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#they’re just a gnome type food yknow <- no one knows what he’s talking about
catboirights · 1 year
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Jellybeans are a gnome food
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gordvendomewhore · 4 years
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heyo this was supposed to be attached to a reblog of @schoolfullofmorons‘s post but it is so outrageously long and has taken several days and therefore is its own post now LMAO
because this is super long, everything is gonna be under the keep reading thingy teehee
anyway,,, i present to you: all nine preppies, and how they would act during quarantine 
(please note that these are just headcanons and honestly are pretty ooc considering the fact they’re all assholes who would protest quarantine with signs that say “WE WANT HAIRCUTS” but GOD i just wanna pretend they’re decent people for a day or two)
derby:
thinks the virus is a joke and would 100% protest quarantine, but still gets SUPER antsy and jumpy when anyone coughs or sneezes around him
wastes a bunch of water and half a bottle of soap washing his hands for ten minutes straight, but totally not because he’s scared or anything!! the virus still totally isn’t real!!!
since there’s only the household help he can boss around, derby gets bored and lonely pretty quickly, and misses feeling in control.
in attempts to fix this, he tends to call up bif or some of the other preps just to half heartedly yell at them about every little inconvenience that happens in his day to day life, but they’re really dismissive and say things like, “yes, yes, derby, whatever you say.”
(they all know derby is just expressing how he misses them in the only way he knows how.)
derby probably spends a bunch of time lounging around the house, watching the workers do their thing and thinking about how he’s sooooo much better and fancier and richer than them.
however,,,,,, he ends up watching them so often and so intently that the workers get confused and wonder if derby is interested in trying out what they do around the house (cleaning, cooking, gardening, etc.)
so they offer to teach derby, and of course, derby gets wildly upset and most likely threatens both their jobs and their lives haHa
it doesn’t stop him from watching just a tiny bit closer though, you know,,,, just to make sure that these paupers are doing everything to the harrington standard
derby pays off the teachers to keep his grades up and acknowledges school in absolutely no other way.
bif:
while bif is concerned about the virus, he doesn’t really care about school closing down.
school was never his main priority, but he’ll still make sure to tune into a couple of his online classes every week because of the sheer guilt that starts to pile up over time.
however he will NOT do anything with his assignments except read over them, and similar to derby, pays off a nerd to do his homework for him to make it seem like he’s actually doing something.
BUT you can totally bet that bif is one thousand percent upset over the boxing gym being closed down!!
he still has his personal gym in his mansion, which he now uses a lot (partially because he has so much time to kill, but also because he’s still butthurt over jimmy’s scrawny ass beating him)
but it’s not the same because now he can’t train with the other preps!!!!!
how will he know if they’re improving? or if they have the proper stance??? or if they’re swinging with the right force????? or if—
but yeah, bif makes sure to check up on the preps every once in awhile to see their boxing progress
he finds quarantine to be incredibly quiet and empty, in a literal and metaphorical sense.
he isn’t lonely per say, bif actually finds a lot of peace in the silence!
he gets a lot more time to think than he normally does and that’s a gift within itself.
...but his days are usually filled with never ending whining and the loud screaming of faux accents, so the sudden change feels strange, but not unwelcomed.
(plus he still has derby bothering him 24/7 so it’s not like much has changed anyway LMAO)
bif may not admit it out loud, but he misses his prep family clique members a whole lot. :(
gord:
this bitch couldn’t care less about the whole situation.
he spends his days at home binging every movie and tv show known to mankind, expanding on his beauty care regimen, and doing major amounts of online shopping; daddy’s card isn’t gonna just spend itself after all!
he’s actually clearing out the entire aquaberry stock as we speak.
gord is aware of the dangers of the virus, but hey, he’s not stepping a foot outside anytime soon, and he’s always been the hygienic type, so why stress over something out of his control?
this king is absolutely thriving, the outside world truly does not matter to him anymore.
