Archive of Our Own ^beta

It took until their second day in Gravity Falls for her to meet him, which Mabel thought was tantamount to a crime.

Grunkle Stan had set her and Dipper to sweeping up the gift shop after they’d complained of boredom, and she was busy making a game of it, pretending each dust bunny she saw was a disobedient mortal who needed to be swept away to the underworld with her godlike powers. She had a feeling she was having far more fun with it than Dipper, who was leaning heavily against his own broom and sighing as he poked listlessly at the dust.

She blasted a few more damned souls to oblivion, sweeping the growing pile into the corner near the checkout counter, and paused when a flash of grey in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned to look more closely, and-

Gasped.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel squealed, dropping the broom and rushing over to the counter. “You didn’t tell us you have a cat!”

It was an oversized grey tom, with fur so thick it looked almost matted in places - though her expert eye could see those were simple tangles that would be easy enough to brush out. There was a lighter grey stripe running around its neck, and its eyes were a deep enough yellow that they could almost pass for brown.

It was the most beautiful creature she had ever met.

“Eh? What?” Stan, who had been tallying up the money in the cash drawer, turned to frown at her. “Oh, yeah.” He jerked a thumb at the cat, not bothering to put down the money. “That’s Sixer.”

“Why do you call him that?” Dipper asked. He’d wandered over at the noise, broom dragging behind him on the ground.

“He’s polydactyl.”

Mabel, who had been holding up her hand for the cat to sniff, blinked and ran this word through her mental dictionary. “He’s got a bunch of girlfriends? Or boyfriends,” she added, not wanting to make assumptions about the cat’s preferences.

“What?” Stan’s brow furrowed, his regular, resting frown turning into a frown of true confusion. “No! Polydactyl. He’s got six toes, look.” He set the money back in the drawer and reached over, picking one of the cat’s paws up off the counter. It let him do this without protest, staring placidly at his hand as he pressed his thumb into the pad of the paw to spread its toes out.

Mabel counted them, her eyes wide.

“Woah,” Dipper said next to her. “How does that-”

“Oh. My. Gosh!” Mabel interrupted, before he could try to get into a science lesson. “Bonus beans!”

“Beans?” Stan echoed, but Mabel had already swept Sixer off the counter and was holding him aloft in front of her, her hands braced under his kitty armpits to keep him steady. He was so long his back legs almost reached the floor.

“Aren’t you just the specialist boy!” she cooed, leaning forward to smush her face into his belly. It was a risky move, since it put her face into very close range of his claws and he could, if he wanted, scratch her eyes out - she knew from experience, many cats had tried before - but it was worth it.

Soft fluff filled her vision, nature’s most comfortable pillow blocking out the rest of the world for a long, peaceful moment before the oxygen deprivation got too much and she had to pull back to gasp for air.

She spat out a few strands of fur that had gotten in her mouth, grinning. “This summer just got a million and ten times better!”

“He is pretty cute,” Dipper conceded, reaching over to pat the cat on the head. Mabel allowed this for a moment, then decided Dipper was depriving himself of the fluff far too much.

“Cat attack!” she shouted, and swung the cat around so his fluffy side collided gently with her brother’s face.

“Ack! Mabel!”

He flailed, and she laughed manically, chasing him in a small circle around the floor until the grating, hacking cough of Grunkle Stan’s guffaw distracted her.

He was smiling wide - his other main expression, and much nicer than the frown - and leaning his elbows on the counter, sharing in her amusement at Dipper’s flustered expression as he frantically tried to swipe the cat fur off his face. Mabel felt a little glow of pride at getting that expression out of their grumpy Grunkle.

She lifted the patient cat again, ready to resume the chase, and noticed something. With the way his cheeks were puffed, and the little tufts of fur coming out of his ears…

“Grunkle Stan, he looks like you!” Mabel pointed out, holding Sixer up for comparison.

“Eh? What?” Stan’s face dropped back into its normal grumpy frown, mirroring the one permanently fixed onto the cat’s fuzzy little face. “Are you saying I look like a cat?”

Dipper stepped up next to her, looking between the two, and laughed. “Ha! You’re right, he really does.”

“Oh, get out of here.” Stan waved a hand at them, rolling his eyes. “If you’re just gonna be causing trouble, you can do it outside.”

