Dipper and Mabel: 0th Chance

by Gentleman_chicken

Summary:

Dipper and Mabel are about to finish school. Well, to be accurate, they already have. It's their last Summer in Gravity Falls before they become adults for real.
The Pine Twins stand at the precipice of a choice that will determine how their future unfolds.
The problem is that Mabel is worried about which way Dipper's leaning.
Thankfully, a timely visit by Blendin Blandin gives her just what she needs to make sure everything turns out fine, and if it doesn't, then there's always second chances, right?

Notes:

This will be a MUCH shorter fic than my last one.
It's basically an idea/scenario that I wanted to try and work into the original fic I wrote, but could not apply it in any way that worked within he story without detracting from the main plot or story beats.

Chapter 1: Thinking bout the future

The boards of the Shack’s back porch creaked in that familiar way that said “this place is ancient but still holding on.” The evening air was warm, sticky in that late-summer way where the sun had only just started dipping toward the treeline, turning the whole sky golden-orange. Mabel flopped onto the old porch swing, which wheezed dramatically like it had been waiting all day for someone to give it purpose again.

She didn’t even need to ask for it, there it was, a cold soda can pressed into her hand before she’d even said a word. Her brother plopped down beside her with his own can, still slightly damp from the fridge.

“Called it,” Dipper said with that smug little half-grin he got whenever he thought he’d outsmarted the universe.

Mabel rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help smiling. “Pfft, you’re not psychic, Dippingsauce. You just know me too well.” She popped the tab and it hissed, glorious fizzy bubbles rising to the top. Ahhh, cold sugar in liquid form. Best way to end a long day of wrangling tourists and Stan’s “totally real and 100% in line with labour laws” Mystery Shack tours (he was actually fairly relaxed with his favourite grandniece, but it was too much fun complaining).

Dipper looked about the same as he always did, but that didn’t stop her from noticing little things. The way his hair was a little messier than usual from being stuck underground in Ford’s lab all day. The little patch of fuzz on his chin that he refused to shave off, like he thought it made him look older instead of like a middle-schooler trying out his first fake moustache. And, ugh, when did he get taller than her? Not by a lot, but enough that sitting side by side now felt different. Like she couldn’t lean her head against his shoulder without tilting slightly upward. Which was weird. Not bad-weird, just… noticeable-weird.

She probably looked different as well. Her braces had come off early last year but she had kept up the patented Mabel style. Although she was proud to say she’d almost doubled her knitting speed and her sweater collection had, well, not grown. She had to keep making new ones as she outgrew the old ones. But it hadn’t shrunk either. All in all, she was a little taller and just as cute. Although genetics didn’t seem keen on giving her a Hollywood star bombshell body. Her boobs had pretty much stopped growing after they got juuuust big enough to need a bra. At first, she was a little miffed, but compared to the back problems and all that junk, she actually didn’t mind.

She shoved the thought away with a sip of soda and leaned back on the swing. “Soooo, Mister Science Boy. Did you and Grunkle Ford blow up the lab again?”

“Not this time,” he said, nudging her with his elbow. “Though we did get close. Ford’s been working on some calibration stuff for the Rift Resonator, and—”

“—and that’s my cue to zone out,” Mabel declared, loudly slurping her drink.

Dipper snorted. “You asked!”

“Yeah, but not for a five-hour lecture, bro-bro. I’ve already got Stan giving me the Stan Standard of Mystery Shack Economics, and let me tell you, that’s enough boring numbers for one day.”

“Hey, at least my choice of Grunkle comes with a paycheck at the end of the day.”

Mabel gasped dramatically, clutching her chest. “He pays you?”

Dipper smirked. “No, but I knew that’d get you.”

She swatted at him, soda can and all, but he dodged easily, still grinning. Ugh, why did he have to look so pleased with himself? Stupid face. Stupid adorable smug face.

They sat like that for a bit, the swing creaking under their combined weight, the forest humming with crickets and the occasional distant hoot. It felt… nice. Familiar. Like the summer had been a thousand years long, but also slipping away faster than she wanted to admit.

“So,” Dipper said, casual but with that tone that always meant he was about to bring up something. “Pacifica stopped by earlier.”

Mabel nearly choked on her soda. “Pacifica? As in blondie, designer-handbag, ‘I-have-like-three-pink-ponchos’ Pacifica?”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “She’s not that bad anymore, you know. She’s… different now.”

Different. Right. Mabel twisted the soda can in her hands, watching the condensation bead up and roll down her fingers. “Sooo, what’d she want? New trench coat shopping buddy? Someone to stand dramatically in front of fountains with her?”

“She just… wanted to hang out,” he said, and for a second there was this tiny awkward shrug. “We’ve been talking a little, I guess.”

Mabel raised her eyebrows. “Talking, huh? Talking talking?”

Dipper’s ears turned red. Always a dead giveaway. “Not like that. I mean, she’s been nice lately. And Ford thinks she has potential to actually, you know, learn some stuff about the weirdness around here. She handled the ghosts alright our first summer and everything…”

“Ohhh, I get it.” Mabel leaned toward him with a knowing smirk. “You and Pacifica Northwest, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S—”

“Stop,” he groaned, but there was no real heat behind it.

Mabel giggled. She should’ve left it there, but something tugged in her chest, sharp and strange, like she’d swallowed a whole handful of her favourite bedazzlement jewels and it had decided to scratch on the way down. 

She ignored it, plastering on her brightest grin. “I ship it. Totally. You two would make, and I am qualified to say this, the 2nd most ultimate mystery-solving power duo, after the Mystery Twins, obviously. She provides the funding, you provide the nerd, bam! Instant power.”

Dipper gave her a look. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Ridiculously right,” she said, pointing her finger at him like it was a wand. “Besides, you could use a little romance in your life. All that studying and monster-chasing can’t be good for your skin. Trust me, I know beauty tips.”

He didn’t argue, but she could tell he didn’t take the suggestion seriously. He just looked away, fiddling with the tab of his soda can. And weirdly, that made her feel… relieved? Comforted? She wasn’t sure. Like the idea of him with Pacifica didn’t actually scare her. It was almost the opposite. She should cheer him on without worrying.

But then why did it bug her? Why did her stomach twist just a little every time she imagined him and Pacifica laughing together, or worse, kissing? Ugh. Gross. She didn’t want to think about her brother kissing some girl. Ew. Totally ew.

Still, she nudged him with her shoulder. “Go for it, Dip. Pacifica’s into you. I can tell. And hey, if you ever need a wingwoman, Mabel Pines is at your service.”

He snorted. “You’d probably embarrass me.”

“Obviously,” she said, grinning wide. “That’s how I show love.”

The swing creaked again as the two of them sat in silence for a while. The soda cans slowly emptied, the cicadas got louder, and Mabel couldn’t shake the weird swirl of feelings buzzing in her chest. Pride, annoyance, affection, stuff like that. All tangled together like the world’s messiest friendship bracelet.

She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Same spindly nerd she’d grown up with. Same Dipper. And yet… not the same. Taller, older, fuzz on his chin, eyes that looked more tired but also sharper somehow. Still her brother. Still her other half. Still the one who’d gotten her the soda before she even asked.

She smiled into her can. Maybe she didn’t need to figure it out right now.

Golden hour decided to do a little catwalk right across the Shack’s back porch, all strut and shimmer, the kind of light that made dust look magical and even Stan’s lawn gnomes look less judgey. The boards were still warm under Mabel’s thighs from a day of sun, and the soda can sweated into her palm like it was nervous about something. Same, soda. Same.

They’d been swinging and sipping for… a while? Time did that stretchy taffy thing around here. Gravity Falls could make five minutes feel like a week and a week feel like five minutes, especially when you were busy wrangling tourists or not-thinking about the future very loudly. Mabel let her heels nudge the porch swing into motion (eeeee, ahhh, eeeee, ahhh) like a sleepy mechanical cricket. Dipper sat beside her, legs too long for the swing now, ankles hooked under the plank so he wouldn’t scuff Ford’s boots sitting by the door. Taller than her. Still unfair. Still a little funny.

“Hey,” she said, mostly to the light, a little to the cicadas, and a lot to the boy with the baby-goatee who’d been with her since she was in nappies. “You realise summer’s basically doing the goodbye-waves right now?”

“Yeah,” Dipper said, soft enough that she could hear the porch swallow the word. He rolled the empty can tab between his fingers, metal ticking like a tiny metronome. “Our birthday was the checkpoint, I guess.”

The birthday they’d celebrated early, because everyone had schedules and pre-schedules and cosmic calamities pencilled into calendars, and it turned out the one night everyone could do cake-and-chaos was not their actual birthday. They’d celebrated early because Wendy had a last-minute family thing, Soos had a cousin’s wedding, Candy was starting uni orientation, Grenda was off to some metalworker camp (which Mabel was still pretty sure was just her lifting anvils and laughing triumphantly for three days). Everyone had been there anyway, scattered across a weekend night like confetti. It had felt right anyway. Same candles, same off-key singing, same old Shack full of voices they loved. She’d even gotten Dipper a novelty magnifying glass with glitter stars inside the handle that made everything he inspected look like a conspiracy theory about outer space glitter. Ten out of ten, very Mabel. He had smiled that small Dip smile, the one that started with his eyes.

“Early-birthday cake still counts as cake,” Mabel declared. “And cake means we’re officially one year older. Which means…” She made a wobbly jazz-hands gesture at the glowing yard. “Adulthood? Bleh-hood?”

“‘Finished high school’ sounds less scary than ‘adulthood,’” Dipper said. “Like, one thing ended. We don’t have to deal with the next thing yet.”

She loved him for saying that. Mostly because she knew that despite saying it, he’d probably been overthinking it and getting all up in his head about it for the past few months. Mabel leaned back and closed one eye, sighting along the porch rail like it was a horizon line she could balance on. 

“True. The next thing can be… lunch. Or matching tracksuits. Or a road trip. Or a combo lunch-road-trip in matching tracksuits.”

He laughed, dorky with a little choke at the start since he was taking a sip of his drink. The sound did a little pinball ricochet between her ribs. Wow, rude. Feelings needed to check in at the front desk and stop playing arcade games in her chest.

The forest did its evening chorus number. A bird tried a solo, then got shy about it. Pines breathed. The light got syrup-thick, pooling in the dips of the yard, kissing the Shack’s peeling paint like, “Hey, you’re still pretty, don’t let anyone tell you different.” Mabel let her head tip toward Dipper’s shoulder, not quite touching, close enough to count the tiny dust flecks floating through his hair where the sun caught it. He smelled like lab air (tin and ozone), old books (Ford), and the Mystery Shack fridge (root beer). If she had to bottle it, she’d call it “Eau de Nerd.” She’d wear it anyway.

“Do you remember,” she said, words lazily somersaulting out, “how when we were ten we thought being eighteen meant, like, owning a sword and a convertible and having a butler who brought us waffles on a silver tray?”

“That was your list,” Dipper said. “My list was ‘don’t die of embarrassment in public’ and ‘maybe see a ghost.’”

“Check and check.” Mabel held up an imaginary clipboard and ticked boxes in the air. “Okay, Ms Pines, your waffle-butler is on backorder, but we can offer you one ghost, one rift, and a persistent shortage of shampoo because your brother keeps ‘borrowing’ it.”

“That was one time,” he said, instantly guilty-sounding, which meant at least three times.

They fell into silence again, the comfortable kind that grew like moss. Mabel watched the stripe of light on the porch inch up Dipper’s knee, across the patched fabric of his shorts, sneaking toward that ridiculous patch of chin fluff he pretended was a beard. She’d teased him about it, called it the “Baby’s First Goatee Kit,” and he’d pretended to be wounded, and she’d pretended not to notice that she noticed it. Except, ugh, she did notice. Because noticing was a thing her eyes did around him lately, like they had decided to sign up for a 24/7 Dipper Awareness Internship. Congratulations, eyes. No pay, long hours.

“Home soon,” Dipper said, so soft she almost missed it under the swing’s groan. “Like… actual soon.”

Home. Their other home, the one with parents and chores and the bedroom that didn’t creak or whisper back. The place where summer wasn’t a place but a story they told themselves when homework got heavy: remember when we found a basement with a dimensional portal that turned off gravity? Remember when the town almost ended and then didn’t because we were together?

Home soon. The words were like stepping on a loose stair. There would be new halls and forms and choices. University brochures with glossy photos of smiling strangers who did not know about gnomes stacked in trench coats or what the Shack’s kitchen sounded like at 2 a.m. There would be maybe maps with routes that curved in different directions. There would be, if she was brave enough to say it out loud, the possibility of him picking something that didn’t have her in it by default.

“Yeah,” Mabel eventually said. “We’ll have to do the whole packing thing. And the goodbyes. And the—” she puffed her cheeks out until she felt like a pufferfish with bangs, “—What Are You Doing After High School Conversation.”

Her words did a little skip at the end, like they tripped on the edge of an invisible rug. She hadn’t meant to put capital letters on that. She hadn’t meant to make her heart lean forward in her chest like it was peeking over a fence into a neighbour’s yard, trying to see if the neighbour had a pool. Stay cool, heart. No trespassing.

She almost said it then. The question stuck behind her teeth all ready and brave: What do you want to do after high school? Can it be near me? With me? Not glued-together me-and-you like we’re children building a LEGO death star, just… proximate. Same city. Same house if the universe is being extra nice. Same anything that keeps us side by side. She could pretend it was about rent efficiency. She could pretend it was about safety in numbers. She could pretend it was about anything but the truth, which was that every time she pictured the future, there was a Dipper-shaped chair in it, and she didn’t know how to rearrange the room without that chair looking empty and wrong.

She imagined them in some shared future kitchen that smelled like coffee and pancakes, windows open, sunlight on a cheap table, her doodles on the fridge, his notes stuck next to them, the rhythm of a life that still matched. She imagined the opposite, two separate flats, different mornings, her seeing a double rainbow out the window and turning around in excitement to grab Dipper so she could force him to look only to remember he was hundreds of miles away. Blergh. Blergh forever.

A moth skimmed the porch light and went, bonk, like it had thoughts about electricity and no plan to back them up. Mabel focused on that instead. On the way the moth dust looked like glitter when the light caught it just so. On the way the evening started humming in her bones like a held note. On how Dipper’s knee bumped hers once, twice, not exactly an accident, not exactly not.

“Hey, Dip?” she said, and the words came out a little shaky (she couldn’t help it! she was nervous!). She cleared her throat. “What do you—”

The universe, apparently, had absolutely no respect for teen feelings.

Because right as she tilted toward the sentence, right as the evening light made a halo of dust in the air between them, right as the feeling swelled into something that felt like a maybe-answer, reality hiccuped.

It was tiny at first. The swing’s squeak stretched like melted candy, one long note. The beetle froze mid-climb. A drop of condensation hung from the rim of Dipper’s can and refused to fall. The breeze went from “let’s ruffle your hair” to “paused”, every pine needle suddenly too still.

And then the air above the porch steps did the least porch-step thing possible: it pixelated.

No, not pixels. More like little glass squares that didn’t know which way time went, rotating and flashing tiny versions of the yard back at them as if someone was trying on moments like shirts. A smell hit, ozone and burnt dust and “somebody licked a battery”, and a stuttering whine wound itself out of nothing, spiralling upward like an anxious kettle.

Mabel’s eyes went wide. Her mouth went, “Oh no,” before her brain had veto power.

A smooth, white and very square-looking space tore open with an apologetic thwip. Out tumbled a man in a too-tight jumpsuit the colour of “why would a cafeteria tile,” a helmet askew, a belt clattering with more blinking doohickeys than Ford on a field trip. He hit the boards, bounced, flailed, and managed to pancake face-first into the porch with all the dignity of a deflated soufflé.

He groaned. He did not move. One of the doohickeys hissed mournfully.

Mabel blinked, then leaned around Dipper’s shoulder to peer down at the heap. She knew that helmet. She knew that whine. She knew that exact brand of “I am here to ruin your plans in the name of temporal integrity.”

The heap peeled itself up by degrees, helmet finally popping free to reveal bedhead and panic eyes. He gasped, spotted them, and immediately went paler.

“Don’t… move,” he wheezed, pointing with a trembling finger that suggested he had never, in fact, successfully commanded anyone not to move in his entire life. “Temporal emergency. Bl— bl— Blendin Blandin reporting for— uh— don’t freak out!”

Mabel’s soda can finally let its drop go. It hit her thumb with a cold little shock.

She exchanged a look with Dipper.

“Uh-oh,” she said brightly.

Blendin Blandin had shown up.

Blendin Blandin was busy peeling himself off the boards with all the grace of a dropped pancake. One boot squeaked. A gadget coughed smoke. The porch air still smelled like someone had microwaved a thundercloud.

“Temporal emergency—!” he blurted, then winced and raised both hands like he’d just been caught trying to steal a cupcake from a baby. “J— jk! Joke. Hah. That was a— mm— bad icebreaker, sorry. No emergency. Nobody panic. Please don’t sue me.”

Mabel blinked at him. Then she clapped once, very helpfully. “Solid landing, Blendy. Ten out of ten for impact. Negative four for style. But, like, in a fun way.”

Dipper had already shifted into alert mode, shoulders slightly forward, eyes scanning the belt, the wrist, the whirry thing that looked like an angry stapler. “You okay?”

Blendin, helmet now dangling from one elbow, gave two tiny thumbs-ups that trembled like weirdo maracas. “Fine! Fine-fine-fine. This is all… perfectly standard post-birthday check-in protocol.” He looked from Dipper to Mabel and back again with the wide-eyed stare of a man hoping if he said the words “perfectly standard” a hundred times the universe would agree. “H-How are you, citizens of the present? Celebrated any temporal milestones lately? Hypothetically numbered around, mm, adult-age?”

Mabel’s soda gave a fizzy answer. “We, uh, did do a little cake,” she offered, bright. “There were sparklers. My eyebrows survived. Mostly.”

“Good. Great.” Blendin tugged his jumpsuit straight, patted a bulge at his hip, and the familiar, terrible, wonderful click-snick of a retracting tape measure whispered from somewhere on his belt. Mabel’s ears perked like a cat at a can opener. No. Nope. Bad idea. Not that she was thinking of it. She wasn’t thinking of anything. Her brain was a responsible adult brain that remembered consequences and did not immediately chase possibly illegal ideas into traffic.

“Why the check-in?” Dipper said, cautious. “I mean, not that we’re not happy to see you—”

“We are!” Mabel added cheerfully. “You’ve got less prison in your vibe than last time. Love that for you.”

Blendin nodded in small, frantic jerks. “Yes, well, I, uh… we… just wanted to… mm… verify you’re both, you know, intact. After the, heh, birthday threshold. Statistically significant date. Totally routine! We run… audits.” His smile was the kind that begged not to be fact-checked. “So! What are the… ah… plans? For your immediate near-future life trajectories? Any pending… hm… relocations, academic enrolments, apprenticeships, full-scale monster-fighting careers… purely as a conversation piece. No pressure.”

Mabel felt Dipper glance at her and she did the automatic Mabel thing: make it light, make it fun, throw a sparkle cape over the too-serious. “Our plan is to eat three more of Stan’s mystery pickles without dying, and then, maybe, I’ll start a sweater empire and Dip will become a professional lab goblin. He already has the little goatee fuzz. Very goblin-chic.”

Dipper made a face and scraped his thumb over the patch like he could erase it. “It’s— look, it’s a work in progress.”

Blendin’s eyes ping-ponged between them. His smile twitched, half-relieved, half like he’d swallowed a bee. “Ah. Heh. Yes. Goblin-chic. Classic. And… togetherness-wise, you’re… mm… still operating as a… unit? A… cohesive twin cluster?” He tacked on a casual little whistle that sounded exactly like a man whistling near a nuclear reactor while insisting everything was normal.

“Yup!” Mabel sang, and then a second voice under it whispered maybe not, and she swatted that voice with a mental rolled-up newspaper. “Like peanut butter and jelly. Like two llamas in one jumper.”

“Like variables in a system of equations,” Dipper said, because of course he did.

Blendin nodded, nod-glitched, nodded again. “Mm! Great analogy. Variables can, ah, separate, of course, for the stability of the, mm, maths. Ha ha ha. But who’s counting. Not me, not w— any… any authority figures.” He coughed into his fist. “Well! Tell me about your… prospects. Schools, jobs, stuff like that… no reason.”

Dipper leaned his forearms on his knees, defaulting to “answer the stressed bureaucrat” mode. “I’ve had a few emails from Ford. He— uh— mentioned some apprenticeship-type projects, more structured study, fieldwork. But it’s not— I haven’t decided anything.”

And there it was, the half-sentence Mabel had been reaching for right before a man from the year Twenty-Snyeventy-Whatever faceplanted onto their porch: I haven’t decided anything. The feeling in her chest gave a hopeful little squeak. Not decided. Good. Good good good. But also he’d been email Ford, for something like the apprenticeship he’d been offered their first summer here. Bad. Bad bad bad.

Blendin’s shoulders unclenched a centimetre, like that answer rang a small bell on a chart somewhere and the bell was labelled “acceptable for now, keep observing, do not spook the twins.” He turned to Mabel with the panicked politeness of a substitute teacher meeting a hurricane. “And you, Mabel Pines? Any, ah, glitter-empire contracts? Studies in… textiles? Performance art? Chrono— nope, scratch that last one.”

“I’m a Renaissance woman,” she declared. “Sweaters, snazz, and possibly a minor in balloon animal philosophy.”

“Excellent. Broad skill base. Very… resilient.” He said resilient like it was a word he’d been told to say in a seminar. “Now, purely hypothetically, if you were to… mmh… choose differing vectors for a time, would that… how would that—”

“Whoa there, Captain Spreadsheet,” Mabel said, smiling so wide her cheeks stretched. “You’re asking a lot of future questions for a guy whose arrival looked like a toaster exploded.”

Blendin actually looked wounded. “It was a very sophisticated toaster.”

“Sure it was, buddy.”

Dipper, sensing the bureaucratic barnacles clinging to the conversation, tipped things toward nerdlandia where he thrived. “What’s the real reason you’re here, Blendin? Technical version.”

“Technical version?” Blendin repeated, and his face brightened in the special way of a man who has finally been offered his native language. “Right! Okay. So. The temporal lattice experiences small swellings around anchor-days, birthdays, anniversaries, that sort of thing, especially for… mm… high-salience individuals.” He gestured at them with both hands, as if the phrase “high-salience” might bounce off their foreheads and soak in. “We run dampening sweeps to avoid resonance events that might, in worst-case scenarios, tip someone across a choice boundary at the exact wrong microsecond.”

He tried to make that sound casual. He did not succeed.

“Resi-what now?” Mabel said, though she caught the drift fine enough: birthdays make time extra wibbly; wibbles push choices; choices… pick paths. Yay. Great. Love that.

Dipper nodded like a bobblehead. “So you’re here to monitor potential decision points. Does that mean you detected—”

“Ah!” Blendin flapped his hands. “No detecting. Just routine looking. Browsing. L— light stalking. Harmless, totally legal by the— ah— regulations in section, mm, never mind the section. Look!” He pointed at a device on his wrist that resembled a wristwatch that had eaten three other wristwatches. “Green indicators! See? All green.” The indicators, Mabel noted, were in fact orange. “Okay they are green-ish, and if you consider colourblind individuals—!”

“Blergh,” Mabel said softly, because her brain had just hit the part of the rollercoaster labelled “equations.” Her attention did that slippery-slope thing it always did when conversations turned into a buffet of math words and policy acronyms. The world smudged at the edges into a slideshow of porch-light gold and Dipper’s voice and Blendin’s fretting and the faint smell of pine.

She was present enough to clock that Blendin kept glancing, casual-not-casual, at Dipper’s face when he said vector, trajectory, apprenticeship. She was present enough to see Dipper doing the “don’t commit, don’t commit, keep options open” shuffle she knew from a thousand “do we have enough money for two kinds of cereal” debates. But she was smart enough to know that their time-travelling friend was hinting at something. Something about Dipper taking that apprenticeship. One where they’d be apart. The problem was that if an officer, to time itself shows up to nudge you in the right direction. Then generally speaking, you should let yourself get nudged. On the other hand, she managed to notice a particular something clipped to Blendin’s belt.

The tape.

It wasn’t fancy. Not to a normal eye. A chunky tape measure, scuffed metal case, a square button, little marks along the edge that weren’t quite inches. But Mabel had held it in her hand before. She remembered how it tugged when you pulled it, like time had a texture and it was stretching under your fingers. She remembered the Ferris wheel and a hundred little redo’s and the terrible feeling of right choices and wrong costs. She remembered Waddles and the ache of hurting her broheim, even if he ended up doing it for her sake at the end. She remembered promising herself she would not touch that kind of magic again because it was a cheat code that skipped the level but also deleted half your save file.

She also remembered the moment two minutes ago when she’d had a picture in her head, a kitchen, sunlight, the easy rhythm of a life that matched, and how a silly balloon in her chest had bobbed like “pick this one.” She remembered Dipper saying it was still a work in progress. She remembered the scrunch on Blendin’s face when he asked about separate vectors like he was reading it off a card, like someone big and loud and baby-shaped had stuck that card in his pocket with a stamp that said STABLE FUTURE. She remembered the way the porch went still right before Blendin fell out of the air, like the universe had held its breath to see if she would ask her question.

Mabel tuned back in mid-sentence to hear Dipper and Blendin in full nerd volley:

“—so if the lattice swell spikes, wouldn’t the dampener create a rebound band that risks a micro-oscillation?”

“Only if your dampener’s phosphorylated in 24-hour time, which, oh no, it is— okay, but we’ve adjusted the— ah— glossary later.”

They might as well have been speaking Whale.

Mabel let them ripple on. She took another sip of soda, flat now, sweet in a sticky way, and pressed the can to her cheek, cool metal against warm skin. Her eyes slid back to the tape. The button winked. The metal case had a dent in it shaped like a story she didn’t want to hear yet.

A very irresponsible thought tiptoed in wearing ballet shoes.

What if… Just what if she never had to ask the terrifying question and wait for the answer that might be “goodbye for a bit”? What if she could go peek ahead, find the place where they didn’t peel apart, and then… nudge. Not big, not disaster, she’d learned that lesson, just a little stitch. A sweater-mender’s touch. Tighten a loop here, loosen a loop there. Prevent the one domino that knocked the others over. Keep the “we” intact.

Terrible idea, said Responsible Mabel, adjusting her Very Sensible Glasses. Time travel is a toaster full of forks.

Brilliant idea, said Fun Mabel, already picking out a celebratory sweater.

She set the can down very gently on the porch rail. The clunk was tiny. The porch light made the case of the tape gleam for half a second like it was winking at her. Blendin turned his wrist to show Dipper some glowing graph spaghetti, too engrossed for a second to notice anything else. Dipper’s face lit up nerd-bright, and he leaned in, asking something about resonance baselines and anchor thresholds (yawn), which made Blendin feel helpful, which made Blendin gesture bigger, which jostled his belt so the tape shifted just a little closer to Mabel’s side of the conversation.

Her fingers tingled. Not yet, no, no, not yet. She wasn’t going to do anything wild on a whim. She would plan the whim. She would blueprint the chaos. She would be so careful even Time Baby would have to put on a monocle and say, “Huh, responsible!”

She slid her gaze up to Dipper. He was beautiful in that oblivious, favourite-face way she refused to examine too closely. They were the mystery twins, and they stuck together. Thats just how it was. And if it meant keeping them on the same page in the same book on the same shelf, well, that was just good library science.

The conversation blurred again, technical, rusty and clattery, Blendin’s hands carving diagrams in the air. Mabel nodded when it seemed polite, “mm-hm”-ed when it seemed called for, and let the irresponsible thought do a slow cartwheel in her head. Just a peek. Then a nudge. Then back before anyone knew. Nobody gets hurt. The future stays… together-coloured.

Her hand drifted, casual as a yawn, to the edge of the bench. Closer to Blendin’s belt. Closer to the square little promise with a pull-out future.

And the idea snapped into full, sparkling shape:

She was going to stea— borrow the time tape.

Mabel wasn’t sneaky. Sneaky was for raccoons in burglar masks and Grunkle Stan on coupon day. She was… opportunistic. Which was totally different and absolutely legal in at least three imaginary countries she had made up for her own defence.

Blendin, bless his bureaucratic little heart, was still busy drawing equations in the air like he was trying to lasso the alphabet. Dipper’s eyes had gone all shiny with “tell me more about phase drift,” which was adorable and also the conversational equivalent of a nap for Mabel’s brain. The tape sat there on Blendin’s belt like a fat silver fish that had flopped a little too close to a cat.

She breathed in. Sap, dust, soda syrup. She breathed out. Courage, or the cartoon of it.

And then, with a smile so big it could be seen from orbit, she leaned forward as if to pat Blendin on the arm in a friendly “congrats on not dying during arrival” way and instead let her fingers boop the tape’s clip just right. The metal case slid a thumb-width down, kissed her palm, and vanished into her sweater sleeve like it had fallen in love with the glitter there and decided to move in. Thank you Grunkle Stan, your apprentice has learned well.

“—so you see, the node alignment is actually counterintuiti—” Blendin babbled.

“Counter— yes! Super,” Mabel chirped, already standing, already feeling her heart doing pogo sticks. “I’m gonna, uh, refresh my soda! Don’t mmind me!” She held up the empty can so no one would. It was such a good empty can. A hero.

Dipper glanced over, sharp boy (she refused to think of her dorky brother as a man, even if he was starting to look like one); of course he did, but she deployed her best nothing-to-see-here smile, the one that said “I am absolutely not about to do something impulsive. How dare you even think it.” He hesitated, torn between a sentence with the word “oscillation” in it and the sister who had once convinced him to add confetti to his breakfast. She slid off the porch before his brain cast a vote.

Around the corner, past the paint-chipped post, down the two steps that always groaned, across the patch of dirt where Waddles had once wallowed herself a pig spa, Mabel moved quick and quiet. The gift shop door stood ajar from closing time; the little bell over it made a tiny ting! as she slipped inside. The air changed to that old familiar Mystery Shack mix: wood varnish, oddities dust, gum under display cases from 1990-never. The afternoon light slanted through antler-shaped shadows and turned the floorboards into caramel strips. She loved this place in a way that felt like loving a person. She was about to mess with time for this place. For them.

In the back corner, just behind the rack of “100% Real Unicorn Hair (Do Not Comb)” keychains, she ducked. The tape slid from her sleeve into both hands, heavier than it looked, warm from Blendin’s hip. The case bore a dent she didn’t recognise, —she pretended not to ask what story that dent held, and the little square button winked like an eye that knew too much.

“Okay,” she whispered to the tape, because talking to objects always helped. “We’re just going to do a tiny, tiny look-see. Like peeking at a present through the wrapping to guess if it’s socks. And then we’re going to make one, one, smart, small stitch. For togetherness. For twin-ness. For… library science.” (She didn’t know what library science had to do with anything, but it sounded official and soothed Responsible Mabel, who had been clearing her throat in the back of her mind.)

She thumbed the button. A soft bzzzt answered, the kind you felt more in your finger bones than heard. The little metal tongue of the tape quivered inside the case. It was a measuring tape. It was not a measuring tape. The marks weren’t inches. They were… moments. She could almost feel them under her thumb, this one coarse, this one silky, like time had textures and she was petting it.

“What are you doing?”

Dipper’s voice. Right behind her. Calm the way a lake was calm right before a thunderstorm.

Mabel yelped and spun, shoving the tape behind her back like it was contraband and she was six. “Refreshing my— uh— water. Hydration is important. For, like, science. Didn’t you learn that in Lab Gremlin School?” She tried to laugh and it came out as small, weird puppy noises.

He was breathless, a little flushed from having walked fast, one hand braced on the counter like he’d told Blendin, “Give me a second,” and the second had sprinted off. His eyes flicked to her hands, then to her face, then to the tiny bell over the door that was still swaying from when she came in. He put it together, because of course he did. That brain of his, ugh. Handy when she needed homework help; infuriating when she needed to get away with something. It didn’t help that he’d spent his whole life learning her tells. Making him the one person that could actually call her bluffs in poker (even if he sucked at bluffing himself).

“Mabel.” He wasn’t scolding. He was pleading with the future. “Give it back.”

She lifted her chin. “Rude. You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“I know exactly what you’re doing.” The word exactly had cracks in it. “And it’s a bad idea.”

“Oh, okay, Time Police, thank you for your service.” She did a tiny bow without meaning to, because sarcasm always made her limbs do theatre. Her face was hot. Embarrassment, anger, fear. The balloon under her ribs bumped the ceiling. “You’re acting like I’m about to, I don’t know, erase Stan from the photo album.”

“You can’t control it.” He took a step closer and held out his hand. He had that careful look on, like she was a hurt animal and he was trying to get close without spooking her. “And even if you could, we shouldn’t. We learned that. Remember?”

She remembered. She remembered a Ferris wheel. She remembered Waddles. She remembered the ache that came with hurting him, even if only a little. And she remembered that one ache had been followed by a summer full of us, and maybe she could use a little wrong to keep the big right.

She clamped her mouth shut on all of that. Because if she said any of it, she’d have to say the real thing: I’m scared you’ll pick away from me.

“I just—” Her voice betrayed her by wobbling. She cleared it, tried again with more Mabel sparkle. “It’s fine, Dip. I’m not going to do anything wild. Just a peek. Like a tiny little snoot of a peek. Then back. Then maybe a minuscule nudge. A polite nudge. Like when you see spinach in your best friend’s teeth and you’re like, hey, spinach.”

“Mabel.” His hand stayed out, palm up. It trembled a little. “Please.”

And there it was, the worst part. He wasn’t angry. He was worried. For her. For them. For the board labelled Consequences. And if she looked at that open hand any longer, she would put the tape in it and sit on the floor and cry and say everything loud: I want you to still be there. I want the porch. I want the easy. I don’t know how to ask you to want that with me without sounding like a selfish baby. She could not. Not without cracking open.

So she did what Mabel Pines did when feelings were too big and her heart had the hiccups: she deflected. “You’re not my dad,” she said, which was stupid, because he wasn’t, he was worse, he was Dipper, which meant what he thought mattered too much. She stepped sideways, itchy, cornered. The tape’s button nudged her palm like hi, I’m a terrible idea; press me.

Dipper’s eyes flashed something. Pain? Frustration? No it was more like… resignation? And then he reached. Not fast, not rough, just a sure move to take away the thing that might hurt her. His fingers closed around the edge of the case at the exact moment hers tightened.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t,” he said at the same time.

Which is how they ended up doing a dumb little tug-of-war behind a keychain rack while a laminated “NO REFUNDS” sign watched like an unamused judge.

The tape clicked. The metal tongue shot out of the case like a striking snake, a bright strip of not-inches whipping between them, arcing sideways, snagging on the corner of the counter and zipping another two notches as if the universe had just said, “Oh, are we doing this? We’re doing this.”

“Let go!” Dipper hissed.

“You let go!” she hissed back, because logic had left the building and pettiness had pressed the elevator button.

He tried to angle the case to let the tongue retract. She tried to press the square button to freeze it, no, not there, there, but their fingers collided and slid and in the mess of it her thumb caught a second recessed toggle she hadn’t seen. Something inside the case rearranged with a sound like a deck of cards shuffling.

The tape hummed. The air pressure went weird. The little bell over the shop door went silent mid-sway.

Dipper’s eyes jerked to hers. “Mabel, that’s—”

The strip pulsed, and all the tiny marks along it shivered like they were fish scales catching light. There was a feeling like leaning too far forward on a ladder, oh no, nothing under your foot, and then a push. Not the soft tug of rewind she remembered. A shove in the spine. A hand between the shoulder blades saying Move.

