#part 3 of how many times can i get away with drawing dipper without the hat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

donutpwns · 6 years

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Little Brother Blues - Part 2

Part 1 - Part 3

Two days pass relatively quickly and Ford comes to a few conclusions about his future.

The first is that the Shack is nice. He's sad that they don't have the Stan O War; Old Stanley says it just didn't work out but won't explain how. Grown up stuff, he says, and Ford hates that Stanley can say that now. But the Shack is nice. He likes the attractions, even if most of them are fake. He wants to draw them, wants to draw new ones too but he doesn't know where to start with that. Stanley was always good at making up monsters; Ford pretended to be mad about it sometimes but really it was just fun. And Stan made money with them, which was super neat. Maybe they could buy a boat! It wouldn't be as cool as building one, but they could still go on a sea adventure together. That would be fun; he needs to ask Old Stanley about that later.

Old Stanley was weird but Ford still liked him a lot. He looks like their dad but he smiles way more, except sometimes when he looks at Ford and just stops smiling. That hurts but Ford would probably be sad too if Stanley forgot everything they ever did together so he doesn't get mad about it. He wants to be big again so they can be best friends again, like they're supposed to be. Old Stanley also has to work and tells people what to do all day and it's so boring. He never wants to play with him, even when he's not working and sitting in his chair in front of a huge TV. It's been two whole days and Stan still hasn't played with him once, not even checkers and Stanley loves checkers because Ford pretends not to notice when he flips pieces over to be kings even though he didn't cross the board. He wants Ford to be big again too. It's very boring.

His niece and nephew aren't boring though. He learns that they're two years older than him but they're not like the big kids back home. Mabel is really nice, even if she hugs and yells too much, and he really likes the sweaters she makes for him. It's been forever since he had new clothes or even clothes just for him. Usually he and Stanley just share hand-me-downs. Heh, guess Stanley’s too big to share now. His shorts and sneakers are from Dipper though so still hand-me-down but at least he doesn't have to share. Dipper is really cool and knows a lot about real monsters. He even has these books that talk about all the monsters in the town. They look through them to try to find out why Ford got turned into a kid again but he keeps getting distracted by other cool things in the books.

Like the gnomes. He found the page on the gnomes and has to see them in person. Getting older can wait because gnomes. Mabel calls them bearded jerks because they apparently tried to marry her, which is gross, but agrees that they can go on an adventure to see them. He thinks she likes adventures just as much as Dipper does.

“What about Old Stanley?” he asks while they load up backpacks with snacks and cans of Pitt Soda. He doesn't want to go on his first real adventure without Stanley, even if he was old. It just doesn't feel right. They probably had lots of cool adventures together but Ford doesn't remember them so they don't count. They were supposed to be the greatest adventurers of all time; the New Jersey Kings. He can't go without Stanley now.

“Grunkle Stan doesn't usually adventure with us unless we know it might try to kill us.” Dipper is packing extra notebooks which Ford thinks is a great idea. Dipper is really smart. “Like with the dinosaurs or the zombies.”

A gasp escapes him and he can feel energy bubbling up inside him. “You guys have seen dinosaurs?! And zombies?! That’s so cool! Can we go see those later?” he shoves his glasses back up his nose when they slip down; they fit a lot better after the kids shrank them with a magic flashlight but still slide down his nose when he gets too excited.

Mabel grins wide as anyone he's ever seen. “Yeah, but the coolest part was Grunkle Stan! He beat up a dinosaur,” she punches the air, “and a bunch of zombies for us! And then we made the zombies head explode by singing!” she makes an explosion sound with her mouth, throwing her hands out and falling back against Dipper.

Stanley is the coolest ever, no matter how old he was. Ford is gonna make him tell him all about it later because he has a right to know about how awesome Stanley is. “I want Old Stanley to come.” He decides with a nod and turns to the door. Finding gnomes with Stanley! What could be better? When Stanley was his age, he'd never have believed it. Stanley didn't believe in monsters but Ford is happy to know he did now. They studied them together! Oh, he hoped he'd been cool too when they fought the zombies.

Stanley’s in the museum, right inside the doorway that connects to the gift shop; Ford doesn't notice that a group of tourists are in front of his until he's already called out to him. In an instant, a dozen pairs of eyes are on him and he's shoving his hands behind his back. His face feels way too hot. Right, Old Stanley did tours because he worked.

Old Stanley laughs and that thankfully gets the attention off of him. “Sorry about that, folks! My nephew is a little excitable. The gift shop is right this way; make sure to grab a bumper sticker! Free with every shirt you buy if you donate five extra bucks!” he ushers them through the doorway to the gift shop, many of them talking about what a deal that was. The bumper stickers were only three dollars on their own though, Ford is pretty sure. Also he's not Stanley's nephew; Old Stanley lies a lot. Stan lied a lot when they were kids too but it feels like a bigger thing when a grown up does it.

He stiffens when Old Stanley turns to him, his smile disappearing with a sigh. Ford wants to squirm but makes sure to straighten his back. You gotta stand up tall, that's what their dad and boxing coach said, when you want something. And he wants Stanley to come with them really, really bad.

“You guys find anything in the books, Sixer?” Stanley asks while shutting the door that connects the museum to the shop. The sounds of the tourists chattering is quieter through the door and muffled enough to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders. Ford really doesn’t like crowds; that part of the Shack wasn’t very cool.

“Gn-gnomes!” he stammers out then winces. Okay, bad start. He clears his throat and shakes his head before looking up at Stanley with determination. New Jersey Kings! First adventure! You can do this, Stanford. “There are gnomes in the forest, Stanley! I wanna see them so we're going on an adventure to find them. And then we’ll look more into why I’m a kid again but first gnomes!”

Stan looks unimpressed as he flips his eye patch up. Ford thinks the eye patch is neat but he doesn't understand why Stan wears it. “What's there to find? They live in a clearing like thirty minutes from here.” He jerks his thumb towards the back of the house. “They go through our trash a couple times a month. Once they stole one of my attractions and I had to chase them back.”

Ford puffs out his cheeks in frustration; why does Stan have to make it seem like it’s not a big thing? Maybe he’s used to it, but Ford has never seen a gnome before. Well, not that he can remember, at least. But still! Magic should never not be special. “That means you can show us how to get there!” he grins and bounces in place. “You can show us and I can see a gnome!”

“I’m working, Ford.” Stan frowns down at him and Ford stares back. He wins the staring contest; Stan looks back towards the gift shop and crosses his arm. “Why do you even want to see one so bad? Isn’t all the info you would want to know in that stupid book?”

Ford huffs because the book is not stupid. Stan is being extra grumpy today. “I don’t want to just read about something cool, Stanley! I want to see it!” he clenches his fists and pushes up onto his tiptoes, “Remember when we camped out on the beach all weekend in the Stan O War because we thought there was a sea monster coming up and stealing our snacks?” Ford knew it was actually Stan eating them all when he wasn’t looking, but that hadn’t been the point. It was about the adventure. “We stayed up all night trying to catch it!” Stan had stolen a pocket knife from their Dad’s shop and they’d carved their names on the inside of the hull. They’d both gotten the belt for that but it had been worth it.

Stan actually laughs at that and shakes his head, which makes Ford grin even harder. He rubs at his forehead, “Ma was livid about that. She sprayed us with the hose so we wouldn’t track sand inside.” This time when he looks at Ford, the smile stays in place though he still looks a little skeptical. “Wouldn’t you rather have an adventure to fix yourself?”

“We can do that later! I want to have some fun first!” he reaches up so he can grab Stan’s arm; he has to dig his heels in and tug extra hard but Stan does take a step forward. “Old me has got to have all kinds of fun with you guys, it’s my turn now! C’mon! We can see the gnomes and then I promise I’ll work extra super hard to find out what bit me!” he wraps his arms around Stan’s arm when he tries to pull away; he yelps when he’s lifted off the ground. Holy Moses, Stanley was strong. “Pleeeeeease, Old Stanley! I’ll double pinky swear to work on it!”

“And here I thought the kids got it from me.” Stanley mutters before putting Ford back on the ground. He kneels so they’re on the same eye level, which Ford greatly prefers. He doesn’t like Stanley being taller; Ford is supposed to be the big brother, after all. “Okay, okay. You can go with the kids to see the gnomes but then—“

“You gotta come too!” Ford holds up his right hand and sticks out the last two fingers. “All of us! Kings of Gravity Falls! And Queen too, I guess, since Mabel is a girl. We’re all gonna go together!”

Stan sighs but he still hooks his pinky around Ford’s two. They shake their hands up and down twice and give an extra hard squeeze. “Double swear. We see the gnomes and then we focus on getting you fixed. Got it, Sixer?”

Ford nods and feels like a hundred bucks when Stan musses up his hair like he’s seen him do to Dipper before. This was going to be the best ever!

-----------------------

So this wasn’t exactly the best ever.

The ropes around his wrists chafe really badly and it’s worse every time he tugs on them. He keeps bumping into Dipper’s back as they’re marched through underground tunnels. Normally he’d find the large expansive network of tunnels, and the cool glowing mushrooms, very fascinating but the sharp spear that keeps poking him in the back anytime he stops to try to get a good look at them is kinda soiling the whole thing. Man, Mabel was right, gnomes were bearded jerks.

The tunnels are bigger than Ford would’ve expected for gnomes, though the ceiling is low enough that Stan has to hunch where he’s walking ahead of Dipper. Ford winces at the thought of the lecture he was probably going to get if they made it out of this. Stanley seems like he lectures now when he’s not being fun. Man, this whole thing was a bit of a bust.

They’re lead to a giant central chamber with a tall ceiling from which what looks like hundreds of glowing orbs are hanging from. There’s enough passageways lining the walls to make Ford think they could get lost forever in them. He should’ve brought some of Mabel’s yarn; it could’ve been like the story of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth! Though it might be difficult to leave a trail of yarn with his hands tied up. Hm. He’s going to have to brainstorm that later. See what Dipper thought of it.

There are two thrones set up side by side against the far wall. A gnome with a brown beard that looks a lot less bushy than the others he’s seen is sitting on the left one while the other sits empty aside from a pillow with a tiara on it. There’s a picture of a girl with long blonde hair and more makeup than even his Ma wears hanging on the wall right above the empty throne. The gnome that had been sitting in the other throne seems to notice they're all staring at it because he looks back at it and quickly throws a blanket over it.

“Pacifica.” Mabel says it the same way Stanley used to say Crampelter. She’s at the front of the group and has even more rope around her wrists than any of the rest of them. Also one of the gnomes put a flower crown on her head so that’s weird. They also smashed the leaf blower she’d brought with her when they captured them.

“Heh, pay no attention to that! We weren't thinking about making her our new queen after you broke our hearts or anything!” he laughs nervously, moving to stand between Mabel and the now covered painting. He clasps his hands in front of him and makes gross gaga eyes at her. “We still only have eyes for you, Mabel! And we’re so happy you decided to finally accept our proposal and become our queen!”

Mabel’s response to that, because she is awesome, is to kick the gnome right in the face. “Stop kidnapping girls, Jeff! It’s creepy!” she kicks another gnome that tries to jab her with a stick. “Also, I thought you guys lived in the forest?”

“We live lots places! You don’t know!” Jeff brushes himself off. “And maybe we thought our new queen would like this better than the forest. We’re working on our pitch!” he hops back onto the throne. “Oh well, that doesn’t matter, because you’re here!”

Dipper and Mabel groan at the same time. “No girl is going to be happy if you kidnap them!” Dipper scowls and moves to stand next to his sister. “Geez, why do all the creeps like you, Mabel?”

“Because I’m adorable and awesome and the best anyone could ever have and I also have a pig.” Mabel says it so matter-of-fact that Ford’s not sure anyone can dispute it. “And I’m not going to marry you and your giant colony of jerks, Jeff!”

Jeff waves his hand like he’s trying to wave away the statement. “You’ll learn to love us! And, hey, we’ll let you keep your family! That was the deal breaker before, right?” he reaches into his beard and pulls out a rose that looks like it’s been stepped on. “C’mon, just say yes!”

Mabel tries to kick him again but the gnome manages to jump back against the back of the throne before her foot connects. “The deal breaker is that I hate you!”

“No marriage is perfect!” he screams when she jumps up onto the throne to kick him.

Stan lets out a loud yell that has everyone looking at him; Ford’s eyes widen when Stan pulls his hands out from behind his back, length of rope held in his right hand. The rope wasn’t even broken! How in the world—Stanley whirls, grabbing a spear that was being jabbed at him right below the point and jerking. The gnome holding it manages to hold its grip, though it probably regrets that when Stan swings the spear and gnome both to slam into another one that was running towards them. That one drops the spear and Stan picks it up.

“Dipper! Catch!” Stan yells and Dipper, somehow, manages to turn and actually catch the spear. He fumbles it but it doesn’t drop; it’s small enough for him to slip it down and start rubbing the point against the ropes around his wrists. Oh! That’s so smart! “Mabel—”

“On it, Grunkle Stan!” on it for Mabel was apparently chasing Jeff and kicking him repeatedly.

Unable to do much, Ford ends up just trying to dodge spears while he watches his family fights a quickly growing group of gnomes. Dipper has his hands free before too long and quickly moves over to get Mabel free; once she’s got her hands she is taking a page out of Stan’s book and punching. Jeff tries to jump on her only to scream when he gets an eyeful of what looks like glitter and fall to the ground.

Four stack on top of each other and try to attack Stan; they topple with a single left hook. Wow, Stan really learned a lot from their boxing lessons. Ford’s starting to regret not paying more attention. Maybe their dad was right about knowing how to fight being important.

“Catch, Great Uncle Ford!” Dipper calls and Ford turns in time to get smacked in the face with the spear; it clatters to the ground and nearly knocks his glasses off too. He tries to squat to grab them but another gnome is running at him so he screams and runs away instead. He hears Dipper yell “Sorry!” but is much too busy trying not to die by gnome to respond.

Crap crap crap crap!

This wasn’t supposed to happen! Ford just wanted to see some gnomes, not fight them! Oh crud! He needs to get behind Stanley, Stanley is good at fighting! Yeah, Stan will keep him safe and then they can escape. Oh, he was going to get Stan so many bags of toffee peanuts for this.

That’s when he sees Stan grappling with what looks like a person made of gnomes, standing a little taller than Stan himself, with four more gnomes stacked up behind him. Something electric shoots through his gut at the sight of it; how can they attack someone from behind like that?

He runs forwards before he can really think about it, ducking his head so the back of it and his shoulders take the majority of the hit as he bowls into the stack behind Stan. It’s enough to collapse them before they could hit Stanley. Stanley lets out another yell and turns to slam the gnome-person into the ground, where it shatters and all the gnomes scatter back.

Stanley’s hair is sticking to his temples with sweat and his chest is heaving but his eyes are about as wide as his grin that Ford has to mirror. Ford wonders if this is how Stan feels whenever he punches bullies and if so, he suddenly understands why he likes punching things so much. He wonders if they ever learned to fight together when they got bigger; he hopes they did.

“They’re forming Gnome-tron!” Mabel yelps as her and Dipper reach where Ford and Stan are standing. She’s also got hair sticking to her face, cheeks even more flushed than normal. Dipper is panting with a hand on his knee while the other points to where all the gnomes are starting to pile together. The pile starts taking the shape of the gnome-person Stanley had been fighting but much, much bigger.

“Hot Belgian waffles.” Stanley says it under his breath and then all of a sudden Ford is off the ground.

He grunts as his stomach hits Stan’s shoulder, quickly sucking back in the breath that was knocked out of him. He kicks his legs; why hadn’t he caught the stupid spear to untie his hands?! Dipper is tossed on Stan’s other shoulder and they share a brief moment of solidarity at how much this sucks. Stanley locks an arm around his back to keep him in place while they run. Mabel runs behind Stanley while he takes off down a tunnel. Ford wants to be offended as she keeps up with Stanley but it’s really hard to once he sees a hand made of gnomes reaching for them down the tunnel.

Dipper laughs from his place on Stan’s other shoulder and cups his hands around his mouth. “Forget that you’re underground? Stupid gnomes!”

“Yeah, bearded jerks!” Mabel throws another handful of glitter over her shoulder.

“Kids, escape, then taunt the enemy! Basic rules of capture!” Stanley yells as he takes a sharp left turn.

Ford tries to take in as much as he can while being jostled by the running and while his heart is pounding in his throat. The mushrooms glow without any other light source, there’s different colored moss littering the ground. He recognizes a few things, like specific groupings of mushrooms or a scratching of different names x Queen in the walls, that he saw when they were being led in. Did Stan remember the way they were led in?

Ford was never happier to see the sun than when they burst through the branches and such that were covering the entrance to the tunnels. Stan drops Dipper who scurries over to where their backpacks were left. He takes his and tosses both Mabel’s and Ford’s to his sister. Ford kicks his feet again but Stan just tightens his hold so he doesn’t fall off.

By the time they reach the treeline within sight of the Shack, Stan is drenched in sweat and coughing from how bad he’s panting. He does finally drop Ford though; as soon as Ford is off his shoulder, Stan his hands on his knees much like Dipper next to him. Mabel stretches to be able to pat both of them of the back at the same time.

They pant for several minutes, trying to catch their breath and waiting to see if the gnomes chased them all the way back. The only sound is their labored breathing and the sounds of Mabel untying the ropes still binding Ford’s wrists. He rubs at the red, raw skin. Slowly their breathing evens out and there doesn’t be any sign of the gnomes.

He doesn’t know why it happens, maybe it’s all the energy still buzzing in his chest, but laughter bubbles up from inside him. He grips his stomach, unable to stop the peals of laughter that tumble out. It seems to be contagious; Stan start’s chuckling next to him and then the twins are covering their mouths while they giggle. Ford doesn’t even mind when Mabel tugs him into a tight hug, her face sweaty and hot when she presses their cheeks together. He even manages to get an arm around her to hug her back.

