dumb bunny

this was painful, agonizing, really any other synonym for just the worst moment ever. it felt like they stood their for hours, awkwardly staring at each other while others looked on. it would’ve been bad enough just to experience nick’s awkward shuffling and throat clearing, but to have an audience made it a hundred times worse. when he places a kiss on the top of her head, judy has a hard time hiding the disappointment on her face. she lets him lead her away from the mingling party, now that people have lost interest in the moment, she could finally release the breath she’s holding. “yeah.” she agrees with a grumble, shrugging carefully out from under his arm. it wasn’t fair to be upset, she knew that. they were figuring things out and they didn’t need their first kiss to be in public. though it was hard to tell if there would ever be a first, or any. “i’m not sure if mistletoe is really an hr approved office party decoration. seems like it could be problematic.” @nickswildbro​

honestly, it could always be worse. it’s the one thing nick keeps saying to himself as judy settles in on the couch next to him. “eh, your couch ain’t so bad. you’ll be fine.” he jokes, even though it’s clear that even if they were at his place he wouldn’t let her sleep on the couch. silence falls over them quickly, playful energy leaving the room as judy calls tonight a slumber party. his instinct is to call her out on how terribly lame that sounded, stare at her dubiously and draw attention to it. but he knows judy, and knows more than anything she’s probably already beating herself up for it. who wouldn’t be. “i’ll only let you call it a slumber party if you bake me cookies.” he shrugs, forcing a small laugh to hopefully help with some of the awkwardness. “or whatever the fuck it is people do at slumber parties.” 

“did you never have sleepovers as a kid?” she asked, brow raised curiously and a smile curly her lips. “there are so many fun possibilities. If you want to bake cookies we also need to paint each other’s nails, gossip, and watch a romantic comedy. that’s like slumber party rules.” she teased, thankful as ever at nick’s ability to make just about anything into a joke. of course, there probably some deeper issues there that needed unpacking, but that seemed like a conversation she would actually want to venture into less than the one they were already currently avoiding. “somehow you strike me as the video games, popcorn, and action movies type myself though. or maybe a ghost stories, dorritos, and forts?”

“you know me, always looking out for ya.” he smiles, taking his seat at the table across from her. there’s a lot of truth to his words, even if they’re said with his usual level of amusement. as if hiding behind carefully placed humor makes the words, and the feelings behind them, infinitely less real.  but as he sits here with her, a brief silence falling over them, he realizes this is far too unbearable for him to sit and accept. he’d need to keep the conversation going, keep them both distracted, in an effort to keep things from growing tense. to keep them from having to talk about this shit again – he’d literally do anything to avoid another conversation about unspoken feelings and all the things they can’t do with them. “so, any activity in particular you’re thinking of dragging me to do?” 

“i’m not dragging you anywhere.” she laughed, maybe just a little harder than necessary with the added relief of the break from the silence. “i have activities i want to do, but i’m not letting you scrooge up my holiday fun. so you’re not allowed to come unless you want to.” as if there was anyway judy would even want to do anything without nick. she was sure if he chose not to come along she’d most certainly lose all interest. ever since they’d met the two had been practically inseparable, and though they had their own lives independent of each other, judy always preferred to be in nick’s company.

things with judy were somehow still as awkward and complex as before. their conversation had resolved very little other than addressing the obvious feelings they had for each other. but from there nick had no idea what to do or how to move forward. a fear of commitment keeping her at arms length when he should be bringing her in. but nick had never been good at relationships, and the very thought of potentially ruining his entire relationship with Judy keeps them rooted to uncertainty. “yoooo,” he greets, rejoining her at the bench she was sitting at while he grabbed them food. “so, i got the little pinwheel things you wanted. but also look at these little snowball cookies.” he sets the food down in front of her, smile bright as if there wasn’t so much more they should be talking about other than sugar cookie balls with m&ms in them. “they’re good as shit. i ate like five on the way back” @cfficerjudyhcpps

“i appreciate you saying a couple for me.” judy teases as she takes one of the cookies off the plate before he can even finish setting it down. she wasn’t sure what’d happened, but somehow the relationship had become even more confusing. she wasn’t sure what she’d expected to happen after they admitted their feelings for each other, but staying in the exact same place they were hadn’t been it. though she couldn’t say she wasn’t grateful, at least she got to keep her best friend. of course, even though she didn’t want to risk ruining their friendship, she was becoming more and more aware of how much she kind of wanted to take that risk anyway. but instead of saying any of this out loud, she just popped the cookie into her mouth.

