& brand the ground with storm and song
Dipper is dreaming.
Nothing he will remember. It's really warm and he's in Soos' truck, begging the man to turn the AC up or crack a window. They are driving through hot springs, like a national park or something; Dipper has the impression that the landscape is alien and weird, but he only cares about how hot it is.
"Soos," he says, and by talking in his sleep, wakes himself up.
He blinks groggily, wondering why he's still hot. Then he wonders if maybe he's still dreaming, because Pacifica is sleeping in his bed.
The light filtering in through the window has the muted quality of a cloudy day, which is unsurprising given last night's storm. Dipper judges it to be late morning. Pacifica is curled up next to him, her legs tangled with his. She's wearing one of her expensive nightgowns and the only thing softer than its slippery cloth is her skin where it meets his own. She feels amazing, and she smells amazing, and her face is mostly covered by her hair, but she still looks amazing, and this is utterly, absolutely forbidden and why the heck is it so stupid hot in here?
Besides her, he means.
The attic tends to be uncomfortable on warmer days, but this is outside the norm. He wonders if he's slept so late it has become scorching outside. He feels sticky and his pillow is damp with sweat. Something isn't right.
As reluctant as he is to remove his much-too-beautiful girlfriend from such pleasant proximity, he doesn't have much of a choice. His bladder demands it, on top of everything else.
He's just about to gently shake her when the door to the attic opens. Dipper freezes, fearing the worst.
It must be his lucky day, because it's just Mabel. "I told you!" she says with a victorious grin. "O-T-P! O-T-P!"
Dipper sighs. This time Pacifica actually is in his bed for the exact reasons Mabel had once teased him with. Well, sort of. Nothing happened. They just fell asleep… wrapped around each other.
How is this his life?
"Stan and Ford don't know, right?" he says, dreading the response.
"I covered for you, spy style, but you better get up soon," Mabel warns. "The air conditioner died and I'm talking Grunkle Stan into taking us to the pool."
That explains the heat. Pacifica is still asleep despite the conversation, so Dipper reaches out and pushes at her shoulder. When she doesn't respond, he keeps it up until he's rocking her entire body back and forth. She really must have been tired last night.
"What?" she eventually says in a tone as sleepy as it is irritated, obviously unhappy to be awoken. She raises up on one elbow and blinks at Dipper, her brow furrowing with pique. "What are you doing in my bed?"
"Nope, guess again," Mabel laughs.
"Mabel?" Pacifica's gaze snaps to the other girl. She blinks a few more times before she realizes where she is. "…Oh. Are we in trouble?"
"Not yet," Dipper says. "Mabel covered for us—"
"Spy style," Mabel interjects.
"—but you should go before we get caught."
Pacifica reluctantly slides out of the bed and straightens her nightgown. Dipper, caught off guard by the sight, openly gawks.
"Dipper!" she hisses, splotches of red appearing on her cheekbones.
"Sorry! Sorry." He obediently turns away.
"Holy cow, when did it get so PG-13 in here?" Mabel gleefully comments.
"Shut up, Mabel," Pacifica mutters. Dipper can hear her bare feet padding across the floorboards and figures it's okay to turn around.
"Grunkle Ford is outside with Soos," Mabel tells Pacifica. "I don't know where Grunkle Stan is, though. I'll create a distraction—spy style!"
"Stop saying that."
After the girls vacate the attic, Dipper starts to dress. About thirty seconds later there's a tremendous crash from somewhere downstairs. He appreciates Mabel's sudden preoccupation with stealth, given it's in the service of avoiding parental censure. He doubts that Grunkle Stan would ever narc, but Ford might feel duty-bound to call Mom and Dad, or at least come up with some kind of punishment (which might be fun to see, provided it weren't aimed at Dipper and Pacifica).
Man, he swears it's gotten ten degrees hotter in the short time since he woke up. When last summer's heatwave had overwhelmed the Shack's rusty old AC unit, it had led to Dipper making an idiot of himself over Wendy at the public pool. He can take comfort in knowing that won't happen again, though he is facing the possibility of making an idiot of himself over Pacifica instead—he has very clear memories of that swimsuit she wore at Lake Gravity Falls.
He goes down the stairs and immediately experiences the slight relief of its cooler clime. Hopefully it isn't too hot outside. Just looking through the windows, it doesn't seem like another extreme heatwave. The sky is cloudy, and the ground still looks damp.
He finds Mabel and Grunkle Stan in the kitchen. Mabel is on the floor picking up what looks like a whole cabinet's worth of cheap plastic bowls while Grunkle Stan eyes her from behind his newspaper.
"How did you dump an entire cabinet, ya knucklehead?" Grunkle Stan asks her.
"Guess I got a case of the dropsies!" Mabel whimsically replies. She pauses briefly to give Dipper a very obvious wink and he turns away before she blows their cover.
At least the refrigerator is still running. Dipper opens the door and pauses a second to let the frigid air wash over him.
"I'm not payin' for you to refrigerate your drawers!" Grunkle Stan barks.
