This Time Around - Mabel Pines Day 1: Favorite Sweater
Stan sighed as he scratched at his shoulder and watched the vivid multi-colored tumbling of clothes in the dryer. The timer said two more minutes, but to him it felt like twenty.
After thirty-plus years of doing laundry on a consistent basis, Stan still hated it with every fiber of his being. It just took up too much of his already-precious time, time he could be using to con another dollar, or work on the portal, or just anything else.
But now he was forced to do triple his usual load of laundry, all because he lost a bet to Mabel. Who knew the kid could do ten cartwheels in a row while listing different flavors of pie?
And so for the next month, Stan had to do Mabel's laundry, and boy, did she have a lot of sweaters.
Eventually, the dryer beeped that it was done and he kicked a laundry basket in front of it. He began taking out the sweaters and skirts within by the handful, marveling at just how many there were, and dropped them into the basket.
The monotony of the chore continued until, on the umpteenth handful, Stan was alerted to attention by resistance. He paused for a second, then grimaced in determination and gave a hard tug to the clothing. It finally gave, and he nearly fell backwards in a flurry of sweaters.
When he regained his balance and looked down at the origin of trouble, however, he gasped in panic. Apparently, one of Mabel's sweaters had been stuck - was still stuck - in the drum of the dryer. Stan followed the thread of yarn that was snagged in the machine to the bundle in his hand and cautiously pulled out a red sweater with Waddles' face on it - one of Mabel's favorites.
"Oh no. Oh, no no no no!"
Stan shook his head repeatedly and carefully plucked the pulled strand from the dryer so he could hold the sweater up and better assess the damage. Part of the right sleeve had gotten caught and stretched out, which had tightened the sleeve shut at the elbow. It looked pretty bad.
He was going to have to tell Mabel. Show her.
"Damn it..." he grumbled at the wall. He hated seeing his niece sad, much less being the cause of that sadness. Yet another reason to despise doing laundry.
Begrudgingly resolved to his fate, Stan shoved the sweater into the basket of others, picked the load up, and shut the dryer door before trekking upstairs to the kids' room in the attic. With a courtesy knock he gently pushed the door open.
Mabel was laying cheerfully on the ground, a purple crayon in her hand as she colored in a picture of some fantasy world. Her head bopped along to a Sev'ral Timez CD playing on her boombox. Waddles was curled up next to her as he napped the late afternoon away. Dipper was nowhere to be found.
"Hey, kiddo," Stan began, placing the basket of clothing at the foot of her bed. "Your laundry's all done." He sat down on her mattress to watch her work.
"Thanks, Grunkle Stan!" Mabel chimed in return.
He smiled back, all while trying to think of ways to stall the inevitable, and asked, "Whatcha working on there?"
She laid her crayon down and held up her drawing for him to see. A bunch of horned figures littered the page. "It's a battle of narwhals versus unicorns," she explained.
"Hehe, nice." Stan leaned back against her bed as she went back to coloring. He tried to think of how to word the bad news in the least upsetting way. But just as he was about to open his mouth, he clamped it back shut instantly.
For whatever reason, the memory of Ford yelling at him after he had accidentally broken Ford's perpetual motion machine came back to Stan in a flash. That had been the most heartbreaking moment of his life, and suddenly the associated guilt weighed down on his train of thought. His present situation felt all-too-similar, and he didn't want Mabel yelling at him like his own twin had. Besides, he didn't want to spoil her good mood.
"Grunkle Stan, are you okay?"
Mabel's question tore him out of his thoughts, but the worry still lingered. He shook his head and answered, "Uhh, yeah. I, uh...I...wanted to see if you and your brother wanted to go get pancakes for dinner."
A grin splayed across her face and she sat up on her knees. "Awesome! I'm in!"
"Great! Then...why don't you go find Dipper and go get in the car? I'll be down in a second," he suggested as he stood up and stretched his limbs out.
Stan watched as Mabel ran out of the room in excitement. Once he heard her footsteps fade away on the stairs, he rifled through the newly-cleaned sweaters he had brought up and snatched the ruined red one out. He then took some of Mabel's knitting supplies sitting in a bin in the corner of the room, and went to go hide everything in his own bedroom.
He couldn't disappoint another family member with his screw-ups, especially not Mabel, and he sure as heck wasn't going to dampen her spirits by telling her one of her favorite self-made sweaters was ruined. No, he was going to fix it himself. Stan Pines was going to knit.