Stanley wipes his eye under his glasses, chest still shaking with laughter that won’t stop. “Holy cow that was a stupid idea. I say we have a treat after all that, yeah?” he moves his hands to muss up Mabel’s hair and shove Dipper’s hat down over his eyes. “You kids are gonna be the death of me.” His hand moves to muss up Ford’s hair next, “All three of you. C’mon. That’s enough for a day right.”

Mabel grins and sticks her hands under her hair to lift it off the back of her neck while she follows Stan towards the door. “We should probably let Pacifica know to look out for gnomes that want to kidnap her.”

Dipper nods next to her. “Last thing we want is to have to rescue her.”

Ford moves to follow but freezes in place; the hairs on the back of his neck are standing on end as the feeling of being watched hits him. He frowns and looks back towards the trees. He could’ve sworn he just heard someone else laugh. He looks over the trees, trying to spot any gnomes that might’ve followed them.

Dipper yells from the porch, “Great Uncle Ford! C’mon! Grunkle Stan’s busting open the ice cream freezer!”

A grin takes over Ford’s face and he takes off towards the porch. Oh well, it was probably nothing.

#this is also on ao3 if you prefer to read it there #little brother blues #kainichivonwrites #gravity falls #mabel pines #stan pines #stanford pines #dipper pines #1.5 stans

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notsoguiltykpop · 7 years

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Disposable pt13

Being friends with benefits with Min Yoongi can be complicated (at best) by itself. But when you accidentally tell your family (and his boss) that the two of you are dating, things get messy. It only complicates things more when you blackmail Yoongi into pretending to date you, and neither of you can quite keep your feelings separate, no matter how much you try.

Angst, fluff, slight smut at times.

Yoongi x Reader

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Jackson stood near Yoongi on the sidewalk while you brought the car around. Yoongi still wasn’t happy about his presence, but he had stopped telling him to go to hell, at least.

“You know, if you want to keep her, you’re going to have to do a lot better than you are right now.” Jackson said offhandedly.

“What are you talking about?” Yoongi grumbled.

“I’m talking about the way you look at her. And the way she looks at you. You do know that if the two of you would just talk like normal people do, all of your problems would go away, right?”

“And what would I tell her?” Yoongi asked, looking at him sideways. Jackson shrugged.

“You tell me.”

Yoongi looked like he was going to start cursing at Jackson again, but then he swayed dangerously and leaned on his shoulder, Jackson steadying him before he fell over. “I don’t know you.” He said, blinking blearily at Jackson, who raised his eyebrows.

“I’m aware.”

Yoongi shook his head. “I don’t know you, but you’re being nice. Why?”

Jackson shrugged. “Because your beautiful girlfriend would be sad if I treated you like shit.” Jackson waited for Yoongi’s reaction. What he told Yoongi was partially true—it really would upset you if he told Yoongi that he needed to straighten up and be kinder to you, the guy already looked like he might cry whenever he looked at you—but Jackson also had a soft spot for drunk people. That was probably why he was always the designated driver; he didn’t mind other people’s strange drunk shenanigans, and would just laugh and guide them home.

“Can I tell you something, Jeffery?” Yoongi asked.

“Jackson. My name is Jackson. And yes, you can.” Jackson was mostly holding Yoongi up now, and he was glad he was such a slight man—otherwise they might have a problem.

“I don’t know what to do. I like her, like, really really scary like her. But I shouldn’t. So I just...” Yoongi sniffed, and Jackson nodded sympathetically. So Yoongi was an emotional drunk.

“Maybe she likes you, too.” Jackson suggested.

“No, don’t say that.” Yoongi waved a hand at him, trying to stand properly by himself.

“Why?” Jackson pressed. He had to admit, after talking to you and seeing how much you cared for Yoongi, he was a little bit worried—he sounded like an asshole, and you sounded head-over-heals. But talking to Yoongi, seeing the way he looked at you, made him wonder how much more there was too it.

“Because. If she likes me… Either I’ll do something and she’ll leave, or one day she’ll realize that I’m not what she wants and that she’s miserable, or, or…” Yoongi looked more upset by the second, and Jackson decided that he really shouldn’t have asked.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” Jackson said, patting Yoongi on the back gently—as wobbly as Yoongi was he didn’t want to knock off his balance. “For now, why don’t you just focus on not pushing her away. You’re going to lose her if you keep pulling shit like this.”

“I don’t want to lose her.” Yoongi said, so quietly that Jackson almost missed it. But Taehyungs rental car pulled up to the curb before he could say anything else, and you hopped out.

“He hasn’t been too much of a problem, has he?” You asked, and Jackson shook his head.

“Of course not. Are you sure you’re going to be able to get him in the house okay, though?”

You nodded, giving him a smile. Jackson always had been a worrier. “We’ll be fine. And thank you, Jackson. Not just for waiting with him, but for listening, too.”

Jackson laughed. “Don’t worry about it, I like listening to other people’s problems, they make mine seem like nothing in comparison. And hey, I’ll see you at Namjoons party.” He was about to give you a hug goodbye when Yoongi stepped in, pulling on your arm.

“Let’s go. I’m sleepy and I keep telling him to stop talking to you but he won’t.”

Yoongi mostly slept while he was in the car, occasionally rambling nonsense about someone named Minhyuk who wouldn’t stop texting him. At first, you thought getting him into the house wouldn’t be so difficult, but as soon as you parked he started wandering off towards the lake.

“Yoongi! Yoongi, where are you going?” You called after him, but were afraid being too loud—most of the lights were off in the house, and you wanted to avoid drawing attention to you and Yoongi. On the other hand, you had no idea if Yoongi had decided to go for a swim, which would be the worst idea possible at the moment.

Yoongi ignored you, instead walking to the waters end and sitting down.

“What are you doing?” You asked, and Yoongi looked up at you.

“Sitting. What did you think I was doing?” But there was no usual hint of sarcasm in his voice, just idle curiosity. “Will you sit with me?” He asked hesitantly, patting the ground beside him. You sighed, doing as he asked. Yoongi stared at the lake for several minutes without saying anything as you stretched your legs out in front of you.

“Do you think you’ll forgive me someday?” Yoongi asked eventually.

“Do you think you will forgive me?” You countered. A slow smile spread across his face and he looked over at you in the dim light of the moon.

“Maybe someday. This trip hasn’t been all bad.”

“Just mostly?” You guessed, and his smile faded.

“Mostly cruel and unusual punishment, yeah.” He leaned sideways, laying down so his head was in your lap and he could look up at the sky.

“Is that the big dipper?” He asked, pointing. You looked up, not sure where he meant.

“I have no idea.” You said after some thought.

“Me either.” Yoongi didn’t look particularly bothered.

“Do you really hate me, Yoongi?” You asked. You knew you should just drag him off the ground and put him in bed. Namjoon had always told you that it wasn’t fair to ask people about their feelings when they were drunk—he said people had a right to privacy, and you never knew if what they said was truly how they felt anyway. But the question slipped past your lips before you could stop yourself, and Yoongi frowned at you.

“Hate you? Never. I don’t hate anyone.” He closed his eyes and shifted, getting more comfortable. His answer didn’t help much, but you supposed it might be for the better. Suddenly he froze, reopening his eyes to look at you.

“Do you hate me?” His eyes were wide, a fragility in them that you had never seen before.

“Of course not, Yoongi. In fact, I quite like you.” He probably wouldn’t remember in the morning, and you didn’t want to upset him.

Yoongi smiled at that. “I like you, too. I mean, when you’re not making me really angry. Which is most of the time. But sometimes I like you. Like right now.”

Absently, you brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead. You hoped he wouldn’t remember any of this, but he was much easier to talk to drunk and sleepy than he was sober. “I’m going to miss you, Yoongi. I know I shouldn’t, but I will.”

“Don’t miss me.” Yoongi said, picking up one of your hands and lacing his fingers with yours. “I don’t want you to be sad because of me.”

“You’re kind of nice when you’re drunk.” You said with a laugh.

“And you’re kind of pretty when you laugh.” Yoongi stopped suddenly. “Don’t tell me I said that.”

“What?” Yoongi had officially stopped making sense.

“Don’t tell me in the morning that I complimented you. I’ll be very angry with myself, and I don’t want to get yelled at.” You laughed at how seriously he said such a nonsensical sentence. “You have to promise.” He said, untangling your hands and linking your pinky with his.

“Okay, I promise. But what if you ask in the morning?”

Yoongi shook his head. “No telling sober-me, even if I ask.”

You laughed, but agreed none the less.

“You said you like me?” Yoongi said after a second, and you hummed in affirmation. “I wish you didn’t.”

You felt your heart sink. He was drunk, you shouldn’t be listening to anything he said, and certainly shouldn’t be upset by it. “Why’s that?” You asked, though you didn’t really want to know.

“Because if you like me, you’ll stop liking me. I’d rather that you never liked me in the first place.” He looked and sounded like he was falling asleep as he spoke, and you ran your hand through his hair again.

“Who hurt you so bad, Min Yoongi?” You asked quietly, knowing you weren’t going to get an answer.

There was a foul taste in his mouth when Yoongi woke up. His head was killing him, and he felt sick. He groaned as he opened his eyes, light hurt and the room was full of it. It took him a moment to figure out where he was, and he blinked blearily at your sleeping form.

He didn’t remember getting in bed, but there he was, sleeping next to you with—what a surprise—his arm around your waist. He really needed to stop doing that. He remembered the restaurant, the video, you being mad at him for ignoring you the whole meal, and then the bar… Kind of. He remembered thinking about calling Minhyuk, and some random guy talking to you, but that was about it.

He propped himself up on his elbows and frowned at you. How many secrets he had told you? He would probably never know. He had a habit of telling people not to tell Sober-Yoongi what Drunk-Yoongi said, mostly because he didn’t want to deal with whatever embarrassing things he had said or done while intoxicated.

Normally it wouldn’t matter—as long as he didn’t give people the information to his bank account, what was the harm? But there was no telling what he might have said to you. Judging by the fact that he was in the same bed as you made him hopeful that he hadn’t said anything too horrible, but that could be just because you didn’t want your brothers to be suspicious. He fell back on the bed face down, pulling a pillow over his head. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink—shouldn’t have had anything to drink, really. There was every chance that your brothers had seen him, and who knows what he might have said to them, too. He might just lose his job after all.

Yoongi felt you begin to stir, and he wished he had a little more time to get his thoughts in order before he had to deal with whatever lecture you were about to give him—and he was sure you would. He had been pretty shit to you the previous night, it would only be fair.

“Good morning.” You said, still sounding mostly asleep.

“Nothing good about it.” Yoongi grumbled before he could stop himself. But his head hurt, and he still felt nauseous, so he felt that some complaining should be allowed—even if it was his own fault.

To Yoongi’s surprise, you laughed. It was such a pretty sound, one that he wouldn’t mind hearing more often—He shook himself. He needed to stop thinking things like that!

“You stay here, I’ll get you some coffee and something for your headache.” You said quietly, and he felt the bed shift again as you got up. Yoongi peaked at you from under his pillow.

“You aren’t mad.” He said, and you looked over at him from the door that was already partially open. You were still wearing your pajamas, your hair pulled up in a messy bun. It made his heart hurt (or maybe that was also part of the hangover—that’s what he told himself) and he knew he needed to do something about his damn feelings. If only there was a switch that he could flip that would make them stop. But he knew there was no such thing, and he would just have to get over you.

“Why would I be mad?” You asked, your head tilting to the side. “Should I be?” You looked mildly amused, and Yoongi shook his head (and stopped abruptly because it made the room spin).

“No, I just… I didn’t say anything… weird… last night, did I?”

A small smile pulled at your lips. “You told me not to tell you.” Yoongi pulled the pillow back over his eyes, and after a second he heard the door click shut behind you.

A/N So I was planning to get to the angst in this chapter, but it somehow ended up 2k words long and still wasn’t there, so I decided that it’ll just have to wait. So more fluff! Kind of? Poor Yoongi semi-confessed, and Reader knows a little bit more about how he feels--but will that change anything? Let me know who you think is going to ruin everything, Reader or Yoongi? I’m curious what you think! Thank you for reading and all the support! Also, please show Admin Marie and Admin Bread lots of love! They’re new to the blog, and it’d be great for you guys to get to know them! <3 <3 <3

--Admin Boo

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impishnature · 7 years

Text

The Light Keeper (Part 14)

AO3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13

Rating: T

Summary: A beast lurks in the waters. Stan loses Ford to the waves, the lighthouse his only point of contact and hope of ever getting him back. …He used to love the sea, now it’s taken everything from him.

Lighthouse Keeper AU.

Series of One-shots.

AN: Commission and story collab with @garrulousgibberish based on their Lighthouse Keeper AU (link above). Warnings: Nightmares, intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation.

Part 14: The Plea That Lit The Way

Keeper…

The nights were still the hardest.

When everyone else had finally fallen asleep and everything felt off kilter again.

Stan gave an endearing sigh as he ruffled his brother’s hair, getting a small still asleep frown for his efforts. The two kids were bundled up in his arms, all three fast asleep on the sofa from a day filled with beach adventures and an evening filled with warm drinks and warmer company as the TV droned on through movie after movie until eyelids slipped and small bodies grew heavy and cumbersome.

And soon enough Ford and Stan were giggling, hushed words over two fast asleep children accompanying the soft music permeating from whatever movie had been left long forgotten.

But even that was short lived, Stan huffing out a small rumble of laughter as his brother, regardless of his fast slurring words that he would stay awake until the end of the movie, soon followed the kids into the land of nod. Even in sleep, his arms still locked around the two kids, his head resting on his brother’s shoulder as if drawing enough warmth from them to make up for the years apart.

Stan had hummed, holding all three of them for a while as his eyes focused back on the TV, hopeful that soon enough he too would drift off. He sat, trying not to smile too much even with no one there to see, as he already wistfully thought about the morning and the gruff words he would spout at Mabel waking first and taking opportune photos of everyone else fast asleep, bundled up in as many blankets as Mabel had been able to carry in one trip down the stairs from Ford’s room.

But sleep never came.

“Come on.” Stan hit his head on the back of the sofa, a small sigh of irritation leaving him as he soon became restless. He never had been one to lie awake until he fell asleep, it never worked. He’d toss and turn, think about the things he had to do, think about how much work had to be done and soon enough up he’d be, stretching and heading to the lighthouse to continue working, regardless of the sleep he knew he desperately needed.

After all, Ford was waiting for him.

And even with Ford beside him, Ford completely ok and here and safe- something in him still wouldn’t let him sleep.

It wasn’t anything in particular, thirty years of unforgiving thoughts and an even more unforgiving schedule, his body just couldn’t seem to get into the mind-set that everything was fine now, that he could rest easily without worry, that he had finally done something worthwhile.

That he deserved to sleep.

For some reason that was the hardest thing of all to stick, that he was allowed to rest, that he deserved it, that the world wasn’t going to fall apart as soon as he closed his eyes-

That Ford would still be there when he opened them again.

He gave a deep groan, hand scrubbing at his face. Ford muttered, a small upset noise before burrowing into his side further as if he could feel Stan’s distress and even in sleep wanted to smooth away the wayward thoughts. A soft warm feeling filled Stan’s chest. He knew that it was all nightmares, the scant amount of sleep he was getting still filled with them whenever he finally caved, either at the kitchen table or actually in his bed like he was meant to. That every time the darkness descended, he would scurry downstairs quickly and find his brother already awake and giving him a smile from above a cup of coffee, which led to good natured bickering even if now Ford was up and about Stan couldn’t stop him ingesting as much caffeine as he could muster.

Yes, he knew that they were baseless. His mind playing tricks on him because his mind had never exactly been kind to him- but that didn’t mean they were easy to ignore when the world was dark and he woke up shaking and alone in his room with the dismal panic that everything had been a dream and the world hadn’t righted itself like he had hoped so desperately for.

He didn’t know what he’d do if one day he went downstairs and Ford wasn’t there, that this had all been a dream and the kids had never gotten to meet…

A small tremor went through him at the thought, his arms tightening around the three of them as he shook his head.

No, this is real. This isn’t a dream. …Are you sure? Can you ever really be sure?

Stan scowled at the slippery thought, intrusive and vastly unwelcome. He ignored it. Focused on his families breathing, focused on the small drumbeat of a heart from the small hand tight around his even in sleep. “Of course I’m sure.” The words came out without effort, whispered into the night and he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination but Ford seemed to relax even further at the determined words.

Oh? Is that so? You know- when have you ever known anything? I just do. There’s no two ways about it. Ahh- gut instinct. I guess it had to be, you’re not Sixer, after all. No facts and figures, just baseless optimism… I didn’t even know you were still capable of that.

Stan’s teeth gritted tight, eyes darting around as a cold draft descended. He felt Dipper shudder and brought the blankets up around him further, unthinkingly as he regarded the voice silently. Whatever it was seemed to wait in the wings, in the stark shadows accentuated by the TV’s harsh glow across the four of them, bundled up in a bubble of light inside the darkness that he refused to let into their little world.

Oh, yes, he knew the creature was there. Knew now more than he ever had before that it was its words that added to his own overflowing self-doubt and self-loathing. Fed off of all those twisted, scarred emotions and tugged them to the forefront to watch him stew and rot in them. Had watched him struggle and fight on the precipice of those agonising thoughts all alone in the gloom of the lantern room, year after year. Decade after decade. Oh, he knew it was there and he knew these thoughts and feelings were his own, just magnified and fizzling for whatever motive this creature had, to play with him, to toy with his emotions, to watch him jump hoops and run rings all to get his brother back. It was ironic looking back, knowing that the deeper he fell into the pit of despair, the harder he strived for a purpose- strived to drag his brother back from the hell the creature showed him night after night if he gave in to sleep. It was ironic to realise that this creature had been able to read him like an open book, had known exactly how to play him to get the results it required of him.