“That’s not—” Dipper started, and then the world skipped.

It didn’t flash white. It didn’t do a Star Wipe. It did a… re-shelving. The gift shop’s air curled, folded, and filed itself differently. The smell of dust blinked and came back with… varnish? Lemon oil? The cool of the bottle fridge became the whoosh of an overhead vent. The floor creaked in a note she didn’t recognise. A fan somewhere made a new hum, like a grown-up version of the old hum.

Mabel’s stomach did a loop-de-loop. Her hand lost the case because the case wasn’t there, no, it was there, but it was hot, and buzzing angrily; it snapped like a bitten ruler and the metal strip recoiled in a panicked, jagged zzzip that bit her fingertip and then jammed halfway back, warped. The square button popped off entirely and pinged into the shadows like a fleeing bean.

The hum stopped.

Silence rushed in. Not the same silence.

Mabel and Dipper stood frozen, still half in a tangle of limbs and loyalty, breathing fast. The tape case in her hand let out a sad little fssss and went limp, a wounded thing. A hairline crack spidered across the face where the numbers-that-weren’t had been. A faint curl of smoke wrote an embarrassed question mark in the air.

Dipper didn’t even say “I told you so.” He just looked at the busted tape with heartbreak and then at her with the softer kind. “Are you okay?” he asked first, because he was Dipper.

Her finger stung, a neat little line of pain. She hid it behind her sweater hem like that would undo the dumb. “Fine,” she croaked, and then, because she had to be Mabel about it or she’d implode, “It barely nicked me. I’ve been sliced by craft scissors worse.”

He blew out a breath, half-laugh, half-cry. “Craft scissors are literally safer.”

“Not in my hands,” she said, trying on a grin. It didn’t fit.

They weren’t in the same gift shop, not exactly. It was the Shack, the bones were right, but someone had taught it posture. The old counter had been sanded down and re-varnished to a honey shine. The glass display that used to wobble if you breathed on it had been replaced by a heavier, straighter case with hidden lighting that made the junk inside look like artefacts instead of… junk. The faded “Mystery Shack” rug was gone; in its place lay a thicker mat in rich red with a stitched symbol she couldn’t place at first. Pine tree silhouette, triangle framing it, no, not quite the old logo, a cleaner one, like someone had hired a designer who didn’t owe Stan money.

The “NO REFUNDS” sign still existed, because the universe had a sense of humour, but it was framed now, like a museum piece commemorating a dark age. The posters on the walls were crisp, colours unfaded: “Museum & Curiosity House,” “Guided Tours,” “Research Annex (By Appointment).” Behind the counter, a neat rack of brochures (actual printed brochures!) stood in a tidy fan, and a small, tasteful bell sat where the ugly cowbell used to be. The ceiling had new fans; the light fixtures were less “haunted basement,” more “vintage lodge.”

Mabel’s heart climbed into her throat. She turned slowly, and every turn gave her another little wrong-right: the old jar of “Merman Teeth” now in a labelled case (“Fossilised, Provenance Debated”), the wall of postcards replaced by an interactive screen (her reflection on it looked modern and out-of-place), the far door upgraded with a keypad she would one hundred percent have tried to guess the code for under normal, non-time-broken circumstances.

“Dip,” she whispered. “I don’t think my hydration break took five minutes.”

He nodded once, hard, jaw tight. He was scanning, corners, doors, sightlines, the way he did in the woods when he heard a twig crack. The porch light beyond the front windows looked different through the glass, warmer, steadier. The trees outside were taller. No, were they? Or did the new glass just distort them? Her brain kept tripping on tiny things and then landing on bigger ones: the air smelt cleaner; the dust wasn’t settled so much as curated.

Behind the counter sat a small framed photo. Mabel’s eyes snagged there like a sweater thread on a nail. She took a step toward it without meaning to, then stopped herself like she’d hit an invisible tape line. She didn’t look closer. She did not. (She would. Later. Maybe. Absolutely not.)

Dipper gently took the broken tape from her hand. It was heavier now that it was useless. He held it like a hurt animal. “This… shouldn’t have gone forward,” he said softly, mostly to himself. “Blendin mentioned that it’s designed for transporting backwards as a safety measure to prevent this sort of thing... Unless—”

“Unless we messed it up,” she said, and her voice tried to make a joke of it and failed. She rubbed her stung finger on her skirt, more for the comfort of rubbing than any blood. “We messed it up.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t blame. He just nodded once, like a soldier accepting the map as it was and not as he wished. Then he looked at her, really looked, and she knew the next words before he said them, because she had known this boy since before they had words: “We stick together.”

The balloon under her ribs, absurdly, bobbed. “Mystery Twins,” she said, because no matter what year it was, that was the kind of thing she could roll with.

Somewhere outside, further-off than it should have been, like the grounds had stretched, there was the muffled ka-chunk of a gate. Footsteps, faint. Voices, not theirs. A low murmur of… customers? Staff? Ghosts with a timesheet?

Mabel reached for Dipper’s sleeve and found it at the same time he reached for her wrist. Hands, warm. Grip, familiar. Hearts, loud. The gift shop they knew had been replaced by… this. Whatever this was. She didn’t know how long they’d leapt. She didn’t know if they’d landed in a version of the Shack she would recognise from the inside out or a stranger wearing its face. She didn’t know anything except that she had broken the thing she stole and the future had answered with a new floor polish.

“Okay,” she said, voice small and brave all at once. “New plan. Step one: don’t panic. Step two: hide, because if Stan 2.0 charges admission to yell at us, I’m not paying. Step three: figure out where and when we are.”

Dipper nodded, the tiniest smile flickering despite everything, because she never did plans and when she did they always had three steps when they needed twenty. 

They moved together toward the shadowed side of the counter just as a motion sensor over the entrance pinged and the new overhead lights warmed a shade brighter, welcoming… someone.

Chapter 2: The future is here

The bell over the door gave a polite ding, not the donkey-bray cowbell of old, but a neat, tasteful ding, and Mabel and Dipper went statue-still behind the newly shiny counter. Footsteps. Slow, familiar, a little heavier than they should have been. A key scraped. The door swept wider and let in a wedge of daylight and pine, and then—

“—Dudes?”

Soos filled the doorway like he always had, but time had added some extra boss-mode to him. He wore a collared work shirt with an embroidered “Mystery Shack” patch and his name stitched under it in big friendly letters. A ring glinted on his finger. His hairline had made some tactical retreats, but the smile was the same: sun-warm, instant, home. He froze when he saw them. Blinked once. Twice. His eyes did a little Windows-98 error, then rebooted straight to awe.

“Uh… little dudes,” he said carefully, as if addressing a rare exhibit. “You guys look extremely… 2010s.”

Mabel popped up so fast the new bell nearly dinged again through sheer force of enthusiasm. 

“SOOS!” She tried to go around the counter and then forgot that the counter was not the wobbly one she could dive over, and bounced off the glass like a happy raccoon smacking a window. She found the gate and barrelled through it instead and hugged him so hard his neat name patch wrinkled.

He made an oof noise and then wrapped her up like a burrito of safety. 

“Oh man, this is like one of those exhibits where the animatronics are too realistic,” he said into her hair, misty-eyed and grinning. “Except you smell like glitter and soda, so this is probably the real you.”

Dipper stepped out from behind the counter with a little wave. “Hey, Soos.”

Soos stared for a second, then pulled Dipper in with his free arm. “Dipper,” he said with exaggerated gravitas, and then squeezed him until bones squeaked. “You guys… you look younger. Like, way younger. Did you fall in a time hole? Was it a sanctioned time hole? Tell me it was sanctioned.”

Mabel and Dipper made identical guilty faces at exactly the same speed, which was the kind of twin-synchrony that she loved.

“Short answer,” Dipper said, which meant he was bout to dumb things down and leave out the bad parts. “We… may have borrowed a piece of equipment. Got sent to the future.”

“Yep. Borrowed,” Mabel echoed, because that sounded much better than “stole and broke.” She flashed what she hoped was a disarming smile and not a ‘I broke time and might cry if you look at me too nice’ smile.

Soos glanced between them, eyebrows climbing like they were scaling a cliff. Then he took a calming breath, patted Mabel’s shoulder, and put on his shop-manager face. The one that they’d seen more and more over the past few years as he ran the shack. 

“Okay. Okay-okay. You’re here. You’re safe. The Shack is… not on fire. We’re already beating the median. Let’s, uh, do the practical stuff first. You need help. Specifically, you need the Grunkles.” He headed behind the counter, flipped a little brass switch that changed the sign in the front window from OPEN to CLOSED with a very satisfying thwip. Evidently, he’d just opened for the day and had ducked outside for the moment when they appeared. He then tugged out a ledger the size of a pizza box. “I can call them. I mean, I can… try.”

“Please,” Dipper said, relief in his voice like a dropped backpack. “If anyone can get us back, it’s Grunkle Ford.”

Soos’s fingers danced over a touchscreen handset that had replaced the old landline. “Heh. Yeah. The boss-men. So… minor hiccup, little dude: the Grunkles are kinda… off-grid right now.” 

He squinted at a contact marked with a pine tree emoji, a wrench, and a lightning bolt, which was either Ford or a very cool electrician. “Like, they go off-grid sometimes, right? Fieldwork. Research. Periodic grump-retreats. And when they do, I leave messages on the secure channel, and then… eventually… I get a message back but…”

He held up the screen, which displayed a calm blue “RETRYING” message that felt like it was judging Mabel personally.

“Uh,” Mabel said. “So… plan B?”

Soos thunked the ledger shut and gave them both a steady look, manager hat off, friend hat on. 

“Plan B is Future Dipper,” he said, and the words landed like a dropped coin. “If anyone knows where the Grunkles are or how to reach ‘em when they don’t wanna be reached, it’s… well… Dipper.” He flicked his eyes to Dipper, her Dipper, current, fresh-faced, wide-eyed, and added gently, “The older one.”

Mabel’s stomach did a tight little flip. Dipper set his jaw in that brave way that meant he was pretending not to be thinking about twelve different worst-case scenarios. Was it weird that she wanted to know what he looked like all grown up? Like, a lot?

“Where is he?” Dipper asked.

Soos rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the thing. He’s kinda… hard to track down. Always has a gig, a hunt, a… ‘consult.’ Comes through when he can. Doesn’t always say when that’ll be. But I know someone who does know how to get him fast.” He looked at Mabel then, and his smile turned careful-sad. “Your place.”

“My—” Mabel’s mouth did a little fish move. “My… place?”

“Yeah,” Soos said softly. “Your house. You’ll understand when you see it. She’ll— uh— you’ll know how to reach him.”

Dipper checked the front door, the windows, the corners, like danger might be hiding behind a brochure. Which was silly, it was the future, not an apocalypse. “How far?”

“Bit of a haul,” Soos said. He flicked the CLOSED sign switch and it changed to CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE. “I’ll keep the shack closed. Was meant to go on holiday tomorrow anyway. I’ll grab the van. You two… don’t touch anything—”

“We did work here a fair bit Soos, we know the rules.” Joked Mabel.

“Cool,” Soos said, already moving. “I’ll pack snacks.”

***

The Mystery Shack had a van. It was old, deep green with a tasteful logo and only a single duct-taped window. It also smelled like coffee, old maps, and a faint, comforting hint of glue from what she assumed was her own adjustments.  Soos had packed the passenger footwell with a cardboard box labelled ROAD FUEL: jerky, trail mix, the kind of random goodies assortment that always accompanied them on long haul trips with the big guy. From what they could tell, Soos had fixed the old thing up a lot over the years, of which there had been 10 apparently. 10 whole years in the future.

Mabel buckled in, fingers still a little trembly from the whole “broke the time travel device” thing. Dipper slid in beside her. Soos adjusted his mirror, looked at them both with a kind of chuckle that reminded them that he was 10 years older than when they’d seen him that morning. Then he rolled them out onto the road.

The forest peeled back. Gravity Falls did that thing it did in the afternoon where the light turned the ferns into stained glass and every shadow felt comforting. Mabel watched it blur by and tried to stamp her feelings into neat little boxes. The boxes tried to spill glitter everywhere and declare a feelings parade. What was she supposed to do? All she wanted was to take a quick look and maybe smidgen things towards them staying as a dynamic duo, and she might have gotten them stuck in the frea

Soos let the silence sit for a bit, like bread rising. Then, as the highway unspooled and the Shack shrank in the mirror, he cleared his throat.

“Just so you’re not blindsided,” he said, eyes on the road. “You two… uh… split up after school. Not in a dramatic way. No soap opera theme song. It was just… life.” He shrugged, one shoulder moving under the stitched SOOS. “Dipper— older, you— he took an apprenticeship with Ford. It was intense. Like… ‘constant mysteries and fighting bad dudes’ intense. And Mabel, you did the art school thing. Big city. Big canvases. Glitter budget I cannot legally discuss.”

Mabel smiled without meaning it. “Sounds like me.”

“Yeah,” Soos said, fond. “For a while, you made it work. You’d meet up summers. You’d come to the Shack, eat terrible hot dogs, . First couple years…hang out with Wendy… that was like… your tradition. Then stuff happened and, uh…” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Then one summer Dipper couldn’t make it. Then the next. Then, after a bit, you stopped coming up too.”

He didn’t say you drifted. He didn’t have to. The road did a long, slow curve, as if to demonstrate.

Dipper sat very still. His profile looked older for a second, not because his face changed but because the air around it did.

Mabel looked out the window so hard she almost saw through time. Trees. A sign for a diner she didn’t recognise. The feeling in her chest did something unpleasant and sludgy, like a milkshake left in the sun.

She wanted to say: No way. Not us. We are inconvenience-proof. We have redundancy. We are twin-shaped. We’re— She swallowed. 

We’re not supposed to split up...

Soos kept his voice gentle, like that would somehow soften the fact that he was confirming her worst fears. “I’m not saying it was anyone’s fault. I’m just telling you dudes what I saw. Two awesome dudes who got very busy being awesome in different places.” He glanced over, managed a smile that landed like a hand on a shoulder. 

Mabel tried to imagine summers not anchored by a porch swing and a pine-shaped air freshener and Dipper’s laugh ricocheting off the eaves. Her brain spat out error messages and a little cartoon of herself flipping a table.

The van hummed. The thermos glugged a little when Soos hit a bump. Dipper finally spoke, voice quiet like he didn’t want to wake something.

“Is she… happy?” he asked, and Mabel didn’t know if he meant future her or her-her because she knew for sure the answer to one and it was hell no.

Soos took a breath. “I think…” He considered, which Soos did more now apparently. Time had decided to give him a collection of pauses that made you trust what came after. “I think she did well in art school. And she’s got people who care about her, for sure. The husband’s… nice.” Another pause. “He’s… nice.”

Nice. The word sat there like unsalted popcorn. Mabel wanted to throw it out the window and demand a better adjective.

“Anyway,” Soos said, rescuing the mood with a professional hard swerve. He reached over, popped the lid on the snack box, and shoved it at them like a peace treaty. “Eat. Hydrate. This is a long one.”

Mabel took a handful of trail mix and promptly ate it one item to appraise their snackiness. Almond. Raisin. M&M. Repeat. Her throat felt weird, chalky. She chased it with a swig from the thermos and made a face. 

“Soos, is this coffee or engine degreaser?”

“Yes,” he said solemnly.

Dipper coughed a laugh, and it made the milkshake feeling in her chest slosh and settle a little like his voice always did. She cracked the window and let air in. It whipped her hair around and smelt like dust and sun.

She didn’t say anything out loud, because if she did the words might be “that’s not us,” and she wasn’t sure if that would sound brave or childish, but inside her head the Mabel-mind theatre put on a show. Scene one: two teens on a porch, sodas sweating, light turning gold, a question almost asked. Scene two: Dipper and Ford going off doing science stuff while she went to art school. Scene three: her being married and barely even seeing her broseph again.

Do we really… drift? Do we become holidays and postcards and “maybe next year”? Do I trade in porch-swing silence for polite dinner parties where I talk about installations and smile like I’m not waiting for a laugh I know by heart?

Her brain tried to hand her a platitude about “people grow.” She drop-kicked it. People grow together, she told the platitude, or they grow apart a little, then build a bridge. She did not like bridges being optional.

Outside, the trees thinned. Highway signs stacked up their promises. Somewhere far ahead, a version of her was waiting behind a door that led to a house where she had some ‘mystery husband’. She imagined Dipper going away and her being the only one holding a thread to connect him to the real world outside of the science and mysteries he no doubt spent all his time with. It made her a little happy that she was apparently the one person who could get in contact with her. It’d make her happier if she didn’t need to go to the effort at all. 

Mabel pressed her forehead to the cool glass and watched the world peel by. She imagined catching that thread with both hands and knotting it to hers. She did not know if time wanted that. She did not know if Dipper wanted that. She only knew that the version where they faded into sometimes made her stomach feel like a broken glitter globe, shiny, but everything sinking.

She supposed she should have been more excited. She had a mystery lover and evidectly her broski had some kind of cool mystery man life going on. So why did she just feel like crap instead?

***

Hours later Soos pulled the van up to a curb in a neighbourhood that looked like a brochure had eaten a middle-aged housewife with nothing to do other than attend PTA meetings and judge people, and then hired a gardener. Palms lined the street like overachievers. The sky was that California blue that made you feel like a small, hopeful speck. The house in front of them sat back from the road, all clean lines and sun-warmed stucco, big windows blinking like friendly eyes. Not a mansion-mansion, but definitely “every angle is worthy of social media.”

He let the engine idle and swivelled in his seat. “Okay, dudes. I’ve gotta bounce.” He tapped a sticky note stuck to the dash: FAMILY TRIP — DON’T FORGET NANA. “Extended family holiday. Melody’ll be freaking out without me there to help her fit in. I am contractually and emotionally obligated.”

Mabel unclipped her belt and launched across the console to hug him again. “Thanks for the rescue. Sorry we… y’know… broke a tape and maybe time.”

Soos hugged back with full burrito-energy. “Hey. ‘ssall good little dudes. I’m sure you’ll fix it.” He held Dipper’s shoulder a second longer, eyes kind and a little heavy. “If Future You gets weird, remember: deep breaths, safe exits, and when all else fails hide behind Mabel.”

“Sacrifice twin,” Dipper echoed, giving a faint smile as Mabel protested with a ‘Hey!’. “Got it.”

Soos popped the back door and hauled out their hastily-assembled go-bag: two sweaters (classic), a packet of wipes (mysterious but probably useful), and the snack box (emergency M&Ms; critical infrastructure). He thunked it onto the footpath, then, because he was Soos and thus powered by loyalty, added his own battered multi-tool to Dipper’s hand. “Just in case you need to… like… fix a sink or something.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Alright.” He pointed at the house. “Go knock on your own door, Mabel Pines. Try not to break your brain. Or do. It’s your brain.” He flashed a thumbs-up, put the van in gear, then paused. “Oh! If someone asks where you’re from, say ‘out of town’ and then cough a lot. It buys time.” With that hard-won wisdom, he rolled away, the Mystery Shack logo winking at them from the rear window until it turned the corner.

They stood there a second, the quiet of suburbia pressing soft hands to their ears. A sprinkler somewhere went tsk tsk tsk like it disapproved of time travel. A small dog across the street was extremely concerned about their existence and made a tiny high-pitched case to the universe about it.

Mabel smoothed her hair and, because she was an adult (arguable) meeting an adult (herself, but definitely more adult), she pulled her sweater straight and told her heart to stop freaking out in nerves. 

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s meet… me.”

Dipper nodded. He looked tired in a way that made her want to put a blanket on him and apologise for making him clean up another of her messes. “Ready.”

They went up the walkway. The garden was neat in a magazine way. Bougainvillea looped one corner like a bright-pink scarf someone aloof had tossed just so. A ceramic planter had succulents arranged in concentric circles that shouted “curated.” Mabel clocked it all with a little mental pencil, adding notes: Beautiful. Expensive. Not… messy enough. Not a single googly eye on a planter. Hm.

She pressed the doorbell. It chimed with a tasteful ding that made her miss the Shack’s rude cowbell more than was reasonable.

Footsteps. A shadow through frosted glass. Then the door opened, and there she was.

Future Mabel looked like Mabel after someone had hit her with a “soft focus” filter and then upped the “grown-up” slider. Same eyes, same smile that tried to climb off her face and hug you, same cheeks that went traitor-red when excited. Her hair was long and neat in that “I own a brush and I’m not afraid to use it” way, rich brown with warm highlights catching the light; a tiny gold pin shaped like a star tucked one side back. She wore jeans and a pale cardigan, a cardigan buttoned at the top, with a camisole underneath in a gentle lilac. No sequins. No pun. No winking llama. Mabel’s brain did a little tactical retreat, then peered out and said, “…cute. But why so quiet?”

Future Mabel’s eyes travelled from Mabel’s face to Dipper’s and widened with a click of recognition. She blinked hard, twice, as if trying to rewind an old VHS that just wouldn’t quite work right.

“Oh my gosh,” she breathed. Then the smile sprinted across her face. “Ohmygosh. Okay. Okay. Uh—” She opened the door fully and stood back. “Come in, come in, before a neighbour sees the glitch in the matrix.”

Present Mabel squeaked and jumped forward because she could not not hug herself. They collided in a very weird, very perfect hug that was like hugging a mirror that hugged back with the right amount of pressure and a familiar laugh. Future Mabel smelled like nice laundry soap, a whisper of citrus, and the faintest hint of paint, acrylic, maybe. She felt like the strength of smells was back to front, and obviously future Mabel was not using enough glue.

“Hi me,” Mabel said into her own shoulder, giggling in disbelief. She pulled back and did a little spin because her body demanded it. “You look… you!”

Future Mabel made a face. “You, but with fewer sparkles, I know.” Her eyes were kind. “I’ve… toned it down a bit. Cardigan phase.” She plucked the edge of it and waggled it like a flag. “It’s a transitional sweater.”

“Cardigans are just… sweaters on stealth mode,” Mabel conceded, although inside she vowed never to compromise so horrifically. Sweaters were not optional.

Future Mabel’s gaze flicked to Dipper then softened with a warmth that pooled in the room. “Hi,” she said, and this time her voice had an undertone Mabel recognised from hospital waiting rooms and graduation days: the sound you make when you’re relieved to see someone you weren’t sure you’d get to see. 

“You two are… wow. Younger.”

“Sixteen-ish,” Dipper said, managing a tiny wave that didn’t quite manage to be casual. “We… had an incident.”

“Stole a time tape,” Mabel blurted, because secrets combusted in her hands unless they were birthday presents. Or surprise parties, or something Dipper didn’t want her telling other people, since his trust was way more important than her own goofy secrets. “Accidentally went forward. It broke. We need Grunkle Ford or Future Dipper to… uh… fix our mess.”

Future Mabel’s eyebrows jumped at “time tape,” dropped at “broke,” and did a concerned tango at “Ford.” She ushered them in with fussing hands. “Okay. Wow. Okay. Shoes off. No, on, who cares— just come in.”

The entryway opened into a living space with big glass sliders looking onto a yard with a sculptural tree that knew it was pretty. Everything was… nice. The couch: low, grey, inviting in a “don’t spill” way. Coffee table: a slab of walnut that probably had an Instagram. Art lined the walls, real ‘fancy person’ art, framed and lit, some abstract, some pieces that tugged at Mabel’s insides because they were all just sort of… Dull. She did not see a single glitter glue explosion. A single aggressively joyful cushion. No “I put googly eyes on the toaster” energy. 

“Water? Tea? Something carbonated and irresponsible?” Future Mabel called from the kitchen, which was all pale wood and brushed metal and a fancy faucet that looked like it preyed on lesser faucets.

“Water’s great,” Dipper said. He stood in the living room in a way that showed he wasn’t sure how much space he was allowed to take up in the future. His eyes moved the way they always moved, cataloguing, comparing, protecting. When he walked past a low shelf of photos he slowed. Mabel followed his gaze long enough to see a frame with Future Mabel at some gallery opening, hair up, smile bright… and beside her, a man with a clean jawline, expensive watch, and the kind of smile you use when someone takes your picture for a magazine. No kids in any of the frames, she noticed. 

Future Mabel returned with waters in tall glasses that clinked pleasantly, and a bowl of something snack-like that was definitely not cheese puffs. 

“So,” she said, handing them over. “You time-hopped. You need the Grunkles.” A shadow skated across her face. “They’re… hard to get right now.”

Dipper nodded. “Soos said. He thought maybe— uh— Future Me might have a back channel.”

Future Mabel’s mouth did a tiny twist at the mention of Future Dipper. “He might.” She set her own glass down on a coaster (of course), then smoothed her cardigan (again with the cardigan!). “He’s… not always reachable. But he gave me an emergency number a while back… never had to use it.”

“Like a secret VIP hotline,” Mabel said, trying for breezy but not quite making it. She sipped water and pretended it was normal. The glass was nice. Of course it was nice. It was probably made of glassier glass than regular glass.

A phone vibrated on the counter; Future Mabel glanced at it and then at the clock and did a little mental math. “Ethan will be home in a bit.”

Mabel’s head tilted. “Ethan?”

“Yeah,” Future Mabel said, absently, like she’d forgotten to attach a label and was now stapling it on. “He— uh— my… Ethan.” She glanced between them, saw the confusion stay, and added, quick and gentle, “My husband.”

Mabel’s lips formed a small “o,” which her brain filled with “oh.” Husband. The word padded around the room on cat feet. She was aware of her own face doing a smile because she was polite. Well she wasn’t usually polite, but this felt like the time to be polite, what with her heart doing a strange unspooling because she was Mabel and sometimes words had textures and this one scratched.

She didn’t know why that was the case, Soos had told them she was married in the van. Somehow she had put the fact at the back of her head and now it was smacking her in the face.

Beside her, Dipper’s expression flickered, a quick grimace. The exact face he made when he bit a chilli thinking it was a capsicum. Not disgust. Just… unhappy surprise. Protective probably. 

She didn’t hate it.

She actually liked it quite a bit.

Mabel elbowed him lightly, trying to chase the mix of emotions away. “Still the overprotective brother, huh? We can’t all marry, I dunno, a sentient sweater.” Wow, that was a rough segway, even for her.

“I remain anti-sentient-sweater.” He managed a sideways smile which let her know he was thankful for the distraction, no matter how dumb it was.

Future Mabel watched them with that soft look again, the one that didn’t fit into a box she knew about yet. Then Dipper straightened a fraction, business returning to his spine. 

“Could you… call him?” he asked. “Future Me. If he knows where the Grunkles are, he can get word to them faster than anyone.”

Something pulled through Future Mabel’s features, a fish under the surface, quick and reflexive. She hesitated. It was small, but Mabel knew her own face and thus recognised every tiny storm. And if Mabel knew it, so did Dipper. He knew her better than she did after all, although she’d never admit it. Future Mabel’s fingers went to the star pin in her hair and worried it a second, then fell. “He’s… it’ll probably go to voicemail and he’ll need a bit to get back to us.”

“We can leave a message,” Dipper said, calm, reasonable, smart. “Say it’s urgent.”

Future Mabel didn’t move.

Mabel’s brain started doing the cartoon lightning thing. Wait. Why the pause? Why the ghost-frown? Why did this feel like one of those moments where everyone knows the answer and no one wants to say it because ‘The Answer’ sucks?

She set her glass down and went closer, making sure the smile in her voice had enough silly in it to let future Mabel know she was okay. “Hey. Hi. It’s me-me.” She wiggled her fingers, ten now, jazz-hands of reassurance. “I know you know this, but we are not going to, like, ask him to fight a vampire of a ghost in the foyer. We just need a line to the Grunkles.”

Future Mabel swallowed. She nodded, once. “I know.” Another breath. “I just… he’s probably busy...” She glanced at the front door, as if expecting it to rat her out. “Ethan has an event tonight and—” She stopped herself, as if the sentence had gotten away from her. “It’s fine.”

Mabel leaned a hip on the island because sitting felt too like staying. “We’ll be super quick. Promise. Two minutes tops. Dipper’s great with voicemails. He does the ‘this is Dipper’ voice.” She lowered her own voice to a perfect (terrible) imitation. “This is Dipper.”

Dipper groaned. Future Mabel snorted despite herself. The room got back towards the energy she loved bringing, the one future Mabel seemed to avoid for some reason. Now she could go for the kill. “Please?” Mabel added, not above weaponised politeness. “Help a sister— or I guess a past version of yourself— out?”

Future Mabel’s shoulders gave in with exasperation that sounded suspiciously like “of course it was always going to be you who asked.” She picked up her phone. Her thumb hovered, then tapped. Then tapped again, swiping to a contact Mabel strained to read upside-down because she was nosy and a raccoon in a former life. She caught only the top of the screen: DIP—heart emoji—no, not heart, a pine tree. Of course. Right.

Future Mabel put the phone to her ear and paced once, twice, three times exactly the small circle Present Mabel made when she had to leave call about something she thought was important but refused to admit. And yes calling in sick to her part-time job was important. Especially since she was doing it to take Dipper on a surprise picnic that one time. On the third turn someone answered, because Future Mabel stopped, straightened, and her face seemed to scream relief like an open book with pop-up illustrations.

“Hey,” she said simply. “Yeah. It’s me.”

Silence, his side. The room held its breath.

“Are you… okay?” she asked, automatic and honest. A beat. “Right. Okay. Listen, I—” She swallowed, eyes flicking to the two teenagers trying not to be statues in her kitchen. “I need you to come by. Today. As soon as you can.”

More silence. She tried to imagine what was on the other side, maybe buzzing electric gizmos? Nattering teeth of creatures with too many mouths? Or just a pen on paper as her dork of a brother wrote in a journal of his own.

“It’s important,” Future Mabel said, and now she was careful, weighing words the way you weigh glass. “We’re here.” A micro-glance at Dipper, then at Mabel. “From the past...”

A longer silence. Future Mabel’s mouth quirked like she’d heard a familiar joke and wanted to laugh but just couldn’t. “No,” she said softly. “They’re okay. Just… young.” Her laugh was small and disbelieving. “So young.”

The pause on the other end stretched. Future Mabel’s thumb worried the edge of the countertop, her other hand went back to the star pin and held it steady like it was a tiny anchor.

“Please,” she said, and the word had layers. “Just… come. Soon.” A breath. “Yeah. I’ll tell him. And… be careful.”

She lowered the phone slowly, then placed it on the island like it might skitter away.

“He’s coming,” she said, and tried on a smile that fit better when she looked at Mabel and Dipper than when she looked at the door. “Tomorrow probably.”

Present Mabel’s heart did a weird combination of cartwheel and crouch. Tomorrow. Okay. Good. Terrifying. Excellent. Why was it terrifying again?

She reached for her water and took a sip that did not fix the dryness in her mouth. The house hummed. Somewhere, a clock ticked with decisively tasteful ticks. In the window, her reflection stood beside a reflection of her future wearing a cardigan and not at all looking the way Mabel pictured herself 10 years in the future.

“Cool,” Mabel chirped, because chirping was a coping mechanism. “Great. Love that for us.” She beamed a watt too bright (impressive since her braces were long gone) and slid her gaze to Dipper, whose jaw had unclenched a fraction at the word coming and re-clenched at the word tomorrow.

Future Mabel folded her arms and leaned back against the counter. “We’ve got all night, and Ethan won’t be back for a couple more hours…” she said with a finger to her lip in consideration. 

“Do you want a tour?” She tried to make it a joke. “I could show you where the spare glitter is hidden.”

Mabel’s eyes flicked to the cardigan. “You still have glitter?”

A twitch of mischief bloomed. Future Mabel tapped the star pin. “Always.” Then, softer, “Just… less now.”

She didn’t like that, but they had all night. They needed to do something.

“Tour,” she said. “Absolutely.” And Future Mabel turned to lead them through her beautiful, curated, strangely quiet home.

 

Chapter 3: Meet the husband

Future Mabel finished the tour with her hands clasped, a tidy smile and her eyes a little shifty as she tried to hide certain bits that she didn’t think she should. They’d looped the house in a neat figure-eight: living room (architecturally gorgeous, emotionally on silent mode), kitchen (fancy tap, no waterballoons on standby, she checked), bedroom (bed made with hospital level precision), guest room (so neutral even a ghost would look like “wow, beige”), and a patio with zero string lights despite it being perfect for them.

What Mabel kept waiting for, like a dog waiting for the word “walk,” was the part where Future Her said, “And now, ta-da, my art room!” A door. A flourish. Paint on the floorboards that had snuck up the skirting. Jars stuffed with brushes like bouquets. Glitter in the grout. A half-finished monster of a piece sulking in the corner because she had gotten sidetracked. 

You know, home.

Instead, they reached a hallway closet. Future Mabel opened it like she was apologising. Inside: a tidy tower of labelled tubs. A rainbow, yes, but the kind with all the colour codes labeled and categorized. ‘Watercolours,’ ‘Acrylics,’ ‘Paper,’ ‘Embroidery,’ ‘Misc,’ and one that said “Glitter (emergency only),” which was so offensive Mabel had to laugh to keep from filing a complaint with herself.

“You don’t have… like… a studio?” she asked, trying to make it sound curious and not like ‘What sort of monster have I become.’

Future Mabel’s mouth did the tiny twist again. “I rent a co-op space downtown. It’s nice. Good ventilation, big tables, people who don’t mind if you get weird.” She tapped the tubs. “Here’s for… at home. When I do smaller pieces. Also the HOA gets weird about… fumes.” A pause, then quicker, “And Ethan’s car takes up the garage. So.”

Mabel nodded like that made sense, because in what universe were garages more important than art? “Right. Cars. HOA. Yep.”

“We talked about converting the spare room.” Future Mabel shut the closet gently, like she was tucking a child in. “But it would be a pain with the carpets. And I don’t really do the… big stuff anymore.” She said it breezy when it should have been as heavy as a dozen bowling balls.

Mabel tried to picture her Future self slinging paint in some random studio, then coming back to this whisper-quiet house where the loudest thing was the clock politely ticking like “don’t mind me.” Her brain returned a sketch of Future Mabel standing very straight in a cardigan and thinking about glitter like an old holiday she couldn’t afford to go on again.

The front door beeped, some tasteful security chime that seemed to say ‘I hardly dare to bother but a guest is at the door’, and then clicked open.

“Hey!” a voice called, warm and bright in that confident way where it expected rooms to adjust to it. “Mabes?”

Ugh, that was not the right voice calling her that name.

Future Mabel flinched in place and then did a small, practiced exhale. “We’re in here,” she called back, turning the exhale into a smile before it fully left her mouth. She looked at Dipper and Mabel with a flash of alarm and then the kind of quick calculation you only do when you’ve actually gotten used to your life containing time travellers. “Just— follow my lead.”

They followed.

He arrived in the kitchen in a shirt that was ironed perfectly, sleeves pushed up just enough to say “I relax sometimes, but only sometimes” and he somehow managed to smell faintly of boardrooms, although that was probably her imagination. Tall-ish, dark hair with that expensive mess that takes a mirror and five minutes to achieve, a pricy looking watch that caught the light. He paused when he saw them, and the pause was both brief and considerate, like his brain swapped contextual overlays with a click. His smile was easy. One look told her that he had practiced that smile.

“There you are,” he said to Future Mabel, stepping into a kiss that landed neatly, a peck plus a press of the hand at her elbow, practiced again. Polite. Picture-friendly. The exact right length to convince an audience that two beautiful people were, in fact, together.

Mabel felt it like she had when she’d seen the shapeshifter the first time. A shiver that had nothing to do with cold zipped down her spine. The thing under her ribs rustled against her heart, not happy. Off. It was… off. Why? She didn’t know why. She didn’t know anything, actually, and that was a great time to be quiet, Mabel.

