Chapter: Too Busy Being Yours (To Fall For Somebody New)
Pairing: Dipper Pines/Pacifica Northwest
Word Count: +2,500 Words
Disclaimer: All properties belong to their rightful owners.
(Your Heart And My Heart Are) Very Old Friends
Chapter III
milkshakes
"Good going in there, Dipstick." Pacifica can't help but snort as she takes off her goggles, the last pair in the room. "You almost burnt a hole straight through the lower floor with that acid spill."
Dipper rolls his eyes at his lab partner and piles his lab coat neatly atop all the others in the cabinet. "Oh, shut it, Northwest," he elbows her playfully. "My hand wouldn't have slipped if you didn't spill your nail polish all over the counter."
"You're losing your touch, you know. Anika Ryan finished her experiment first," the blonde says with an edge in her voice. She flips her hair from under her collar, hands him her lab coat. "I'll be damned if I let that half-witted bottom feeding hick top the class again this year."
"Well, maybe that's because she has an actual lab partner to help her out, and not just one who hands her things and then spends the rest of the hour doing her manicure."
"Oh please, we both know you don't need the help, dork." It's a compliment, but she says it like an insult.
Still, Dipper smirks. "True. But it would be nice to get some from time to time."
"Whatever," Pacifica sticks her tongue out at him, and he knows he's won. He hides his grin from her as he flicks the lights off. "Just hurry up, will you? I'm starving."
"Yeah, yeah, hold on, your Highness," he locks the doors closed behind them and jingles the keys in his fingers. The halls are almost empty now, twenty-minutes into the lower years' lunch break. They're walking quietly to the cafeteria when all of a sudden Pacifica grabs his arm excitedly.
"Wanna go get a something to drink?" Pacifica tilts her head in an enticing gesture.
A curious half-smile forms on his face. "Only if it's a smoothie."
"Better. Milkshakes," Pacifica nods, her periwinkle eyes lighting up. "I know this greasy little diner just a little bit out of town where they make the most monstrous milkshakes, complete with s'mores toppings and KitKat bars and everything! It's absolutely guaranteed to give you diabetes!"
"Hm, let me see," he looks down at her cheekily. He knows how much she hates being reminded of their height difference, so of course, he pats her on the head smugly. "A little - "
"Watch it!"
"-sixteen year old adrenaline junkie with a penchant for getting into trouble, loaded up with a ton of caffeine and sugar?" He shakes his head. "Sounds dangerous."
She huffs, blowing the fringe away from her eyes. "Danger is just another word for fun."
"Are you seriously suggesting we spend the next - " he looks at his watch, "Half-hour driving out of town just to go get a couple of milkshakes?"
She looks offended, and he laughs at her theatrics. "French fries and cheeseburgers, too, of course."
"Of course," he appeases. "The food there any good?"
"Sinfully so. Just my taste, then," she laughs at her own joke.
He wants to tease her some more, but from the way she's grinning and looking up at him like that, he guesses she already knows that he's caved in ten seconds ago. Sighing, he puts away the lab keys and takes out his car keys. She practically jumps up and down in and drags him to her car in excitement.
He shakes his head at her. "You think they'll let a couple of students in? They might think we're playing hooky, you know."
She rolls her eyes at his paranoia. "Because they're also moonlighting as high school faculty members?"
He lets out a small 'ha' at that and starts the engine. He looks at her through the corner of his eye and she flashes him a devilish grin.
"And even if they were," Pacifica says offhandedly, putting on her sunglasses. "I own place."\
driver's license
"Okay, so just ease on the clutch and -"
The blonde girl yelps, nearly bumping her head through the glass as the car rigidly jerks forward.
"Ohkaaay," she drawls, trying her best to be patient. Her eyes narrow into slits. "Ouch."
The driver beside her groans, apologetic. "God, I'm so sorry. I'm just really bad at this."
Pacifica lets out a sharp laugh. "Huh, the guy can exorcise ghosts and banish demons with no problem, but has trouble learning how to parallel park?"
"Yeah, well," Dipper pretends to adjust his rear view mirror to hide the blush on his face. "We don't all have car collections that we've been practicing driving with since we were fourteen."
"Oh please. Don't turn your poverty into an excuse. I learned when I was sixteen just like you and I did it in a week. And terrible or not, you are passing your driver's test tomorrow, so help me god. I need someone to drive me to the mall. Start it again."
p style="max-height: 999999px;"Dipper puts his foot on the brake, turns the key in the ignition. He places the car into the gear. "Wouldn't that still be violating the rules of you being grounded? And what did you even get grounded for anyway?"
"Slowly put your foot on the gas and accelerate a bit," she instructs. "And no, going to the mall is allowed because my parents specifically said I was banned from hanging out with my friends for a week, so when they ask me, I'll just tell them I'm going to do stuff with my...lab partner."
"Dipper smiles, backing into a tight space. "You really are a brilliant evil mastermind."