Dipper rolls his eyes and grabs the milk. He checks the cereal cabinet and picks the box which looks the most edible. "When are you going to buy some real cereal brands?" he asks Stan.
"They put marshmallows in everything! I don't have marshmallow money," Grunkle Stan retorts.
The doorbell rings and Mabel hastily crams the rest of the bowls into the cabinet and runs off to answer it. Dipper assumes she's been waiting for Candy and Grenda.
"Is Soos fixing the AC?" Dipper is becoming increasingly curious on this point as he's starting to sweat.
"I dunno. Ford is out there with him, so it'll probably be a time machine by tomorrow." Grunkle Stan does not looked perturbed by this, though Dipper thinks he should.
Dipper finishes his cereal and places his bowl in the sink. "Uh, I'm going to go wake Pacifica up," he says, figuring it won't hurt to cover their tracks.
"Oh, sure. That must've been some other blonde girl who was upstairs," Grunkle Stan says sarcastically. Dipper freezes in mortification, but then Stan adds, "Unless Mabel put a wig on Waddles."
A sudden spark of anger wipes away Dipper's chagrin. "Hey!"
"What?"
"Come on, that's not cool."
Grunkle Stan sighs harshly but manages to look at least mildly apologetic. "Yeah, I'm still getting used to this whole 'that Northwest kid is alright now' thing we've got goin'. I… shouldn't have said that."
Dipper appreciates how hard that must've been to say. "Well, okay. Just lay off her, alright? She's been through a lot."
"Not last night, I hope," Stan says pointedly.
"Geez…" Dipper fidgets uncomfortably. "Look, she just came up because of the storm and then we both fell asleep. That's all, I promise."
"If it was anyone else, I wouldn't believe it," Stan said. "And, well… between you and me, kid, I can't exactly point any fingers. I was up to worse when I was thirteen."
Dipper can only imagine. "So… it's okay?"
"What's okay?"
Dipper smiles gratefully. "Thanks, Grunkle Stan."
Stan snorts and returns to perusing the paper. "I don't even know what you're thanking me for. You should do it more often, though. I saved the world! I should get a plaque or somethin'. Or maybe they only give those to dead people. You know what, never mind. Make it a lump sum."
"You should write Mayor Tyler," Dipper says, turning to go.
"I billed City Hall, but they never got back to me. Me!"
When Dipper steps outside he finds the temperature to be in the low 80s, which isn't too bad by itself, but the humidity is stifling in the aftermath of the storm. His shirt begins to stick to his back in the short time it takes him to walk over to the AC unit. The grass soaks his shoes and socks and he sinks a bit into the sodden ground with each step. The forest is cloaked in misty fog despite the relative brightness of the day. The muted quiet is a bit eerie; all birdsong sounds distant and the fog curls out from behind the trees in strange shapes, every bush and fern made a ghostly apparition.
Great-Uncle Ford has partially dissembled the air conditioner when Dipper walks up. He's bent over it with most of his upper torso inside. Soos is standing close by, handing him tools. With a loud clank, Ford emerges, wiping at his forehead.
"This thing is practically an antique," he says, "and I should know. We could fix it, but it'll just break again. I think I'll come up with something better."
"Are we going to capture some sort of interdimensional ice dragon?" Soos says.
"No. Ice dragons are much too lazy. I'll use the internet to find some schematics and we'll go from there. Between your knowledge of air conditioner repair and my everything else, we should be able to knock something together."
"Oh, hey Dipper," Soos says, noticing Dipper's approach.
"You guys need some help?" Dipper says eagerly, excited by the prospect of helping Ford build something.
"Aren't you going to the local pool?" Ford says. "Mabel seemed very enthused about it."
"Oh. Well, I don't have to go," Dipper says.
Ford cheerfully waves him off. "It's perfectly fine, Dipper. Soos and I will manage. Go enjoy yourself!"
Dipper is reluctant to abandon the possibility of science, but a dip in the water does sound amazing. "Yeah, I guess… I'll be back later, though."
As Dipper walks away, Ford and Soos return to their examination. "We'll need to collect all the fluorocarbon we can get out this old thing," Ford says. "Be careful, it's not a safe substance."
"Got it," Soos says, his voice coming muffled from the inside of the unit. "But, uh, what would happen if maybe I got some in my mouth just now?"
When Dipper traipses back around to the door, he finds Pacifica seated on the couch beneath the awning. She's wearing a sundress in her usual shade of eye-matching blue, along with what Dipper supposes is a very fashionable sunhat with a pair of hot pink sunglasses perched on the brim. There's a towel slung over one of her shoulders and her skin has the telltale greasy sheen of sunscreen.
"Where's your swimsuit?" Dipper says with what he hopes isn't noticeable disappointment.
"Public pools are for hobos," she declares.
"You're not going to swim?"
"People pee in there. All the time."
"Not all the time…"
The look she gives him is dire. "No thanks."
"You're not even going to work on a tan?" he says, having the vague thought that's something stylish people do.
"Do you have any idea how terrible that is for your skin?" Pacifica tugs her sunhat more firmly into place. "If you want to look like a leather purse by the time you're forty, be my guest."