(but did it ever?)
gord will admit that he misses his friends, but it’s not like he has no means of communication with them!
you can bet your ass that every single prep is being hit up with a selfie of gord‘s magnificent face every single day of the WEEK baybee.
gord would also be the time to experiment with new hobbies and activities, yknow like a bunch of random shit like knitting or wood carving just to say he’s actually done something during quarantine.
he’s also the type of person to get really obsessed with social media quarantine too LMAO he probably gained thousands of followers on twt or tiktok or some shit for thirst trapping
gord would 100% open an onlyfans too, but he doesn’t need the money
plus, the world already can’t handle him and he CANNOT be held responsible for the chaos that will ensue if he does more than mere thirst traps
with school, he skips out on the online classes for subjects he doesn’t take an interest in, but rigorously studies for the ones he does care about (especially if they’ll play a big part in law school!!!
tad:
oh poor baby, he’s stuck at home with his horrible excuse of a father.
tad, like the other preps, doesn’t care for school (“money gets you farther in life than education ever will,” derby harrington at some point), but that doesn’t stop him from sucking himself into his education.
he attends all his online classes, does all his homework, studies optional material, does extra credit, anything to keep his mind away and busy from his dad.
(idk what tad’s dad does for a living but let’s just pretend he’s an essential worker and is out of the house often because i do Not Want tad suffering more than he has to)
he’ll take lots of walks around the neighborhood, and spends a lot of time hanging in the park.
plus gord usually calls him every other day or so to keep him company and the two will just chill together and talk.
tad probably gets into some soft hobbies like keeping up a diary, sewing, painting, and maybe even slowly picks up baking again.
gord probably sent him a bunch of tiktoks of people making frog bread and tad knew in his heart that he needed to make frog bread too LMAO
tad is canonically the type of person that would bake for your bday, so he experiments around with cakes and sweet treats in general he thinks the other preps would like.
there’s an Entire Fridge in his house dedicated to his baked goods now. that’s how often tad bakes.
he also looks forward to the day he can see his friends again and plans out all the things they’ll do once they’re reunited.
the preps are more of a loving family than his real family ever was, and tad doesn’t plan to let that fact go by unnoticed in the future :))
parker:
he lowkey goes insane.
parker has no idea what to do with himself now that he’s stuck at home with his parents and sister.
don’t get him wrong, he really loves his family, and genuinely enjoys the family activities his mother forces them to bond over, but what else is there to do?
he’s bored.
plus, parker gets up in his head way too often, and now there’s nothing to distract him.
he never really had any particular hobbies, and you will never catch him doing school work (he pays off his teachers).
and even though being at school sucks because bullworth academy itself sucks, doing things with the other preps made parker forget about his lack self importance and direction in life.
it seems like the end of the world to him, more because of his life and schedule being interrupted rather than the virus itself.
when he’s not with his family, parker spends a lot of time lounging in the mansion’s garden with the garden gnomes, and talks to them pretty often too (we’ve all heard those voice lines LMAO).
parker talks about everything and anything with the gnomes, and allows himself to just rant about life.
and sure, he thinks people who talk themselves 24/7 are hella crazy, but hey!! the gnomes love to listen!!! so therefore parker isn’t crazy!!!!!
he probably ends up doing gardening as a small hobby, and he genuinely likes it!
...even if it does have him down in the dirt and covered in sweat amongst other filth.
parker’s one of the less pretentious preps, so i can see him putting his entitled behavior aside, even if it is only this one time and for this one thing.
after all, his money and status don’t exactly matter anymore; everyone’s busy caring about more dire matters.
after the initial boredom, i can see parker letting loose and maybe even becoming a more decent person while in quarantine.
bryce:
he is 24/7 anxious.
it’s not specifically because of the virus itself, or because of school closing down, but it’s just the whole situation in general that makes him nervous.
