#wendip week

Mod Fere here.

Set in 2022, Wendy, Pacifica, & the twins are all at Willington U. Pacifica is going for her bachelor's degree in business. Mabel is attempting to dual degree in teaching and child development. Wendy is going for her bachelor's degree in forestry after working two years with her dad to save up for college. And Dipper is juggling a bachelor's degree in archeology, being a division 1 track star, and a girlfriend.

Everything is going great, except Wendy has a problem.

Wendy's problem is that she is not the girlfriend...

________________

Prompt - On 4 Wheels

(Ao3) rated T/M some mature themes and mentions of use of alcohol.

Dipper Pines woke up with a mild headache that got replaced immediately by a soothing smell of fresh laundry, fresh air, and freshly brewed coffee…

It took him a moment to completely wake up from what he was almost sure was very pleasant dream. clutching the pillow, he rolled from left side of his bed to the right…

And he sharply woke up when re remembered that his bed wasn't that wide.

As he sat up, he looked around to ponder his situation, and with his eyes getting used to the morning sun illuminating the wooden cabin, he slowly realised where he was.

He was in Wendy's bed.

His heart started beating faster in his chest as he frantically tried to remember what happened last night, and with that, the headache came back.

They were… on a date, as hazy images began to appear in Dipper's head. Yeah, it was eight of August, and for that, Lazy Susan prepared a special: a date dessert for dates on a special date.

And Dipper slightly choked when he realised it was spiced with just a little bit of something stronger…

Cold sweat appeared on his forehead. He was of age, but even now he was cautious about alcohol, and with holes in his memory it was evident that Susan might have overdone it.

But that wasn't the worst. he did not remember what happened to-

"Wendy…"

As if to reply to his mind's calling, the door opened and Wendy walked in, holding two cups of steaming coffee. She greeted him with a warm smile and oddly salacious voice.

"Hey, there, tiger".

She sat on the side of the bed, handing him the cup.

"I thought you'd sleep longer after that night."

"Th-that night?", Dipper replied, anxious about her next line.

"Well, yeah.", she took a sip, "You've done a lot."

The gulp of warm coffee got stuck in his throat, though the burning sensation was nothing compared to the warmth of her tone.

"I mean, I was kinda tired too, but let's face it, you did most of the work. By the way… thanks."

Wendy brushed her shirt… and only now Dipper realised that it wasn't hers.

It was his.

He put the cup away and looked at what he was wearing, quickly realising he was half-naked.

"Shame, I quite liked that green one", Wendy spoke with some tenderness in her voice, "But it's in shreds now, all thanks to you…".

She turned her eyes at him, but instead of anger, he saw once more a seductive sight so far only his dreams could have produced.

"I might still have marks…"

"W-Wendy I'm sorry!", he sudden;ly exclaimed, almost jumping out of bed, but promptly remembering his naked chest. "I- I shouldn't have-I should have-I didn't-I-"

"Dude, what the heck?", she asked, taken aback.

"Please, Wendy, I know that there were things between us back then, and then there were more thing, and-"

The redheqad watched as Dipper gesticulated, mumbling in a dialect only he could fully comprehend as thoughts raced and ultimately outran words shooting out of his mouth.

"-the-the point is…", he took a long breath, "I don't want to ruin our friendship. Like, I know I was pushy and needy back then, and maybe yesterday, but- The last thing I would want is to lose you as a friend."

Wendy blinked a few times, before she burst into laughter.

"Dude.", she spoke as she calmed down, "Don't you-oh gosh, you don't remember what happened, do you?"

"No, and I swear that-"

"So you don't remember the pussy?"

"thewhatnow"

Wendy slapped her forehead.

"The cat! The one Lady Susan found last Summer!"

"Oh! You mean the mountain lion."

"Semantics", she took another sip, "Well, after we ate our dessert, we found that it climbed a tree , and it couldn't get down."

"But it is a mountain lion."

"Which is still very much a type of CAT", Wendy gesticulated, explaining her point. "So you tried helping it, and then it fell on me, and it torn my shirt to shreds…"

"A-are you-"

"Chill, dude, ;et me finish", she replied, "So then you offered me your shirt, and you caught it in that torn one, you fought all over the ground, and once I pacified it with some fresh cream we gave it back to Lazy Susan. And then I took you home so I can give you the tetanus shot."