The conman stripped bare of his façade.

A wide tooth filled grin, sharp and vicious coasted across his face.

That was why the victory was all the sweeter. He’d done everything the creature had wanted, and still come out on top.

Underestimated until the very end. No longer a pawn in the creature’s game, but the victor defeating the odds.

He always had been a gambler.

And even now he was gambling with everything he held dear, a single trail of thought sliding through as he closed his eyes and let the sounds of the TV drag him back to reality.

Yes, just like he knew that this was reality, he knew that it was there, eyes glowing unseen in the darkness, teeth chattering in warning in his peripheral.

But that didn’t mean he had to acknowledge it.

Sure, maybe it would be good, healthy even, to acknowledge that the words were not his own. That his head wasn’t quite as self-destructive as he always thought it had been. But then again, he knew that no matter what, monster or no monster, he still had his own demons, not quite buried away and always ready to claw themselves out of whatever recess he had managed to push them into.

No, it was better not to give this creature any credit at all. It was all in his head, it always had been.

What better way to really drive it home that he had won, than to ignore everything this creature had tried to accomplish with him?

Optimism? That died a long time ago. But gut instinct and reckless determination seem to have gotten me this far, with or without that. Oh, you don’t really think you’ve won, do you?

A sharp chuckle sounded through the still air, a hissing sound as if air was being pushed past more teeth than Stan could count. His teeth gritted even further, his hands bunching into fists as he kept his eyes closed and refused to converse any further. The draft slipped over his shoulders and down his spine as if something was settling around him. He forced his hands open, tugged another of the blankets tight around him as he latched on to the warmth of the other bodies on the sofa. There was only so far that he could pretend the voice was his own, keep talking like he used to, keep thinking the voice was a biting sharp edged blade forged inside his own mind to cut him to the quick.

Oh? Are we done? Can’t think of anymore arguments, keeper? …Well, that won’t stop me talking. You have after all, already let me in. You think you’ve won, little keeper? Think you’ve stopped me? You were just one avenue, one option. You weren’t special, you never were. What’s special about you? My little key held more promise than you did, jumping at the chance to help me...

Stan’s frown grew stronger, his arm tightening around his brother as if to protect him from the unseen assailant.

Oh, so you are still listening. Silly keeper, you just can’t stop doing things you shouldn’t, can you? But don’t worry, it won’t be long now. You seem to think this is it. It’s not. It’ll never be over. I’ll always be here, watching… waiting. You’ll slip up one day, you’ll need that light again, you know it will happen. Someone else will fall, someone easy to lure out, easy to trick…

A small sigh reminded Stan of the three bodies, so unaware of the conflict running around his head. He tried his best, tried to push the thoughts away but they tugged at those fears all over again. All those little thoughts already there that blossomed into thick vines that made it hard to breathe as he sat there. Small flashing images of history repeating itself, of the world turning on its head again as someone once again falls where he can’t protect them.

There was a scream, an echoing sound that he chased through the darkness, so familiar and so heart-breaking.

“Grunkle Stan!”

He tried to shake his head, tried to remind himself that that particular scream had been born from his foolhardy nature, that in reality it was a cry of relief at seeing him back on solid ground after rescuing his brother.

“Stan!”

A tremble of fear shot through him as they continued, as both twins cried out in fear, his brother’s voice soon joining them and when he turned to face them they were no longer there.

A moonlit sandy beach where his family had once been.

He felt his knees give out beneath him, the moon casting a sickly yellow hue on the scene. With a nauseated gaze he saw two sand angels, half made in the sand from that morning, the sea lapping over them, slowly wiping them from sight as if they had never been there. Even so he could still see the fresher marks, the deeper ones. The clawed gouges in the sand, hands trying desperately to stay on dry land as they were dragged into the sea, the voices gurgling and joining the bubbling foam of the ocean until nothing remained.

Dipper’s cry echoed in a way unlike Mabel’s, still sounding after the others had long since faded until there was a terrible sickening crunch. The wind vanished, complete solid silence flooding the area. He found his body moving without conscious effort, facing the caves that had terrified the boy as pages scattered out of the opening, all of Dipper’s hard work fluttering across the winds splattered in a horrid viscous black liquid that also trailed in rivulets from the cave entrance.

And I’ll take more this time. You hold so many silly things dear to your heart, so many things to take away from you… One by one. One by one they’ll find their way to me, one by one I’ll take them. One by one, you’ll lose everything you hold so close to you.

A terrified Wendy swam behind his eyelids, knocked from her father’s fishing boat into the sea, his arm outstretched but grasping air where she had been moments before. Her father’s booming voice laced with a terror he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard in real life as he tried to find her in the waves. Soos dragged out by an undertow from the shore, swept away within the blink of an eye before he could help him. He could hear wailing in the distance, heart shattering as he remembered promises he’d made long ago to keep him safe, to keep him from forgetting the stories he’d always been told as a child.

You should have just let me free when you had the chance, little light keeper. I might have been kinder. But you always know what you can do to stop all that pain…

The sky darkened as Stan stood frozen on the beach, eyes locked to a small shadowed figure falling from the lighthouse balcony to the crashing waves below. No one else left to care, no one other than him to watch the person give up and give in to the creature.

You can’t stop anything else, keeper. You can’t stop me, not forever. I’ll never leave, you know. I’ll always be here. Long before you and long after you, I shall still be here. But as long as you are here, I still have someone to play with, something to occupy my time with. Oh, little keeper, all those twisted little thoughts, all those hopeless nights, every time you close your eyes and think about what could have been or what might still be – you let me in. And I’ll never stop, you can’t help but let me in. I’ll never leave. Not until you let me out and finish what you started or until you’re rotting down here with me. That’s the only choice you have. Whether or not you’re around to see me take back my rightful place, that’s the only power you have. So choose little keeper, choose whether you have it in you to keep fighting. Because watching you run around in circles has amused me for all this time, I’d love to keep watching you dance for the rest of your miserable little existence.

“Stop it. You can’t do anything! You’re stuck down there, stuck as long as that light stays out!” Stan roared into the air, the clouds darkening across the sky as the wind tugged at his hair, at his clothes, making him squint as the moon was finally covered and a cackling laugh filled the darkness.

Then rot in that lighthouse, keeper. Waste away in there making sure I never return. Because once you’re gone, there’ll be someone else to take your place, to become the key and let me out. You can’t win. You never won. You’ll lose, whichever route you choose. But you still must choose.

The light came on in the lighthouse, blinding Stan where he stood, his hand raised up to shield himself.

But even blinded, lights sparking behind his eyelids, he still saw the shadow amongst them. The figure perpetually falling. Over and over again he went, never able to escape his fate, always walking towards his own doom.

Just jump, keeper. Jump and save us all the trouble.

And suddenly he was falling, the sands beneath him shifting and sliding to nothingness and as he blinked the lighthouse came into view above him, quickly becoming smaller and smaller as his hand reached out to the railing he hadn’t even tried to hold on to.

The cackling was all that he could hear, vibrating through his entire body in a painful heave of sound that made it impossible for him to move. The wind tore into him, ice cold and sharp as if he was falling through the shattered remnants of the glass panes above.

Shh…

Stan blinked past the pain, another voice entering the fray, a soft warmth dampening the cold, melting the ice until the sharpness vanished and the cold soaked into him instead of tearing him to ribbons.

He felt heavy, heavy and sluggish but there was something there, a spark of something else. He could feel something heavy in his arms, a hint of a memory as he dragged his brother from the depths and the pair of them broke the surface.

The cackling died, a lilt of confusion taking over as Stan looked back up, his brother’s hand reaching out to him, face panic-stricken from the top of the lighthouse as he fell.

And Stan’s resolve stopped wavering, the beat of his own pulse steadying beneath his skin as his eyes hardened.

No! We beat you! I beat you!

Stan landed with a thud, jolting to sit up as the blankets fell around him. His brother clutched tightly to his arm as he tried to take deep breaths, keeping as still as possible as he waited for the fear to pass.

He froze as the hand patted him, an apology stuck uselessly on his lips as he caught his brother’s concerned frown, his eyes still tightly shut.

“Shh…”

He couldn’t help the bubble of a laugh that left him as he realised that Ford was still mostly asleep, if not completely, his arm patting his arm haphazardly and lethargically as the comforting mumbles became a slur of words Stan couldn’t actually make out.

Stan ran a hand through his hair, watching the frown smooth out at the action. “Hey, it’s OK, Ford. Just a dream, go back to sleep. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Doesn’t he?

Stan tilted his head to the side, a violent burst of irritation needing to be dampened before he screamed and woke them all up. He shuffled from his space, slowly guiding Ford to lay down properly with the twins resting on his chest. He tucked them all in with some semblance of a smile, pushing the thoughts away as he let their steady sleep centre him. “Just a dream. Just the remnants of a dream. That things not real, just a nightmare. Only ever been a nightmare and will always be just a nightmare.”

Oh? Is that all I am? You’re sure of that?

“Yep.” Stan glared at nothing as he straightened up. “Nothing to worry about. After all that, I actually did manage to fall asleep, who’d have thought it? Pity my brain’s such a horrid space to be stuck in though.” The voice started to ebb away, a hiss of irritation sparking something hot and viciously victorious in him as the heat of his reckless nonchalance forced the cloying cold from his shoulders. “Just my head. Always was my weakness, my brains not good for anything, never has been.”

Maybe you should get rid of it then. Stop thinking altogether.

“Now you stop that.” Stan chided himself, ignoring the growl as he focused on the intrusive thoughts. “You’ve got Ford back, your family is all together and things are going right. You’ve just got to find a distraction for the night and deal with Mabel’s scolding in the morning.” Another affectionate bubble of warmth filled his chest at the thought of the small girl, the darkness lifting just that bit further from his surroundings. “Yup, gonna have to deal with that in the morning, but better that than being stuck in there with you, wayward thoughts.”

Even with no one around to talk to, filling the air with his own words seemed to help keep everything at bay. Point out the good, keep talking over any voice that tried to strike up a conversation, push past every small sharp scratch of worry, every icy shiver of self-doubt that he was wrong.

He always was a gambler, and his reckless abandon had always made it so hard to throw in the towel when the stakes were high and the reward was higher.

Even so, he knew it would only last for so long. He could only keep chattering quietly to himself for so long before someone woke up, and he couldn’t have that. There was only so long he could keep up the mantra anyway without something to occupy himself before the looming darkness engulfed him again. It wouldn’t take long, he’d slip up, falter and the thoughts would crowd in again.

The nights were always the worst.

When everyone else was asleep and he was left to his own devices.

His eyes found the lighthouse through the window he was pacing beside, his feet pausing as he weighed up his options.

The voices had always been the loudest up there.

But it had also been the place where he had gotten the most done, his purpose tied tight to its timeless structure.

Each night he had ignored the voices, held on to the ones that were important and thrown himself into work, thrown himself into the distraction that the manual labour gave his hands.

The image of a small figure falling, superimposed itself onto the view before him.

He glanced back to his family, sleeping safe and sound behind him. He could go back, could try and sleep even if it was a fruitless endeavour. Or he could go up to the lighthouse, get back to work and see where it took him. See if it was his salvation or his downfall.

He could just try and sleep, do the normal thing and pretend his nightmares hadn’t happened. Or even wake his brother, ask for comfort, let him help him, but that made it real. That made the creature real.

He looked again towards his family, peaceful and resting, his brother finally sleeping which Stan had been trying to get him to do since he’d got him back. A wave of guilt at even thinking about waking him slid across him for a moment as he pushed the half formed idea away before it could take root.

He stood back up straight, turning towards the door.

…He always had been a gambler.

The gloom outside was ominous at best.

Pinpricks fizzled down his back, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as he walked with purposeful strides down the path, his footfalls heavy and loud to counteract the multitude of noises that crept up on him through the shadows of the trees.

He shook himself, refusing to take his eyes off the path and the door ahead.

After all, he’d done this trip before, multiple times. Up and down he’d traced a path through the gravel, an indent forming from his continuous efforts.

It didn’t matter what lurked in the darkness, only that he didn’t give it power.

It had always been that way, and in an odd twisted notion it was almost comforting. The same old path, the same old monsters lurking just out of sight, dancing and scrabbling for attention on his peripheral, against the new fears and worries that had been consuming his time and thoughts recently.

His shoulders lost their tenseness, his back straightening as he held his head high.

You’ve never scared me before, you won’t scare me now.

He wasn’t sure if he heard a cackle or just thought about it but either way he chalked it up to the wind rustling through the trees and continued ever onwards on his path.

Just the wind, just the waves. Just animals in the trees or off the path where you can’t see them. Just normal everyday- every night? Life taking place around you as usual.

Just the things that are always out there on the edge of your vision waiting for you to let them in-

A twig cracked behind him, muted by the stillness, but there just in hearing distance. He ignored it, refusing to let the creatures get the best of him. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of being spooked, jumping at every sound or cringing at every movement-

A crunch of gravel behind him made his feet slow, his movements hesitant even as he plunged forward regardless. That had never happened before, the sounds were always in the trees, always in the rustle of the leaves and in the sway of the grass. Always something he could brush away with a small mantra of a thought.

Just the wind, just the waves. Just a woodland creature that got a bit close to you before realising and is now scampering away quickly-

The gravel crunched again, and then again. Soft feet falling into step behind him and making his hackles rise as the sound refused to falter, refused to vanish where he could pretend he’d never heard it to begin with.

OK, that’s not the wind. That’s not the waves. That’s something tangible.

His eyes glinted in the darkness as another twig snapped, much closer and most definitely on the path behind him.

If it’s tangible, it’s punchable.

And with that, with the gunshot of a crack that was the twig crunching under something’s foot, he spun around on the balls of his feet. The small torch that he had brought with him caught on the figure behind him, his other hand raised ready in warning for whatever it was to take another step closer. “Alright, whatever you are-”

He froze, his brother’s shocked and confused pale face lit up in the darkness. “Sixer?”

“I- uhh- uhm-”

Stan blinked a few more times at him, the frazzled deer in headlights look taking the thunder out of his movements, visibly deflating as he relaxed. He rubbed a hand at his chest, his heart trying its damnedest to beat completely out of his ribcage by the feel of it as he tried to calm himself.

You really are scared of your own shadow, aren’t you? Just your silly brother trying to be sneaky.

“What on earth are you doing out here, Sixer?”

“I- uhh- I could ask you the same question?”

Stan huffed, shaking his head as Ford tried to take control of the situation, still looking shame-faced at least, at being caught red handed following his brother. “Uh-huh?”

Ford’s hands that had been up placatingly, finally dropped to his sides as he stood up straight. “Alright, I was worried. I mean one second I was falling asleep on the sofa with my family and the next my brother’s pacing a hole in the carpet and muttering to himself before walking out of the house in the middle of the night.”

Stan winced, eyes closing apologetically, though he still heard with a painful spike of guilt, the tut of hurt disapproval at his flinching actions. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“No, that’s- that’s not what I meant, Stan.” Ford sighed, running a hand through his hair. “You worried me, I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

“I’m fine, just couldn’t sleep. You should go back to sleep, the kids will worry if we’re both not there when they wake up.”

“Stan. Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?” Stan felt his hackles raise for a completely different reason, drawing back towards the lighthouse without thought.

“This! Closing off! Not letting me help!” Ford huffed, hand still tugging at his hair. “I thought we’d got it into both our heads that we need to communicate?”

“We did but- you were asleep! And I’m fine.”

“Yes, of course, because leaving the house in the middle of the night without telling anyone whilst muttering that you’re ‘not good for anything’ to yourself is the definition of fine.”

“Actually it was that my brain’s not good for anything.”

“Because that’s in some way better?” The words came out in an exasperated sigh that had Stan blinking and at least pausing for thought. Ford shook his head fondly, hoping his words had gotten through to him. “So, I’ll ask again… what are you doing, Stan?”

“I’m… going to work?”

“To work?”

Stan shrugged, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I-I dunno. I can’t sleep and I thought the lighthouse would help.”

“But-”

“But I’ve already got you back? I know that. I just- it’s been part of my routine for so long now, it’s hard to not just feel the need to go up there.” Stan bit down on the nightmare, bit down on blurting out about the voice.

Ford didn’t need to know all that, saying it out-loud made it real.

None of it was real.

“Stan.” The voice was appeasing now, filled with well-meant comfort and logic. “You know that that light can’t come back on. That going up there now could- well- you might-”

And with that, something snapped slightly, Stan’s eyes hardening and stopping Ford’s words in his tracks.

“Of course I know that. I’m not trying to get the light on tonight. Why would I do that? I’ve got you back from that- there’s no need to put the light on, ever again.” Stan sniffed, as if offended that Ford could even imply that he was trying to do that.

“Then, why-”

“I need to figure out how to make sure that the light never comes on again, of course.” Stan let out a bark of hollow laughter. “I mean, it only took thirty years to get it to come on properly, how hard can it be to make sure it doesn’t do that again, huh?”

“Stan…”

Stan sighed, eyes finding Ford’s worried expression again. “Look, I just- I need to do something, OK?”

“Then rest, Stan. Sleep. Isn’t that what you keep telling me to do? It’s like 1am, bro…” Ford’s words fizzled out at Stan’s expression, as he seemed to gulp past something stuck in his throat.

“I can’t.” Stan shrugged, trying to smile but failing. “I just can’t, I need something to do.”

“…You know Mabel’s going to tell us off in the morning.”

“Us?”

“Well yeah, not about to let you spend the night up there alone.” Ford frowned distastefully at the lighthouse, the thoughts of the other wisps that tapped on the glass filling him with unease and the resolve to ignore all and any arguments Stan put forward.