bryce is stuck at home with his mother and father, in what bryce likes to call their cozy mansion, but what derby likes to call their oversized blue collar cottage (which bryce finds dumb because his parents don’t even work blue collar jobs).
his father, even during these dire times, is still gambling and wasting their money away, so that just hella adds onto bryce’s anxiety about the situation.
golf & yacht (where bryce canonically works) closes down since it isn’t considered an essential business, and so bryce ends up losing his job.
he’s really desperate to find another place to work, and rightfully so!! he doesn’t want his family to be losing more money than they gain.
bryce probably ends up working somewhere a step above fast food (he isn’t that desperate), like a cafe, since some are still open and surprisingly busy.
because of this, most of his hours are spent split between working and sleeping, and bryce doesn’t exactly have time to think about anything else other than family and money issues (something he thought he’d never have to worry about).
but bryce hides his physical and mental exhaustion quite well, mostly so that his life proceeds without anyone wasting his time with questions of concern.
sometimes the preps that aren’t as judgmental as the others (tad, gord, parker, pinky, bif) will check up on him and even offer to lend his family some money, but bryce knows better than to accept donations of any kind.
he tries to attend the online classes that he can, and does a lot of his homework with tad.
chad:
put simply, chad is fine.
he wasn’t particularly shocked when the virus was reported to be spreading, or when school was closed down, or even when he had to say goodbye to his fellow preps and the harrington house, and leave to his home in old bullworth vale.
chad was never strongly effected by any of this, and honestly is just really relaxed.
chad’s relationship with his parents is quite well (despite their occasional nagging), and he has a lot of hobbies that filled up his time during school and still fill up his time now.
so unlike tad or gord, chad doesn’t go searching for new activities to keep him busy or give him a sense of meaning and accomplishment.
chad wakes up early in the morning, when the sun is still rising, spends his day playing with his dog, chester, jogging around the neighborhood or park, boxing in his home gym, talking with his family, attending his flute lessons (which are now online), and then he goes to sleep with a tired mind, yet a well rested soul.
the only thing he doesn’t do is his school work (he pays off his teachers like derby), but occasionally you’ll see him attend an online class or two.
he lives his life on a clean schedule, and enjoys the alone time he gets during these tough times.
there’s no significant change in how he goes by his days, and chad is perfectly content with that. :)
justin:
he’s vibing.
at the beginning of quarantine, justin probably spent a bunch of time laying in his $10,000 satin sheets, doing nothing but thinking about random shit ranging from whether or not his family should invest in a second jacuzzi, his raging insecurities, how big his muscles are, or if he’ll ever get a chance to talk to the ted thompson himself, but that all gets old REAL quick.
he’s the type of person to be like, “i’m too rich to be sulking around!” even though those two things don’t exactly correlate in this situation LMAO
(but oh well, justin is a prep after all, their whole personalities are based around money.)
similar to bif with his boxing, justin throws himself entirely into swimming!
his family owns an indoor and outdoor pool, but nothing will EVER beat the feeling of swimming in the ocean for him.
there’s just nothing that feels the same, not even a pool with saltwater will ever mimic the feeling.
so justin will often times travel from his cozy home out to the beach just to swim and chill out in the sand for awhile, whether it be for thirty minutes or a whole afternoon.
omg he also gets really into corona virus gossip
*justin the the prep group chat* “guys, i heard that if you put an onion in every corner of your house, you’ll be safe from corona”
“guys did you know that if you drink a shot of vinegar everyday it’ll clean out your immune system?”
