The door opened with a gentle ringing of the bell, warm light spilling into the room, obstructed by a black silhouette. As Dan stepped into the cooler shade offered by the Mystery Shack, he ran a quick eye over the merchandise displayed proudly on shelves. Amazed, he took a few quick steps forward-
"Hey."
The man paused and blinked, before quickly spluttering an apology when he finally noticed a red-head standing beside the door, leaning against the wood as she picked at her nails. She looked young, around 18 maybe, and utterly bored of her post.
He offered her a nervous smile when his apology was met with a dismissive wave that was softened by a drowsy grin.
He watched, curious, as the red-head yawned once, head resting against the door frame in the throes of her exhalation, then headed for the counter which he now just noticed.
He looked at the signs- 'No refunds', 'Put your money here', 'You break it, you buy it' then gave into his curiosity to poke and prod at the jars of eyes beside the cashier which he swore blinked at him.
He startled when he realized that the red-head was still watching him with a focused glance that only came from a relief from ennui. He was shocked into letting a nervous laugh out.
"H-Hi," he stuttered, before clasping his mouth shut, cursing himself. He sounded so stupid.
Dan wished that Carmen hadn't decided to stay in the car. She was the chatty one of the two of them and she would've struck up a conversation faster than it took to say 'Buttered cabbages'. As it was, without her, he was a mute anti-socialist, though Carmen would've laughed and said something to soften his analysis of himself. Thinking of his wife, he tried to think of what she would say.
"Er, nice stuff you have here."
He cringed, but he was awkward enough to warrant a pleasant chuckle from the cashier girl. He watched as the girl arranged herself into a more relaxed pose, perched on the seat, head supported by a cupped hand around her neck, back slumped forward. It would have been unprofessional for the shops back in the big city but, as it was, the informality kind of suited the quaint small town of Oregon, Gravity Falls.
"Thanks, but the credit goes to my boss" the girl told him, bored look easing so that she looked less likely to expire from listlessness.
"Your boss?"
"Yeah." Without looking, she waved at something behind him and he quickly turned around, surprised when he saw a man he hadn't noticed before crouched on the floor beside a row of cabinets against the wall. All he could see was his back but he could see that he was wearing what looked like a more laid-back version of an old-fashioned tux, complete with two tails, and he had a strange cap on his head, one with a tassel on it. He looked odd enough that the man wondered why he hadn't noticed him in the first place.
Unable to resist, Dan craned his neck forward, blushing at the sound of the cashier chuckling at him as he heard her obligingly move to the side to allow him a little space for peeping, but he was preoccupied when he saw that the odd man wasn't alone but was in fact crouching next to a child, whom he couldn't see anything of due to the fact that she had pulled the sweater which she was wearing over her head and knees.
She was rocking to and fro and he would have worried over her had he not seen the fact that, as the man adjusted his position to presumably talk to her better, the worry in his eyes shined through his seemingly grumpy exterior. While it wasn't dramatically pronounced, the way his eyebrows were furrowed in that split second and his downturned mouth spoke of worlds of concern.
"What happened?" he asked behind him, entranced by the split second of emotion he had seen the man exhibit for the child. It almost seemed like a secret, like the man was trying to hide his true depth of worry but that made his concern more meaningful. Who was he? Was he her father? Why was she scared? Then, the fourth question when the teenager answered him with a casual voice, untouched by the drama occurring three aisles over: Did this happen often?
He started wondering at his soundness of mind at stopping at the place and wondered whether there was something fishy going on in Gravity Falls. From disappearing groceries from his car trunk to a crazy old man with bandages in his beard running down the street, to young girls freaking out in gift shops, he and Carmen had been wondering it the past few days.
"It's nothing," the red-head had replied. Dan heard rustling behind him and, despite only knowing of the teen for a few minutes, he automatically knew that she was adjusting to a more comfortable position. The next sentence caused the man to blink and whirl around, though, resisting the urge to dig his ear because he didn't think he heard that right. "Stan just took her grappling hook and Mabel's upset."
Dan fell silent, trying to come to grips with the whirling in his mind, thrown into a perturbed state by the situation. He scrutinized them closer, unable to help it, feeling himself slip into a trance that Carmen called his 'psychologist mode', referencing to his occupation and the degree of quiet intensity he approached all his patients.
