Chapter IV: Finding the Words
MONDAY
"Dipper, c'moooooooon, pleeeeeeease," Mabel whined, with the biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes she was capable of mustering. "It's for love!"
The urge to say something cruel seized him. 'What do you know about love?' he wanted to say, 'You have a new 'love of your life' every two weeks.'
But he didn't.
He couldn't, not to Mabel.
So instead, he just let out an exasperated sigh and put his face in his hands. "Alright, fine," he said, as if there were any other way this could have gone.
Mabel unleashed an almighty screech of appreciation and wrapped her arms around him in a crushing hug. "Yes! Thank you thank you thank you! You're the number one brother in town, for SURE!"
Dipper wanted to complain, but he couldn't fight the small smile that crept onto his face against his will. "Mabel, we're still in the library, you gotta be quiet," he grumbled through her squeals.
They were lucky they were in a backroom of the library. There were only a few people there to be disturbed, but they were all staring at them. Especially the frumpy old lady who'd been sifting through one of the shorter bookshelves. Dipper hoped they could see the apology in his eyes.
Mabel pulled back, still grinning from ear to ear. "The whole world deserves to hear how great you are!" She clapped her hands with a giggle. "Okay! Let's get started for real! My show needs music, how do you feel about composing?"
Dipper cringed, both at her continued high volume and at the thought of composing. "Mabel... Just because I play a few instruments doesn't mean I can write a song, let alone a whole rock opera." Even if she did want a soundtrack featuring only sousaphone and banjo he was reasonably sure he wasn't the guy for the job.
"Of course, you're right bro-bro, you're always right! Because you're the best!" She slapped him on the shoulder and laughed maniacally, drawing even more stares. Then stopped as suddenly as she'd started, scratched her chin, and made an exaggerated show of pondering deeply. "Who do we know that writes music?" She snapped her fingers. "Oh! Maybe Robbie could do it!"
Something caught in Dipper's throat and he choked, coughing long and hard. Mabel smacked him on the back to help him, and by the time his throat was clear he was teary eyed. " Robbie ? No way Mabel, come on!" The thought of having to work with Robbie on all of this made him want to vomit, and brought him dangerously close to thinking about She-Who-He-Must-Not-Think-About. "Why would he even want to help you?"
Mabel waved her hand vaguely. "I could work something out."
With her, that probably meant blackmail.
"Mabel, I think you should be the one to write your music. It's your show, not mine, or – ugh – Robbie's." Another thought occurred to him. "And Soos is pretty good on the keyboard, I'm sure he could help you out a bit if you asked."
Mabel's grin returned in force. "You're totally right, like I just said. Dipper the Always Right!"
"Okay, I think you're laying it on a little thick now," Dipper said flatly.
Mabel only laughed. "That's the only way to do it!" Her gaze wandered to the laptop's screen as she calmed. "And I promise , the second we're all done, we'll get crackin' on that password. It'll be no match for the both of us!" She flexed both arms as if she had any muscle in either of them.
ENTER PASSWORD
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The first underscore blinked unceasingly on the old school green-toned laptop screen, taunting him to try another word.
He'd already tried at least like fifty or so while Mabel had been gone, and, predictably, they'd all been duds. One of the cryptology books he'd found had said there were over seven million eight letter words, which meant if they had to brute force it, it'd take them quite a while. But it was a welcome reprieve from... well... everything else that had been on his mind.
Dipper had been so wrapped up in his problems that he'd been totally blindsided when Soos showed up that morning with the laptop fixed and ready to go. The mystery of the journal author hadn't seemed too important for a bit there.
But it looked like it was going to have to take a backseat again. He shut the laptop with a clank, and stacked the couple of books he'd found on cryptology and cryptography (was there a difference?) on each other. He held the laptop in one hand, and sloppily tucked the books under his other arm.
The laptop was honestly way heavier than it looked like it should be, but he kept a brave face. He'd managed to lug it in, after all.
"Want me to help?" Mabel asked, looking pointedly at the books under his arm threatening to slip to the ground.
"I'm fin–"
The books fell out from under his arm with a series of loud thuds, scattering across the floor. Dipper groaned in frustration.
"I'll check out the books," Mabel said as she knelt to pick them up for him. "It's the least I can do!"
"Do you even have a library card?" he asked, genuinely unsure. He wouldn't put it past her to just steal them; Grunkle Stan had not been a good influence on them.