“GUYS omg i just heard that if you bathe in a mix of egg yolks and nesquik chocolate milk powder, you’ll be immune to corona!!!”
and everyone is just so tired of him (except for parker who believes almost everything justin says and derby who encourages his behavior on because he lives for chaos)
he pays off his teachers for grades lolol mr. hattrick didn’t get fired for us to just forget these canon facts
honestly justin completely forgets school exists as a whole.
pinky:
pinky is completely sucked into social media.
she has an account on every big platform out there, each one being incredibly active, and each one having a cult following.
and now she gets to be even more active than she was before!!
pinky spends all of her time doing complex photoshoots in her bedroom, experimenting with intricate makeup looks, binging tv shows with gord, and contemplating whether or not she should give herself bangs (you can bet all of this shit and more is going onto her accs too).
pinky also spends a lot of money ordering random shit she doesn’t need and sometimes doesn’t even want, but hey!! it’s free serotonin, and pinky’s therapist says that serotonin is a good thing ahahA
sometimes she’ll even order something and just send it to random addresses just for the fun of it.
pinky is like santa, but with better fashion taste and a little less no slave labor.
speaking of therapy, her sessions are now all online because we practice social distancing in this house teehee
shits and giggles aside however, pinky is thriving!
she’s happy, and healthy, and safe in her mansion, and besides the general feeling of unimportance and lack of meaning during these times where time itself doesn’t feel like it exists at all, she’s fine haHA.
her parents keep nagging her to talk to derby and to “hang out with her future hubby while the streets are empty and there’s free time!” but pinky is NOT breaking quarantine to hang out with a boy who made her wait for a whole three minutes on their date.
(she had a nicer time with jimmy than derby would’ve ever given her anyway.)
surprise surprise! pinky also pays the nerds to do her work, but still attends most of her classes for fun, mostly so she can help tad and bryce with anything if they need it.
real queen shit if you ask me.
whew, thanks for reading all of that if you did!! sorry it was super long but enjoy your preppy food lmao
oh and my anon asks are on now so go ahead and send me some shit if you want to!! headcanon requests, drawing requests, questions in general lol anything
anyway bye byeee uwu
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feferipeixes · 5 years
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Innocence Is Not Knowing That You’re Innocent (2/5)
Belle knows her brother pretty well. He likes comic books, he cheats at board games, and he wants more than anything to be human again. So, when he wakes up one morning with no memory of the fact that he’s a demon, she figures there’s no reason to remind him just yet. He deserves some time to just enjoy being Dipper, and not have to be Alcor.
Unfortunately, she can’t hide Dipper from the demon forever.
Chapter 2: Trouble in Paradise (link to chapter 1)
Special thanks again to @toothpastecanyon​ for beta reading and being super cool!
(See the most updated version on AO3!)
===
“Dipper! Belle! Dinner!”
Belle, jumping around in her room and jamming to Evaporate the Dancefloor by &ndra, pulled out her earbuds. “Is someone calling me?” she yelled.
“Yes, I said it’s dinner time!” Lionel called back.
“Oh. Coming!” She dashed out of the room, ran down the stairs, and took a seat at the table. A plate of spaghetti sat before her. Belle eyed it, frowning.
“Something wrong?”
Belle balanced her chin on her fist. “Dad, what was your artistic intent with this dinner? I love the direction, but, I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it, yknow? It just doesn’t speak to me.”
Lionel gave her a thin smile. “My intent was to make sure you don’t starve.”
“Oh, I’m starving alright. I’m emotionally starved!” She leaned back in her chair, resting the back of her hand on her forehead dramatically. “This might be good enough for you and Dipper, but I need a dinner that makes me think!”
“If you don’t like this, you can make an emotionally stimulating dinner for the three of us tomorrow night. Speaking of which, have you seen your brother? His dinner is going to get cold.”
“I’m here,” Dipper said, shuffling into the room. He took his usual seat at the table -- next to Belle -- and his whole body seemed to droop. Belle raised an eyebrow. She glanced at her dad, who seemed to be having the same reaction
The three of them were silent for a minute, and then Lionel coughed. “So, how was school, you two?”
Belle leaned over the table, putting her weight onto her palms. “It was great! Mindy and I presented our history project and Mrs. Riviera seemed to like it! I personally think bedazzling the poster board is what put us over the top -- Mindy says it was the extra detail we put into finding primary sources about gnomes instead of relying on Wikipedia, but I guess we just think differently!” She slid back into her seat, a satisfied grin on her face.