They left him to his counting - carefully not mentioning the unfinished sweeping job - but Mabel could have sworn, as the door swung shut behind them, that she saw a small, pleased smile lifting the corner of Grunkle Stan’s mouth.

~~~~~

“Mabel!” Dipper yelled, bursting into their shared room so fast the door bounced off the wall behind him.

“Ah!” Mabel jumped, tossing the handful of plastic gems she’d been holding while she bedazzled a glitter painting of Waddles into the air. They tinkled to the floor around her in a glittering rainbow shower. “What!”

“I figured it out!” He dropped to the ground in front of her, slamming The Journal down between them and sending up another fountain of gems. “The Author is Sixer!”

Mabel liked The Journal, because it was full of lots of cool stories about the magical creatures of the town and had gotten them into a lot of fun adventures, but she wasn’t sure it really needed the audible capital letters her brother always put around the title. She liked The Author, too, because he seemed like a funny kind of guy who would appreciate something like a bedazzled journal, if Dipper ever left it unattended with her for too long. She didn’t think he necessarily needed the capital letters either, though.

And she definitely didn’t think he was a cat.

“Uh… what?” She gave Dipper her most skeptical look, head tilted to the side.

“It all makes sense,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “He wrote that there was something dangerous here, something that was after him! The stuff he was studying came back to bite him - he was too curious for his own good, just like a cat!” He held up the book triumphantly, to one of the pages that had ink spilled all over it. If you squinted, and took a step back, and used your imagination, one of the splotches looked almost like a paw print. “He must have gotten cursed! Turned into a cat in revenge because he looked into something he shouldn’t have!”

“Dipper,” Mabel said slowly, putting one hand on the top of the book and pushing it down again. “Last week you thought Grunkle Stan was The Author.”

“Yeah, but I got a better look at his hands and he doesn’t have any scars,” he said. “He hasn’t lost any fingers. But Sixer is polydactyl! He’s literally called Sixer!”

“And the week before that you thought The Author was a vampire,” Mabel continued, undeterred.

“Well, some of the things he wrote- but that doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head. “I’m sure about this one, Mabel! All of the pieces make sense! What kind of cat would hunt gnomes as much as he does if it wasn’t The Author of The Journal?”

“A normal one?” Mabel offered.

“No, there’s something more here,” Dipper muttered, with that frantic look in his eyes he’d been getting more and more lately. “Have you seen the way he’ll just sit there and stare at you? Or turn to look at something that’s not even there? He knows more than he lets on, I’m sure of it.”

“Dipper,” Mabel said slowly. “You weren’t here the last time Candy and Grenda came over, were you?”

“What? No, I was hanging out with Wendy. What does that have to-”

Mabel hopped to her feet, bouncing over to her bed to grab her scrapbook out from under the pillow. She carried it back to where Dipper was sitting, dropping it on top of The Journal and flipping to a recent page. “Soos helped us dig out a bunch of old pictures!” she explained. “And he let me keep this one.”

He craned his neck around to see. It was an old polaroid of a teenage Soos, standing in the gift shop with a huge grin on his face and a tiny kitten on his head. He was holding the camera pointed at himself, so the angle was a little wonky, but the paws splayed over his forehead were clearly visible, six toes and all.

“See?” Mabel said. “Soos said this was about seven years ago.”

“That doesn’t prove-” Dipper began, but the conviction was fading from his voice.

“How can Sixer be the mysterious Author who disappeared thirty years ago if he was a kitten seven years ago?” She raised an eyebrow at her brother, watching him slowly deflate as it sunk in.

“Oh,” he said eventually.

“Sorry,” she said, not really sorry at all. “It’s back to square one, bro-bro.”

He huffed. “Maybe not,” he argued. “There’s gotta be something there. It’s too much of a coincidence that Grunkle Stan has a polydactyl cat.”

“They’re a lot more common than polydactyl humans,” Mabel pointed out. She’d been reading up on it, the prospect of extra toe beans much too adorable to pass up on. Apparently some cats had seven toes, and she’d made it a life goal to find one of them and give it a tiny high-five.

Or would it be a high-seven?

“I know, but…” Dipper sighed, trailing off. He sagged a little bit where he sat, and she patted him on the shoulder, feeling a little bad for bursting his bubble so hard.

“Hey, it’s probably a good thing that he’s not a cursed human, right?” she offered.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he does sleep on Grunkle Stan’s face at night. And drop dead mice in the kitchen.” She paused, then added, “And lick himself in public.”

“Ew, Mabel!” Dipper said, springing up from the floor and making a grossed-out face.

“Might be a little awkward,” she continued, “Imagine if he turned back into a human while he was-”

“Mabel!” He snatched up The Journal, fleeing the room, and she cackled at his retreating back as he went.

