Hello readers! Thank you all for being so patient for the past nine days while I was visiting family- that's my longest gap so far, not too shabby. :) I hope you all had a great Christmas and enjoy the rest of the break! :)
"And then I walk up on stage to give my acceptance speech and when I look down, I'm wearing absolutely no clothes. Zero. And there's no escape route. If I run offstage, the cameras will just follow me."
"Oh, man." Dipper laughs sympathetically, studying the stars overhead. The springs of the trampoline creak as Alexis rolls over onto her stomach and pokes his shoulder.
"Now it's your turn. Recurring nightmare. Go!"
Dipper hesitates, flushing. "Well, I can't really think of anything…"
Alexis sticks out her bottom lip in a pout. "Aww, you know you have one! What's that one dream you've had since you were a kid, and every time you think you'll never have it again, it just pops up again and scares the poop out of you?"
"Okay. It's kind of dark, though." Dipper taps his fingers together, trying to think how best to explain. "Ever since I was, like, twelve, I've had this dream every few months that I'm having a sort of out of body experience. I'm just watching myself walk around, I can't control my arms and legs or what I say or…. what I do."
"Ooo." Alexis shivers. "That's freaky."
"And the weird part is that there's this big, yellow triangle with one eye in the middle of his- uh, its face, and it's the one controlling me… and making me sort of… like, get these forks and… " Dipper trails off.
Alexis's face blanches ever so slightly in the light from the porch. "And then what?"
Dipper coughs into his elbow. "I don't really remember."
The trampoline shifts under them as Alexis sits up, wrapping Dipper's jacket a little tighter around her shoulders against the evening breeze. She studies him with wide, concerned blue eyes.
"What?"
"Nothing. That's just really…. um…" She pushes her hair behind her ear. "Have you ever talked to anybody about this?"
Dipper shrugs. "I mean, Mabel knows…"
Alexis bites her lip. Oh, she meant a professional. He's very glad he didn't mention the knives in his dreams. Or the freaking garbage disposal.
"It's okay, really. I probably saw some movie when I was half asleep and my subconscious just ran with it."
"Probably," Alexis says, lacing her fingers through his.
Sometimes she lays awake at night and wonders about him.
"I think I'm gonna tell her. I mean, we've been dating for almost a year and a half," Dipper says, marveling at how fast the time has gone. "I can't just keep making stuff up. Do you think she can handle it?"
"Sure she can. Have some faith, you dork."
"But should I tell her all at once, or try to ease her into the idea that, I don't know, magic exists and her life is a lie?"
"You know Alexis," Mabel says, because she also knows Alexis all too well by now. "No matter how you do it, she'll just be pissed that you didn't tell her sooner."
Mabel and Alexis's blossoming friendship has resulted in the twins sharing a "group" for the first time in their junior year. The clan mostly consists of girls who have been deeply connected blood sisters since middle school and a few hopeful boyfriends who rotate in and out. Dipper and Alexis are the only constant couple.
"It's easy for you to be honest," Dipper retorts. "You're dating a werewolf. There's nothing you could possibly have to prepare him for."
Despite their attempts to include Aaron in this newly formed social circle, he's always hung back from their other friends. Mabel is surprisingly chill about this. In her first serious dating relationship, she has actually been surprisingly chill about everything. She doesn't make him keep up with bi-monthly anniversaries or text her around the clock, and she doesn't complain at all when he disappears for days at a time. It's probably healthy, Dipper thinks, that she isn't expecting perfect consistency from a supernatural creature of the night. Also, girls can be downright exhausting, and he's thankful for Aaron's sake that she isn't.
"I've always known that I'd have to tell Alexis sometime… I mean, I want to take our kids back to Gravity Falls and-" Dipper stops abruptly.
"What was that?" Mabel's eyebrows shoot up.
"Our kids. Like, my kids and your kids. They'd be cousins. I was just thinking out loud. Gosh." Dipper buries his nose in a book and ignores the fact that his twin is staring at him. She studies him for several long minutes, giggling louder and louder until her laughter bubbles over into a shriek.
"I'm gonna be the maid of honor!"
"Shut up," Dipper mutters.
She is already designing the gowns.
Alexis turns the final page of the journal and then closes it. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, staring at the ground.
"I totally understand if you don't believe me," Dipper says, rubbing his neck. "I would never believe it either, except, you know, I lived through it. But you're a rational human being, and I totally understand if you think I'm crazy."
"I would never think that," Alexis insists. "It's just… a lot to take in."
"Yeah, I know. It was years ago and I'm still sort of reeling from it. I had to tell you. It's like a huge part of my life, you know?"
There's a long silence. She flips between the gnome and poltergeist pages and bites her lip.
"Do you think… is it the most important thing that ever happened to you?" Alexis asks.
Dipper feels strangely cornered. "Well, one of them." Was that a trick question? No, he's just nervous from such an outpouring of honesty. "I know I should have told you a long time ago, but it got harder and harder and then- I had to tell you now, though, because Mabel's boyfriend Aaron is a werewolf- totally harmless, I swear- but we were all thinking of going to prom together."
"We were?" Alexis's eyebrows knit together. "Since when? You didn't tell me that."
"Oh, uh, Mabel just threw it out the other day. She wanted to double date…" he trails off. Of all the revelations tonight, this is the most unsettling to her? "Unless you don't want to?"
"No, that's fine." Her smile is chilly. "That sounds like a lot of fun."
Dipper hesitates. "Are you sure? Because if you don't want to you should say something right now. And we won't."
"Why wouldn't I want to?"
He shrugs. She grabs his shirt and kisses him, and that melts away the memory of her icy side, for the moment.
But sometimes he lays awake at night and wonders about her.
Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder about both of them. But such is the creative process. Thanks for reading! Aaron will be back next chapter, the darling little puppy. XD Thanks for contributing to the get-Stan-out-of-jail fund, cartoonsforlife1314! Hopefully he's out by now, though. :D
