Archive of Our Own ^beta

She always wanted a spring wedding.

At seven years old, Dipper ironically remembers being forgetful of a lot of things. Where facts and formulas came to him like second nature, it’s everything from chores to birthdays that escape him when he needed them most. For all his smarts, he was forgetful of what probably mattered more than what came to him in classroom worksheets.

But even in the moments of forgetfulness, he remembers his sister and her wildest dreams.

What he doesn’t fill with school he fills with only the quiet memories of home (at least, as quiet as possible with someone like Mabel around). Those were always the most vivid, when they’re too young to commit much to memory to begin with. Among them, he still seamlessly recalls the way Mabel used to raid their mother’s closet. How she’d scale the shelves for dresses far too big for her, laughing with all the glee that a seven-year-old girl could possibly emit.

If he digs deep enough, there’s still the muscle memory of having to spot her in case she fell. Still the practiced disgust for when she passionately described her dream husband. They changed every time, of course — black hair, blue eyes. Green eyes, brown hair. Jocks with too big an ego, hipsters without a discernible one.

There’s a lot that isn’t set in stone at seven years old, but one thing was for sure: Mabel Pines would be married in spring.

--

When Dipper stares out of the windows of her reception’s venue years down the line, it doesn’t surprise him, really. It was always meant to be spring. The season of new life and new beginnings, it was only ever fitting.

In her youthful splendor, he’s convinced that his sister is the very embodiment of it, if one were to ever walk the earth.

Her ceremony’s an extension of herself in every way. Lively party favors line the walls, even livelier guests attending her intimate service. None of it’s a surprise. Not for someone as unorthodox as her.

But even for someone so out of the ordinary, Mabel’s kept her affair astoundingly traditional.

Her bridesmaids are an explosion of color, but she’s as classic as they come. Donned in white, she’s chosen a cap-sleeved ball gown for her special day. The line of crystals from her metal hair band decree her something short of royalty, not too strange a thought given how much she looked the part.

Excited, enamored, elated — something else with an ‘e’ — she’s a lot of things today. But even if she's matured, she's never lost sight of who she was always meant to be. Growing older has only done so much, because he still catches glimpses of her that steal him back to snapshots more reminiscent of their younger years.

So much has changed. So much still hasn’t.

Mabel’s been without her braces for ages, but each time she smiles, he still finds himself as taken aback as the day she got them removed.  From adolescence to adulthood, she’s lost more than just that — she’s marked every passing season with an inch or so of her hair, trimming her locks more and more each year. It hangs just past her shoulders now, far wavier and done up prettily in a half ponytail with a diamond piece securing it.  

She’d always dreamed of being beautiful on this day.  

In the arms of a man she loved, he couldn’t be happier watching it come true.

Her fiancé’s been good to her. A fairy tale from the start, he’d been the head-over-heels romance she’d always been chasing after — for more reasons than just one. The wish to find one had never been mutually exclusive. It was always a shared hope as much as it was the only option, because there’s never been a conceivable reality where he could imagine her happy with someone who didn’t accept all of her. The oddities, the quirks.

That awful giggle-snort when someone told a joke bad enough to provoke it, the off-chance it might come accompanied with some liquid spewed from her nose.

Yet along he came, never drawn back by any of it. Never trivializing of the traits that made her, her. He’d come to adore them.

He’s everything she’s ever wanted.

“—first dance as newlyweds.”

Dipper doesn’t realize he’s zoned out until the voice of her DJ pulls him out of his own head. Around him, her guests break out in applause, and he joins in with them late.

As their song fades, the two of them release each other, but not before merrily smooching. A gooey couple, really, the both of them — a time or two ago, he’d have grimaced. But he’s old enough to know better. Too happy for her to treat it otherwise.

Pivoting on his heel, her beloved retires from the floor, leaving Mabel still its the limelight. As the applause dies down, her DJ motions towards him with one hand as he makes his exit.

