The sunset really was pretty.
It made Dipper wince.
He laid back on his lawn chair, one of the two Wendy always had set up on the Mystery Shack's roof spot. Along with that was a plastic bag that consistently had some type of junk food-y snack or candy that lay on its side next to the fourteen year-old. In his hands he held an unopened jumbo-size thing of gummy chairs, which he never thought he'd be eating but he had to admit weren't actually that bad.
Wendy was supposed to meet him for their first movie night of his third summer at Gravity Falls, which he didn't know how to feel about.
He supposed that was a good thing, but it sure as heck didn't feel like it. This year he managed to finally get a girlfriend; a geeky girl named Angie of whom he'd been very fond of as of late. It was with spluttering surprise that he said yes when she asked him to see Bobsponge: Left to Die On Land with her, and he could still recall vividly the way her pigtails had bounced from the noticeable spring in her step when she walked away. He remembered clearly the feeling of her head on his shoulder, and how some of her pigtails had tickled his neck in the theatre. She'd told him his hair was soft, and that his birthmark was cute. The sound of her laugh, so carefree and impsih when she'd make him blush. A small, wistful smile began to cross his face before it died.
They broke up a three months in.
He'd neglected the topic of his previous romantic attempts with Angie, mainly because that made him supremely uncomfortable, and under that umbrella came Wendy. It hadn't helped at all, too, he realized, that she'd seen him texting Wendy (Essentially) behind her back. She'd confronted him about it, and though he hoped he mitigated some damage, he clearly hadn't done enough. He wouldn't be sitting here, waxing nostalgic if had, wouldn't he?
Dipper sighed, closing his eyes and running hands down his face. It had been a good month since then, but life had failed in providing any true, real distractions for him; Piedmont wasn't weird. He'd encountered, at max, one anomaly there. Even then, though, it was just another one of those giant fruit bats preying on some unsuspecting vegetarian's house. He and Mabel had tracked the thing to its lair and gotten it to move (Unless it's just back in the same spot, he thought moodily) well away from that poor woman's home.
He wished it could've worked out.
He knew he would've stayed loyal; nobody would've done - or likely tried, he was confident - to seduce him or anything at all like that. The world was weird, he knew, but stories had failed to show themselves to come true most of the time. Or if they did, they certainly weren't happening to him. Angie was nice, the one person he knew who found enjoying Smack Bros attractive or the mixed martial arts robotics club like-worthy. Angie didn't make fun of him (Too much) for writing in a journal, nor did she ever tell him he was too weird.
Ugh.
How'd he mess it up so bad?
He could make a deal with a demon, an actual demon, but girls were beyond his comprehension. Dipper shook his head, letting out a bitter sound that he could just about call laugh, if he stretched the definition a whole bunch.
"Dude? I know like, brooding's kinda your thing now, but you okay?" Dipper started, his bag of gummy chairs falling out of his lap and onto the roof, as an eighteen year-old redhead finished climbing the ladder, which made his heart beat a bit faster.
He'd told Wendy, of course, that he and Angie had broken up. She'd given her own empathies and said he could talk about it with her when he felt ready.
That was a month ago.
"Oh! Uh… hey." Dipper felt his face flushing. Discomfort began to nestle itself comfortably in his chest, right where it could tell his voice 'Hey, how about you come down here with me?'. Wendy frowned at him.
"Something's wrong then," she stated. It was bit harsher than Dipper expected, and added its own sting to his hurt. He gave small, abashed nod, moving to get out of his chair when Wendy took the other. He could feel her eyes watching him, feeling like they'd picked up far too much of a knowing quality for him. Only Mabel or his parents should've been able to do that.
"Angie." she finally says, tone flat. Dipper jolted, stiffening for a moment before nodding slowly.
