Wendip Week 2025 Day 5: “Asking Her to Dance”
Dipper stepped up to the door of the Mystery Shack, pop music playing over speakers inside. He looked through the window of the Mystery Shack, to see Stan happily counting the cold cash he just made, Mabel dancing next to a couple of girls that appeared to be her age, and Wendy, nodding her head to the beat.
He took the list that had been holding him back all evening, and tore it to shreds. Steeling himself, he entered the Shack.
“Dipper! Where have you been? Meet my girlfriends!”
Dipper raised a hand. “Hello, I’m Dipper, Mabel’s twin brother.”
“I’m Grenda,” said the taller, muscular one.
“Candy Chiu,” said the one with glasses.
“We’re gonna have a sleepover tonight!” said Mabel.
“Nice!” said Dipper. “You both from here?” he asked, looking at Grenda and Candy.
“Yep, my whole life,” said Grenda.
“My parents are from South Korea, but I was born in Salem, before we moved here a few years ago,” explained Candy.
“Any chance you could convince your great-uncle to refund us?” asked Grenda. “I think there are bugs in the fruit punch.”
“Grunkle Stan is vehemently opposed to giving anyone their money back, so probably not. Sorry,” said Dipper.
“So Dipper, have you asked you-know-who to dance yet?” asked Mabel expectantly.
“Ooh!” joked Grenda and Candy in sync.
“Yeah, Grunkle Stan made me keep the ticket stand alone, so I couldn’t ask her yet.” Dipper did not feel like sharing his trouble with sentient paper clones of himself with Mabel’s new friends, but he certainly intended to share it with just her later.
“Yeesh, even when Wendy was in here dancing?” asked Mabel, looking disconcerted.
Dipper nodded.
“Well, no worries now that the stand is closed!” said Mabel. She walked up to the DJ booth, where Soos was experimenting with sound effects, and said something to him that Dipper could not hear over the peppy song playing.
“We have another request,” announced Soos, as if there was still a significant audience, even though there were only half a dozen people present. “Another slow song.”
Mabel ran back to her little friend group and they started lightheartedly dancing with each other, as girls often do.
Taking a deep breath, Dipper made his way over to Wendy.
“Nice, another song I love!” said Wendy in response to the slow song starting.
“Hi, Wendy.”
“Hey, Dipper.”
“I was wondering if maybe you’d like to dance?” said Dipper. “With me?”
Wendy smiled. “Happy to.”
Dipper’s cheeks reddened as his hand intertwined Wendy’s hand, his other hand stretched up to reach her waist, and her other hand rested on his shoulder. “Alright, remember the steps. 1, 2, 3, 4,” he thought.
He struggled at first to get the rhythm right, but Wendy seemed unbothered. “Ever danced with a girl before?” she asked.
“Nope,” he answered honestly.
“Not bad for a first time then.”
Over the next couple of cycles through their basic box-step, Dipper felt himself getting more comfortable, and he found himself able to spend more time looking up into Wendy’s dazzling eyes than looking at his feet. She took her hand off his shoulder and raised her other hand, signaling that she wanted him to spin her. While he hadn’t practiced it, he trusted the gesture and raised his hand as far as he could. Wendy twirled effortlessly before placing her hand back on his shoulder.
“Wow,” uttered Dipper out loud. Wendy chuckled at this.
Dipper glanced around to see Mabel looking on with approval, Soos giving him a thumbs-up, and he thought he even saw Stan look up from his money counting for a moment.
“Dipper, I’m sorry I left you outside to handle the tickets on your own,” said Wendy, sounding unusually sheepish. “I shouldn’t have abandoned you like that.”
“I understand,” said Dipper, giving a kind smile.
Wendy smiled again, and then her expression turned into a slight smirk. She gently gripped Dipper’s hand on her waist and moved it to on her back. His eyes widened in realization. She wanted Dipper to dip her. Remembering his practicing, he spread his legs to help keep his balance, and slowly lowered her. He worried his “noodle arms” would be too weak, but Wendy apparently understood in that she kept herself from leaning in too deeply.
Her head was brought down to being level with his head. With their faces being so close that they nearly touched, Dipper’s face flushed further. It only lasted a moment though, and then Wendy was upright again.
Once the song concluded, Dipper said, “Thanks for the dance, Wendy.”
“Same, it was fun,” she said.
Later that evening, while Mabel, Candy, and Grenda giggled at the sight of shirtless men in a magazine Grenda brought, Dipper wrote in the journal he found at the start of the summer. He recorded the events of his paper doppelgangers, and how he had worked up the courage to dance with his crush for the first time.
That feeling of swaying with her to that gentle tune played over and over in his mind as he drifted to sleep with a smile.
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This is a fan work, based on the TV series Gravity Falls (copyrighted by Disney). Everything copyrightable in this text that is not copyrighted by Disney is released by its author, only-here-for-the-ships, under the Creative Commons Zero.