“Believe it or not, that man wasn’t the first special one in Mabel’s life,” he begins, a sweet speech in the making. It hangs earnestly for only a moment, before falling flat. “—Just ask the eight that came before him.”

Dipper smirks at the remark, but finds the whole crowd around him erupting into laughter. Mabel’s quick to raise a hand to cover the embarrassed flush blooming in her cheeks, but she’s laughing along with them. A friend-of-a-friend’s tattled on her at some point, but it’s more amusing to think it was ever a secret at all.

A vice and a virtue. Her oversized heart always had enough love to go around.

“Nah, nah, not that many. All crushes, all crushes,” he rushes to correct himself, suppressing his own chuckles. It takes a moment for her guests to regain their composure too, but when they do, the sincerity in his voice returns. He means it this time. “But really. The first came long, long before he did…”

Dipper tunes out the man’s speech without even meaning to. Where his words fade to the foreground, his attention goes far more focused on his sister and her graces. From below the mixing station, she stands alone, hands folded elegantly at the front of her. The softest of lights cast a halo effect over her hair, even more cascading to make the rest of her glow.

She really is beautiful.

“...by her side...”

She’s also probably heard it a million times today — regrettably everyone but him. In her hurricane of bridal prep, he’s had neither a moment up close nor alone with her, and there’s an awful lot he would give to have just one.

“…loved her first, before the rest of us did…”

As if reading his thoughts, Mabel looks his way as he thinks it, her lips curling into a small smile that he mirrors right back to her. Their twin telepathy has never been too sharp, but in moments like these, he can’t help but believe that there’s a reason it’s only worked a handful of times.

“…even before they were born.”

But to that, Dipper will freeze, yanked from his daze instantly, and for good.

‘…wait, what?’

His eyes flick back into focus. In the next instant, they're darting to the monitors and sound boards to find her DJ staring at him.

They all were.

“…which is why, at this time, the bride’s asked her twin brother to share a dance with her.”

A lot’s changed. A lot sure hasn’t.

Mabel’s unpredictable if anything, and he should have learned by now to expect these things.

Really.

There are a lot of thoughts that hit him. More than he can sort through — the realization of just how many eyes were on him. The very real problem that he didn’t dance. All while a million thoughts unfold in his head, her guests clap for him, a spotlight somewhere overhead threatening to shine his way.

As blessed an occasion as it might be, he did not sign up for this. He did not sign up for this.

But of all the eyes on him, its hers that undo the knots forming in his stomach. Encouraging but patient, her smile is the smallest means to coax him from his place. From across the floor, Mabel reaches both her hands his way with a grabby motion too reminiscent of the child she used to be.

They’re twelve years old again, and she wants to dance with him.

From behind, Wendy steals the flute of champagne straight out of his hand before he can protest it. She has that mischievous grin wide across her face, but the often-sinister energy behind it is missing. It isn’t how it is while making her dares with Thompson. Vaguely unsettling, naturally, but somehow softer this time — something reassuring in the face of his reluctance.  

Like the good friend she’s been all these years, Wendy gives him a small push for good measure, mouthing something as he turns to leave. It’s a string he can’t make out, but he sees ‘go’ and knows that’s more than enough.

Breathing deeply, he turns to step out onto the floor.

When he does, it’s like reliving adolescence all over again.

Maybe the sheepish feeling never went away.

Between the butterflies in his gut and the suspicion of his tie growing tighter, it’s no different from all those functions that Mabel was so persistent of them crashing. It’s unnervingly similar, all of it, the only difference being that it’s Wendy shoving him headfirst into the fray instead of his sister for a change.

Instinct has him stuffing his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. The need to keep his eyes glued to the floor is as burning as the urge to fumble with his collar, and the tug-of-war between them is telling all on its own. Old habits truly die hard.

Framed how this is, it’s a somewhat humiliating callback to the times he’s done this before, when he thinks about it. Homecoming. Spring fling. Any and every function where rejection awaited him at the middle of it.