“Good job. I know you worked hard on that project.” He turned to Dipper, and his smile faded a bit. “Dipper? How about you?”
Dipper poked sullenly at his spaghetti with a fork. “It was okay.”
Belle bopped him on the shoulder. “Come on, you big nerd, you like school too much to not have anything to say about it.”
He shrugged, and swirled a noodle around his fork.
“Didn’t you have a test today?” Lionel asked. “How’d that go?”
Dipper jerked upright, looking like a deer in headlights. “Oh… y-yeah,” he stuttered. “It, uh. It didn’t go so well.”
Belle put down her fork and tilted her head. “Why not?”
“I don’t know, it was weird.” He started fiddling with his fork, trying to avoid making eye contact with either of them. “I thought it’d be a piece of cake, but then I got there and I didn’t know any of the answers. I don’t know why -- I thought I knew this stuff, but it’s just... gone or something.”
“Aw, that’s okay, my bromide! It’s not, haha, it’s not like you’re supposed to know everything!”
“That’s the thing -- for some dumb reason, I didn’t even study! I thought I’d just know.” He turned to Lionel, and shrank back into his seat under his father’s gaze. “Sorry dad… I know I’m supposed to do better than that.”
“It’s alright,” Lionel responded. Dipper picked his head up again, looking even more confused than before. “It’s great that this matters to you, but everyone makes mistakes.”
“I, uh… I just failed a test. Aren’t you mad at me?”
“No….?” Lionel trailed off as Belle furiously tried to signal him to stop, change lanes, take an immediate U-turn, stat! Unfortunately, none of that meaning seemed to be getting communicated to him. He furrowed his brow in confusion, cueing Dipper to look at her too, and so she stopped.
“Anyway,” he continued, “it’s not the end of the world if you don’t know everything. I’m sure it’ll be back by next time.”
Belle bolted out of her seat, jostling the table and spilling some pasta sauce onto her skirt. “Hey dad! Can I talk to you alone for a moment?”
“We’re in the middle of dinner. Can it wait?”
“I guess so,” she responded through clenched teeth.
She sat back down and stared at her plate, trying to ignore the suspicious glances Dipper kept sending her way. He seemed confused enough at her outburst to have stopped asking questions for the minute, and Lionel must’ve taken some amount of the hint as he didn’t try to restart the conversation, so the three of them ate their spaghetti in mostly silence.
It felt wrong -- Dipper usually had some wild conspiracy theory he had been investigating and couldn’t wait to talk to literally anyone about, so he’d regale them at the dinner table while Belle provided comic relief and Lionel watched his kids with amusement and pride. That had been before Gravity Falls; they still had interesting dinner conversations after Dipper found out that he was Alcor in disguise, but they were of a different calibre, because conspiracy theories no longer tickled his interest when he had infinite knowledge. For now, he was basically human, and he should be getting to enjoy the mystery of unsolvable conspiracy theories again, but instead there was silence and Belle felt the pit in her stomach grow and grow.
This wasn’t good, but it was fixable. After dinner, Dipper went to the bathroom and she cornered her dad to remind him that he couldn’t talk about demon stuff around Dipper. When he got out of the bathroom, she pulled him into the TV room and put on Pony Magic Academy, but left the remote near him so he could quickly snatch it up, change it to something else, and forget his suspicions amidst a sibling squabble. It was the tried and true art of distraction, and it seemed to work, but the heavy feeling in Belle’s stomach just got worse as she thought about how easily she was manipulating him.
It’s okay to be protective of him, she thought, as he put on Ghost Hunters and glued himself to the screen.
It’s for his own good, she thought, as they went upstairs and listened to his favorite top 40 hits.
He’s happier not knowing, she thought, as she got into bed and bid her twin goodnight.
