#but his gay yearning for his straight best friend roommate makes him lose by a significant margin against stacy pilgrims

[dalandan012]

Kinda weird how i haven't seen any hanahaki au fics on the scollace tag. Like CMON the scott pilgrim universe has shit like the space subways and vegan powers are you telling me getting the hanahaki disease is too farfetched. cmon somebody should start working on it!!!!

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

Mabel’s All-in-One Guide to Being a Shooting Star: How to Avoid Being Caught and Other Tips You Should Know

Chapter One: Just for the Summer

Shoutout to my betas/brainstorming buddies @edward-or-ford and @pacific-ship!

You’re never gonna love me, so what’s the use? What’s the point in playing a game you’re gonna lose? What’s the point in saying you love me like a friend? What’s the point in saying it’s never gonna end? - Marina and the Diamonds, Lies

Mabel was in a rut. Her boyfriend- no, it was ex-boyfriend by that point, huh? He’d dumped her, after all. Her ex-boyfriend was a dick. And Mabel didn’t jump to these types of conclusions lightly, either. When Mabel was of the opinion that someone was a dick, they weren’t just a dick, they were a Dick™ with a capital D.

Such was the case with Andrew Craddock (or AC, as she’d taken to calling him a few times; as it turns out, he was not as cool as his initials implied). Andrew was a Dick™. Like yeah, they’d been dating for, like, a month, month and a half maybe. And sure, maybe lots of nineteen-year-old college freshmen are willing to jump into bed with anything that moved, which was perfectly fine, but while Mabel was okay with holding hands and making out and maybe even the occasional butt grab, she was not okay with her boyfriend trying to grope her during a movie when she’d said she wasn’t ready for that sort of thing yet.

So she didn’t wanna sleep with him right off. Big whoop. She reiterated this to him, of course. And then! And then the absolute butthole had pointed to Clueless (the movie they’d been watching, cause it’s a mother-flippin’ classic, aight?) and said, “ya hear that, Mabel? You’re just a virgin who can’t drive!” and then the dude straight up stormed out of her dorm. Like. What? Seriously, who even does that?

Also, Mabel could absolutely drive. She had her license and everything. It was just Mabel really liked looking at the UC Santa Cruz campus (go Slugs, woooo) while riding her bike, and cars were expensive anyway, plus she didn’t really need one. She lived on campus, so a bike ride to and from class or the library or the cafe or whatever, it was all nice. It was fun. And economical. And better for the environment. It was a win-win-win situation!

And yeah, okay, fine, she was a virgin, but several of her friends were still virgins, so it wasn’t like… this big huge deal, it really wasn’t.

At least, that’s what Mabel had thought.

Until Andrew decided he wanted to be a Dick™.

And then, after all that, she’d gotten an email from her Painting 101 professor that her final was… acceptable, but if she wanted to make it into 102, she needed to have a little something extra. So Mabel had to scrounge up an extra credit project at the last minute before the grades were in for the summer.

She’d passed, thankfully, and her professor had approved her for 102, but even so…

Mabel had perhaps taken part in too many clubs (UC Santa Cruz’s LBGTQ+ club, two separate environmental clubs, an animal advocacy club, and a club that made crafts for kids in hospitals), She loved them all, she really did, but five clubs was a lot, and it was tiring. She probably wouldn’t go back to all of them when she returned in the fall, but she was still very much on the fence about which clubs specifically she should stay in.

Dipper was… Dipper was Dipper. He’d never been anything but. He’d come out as gay their senior year of high school. That was fine with Mabel. She didn’t mind it. Really, she didn’t. Sure, she mighta kinda sorta had teensy little feelings for him that were maybe slightly a bit on the not-so-platonic side of things, but just a bit, okay?

When Andrew had asked her out, she’d said yes, because, well. Get under someone to get over someone, right? That’s what one of her friends had said. And no hate on her friend, ‘cause her friend was the bomb dot com, but like. Her friend was one of those aforementioned college freshmen who was totally cool about jumping into bed with anything that moved, which was fine for some people, but, well…

Kissing Andrew felt weird. It felt wrong. He didn’t make her knees tremble, and he didn’t make her sigh blissfully. She’d hated being alone with him, because he’d always, always make a move on her, like, it was ridiculous how consistent he was about that, and whenever he kissed her, she’d just…

Well, there was no way around it, was there? She wished he was Dipper. Whenever Andrew kissed her, she spent every second thinking about Dipper, her twin bro, her best bud. Absolutely the worst possible person for her to fall in love with, but Mabel had never been one to play by the rules, and that didn’t appear to be any different in matters of the heart, either.

‘Cause falling in love with one’s twin brother who just so happened to be of the homosexual persuasion broke pretty much every rule in the rule book. If there was a rule book. Which there wasn’t. But maybe it would be better if there were, because then, like, she’d feel better about the set social norms and where she was in relation to them. Not that she thought she was in the green with her not-at-all platonic feelings for her bro bro, of course. She knew that. She knew it was kookoo bananas, okay? She knew.