~~~~~

Some time later - but not too long, in the grand scheme of things, the summer was flying by far too fast - she shook hands with her surprise bonus Grunkle, feeling the extra digit under her palm, and wondered if Dipper had maybe been onto something, after all. She tried to catch his eye, to see if he had made the same connection, but he was far too star-struck to notice.

~~~~~

“Sixer! C’mere!” Mabel held out her hand, trying to temp the cat closer by rubbing her fingers together. He moved forward a few steps before pausing, dipping his head down to sniff at the various bows and ribbons that were scattered over the living room floor.

“Come on, you can join in,” she said cheerfully. Waddles was lounging on the armchair behind her with a rather fetching blue bow around his neck, and her own hair was decked out with so many clips, ribbons, and bows that her head felt twice as heavy as normal. She needed a new model for her fashion extravaganza, and the cat had wandered into the room at just the right time.

She made a soft clicking noise with her tongue, luring him the last few steps into grabbing range, and then swooped him into her lap, applying the hairbrush to his side before he had a chance to figure out what was going on. His fur was silky-smooth after a few months of her attention, and he submitted to the brushing peacefully, settling down and starting to purr quietly.

Then he perked up again, turning his head to stare at the doorway when Grunkle Ford poked his head around the frame.

“Mabel? Did you call?”

Mabel wasn’t sure how she felt about Grunkle Ford. He was super cool, of course. He’d been on lots of amazing adventures, and had fought monsters and built a ton of wacky gadgets and gizmos. He had a laser gun, and although she hadn’t yet broached the subject of bedazzling his journals in the week or so that he’d been back, she definitely thought she had a real chance on that one.

But she didn’t like the way he acted toward Grunkle Stan, or the way Dipper idolized his ‘lone wolf’ trailblazer shtick so much.

Still, he was family, and she loved him, so she gave him a big smile, grabbed the cat under the armpits, and held him up for inspection.

“Nope! I was calling Sixer over!”

He blinked at her, then at the cat, looking confused. “Excuse me?”

“He’s Grunkle Stan’s cat!” Mabel explained cheerfully, internally horrified that a whole week had gone past and Ford hadn’t met him yet. Another crime, and really there should be a law about being able to meet any nearby cat immediately as soon as you arrived at a new place. “He’s got six fingers, just like you!”

Ford stared at the cat for a long, silent moment. “Sixer is… Stanley’s cat?” he eventually said.

“Yep!”

Another long moment of staring. Ford took a deep breath. “Would you excuse me for a moment, Mabel,” he said evenly, and turned and walked out of the room.

Mabel stared after him, head tilting to the side. She shifted her grip on Sixer, turning him around so they could face each other. “What was that all about?” she asked the cat.

“Stanley!”

The girl, the cat, and the pig all jumped as the furious shout echoed around the house from Grunkle Stan’s office.

“Gah! Haven’t you ever heard of knocking, you nut?” Stan’s voice was just as loud, and equally angry. “I almost dropped my coffee!” 

“Your cat is named Sixer?”

“Yeah? What’s it to ya?”

“That’s my name!”

“Ohhhh,” Mabel said to herself, wincing and cuddling the cat closer.

“Yeesh, cool your briefs, it was just a nickname!”

“My nickname!”

“Yeah? And I’m the one who gave it to you, I can give it to someone else if I want!”

“No you can’t!”

“Well now you’re just being-”

“Is that my coffee mug?”

“Hey! Let go, it’s- it was in your cupboards, what, you expect me to have put all your stuff in storage for thirty years?”

“Give it to me!”

“No!”

There was a short silence, then the sound of shattering ceramic.

“My mug!”

“My coffee!”

“I can’t believe you just broke-”

“Me? You’re the one who grabbed-”

“Don’t you pin this on me!”

There was a thump, a crash, and the sound of furniture breaking.

“Stanley!”

“Stanford!”

Dipper wandered into the living room, giving Mabel an uncertain look as he approached.

“Uh… is everything okay?”

“I think,” Mabel said carefully, as another loud thud resounded through the house, “that Sixer was Grunkle Ford’s nickname when they were kids.”