Mabel smirked at him knowingly and raised her eyebrows. "C'mon bro-bro, you don't think I was just watching the most handsome puppeteer ever, do you?"
"Yes", he said with a hard stare, "Yes I do."
"You worry too much!" She said, smiling a little too widely for his taste. "I'll meet you outside. If you hear any sirens, just start running!"
They made their way out of the backroom quickly enough, and he made sure to watch his twin walk all the way to the librarian's desk before he exited.
"At least it's nice outside," he mumbled to himself as he waited, leaning against the wall beside the library's entrance and switching the laptop from his left to his right hand as his arm got tired. It was innocent mumbling, that was still fine, right?
He'd gotten rained on pretty good at the mini golf course yesterday afternoon, which really hadn't helped improve his mood. It was warm today, at least, and the skies were clear as far as he could see. If he saw even the slightest hint of a raincloud, he'd be calling Soos to pick them up. He wasn't going to risk the laptop getting fried right after it finally got fixed.
Mabel sauntered out of the library and up to him a few minutes later with a brand new bookbag she hadn't had before, and he counted his lucky stars that he didn't hear the police on their way over.
Dipper quirked an eyebrow. "Did Grunkle Stan give you some cash?"
Laughing long and hard, Mabel waved her hand dismissively. " Give me cash? No. But you know what he always says! If no one sees you grab it, is it really stealing?"
Dipper just shook his head. Yeah, Grunkle Stan did say that, but if it were Dipper doing the stealing and not Mabel, he was pretty sure he'd get a bit of a different reaction. Well, that was assuming he'd actually notice.
"You didn't take much, did you?" Dipper asked, almost dreading the answer.
"Minor details!"
Dipper made a noncommittal noise.
She ignored him. "Alright! Let's get going! We need to hit Shop Thrifty and load up on all the stuff we're gonna need, and we're gonna need a lot!" Mabel started walking down the street without even waiting for him, forcing him to have to jog a few steps to catch up to her.
"Do you even know what your story is yet?" Dipper asked when he caught up.
"Of course!" She said as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. "I thought about it while I was waiting for the librarian to check out the guy in front of me." She turned to him and grinned. "It's gonna be about what I know best: me!"
"You?"
"Me!" she confirmed, and then pointed at him. "And you, and everyone else too! But mostly me."
Dipper nodded. That was the best course of action in times like these. "Alright, sure. Now, uh, elaborate please?"
"Well we're gonna have to make a whole bunch of puppets either way, so I figured we might as well just make puppets of ourselves! We have plenty of inspiration sitting around, and wouldn't it be just the cutest thing to have a whole bunch of puppets of us and all our friends? The whole town will love it!"
Okay that was actually a pretty decent point. Making up a bunch of characters from scratch would be a lot harder than creating puppet versions of everyone they already knew.
"And we can make the Mystery Shack! And maybe a few other places from around town too. It'll be a hit, for sure ." Mabel pumped her fist. "We're gonna need all hands on deck to be finished by Friday though, not just me and you. Candy, Grenda, Soos..." She counted them off on her fingers. "and maybe we can get Grunkle Stan to help too." She turned him and wiggled her eyebrows. "Do you think Wendy would help?"
Dipper's foot caught on the sidewalk and he stumbled forward a few steps before thankfully regaining his balance. He tried to school his expression into calm neutrality. "Wendy?" he said, her name nearly catching in his throat. "Y–yeah I'm pretty sure she'd help."
"That makes six even without Grunkle Stan! We can do it no problem!" She hollered triumphantly, drawing the eye of more than one pedestrian.
He'd almost added, 'but it'd be best if you asked', but managed to stop himself. He knew that'd only encourage her to start asking him questions he didn't want to answer. Questions he'd been doing his absolute best to avoid since Mabel had come back from Candy's the previous morning.
He'd given her a cliff's notes of the party, but he'd told her basically the bare minimum he could to get her off his back. He'd left out a lot . Namely, anything about him and Wendy.
He did not want to talk to Mabel about Wendy. In fact, he didn't want to talk to anybody about Wendy. He didn't even want to think about her, and he'd been doing such a damn good job this morning that he wanted to hit himself for spiraling so quickly.
Mabel was talking again and he wasn't even listening.
"Uh huh."
"Yeah."
"Sure."
He'd messed up real bad.
Even worse than the night she'd broken up with Robbie, and he'd thought that would be him at his worst. He'd sworn to never sink so low again, but, well, here he was.