"Yeah." he sighed, "I just…" he looked at the roof. His heart wasn't pounding in his chest and he wasn't getting nervously itchy, a plus, but his throat was also tightening. It hurt. Even after a month, the anger in her eyes haunted him. He didn't want to see that. He didn't want to walk down the street and just be reminded of the times when they held hands. He wished he could just forget it all. Wished she never asked him out. Maybe things'd be… different.
But there was another reason behind all of this. Something that made it so he couldn't look Wendy in the eye. His best friend of three years and he couldn't even look her in the eye.
God, how much sadder could he get?
Part of him wanted to say she was the reason he and Angie broke up, but he knew full well that wasn't true. He knew he probably should've brought it up earlier, but his fear of what she might do if he did stopped him. If he was honest, he wasn't sure what he would've done if he had.
He still wanted Wendy on some level. He knew that. It was nowhere near as strong as it was, but it remained. It nagged at him, even when he was out with Angie. Part of him rebelliously declared that he didn't belong there. That he should be holding hands with Wendy and not her. He shoved those thoughts aside every time, but they still happened.
Maybe he wouldn't've stayed loyal after all. Maybe it never would've worked out. But it still hurt. He looked away from his friend, like the bricks to his right were some kind of safe zone. There was nothing there that would raise uncomfortable questions. No thing there could stress him out.
But there was a stressor one to his left. Walking. Talking. Breathing. Thinking. Watching.
Wendy had an annoying tendency to see right through him. Past the thin veneers of calm he was able to put up and into the awkward, shy dork underneath it all. Dipper bit his lip and gripped the sides of his chair.
He hadn't contacted Wendy since he told her about the breakup. An entire month of radio silence on his end. No responses from him. He'd probably ruined their friendship with his stupidity.
"I…" he began, but trailed off. His eyes flicked over to her, making the barest contact with her eyes before moving back to his right.
He'd spent a lot of time wondering how this would go. Thinking through it all.
Did he want to be this close to her?
He wasn't sure anymore. If it caused trouble with his relationships, who's to say it already hadn't with hers and she just hadn't said anything? Even if their friendship hasn't messed with her personal life already, he didn't want it to in the future. He wanted his friends to be happy. If he was getting in the way of that happiness, shouldn't he leave? He could give back sympathy and empathy and junk, but was it worth it for her? He'd questioned their friendship occasionally, but this time - for the first time - it went both ways. And the answer to whether it was worth it for him stabbed at him.
He doubted many girls would put up with him being this close to another girl, especially an ex crush. The age gap was relevant now, but Dipper knew it wouldn't be long before the three years between them felt like a number. A fourteen year-old dating an seventeen year-old was questionable, but an eighten year-old dating a twenty one-year-old? That was less so, and the situation only got worse from there.
"I-I…" Dipper tried to speak, but it was just as hard as the last time. His throat felt like it had been stuck in the middle of a Texas ranch. He forced himself to look at Wendy. Looking her in the eye hurt him. He hoped he wouldn't cry. Wendy sat patiently, though she looked a little annoyed. He flinched. "... should we even be friends?"
Wendy paused for a second before rolling her eyes.
"This is why I haven't heard squat from you for a month? Dude, you know the answer."
"Do I?" Dipper asked, and Wendy's eyebrows rose. "Angie - she - she broke up because I didn't tell her about you and she found out about us. She said I was a traitor. I know I probably should've just been up front but… I don't want to lose this. I like this more than anything. But if we have to get distant with each other 'cause of our boyfriends or girlfriends or whatever is it worth it?"
Wendy frowned at him. She scrutinized his face intently. Dipper looked down. He opened his mouth, but Wendy cut him off, holding up a hand.
"Dude, I get it. I had these same thoughts and junk too. But if your boyfriend or girlfriend can't tolerate me, fine. I have other friends, man. I'd make it through."
"Then the same would go for me," Dipper said, looking at the trees. "We'd just get more distant every time we date." he drew his knees up to his chest and bowed his head. Then, after a moment, he glared.