nick listens patiently as judy barrels through her long winded sentence. under normal circumstances he’d make a joke to lighten the tension, something dumb and small to imply he’d long ago checked out of the conversation. but given the nature of her words, the reason for her clear nervousness, he feels the least he can do is keep his stupid jokes to himself for once. “i mean, do i ever wanna talk about anything?” he asks, because Judy wasn’t necessarily wrong to assume he wouldn’t want to talk about it. but wanting to and needing to were two very different things. “weird?” nick lets the word hang around them, biting the bottom of his lip nervously as he tries to think of a decent way to explain how exactly it had made him feel. “yeah, little bit.” he finally admits with a sigh, this whole thing was weird. “but not cause i’m tryna dub you or nothing. i just…i don’t know i was caught off guard? i just didn’t know you felt that way.”

“oh, well. surprise?” judy asked, raising her hands slightly in entirely understated fake enthusiasm. a small, feeble attempt to lighten the tension. she wasn’t sure what else to say really. “i guess i’m a little caught off guard that it surprises you.” she admits. she had never been truly sure if her feelings for nick had ever been as obvious as she feared they were. he was her best friend, her partner, and he was also so far out of her league. she knew that, and accepted it. he went out with gorgeous and interesting people, judy was...neither of those things. not that she wasn’t great, she just never saw herself as being, well, nick’s type. they were friends and she was happy with that. despite, occasionally, thinking about what it would be like to be...more. “i mean you’re my best friend. doesn’t everybody have a crush on their best friend at some point?”

“come on,” nick sighs. as much as he himself didn’t want to necessarily have this conversation he wasn’t about to let judy dodge the topic. not when her answer was initially what had started any of this. he didn’t necessarily fault her for it, knowing all too well that it’s easy to let nerves take over when dealing with a situation this fragile. and, maybe he should handle it with more care as well. one wrong word and their friendship could shatter, healthy functional relationship broken. memories of one of the best things in his nothing more than a million shards of glass on the floor cutting deep, a constant reminder of how they fucked up. the thought alone makes him hesitate. “you…said what you said and now you don’t want to talk about it?”

judy almost asked what he meant, but playing any dumber at this point was putting it on thick, even for her. “i don’t not want to talk about it. I just...you know...assumed you wouldn’t want to talk about it. so i’ve just been pretending i didn’t say anything so that you could ignore it. but if you don’t want to ignore it, i guess we should talk about it.” she was well aware she was babbling, but she was afraid to stop talking, as if whatever filled the silence after her would ruin everything. potentially, it could, potentially whatever came next had the power to ruin the best thing in her life thus far. she filled her cheeks with air, holding in her breath for a moment before letting it out in a small burst of wind. “was it...did it make you feel weird?”

nick pauses, taking a moment to think over her question and more importantly how he was going to answer. sarcasm was the instinct, and he found it hard to keep the desire to deflect from the conversation with humor at bay. but he’s almost certain that would only create more confusion and welcome in more tension to their relationship. not talking about things has to be how they ended up here. when she continues speaking, instructing him to be honest he can’t even try to bite back the amused smile that touches his face. “how you know i was gonna say nothin? what was that thing people say about assuming?” truth be told he was probably going to say nothing, it was funny how well she knows him. “i was thinking about you,” he answers easily with a shrug. “‘about us i guess.”

“us? what about us?” judy asked dumbly, though the panic only rose in her chest. she was sure now that she’d ruined everything. now things were going to be weird and nick had to give her ‘the talk’. how they’re just friends and he’s sorry if he led her on and all the things that are so agonizing to sit through and so very much what she had been hoping to avoid by not saying anything. ever. why did she have to answer such a stupid question? her brain was working quickly, hoping to come up with someway to recover. god, nick was her best friend, her partner, she couldn’t lose that.

for the bulk of the day nick had been in his own little world. head consumed with thoughts and concerns about something that, overall, shouldn’t even be that big of a deal. and yet, here he is aversion to feelings and discussions about them making him distant and distracted. he turns to look at judy, taking note of the silence that hangs around them, and it isn’t until he sees her expectant gaze on him that he realizes she was waiting for something. “hmm?” he hums inquisitively, but not wanting to make it clear that he wasn’t listening he follows up with a nod. “yeah, yeah. whatever you want hopps.” giving into whatever judy wants is usually the easy way out of anything and he hopes the agreement is enough to distract her from the fact that he clearly hadn’t been paying attention.

judy’s face fell and she had to look away, hoping nick wouldn’t see it. he’d been off all day, distracted really, and judy couldn’t help feeling anxious. she was sure she was overthinking it, that he was probably just tired or had a lot on his mind, it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with her. of course, that didn’t convince the knot in her stomach to untie. “what’s going on, nick?” she finally asked, her tone almost desperate. she couldn’t go through the rest of the day like this, let alone any longer. they just needed to talk, they could figure this out. “and don’t say it’s nothing. you know that i know when you’re stuck on something. so what’re you thinking about?”