I’m doing the right thing, she thought, as she closed her eyes and wandered off to dreamless sleep
---
Belle poked at the food on her lunch tray. It kind of wobbled in response, which was weird because the lunch room had advertised it as “Chicken Soup”. The quality of food in the cafeteria wasn’t usually incredible, but this was something else.
She looked up as Dipper dropped his tray across the table from her and sat down. The gelatinous cube on his tray was reddish-brown instead of green -- he must’ve gotten “Meatloaf”.
“Well, this sucks,” he said. Belle was rather inclined to agree with him. “Do you have any of that rainbow sparkle sugar glitter you always carry around?”
Her eyes lit up. Dipper never usually agreed to letting her put candy sparkles on his food, citing the fact that it “wasn’t technically food” and “had that FDA-banned type of denser sugar that was way more potent than normal sugar”.
“Do I!” she squealed. She fished around in her backpack, and her expression fell. “No I do not.”
They both sighed. He speared a piece of jelly with his fork and looked at it wistfully. “If I die eating this, you’ll tell dad I love him?”
“Only if you come back as a ghost and do the same for me.”
“Yeah, right. If I become a ghost, it better be for a much cooler reason than that. Like… to take revenge on whoever killed me, or maybe ooh to play pranks on hotel guests. You know how they always do that, in the movies? Imagine just pranking rich people in hotels for eternity.”
He laughed, and Belle’s stomach did a somersault. “Yeah but you wouldn’t want to be a ghost, right?”
“If you’re asking whether I want lethal cafeteria food poisoning, the answer is no.”
“No… yknow…” Her eyes shifted nervously. “If- WHEN you die, would you want to be a ghost?”
He seemed to consider it for a few minutes. “I’d say probably not,” he responded finally. “From what I’ve read about ghosts, they’re kind of obsessed with whatever their reason for becoming a ghost is. I’m not really the obsessive type, so I wouldn’t want to get stuck obsessing over something until some ghost hunter puts me out of my misery.”
Belle screwed her face up, torn between relief at the reassurance that she was doing the right thing by keeping Dipper in the dark about his true nature, and amusement at the idea that Dipper wasn’t an obsessive nerd. She settled on a smile, but then the picture wandered into her mind of a demon obsessed with tracking down reincarnations of his human sister, and the smile melted away.
“Hey!” A cheery voice broke into Belle’s thoughts. She looked up to see Onika holding a gold encrusted lunch tray. “Mind if I sit with you two?”
“Sure thing!” Belle trilled. “What’s up?”
“Oh, everything’s great. There was a test in the spells class I’m in and I aced it with flying colors! Literally, the test was to create a rainbow. Most of the class only succeeded in making it rain hair bows. Hey…” She elbowed Belle, and pointed at Dipper. “Why’s Mr. Reality Bender giving me the stink eye right now?”
“Hey Onika, I have to go the bathroom!” Belle babbled, shooting to her feet before Dipper could even open his mouth.
“Okay… good for you…”
“Yeah, but uh, girls always go together, so come on!”
She hooked her arm around Onika’s and dragged her away from the table, leaving behind a very confused looking Dipper.
“What’s going on, Sterling?” Onika asked when they got to the bathroom. “Spill.”
“Don’t mention any demon stuff!” Belle hissed. “He doesn’t remember that he’s Alcor!”
“What? How does he forget something like that?”
Belle rubbed her temples, frustrated that no one seemed to immediately understand the genius behind her madness. “His body’s glitching or something, his memory will come back soon, but I want to hold that off as long as I can because look at how happy being human makes him!”
Onika looked nonplussed. “He seems kinda pissed, if you ask me.”
“Yeah, but he’s always like that! I know he’s happier this way -- he told me when he had his memories that he wishes he could just have a normal, human life, and not have to know what he really is. Now he gets to, at least for a little while!”
“Okay.... that sort of makes sense…” Onika replied, with the air of someone who did not think it made any sense at all, “but if he doesn’t remember that he’s not human, why would he be happy that he doesn’t remember that he’s not human?”
