Gravity Falls Twangst

Innocent Speculation

Breakfast time at the Pines Mystery Shack: today's forecast, Stan-cakes with scrambled eggs, and a few showers of orange juice and milk.

Stan was doing the work at the stove, pretending he couldn't hear the kids talking about their exciting adventure with the gremloblin again.

It was amazing what you could get away with listening in on when you wore a hearing aid and people thought your hearing was worse than it was; though of course, it helped that those kids had about as much concept of stealthy conversation as if they'd had megaphones strapped over their mouths. Dipper, especially-if Stan could hear perfectly the way he kept muttering his feelings about Wendy to himself, she could probably hear it too.

He quickly flipped the Stan-cake to keep it from burning, and tuned back into the conversation in time to hear Dipper ask in a concerned tone, "You're okay, right? You weren't traumatized by what you saw?"

"Nah, I don't think I looked long enough," Mabel reassured him. Then, her voice becoming a little less buoyant than usual, "I...started to see something. Lots of...darkness-probably with a claymation figure of some kind just waiting to leap out and grab me, rawrr!!!!"

Both the kids laughed, and there were a few playful scuffling noises. Stan got the feeling the kid might have seen worse than she let on, but didn't wanna talk about it and was trying not to worry her brother; not that he blamed her, that whole experience sounded terrifying.

********

A short silence passed between them, before Dipper suddenly asked, "I wonder what my worst nightmare is? I mean, I know the kind of stuff that scares me, but I dunno which of it I'd classify as the worst thing, there's so many options." He began listing off a series of fears and insecurities, trying to classify his terror level for each of them.

Then out of the blue Mabel dropped her voice to a (still very loud) whisper. "Ooh, what about Grunkle Stan's worst nightmare?"

Stan's hand clenched around the handle of the frying pan.

Not getting the portal to work

Getting it to work, but someone-like the government-finding out and coming to take it away before I can use it

Finding out I'm too late-Ford's gone forever and it's all my fault

Something happening to you two because I wasn't there or couldn't keep you safe

You finding out the truth and hating me for it

Being back in that trunk

Being all alone again

Being worthless

Dipper snorting snapped him out of it. "Probably something like the tax collectors showing up."

********

The kids giggled, and shot out more suggestions, like Li'l Gideon gaining more business than Stan, or Lazy Susan deciding to show up at the Shack to find out why he hadn't called her back after her fifty-thousand phone messages.

He knew they didn't know any better, that it just meant the image of himself that he showed everyone was working perfectly.

That didn't stop him from slamming their plates of breakfast down on the table a little harder than he'd meant to, making both kids jump in alarm.

Stan coughed. "Sorry."

Then, when they continued to look at him like deer in the headlights, he turned and walked out of the kitchen to go get dressed for work.

It was fine.

Everything was just fine.

He didn't care what they thought about him anyway.

********

Poor Stan.

But at least we know better, right?

And soon enough the kids will too.