But she couldn’t help it. He was everything to her, and pretending she’d felt something she didn’t for Andrew had felt all wrong, like she’d been going against everything her heart and soul yearned for. Which was probably because she was going against everything her heart and soul yearned for. But it wasn’t exactly like she had a choice. It was either go against everything she wanted or do nothing, and Mabel had never been particularly good at doing nothing.

Sometimes, a bit of moping becomes necessary. Sometimes, you just need to listen to sad music and cry for a while to process your emotions.

And so, Mabel found herself walking around Gravity Falls, which, in retrospect, was maaaaaaybe not the best place for her to visit in an effort to forget about her very romantic love for her gay twin brother, with whom she had had more adventures in Gravity Falls than she could count. Staring out at the lake, Mabel wondered if her feelings for Dipper began there, in that small town surrounded by trees and teeming with mystery.

Thinking she heard a rustling in the bushes behind her, she whipped her head around, only to find nothing. No one. She was alone, it would seem. She’d always been alone, ever since she and Dipper had gone off to college separately. She’d stayed in California. He’d gone off to some tech college or other on the east coast, and was having better luck with guys than she was.

Dipper had a boyfriend. He loved his boyfriend. He’d told her so just a few nights prior. Mabel had fought to keep her voice even, pretended to hear her roommate calling her from the living room, and promptly hung up. Her roommates weren’t even home.

Mabel had sobbed into her pillow until her eyelids were raw.

Candy and Grenda weren’t in town. They were coming home for the summer at some point, but not yet. Mabel had just needed to get out. She loved Santa Cruz, but she needed to get out.

Just for the summer. Just for awhile. Just to purge herself of her feelings for Dipper so she could finally, finally move on.

But first, she needed to cry. She needed a place to cry. So she got on her bike and, with one last look at the setting sun reflecting off the still water of the lake, Mabel rode off in the direction of the Shack.

———————————————————————

The sky was a bit darker by the time she got to the Shack, resting her bike against the porch and walking off into the trees, fallen leaves and grass crunching beneath her sneakers. It wasn’t terribly dark outside, since it was only, like, six-ish, but the trees shielded some of the sunlight, and Mabel was grateful she’d thought to shove a flashlight in her backpack before she left. She doubted she’d need it, but hey. The night was young.

She trudged through the forest, stepping over fallen branches before finding a clearing that felt… familiar. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it felt as if she’d been there before. It was as good a place as any, she supposed.

Mabel took off her backpack, leaned against a tree trunk, and slid down to sit on the leaves. She unzipped the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out her wallet (Hello Kitty with a whole bunch of lace and rhinestones expertly glued on by yours truly). Opening it, she stared at the picture she had of her and Dipper, grinning in front of the Mystery Shack on their thirteenth birthday.

It had been better then. Simpler. Everything was simpler before she fell in love with him.

If Mabel closed her eyes, she became fifteen again. Young and stupid and so, so naïve. It was like everything had changed overnight. One day, she looked at Dipper, and her feelings were completely platonic, as far as she was aware. The next, they were anything but.

She’d nearly broken down when they were sixteen. She was sitting with him on the roof of their house on a Saturday night, looking out at the lights of the city. They blocked out most of the stars, but the moon was still bright.

She made a joke, and when he laughed, she looked over at him, and he was just… he was beautiful. There was no other word for it. He was just beautiful. There wasn’t much light, but what light there was illuminated his face as he smiled at her. In that moment, she’d almost lost it. She’d almost told him how she felt. Almost kissed him. She’d been inching closer to him, and it was entirely subconscious. But then, their mom had called for them, and they’d gone back inside.

Two years later, he came out as gay. And Mabel was so, so relieved that she’d never ruined their relationship by telling him she loved him in a way she never should’ve loved him.

But she did, and there was no helping it. She’d fought against it, but in the end, she probably couldn’t have prevented it or avoided it. There was nothing she could’ve done.

Mabel was convinced that she’d been destined to fall in love with Dipper. And maybe, in another life, he could’ve loved her, too. But not this one. Never this one.

She didn’t realize she’d been crying until a tear plopped onto the picture of her and Dipper. Right on Dipper’s stupid thirteen-year-old face, too. She would’ve laughed if she hadn’t been so upset.

“Mabel?” a voice said, not far from where she sat. “Is that you?”

Swiping away her tears as quickly as she could, she looked up.

“Jeff?” It had never occurred to Mabel she’d see any of the gnomes again.

He approached her. His beard was longer, she noticed. “Been awhile,” he observed.

“Seven years,” she agreed with a small nod. “How, uh… how’ve you been?”

He shrugged. “Been better, been worse. I’m not the leader of the gnomes anymore. Haven’t seen ‘em in a long time.”

“Oh, I’m… sorry to hear that,” she said, not feeling sorry in the slightest. Maybe if she seemed disinterested, he’d leave her alone and she could get back to her very important business, which was, of course, crying her eyes out and staring miserably at Dipper’s picture.

“Ah, well. Such is life.” There was silence for a moment, and he spoke again, his tone much snappier than it had been before. “I said, ‘such is life’.”

There was a little “oh!” from the trees behind her, and then a rustling, and then something was put over her head, and she screamed.

The last thing she saw before the cloth fell over her eyes was Jeff’s smirking face.