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Fistbump (a Pinecest story)	By : Edward_or_Ford Category: +G through L > Gravity Falls Views: 13062 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls or its characters. I will not earn any money from this story.

Chapter List
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“Come on, Grunkle Stan!” whined Mabel, chasing after her great-uncle as he walked toward the cash register in the Mystery Shack.
“Yeah, come on! We just want you to think about it!” added Dipper.
Stan turned around, exasperated. He waved his arms around and gestured to the building, having just locked up for the evening minutes before. “What? You think I can afford to close the Shack on one of the last weekends of the summer? So that I can hang around and watch you two spend all your money on a stupid trip to the city? Forget it!”
Dipper and Mabel looked at each other. This was not going as well as expected. They had hoped that their uncle would think their idea was perfectly reasonable, but their plans for a grand birthday celebration, in a couple of weeks, were now on the verge of collapse. They were about to turn fourteen: their birthday was on the last Saturday of August, the weekend before the Pines twins were due to finish their summer vacation in Gravity Falls, Oregon.
“Vacation,” of course, is another word for “labor” when it comes to staying at their great-uncle’s tourist-trap home. For the past two summers, Grunkle Stan had put them to work, making sure that the creepy trinkets and strange displays were to the idiot visitors’ liking. But they had actually done well in the Shack, and their uncle had grumbled reluctantly that business the previous year had been good, and had been particularly great that current summer.
The last summer, of course, had been the weirdest summer ever. The twins arrived as twelve-year-old innocent tweens, and were immediately thrust into adventure after misadventure, facing terrifying spectres and unexplainable horrific events. It was the scariest and most thrilling summer any kid could possibly imagine. Thankfully, no one was ever injured too badly, but Dipper and Mabel had actually saved each other’s lives on more than one occasion. They also survived a challenge to the trust they had for each other, hurting each other more than any monster could, before they successfully repaired their trust before the end of the summer.
They took it all in stride, and by the time autumn came and school began, their already-close sibling relationship was firmly cemented. As the year went by, the twins loyally looked out for each other. They did homework together, helped each other with household chores, and supported each other at school. They even enjoyed just hanging out at home together. Of course, they had other friends, but no one doubted that they were each other’s best friends.
When the next summer came around, they pleaded with their parents to let them go back to Gravity Falls. Their mom and dad had never been given the full story of the adventures they had experienced, but they read the news accounts. They knew that the kids had been involved in many dangerous occurrences and were reluctant to let them return. And they did not know if they could trust Stan any longer, as his shady involvement with the strange events was revealed. However, it was apparent that the conspiracy that had unravelled last summer was now over. Grunkle Stan explained what had happened and why he did what he did, and reported to the Pines family that everything was normal in the rural town, far more so than he could remember in thirty years.
Also, the legend of what had happened the year previous had spread to the public, and the tourist trade was hotter than ever. Stan basically begged for the twins to be allowed to return to help him at the Mystery Shack. Combined with Dipper’s and Mabel’s enthusiasm for the same thing, their parents relented and allowed them go back for a second summer.
Things really were different the next summer. As Stan had reported, the weird happenings seemed to have disappeared. Dipper and Mabel hadn’t once needed to run screaming from a zombie, or face down a ghost. There was not a shapeshifter or manatour to be found. Bill Cipher appeared to be banished for good. Even the little creep Gideon had been locked away in an out-of-state institution after his last escape attempt.
And the tourists had indeed flocked to Gravity Falls. Stan had years ago converted his run-down home in the woods into the “Mystery Shack” and advertised it as the place to see strange and scary artifacts. He had filled it with unabashedly fake items and took advantage of the gullibility of his visitors. After the last summer’s publicity, though, many people came to Gravity Falls to see what “really” happened there, so Stan changed his business model. The Shack was now “Ground Zero” of the conspiracy, and Stan profited from his (and his great niece and nephew’s) pivotal roles in the story, at least the parts of the story that they were permitted to (or wanted to) tell.
The people of the town had changed, too. Most of Dipper and Mabel’s friends in town were gone. Mabel’s two best friends from Gravity Falls, Grenda and Candy, had moved away after their families were spooked by the events of the previous summer. Temporary loss of gravity, causing wide-spread property damage, can do that to people. Wendy was still around, and worked at the Shack occasionally, but she was needed in her family’s lumberjack business more and more, and had a lot less time to hang around with the kids. And the NorthWest family was rocked by lawsuits brought against them for the family’s illegal business practices: their daughter Pacifica had shared a spark with Dipper for a short time, but she was sent to a posh boarding school in upper New York State while the family scandal was being litigated.