"I know. Turn at forty-five degrees," she watches him carefully. "Besides, I hardly think getting a B- in AP English Lit warrants a punishment. I still stand by my view that Mrs. Walsh should have made us read Animal Farm instead of that shabby, hollow excuse for a book The Great Gatsby."
Dipper raises his eyebrow at her, straightening out the car. "I actually thought you'd like The Great Gatsby. People say it's glamorous depiction of the Jazz Age."
"Empty is what they mean, and the characters are all phony and superficial, too. It made me upset just reading about them."
"What? Reading about the beautiful and wealthy Daisy Buchanan made you upset? Or the romantic and suave Jay Gatsby?"
Pacifica rolls her eyes. "More like the air-headed and selfish type-list blonde girl who has a desperately obsessed stalker. If he wasn't rich, it wouldn't be romantic you know. She'd be giving him a restraining order instead of some 'rich and supple wine to which warms their love' and all that crap."
Dipper laughs, "You say you hate it, but you quote it. Maybe you - " the car lurches into a painful stop, the rear bumping into the front of another car, setting off the lights and the security sirens. Dipper groans, slams his head into the driving wheel. "I almost had it!"
Pacifica bites her lip to keep from laughing inappropriately. "Yeah, well can you try for more than almost next time? Because you just crashed my hundred-and-twenty-five-thousand dollar 1966 Lamborghini Miura into another hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollar 1969 Maserati Ghibli."
Dipper buries his head into the wheel, accidentally honking numerous times. "I need a miracle to teach me how to do this."
Pacifica smirks, "Lucky for you, you're looking at her."
blonde
"Hey, so I really just gotta ask you something," Dipper says, eyeing Pacifica over his comic book.
The pair find shade under a tree by the edge of the school fence, the one place they both went to when they wanted to be away from other people for a while. He used to go stay here by himself back in freshman year, his own secret hiding place. One day he came here looking to get some peace and quiet, when all of the sudden she was already there, listening to music and eating a cup of chocolate pudding. She raised her eyebrow at him in defiance - "Want some?" she said coolly - and he sat down next to her and ate a spoonful.
He hasn't needed to go looking for another hiding place ever since.
Today it's a cloudy and everyone in school is somewhere far far away where you're all too busy worrying about the latest gossip or who's having a party this weekend or who's hooking up with who. Pacifica is lying on her stomach, leaning on her elbows as she solves riddles from the book Dipper lent her a week ago. Of course she has her earphones on, he thinks amusingly. He knows music is like breathing to her, she can't go on a day without it. But it there's another thing that surprised him, how much she likes to solve puzzles and riddles. How well she does it, too.
"Yeah?" she scribbles her answers on the pages of her sodoku book absentmindedly. "Okay. What is it?"
Dipper bites his pen, smiling. He loves teasing her. "What's your real hair color?"
He expects her to maybe punch him on the arm for that comment or even just shoot a dirty look his way. But she doesn't even look up from what she's reading, simply turns the page. "Why do you want to know?"
He looks at her figure in the sunlight, sprawled out on the blanket like a lazy kitten. Her skin is fair and creamy, freckles decorating her bare shoulders in an off white chiffon top. Sunlight beams shine through her sunflower blonde hair, making it look like a halo against her deep blue eyes and smiling dark red lips. Her eyes are so blue he swears he can see the waves crashing in them.
"No reason," he smiles. "You know you'd make the most adorable redhead, right?"
rollercoaster
"Oh, come on, it's not that scary." Dipper lugs the immobile blonde with all the force he can muster, but somehow she still stays firmly planted on the ground.
"Did you forget that I am terrified of heights? How much more of plummeting to my own death?" She frantically waves her arms around at him, her voice higher under duress.
Dipper gives up making her budge and sighs. "Well, what do you want to ride then?"
"I don't know. Something safe like...like..." Pacifica looks around desperately. "The carousel!"
"With all the other giggling, snot nosed five-year olds? For the second time?"
"The tea cups!"
"You'd willingly want to waste five minutes in a nausea-inducing carnival ride with me and my weak stomach?"
"The bumper cars!"
"Oh, fun. It should only take us about a week to get to the front of the line."
"The love boat?"
Dipper raises his eyebrow (like the dipshit he is, she thinks). "Don't even go there."
Pacifica grabs Dipper's hat abruptly and screams into it. "You're just making excuses because the only ride you want to go on is thisrickety, overrated, cardiac-arrest-provoking, huge ass roller coaster!"
"Hey, hey," Dipper rubs the girl's arms soothingly, trying not to chuckle. He knows her reaction is no laughing matter (but can he seriously help it when she looks like she's two minutes away from getting a stress ulcer?). He bites his lip to reprimanding himself and says, "I've never seen you this anxious before. What's the matter?"
"I-I just..." Pacifica shuts her eyes for a second, trying to catch her breath. "I don't know. These things just freak me out. I mean, how could you just...ride that thing without thinking...imagining what if a screw got loose or the tracks didn't hold or...or...something! And the whole thing just falls apart, taking you down with it. I mean, how could you just sit back and enjoy it?"
