conrad was glad he lived in mysterii, because that meant he could walk over to gravity falls and check out the mystery shack. it was one place conrad felt like he could spend hours in and not get bored. it was just so interesting, and it inspired conrad to look at things differently—which overall really helped with his photography. but, another thing that conrad liked about living in mysterii, was he could see dipper. dipper was just overall a very great guy that’d he’d always talk to at the shack, and conrad couldn’t help but sometimes go to the mystery shack just to see the guy. so when he walked through the doors and saw him, he smiled instantly, “hey there dipper!”
Mabel and Dipper were hurriedly following along after their grunkle as he purposefully went through the house for...- what, they honestly didn’t know.
“I-It really isn’t- uhm.” Dipper faltered, clenching his hands into fists then un-clenching them again uncertainly, as he tried moving ahead of Stan to get a look at his face. “We really didn’t get into as much trouble as it sounds we did.”
“We were just telling a story!” Mabel piped up, putting on a big smile as she hugged Dipper to her side. “Just good ol’ sibling story time. When we were talking about almost dying we didn’t REALLY mean that.”
“Nothing, but us being completely safe and taking care of ourselves.”
He was completely undeterred, face set into a hard frown. “Kids. I heard enough, this ends now.”
The twins gave each other a worried look then looked back at Stan, nearly talking over each other as they pleaded.
“Please, don’t send us back home yet, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel said, pulling on Stan’s coat, making him stop. “I haven’t had enough sleepovers with Candy and Grenda yet!”
“And I haven’t figured anything out yet! I’ve got all these questions-!”
“Kids-?” Stan tried.
“I could still have a big summer romance! Dipper could find a werewolf! These are childhood dreams, Grunkle Stan! Dreams!!”
“Please, Grunkle Stan, we won’t cause any trouble!! Promise! Mostly!”
“We won’t get caught for anything!”
Stan put his hands out. “Hey! Hey, calm down there, both of you.” He urged them. “What’s this ‘sending you back home’ nonsense?” He asked, getting down on a knee to talk with them.
Mabel pulled at her hair. “So... you’re not sending us home because we’re too much trouble?”
“Ha? You kidding me?” He smiled. “No. No, I’m not sending you two back home any sooner than I gotta.” He paused for a second, soon adding on as he shrugged. “Need someone to sweep the shop when Soos is busy. Never turn down free labor!”
“Uh, what’d you mean by ‘this is ending now’ then?” Dipper asked him.
Stan stood back up again, headed towards the living room. “Well, I'm not having some ah... goobledy-gook masked teenager go around scaring the sweeping energy out of you two.”
“Pretty sure a teenager can’t be ten feet tall.” Dipper pointed out.
“Meh, growth spurts.” Stan said dismissively, reaching under the arm chair.
“I don’t know if you can really... ‘talk to’ this ‘teenager.’” Mabel told him using liberal quotation marks on the word ‘teenager.’
Stan pulled out a wooden bat, and cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. Talk to ‘em.” He got back up again. “Yup. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“With a bat?”
He glanced around briefly. “... Yes.”
“Uh... Grunkle Stan-?” Mabel tried, pushing her fingers together. “Maybe you shouldn’t try to find the ‘teenager’ to talk with them because maybe... maybe it’s a super buff teenager! And you’re really old! And he...” she struggled for more reasons, “listens to really bad music?”
“All teenagers listen to really bad music, sweetie.” Stan walked back towards the back door, stopping with hand on the handle to turn back to them. “Now I meant it, you two.” He said pointing at them. “The both of you stay here until I get back. Got it?”
They mumbled back in response.
“Yeah.”
“Got it...”
“Good.” He glanced around as he went through the door with the bat, shutting it after himself. “And uh... dust the kitchen or sweep some cobwebs or something while I’m gone.”
The pair waited a few seconds at the door until he was far enough away.
“Baseball? Grunkle Stan really doesn’t get teenagers...”
“Mabel, we got to get to it before he does!”
She nodded her head. “Mission: Save Grunkle Stan.” Cracking open the door, she peeked around it to check before fully opening it. “Come on!”
