The Pines twins were unsure of what had possessed their great uncle on that final day of their summer in Gravity Falls. Dipper would attest it was some sort of vengeful spirit taking punishment out on Stan by making him spend money out of his pocket on people who weren't himself. Mabel brought up the idea of a potential bribe being cooked up. At the end of the day, when all was said and done, it seemed like the ill-dispositioned man actually wanted to make their last day worthwhile. They had seen some seriously weird stuff in this town, but this was definitely a first.

The backside of the Mystery Shack leading into the woods had, since then, been made into a perfect dig for the party. Their Grunkle laid down the basics for them: it was going to be a huge end-of-summer blowout bonfire. Marshmallows, tall tales, weenies, and maybe some booze to loosen things up for the grown-ups. Mabel had immediately invited Candy and Grenda to join the usual gang that hung around. Stan had no problem with Wendy bringing her loud, rambunctious friends (again, probably another lapse in judgment) and set it up so that there would be music loud enough to wake the neighbours far away in town and enough refreshments to keep everyone sugar-hyped and well-fed.

Dipper had other things on his mind, however-namely, a girl he'd been preoccupied with since his first couple weeks in this sleepy town.

Mabel had nagged and nagged him for months now to tell Wendy how he felt. If Dipper were to even try to translate to words how "he felt" about Wendy, it would probably look something like "sddasfdsfgflk" followed by a gratuitous amount of less than three emotes, which he would then delete before sending. Point was, Dipper knew how to hunt monsters and tear apart conspiracies and hold his own in a world of the supernatural-but was not well-versed in the slightest on the topic of girls.

His impulse initially was to make one of his complicated lists detailing his plan and precisely how to carry it out, but he'd learned early into the summer that he was probably better off just winging it and hoping he didn't embarrass himself. Still, he'd spent a good portion of the day going over scenarios in his head, trying to find the words, and reminding himself that they'd be a lot harder of sentences to squeeze out with the crazy flutter his heart was sent into whenever she entered the room.

o0o0o0o0o0o

When the sun had started setting, Mabel and her friends burst out the front doors of the shack, all of them decked out in near-theatrical makeup ("Makeovers!" she had insisted) and happily dancing to the music resonating from the shack's back porch. Dipper and Wendy were perched atop the roof in their usual hangout, contentedly eating ice cream bars of some undetermined flavour. He was nervously checking his surroundings, wondering if it was good enough of a moment to talk to her, but the mood hadn't dimmed yet and the energy was still high, so he settled for keeping his words inside while he made small talk with her.

"I never really noticed how sweet the view was up here," He mentioned.

"Oh, yeah, it's awesome." Wendy proclaimed. "I kind of have a thing for sunsets, I kind of make it a point to find high places facing east just so I can see the best ones in the summer. I used to just settle for trees, but this definitely takes the cake."

The younger boy smiled. "I never knew you were into sunsets."

"Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. You know how you just have those things from your childhood that stick with you? Like weird things that seem silly at the time, but ended up being significant," She explained. "I had this friend when I was younger who was kind of a sad person, and she watched a lot of sunsets because she thought they were beautiful and they cheered her up. For someone who claimed to be unhappy at such a young age, she was really strong. And I missed her a lot when I moved here... so I guess I watch the sunsets so I don't forget all the things we talked about at the end of the day."

Dipper peered into her, suddenly inspired by the profoundness in her voice and the way the words left her like heavy weights. "You know, when I was a kid, I was terrified that aliens were going to abduct me in the middle of the night. That sounds really stupid, but I really believed it. So I'd force myself awake and never get any sleep," He stammered over his words, chuckling slightly. "Mabel started to get worried about me, so she'd crawl down to my bunk and sleep in my bed and talk about how if any aliens tried to probe me she'd pelt them with her massive collection of porcelain pig figurines until I fell asleep. Our parents would come in our room in the morning and laugh about us being inseparable... I don't know, that's always kind of stuck with me."

Wendy grinned. "You guys are awesome. I always kinda felt like the outcast in my family. It's nice being the firstborn and having the title of daddy's little girl, but my brothers are so close and I'm just on the outside. Gets lonely sometimes, you know?"

"You've got cool friends, though. I know it isn't the same, but... we're both lucky in our own ways." He laughed, taking another bite of his melting ice cream.

"Guess you're right," She leaned back, staring into the endless pool of oranges and blues in front of them. "So hey, bet you don't know why the sun sets red."

He tilted his head at her curiously.

"Well, it goes like... light is made up of a bunch of colours, and out of all of them, red is the one that travels the farthest. Cool, huh?"

The descending light in the sky reflected her long scarlet hair and made it look like a brilliant flame-blanketing the shape of her face and falling along her shoulders and Dipper couldn't help but stare into those bright green eyes of hers that were framed by her freckles and smile like a huge dork. Red was a good colour, he thought. "Yeah. Cool."
Wendy's attention was immediately directed toward the ground below when she saw the van pull up. Adorning a huge grin, she fought the inevitable brainfreeze and scarfed down what little was left of her ice cream, chewing on the soggy popsicle stick as she turned back to Dipper. "Dude, the crew's here! Mind if I go hang with them?"

He was sad to know if he said yes she'd probably disappear somewhere on an adventure without him, but he knew it was a rhetorical question from the beginning. "No way! Have fun! I'll be around!"