Dipper swallowed loudly.

"And then…"

"And then you fell asleep after a fight with a mountain lion! Why do you think I called you 'a tiger'?"

Dipper stared absent-mindedly into the dark abyss of his coffee.

"So we didn't-"

"No.", Wendy replied quickly, chuckling softly under her breath and rolling her eyes.

"Oh… G-good" . "Good?", Wendy suddenly raised her brow, as her smile vanished, "I thought you would be saddened…"

"N-No, Wendy, I meant-"

"Dude, relax, I'm messing with you.", she sudden;y burst into laughter. "And stop hogging that blanket, I have seen your flat, hairless chest at the pool a million times."

Dipper lowered the blanket and, for the first time in a long while, relaxed against the soft pillows.

"Sorry, I kinda… Panicked… And overthought some stuff.".

"Nothing new for me, Dip.", Wendy chuckled, "But hey, as far as first dates go, it wasn't bad watching you get cocky… even if you were very, very stupid and I had to rescue you. Again."

She made a gesture in the air drawing an invisible score on a board.

"Yeah… I shouldn't have done it", he smiled, "I promise I'll try to be a better friend."

The two stared at each other, until Dipper suddenly felt a familiar sensation.

"Uhy, Wendy do you mind if-"

"Sure, dude, it's coffee."

"Thanks."

Dipper stood up and he was almost out of her room, when a splash of colour blue caught his eye.

"Hey, hang on, those are not my boxers!"

He turned towards Wendy, looking for an answer.

Wendy tries to get her husband to enjoy their honeymoon. 

written for @wendip-week

Whenever I post ship art I feel the mental need to make it more exciting or less romantic, either by prefacing it with some kind of biting sarcasm or surrounding it in some outrageous adventure, sometimes I just make a pun of it by accompanying it with a picture of some cool spaceship, but this time I got nothing.

This story is not in my usual continuity, but was written for Wendip Week 2021, topic "Time Travel."

for Wendip Week 2021

---

Mabel faced a hard decision when she called in that favor.

She was nearly thirty, she was a successful clothing designer, she had a steady romantic partner, life was good. But then on a visit to Gravity Falls, she visited the grave of good old Waddles, whose heart had given out the previous winter, while she was off in New York.

And she hadn't been able to say goodbye.

And despite the fact that she was all grown up and everything, it ripped at her heart—that she hadn't said farewell to her most favorite pet of all time. It wasn't that he hadn't been well cared for—Soos saw to that, giving the pig all the comforts and plenty of food. It wasn't that he was cut off in his youth—seventeen is a good long life for a pig. It's just that—

Well, now she knew how Dipper felt.

Speaking of whom.

Dipper and Wendy were coming up on their tenth wedding anniversary, they had adorable twins, age six, names Alexander and Amanda, and they lived in the Mystery Shack. Grunkles Stan and Ford still technically owned the place, and Soos ran it, but over the years he and Melody had expanded it until their own growing family caused Soos to have a separate house built just across the road, and he and his family of six—he, Melody, Benny, Betty, Alma, and little Stanley—had made the short move. Dipper had inherited Grunkle Ford's role as investigator of the weird, Wendy was a nationally-known consultant on forestry issues, and they took over the living space that Soos had left vacant.

Ford, now semi-retired, still came over to work with Dipper down in the secret labs when some project was afoot. Grunkle Stan came over to help when the Shack was swamped with tourists in vacation season, but he spent a lot of his time visiting casinos all over the world, where his odd luck always brought him a steady income.

The attic bedroom had become disused.

"Can I stay?" Mabel asked in a small voice just at sunup that day. "Just for a couple weeks?"

"Sure, Mabes!" Wendy said. "Any time, you know that."

Dipper, now sporting a goatee and wearing glasses to correct mild myopia, said, "Sis, what's wrong?"

With a sad smile, Mabel said, "You can tell, huh? Just getting all sentimental. Missing Waddles."

"Oh," Dipper said. "That. We're sorry you couldn't make it back in January."

"It was so unexpected," Wendy said. "He was OK, you know, kinda slow and sleepy all the time, and then one morning we found him in his stall. He'd passed in his sleep."

"He was comfortable to the end," Dipper said. "The heat was on. He didn't freeze or anything. He looked peaceful."

"We buried him down the hill," Wendy told her. "Come on, we'll walk you down."