The comfort comes in knowing that there’s nothing like that waiting for him today — it’s his best friend with her hand outstretched for him to come take.

Floating through the chandeliers and candles gracing the venue, her picturesque setting only seems to fuel the nerves. There’s something still leaving him needlessly tense about it, the reason why all but lost. It isn’t the parallels. It isn’t even the attention anymore. It’s just…something about this.

‘Relax. It’s just a dance.’

At long last, he sees the hem of her dress peek into view, and his eyes lift from the floor. Anticipation building, he takes in the sight of her piece by piece: The pool of her skirt, flooding the ground beneath her. The tips of her shoes just barely poking out. The delicate lacing at her waist, the diamond around her neck…

When their eyes finally meet, his whole chest swells.

She’s a world of difference up close.

Standing before him, he knows now with certainty just how much of it is lost from the tables. They can’t fathom the radiance from that far away. The flush in her cheeks. The very happiness she emanates, the stars swimming in her eyes like a river running from the deepest well of her heart.

For all the diamonds and makeup, though, her voice is uncharacteristically small when they’re face to face.

But no less overjoyed. Of course it isn't.

“…Hi.”

“…Hi,” Dipper says just as quiet, taking her hand into his own. He has a good feeling twin ESP had nothing to do with the way she’d looked at him just now. But it’s their moment now. Maybe their only. “You look beautiful.”

It takes so little to undo the illusion of the woman she’s become. Flattered, Mabel reflexively grabs a bundle of her dress in her free hand to eye herself down and back up. For as forward as the motion may seem, her puffed out cheek and upturned smile crosses him bashful.

“…‘You think so?”

He doesn’t reply to that. But he flashes a smile that her eyes light up to, and he’s hoping that’s more than enough of an answer. Mabel squeezes his hand in appreciation, leading them both to the very center of the floor.

Their footsteps are leisurely against the wood, the muted shuffles of his dress shoes and the clicks of her heels fill the air in unison. For all the times he'd grabbed it in a quick getaway, holding her hand is a new sensation this time — a wedding band newly adorning her finger; the halo-encrusted diamond so paramount to her love story.

(the very ring he’d seen months before this, caught in a mere glimpse at a family gathering. her fiancé flashed it in a private moment between them, and it only dawns on him after-the-fact that the gesture itself is a little less an act of camaraderie, and a little more one of a roundabout need for his blessing, too.)

At the heart of the venue, they fall into place in way that almost feels practiced. With all the care of a gentleman, Dipper twirls her slightly to face him, hand falling from hers to settle around her back. Mabel vees her own around his, her open palm cradling the back of his shoulder blade. Even if he’s grown a full head taller than her, her heels bring her up about half of that. Just enough for her to rest her head on his shoulder, when it comes to it. Just enough to matter.

But rather than extending their other hands out in the air, Mabel keeps hers curled against his tie. A strange choice, but he doesn’t push it, cupping his own atop hers.

The music comes for them.

Slowly, the soft keys of a stripped-back piano drift in, striking some chord in his chest that he didn’t know existed. But it comes for them. Notes nowhere near loud enough to swallow their voices, but just enough to hide them. As the sentimental tones fill the walls and their moment begins, he leans over to whispers to her.

“So…how long have you and Mom had this planned?”

She chuckles at the accusation. Maybe Wendy as well, given the way she’d ushered him. The whole room? Probably them too.

“Like twenty minutes.” And at first, it seems like a joke, but he knows better. This is Mabel, after all. “Dad really wanted to walk me down the aisle, but I couldn’t just leave my twinner hanging, y’know?”

To that, he smiles. So thoughtful. In lieu of a father-daughter, she’s done this instead, just to make him part of it.

“…not actually though,” she murmurs after a pause, craning her head to look up at him. “Twenty minutes…more like twenty years, amirite?”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“You know, from when we were younger,” Mabel elaborates, as if it’s the most memorable thing in the world. In her’s, maybe it is. “You don’t remember? The promise I made you?”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, from when we were little?”

