down.”
“Good. I dunno if I can afford one all on my own so I might need some help, but it’ll be worth it.”

“Yello? Wendy! How’re you doin’? Did that thing them two kids were doin’ work out?”
“Hah. So you knew about it too, dad?”

“Mmm.” Dan grunted in response.

“Well, thank you. As a matter of fact it worked out perfectly. And I had an idea for how I could repay the gesture. Do you think you could load up a bunch of wood and bring it over to the twins’ and my place in like an hour?”
“You buildin’ sumthin’?”
“Yup. It’s gonna be a surprise. Long story short they shop at that Danish discount furniture store and now they know better.”
“Particle board ain’t real wood!” Dan howled into the air, much to the dismay of the rest of the grocery store he was in when Wendy had called.

“Totally. So, if you’ve got something nice, maybe oak or hickory or cherry? I want to make a, uh, y’know, a replacement. So I’m gonna need it to be nice and sturdy, cuz, I mean, it wouldn’t be a great gift otherwise.”
“Broke the bed, gonna make a new one. Got it. I’ll bring over ma tools and whatnot.”

“Y-yeah, thanks, dad.”

“M’little girl’s makin’ furniture! I’m so proud. I’m so proud!” The call disconnected after that. Either Dan had chosen a particularly dramatic moment to hang up, or he’d accidentally crushed another phone. Just as well if he had, Wendy didn’t feel like having the rest of the conversation about why they needed a new bed anyway; and buying her dad a new burner phone in exchange for his help would be a nice way to pay him back.

Mabel meanwhile was dropping Gideon a Bookspace message to let him know that she and Wendy were planning on stopping by his place of business. He responded less than ten seconds after she’d sent the message, saying that he’d be there. So naturally they took just a little too long to really doll themselves up and get ready for it. Making him wait to see them just that much longer would be the key to their success. When they did finally saunter through the double doors to the Bed Barn he was pacing back and forth in the back of the store, wearing for all intents and purposes, a giant version of the periwinkle blue suit he’d run around in so much in his youth. Neither Mabel nor Wendy had actually seen him in quite some time, but he was apparently doing fairly well for himself. He looked the spitting image of his father Bud, right down to the overbite. Though his fashion sense was somewhat more ‘gentile’ and he retained the shockingly white and shockingly tall pompadour.

“Well How do! My, my, my, my, my, as I live and breathe. Mabel Pines and Wendy Corduroy. What a surprise it is to see you two here in my humble little ol’ store. What brings you fine ladies into my establishment?” Mabel rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Oh come on, Gids, you knew we were comin’. And as a matter of fact, my uh, lady friend and I, were in the market for a new bed.” They each wrapped an arm around each other and bumped their hips together. “We sorta broke the old one.”

“Oh, oh my.” Gideon extracted a hanky from his pocket to mop his brow before returning it to his pocket. “Well, what size were you ladies looking for?”

“King sized.” Wendy purred, bending down ostensibly to look him in the eye a little closer, but of course her low cut top was doing plenty of talking for her.

“I-I s-see. Yes, well, right this way.”

He brought them over to the show room floor dedicated to the king size mattresses and they made a big show of bending and leaning over to examine the beds. When they found one they liked they both laid on it to try it out, cuddling up with each other. Wendy played the big spoon just then, nibbling on her lover’s ear while she whispered.

“So, how do you think it’s going?”

“He’s just about to crack.” Mabel whisper-giggled back. Wendy sat up and adjusted her shirt, crossing one leg over the other and looked Gideon right in the eye, though it took him a moment to realize that and meet her gaze.

“Uh, hah, s-so y’all like the bed?”

“Mmhmm. We do. It’s really comfy. All soft and supportive at the same time.”

“Oh yeah, it is that.”
“Only, I dunno if we can afford it. It really is the nicest bed we’ve seen, but I suppose we’ll have to just do without. Come on Mabel, dear.”

Gideon shot upright and held his hands up to keep them from leaving.

“Now now, I’m sure we can work something out. I wouldn’t want you to walk away unsatisfied or nothin’. We have a lovely in home financing package?” Mabel sat up, brushed off her skirt and joined pinkies with Wendy to turn and leave. “O-Or we-I’m- I’m sure I could offer y’alls a lil’ ol’ discount, on the house, you know?” The couple stopped and set their hips to the side, Wendy quirked a brow up at him. “Uh Ten Per-Twe-Th-thirty percent is what I meant. Y’all can have it delivered same day even.” The set of Wendy’s eyebrow told him that wasn’t good enough.
“Well, I can’t just give it away now. You wouldn’t lil’ ol’ me to end up on the street due to my generous nature? Forty?” Wendy and Mabel appeared to consider forty percent for a moment, and of course it was about what they were hoping for, but the sweat on Gideon’s brow told Mabel that there was still some profit left in it for him. She took hold of Wendy and shoved her against a nearby support beam and let her libido guide her hands. She nibbled on Wendy’s elegant neck and squeezed her butt, pressing their bodies closer together. Wendy reciprocated by squeezing her breast, eliciting a moan from her.

“Alright! Alright. I’ll give Y’all half off. Just knock it off before ya gimme another heart attack. Also….”
“Yeeeaaas?” Mabel asked. Wendy whispered into Mabel’s ear when Gideon’s answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming. They simultaneously raised their shirts and held them up for a five count. When they came back down it looked as though he really might have a heart attack, though it didn’t seem to be bothering him too much.

