Grim Falls Ch. 2"Can We Stay Here?"
Dipper pines sat in silent discomfort. It was not physical discomfort, definitely not he thought. It was a sort of vague emotional, perhaps even moral sense of wrongness that he couldn't push from his mind. He wasn't sure that either of them were in the right, Mandy pushing all of this off on him (though she hadn't said very much that was personal or concrete), and Dipper just sitting here while this girl snuggled against him (which he tried not to enjoy too much). They hadn't exchanged many words since she had laid her head on his shoulder, and he didn't really think the ones that had been said were enough. Dipper pondered higher thoughts of morality in an attempt to distract himself from the building realization that he could feel Mandy's hair on his cheek once she set her head on his shoulder and that the hair in question was really soft and smelled really good. Way to be wierd, Dipper he chided himself, struggling not to disturb mandy by slapping himself in the face.
Mandy sat in silence now, though he could see and feel her breath. Dipper considered wrapping his arm around her, but he couldn't stop thinking that it wasn't something he deserved to do. The only way they had even ended up in this situation was personal tragedy, and Dipper was sure that benefitting from that tragedy definitely wouldn't be right. She had made no attempt to embrace him either, but it was enough that she shifted her head occasionally and pressed closer to him, as if even with both of their jackets she was still cold. Dipper gulped and drummed his fingers against his knees. His eyes darted down to his journal, as they often did in times of stress. And he concluded that while girls were mysterious creatures, there probably wouldn't be anything to help him in the book.
The game was in the fourth quarter, and as the clock ticked downwards, Dipper dreaded when it would run out and he'd have to remove Mandy from his shoulder. He dreaded more that he wouldn't have to. That when the game drew to a close, Mandy would stand up, dust herself off, and walk away to someplace Dipper would never see her again. He blew air out his nostrils and tried to stay calm and focused. Mandy stirred and turned her dark eyes up towards his again, as if expecting him to say something. Dipper found himself meeting her expectations, "Did you um..." dipper stumbled over his words, "Do you live here now?" She nodded, her silky blonde hair rubbing against his cheek again. "So I'll... see you in school, right?" She stiffened slightly, and he was afraid that she was going to sit up already, but she just nodded and put her weight back on his shoulder. He sighed in a strange relief.
The Gremloblins zipped back and forth across the field, and Dipper found himself unable to even follow the game. He kept glancing at the clock, and at Mandy's downcast eyes. Dipper used the arm that wasn't pinned by Mandy to scrach his head and readjust his had in a nervous gesture. Though it had abated for quite a while, he was struck again with that agonizing terror and felt burning eyes bore into him. His head turned to the side, and he spotted a pair of figures standing next to the field on the visitors side. He wasn't sure that they were supposed to be down there. One of them was a boy, around his age and his height. His hair was messy and red and topped with a baseball cap. The boy seemed familiar to Dipper, though perhaps it was just that they were dressed similarly. The boy seemed wrong in a way that only things in gravity falls can seem wrong. His colors were washed out, and though Dipper could clearly see his features, the boy seemed hazy and hard to make out. The other figure seemed impossibly tall. Its features were obscured by the hood of a long black robe. The hooded figure held a long and sharp scythe. The boy waved to Dipper, and Mandy stirred. Dipper looked back down to the girl on his shoulder, but she didn't seem to have noticed the feeling, or the figures. When he returned his gaze to the field, the pair were gone.
Dipper threw book number four a searching look and considered flipping through the pages with his free hand, but even that seemed like too much of a risk with Mandy so close. The Gremloblins had a stroke of luck as the clock ticked down to zero. After a long and pointless time out, the team went aggressive, pushing past the visiting team and down to the endzone. Everyone but Dipper and Mandy jumped to their feet and shouted as the last touchdown was scored. He could hear Mabel and Wendy over the rest of the crowd, and he smiled. Mandy placed a hand on his back and sat up straight. She looked back at Dipper and now he smiled at her. Dipper looked down at Mandy and she frowned at him. Dipper felt a small surge of panic, but he supposed that Mandy just didn't ever smile. Her fingers were light on his shoulder, then absent. She crossed her hands in her lap and looked down again. "Thank you for that." she grumbled. "I've been..." she closed her eyes and sighed. "Tired. I'm glad I found -someone- who's willing to just let me sit still and breathe for a bit." Dipper nodded, silently glad now that he hadn't said anything to alleviate the silence he had felt was so awkward.