He bites the inside of his cheek. ‘When we were little…?’

“Uh…”

The deer-in-headlight eyes give him away too easily. Mabel playfully slaps his back, but never with the intent of hurting him. “Aww come on, you have to remember.”

Nothing. Not a single inkling. Dipper stares off into the distance, wracking his brain for something. Anything.

“You know…when I had that phase? When I’d run around the house saying—”

“—I’m gonna get married in spring!”

Mabel’s shrill voice returns with a sharp, lively rush. Where the venue starts to blur and fade, it’s the images of long hallways and autumn light that bleed through in its stead. Their childhood home. The sound of her bubbly laughter, how it bounced off the walls. He’d been all too used to it at that age, a bystander to her antics as she paraded around in stolen skirts and dresses.

It was that day, when instead of racing off down the hall like she always did with her games, that she abruptly turned on her heel to point at him. An odd day among many, he remembers the insatiable fire in her eyes, the way it burned as if to mark a crossroads of both their lives.

“…and you’re gonna be by my side when I do!”

He remembers.

He remembers, and the memory of it floods back all at once.

“Well duh,” he states, matter-of-factly, if a little offended. “Why would I not?”

“No! That’s not what I meant,” she clarifies, arms flapping at her sides, jumping to the balls of her feet. “I mean— you’re actually gonna be by my side! Like you’re gonna walk me down the aisle.”

He blinks at her.

“I don’t…think you can do that.”

“Too late! I just decided.”

“No, I mean— I actually don’t think you’re allowed to.”

Mabel pouts.

“What are you talking about? Of course I can! The bride gets anything she wants,” she says, as if she hasn’t heard him at all. “And I mean anything. Like unicorns pulling the carriage. And a really big dress. Ooh, and a chocolate fountain! Definitely a chocolate fountain—”

“Mabel, everyone knows that the dad always walks her down the aisle,” Dipper cuts in, flat. That was the just how it worked, he remembers their mother explaining on a night perched in front of the TV.

Hallmark was practically law.

“He’s the one that dances with her too. Haven’t you seen those movies that mom cries over?”

“Pffft, well yeah! But we all know those are fake!” Mabel counters, blunt. She clamps her hands to her hips in defiance, a display of someone too deep in her own fantasies to be convinced otherwise. “And it’s not fair. What if I want you to be part of it?”

“I will be! Just…watching with everyone else. Probably.”

“Laaaaame,” she boos him. “That’s not fair.”

She’s deceitfully stony faced at first. Gradually, he sees her confident facade crumble at his logic. Mabel deflates the longer she thinks it over, and the hint of sadness creeping into her eyes inflicts the guilt on him tenfold, when he hears it manifest in her voice.

“…You really mean I can’t…?” she mumbles, voice stripped of its fire. “But it isn’t fair. Not to you. You’re my twin for crying out loud.”

“Maybe you can. I just haven’t seen it happen yet. Look, there are probably girls out there who don’t have dads. Or…”

‘they don’t live that long,’ but that’s a dark thought that won’t do much, if anything. He’s not about to entertain the possibility of their father not being alive to see her married.

(but it’s in some melancholy reflection that he realizes he’s not opposed to the notion of filling that role himself either, should it ever come to that.)

Still. For the here and now, he’ll cough, awkward.

“…or…they have bad dads…”

Half of him is begging the other half to shut up. He genuinely doesn’t know. He’ll make it worse at this rate, and it has him fidgeting uncomfortably, unsure of what else to say.

He doesn’t need to.

Something clicks with her. In his own search for something to lift her spirits, she uncovers it herself. Mabel’s eyes lift just touch, the creak in her voice receding.

“…what about dancing?” she peeps up. “You said the dads do both. If you can’t walk me, what about that?”

