Dipper Pines was having a... taxing morning.
He was rudely woke up at 2 o'clock at night by a 'courtesy call' from his hotel's front desk. Well, calling it a hotel was a strong word. It was more a multi-storey parking lot with beds, and a dodgy-looking buffet. Yes, the Tranquil Cavern Airport Hotel, just outside Heathrow Airport, was anything but living up to it's namesake.
The 'courtesy call' was in fact the hotel's night manager, an intimidating man who Dipper thought looked like Manly Dan if he was forced into a middle-management position in a used car dealership, pounding repeatedly on Dipper's door and throwing in a few hacking coughs of a long-time smoker for good measure. So that wasn't the best. He followed that up with a shower (which was of course infuriatingly lukewarm) and a quick visit to the breakfast buffet- followed by an even quicker visit to the takeaway restaurant next door. Finally, he caught a cab to the Heathrow Departures Terminal, in which he made extremely awkward conversation with a taxi driver who treats his passengers like his personal psychiatrists.
And that is how Dipper Pines entered the airport tired, annoyed, full of Chinese Food and with one (probably misdiagnosed) case of Seasonal Affective Disorder under his belt. All to see his phone (which he had forgotten to turn on till now) full of texts from his fiancé Rebecca, all labelled 'We need to talk'. And so he, with a mind that if anyone could read it would get him tackled to the ground by security, lugged his bags back into the same cab and went home.
'Home' was a small flat in the small village of Ashwell, what Dipper considered the polar opposite to Gravity Falls in every way.
Well, maybe just one major way. It. Was. Boring.
In his time in Europe, Ashwell was the most normal place he'd ever been. Heck, even Piedmont was riveting by comparison. But it was home, no matter how much Dipper longed he could be somewhere interesting. Like Edinburgh (full of Relicts; hags, golems, that sort of thing,) or Tunbridge Wells (surprisingly home to most Vampires in Western Europe- Not all Europe, Transylvania still had them beat in that regard). But still, Rebecca liked it here, and that was good enough for him.
Rebecca. Dipper's fiancé. He still felt a strange mix of happiness and sadness at those words. Was that normal? He hoped that was normal. He didn't think it was, but he could hope. But Rebecca was great. She was a archivist for the British Wildlife Conservation Effort, and while that took her away a lot, his job did too. Smart, funny and pretty, he thought she was like an English Wendy.
He wondered what was wrong. She knew he had been looking forward to this trip for months. Why had she chosen now to talk? And what about?
The cab pulled up to the kerb, and Dipper almost forgot to pay the driver in his rush to get to his front door. The drive had two cars, which was odd seeing as his van was currently in the care of a friend.
Fumbling with his keys, he finally managed to open the doors only to be confronted with Rebecca pacing up and down in the kitchen, with packed suitcases stacked up in the corners, scratch that, his suitcases, and a stranger leaning against the kitchen side.
Dipper was still reeling when Rebecca noticed his arrival, and the stranger calmly got up and took to her side in the kitchen
"Hello Mason." She said, her voice cutting through Dipper's mental fog like a lighthouse in a storm.
"Hey yourself." Dipper countered, his instincts telling him this wasn't gonna be a fun conversation. He would bet his journal on the fact that his things were in a storage unit somewhere, and not in this flat. Some of that aggression got into his voice evidently, as Rebecca's companion seemed to puff his chest up in argument.
"Didn't catch your flight then?"
"No. I was about to check in when I got your texts, y'know, all seven-hundred of them?"
"I sorta assumed you would be in New York by the time you got 'em."
"Yeah, well I'm here now," Dipper walked further inside the flat and leaned against the doorframe, "so what's up?"
"Well, I wanted the trip to act as a cushion but..." Rebecca collected herself and stood up straight. "Mason, I'm breaking up with you."
"Yeah, I got that from the suitcases, which I'm guessing have all my stuff in?" Rebecca nodded. "Right. So my only questions are why and who?"
The stranger apparently took this as his cue to enter the fray, and held his outstretched hand to Dipper. "Robbie. Im your fian-"
Rebecca quickly cut him off with a pointed look and took over. "Robbie is a friend from work."
"Oh." That was all Dipper could come up with. It was as though he had had a staring contest with the Gremloblin. He was dazed. The next moments were a blur, and he could just make out something Rebecca was saying, the same things you hear in every breakup- a lack of communication, feelings of resentment, all the stuff he had heard from his previous girlfriends. And before he knew it, he was handing over his key and leaving the flat with considerably more luggage than he came with, both physically and emotionally.
So! Its been a while. About a year, actually. Sorry about that. But, I'm back (hopefully) after exams, and I can focus a bit more on this stuff. But enough apologies, the first chapter following Dipper is up, and we start to see a bit more about his life. Please read and review if you have anything to say, constructive or not (Yes, even the flames, I think they still have a bit of merit). But yeah, hopefully the next chapter will have a gap of less than a year, fingers crossed.
JKB-D