Mabel leapt through the crowd and bounced over to Dipper, waving her fingers in the air. "Oh my gosh, did you see that?" Dipper opened his mouth to speak, but Mabel cut him off. "It was like, eh, and then it was like, aw, but then it was like, WOOOOAAAAH!" she said coherently. Dipper nodded in understanding, which would have been feigned understanding if she had said that sentence to anything other than her twin brother. Mabel stopped jumping and her eyes widened slightly. She leaned forwards and looked at Mandy, still sitting awfully close and wearing Dipper's jacket. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. She seemed to think for a split second. "Hey," she started with a grin, "I'm gonna hitch a ride with Candy alright?" Dipper furrowed his brow and then got it. "Oh, oh yeah! right. cool." he stuttered. "I'm gonna..." Dipper flicked his gaze towards mandy and continued, "I'll be back later." "MMhm." Mabel affirmed. She then winked at Dipper and skipped back up the bleachers, nearly running over a blood pact scout, who hissed at her in protest. "Who was that?" Mandy said, there was an edge to her voice, a sort of pessimistic caution. "That's Mabel. My twin sister. She's pretty great." Dipper assured her. Mandy's shoulders went slack in something Dipper realized was relief. "Oh, no. Right. I should have seen the resemblance." She said. Dipper smiled at her. She continued to not return this gesture.
As people filtered out of the stadium, Mandy and Dipper became increasingly alone. He ran a hand across the cover of his book and looked at Mandy. She had made no move to leave. "So hey um... you want a ride home?" Her expression was cold. Dipper flinched slightly, leaving a small gap between them. "It's just... I've got a car, and Mabel got a ride home, and I just didn't wanna leave you alone and if not it's just whatever, y'know?" Dipper babbled. Mandy glared at him. "I'd rather not go home just yet. There's not exactly a lot for me there." Dipper had a puzzled expression. "Parents?" he ventured. "I have better conversations with my dog." she grumbled. "Well then let's just get in the car. I can drive you wherever. Maybe get you something to eat?" Mandy looked suspicious again, then looked down and furrowed her eyebrows. "Whatever makes you happy." Dipper wasn't sure how to respond to that. He settled for straightening his hat and tucking the journal under his arm. He pulled himelf to his feet and turned around to face her. She looked up at him with a flat expression. He held his hand out towards her and she frowned again. Was that the wrong thing to do? Dipper worried. His hand receded a bit, until both of her hands shot out and clasped his tightly. She pulled herself to his feet, using him for stability. She let go as soon as she was standing.
Dipper gestured for her to go ahead of him and she kept on frowning. "While I respect that you know your place," she said sarcastically, "I don't exactly know where you parked." Dipper felt the need to slap himself again. "Ah, right, right." he said hurriedly. "I'll just. Um..." he cleared his throat and set a brisk pace down the ramp towards the parking lot. It was a large expanse of gravel with only a few dozen cars left. Dipper walked up to an old green car and reached for the keys in his coat pocket. Mandy stepped up behind him and he turned around to face her. "What?" she snapped. Dipper shrunk back. "The um, keys are in my jacket." Mandy raised her eyebrows and looke guilty. She felt for the zipper and Dipper grabbed her hand to stop her. "I'ts fine." he assured her. "Keep it for a little while longer, I just need the keys." Mandy looked down and nodded, digging her hands into the pockets of the blue jacket and then handing over a pair of keys on a ring with a Mystery Shack keychain. Dipper unlocked the car and opened his door. Mandy stepped around, pulled open the passenger side and slid into the seat. Dipper did the same. They buckled their seatbelts with simealtaneous clicks.