The place was pretty, a small clearing off to the right of the Mystery Trail. Grass had greened the mound, dewy now with the dawn, and—Mabel couldn't help sobbing—Dipper and Wendy had put up a marker, one of those you could buy for a cherished dog or cat. It read,

---

WADDLES

2012-2029

Always Loved

---

"Could you just leave me here for a few minutes?" asked Mabel.

Dipper hugged her. "Sure, Sis," he said. "Take y our time."

Wendy hugged her, too. "You gave him a good life," she said.

When the two had left, Mabel took a deep breath and took something that looked like a thick button from her jeans pocket. She held it between finger and thumb, close to her lips, and said, "OK, Blendin Blandin, you owe me one."

And without fuss, explosions, or special-effects noise, he was there, beside her, in his old uniform. "M-Ma-Mabel," he said, smiling. "Hi. It's be-been a wh-while."

"Yeah," she said. "You're looking—exactly the same. How's Time Baby?"

"Te-te-teething," Blendin said with a grimace. "The ne-next thou-thousand years are go-gonna be hard. I gu-guess you want your fa-favor now?"

"I do," she said. "Waddles passed away last January. I don't want to bring him back to life or anything. I've learned better than that. But I didn't get to see him before he went, and I really want to visit him one last time. So—could I borrow a time tape?"

"I pro-promised," he said. "I always carry a sp-spare these da-days. Here."

"And I also need your advice," Mabel said, accepting the heavy time-travel device. "I want to visit Waddles on the happiest day of his whole life."

"You-you'll have to a-avoid meeting yourself," Blendin warned. "That would be cat-cata-catas—bad."

"Agreed," she said.

"Let me find out how to se-set the co-coordinates, then," he said. "Just a se-second."

He blinked out of existence for just three seconds, then reappeared, slapping at his hair, which was smoldering. "Th-that was two we-weeks of hard wo-work!" he said. "Lucky this-this is m-my va-vacation month. OK, I've reviewed Wa-Waddles' s li-life and this will ta-take you to the ex-exact day when he was happiest. You can ha-have the wh-whole day, or eight hours any-anyway, bu-but remember to a-avoid me-meeting yourself."

"Will do."

Blendin set the time tape, warned, "It will br-bring you ba-back to the present automatically. Ha-have a g-good time-tr-trip."

The strange noiseless explosion, a moment of spinning disorientation, and poof! there she was, at the edge of the woods behind the Shack. The sun was just rising.

"Out you go," she heard a girl's voice say from the back door.

She saw a rectangle of yellow light. Oh, my God, that's me, in my old sleep shirt! I'm twelve! I'm so young!

Her younger self held the door for Waddles—He's so cute and tiny!—and the pig stepped out, sniffed the air, and waddled over close to the woods to take care of his morning business.

Let's see. I always let him out, then had breakfast, then called him back in, so I have about half an hour before I have to duck out of sight.

"Waddles," she called softly.

He heard and galumphed over to her. He knew her. Her different size, her different voice, didn't matter. She scooped him up. "Oh, I love you!" she said as he curled into a ball and nuzzled her cheek. "Let's go for a walk."

She set him down, and they went down the Mystery Trail, past the Bottomless Pit—not yet fenced off—and as far as the bonfire clearing, where she sat on a log and played with him, laughing through tears. "I'm gonna have to say goodbye, later," she whispered. "But remember, no matter what, I'll always love you!"

Too soon she heard her own younger voice calling, probably for the second time and more loudly, "Waddles!"

"Go on," she told the pig, patting his bottom. He trotted back to the other Mabel, his Mabel.

What day is this? Mabel wondered. What day made him happiest?

She sat too long. Someone spoke, startling her. "Whoops, sorry, didn't know anybody was here!"

Wendy.

Mabel stood up. "I was just, uh—I used to come here when I was a girl—" she began.

"Mabel?" Wendy asked, blinking and staring. "Mabel? Is that you?"

"Haven't changed all that much, have I?" she asked. "Oh, my God, you're so young! Can—can I hug you?"

She was a little bit taller than the fifteen-year-old Wendy, who would add a few inches to her height in the next two years. Mabel couldn't help crying again. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to let anyone see me. Time travel. I came back to—to visit Waddles."

"Oh, man," Wendy said. "Dipper's told me about this kind of stuff! Come on back to the Shack and surprise him!"