A small, shameful, part of him had hoped that Wendy drank too much to remember anything that happened after he walked her home, but the fact that she hadn't even texted him yesterday told him everything he needed to know.
Drunk enough to do something she'd never have done otherwise, but not drunk enough to forget him making an absolute ass of himself. His own words echoed in his mind, taunting him.
'Wendy, that's not fair.'
She hated him now, he was sure of that.
Dipper stewed for the remainder of their walk to the thrift store, giving Mabel the bare minimum of response she'd need to keep talking. When they got there, she handed him the book bag with a giggle, and he parked himself by the entrance. Watching absently as Mabel did all the shopping, he did his best to stop the last few minutes of his Saturday night with Wendy from replaying in his head on a loop.
Mabel zipped around the small thrift shop with a speed that was astonishing, and if his mood hadn't plummeted straight into the dumps, he might have laughed.
She filled a large cardboard box full of secondhand socks, and piled all sorts of crafts supplies on top of them with reckless abandon. Googly eyes. Cuts of fabric. Scissors. Glue. Needles and thread. Glitter. So much glitter. Everything she could possibly need and then some.
Before he knew it, Mabel was heading towards him with three plastic bags full of supplies on each arm and a wide grin on her face.
"I think we're gonna need Soos's help," she said, struggling to keep the bags steady. "I'm not sure we'd make it all the way back to the Shack!"
"Yeah, you're probably right," Dipper replied, forcing a smile.
A quick phone call later, and Soos was on his way to pick them up.
Mabel chattered about all the ideas she'd come up with in the last ten minutes while they waited for Soos's car to pull up, as Dipper did his best to mentally prepare himself for the possibility of an imminent run-in with Wendy.
She'd be working the register by now, even if she got to work late.
He'd really wanted to spend the day in the library working on the laptop's password, but things never really went the way he wanted, did they? He didn't even know why he tried sometimes.
Wendy glanced up at the clock and sighed. It was 11 o'clock, and the day was crawling by excruciatingly slowly .
A few customers meandered around the gift shop, looking at cheaply printed bumper stickers, or crude copies of the already crude fake curiosities that filled the Mystery Shack's museum. A family of three sifted through the rows of mismatched t-shirts that hung on racks near the window. Her gaze lingered on the pine tree hats that sat on the shelf nearest the door, and she told herself it was because a sweaty looking thirty something was inspecting them.
The "employee's only" door beside the vending machine burst open suddenly, and Mr. Pines stomped out and over to her, his jaw set hard. "Corduroy!" he barked as he stopped in front of the cash register.
For a second, she thought he was going to complain about her leaning against the counter again, but he barely seemed to be looking at her.
Instead, he looked around suspiciously, mostly at the customers. "You haven't seen a fifty lying around anywhere, have you?"
Her brows furrowed. "You mean, like, a fifty dollar bill?"
He grunted in the affirmative.
She shrugged. "Can't say I have."
Mr. Pines nodded absently, his eyes still darting around the room. Then, wheeling around to face the customers fully, he yelled, "Remember everyone, no refunds!" He turned back around to look at her after the ensuing grumbles. "If you find it, I'll let you out five minutes early," he said with a grimace, the words seemingly causing him almost physical pain.
Then, he was stalking off without even waiting for her to reply, mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like "slipper".
Wendy watched him go, wishing the distraction had lasted a bit longer, and wondering if Dipper really had it in him to steal fifty bucks from his great uncle. A few nights ago, she wouldn't have thought so, but now she wasn't so sure.
For once, she'd really been trying to do her job. She hadn't even brought any magazines today, and she'd checked her phone only twice since she walked into the gift shop. But whether she was helping the customers or leaning against the counter and staring at the clock, everything just kept looping right back on to Dipper for her.
Maybe it was because Dipper had pretty much always been a mainstay for her; always there to crack a lame joke or do something goofy to get her attention. She'd barely been working at the Shack for a week when the twins showed up, and he'd made himself a constant for her basically immediately.
If she was being honest with herself, there was a brief moment where she'd found him a bit annoying. But now... the thought of not having him around made her heart clench.
He'd even been floating around after she'd...rejected him, at the bunker, when she knew it must have hurt him to be around her and pretend like nothing had changed.
"–ey, cashier girl," the sweaty guy said with a really snooty tone, bringing her back to reality. "You in there?"
She jerked and sat up straight. "Uh yeah, sorry," she said, feeling like a space cadet. "How can I help you?"
