Hello, and Happy Holidays! ...Okay, so it's Halloween not Christmas, but it's still the holidays - and what's more holidayish than a Christmas Gravity Falls Special! It will be finished by around the end of November, so trust me, I know what I'm doing...
Anyway, if you don't know, this is in the Mystery Trio AU; specifically part of my own series, called Tabasco Sauce. (Great name, Ella. Thanks, Ella!) It's still unfinished, so don't feel too obliged to read it. It fits just as well in the more mainstream AU. Although nothing on this fanbase can be considered mainstream. Creepy, yes, but not mainstream.
Oh and as always, I don't own anyone in this.
Fiddleford McGucket had had some truly abysmal ideas in his time.
Even he could admit this was true. After all, he was on his way to pick up his six-year-old son from the Oregon-California border at ten in the morning, so they could spend Christmas in the house of a man who sets fire to his face because it is "quicker than shaving". Oh man. Maybe it was best to not think about it too hard. Thank God the man didn't actually appear to celebrate anything, since he seemed to create a bonfire simply while walking to the toilet. And Stanley was even worse on a bad day… Luckily, they were out of town for the holidays, so he only had the portal and the bunker full of otherworldly experiments to worry about.
Fiddleford tried his best to clear his mind, as he pulled into the car park of a tiny, dingy motel. He'd arranged to meet Gina and Tate there, because he was (as of now) banned from the state of California, where Tate lived and went to school. The reason for this? One word: Pterodactyl.
As he walked into the lobby, looking around him, he realised that this was the first Christmas he'd be spending with his Tater-tot since the boy was less than a month old and the length of his forearm. Of course, the last six years hadn't been a river of tears by any stretch of the imagination, but this Christmas would definitely be special.
"DAD!" Fiddleford yelped as small hands grabbed his neck from behind, and almost pulled him onto the linoleum floor.
"Hey there, Tate," he grumbled, not quite able to stop smiling. "We really have to talk about your 'hugging' technique, you know."
"I was just hiding," huffed his son, crossing his arms. He really needed a haircut, Fiddleford noticed absently. His light brown hair was far past his eyes, and wafted slightly when the boy spoke. "You just don't get the joke because you're old and weird." Yes, he'd become well acquainted with Tate's love of hiding from people, after the summer he'd spent at Gravity Falls over a year ago. Needless to say, his heart rate would never quite be the same.
"Tate!" scolded Gina, as she put down his bags. "I'm sorry in advance. He's beginning to develop an attitude, I think."
"Isn't that supposed to happen in the teenage years?" he worried.
His ex-wife smirked. "You got yours when you were twenty-one, just after your spine fell out."
"Not true! I'll have you know I was quite the rebel at college."
"Yeah, right. The weird kid who occasionally put milk in the bowl before cereal, and wore Monday socks on a Thursday one time. You were just too much of a bad boy for me, honestly. Y'know your nickname when you first arrived at Backupsmore was 'The Human Mop'?"
Fiddleford laughed, taking the bags. He still got on pretty well with Gina, even though they weren't together anymore. They just weren't right for each other, and had rushed into things after college because of the pregnancy. Granted, they'd gone through a bad patch during the divorce, what with him setting a homicidal robot dinosaur on her neighbourhood two months after their official break-up, but they'd worked through those issues eventually in the counselling sessions.
"So you've got clothes, pyjamas, enough knitwear to warm Alaska, and bathroom stuff. He has an aversion to brushing his teeth, so be sure to check. Oh, and the EpiPen is in the front pocket of his backpack. Why you should choose to have strawberries during the Christmas period, I don't know. Anyway, you probably won't need all this stuff, but it's-"
"Best to take precautions," Fiddleford finished the sentence with her. "Seriously, we'll be fine. Which one of us here is a lab assistant?"
"Which one of us lives with Mr Weirdyton of Weirdville?" Gina fired back. He feigned innocence.
"I have no idea what you're-"
"Ha! C'mon, I'm not blind. Did you see that 'rainbow trout' that Tate sent me a picture of? Fish are not supposed to have fists." Fiddleford was about to retort, when Tate tugged on his jacket.
"Are you done with grown-up stuff now? I have to go."
"I know, sweet-pea, we've just got to do some things before we leave for Gravity Falls."
"No, I mean I need to go! Bad."
"Wha- oh! Um, well. Sure! You do still know how, right?" Tate somehow managed to give him a withering look from behind several inches of thick hair. Fiddleford withered accordingly. "Okay, okay. Just meet me at the car - the red one on the far left, okay?" He walked off to the public toilets near the entrance, leaving Fiddleford and Gina standing alone. "You're not wrong about the attitude. Last time he stayed with me, I struggled to get him to say a single word."
"You don't know how lucky you are," said Gina wryly, dumping the last of the heavy bags on her scrawny ex-husband. "But don't worry. You will. But seriously, have a good time. And my kid had better have fun too, or I'll break your arms like twigs."