Dipper fit the key into the ignition and pulled forwards. The gravel crunched under his tires as he pulled away from the parking lot. Mandy spoke up, "Do you happen to know somewhere we can hang out?" Dipper pulled up to a stop sign and pondered her question. "There's an abandoned convenience store a couple blocks away..." he drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "But they aren't really a fan of teenagers over there." "They?" she asked. Dipper didn't answer her question, he just kept thinking aloud. "We could park..." Dipper's face lit up. "In the empty lot behind the water tower!" he said excitedly. "It's pretty trashed, but you can see the whole town from up there!" Mandy frowned and shrugged. "Whatever makes you happy." She repeated.
Dipper turned down a side street that sloped upwards into the woods. He frowned and raised his eyebrows. "Doesn't anything make you happy?" Mandy scowled at him with even more venom than when he'd just met her. Dipper caught her expression out of the corner of his eye and mirrored it. Mandy held the face for several seconds before crossing her arms across her chest and leaning her head against the window. Dipper sighed and ran a hand through his bangs. He shook his head as the car's headlights illuminated the emptiness of the vacant vacant lot. The hi-beams flashed across a mountain of empty crates and oil drums, several dead trees, the half smashed wall with muffins spray painted all over it, and finally the water tower. Which stood as tall as the nearby pine trees. Dipper smiled again. "Here we are," he said. Mandy grunted and undid her seatbelt as he pulled the car to a stop.
She popped the car door open and stepped quickly out into the cold dark night. "Wait, Mandy!" Dipper protested, but she kept up her pace and made her way to the water tower. Dipper climbed over the console and tumbled out the passenger side door after her, limbs splayed awkwardly. He pulled himself to his feet and brused off his pants as he stumbled around in the near darkness, the lot only illuminated by the headlights of his car. He came up to Mandy just as she climbed the first rung of the rusted steel ladder that led up the water tower. "Where are you doing?" Dipper demanded. "I'm going to go see the town." her expression was neutral, and the headlights reflected in her dark eyes with a haunting shimmer. She began climbing the rungs one at a time and started scaling the tower. Dipper huffed and scurried up after her. Don't look down, he recited, although heights were not actually amongst his many fears. He turned his gaze up the ladder, and nearly fell to his death. He blushed as mandy continued to climb the tower above him, and he ducked his head and made a quiet squeaking noise. Only look down, Dipper commanded himself.
When dipper reached the top of the ladder, Mandy's fingers wrapped around his hand and hoisted it up with more strength than he would have thought possible from the girl who had laid her head so lightly on his shoulder. He shivered and felt an aching in his chest, but he assured himself that this was the cold and the altitude respectively. Mandy pulled him over to the railing on the side of the tower that faced Gravity falls. Most of the houses were dark, but some of the businesses and all of the street lights bathed the town in orange light. The sounds of wildlife and the distant waterfall echoed endlessly through the valley. The wind was strong and cold, and Mandy pressed against dipper's side again. Dipper took a sharp breath and then sighed. His eyes traced the familiar streets of gravity falls. Mandy released his hand and unzipped his jacket. Dipper gave her a puzzled look as she slipped the coat off and draped it over his shoulders. He slipped his arms into the coat and Mandy stepped between him and the railing. She shivered, then reached back and snagged his arms. She pulled Dipper's arms around her and sighed deeply. Dipper swallowed and took a deep breath. She pulled her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie and he kept his arms wrapped around her shoulders. He squeezed her tightly, and it seemed to be what she wanted him to do.
Mandy rolled her head back onto his shoulder and turned to look at him. Dipper felt her warm breath on his cheek. "I don't know you Mandy," Dipper whispered. She looked at him. He continued, "But I do want you to be happy." Tears welled at the edges of Mandy's eyes. "I..." she trembles, "Can we stay here? Like this?" she pleaded quietly. "Only for a little while." she whispered. Dipper smiled down at her and held her close. She sobbed quietly and felt a little bit better.