“So?” Dipper asked. “What’s that-”

“You can’t just keep stealing all my-”

Crash!

“Ohhhhh,” Dipper said. “I see.”

“Yeah.”

They listened to the thumps and bangs for a moment.

“I didn’t steal anything, I was just borrowing-”

“‘Borrowing’, my foot! Anyone who hears ‘Sixer’ is going to think of a cat from now on!”

Something shattered. It sounded expensive.

“For the record,” Dipper said, “if you ever meet a cat with Ursa Major on its forehead you have my full permission to call it Dipper.”

Mabel giggled. “Thanks, bro.”

“Get back here you little-”

“Should we… stop them?” he ventured.

“Uh…”

There was another crash and clatter, like chair legs breaking and rolling over the floor.

“Nah,” she said. “I think they’re fine.”

Dipper rolled his eyes, and the walls shook as something slammed into them.

“It’s just a frickin’ cat, Ford! Why do you even care?”

“It’s not about the cat!”

“What?”

“It’s about my name!”

Crash.

“It’s about my house!”

Thud.

“It’s about my life!”

Bang.

There was a brief pause, but Stan must have spoken because Ford burst out, “Yes, this again!”

“You think I would have chosen this?” There was another layer to Stan’s voice this time, not just anger but- rage. “You think I wanted-”

“I don’t care what you wanted!” It was more of a rattle than a crash, like debris getting kicked around in a tussle. “I don’t care what you wanted, Stanley! You stole my life!”

“I wasn’t stealing anything!” The floor vibrated with an impact. “I was just trying to get you back!”

“I never asked you to!”

“Bull-” Stan was, perhaps fortunately, cut off with a winded-sounding grunt. A moment later his voice came back full-force. “You told me to do something!”

“Not this!”

There was another, very final-sounding thump.

Then Stan’s voice, boiling over with frustration - and exhaustion.

“What do you want from me, Stanford?”

“I want my life back!”

“You can have it! Why do you think I’ve been keeping this place safe for you for so long?”

“Safe?” Ford spat. “You call this safe? You’ve turned my house into a tourist trap!”

“So? Why do you care!”

“Because there’s no place for me here anymore!”

The shout echoed around the house. Dipper and Mabel, who had been listening rather apprehensively to the fight, leaned a little closer to each other. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she reached up to give it a squeeze with her own.

“Everything is-” There was a pause. “It’s been thirty years, Stanley. There’s no-”

Grunkle Ford’s voice broke, and suddenly everything was quiet.

Mabel exchanged a glance with Dipper.

They waited for a moment. The silence continued.

“See?” she whispered, when it became clear the fight was really over. “Told you they were fine.”

He had to suppress a snort - she could see it in his face - but he kept his expression stern. “I don’t think this is ‘fine’, Mabel.”

They waited for another moment.

“Should we… check on them?” she ventured.

“Probably?”

Neither of them moved.

The silence was deafening.

Then Waddles broke it with one of his cute little oinks, and Mabel snapped to attention.

“Waddles is right!” she declared, setting Sixer delicately on the chair next to the pig. “Let’s go!”

They crept cautiously to the door of Grunkle Stan’s study. It was hanging ajar, a splintered wooden board that looked suspiciously like part of a bookshelf propping it open. Muffled noises came from inside, and with a shared look and a wordless nod Dipper and Mabel moved to crouch on either side of the opening, straining their ears to hear inside.

And what Mabel heard was…

Sniffling?

“...belong here anymore,” Grunkle Ford’s words were unsteady. “I feel like a ghost. Haunting my own house while the world moves on around me.” He blew his nose. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Heh,” Grunkle Stan’s voice was low, and softer than it had been, but it still had an edge to it. “You wanna bet? I’ve been a ghost for thirty years, trying to convince the world you’re still alive.”

Ford scoffed. “You couldn’t possibly know-”

“I’m legally dead, Stanford.”

There was a long pause.

“Do you want to know how many people cared?” Stan continued.

“Well surely-”