Stan seemed ready to dispute with him as well, opening and closing his mouth a few times, but only for a moment before settling instead for a soft grateful smile. “You sure? You can go back to sleep, Sixer. I promise I’m fine.”

“I know you are. Doesn’t mean I don’t think it’d be nice to spend the evening talking up there while you work. I bet it’s peaceful up there.” Ford tripped over his words, not wanting to break the tentative thread that had been mustered between them, not wanting Stan to push him to leave him be.

“Hey, vs those two whirlwinds everywhere is peaceful once they’re asleep.” Stan scrutinised his brother, a small cheeky grin sliding on to his face now that the worries and doubts seemed to have lifted. “So, were you trying to sneak after me? Because you- uhh, kind of failed there.”

Ford flushed, embarrassment overflowing as he looked down at his feet in annoyance. “I mean, I’m sure I’ve been a lot quieter on this path before. I’ve followed you a few times over the years.”

“Uh-huh?”

Ford huffed, scowling at Stan and then back down at his feet as his arms crossed. “I have! And you never noticed before!”

Stan snorted at the expression. “Wow, you really are a fish out of water, aren’t you? Not used to your legs anymore.” He waited a beat as Ford continued to glare at his own feet in irritation, eyebrow raised before he saw a small dawning look of realisation on Ford’s face and used that moment to turn away, grinning smugly.

“Did you just-”

“Waste a perfectly good joke on my oblivious brother? No, not at all. Come on, Casper, I’m going in now and I don’t want you thinking you can walk through doors as well as silently follow people about.”

“Not this again- who or what is Casper?!”

There was a companionable atmosphere a while later, warm and inviting even with the thick glass walls around them trying to leech the heat away. It had started off with some chattering, some banter back and forth, all the way up the stairs and onwards as Stan settled into his familiar routine with ease. It had been a comfort, Stan's voice and the glow of his lantern ahead of him as they traversed the small, winding stairs. Ford almost hoped his brother didn't notice the hitch in his breath when the door closed, nor how he shuffled closer as the world was shut out behind them. Hoped he couldn’t see how the gloom felt like a solid wall against his back, couldn’t feel the sudden tense atmosphere as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and his mind cast images of glowing eyes burning holes into the back of his skull just waiting for him to turn around.

The darkness had taken on a new sharper edge since he had returned home, much like the cold seemed to seep in that much faster, all the way to his core. On more than one occasion Dipper had jokingly scolded him for falling asleep while reading, making the logical assumption for the lamp beside his bed still being on as the sun rose in the morning. He had stuttered out an excuse, shamefaced and disappointed in himself when Dipper had teased that he’d have to take it away if he didn’t get enough sleep, almost promising himself that he’d stop needing it soon. But the next night was always the same. A childish fear turned into a shockingly painful reality that he couldn’t escape from. A fear he hated to admit still existed and had intensified, blooming ice cold and deadly in his dreams that spoke of never having escaped the abyss.

His hopes seemed to go unheeded though, even if Stan didn't say a word. The lantern managed to find its way much closer to his perch than Ford thought was strictly necessary, even if he was eternally grateful for the gesture, especially when Stan started to squint at his writing in the gloom across from him.

As much as his brain warred over Stan straining himself, the light helped ease the tightness around his heart that had begun when his brother had vanished into the night and had grown exponentially as he tried to follow him along the almost pitch black path. Ford settled on the floor as his brother worked, his pottering away and the flickering warm light making his eyelids heavy as the rhythm of his actions sent him into a tranquil daze. A jacket was thrown over him at some point, an item of contention when the motion woke him up and he tried to give it back to no avail, the light getting a similar rebuttal when he tried to shuffle it further away from him and was promptly placed back in its original spot.

So for a while at the very least he had tried to wake up properly, to rekindle that conversation they had had the last time he had been up here, when he had thought it was his last time seeing his brother and he had wanted to make the most of it. This time it was obvious that something had happened, that Stan wanted to distract himself and take his mind off of other things and Ford was happy to oblige. He brought up old memories, little bits and pieces to make his brother chuckle. He even brought up a few things from when they had been apart, silly nonsensical things that had happened at college or once he’d moved here to get Stan asking questions, always intrigued about the parts of his life that he had missed.

He tried to coax the same from Stan, though it was a lot harder. Some things that Stan found to be amusing, gave a shrug and said were an average day, left a vaguely bitter taste in Ford’s mouth. Luckily there were other times though that he couldn’t seem to stop laughing as his brother spun a tale about finding a new attraction for the Shack on the beach which turned out to be a bit more lively than he had first anticipated.

But soon, Ford tired. He’d been asleep when Stan had jolted from his dreams, half asleep still when he heard the door snap shut and he’d suddenly noticed the cold spot where his brother had been and connected the dots to the muttering shadow that had been pacing the space before him as his mind clicked slowly back into place. And so again, he found his eyelids drooping as Stan continued to talk, for his own sake or Ford’s, he couldn’t quite tell but either way it was comforting to hear his voice, to see that soft smile on his face as he worked at a particularly annoying panel in the lighthouse that Ford knew for a fact had always irritated him.

And so with his own soft smile in place, he tugged the jacket tighter around him and tried to blink the tiredness away. “You always did turn that screw the wrong way.”

Stan huffed, good-humouredly. “Yeah, yeah, like you could do any bet…ter…”

The steady squeaking of metal paused, Stan’s voice dissipating into the night sky around them at the same moment. Ford frowned, eyes opening as silence took over, tension prickling at his skin and making him shudder. “Stan? Is something wrong?”

“You’ve said that before.”

Ford nodded without thought, brain still fogged with sleep as he tried to sit up straight and yawned. “I have, many times. Lots of times, I’ve watched you tackle that-” Another yawn took over as he scrubbed at his eye half-heartedly. “-particular screw many times. You always were stubborn, why didn’t you give up on it?”

“Cause, you never know…”

Ford’s frown deepened as Stan seemed at a loss for words, he blinked a few more times until he could focus in on his brother and abruptly he was wide awake, pushing up from his position to move over quickly. Stan’s face was almost distraught, a myriad of emotions filtering over in quick succession- relief, pain, distress, acceptance- all fluttering like something had suddenly changed and Ford had no idea what. “Stan? Stan, what is it?”

“You said earlier that you had followed me down that path before.”

Ford stared at him, settling a lot closer now, not touching but there if Stan needed him. He felt self-conscious suddenly as Stan watched him like a hawk, waiting for an answer. “Because I have. I followed you a few times, once the light was out and you went back home for your day job, I could stay here for just a bit longer, only ever observing.” His face turned bitter as his hand crept forward, tightening with a relieved sigh on Stan’s. “It’s… good to be able to feel again, for you to hear me again-”

“You don’t understand, Ford. I heard you, I heard you and I thought-”

“You heard me.” Ford’s words cut Stan off this time, silencing him as it was his turn to appraise him. There was a lightness to him as he went, a small happy thrill that he had been correct, that Stan had been listening and responding in a roundabout way. There was only one night that he had been optimistic Stan could hear him, was sure he was answering him but then again, until now he’d forgotten most of the conversation to really analyse it. “You could actually hear me! I was always so hopeful that you could…” Stan’s face was dark, still staring downwards and it made his heart sink. “What’s wrong? Is that a bad thing?”

“Hmm? No, I guess not.” Stan shook himself, his mouth tweaking into an offset smile that wouldn’t stick. “I mean- I guess I wasn’t hearing things, that’s always a plus, am I right?” He gave a small high pitched chuckle that set Ford’s teeth on edge. “There were a lot of nights where I thought I’d lost it entirely, talking to things that weren’t there.”

His words drifted as his eyes unfocused. Ford held his breath, not wanting to break the moment and for his brother to clam up again.

The words however, made his lungs ice over, convinced that a mist of frost would speckle out when he let out his next shaky breath.

“I didn’t want to… No, I wanted to believe but… If I believed in one voice I had to believe in them all.”

His brother had been able to hear the wisps too. The ones that tapped and sang, sharp hissing venom mixed with pleading words.

Join us… stay with us… you’ll never win, come, come to us…

“Stan…” The word came out in a choke, a painful bitter tang behind it that had Stan snapping out of his reverie in a panic. Ford obviously wasn’t meant to hear any of that, but when their eyes locked Stan knew as well as Ford did that they both knew exactly what voices had plagued him.

“S-sorry, forgot you were there for a minute.” Stan sat up again, the entire reminiscence seeming falling like water from his back but there was something there still, something that made Ford open his mouth to keep the conversation going but Stan beat him to it. “I- I can’t really explain it, it’s all muddled. I wanted it to be real so much that I was sure I was dreaming up your voice- I mean you even told me you were proud of me! That I was accomplishing more than you ever had, that had to be me…” He petered off as Ford stared at him, obviously trying to convey the truth. “Really? You- I… I guess you have proved that with our recent conversations, I just never thought I’d actually hear it…”

“Well, you did, Stan. I never got this lit.” Ford tapped the lantern with his knuckles, the metal ringing in protest. “Not once, in 5 years and on your first night here, boom.” He spread all his fingers, arms gesturing widely as he did so. “And then time and time again after that you got it working, maybe not all the way but still, there was nothing when I tried, not even a spark.” He shook his head, the voices far more pressing a conversation in his mind. “Anyway, back to-”

Ford would have been irritated at the amount of times Stan interrupted him and made him lose his train of thought if it wasn’t for the deep seated regret that pulsed through him at Stan’s next words.

“That means you actually said that too…” Stan’s baleful eyes locked him in place, freezing every muscle in him as shame bubbled up thick and fast. He didn’t know what he’d done but the distress in Stan’s eyes physically wounded him, the tears ready to spill forth a stab to his heart. “You said… you told me to stop. You told me it would have been better if you’d…” The words choked in Stan’s mouth as if the mere thought of them was too much.

I’m sorry, Stan, you’ve been doing such a good job but now… now it’s time to rest. Time to stop. You have a life to live. It’s- it’s…

It’s time to grieve.

That was right. That night. The night Stan had responded, had told him to stop talking. Had pushed him away as another one of ‘the voices’. His heart sank into his stomach as he sat there, Stan still chattering away before him and cutting him with each rambling half thought.

“I mean, night after night you were there encouraging me, I thought it was all too good to be true. And then suddenly one night you changed your tune, it was like you tore me apart. Thirty years and you were suddenly telling me to give up, to let you go- to stop caring.” The words came out in a torrent. “Was it really you? Both times?” Ford nodded on autopilot and Stan choked. “How?! How could you tell me to stop searching for you?”

“I-I didn’t think you could get me out without bringing that creature out too. You- you were doing exactly what he wanted.”

“Yeah? Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you? Just like he did.” Stan snapped, scrubbing at his eyes in quick stuttering movements, trying to stop any tears before they had a chance to escape. “The both of you, the both of you thought I couldn’t do it, and look at where we are now.”

“Stan- please, I’m… I’m glad you ignored me, I’m glad you carried on and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for that night. You-” Ford stuttered to a halt, the night in question making him shake as he remembered Stan’s listless expression, his pale tired complexion.

“Then what’s the point? No use to anyone…”

“You… really scared me that night.”

Stan went quiet at the fearful confession, eyes widening as he remembered the moment when he had crumbled, had lost all hope. His voice turned gruff as he turned away. “Yeah well, that kind of happens when your guide does a 180 turn and tells you ‘everything you’ve done was for nothing’.”

Ford winced. “I am sorry. Honestly. I just- I wanted you to live, Stan. And you couldn’t do that still looking for me. You’d already wasted so many years-”

“Wasted? You think I wasted them?”

“No! Not, not now.” Ford groaned, scrubbing at his face, any thoughts of sleep well and truly trodden into the mud. “Stan, stop twisting everything I say! Of course I’m grateful, I’m so glad that it all worked out. I can’t believe what you achieved- what you did to get me home. It was an amazing feat and I’m sorry I doubted you.”

The outburst was met with silence, Ford sagging under the sudden flare of emotion as guilt swirled around them both.

“Y-you… you said goodbye, Sixer.”

Ford’s eyes closed, another sharp pain lancing through him as he realised just what he had done in those moments. He’d never regret them if Stan had listened, if Stan had stopped and gone about his life without him, he’d never have begrudged him that. But if something worse had happened because of his words…

He’d never have forgiven himself.

And in hindsight, it would never have deterred his brother, if anything there was a sharp tang of remorse settling in his throat at what he would have done if it was the other way around, how betrayed he would have felt if Stan had told him to give up and leave him down in the water.

If it was Stan that had said goodbye to him, had vanished from sight and willingly sacrificed himself to the waves.

…Ford would never have forgiven him.

Before he could think of anything to say however, there were suddenly arms encasing him, tugging him over full body into a warm chest that shook with sobs that he wasn’t allowed to see.

“Don’t- don’t you dare. I get it, I get why you did it as much as I hate that you did it. But don’t. Don’t you ever, ever say goodbye to me like that again, do you hear me?”

Ford burrowed into the warmth, arms encircling Stan to pull him tighter and rub at his back. “OK, OK, I promise.”

“And don’t ever even think about telling me to give up on you again, because I can’t- I can’t-” Stan’s words stuttered to a halt again, a small shushing from Ford just enough to get him back on track. “Just- don’t, OK? Don’t tell me to give up on you or stop trying because I’ll always be there to protect you. You and the kids and Soos and Wendy and- everyone else. And I need to do that, I need to know I can protect you all and the thought of you telling me not to and to let you go-”

“Shh, OK, Stan, I get it. I’m sorry.” Ford bit his tongue from the words he wanted to spill. He knew that this wasn’t just about what he’d said, that something had happened that had made Stan worry, had made him fear that something would happen again and he wouldn’t be able to stop it and he’d blame himself. “As long as you’ll always be there to protect us, I won’t say a word about you giving up or leaving me behind or anything like that again.” He pulled away hesitantly, trying to catch Stan’s eye. “Wherever we go, we go together, right?”

Stan shook for a second more, his face scrunching up as he rubbed at his eye with a nod. “Y-yeah. Wherever we go, we go together. You better remember that, Sixer.”

“Always.”

There was silence for a moment as both of them took stock of themselves, stitched themselves back together after another emotional conversation. But Ford hoped that it had been another meaningful one, that this was another link in building the bridge that had been lost years ago. There’d be a few bumps, a few twists and turns but he knew that they were both working towards the same goal.

He just hoped he wasn’t about to throw a spanner in that work.

“…Stan?”

“…Yeah?”

The voice was hesitant, perturbed and Ford bit his lip nervously. “I know you don’t want to hear it but part of the reason I asked you to stop was because that… thing, was hanging over you. The creature that had me locked down there, I could sometimes see him whispering to you, slipping into your head whilst you slept. He even impersonated me at times.”

He waited quietly as Stan blinked at him as if struggling to remember a specific voice. He wanted to bring them all up, bring up the wisps that flowed through the fog at the windowpane and whistled through the air like a vengeful breeze. But there was only so much that could be brought up in one conversation before they were both too emotionally drained.

These things took time, he wouldn’t rush him.

But he needed to know what that thing had told him.

“I mean…”

Ford sat up straight as Stan’s face wavered, he could tell there was more there than he wanted to say but he tried to be patient, to see where he went with his words.

“I heard other voices, I just assumed they were all in my head, including yours.”

Ford nodded, trying not to wince as icy shivers fluttered down his back at the sinking weight that Stan was used to voices like the wisps, that they weren’t so foreign that he knew they weren’t his own.

“But none of them mattered, because even- heh- even when I didn’t believe in it, yours was the only voice I paid attention to.”

“He used my voice too.” Ford gestured around helplessly, trying to remember exactly what was said as Stan looked on at him disbelievingly. “He- he asked you for help with my voice. Begged, pleaded with you in a panic.”

“Come on, Sixer, you think I wouldn’t know when something was impersonating you?”

Ford closed his eyes at the question. He knew the answer to it, knew that it might as well have been a recording, but his throat was closing up as he tried to answer. Water was sliding down his throat in a torrent as he found himself locked at the bottom of the ocean as its weight crushed into him and only bubbles of fear fled out of his mouth instead of the scream that wanted to erupt.

“Whoa! Whoa, Sixer, you’ve gone as white as a sheet!”

“H-he…” Ford gulped, opening his eyes, tearing himself out of the dark abyss and back into the warmly lit room with his brother’s even warmer hand grasping his to keep him afloat. “He… I can’t-”

“Hey, shh, it’s OK. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” Stan shushed him, his thumb moving in small circles on the back of his hand and dragging him further and further from the sea.

“I need to-” Ford took a deep breath, marvelling at the lungful of air before shakily letting it out again. “I can’t explain but- I did panic, but it wasn’t when the light was on. He wanted you to work faster so he… produced an incentive and used it more than once to his advantage.”

Stan’s eyes sparked with fury as the words sunk in, a fire igniting in them before he took a deep breath himself and seemed to physically shrug it from his shoulders. His face was grim but set with a determination that Ford couldn’t yet muster himself. “Well, as much as I really, really want to drag that creature from the depths and beat it back into oblivion- we won, Sixer. We won and that thing is never going to hurt you ever again.”

Ford nodded, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to look up, the rows of jagged teeth and glistening bulbous eyes still too fresh in his mind’s eye to want to look up at the ceiling of the lantern room. “Y-yes, of course.” He shook himself, rubbing under his glasses as he tried to focus. “That- that wasn’t the point, anyway. The point was that he has spoken to you, on more than one occasion. Sometimes he pretended to be me, but other times, I don’t think he did.” He turned back to his brother, still tightly holding his hand as the concern shifted between them and now Stan looked self-conscious. “He whispered to you while you slept and you’d wake up in such a panic. What did he say, Stan? What did he do in your dreams?”