He keeps his eyes trained to a corner of the room that isn’t her. Again, he doesn’t know this stuff. “I mean sure, but…”

"Okay, so how about this:"

When his eyes return to her, he finds Mabel offering up her pinkie to him. It catches him off-guard when she does, watching with momentary wonder as she raises it. In its own innocent glory, he marvels it for the rarity it often is.

Because Mabel only reserved it for the most serious of her agreements — and whatever this was right now must rank pretty high.

“Help me find Mom’s wedding dress, and I’ll dance with you instead of dad.” And it’s after she says it that she blinks off in the distance, as if only just aware of what she’s proposed. “Uh...Somehow. I’ve got some time to figure it out.”

But Dipper knows better. For as rare as they are, they're always promises she pulls out of nowhere. Deep down, there was the conviction it was just for today. They always were. Come tomorrow morning, she’d forget this, long and gone the same way he was with his chores and birthdays.

Humoring her for the meanwhile, though, he offers up his own too.

“Okay, okay, whatever’ll get us out of here before we get caught…” he whispers, twirling their pinkies together. “Promise.”

“…Promise,” she echoes, hand dropping to her side. Her smile grows to something eager, facing the closet doors with renewed vigor. “Now come on Dip’n’Dots, give me a boost…”

For something so forgotten, the memory comes to him in perfectly clarity. A brisk fall afternoon. A brisker a moment of uncertainty.

A promise born from some hope for an absolute.

Dipper ironically remembers being forgetful of a lot of things, but he never imagined that day would be one of them.

“…you did make that promise, didn’t you…?” he says, awestruck. She’d made it. She’d kept it.  “I…wow. I do remember.”

“The day that I—”

“—fell off the top shelf for real,” he says. “And Mom didn’t—”

“—let me go through her dresses after that,” she finishes for him, hiking her arm a little further up his back. “Geez, we really were a handful…”

“‘We?’” he contends, chuckling. Mabel does too, and the sound of it rings in his ears. “Pretty sure you were the handful.”

He imagines they’d share this moment with something a little more heartfelt — the way they’d always seen in the movies. It’s nothing close to those cookie-cutter scenes from their mother’s movies. The silence, the emotion brimming in both their eyes. The normal way.

But then again, they’re the farthest thing from normal. So were brother-sister wedding dances. They joke as if they haven’t in years, quietly giggling amid the emotive piano track enveloping them.

It’s different, her take on how this would play out. But Dipper can’t help but think that it’s heartfelt in its own way.

“Okay, okay, so maybe I was a little more hectic of the two of us,” she confesses, like it takes every fiber of her just to admit to it. “But I can take care of myself now.”

Mabel says it with such bravado. She’s grinning wide and proud, and on any day that isn’t this one, he’d believe her. But since he’d first held it, it’s been hard to ignore the faint tremble in her hand beneath his own.

Their voices are still too low to be heard. He’ll take advantage of it, leaning an inch closer to her ear. When he speaks, he speaks with a tone that comes earnest and stripped of any formality.

“…'you okay?”

She stiffens, just noticeably. It’s still enough to know. The smallest indication that she’s hiding something, adamant not to let him see. But she drops the last wisps of her act when she realizes it’s all for naught, and the most he’ll get is a sigh.

He always did read her better without words.

“Mhm-mhm,” she hums in his shoulder, “I’m just…a little afraid, I guess.”

That’s…not entirely what he was expecting. Still in his grasp, he strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. A small comfort for what otherwise would look like a simple affection to anyone watching.

“Of?”

“I’m not really sure, honestly,” she admits, somber. “Just…how quickly time passes, maybe…”

“So totally not the part where you’re married now.”

“That’s kind of scary, too.”

It’s a drastic change from clones and mermen — when this one’s alive and real, when he’d sworn this morning to love and never to leave her as so many of them had. Her summer romance is six years in the making this time around, but what it’s given her in the end makes the several before all worth it.  

Maybe that’s the scary part. How genuine it is, this time.