His hopes of seeing her in a swimsuit again have been thoroughly dashed. His enthusiasm for the pool is commensurately diminished. "Uh… Great-Uncle Ford and Soos are working on the air conditioner and I might—"
Mabel comes bursting out of the door like a starry rocket, a spangled t-shirt draped over her swimsuit and her purple flipflops clapping against the porch. "What's up pool people?!" she practically shouts. "Where my floaties at?"
"POOL PEOPLE!" Grenda cheers, coming out right behind her.
"We rule the pool!" Candy says, bringing up the rear.
Dipper is about to tell them he isn't going, but Mabel catches him by the arm and shoves him towards the door. "Come on, Dip, get ready! Pacifica, you can't swim in that!"
"I told you, Mabel, I'm not swimming. People pee in that pool," Pacifica repeats.
"Yeah, that's half the fun!"
"…You aren't allowed to use the bathtub before me."
Grunkle Stan joins everyone outside, carrying a towel and looking disgruntled. "I don't know how I got roped into this. Who are we waiting on? Dipper?"
Dipper shakes his head. "I think I'm going to help Great-Uncle Ford—"
"Oh no," Grunkle Stan immediately interrupts. "I ain't taking your sister, her friends, and your girlfriend to the pool while you stay here. I'm taking you with me, kid. Get your stuff."
Dipper fully understands that 'I'm taking you with me' has meaning beyond the literal in this case. And he owes Grunkle Stan one anyway (when will he learn—never owe Stan anything). He sighs and jogs upstairs to retrieve his swimsuit.
There are too many people to fit in the car, or so Dipper thinks. Before long, however, he finds himself stuffed in the backseat with Candy and Mabel. Grenda rides shotgun, and Pacifica sits on Dipper's lap. Which he's fine with.
When they arrive at the pool, it's less crowded than the previous summer. Not that it was particularly crowded then, either, since Gravity Falls isn't exactly a big town. But it's dreadfully humid and the temperature, while on the warmer side, is nothing compared to last year's heatwave. Besides, everyone else's air conditioners are working just fine.
Mabel and Candy take running leaps into the pool, followed closely by a cannonball from Grenda that soaks everyone in a ten-foot radius. Pacifica spreads her towel over one of the chairs and lies in repose with her sunglasses in place, despite being in the shade. Dipper can't decide if he wants to join her or Mabel. It's entirely too humid and the pool offers relief, but Grenda looks like she's in a dunking mood.
Grunkle Stan rubs his hands together anticipatorily. "That little creep Gideon won't be around to take my spot this time. And I got the perfect keister for that perfect chair…"
"What ever happened to him, anyway?" Dipper asks.
"Who cares? Probably found some other hick town where he can impress grandmas. He's someone else's problem now." Stan strolls off, intent on claiming his vaunted chair.
Dipper decides not to note how similar 'impressing grandmas' sounds to Stan's own job description. A quick survey of the pool shows that Grenda is indeed in the process of half-drowning Mabel and Candy, so Dipper heads over to keep Pacifica company for a bit.
"What, you aren't ready to pee in the pool yet?" she snipes at him when he sits on an adjoining lawn chair.
He rolls his eyes. "You are really obsessed with that."
"I'm not the one making it true."
The fog is starting to thin. Dipper feels the hint of a breeze wick the heat from his face and it's a wonderful relief. If there's anything the valley needs right now, it's some wind.
"You should take me somewhere with air conditioning," Pacifica says, apropos of nothing. "The theater would be fine."
"Like, on a date?" he asks.
"Maybe," she says coyly.
"The theater seems a little low-rent for you," he notes.
"This entire town is low-rent for me," she says haughtily, though there's just enough of a hint of self-awareness in her tone to take the edge off it.
"So, your majesty doesn't want to see a movie?"
She glances at him with overstated indifference. "I don't know. I might get a better offer."
If he had somehow been able to choose beforehand how he would relate to a theoretical girlfriend, 'combative flirting' would not have been what he would have picked for himself. But he wouldn't want what he has with her to be in any other form; not that it could be, each of them being who they are.
He's about to test her poise of disinterest with further verbal sparring when a gust of wind bursts across the open pool and shakes the trees just past the fence, so sudden and bracing that it whisks the words from his mouth.
"Geez!" he exclaims. "Was it supposed to be windy today?"
"Dipper, look," she says, pointing towards the horizon.
Clouds are rushing in from the cliffs of the valley; thick, roiling clouds of an ominous storm-black character. They come in so quickly that it's like watching a recording fast forward. The air—dead calm a minute before—is alive with a cold, scouring wind that rips the fog from the damp earth and sends the pool-goers shivering. They are suddenly at the seething edge of a stormfront. The sun disappears and the temperature plunges with frightening rapidity.
There's another hard clap of wind that flattens the grass, and then Dipper sees something descending from the clouds. He doesn't know what he's looking at; there's a huge round disk made of what he thinks are twigs and branches woven together like a wreath.
And standing in the middle of it is…someone? Something?