He was holding out one of the pine tree trucker caps. "I'll take this," he said gruffly, tossing a few crumpled bills onto the counter.
Wendy had to straighten the bills out just to make sure he'd given her enough, but once she'd done so, she rang him up and handed him his change. "Remember," she repeated, like Mr. Pines had ordered on her first day, "no refunds."
The guy jammed the hat onto his head. "Yeah, we all heard ," he muttered before quickly exiting the gift shop.
Wendy rolled her eyes and tried not to let it get to her. The hat didn't look as good on him anyway.
She sighed again, and her eyes flickered back up to the clock. 11:05. If she didn't know any better, she'd think time was moving backwards. She leaned her chin on her hand as her thoughts looped right back to where she knew they would.
Soos had left ten minutes ago to go pick the twins up, so, unless something happened, they'd be back any minute.
Both Mabel and Dipper were already gone by the time she got to work, and she hadn't even been sure if she should be glad or not. She wished she could say she'd thought of something to say, but despite the two hours she'd had to think of anything , she'd come up completely blank.
As if on cue, she heard the tell-tale rumble of Soos's pick-up truck pulling up outside. The rumble quieted, and a door opened. Mabel's exuberant chatter was easy enough to make out, even through a wall.
Wendy sat up straight and tried to look like she was busy, but her eyes were glued to the gift shop door. Would they be coming in this way? Or would they take the side entrance? Which way did they usually come? She suddenly couldn't remember!
The gift shop door flung open with a jingle, and Soos led the way in with a plastic bag on each arm. Mabel practically vibrated beside him with a bookbag in one hand and a bag in the other as she said something Wendy didn't quite catch.
Dipper trailed close behind, lugging with him a big briefcase she'd never seen him use before.
His eyes flicked to hers for the briefest of instants, before zeroing in on the ground in front of him.
"Sup dudes," she said with her best smile that she didn't quite feel.
"Wendy!" Mabel yelled enthusiastically as she instantly disengaged from Soos and bounded over to the counter.
"Let's just take all this upstairs Soos," she heard Dipper say.
"You got it bro!" Soos said, glancing over to her and waving before the two of them made for the "employee's only" door that led to the living room.
Mabel leaned over the counter like a mob boss making a proposal Wendy couldn't refuse. "So, Wendy, my favorite cashier in the whole wide world, how do you feel about me cash ing in on that 'next time' you offered?"
"Next time?" She replied, confused, as she tried not to feel hurt by Dipper's swift exit. "Can you start over?"
Mabel's good cheer faltered. "Are you okay?"
'Brave face. Cool.'
Wendy forced a smile. "Yeah, duh. I was just up late, that's all." She yawned for effect, then pointed at the bags that Mabel had brought in. "So what's this 'next time', is it about all this stuff you bought?"
Mabel brightened up again. "Uh-huh! I'm directing, writing, and producing a rock opera with sock puppets! A sock opera!" She opened up one of her bags, revealing a whole bunch of old socks and more googly eyes than Wendy could count. "We've gotta get it finished by Friday, so we'll need lots of help, and you said 'maybe next time' yesterday, so..."
That had been about breaking and entering, not sock puppetry, but Wendy's smile became a bit more genuine anyway. "Of course I'll help out, dude." Then, after she thought about it some more. "Just don't make me sing or anything."
She would sing, but it wouldn't be pretty.
"Oh don't worry about that , me and Grenda and Candy will handle the singing! I'm just gonna need help making stuff like the puppets and the props and all that." She made a noise. "Dipper's gonna help, but he's no good at artsy stuff. That's where we girls shine! Am I right or am I right?" She offered her hand for a high five, and Wendy had no choice but to take it.
"I can bring our old sewing machine over tomorrow," Wendy said, as she continued to think about it. "I'm not the best at sewing, but I don't think I'll hurt myself... much." They didn't have the money to buy new clothes all the time, so if something got ripped up, it usually fell to her to fix it.
Mabel nodded excitedly. "Thanks Wen-Wen! I gotta write the play today, but tomorrow it's gonna be all crafts all the time baby! So prepare yourself!"
But before Wendy could reply, the mother of the family of three, a chubby blonde lady wearing a fanny pack, cleared her throat from behind Mabel. "Excuse me," she said half at Mabel and half at Wendy. "We'd like to make a purchase."