“So, uh, w-will that be cash or charge, ladies?”

With the mattress loaded into the back of Wendy’s van the girls took the opportunity to change into more carpentry friendly clothes before getting back to their place. Mabel changed while Wendy drove, slipping on a pair of denim overalls with sequins and stickers all over them. Wendy took the opportunity at a red light to slip the gear into park, unzip her skirt and shove her legs into some jeans and a button up plaid shirt over her bra. By the time they showed up Dan was already in the front yard with some saw horses, a work table and various other tools strewn about. The grass was already covered in saw dust from the belt sander he’d plugged in to smooth out the lumber. His over-sized pickup truck was packed to the brim with what looked like it could have been half of the good hard wood in his shed.

“Hey dad! Thanks for coming!” Wendy called out from her lowered window as she parked in the space next to his. “You think you can help us get this thing inside?” Dan smiled a gap toothed grin and his eyes seemed to unfocus. He was in his element when he got to put his strength to good use. Mabel found herself feeling a bit surprised at how professional and put together Wendy’s dad looked when he was all kitted up with his gloves, goggles, tool belt and respirator. And judging by the set up he definitely knew what he was doing.

Once the box was unloaded in the living room Dan whipped out a trusty old tape measure and eyeballed a few measurements. Though Mabel felt a bit concerned when he didn’t write anything down, Wendy placed a reassuring hand on her arm and winked. Before they knew it, the old bed parts that’d been piled in a corner were thrown cathartically out the window and Wendy’s old bed frame and mattress returned to her room. Dan was a blur of activity when he really laid into the wood. The lumber was cut and sanded smooth in moments. He drilled and screwed the various pieces together before Mabel could even figure out how they were supposed to fit. It was her job to run new pieces in to Wendy who was in the bedroom finishing all the attachments. With an hour and a half left before Dipper even got out of work the bed was finished and the mattress was sitting snugly in place.

“Oh my god, Dan, you’re like magic!”

“Thank yuh, Bagel. I like workin’ with mah hands. You treat mah little girl right, so that makes you family. You gimme a call if yuh need anything else, got it?” Mabel nodded, holding back the waterworks while she did her best to wrap her arms around the giant man. He patted her back and turned to Wendy. “Hey darlin’, daddy’s all done here. Gonna leave you to it. I’m real glad you, uh, you gotcher life all smooth an’ nice. You do what makes you happy, cuz that makes daddy happy. I loves yas.” He carefully hugged his daughter as tightly as he could without breaking her, then kissed her forehead and lumbered out of their house to gather up his tools. She tried to hide the emotion in her expression from Mabel until she remembered what that lead to. Wendy turned back so she could be up front with how happy her father accepting her relationship with the twins made her, but having a Pines collide into a person, wrapping arms and legs around them, tends to shift the priorities.

When Dipper pulled his car into his space he couldn’t help but notice that the lawn, sidewalk, and parking spaces were absolutely covered in sawdust.

“Well, if they weren’t up to something after being alone all day I’d be surprised.” He gathered up the brown paper bag filled to the brim with Chinese, the plastic bag filled with Mexican in one arm, and the pizza box in the other. Lo mein taco pizza was a favorite in their house, and he decided the occasion was worth celebrating. After negotiating his way to the door he slipped off his shoes so as not to track anything inside, and left them just inside the door way along with a mismatched pair of Purple and Pink galoshes and to his relief, a muddy old pair of leather boots. He knew that Wendy hadn’t left again since her van was still out front, but seeing that she’d slipped right back into the way they lived still felt uplifting.

“Mabel! Wendy! I brought Diiinnneeeerr!” He called up the stairs as he set the various constituents of the meal in the kitchen. No response came after a few seconds, so he decided to go upstairs to let them know he’d brought food as promised. The door to the master bedroom opened before he could turn the knob himself and Wendy and Mabel burst out to greet him.

“Yay! Dipper’s home!” Mabel cheered. “After dinner we can start round five, but don’t tire him out too much, cuz I wanna squeeze in a six and seven.”
“Seven?” Dipper croaked.

“Hey, we gotta fill up that SD card somehow.” Wendy jerked a thumb to their camera set up on its tripod just inside the bedroom. “Plus, we gotta test this thing out to make sure it doesn’t break. No promises about not breaking you though, cuz I’m still pent up.”
“Seven?”

“Mmhmm, what’dja bring? I’m starving.” She asked as her and Mabel practically skipped down the stairs. “Oh! And surprise! New bed! You’re gonna love it!”

“Seven?” It wasn’t so much the leather chaps and vest that Mabel was wearing. It wasn’t even the 70’s biker hat, mustache and strap on that she had on. Wendy’s pencil skirt, cardigan and horn rimmed glasses didn’t even phase him. Nor did her hair all tied up neat in a bun with a pair of chop sticks holding it all together. The brand new bed was awesome, and the camera was an awesome idea. Hell, he had five more rounds to catch up on in his free time, apparently. But the hockey mask and rainbow afro wig they’d set out for him clearly begged some questions to answer.

He shrugged.

“Oh well, my family’s whole again. Don’t question it. Hey, wait up!” He called as he raced downstairs to join them. There was no way he was going to let Mabel hog all the duck sauce again.