Stan bit his lip for a second, his eyes glazing as if he was far away before he shook it all off, his face once again a thin sour line of, what Ford could only place as, determined denial. “Honestly? If he was talking to me in my dreams or whatever, then… I never knew, I never noticed anything different.” Ford almost felt the need to raise an eyebrow in disbelief as Stan’s face looked conflicted, as if even he wasn’t so sure anymore in his conviction. “OK, maybe not at the time, whereas thinking back now in hindsight… but really, there’s nothing he could have said that I hadn’t already thought myself on a number of occasions- heck, most were probably things I’d thought before I even got here!”

Ford shook his head, watching Stan visibly deflate at his response. “No, there has to be more to it than that. Are you sure? Are you sure he wasn’t making things worse? This creature feeds off of fear, Stan. It makes him stronger, and with you up here trying your best to get me back I’m sure he had a lot of ways to make you scared-”

“All the more reason we should stop having this conversation. I already said it, right? We. Won.”

“Stan…”

“Alright.” Stan barked, Ford’s mouth shutting with a snap as his brother continued in a torrent of words that he couldn’t quite seem to stop. “If he was talking to me, he sounded an awful lot like the voice in my head does anyway. So I don’t know! I don’t know if he was rooting around in here for whatever reason, all I know is that if he was… I never noticed. It didn’t sound any different.”

“Oh. Oh, Stan…”

Stan winced at the pain laced whisper that left Ford’s lips as if he’d punched him in the stomach. He ran a hand through his hair, the guilt across his face evident to Ford for a mere second before he turned his back on him.

“Can we… can we just stop talking about this now? You keep saying that thing feeds on fear and recognition and quite frankly the quicker we forget about it, the better.”

Ford opened his mouth to argue, but when Stan turned back to him the words died on his tongue. He looked exhausted suddenly, as if the act of telling him hadn’t unburdened him but left him feeling even more weighed down by his own swirling thoughts. He gulped, hoping he hadn’t opened the floodgates of self-loathing and instead gripped Stan’s hand that was still in his, giving it another squeeze as he mused over what to say next.

It only really took a few moments to realise what he really needed to ask in that moment.

“If… if that voice starts up again- not the creature’s!” He put his hand up as Stan looked ready to snarl at him. “If your inner voice starts… to get like that again, you’ll come talk to me, won’t you? I want to help you.”

The snarl left Stan’s face, melting into wide eyed shock for a second before a bubble of laughter escaped him much to Ford’s surprise. “Yeah, alright. I’ll do that.”

“Stan.” Ford put as much authority into that word as he felt was possible, for some reason hearing their mother in the tone as Stan cringed slightly.

“Come on, Sixer. I can’t come to you whenever my thoughts turn sour- that’d be more often than not.”

“…All the more reason to.” Ford bit back on the sad pained noise that had threatened to come out at Stan’s words, instead choosing to go with what his heart said was the best thing to say as Stan looked on lost. “Stan, you- you’re amazing and you don’t seem to see it. I need you to see that. You took on an eldritch horror and won. We didn’t win- you won.” Ford pulled him close, still talking as Stan sat frozen in his arms. “But none of that even matters, you matter, whether or not you did that, whether or not you got me back, you deserved a good life-” The noise of disagreement fuelled Ford ever onwards. “No, Stan, you did. The kids love you for who you are. And-” He growled, feeling Stan shake his head against his shoulder.

He couldn’t get through to him.

And suddenly it clicked, his entire body freezing for a second before relaxing as he pulled his brother even tighter around him.

“All you wanted to do was keep me safe, you never gave up on me. You just made me promise to never ask you to give up on me again, didn’t you?” Ford felt the hesitation, the quick nod that was almost a question as to where this was going. He smiled, resting his head on top of Stan’s. “Then, don’t ask me to give up on you. ‘Cause I won’t, I’m going to be here whenever you need me, no matter what from now on. We’re going to look after each other, but I can only do that if you let me.”

Stan locked up, pulling away slightly to scrutinise Ford’s expression, as if still doubtful before he burrowed back into his embrace, his arms finally moving to wrap around him in return and Ford gave a relieved sigh at the motion.

“I’ll try to talk to you more. If the voice gets too much, I’ll come talk to you.”

“That’s all I ask, Stan.” Ford gave him a pat on the back, closing his eyes as his breathing evened out. “If you ever need me, I’m right here, I don’t care how insignificant you think it might be or not worth telling me, know that I’m always here to listen.” He hummed thoughtfully as the words made him think of another time, tapping at Stan’s back to get him to look him in the eye. “If I’m honest, I’m pretty sure our lack of communication got us into quite a lot of our troubles as kids… so how about we both promise to do our best to communicate from now on? No more secrets, no more not telling the other what’s bothering us.”

Stan snorted, nodding. “Hey, I think we’re doing well. How many heart to hearts have we had since you’ve been back? I feel like we’ve had more in the last week or so than we’ve ever had before combined.”

Ford huffed out a bark of laughter back. “True. We’re doing a lot better than we ever did before.” He leant in conspiratorially even though it was only them in the vicinity. “Let’s keep that up.”

“Deal.” Stan nodded, pulling away. “But for now, can we please stop being sappy?”

Ford couldn’t help but continue to laugh as Stan shuffled away from him. “OK, OK, for now we can stop.”

“Thank God for that.” Stan dropped his hand and stood up with a stretch.

Before he could do much else though, his thoughts already back to the work he had been doing, Ford followed him up, walking past him towards the balcony door.

“Whoa, Casper, where do you think you’re going?”

Ford blinked, frowning for a second at the nickname before brushing it off. “I thought we could both use some fresh air is all. It’s a nice night, the views great-”

Stan’s hand gripped the back of his collar, tugging him back. “Yep, fair but funnily enough Mr ‘I forgot you’d be able to hear me sneaking after you’, I don’t completely trust you to remember that you can’t float about anymore.”

Ford gave an indignant squawk. “I’m fully capable of-”

“Sixer, I know you’re completely capable of moving around now, considering how you chase after the kids but how about we don’t put your legs to the test around that big a drop just yet, hey?”

Ford frowned again, his expression disappointed and hurt in a way that made Stan look away. “Well I guess you’ll have to be there besides me to make sure nothing happens then, won’t you?” He gave a smug grin as Stan sighed, hand reaching for the handle even as the hand in his collar refused to relent.

He felt more than saw Stan rub a hand over his own face, a groan of defeat echoing through the small room.

“Alright, honesty, right? That’s what we’re doing from now on, yeah?”

Ford paused in his fight to be free, turning back to Stan in interest, the change in tone from light-hearted to downtrodden knocking him off kilter. “Yeah?”

Ice found its way through Ford again within an instant, the fight leaving him in one fell swoop.

“Frankly, I don’t trust myself out there either.”

“S-Stan-”

“No, I mean- I don’t mean-” Stan groaned, his hand still pressed over his face as he sighed again. “I meant I’ve already dreamt once tonight of falling over the edge, I’m not really up for going near it right now.”

“…You dreamt of falling off the lighthouse.”

“Yeah?” Stan’s voice grew defensive at Ford’s disbelieving tone, raising an eyebrow as his arms crossed, obviously no longer worried that Ford would make a dash for it. “What’s weird about that?”

“Nothing.” Ford turned fully to him, eyebrow quirking. “What’s strange is that you had that dream and then came up here at all.”

“I… I don’t really have an argument for that.” Stan rubbed at the back of his neck, glancing back at the lantern. “Guess this place always gave me a sense of purpose. It’s a good distraction from nightmares, always has been. I kind of took a gamble.”

“You could have woken me.”

Stan winced, still refusing to look at him. “I mean, I did think about it….” He stood up straight, closing his eyes before taking a deep breath and looking earnestly at his brother.

The ice melted, a flood of warm water making Ford smile softly.

“I’ll- try to talk to you next time instead, yeah? I felt guilty waking you when I always push you to sleep more but… if you really want me to, I’ll wake you next time if I can’t go back to sleep and feel the need to come up here, or make an exhibit in the middle of the night, or something equally as distracting.”

“I’d like that.” Ford patted him on the shoulder before pulling him up beside him at the door. “Don’t worry, I won’t open it. But still, that’s a great view, isn’t it?”

He watched carefully as Stan gave in, relaxing as his eyes scanned the stars and the bright moon, as they flickered to the water now and then before a soft huff escaped him. “Yeah, I guess it is. I stopped taking it in a while back but now I’m not looking for something out there, it really is something, isn’t it?”

Ford grinned, hand wrapped around his brother’s shoulder, glad to have helped in any way he could as his brother settled beside him.

Soon enough they found themselves sitting, side by side, not out on the balcony but still gazing outwards, a soft silence filling the air that was completely companionable when the solid presence of the other was tight to their side.

It was a while later, in amongst the quiet that Ford asked a question that had been plaguing him for a while.

“Hey, Stan? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, might not answer though.”

“The night that you got me back. When you got the lighthouse working properly… what was different?”

Stan sat silent for a while, so long in fact that Ford almost thought he wouldn’t answer.

“I… I don’t know actually. I was pacing around a lot up here, trying to figure out what to do, but… I did that a lot. That wasn’t anything new. In fact the only thing was-”

Stan’s words cut off, Ford moving to look at his face as a soft small smile wormed its way on to his face. “Stan?”

Stan shook his head, leaning it against Ford’s shoulder as he shrugged. “I was just thinking about… nah, never mind. It wouldn’t have had any bearing on anything.”

“Tell me? Please?”

Stan sat up again with a sigh as Ford nudged his shoulder, scratching at his face in open vulnerability. “I dunno, I guess I was just thinking about the kids? That they were going to leave soon and how much I knew they’d love to meet you.” He glanced at Ford sheepishly, his smile still plastered on his face. “How much I wanted you to meet them before they left because they’re just so-” His hands gestured uselessly, trying his hardest to come up with an all-encompassing word for them.

Ford laughed, nodding along with him. “They really are something.”

“Bright? They’re just so – them.” Stan grumbled under his breath for his lack of eloquence before continuing. “So, anyway, yeah, that’s all that was different. I was up here looking out to sea, thinking about how soon they’d be gone and how much they needed to meet you. I kept thinking about how you’d said goodbye to me and how that couldn’t be the end, I refused to let it end like that because those kids deserved to meet you as much as you deserved to meet them. How nothing else mattered as long as you were safe and sound and you got to know your family like you always should have- and on it came.”

Ford sat quietly for a few moments, letting the words sink in as Stan shifted beside him, filling in the silence himself awkwardly.

“So yeah, when I say we won- I have no idea what caused the light to turn on. I’m just glad something out there likes us enough to give me the chance to get you back, Sixer.”

“You won.” The words came out automatically, but luckily Ford knew how to continue as Stan got ready to dispute it. “From what you just said, I’d say you got me back through force of willpower and determination. And even if I’m wrong, it was still you who dived off a ship and rescued me. It’s still you who did all of that, not some light.”

“… If you say so. I still don’t think it was all me.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me to make you see sense.”

Stan looked over at him, trying to hold back his hopeful expression. “I’ll drink to you being around from now on, that’s for sure.”

Ford leant back against him, feeling an arm wrap around his shoulder. “Heh, you’ll never get rid of me even if you tried.”

They fell back on to easier conversations, light hearted and warm now from that particular open discussion. The thought of the kids, how the thought of them had driven Stan on, felt like a warm beacon for both of them to latch on to, wondering what the next day would bring once they awoke and dragged them along to the next big adventure.

On that note, Ford found himself drifting once again, only this time he could feel Stan doing the same, both of them slowly becoming more lethargic and unwilling to move with every moment that passed. He knew though that if they weren’t careful though that soon the sun would start to dust the horizon and falling asleep up here would one, do a number on them both muscle wise, and two, scare the kids if they woke up and couldn’t find them in the house.

He struggled upwards, feeling Stan groan beside him but move as well, understanding thick in his every movement even if he refused to open his eyes. Ford shook his head in amusement, eyes skating across the still navy horizon where the sky hit the water and tried to think of something to say that would get them both moving back to at least the sofa where the kids were bundled up, if not to their own beds.

Instead however, in the sleepy haze, his words jumbled into something far off topic that he hadn’t even known whether to ever broach. His eyes followed the crest and fall of the waves, the silver foam derailing his thoughts entirely from the momentum he had been following.

His filter vanished with the lack of sleep, not quite awake until the words were out of his mouth and Stan’s body language changed entirely.

“Hey Stan, would you still like to go sailing together?”

AN: 8D I hope this explains a few more bits and pieces ♥ On the final stretch! Stan talking about the kids and how he thought of them when the light came on properly was one of those flaily scenes I’ve been dying to share.

#gravity falls fanfiction #gravity falls #lighthouse keeper au #Stanley Pines #stanford pines #bill cipher #mabel pines #dipper pines #grunkle stan #grunkle ford #the light keeper

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skia-oura · 7 years

Text

Orange Lilies, 3/?

A/N: twO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER, the next chapter! This is set to be fairly slow development, so things are still in that gear-up stage. Also! We get to see a certain Henry reincarnation this go around :D

Prologue // Previous // Next

Ao3 ff.net

2. Brownies for Hepsa

Saying yes to Meung-soo had been easier than Bentley thought it would be. Her reply to his suggestion, though still a little distant, felt more relaxed, more human, than the last message. She had also agreed to lunch at Tarannala’s Treasury, though it seemed that Mikael wouldn’t be coming with her; apparently, he had work at home and couldn’t make the trip over from Switzerland. Bentley found himself looking forward to the meeting, oddly enough. He was interested enough that on Saturday he found himself at an outside table at Trannala’s early, fingers curled around a tall glass of complimentary, cherry-infused water, waiting for his Aunt to arrive.

On the table, his phone vibrated. He took a sip of water, then murmured, “Open, show message.”

The phone expanded with a quiet sshhf, the screen blinking to life before his messages were selected by the phone’s program. He was glad to have remembered to set the phone to silent before coming out; the family at the table next to him seemed very straight-laced, the kind that stared loud strangers into submission. Bentley shifted in his chair so that his back was more to them, and read the message.

Oh my god ben they have the new stars of wood and gold, they have the new swg I’m going to die I’m so happy.

Bentley snorted, his shoulders lifting with humor. He reached for the phone and typed back a quick reply telling Torako that she could buy it if she wanted, but don’t expect him to read any kind of Twin Souls related drudgery, and he didn’t care how good the prose was.

Moments later, his phone vibrated in his hand and he looked down at it.

Hey now, even TYRONE is excited about it. Tyrone.

Don’t care, he typed back. And you’re bluffing, he might not hate Stars of Wood and Gold, but he doesn’t actually like it.

He set the phone down and took a sip of his water again. Half of the reason to go to Tarannala’s, he thought, was this right here. Thanks be for complimentary cherry water. The phone buzzed, twice, and he went to read the message—in all-caps, so Dipper was borrowing Torako’s device—when he heard his name.

“Bentley?”

Bentley looked up into the face of a woman he didn’t know. She was clutching the strap of a small purse in her hand, thin bracelets glinting off her wrist. The spots of light let through the revolving canopy above the table tracked slow and smooth across the curves of her wide face and the faux-cotton texture of her light jacket. She had crow’s feet around her eyes, but he thought that he could see his mother’s nose—seen only in photos and in the bridge of his own—in the way hers lay on her face.

“Aunt Meung-soo?” he asked, standing up on reflex.

She smiled, and it curved her cheeks up to crease her eyes from the bottom. “Flesh and bone,” she said. She pulled out a chair, which was old-fashioned and four-legged. Single-limb chairs were way more stable, but it was part of Tarannala’s antiquated charm. “I thought it might be you; you look a lot like your father, though you’re built more like my Soo-jan.”

Bentley smiled back, ignoring the sudden pang of pain in his heart, and sat down himself His chair dipped far enough down on its levitators that it touched the ground before stabilizing again. “Soo-jan is my Mom, right? Susan?”

Meung-soo nodded, sliding her hand against the edge of the table to bring up the menu and alert the waitstaff to a new customer. It flickered into existence in front of her, and she met his eyes over the top of it. “Yes. She went by both, but Philip called her Susan more often than not so I’m unsurprised that he would refer to her that way. Did you talk about her much, if you don’t mind me asking?”

His hand found his phone, and he traced his thumb up and down the side closest. He could try. “Not…not much. Just that she was out on a Dip and the excavation site turned dangerous quicker than expected. That Dad liked her laugh and that she sang me to sleep every night. Little things.”

Bentley fell quiet. Dad had always gotten the softest, strangest expression on his face when he talked about Mom, Bentley remembered. He remembered fuzzy pajamas and his hands on the photo album’s screen, Dad’s warmth against his back and his arm wrapped around Bentley’s torso, like he was afraid to let Bentley go, and—

He looked down at the phone, at Dipper’s message. IT DOESN’T HAVE US ALL FUCKING THIS TIME, it read. Of course Dipper knew that already, without having even read a single word. He found himself taking a deep breath and anchoring himself to the words. HALLEFUCKINGLULIJAH IF TORA MAKES ME SUFFER THROUGH IT I MIGHT NOT DESPISE EVERY SECOND.

He wasn’t quite sure what ‘hallefuckinglulijah’ meant, but Dipper had said it enough times for Bentley to think it was some kind of curse, or maybe a prayer. It could have been anything, with Dipper.

Meung-soo laughed, and the self-depreciating edge to it made Bentley look up at her, startled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I told myself I wouldn’t bring up sore subjects right away, and here I am. This was more about us getting to know each other, not dwelling in the past.”

“It’s…understandable,” Bentley said. He noticed that he menu in front of her was gone; she must have sent in her request to the shop. His sandwich would come out at the same time as whatever she ordered would.