"You - err, neither of us - should have to do that." he said, voice tight. "It's stupid. No." Dipper turned to face his friend. Blue eyes stared right into green. "If they can't put up with us, screw them. I don't care if it takes longer. They learn to put up with you or they don't date me." Wendy hesitated. She saw the hurt and resentment and fear in his eyes.
"Dip, I'm not sure that's, y'know, healthy." Dipper glared at her. His eyes watered at the edges.
"I can trust you," he said, "No-one… no-one else has gone through the apocalypse with me. You're - you're the coolest person I know, Wendy. I don't have to watch myself around you. I don't need to hide my journal or anything. I don't want to lose that because of some girl." Dipper held her gaze firmly. Wendy blinked.
"Dude," she said, and she analyzed his face again. There wasn't a hint of misgiving in any part of his expression. No bit of question or hesitation.
She hadn't been lying. She had had these thoughts before. It would've been easy, a corner of her said, to leave Dipper in the dust. After all, he was younger, not popular, and well over a hundred miles away from her. She only saw him in the summer. Shrugging him off and leaving him alone would not have been hard.
And, though she hadn't told him, she'd come to the exact same conclusion he had.
Wendy stopped herself from smiling, even though her inner sap wanted to grin as bright as the sun. She'd dealt with guys who couldn't take Dipper's presence in her life, and she'd accepted that. She was liking what he was saying, but she wanted to be sure. Because the last thing she wanted was to lose this.
"You're sure?"
"Yes." Dipper replied simply. Now Wendy let herself smile.
"Can I get something off my chest?" she asked. Dipper nodded resoloutely.
"I kinda came to the same conclusion you did."
Dipper was silent. Then he began to give her a watery smile that made a tiny part of Wendy wanna cry as well.
"Thanks," he responded. "And um, sorry I guess."
Wendy laughed, and took his hat - the same one she'd given after his first summer in Gravity Falls - off his head. Dipper blinked before shooting up.
"Nothing to apologize for," she said, and Dipper narrowed his eyes. Wendy stretched her arm as high up as it would go. She'd hit another growth spurt this year for reasons unknown and that she wouldn't question, which restored her height advantage over Dipper, something he'd managed to break at Christmas. Her friend tensed.
Dipper lunged at her and took his hat back, catching Wendy by surprise. She fell back on the roof, laughing again as Dipper quickly took on an expression of horror. She picked up a pine cone that had left up on the roof and threw it at him, grinning full bore.
When the pine cone hit Dipper, he took only another second to fish out a gummy chair and throw it at her. Soon enough, the two were throwing random junk around in the sunset, laughing their heads off the entire time. One of the pine cones Wendy threw bounced off part of the roof and hit Stan's car, setting off its car alarm.
"Does that count?" Wendy inquired, only to narrowly dodge a stale gummy koala. She scowled. "Cheap sho - ow!" a second gummy koala hit her in the nose. She wasted no time in grabbing one of the few pine cones left and beaning Dipper right on his birthmark. The boy scowled back at her, but was laughing all the same.
When the sun finally went down, they whiled away the rest of the night watching Nearly Almost Dead But Not Quite 2: The Nearly Almost Deadening! and Help! My Mummy's a Werewolf! 5: We're Still Doing This!
When they fell asleep that night, they were passed out drooling on the floor together.
Sup. The sap is back.
I began the original doc for this a while ago, actually. Of course, the idea never truly hit me until two days ago, and then I finished this super fast. I like how it turned out, but please tell me what you think. I love to get your feedback and opinions, so don't be shy!
And in case anyone who's read my other Gravity Falls stuff is wondering: yes, it is in the same universe my other one-shots. This is unrelated, as well, but I really wanted to make the movie Angie asked Dipper out to be Gnat-Man, but that came out in July of 2015 and this story takes place in June. And yes, I pay this much attention to details like that.
As always, any and all reviews/favs/follows will be duly and blushingly noted. 'Till next time. - Raging Celiac