"No, I can't," Mabel said. "Don't even tell him you met me. That would cause problems with time."

"Oh."

Something in Wendy's voice hit her then. "Uh—what's wrong, Wendy?"

"Just—just the end of summer," Wendy faltered. "I—I hate that you and Dip are goin' home today."

Oh, my God! Of course! Waddles thought I was gonna leave him, and I nearly had to, but Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford made the bus driver take him aboard—of course he was happiest on that day!

"Oh, yeah," Mabel said. "Our birthday was yesterday. We turned thirteen."

"Technical teens," Wendy said with a ghost of a grin. A tear ran down her cheek.

"But you don't have to cry," Mabel said.

"I—I guess I can tell you a secret," Wendy said. She sat on the log, and Mabel sat beside her. "See, Dipper admitted to me a while back that he has a crush on me. I already knew, but I had to let him down. You know, me fifteen, him twelve. But now he's going away, and I'll never see him again, and—I just can't tell him I'm kinda-sorta in love with him, too. It's hard, Mabel."

Mabel bit her lip. "Listen," she said. "I may get in big trouble because of this, but—OK, I'm gonna say it. You gotta give Dipper a note. Have all his friends here sign it. You sign it, too. Here's the most important part—write on it 'See you next summer.' And wait for him. He'll come back. And he'll grow up, Wendy. And if you wait for him—it's gonna happen. I promise. Just stay in touch, and—most important—when the time comes, the age difference won't mean a thing."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Trust me, I know. OK, I've got a few hours today. I'm gonna stay close to the Shack and get in as much time with Waddles as I can. Then I'm going back to the future, and thirteen-year-old Mabel and Dipper are going back to Piedmont. But he doesn't just have a crush, Wendy. He really and truly loves you. So write the note, give it to him before he gets on the bus, and things will all work out. Promise me?"

"Yeah. I promise."

"Oh—and tell Grunkle Stan that when the time comes for us to leave, to make sure Waddles gets on the bus, too! I—Oh, I love you like a sister, Wendy! You won't believe how happy you're gonna be with Dip."

"That—that means a lot to me, Mabes," Wendy whispered.

"OK, you'd better get back. Don't say anything to anyone about this. Be sure to do the note thing. Oh, and Wendy—do me one more favor?"

"Sure, what?"

"Tell Pacifica that Mabel's waiting—in the future. Don't explain."

"All right," Wendy said with a lopsided smile. "I'll do it." She mimed zipping her lip.

The day passed. Out of her eight hours, Mabel spent about three in Waddles's company as her brother and her younger self got ready to leave Gravity Falls. She spent more time standing out of sight, watching things unfold—finally the kids coming out, glum, with their suitcases, the bus pulling up, Dipper and Mabel and—finally—Waddles climbing aboard. And all their friends running as far as they could to see the twins and the pig off.

She stood alone near the Shack. The flash came. Benjamin stood there. "How d-did it go?"

"It went good," Mabel said, handing over the time tape. "I said goodbye." She sniffled and a tear ran down her cheek. "I'll still miss him but I—I can handle it now. Uh, how much time has gone by while I—?"

"A m-minute," Blendin said. "Well, I-I g-guess we're e-even."

"Thanks, Blendin. Goodbye."

"N-no, I d-don't think it's g-goodbye," he said, smiling. "I'll s-see you again. In time."

He flashed out of existence.

"Aunt Mabel!" It was red-headed Amanda, running down the hill to meet her. "Hi!"

Mabel swept her up in her arms. "Hi, Sweetie! Where's your bro-bro?"

Squirming, Amanda laughed. "He can't find his shoes!"

Carrying the six-year old up the hill to the Shack, Mabel laughed. "When your dad was six, he had the same problem! All the time! Every morning!" She paused and looked back at the green grave. "Hey, let me tell you a story about the most special pig in the whole world," she said, and they went back to join the family.

---

I’m not one to make deals, bargains... but, I have a proposition. We all know the superior prompt: Say Something. Some might say it’s vanilla, cliche, too general. But I disagree. A prompt so mighty should surely be seeded into the list of prompts.  So, here’s my offer: 

That’s right baby, a crisp 20 Dollar note and a Kiwi. I know, I know, crazy right!?!?  But the choice is yours, Wendip Week. How will you decide?