She’s worked too hard to make this day happen only to have it ruined by some unspoken nerves. Out of childish habit, the same way she's shaken his off, he'll defuse them the only way he knows how. In the fakest, most sarcastic tone possible—

“You know, it’s not too late to leave him.”

That gets a laugh out of her.

“I don’t think he kept the receipts for the rings, Dip.”

That gets a laugh out of him, too. It’s never-ending, the two of them, and Dipper wonders briefly if her new in-laws are sporting questioning glances — but in the same beat, he doesn't care. Like anyone was expecting a real dance out of this. Not whatever this was now.

Not from the two goofballs who never really grew up to begin with.

It’s straying them farther and farther from the traditional ceremony she pictured all along, but it ultimately loosens her up enough to extend their hands properly. It’s his teasing that finally has her showing signs of relaxing into it, the quivers ceasing when she lifts her hand from his chest.

Even with the song filling out the room, everything goes silent inside his head. Time feels frozen when he stares out into her crowds — but it’s from that alone that it dawns on him how much of it has passed. The aged faces, the new additions peppered within them. Things have changed.

All her bridesmaids are clad in pink today, and that’s perhaps the most telltale sign that it’s changed for the better. Once upon a time, she brandished a shooting star sweater like armor — and for all he knew, it probably was. But even armors grows brittle over time, he’s seen it crack in the moments where he thinks she’s the most healed she’s been in years.

The past used to bite them. Used to catch her in unsuspecting hours, when she’d held her armor in her hands for old times’ sake, flinching if she so much as stared at it for a heartbeat too long.

There’s a shade of it so embedded in his memory (oversaturated, cracking at the edges—) that used to churn his stomach.  

Because he remembers the bubble more than anything that summer.

“Hey Mabel…” he whispers, leaning his cheek against her head. “'Remember when you were scared of the future? Look at you now.”

To think that Gravity Falls was only the beginning to the colorful life she’d go on to live.

Mabel’s never let herself be defined by gum laden hair and nacho earrings, but neither was she discontent to be just that. It’s a beautiful balance that he thinks says more about her than anything else ever will.

She was always deserving for happiness like this.

Honing talents that would lead her to form circles at school, she was always deserving for the for friends that laughed with her, not at her. Deserving for the recognition from her teachers. Even if core curriculum was never a strong suite, her near-presidential status among the arts department had her climbing ranks quicker than he ever could.

Graduation was all but a fanfare of just that. When their high school days had finally come to an end, she defied all the preconceptions stacked against her. She crossed the same stage, ten pounds heavier in medals and sashes, each one a love letter from clubs she’d help flourish.

At the back of his mind, the faintest thought to stick with him is how he knew they were only signs of what was to come.

And watched as they did.

A mission to set out into the world, steadfast to change it. A late budding love for children, the blossoming career as a teacher that followed it. A determination to become the best in the district, a resolve not to settle for anything less.

Forming bonds, leaving impressions.

Falling in love.

She was always deserving for a life like this one.

Mabel releases their hands. The action tugs him from his thoughts, even more so as she opts for wrapping both her arms around the back of his neck. She’s sensing it, and so is he. It’s winding down now. She hugs him close and breathes in deeply, laying her head against his shoulder. He'll mimic her all the same, wrapping his other arm around her back to bring her closer.

Dipper has yet to see her eyes, and has a hunch that there’s a reason for that. She's too fixated on keeping her gaze cast the other way. Too discrete about hiding the hitch in her breathing that’s too close to ignore.

He says nothing, but glides his hand across her back in solidarity.

They aren’t dancing anymore as much as they are swaying from side to side. It wasn’t about putting on a show for her guests anymore. It never was. Not when it was just the two of them, alone in a golden moment. Two children at the heart of a world they raised each other in.

From the center, Dipper sees it all.

Her high school art teacher, glowing as if Mabel was one of her own. There’s a mother with her little boy, a bubbly child she babysat and spoke too often of. There are coworkers and college friends. Neighbors, former students, her new in-laws. From every avenue, they’d come to her.