"Thanks, man!" She beamed, and twirled down the nearest tree like it was a fire pole.

Dipper let a tiny smile plaster itself on his face and headed back down the roof to observe how everyone else had been while he was up there with his head in the clouds. From what he could tell, Soos was halfway between humouring Grunkle Stan's stories about Guantanamo Bay and messing with the sound equipment, Mabel and her friends were roasting marshmallows and making s'mores so big he was sure they couldn't even fit in the girls' mouths, and Wendy and her friends were all in their own corner causing a ruckus. He caught a glimpse of Robbie wrapping his hands around her waist and pulling her into a kiss with way too much tongue than Dipper could bear without projectile vomiting, so he turned away and settled for filling his evening learning about the adventures of Stan in Cuba.

o0o0o0o0o0o

Wendy wasn't nervous about making a hasty escape into the woods without being detected by the younger ones-mostly she was just concerned about her uproarious friends and if they could manage to lay low even when they got to the river. So far everything was going alright, and Robbie had promised to pummel someone if they did anything too reckless. She was soured with the actual idea of that happening, but appreciated the sentiment behind it. Nonetheless, every step they got closer to the sound of rushing water made her feel less paranoid, and finally the trees broke into a clearing and they were there-surrounded by grass and with the full moon hanging over them in the calm August air. Everyone shared a collective mischievous gaze and they started dumping towels and blankets onto the grassy floor.

"This is perfect!" Wendy exclaimed. "I didn't realize it'd be this cool-looking."

The moon reflected off the water's surface and the teenagers could see bats skimming the uncharacteristically quiet river in front of them. Without a moment's hesitation, Tambry started digging in her heavy coat pockets as Nate and Lee's hushed whispers of 'you have it?' started to drift across the clearing. She pulled out a conspicuous ziploc bag and threw it at the both of them, who immediately smirked at the others.

Thompson sighed as the five of them started rolling joints to be shared, not discontented with the idea of being the permanent designated driver, but at the looming sense of doom that hung over him and reminded him that his group of friends, even under the influence of downers, did not know how to chill out.

o0o0o0o0o0o

"I like to believe there's something more out there,"

"There's no way. It's not logical... Tambry, there's no proof, dude..."

"I don't need proof, I have faith..."

Wendy sat up, staring her childhood friend dead in the face. "Dude," she said. "Duuude, take a step back. Faith based on what? What if this is a dream? What if all of this is a dream? And... it's not even our dream."

She turned to a stray cat that had perched itself next to a bush approximately an hour ago and refused to leave, sleeping in the dirt below.

"...it's that cat's dream..." She widened her eyes, staring. "What if we're just existing in his mind? And... all of the sudden he wakes up to go get eaten by a cougar and we're gone... what would happen if that cat wakes up?"

Nate and Lee nodded in unison, gazing in the same direction as her, their mouths wide open in bemusement. "It'll be over..." said Lee.

Thompson fiddled with his phone, leaning on the tree beside them, and let out a sigh that screamed 'please take me away from here.'

Tambry was still going on about the vast expanse of space above them and Nate and Lee were daring each other to wake up the cat and end their existence when Wendy decided to tune out. She turned to Robbie, who almost never spoke when stoned, and let her gaze melt into his icy blues, laying her head on his chest and whispering words she'd pick much more carefully were she sober. She planted kisses on his lips that were slow and gentle and much more romantic than he was ever used to, and it just made him more lost for words than he already was. At some point in the next hour, Nate screamed something about skinny dipping and Wendy blinked for half a second and the two of them were completely bare and having a totally heterosexual splash fight while Tambry filmed it through a plastic bag housing her phone.

Wendy stood up lazily, cast a knowing gaze at her boyfriend, and stepped around a bush to undress herself and join in on the inevitable hilarity. Behind her on the blankets, he started to do the same, and when the both of them had fully stripped, the redhead shot a shy glance back at Robbie who was staring at the ground and blushing all the way to his ears. He was trying so hard to be polite, to not look at her, but she simply smiled with half-lidded eyes and guided him down to the waters edge.

The both of them shivered when they finally managed to get submerged, and paid no mind to the others beating each other with tree branches on the other stretch of the river. Instead, Wendy pressed her body up against Robbie's and kissed him again. Every one of their senses were on fire, they could feel the fibres of each other's being and smell the mixture of hemp and campfire in each others skin and when she moved her lips down to his neck he clenched his teeth and let out a quiet, breathy moan.

"Wendy," He near-whispered, and swallowed nervously. "I-I... this might... be too much for me..."

She softly smiled, always amused at how this boy who presented himself as so tough and badass melted into an awkward, stuttering kid at her touch. "Alright, alright..."

Wendy laid her head into the crook of his shoulder for a moment, feeling his pulse pound in her ears and setting the both of them at peace. After a second of staring at the flying creatures making tiny ripples in the water's edge, and bathing in the moonlight that lit up the entire clearing, Wendy and Robbie slipped out of the water and fell back onto the arrangement of towels and blankets on the grass, meshing their lips together like they were always made to do it and rolling on top of each other and loudly moaning each other's names while the teens in the water paid no mind.

Thompson buried his head in his hands and considered quick and easy ways to take his own life.