Future Mabel smiled back, soft and small. If kisses could be underlined, this one wasn’t.

He turned to them. “And who—”

“These are my cousins’ kids,” Future Mabel cut in smoothly, the lie wearing flats because it had to walk fast. “From— uh— Oregon. Last-minute visit, total surprise.” She produced a laugh that said, aren’t families wild? “Dabel and Mipper, I know, the names are kinda weird.”

Ethan blinked. Then chuckled the exact amount of chuckling that said ‘ah yes your nutcase family’. 

“Cousins,” he repeated as he offered his hand. “I’m Ethan.”

Mabel shook his hand and had the immediate impression of a very nice hotel. Clean lines, correct temperature, scent like a vague citrus that could never possibly offend anyone. 

“Hi!” she chirped.. “I’m Mab— Dabel, your cousin-in-law…” She pointed at Dipper. “And this is Mipper, my twin, also cousin… adjacent.” She would have jazz-handed, but you don’t jazz-hand to introduce a cousin in law. (Do you? Add to list for later.)

Dipper slid in with a perfectly neutral smile, that one he wore around Pacifica's parents. He shook Ethan’s hand and said, “Good to meet you,” and Mabel could tell he meant exactly as much of that sentence as he was obligated to. 

He didn’t frown, his brows didn’t furrow and he didn’t let his eye twitch when their hands met. But Mabel could see the little things that even Dipper didn’t realise were tells. The way he stood up just a little straighter. His other hand moving back a fraction in preparation to grab something from his pocket, even though he had nothing prepared. The way his eyes stayed locked directly on Ethan instead of darting around to take in whatever caught his attention. She knew his body language like her own handwriting.

And— oh no, she liked it. She liked that his everything went quietly, instantly protective. She liked that he was on guard against this stranger that was supposed to be important to her but wasn’t. She liked that she could read him that quickly. It fit her chest like slotting on the last limb of a wax statue.

Ethan leaned his hip against the kitchen island like people who own islands. 

“So,” he said, smile aiming to involve everyone, “what a day for family reunions. I’ve just come from the Davidson thing. Fundraiser turned product launch? You know the type.” He looked to Future Mabel. “It was actually fun. You should have come.”

Future Mabel’s smile thinned. “I wasn’t… up for it.”

Ethan gave a half laugh that had just a freckle of condescension in it— so small you could miss it if you weren’t trained in Mabel’s School of Hating Stupid Subtext. “Yes, I know, you find them stuffy. But they’re good people once you get to know them.” He added to the room at large, “Old money, but not the bad kind.”

“Good people once they start giving you cash?” Mabel said before she could stop herself.

Ethan chuckled obligingly. Dipper’s mouth made the smallest smile at the joke, then returned to polite. Future Mabel’s eyes swung to Mabel for half a second, then back to Ethan. “I’ll go next time,” she lied with the finesse of a former teen menace who could fool a lie detector and a grunkle.

“Next time’s next week,” Ethan said, bright. “The Crowleys are hosting in the Hills, it’s actually way better than that sounds.”

Mabel filed the Crowleys under rich butt-heads.

Ethan peered into the snack bowl like it offended him. “Do we have any of those rosemary almonds left?” he asked the kitchen, which failed to answer. So he headed to the pantry, calling back, “So how long are you in town? We could take you to the beach. Or, Mabel, there’s a pop-up for this artist at the old mill. you’d love her. Very… curated chaos.”

“Wow, my two favourite words,” Future Mabel said sweetly. 

Meanwhile, non boring Mabel was brain writing a strongly-worded letter to the universe about the criminal use of curated and chaos in the same sentence.

Dipper nudged her ankle gently, twin Morse for be nice. She kicked back just enough to say I am. Mostly.

Ethan re-emerged with almonds and poured them into a small bowl. “Seriously,” he said, to Future Mabel now, “you should have come. Julia asked after you. She thinks you’re a mystery.”

“Ha,” Future Mabel said. “I’m sure she does.”

“She likes you!” Ethan insisted, earnest and baffled at the idea of anyone not liking Future Mabel. To be fair Mabel could relate. He tossed an almond, caught it, popped it. “She told me your piece at the Eastbridge show last year was her favourite. The one with the—” he gestured vaguely in a way that meant texture. movement. the part where I say something that flatters you “—the suspended forms.”

Future Mabel’s posture changed a millimetre. Mabel caught it. Recognition, then a shy warmth, then a quick tuck-away. “That’s kind of her,” she said. “Tell her thanks.”

“I did,” Ethan said, pleased with himself. “I’m very good at deploying compliments.”

“You are,” Future Mabel agreed. So how come Present Mabel felt like his compliments sucked?

He looked at the twins again, taking them in with a more curious eye. “You two in school?”

“Just finished,” Dipper said. “We’re… touring in a very specific, extremely educational way.” Which was a weird way to describe accidentally breaking a time machine and getting stuck in the future, but obviously Ethan wasn’t exactly ‘in the know’ with the whole supernatural side of things.

“Fun.” Ethan’s gaze flicked between their faces. Mabel did her best “I’m a cousin’s kid” impression, which was just her normal face but with 10% more freckles of innocence. As well as hope that he didn’t notice that she was literally identical to future Mabel with ten years between them. 

“We’ll get you fed,” he said, like a proper host. “Mabes, can I…” He glanced at the fridge. “Uh, do we have—”

“Yep,” Future Mabel said quickly, already moving to intercept a recipe. “I’ll handle it.”

He smiled like “that’s my girl,” walked around the island to kiss her temple (polite), and opened the fridge anyway (of course). He pulled out ingredients that she was certain they brought out for better, more well off guests to impress people with their cheese selection or whatever rich people did to judge worth..

“Do you cook?” Mabel asked, because prodding was love.

Ethan laughed. “I plate. She cooks.” He jerked his chin at Future Mabel, soft pride there, sincere. “She’s incredible.”

“She is,” Dipper said, and for the first time since Ethan showed up there wasn’t a hidden edge to it. She wanted to embroider the feeling on a pillow and sleep on it.

Future Mabel’s cheeks did the traitor-red. “Okay, enough.”

“Never enough,” Mabel said automatically, and Future Mabel made a little hand flutter like she was trying to wave away butterflies.

When did she get so uncomfortable with compliments?

For a minute, they managed to pass as normal houseguests and hosts. Future Mabel chopped something green. Ethan arranged crackers with the earnest competence of a man who had been told his contributions were more about the looks than the taste. Dipper dried a few plates because he couldn’t stand watching and not helping (that’s just who he was and it was adorable). Mabel hovered and tasted things for morale.

Eventually Ethan leaned an elbow on the island again. “So, Mipper, Dabel,” he said, bright as a fresh coin, “what do your parents do?”

“Dad’s in… mechanics,” Mabel lied, because that seemed like a Dad-adjacent job. sure. “Mum’s a… librarian.” and that sounded like a nice lie. Books. Shh. Safe.

“Respect,” Ethan said, crunching. “Two honest trades. We need more of that.” He meant it. He wasn’t playing snob. That earned him a small internal point.

It also didn’t fix the part where Mabel’s insides were doing the Opposite of Swoon, which should be a word. Maybe Smnool? She watched him kiss her future self the way a polite person kisses in front of a camera and tried, really tried, to line up the dotted outline of “husband” with the man in front of her.

He wasn’t mean. He wasn’t a cartoon rich guy who kicked puppies for a workout. He was kind in that conscientious, upward-moving way. He wanted Future Mabel at his parties. He bragged about her art. He was also…mm. Beige. It reminded her of unsalted popcorn. Polished like a stone you keep turning until it loses all the interesting scratches. Every time he said “you should have come,” there was a ghost-voice whispering “…because it’s embarrassing for me when you keep skipping.”

Mabel caught Dipper’s reflection in the window. He caught it as well. At least some of it, and she could tell what he was thinking. He wouldn’t have asked her to go to thoes things, he’d have blown them off entirely and asked if she wanted to do a spontaneous road trip. Or he’d grab her and mention something about tracking down a real life siren to inspire her latest project. Dipper wouldn't care about her not being there. He’d just come to her instead.

“I’ll slice the figs,” Dipper offered, because from the way he was starting to grind his teeth, if he didn’t do something useful he might chew through the countertop. He took the knife with steady hands, consulted Future Mabel with his eyes (this okay?), and at her nod, set to it with that careful concentration he used on bomb-like puzzles and helping her pick out what type of yarn to use despite knowing nothing about fashion.

“Figs,” Ethan said, pleased. “We’re doing figs.”

“We are, as a side dish. Probably just toast to go with it,” Future Mabel said.

Such a boring conversation. Where were the teasing jokes? The insider mentions of funny stories or the happy pop music in the background? Not in this house apparently. 

They assembled food. The twins and her future self didn’t mention tomorrow. Or the fact that Future Dipper was on his way. They didn’t mention anything about how off the whole house was and how un-Mabel it felt.

Ethan told a story about a guy at the party who had introduced himself with his job title and two middle names and then tried to sell him a boat. Mabel laughed in the right places because she was a professional at laughing, and because parts were genuinely funny, rich people were weird. She had a Grunkle who was weird, and funnier, but she didn’t feel like one upping the guy in his own home. Dipper chuckled at the same parts she did, he had a good sense of humor after all. Although Mabel would have probably laughed harder if he was telling the story. Mostly because her bro-ba-nano was better to listen to in general.

When a lull hit, Ethan glanced toward the living room. “We could put on some music,” he offered. “I’ve been making a playlist for the gallery thing. Bit of old, bit of new. Very relaxed vibe to it”

Mabel’s soul, which was deeply in love with notions that hated the term ‘relaxed vibe’ died a little.

“Maybe later,” Future Mabel said quickly. “Let’s eat first.”

They headed towards the living room and Ethan’s phone buzzed. He checked it reflexively, flickered through a couple of things, typed a reply, and put it face-up with a “sorry” smile that wasn’t really sorry. Future Mabel forgave like it was a matter of course.

“So,” Ethan beamed, gathering the room with his telltale nice guy charisma again, “what are you studying?”

“Um,” Mabel said, and the syllable did a little skateboard trick, “life?” She added, more conventional, “Art.” (Later, maybe. Or never. Or both. Help.)

“Physics,” Dipper said, because he was a much better liar than she was. Also he really did study physics so that probably helped, Well studied was a stretch. More like breezed through the highschool material and had to call Grunkle Ford for advanced problems just to challenge himself.

Her broski was stupidly dorkishly smart.

“Fantastic,” Ethan said, sincere. “We need both kinds. People who want to build things, and people who figure out how to build things.”

“What if all I want to build is the world's largest sentient bonfire?” Mabel asked, and Dipper actually barked a real laugh, which made the clock sound less smug for a full five seconds.

Ethan laughed too, happy to be inside the joke even when he didn’t get it. In his defense there was no way for him to know that with everything that had happened at Gravity Falls, a living fire was actually kind of tame. He put his hand lightly on Future Mabel’s back as she brushed past to set down plates, and Mabel watched the way Future Mabel’s shoulders softened under it, not with melting so much as yielding. Like she’d eventually gotten used to it.

Mabel sipped water and stared at the line where the pale kitchen tile met the darker wood of the living room. A seam. A join. Someone had decided these two things could sit together. Just next to each other without actually being together, it was simple. It was also… What? Lonely? Maybe floors could be lonely. Maybe she was projecting. Probably both.

Her brain tried to hand her a reasonable brochure: He seems nice. He loves her art. He eats almonds. She realised she was repeating herself and that in the past however long she still hadn’t figured out something else she could say about him.

She couldn’t see it, the thing you’re supposed to see when two people love each other enough to dedicate their lives to the feeling of closeness. She looked right at Future Mabel and Ethan and tried to line up that dotted outline again: love, marriage, house, parties, co-op studio, cardigan. The outline kept flickering. The picture inside kept refusing to stay coloured.

She ate a fig slice which should have been watermelon, or a smoothie with ice cream and honey and four different fruits. But it was figs instead.

The conversation flowed on. Ethan asked vague leading questions about what they were doing after school and Dipper answered with vague responses about ‘sciences’ while Mabel did her best not to say anything because she was not a good liar. Ethan told a kind story about a colleague’s kid learning to ride a bike. Future Mabel asked a question that proved she listened. Mabel cracked a joke and earned a smile from Ethan that felt like a sticker from a teacher who didn’t really get her drawing but appreciated the effort. Dipper smiled properly. He got it.

And under all of it her heart was tapping something quiet and stubborn: He’s nice. He’s nice. Why can’t I see what I’m supposed to?

She didn’t say it out loud. She didn’t say anything like it. She just chewed, swallowed, laughed on cue, and let the thought sit there as it helped distract her from the horrifically dull food. Eventually Ethan saw the eating part of the dinner was about done.

“To family,” Ethan said lightly, lifting his glass. “Old and… recently rediscovered.”

Mabel did her best clink. “To cousins,” she said, because anything more would have her stumbling over words or rambling.

“So,” Ethan said, sliding easily into host-mode, “what’s new in… Oregon?” He smiled at them like a good waiter.

“Pine trees,” Mabel said. “Bigfoot. Stuff like that.” She grinned in a way that urged the conversation to move on.

“Mostly trees,” Dipper added, which was his way of saying “I will be affable for exactly one sentence.”

Ethan chuckled. “Well, welcome to lower humidity. You picked a good week to visit. Weather is perfect. Work is… genuinely insane.” He allowed himself a little eye-roll at his own ‘insane,’ then glanced at Future Mabel. “Quarter close. Valuations. Board dinner tomorrow. Business is good.” The last bit came out like he was bragging but he’d literally started with talking about the weather which disqualified the whole thing from being interesting in Mabel’s book.

Future Mabel made a polite noise. It probably translated to ‘good job dear husband, you are good at husbanding.’

Ethan turned the spotlight. “And how’s the co-op? You’re still going Saturdays?” He asked like he asked about the gym, supportive tone, with that hint of ‘I expect the answer to be yes’.

Future Mabel’s hand, which was about to drink something from her cup, paused. “Sometimes,” she said, small. “I… haven’t lately.”

“Oh?” He tilted his head in that inquisitive, agreeable way. “Schedule?”

“There was the thing with the Davidson’s.” She flicked him a glance. “Then your call with Singapore. Then the—”

“Right,” he said quickly, nodding, either accepting the reason or not wanting to deal with the excuses. “Yes. Those Saturdays got eaten. After this quarter, we’ll carve out a weekend. We’ll make time.” He smiled like he was being magnanimous.

Mabel heard the capital letters on “We’ll Make Time.” She’d heard them before. Either in the context of her parents referring to homework, or her broski referring to helping her. Both got very different reactions from her. 

“You could convert the spare room,” Dipper said, voice mild. It was the first time he’d spoken since the toast, and it made her feel… secure. “North-facing window’s good. You’d get steady light.”

Ethan nodded quickly. “We’ve talked about it,” he said, glancing to Future Mabel. “Carpets complicate it, and the HOA is… you know how they are.” He chuckled, inviting them to join him in marvelling at the nonsense of the world. “But yes, after we do the gym, it’s on the list.”

“Art probably should be before… treadmill,” Mabel said, overly casual. Her mouth had not consulted management.

Ethan laughed, gracious. “We can do both. Multipurpose. Yoga mat, easel, little storage. Hybrid spaces are very in.”

Hybrid spaces. Mabel pictured an easel staring politely at a treadmill so it wouldn’t be rude. 

Since when was she able to fit all her ideas in a hybrid space? Dipper let her use his room for whatever project she wanted when hers got too full or half finished ideas and that still wasn’t enough.

“What are you working on now?” Dipper asked, eyes on Future Mabel. He didn’t say it like idle small talk. It was more like he leaned in, full focus and said “tell me your favourite part of your day.”

Future Mabel’s shoulders eased a millimetre. She wiped her hands, thought, and you could see the piece assemble behind her pupils. “There’s this series… paper and wire. All tangled up in the air.” She looked into space. “It’s about weight versus suggestion. Like… like trying to make gravity look like it’s forgotten to do its job.”

“Nice,” Ethan said immediately, because that was too vague an explanation and didn’t fit into an easy compliment box for him to use. “We should put one in the den. Neutral palette. It’d play well with the walnut.”

“It would look good in the den,” Mabel agreed, and then added, not agreeing, “It would look better in the front room, and then the den with like the whole house being a tour showing different versions!”

Future Mabel’s mouth touched a smile. “Maybe.”

“We should reach out to Julia,” Ethan went on, picking up a chip. conversation as charcuterie. “She’s on a board now. Not the big board, but a board.” He gave the twins a quick ‘being on a board is impressive’ look. “They’re always looking for feature pieces to try and sell to galleries and high end clientele, you could make some serious money.”

Future Mabel nodded politely. “That’s nice.” The words were proper and sat straight in their chairs.

“They need artists like you,” Ethan said, earnest, hand out in a little rallying gesture. “Creativity from the upper class is all the rage right now.”

Upper class. Mabel tried not to laugh in a way that would start a fight. Her future self was being recommended as an upper class lady when they’d spent their teen summers in a dingy tourist shop scamming people and solving mysteries.

“I posted your piece from Eastbridge last year,” Ethan added, brightening with a contribution. “The blue one? Got tons of response. People love your stuff.”

“‘Blue one’?” Dipper said, picture-soft. “The colour’s called ‘Throat of the River.’”

Future Mabel’s head jerked a little, like the name had stepped into the room and touched her hand. She looked at Dipper, young, old, it didn’t matter. She smiled a genuine little thing that showed her now perfectly straight teeth. 

“Yeah,” she breathed. “It is.”

It was a shade of blue she’d made herself on their third summer in gravity falls. She’d been painting a waterfall that had been stained a certain type of blue by a migrating sea creature that could fly and spit acid. She’d had the bright idea to use the water itself as a colour and had taken it and boiled it down until this brilliant blue dye remained. She’d named it throat of the river since she’d been feeling particularly poetic that day. Dipper hadn’t even been there when she painted it, she’d shown him after and only mentioned the colour in passing once. Even if she kept using it long after.

Ethan snapped his fingers. “Right, ‘Throat of the River.’ Great title.” He aimed the phrase at the air, then caught Mabel’s eye. “I told her she should post more. Build the brand. You know.”

He didn’t even realise it was the name of the colour and not the title of whatever the latest work was.

“It’s not a brand,” Dipper said, gentle but wonderfully firm. The way he always said things when he insisted he was right and there was no room for argument. “It’s her voice.”

Ethan didn’t bristle. He wasn’t that guy. He nodded, generous. “Of course. I just mean, audience. Access. The right eyes.” He smiled at Future Mabel, that handsome sincerity shining. “I want people to see you.”

“I do too,” Future her said, and Mabel didn’t know if she meant the same thing he did.

Ethan reached across for the rosemary bowl. “We should host more,” he said. “Bring the gallery crowd here. Curate the conversation. People love meeting the artist in her element.” He offered a grin. “And you love an excuse to feed people.”

Future Mabel laughed a little, not a lot. “I do.”

“You’re so good at it,” he said, almost tender. He looked around, satisfied. “This place has become… us.” He said it like the house was a success story. 

Mabel’s thoughts flicked to the neat labelled tubs tucked away in a small closet. Us, she thought. Sure. 

Ethan’s phone buzzed. He glanced. The name glowed. He clicked it off, apologetic smile already on. “Work,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll call back.” He added, lightly, “Married to the job.” Then, catching himself, “And to you.” He leaned in and pecked Future Mabel’s temple again. Polite kiss. Correct kiss.

Mabel didn’t shiver this time. She braced. Once again she tried to overlay the dotted outline of “husband” on the man and found it kept missing. She still couldn’t come up with that something that would make it click together.

“Do you need to take it?” Dipper asked, neutral.

“Nah,” Ethan said. “They need me more than I need them for once.” That was nice, a small internal point. At least he could put her above work a little, that was good right?

Ethan relaxed, pleased, then brightened again at Future Mabel. “Oh! The Davidsons were asking after you. They’re doing a new wing. They’d love your eye on the decor.” He said it like a compliment.

“Decor,” Mabel repeated, rolling it on her tongue like a lolly with the unfortunate taste of cardboard and ash. She didn’t do decor, she did chaos and colour and fun.

“I can… look at it. If timing works.” Future Mabel responded.

“Or,” Dipper said, in a tone that wasn’t exactly suggesting. “You could get to re-doing the spare room as an art studio.”

Ethan blinked, then walked past the tone like it was nothing. “Well there certainly is something to be said about sorting out our own little slice of heaven before we help out with others. You know how it is with having a full studio in the house. But we could… we’ll see.”

We’ll see. Mabel wished she could ban those words without being arrested by the Language Police.

“What about your ‘paper-gravity’ thing?” Dipper asked Future Mabel, eyes following her hands. “Could scale it up. Suspend it in the foyer. North light, no direct UV. It would look awesome.”

Future Mabel’s eyes went shiny for a half-second, like she’d seen it. Like talking to the kid version of her favourite audience had pulled a cord and lit them up from inside. She nodded, slow. “Maybe.”

“Totally,” Ethan said in a way that delayed the conversation rather than affirmed it. “We’ll run it by Julia. She’ll have thoughts.”

We. Run it by. Thoughts. She forced her smile to stay on.

“What do you like most about those parties?” Mabel asked Ethan, because if you press on a bruise sometimes it tells you a secret.

He laughed. “Honestly? The deals that don’t look like deals. The side conversations. You find out who’s backing what, who believes in what. It’s… exciting.” He aimed the smile at Future Mabel, inviting her to share the buzz. “You’d like it if you gave it a chance. It's like being a secret agent!”

“I’ve given it… some chances,” Future Mabel said.

Ethan heard the tone, he wasn’t deaf, and softened. “I know they can be… a lot.” He touched her wrist, warm, brief. Boring. “But they’re good people once you get to know them.” He looked at the twins like they might support his point. He was barking up the wrong tree.

They had started to move around the table now, doing standard post-dinner things.

Dipper rinsed the knife and set it to dry. He hadn’t said much that dinner but what he did say made much more of an impression than the dozens of sentences Ethan spouted. Every time Dipper spoke, quiet, low-frequency, Mabel felt the weird nervous ‘drank a past expire milkshake’ feeling settle.

Ethan gathered plates once they were finished and loaded the dishwasher with an efficiency that said he hadn’t spent much time washing them by hand. 

“Beach tomorrow?” he called over the water rush. “If your… cousins don’t have other plans.” He smiled at the twins. “We’ll make time before my dinner. Good sun around three.”

Future Mabel looked at Mabel and Dipper and then glanced towards her pocket where the phone she called her brother was, a pine-tree emoji hiding under fabric. 

“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see how tomorrow goes.”

Ethan nodded, agreeable like he’d never said anything outright negative in his life. He dried his hands, checked his phone once more, typed a reply to someone doubtlessly important and put it away with a sigh that said he was magnanimous for spending time with them instead of business. He came over to the island in the kitchen they had gathered at again and leaned in that practised way. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” he told the twins, and meant it. “It’s nice to have family in the house.”

Mabel smiled because she was not a monster. 

“Thank you,” she said, and meant that too. She glanced at Dipper, at the careful set of his mouth. the way his eyes were on Future Mabel’s hands, not Ethan’s face. The way he already had a list in his head titled Things I Can Do To Make Her Studio Happen. Because he was always looking out for her. Every version.

Things line up fairly simply in her head. Boxes ticked themselves. The “nice” column filled up for Ethan: friendly, provides, easy attitude, loads dishwasher, plates almonds. The “believes” column stayed… spare. Over in Dipper’s column, “believes” was not a word. It was a given, like air. He never said “we’ll make time.” He just showed up with a lamp and a smile at 2 a.m. and asked how he could help.

He seems nice, she told herself again.

Future Mabel did the tidy-hostess glide through the last of the washing up, plates nested, counters wiped, a tea towel hung just so, and then clapped her hands once, quietly.

“Okay,” she said, voice pitched to not echo. “You two must be wiped. Guest room?”

“Sleep is a thing,” Mabel agreed, mostly because she wanted an excuse to not be in this awkward impromptu dinner party with her ghost of christmas future.

Ethan had retreated to the den with a laptop and very fancy and probably expensive headphones. Future Mabel checked the doorway, the angle of his shoulder, the distant blue of the screen on his face. Her eyes did a quick triangulation and went through some kind of check to see if he’d stay put before she nodded. Satisfied, she led them down the short hall, past the closet of labelled tubs (Mabel tried not to rip the emergency only part off the ‘Glitter — emergency only’ tub), and opened a door on the right.

The guest room was still aggressively neutral to the point it could win a hotel decoration contest. Soft grey walls. A print of a fern leaf doing its best to be art without daring to get close to frightening anyone. A double bed that looked like a cloud had gotten a mortgage. Two identical lamps with identical little pulls. Everything symmetrical and soothing and extremely “no funny business,” which felt like a robot had decorated the room and Future Mabel had shrugged and said fine.

“Sorry,” Future Mabel said, hovering automatically. “It’s a double. We haven’t— We get couples. There’s not, um, a spare mattress. Sheets are clean. I can grab an extra blanket?”

“It’s perfect,” Mabel said, because the bed at least looked comfortable, if boring, and she was at least 60% made of sleepiness.

Future Mabel fussed with a corner that didn’t need fussing, then turned to a dresser and pulled out a stack of folded t-shirts and drawstring shorts, soft, oversized, laundry-soap scented. She handed Mabel a pale purple tee that said “Eastbridge Arts Festival” in tasteful font. She handed Dipper a heather-grey one that said nothing, which was dumb because she should have a bigfoot sighting tee or maybe one in ‘throat of the river’ blue with nessie hiding under a lake.

“I, uh, keep extras,” Future Mabel said, a little self-conscious. “Helps to have them on hand if I want to paint and not care about getting dirty.” There were no dirty paint stained clothes in the dresser. “Bathroom’s there. Help yourself. Toothbrushes are under the sink.” Her eyes softened. She reached out, hesitated like a magnet near a fridge, then squeezed Dipper’s arm. “I’m… glad you’re here.”

“We’ll… figure it out,” Dipper said, which made everything okay.

Future Mabel nodded quickly, her eyes shiny again for a moment looking at Dipper. Then she slipped out with a trained smile and a quiet, “Goodnight, you two,” like she was tucking away a part of herself as well as them.

They stood there for a second with the door closed and the guest room glowing amber. The air was breathable again now that it was just the two of them. Mabel picked the tee up to her nose and breathed in laundry soap to find none of the sweetness, craft glue, or lingering dye scent that permeated her usual clothing. Dipper wandered to the window, peeking through the gauzy curtain at the backyard.

“Bathroom or gentlemanly turn-around?” he asked jokingly.

“Turn around” she said before she could really register the words.

Dippers cheeks seemed to heat up a little as he turned around with a “right— Ok— sure.”

She giggled a little. 

Once he was facing the wall, like a real gentleman, she went about the process of taking her top off. She took her time with it, facing away from her broski as the light fabric of her tanktop slid over her shoulders. Revealing her bare stomach and the simple bra she wore underneath. She wasn’t wearing lingerie, she did have some. On occasion one of the boyfriends she’d had over the past couple years had gotten far enough along the dating path to get a view of no shirt Mabel, and she wanted to look good in those rare cases. Not to mention the even rarer occasions that things went even further. Not that she’d partially cared for the experience but it was highschool so she’d given things a shot. Not her fault it didn’t work out for those random guys.

And boop, there goes the bra. She tossed it to she side and started taking off her the lower clothing she was wearing. She still favoured skirts but she’d ended up wearing pants more and more just for the freedom of movement. Today she was in a skirt and soon it was dropping around her feet as she kicked it away.

Quick look back. He was still wasn’t looking at her. Even with all the sounds and her being in nothing but her panties. So she bent over and took those off too, one leg at a time. She peeked again back. Nothing.

She sighed, then caught herself. She must have been more relieved to change out of her clothes than she realised.

She pulled on the pyjamas, letting them hang loose in that easy wearing summer way as she looked back at her broski secretly to try and catch him peeking.

Eventually she had to call out that she was done and her bro-bro turned around to look at her properly. His face was still a little red as his eyes swept up and down on her form and she felt a little flutter in her stomach. She was in these dumb clothes instead of good ones after all. That's why she felt nervous.

He nodded approvingly. Flutter.

“My turn then. Turn around Mabes,” She smiled a little at the name.

She did so, for like 45 full seconds. Enough that she heard the sound of his shirt get placed gently on the bed. Not like how she kicked and threw her clothes off. She turned around and saw him facing away from her with his shirt off in nothing but his pants. Her eyes may or may not have lingered for a decent while. A long while. Long enough that she only remembered to look away when his hands went down to his waistband and began to tug—

Nope, whoops. That was just meant to be a prank where she pointed out how scrawny he was. Not a staring contest with back muscles she hadn't realised were there.

She ducked to the bathroom afterall, a short toothbrush and a solid look in the mirror and she was ready to come back out as the usual Mabel.

When she came out, Dipper went in in a hurry with his own jeans folded over an arm with unnecessary neatness. When he came out his hair was damp at the edges. Had he splashed water on his face to freshen up? Probably. He looked… like Dipper. Which, in any year, any house, any version of a life, meant the room was safe and she could sleep peacefully.

He glanced at the bed, at her, and then wordlessly, like there was a manual somewhere that explained all of this, grabbed one of the spare pillows and set it lengthwise down the centre of the mattress: The Great Wall of Pillow. He did it with an apologetic little shrug she knew meant he had reasons that were mostly “respectful” and a little “panic.”

“Really?” Mabel said, eyebrow going full Mabel. “What is this, the Berlin Pillow?”

“It’s… diplomacy,” he said, deadpan, turning down his side of the covers with all the ceremony of a treaty. “International co-sleeping accords.”

“Wow, and here I thought you were protecting yourself from my famous midnight elbow,” she said, climbing in and flopping dramatically onto her side of the treaty agreement in fluffiness. 

She guessed it had been a while since they’d slept in the same bed. Back home their parents had converted the study into a second bedroom when they started highschool so they’d have their own rooms. Not to mention they hadn’t slept in the same bed for a decent while before that. Not counting passing out on the couch on a Ducktective marathon. 

“Your elbow does terrify me,” he conceded, a tiny smile escaping. He clicked off one lamp. The other threw a nice, small pool of light. He flopped onto the bed as well and they lay there on their backs for a moment, very not asleep, breathing in synchronised not-sleep.

Somewhere in the house, a door clicked. A laugh burbled. Ethan on the phone, probably. Future Mabel’s voice, softer, answering something like a reassurance.

“So,” Mabel said into the ceiling, all casual like, “he seemed… nice.” She kept coming back to that word so she decided she might as well use it again here. Although she did do the thing where she said nice the way you say “the dentist was… fine” after the dentist pulled three teeth and you could swear he was smiling under the mask.

Dipper huffed. “That’s a lethal deployment of the word ‘nice.’”

Mabel rolled her head toward him, the pillow wall a ridiculous diplomatic corp between their faces. “I’m just being… nice.”

He stared at the ceiling for another beat. “I didn’t like him,” he said, simple that. “Like, I don’t think he’s evil. He’s not… bad. He’s just—” He searched for a friendly word and came up with, “—not… enough.”

Mabel’s lips did that little curl without her express permission. Delight, uninvited, fizzed in her chest. “Not enough,” she repeated, tasting it. Her toes wiggled under the sheet like they were applauding.

“He didn’t listen when she answered,” Dipper went on, turning towards her and the pillow wall. His voice was low, the pace picking up like he was about to start one of his adorkable rants she never got tired of. “He listened for the answer he wanted and then fitted her into it. parties, den décor, posting strategy. It’s like he was… arranging the room around her.” He exhaled. “He can’t…”

Mabel tried to keep the victory parade off her face. “You arrange snacks,” she offered. “People snack. People don’t get arranged.”

“Exactly,” he said, and the exactness warmed her like a cup of something.

They lay there in the soft lamplight, easy, happy, warm.

“I did like the almonds,” she admitted. “Weird that he kept going on about the rosemary.”

“They were fine,” Dipper said, which in Dipper meant “I will not be drawn into almond discourse.”

She pressed her face forward and snorted into the pillow, and some trick of the evening made the sound bounce back to her ears from his chest, because they were close, because the bed was small, because the pillow wall was a stupid idea and should not have been implanted. She lifted her head up over the diplomatic cushion, and poked it in the middle so it bulged like a little mountain.

“Are we really keeping this?” she asked.

He made a noncommittal noise that meant “yes, but probably not, no.”

She slid her hand under it and tugged. He paused, then lifted his side reflexively to help, like he’d never considered doing anything else. The pillow gave a sad little flop and migrated south, settling somewhere near their knees as a gesture to propriety without getting in nostril-space. The distance between their faces halved. The room was wonderfully warm.

“Oh no,” she whispered dramatically. “International relations have broken down.”

“We’ll rebuild,” he whispered back, and his breath ghosted her nose, and she had to stare at a very specific nothing spot on the wall behind him to not stare at his mouth like a weirdo.

Silence hung out for a minute. Her brain tried to burst into seventeen topics like confetti, but a quieter part of her just… enjoyed. The way their shoulders lined up. The comfort of his familiar night-breath rhythm (inhale, little catch, exhale), the one she knew so well from late night gaming marathons and TV binges and everything else they did together. The Mabel inside her that wanted to sprint around and throw paint and glass gems at everything purred contentedly despite the stillness like this was the only permissible alternative to chaos.

“I thought their house would be louder,” she said eventually, because quiet made her fidgety in the soul. “Like… the lamps would have tassels, and the toaster would have a face I stuck on, and there’d be a room where the floor was aggressively paint. You know?”

“I know,” he said, soft. “But it’s… nice.”

There it was again. Nice. The word that felt like shrugging.

“She’s got a co-op," Mabel added, because her future self had offered that like a lifeline. “That’s something.”

“It is,” he agreed, and even his agreement felt careful, like he didn’t want to outright tell her what he obviously thought. That Dipper would have made let her turn the whole house into a gallery / studio. His only sticking point would be adding cryptid themes and puzzles for guests to solve. Like a goody mad scientist.

Mabel’s foot nudged the migrated pillow. it squished. “Remember when we were little and we’d build bunkers out of couch cushions and declare sovereignty from the country?”

“We definitely didn’t use the word sovereignty but yeah. You wanted to call it Mabelton, and I think I got you to settle on Pineland,” a slightly chuckled landed in her ear.

“Well I think we should declare sovereignty from cardigans,” she muttered, and he actually laughed properly. The laugh was her favourite. The laughter was her favourite. Him, favourite. She pressed her cheek a tiny bit into the pillow near her head as she looked at him, the pressure was nice, but not warm enough.

“Sorry,” she added into the mattress, words muffled. “For the tape. For the… everything.” It got easier to say apologies when you were horizontal,in a borrowed shirt, and perfectly safe since her twin was right where he was supposed to be.

He was quiet for a second. She could hear the page-turn in his head. “I know why you did it,” he said.

She waited for the lecture part that sometimes came. It didn’t. Relief wandered through her chest. 

“I know you hate not knowing,” he went on, a smile curling the edges of the sentence. “I’ve known since we stopped Weirdmageddon. And I know you don’t like the idea of… me being far.”

The last bit showed up out of nowhere. Of course he knew. Just like she could read him like a book in a way no-one else could, he could read her just as well. She wanted to say something breezy like, “Pfft, I’m chill,” and not something true like, “I hate the idea of eating breakfast without you,” and the two ideas collided in her throat and shot fireworks out her ears, so she poked her pillow’s corner with one finger until the feeling passed.