They were silent a while longer, the space between them awkward. Bentley stared at his water glass, watched the condensation bead down the outside of it, and listened to the chatter around. The table next to them, with the stern family, were discussing the failure of the local Petty Matter Investigative Squad to hold up their promises to return missing pets to their homes, and dear goodness where would Pretty have gone that was so impossible to find? Their youngest kept making babbling noises, though; when set against the self-righteous indignance, it made Bentley grin to himself.

“So,” Meung-soo said, and Bentley refocused on her, losing the thread of conversation regarding how little Pretty would never run away. He took a sip of his water. She glanced away and then back at him, eyes dark and warm and a little unsure. “What do you do, Bentley?”

Work questions. He knew this line of conversation well. “I’m a practical researcher at Niklakka Labs; most of what I do is taking theory—”sometimes from idiots who didn’t know what they were doing, so he had to fix the theory and he hated pure theory—“and putting it into practice until we get the right combination of sigils.”

Meung-soo’s eyebrows rose. “Sigils? That’s a rather odd choice, even if it is on the rise. What made you want to study that?”

He tilted his head and lifted a hand to shake it back and forth. On the table, his phone vibrated, but he didn’t pick it up. “I was good at it, and I enjoy it. Also, it’s really handy and it’s not something a lot of people know how to do well. Most can’t even tell sigils apart from other writing-based magics.”

“Can you show me something easy?” She asked, leaning forward so that her elbows were planted against the table. Light slid across the forearms of her jacket, grass-green against shadow. “I don’t know much about sigils.”

Bentley felt his eyebrows twitch up a little. Usually, people changed the subject after hearing what Bentley’s job was. “Okay,” he said, and he picked the phone up off the table. She come? Asked Torako. He shot off a quick reply, and then pulled up a DrawNote tab and full-screened it.

“So this,” he drew an upright triangle with a stylus materialized by the program, “is commonly recognized as the alchemical symbol for fire, but it serves the same purpose as a sigil. And if you draw an activation line through it—” A small burst of flame flickered to life above the screen, not powerful enough to make a dint in Bentley’s energy or damage anything. It disappeared quickly, but when he glanced at Meung-soo, she looked enraptured. “It releases the energy pent up in the symbol.”

“So I could do that on my phone too?” She reached for her purse, eyes still on his hands.

“Definitely not,” Bentley said. “Mine is warded and prepped for sigil work because of my job; because my school had them on all the issued tablets, but it is an extra fee and has to be specially requested.”

“Oh,” she said. “How much extra?”

“It depends on the power levels. The school issued tablets weren’t too expensive, from what I remember, but,” Bentley trailed off. He popped off the case of his phone and leaned across the table to show Meung-soo the sigils chained along its edge, tiny and delicate. “Mine has protections as strong as we know how to make. Something like the fire sigil I just showed you would be much less intricate, and much less expensive.”

Meung-soo traced a line of sigils, all carefully activated with a single, complicated line. She hummed, eyes narrowed in concentration. “This must have cost a lot, then.”

Bentley shrugged and looked away. The edges of his mouth twitched up. “Not really. Just my effort.”

She raised her head, and he looked back at her. “You did this?”

He nodded.

“But they’re so tiny!” Meung-soo bent closer to the phone, like she could absorb all the secrets of the craft if she could just get her eyes near enough. “I thought this was machine crafted!”

“No, sigils need more of a sentient touch,” Bentley said.

“Ah!” Meung-soo snapped her fingers twice and pulled far enough away from the phone to catch his eye again. “But wait, if sigils are anything like wards, then they need sentient energy to work right?”

“Yes,” Bentley said. His eyebrows were raised. “Not many people know that wards need SE, much less think to make that connection.”

Meung-soo tilted her head and went back in to study the sigil chain. “I’m a Magitechnician who works in Practical Applications; I have to know my wards.”

Bentley passed her his phone and leaned back. He took a sip of his cherry water. “Aren’t there people working to integrate sigils more into that kind of thing?”

“In some places—North Africa has been at the forefront of that push, but it’s pretty fledgling. I think what puts companies off is how personal everything about sigils is.” She very carefully drew the back of one manicured nail against the string of sigils; Bentley wondered where she went to get that kind of nail job, and how much it would cost to get one himself. “Taking what you said about sigils needing to be drawn instead of machine-made, that makes sense. I hadn’t considered that.”

Bentley nodded. He curled his fingers around the glass and watched Meung-soo. Her eyes gleamed, even in the spotted light, and she was hunched over like he did whenever he was particularly engrossed in something. Meung-soo was smiling, her expression unreserved the way it hadn’t been when she’d first walked up.

Maybe, Bentley thought, something really would come of this.

The next day, Torako knocked on Officer Nathan’s apartment door, her briefcase in one hand and Bentley under her arm. Dipper was crowded in front of them, and held the tray of brownies in two hands.

“I could have blipped us here,” he groused, human skin on and already sweaty. They had walked over, the day unusually warm for early April.

“And what about Torako’s job makes that a good idea?” Bentley murmured from by Dipper’s shoulder.

“It wouldn’t be that noticeable,” Dipper said.

“Says the little shit who wasn’t up five nights in a row not only proofing the entire apartment, but sewing careful and very difficult sigils into everybody’s clothing. Sewing. Not drawing, sewing.” It had been several months since Torako nearly tripped the station’s detectors, and Bentley still wasn’t over it.

“Shush,” Torako whispered. “We are here to be a very normal family who does very normal things in their time off like baking brownies and visiting people who have recently been attacked.”

“Somehow I don’t think that last part is exactly normal, Tora.”

Dipper snickered. Torako kicked him in the ankle, and he hissed a little. She was saved from immediate retribution by the door opening, and Officer Nathan’s voice saying, “Please come in.”

“Thank you very much for having us!” Torako said, herding Bentley and Dipper into the apartment. “We brought brownies, just in case that would cheer Holly up.”

“She can’t have solids yet, but I’ll place them in stasis so that she can enjoy them when she recovers.” Officer Nathan looked—it was hard to tell with him, but he looked tired. Torako didn’t pause or let on that she’d noticed, but she did. “Thank you all for coming.”

“Can’t have solids?” Bentley asked. She pulled off her shoes, and when she kneeled to put them down she absentmindedly tugged at Bentley’s laces. He braced himself on her back and toed out of them so that Torako could set his next to hers.

“They got her in the throat,” Officer Nathan said. “Used some kind of substance that makes healing harder. Holly was bad enough, but this made it worse.”

Torako tugged at Dipper’s shoes, and he ruffled her hair in thanks before taking them off.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dipper said. She could tell by the tone that he was biting something back, and Torako wondered at how far he’d come since she’d met him years ago, bloody and demonic and hovering over Bentley protectively in the wake of a situation that still gave her nightmares.

She set Dipper’s loafers on the other side of Bentley’s shoes, and then stood to see Dipper pass Officer Nathan the brownies. “Is she resting right now?”

Officer Nathan’s lips pulled back in a smile. She could see the glinting of his iron teeth in the crack. “No. She’s lively today, and has the Mindword app on her tablet. If you want, she’s in the bedroom at the end of the hall.”

“We’ll go say hi, then,” Torako said. She pushed the briefcase, which she’d set on the floor, closer to the line of shoes and set a hand each on Dipper’s and Bentley’s backs. “Again, thank you for having us.”

Officer Nathan nodded. “I’ll let you say hi to her,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Dipper was warm under her hand, his outdated formal shirt a little stiff against her palm. Under her right hand was Bentley in one of his favorite, but also nicer jackets. If she moved her hand, Torako knew that she’d feel the embroidery shift under her hand, pushed into action by the pressure of her fingers. Other people might not know looking at it, but Bentley had embroidered it, and it was full of sigils—Torako couldn’t even name all of them.

Up along the back of her neck, she could feel the residual tingle of anti-demon wards.

“Tyrone,” Bentley said, “you don’t have to hold your arms like that anymore.”

Dipper snorted and very quickly folded his arms like he was hiding his hands. “Like what?”

“Like an idiot.”

Dipper stiffened under her hand. “Excuse you, I was solving complex calculus when I was twelve. What were you doing when you were twelve? Not that!”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Play nice, children,” Torako said. She looked to one side of the hall, where Officer Nathan had a series of moving and stationary images. One was of him and his wife, Hepsa; they were smiling, dressed in thin, traditional clothing that let the sunlight in through the fabric. They held a ball of rose-thorn vines in their hands between the two of them, and no blood was to be seen. He had explained the significance of it once to Torako, but she had forgotten what he’d said.

In the picture, Hepsa was round-faced and smiling, just a few centimeters shorter than her husband. When they got to the open bedroom door, she was barely recognizable under the red-orange bruises and the white bandage wrapped around her throat.

Bentley sucked in a breath and paused in the doorway. Dipper kept going forward, and Torako, with a spine tempered by a year of cult-hunting and all the pain that came with it, pressed against Bentley’s back and smiled. “Hey Mrs. Akuapem! We gave them to your husband to put in stasis, but we brought you some brownies for when you feel better!”

Hepsa smiled with one side of her mouth. The left half remained where it was. Paralysis from the holly weapon, Torako thought. Maybe complicated by the poison. She swallowed; the paralytic should have worn off by now.

Bentley found his feet again, and stepped forward. “I—I’m so sorry that this happened, I can’t believe that somebody would do this.”

The woman on the bed huffed and patted the bed with her hands—first palm down, then palm up. The left hand was slower to move than the right, but at least it moved.

Dipper sighed, dragged a stool over, and sat on it, knees apart and an inch from the bed. Torako couldn’t see his face from her position by the door, but she imagined that he was looking Hepsa up and down, taking in her aura. “Long recovery, huh?”

Hepsa made a sort of gravelly gurgling in the back of her throat and reached out to the bedside table for her tablet. There was a glowing IV device in her arm, undoubtedly connected to the floating bag of solution in the corner. It wouldn’t be a saline drip, but Torako didn’t know what Asanbosam were prescribed.

They waited for Hepsa to blink her eyes at the device, and she turned it around in one hand. The motions were more labored than Torako liked.

The worst part is that I’m missing a month of school, the tablet read. The children are just learning the incantation for firefly lights. I had looked forward to it.

Torako grinned. “Firefly lights? I remember learning that! I was shit at it, but it was a lot of fun. Bentley, were you any better?”

He looked over his shoulder at her, a little confused. “Torako, you know I was homeschooled. And,” his eyes got a little misty, “you know that Dad—”

Dipper reached over and tugged Bentley onto his lap. “YEAH I was homeschooled too, and the curriculum just wasn’t the same! In fact, we didn’t touch any incantations until I was like a teenager, it was the worst. I’ve never learned it!”

Hepsa’s eyes, faded green, widened. She blinked, and on the tablet: You’ve never learned? Neither of you?

“Neither of them,” Torako confirmed. It occurred to her that it was taking Officer Nathan a long time to put the brownies in stasis.

What a shame. Hepsa frowned, again with one side of her face, and tapped one stubby finger against the side of the tablet.

Bentley looked back at her, his arm slung over Dipper’s shoulder for balance. Torako flicked her eyes towards Hepsa, and then nodded at him. He frowned at her, obviously not getting what she was trying to tell him. He seemed more dense than usual—too many late nights?—so Torako huffed and set her hands on her hips.

“I’m sure that if you’re up to it, they’d love a quick lesson,” Torako put forward for both Dipper and Bentley. Bentley’s face lit up with understanding, and he turned back to Hepsa.

“Absolutely! But only if you have the energy.”

Hepsa already looked a little more solid, despite the fiery bruises showing even through her thick skin. She smiled, lifted her left hand very, very slowly to rub at the skin behind her long ears. I would like that, yes.

Dipper opened his mouth. “But I can’t do—”

Bentley hit Dipper’s shoulder too forcefully for Torako to fairly judge it a pat. “It’s okay Tyrone, I know that you’re self conscious about your inability to do much magic—his aptitude for it is really low—but this is a spell that Torako was able to do when she was six. Six. And you’re how old?”

Unsaid was are you saying that you, an immortal demon, are weaker than a six year old child with an aptitude that runs in the opposite direction of magic? Torako snorted.

Sure enough, Dipper bristled. “Twenty-seven,” he hissed out through clenched teeth. “And fine. Maybe something has changed in all these years.”

Hepsa, for a bed-ridden Asanbosam with a half-frozen face, could beam really well for having sharp, iron teeth. The first steps to the firefly spell were listed on the tablet within seconds, and Torako had to laugh out loud.

“I’ll leave you all to it,” Torako said, waving one hand and heading down the hall. She passed the wall of pictures and wondered if, once they got their own home, Bentley and Dipper would be up for something like that. A wall of them, over the years. She stopped, looked at a picture of Hepsa and Nathan dancing, decades younger and smiling, and wanted to be able to do that herself, decades in the future.

She shook off the thought as she peered into the kitchen. Officer Nathan was standing there, staring at the stasis container. He was hunched over, shoulders drawn in a way that unnerved Torako with their vulnerability. She knocked on the wall, and said, “Everything okay?”

Officer Nathan startled, his feet scraping against the floor as he turned. “Oh, Ms. Lam. Torako. Has it been long?”

“Not too,” she said. She stepped into the kitchen, her socks sliding a little with the lack of traction. “What’s up?”

He inhaled and leaned back against the countertop. He narrowed his eyes at her like he was watching her for the first time. It was, Torako realized in a flash of memory, like that cult member informant from forever ago: on the edge of trusting Torako but not sure if the leap forward was worth it. “It is…just a lot. Everything will be fine, don’t worry.”

“Of course it’s a lot, it’s about Hepsa.” She propped herself against the opposite counter, near an impressive collection of mugs, and slid her hands into her pockets. She relaxed her body, softened the tilt of her head. “It’s okay to have it feel like a lot.”

Officer Nathan snorted. “Hepsa is a big part of it. If I didn’t have a nurse to stay in when I am not home...”

Torako didn’t respond immediately. She watched how his hands gripped the counter, fingernails curling into (probably literally) the bottom edge of it. His knuckles were a thin, watered-down yellow with the pressure of his grip. She breathed in and out a few times, and then breached the silence.

“You’re worried,” she said. “About Hepsa. And about the case?”

He waited a few moments before responding. “And about the case.”

“Still nobody reported at the hospital?” Torako was worried, so the hint of it in her voice was genuine, and the frown on her face was real.

“No. And I’m in contact with them a lot.” He pulled one of his hands off the counter—sure enough, there was a dusting of something on the tips of his fingernails—and dragged it down his face.

Torako watched the way he inhaled. She was not used to this Officer Nathan. This Officer Nathan was less Officer Nathan, and more Nathan Akuapem who happened to be an officer. Maybe…

“Have things been happening around here, too?” Torako asked. She had a sudden thought: “Has somebody tried to break in?”

“No, no, nobody’s done that,” Nathan said. He looked her over again. She let him, doing her best to not stiffen under his gaze. Sometimes, when he looked that hard, she was reminded that his species had a history of devouring human beings—but that’s all it was. History. It was in the past, and she was going to keep it there.

She had good practice with that, too, considering the fact she lived with an actual demon. He breaks her arm, and what does Torako do? After a few break-downs and panic-attacks, she pulls herself together and demands snuggles, more sparring and returns to trusting him with her mind and body. She definitely wasn’t looking to do het chicken with Officer Nathan, but she was used to trusting a person over an instinct.

Finally, Nathan exhaled and set his hand back on the countertop. His knuckles were no longer pressed up against the skin. “You’re a good intern, Torako.”

“Why thank you,” she said.

“I do mean it,” he said. He shifted, started dragging his thumb across the bottom corner of the counter. He wasn’t looking at her. “You’re a good worker, even though you can push at the rules and cause a bit of trouble. And you’re a good person.”

Torako shifted, a little uncomfortable. “I…thank you. I know I can rub people the wrong way with my attitude, so I try, and it’s good to know that I’m succeeding with you at least, but…why are you telling me this now?

Nathan smiled a thin, worn smile at her. “Because…well, you’re right. About things going on here.”

Torako raised her eyebrows. “Nasty things?”

“Not really. Little things. They build up.”

She pulled her hands out of her pockets and set her elbows on the counter, slouching down a little to reach. Torako didn’t look away from Officer Nathan. “If you don’t mind me asking, what little things?”

Officer Nathan shook his head. “Nothing worrying, mostly personal. A few neighbors have been pestering me about their missing pets and insisting that I do something, and last night somebody broke into Milla’s store to steal a new fridge. They have been…vocal about the ineptitude of the police, to say the least.”

“The pets in last few days, I’m guessing?”

He nodded. “The pets could have run away, but the neighbors refuse to entertain that notion, and refuse to register their complaints with the right office no matter how often I suggest that. It is tiring.”

Torako grimaced. “I can’t really do anything about the neighbors or the store, but…would it help if we interns did some leg work for the case, at least? I mean, like, calling apartment owners up or meeting with them with quiet requests to check up on their residents, just in case.”

“It might,” Nathan said. He tipped his head back, the light from overhead easing the harsh shadows on his face. “I had been entertaining the idea myself.”

“I can send out an email tonight, to give everybody a heads-up.” Torako drummed her fingers over the countertop. “Oh! And I know you don’t like work stuff at home, so I’m really sorry to bring it up after this whole conversation, but I thought it might be good to hand you a copy of the research I’ve done—you mentioned having a personal office here?”

“As long as we don’t have to go through it,” Officer Nathan said, “I will be fine. Are the files out in the entryway?”

“Yes.” Torako pushed off the counter. Down the hall, she could hear Bentley laughing. “I’ll go get them for you.”

“Thank you, Torako.” Officer Nathan was smiling a little. She flashed one back and turned to leave the kitchen to grab her work case.

“Torako?”

She turned back, a hum in the back of her throat.

Officer Nathan’s eyes were soft at the edges. “Truly. Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said back, fingers curled around the doorway of the kitchen. “It’s not a problem.”