Now that he knew he had to look for it, he caught the black of the butt of the gun the first time he re-ran his eyes over the scene and he gaped rather unattractively at the seemingly harmless device, tucked in the back of the man's- Stan's- pants, its iron limbs gleaming in the dim light.
God, everyone in the damn town was strange.
Who gave a grappling hook to a child?
Movement in his peripherals drew his attention back to the scene at hand and he turned back, leaning against the counter when his head refused to stop spinning with disbelief. And to think, he'd only dropped by at the store because he liked the look of the dilapidated old shack and had been told by numerous locals to at least see the place before Carmen and he left town. Who could have known of the madness within the four walls?
And, oddly enough, he was the only one befuddled by this revelation as he extrapolated from the bored countenance of the cashier and the stiff yet resigned way the man had thought to even give the grappling hook back to the eager arms of the girl, for that was what the movement had been.
It seemed that the man had finally given up withholding the dangerous object from the child and had handed it over with a sigh which was fond yet exasperated.
His mind was spinning. Nothing made sense. The man had no right to even give her the grappling hook in the first place, even if he was her father. It was a hazard! She could poke someone's eye out with that! And, the girl had no right to look so pleased at being handed the device because she wasn't supposed to have it in the first place!
All things going without saying, his mind wasn't so far gone yet that he didn't catalogue that, head out of the sweater, the girl looked 12 years of age with braces in an impossibly large smile set on a round face, still full of baby fat. Her large hazel eyes shined fiercely with voracious life. She looked adorable. And he felt horrible and scandalized.
He didn't realize he was gaping terribly until he felt a tap on his shoulder and he was brought back to earth with an unpleasant thump. He realized that the teen was staring at him weirdly now and he colored brightly underneath her scrutiny but still refused to release the steadfast belief that she should have been wondering over the grappling hook debacle instead of him- like he was the weird one there.
"Dude," the teen asked him and he heard the concern in her voice and her bemusement," Are you okay?"
Dan nodded his head, then shook it after a moment's thought. Unnervingly, at the action, the red-head's eyes narrowed, as though in clarity and he realized with a jolt of fright that she knew what he was thinking about.
He resisted the urge to back away, arms up in defense, at the protectiveness that suddenly bled into her hazel irises as she abruptly took on a pose of confrontation, losing the laxness in her limbs and even leaning forward intimidatingly, one hand coming up to point at him, another on her waist.
She looked like an angry badger, bristling at the audacity of whoever dared to disturb her nest.
"You're one of those people!" she exclaimed, and he noted that the warmth had leaked from her voice to be replaced by mild hostility.
"What do you mean by people?" he couldn't help himself asking.
The teen's frown intensified. "The type who think they can tell anyone what they can or cannot do just because it's the socially normal thing."
He spluttered. "I never-!"
"See! I knew it." Then she proceeded to lean forward to press the finger that had been posed tensely in between them, like a gun, into his chest, mindless of his scandalized squawk. Her eyes looked determined.
"Look, dude," she told him seriously, mouth ticked in a frown," You can't come here and tell my boss how to act with his family. You don't have the right. He's lived through things you can't believe and he doesn't have to listen to a low-life psychoanalyst like you!"
The man, whose jaw was dislodged, gasped in indignation.
He replied, with a fire that Carmen always said came out when someone insulted his profession," I'll have you know that I am not a low-life and I would greatly appreciate if you could refrain from stating such atrocities!"
He then raised his hands in surrender when the teen looked like she hadn't finished blowing off steam at the end of his protest. Thankfully, the teen acquiesced with a huff as she slumped backwards again, more relaxed but eyes still sharp and searching.
"And I apologize," he told her solemnly. "It was presumptuous of me to judge your employer."
The red-head huffed again and said, "Darn, right!" to which he talked over after a moment of intense thought.
He picked his words carefully, now knowing how prickly the teen was under the exterior of carefreeness, determined to explain himself and clear the air.
He wondered what Carmen would have thought about the situation. He'd only come into the shop for a souvenir or two, after all, and he hadn't, most definitely, come to get into an argument with the locals. She would have had a riot.
"It's just that the customs here are strange. Is it… normal to give a child dangerous objects here?" He asked in such a befuddled, confused tone of voice that it wrangled a reluctant smile out of the red-head which he saw she tried to annihilate immediately.