“Just ma.” Mabel winced. Not that she was going to stop eavesdropping, but that was something she and Dipper probably shouldn’t have heard. “I think everyone else who knew me was relieved.”

Ford hesitated, then began, “Shermie-”

“Too young. He barely knew I existed.”

There was a long, long pause.

Ford sighed. “When did everything go so wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Stan said, with false cheer. “Probably the minute pa decided to kick me out of the house with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

“You had the car. And a bag with your things.”

“Yeah.” His voice was flat. “And I’m sure that made such a difference.”

Silence.

“...I’m sorry, Stanley.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I never reached out.” Ford sighed again. “I’ve… I’ve thought a lot about it these past thirty years. What I would say if I ever saw you again. I… I should have started with that. I’m sorry I shut you out for so long.”

There was a pause.

“Thanks.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Why did you name your cat after me?” Ford asked. He sounded genuinely curious.

Stan snorted. “You seriously need to ask?”

“What?”

“I’m not exactly the kind of guy who keeps pets. The goat just hangs around, it’s not like I-” He sighed.

Another pause.

“We found him on the porch one day, shivering in the rain. Soos brought him in, and I was gonna send him home with the kid, but then…”

“You noticed the paws.”

“It’s been a long thirty years, Ford. I figured… maybe I was too much of a screwup to help you. At least I could help him.”

There was a soft sigh. It sounded like Ford.

“You’re not a screwup, Stanley,” he said.

Stan sounded genuinely surprised. “What happened to ‘you botched all the repairs, you should’ve never touched the portal in the first place’?”

“You still managed to bring me back.”

“Which you’re pissed about.”

“Yes, well. I was in the middle of-” Ford cut himself off with a sigh. “It was… unfortunate timing. And the manner in which you repaired the portal has caused… issues. Which I now have to deal with.”

“Like the ceiling caving in?”

“It didn’t cave in, it’s still supported by-” He stopped. “But, yes. Like that. Nevertheless, I am still… grateful, to be back in my home dimension.”

There was a pause, and then Stan said, surprised and pleased, “Ford… was that a ‘thank you’?”

Ford had an audible eye roll in his voice. “Fine. Yes, Stanley, thank you for giving me a way home.”

Stan sounded like he was smiling. “Any time, bro.”

Ford made a noise like a shudder. “Please don’t do it again.”

Stan snorted. “No promises. You just try not to fall in again.”

“I’ll do my best,” Ford said dryly.

They were silent for a moment.

Then Stan said, slowly, “And for the record… you’ll always belong here, Sixer. That’s what family’s for.”

Ford’s voice sounded hopeful. “Really? You mean that?”

“‘Course I do.”

There was a clothy sound, like arms sliding around torsos in a tight embrace. A moment of silence, then a distinct, clear, patpat.

Grunkle Ford sighed. “We should probably clean up this mess.”

Grunkle Stan groaned, and there were the sounds of them both shifting and standing. “Start kicking all the big bits into the corner. I’ll go get a broom.”

His footsteps approached the door. Dipper and Mabel, suddenly pulled back into awareness of their own presence, exchanged a wide-eyed look. As one they stood, tiptoeing a few steps away from the door and then booking it down the hallway as fast as they could before either of their Grunkles could spot them.

~~~~~

That evening, Mabel made her way down the stairs slowly, yawning and rubbing her eyes. She went to the kitchen: grabbed a glass, and filled it with water from the tap. After a moment’s consideration she grabbed a second one for Dipper, and then turned to bring them both back upstairs to bed.

As she was passing the living room, she spotted Ford out of the corner of her eye. He was alone, standing by the coffee table, and holding Sixer in his arms.

“You’re a lucky cat, you know that?” he whispered, smiling down at the fuzzball and scritching him gently on the head. “To have been taken in by Stanley. He’s the best family anyone could have.”

She moved on before he could spot her, smiling as she made her way upstairs. Yeah, she decided. She definitely liked Grunkle Ford.

Everything was going to be alright.