Mabel's smile remained bright and cheery. "Oh don't mind me, I'll get out of your way!" she said as she backed away from the counter. "Talk to you in a bit girlfriend!" She offered Wendy a wave and then she was barreling out of the gift shop and into the living room.
The blonde lady dropped three shirts onto the counter, along with two post cards, and a novelty mug that had a cartoony version of Mr. Pines' face on it smiling creepily.
Wendy quickly rang her up. "Cash or credit?" Wendy asked automatically, feeling even more drained than she'd been before the twins showed up.
The lady dug into her fanny pack as Wendy threw all the cheap merchandise into a plastic bag, making sure that the creepy mug was on top. The blonde thankfully took out a credit card, making Wendy's job ever so slightly easier. A quick swipe, a PIN entry, and a "No refunds," later, and the gift shop was down three more customers.
There were still two hanging around lazily looking at various knick-knacks, which meant Wendy couldn't very well leave the cash register alone.
Wendy once again found herself looking at the clock. 11:15. God.
Suddenly not wanting to be sitting anymore, she got up and walked over to the shirt rack the family had been looking at. They'd mixed the shirts all up and made it look like a mess, so she reorganized and straightened the shirts out so that it looked somewhat more presentable.
Then she went to the hats and straightened those out too; customers had a way of making a complete mess even when they only bought one thing. They were like her brothers, except they didn't have the excuse of being twerps (most of the time).
She grabbed a pine tree hat and pulled it forward to take the space of the one that had been bought, but once it was in place, she found it strangely hard to let go.
'It's a nice hat,' she'd said, right before she kissed him.
Her heart clenched in her chest as her fingers left the hat's brim.
She just– just wanted everything to be the same as it was. The exact thing she'd been trying to avoid was happening anyway; he could barely look at her, and it really fuckin' hurt.
But she could fix it, couldn't she? There had to be something she could do. Something she could say.
Mabel needed her help with her sock opera, so that gave her an excuse to hang out at the Shack even after the gift shop closed... but she was still just as lost as she'd been last night.
She sighed, and returned to her usual post at the register.
Her eyes flicked back up to the clock again.
11:25.
'SUPERIOR'
BZZZZZZZZT.
'INFERIOR'
BZZZZZZZZT.
Dipper groaned and leaned back against his pillow.
Mabel was busy writing her script, and there was no way in hell he was going to try to make anything for her stupid puppet show by himself, which meant that he had at least this one day to bash his head into the password problem before he got stuck making puppets or whatever for the rest of the week.
He'd been at it for hours now, and he'd gotten precisely nowhere.
His bed was already a mess of papers haphazardly thrown all over, with even more on the floor beside him. Each paper was full, top to bottom and side to side, with eight letter words written in his crappy penmanship, and every single one was a dud.
Over seven million words, and he hadn't even scratched the surface of them.
"Too obvious?" Mabel asked with a giggle.
"Not obvious enough!" Grenda shouted. "He needs to believe your love Mabel!
"Oh yes," Candy agreed as she covered her beet red cheeks, "even more professions of love."
It didn't help that Mabel's friends had shown up at 3 o'clock and made it even harder for him to concentrate. Especially Grenda. Her voice had a way of bulldozing through any of his thoughts and turning them into mush. They were all just sitting on Mabel's bed, and they seemed to spend as much time giggling about boys and romance as they did writing the script.
Oh wait, that gave him an idea!
'ROMANTIC'
BZZZZZZZZT.
Annoyed, growled and wrote 'FAILURE' and smashed the enter key several times despite it not even being eight letters.
All three of the girls were staring at him.
"Uh, Dipper? Perhaps some fresh air might cool your brain?" Candy supplied shyly.
"How would that help?" he snapped, all but glaring at her. He immediately felt like an asshole and covered his eyes with his right hand. He sighed. "I'm sorry," he continued, "you're probably right."
He shut the laptop and disconnected its charger. Soos had assured him it could last hours even without being plugged in. Something about "safe mode" not needing as much battery power or something. Slipping his shoes back on, he got up from his bed and took the laptop with him.
"If you need me, I'll be..." he waved his hand in the direction of the window, "outside somewhere."
"We'll be hard at work," Mabel proclaimed, her smile not quite as big as it had been before he snapped.
Dipper exited their bedroom, sidestepping a slumbering Waddles that was sprawled across the floor, and stopped right outside their door just as he closed it.
Where was he going to go?