"God no," she replied, startled when the question sank into her head. "Definitely not normal at all." Then she sighed, "Sorry. I get why you're confused. But, like I said, the Pines are a special case."
"They're family?"
"Yep, but probably not in the way you think."
"As in, they're not father and daughter?"
The red-head laughed," Nah. He's her grand-uncle and she's her grand-niece. Kind of a boop-dee-boo, wacky dynamics. But-" Here, her gaze went shrewd," don't get me wrong. The way Stan takes care of the kids, it could put a lot of fathers to shame. He treats them like his own."
He tried to reattach the statement to the image he had imprinted in his head of the man giving the girl the dangerous device, dubiously. Then found it wasn't so hard when he scrutinized the emotions behind the act and not the actions. He remembered being touched at the worry the man had for the child, and realized that he must have taken the weapon out of the girl's hands out of worry initially and, just like that, his conscience stopped screaming at him and he found it in him to nod slowly in comprehension.
The red-head nodded in satisfaction, crossing her arms and slumping now that the enemy had been neutralized. He wouldn't put it past her to think that way with the way she'd been eyeing him earlier.
She waved a hand at the merchandise, drawing his attention away from where it had been so focused on their argument, and slowly, the knick-knacks and displays sharpened with clarity in his vision.
Oh, right. He was buying souvenirs.
The red-head was grinning at him, as though she knew that he had forgotten his objective in the first place, "Now that everything's been clarified, anything catch your fancy-?"
"Wendy!" A gruff voice asked.
The red-head- Wendy- looked at someone over his shoulder and grinned in a way that made Dan suddenly realize that the way the cashier had been smiling at him hadn't been her sincere smile. No, that smile was beamed at the older man standing behind him and as he turned, he came face-to-face with their subject of debate for the past few minutes.
The man, older than Dan had assumed, smirked into his face. The view of his front was as quirky as his back as the man had a rough, angular face with stubble dotting his chin, giving the impression of un-refinedness. His eyes were narrowed into a shrewd, crafty slits, his cheekily curved mouth completing the picture of mischief. He noted that despite how antic he looked, he slotted right into their surroundings fittingly. Then the man, still grinning, wrung the head of the cane Dan hadn't realized he'd had, giving the impression of a scheming villain.
"Brought new meat for me, have you?" he continued, gruff voice holding a note of jesting that made the alarm in Dan's head, which had gone off at the maudlin description of him, taper off.
"Welcome!" he announced dramatically, even though Dan was the only customer in the room," To the Mystery Shack!"
He then posed theatrically and Dan almost expected the lights to flicker in tandem to his dramatics, but the lights stayed bright and he was torn from his stuttered, "Thank you for the welcome." abruptly when the old man threw an arm around his shoulder without an ounce of decorum to tug him away from the counter.
He heard Wendy laugh to herself about his predicament and hoped he didn't look too alarmed at the turn of events.
This was not what he expected of a simple trip to the gift store.
"Nonsense!" the man laughed into his ear, which was deafening now that they were right beside each other," No need for politesse here! You're on my turf and polite people are kicked out the door! Now!"
With a jerk, Dan was released and he quickly took the moment to take stock of where he had been hauled.
He saw that he was standing in front of a glass case holding some sort of… abomination. It was wrinkled, dried out and its face was forever stuck in an irate, blood-thirsty expression.
Holy mother of- He yelped, jumping back.
-Right into the side of the man, who was now rambling about some sort of 'mystery tour', whatever that was.
Dan was confused, overwhelmed and not thinking straight. No, he didn't want to go on a mystery tour. Yes, he would want to buy something from the gift shop later (and also, perhaps thank the Wendy girl for obliging him his questions). What he wanted to know was whether the girl was alright-
"How's the little girl?"
Later, he'd blame the straight-forward manner he'd asked the question on his perturbed state. He really hadn't expected the question to come out. It was uncharacteristic for him. It was mortifying and his face burned at the sudden shift in atmosphere around the man. Immediately, he stopped mid-sentence and his expression cycled quickly from alarmed and baffled, defensive and protective to ultimately a forced grin that hid apathy and hostility. Simultaneously, his energy changed from all over the place to something more centered.