“What if we don’t end up like this?” she murmured, and immediately wanted to stuff the question back in the box. Not because it was too much, but because it wasn’t. It was exactly the right size to get a proper thought out answer. That was terrifying.

The mattress shifted a little as he considered. Something prepared and timid but equally terrifying in the same way her question was. 

“We don’t have to…” he said.

“I know,” she said quickly, because too big, too big, abort. She pinged a new topic into the room. “He didn’t know the name of my blue.”

“‘Throat of the River’ is very blue,” Dipper said, dutifully annoyed on her behalf. Or maybe just thankful of the subject changed away from the other stuff that scared the crap out of her.

She smiled at the ceiling. She really liked him. Obviously, she liked him, he was her other half. Her favourite person. She liked that he remembered her names, all the dumb names she gave everything. Paintings, sweaters, emotions. She liked that he had come with sixteen solutions for a sunny window before she had even asked for one. She liked that he had put a pillow between them and also helped her move it when she prodded like he’d only done it so that she’d have a choice to make instead of insisting on what he thought.

Her eyelids were getting heavy in that cartoon way that made them become ten kilos each. She blinked slow and watched the lamp shadow slide a little as the bulb continued its simple work.

“Hey, Dip?” she said, almost asleep and thus allowed to ask questions she would avoid while awake.

“Mm?”

“You think Future Me’s happy?” She tried to say it lightly.

He was quiet long enough for her to count three heartbeats and start a fourth. When he answered, his voice had a softness she didn’t hear all day, a sad soft that made her want to hug it better.

“I hope so,” he said. Then, after a breath, honest leaking in despite his best efforts, “Yeah… At least she’s… happy.” She didn’t like the way he said it, but she also loved it. It was sad and happy and annoying and warm at the same time.

Mabel let the sentence settle across them like the spare blanket Future Mabel had offered and they hadn’t needed. She tucked her shoulder under the sheets, closer to him, because Mabel Pines refused to recognise pillow borders. 

“Yeah,” she murmured, not convinced. “At least.”

In the quiet that followed, she listened to his breathing line up with hers the way it always had, and let it be the lullaby. Mabel closed her eyes, and the gold porch light of a different evening in a better place flickered behind her eyelids, and for a moment all timelines narrowed to a single small bed, a borrowed shirt, and the boy beside her who made it bearable.

Notes:

Another chapter is done.
Since it's become my modus appartus at this point, I have basically left this in draft form after going over it once for editing.
Once the fic is finished I will go back over it with a fine-tooth comb and fix up anything I missed and just generally try and improve it a bit.

And yes, Ethan is here as well. In my head, he's sort of the archetype character for 'the guy Mabel isn't meant to be with' so yeah, he's in this one as well.
Will probably be uploading once a week as a standard until this is done.

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed and feel free to leave comments if you'd like.

Chapter 4: Dipper: monster hunter

Morning arrived both too quick and too slow. Quick in how little time she seemed to spend happily snuggled, and slow in how she woke up. Mabel surfaced slowly from a dream about waterfalls and found herself warm, anchored, and very… tangled. A forearm was tucked loosely around her middle like the world's most comfortable seatbelt. A knee was hooked over her shin, which kept her leg in place in a way she weirdly loved. At some point during the night, the pillow wall had migrated so far down the bed that it was below their feet.

Dipper was an excellent sleeper when he finally went down, steady, patient, the human equivalent of a campfire. His breath came in those even, quiet drifts she knew better than most songs. Every fifth exhale did a tiny hitch, and occasionally he’d do a single deep breath. He’d rolled closer at some point during the night. His chin hovered near the crown of her head. His t-shirt smelled faintly like judgmental fancy soap since they probably used expensive washing detergent. But it mostly smelt like… him. Paper and cinnamon and a little adventure-dust he must have brought with him through time without realising.

She should have moved. Probably. To the respectable side of the bed, to the Mabel side of where the pillow used to separate them. Instead, she let her eyes flutter shut and leaned back into the curve of him another notch, because the sun hadn’t quite risen yet, which meant nothing counted, and this felt good. Uncomplicated and… warm. Home. 

Her brain tried to hand her a thought about Ethan, polite as always: Husband. She told her brain to shut it. Five more minutes. She let herself notice small things instead, the way his fingers had ended up on the hem of her borrowed shirt and were holding it. The way their toes had found each other under the sheet and decided, without a meeting, to overlap.

“Mm,” she said to absolutely no one, and tucked her cheek deeper into him. The room was dim gold as the sun barely managed to rise. The type of light that tried to get you out of bed, and she considered herself very brave for refusing to be woken.

Then the doorbell went ding, and the house remembered it was a house again.

Dipper inhaled sharply against her hair and did a full-body startle that transmitted through all their points of contact like a message in string and tin cans. 

“Wha— time?” he mumbled, already reaching for a watch he was not wearing and then frowning at his traitor wrist.

“Future o’clock,” Mabel whispered, unable to make a better joke as her brain cursed the meddling person who had ended the moment. They unspooled from each other with the clumsy grace of people detangling old PlayStation controller cords. The peace pillow flopped onto the floor with a sound that said, in Pillow, we did our best.

Somewhere in the house, footsteps. The low murmur of Future Mabel’s voice, the words of a greeting, then another voice, deeper, steady, with a rasp at the edges but also familiar. She liked it.

She shoved her hair into a ponytail with the elastic she’d worn on her wrist (past and future Mabels were in agreement on always having one) and yanked on her skirt again. Dipper was already standing, neutral grey tee still on as he pulled jeans over his PJs in a hurry. He ran a hand through his hair and achieved only more hair, which made her smile since he never really bothered with it and it still looked good. Which probably should have annoyed her. Did it. It did, probably. Or it would have if it wasn’t him. 

“Ready?” he said, and did the micro-check he always did, eyes skimming her face for upset like he kept a first aid kit for expressions.

“Yup.” She rolled her shoulders. “Let’s go meet… you. I assume at least.”

They padded into the hallway, past the labelled art tubs (she patted the “Glitter” out of superstition, good glitter vibes, please), and down to the living room. The morning had filled it with a kind of courteous brightness. 

At the threshold, by the door, Future Mabel and Future Dipper did an awkward hug that reminded her of their patented awkward sibling hug that had taken a back seat to the more genuine article over the years. He bent slightly to reach her (he was even more tall than he was now, and he had already passed her height a year ago!), and future Mabel tucked her face for exactly one heartbeat into the corner of his shoulder before they seemed to snap apart and stepped back to their marks.

He wasn’t a stranger. That was the weird part. He was… Dipper with more story written on him in something sharper than pen. The same geometry of face, the same eyes, their brown turned low-ember with urgency and suspicion, but his features had settled. The boy angles had chosen sides. There was a thin scar at the hairline near his temple, a small white nick along his jaw that you wouldn’t see unless you knew to look. He wore a trench coat like Grunkle Ford, which had more than a couple scrapes. Boots: beaten. Hands: steady. There was the ghost of stubble that made the baby goatee her current broski wore seem like a joke.

When he saw them, he smiled, quick and wry in a way that made her chest tug. Not because of something good, but because it was only thanks to knowing the current version of him that she could see the tender part of it. To the observer untrained in the art of Dipper observation, the smile looked jagged and a little angry.

“Dipper,” he said, half shrugging at the inevitability of it. “The older, improved model.” A glance to his younger self, a flicker of amusement that had more affection than ego. “Hey, kid.”

Younger Dipper stepped forward. It was like looking at a person in front of a mirror that aged you a decade. “Hey.”

Then Future Dipper’s eyes went to Mabel. They didn’t do anything dramatic. They just… stopped there a half-second longer than they’d stopped anywhere else and softened from the alertness that she kept seeing in them. Tiny smile, unrehearsed, automatic, a motion-activated porch light type smile. 

It hit her like stepping into a patch of sunlight, and for one impossible second she heard the cadence of the summer they’d just left, the click of a swing, the fizz of a soda. Then it was gone, that summer warmth, swallowed by a professional calm that said his future had made a career out of putting his feelings in pockets so he could use both hands.

“Hey, Mabel,” he said, and her name in his mouth was a small, careful thing, as if he were putting it in a hidden vault.

“Hey, you,” she chirped as a knee-jerk reaction to that voice calling her name.

Business arrived on his face right after that. He pushed a hand through his hair (the motion was the same, the hair resisted as a point of pride) and nodded toward the kitchen. “We can talk here, if that’s okay.”

Future Mabel had already made space at the island and poured coffee that he apparently drank now, black with no sugar or whipped cream or anything. She guessed that without her around to spice up his beverages, he’d gotten slack with them. He wrapped his hands around the mug and stood, shoulders a little hunched since he obviously felt out of place. He didn’t sit. She could tell (current Mabel could anyway) that sitting was not something he did until he had done the Thing.

What the thing was she had no idea, but there was definitely a thing.

“Ford’s got something,” he said without preamble. His voice had the rough edges of too many long nights without a cute twin bouncing jokes off him. “We’ve been working on a temporal realignment device for… a while. Kind of a… anchor and sling shot hybrid. Hard to explain without a whiteboard. The short version is: it should get you home without tearing anything that can’t mend.”

“Should?” Younger Dipper said, “Calibration?”

“Yeah.” Future Dipper’s mouth quirked. “Ford is calibrating it to you.” He tilted his head, measuring. “You’re a person, not the bowling balls we tested with, harder to model. He wants to be sure.”

Mabel’s brain, which had been playing a game of How Many Adults Can We Trust This Morning, let out a little breath, partially because she realised she was technically an adult as well now. It was the whole reason they were in this mess.

 “So… like… two hours? Three? How long before we get slingshotted?” she asked.

Future Dipper shook his head, apologetic. “Not today.” He glanced toward the door, still uncomfortable. “Couple of days. Two nights, probably. They’re off-grid for the moment. comms are… intermittent. I came as soon as Mabel called.” He said.

Two more nights. The numbers slotted into Mabel’s head with the same little click the time tape’s marks had made. Two nights of this house that didn’t have googly eyes on the appliances. Two nights of Ethan, who was nice. Two nights of Future Dipper looking all rough and broody and serious when he should be goofy and nerdy and laughing.

Younger Dipper was nodding, accepting parameters, rearranging his internal schedule to accommodate their new departure date. Then, in a move that made Mabel want to both wheeze and pat him on the head, he blurted the question.

“So… not to be rude, but… how are the Grunkles… still alive?” he asked, the politeness stapled to the grenade. “I mean— age-wise.”

Mabel wanted to elbow him on principle, but curiosity had already lit up her own bones like a marquee. She looked at Future Dipper, bracing for a wince.

He didn’t wince. He huffed a little, which she could tell was his language for a fond of course you’d ask that. She found it funny that she could still read him. Even a version of him ten years apart. He set the mug of black liquid down. 

“Long story short?” He lifted a hand, ticking off items, “Ford is an inventor. Give him a problem and a planet’s worth of bad ideas and he’ll make a solution. Between the stuff he brought back from his travels outside our dimension, the tech we’ve… borrowed…” a brief glance that meant we totally stole a lot of stuff from the government  “…some biotech that’s half alien, and very ethically grey, and a few… temporal effects that we barely understood at the time? We bought them time. Literally. Think of it like… delaying old age with duct tape and impossible numbers.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, habitual, tired. “They’re… stubborn. That helps more than you’d think.” His mouth softened. “Stan’s, well. He’s still Stan. Ford’s… Fordier liked more mad scientist feeling and less inhibition when it comes to nutso plans, which is terrifying by the way. Anyway they’ve got some… Upgrades now, thats the best way to put it. They’re mind’s not what it they used to be on bad days. But. They’re alive.”

Mabel swallowed a knot she hadn’t noticed setting up camp in her throat. Alive. She pictured Stan with shiny plates where knuckles used to be, Ford with a whirring something humming in his wrist, both of them snarling at the sheer concept of old age like it was a tourist demanding a refund. She smiled, because of course they were. You couldn’t con a con man or out-stubborn a Pines.

“That’s… good. I mean, it’s yeah. Good.” Younger Dipper said.

“It buys time,” Future Dipper agreed, eyes on the steam rising from his coffee, “Sometimes that’s the best you can do.”

Mabel caught the way his gaze slid, half a second, back to her after he said it, and something very gentle and very loud pressed a hand to her sternum.

Two nights. Okay. She could do two nights.

“Okay,” she said, matching his pragmatism with her best Mabelness. “Two nights. We can survive in a cardigan zone for that long.” She shot Future Mabel a grin that softened the tease. “We will require pancakes as hazard pay.”

Future Mabel actually laughed, a small, bright sound that looked surprised to find itself in her kitchen. “I can do pancakes,” she said, and for the first time the house looked briefly, truly like hers.

Future Dipper’s mouth did that tiny unguarded upturn again, less a smile and more a slip of an aged mask. “Good,” he said.

Then came the other part of the two nights she had been putting out of her mind.

Ethan.

“Morning,” he called down the hall, not loud, just present. The stairs gave two soft creaks that sounded expensive on purpose, and then he appeared: Crisp shirt rolled to the forearms, hair already doing that controlled thing from yesterday, expensive-looking watch that probably didn’t glow in the dark. He slowed a half-beat when he saw Future Dipper, the micro-pause of a man retrieving a file labelled ‘Wife’s Twin, Nice Enough, Odd.’

“Dipper,” he said, defaulting to pleasant. “Good to see you.”

“Ethan,” Future Dipper returned. He didn’t move forward. He didn’t offer a hand. Not rude… not exactly happy to see his brother-in-law. Obviously, no matter what age, her bro-bro wasn’t a fan of her husband (husband to be? Time travel was confusing).

Mabel clocked the temperature shift immediately. Yesterday had been ‘polite salad.’ This was ‘polite soup that had cooled a little.’ Neither were great, but at least salad was meant to be coldish.

She slid half a step between them without looking like she was doing that and pasted on her cheerleader-for-reality smile. “Hi, husband person,” she chirped, then added at herself internally, yikes, words, try harder.

Ethan noticed the twins then, the younger pair hovering around the house’s new guest. He did the double-take, the kind that nice people do when they’re not sure whether to be confused or amused. 

“You two,” he said, grin re-arming. “Every time I look at you, you look even more like your… cousins.” He sent Future Mabel a chuckle, as if family resemblances were a fun punchline. Did he ever make her really laugh?

“Genetics are wild,” Mabel said sweetly. “Like a game of copy-and-paste that sometimes hits ‘paste’ twice.” She joked badly, hoping to somehow over-steer the conversation towards the topic, then away from it at the same time. God she was bad at conversational subterfuge. No wonder future her avoided fancy pants parties.

“Coffee?” Future Mabel offered, and she had to thank her future self for moving things along. 

She set one near Ethan’s elbow, milk, one sugar, and topped off Future Dipper’s, which he acknowledged with the smallest tilt of the mug.

Ethan leaned the way of men who are used to kitchens that listen to them. “Big morning?”

“Not really, just heard the cousins were in town. Thought I’d stop by since the logistics of it were easy.”

Ethan nodded like he cared about the conversation as more than just the banal pleasantries he so obviously was used to. “Good. Logistics are everything.”

Mabel watched Future Dipper watch Ethan have an opinion on “logistics,” and she felt the tension line pull taut between them. 

It wasn’t that Ethan was being a jerk. He wasn’t. He was being… Ethan, which meant he spoke the language of dancing around the topic and doublespeaking his way to success and eventually getting his way. Without upsetting anyone. Even having only met him once Mabel knew that’s who he was. From a more positive point of view, he was considerate of everyone's feelings, enjoyed keeping a happy, relaxed vibe and focused on steady slow progression rather than efficiency or risk.

From what she could tell, Future Dipper spoke the language of getting things done one way or the other. That was it.

Ethan set his mug down, social gears shifting. “So, what’s the project this time?” He tipped his chin at Future Dipper with that good-humoured curiosity people use when they are being supportive without a clue. “You’ve always been so… mysterious about your work.” He said it with affection, then glanced at the twins. “Academia? Field research? Consulting?”

Future Dipper’s mouth did the not-smile Mabel had seen when their parents asked about what university he wanted to attend. The one that meant he would prefer not to lie but wasn’t ready to explain wendigo biomechanics to a brunch person. 

“Mostly field,” he said, honest in structure if not in content. “Survey work. Problem-solving.”

“In forestry?” Ethan asked, angling to a box that made sense. “Or like… municipal? Because the city’s been ridiculous about permits lately. you wouldn’t believe—”

“Outdoorsy outdoors,” Mabel broke in, hands making vague shapes that could be mountains or a large mind-bending eldritch horror for which there was no name. “Lots of walking somewhere cold and writing notes that make no sense to anyone else. Very scientific.”

Ethan laughed. “Sounds like your brand,” he told Dipper, friendly ribbing with just a hint of ‘not quite as good as my job, but I’ll be nice about it. ’ Dipper (either version) didn’t react.

Future Mabel pitched her voice into the soft middle. “Dipper’s got a job nearby today,” she said.”

“Nearby?” Ethan perked. “Small world. Downtown, or—?”

“Out by the old aqueduct,” Future Dipper said, the words precise, clipped enough that Mabel heard the unspoken and that’s as much as I’m going to say while you’re within earshot. He sipped his coffee and followed that tone by not elaborating.

Ethan did the supportive nod again. “Well, if you need gear, truck, ladder, whatever, take what you need from the garage. Mabes has the spare fob.”

“Thanks,” Future Dipper said quickly “But I’ve got what I need already.”

“Offer stands,” Ethan said, magnanimous, not at all detecting the energy that suggested future Dipper wanted nothing to do with him. He turned to the twins with that easy host smile. “And you two— plan for sunshine. We’ll get you to a beach before the week’s out.” He glanced at Future Mabel. “If the… cousin logistics allow.”

“Love a good cousin logistic,” Mabel said. She wanted to like him. He made it easy to like parts. Its just… he was nice. But he was just nice. Like that’s all there was to him. She shifted her weight, and the movement lined up her sightline with Future Dipper’s profile again, the trench coat and the steadiness and the jaw line looking all serious and broody. And ugh, okay, he looked… good. He gave the kind of feeling of ‘mysterious stranger here to save your life from vampires’ or something. When he turned to answer Ethan, the scars caught the light and she thought, wildly and unhelpfully about how if she was around he’d never have gotten them, which would have been a shame because they looked annoyingly good. 

Ethan drummed fingers lightly on the island, warming up to a joke. “You know,” he said, chuckling at his own observation before delivering it, “i’d say that the young Mipper over there might end up following along with Dippers line of work. He has a studious researching look about him.”

Younger Dipper’s mouth twitched. Future Dipper didn’t bite at the irony of the situation. He let it pass, eyes on Ethan but never exactly happy about it. Mabel saw the tiny tells, the way his shoulders stayed square, the way he never leaned into Ethan’s orbit, the way he sip his coffee frequently so he could have a natural excuse to leave. She’d been wrong to think the two Dippers had the same opinion of her future husband. Future Dipper liked Ethan less than Kid-Dipper. Of course he did. He had ten more years of watching Future Mabel arrange herself around this kitchen. Ten more years of answering dumb, vague questions from a man who he had to call brother (even if was just in-law). Ten more years of pretending he wasn’t as amazing as he was while he uncovered the world’s secrets.

Ethan, to his credit, tried. “We were just talking about putting some of Mabel’s work up for the Davidsons,” he said, warm. “You should see her mobile series, the new stuff. It’s… What did Julia call it? The perfect ‘art moment’ for the foyer.”

Future Dipper’s gaze flicked to Future Mabel. His mouth softened, not a smile, more like a memory, then set again. “If Mabel thinks it’ll look good there, then sure.”

He never even considered money or this Julia person. Just if she thought it’d work.

She smiled a little, both versions of her.

Ethan blinked at the response, then chuckled, indulging the poet in the room. “Well, of course. I trust her art choices implicitly. She’s a much better decorator than I—”

“Artist.” Present Dipper clarified before he could stop himself, and his tone had an edge. That filled her heart at the simple statement of a label. 

The room was a bit rough with tension. She sanded down with a grin. Keep it cute. Keep it light. Keep two men from turning a cold war of passive-aggression into a straight-up brawl.

Future Mabel slid a plate of cut fruit onto the bench the way a person slides a treaty over a border. “Breakfast,” she announced, gentling the room. “Fuel before… anybody does anything.”

They all obeyed, because it was a good point and they were hungry. Future Dipper did that thing where he ate like it was a task to complete, the way her version had done around exam period during school. Ethan was more relaxed, almost like he was presenting the fact that he was eating rather than just eating.

“If you’re at the aqueduct,” Ethan continued, turning back to the token topic like a lab retriever with a ball, “watch out for the roadblock by the old mill. They’re rerouting for a fortnight, it’s a mess.”

“Noted,” Future Dipper said, and Mabel almost heard the readjustments to his plan involving relocating civilians. It occurred to her that she didn’t know exactly what he was doing, or hunting, or investigating. For all she knew, he may have actually just been checking the area out for normal science reasons. She doubted it.

“And the ridge trail, don’t trust the app,” Ethan added, helpful. “It’s wrong by like half a mile. I complained.”

“Good to know,” Future Dipper said, and Mabel had to swallow a smirk because the trail being wrong was… probably part of why he was going. Trails moved when supernatural stuff was afoot. She knew he knew. Ethan didn’t believe trails could move because spreadsheets.

“So what exactly are you ‘surveying’?” Ethan asked, still easy, still curious in the way you’re curious about an aunt’s Etsy store. “Water table? Bird counts? You’ve never really said.”

Future Dipper met his eyes. The air tightened by one notch around Mabel’s collarbone. “Depends on the day,” he said. “Today it’s… containment.”

Ok, so he was looking for a cryptid, possibly re-sealing a demon. She didn’t know exactly what level of mystery hunter her bro-nara-no had achieved, but probably high since it had been a decade.

Ethan laughed, delighted. “Containment. That’s very… ominous.” He glanced at Future Mabel as if to say, your twin is hilarious, as always, then back. “Is there a new fungal infection about that might destroy the coastline?” he joked.

“Ooooh, zombies or mutants?” Mabel jumped in (it was a relevant question!) Future Dipper smiled a little at her input. Yay.

“You know,” Ethan went on, gesturing with his fork like a lecturer, “you’d be great on a panel. ‘Unsung heroes.’ People love that mystique. You could pair with a photographer, do a book, where you’ve been, the behind-the-scenes stuff. The mood of it.”

“Maybe after the job,” Future Dipper said. Zero intention of doing so.

Ethan checked his watch. “I should head in,” he said, and made an apologetic face at Future Mabel that came pre-installed with a kiss for her hairline. He gave it. It landed politely. Everything about him was so freaking infuriatingly polite “Text me about dinner?”

“Will do,” she said. The smile she wore for him had a different hinge than the one that had peeked through a few times. The real one.

Ethan turned to the room with genuine warmth. “Good to see you, man,” he told Future Dipper, and meant the the part where he was happy to make what he probably thought was a favourable impression. “It’s always interesting getting to know the wife's family better”

“Oh, we’re certainly interesting,” Dipper said, which was either a promise or a threat.

He laughed, scooped his laptop bag, and went. Door, tasteful chime, then back to the more comfortable version of the room.

Future Dipper looked at the door long enough to make sure it had stayed shut, then let out a breath like he’d been permitted to relax. He set his mug down, the slightest hard click. “I should get to it,” he said.

“‘It’?” Mabel repeated, aiming for innocent and landing (barely) inside its borders.

He met her eyes, hers, young-hers, with a little twinkle that wasn’t there when he spoke to Ethan. “A job,” he said. “Out by the aqueduct.” Then, like he had to explain himself, “It won’t take long.”

He didn’t say don’t come. He didn’t say do. 

“Cool,” she said, too casual. “Jobs are… neat.”

She thought about having to spend two more nights in this house. The one that was hers but wasn't her. The one with the husband, Ethan. The one future Dipper would obviously avoid until the last possible moment.

Future Dipper had his coat half on when Mabel spoke.

“We’re coming with you.”

He paused. No eye roll, no groan. Just a small, steady look that said he’d expected this sentence in some form since the moment he knocked.

“It’s an observation job,” he said with a slight edge. “Not a tour.”

“Great,” she said. “We’ll observe.”

“Mabel.” Younger Dipper’s warning voice. Obviously, he knew that if his future self didn’t invite them, there was probably a reason.

Future Mabel set a rinsed bowl down very carefully and turned, hands on the edge of the sink. She didn’t say anything yet, not that she could. They may have been the ‘adults’ but they were also the future versions of themselves.

“We won’t get in the way,” Mabel added, softer now. “I promise. We’ll sit where you point and behave. I just… don’t want to sit here waiting around.”

Future Dipper slid the rest of the coat on and tugged the collar straight. “Like I said, It’s not sightseeing, I can’t guarantee what’ll happen.” he said, but the edge in it had eased. He looked at Younger Dipper. “You okay taking responsibility for your half of this promise?”

Younger Dipper straightened. “Always.”

Future Dipper shifted his attention back to Mabel. “And you’ll listen.”

“Yeppers!” she said, sensing weakness.

He was quiet for a few seconds, but she knew she had him. No matter the age, her Dip-n-dots couldn’t say no to her when she begged. “Okay. Boundaries.”

He dropped into a clipped cadence that felt like a checklist he’d used a hundred times.

“Rule one: You stay at the camp when I say to. No exceptions.”

“Okay,” Mabel said.

“Rule two: Radios on you at all times.” He reached into the coat and came up with two compact handsets. “Channel three. Don’t touch the side knob. Tap twice if you need me, hold to talk. If I say ‘Quiet,’ you don’t speak, even on radio.”

They both took radios with another “Okay.”

“Rule three,” Future Dipper said, “no phones. This thing latches onto complicated tech.

Mabel swallowed the questions and fished her phone out. Off it went, along with her ability to communicate with the world. Maybe. Actually, she hadn’t even tested if her phone and SIM worked yet. Dipper probably had.

“Rule four: Don’t look at anything’s eyes unless I tell you it’s safe.” He glanced at Mabel, and his voice softened a millimetre. “You will want to. Don’t.”

“Okay,” she said again, quieter.

“Rule five: If I say ‘Back,’ you move away and hide until I get you. If I say ‘Out,’ you go to the car and you leave. No debate. You drive to the service station off County 12 and wait out front. I’ll find you.”

Younger Dipper nodded. “Got it.” Then he had the audacity to look at her like he’d drag her away if he needed to. Just because she was totally planning to run back to help her aged up broski.

Future Dipper looked between them one more time, then reached into a drawer near the door like he’d been allowed to do that a hundred times and grabbed a small first-aid pouch. He handed it to Younger Dipper. 

“Basics. Keep it on you.” He pulled a folded bandanna from his pocket and passed it to Mabel. “If you get dusted with anything and I’m not there, cover your nose and mouth, rinse eyes with water from the bottle. Don’t rub.”

“Dusted?” she echoed.

“Probably won’t happen,” he said. “Just don’t improvise.” He flicked a look to Future Mabel. “I’ll have them back here tomorrow. Not sure when.”

Future Mabel nodded. She walked over and almost went for a hug before deciding against it. Which was dumb. Dipper hugs were the best. “Coffee,” Future Mabel said. “Hot. Don’t pretend you don’t need it.”

He almost smiled before the lines in his face refused to let him. “Thanks.”

Mabel watched that tiny exchange land, and despite her annoyance at the lack of sibling camaraderie and contact, she stayed quiet. She didn’t even mention the fact that Future Mabel should have been insisting on coming along as well. Instead, she stepped in and hugged her future self hard. “We’ll be careful,” she said into the cardigan. “Promise.”

Future Mabel squeezed back. “I know.” She looked at Younger Dipper over Mabel’s shoulder. “She’s your job too.”

“...yeah, I know,” he said, and that was the end of that.

They moved to the door. Shoes on. Radios clipped. Future Dipper held the door, checked the street, then let them step out first like he’d practiced that choreography until it was muscle memory. The morning had turned bright and clear. Heat was already coming off the pavement.

In the driveway sat an old car that looked like it had the right to be grouchy and somehow wasn’t. Boxy. Faded paint that used to be blue, maybe. A few spots of primer. The hood had new bolts. The tires were good. The bumper had an extra strip of rubber that didn’t come from the factory. There were two driving lights mounted low that looked like they’d been wired in with care.

Mabel liked it immediately.

“You named it?” she asked, because she knew him.

Future Dipper scoffed. “Of course not.”

Which meant yes.

He unlocked it and the hinge swung smooth. The interior smelled like old vinyl and clean tools. The dash wasn’t stock. The radio had been replaced by a unit with an extra bank of unlabeled toggles below it, lights, maybe, a compressor for tires, who knew. A small analog gauge sat where an ashtray should have been. The upholstery had patched seams that were neat. There was a map book in the door pocket, a pencil clipped to it, and a duct-taped notebook pushed half under the seat. Was it because the thing he was observing didn’t like fancy tech? Or just the fact that he preferred hard records and paper to a screen? The back had a crate with a blanket, a coil of rope, a few water bottles, and a battered field kit.

“You can sit up front,” Future Dipper told Younger Dipper, already sliding in behind the wheel. “You know how to read the map. Mabel, back seat, middle if you want to see.”

Mabel climbed in and did middle without needing to think about it. The seat belts worked. She clicked hers and leaned forward a little between the front seats because she wasn’t going to miss anything if she could help it. Her radio cord brushed the edge of the seat. Younger Dipper buckled and set the map on his knees.

Future Dipper turned the key. The engine didn’t roar. It woke up. A low, even note. No lifter tick. No drama. He was comfortable, relaxed in an environment he’d built himself. He watched a small light on the extra gauge settle. He checked the mirrors and tapped the dash twice with two knuckles like a habit.

“You did this yourself,” Mabel said, approval heavy in her voice.

“Most of it,” he said. Shoulder check. “Transmission was a gift.”

She loved it. It wasn’t like her future house. This thing practically screamed Dipper, and she felt like she could explore it for hours, the same way she could talk to him unendingly about stupid stuff and have it seem like the most interesting topics in the world.

He eased it out of the driveway. The whole thing moved ‘smooth’. Not like the van Soos took them in, it was a well-oiled machine. Even if it had a bit of a retro feel. The kind of thing that was primed with constant upkeep and modded to work perfectly beyond its original make.

Future Mabel stood in the doorway and watched them go. She had one hand up in a small wave that looked so very lonely. Mabel waved back until the car turned and she couldn’t see the house anymore.

But she was happy… Right?

The first few blocks were quiet. The neighbourhood slid past: tidy lawns, bins by curbs, a jogger with a dog, a delivery van. Future Dipper was a good driver, like young Dipper but more experienced. Which was obvious, but she still liked it.

“So,” she said, aiming for normal, “camp. What’s that look like?”

“Pullout a while away from an old service road,” he said. “There’s a flat spot. You’ll stay there. I’ll run the perimeter and check the inlet. I won’t be far.”

“What are you looking for?” Younger Dipper asked. He had the map open to the right page already, finger marking the aqueduct line.

“Traces of lightning arcs in trees mostly. The thing I’m hunting is… electricity adjacent. Hence, the need for low tech, even the radios are a risk. Only good news is that its marks are fairly distinct. Not a lot of creatures have lightning discharge.” He explained as he made a turn. “Which is why you need to stay put, one wrong move and this thing will fry you. And I didn’t pack a second insulated suit.”

Mabel chose not to pull on that thread. “We’re good at staying put,” she said, then immediately corrected herself. “We can be good at staying put.”

“We can,” Younger Dipper said. He angled the page so Future Dipper could check it quickly. “Are we taking County 12 to the old mill turnoff, or the off-road trail to the outlook first?”

“Old mill, I know the area well enough to not need the overview,” Future Dipper said. 

“Copy,” Younger Dipper said, and Mabel had to smile because they’d slipped into a teamwork groove like it had always been there. 

They hit the main road. The old car settled into the speed without even trying. Air through the vents. The radio was off. A small portable clipped to the dash gave a spare hiss of open channel and then quieted.

“So we’re getting back tomorrow?” Mabel asked, because she was sort of hoping to avoid going back to the house until the last day, “Midday?”

“Maybe,” he said, no doubt. “With these jobs guaranteeing an exact timeframe is never a good idea. Always best to leave wiggle room, if we're lucky we can leave early in the morning and be back in time for breakfast.”

“Pancakes,” she said.

That almost-smile again. “If she wants to make them.”

“She does,” Mabel said, confident since she was always up for making pancakes, and she refused to believe that had changed.

Her Dipper, the younger one who didn’t look so battered by a life of hunting the supernatural, looked back at her. He smiled with a hint of that goofy, teasing grin she couldn’t ever get enough of. Then his face shifted to a bit of sympathy, like it wasn’t all her fault they were in this mess.

“Two more nights Mabel, just two.”

Two nights. Okay.

She sat back, let the old car carry them forward, and told herself that they’d be fine. That she’d seen worse than this. She might try to make this into a good memory for them, like usual. She could do that. She would do that. She wanted to see what he did. The future him. She wanted to see him working. She wanted less time with polite kitchens and more time with whatever real thing was waiting by an aqueduct that was apparently filled with lightning.

Notes:

So another chapter is done.

Also, there are a number of Mabel and Dipper snuggled in bed scenes in this fic. I like writing them since it's adorable ok?

Anyway let me know what you think about future Dipper representation? Do you think he'd grow up differently or what? Obviously there's no 'canon' way that Dipper's future unfolds but I think the most lore-accurate way to do it is to have Dipper's future career involving mysteries and investigations and stuff. I figure Gravity Falls as a whole would have effected him a lot growing up and obviously after experiencing something like that (coupled with the fact that the show does NOT show him as traumatised despite what a lot of fics seem to insist on) I think it's safe to say he'd have an interest and would want to continue interaction with the supernatural.

But thats just what I think, if someone else has a different plausible or intersting alternative feel free to share. I get bored easy and I love reading and responding to comments.

Chapter 5: Not quite a monster hunt

They drove and drove and drove some more. Well, not really. It was maybe 2 hours all up. But without her dip-n-dots next to her to use as a footrest or pillow, she was bored for most of the trip. He even had the nerve to deny her when she suggested she just sit on his lap up front! Just because of safety concerns. But she totally saw him blushing, so she was pretty sure he was just embarrassed.

Eventually, they took a turn off the highway, past the old mill and ended up at the end of the road where the old campground was supposed to be found. At least according to Future Dipper. He said it was about a 40-minute hike to the aqueduct, and that they’d be camping near it. So the twins helped gather up the camping supplies, and the group set off.

The trek was… boring. For the most part. Trees, dust, repeat. Future Dipper set a steady pace and used short, practical sentences to advise on occasion.

“Watch your footing by the wash. Left side’s soft,” he said once, pointing. Translation: he’d walked this exact strip recently.

“Been here before?” Mabel asked, mostly to check her hunch.

“Last week,” he said. “It moved through after a windstorm.”

Right. Weekly check-ins with a lightning thing. Not a one-off job then.

They reached the site without drama. The aqueduct sat a short walk away, concrete and quiet. Camp went up fast. Younger Dipper staked the tent, Future Dipper checked his work, then strung a thin wire with two little bells on it along the uphill edge. He sunk a metal rod near the cooler and clipped a loop of wire to it.

“What’s that for?” Mabel asked.

“Grounding,” he said. “If it runs past and anything arcs, the charge goes to earth, not us.”

Okay. Noted. Future Dipper is still a planner.

Another thing Mabel noted was the fact that there was only one tent, and it sure wasn’t going to fit them all.

“I’ll keep watch while you two sleep,” Future Dipper said as she looked at the fabric housing in confusion.

Normally, she would have insisted on taking shifts or something for the sake of fairness. But the chance for more broski sleepy snuggles… Well, she was only human!