“Of course it’s not a problem!” Dipper insisted, Monday night in Southwest Canada, in what used to be Bellevue, Washington. “I love watching them!”

“Ah, Lata feels more them now? Good to know, thank you,” said Kanti Pines. She fingered the strap of her purse. “But are you sure you don’t mind watching her tonight? Alone?”

Dipper cracked a human grin at her. It always put Kanti and Reyansh at ease when he wore his human skin, even if it itched a little. Henry was worth it. “You can’t help a babysitter bailing, and Bentley and Torako both work tomorrow. I can handle it, I have all the time in the world on my hands!”

“If you’re sure,” Kanti said again. She pushed her hair behind her ear. If Dipper focused hard enough, he could see Reina in the cant of her nose. It was nice, to see the physical echoes of family in Mabel’s descendants. “Reynash, dearest, we need to go! The party starts in thirty minutes, and you know how traffic gets!”

“No! Papa can’t leave, he’s playing with me!”

Dipper grinned up the stairs. “What, you don’t want to play with Uncle Dipper?”

There was a pause, and then little feet thudded against the carpet upstairs, Reynash laughing behind them. Lata soon was at the top of the stairs, then was toddling their way down in large, unsteady steps.

“Lata, dearest, be careful,” Kanti said. She held out a hand. “Take your time, Uncle Dipper will still be here when you get down.”

The tiny leaves on Lata’s small antlers bounced with every step, even when they slowed down so that their mother was less likely to die of a heart attack.

More likely Alzheimer’s, Dipper thought, way back in the part of his mind that wouldn’t shut up. Maybe Lividon’s Cancer. 103 years left on that fleshsuit, tops.

Dipper smiled hard in the hopes that he’d stop thinking about that. “Lata! My most favorite nibling!”

“Uncle Dipper!” Lata smiled at him from where they stopped on the fifth step, open-mouthed and missing their bottom incisor. “Uncle Dipper, Uncle Dipper, are you my babysitter today?”

“Your parents thought I would be more fun—and they were right—so I blipped on by to spend some time with you!” Dipper held out his arms, and Lata jumped, wrapping their arms almost too tight around his neck. It was a little uncomfortable, but they were mine, my Henry, here and safe and mine so it was okay.

“Thank heavens you’re here,” Reynash said from the top of the stairs. Dipper looked over Lata’s shoulder to see him set a hand on the banister and begin to descend. His long braid was pulled over his shoulder, the tip of it swaying by his waist with each step. “Kanti was working herself into a panic attack before I suggested you.”

“I love to see Lata, but is this—oh,” Dipper said. Lata did that thing where they bit his ear really, really hard because they could and he winced. “Oh, this is an R-18 party?”

“Lata, darling, don’t bite your Uncle.” Reynash reached over and flicked Lata’s forehead, making them giggle. “But yes, it kind of is. A couple beers would be fine, but it’s our annual get-smashed-and-cry party, and we promised that we would be there. If somebody doesn’t have an autowheel option and needs a ride back, we’re the designateds.”

“But because it’s smash night, it might get a little…wild,” Kanti said. She pulled her purse over her shoulder and fussed with Reynash’s cropped jacket and long skirt. “Not appropriate for a five year old. We took tomorrow off work for a reason.”

“Of course not,” Dipper said, shifting Lata up further onto his chest. They were warm against him, and it settled awful visions of the Pines’ crashing and burning, or drinking so much they had alcohol poisoning, or—

“Thank you so much again,” Reynash said. He fiddled with the bottom of his braid and did his best to meet Dipper’s eyes. He was more successful than usual, which told Dipper that he hadn’t forgotten to put the illusion of white sclera and brown irises on for once. Reynash also had fewer bruises in his aura, more soft pinks and pale furples than rich browns and sickly greens.

They tried, so Dipper did his best to meet them in the middle.

“Again, I love seeing Lata!” Dipper grinned. “Even if they’re a nibble monster.”

“Rawr!” Lata said, uncomfortably close to his ear. They wriggled in his grip. “I’m a nibble monster! Fear me!”

Kanti held her fingers to her lips in a poor attempt to hide her smile. “Well, we should get going. If you can’t handle the nibble monster…”

“Your number is first drawer next to the fridge because Lata keeps climbing and pulling things off of it, and you figure they can’t get into the drawer but that trick’s only going to work for another week before they succeed at jimmying the lock and dumping everything onto the floor in a fit of frustration.”

There was an awkward beat of silence. Dipper swallowed and forgot to make his throat bob with the motion. The silence drew on. Rich brown seeped into being in Reynash’s aura, tiny little pinpricks. Whoops.

“…yes, it’s in the drawer by the fridge now.”

Lata tugged at his ear, ran their fingers over the rounded shell of it. “Uncle Dipper, why are your ears boring?”

Dipper didn’t respond, because it was then that Reynash drew Kanti closer, his hand on her waist. “I suppose that we’ll have to remember the drawer for later—Kanti, you ready?”

“Oh, yes, of course, just one more thing,” she said. She smiled at Dipper with the edges of her lips, and she was trying. “We’ll be back anywhere from midnight to one. Lata should be in bed by ten at the very latest.”

Dipper saluted. The moment he did, he saw the confusion on their faces reflected in their auras, but kept at it. “Aye aye, captain!”

Lata, a heartbeat after, copied his motion and giggled. Dipper felt his heart (metaphorically) melt, and his grin pulled wide across his face.

Reynash snickered a little, pulled a salute back even if he didn’t know what it was, and pulled Kanti out the door. They blew kisses to Lata over their shoulders and Lata kissed back, wriggling against Dipper.

They stood there a moment in silence, listening to Lata’s parents leave the driveway in their car. Once it was far away, Dipper felt Lata’s pudgy hands on his face, and let them turn his head. He looked into Lata’s eyes, dark brown and nothing like Henry’s. He wondered, in a small part of him, how long Lata would last. Henry hadn’t, not very long. The one before Lata had hours, and that was it.

Lata pouted. “Uncle Dipper, can you stop being boring now?”

“Is that what my monarch requests?”

They nodded once, their tiny antlers gleaming in the entryway light. “Yes. Stop being boring. I request it. I’m done doing bored stuff.”

Dipper snorted, and then shook his head. The human visage fell off of him, and he felt lighter. “As you command. And your next request?”

Lata grinned, tugged at his newly pointed ear and played with one of the earring studs in the cartilage. Dipper winced at a particularly enthusiastic tug, but Lata shushed and stroked it, so he didn’t admonish them.

“Can we…” Lata hummed, and then reached over Dipper’s shoulder to pull the ribbon out of his hair. He let them. “Can we see animals?”

“Like a zoo? Or an aquarium?”

Lata shook their head. “No! There was a doc-yuu-pan-try on the screen and there was striped horses and giraffes and cute rat-squirrels…um, I forget their name, but they were cute! And I was eating naan and asked Mommy where the fences were and she said there weren’t any and I wanna see.”

“Oh, like a safari? Or a free-roam park?”

Lata paused. “Yeah!” Lata, Dipper was sure, didn’t know what a safari or a free-roam park was. They had been out of the country twice with their parents, and both times that was to urban India to visit their great-grandparents.

This, of course, didn’t stop him from thinking about just blipping them over to, like, where the United Congo was. What stopped him from actually going through with the idea was the fact that it was one or two in the morning over there, and he wasn’t sure that was the best time to be taking a five year old into a free-roam park. They couldn’t see anything anyways.

“Mm, I want to take you, but it’s too late for the striped horses and giraffes and cute rat-squirrels.”

Lata scowled. “Not fair,” they said.

“They’re asleep,” Dipper countered.

“Are there others?” They asked, and ran their fingers through his hair. If he was lucky, they’d get distracted and decide to play salonist. Which Dipper was perfectly fine with, except he kind of wanted to go to a free-roam park now too.

“Well, yes.”

“Are the animals asleep there too?”

Dipper opened his mouth to say yes, thought of something, and then closed it. “Well,” he said. “There aren’t any striped horses, or striped giraffes, or regular giraffes, but there are some cool animals, yes.”

He really shouldn’t.

Lata looked away from his hair and stared at him, eyes wide. “Really? What kind of animals?”

“I really shouldn’t,” Dipper said.

“What kiiiind?” Lata whined. They grabbed his cheeks and squished them.

“Well,” he said, again. “There are kangaroos. And emus. And koalas. And stripe-backed manarans.”

He could have sworn that Lata’s eyes were sparkling. “Kangaroos?”

“Yes, kangaroos!”

“Can we go?” Lata came even closer, their nose pressed against his. He could hear their pulse in their neck, could practically smell the blood. They were desperate, he thought. Utterly desperate to go to see these animals.

“Well,” he said. “I can’t take you there without a deal. Australia’s far away.”

Lata leaned back, eyes set in determination. “Like Uncle Ben and Aunt Tora do with you, right?”

He shouldn’t encourage this. “Yes,” he said. He wondered how much he could pull out of this deal, how far he could bend it in his favor. He shouldn’t, but he did.

“Okay. Down, please,” Lata said.

Dipper set them down on the floor, and they clambered up the stairs, pants slowly shifting color with every step. He watched them disappear into their bedroom; he could just see the ceiling from where he was, knew that the walls were green and that the light cover was shaped like a little sun and hovered an inch from the ceiling. He knew that on Lata’s bedside table, there was a little figurine filled with light magic—Bentley’s last birthday present after Lata had started having nightmares about being trapped, about being hurt and watching a nice lady cry on an uncomfortable-looking bed.

Henry’s soul was still weak from Paloma’s incarnation a millennia ago. Dipper didn’t know how much that would affect Lata. Didn’t know how long they had. If they would crash under the pressure of living a few years from now, if they would be caught between the grill of a transporter and a forcefield when twenty-five and on the way to a fourth date with a person who really, really got them and loved them, if they would walk down the wrong street at the wrong time while the wrong person with the wrong Sight and the wrong ideas caught sight of them and pressed their face against a cobblestone street, forty-nine and just divorced and screaming as that wrong person ripped their antlers from their body, if they would be eighty-three and fall to a brand new sickness, brutal and quick and devastating and the price for healing something like that would be a soul, a soul, and Dipper had already loved the sensation of the soul in his palms when he killed it so what would it feel like to swallow it, to feel the warmth against the muscles of his esophagus and feel it be his his his really his really mine Henry—

“Uncle Dipper? Why do you look like that?”

Dipper blinked without actually blinking, and the world came back into focus around him. It took him a couple moments to actually take Lata in. “What?”

Lata’s lips were thinned, their eyes wary. They were on that fifth step again, but they didn’t come straight to him. “Like that. Did you go funny?”

“I,” Dipper started. He pressed his palm against his forehead, closed his eyes. “Probably. You have something for me so we can go to Australia?”

Lata nodded, excitement a little dampened. They raised a giant bag of suckers. “I have this! I had to hide it from Mommy and Papa, but Aunt Tora said it was a good in—investing, so here! I want to go to see the Kangaroos.”

That was a good point, Dipper thought. Kanti and Reynash wouldn’t want their kid in Australia. They hadn’t signed up for that.

But, Dipper thought there were four hours left until Lata absolutely had to be in bed. That was enough time to go to Australia and back. Definitely. Even if a giant bag of lollipops wasn’t that close to an even deal.

“Okay,” he said, “but you have to promise not to tell your parents, okay?”

Lata cheered, and held the bag out. “Kangaroos!”

“Kangaroos,” Dipper agreed, and took the bag in a flash of blue. Who knew? Maybe he could track down that Acacia reincarnation he’d sensed around that area while they were there.

#torako #bentley #dipper #transcendence au #tau fic #i wrote this in spurts of activity #that had lots and lots of inactivity between those spurts #lata #orange lilies

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a-million-stories-for-you-blog · 6 years

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Stanford Pines Application: Accepted

Name/Alias: Rosenthorne (Or Jess or Thorne)

Preferred Pronouns: She/her/They/Them

Age: 29

Time Zone: Central

Discord name: *Private* (since you already know who it is 8U)

Triggers: Not much. Bit of a crime buff so I’ve seen/read a few morbid things. Or a lot. Don’t like feet.

Personal/About Yourself: I can be nice and squeaky clean or I can be downright morbid and not so clean. Depends on the situation. I’m a stickler for canon when it comes down to it. Not much for romance but I can write for it when the mood allows. I have written a LOT of smut in my day though. I love the strange, the unique, dark humor, dark stuff in general.

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Character Name: Stanford Filbrick Pines

Headcanon Age: Young to Adult (But like 15 minutes older than Stan XD)

Headcanons About Character:

-Asexual, aromantic. This is mainly for the fact that in Journal 3 he wrote that he found ‘romance more baffling to him than the greatest mysteries of the universe’. If that doesn’t scream asexual, I don’t know what does.

-Despite being asexual, he is very touch starved. He wants people to talk to him. He doesn’t mind hugs, holding hands, platonic cuddles, laying side by side while talking about anything really (it doesn’t have to be science based), etc, from those who are very close to him. He will always do what he can for those who mean a lot to him. Any unsolicited touching without his acknowledgement of who it is will usually end with someone’s arm twisted behind their back and on their stomach on the floor out of reflex.

-Has a hard time opening up to people and is still learning on how to do so. This is the result of being viciously bullied growing up with Stan as his only friend. This makes being touch starved even worse.

-He did love DDMD in middle school on up and tried to join the local clubs full of other nerds who adored the game, however he was shunned and avoided like the plague due to his extra fingers. Undeterred, Ford continued to make OCs and strategies in hopes that one day he’d have friends to play it with.

-He would quickly finish his tests in school and, instead of turning it in, ‘accidentally’ leave it somewhere that Stan could cheat off him. While Stan did this, Ford would use this time to draw or read paranormal books.

-Terrified of swimming in open water at a young age, opposite of Stan’s fear of heights. He slowly grew accustomed to the idea of sailing when Stan started to weave the idea of adventures on the high seas. He did have a fascination with boats despite his fear and he had tried learning to swim in a community pool, making him a mediocre swimmer. After he arrived in Gravity Falls, he included swimming in the lake as part of his exercise regimen. He had hoped to swim the areas Nessie or Ogopogo had been rumored to be.

-After Ford closed the curtains on Stan when he was kicked out, Ford sunk to his knees and cried while hugging a pillow. Time was lost to him (he spent two weeks in his room, barely eating what his mother brought to him or going anywhere). His heart and trust had been shattered by the only person he had ever trusted. During that time, his father started to beat ideas into his head, building him up to a more egotistical persona, one that re-sparked his interest in inventing and school. He made Ford believe he was better than everyone, that he was special and only people like him were destined for something greater. However, the motives to get Ford moving again was not without want of personal gain. Filbrick still wanted those potential millions. These motives have severely harmed Ford’s ability to forgive Stanley. Ford is slowly unlearning what his father had instilled in him.

-To Filbrick’s dismay, Ford did not go down the path of ‘potential millions’ right away. The father had tried to make Ford change his mind about going out west to pursue his interests in favor of being hired on as a scientist somewhere. However, the flattery had made Ford a bit more cynical to the world around him. He did not share his grant money like his father expected him to. He pretty much cut ties with the rest of his family minus the occasional phone call to his mother.

-If it weren’t for his mother and later Fiddleford and Bill in his early years, Ford would have been worse off. When he throws himself into his work, he forgets to take care of himself. He wouldn’t shower for weeks on end, forget to eat or sleep to the point of passing out and would often forget what day or year it was.

-Loves horror movies and has somewhat identified with the monsters but greatly criticizes them. He has never showed any fear toward ‘old school’ horror movies. However, he hates jump scares and will react violently to them out of reflex.

-Ford’s trench coats have been modified to be ‘bags of holding’ through a technique he learned while traversing the universe. When you look into one of the many pockets, you find nothing but a void of stars and nebulae which pretty much are ‘pocket dimensions’. **BU-DUM-TISS** He could pull more than a live rabbit out of any one of them at any moment. Probably an extinct Dodo bird or a mini noodle dragon.

-Ford has doodles all throughout Journal 1 and 2 of characters he created for DDMD. He also has a strategy journal floating around the shack somewhere that contains some of his best material that has been lost for years.

-He buys ALL of his clothes in bulk, sometimes the boots already have their own mud stains or have them printed on them at all times. It’s a look Ford loves. Speaking of looks, not all of his black pants are actual pants. Some of them are spandex or yoga pants in case he’s afraid he may rip normal pants when having to do something athletic.

-Yes, he does have 12 PHDs. He earned one on earth but the rest were earned during the 30 years he was away. None of them are in the medical field. That’s what spells are for. One has to wonder if the other eleven are even valid in our dimension. Even he ponders that but will probably aggressively state that they are.

-Everyone expects him to like classical music. While, yes, this is true, he actually took a liking to rock and alternative music. However, he somehow knows all the lyrics to songs that were not made in his time, possibly from a parallel timeline where he got his PHDs.

-He has commissioned Mabel to make him a knitted Plaidipus plush that he shamelessly sleeps with every night. Its name is ‘Theory’.

-Ford keeps up an exercise regimen that he doesn’t force on anyone. He couldn’t care less about anyone’s physical prowess unless they wanted to adventure with him. He doesn’t want them hurt. He only comments on his brother to rile him up from time to time. Sibling rivalry and all.

-Ford has killed before and he will kill again if he has to. He doesn’t like talking about it but most of his kills were the result of either protecting himself or someone or getting something he desperately needs.

-He has a lot of scarring all across his body. While he will admit half of them were from his years in the multiverse, a good chunk of them were from Bill after he found out that Bill was plotting against him.

-After Stan’s memory recovery and his adrenaline came down, Ford had to be taken to the hospital as a result of Bill’s torture on top of the ride in the alien shuttle that would have taken him to an intergalactic prison. He didn’t stay there long. In fact, after he was bandaged up, he declared himself healed and walked right out the front door. Remember, none of his PHDs were in medical. He probably memorized a healing spell.