Dan felt intimidated as the weight of his suspicious gaze fell on him, intrusive and frightening in its need to protect.
"How do you even know of that?" he asked him shrewdly.
Dan gulped. "S-saw you guys across the room."
His countenance lightened a shade and the gruff man managed a bark that was only slightly fake. When the gaze re-focused on him, it was slightly more open but still very cautious.
Dan wondered what he had done to earn him such suspicion and found himself grasping for his previous impressions of the man. Forget about not caring about his kid's wellbeing, this guy was paranoid about her safety.
So… what did that mean? That the girl was mature enough and able enough to handle a grappling hook?
His question was answered brusquely with a brief," She's fine. Nothing's wrong with her."
He didn't dare say that he hadn't at all insinuated that something was wrong with her but the protest was bitten off when there was an exclamation of, "Grunkle Stan!" in a prepubescent, male voice.
So fast that Dan was wondering whether the old man had switched bodies in the few microseconds he'd blinked, his host had levelled his heavy gaze away from him and an alert and paternal glint entered his eyes. He paused in his quick steps and, with Dan watching, greeted the approaching figure who had shot into the room they were in with a surly yet still inviting, "Hey, dipping sauce, what're you doing yelling my name like that? I'm not that old, ya know."
Another child braked in front of them, and Dan did a double-take when the boy looked the mirror image of the girl he had seen earlier with curly brown hair stuffed under a trucker cap, hazel eyes wide. The difference, though, was that while the girl had a sunny countenance, he reckoned that the boy was the exact opposite of the girl, with a worried lip that looked like it had seen better days.
The boy glanced at him fleetingly, appraising for a second, before his gaze settled on his 'Grunkle' (Great-Uncle?), impatience clear in his eyes.
"Grunkle Stan," he started with an air of indignation," Did you take my journal?"
Dan heard the man in front of him sigh explosively before he practically felt his thoughts slide to him in the momentary silence following, as though he was feeling discomfit at the thought of a stranger being witness to his interaction with his family. Dan shifted uncomfortably but stuck the awkwardness out. It was interesting and, damn his curiosity, but this Stan character was a complex individual who puzzled him.
The man sighed again when Dan refused to take the hint but obligingly shook his head at the boy's impetuous gaze. He placed a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder and gave him a slight shove in the direction of another door at the back of the room that Dan hadn't noticed.
"Your sister borrowed it for a paper weight for her things last night. I think it's still on the table."
The boy gasped, eyes becoming more alarmed," But- The glitter! The coffee stains!"
As the boy panicked, murmuring to himself, Dan had the luck to take a cursory glance at the man's expression and discover the veiled fondness weaved into every feature of his bearing.
Surprisingly, he was smiling gruffly- not the fake, overly bright ones crafted to sell merchandise which he'd gotten well-acquainted with in the past few minutes but genuine ones which were small but lit up his face. Dan rediscovered the meaning of Wendy's statement that he loved the kids 'like they were his own'.
If Carmen were there, she would have cooed and scrambled for a photograph. As it was, she wasn't and Dan, thank goodness, didn't reach for his camera.
"Now, go away," he told the boy impatiently, breaking the moment, "Scram. I have better things to do than cater to you idiots."
Dan would have squawked in indignation on behalf of the kid but, to his surprise, the ham-handedness of the man only brought a smile to the boy's stressed face. He watched as the boy grinned, in that trusting way only children could grin at people in their total confidence. At his Grunkle's prompting, he turned and sprinted for the room, hand raised briefly in parting. "Thanks Grunkle Stan!" he smiled.
Then he was gone and they were left in an awkward silence that only lasted a second before the man caught his eye and tried to dismiss the vestiges of care from his body language with a shrug and a reckless grin. "So, kids, huh?"
Dan could only nod dumbly.
The man jumped back into the tour he'd started, despite Dan's protestations, with nary another awkward glance and Dan was weaved into a world of mystery and over-priced souvenirs.
Although the tour only lasted half an hour, by the time Dan was released from the clutches of the man, he was loaded with a shopping basket worth of merchandise from the shelves of the Mystery Shack and wearing a perpetually intrigued expression. As he made his way to the checkout, he spotted, with a breath of relief, Wendy, who was still sitting in the seat he had last seen her in, with the exception of a paper with the game 'hangman' drawn on it.