“what? that’s so...what a crazy question. i mean, hypothetically, i guess i would say yes, but that would just never happen?”

moving the camera so it was now pointing to the ground, though still filming to catch any audio of something the woman might say, dipper shakes his head. “no - i’m a college student. and not a journalist one. i promise.” his words are all true. he’s not technically a report nor a journalism major - but he leaves out the mention of anything regarding his documentary or investigation of the island. “yeah, yeah. i’d like to open a case about her. what could you tell me if i did that?”

judy nods and reaches out to carefully hit the power button on his camera. she’s not that dumb. she wants to help him, but she can’t run the risk of sensitive information getting out, even if it’s that they don’t have much to go on. “i can’t tell you much. we’re trying to identify everyone who’s gone missing and talking to the people who witnessed it. right now it seems to be random, but i’m not so sure.” she admits, though she has no real basis for that suspicion. “did your sister happen to have or know of anyone with powers?”

nick’s annoyance dulls quickly, as it often does when it comes to judy. he doesn’t fully know what had been going on with her this morning, but it’s clear whatever it was isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. at least not right now. “shit, you’re really out of the loop huh?” nick asks, finding it staggering to be the one of the two of them that’s further ahead on this. his night had gotten cut short early, free time shifting into time to run to work once calls about disappearances started coming in at the precinct. judy not knowing only further confirms today was going to be a ride. “got about a couple dozen calls about missing people. some say they watched the person disappear right in front of them, others turn their back for one second and their friend is gone the next.” nick shakes his head, leading judy over to his own desk so he can grab his keys. “c’mon I’ll grab you a coffee and we can talk about it some more. cause honestly…hopps i could use your optimism right  now.”

“ok, i’m with you, partner. we’ll figure this out.” she meant it, too. he’d asked for optimism, but the statement had come out even without her thinking about it. she and nick could figure out anything together, she was sure of that. so she followed him, thinking over the information he was giving her, her own personal chaos all but gone from her mind for the moment. “people don’t just disappear into thin air, right?” she asked, though she wasn’t so sure about that. “maybe it’s linked to these powers that people have been reporting. maybe some people developed invisibility. or lost control of their teleportation?” she tried to put a reason to it, working through it out loud for both their benefit, or so she hoped. “is there anything all the missing persons have in common? were they in the same place? or dare they all suspected of having powers?”

“mabel pines,” he answers quickly, though he doubts there’s much of anything the police could actually do to find her or any of the other missing individuals. dipper wasn’t here for help - he was here to find out what the authorities already knew. “do you have any leads on what happened? how many people have been reported missing so far? do you think the magic of the island plays any part?”

“mabel pines.” judy repeated as she wrote down the name. suddenly there were a lot of questions and judy’s eyes widened. “are you a reporter or something?” it was then that she spotted the camera in his hand and she was sure he noticed her realization. “i can’t discuss an ongoing investigation, i’m sorry.” she shook her head, taking a deep breath. she couldn’t just leave it at that and walk away. nick would probably scold her for this, but she was getting used to that, too today. “but if you’d like to open a case for you sister...maybe i could help.”

the excitement he had at filming the festival was gone. no longer was dipper recording for the sake of a fun little vlog - now he documented everything as proof of what was happening. it was probably wrong of him, to be doing this while his sister was one of the missing people, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t also looking. and asking just about everyone if they had seen mabel or knew anything in general about the disappearances. so when he saw a policewoman alone, he jumped on the opportunity. “my sister’s missing. but i know you probably haven’t seen her. i’d rather actually ask you a few questions.” his camera was on and recording, but he held it low so that it wasn’t too glaringly obvious that he was filming.

there was something odd about this interaction, but it didn’t seem to be necessarily in a bad way. there was anything about the boy or his demeanor that raised any red flags to her. not yet anyway. and she felt for him losing his sister, she couldn’t imagine. “alright. i’ll do my best to answer any questions you have.” she agreed, though the knot in her stomach tightened, knowing she probably couldn’t give him much. “first though, what’s your sister’s name?”