They ate something simple, oats with sugar and cinnamon, because when he brought them out plain she had made a face that led to him wordlessly taking out a cinnamon jar. His kit was tidy, patch-repaired, and very one person. One pot. One pan. One mug. His sleeping bag roll sat off to the side like he expected not to use it.

“You always do these jobs solo?” Mabel asked, casual voice, totally not enquiring about the possibility of a monster hunting lady friend.

“Yes,” he said. “Safer for everyone.”

Well, that was definitive. 

Younger Dipper tapped the tool roll twice. “Where do you keep everything when you’re not on the road?”

“Lockers in a few towns,” Future Dipper said. “An old camper van down south. Soos keeps a box at the Shack.”

So: no fixed base. Or house, or apartment. Even that van sounded… thin.

Mabel tried a different tack. “Okay, coolest monster hunter story. Go!”

Future Dipper didn’t look up from checking the radio. “Coolest is usually ‘least terrible,’” he said. “But… once a vampire nest grabbed me outside Crescent Lake.”

“Grabbed you, like, kidnapped?”

“Yeah.” He said it ‘like yeah, it rained’. “Wrong turn at dusk. They knew I was snooping and liked playing with their food.”

“Whoa,” Younger Dipper breathed, already half reaching for a notebook he didn’t have.

“How long?” Mabel asked, more than a little worried about how blasé he was being.

“Three days,” Future Dipper said. “They kept me fed, and I had rainwater. They overestimated the locks. I waited, used an old spoon to leverage a hinge on the lock open, timed the patrol, and ran for sun.”

Mabel stared. Three days. Alone. She looked for any sign on his face that this was a big deal. He was already re-clipping the bell wire like he’d just told them about waiting for a bus.

“Three days is… not nothing,” she said.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Could’ve been weeks. I had worse camps. At least vamps have an easy weakness.” He paused, as if to offer a concession to her expression. “I went back prepared with C4 and bombed the walls to let the light in. Cleared the nest.”

Right. Of course he did. She hated that “three days in a vampire dungeon alone” was somehow equal to “forgot to buy milk” for him.

Silence stretched just a little too long. Partially because she didn’t have a good follow up and was still trying to wrap her head around how her brother had changed.

“I’m going to sweep the perimeter then check its usual haunts,” he said, back to business. “I’ll stay on radio. Check in if anything happens. Otherwise, keep off the signal.”

“Copy,” Younger Dipper said, voice steady while he zipped the tent door up and down once so it wouldn’t snag later. “We’ll hold the fort. No heroics.”

He gave them both a look, hers got the extra half-second, like always, and a small “Back soon.”

He moved off toward the aqueduct, careful and quiet.

Mabel watched him go and didn’t move for a moment. Three days. Of course he survived off rainwater. Of course he broke out of a dungeon with a spoon. He always had a plan when nobody else did. She could hear it in how he talked, short, practical, normalising things that weren’t normal. One pot. One mug. Lockers in different towns. Totally solo. Safer for everyone.

She felt annoyance rise. Not at him. At her. Future her. How did she let it get like this? How did she let “three days” be a sentence he could say without blinking? It was supposed to be her job to keep the world from sanding him down like that. To be there. To make the hard days less hard To make things dumb or silly and keep grimness at bay with sheer force of fun.. Instead, he’d learned to treat hard as standard.

Mabel sat on her hands so she wouldn’t go after him, because she might break promises on occasion (for the sake of the greater good! Which usually involved fireworks) but never with Dipper. Fine. Two nights. She could do two nights. And then she was going to go back and figure out a way to make sure future Dipper didn’t end up all hard and rough. Even if she had to track him down on his apprenticeship and annoy him 24/7!

He was so quiet that it was like he almost forgot to exist while he scouted the area the only proof he still existed was a crackle on the radio, followed by his voice, low and calm.

“Perimeter’s clean. Extending to the south ridge. See you two later tonight.”

“Copy,” Younger Dipper said, the tone fitting him too well.

Dipper once said that a super smart guy had said that time moved faster when you had fun. Which was probably why it felt so slow right now. They built a small fire in the ring Future Dipper picked, because he’d picked it and therefore it was fire-okay. Younger Dipper did the careful part, tinder, twigs, actually getting it going. Mabel handled the morale part, marshmallows on sticks, a bag of trail mix she had snuck into the car from the Soos emergency supply. The afternoon slid into that lazy gold that made the concrete line of the aqueduct look less ugly and more like a giant had left a ruler across the hills.

They talked because that's what they did when they were together.

“Okay,” she said, nudging a coal with a stick. “Top five things about the last twenty-four hours. Go.”

Younger Dipper smiled into the flame-glow. “You’re making a list?”

“I’m assigning homework,” she said, appealing to his nerdiness. “Fun homework.”

He pretended to think. “Meeting Future Me. Confirming Ford is still Ford. Soos being Soos. Your house not being secretly haunted. And—” He looked toward the trees like he could see through them. “—seeing how good he is.”

There it was. She had felt it too. The comfort of competence. Future dipper had the air of someone who always knew what they were doing. And even if they didn’t, they’d figure it out with an eyeroll and carefully raised eyebrow. It was attractive in the same way watching someone casually display skill without even realising what they were doing was something most people could only hope to do. Which was also annoying, because now her brain had actually labelled her broski as ‘attractive’ and that was not the right word… right?

She tossed him a marshmallow. “You’re allowed one nerd answer but not five.”

He caught it without looking, which made her roll her eyes and also grin. “Your turn,” he said.

“Fine. Future Soos’s neat little bell. The shack in general really,” She pointed at the way they came. “The car. The cinnamon jar. Sitting on your lap—”

“Didn’t happen,” he said, trying to be stern but still blushing a little. Cute. 

“—and that I’m here,” she finished. She met his eyes. “With you.”

They let that sit. Logs shifted. The fire crackled a little.

After a while she poked the fire again. “Do you… like it?” she asked. “What he does? What you’re… going to do?”

He followed her gaze to the empty edge of the camp where the trees began. “Like is a weird word.”

“Do your best. Do you like the idea of being him?”

He was quiet, but not in a “deflecting” way. In a thinking way. “I like not being useless,” he said finally. “I like being the person who knows what to do.”

He didn’t say “I like being alone.” He didn’t say “I like being scared.” He also didn’t say “I like being tired,” because Future Dipper was all of those things even if he pretended otherwise.

She roasted a marshmallow too long and it caught, she blew it out and shoved the molten, charred thing into her mouth because the only way to fix a burnt marshmallow was to commit. “It looks lonely,” she said through sugar.

Younger Dipper looked at the fire. “It probably is,” he said. He kept his voice careful. “That doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

“Doesn’t make it right,” she said, a little fast.

He half-laughed. “There are other options, Mabes. He could’ve… not done any of it.”

“Like go to college with me.” She tried to make it a joke and absolutely failed.

He heard the wobble. Of course he did. “We don’t know what happens,” he said softly. “We’re literally looking at one version.”

“One version where you treat getting kidnapped and help alone in a dungeon for three days like it's nothing. Where you don’t have a house or a girlfriend—” he flinched a little at that, whoops “—and you spend all your time alone…”

He recovered a little from the flinch. “You heard how he talks. This is what he’s good at.”

She snapped her stick in half and immediately regretted it because it had been the best marshmallow stick. “He’s good at other things. He’s good at being with people. With me.” She forced her voice down from the edge. “I don’t want you to be… resigned.”

He shrugged, and it was the Future Dipper shrug in a smaller jacket. “Resigned is practical,” he said. “You play the hand you're dealt and all that.”

“And what if the hand you’ve got sucks?”

“...Then you make do and hope it gets better I guess.”

He sounded… satisfied. That was the part that got under her skin. He was already practising the calm she’d seen in those older eyes. He wasn’t happy, she knew it. She could see it. He was good, yeah, probably better than if he went another direction. More efficient and better at hunting the things that went bump in the night. But he was just so… Alone.

“We could pick a world together,” she said. “That’s an option too.”

He met her eyes. He knew what she meant. He was too polite to say the part that would hurt, the part that had to do with the whole reason Blendin showed up: I might not be allowed to pick that. So he said something else. “You’ll make the best of whatever we get,” he said. “You always do.”

She groaned, flopped onto her back on the tarp, and stared up at a sky that didn’t care about any of this. “I… I’ll try.”

“Me too,” he said. Then he was lying down beside her so their shoulders touched. The fire popped. Something small moved in the brush and didn’t come closer. The stars shone and she spotted her favourite constellation. The Big Dipper.

But eventually she got bored.

“Any sign?” Mabel asked into the radio.

“On the downstream bend,” Future Dipper replied. “Fresh arcs on two trunks, smell like ozone. No eyes. I’m checking the far culvert. Hold camp.”

“O-kay,” she said, and went back to lying down next to her bro-bro. Who was not in half-asleep mode and therefore could not be cuddled to the full extent of her abilities. Such a shame he was such a goof when it came to twin cuddle time. Just because they were too old for it now.

As if.

By the time full dark edged in, she’d eaten more marshmallows than any medical professional would endorse. Younger Dipper roasted them better; she was on quantity over quality, which was a life choice and also a totally valid sugar strategy.

That was when Future Dipper stepped into the firelight. He took in the scene, the two teens relaxed near the fire, pointing out stars as Mabel made up constellations and Dipper rattled off real ones. 

“Find anything?” Younger Dipper asked, relief hiding under his voice.

“Traces,” Future Dipper said, all business. “Fresh arcs on elm and pine on the downstream bend, and scorch on the culvert edge. Foot sign’s messy, storm chewed the path last week.” He crouched, picked up a stick, drew a simple line in the dirt like a map: aqueduct, bend, culvert. “It moved through fast. Either it fed somewhere else or it’s relocating burrow. If it’s migrating, it’ll ride the stone line and settle on a new seam.”

Translation: it wasn’t here. It had been, briefly. Not now.

“So… we wait?” Mabel asked, trying to keep the edge out of her tone and only partly succeeding.

“I come back,” he said. “In a week.” He tapped the drawn bend. “You two have to get back home, to your actual place in time.”

“Sooooo…” Mabel started.

“Camp here tonight. In the morning I’ll walk the ridge once more to double check and then we’ll head out.”

Relief and disappointment did a weird dance in her stomach. Part of her had wanted a Thing to happen so she could see him do the Thing. Part of her wanted him to be home eating pancakes already. Ideally, with her flinging syrup at him so he had to change, then he’d have to stay longer and actually sleep indoors instead of in his car which she just knew he slept at least half the time.

“Okay,” Younger Dipper said. “We stayed put.”

“I know,” Future Dipper said. He scanned their faces, the tent, the bells, the tidy little fire that was obediently fire-sized. “Good job.” He said it like he meant it and like he didn’t say it often because he had no one to say it to and Mabel wanted to hug it better.

Mabel almost said something about vampires and “three days,” because the sugar in her blood had loosened her filter, but she swallowed it. She doubted he'd talk about it, the part of Dipper that bottled things and clammed up when stuff got emotional had evolved a lot over the decade away from her (yes, she knew it wasn’t a full decade since they’d seen each other less and less and it had been gradual, but that was the vibe of it).

She skewered one last marshmallow because she had the decision-making skills of a raccoon at a buffet. “Want one?” she asked, offering the bag.

“I’ll pass,” he said. He took a water bottle, drank, checked the radio on his coat like a fidget, then finally sat on the cooler since now that his little mental checklist was done, he was allowed to relax for half a second. He still watched the fire like it might try something. It didn’t.

Mabel’s energy, that very special brand of energy that could fuel a parade, hit a wall. The sugar cliff was real. Her eyelids did a slow blink that lasted way too long. The ground felt like a warm couch if you didn’t think about it too much.

“Go sleep,” Future Dipper said, practical. “You’re tilting.”

“I do not tilt,” she said, but she was already halfway to the tent, dragging her sleeping bag open. She heard the two Dippers switch to plan voice behind her, short, efficient, making morning into bullet points. It was nice, in a boring, safe way. Like Dipper should have been. She should have been the one making things weird and exciting, not nearly dying to creepy stuff in the dark.

Inside the tent, the sleeping bag was warm from the fire nearby. Thankfully, no pillow wall was included, so Dipper would have to share normally. She flopped onto her side and told herself she’d just close her eyes for a minute, then get back out there. Which was the same lie she always told herself when she fell asleep at a sleepover first.

***

She woke to dark fabric and the small warmth of a tent. For a second she forgot where she was. Then the bell wire gave a single faint tick out beyond the fire ring, future him stepping over it, and her brain slotted the pieces back in. Camp. Aqueduct. Marshmallow regret. Two Dippers.

The fire outside was quiet but still alive. She could hear the soft crackle through the nylon. Night insects had started up. The radios gave a tiny hiss, then settled. She didn’t move. Sugar-nap fog made her limbs heavy and her thoughts slow, but voices cut through it: Dipper and… Dipper. Younger him had the slightly higher, quicker tone. Older him spoke lower, measured, more experience in it for obvious reasons.

She rolled to her back silently so taht she could see their shadows on the tent wall, two silhouettes near the fire, one broader coat-shape and one spindly with a vest, shoulders tipped toward each other. She eased her breathing down to the “sleeping Mabel” setting and listened.

“…no,” future Dipper said, quiet. “We never told her.”

The words hit like cold water, even through the dim. Never told her what? About monsters? About the job? No. Not that. Her stomach did the little drop it did before quizzes she hadn’t studied for. She stared at the shadow of his hand; it made a small, dismissive line in the air.

Younger Dipper answered, voice trying to be neutral and failing. “I figured.”

A pause. The crackle popped once. Mabel kept still. Her brain lined up guesses and crossed them out. If it had been something normal, they wouldn’t be speaking like this. And if it was nothing, they wouldn’t be murmuring at all. 

She missed what young Dip said but heard the response.

“No, we didn’t move on,” future Dipper said, still low. “How could we?”

Her chest pulled tight in a way that had nothing to do with sleeping bags. Okay. Not about work. About people. About a person. She set the name in the sentence even before her brain gave permission. A girlfriend? Pacifica maybe? She tried to make her face look boring so if he looked in he’d see a boring sleeper face. She wanted to sit up and stomp out and demand footnotes. She did not. Hot goss came first.

Younger Dipper said something Mabel couldn’t catch, a question. (she really wished that young Dip wasn’t facing away from her) Future him answered at once, like he’d practised it.

“She’s happy,” he said. “She has a great life. And we see her when we can.”

We. He used “we.” Not “I.” Not “I try.” We. Him now and him then and him always. Both versions. Like it was already decided.

The older silhouette lifted a hand and let it drop. She could hear him exhale. It wasn’t even sad or insistent, just… tired.

“We set lines,” he added, quieter. “It helps.”

Mabel bit her lip. Lines. Boundaries. Of course he set lines. 

Younger Dipper, again, a soft push. “So this is it? This is… how it is?”

“This is the good ending,” future Dipper said. “Even if it might not look like it.”

Mabel stared at the tent ceiling like it had wrong geometry. Good ending. To who. For who. Her brain put a dozen pictures in a row: cardigan kitchens, emergency numbers, not seeing him outside holidays, an old car that smelled like tools, a sleeping bag that saw too much use. She wanted to go out there and tell him that “good” needed more than two nights a year and a phone call with an ETA.

Was it for her? Somehow? That might make sense. He did things like that. Gave things up so she could he happy? But how did this version of the future qualify as happy? How could any when her twin wasn’t around?

Younger Dipper’s shadow shifted. “And you’re okay with that.”

Silence, then the smallest: “…okay enough.”

Right. That tone. Resigned-with-a-plan. Practical. The same tone he used when he talked about letting her have his pocket money to fund her latest art-crazed idea. Except this was his whole life. She found that she hated that tone. Really, really hated it.

They let the fire fill space for a while. Future Dipper said something too low to make out. Younger Dipper’s shoulders untensed a fraction, then set again. Mabel closed her eyes, opened them, closed them again. She was mad at both of them and also not. Of course he’d think this was “good.” He’d defined “good” as “safe for Mabel” since forever. If “safe for Mabel” now required “Dipper not being there,” he would pick that like it was the most natural thing in the world. Of course past-him, her-him, was already trying to train himself to be the kind of person who could do that easily. All because some time-travelling baldy told them that its what they needed to do to keep time from being destroyed or something, which by extension included her being destroyed. Hence his stupidness.

She counted three breaths, then caught another line through the fabric.

“We chose,” future Dipper said, soft but firm. “We keep choosing.”

Mabel’s jaw worked. He’d chosen away from her because he thought that was what love looked like from his side. He hadn’t given her a vote. He hadn’t trusted that they could figure it out together and deal with the fallout of whatever Blendin didn’t quite warn them about. 

The shadows reshaped. One stood. The other did too. A zip on a bag, a quiet click of a kettle being moved off heat. The conversation turned to practicals, almost like they’d hit a timer: ridge again at sunup, early start, keep the radios on low, leave no trace. Mabel let those sentences wash past. She already knew that part of him. Lists. Checkpoints. Plans.

Footsteps approached, careful on the dirt. The tent zip tugged down a touch, then up again. She went still as cloth. Younger Dipper’s outline filled the doorway, small rectangle of cooler air coming in with him. He paused just inside, the way he always did, eyes adjusting, brain mapping the small space. The radio came off his belt and got set on its side, within reach of his right hand, because of course it did.

He undid his boots by feel, slow and careful like everything he did when he wasn’t nervous and sweaty. He put them by the door, tops facing out, ready. He slid into the sleeping bag with careful motions, trying not to jostle her. He left a thin line of air between them like a demilitarised zone, polite, trained by pillow walls and the idea that they were too old for full contact sleep piles.

She made a sound on purpose, a small sleepy hum, the kind she did when someone moved the blanket at home. She shifted. Not a pounce. Just a roll that put her back toward him and her shoulders under his chin zone. She did it like it was totally unintentional sleep movement.

He hesitated. She felt it in the way the bag tightened for a second. He didn’t retreat. She waited. Her heart was stupidly loud. She told it to calm down; this was nothing. Normal. Twins. Cold night. Shared bag. Everyone in this tent had seen everybody else drool on a couch at some point. Nothing.

His arm moved. He set it near her first, elbow against the sleeping bag, hand not touching. Another breath, then he let the last five centimetres happen and draped his forearm over her waist like a seatbelt set to “loose.” He kept the hand open. He was giving her an easy exit she had zero plans on using. The warmth along her back was immediate and familiar. The part of her that had been angry at the word “okay enough” relaxed a little into the warmth.

He didn’t speak. His chest did the slow in-out next to her shoulder blades. She didn’t need to see his face to know the expression. She could feel his mouth shape through his breath. A small, tired smile he didn’t show other people because at some point they started expecting him to be the smartest person in the room (just because he aced a few test and corrected the teachers a few times). The smile he used when plans didn’t matter because she was there and she refused to let him plan things and forced him to actually live a little.

She pressed the back of her head very slightly into where his chin would just let himself fully relax. Not a request. A nudge. He made a tiny noise that could have been a quiet laugh or a caught breath. He didn’t shift closer, exactly. But he did relax, which did the same thing.

She lay there, eyes closed as she felt him breathe, and restarted the part of her brain that made plans. Not clever Ford plans. Mabel plans. She was not going to yell at him about “good endings” tonight. He’d just lock the doors inside himself and she would be here with a pile of keys that didn’t fit. She would not think about cardigans and kitchens and a number in a phone labelled with a pine emoji that Future her was scared to call. Not now. She could do two nights. She could wake up and be annoying on purpose until the edges of him softened back into view. She could get them home and then make sure this path didn’t set in concrete.

He shifted once more, the arm over her tightening a fraction as he drifted toward the slow breathing pattern that meant sleep was winning. She thought about rolling to face him. She didn’t. If she did, she would absolutely talk, and if she talked, she would ask the questions from the dark and that felt unfair to both of them.

Her eyes slipped shut. The sugar slump finished what it started. The last thing she noticed before sleep took the rest was the way his fingers had ended up half under the hem of her borrowed shirt, not grabbing, just there, and how the contact sent an uncomplicated message up her spine: here. It didn’t fix her annoyance at “okay enough.” It didn’t fix the vampire dungeon or the “this is the good ending.” It did, however, ignite a certain feeling a little lower that had absolutely no business being there. So she decidedly ignored it.

Tomorrow, she decided, letting her thoughts go quiet. Tomorrow she’d start her plan to make sure the future ended up being pair-shaped rather than two-shaped. Tonight she would be a very convincing asleep person and steal his warmth without paying.

Notes:

Sorry for the delay.

A large part of why this is coming out a little later than it should is due to me working on my original stuff. If you're interested, the first few chapters are now up on Royal Road (I originally meant to start the story after this novel, but they have a writathon going on, so I uploaded earlier). It's called 'Of Wolves and Nightmares'. Not a fanfic of any kind, but if you like my writing, you might like it.

Oh, and just to clarify, this fic will still be continued, and I never plan to be working on more than 2 projects at a time to avoid burnout.

Hope you enjoyed!

Chapter 6: Late night feels

She woke up warm and held and very unwilling to change either of those things.

At first she didn’t know why it felt so exactly right. Then the details filtered in the way morning does when you didn’t set an alarm: the slow weight of an arm across her middle (again), a forearm bracketed just under her ribs with relaxed little fingers. One of his knees had found the back of her thigh sometime in the night and decided to stay. Their ankles were in a situation. Her nose had tucked itself into the soft cotton at his collarbone, and his breath moved the tiny hairs near her temple in patient, even pushes.

She stayed very still to see if the universe would notice and ruin it. It didn’t. Good.

The sleeping bag had given up on “two users” and moved to “one contained tangle.” Heat pooled where they touched. Her head and shoulders understood the exact shape of his chest. His leg shifted once in his sleep. Just a weight adjustment. and then settled again with a soft, unconscious flex that had zero business being that gentle. Half-asleep Dipper was a menace, apparently. Much too honest. Awake Dipper would’ve pretended to be a plank. This one had his chin tilted forward enough that when she kept quiet, she could feel the rumble of his next inhale through his sternum. That was… nice. Really nice.

Outside the tent, the world was starting back up. The little bells on the perimeter wire didn’t chime, the fire had gone to coals. She could feel the light through the fabric, grey, not yet gold.

He made a sound, half word, half sigh, and his mouth brushed a place near her hairline. Not a kiss. Just another small movement where he shuffled a little closer to her. Her toes flexed under the bag on their own. He followed the flex with a long, sleepy breath that said his brain was still in the slow lane.

“Time?” he mumbled, voice low with sleep, the syllable against her hair more than in the air.

“Not yet,” she whispered, automatic. Not a lie. It was morning, technically, but not the kind that counts.

He accepted that by not moving. His palm readjusted and slid just a little under her shirt, warm on her bare skin. A small tingle went up her spine. She put her fingers lightly on his wrist the way you do when you want to keep something in place without admitting that’s what you’re doing. No conversation. No thinking. Just everything exactly where it was supposed to be.

Five more minutes, she told herself. Which meant ten. Which meant as long as the universe let her get away with it.

Eventually the light strengthened. Bird noise levelled up. The practical part of her brain, trained by one Dipper and reinforced by a future version with bells, tapped a sign that read pack, walk, go. She ignored it for two more breaths and then peeled herself gently out of the hold, inch by inch like disarming a cuddle trap. He stirred, blinked, immediately tried to put proper distance between them, and got caught in the sleeping bag zipper for his troubles.

“Good morning,” she said, too cheerful on purpose.

He pushed hair out of his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn’t just been clinging like a koala. “Morning.”

She smiled into her shoulder so he wouldn’t have to see it full strength. “You were very responsible about conserving heat.”

“Standard protocol,” he said quickly, which was not an answer but sounded like one. The tips of his ears were pink. Cute.

***

Pavement heat. The tasteful door chime again.

They made good time back. Future Dipper broke camp at a downright scary pace. Probably due to having done it approximately a few hundred times she reckoned. The drive felt shorter on the return because everything does when you’ve already seen it. The old car complained exactly zero times since future Dipper refused to let anything wear enough to complain about. Soon they were back in the driveway of the house Future Mabel lived in that Mabel refused to recognise as hers.

Her future self opened the door with a simple relieved “oh good, you’re back.” Her cardigan sleeves were pushed to her elbows. She actually had some paint under one thumbnail which Mabel was glad to see. The house smelled like coffee and the faint lemon-clean of a wiped bench.

“How’d it go?” she asked, eyes flicking automatically to Future Dipper and then to the twins for cross-reference.

“Moved through,” Future Dipper said. “I’ll check it again in a week.” 

He didn’t step fully in. He stayed just past the threshold, one foot angled toward the driveway in a ‘just dropping them off’ stance.

“You’ll stay for dinner?” Future Mabel asked, automatic politeness plus real hope.

He shook his head once. “I can’t. I need to get to Ford. double check he hasn’t messed anything up. Like I said, they’re mostly fine but old age means that occasionally they forget minor parts to a whole. Like the fact that not everyone has 6 fingers, or can solve quantum equations on the fly.”

“You got through to him?” Younger Dipper asked, locking straight into logistics-mode.

“Yeah,” Future Dipper said. “He’s back on grid. We synced this morning. If nothing burns down, metaphorically or literally, I’ll be back here with him tomorrow.” He looked at the twins when he said tomorrow, then at the hallway like he already saw the spot where the not-yet-invented device would sit.

“Tomorrow,” Mabel echoed, not sure if she was relieved or bracing. Both, probably. Two nights was suddenly one night. Well, suddenly was the wrong word, despite the time travel biz it the watches and time pieces of the world were currently moving like they were supposed to. 

Future Mabel checked her phone and made a face at a message that Mabel managed to peak at. She decided it had too many exclamation marks to be fun. Anything that required that many was something boring that you had to overcompensate for. “Ethan’ll be late,” she said, light voice, light shrug. “Work thing.”

“Right,” Mabel said. She put extra brightness on the word so the rest of the sentence (“thank god”) didn’t slip out after it.

Future Dipper’s eyes did a quick scan of the room again, maybe re-evaluating now that Ethan wasn’t going to be in the picture. He stopped on the Mabels for half a second longer than professional, the same way he did every time. For a second, Mabel thought he’d stay. But he seemed to decide against it at the last moment.

“Showers,” he said, nodding toward the hallway. “Rest. Hydrate. Phones can go back on, but try not to look online. Future knowledge is rarely worth the cost.” He paused, then added to Younger Dipper, “You were good at camp.”

Younger Dipper tried to play it off. Didn’t quite manage it. 

Future Dipper’s mouth almost smiled. She really wished he’d smile properly. Then he looked at Future Mabel again. There was a lot packed into that glance. She really wished she knew what.

He turned to go.

“Hey,” Mabel said, stepping forward before she let herself think about it. She didn’t touch him. She didn’t do a hug and make things weird. She just stood where he’d have to see her straight-on. “Tomorrow, yeah?”

“Tomorrow,” he confirmed. 

She wanted to say more. Something like you don’t have to bolt or we could order pizza or it’s okay to sit still for an hour. She didn’t. His hands were already in motion, keys, coat, the easy, practised rhythm of leaving.

“Be careful,” Future Mabel added quietly.

He tapped twice against the doorframe on his way out, a little habit she’d seen him do a few times now. She wondered when he’d picked it up. Why? How often did he do it? Was there a story, or just a nervous tick? If she’d been with him she would have known… 

She did do something she maybe shouldn’t have as he left. She took a picture. Just a quick one on her phone, mostly because she wanted documented proof that her broski could actually grow up to rock a coat/mysterous stranger combo.

The car turned over cleanly and he pulled away without revving, good, careful driver as always. The Mystery Shack sticker on his tool bumper that she didn’t notice earlier winked once in the light. Then he was a taillight and sun glare and gone.

The house felt bigger without him in it. Not better. How could it be better? Just as if you’d taken the lid off something and the air had changed pressure.

Future Mabel exhaled and did the host thing again because when in doubt you offer people a drink. “Water? Juice?” She squinted at Mabel’s hair. “Shower. Then juice.”

“Copy,” Mabel said, and felt weirdly proud that the copy came out of her mouth like it was official, maybe she’d gotten some future Dipper confidence by proximity overnight?

They dispersed. Steam, towels, borrowed clothes that smelled like nice soap. The hallway mirror showed a girl who’d slept in a tent and didn’t regret it. She tugged her hair into a loose bun and tried not to think about the exact way the morning felt when she’d been pretending not to be awake.

When she padded back to the living room, the late afternoon had settled into the main room like a cat finding the warm spot on the couch. Future Mabel had a glass of something with mint in it and was staring at a corner where a painting should’ve been. She noticed Mabel and put on a gentle smile that had a seam down the middle.

“Hungry?” Future Mabel asked.

“Yes,” Mabel said, discovering it as she said it. “But not… dinner-hungry.” She pointed at her own face. “Snack-hungry.”

“I can do snack,” Future Mabel said, since she’d trained for this exact scenario. “Crackers, fruit, that cheese you only buy when you’re trying to impress someone.” She stood, moved through her own kitchen like a guest who’d stayed long enough to learn where everything was. The motions were smooth. 

Ethan texted again. Future Mabel read it; her mouth did the polite version of a line. “Late,” she said, not asked. “He said it might be till after ten.”

“Work,” Mabel repeated, neutral.

“Work,” Future Mabel agreed.

They ate snack on plates that were expensive enough to be named or have stories. The kind her mom would have brought out to impress people but never eat on. Younger Dipper emerged with damp hair, eyes blurred a little, and still running inventory on the day like he couldn’t help himself. He was wearing a casual outfit that had obviously been taken from their hosts again. Not to say it didn’t look annoyingly good. He sat, he ate, he made a small comment about the aqueduct construction material Mabel do the fond-sister snort she hadn’t used all afternoon.

The sun slid lower. Street sounds softened. Night got on with it as the evening gave up its claim on the day.

Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow Future Dipper would walk back through the door with Grunkle Ford and a machine with a name that sounded like homework. Tomorrow they’d go home. Tomorrow she’d start re-routing the road signs so the two of them didn’t end up as two lines running next to each other with glances at holidays.

She stacked her plate. Future Mabel took it automatically and washed it as if dishes could keep time moving.

They got ready for bed and decided thoroughly against waiting for Ethan to get home. In fact she may or may not have deliberately pushed for an earlier sleep to avoid such a confrontation. Regardless, time moved on.

***

The pillow wall had held like a tiny, infuriating border. Dipper had gone down first, and he was out cold. Probably because he’d stayed up the previous night talking to his future self. So while he slept like a stupidly adorable baby, she was just lying there on her side, eyes open, counting heartbeats and her broski’s eyelashes. 

Sleep didn’t come. Thinking did. Thinking was the worst.

Normally she would have distracted herself by talking and giggling with her twin, which obviously wasn’t an option. She almost moved the pillow and snuggled closer, but it was different when they moved it together, or if she did it while she was asleep. Doing that without him knowing about it, and while she was awake, felt… wrong. 

After too long of that, she gave up. She slipped out of bed like a thief, bare feet quiet on the floor, and eased the door open. 

The house was mostly dark. A small lamp threw a cone of warm light over the living room. Future Mabel was curled on the end of the couch with a throw around her legs and, of all things, a book. Not a sketchbook or a pile of reference photos or a half-knit scarf. A normal paperback with a neat bookmark and no paint fingerprints. Her hair was down, cardigan sleeves pushed up, a glass of water sat on a coaster, the mint had gone a little limp.

Reading. Huh.

“Hey,” Present Mabel whispered from the hallway.

Future Mabel looked up, blinked, and smiled in the soft, familiar way that made it weirdly easy to walk closer. “Hey,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Can’t sleep?”

“Pillow wall is evil,” Mabel said. She made a little chopping motion with her hand. “An insult to sleep sibling snuggle time.”

Future Mabel huffed a tiny laugh and patted the couch. “Come sit.”

Mabel dropped onto the other cushion and tucked one leg under. The book’s cover caught her eye. Some tasteful novel with a single leaf and a serif font. She didn’t recognise it, which meant it wasn’t one of the old favourites. The coffee table was clear except for the remote and a folded magazine. No stray beads. No glitter trail. No glue gun cooling on a trivet. Nothing fun. Nothing Mabel.

“Whatcha reading?” she asked.

“Something Julia lent me,” Future Mabel said, closing it over a finger. “I’m trying to read more before bed. Screens mess with my sleep.”

Mabel raised an eyebrow. “Not drawing?”

“Not tonight.” Future Mabel’s smile slipped and reset. “I’ll make a mess tomorrow.”

Right. Tomorrow. She glanced at the clean edge of the rug. She wondered how long it took for tomorrow to come in this house. If it ever came at all.

They sat with the quiet for a minute, listening to the low hum of the fridge and the softer sounds houses make when they think no one’s paying attention. Mabel picked at a loose thread on the throw, then decided she didn’t want to circle the topic like a polite person. She wasn’t one.

“I have a question,” she said.

“Mm?”

“Do we… grow apart?” She kept it flat. No dramatics. “Like, actually. Not the ‘we’re busy’ version. The real thing.”

Future Mabel held her gaze for a second like she was measuring if this was a good idea. Then she looked down at the book and used the corner of it to press the edge of the page straighter. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “We did. Slowly.”

It felt like someone had pushed a thumb into a bruise she’d been pretending wasn’t there. Even if she had known, she hadn’t really. not until she heard it from her own mouth. 

“Why?” She asked simply.

A tiny, tired breath. “A lot of reasons.” She wiggled the book’s closed spine, thinking. “I hate saying this, but… partly because I have a husband now.” She said it gently, as if it might break. “I love him.”

Mabel looked at her future face. Thought about the words that just came out of her own future mouth. She meant them. Somehow. She really didn’t know how Ethan of all things managed to be up to her standards… 

“Okay,” Mabel said, letting the syllables sit in a neat row so she didn’t say anything else on top of them. “And the rest of the reasons?” Because there had to be some.

Future Mabel glanced toward the hallway, toward the guest room, and then back. “After high school you— we, I mean. We went to art college,” she said, almost talking about what had happened like it was someone else who did it. Not her. She continued after the self correction “Dipper apprenticed with Ford. Different schedules. Different cities. We were good about summers at first. We really were. We’d meet in Gravity Falls, do the Shack, make dumb plans.”

“Then?”

“Then I met Ethan.” She said his name with something that seemed like fond nostalgia but Mabel could only think was forced. “Well, technically, I met him right when I started at the college, but it took a while for me to realise he liked me. He was doing a business major and took a marketing elective with one of my studio classes. He… understood how to talk about art to people who don’t speak… our language.” She made a small face that looked like apology. “He was helpful. He’s good at… making things happen.”

Mabel waited. She could hear the sentence that was hovering.

“The first time he met Dipper it…” Future Mabel searched for the right size of word. “Didn’t go great.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Mabel tried to keep the little bit of joy she felt at that hidden.

“Yeah.” Future Mabel’s mouth tugged. “They were polite. Eventually. They grew into that. But it was… tense at the start. Two very different… approaches. Ethan doesn’t believe in—” She cut herself off and picked a safer path. “The way Dipper tells stories about the world. And Dipper doesn’t like the way Ethan… manages.”

Understatement. Mabel pictured the kitchen island and the way Future Dipper’s jaw looked near it. “So you stopped inviting them to the same stuff.”

“Sometimes,” Future Mabel admitted. “It felt easier to see them separately. And then separate got… normal. A class due date, a bit of research he was working on, his trip going long, there was always a good reason.” She rubbed her thumb along the book’s edge. “We promised we’d catch up the next week. Then the next. We did, for a while. Then there was a summer he couldn’t make it. Then I didn’t. Then time just… moved.”

Mabel pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth so she wouldn’t say the thing in her throat. She went for a different route. “Are we happy?”