Belle stared at her, opening and closing her mouth several times, gears in her head grinding against the grain to try to fight off a series of thoughts she didn’t want to be having. First dad, and now Onika? Did no one care about Dipper’s happiness other than her?
A sly smile crept onto Onika’s face at the lack of response, and Belle pouted. “He just is, okay? It’s deep inside of him or whatever, I don’t know.”
“Alright, you’re the boss. I’ll just pretend your brother is a normal human that I’m allowed to have a crush on again.” Belle’s jaw dropped, and Onika laughed. “Kidding! I’m kidding. Can we go back to the table now? I’m done not-peeing.”
Dipper had the same annoyed look on his face when they got back. It looked like he’d hardly touched his food in the meantime, and was practically following her eyes as she sat down.
She giggled nervously. “How’s it going, bro-bro?”
“Not bad,” he said slowly. “Having a great lunch over here by myself. How was the bathroom?”
“What? Oh yeah, so much fun. You know me, I love a good bathroom!”
Onika looked back and forth between them. “Hey, is this a weird conversation or is it just me?”
“No, everything’s fine!” Belle replied at the same time as Dipper said “No, it’s weird.” The two of them locked eyes for a moment, and Belle broke into a big, saccharine smile. Dipper rolled his eyes, and went back to his food.
Onika whistled. “Wow, having a sibling the same age as you must be exhausting. Good thing my sister’s 24. Anyway, the reason I came over was to ask if you two are doing anything for Halloween next week. My parents are throwing a party -- it’ll be very fancy and a downright bore, but maybe you’d want to come and keep me company.”
Belle clapped excitedly. “That sounds fun! I bet none of the fancy pantses are gonna use your antigravity pool -- we could take a swim!”
Dipper seemed to sink into his seat, and continued to spoon coagulated meatstuff into his mouth. Belle snapped a finger in front of his face. “Hey! Dipper! Did you hear Onika? Wanna go air swimming on Halloween?”
He shrugged. “That sounds fun, but… it’s Halloween, shouldn’t we be out getting lost in the woods or hunting ghosts?”
Oh yeah. Alcor could fly whenever he wanted. They should spend Halloween doing stuff that a demon wouldn’t enjoy in the same way a human would. She glanced at Onika, who hopefully had come to the same conclusion.
“Hunting ghosts definitely sounds better than a fancy dress party,” Onika said. “Well, I at least figured I’d ask. See you two later!” With that, she got up from the table, dropped her tray in the garbage, and strutted majestically out of the room.
Belle whistled. “She’s really something, isn’t she?” She smiled to herself, and then turned back to her brother, who had somehow sunk even further and was at risk of falling out of his seat altogether. “Hey, what’s going on down there?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll say, cause it looks like you’ve forgotten how gravity works!”
She grabbed his arm and tried pulling him back into his seat, which he obliged to with a large groan. He slumped over, cheek pressed into the table, not caring about the scraps of unknown food he was lying on. Belle prodded him in the forehead a few times, and then cocked her head.
“Well, I guess my brother is broken! I’ll have to find a new one! Seriously, what’s up?”
He sighed. “Okay, it’s just… embarrassing, so don’t make fun of me okay?”
“Definitely not, and that’s a Belle promise!” She mimed zipping her lips and throwing away the key. For some reason, that made him flinch.
“Okay. I’m just tired of only hanging out with your friends. Don’t get me wrong, Onika’s great, but it’d be nice if I had some friends of my own.”
Belle slapped herself in the forehead. “Ohhhhhh, duh! How could I be so delightfully naive? Yeah, you should make some friends! I can help you! I’ll give you tips!”
“You’re weirdly enthusiastic about this,” he said, picking himself up. He grimaced at the sticky patch that his shirt had received from lying on the table. “Thanks, though. Twins?”
Belle beamed and fist-bumped him. “Twins!”