All this added up to a summer that was very much not what the twins had expected, or wanted. They had worked long hours in the gift shop of the Shack, sometimes seven days a week. Even on their occasional days off, Stan wanted them to be nearby so that they could pose for pictures with the tourists because of their minor celebrity status. They never got to visit the lake or the town pool once. Unlike the last summer, there was no grand adventure, and no other friends to share it with even if anything was to happen. They were tired and bored. At the end of most days, they trudged up to their “bedroom” (the attic of the Shack, where their beds sat on either side the space, beneath the high sloped walls) and grumbled about what a disappointment this summer was, compared to the year before. They agreed that they probably wouldn’t want to come back again the following year. One thing they thought they’d miss was how they would chat across the room after the lights went out: it was a ritual they had cultivated, their own private time to share secrets and get advice from each other, away from everyone else. They didn’t get to do that during the school year, since of course they had separate bedrooms at home in California.
The only good thing about the summer was that Stan had acknowledged that the twins had been a big part of his financial success, and recognized their hard work. Demonstrating generosity unusual for him, Stan decided not to take advantage of the kids and paid them (somewhat) fair wages for their labor. Since they had little opportunity to spend their money, by the end of the summer they had saved several hundred dollars each.
It had been Mabel’s idea to spend much of this money on a once-in-a-lifetime birthday celebration. Together, they decided that it would be awesome to have a weekend in the city, seeing places they had never seen, doing things they had never done. With an entire day, they could do one thing Dipper wanted to do, then something to Mabel’s liking. They also wanted to be “fancy” for once, to go out for a nice dinner and see a live show, as a conclusion to the birthday extravaganza. None of this could happen in their small town: they wanted to go to Portland, Oregon’s largest city.
However, it was not just a matter of money. Portland was almost a four-hour drive from Gravity Falls. Someone needed to drive them there. Someone needed to have a credit card to reserve tickets. Someone needed to arrange to book hotel rooms. Quite simply, they needed Grunkle Stan to go with them.
And now he was summarily killing their plans. They silently communicated to each other that they had to turn up the guilt factor.
“But we’ve worked really hard for you for over two months,” reasoned Mabel. “School is only a few weeks away, and we’ve not had any fun at all this summer!”
“Imagine how many of the dummies that you’ve had through here that would never have come at all if not for what we did last year,” said Dipper.
“And how many this year went away happy because of our work for you!” added Mabel.
Dipper piled on. “The two of us are probably responsible for half of your added income, all told.” Stan glared at Dipper darkly. “Right, Mabel?” Dipper added quickly.
Mabel tagged in. “Yeah!” she said. “At least half!”
Stan was silent and stone-faced. He wasn’t caving, but he wasn’t shutting them down, either. The twins knew they were making progress. Mabel switched tactics to blackmail.
“Maybe we should think about just going home to Piedmont, Dipper!” she huffed in a highly inflated manner. “How quickly do you think we could be on a bus heading south?”
Dipper smiled shrewdly. “Oh, I don’t Mabel. Maybe by this time tomorrow. Say, Grunkle Stan, don’t you have two busloads of Japanese conspiracy fans arriving in a couple of days? They usually have tons of cash for spending on mementoes, and stuff like signed selfies with “the Mystery Twins,” don’t they? Are you going to have enough help around the Shack when they get here?”
“All right all right all right!!” exclaimed Stan. “Yeesh! What a couple of evil little twerps you are!” Stan paused, hand over his eyes, as he tried to think about the plan the twins had presented minutes before. Dipper and Mabel, for their part, excitedly but silently waited.
After almost a minute, Stan finally said, “For the record, I want you two to know that this little stunt of yours is manipulative, underhanded, and unethical. I see that I’m finally getting through to you, and I’m proud of you!” He cracked a small toothy smile, then more seriously he continued, “But really, you have to understand that going away for a whole weekend would be a lost opportunity to pull in a big wad of cash. I can’t throw that away, it’s just not in me.” Dipper’s face started to fall, and Mabel looked down.
“So instead of your plan, let me tell you my way to get you to Portland for this birthday bash of yours,” finished Stan, smiling broadly.
The kids reacted immediately, making sure their uncle wasn’t joking around. When he assured them he was serious, they let loose celebratory whoops and hollers. Striking an over-exaggerated pose of triumph, Mabel made a fist and raised her right arm to Dipper. Dipper happily duplicated the pose, and then they tapped their fists together to mark their latest success.
Stan had always thought the fistbump was a cute tradition that the kids shared. He envied their wonderfully strong relationship, one that he knew from personal experience was rare in siblings.
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Fistbump (a Pinecest story)