He didn't really feel like trekking out into the woods to get attacked by gnomes or something, but his usual spot on the roof was completely off limits.
Running into Wendy was something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
Of course... she'd agreed to help Mabel with the sock opera, because she was a good friend, unlike him. He couldn't just... run away forever. He'd have to talk to her. But the mere thought of it sent his nerves into overdrive.
What was he supposed to say?
'Hey Wendy, sorry, I knew you drank way too much, but I pushed for another kiss anyway and then got mad about it. Can we still be friends?'
It sounded completely moronic even in his head; he couldn't imagine trying to say it out loud, but everything he tried to think of sounded just as stupid.
A little voice in his head kept reminding him that she'd kissed him first, but he pounded it into dust every time it dared to speak its mind.
She wasnt– she couldn't have been in her right mind.
'I'm too old for you, you know that right?'
Her words had run through his head a million times since they fought that shapeshifter. How much clearer did she have to be? She'd spelled it out for him right there, that night at the bunker; he'd come to terms with that.
It was the beer that made her kiss him, and nothing else. And he'd known better, even in the moment.
He growled under his breath, and gripped the laptop's handle even more tightly.
That's what he needed to focus on. The laptop. The journal. The mystery. And then tomorrow, Mabel's sock opera, so that he could get back to password cracking as quickly as possible. Nothing else mattered.
Dipper walked down the stairs quickly, but the second he was at the bottom of the stairs he was confronted by the same problem he'd had before he got distracted. Where was he going?
He could sit on the front porch, but then he might have to deal with last second customers. Yeah, it was stupid to walk into a museum an hour before closing, but he'd seen it happen several times this summer already. Grunkle Stan had a lot to say about the stupidity of tourists.
It occurred to him suddenly that he pretty much never used that couch that was outside the back entrance of the Shack. He'd never even seen Wendy use it.
Which, of course, made it perfect.
Dipper made his way out of the Shack, closing the door behind him quietly. Thankfully, the couch was empty. Grunkle Stan and Soos used it occasionally, but Soos was hard at work coming up with some melodies for Mabel to use for her show, and Grunkle Stan was probably still stalking around the Museum like a vengeful ghost. He sat down, finding the couch warm from the summer heat.
At least he had a bit of shade, so it wasn't too bad.
Opening up the laptop, he got to work.
BZZZZZZZZT.
BZZZZZZZZT.
BZZZZZZZZT.
It was an incredibly frustrating error noise. He felt himself twitch pretty much every time, and he was positive he'd be hearing it in his nightmares tonight.
BZZZZZZZZT.
BZZZZZZZZT.
In his rush to get out of his room he'd forgotten to bring any of his papers with him, but he supposed it didn't matter much. Anything he managed to try in the next couple hours was a statistical drop in the bucket compared to how many possible words were still left.
BZZZZZZZZT.
He'd already tried just about everything he could think of that had anything to do with the mystery, including weird misspellings to force them to fit the eight character limit.
'JOURNAL3'. 'SHAPSHIF'. 'SECRTLAB'. He'd even given 'BILLCIPH' a go, but that too had only resulted in the dreaded BZZZZZZZZT.
BZZZZZZZZT.
He'd even tried stuff he was pretty sure had no relation in the slightest to the journal author, like MANOTAUR and SHMBULOK!
BZZZZZZZZT.
Time passed, and the BZZZZZZZZT burrowed its way further and further into his psyche with each failed guess. He wasn't even counting anymore, but if he was, he'd definitely have lost count again.
Despite each BZZZZZZZZT and every one of his frustrated sighs and groans, he was in the zone; he could keep this up until midnight if he had to, and at this rate, he was going to.
BZZZZZZZZT.
But he wasn't so in the zone that he missed the sound of the back door opening. He tore his gaze from the screen and turned his head, expecting to see Grunkle Stan grumbling about some dumb chore for him to do, or Mabel coming to bug him about the opera.
"Oh," Wendy said, just standing there and staring at him, one hand still on the doorknob. Her green eyes were wide.
He felt a knot form in his stomach as his heart beat faster.
"Can I... sit down?" She asked, more unsure than he'd ever heard her.
For a second, he debated just getting up and leaving.
"S-sure," he mumbled, as he scooted further down the couch to give her the spot closest to the door.
Wendy smiled slightly, and closed the door quietly behind her before taking the seat he'd vacated. She was holding a Pitt Cola, but didn't open it immediately, instead, she just looked over at the laptop. "Watcha working on there?" she asked.