So many walks of life, so little time she’d walked them. Mabel’s touched more lives than she has fabrics, and it’s never more apparent than in the number of eyes lighting up at her now.

As his eyes drift to their own table of close friends and family, their parents are the first to catch them. Proud as they’ll ever be, the two of them watch, heads leaning together with bundled tissues between clasped hands. Where their father watches with reserved delight, their mom wears the smile of a woman whose heart could burst right out of her chest any second. Like it hasn’t already.

Dipper spies Wendy hovering by her chair, still holding his glass (a good amount of it missing, he laughs) and beaming at them. At her side, Pacifica is too. Soos and Melody hold similar expressions, the latter cradling their baby girl in her arms.

Seated beneath them all, they’re there.

His eyes flicker first to a knowing pair of spectacles. He’s managed to crack these ones too, from some whirlwind adventure, no doubt. The wear and tear of the oceans is never more apparent in his face than right now, but it does nothing to mask the joy in it. Crossing dimensions or crossing waters, he’d do it all over again for his niece.  

When Ford finally takes notice of him, he sends back a smile just as genuine, Dipper’s eyes drifting to the figure seated next to him.

Who she’d always needed the most.

If fortune favors the bold, she’s the bravest he’ll ever know. It takes a special kind of courage to count the years like blessings, for every day they’ve still had him. Even in the face of his slow declining health, he’d been above it all. Every prescription bottle, hidden just out of sight. Shrugging off every symptom of age. He was tougher than the odds, a demeanor stemmed from an alleged cold, dark, empty soul.

For all his claims of a heart grown hard over the years, Grunkle Stan’s the closest one to a teary, inconsolable wreck in the entire room.

From left to right, table to table, her life told its story. It’s true privilege to share a room with them all, the countless lives who’ve held a role in her’s. Every face a testament, every voice a narrative, her endless list of guests served to prove just how treasured of a life his sister was.

It’s a unifying love, all of them.

She thinks it started with him.

The thought strikes him a little more profoundly in this ambiance, the one where she’s surrounded by every soul that’s ever mattered, to have him be the one to share this with. And his lungs seem to agree with him, because there’s a knot fast-forming in the middle of them that has him dangerously close to losing his cool.

Out of seemingly nowhere, Mabel hugs him tighter. He knows she can feel it too.

It hits him how right she is, how quickly time truly passes. It’s still never felt slower than in the few precious minutes he has with her.

From the edges of the room, Dipper hears the track beginning to fade. The mellow notes of a piano start to trail up and away, and he knows it’s time. Mabel’s hesitant to let go, and admittedly, so is he.

The most she can manage in the moment is retreating her arms enough to take a single step back, hands still linked loosely around his neck. The second she comes into view though, he sees them — tears he’d known had been welling in her eyes.

“Hey c’mon, don’t cry. Not here.”

She sniffles, but her smile never wavers. The tears are small when they stream down her face, but she doesn’t break her hold of him to wipe them away.

“Speak for yourself, bro.”

And as soon as she says it — as if on cue — his own fall into his line of sight.

Everything goes still. One streams from his cheek, landing with a muted splash on his tie. Another right behind it. The disbelief that they’d gone so unnoticed is almost enough to keep them at bay.

Before any more have the chance to fall, he’s raising a hand to swipe at the subtle trails staining his cheeks. With the inside of his wrist, he’ll do it as nonchalant as possible, because he’s definitely not having the waterworks right now, and they definitely can’t tell that he is.

It’s useless, he knows, already feeling more starting to form as his hand falls away.

He reaches for the pocket on the inside of his jacket, blindly feeling for the cloth it housed. For only a second, Dipper silently mourns the amount of care their uncle had put into folding it, because it’s in the next that he’s tugging the handkerchief free for her.