“Yes,” Future Mabel said immediately. Then, softer, “Yes.”

The second yes had more hope in it than joy. Mabel watched her face. The muscles around her eyes did a small twitch. The smile stayed, but Mabel wasn’t sure it should have.

“What does happy look like?” Mabel asked, not unkind.

Future Mabel leaned back into the couch, looked up at the ceiling, and listed like she’d practiced: “We have a good home. We laugh. He… takes care of things I forget. He believes in… stability. We have friends. There’s a routine. It’s calm.”

Dipper did that. He made her laugh. He helped her when she forgot stuff or got too wrapped up in something. Dipper didn’t force her into routine, even though he loved it. He didn’t try to make her calm. Not that calm was bad. Calm just wasn’t her. Mabel’s gaze slid to the tidy shelf, the curated art, the book with no dog-ears. “Do you still—” she wiggled her hands—“do the crazy stuff?”

Future Mabel’s eyes flicked to the kitchen and back. “Sometimes.” She smiled, a little defensive now. “I did a great remodel of a kid's room.”

“...sounds awesome.” It didn’t. It sounded like a consolation prize.

“It was,” Future Mabel said, and it was the first sentence that sounded entirely like her. Even if it was just a consolation. 

Mabel let her eyes travel the room. No stray paint. No taped-off floor space. No half-dried neon green furniture.

“Do you still do… weird?” she asked. “Like, real weird. Glue a hundred googly eyes to the toaster weird.”

Future Mabel actually laughed, soft and surprised. “He doesn’t love when I… experiment with appliances.” She lifted a hand, palm-out. “Fair. Safety and all.”

Mabel heard the echo of a different sentence that probably lived somewhere in this house: maybe not tonight, big morning. Maybe after the board dinner. Maybe keep the glitter to the garage. Maybe the garage is for tools. She kept her face polite. She hated polite.

“And time?” she asked, casual. “You two get a lot of it?”

“We try.” Future Mabel’s thumb went to the book’s corner again. “His work runs late. I don’t like going to brunches and stuff so… We do what we can.”

“Date nights?”

“Sometimes.” A small wince-smile. “We’ve… rescheduled a lot lately.”

Right. Rescheduled. Which often means cancelled. Mabel nodded because if she didn’t she might say “Uh-huh” with the exact tone she used when someone told her they didn’t like sequins. She sat up a little, leaned her elbows on her knees. “Do you think you could have done more?” she asked. “With Dipper.”

Future Mabel didn’t dodge. She looked at the lamp light pooling on the coffee table and said, “Yes.” She let the word rest there for a second. “I could have insisted on summers no matter what. I could have made the spaces overlap. I could have… asked different questions sooner.” Her mouth pulled. “I kept thinking the moment would arrive when everyone’s schedules made sense and we’d lock it in again. It didn’t. Not the same way.”

Mabel’s chest did that squeezed feeling. “He didn’t… ask either?”

“Not in those words.” Future Mabel’s voice went small and fond at once. “He made it easy for me to think everything was fine. He’s good at not being a problem.” She paused, and when she spoke again, it was careful. “When the two of them were together, I felt like I was translating. I got tired of… translating. So I stopped putting them in the same room. That wasn’t fair to either of them.”

Mabel looked at her, really looked. There were tiny lines at the corners of her eyes that meant smiling and tiny lines near her mouth that meant biting things back. She seemed… composed. Not hollow. Not miserable. But not exactly lit from the inside either. Like someone had turned the dimmer down and she’d gotten used to it.

“You said you’re happy,” Mabel said.

“I am,” Future Mabel said, and she believed it. Mabel could tell. But believing and being were not always the same thing.

“Okay,” Mabel said.

They sat a little longer. Future Mabel tilted the book back open but didn’t read. Mabel watched the hallway. The clock over the mantel ticked at a polite pace. 

“I should sleep,” Mabel said. “Tomorrow is… probably gonna be busy.”

“It is,” Future Mabel agreed. “Night… me.”

Mabel stood, then leaned down and hugged her. Future Mabel hugged back, real and tight for a second. There was a tremor in the end of it that made Present Mabel hold one heartbeat longer than she’d planned.

On her way down the hall, she looked into the kitchen. The counters were clear. The oven didn’t have eyes. The microwave didn’t have internal splat marks from trying to invent new colours with radiation. The fridge had no silly magnets. The sink was stainless steel with no big plastic colourful covers.

She kept walking.

Back in the guest room, the pillow wall was still up, loyal to its mission. Dipper was on his side, facing the door from the far side of the bed. His breathing was deep, steady. Sleep had pressed the worry out of his forehead.

She hesitated at the threshold, then slid under the covers and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling shadows. The wall of pillows made a neat line between them. She could have nudged it down with a wrist. She didn’t.

A rustle. Dipper shifted on the other side. He did that little inhale he always did when he floated up from sleep, like surfacing from a pool. “You okay?” he whispered.

“Mm.” She didn’t trust the first words lining up in her head. She picked safer ones. “What do you think of him?”

A beat. “Ethan?”

“Yeah.”

He was quiet long enough that she pictured him looking at the ceiling too, trying to choose a version that wouldn’t start a fight. “I think,” he said carefully, “you already know what I think. We sort of… covered it. Yesterday.”

Right. They had. He’d been polite. It still bugged her that the only answer available was the one she already had. She pushed on it anyway because that was her style. “Say it again.”

A soft breath. Not annoyed. Just bracing. “He’s… fine,” Dipper said. “Nice. Not bad. Not for you.” Another pause, then, honest: “I don’t like how he fits around you.”

That didn’t help. “Okay.” She stared at the pillow wall and suddenly did not want to talk about Ethan anymore. 

“What do you think it looks like when you—” She caught herself before the word came out too fast and weird. “—love someone?”

Silence again, different shape this time. He rolled onto his back. The mattress dipped, then settled. “Like… in general?”

“In… your opinion.”

He huffed a tiny laugh that made the pillow squeak. “You’re asking me for my opinion on feelings.”

“You have them,” she said. “They live under all the crazy ramblings and obsession with monsters and stuff.”

“Rude.” But he sounded a little lighter. She could almost see his faint smile in the dark. 

“Okay. Um… When I liked Wendy way back when—” his voice did a tiny trip over the name and then kept going, because it was old ground— “it was stuff like… thinking about her when she wasn’t around. A lot. Trying not to be a total dork around her. Wanting her to think I was… cool… Which, historically, didn’t go great.” 

Mabel waited. It was honest but also very… brochure. “And?”

“And what?”

“That’s the whole thing? Think of them, don’t be dorky, act cool?”

He exhaled through his nose. “You asked what it looked like.”

She made a small, impatient sound that translated to dig deeper, pine tree.

He did. Slowly. 

“It’s… little stuff,” he said, voice getting quieter, like smaller gear teeth were finally catching. “You… look at them more than you look at anything else in the room. Not, like, in a creepy way, just… your eyes keep going back there. And you don’t even notice it until it's happening all the time. You notice when they change something tiny, shampoo, a shirt, a different… laugh that day, and you remember it like it matters even if the person themselves just forgets the next day. You catch yourself smiling and you don’t even know why until you realise they just… walked in.”

Mabel swallowed. The ceiling suddenly felt very close.

“You end up planning around them without meaning to. Like, you pick a seat so they’ll be comfortable, or you bring the snack they like even if it’s not your favourite, or you carry the heavy part so they don’t have to even if they could. It’s dumb, it’s tiny, but your brain starts running, like, a background task for them. Automatic…” He paused for a moment. “You stop noticing other options because your priorities change to put them first.”

She let that breathe. Then she couldn’t help herself. “...you smell their hair?”

A stretch of silence that was half scandalised, half mortified. “That is not what I said.”

“You basically said it.”

“I said you notice things.” His voice had moved into the territory labelled absolutely red in his internal zoning map. “Not… hair specifically.”

“You said shampoo… You totally smelled Wendy’s hair,” she said, grinning in the dark because she needed to tease him or he might notice how fast her heart was beating despite the pillow wall. “Creep.”

He groaned, but it came with a laugh he tried to bury in the pillow. “If someone stands near you long enough, you notice shampoo. That’s science.”

“Mhmm. Head & Shoulders: the scent of true love.”

“Please never say the words ‘true love’ and ‘anti-dandruff’ to me again.”

“No promises.” She rolled to face the wall so she wouldn’t be tempted to climb over the stupid pillow because this conversation was already closer than it should be. “What else?”

He didn’t make her drag it out this time. “You get protective,” he said, softer. “Like I said, properties change…” His voice went a fraction lower, like he was talking to himself more than her. “You do what’s best for them even if they don’t… know that’s what you’re doing. Or even if they wouldn’t pick it for themselves.”

She stared at the dark and felt something tilt in her still hammering chest. 

“You try not to make your stuff their problem. You keep the broken bits on your side of the line so they don’t have to carry them.” A pause. “You make your peace with… less, if less means they get more. That kind of thing.”

That landed with a little thud right in the part of her that hated the words “okay enough.” She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that’s not how it’s supposed to work, because she could hear future him in there doing whatever stupid thing he wanted for stupid reasons that probably made no sense at all.

She side-eyed the pillow wall again and thought about taking two fingers and tipping it over. Don’t. Talking like this worked because it had a border. It was easier when they could pretend they were talking to themselves.

“What about the part where your chest goes fizzy and your hands go dumb?” she said, because someone had to represent Team Feelings with panache.

“That’s… a symptom,” he said. “Not the definition.”

“Ugh, scientist.”

“Sorry my brain insists on labelling.”

“No you’re not.” She let the corner of her mouth turn up because she could practically hear him shrug.

They were quiet for a little. The house made a far-off settling sound. Somewhere in her future there was a neat kitchen and the smell of mint going limp in a glass. Somewhere in her immediate past there was a future version of her saying “happy” like a line she’d practised in the mirror. Somewhere in her present there was a boy who had just defined love as “setting yourself on fire so someone else could be warm”. She wished she knew how she was supposed to feel about at least one of those things.

“That’s… it?” she asked, softer, not mocking this time. “That’s what it looks like?”

“Plus, you know,” he said, trying to make it lighter again because he could tell she was drifting to the edge, “a bunch of dumb micro-things I’m not going to say out loud because you’ll make fun of me forever.”

“Try me.”

“No.”

“Chicken.”

“Correct.”

She puffed air through her cheeks and let it out slowly. The pillow wall suddenly seemed less like an enemy and more like a helpful fence at the edge of a cliff.

He spoke again, so quiet she almost missed it. “Also you… don’t want to mess it up by saying the thing at the wrong time.” He swallowed. “So sometimes you don’t say it at all.”

She felt that like a little push behind her sternum. Her eyes were heavy now in the safe way, the way that meant she could sleep without sliding into a pit. “That sounds… dumb.”

“Yeah.” He sounded unimpressed with himself. “It is.”

She rolled an inch closer to the pillows, like leaning on a wall you intended to climb tomorrow. “You’ll tell me if I start trying to be calm, right?” she mumbled, half to him, half to the ceiling.

“You can’t,” he said, and there was so much fond in it she had to swallow. “It’s against your code.”

“Good.” Her eyelids did that long blink. “Wake me when you need me.”

“I always do, do I need to call you Master Chief as well?”

She smiled into the dark. “Duh,”

She wanted to tell him she was going to fix everything when they went back to the past. She wanted to tell him about the book with the leaf on the cover and the quiet house with the quiet rugs and how she’d make sure it was never quiet when she got to it. But her body finally decided to cash out. The edges of the room softened. His last line floated to her like it had been waiting for her to go still.

“Doing what’s best for them,” he said again, hardly more than a breath. “Even if they never know.”

And sleep took her.

Chapter 7: Back to the present

Breakfast smelled good.

Mabel stood at Future Mabel’s stove flipping pancakes while Future Mabel worked the fruit and plates. They moved well together, like they’d done this a hundred times, which, technically, they had, just not at the same time with two versions of herself. She stirred cinnamon into the batter because obviously, and Future Mabel didn’t argue since she also had the idea way back in the 4th grade. She just did a small taste test without comment and set out maple syrup, butter, and that fancy berry compote adults pretend is healthier.

Ethan had left early (thank the breakfast gods). There was a neat note on the counter, “big day, dinner late, sorry xx” next to a coffee ring and a very clean mug. Mabel folded the note in half and slid it under a fridge magnet shaped like a… tasteful leaf. She missed the dumb lobster magnet from home that only had half the magnet bit so it drooped to the left.

“Batter’s perfect,” Future Mabel said proudly.

“Team Mabel,” Mabel said, and wiggled the spatula above her head in triumph.

They didn’t talk about last night. They just cooked. Future Mabel warmed plates in the oven like a fancy person; Mabel stacked pancake towers like someone preparing to feed a pack of wolves.

“Dipper will be here soon,” Future Mabel said, glancing at the clock. “And your Dipper should wake up soon, probably.” 

“Plus Grunkle Ford,” Mabel said, happy fizz in her chest despite everything. “And Stan?”

“He texted an emoji that I think is a ship and a fist. So yes.”

Mabel grinned. Pancakes got one more flip and landed to rest. She cut butter in quick squares so they’d melt properly and not just slide off like cowards. Her brain kept looking at the doorway even when she made herself not look at the doorway. Every shadow that moved in the glass of the back slider made her heart do a little hop. 

She heard steps coming down the stairs at a familiar pace. Her Dipper, thats what the future version of Mabel called him. She liked that.

The doorbell gave its tasteful ding. Two quick footsteps she recognised before the door even opened: firm, even, coat-swish. Behind them: a slightly heavier cadence with a hitch (Stan), and a measured one that always sounded like it was counting (Ford).

Future Mabel wiped her hands and beat Mabel to the door only because she was closer. The door opened and revealed three of the most important people in her left, all older than they looked four days ago before she found herself in the future.

Future Dipper: trench coat, calm eyes, a dusting of road on his boots. He stepped in first and did that quiet scan of the room he did out of habit, corners, windows, exits, then found Mabel by the stove and gave her that small flash of a smile that made things tilt inside her for a second.

Behind him, Grunkle Ford ducked his head a fraction on entry like he always had, as if every doorway might be a trap. His hair was whiter. His coat looked new but already lived-in at the elbows. His extra finger wrapped around a hard-sided case with an engineer’s grip. When he set it on the entry bench, she heard the faintest… not-click. A gentle internal whirr? Maybe in his wrist. Maybe just the case latches. He straightened without the old tremor she remembered from the really tired nights. Something in his posture had a steadiness she couldn’t name.

“Children,” he said, voice warm in a way it rarely was at first contact. Her more intellectual uncle didn’t really do hugs, but his eyes did that soft thing that meant he wanted to. He sniffed the air. “Is that cinnamon?”

“Obviously,” Mabel said. “We have standards.”

Stan rolled in like the sun on legs, hat slightly askew, jacket open. He looked… like Stan. Older around the eyes. Mouth still a smirk halfway between a lie and a Cheshire cat. He clapped once, big hands, and the sound thudded different, like something in his chest answered back with a very faint hum instead of a wheeze. He sniffed too. “Pancakes. Finally, get to have some of my Grandnieces' breakfast again, and for free!” He leaned over the island, swiped a strawberry from the bowl, and popped it in his mouth with a wink at Mabel. “Don’t tell your mother.”

“You mean future me or my actual mom ?” Mabel deadpanned, and got the grin she wanted.

“Both.” He jerked his chin at Future Mabel. “Hey, kid. Kitchen still thinks you’re in charge? Good. Kitchens need fear.”

Future Mabel hugged him. “Hi, Stan.”

There was a half-second where everyone just… existed in the same room. Present and future, science and pancakes. It was nice.

“Eat,” Mabel ordered, because someone needed to do crowd control. Plates found hands. Butter slid into a melting shine. Syrup poured. Stan took eight pancakes like he’d paid for them (he hadn’t), Future Dipper took two and cut them neatly, Ford took one and then looked surprised at himself and took a second. Future Mabel hovered with more napkins instead of eating so Mabel sat her down and got her a plate..

“We shouldn’t linger,” Ford said around a very dignified bite. He tapped the hard case with his knuckles and it answered with a faint metallic tick. “Every minute you two spend out of your own temporal vector increases local phase drag. A few minutes delay is minimal, but non-zero. I’d rather not become the reason the neighbourhood experiences a spontaneous blackout.”

Mabel almost laughed but then remembered it was Grunkle Ford so he probably wasn’t joking.

Future Dipper set his fork down and came around the island, business already sliding into place. “Device is tuned?”

“It is.” Ford’s tone warmed, proud of his skills as usual. He flipped the latches on the case. Inside, nestled in foam, sat something that looked halfway between a projector and a lantern, ring-shaped with three small vanes braced around an inner coil. Wires coiled under it like tidy snakes. Two slim bands sat in cutouts, bracelets? Each with a tiny inset stamped with a pine and a star. Mabel’s stomach did a good flip at that. “Temporal realignment device,” Ford said, like a magician finally naming the trick. “Anchor-and-sling hybrid. I’m going to align you to your last stable home frame and then push. Should be… smooth.” He glanced at Stan like a man who knew the universe and also liked to have a backup plan. “Relatively. Also Stan insisted on the symbols, I’ve no idea why”

“Makes it easier to keep track of who’s who,” Stan said, stealing another strawberry.

“More than their names—” Ford started, then stopped himself with a minute roll of his eyes. Growth! Evidently, a full decade gave even her Grunkles a little time to grow up.

“You sure you calibrated to them?” Present Dipper asked, looking over the guts without touching. “We probably left a mess of temporal residue at the shack….”

Ford’s mouth twitched. “Your mess was helpful, actually. Plenty of residual phase signature to isolate.”

Present Dipper slid in at her shoulder, eyes bright, tracking components like he wanted to put them together and then take them apart again. “Will it really short out the grid?” he asked.

“Not if I’ve done my job right, and I always do. It should be nothing the grid will notice for more than a blip. We’ll spike the mains for a fraction of a second. The array’s designed to buffer with onboard capacitors and then sip the rest.” Ford’s thumb brushed a small notch on the housing. It was almost nothing, and yet, for a second, the pads of that thumb clicked lightly where skin met metal. Mabel filed that away under ‘cool robot upgrades, probably fine, maybe a little cool, try not to think about the why.’

Stan noticed her look and flexed one shoulder like he had a private joke with it. “He’s got spare parts,” Stan stage-whispered. “So do I. We’re like a used car with a good warranty.”

“You’ve never gotten car insurance or a warranty in your life Stanley,” Ford added helpfully. He flicked his wrist once and the little click disappeared. “Let’s move to the living room. More space, fewer reflective surfaces, fewer… syrup.”

“Hey,” Mabel said, protective over her sweet good time juice.

Future Mabel exhaled, then gathered herself in that way hosts do when they’re about to have science in their lounge room. “Okay. I’ll clear the coffee table.”

“I’ll grab the extension cord,” Future Dipper said, which he apparently knew about. Maybe he’d visited more than she assumed over the past however many years?

“Stan, don’t touch anything labelled ‘do not touch,’” Ford said.

Stan put both hands in the air. “Name one time that’s gone badly.”

Ford just… looked at him.

“Yeah, okay,” Stan conceded, then to Mabel: “Kid, don’t listen to him, touching things that say don’t touch is the quickest way to get rich! Or arrested. Occasionally both!”

Mabel snorted and took her plate to the sink, suddenly a little dizzy at how normal and not-normal this all felt. She dried her hands on a tea towel that had a pattern of subtle triangles instead of ducks wearing boots. She wished she could stop noticing this stuff.

They migrated to the living room. Future Mabel had already cleared the coffee table and rolled back the rug a fraction to give Ford a flat spot. The device came out of the case with the care of a newborn. Ford set it down, centred, then unfolded three stubby legs that kissed the wood with rubber feet. The inner coil had a faint sheen like the air around it was slightly wrong. He adjusted a dial with fine motions; when his sleeve shifted, Mabel glimpsed a seam of pale scar along the underside of his forearm that hadn’t been there before. He moved like it didn’t hurt.

Future Dipper returned with a heavy-duty cord and an outlet map in his head. He plugged into the wall he’d already decided was safest and ran the line along the baseboard so no one would trip it. He took his old place by Ford’s shoulder without being asked.

Present Dipper hovered at a perfect viewing angle, hands linked behind his back to keep from poking. He shot Mabel a quick look are you okay? She gave him her best “obviously” face, which he did not buy for a second.

Stan picked a spot where he could see everyone at once. “Alright, knuckleheads,” he said, voice suddenly gentler than his words. “Let’s send the kids back before I start feeling feelings.”

Ford lifted the two slim bands from the foam and handed them over with ritual care. “These will anchor you to each other and to the device long enough for the sling to catch your original frame.” He offered one to Dipper, one to Mabel. “Left wrist for you, right for you.”

Mabel slid hers on, the metal cool, the tiny pine charm resting against her skin. She didn’t look at Dipper when he clicked his, she didn’t need to. She felt the little hum run through the band when his locked, like a second heartbeat that matched hers just enough to feel… good.

“Calibration complete,” Ford said, glancing at a handheld meter. It beeped politely. “See? Smooth.” He squinted at the room’s overhead light. “Let’s keep other power draws to a minimum. No appliances during the transfer.” He looked pointedly at the kitchen like he expected the blender to start itself out of spite.

“Don’t think anyone's in the mood for a smoothie break Grunkle Ford,” Mabel joked.

“Speak for yourself,” quipped Stan.

Future Mabel had her hands tight around the back of a chair. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t. The point was she didn’t. Future Dipper stood near her, coat half-open, scanning the windows again and the street beyond, like he was waiting for the feds or the time police to pull up outside. When his eyes landed on Mabel, the sharp line of his mouth softened a millimetre.

Stan rubbed his hands together. “Pines family classic: wildly complicated machine, improvised in a living room, probably illegal. Brings a tear to my eye.”

Ford didn’t even pretend to deny it. He crouched and flicked a covered switch. The device woke with a low, even hum that Mabel felt more than heard, a pressure in the air like before a storm. The inner ring began to glow the softest violet, not bright, just present. Tiny LEDs along the base walked from red to amber to green.

“Alright,” Ford said, straightening. “On three we prime the field and begin the anchor pulse. Minimal chatter, minimal movement.”

“Since when have we ever done minimal chatter?” Stan muttered, but he edged closer anyway, protective orbit engaged.

Mabel’s wristband gave a tiny responsive flutter against her skin, like a cat purring. She glanced at Dipper. He already had his “ready for science” face on. It was cute. Not the point.

“Wait,” Mabel blurted, the kind of “wait” that jumps out of your mouth before your brain votes. Everyone looked at her. She lifted both hands. “Goodbyes first. I’m not getting chucked through time without hugs. House rules.”

Stan’s mouth pulled into a grin. “Kid’s got priorities.”

Ford sighed but didn’t argue. Future Mabel gave the smallest laugh, one filled with relief. Future Dipper didn’t smile, exactly, but his shoulders lost a millimetre of tension.

Mabel went in fast because lingering makes things weird. She wrapped Future Mabel first, tight, cheek against cardigan. Future Mabel hugged back, all-in for one solid second, then steadier. “You’ll be okay,” Future Mabel said into her hair, like a promise and a request.

“You too,” Mabel said, and tried not to think about tidy bookshelves and tasteful leaf magnets. She let go before she accidentally said anything.

She pivoted to Future Dipper. “C’mere, you,” she ordered, because otherwise he’d default to a handshake like a dork. He accepted the hug like a professional, arms careful, chin clearing the top of her head. Up close, he smelled like clean sweat, old canvas, road, and a hint of her cinnamon from breakfast that made something in her chest tilt. His coat creaked. Under her hands: solid, warm. He squeezed once, briefly, and let go.

Present Dipper stepped in and hugged Future Mabel. Awkward at first, then properly. “Thanks for pancakes,” he said, because of course he did. She snorted and patted his shoulder like she used to when he was smaller (it was so unfair that he was taller now).

Then Mabel clapped her hands. “Okay, okay, last one. Sibling law.” She pointed between the two older versions. “You two. Hug. I demand it.”

Future Mabel blinked. “We—”

“—are doing it,” Mabel said, pushing gently at both of them like a very determined sheepdog.

Stan was already nodding, delighted. “C’mon, give the kid a Hallmark moment.”

They hesitated for a moment. The years of lacking time together, distance and tension seemed to come between them to form a wall. Then Future Dipper stepped forward. Future Mabel did too. They met in the middle, careful the first half-second, then closer because muscle memory won out. Arms around shoulders, around back. A small exhale from both.

In that very ordinary motion, Mabel saw it.

Future Dipper’s nose dipped the smallest fraction, a barely-there tilt, and he breathed in against Future Mabel’s hair. Not a creepy thing. Just that automatic, stupid little inhale you do when your brain wants to be a little closer. She wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking straight at them. But she was. And once she saw it, a row of dominoes that had been standing in her head started falling in neat, loud clicks.

She remembered Dipper’s voice in the dark. Love looks like looking too long. The way you look at the person more than other stuff in the room. The way your eyes flick back to them. Future Dipper’s always did. Past and present. She just… hadn’t really noticed even though she’d seen it.

Love looks like remembering dumb details. The colour she loved, throat of the river, he’d remembered that since she’d made it that one Summer. She only told him one time and never expected him to remember. He picked the ribbon at Christmas that matched it without being asked. He’d said it like it was obvious at Dinner.

Love looks like small, dumb things. The way he always did that hair thing, whenever they hugged he took a deep breath. The way he’d stood in the kitchen yesterday, half between her and Ethan without meaning to. The way his tone changed when he said “she’s happy” when both Dippers thought she was asleep in the tent. The way he never once said he didn’t like Ethan but his jaw answered for him. The way he’d picked a life that didn’t make him to watch her be with someone else every day.

Oh.

The thought didn’t slam into her. It just… assembled, the way a picture comes into focus when you adjust the camera properly. No trumpet. No glitter. Just a clearer image of something she’d walked around for years, visible from a different angle. She didn’t say the word. She didn’t even let herself think it all the way through. She knew it, though, the way you know a song by the first three notes.

“Alright,” Ford said gently, as if he’d given them enough seconds for feelings and now physics would like its turn back. “We’re burning daylight and luck. Positions.”

Hugs loosened. Future Dipper let go of Future Mabel with that careful final squeeze people do when they secretly don’t want to let go. He moved back to the window side. Future Mabel went behind the couch again, hands white-knuckled on the fabric for exactly one heartbeat before she unclenched on purpose.

Mabel and Dipper took their spot by the device, side-by-side, wrists humming faintly. Stan shifted half a step closer to them like a wall you could lean on. Ford checked a meter, flipped a safety, and nodded once.

“Three,” he said.

The hum deepened. The air got that dry taste, like biting a battery. The lights dimmed one polite notch and then steadied. 

“Two.”

Mabel glanced at Future Dipper without moving her head. His eyes were on her for that half-second extra again. Not permission-seeking, not goodbye. Just… there. She wanted to say a hundred things and none. She settled for a look that meant thank you and also stop being so okay with ‘okay enough.’

“One.”

Ford threw the switch.

The room flexed. Violet coalesced into a thin ring suspended in much-too-normal air, and the bands on their wrists tightened with a diagnostic click. Her stomach did the elevator drop. The sound wasn’t loud; it was big, a low chord that made the picture frames hum. The coffee table slid a millimetre. A gust that didn’t come from anywhere lifted the edge of the rug.

“Hold steady,” Ford said, voice calm in the storm.

Stan’s palm hovered near Mabel’s shoulder without touching. She felt the heat of it and didn’t admit how much it helped. Future Mabel’s breath caught. Future Dipper’s jaw set.

A filament of light reached from the device to her band, no heat, just pressure, and another to Dipper’s. They blinked green in sync. The ring’s glow brightened to not-quite-daylight. The hairs on her arms lifted. She tasted ozone and cinnamon because breakfast was still in the air.

“See you soon,” Stan said, softer than she’d ever heard him say anything.

“Get home,” Future Dipper said, and she heard everything he didn’t put after it.

Mabel opened her mouth to say “We will,” but the floor slid sideways without moving and the room rushed inward and outward at the same time. For a breath she could see all of them at once like a smear: Ford, precise; Stan, solid; Future Mabel, brave; Future Dipper, steady, eyes still on her—

—and then the world snapped.

The hum cut. The light ring collapsed to a spark and went out. Gravity remembered its job with a thud.

They were standing on old wood again. Dust motes hung in air that smelled like pine cleaner and mystery. A cardboard cutout of a tourist trap gnome leered from the corner. The Mystery Shack’s living room. Home.

For two long seconds, neither of them spoke. Mabel’s wristband was just a bracelet now, cool metal, no hum. She realised she’d been holding Dipper’s sleeve. She let go and deliberately made it seem casual even though it sent a spike of electricity up her.

Dipper looked at her with that wide, shiny-eyed look he got after rollercoasters. Then he grinned, full, uncomplicated, relief punching through everything, and threw her a big, goofy thumbs up.

Mabel lifted her hand. Her thumb went up, a little late, a little shaky. She smiled back because she always would for him, even with her brain suddenly full of a puzzle she’d just solved and didn’t know where to put.

Notes:

And she finally realises his feelings. Hope I communicated this moment well enough. Leave a comment if you'd like on how the pacing has been so far. part of me feels like I could have skipped some stuff or sped things up, but I like to make sure characters have a chance to develop properly within the story.

Chapter 8: Back in the present

Mabel’s new room looked… blank, boring, and un-Mabel. But that was fine, she could fix that. Dorm rooms always started out that way.

Boring white walls, an (admittedly nice) square window, a tall wardrobe she was determined to stuff full of outfits she made herself, and one of those beds with the plastic-wrapped mattress that went eeeek the first time she flopped on it (yes, she tested it; yes, she regretted nothing). Two desks, hers and not-hers. Two pinboards, hers and not-hers. Only one name card on the door so far: MABEL PINES (handwritten, block letters, a little heart she drew herself because the RA’s was almost as boring as this room and she had a feeling she’d be battling them over creativity soon enough).

She draped a sweater over the not-hers chair anyway. Claim by osmosis (also glitter, not yet, but sooooon). Then she stood in the middle of the floor and tried not to think about the part where the room was quiet and the other bed was empty and there wasn’t a Dipper making lists sitting on it with the end of the pen in his mouth as he churned that big brain of his.

They’d blinked home, zip, buzz, old bell clanging in the Mystery Shack like a mini fog horn that felt more familiar than the future version. No one had noticed that they’d left. It seemed that Ford’s device had put them back within minutes of when they left. They had no idea where the time tape went, and Blendin Blandin was nowhere to be seen.

Back in Piedmont, The Conversations happened around the kitchen table. Dipper told their parents about apprenticing with Ford. The way he explained it made it seem like he’d thought about it a lot and managed to convince them that traditional education wasn’t the way for him. They asked about how it would qualify him for a ‘real’ job. DIpper showed them a literal laser gun Ford had made. After that, they realised the Grunkle was probably smart enough to teach Dipper. Then Mom turned to her and she said “art college,” and everyone nodded like that was as natural as the sun, which it was, even if her brain was still busy doing cartwheels over the other thing.

They packed. Dipper: two bags, journals, boots, that sweater with the tiny trees she knit (he called it “efficient,” which was Dipper for “favourite”). Mabel: three suitcases, two boxes of art supplies, one emergency glitter kit, and a small album she was determined to fill before Summer. She pretended not to notice him tucking their porch-swing photo into his notebook. 

On the porch (which wasn’t as nice as the one in Gravity Falls but wasn’t bad) they did their awkward sibling hug. Mostly because Mabel had no idea how to do a real hug right then. He gave her the classic thumbs-up. She returned it. 

She didn't tell him that she hadn't been able to focus since they came back. She didn't mention the fact that she was having trouble sleeping. She didn't ask if he was going to go along with 'okay enough'. She didn't even mention that she hadn't been able to give her signature smile as much as she wanted to send him off with it.

He left for Gravity Falls first. She left for campus the next morning. The car dropped her at the curb with a laundry basket and a small balloon animal of nerves in her stomach. Orientation happened. People with clipboards happened. A studio that smelled like turpentine and ambition happened. She kept busy on purpose because if she stopped, she’d think about how last week she’d realised something big and ridiculous and terrifying.

She shook her head like an Etch A Sketch and got back to the task of un-boring her room. Pens in a cup (her blue on top, special refillable ink pen Dipper made her). Googly eyes on the plant pot (mandatory). A print of that sweater-weather photo on the pinboard. A tiny string of lights along the window. Better. Not fixed, but better.

Her phone buzzed. A picture from Dipper: a lab bench and a box labelled MABEL: DO NOT OPEN with Ford’s handwriting and six underlines. His caption: pretty sure this is a trap specifically for you. She snorted and texted back a photo of her plant (googly eyes in place): i have a supervisor now. He replied with a laugh. She smiled like she could hear it.

She pushed the suitcase under the bed with her heel and tried to keep the summary going before her brain detoured again. Parents: proud. Cake: lopsided. She got the corner with the most frosting letters because obviously. They clinked paper cups; they didn’t talk about the future in capital letters. No one said “good ending.” She definitely didn’t say “Dipper is—” Nope. Not yet. She could still feel the way the word had settled in her when Future Dipper hugged her cardigan-toting future self and did that quick, almost not-a-thing inhale, and how suddenly everything was different despite nothing actually changing.

She opened the wardrobe and started hanging sweaters, which was like putting up flags. Red rockets, teal waves, one with tiny cats, one with tinier cats. She left a gap, on purpose, for a new one that didn’t exist yet. She planned to cram so many in so she had to start soon. Maybe she’d knit between classes? Maybe she’d mail Dipper a matching one with an annoying note like, “uniform upgrade.” He’d pretend to hate it and then wear it until it disintegrated.

Her stomach reminded her it had not, in fact, been fed. Food later. One more picture. She taped a small print by the desk: the shot she’d snuck of Future Dipper at the doorway, coat, scars, that quiet in his eyes that wasn’t emptiness, just… the kind of quiet you get when you spend too long by yourself, well, Ford was probably with him for a decent bit of it. But her brainier Grunkle wasn’t exactly the most emotional or talkative company. She didn’t know why she’d printed it. Maybe because it made her mad in a useful way. Maybe just as a reminder.

A cart rattled down the hall. Someone whooped. Somewhere a kettle whistled. Campus noises, brand new, already familiar. She stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. It was still a little blank. It was also hers.

Her thoughts went back to him again. She was unpacked enough that it wasn’t a distraction anymore. She needed to slow down and think for once. Which wasn’t her strong suit, but she’d do it. This was important. It was Dipper. Her brother. Her broski. Her twin, partner in crime, best friend.

The boy who was in love with her.

Mabel stared at the not-hers chair like it had personally offended her and also like it was a stage prop from her own brain. Because it kind of was. In her head it wore a sticky note: DIPPER-SHAPED SPACE. She could see him there, knees up, notebook on one, pen cap between teeth, muttering about “calibration” while she made the world brighter with fabric and crayons. She could also see the empty version: chair, no Dip, silence pretending to be peace. Blergh. Blergh forever.

She tried to rearrange the mental furniture, future kitchen, future apartment, future house, future husband, pancakes, sticky notes, her doodles taped to a fridge, his notes beside them. And then she tried the other futures on like outfits: them in a small RV with a terrible floral curtain and a “HOME IS WHERE THE HORN HONKS” sign he hated but tolerated, bouncing down a highway and arguing about gas stations. Maybe a mountain cabin with a gnome eviction plan and a porch swing that didn’t squeak. Summers at the Shack where the bell over the door was the rude one again and Soos’s van lived forever.