"Yes ma'am." squeaked Fiddleford. "See you on the fifth!" He stepped out into the crisp morning air, giving a sigh of relief. Even when she was a few hundred miles away, that woman managed to put the fear of God in him. She was second only to the Grembloblin.
The Gremloblin...
The Gremloblin...
"Uh... Dad?"
Fiddleford shook himself back into awareness. He was standing in the car park, next to his tiny red car, with Tate staring up at him. He anxiously adjusted his glasses. He must have gone into his head by accident...
"Are you alright?" asked the boy. "Your eyes were pointing in opposite directions." Oh, lordy, thought Fiddleford. Now even his son was going to think he was a bit of a loony.
He gave a nervous laugh. "Yup, fine. Just got a little distracted there. And don't worry about the eye thing, it happens when I'm not concentrating... Anyway! You ready to start another holiday with your boring ol' dad?" Luckily this seemed to distract his son.
"YEEAAHH!" Tate cheered, jumping into the back seat. "Christmas, here we come!" Fiddleford smiled, and walked round to his side.
"...So you say there'll be snow? Real snow? Will there be enough to build a snowman? Will it be snowing on Christmas, like in cards? Will it..."
"I'm not a fortune teller, Tate," sighed Fiddleford, as they drove the last leg of the journey. "It might snow, it might not. We'll have to wait and see." Evergreen pines lined the road, and Fiddleford noticed a few whitish-grey slopes on the wayside . He wasn't going to tell Tate though, as he would probably go through the roof with excitement at the sight of real snow.
Tate suddenly let out a yell. "DAD! I remember this bit! I remember this! The cliffs, they're THERE! You see?!" Sweet sarsaparilla. He was pretty sure he was going deaf in his right ear. Despite this, Fiddleford gave a smile to the small passenger over his shoulder.
"That's right. Not far to go, Tater-tot."
"Will Mr Ford be there?" asked Tate excitedly.
"Nope. He's out of town, having a good time with his brother. Did I tell you about Stanley in the phone calls? About how he came to help us?"
"Mhm. Where'd they go?"
"They went to go and steal radioactive waste from a plant in Minnesota, so we can power Mr Ford's inter-dimensional metavortex - which, by the way, we are testing sometime next year," Fiddleford didn't say.
"Y'know... I'm not actually sure. To visit family, I guess." He took a right, branching off the main road to a wide track, the pine trees clustering further together.
"That's cool. Would've been nice to see him, though."
"Aaaand here we are!" The tiny red car reached the end of the track. A modest wooden house, relatively new, stood tall over them. Fiddleford pulled the car in line with the golf buggy, and cut the engine. "Just leave your booster seat, but everything else is going in. Care to give me a hand?"
"Not really." Fiddleford laughed.
"Attaboy." He ruffled his son's hair. "Just let me get your bags. Could you shut the trunk for me?" They walked round to the back of the car.
"I can't wait to see the lake again," expressed Tate, smiling. Fiddleford's blood ran cold. The lakeside was awfully chilly that time of year. Covered in ice, he'd bet...
"Um... ahem, I'm not sure that's a g-good idea, Tate."
"Why not? We went all the time that summer." In a different situation, Fiddleford might have found it heartwarming that his son remembered so much about a holiday which was relatively long ago. He sighed.
"Look, we'll talk about it later. Okay?" The boy gave him an odd look, and Fiddleford suddenly felt like his soul was being inspected. Then Tate's face split into a grin.
"Okay, Dad! That's fine. Here, I'll take this." He grabbed one of the smaller bags from on top of the pile, and skipped towards the door. Fiddleford stayed back, feeling a bit apprehensive, then quickly followed. It's always a bit alarming when your child lies to you for the first time, even to save your feelings.
"Can we go in now?" Tate begged, as Fiddleford fished around for the key in his coat pocket.
"Yep, if I just... aha! Right. The heating's on, so it'll be lovely and warm." He turned the key in the lock. "Lovely and warm and-" He was interrupted by the sound of someone yelling indistinctly from behind the door. "...quiet." Fiddleford frowned, and turned to Tate. "Hold on a sec, and get behind me." The boy stepped behind his father, who slowly creaked the door open, peering around the hall. The sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him, but he could have sworn he'd checked all the lights were off before he left...
"...all your fault!" A voice said loudly.
"What'd ya mean, my fault?" demanded another - quite similar to the last voice, but deeper and a bit gravelly. "You know that I speed when there's a good song on the radio! How was I to know they'd play Bohemian Rhapsody just when we went past a cop?"
"I wouldn't have let you be the getaway driver if I knew you couldn't control your speed regardless of-" Fiddleford purposefully dropped one of the bags in his arms. Stanley and Stanford Pines (for of course, who else would it be?) paused mid-argument, and stared at their friend with twin expressions of dismay.
"Gentlemen." greeted Fiddleford coolly. "I'd say I'm pleasantly surprised, but that would be lying. Now: why in the name of Sam Hill are you here, when you promised me you wouldn't be?"
Somebody's in trouble!