As delicate as he can, he’ll dab it along the bottoms of her eyes, swallowing hard. Some hybrid of guilty admission and a sad attempt at ridding his voice of its cracks.

“Sorry. ‘Didn’t mean to ruin your makeup.”

Mabel shakes her head all the same, untangling her fingers from the back of his neck. Her touch is just as fragile when she rests both her hands against his cheeks, sacrificing her own French tips to brush away his tear trails.

“It was already doomed anyway,” she reassures him. “Don’t be fooled. This dress is way hotter than it looks.”

To them, it’s so normal. It’s no different than band aids on bruised elbows, or ice packs on scraped knees. Still, their gentle favors cause a stir in everyone else, a whispered chorus of awws that sweep through them.

From behind her head, naturally, he sees Candy and Grenda ready to fix her up — and nearly laughs at the size of the makeup case they’re carrying. A monstrosity of striped prints and too many compartments, it’s a funny sight to see them toting around, but he knows his sister isn’t deserving of anything less.

When Mabel steps back further, her hands slip from his cheeks to rest atop his shoulders, his own cradling the undersides of her arms. Like the centerpiece of this family, the whole room watches the twins with misted eyes, the lingering wish they could share any piece of this moment in any depth close to how he was right now.

In its own quiet tenderness, Dipper imagines that this may be the closest they’ll ever get to one of their mother’s movies. She’s smiling and so is he, and he realizes that there’s an awful lot he could tell her in that moment — “Thank you.” “I’m so happy for you.” “Yes, you are beautiful.” “Take care of yourself, okay?” “You’re my best friend.”

“I love you.”

They all mount at once. A thousand small sentiments that no amount of words could ever convey. It’s now of all times they chose to choke him up, when it feels like there’s too much to say and not enough time to say them. The lump growing in his throat is too big to put any of them into spoken word, but he lets that thought fade when something more endearing comes to light in its stead.

Mabel leans in to embrace him one final time, and when she does, he’ll kiss her temple just as tenderly.

A thousand small sentiments, all wrapped up in one.

It’s a touching way to leave this, before releasing her to her friends.

But they never do get that far.

Because as soon as she feels his gesture, he sees her mouth twist with unbridled emotion, another flood waiting in her eyes. What meant to part them draws her even closer, Mabel throwing her arms around him all over again just to help remedy the looming tears.

She keeps them wound tightly around his back, reduced to burying her face into his jacket and babbling into his lapel.

He imagines it’s half of what he’s just said to her.

He’ll hug her tighter all the more for it.

Beyond them, there’s another song beginning to play — some ear worm from the eighties — but barely a second in, her DJ cuts it silent. In its place, the thundering of applause overtakes the room, and neither of them need to look up to know.

Everyone is smiling for them. They’re smiling for each other.

They unwind for real this time, but letting go is so much easier. Mabel’s eyes are glowing with a sparkle more brilliant than what met him on the floor. It’s so much warmer. Brighter. Everything she is, has ever been, but somehow more.

“I hope you know that he meant it,” she says, almost free of the emotion in her own throat.  She does what she can to overcome it, but her voice still tapers with the weight of what she says next.

“…you really were the first, Dip.”

And it shouldn't touch him as deeply as it does.

The reassurance, however unnecessary it could ever be – still mattered. Moments as precious as these, as rare as they come, let down walls he often forgets are there. She says it like the simple truth that it is, and the lightness that weaves into his chest from it could rival every sensation leading up to this point.

So much has changed and so much still hasn’t. And it’s in those words and those alone that they anchor him right where he’s supposed to be.

His pinkie isn’t as small this time around, but their hearts haven’t aged a day. Just as she had so many years ago, Dipper extends his to bring this full circle.

“Promise?”

And just as he had in the beginning, she winds them together. In the most fulfilling way, she’ll take this back to the cusp of their youth, when she squeezes them. In one gesture, she seals the sincerity of a pact decades in the making.

In one word, she brings them both back home.

“Promise.”