Only, each picture kept… editing itself. Not a Dipper chair across the room. Not two rooms. Not two anythings. Suddenly, every layout had one bed. One bed because there was one life, shared, like every sleepover they’d ever had that drifted into morning after a late-night plan and the last cookie. One bed where they’d fall asleep together as he looked at her like nothing else mattered. Where they woke up tangled in limbs so tightly that she could hear his heartbeat through his bare chest, and he held her back as his hand gently traced on her…

She blew out a breath and dropped into her chair (hers, definitely hers) and yanked a sketchbook from a box. Okay. Fine. If her brain wanted to be a montage machine, she’d give it something to montage. She clicked a pencil, flipped to a fresh page, and pulled her knees up into the chair. Pencil down, brain up. Draw.

Lines first. Quick. A square window. The little plant with googly eyes. The string lights like a tiny comet trail. Her hand moved because it could, because it knew how to turn “too many feelings” into shapes that felt less crowded. The room started to look less like a blank and more like a place a person could live.

Thinking barged back in anyway because that’s what it does. Ethan. Ugh. Fine. Think about Ethan.

She remembered Future Mabel saying his name and the way she said it. She remembered how Future Dipper greeted him and how Mabel said that was how they interacted after they got better. And then the pieces slotted themselves into a line she hated but understood instantly:

Dipper didn’t go with Ford because telescopes are sexy. (Okay, that depends on what kind of dorky goofball is behind them.) He went because proximity to her would make the secret too loud to ignore. Her brain turned that over and over until the edges went smooth. He knew she’d see it eventually (she got it in two seconds just from a hug and a sniff, nice job, Mabel. You proved him right) and he chose distance before she could catch him. He hid himself so she’d stay the version of happy he’d decided was best for her.

She chewed her lip and shaded the corner of the window. Was he ashamed? No. That wasn’t it. He wasn’t ashamed of feelings. He was allergic to bothering people with them. He would rather deal with it on his own than risk someone finding out. And when that someone was her? Double it. Triple. He must’ve decided that telling her would “burden” her, capital B, because she’d try to help. She’d try to fix. She’d bend herself into some new shape to take care of his heart like it was a craft project, and then she’d fail because hearts are not felted animals. He knew she’d hate failing him. He hated the idea of making her feel trapped between “I love you as my brother” and a thing she couldn’t fix. So he built a hallway away from her life and walked down it with his flashlight on low.

She sketched a tiny RV on the page margin, grinning despite herself. It had crooked curtains. It had a pine-scent air freshener. It had— no, stop. Focus.

The pencil wandered anyway, drawing a trench coat without meaning to, a line for a scar at the temple, a careful mouth that didn’t like to show worry it couldn’t solve. Her hand knew him even when her brain pretended not to.

She thought about Ethan on the other side of that kitchen island: polite, not curious about the right things, all correct edges. In hindsight (the obnoxious, smug friend of all the sights) she could see that Future Dipper had been… what was the word… eroded? By years of seeing Ethan’s hand on her future back. Not because Ethan was a villain. He wasn’t. He was a man who brought an easy smile and a schedule and liked a world with labels. Which was fine. Which was boring. Which was exactly the kind of “stable” someone might pick when her twin trained her to think “stable” was the safe option.

The pencil pressed too hard and made a dark streak. She wiped it with her thumb and left the smudge there on purpose, a little meteor trail.

He must have hated it. Not Ethan like a person (okay, maybe a little), but what Ethan represented: the proof that Dipper had put his own heart on airplane mode and left it there. The proof he’d stuck to a plan that kept her safe by building a him-shaped absence. And he did it for a decade. Ten years of holidays, of quick visits, of emergency numbers passed through a cardigan filter. Ten years of “I drew these lines” and “okay enough.” Ten years of loving her like a secret he protected from the one person it mattered to.

She slumped a little and drew a porch. The Shack’s, because apparently her heart wanted to hang a “CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE” sign on this conversation. She added a swing. She added a soda can with condensation. She added a tiny doodle of his dumb baby goatee, because the present version of him was here too and her stupid brain kept overlaying them like transparent pages.

“Smelling their hair,” she murmured without realising she’d said it out loud. The pencil stopped, mid-line. Her cheeks heated again. Wow, Mabel. Top-tier cool. Great job not replaying that.

But she did replay it. All of it. The list he’d stumbled through that night. Looking at the person more than other stuff in the room, the way your eyes just… find them, the smiling just because, the remembering everything about them because your priorities, the doing what’s best for them even if they didn’t know it. Especially if they don’t know it. Check, check, check, check, and big, loud check.

He had told her everything without saying her name. He’d practically handed her a decoder ring and she’d put it on and pretended it was a cute accessory. Now the message was bright as a billboard: HE LOVES YOU. In ten-foot letters. With arrow lights. And her reaction was to… draw an RV and think about curtains.

Because what else could she do? He’d built a whole life around the idea that the kindest thing was distance. If she ran at him with a huge banner that said “I KNOW,” he’d dodge. If she cornered him and demanded, he’d lock up and turn into a statue marked DO NOT TOUCH. If she tried to fix it, he’d be gentle and say “It’s okay, Mabes,” and keep choosing the hallway.

The pencil slid into a circle on its own and she realised she was drawing a ring. Not that kind of ring, calm down, brain. The inner ring from the device, that soft violet, that hum. She shaded it lightly. It looked a little like a portal and a little like a halo and a little like a bruise. Appropriate.

She tapped the eraser against the paper, thinking of Future Mabel on the couch, of the book and the water glass with the sad mint, of the “we rescheduled a lot lately” smile. Did Future Her love Ethan? She believed she did. Mabel believed she believed it. But that belief felt like those cardigans, soft, warm, and meant for keeping wind out, not for running into storms. Love wasn’t supposed to be only wind-proof. Love was supposed to be “double rainbow, come look!” Love was supposed to be glitter in the toaster (okay maybe not the toaster). Love was supposed to be two brains leaning into the same ridiculous problem and making it worse, then better, then hilarious. Love was supposed to be…

She set the pencil down and pressed her palms to her eyes until colours popped like tiny fireworks. Okay. So: he kept loving her. Ten years did not dim it. Distance did not kill it. He kept loving her from a safe perimeter because he thought that was the good ending. That sucked. She could say that without bursting into flames. It sucked.

What didn’t suck: she knew now. That put a hole in the hallway wall. Small, but a hole. She could shout through it. She could pass snacks. She could, at the very least, refuse to let “okay enough” be the final draft. He wasn’t the only author here. She could… collaborate. (Ha. Art school joke. Someone give her a degree.)

She dragged the sketchbook closer and started a new page. Big block letters at the top: PROJECT: FIX THE FUTURE (WORKING TITLE). Under that, she drew a stick-figure Dipper with a flashlight and labeled it “Bro.” She drew herself with a cape and a glitter cannon and labeled it “Sis (but more sparkles).” Then she drew a dotted line between them with the world’s least helpful map symbols: a cardigan emoji, a pine tree, a box that said DO NOT OPEN, a tiny RV, a porch swing, a lightning bolt, a heart she did not label because she was not insane and did not need someone else finding this and learning her brother was in love with her.

She blew a raspberry at the heart anyway, because who was she kidding. She could pretend to be subtle, but she was Mabel Pines. Subtlety and she nodded at each other in hallways, they were not friends.

Her phone buzzed again. A text from Dipper: First day = sorting Ford’s lab inventory. Found five jars labelled “definitely not cursed.” Unsure. She grinned before she remembered how to be mad at him for sacrificing himself on the altar of her so-called stability. The grin won.

She typed back: Open the third one. If cursed, it’s on me. Then added a winky face so he’d know she was joking (mostly). Three dots. Then: Nice try. Also no. Also send a photo of your lunch so I can judge if you are eating properly.

She could practically hear his voice. She could also hear the other voice in her head. The “good ending” one, and she wanted to shove it into a locker.

Mabel flipped one more page and drew a bed. Just a bed. No faces in it. No labels. She filled it with patterns, cats, stars, tiny pine trees, a swatch of the deep blue that only he remembered the name of. She wasn’t going to write what it meant.

She closed the sketchbook, set it on the desk, and looked around the not-blank room. Curtains (okay, string lights). Plans (okay, doodles). A her-shaped dent in a mattress that squeaked. Somewhere in Oregon, a him-shaped dent in a lab stool and a trench coat on a hook. She was sure he’d hang it carefully, like he did everything, at least when she wasn’t around to make a mess and drag him into it kicking and laughing. She smiled for no good reason and every good reason.

“Okay, Dipper,” she told the room, “If you picked distance because you thought it was good for me… consider this a formal complaint.”

The plant’s googly eyes looked supportive. The fairy lights did their best star impression.

She set her sketchbook on the windowsill, because that’s where plans go. Then she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and let the RV version run one more time, just because. In that one, their future had exactly one bed.

Tomorrow, classes. Soon, sweaters. Eventually, a phone call she’d figure out how to make without saying the wrong true thing. For now, she tugged the blanket up and giggled once into it because she was allowed to be ridiculous even during a crisis. Then she whispered, “Goodnight, Dipper,” to a room that was trying very hard to be hers.

Chapter 9: A not very cute meeting

The party looked exactly like a party should look if you pictured ‘typical college party’: LED lights around the edges of a too-low ceiling, a playlist that kept guessing wrong and then nailing it for one perfect song, a coffee table doing its best under the weight of chips and dips and cups that were absolutely not water. Someone had taped a paper sign to the kitchen door that said “NO GLITTER,” which felt like a personal attack. It was. The host knew her. They learned quickly here.

Mabel had decided to like it anyway. She’d decided to like a lot of things these past few weeks.

She’d come with Tash, a friend she’d made in class, black eyeliner like a superpower, hair in a knot that said “I woke up like this and nailed it.” Tash knew everyone already because Tash collected people the way Mabel collected novelty buttons. Five minutes in, someone handed Mabel a drink with fruit floating in it like tiny buoys. She thanked them, tried it, decided it tasted like fermented fruit salad, then finished it and switched to soda. Soda didn’t pretend to be anything but itself.

“Okay,” Tash said, popping up at her elbow like a magic trick. “Mission status: your first college party. We’re going to have fun, or at least get one excellent story out of it. Ten out of ten scarf choice, by the way.” Tash flicked the end of Mabel’s bright scarf. “Festive without apologising.”

“I don’t apologise for festive,” Mabel said, deadpan, and that got a grin.

They did a lap. They met three Joshes and an Amara and a guy named Finn who was definitely not in their year but made good guacamole. Mabel asked sincere questions about majors and hometowns and worst art assignments so far (“draw with your non-dominant hand while blindfolded” still winning). She was determined to make friends. Plural. Many. If she stacked enough brand-new people between herself and the quiet parts of her brain, maybe the quiet parts would run out of room.

After exactly one and a half laps, Tash leaned in, voice low conspiratorial. “So. What’s the vibe tonight? Are we flirting? Are we practising our polite exit? Are we hook-up-curious?”

Mabel made a face that could have been a no or a maybe if you squinted, but it was a no. “I am… party-curious,” she said. “General fun. Specific no.”

“Specific no as in?” Tash waggled her brows like a cartoon.

“As in no rando lip collisions,” Mabel said. “I’m not opposed to lip collisions as a concept, I just… one-night stands are like ordering dessert and then forgetting to eat dinner. Actually, that sounds amazing and I think I’ve done it before. That was a bad metaphor. You get me, though.”

“I get you,” Tash said, amused. “No getting the D for the Lady Mabelton tonight then.”

“Exactly.” Also, she’d done the high-school boyfriend thing before. She doubted college boys would be much different. Not that she was particularly interested in that sort of activity anyway. Her experiences so far had been. Meh. it probably would have helped if the guy actually cared about her instead of just whipping it out and trying to get it in the right hole. Wow, how strong was that first drink? She normally avoided this kinda language even in her head.

Tash bumped her shoulder. “Permission to scan the room anyway?”

“Permission granted,” Mabel said, feeling a little triumphant because she had an out. She sipped soda and let the party swim around her. A girl in a thrifted bridesmaid dress sang along too loud to a chorus and Mabel loved her instantly. Someone laughed from the kitchen, really laughed, like a sneeze of joy. Good noises.

“Okay,” Tash said, returning with a tiny posse, two guys, one girl, all friendly, all carrying cups. “New people. This is Ethan, business, sophomore. Amaya, printmaking, and James, undecided slash philosophy. Ethan, this is Mabel, illustration, queen of sweater weather.”

Ethan stuck out a hand and did a small bow at the same time, like someone had taught him “charm” from a YouTube tutorial. He was tallish, hair neat but not fussy, open smile, shirt sleeves rolled just enough to say “I can help move a couch.” He radiated “good first impression.” He looked like he had practice being the person your parents liked.

Mabel knew his face from the future like you recognise a friend's childhood photos. The younger of her future. The husband prototype. Whoa.

She shook his hand because she was a functional person. “Hi,” she said. Her voice overshot and landed a little too bright, then steadied. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Ethan said easily. “Tash says you annihilated the perspective assignment.”

Tash shrugged like, sorry, I brag. Mabel waved a hand. “It was a building. Buildings are just boxes that think they’re better than other boxes.”

Ethan laughed. He had the same nice laugh. Clean. He launched into something about a student entrepreneurship club putting on a zine fair, and Amaya jumped in with screen-printing tips, and James mentioned capitalism, which wasn’t relevant, but philosophy majors were like that. Mabel nodded in the right places and added jokes at the correct intervals. She was good at ‘friendly.’ She just wasn’t… engaged.

It felt like standing in front of a painting that critics loved and feeling nothing. She kept waiting for the click. She tried. She was not a sabotaging person. But while Ethan talked, in a pleasant way, with eye contact and no interrupting, Mabel’s brain kept sliding sideways, like a rug over slick floor.

He asked her about her hometown. She answered. He asked about why illustration, and she said something honest about telling stories with pictures like sneaking a secret past someone’s guard. He smiled and said that sounded “marketable.” She smiled back because she had manners and did not say Okay, but also magic, and I fought a thing from another dimension and briefly married a gnome and punched a unicorn.

The longer she stood there, the more the wrongness sharpened. He didn’t do anything wrong. He was… nice. Always nice. To the point where she started to hate the word. Soft, neutral, will not offend your aunt. The future version of him had been exactly that, just with a mortgage. This one was the starter pack.

When he said, “We’re hosting a mixer next week; you should swing by,” she heard the word mixer and thought of cardigans and polite kisses at doors. She thought of a kitchen island that didn’t want glitter. She thought of Future Dipper’s jaw going quiet.

Her smile got tight around the edges. “Maybe,” she said.

“Totally,” Tash answered for her, because Tash was helpful and also matchmaking for sport. “We’ll check it out.”

Mabel needed air.

She made her excuses (“bathroom,” a classic), bumped elbows and “nice to meet you”s, and slipped sideways through the living room until the hallway spat her into blessed night.

The backyard was a rectangle of dark cut out of the party’s warm square. Someone had stuck two tiki torches into the dirt. They were unlit, because why would they be lit? A laundry line sagged near the fence. The music inside turned itself down to a muffled heartbeat, everything else replaced by the quiet hiss that cities made when they forgot to be loud.

She sat on the back step and let her shoulders droop. The air smelled like grass and someone’s overwatered basil plant. Her soda hissed politely when she twisted the top off again. She took a long swallow and stared at her shoes like they had answers.

She had just met the person Future Her married.

That sentence should have felt like fireworks or fate. It felt like… nothing. Or, not nothing. It felt like the sound a microwave makes when it’s done: polite beep, no meal. He was objectively likable. She could list the reasons his resume would impress a parent. He asked questions. He didn’t talk over people. He would absolutely remember your birthday and text “good luck” before your review. He was the kind of guy who labelled cords.

She closed her eyes and tried an exercise: put him in the chair.

The Dipper-shaped chair in her head, the one by the window in a kitchen that smelled like pancakes, the one that always had some version of him in it, kid-him, current-him, trench-coat-him, pen tapping, brain thinking.

Okay. Ethan. She put Business Ethan in the chair. He sat there politely. He asked about rent. He offered to organise the spice rack. He bought the good coffee because it was recommended. He did not look up startled and smiling weirdly when she blurted “double rainbow!” He smiled at the appropriate rainbow time, then returned to a spreadsheet.

The mental furniture protested. The chair didn’t fit him. Or he didn’t fit it. He kept turning it into an office chair.

She scrunched her nose and tried a slightly different layout. Future’s living room with the quiet couch. Ethan in the chair? That worked because it was his chair, in his world. But when she swapped in her fridge doodles and Dipper’s notes, the whole scene looked shy and wrong.

She opened her eyes and stared at the laundry line again. A sock flapped once “I feel ya buddy,” she mumbled.

The party swelled behind her and then dipped. Someone whooped. Laughter, the good kind, spilled through a window and made the basil plant nod like even plants agreed parties were better inside. She could go back in. She would, in a minute. She just needed to breathe and not lie to herself.

She rolled her cold bottle against her cheek. Tash’s voice replayed, amusement in it: Are we hook-up-curious? She was not. Not here. Not now. Maybe not for a while. Her stomach did a tiny twist at the idea of kissing anyone who wasn’t—

She dropped her head into her hands for a second and then let it thunk back against the siding, gentle. The siding was cool. Cool siding did not have opinions. Good.

Her brain, traitor, lined up the last few weeks like index cards and flicked them one by one. Future Mabel’s house. Future Ethan’s polite kiss. Future Dipper’s arm around her for exactly one second longer than necessary when she’d hugged him goodbye, the way his breath had hitched, the way he’d locked it down before anything could come of it. Present Dipper’s voice in the dark, talking about love without saying her name. Smelling hair, creep, ha, shut up, Mabel. Eyes following without trying. Doing what’s best for them even if they don’t know it. The good ending. The hallway.

She imagined calling Ethan “babe” and immediately wanted to rinse her mouth out with soda.

She imagined Ethan learning her weird, really learning it, and could not get the image to stay. 

She imagined Dipper in that chair and didn’t have to try. He was just… there. He’d always been there. He’d tilt the pen and ask her how many cats was too many cats on a sweater (trick question), and he’d pretend he didn’t want pancakes and then eat half of hers, and he’d make fun of her for naming the plant and then water it when she forgot. He’d remember the exact blue she made and she still couldn’t get over that little fact. He’d be annoying about lightbulbs and adorable about safety instructions. He would look at her and the way he looked would make the rest of the room blur a little.

She groaned, quietly, at the sky. One star peeped through light pollution like a nosy neighbour. “Don’t judge me,” she told it.

The door opened for a second; warm party spilled out and then cut off. Someone darted past to the grass. Another group laughed near the fence. Mabel stayed put.

She tried the chair swap again out of stubbornness. Ethan in the chair. Dipper out of frame. It didn’t stick. Her brain pushed back like a magnet the wrong way around.

It would be so much easier if she just liked Dipper instead.

It would be so much easier if she just liked Dipper instead.

The sentence echoed in her head. She stared at the dark yard and tried it again, slower, making each word step on purpose.

It. Would. Be. So. Much. Easier. If. She. Just. Liked. Dipper. Instead.

Her brain, ever helpful, started editing the mental slideshow. Ethan slid off the stage like a polite extra who realised he was in the wrong scene. No hard feelings; he just… wasn’t needed here. The chair in her imaginary kitchen became what it had always been, the Dipper spot, and then, just for fun, the chair turned into a couch. Their couch. Soft throw. Shared blanket. His socked feet hooked under her calves while they watched something nerdy and argued about whether it counted as a documentary if there were laser guns.

And the bed? One bed, obviously. What moron would ever let him sleep in a bed other than hers? It had starry sheets she picked and a too-big sweater tossed at the foot that he’d ignore despite his neatness, since it smelled like her and he liked that apparently. They’d fall asleep in a tangle that made sense to them and only them, the way they’d accidentally done by a campfire and in a borrowed guest room and a million Saturday mornings. Her brain put them there without effort, like it had been holding the blueprint under the couch the whole time.

She flipped the slide again: RV version. Curtains ugly on purpose. Cupboards that rattled. They’d park by a beach or a forest or a parking lot behind a diner that sold pancakes 24/7 and called her “hon.” He’d run a line of bells across the door because safety, but he’d have happy, smiling eyes instead of darting, danger-seeking ones, and she’d hang a mobile that clinked in the breeze because pretty. Rules on the whiteboard (his), doodles around the rules (hers), radio music every morning, her stealing his pencil and then tucking it behind his ear when he forgot it was there.

Mountain cabin? Sure. Porch swing that didn’t squeak because he would fix it and pretend he didn’t want to name it (she’d try and he’d veto it with something nerdy and awesome). Fire that kept everything comfy. She’d knit ridiculous blankets, he’d label the toolbox, and they’d both lose their minds when raccoons stole their snacks and they had to set up a tiny raccoon deterrent system that was absolutely humane and maybe a little glitter-based.

Shack summers? Yes, please. Soos’s van alive by sheer stubbornness. Wendy dropping by to tease him and high-five her and then vanish out a window. Stan grumbling about rent while secretly putting a jar of emergency gummy worms on the counter. Ford pretending not to watch them team up and solve a weird problem faster than either could alone. There were a hundred versions. In every one, the couch stayed theirs, and the bed stayed theirs, and the world outside could be whatever it wanted.

The kiss problem tried to wiggle back into view. Future Ethan’s polite hairline kiss, deadlines and courtesy. It had been fine the way white walls were fine. Her mouth didn’t want fine. It wanted—

—Dipper heading for the door with his pack on and her catching him by the collar and saying “wait,” and then their mouths finding the right angle like they’d practised in some other lifetime. It’d start cute because everything with him started cute. His nose would bump hers because he always forgot how tall he was and she would laugh into his mouth and his hand would come up, careful, along her jaw like he was asking permission even though she’d already given it by existing in his general area. He’d taste like mint or coffee and that paper-and-cinnamon of him, and he’d make that small sound she’d heard him make one or two nights in the shack when he thought she was asleep and he hadn’t had a chance to relieve stress during the day. His fingers would find the back of her neck. Her fingers would find the edge of his hairline (soft; she knew that already), and the second kiss would stop being a goodbye and start being a “are you sure you need to go?” and then he’d tell her that it could wait 30 minutes and his hand would slip under her sweater and cup her boob and she’d moan into his mouth while she palmed down to his pants and—

Okay, wow, that ran away from her. She sat very still on the step because moving felt like admitting how much she wanted exactly that, like right now, like yesterday, like always.

Maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t have an interest in all that R-rated stuff. Maybe the boys in high school just didn’t excite her because they weren’t what she wanted. Maybe she needed something different than a guy just wanting to check off his own boxes. Maybe she needed a certain twin who cared more about her boxes (hehe) than anything else. 

Her brain chased the implication to the next checkpoint. If she reciprocated— no, if she said it plainly, showed it with the way she always showed everything, then he didn’t have to keep doing the “good ending” where he stood outside her life like a guard at a museum. He could be inside the exhibit. He wouldn’t have to pick “distance” as a love language. He could still do the work (because of course he would; she loved him partly because he was exactly that maddening kind of good), but he wouldn’t have to do it alone. She could come sometimes. She could be the person at the camp he trusted without reading her the rules twice. She could be the voice in his radio that he didn’t mute. On the days she couldn’t come, she’d be the reason he came back fast. And on the days she needed him, he’d be there because that’s what he’d always wanted to be anyway.

Her little movie kept sprinting, because once you open that door it doesn’t tiptoe, it stampedes. They were grocery shopping and arguing about which cereal qualified as “breakfast” and which was “dessert lying.” They were at a thrift store, her holding up the ugliest sweater to see if his face did the scrunch she loved. They were in a library, her asleep on his shoulder with a book upside down and his hand on her knee like a placeholder. They were in a tent again, minus the pillow wall, plus twenty extra degrees of permission. They were on a ridiculous date she designed, mini-golf and neon milkshakes, and then on one he designed, planetarium and meteor shower, and both were somehow perfect because the point wasn’t the activity, it was each other. They were kissing in a doorway and then laughing because Wendy had wolf-whistled from a tree. They were falling asleep in front of a fire, her cheek on his chest, his hand drawing nothing in particular on the back of her sweater because he liked the way she leaned into it.

She pinged back to the present like a rubber band. Nice fantasy, Mabel. But all of that assumed one crucial thing: that she liked him back that way. That she could see him that way. That her brain hadn’t just gone to a “what-if” place because the future had poked her with a sharp stick.

She tested the thought like a chair in a store. Sit. Lean. Bounce a little.

Could she see him that way? Could she fall in love with her twin brother?

Her body answered before her brain, which was rude and also helpful. She thought about waking tangled in the sleeping bag and how her whole self had gone, yes, this, more, much more, please. She thought about the way her stomach did a flip when he blushed because she said something dumb on purpose. She thought about how the air felt different when he walked into a room, like someone tuned a radio to a station that made sense. She thought about the way she hunted his face automatically when she laughed, how the laugh wasn’t finished unless he saw it. She thought about how he smelled when she was pressed into his shirt and how that scent had become her favourite. She thought about the “okay enough” mumble by the fire and how protective she’d felt, like his future was something she could tackle and wrestle into a better shape by sheer annoying force. She thought about how many times she’d wanted to kiss his stupid mouth and never actually realised since she’d just filed it under “cuddles plus,” except cuddles-plus had been a lie because the plus had been the whole point. She thought about getting changed in a room with him and taking an extra long time to take her clothes off, hoping he would take a peek. She thought about the way she took a peek herself and the little arc of lightning that shot up from her crotch at the sight of his naked back.

She thought about the chair and the bed again before she had to bury her face in her hands for a second because her cheeks were on fire and the star was probably judging.

It wasn’t new. That was the most unfair part. It wasn’t a switch flipping. It was a light she’d been working under for years, only now she looked up and noticed it and read the label. She had always wanted him next to her, had always arranged the world so he would be, had always treated distance like a prank the universe played that she would immediately undo.

She exhaled, long. “Oh,” she told the basil plant. “Okay. Okay.”

The plan she’d sketched on her windowsill earlier —PROJECT: FIX THE FUTURE— rolled itself up like a scroll and tapped her on the forehead. It needed an edit. A big one. Not “keep us from drifting.” Not “maintain proximity through clever scheduling.” That was a cardigan plan. She needed a glitter plan.

New title: PROJECT: CLOSER THAN EVER.

She could almost see the bullet points (not actual bullet points because, hello, Mabel, but star stickers shaped like bullet points) lining up.

Step 1 was simple and terrifying and also not: go to him. Not text. Not email. Not a voice that could be mistaken for a joke. Go. Put her face in front of his face, put her hands on his shoulders so his escape artist instincts couldn’t bolt, and say the sentence that would change everything. Or don’t say it. Do it. She was very good at showing.

He’d panic for exactly a half-second. He’d go deer-in-headlights and then scientist-in-lab and then boy-who-loved-her-since-forever and then… then he’d kiss back. Not because she forced it (gross), but because the hardest part, the part where he believed he wasn’t allowed to want what he wanted, would be over. She could practically hear him: “Mabel, we can’t—” and then his hands would forget that argument and answer for him. Maybe he’d kiss her hard. Maybe his tongue would go in her mouth, and he’d push her against a wall, trying to press against her. Maybe she’d love it. Maybe she’d feel how excited he was through his pants. Maybe she’d be pretty excited herself.

She rocked forward on the step, excitement fizzing through her in a way that felt suspiciously like relief dressed as adrenaline. The logistics sprinted to keep up (bus timetables, a backpack, snacks, sweater count, would Ford be cool? Yes, Ford would scientifically evaluate and then pretend to disapprove, Stan would call it “weird” and then slip them twenty bucks for pizza). Her classes would survive one emergency sibling trip. She’d email a professor a sketch of a raccoon to soften them up. It would be fine. It would be better than fine.

She glanced back at the kitchen window and caught her own reflection for a second: hair a little wild, eyes too bright, smile trying to sneak onto her face. She didn’t look scared. She looked like herself. The version who made choices and then bedazzled them so no one could undo them. She looked like she’d never wear a cardigan in her life.

“Revision accepted,” she told the night, because why not make this official?

She stood, dusted imaginary dust off her skirt (nice try, outdoor grime), and checked her phone for bus times like she was checking the weather: nothing dramatic, just a necessary condition. There was one in the morning if she packed fast. There was a later one if she chickened out for twenty minutes and then came to her senses. Either way, gravity had picked a direction, and it was toward him.

She texted Tash something noncommittal about Irish exiting (“I owe you a dance IOU; redeem anytime!”), stuck her head back into the party long enough to wave, then slipped down the side of the house into the cool sidewalk night. Her steps felt bouncy. Not because everything was solved. Because she’d finally stopped arguing with the obvious.

On the walk home she let herself say it out loud, but only to the air, because the air could keep a secret.

“I love him,” she said, and the words didn’t explode either. They just floated up into the air like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I love him, I love him, I love him.”

Back in her room, she flopped on the squeaky mattress and grinned up at the blank square of ceiling that wasn’t going to be blank for very long. She grabbed the sketchbook off the sill and added a new line under her silly doodles:

STEP 1: get on the next bus, find the adorkable, handsome face, and kiss it until he agrees to kiss back as much as he can, for as long as he can, until he passes out. Maybe more. See what happens.

She underlined “handsome” twice and “adorkable” three times, because accuracy mattered. Then she closed the book and hugged it to her chest like a kid with a new toy and also a plan to break the toy and then fix it better.

Tomorrow, transportation. Tomorrow, courage. Tonight, the kind of sleep you only get when you’ve decided to do the thing you should’ve done in the first place.

Notes:

Back for another update.

Proper plot progression and nearing the end with this one huh?

So, big reveal time (don't get too excited). One of the core ideas I wanted to run with for this story was the idea of 'Mabel POV and she loves Dipper but does not realise it'. I wanted to write from the POV of Mabel, who was obviously in love with Dipper but had no idea herself, which was a fun challenge as it's from her perspective. So I had to walk a line of things being more than sibling affection'without being downright romantic, since she wouldn't actively be thinking like that.

Not sure if I pulled it off, but it was fun to write, and this reveal was a real blast to put together since I got to link all the little nods I made towards Mabel liking Dipper into one big chapter.

Fair warning, some of this might come up again next chapter, I like writing it ok? Sue me.

Anyway, let me know what you think about Mabel's romantic realisation, did I write it subtly enough, was it too obvious, or could I have been more blatant?

PS: Will be dropping last chapters next week. Just a heads up.

Chapter 10: 0th Chance

Notes:

Just a quick warning, this is basically the last chapter. The next one is an epilogue.

Mabel got off the bus with only her backpack and a nervous system doing jumping jacks. It was almost noon, the sun had that “you’re late to fun” brightness. She speed-walked, then jogged, then did that weird half-trot thing people do when they want to look casual but also arrive immediately. The trees smelled like Gravity Falls, that special scent that said “is that the gnomes or just the air?” Every step closer to the Shack made her stomach fizz harder. She was ninety-nine-point-a-million percent sure he loved her. That didn’t cancel out nerves. It magnified them in a good/bad/oh-no kind of way.

She had almost texted him eighteen times on the ride. She hadn’t. That was the point. Show up. Face. Words. (Kiss.) No room for Dipper-style tactical retreats. She’d even chewed one piece of gum all the way down to “this tastes like a pencil” and then another piece to make sure she wasn’t going to mint-assault him. Hair: ponytail that wouldn’t stab him. Sweater: river-throat blue, because he remembered it first and she liked that about him more than was probably legal.

Nerves tried to do a drumline on her ribs. She let them. He mattered. That’s why it felt like this. He was Dipper. Her favourite person. Her twin. The risk wasn’t nothing. But she was Mabel Pines, CEO of Leaps Of Faith™. If there was a cliff with a nice view and a sign that said “careful,” she was the one who went, “what if we build a picnic right here?” Anyway, this wasn’t even a cliff. It was a… ramp. A very handsome, Dipper-shaped ramp.

The Mystery Shack finally filled her whole view. They still hadn’t fixed the ‘S’ in the sign. God she loved the place. The rude bell over the door did its familiar “don’t touch me” jangle when she pushed in.

“Open!” Stan barked automatically, then blinked. “Mabel?!” He squinted, then did the full eyebrows-up surprise. “What— you— kid, I thought you were at colour school learning how to hot glue a degree to your wall.”

She grinned so hard it hurt and launched across the floor in three steps to hug him. “Stan!” The hug got a quick, warm squeeze back and a paternal pat-pat that said he was pleased and baffled in equal measure.

He pulled back and looked her over like she was contraband (which he delighted in). “What’s with the backpack? You on the lam? You brought me any of that fancy art-school coffee? The coffee machine still doesn’t work right since Ford ‘upgraded’ it.”

“Just me,” she said, breathless and beaming. “And my plan.” She did not elaborate on the plan. Instead, she did the important thing. “Where’s Dipper?”

“Down in the lab playing ‘Don’t Push That Button’ while Sixer’s out scavenging for whatever wire he swears he doesn’t already have. Said something about calibrating a sensor array and ‘minimal arcing.’ Minimal. As if that’s a thing.”

Mabel’s heart clicked forward since a small part of her sort of hoped he’d be out so she had more time to psyche herself up. The rest of her wanted to jump on his adorably handsome face as soon as she was physically able. “So he’s here here?”

“Here here.” Stan peered, like he was trying to see the thought bubble over her head. “You in trouble? You need bail? Because my policy is fifty percent up front and I keep the mugshot.”

“No trouble,” she said, which was technically true, if you ignored the part where she was about to go do an incest. Cus that’s a thing, yeah. It was illegal. Well, she was pretty sure it was. Didn’t matter. Laws don’t count when there's no cops around. 

“I just… missed my favourite nerd.” She decided on.

Stan’s mouth twitched. “That I believe. Go say hi to him then,” He leaned closer. “And if you pass Soos, tell him the ‘Closed For Lunch’ sign goes the other way. We don’t advertise when we’re not scamming— I mean, selling.”

“On it.” She saluted. Then she hesitated long enough to ask the question her stomach insisted on. “Ford’s out for a while?”

“Hour, maybe two. He only left a bit ago…” Stan smiled a little, the way he only did around her and Dipper. “Kid’ll be happy you’re here.”

She swallowed something warm and stupid that tried to jump up her throat. “I know...” Then she was moving, backpack bumped to one shoulder as she moved to the vending machine.

She popped the panel, punched the code by muscle memory (blessed be summer), and slipped into the narrow passage as the machine swung open with that clanky metal sigh.

She walked down the passage and made sure to make a small checklist to avoid any mishaps from impulsive Mabel.. Breath: mint. Hair: cute ponytail. Sweater: the blue he remembered. Heart: yes, loud. Confidence: in progress, loading bar at 87% and climbing.

She pictured him at the bottom. There were a hundred versions: goggles on, goggles off, flannel rolled to elbows like a magazine cover for Nerds Who Lift Things Carefully, a pen behind his ear he’d forget until she stole it, that little crease he got when he was coaching himself through delicate steps. Hands that belonged with hers and on her and under her clothes and—. Ugh. Okay. Focus. Hands doing science. Science hands.

She reached the bottom. Boards, notes, charts. Jars labelled “definitely not cursed” with a passive-aggressive underline. A device that looked like a desk fan if a desk fan had survived a lightning strike and wanted revenge. It all hummed quietly, as sticknotes were dotted around the place, courtesy of her broski. It felt like the place that belonged solely to Ford was now just a little Dipper as well.

And there, by the main bench, was her twin. Her Dipper.

Back to her at first: fitted tee, overshirt, sleeves pushed up. He had a new nick on his forearm she didn’t recognise (rude; who gave him permission), and the brown leather of his tool belt somehow made him look like a 1950s radio hero. His hair did the stubborn thing. He was studying a scattering of very Ford graphs with a pencil paused mid-air like as he chewed the back of it slightly. There was a smudge on his cheekbone. Of course there was. Her stomach did a little somersault and then stuck the landing with jazz hands.