When the Pines got back to the Mystery Shack that night and Stan eventually got the kids to bed, he waited about an hour before he retrieved the sweater and knitting supplies from his room and laid them out on the kitchen table.
When he actually sat down to get to work however, he froze in his chair. What was he doing? He didn't know how to knit.
Sighing, Stan looked down at the table and closed his eyes to try to conjure up an image of one of the countless times he'd seen Mabel with knitting needles and a ball of yarn in her lap. He opened his eyes back up and picked up the ball of red yarn, staring apprehensively at it. He could do this. He had to, for Mabel.
Step by step, he prepared himself for the task at hand, trying to match exactly how Mabel would have knotted the yarn, held the needles. Finally, he was ready to start.
When he first tried to stretch the elbow of the sweater back out, the material thankfully slid back into place, which helped to pinpoint the problem area better. There was a huge hole on the outer side of the sleeve where the stitching had come undone by being pulled this way and that. It reminded Stan of the tape in an old VHS movie being stretched out in a heap. With the problem assessed and nothing else left to do, he set to work on patching up the hole.
At some point, probably around six or seven in the morning, Stan realized he had fallen asleep when he felt a finger poke his nose. He shot up in his chair and blinked away the sleep as he looked around the kitchen covered in the early gray light of the sun. Mabel was standing next to him, a curious look on her face, and the sweater laid balled up on the table, as if he had used it as a pillow. He immediately covered it clumsily with his arms.
"Grunkle Stan? What are you doing with my Waddles sweater?" Mabel inquired. Her voice was still groggy from sleep as she rubbed her eye with her fist.
"Uhh..." Think fast, Stan, he thought to himself. "I can't tell you. You're having a nightmare. Go back to bed." Smooth.
She gave him a skeptical, disapproving smirk and crossed her arms in response. "Stan..."
For a well-established con man, Stan had nothing to answer the boring guilt of her niece's stare. The moment he had been trying to avoid had finally come around to kick him in the pants.
"Alright. I...I had-When I did your laundry yesterday, the sleeve got caught in the dryer and got ruined. I wanted to fix it before I gave it back to you, but...here. This was the best I could do. Sorry, kiddo." He handed the sweater to her and quickly looked away to avoid the impending onslaught of hatred.
Mabel held the sweater up in front of her and instantly saw Stan's repair attempt. There was a couple of layers of yarn on the right elbow trying to hold a significant hole together, and in the center of it was a knot about the size of a small olive.
She lowered the sweater from her view to see Stan looking out the window, bracing for her response. Her face melted into a sincere smile over her uncle's gesture and concern for her feelings, and she slipped the sweater over her head before climbing up onto the chair closest to him.
"It's okay, Stan."
He turned back towards her and was surprised to see her wearing the sweater. "Really? I ruined it though."
Now it was Mabel's turn to be surprised. "Why would you think that? It was the dryer's fault."
"Yeah, but it's one of your favorite sweaters, and you made it yourself, and I just made it even worse by trying to fix it," he lamented gruffly, gesturing to her arm.
She took another good look down at her elbow and rolled the knot between her fingers. "It's actually not that bad, Grunkle Stan. I can clean up what you did and it'll be okay, honest."
His eyes implored hers, trying to find her forgiveness, but remaining unconvinced. "Really?"
"Hey, it's even better now, actually, because now I'll know that it was worked on by you as well, and that makes it even more special because it shows that you care. So, thanks for improving it!" Mabel got up from her chair to give him a hug around the waist.
Stan laughed and breathed a sigh of relief as he patted her shoulder. "Thanks, kid. Now, how about I make you some breakfast, huh? Scrambled eggs sound good?"
"Okay! I'll go wake Dipper," she answered, her mood even brighter now that her uncle was happy again.
As she left the room, Stan watched her and stood up to start cooking, a big grin on his face. Perhaps he had jumped to conclusions too soon. Sure, he goofed up a lot when it came to his family, but that didn't mean they would all respond negatively every time. Mabel had been forgiving, and who knew? Maybe Ford would be too, next time around.
So, this may be a day late, and it may follow Stan more than Mabel, AND it might be really fluffy, but I assure you it is definitely about Mabel and one of her sweaters.
(And welcome to my Gravity Falls one-shots!)
