"Dipper! What if he writes me a poem? Oh, that would be so romantic!" Mabel mused. She was half draped over Dipper's shoulders.
"Boo, gross. Can you stop? Please? I'm trying to drive." Dipper tried to shrug her off. The trees parted suddenly, and a dusty clearing opened ahead of them. The Mystery Shack sat sleepily in the clearing's center.
"We're here!" Mabel cheered.
Dipper pulled the golf cart up to the side of the Shack and turned it off. He turned to Wirt and Beatrice. His face was darkened by his cap.
"You guys should probably wait here."
"You don't wanna bring ghosts in the house?" Beatrice teased with a smirk.
"No, it's not," Dipper blushed. "It's not that. Things are just kinda… tense right now." He gave a sudden shake of the head. "Why am I even explaining this, just wait here!"
Dipper climbed out of the golf cart and disappeared around the corner.
"Don't go anywhere!" Mabel sang at Wirt as she followed Dipper.
Wirt gave Beatrice an exasperated look. She was grinning.
"You know, maybe we could just stay in this time period for a while. You make funny faces when you're flustered," she teased. "But take that hat off. "
Wirt obliged, but tossed the hat at Beatrice. He looked down at Greg, who was now sound asleep. Jason Funderberker had crawled out of his pants and was crouched absently on the seat.
The Mystery Shack was closed for the day, so Dipper and Mabel walked around to the side entrance.
"I think you have a thing for redheads," Mabel teased.
"No, unlike my crazy sister, I do not develop crushes within seconds. Or on people who should be dead."
"You can't deny the color in your cheeks!" she sang. Mabel trotted ahead of Dipper and flung the door open.
"I blush under stress!" Dipper called after her.
"Grunkle Stan! We're home!" Mabel's voice echoed down the hall and met no response. Her shoulders dropped just a bit. Dipper caught up to her and tugged at her sleeve.
"Mabel, we need to use some level of tact here. Grunkle Stan's really touchy right now."
Mabel frowned. "Dipper, you know as well as I do that Stan is the kind of guy who pretends everything's fine! I mean jeez, he totally pretended his brother hadn't been sucked into an alternate universe before his very eyes, and he kept it going for thirty years! Grunkle Stan needs some good-old-fashioned, happy-times Mabel love. Not tip-toey Dipper love."
Mabel lifted her chin and marched on.
"Grunkle Stan?" Mabel called, even louder, through the doorway.
Stan was snoring on the couch, head lolling back over the headrest.
Mabel grinned and took a running leap onto his lap, knees first and squealing. Stan woke with a cry of pain to clutch at his stomach, which had taken almost the full force of Mabel's jump.
"Hey there, pumpkin," Stan winced through his teeth. "Next time you wanna wake me up, just stab me in the foot or light me on fire like a good girl."
"Grunkle Stan, you don't need to be lit on fire 'cuz you're already smokin'!" Mabel waved finger guns at him and gave a mouth-open smile.
"Heh," Stan allowed, before quirking an eyebrow "What are you sucking up for?"
"Nothing!" Mabel insisted, crawling off of Stan's lap to sit beside him. Dipper shuffled over and hopped up beside Mabel. He had never been one to help break the ice. He was more of a wait-until-the-ice-is-broken-and-then-cautiously-dip-your-toes-in-the-water kind of kid. "Just wanted to make an old guy smile!" Mabel booped Stan's face with a finger.
Stan smirked, and then eyed Dipper.
"You're looking more high-strung than usual," he remarked.
Dipper took a deep breath, struggling to plan his next lines carefully.
"Yeah, it's just there's a golf-cart full of time-traveling children outside and we were wondering if they could stay at the shack until we figure out how to get them home." He paused before adding "I know it's weird right now with your brother and everything, so if that's too stressful I understand."
Stan's face dropped, and so did Mabel's, but for clearly different reasons.
"Too stressful?" Stan growled.
"Tip-toer," Mabel accused.
Dipper felt himself actually shrinking into his seat as Stan stood up.
"You think I wouldn't let kids stay here because it's too stressful!? Sweet Prince of Shiba, I already took you two clowns in, while running a full time business, and building an inter-dimensional portal in the basement! Nothing's too stressful for Stan Pines!" Stan jerked a pompous thumb at himself.
Dipper brightened.
"Oh! So you'll take the kids in?"
"No!" Stan snapped.
"No!?" Mabel and Dipper repeated in unison.
"My customers come here for fake legends and cheap merchandise. I don't want any time anomaly ghost kids scaring their little heads away!" Stan crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at Dipper. Mabel hopped in to block his view.
"Come on Grunkle Stan," she began, but before she could finish, a sudden thudding sound came from the Mystery Shack public room. Then came the mechanic hiss of the vending machine sliding open, and Stanford appeared in the doorway, a gun in one hand and a squid-thing in the other.
"Did somebody say 'time anomaly ghost kids'?"
Stan's face went cold. Mabel winced with her eyes, but smiled with her mouth. Dipper beamed.
"Hey Ford," they all said, both together and on their own.
*studio audience whoops and hollers*
The Grunks are in!
So I just edited the description of this thing to give you an idea of the timeline and what is/ isn't canon at this point. If you notice anything that needs work in my writing, pretty please speak up! Constructive criticism is the biggest compliment in my mind.
Thanks for reading!