-Ford may be looking into changing his name after seeing the list of charges Stan put on his legal name. Yeah.

-He and Fiddleford keep a close connection. When he isn’t skyping the kids on his adventures with Stan or spending time with Stan, he is talking with Fiddleford. They pretty much rekindled their bromance. He somewhat owes his life to Fiddleford for all the times the man had saved him from his own stubbornness.

-With Dipper turning down Ford’s offer of apprenticeship, Ford has turned his sights to another adventure loving child who was more local and could probably keep up with him like, if not better than, Dipper had. Wendy. However, during their first adventure out, instead of voicing her opinion on a matter, she ended up knocking sense into him with the back side of her axe. The clanging of it against the metal plate in his head echoed throughout the woods.

Example Writing Piece:

There he was. Lying flat on his back on the kitchen floor of his cabin with a bewildered look on his face as a pair of long, twiggy legs draped over his chest and hugged around his arm that was outstretched and held fast against a thin chest. Never in his life did he think he could have been taken down so easily by a man who claimed to be a complete pacifist.

“Say it!” Fiddleford panted, tightening his grip on the arm some while lying on his own back, perpendicular to Ford’s body.

“Never!” Ford snapped out of his bewilderment and started to try to struggle against the hold. “They’re nothing but a stupid fashion trend!”

“Facts are facts! Leg warmers are a practical piece of clothin’!”

“What warmth could you possibly get from leg warmers?!”

“Not all of us have paddin’ in the winter, Stanferd!” the assistant growled and twisted the arm. A yelp echoed off the walls as Ford tried to manage to get the upper hand. He should have been able to dominate this… whatever it was. He was a good bit stronger than his friend. When Ford found that he was not going to get out of the hold without resorting to dirty tactics that would hurt Fiddleford, he sighed and smacked his open palm on the floor next to him to tap out. “Ah ah! Ya gotta say it!”

“No!”

“Say it’s practical! I ain’t lettin’ go until you do!”

“Fine! Leg warmers are practical! Now get off!” Ford tried to remain irritated but then started laughing at the whole situation. All this over leg warmers? Well, now he had a topic to get under his friend’s skin other than his cubic’s cube. Maybe next time he’d get a running start.

#discord roleplay #accepted #stanford pines #gravity falls #gravity falls roleplay #submission

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animator19 · 7 years

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Interview with Alex Hirsch from after he had finished Gravity Falls

https://www.themarysue.com/alex-hirsch-interview/

Alex Hirsch: My main goal after Gravity Falls was finished was to take a vacation a BIG one and I spent about a year doing everything I couldn’t do while I was serving solitary confinement at Disney. I visited Hawaii, Japan, Portland, Burning Man. I did conventions in New York, Russia, Rio. My goal was to say “yes” to anything that wasn’t work. Sort of like Grunkle Stan on his worldwide boat tour with Ford, I needed some time away from the shack. But GF is a weirdness magnet after all and I can’t resist its pull forever. When Disney asked if I’d want to do Journal #3 I said yes immediately. It’s the number one thing I’d want to read if I was a fan, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Kaiser: Was the Journal done in stages? i.e. was the original draft for the black light version, or did you have to come back and do that once the sales proved viable?

Hirsch: Definitely stages, the very first thing I asked when they brought up the possibility of doing a journal was whether we could include the black light messages, but we were told that it would be way too expensive and to just try to forget about it. Then when the book came out and was topping the NYT bestseller list, Disney Publishing agreed to release a special edition for the superfans and give me my dream of black lights.

The challenge then was to try to fit the new messages over the old pages as though they always belonged. But these are fun challenges. Probably the hardest part was on the “Floating Eyeballs” page—there’s a spot where you see text coming from under a Polaroid. But in the Special Edition Journal, the polaroid is finally removable, so I needed to think of sentences that would credibly end with the words you’ve already seen

Kaiser: On that subject, Disney never seemed particularly keen on releasing much GF merch. Has the success of Journal 3 re-opened the conversation on things like the BluRay set?

Hirsch: The day that Disney bought Star Wars (AFTER buying Marvel) was the day I knew my merch dreams for Gravity Falls were basically toast. The company is too huge and we’re barely a blip on the radar to their consumer products division. Luckily the enduring popularity of the show has resulted in a few departments within the company sticking their neck out and trying cool experiments like journal 3. Everyone was surprised by the success of the journal except the fans. Their appetite for more continues to impress even this long after the end of the show. I’m hoping those numbers increase our likelihood of getting a DVD but I can’t make any promises.

Kaiser: Were you involved in getting The Mystery of Gravity Falls (@TheMysteryofGF) permission to do what is (according to them) small batches of sanctioned merch like the stone Bill figure and Grunkle Stan bobbleheads?

Hirsch: That guy is like my guardian angel. He’s some kind of brilliant, crazed super-fan who understands the show better than Disney ever did. Honestly, I don’t know how he contacted Disney and got the sanctioned merch—he’s some kind of wizard. I hope he runs the company one day.

[Note: I reached out to @TheMysteryofGF to check on this. Turns out I was slightly incorrect in my question. They have worked in conjunction with Disney on at least one occasion, but for the most part the merchandise they’ve made available has been of their own initiative, sometimes with help from an outside contractor. They also work with Bioworld, who provides the GF license to Hot Topic, in creating certain items.]

Kaiser: How did you approach fan interaction during the series? The codes are obviously built into the show from the get-go, but did you think it would catch on like it did? Did the response require you to adjust planned fan engagement on the fly?

Hirsch: The scope, size, influence and presence of fandom culture has gone through a complete and total revolution between now and when I first pitched Gravity Falls in 2011. Keep in mind- my first job was on Flapjack back in 2008-ish. Back then, you would release a cartoon into the ether, and it would basically disappear into a black void after airing. There’d be maybe two drawings on DeviantArt, maybe a message board with a few comments, and that was it.

That was the entirety of online feedback between cartoons and creators at the time. (And even those paltry scraps of feedback were still huge compared to fandoms when I was growing up. There was nobody in 1991 willing to die to make sure that their ship of Tommy Pickles and Reptar came to fruition. At least no one with a way of getting that opinion in front of Klasky-Csupo)

Tumblr’s rise happened just around the same time as Gravity Falls‘s premiere in 2012, so I was totally unprepared for the level of passion and engagement and fan art that would happen. I had to evolve along with all this in real time as it happened.

Kaiser: I always found it curious that you’d hold Twitter Q&As, but then delete the answers within a day.

Hirsch: Probably the best formats for answering questions were Reddit AMAs—I enjoyed doing two of those—and interviews. I occasionally answer questions on twitter when the mood strikes me, but Twitter is a TERRIBLE place for meaningful discourse.

Twitter has an ephemeral conversational glibness built into its core, but it ironically also has this incentive to cast every word said in bronze and isolate it from its context. It’s like if everything you said at a dinner party with every guest was carved into the wall and permanently became part of the house decorations. I’ll frequently prune my twitter posts to keep my feed clean from the residue of 100 little back and forths. Even if I tried to leave everything up, it disappears into the feed anyway. No matter how many times I say “There is no Season 3” people will never stop asking.

Kaiser: Obviously, that’s got to be a trial and error process. Any regrets?

Hirsch: I honestly don’t have many regrets from my engagement with fans, because everything that happens, positive and negative, is a learning experience and teaches me something about our world and the culture we live in. And overwhelmingly it has been positive. Back in the pre-fandom-culture days I never could have imagined I’d get such an overwhelming tidal wave of creative, kind, validating responses to my work. It’s every creator’s dream. It’s absolutely worth any weird prickly trolls or growing pains that come along with it and I’m insanely grateful.

Kaiser: The Cipher Hunt had to be an enormous undertaking to put together. How’d you go about organizing it? Did you ever take part in any ARGs (Augmented Reality Games) yourself that inspired you?

Kaiser: The Cipher Hunt was the most fun thing I’ve ever done.

I’ve never been part of any real-world treasure hunts, but as someone who grew up with games like MYST I love puzzles; the idea of doing one in the real world was too tempting to pass up.

The entire thing was organized by me and my buddy Ian Worrel, Gravity Falls‘ Emmy-winning art director. I’m a restless idea guy and he’s this master executor/craftsman—we were both totally in love with the idea of using our newfound free time to put something together totally for the fun of it, to build this strange Rube Goldberg Device and then watch how the fans would interact with it in real time.

Kaiser: Did you split up duties as far as where to put what? Who made the statue?

Hirsch: The statue was made by a brilliant props/effects fabricator in LA, Fon Davis of Fonco, a friend of a friend who was willing to make something weird for a price. Ian did most of the intellectual legwork in terms of figuring out which clues would lead to where, and I wrote all the actual codes. We took a road trip up to Oregon together to hide some of the final clues and had a lot of fun.

I hid the clue in Russia personally, which was a little terrifying. I knew if I got caught trying to hide a tiny magnetic capsule with a code scroll rolled up into it, Putin might not take to kindly to the optics of that. But Bill Cipher was smiling down on me that day and it went without a hitch.

Kaiser: Shifting a bit to the series itself: I recall you mentioning that the writing for season 2 had to be somewhat rethought because so many people had figured out the Author’s identity. Did that change how you wrote Ford’s arc? Were there other things you wanted to explore in general, given more time?

Hirsch: The truth is, no matter how many grand plans you have in your head, no matter what tentpole plot points or ideas you imagine, everything changes when you actually sit down to write. You discover what the show is as you make it through collaboration, trial and error, and what feels right.

In your question, you say season 2 had to be “rethought” but that implies that there was this already finished season 2 totally written out in our minds. But that’s not the case. All we knew after Season 1 was over was “Ford comes out of the portal. Bill probably creates the apocalypse. Dipper & Mabel complete their arcs. Fun stuff happens in the meantime.”

Figuring out how it all fits together in the writers’ room, discovering new things and surprising yourself—that’s the fun part of writing. We didn’t really know who Ford was, from a personality perspective, until we sat down to try to write him. The same is true of Dipper, Mabel, Grunkle Stan, and Bill. You learn as you go.

Kaiser: Fascinating! I suppose I must’ve heard about very early discussion, and extrapolated … as GF fans are wont to do. How embarrassing.

Hirsch: Casting also hugely affects a character. You have an idea of what a character is like in the writing room, but then when the actor comes in, everything can change. We cast JK Simmons as Ford late in the process. He was instantly perfect, but changed how we thought about the character. Regarding things I would love to explore if I could go back in time, I would definitely add a full episode about Wendy if I had the chance. We always wanted to give her more, but we never quite cracked a story that worked for us. But I do think she deserved more!

I deliberately tried to give her more of a role in Mabelcorn and Weirdmageddon Part 1 to make up for the lack of Wendy elsewhere. Linda Cardellini was amazing to work with. She gave the character such a grounded performance. Really was exciting to watch her work.

Kaiser: One of the issues around the show was representation/diversity, and there were a lot of rumors about what Disney would/wouldn’t allow—the little old ladies falling in love in “The Love God” is probably the most famous example. Any comment?

Hirsch: Definitely. If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know I’ve never been shy about discussing my frustrations with Disney’s censors and this was one of the most frustrating incidents of all. Back on “Love God” there was a scene in the script that described a few random couples in a diner falling in love in through the power of cupid’s magic.

When one of our storyboard artists presented the scene to me, she’d made one of the couples two lovable old ladies. It was sweet and casual and I knew INSTANTLY that it was going to turn into a huge fight with Disney. So naturally I left it in. The note came back immediately “The scene of the two old ladies kissing in the diner is not appropriate for our audience. Please revise.” I responded with a one word answer: “Why?”

This basically broke the censors. The couldn’t think of a single way to phrase an answer to that question so they made me talk on the phone so there would be no paper trail. They were terrified of sounding like bigots—but I honestly don’t think they were bigots, I think they were cowards. They basically admitted that there was no good reason why I should change it, but that they get complaints about this stuff from various homophobic parents and would rather avoid the headache, and couldn’t I just drop it?

I said that if we did that we were basically just being held hostage by bigots and screw that, lets rise above this crap and just pull the trigger. The worst thing that can happen is that we get some letters. Who cares? Disney’s a giant company, we can survive some letters from some cranks. I don’t think they necessarily disagreed—but there’s no incentive in their job to say yes to things. But I kept going back to them.

We probably had 6 or so conversations about it. It’s one of the only times I had a face to face meeting with the censors. I didn’t want to go back to my board artist and tell her that I lost this fight. I wanted to win, and I wanted to set a precedent, and I argued that little things like this could mean the world to people and that anyone who was pissed off deserved to be pissed off. But despite my greatest efforts it finally came down to “change the scene or we’ll cut it out of the episode ourselves.”

I felt awful reporting to the artist that I’d lost this one. But I didn’t stop trying. In the last episode, I had the two police offers, Blubs and Durland, flat out say they loved each other, and I didn’t get a single note. I think the censors were finally less scared of complaining parents than they were of having to deal with how annoying I am again.

Since then, times have thankfully changed. I hear that Disney has allowed same-sex couples in Star Vs the Forces of Evil, and the Nickelodeon has done the same in Loud House. Both studios are way behind CN and what they’ve done with Steven Universe, but progress, slowly but surely, is being made. I would love to see a new Disney animated show have the guts to show a proper same-sex kiss on air. One of these networks is going to do it—I encourage Disney to keep growing and be the first.

[Note: We now enter the portion where I completely gave into my fannish id for a second. I hope you’ll all forgive me.]

Kaiser: Two things, purely to satisfy my curiosity as a fan: A) did Pacifica stay with her parents post-series? It seemed like a seriously bad situation, guardianship wise. B) what WOULD Bill have done if Ford had decided (that is, been dumb enough) to take him up on his offer?

Hirsch: I think a lot of fans read more than I meant into the awfulness of Pacifica’s parents. I never imagined them as being abusive, just very controlling—living vicariously through their daughter, treating her like a prize more than a person. I grew up in a town with some rich families and it was something I witnessed more than once—parents trying to make their kids extensions of their own reputation. Pacifica is still only a kid, so I think she’d continue to live with them, but I think she’d start to have a very needed rebellious phase to discover who she is outside of her family name.

I definitely imagined Pacifica getting a side job at Greasey’s Diner working with Lazy Susan after the family lost their mansion. I think learning the value of a dollar and having to interact with the town riff-raff would be good for her.

Re: What Bill might have done, like all things that happen off camera, that question has no true canon answer. But if I had to speculate, in my gut I think Bill would have incinerated Ford on the spot the moment he got the formula to shut down the barrier. I don’t see Bill as a romantic, sweet, or charitable character. He’s a psychopath who takes what he can get. He sees people as toys and when he gets bored of playing with them tosses them aside. I think at that point he was done playing.

Kaiser: Makes sense. There’s a decided inclination to read Bill as being sincerely impressed with Ford on some level because that’s the trope (i.e. Q in Star Trek), but it’s not quite in keeping with how things shook out, is it?

Hirsch: That’s not how I imagine Bill. I see him as a serial manipulator. While he’s “seducing” you with flattery his brain is somewhere else imagining playing ping-pong with a severed head. But people are free to imagine any headcanon they like! I’m genuinely excited by other people’s interpretation of the characters–but I never forget my own.

Kaiser: Is there a story behind that doodle you and Roiland (the creator of Rick & Morty) did of Rick and Stan? That’s a crossover that’s never coming, I’m sure, but I love the cross-show elements.

Hirsch: There’s been a lot of hay made out of the little winks about Gravity Falls in Rick & Morty, and vice versa, the truth is just that we’ve been friends since before we had TV shows, and enjoy messing with people. Although if we WERE planning something big we’d definitely deny it—so I guess you’ll never know!

Kaiser: You left one seriously huge plot thread open with Bill’s coded message in the finale and then the secret Axolotl page of the Choose Your Own Adventure book. Is that something you might come back to, or just a mystery for the fans to chew on?

Hirsch: In terms of Bill’s secret message … I like stories that complete their emotional arcs, but still leave some lingering threads to chew on. It gives the fans something to theorize on, and it gives me a window back into that world if I ever choose to return to it.

Kaiser: Do you have a medium you’d prefer? Or would it just depend at the time?

Hirsch: All depends on my schedule—and the creative urge. I’m involved in a number of projects right now, so it’s hard to say. Comics are definitely a possibility. And maybe a special one day. Honestly my dream would have been to do a Gravity Falls theatrical feature—Disney discussed it with me for a while, but ultimately (and probably rightfully) determined the show wasn’t big enough to warrant it. But if some lunatic wanted to give me 50 million dollars to make a Gravity Falls movie I’d probably do it!

Kaiser: Is there anything you can say about your other project (the one you publicly announced for Fox, or anything else), or is it too soon?

Hirsch: It’s too soon to say anything specific. I will say that Gravity Falls opened a huge number of doors and opportunities for me but I’m being careful not to announce anything until the time is right. (And most of the announcements and leaks you’ll see online about various things I’ve been involved with have been either inaccurate or premature) I can say that I have been working on a feature project that hasn’t leaked online (if you think you know what it is, you’re wrong!) that I’m very very excited about, but owing to the nature of the parties involved I can’t say anything. I’m counting down the days until I get to announce what it is.

Kaiser: As a closer, you published a series of tweets not long ago about the stigma against being allowed to fail that animators face. Do you have any advice for them?

Hirsch: Haha! Oh, that. My latest tweetstorm was specifically about a trend I see in animated series development, where executives will “develop” a show to death and waste time, money, and goodwill trying to come up with a risk-proof TV pilot. But every creative act is inherently risky. The key is to create an environment where risk is encouraged, and failures have as small a cost as possible. I believe failure is the first step to success. The key is to fail as quickly as possible and try again. To treat failure not as a terrifying ending but rather as an opportunity to learn something.

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