Wendy's expression flitted from bored to interest when she caught sight of Dan heading to her counter.
"Hey," she said when he was within hearing distance for conversations of the polite volume.
Dan gave her a weary smile," Hi your-ugh-self. Oof." He deposited the basket on the counter and she started scanning the souvenirs in it, whistling in awe as she did so.
"Old Stan got you good, huh?" she asked, with an eyebrow raised in amusement. Dan just shrugged, an action to which Wendy laughed.
"He likes to give the customer one-on-one attention to swindle more money from them when there are no customers around," she told him frankly.
After hearing many heavy-handed jokes at his expense from the man, Dan could no longer find it in himself to care about propriety. In the shop, there was no sense of propriety or personal space. In the shop, there was only an informality which he had strangely enjoyed.
He merely hummed at the admittance.
As Wendy rung up his purchases, she leaned forward over the cashier, suddenly scrutinizing, and she continued the train of conversation despite there being no audible response from him. "What I'm wondering, though," she said," Is why you've gone along with his plan. You're one of the few not to punch him when he gets too handsy in his attempt to coax more money out of pockets, you know."
That was interesting and, at Wendy's inquiry, he wondered why he'd allow the lack of manners and rampant impropriety to slide off of him so fluidly. As Carmen would attest to, he was a very prickly person, stuck on what were socially acceptable and what was not. Truthfully, he was a mite surprised at himself.
But then, ah, yes, he remembered the kids.
The way Stan had conducted himself around the two 12 year-olds had made an impression of itself in his mind and he remembered that, despite his prickly personality, he valued two characteristics in a person: family loyalty and honesty. And while Stan had been a swindling crook, this he respected in him. And he didn't mind that he had squeezed out every available penny out of him, honestly.
The Mystery Shack was his and Carmen's last stop after all and he appreciated that he'd be spending the money on something interesting and also, in the process, made himself more agreeable in Stan's eyes with his generous spending.
He appreciated the fact that he had been able to meet Wendy, Stan, Dipper and Mabel (he had extracted the names of the two children in his and Stan's lengthy conversation-slash-tour).
Unable to put his silly thoughts to words, he merely grinned, and admitted," He's nicer when you get to know him a bit."
He was subject to Wendy's narrow-eyed stare again, as though determining his sincerity, but, after a moment, the teen acquiesced finally and gave him a small smile.
As he picked his purchases up, all bagged up and ready to be deposited in the boot of the car, door open, ready to admit him back to normality, he paused because Wendy chose the moment to shoot back, "You're not so bad yourself, too, stranger."
The sight of her grinning at him, sincere and warm, made his stomach roll pleasantly with the experience of making new friends yet also a pang of sadness at having to leave them behind.
Still, though, he waved his free hand in farewell as he made his way out the door.
He caught sight of his car in the parking lot and an approaching figure in the distance whose silhouette looked familiar.
He sighed with relief as the familiar features of Carmen defined itself and they both grinned at each other across the carpark.
"Danny!" Carmen exclaimed when he met her at the car. Her hair was tied in a bun which indicated that she had taken a walk around while waiting for Dan to return and she smelled slightly of fried things. She had probably checked out the fair they had passed on their way to the Mystery Shack. She gaped at his bulging bags then raised an eyebrow at him teasingly.
"Gone shopping?"
He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant but a smirk breaking his act. He raised the bag in his right hand," I've got a lot of souvenirs for our nieces and nephews back at home."
She laughed, eyes crinkling at the sides with amusement, before unlocking the car and getting in. Dan made his way to the back of the car, popped the trunk open and dumped his purchases in them. He then got in the car as well.
As he busied himself with strapping himself in, Carmen leaned towards him, in the midst of starting up the car and backing out of the parking slot.
"Enjoy your trip?"
Dan turned a slightly reticent gaze towards the Mystery Shack, which he had thought looked creepy when he had first seen it but now looked cozy, knowing about the tight-knit family living within it.
"Yep."
Carmen leaned, mock-conspirational, towards him, "You won't guess what I heard about the place, though. The guy who runs it is apparently a crook and a sneak and his kids run around getting into trouble everywhere."
Dan was startled into a laughing fit that made Carmen eye him weirdly.