"Paz, you're overthinking it." He knows she doesn't want to hear this but - "You know, sometimes, I notice you can get a little...neurotic and...perfectionist...you know?"
She blinks. "No. What do you mean by that?"
"You're kind of a control freak."
Pacifica's face flushes, whether it's with anger or embarrassment, he's not sure. "Well, okay, fine. But better a control freak than a corpse."
He takes her hand, rubbing her palm gently. "If you really, really don't want to, then it's okay if we don't. I just wanted to make you happy, that's all. I just wanted to show you how to let go."
She looks up at him, her blue eyes like glass, clear and ready to break. "I'm scared. I don't trust that thing."
"Then trust me." He kisses her knuckles. "I'll be right beside you the entire time. I won't let anything happen to you, okay?"
Quietly, she nods, even smiles a bit at him "Okay. I trust you."
Later, when they're strapped on the roller coaster as it's about to start, she twines her fingers with his and never lets go. She screams with every plunge and squeals with every turn, first out of terror, but soon it almost sounds like laughter. By the time they get off the ride, she's grinning and breathless. She tiptoes and presses a kiss to his cheek.
"Thank you."
cookies
"Now class, you'll want to whisk the batter quickly to get a nice, smooth consistency -"
Pacifica's in the middle of whisking more eggs into her dry cookie batter with great ferocity when...
Thump!
A crumpled up piece of paper lands in her bowl.
Pacifica snaps her head around the room to find the perpetrator and spots an apologetically smiling apron-clad Dipper Pines.
"Sorry," he mouths.
"What the hell is this?" She shouts under her breath, among other things.
"Read it," he says.
She fishes out the note from her bowl and licks the batter off of her fingers, wipes it on her apron. She unfolds it to reveal the message: Catastrophe cookies. Will give rides in favor of some much needed help.
Pacifica rolls her eyes and scribbles a hasty reply on the back: By assistance, don't you mean freeloading? And say please.
She tosses it behind her and resumes whisking. Soon she's pouring the mixture into a tray and sticking chocolate chips in it when she promptly receives a response via paper airplane a few minutes later: Whichever answer will make you help me. Please. Desperate. Will skip out on Chess Club and take you to shopping this Friday.
She snorts, writes: You were going to take me anyway. P.S. paper airplanes are so middle school.
He retorts: Yes, but now I'm buying. P.S. As opposed to needing to be bribed to help out a friend?
Bribery is universal, she states.
Please. I'm begging, he answers.
Damn my conscience, the blonde girl thinks. She sticks her tray in the oven and sets her timer. Pacifica looks over her shoulder to the pleading eyes of a teenager desperately whisking what seems to be flour and milk with a few eggshells that just won't turn into cookie dough, his chocolate chips crushed and his tray an array of disastrous attempts.
She mouths an exasperated "Fine," to the messy, cookie dough-covered teenager and his entire body slackens and slumps over, relieved. He grins at her, all ear-splitting and twinkle-eyed, and she sticks her tongue out at him as she makes her way over to his counter at the back.
"Stop smiling and start making a fresh batch," she bumps her shoulders with his, a habit she picked up over the past years, even though he's grown much taller than her now. "Clean up this mess and get me a new bowl and some chocolate chips. I'll be the one cracking the eggs this time, Dipstick."
Dipper chuckles, puts his hands on his girlfriend's hips. Pacifica stiffens, looks around at everyone else, too preoccupied with their own work to notice them, and their teacher, nowhere to be found.
"Whatever you say, boss."
She relaxes a bit into his touch, even cranes her neck instinctively. "Getting a little distracted, aren't we, Dipper?"
"Mmhm sorry, Paz," she feels his warm breath on her neck, feels the soft, slow kiss he presses in the spot behind her ear. "You're just so distracting, you know."
She swallows slowly, rests her hands on the counter. "What are you doing?"
She can practically see him smirking as he tucks his head into the dip of her neck. "You had some cookie dough behind your ear, love."
She laughs breathlessly. "You're full of shit." She cranes her neck and he leans closer, expecting a kiss and getting some flour wiped on his nose instead. He crinkles his face and she quickly escapes his grasp, whips him with a kitchen towel.
"Now get back to work, slacker."
He rolls his eyes, smiles. "Whatever you say, boss."
I'm so glad I finally got this up. It's been exactly one entire week since my last update, which is good, because I really want to make this into a regular sorta thing. So cheers to that!
Anyway, yeah, as you can see this a bit deviant from my usual work. I did this because of a lot of requests I got to use a random word generator to inspire themes and situations. About the milkshake one, headcanon that Dipper holds all of Pacifica's important stuff (car keys, credit cards, etc) because she forgets and misplaces things easily. Reviews feed my muse and I love hearing from my readers. Thanks, guys. Stay awesome!
xoxo Amaya