The bell chose that moment to ring, and the room was filled with clattering as people scrambled from their seats. “Oh, heck-a-poo, we’re gonna be late for gym class!” Belle babbled, jumping up.
“Maybe later we’ll figure out some Halloween plans?” Dipper asked, after they’d emptied their trays and were heading out of the room. “If I’ve got new friends by then, we can -”
He was cut off by a carton of milk colliding with his face and exploding. He stumbled, eyes closed and sputtering, and Belle gasped.
“Hah, nerd!” chortled a voice in the crowd of people streaming from the room.
“Are you alright?” Belle asked, pulling him aside. At that moment, the bell rang again, and Dipper’s eyes sprang open in panic.
“Crap, we’re going to be tardy!” he yelped. He grabbed Belle’s arm and ran down the hall to his locker.
“Bro-bro, you’ve got milk on your face.”
“It’s fine! I’ll clean it off in the locker room! If I could only find my gym clothes… argh!” He rummaged through his locker, pulling notebooks and binders out and tossing them aside. “Crap, crap, crap, where are they? I’ll get in trouble if I don’t have them!” He slammed the door shut, and slid down the face of it until he reached the floor.
“It’ll be alright, we’ll just tell Mr. Plinker that you left them at home…”
“No, you don’t understand! This always happens!” His fists were clenched and his face was starting to turn red. “Someone stole them, I know it!”
“What? This always happens?”
“Yeah, some jerks are always stealing my gym clothes and hiding them in toilets, the dumpster, whatever!”
“I, uh…” Belle started to feel like her mind was caught in a taffy puller. “Always? Even… last week?”
“Yes, always, since the start of the year! I’m sick of it, it’s so stupid! I wish I just magically knew where everything was without looking for it!”
He slammed his fist into the locker next to him, and the sound rang abnormally loudly through the suddenly empty hall. Belle opened her mouth to respond, but faltered when she noticed the goop on his face, the icky lumps of dairy left behind as the milk he had been splashed with mysteriously curdled on his skin.
She bit back a gasp -- this didn’t have to be a demonic powers thing, he might have just assumed that the milk was spoiled in the carton, or maybe he hadn’t even noticed because of how angry he was. Now wasn’t the time for her to be planning her next lie (and oh how she wished that wasn’t something she was seriously setting aside time for now). She grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. He grumbled some fashion of thanks, and she walked him over to the boys bathroom so he could wash his face off. She offered to go in with him, but for some reason he wasn’t quite comfortable with that.
So, she was left waiting for him in the hall (she was already late for gym class, so she might as well be as late as him), and it was there that the soup of unwanted thoughts in her head started to curdle too. He’d said that people had been stealing his gym clothes since the beginning of the year, which meant that it’d been happening even when he knew he was Alcor. He definitely could’ve gotten them to stop with his powers, so he must’ve been letting it happen.
But why? Was it because he didn’t want to blow his cover and reveal his true nature? Or… did he actually like being bullied, because it felt like the other students were treating him just like any other teenager? But Dipper without his memories was clearly really upset at being bullied, just like he had been before Gravity Falls. And that led Belle to the thought that she’d been stomping her foot down on more times than she’d like since this whole memories thing began: was Dipper actually happier with his memories than without?
She was still dwelling on it when he came out of the bathroom, face a little less red and all traces of milk gone. He grumbled some more at her, but she barely parsed it, so distracted she was by the way her mind was turning itself over and over again.
It’s okay to be protective of him, she thought, as they walked down the hall to the gymnasium.
It’s for his own good, she thought, as Mr. Plinker yelled at him for losing his gym clothes.
He’s happier not knowing, she thought, to block out the snickering when the two of them walked by a crowd of students on the bleachers.
I’m doing the right thing, she thought, and she felt worse and worse with every passing rationalization until she found herself wishing that this entire thing was just a bad dream from which she’d soon awake.
(AO3 link)
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