He remembered the times before the twins, when the whole shop was haunted by a frigid silence all throughout the day. Wendy the cashier had her furry boots atop her desk, read the latest issue Punk Rock Weekly, and unresponsive to any form of human contact. Stan wasted away in his undershirt and boxers, ate a bowl of strawberry ice cream while watching the television. And then there was him, Soos the maintenance guy of the Mystery Shack who did nothing except sweep the floor, change light bulbs, that kind of stuff. There were times when an occasional customer enters the Shack, Mr. Pines would get dressed, and woo the tourists into buying something completely unnecessary. Other than those instances, the Mystery Shack had basically a dead atmosphere.
Not a single day of the length of his employment did he feel welcomed at the Mystery Shack. At times, he even felt like he didn't exist. In fact, this was the story of his life so far. Nobody paid attention to him. At school, he had only three friends, and all of them fled to the big cities when college came a-knocking. At home, he was practically invisible to his parents, who were at work all the time. He couldn't blame them one bit, in hindsight, because he wasn't a brilliant son anyway. He got too many F's for the school's liking, and was kicked out before he even reached his sophomore year in high school. Plus, almost everybody who he'd met had told him that he was too immature for his age and size.
Everyone wanted him to grow up; a request that Soos has refused to grant. He knew he was a nobody, and it seared a hole in his heart every time he remembered so. Letting people know that he existed was one of his aims, but he disliked the idea of pretending to be another person. He'd rather be who he is, a nobody.
One evening, Stan had received a phone call from the city. From that phone call, he had learned that a pair of Pines was on their way to Gravity Falls. Soos felt the kid inside of him run around in glee. He was finally going to have some friends to hang out with, much to his exuberance.
Everything had gone as expected with the twins. Ever since they arrived at the Shack, he'd been having these crazy escapades with thm, uncovering mystery after mystery. (His personal favorite was when the three of them headed for the lake in search for the mythical Gobblewonker.)
In fact, the rotund handyman would rush through his errands everyday at the Mystery Shack just so he could go play with the Pines twins a little bit sooner, because he knew that summer wouldn't last forever.
Time had flown too fast for his liking when the last day of summer came. Mr. Pines had thrown a send-off dinner for the departees. It was clear that the twins' great uncle wanted to throw the grandest of dinners for his most beloved nephew and niece. The food was excellent, much to Soos' enjoyment. However grand the feast may have been, there was still an air of melancholy among the occupants of the Mystery Shack.
Wendy was the first to break into tears, sending down great amounts of mascara, staining the redhead's freckled cheeks. Stan sat in the capital of the table, trying his best to hold in his tears by making jokes here and there. Soos, too, was tearless, but chewed on a fried chicken leg, more than usual. (His mom had told him that it was some kind of coping mechanism.) The twins switched from one dismayed person to another and gave each a warm hug to cheer up the atmosphere. That was practically the story of that dinner. Their last dinner with the Pines twins.
It was not too long before their heard the ominous humming of the twins' parents' car. They both gave one last embrace to Stan, Wendy, and finally Soos. He bent down to one knee, opened his arms as wide as he could, and absorbed the impact of Mabel and Dipper, who threw themselves right into the soft torso of the big man.
"Thank you, Soos!" said both as they squeezed their hardest "We'll see you next year."
"See ya, dudes!"
A minute of hugging felt like a split-second to big Soos. The twins' parents were now urging them to get inside the car. It was hard letting go, literally. He wished and wished that this moment was just some horrible dream. But as the sedan drove farther and farther away, he confirmed the reality of everything. He felt a dark, stabbing pain all over his insides.
An arm landed on his shoulder, and then another. He looked at his redhead co-worker, and then to his decrepit employer, who both smiled at him with soaked, reddened eyes. He smiled back, revealing his beaver-like incisors. The stabbing pain soon turned into a state bright bliss. This was when he began to cry. He had never cried this hard before. He had never felt happiness like this before. He was finally a 'somebody'.
Before the sedan disappeared was completely eaten up by Gravity Falls' thick fog, he said, as though the twins would hear:
"Thank you."