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“Stanley,” Ford whispers, barely a breath of air, so quiet it wouldn’t even register without his insistent fingers digging into Stan’s shoulder and dragging him awake.
Stan grunts, clinging to sleep. He was in the middle of a dream about a super hot werewolf dude, and it was just starting to get good…
“Stanley,” Ford whispers again, more urgent this time. His nails dig deeper, all six of them sure to leave crescent shapes behind when they finally let go. Stan blinks and tries to shake him off. Ford probably doesn’t even realize he’s gripping onto old scar tissue, that old brand that lives on Stan’s right shoulderblade and still aches from time to time. The nerve endings never quite knit back together, so Ford’s demanding poking and prodding feel weird and tingly on the skin. Stan rolls his shoulders, but Ford clings.
“What the f–” Stan starts, but Ford claps a hand over his mouth. The urge to lick him is strong, but Stan’s brain finally starts to catch up and realize that maybe, something is actually wrong .
“There’s someone outside the door,” Ford whispers.
Stan blinks and glances at the clock. It’s just past three o’clock in the morning, and the Shack is still and quiet. They’re in Gravity Falls for the dress and suit fittings for Soos and Melody’s wedding, and have been crashing in the guest room while the boat gets repainted. If Stan strains his ears, he can kinda hear Soos snoring down the hall, but that’s it. No creaking, no footsteps, no heavy breathing, hell, not even the sound of some Tiktok or another playing from the kids’ room in the attic. Nothing.
“Probably just dreaming, Six,” Stan grumbles, and rolls over. Ford whines, a little animal sound that Stan hates. He sighs and tries not to roll his eyes. Yeah, it’s probably nothing, but if it’s got Ford’s interdimensional PTSD acting up, Stan’s gonna fix it. “Alright, alright, lemme listen.”
There’s no sound from the other side of the door. Stan waits patiently for what feels like ten years and goes to open his mouth to tell his brother to go back to sleep, but then… he hears it. A tiny, tiny exhale of air, right outside the room.
“Ah, shit,” Stan says. He starts mentally running through the list of potential weapons in the room. His knife and brass knuckles are on the bedside table, but scrabbling for either one of those in the dark would probably make some noise. Granted, they’ve been whispering, so maybe whoever or whatever is out there knows they’re already awake? So maybe Stan should just flip on the light and come out swinging, or–
“Grunkle Stan?” says the whoever or whatever is out there, and it’s Mabel, voice tiny in the quiet.
“Jesus, kid, you about scared Ford to death,” Stan calls. “Come on in.”
The door creaks open slowly, a rectangle of light falling onto the floor cast by the nightlight that Soos insists on keeping in the hall. Stan reaches over and turns on the lamp on the nightstand, bathing the room in a dim yellow glow. With the light on, he can see Mabel in the doorway, wearing pink flannel pajamas and clutching a stuffed rabbit to her chest tightly. Her eyes are red and puffy, her cheeks wet.
“Hey, sweetheart, what happened? Are you okay?” Stan demands, fear ratcheting his heart rate up a notch. Is she hurt? Is she sick? Did someone or something hurt her? And if she’s here, where’s Dipper? Is he okay? Does he know something happened to Mabel?
“Just a nightmare,” Mabel mumbles, wiping her eyes. “A really, really nasty one.”
Stan lets out a breath that’s half relief, half sigh. He scoots over and pats the bed. “Well, come have a seat. Wanna talk about it?”
Mabel shrugs miserably and folds her legs up to sit criss-cross by the headboard. She fiddles with the ear of her stuffed rabbit, which is worn and full of clumsy stitches where she’d mended it over the years. Stan doesn’t know how long she’s had that thing, but he can’t remember a time before it, not even when she was very small and he was being dragged into babysitting once or twice a summer. He’d used to have to tuck the damn thing into bed at night or else she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep.
“It was just Bill stuff,” she says eventually. Stan doesn’t miss the way Ford flinches, but luckily Mabel doesn’t notice. She doesn't seem to want to say anything else, so Stan puts a hand on her back and rubs a few soothing circles, content to sit in the silence with her.
Mabel’s face crumples, and she falls sideways to press herself against Stan’s shoulder. He’s quick to wrap an arm around her and bring her in close, holding her tightly as her shoulders hitch and the tears start to fall in earnest.
“Hey, pumpkin, it’s alright. I’m here. I gotcha,” Stan assures her.
Mabel makes a strangled noise and presses one hand over her mouth, as if trying to keep herself quiet. She’s shaking, the air not quite making its way into her lungs, well on her way to hyperventilating. She’s got one hand fisted in Stan’s t-shirt and the other pressing the rabbit to her chest like a lifeline, her eyes wide and panicked. Stan shushes and rocks them back and forth a little bit, bumping his other shoulder into Ford in the process.
The gentle touch seems to kickstart Ford’s brain, who says matter of factly, “He’s dead, Mabel. We killed him. He can’t hurt you or anyone ever again, I promise.”
Stan tosses a glance at his brother, a little bit shocked by the statement. Usually, it’s Ford having a flashback nightmare, and Stan’s the one repeating he’s dead, he can’t hurt you, he’s dead, he can’t hurt you over and over like a broken record until Ford’s calm enough to rationalize. It’s weird being on the other end of it.
“I know, I know,” Mabel says shakily between huge, gulping breaths.
“And even if he wasn’t, I would never let him get to you again. I promise you, there is nothing in any dimension that I would ever, ever let hurt you. You have my word,” Ford says firmly. He reaches out a hand and gives her knee a gentle pat, almost tentatively.