There it is, she thought, giddy, because she could finally let the word into the room without tackling it: handsome. He looked handsome. He probably always had and her brain had just filed it under “of course he’s nice to look at, he’s your person.” Now the file had a giant neon label. She had to clamp a hand over her mouth for a half-laugh because wow, past Mabel, how did you miss this. She wanted to walk over and thumb the smudge off his cheek and then pretend she was just doing a civic duty. She also wanted to climb him like a tree. She did neither. For now.

He muttered to himself, the Dipper soundtrack. “If we reduce the EM bleed— no, that spikes the harmonic— okay, then adjust here… okay… okay.” The okay was quiet and pleased. She melted a little at the ‘okay’. It was soooooo much better than the ‘okay enough’ from future Dipper. It had none of the resignation and the sadness and the lack of hope. It was interested and a bit excited and passionate and smart. Just like him. She’d make it so that never changed. Never became ‘okay enough’. She’d make it so that ‘okay’ always meant he’d done something fun and cool and a little proud but too embarrassed to brag properly. But that was fine, she’d brag for him. Ideally, while kissing him. Maybe while taking his shirt off— later.

He still hadn’t turned. Good. She had five seconds to do a last-scan of the battlefield. (Not that it was a battle. It was a… joyful ambush.) Entering routes: three. Exit routes: pfft. No exits, all in. Lighting: not exactly flattering but functional. Witnesses: none (thank you, Ford’s errand list). Backup plan: probably should have thought of one (she refused to panic).

She put her backpack down softly by the stairs and crept in another two steps, the soles of her shoes quiet on the concrete. She could hear his pencil scratch and a pleased little hrump from his throat that she desperately wanted to smother with her own mouth. She let herself look because she was allowed to now, because before she’d liked looking at him for normal happy standard twin reasons. Now she still liked looking at him. She just wanted to do it more. Also see more, and do more— LATER!

His mouth did a line when he concentrated. Were his shoulders always this broad? No. No, they weren’t. They weren’t even that broad now, it just seemed that way for some reason. His posture hadn’t quite set into the rigid ‘burdened by choices’ kink in his back that was worn into his future self. Well, not on her watch, his back might get a ‘burdened by Mabel’s unending snuggles and love’ kink, but even then she’d massage it out. And kiss it better. Then lick it better. Then go lower and lower and— GIVE IT A MINUTE, GODAMN!

.Alright, final checks. No she wasn’t stalling, all of this was necessary. Also he was really distracting. But back to the checks.

She patted her pocket: chapstick, check. She bounced once on her heels, just to channel the adrenaline into a physical “whee” so it didn’t explode out of her face at the wrong time. Then she inhaled, and the nerves and joy hit the same gas pedal. She could absolutely do this. She wanted to do this. She was Mabel “chaos cannon” Pines and he was Dipper “overprepared” Pines and together they were the kind of team that could beat a world ending demon triangle if it got lippy. They could handle a kiss. They could handle more than a kiss— 30 FREAKING SECONDS!!!

Okay. Enough pre-game. Time to begin the actual play

She stepped into the brighter circle of lab light.

“Hey, you,” she said.

He turned, pencil still in his hand, smudge still on his cheekbone. And Mabel’s plan (walk, speak, maybe touch his sleeve, ease into kiss) exploded into a thousand irrational pieces. 

Her feet made the decision her brain was busy drafting. She sprinted the last three steps, launched, and tackled him with her arms out because her whole brain was screaming, “DIPPER HERE! CLOSER! CUDDLES! KISSES! LOVE! MINE!”

The pencil pinged off the bench, stool scooted, his “Mabel?!” came out halfway between baffled and delighted, and then she was up on her toes with fistfuls of overshirt and kissing him.

Not a peck. Not a test or a light brush. A big one, sure and warm and slightly breathless because she’d just sprinted and her heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt. He was solid and surprised. She could feel the half-second of his brain trying to boot every ethical subroutine at once. Then his hands remembered her, and he steadied them both. He didn’t pull away. He also didn’t surge forward. He just held there, caught between centuries of caution and ‘Mabel is literally, actually kissing me.’ At least she hoped he was.

She kept her lips on his, not moving them much despite wanting to. She stopped herself from pushing her tongue forward with sheer force of will and simply kissed him.

She broke for air because oxygen was still a thing (a very annoying thing). She looked at his cute face. Eyes wide, pupils massive, mouth twitching between surprise and a smile (she really, really hoped it was a smile). He looked like someone had handed him a treasure map and also set the map on fire.

“Mabel,” he said, low, husky, adorable, perfect. “You don’t— You don’t have to do this for me.”

“I’m not doing it for you, dummy,” she said, a little exasperated (how did he make all the connections and realise she figured out he liked her so quickly? Her twin really was stupidly smart). “I’m doing it for me. I meant it. I’m here. I’m doing this on purpose. Also, please tell me I didn’t headbutt a doomsday button.”

His brain tried to reboot. You could see it behind his eyes, all the rules he’d written for himself jamming the door. “I don’t want you to feel cornered, or like you owe me anything, or— or regret this later because it’s me and I’m…” He flailed a hand that usually did charts. “Me.”

“Buddy. I took a bus across two zip codes with one backpack to do that on purpose. If this is a joke, it’s the least funny one I’ve ever committed to.” She planted her hands on his shoulders and forced him to look straight at her. 

“So that’s Exhibit A. Now we move onto exhibit B. Casual physical contact: me. All the time. In case you don’t remember how I like to watch movies with my feet on your lap or how, when we watched them on your laptop in bed, I’d snuggle into you and use you as a hot water bottle. Not to mention our last time adventure when we slept in the same bed like every night we could. And you—” she poked his chest lightly “—did not hate it.

“That’s just normal twin stuff—” Dipper started.

“Which moves us on to exhibit C: remember camp? Sleeping bag? The whole ‘oops, pillow wall slipped to outer space’ situation?”

Colour shot up his neck. “We were cold.”

“And warm,” she said, cheerful and mean in that sister way because he was being dense about himself. “And attached. And I did not move. You know why? Because I didn’t want to. Because I liked it.”

“Mabel—”

“Nope, not done. Exhibit D: When I fell asleep, you put your hand up my shirt” He blushed and stammered a little, but she pressed on. “I don’t think it was on purpose, and I didn’t really know it at the time, but I very much liked it. Which should have been obvious by the fact that I made zero, and I mean zero, attempt to move away, or move your hand. That's not even mentioning when we got changed in the same room, and I was basically begging for you to peek at me. I mean, I took, like, an extra 3 minutes to take my freaking skirt and sweater off Dipper. How the heck did you miss that?”

“Wait, that was on purpose?! I didn’t even— I just kind of blacked out from the noises…”

“Yeah, dummy. Well. Maybe not, like, fully on purpose. I didn’t totally know why I was doing it. But in hindsight, it's pretty obvious.

He made a small, helpless sound that was somehow both laughter and “your impossible.”

“Exhibit E: I literally just kissed you and my only regret is that I stopped to list exhibits.” She rocked forward on her toes, very much not stopping the steady eye contact drill she was doing on his poor soul. “So. Could we please do that again? Please please please please.”

The last pleases came out a rush because her patience had a very short leash and his mouth looked very busyable.

He stared at her like she’d just redefined the laws of physics and handed him a manual. His hands flexed at her waist, not pulling yet (she really wanted them to already). 

“You figured it out,” he said, almost a question, almost a confession.

“Yeah,” she said, softer now. “I figured it out. It took too long and a time machine and a trench coat and seeing exactly the future I don’t want but... I know.” She lifted one hand and tapped the smudge on his cheek with her thumb. “I know.”

His eyes did that tiny close-open with a hint of tears. “I didn’t— I wasn’t going to— You weren’t supposed to have to deal with—”

“Hey.” She nudged his forehead with hers, gentle. “I am choosing this. That’s the deal, okay? Whatever plan you had is scrapped. We’re doing the Mabel Plan now, the one where we stay together no matter what. Step one was ‘get to you.’ Step two was ‘kiss your face.’ We are currently between steps two and two-and-a-half.”

He almost smiled. It was the close-lipped, stunned kind, but it was real. “What’s two-and-a-half?”

“Kiss your face again,” she said, dead serious. “And then probably again, and again, and a few more times after that. And then talk with our words, because yes, I know. But I am not leaving this lab with only one kiss on the tally.”

He let out a breath that sounded like he’d been holding it all week. “You’re sure.”

She leaned back enough to look him straight on. “Dipper Pines, I am so sure I could knit the word ‘sure’ across a sweater and mail it to every dimension. I—” her throat did a small hop; okay, feelings “—I want you. In the normal ways and the nerd ways and the ‘let me sit on your lap while you explain math to me’ ways. I want the RV curtain argument and the porch swing and the bed that squeaks and the boring Tuesdays and the not-boring ‘oops, a cryptid’ Thursdays. With you.”

He laughed a little. It was music. She wanted to hear that sound every day from now until forever.

His laugh broke, bright and disbelieving, and then turned into something that was almost a sob and wasn’t. She’d clearly lost him with the RV part of her explanation but he probably got the gist. He understood her better than anyone after all.

He looked at her in a way she hadn’t realised she missed. Because she hadn’t realised he’d stopped doing it. Straight-on, no blink. Then she realised why he’d stopped. She saw all the extras in it. The catalogue of details. The unhidden wanting that he’d probably struggled to keep away from her for so long. But now there was relief at not having to turn away to hide. He reached up and tucked a flyaway behind her ear. That tiny, practical gesture almost undid her more than the first kiss. 

He swallowed. “Last check.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned in until their noses almost bumped. “Last check passed. Kiss your sister, Dipper Pines.”

He flinched like the word sister had pricked him. She almost frowned. She might have if she wasn’t so deliciously happy. But she had to make sure he knew that she wasn’t throwing anything they had away, just adding to it 

“Kiss your twin,” she insisted, soft. “The one who came here because she chose you.”

He exhaled and moved in this time, his eyes closing a little as he did.

The second kiss landed different. Less surprise, more yes. He met her halfway. His hand moved, careful, to her jaw, thumb brushing once along the hinge in such a delicate way that she would swear he was holding fractured glass. Her knees decided that stability was overrated. Fine, legs, do your thing. His mouth caught the rhythm of hers. Kissing him was… it made sense. Which was odd since the whole world was gone and light had stopped working and sound seemed like a slosh of pleasantness rather than anything recognisable. If she’d had capacity for thought, maybe she’d be able to recognise the way that kissing Dipper was somehow the second-best thing to happen today, because now that he was kissing back? Yeah, she was gonna get addicted to this. Big time.

They broke for air. She stayed close because distance was cancelled now. His forehead dipped to hers like usual. “I really didn’t think,” he murmured, “you’d ever want—”

“Hi,” she said, and poked his sternum lightly. “I am the one who you always helped out in school. The one whose literal life you’ve saved on at least a dozen occasions. The one who other people find annoying a lot because I always want to do something and can never sit still.” he smiled a little and almost spoke but she wasn’t done “I’m the one who cried into you when that asshole Dave broke up with me after prom. The one who you bought ice cream for whenever my cramps got bad. The one who got to use your room like a second art studio because even when you were busy you always made time for me even if it was just humouring my dumb jokes and ideas…” She nearly finished. He was silent now.

“I’m the one who fell in love with a stupidly caring twin who refused to be anything but amazing for me whenever I needed it. I’m the one who had to grow up and never held onto a boyfriend because everyone fell short of the guy who refused to let me down and the one time he did he trekked through a literal apocalypse to make it up to me. But you’re the one who I’ve always belonged with and didn’t even notice…” she smiled. There were tears in her eyes now. So dumb. It was supposed to be a happy thing too. “How didn’t you pick up on any of the clues super detective? You're supposed to be the smart one. We could have had this years ago…”

He looked at her like he wanted to laser her tears away for daring to make her sad. Stupid. They were happy tears.

“I caught some clues. I just… refused to interpret them because if I got it wrong I—” His jaw worked. “I didn’t want to put you in a position where you had to fix me. We— we need to talk about this properly.”

“We will,” she promised. “After I finish proving to your brain that this is real.” She poked his chest again. “And after you admit you love sniffing my hair.”

His ears went red. “That was— I— You— that’s—”

“Adorable,” she said. “Also legally binding. You owe me at least six more hair sniffs. Because I actually really like the idea that you like how I smell that much. Oh, and at least one make-out session that makes me forget my own name and possibly some of algebra. Never needed it anyway”

He made a noise that should not have been that cute from a grown man and might have been panic or joy or both. “Mabel.”

She softened. “I know you were trying to be good,” she said. “I know you drew lines and stuck to them because you thought that’s what kept me safe. But you made a big mistake. You didn’t consult your twin. Because if you did, I’d have told you I pick you dummy. I pick us, this, kisses and hugs and all that jazz. I pick it every time. Over everything. In every way. So next time just talk to me Broski”

He nodded; she could feel it against her forehead. “I didn’t want to burden you.”

“You are not a burden,” she said, sharp and quick because no sir. Not a chance in any hell she would let him think that for even a split second. The thought alone that he’d think like that annoyed the hell out of her to the point it actually made her a little mad.

So she was a bit forceful with her next words rather than tender and caring. “It’s never been anyone else, you idiot. You are my favourite. You’ve always been my favourite. The only difference now is I’m going to kiss you about it.”

He shut his eyes briefly. He was probably filing that sentence under Something I Didn’t Dare Want To Hear and Now I Did, What Do I Do With My Hands. (Answer: keep them anywhere on her and use them to pull her close or at least hold her in place. He passed.)

It seemed her words had managed to break through that stupid self-doubt, low self-esteem crap that she wanted to tear into shreds because how dare anyone talk about him like that, even him. It didn’t matter how many times she needed to say it. She would. Even if he kept up with the “I’m not good enough” junk she’d just shove it back in his face and tell him over and over and over that yes he was. That only he was. Just him. Just Dipper.

She knew it had worked because he smiled, really smiled, the one that came from way down in a way so different from Future Dipper’s smile that she burst with pride and euphoria. Future Dipper’s smile was constrained, worn out, barely hanging on. This smile wasn’t that. The smile that her Dipper wore was perfect and full of life and love and longing in a way that made her want to squeal. 

“For the record, I would like that,” he said.

“Great, because I would like it, too.” She brushed her thumb over that smudge on his cheekbone (still rude; still hot) and then kissed him again just because she could. He kissed back and she melted again. He was still careful but not apologetic now, and she filed away a thousand little details for later weaponised use: the way his fingers pressed a little tighter when she hummed into his mouth. The way his breath hitched when she nipped his lip (lightly! Taking things slow!), the way he chased after her when she finally had to break things off so she could breathe for a second.

When they paused again, she rested her chin on his chest and grinned up at him. “See? No regrets.”

He glanced helplessly at her mouth again. “I’d never regret getting kissed by you,” he responded automatically, dazed and delighted and Dipper as ever.

“Good.” She squeezed his shirt in her fists as something dumb like letting go was so far off the agenda it wasn’t even funny. 

“Ok, couple things. I am absolutely going to keep grabbing your sleeve and stealing your pens and putting my feet on your lap. Also, if you ever try that ‘distance is for your own good’ thing again, I will hunt you down, tie you down and make out with you naked until you change your mind.”

He laughed into her hair (oh no, hair smelling, she was going to combust). “Jesus Mabel....” But he wasn’t done, even if he did seem very non-distressed by her plan. Remembering that for later, maybe tonight. Maybe while he was in the room. Maybe while he was sleeping next to her. Maybe with him helping.

“Can we go slow, though? Not because I don’t want— I do,” he said, cheeks pink, “but I want to do this right. Make sure I don’t mess up and… I want to make you happy properly…”

She nodded instantly. “I like slow. Slow has, like, two thousand kisses in it.” She pecked him once more to demonstrate. “Also dates. Also holding hands in public and letting Pacifica scream into a pillow about it. Also me living here for weekends sometimes and stealing your clothes and wearing nothing underneath. Also—”

He kissed her quick to stop the list and it worked and she made a pleased noise that sounded a lot like a moan. Horny Mabel was in full force, maybe going slow would be harder than she thought. Didn’t matter. It’d be fun. He’d be there with her, kissing her, laughing with her, snuggling with her. Everything else was just something to look forward to.

They made it as far as the stairs before she decided stairs were dumb and also in the way of kissing. He locked up the lab and she stole one more quick one in the doorway, then another on the first landing, then another at the squeaky third step that had always tattled on late-night snack runs. By the time they reached the attic, she was laughing against his mouth because it was very difficult to walk and also kiss and also not trip over him. Not that he seemed to mind.

The door gave its familiar creak. Same slant of ceiling, same moth-eaten rug, same twin beds that she now realised were criminally far away from each other. Her sweater from three summers ago still hung on the bedpost like a tiny flag that read MABEL WAS HERE (AND WILL ALWAYS BE). She toed the door closed with her heel and turned, already beaming.

He looked unsure for half a second, stupid old habits, but the unsure dissolved when she stepped into him and cupped his jaw. “Hi again,” she said. He answered with a relieved exhale and then kissed her like they had time. Which they did. (At least until the rude bell, Ford, or an invading raccoon.)

This one went deeper on purpose. She brushed her mouth to his and felt him meet her there, patient and present. When she skimmed the tip of her tongue to ask, he understood immediately and parted for her. It was warm and careful and a teeny bit clumsy in the way firsts are, and she loved it so much her knees were basically jelly at this point. She also slightly hated the fact that this wasn’t her first kiss. Because she was sure it was Dipper’s and he deserved her firsts even if she couldn’t give them anymore. He steadied her hips like he’d been born knowing how to catch her, and she damn near swooned right then and there.

They bumped into the end of her old bed and kind of half-sat, half-tumbled onto the quilt. He kept one hand braced on the mattress since he was probably still worried about someone coming in and wanted to make sure he could jerk away at a moment's notice if he needed to. It was adorable and also unnecessary because she had zero plans of going anywhere except closer. She slid her fingers into his hair (soft, stubborn, her favourite) and felt him shiver just slightly, which she pretended not to notice so he wouldn’t get self-conscious about being extremely, devastatingly kissable. A weird thing to get embarrassed about sure, but he was Dipper so he’d pull it off, the goofball.

They came up for air eventually, stupid tyrant lungs. Foreheads together. Her ponytail had given up and her hair was everywhere..

“Okay?” he asked, voice wrecked in the nicest way.

“Nope, not even close. So, so so so, much better,” she said, equally wrecked, equally nice.

He smiled, then looked at the ceiling beam like it might have the script for what to say next. It didn’t. So she helped.

“Tell me something,” she said, and tapped his chest twice, right where his heart did the drumline for her. “When… when did you know you liked me? Like, wanted to kiss me sort of like me, not usual twin stuff?”

He was silent for a moment. “...Those were hard years,” he said, his voiced toned to sad in a way that she wanted to kiss better (she could do that now. Yay).

“Yeah?” she said quietly, letting him talk.

“I wanted to be good,” he said simply. “And normal. And… supportive.” He scraped a hand through his hair and gave her the rueful smile that she loved and hated at the same time. “I tried really hard to be the guy who made popcorn and did post-breakup triage and didn’t hover. But I—” He huffed a short, embarrassed laugh. “I hated feeling like I was a problem for having feelings. So I just… didn’t show them.”

She let her thumb coast along his cheekbone, over that permanent smudge shadow. “You weren’t a problem,” she said, because that needed to be the first thing that got stapled to this conversation. “I just didn’t…”

He nodded once, but the old reflex crossed his face anyway. “When you kissed someone at that winter carnival and came home grinning like a comet, I went to the roof and… memorised constellations for an hour so I could be calm. That’s stupid.”

“That’s extremely you,” she corrected. The roof memory poked her in the ribs; she’d wondered where he’d gone that night, assumed he was being mysterious and cool to try and make up for the fact that he was ‘too cool for carnivals’ (which she now realised was code for not wanting to see her on a date with another guy, ugh). “How long?” she asked. “When did you know?”

“Freshman year,” he said. “First month. Maybe week two.”

Her breath caught. “That early?”

“You wore that sweater with the tiny stars and spilled hot chocolate on it and laughed instead of panicking,” he said, gaze unfocusing on the memory. “You made fun of my attempt at a moustache that I was gonna debut in highschool and then bought me the razor I was too embarrassed to ask Mom for. You asked if we could take the same electives ‘for totally real homework reasons’—” he made little air quotes “—and all I could think was ‘I want to be in every room you’re in forever.’ It… surprised me. Cus it wasn’t the first time I felt like that. But it was the first time I also wanted no one else to be in the room with us.”

She swallowed around a lot of feelings that were trying to come up. Some were the good kind that made her want to pull him down and say thank you with her whole mouth. Some were the prickly kind that said hey, how did you not realise this perfect guy was hopelessly totally in love with you? Both were fair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and his head snapped like she’d sworn. She hurried. “Not for dating. For… not noticing sooner. For making you do roofs and constellations and helping with my stupid little heartbreaks when you never even got the chance to deal with yours.”

“You don’t owe me an apology for living,” he said, automatic and sincere. “You were being you. That’s the part I love.”

She loved that. It also annoyed the heck out of her. He was allowed to blame her a bit, more than a bit. If it was her, she’d… well, she’d have done something similar to now where she bombarded him with the truth and hoped everything worked out. But Dipper couldn’t do that, he wasn’t wired that way. Also, she was annoyed at him never getting a girlfriend. As weird as that sounded. With the way she felt about Pacifica, if they had actually gone a little further down the typical dating path she probably would have realised she was jealous, then obviously she’d confront her own feelings. Then move on to the kissing Dipper stage, and they’d have been able to have years of this instead of just starting now. Darn, she could have taken him to prom and passed it off as a joke to everyone but them!

“I keep thinking about prom,” she admitted. “About how I danced with somebody whose name I barely remember while the person I actually wanted to be next to didn’t get… any of that with me.” The guilt was heavy. “You didn’t get a normal high school with stupid drama in the good way. You got… me telling you about it.”

His thumb traced the back of her hand, grounding. “I got you eventually. So I’d say it all worked out.” God, the idea that he had her made her want to squee and bury her head into his chest again. “And it’s not like I was perfect about any of it. I hid. I avoided all that stuff like the plague. Which is kind of my brand, but still.”

She nudged his arm with her shoulder. “Okay, yes, you are a little antisocial gremlin. But you’re my gremlin.” A beat. “We can retroactively fix prom if you want.”

He blinked. “Retroactively fix…?”

“Prom 2.0,” she said, already picturing the glitter. “We put on something nice, terrorise Soos into DJ-ing in the gift shop, dance under the ‘Beware of Bear Traps’ sign. You call it a field experiment in social rituals, I call it an excuse to wear something sparkly and put my hands where I want.”

His ears did the pink thing again. “Where you want, huh?”

“Everywhere. I. Want. Problem?” she said, making it clear that while she definitely belonged to him now, the arrangement went the other way as well and she was taking full advantage of her right to his body. But she couldn’t just joke around so… “I wish we’d had that then. But I’m… glad we get it now.”

“Me too.” he looked at her in such a tender way that she almost melted again. She settled for a quick kiss on his neck.

They slipped down onto the quilt properly, shoulder to shoulder, shoes off, legs tangling under habit and a throw blanket. The Shack’s afternoon light did its soft dusty thing through the attic window. Somewhere below, the rude bell complained and Soos shouted something about a “limited-edition grappling hook soda,” which sounded entirely plausible. The world kept happening. She let it.

There was kissing. There probably always would be from now on, not that she had any problem with that. The exact opposite actually. She memorised the way he tasted like mint and the hint of whatever lab drink Ford called “electrolyte solution” but was definitely just lemon water, the way he moved so perfectly in a way that complimented her that put every kiss before him to shame.

They talked between kisses because they were them and that’s how they worked. 

“Remember when Dave tried to dip me like a ballerina and almost threw out his back?” she said into his mouth.

“I remember knowing it’d end badly but letting it happen because I really didn’t like the guy. For totally normal reasons, nothing to do with the fact that he was trying to get with my dream girl…” he said, mouth curving, then kissed the smile he’d caused.

“Remember when I cut my bangs too short and you said, ‘hair grows at approximately one centimetre per month,’ and I threw a pillow at you and then cried?”

“I also brought you a beanie,” he said. “And did not say, ‘I told you so.’ Which I’m still proud of.”

She laughed into his collarbone. “See? How was anyone supposed to compete with that?”

“They weren’t supposed to,” he said, and then looked immediately like he wished he could snatch the sentence back for being too bold. She didn’t let him. She kissed the spot just under his jaw, light as a promise.

“Good,” she said into his skin. “Because they didn’t. Not even close.”

That silenced both the guilt and the what-ifs for a moment. She let herself feel sad for the versions of them who missed each other for a few years and then let the sadness dissolve into the warmth of the versions of them now. The ones that were moving in such a different direction from the future they visited. A better one. 

Eventually they ran out of words and didn’t need any. She tucked herself into his side, head on his chest, exactly where she’d wanted to be every time she’d pretended to herself that he was just a warmed-up pillow. His heartbeat did steady, steady, steady under her ear. She made a note to tease him later about the way it sped up when she kissed the hollow of his throat (going slow, promise!). For now, she contented herself with drawing little circles on his shirt with one fingertip and letting the attic quiet wrap around them.

“This is wild,” she said at last, into the fabric. “A couple weeks ago I was making lists of cereal I wanted to try in the dorm. Now I’m—” she waved a hand to indicate all of this “—here.”

“Time travel will do that,” he said, dry, and she felt his smile in his chest.

She tipped her chin up to see him. “It gave us a second chance,” she said, feeling it settle like correct math in her bones. “Doesn’t that feel like what this is?”

He thought about that, he was Dipper after all. 

“It’s weird,” he admitted. “Because the thing we’re calling the ‘first chance’ didn’t… happen.” He scratched his jaw with his free hand, eyes flicking to the window, the way they did when he lined up ideas. “So it can’t be a second chance, technically. There wasn’t a first in the timeline we’re in.”

She made a face at the ceiling. Leave it to him to be pedantic about fate. Adorable, infuriating man. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes fondly. “Then it’s a… pre-chance.” She tasted the word and wrinkled her nose. “No. That’s gross. Or a… baby chance? Ew, no. A egg-chance?” She paused. Then she grinned because the right phrase clicked into place and made her whole chest fizz. “It’s a zero-th chance.”

His mouth did that surprised curve she adored. “Zero-th?”

“Yeah,” she said, proud and a little giddy with naming rights. “The chance before the first one. The one you only get if the universe decides to be nice to you because you’re perfect for each other, and also saved the world one time. Our zero-th chance.” She poked his sternum to punctuate each word: “We. Don’t. Waste it.”

He looked at her for a long second, something bright and fierce and soft moving behind his eyes, and then kissed her temple so very softly. “Deal,” he whispered. “0th chance.”

Notes:

Ok, writing about the twins being like this is way to much fun. My first draft for this chapter was only about 4k words but I kept wanting to put more bits in and ended up making it longer than it needed to be.

Either way, the twins are together now and are busy being adorable as usual.

I'm doing the send-off / last chapter afterword now as the next chapter is an epilogue.
As I said earlier, this is a story built around the concept of Mabel being unwittingly in love with Dipper and her short journey that lets her figure it out and accept her feelings. This was originally going to be a part of Second Summer, but I realised I had no real way to connect it to the main story. So I scrapped it.

For those of you who actually like my work/writing and want to read more, I am still writing a story on Royal Road called 'Of Wolves and Nightmares'. Currently at around 80k words and 75% through the first book / major arc.

For those of you who are only interested in my Fanfics, fear not! I will continue to write them. In fact...
I know I said no more Pinecest... But I had an idea for a Christmas-themed story based on an old comment I got on Second Summer. So I might be writing a short Christmas Pinecest story soon...

Anyway, that's all from me. Hope you enjoyed this story, and PLEASE feel free to comment. I respond to pretty much all of them, and it helps my motivation.

Chapter 11: Epilogue: Mission accomplished

Blendin walked the axial corridor to the Hall of Debriefing and organised the facts into a sequence he could deliver without hesitation. Floor grids: aligned. Wall glyphs: cycling through session queues 17–29. Air pressure: normal. Chronon density: baseline plus 0.3%. Typical after an anchor-day sweep. None of that mattered to the outcome. He catalogued it anyway. Order calmed the body, precision reduced error.

If he could just get his mouth to work as efficiently as his mind he might have been higher up the chain by now.

He reviewed the file he had already built in his head.

Case: Pines, Mabel (MP-12) and Pines, Dipper (DP-12).
Epoch: Post–secondary graduation window, Gravity Falls, Earth-121.
Trigger: Birthday resonance swell; high-salience pair; prior exposure to apex-class anomaly (Bill Cipher).
Mandate: Routine dampening and observation of decision boundaries around anchor-day; no direct interference beyond calibration queries and compliance checks.
Assignment mode: Solo monitor, per his own petition citing familiarity with subjects and prior supervision credit. Petition approved with conditions: no discretionary tools deployed, no escalation without relay confirmation, no unsupervised vector corrections.

He passed the first sensor arch. It acknowledged his ID, and he continued..

Observation summary: Arrival at Mystery Shack porch, standard temporal aperture. Subjects present, relaxed, discussing near-future plans. Male subject uncertain regarding apprenticeship; female subject verbally supportive, affect bright, masking internal ambivalence, standard for MP-12. Initiated contact under the pretext of a post-birthday audit. Ran wording from the standard template: verify intactness, inventory prospects, test cohesion index. He kept questions open-ended to avoid suggestion effects. Good. That part had followed procedure. Auditors loved their procedure despite the fact that it went out the window when creatures like Bill Ciper showed up.

Deviation point: Asset TT-58 (“temporal metric tape,” restricted use) left holstered. Proximity to MP-12 increased risk. He knew that. He did not re-clip after the second demonstration gesture. He logged that as Negligence, Class C. The tape was removed from his belt without force. No alarms fired; MP-12 has high sleight aptitude when motivated. He located her in the gift shop thirty seconds later. He did not attempt a verbal abort or acknowledge issue due to inability to escalate without a relayed confirmation; DP-12 intervened; physical contest for the case; wrong toggle engaged; forward displacement occurred.

He reached the second arch. Two Enforcement cadets peeled out of a side hall and then decided he wasn’t their problem. He kept walking.

Forward displacement: gift shop reconfigured to “Curiosity House / Museum” schema. Evidence of organisational investment, new signage, improved curation. Ten years pased based on records obtained from device. Tape returned to hand in damaged state: jammed tongue, broken mode switch, hairline crack across faceplate; warm; residual ozone. He did not report up-chain; he contained.

Containment: Stanford Pines present approximately 4 days after chrono desynchronization with “temporal realignment device” (unregistered; energy draw local; risk of authority attention noted by Pines himself). Present and future instances of the twins interacted; cohesion index between present twins increased; separation vector decreased. Device activated; present twins returned to origin epoch minutes after initial departure. Forward branch persisted for locals; forward branch collapsed for subjects. Standard one-branch carryback after localised realignment.

He stepped aside to let a file cart glide past and resumed.

Outcome against mandate: “Routine dampening and observation” failed. “No direct interference” breached by presence plus unsecured tool. “No escalation” maintained briefly then breached by not relaying post-forward displacement. “No discretionary tools” technically not deployed by him; nonetheless, his asset enabled the incident. Responsibility attaches.

He put that in the first paragraph of the oral report.

He assembled the penalty menu in parallel. First-tier: demerits, duty cycles, scrub shifts in the Null Corridor, documentation backlogs. Second-tier: probation, temporary suspension of aperture privileges, retraining. Third-tier, unlikely here but possible with Time Baby in a mood: partial stasis, memory prunes, reassignment to inventory. 

He did not slow down.

He added the quantitative layer because auditors wanted numbers. Measurable deviations: DP-12 apprenticeship probability pre-contact: 0.81; post-contact, pre-forward: 0.86; post-forward, post-realignment: 0.59. MP-12 off-site arts enrolment probability pre-contact: 0.77; post-contact, pre-forward: 0.73; post-forward, post-realignment: 0.68. Pair cohesion index pre-contact: 0.64; post-forward, post-realignment: 0.89. Separation risk across first two years post-epoch: reduced from 0.42 to 0.17. Global stability deltas: within tolerance. Cipher residual vectors: unchanged (triangle entity erased in this continuity; latent cult noise persists at background). Net: the world remains intact; the pair’s divergence decreased; monitoring load moves from “separate trajectories” to “entangled trajectory.” Alternative workload.

That was the term he would use: alternative, not heavier.

He partitioned the narrative into debrief sections he knew Time Baby’s aides liked: Pre-Event Conditions, Incident, Containment, Effects on Macro-Continuity, Corrective Plan.

Pre-Event Conditions: high-salience pair, anchor-day swell, dampener pass successful, chrono displacement measured by local subject FP-42. Incident: tape compromised, forward displacement, small facility upgrades observed as consequence of FP-42 and SR-24, no civilian injuries, asset damaged. Effects: vector drift within acceptable corridor; pair’s cohesion rises; risk of future rogue actions by locals increases marginally (Stanford Pines retains data from device; he is already on watchlists). Corrective Plan: schedule micro-adjustments at next three anchor days; deploy passive observers during first academic term; tag TT-58 as scrap; replace with secured version; update guidance on tool carriage when around MP-12.

He reached the antechamber. Doors shut. The chamber smelled of neutral metal. He occupied bench 3, sat straight, and let his hands rest palms-down so the muscle tremor in his left thumb could exhaust itself slightly.

He thought about the petition he had filed to take this sweep alone. He had written that the pair’s file still drew high heat from the Cipher case and thus merited a handler with context. He had noted that he could recognise their tells, de-escalate quickly, and avoid spooking them into defiance. The committee had approved. They had added a line: “No improvisation.” He would not dwell on the irony encoded there. Irony was not actionable.

He considered whether to include the forward branch’s details. He wouldn’t.

He rehearsed two lines he would say exactly:

“Solo monitor failed to keep restricted asset secured; forward displacement ensued; I accept responsibility for asset compromise.”

“Macro-continuity remained within tolerance; local vector drift likely reduces long-horizon volatility associated with this pair; recommend continued observation.”

He reviewed the repair list he had quietly queued already: TT-58 decommissioned; TT-59 issued with dual-lock holster and biometric strip; belt policy reminder circulated; “post-birthday audit” script slightly revised to reduce gestural movement; dampener calibrations bumped by 0.02 for twin anchor-day windows; Stanford Pines flagged for device audit at next available window; no one would execute it soon, but flags built layers; layers produced options.

He built the corrections because if he presented the mess with a more organised version of itself the advisors would have less to complain about.

He debated the sentence he thought to embed near the end: “I petition continued assignment to this pair’s watchlist due to my error in the initiating incident; proximity to the consequence encourages careful follow-through.” Supervisors liked responsibility to remain attached to the employee who had created the work. It made the ledger clean.

He stood in front of the chamber. His mind wandered to what he’d done. The failure he was about to be berated for. 

The future had been altered yet again due to the actions of a meddling time agent. 

A tiny, tight smirk threatened to break out on his face.

He walked in.

Notes:

And with that, this story is done.

A small nod to Blendin there, as I feel like his whole dropping in and the grave time danger stuff was never really addressed. So I hope this chapter can serve as an explanation as to why nothing bad happened.

Anyway. I hope you all enjoyed reading another of my stories.

And with that, I must leave you until the next time I drop some content on this site.

Have a great night.
-A Gentleman Chicken