Having a busted lip is most definitely unattractive, but Pacifica can say with absolute certainty that it is satisfying to have one if you got it by helping to fight off a horde of supernatural creatures.
And, because luck is on her side (besides, you know, the number of semi-grievous injuries, sore joints, and the fact that she lost her house key somewhere in the woods), Dipper doesn’t look half-bad, either. Granted, he’s all scuffed up and messy-haired and his nose is bleeding, but, you know. The adrenaline-charged look suits him. Good for his complexion, and stuff.
Which are all things she should not, under any circumstances, be noticing. Not when she’s fourteen years old and she’s got the whole town to choose from. The exhilarated, possibly delirious smile of one half of the notorious Nerd Twins is the opposite of a priority.
“Hey,” Dipper says, punching her arm lightly and repeatedly, exactly the way Mabel does when she thinks she’s got a lead on who Pacifica’s crushing on (”Robbie? Thompson? Gasp! Toby Determined?!”). And jeez, does she ever wish Mabel was here—colds aren’t even remotely close to an acceptable excuse for bailing on forest patrol. “Hey, hey. Nice job saving my life back there.”
Pacifica’s mouth stops working as it often does when he’s beaming at her like that, and all that comes out is a haughty huff.
“You were like—boosh!” Dipper gesticulates wildly. “And then—kazow! And then like, whoa!” His eyes are practically glimmering. “You’re amazing.”
“Ugh, gross,” Pacifica sneers, because it’s the only thing she knows how to do when getting roughed up by the dark and creepy things slithering through the woods is making her feel invincible, like she can take on the whole world and everything in it, her parents and that ringing bell and the sharp stares of her friends. “Don’t rub any of that loser off on me, Pines. Get a grip. I only did it because—” She fishes around for a reason. “Because if you die, Mabel will cry at me for like a million years, which I so don’t have the time for.”
“Aw, come on,” Dipper eggs her on—amicably, of course. He nudges his shoulder into hers as they traipse along, skinned knees and prickling feet, heels crunching into the dirt path back to the Mystery Shack. “You had fuuuuuun.”
“Um, in your weirdo X-File dreams, Pines,” Pacifica says, caustic. “Walk two steps behind me; I don’t want any potential witnesses getting the wrong idea here.”
“The idea that we’re friends?” Dipper asks slyly.
And Pacifica wouldn’t have a problem admitting such a thing, normally—except that she just saw him come this close to, you know, doing that thing she always has to pretend she has no grasp of when her parents bring it up at the dinner table like she isn’t even there; that thing that would make him just as pale and incandescent as the wrathful ghost he had saved her from. She has to save face, here. She has to quell that rampant, painful galloping of her heart—the one that she wishes were smaller.
“As if,” she mutters, even though it sours her throat.
Dipper walks the rest of the way in silence, two step behind her, just like she’d asked but hadn’t actually wanted.