“Yeah, kiddo,” Stan adds. “Plus, even if something did try to come after you, I’m pretty sure you’d just fuck em up. I’ve seen your right hook and I do not envy the guy on the other end of it.”
Mabel laughs shakily. She takes in a few deeper breaths and coughs a little, wiping her eyes on the fur of her rabbit. She must be starting to calm down, because Stan can’t feel her heart pounding anymore and she’s not shaking nearly as bad.
“I did help kill an all powerful demon and save the world,” she croaks eventually.
“Exactly!” Stan says, giving her a little shake. She laughs again, stronger this time.
“Plus, you survived an entire summer of Stanley’s cooking,” Ford adds.
“Hey! Fuck you!” Stan says. Mabel shushes him and points at the clock, reminding him that it’s still the middle of the night and that people are, in fact, sleeping.
“You’re gonna have to pay the swear jar in the morning, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says, and yawns so hard her jaw cracks.
“You’re almost fourteen!” Stan insists. “You probably hear way worse than this on the school bus!”
Mabel shrugs. “I need the money for ice cream.”
Stan grabs for his pillow and lightly smacks her over the head with it. Mabel lets out an oof and slumps sideways to lay across Stan’s ankles, throwing a hand over her face dramatically and sticking out her tongue like a dead cartoon character. She makes a show of letting out a final death rattle and goes still. After a second, one eye peeks open to make sure Stan is watching.
“Welp, there goes my great niece. Guess I get the money back from the swear jar after all,” Stan says. “Oh well. Goodnight, Ford.”
“Goodnight, Stanley,” Ford says around a grin. Stan reaches to turn off the light, but Mabel rises from her deathbed and shakes her head, biting her lip.
“What’s wrong?” Ford asks, frowning.
“I just… Can you leave the light on? I don’t wanna be in the dark yet,” Mabel says.
“Yeah, no problem,” Stan says.
“I have just the thing!” Ford says, hopping out of bed. He almost trips when he lands because he’s wrapped so tightly in the blankets, but he manages to stay upright, socked feet sliding slightly on the wood floor. He hurries over to his duffel bag and roots around for a second. Stan and Mabel make eye contact and shrug at each other while Ford mumbles things like, “No, not that… Oh, that’s where that went… Forgot I had that… Aha! Here we go!”
The thing he pulls from his backpack looks like a lightbulb, but if a lightbulb was made of metal and also inexplicably shaped like a fish.
“What’s that thingy?” Mabel asks, eyes wide.
“A nightlight, of sorts! Brought it back from… well, I can’t remember which dimension, but it’s very cool! Observe,” Ford says, and places the weird object on the windowsill. He presses a place near the fish’s eye, and the metal starts to glow a soft, gentle orange. A quiet humming starts up, almost like white noise but warmer somehow. It immediately makes Stan want to go back to sleep.
“That’s so neat!” Mabel whisper-shouts.
“Isn’t it! It’s technically a particle ionizer, which I use when I’m welding some of the more tricky off-Earth metals, but I realized that it makes for a fantastic nightlight when it’s charging. I’m glad I brought it with me!”
“Why’s it shaped like a fish, though?” Stan asks, because the curiosity is eating him alive.
Ford looks confused. “It’s not? It’s shaped like a–” and here he makes some sort of noise that his universal translator must not be able to pick up on “--but I can see how you would think it looks like a fish.”
“Cool. Wanna take the fish back to bed with you, pumpkin?” Stan asks.
Mabel hesitates and goes back to fidgeting with her rabbit. “Um, could I… stay here with you guys? I don’t like the triangle window upstairs. I mean, usually I’m fine, it’s literally just a triangle, but right now it gives me the heebie jeebies.”
“Eh, why not, this is a California king anyway,” Stan says. “But you gotta be warned, Sixer steals all the blankets.”
“I do not!” Ford insists indignantly.
“It’s okay, Grunkle Ford, I steal blankets, too,” Mabel says. She sets her rabbit gently down on the pillow and settles in, her eyes fluttering closed. For the first time Stan notices the dark circles under them, and wonders how long she’d been awake and terrified before she’d gotten the courage to come downstairs and wake them up.
“Goodnight, Mabel,” Ford says, leaning back on his own pillow. Stan takes a second to be proud of him for being willing to go back to sleep after this. It used to be that Ford would wake up in the middle of the night and stay awake for the next two or three days, and sometimes the progress takes Stan’s breath away a little bit. He’s had Ford back for long enough that it doesn’t feel unreal anymore, but sometimes the weight of it all sends him mentally staggering.
“Goodnight, Grunkle Ford. Goodnight, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says sleepily.
“Goodnight, sweetie,” Stan says, and reaches over her to turn off the light. In the orange glow of Ford’s weird fish welder nightlight, the room is warm and soft. The gentle humming of the ionizer charging is a welcome background noise. He’d gotten so used to the sound of waves slapping the sides of the boat that now the quiet of being on land is sometimes deafening, and Stan already knows he’s about to have the best sleep of his life.
“And I better not wake up freezing cold,” Stan grumbles into the quiet.
Mabel and Ford both laugh.
Sure enough, Stan wakes up freezing cold, with his brother on one side and his niece on the other, and both of them are wrapped warmly in every single damn blanket in the room. Stan sighs, reaches over, and grabs a fistful of the blanket that Ford is peacefully dozing in.
Stan gives the blanket a yank and relishes Ford’s indignant squawk.
Last night was rough, but it’s gonna be a good day.