"Soos found it back in that secret bunker, but he only finally got it fixed last night," he explained as he patted the keyboard, the words coming more easily than he thought they would. He just had to focus on the tasks at hand.
Wendy nodded. "Mabel said something about a password. No luck so far?"
He turned the laptop slightly so that she could more easily see the screen.
ENTER PASSWORD
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"Nope," he confirmed as he turned the laptop back to face himself fully.
She was still looking at the laptop. "Seems pretty old school," she said with a chuckle. "Even older than the computer we have back at home."
He laughed dryly. "It's definitely older than either of us, and probably Soos too." He looked back to the laptop and got back to work.
They lapsed into silence, the only sound in the air the occasional click of keys and a BZZZZZZZZT followed by a groan. The can of Pitt Cola hissed as Wendy opened it, but he kept his eyes glued on the laptop screen.
The quiet hung over them heavily, but Dipper couldn't think of anything to say. So he just kept typing.
BZZZZZZZZT.
He was waiting for the hammer to fall.
BZZZZZZZZT.
Any second now.
BZZZZZZZZT.
"Hey," Wendy said suddenly, sending his heart rate through the roof.
He looked over, but studiously avoided her gaze.
She shook her can of soda. "Want me to grab you one?" She was smiling, almost like it was a normal day. "I didn't think you'd be out here, or I'd have brought two."
His mind raced, and his voice caught in his throat for an uncomfortable few seconds. "I–I'm fine," he replied, shaking his head.
"You sure dude?"
"I'm sure."
Wendy chuckled. "Suit yourself!" She took a long sip from her soda, as if she were bragging about having a soda while he didn't.
Dipper tried not to stare at her lips. Tried to forget the soft warmth of them that was as fresh in his brain as it was on her porch on Saturday.
He looked back at the laptop and typed.
He wrote WENDY twice without even trying to.
The laptop was getting harder to focus on; the password and the mystery surrounding it drifted further and further from the forefront of his attention.
Dipper snuck a glance at her.
She was looking out at the forest, calm as could be. As cool as she always was.
And just as beautiful, too.
He looked back to the laptop's screen. The first underscore blinked, begging him to try another password.
'GORGEOUS', he typed.
BZZZZZZZZT.
Wendy laughed lightly. "You'll get it sooner or later, dude."
Dipper swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He'd typed so many words today, he'd been thinking about them all day. And he'd been thinking about them yesterday too, but... they were two different sorts of words weren't they? So many words, and so many choices. He'd always had a hard time finding the right ones, but it was even harder now than it had ever been.
"...hey Wendy?" He said after a long silence, his voice small, and his gaze still locked on the screen. "I...I wasn't trying to ignore you earlier. I just– I didn't really know what to say."
The silence stretched. His heart pounded.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that she was looking directly forward, still staring at the treeline.
"I didn't either," she finally said, her voice near as quiet as his. "Words are tough sometimes, aren't they?"
She was looking at him now.
"Yeah, they are," he replied, his eyes finally meeting hers.
Their gazes lingered, neither of them saying anything. His thoughts flew. Words upon words pushed themselves to the front of his brain, but none of them were the right ones.
In the end, what broke the silence came from inside the Shack.
"CORDUROY!" roared the voice of Grunkle Stan. "You're still on the clock!"
Wendy shot up from the couch and had her free hand on the doorknob within two seconds.
But... unlike the last time she'd left him like this, she stopped, and turned aside to face him. "Hey, Dipper?"
"Yeah?" he answered, the word nearly catching in his throat, like so many others had today.
Her smile was unsteady. "When we're all done with Mabel's puppet show..." She looked away slightly. "I'm still down for that movie night."
Dipper's smile felt like how hers looked. "Your house, or mine?"
Wendy shrugged lazily, and her eyes met his again, making his heart dance. "We'll figure it out."
She was halfway through the door when she stopped again and poked her head back outside. "Oh! And don't let Mabel let you take the fall," she ordered, giving him a hard look. "She's totally the one who took that fifty."
Then, she waved, and he was alone on the back porch again, with just his thoughts and anxieties as company.
Maybe it would have been easier if she hated him, and yet... Dipper couldn't help but smile as he finally looked at the laptop's screen again.
'HOPELESS,' he wrote.
BZZZZZZZZT.
AN: Hope you enjoyed! Please do drop a review if you did. Reviews are the mortar that keeps my walls strong!
