No Sense

Oration

As the order was placed for a double bacon cheeseburger, a double chocolate milkshake, and a slice of blueberry cheesecake on the ground floor, Dipper was having a meal of his own. Unlike his sister's, there was no whipped cream or French fries; this main course was presented in pill form.

Sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas — a well-worn Jimmy Eat World tee he picked up at one of their concerts and Mario Kart-themed fleece bottoms — he tipped his hand back, popping all four pills into his maw. The event was a nightly ritual that had been going two years strong by that point. It took multiple visits to the doctor and then a shrink to finally get diagnosed with depression and high anxiety. The label didn't fix anything; it simply meant he could obtain an assortment of pills that made him somewhat sleepy and a bit numb around the edges.

His field of view from that position was high enough to permit him survey of the southern outskirts of Medford, currently being showered in a light dusting of snow flurries. Oddly, it made him laugh to himself, for no other reason than the fact that he never envisioned himself ever stopping in the oversized retirement community in southwest Oregon. More generally, though, it was a mild appreciation of the route that everyday life can take a person down, turning a day-long road trip into...

'...this,' he sighed, looking around the room, spotting Mabel's luggage on the rack next to a flickering television.

Desiring darkness, he reached over to extinguish the bedside lamp and put an thirty-minute sleep timer on the TV. Swiftly, he laid down on the bed — the covers pulled back, but not under them quite yet — and closed his eyes. The first thoughts, naturally, were of the events of that bizarre afternoon. However, to no surprise, his train of thought didn't belabor the collision or the resultant plan-setting that brought them to the Grand Plaza.

Rather, it was focused directly on the person who would be crawling into bed next to him once both an appetite and a tab had been rectified. Having Mabel as the star of his nighttime mental machinations wasn't unusual at all; in fact, he could probably count on one hand the number of times she didn't enter his thoughts upon his head hitting the pillow.

While there were very obvious peculiarities to the workings of their relationship, the thoughts that actually make up the various scenes and acts were rather common, perhaps downright wholesome in some instances. Some of the fantasies were as innocuous as them sitting on the dock at Gravity Lake the summer prior to staring high school, planning out a write-in campaign to bring back Smile Dip. There was also the field trip their eighth grade homeroom class took to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where Mabel purchased a shirt depicting the British modern artist Damien Hirst driving a hearse; it was a play on words the twins found hilarious, and their parents found somewhat mortifying.

Other nights, it might have been that time sophomore year when he had snuck up behind her while she was in the kitchen baking muffins for a school fundraiser, mixing the batter, completely oblivious to her surroundings. As she was singing in a terrifyingly off-key timbre to some top-forty cut of the day that was blasting from her earbuds, he snuck up behind her and gently poked her ticklish sides. Instantly, she spun around, her lengthy cascade of stunning tresses following in the wake, and came face to face with him. Her look of horror quickly turned into one of adorable embarrassment, her cheeks starting to blush in the sunlight trickling in through the kitchen window. Then, the look lasted longer than usual, and the expression behind it morphed into something else, something he swore he had seen in her eyes before, but never this close-up. never so blatant and crystal clear. The tension was broken, however, by the sound of their parents arriving home after taking a trip to the grocery store, leaving him to question what might have happened.

Of course, any recounting would be incomplete without recalling that night in October, where he let down his guard down and gave into his and her desires. Flashes of that momentous milestone in his life and their relationship never strayed too far from his consciousness. The passionate kisses and roving hands would, of course, fill his vision while lying in bed, but also in less discrete circumstances, as well: while driving around town, in the middle of a family dinner, and — most unfortunately — during a classroom presentation.