Actions

Work Header

It's In The Everything

Summary:

It's in the clothes, it's in the music, it's in the makeup, it's in the girls, it's in the summer--it's everything Mabel Pines has ever wanted, for two months.

Notes:

Semi-based on my own experiences with Asperger's syndrome. Most notably, those are my bathing suit requirements, and it gets infinitely more difficult the older you get.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

It’s in the clothes. It’s in the biggest, fluffiest, pinkest dress she can find; it makes her feel normal. It doesn’t make her look normal, she knows that, but it makes her feel normal. Feel pretty for a night, feel like you can do anything even if you don’t look like the others.

When Pacifica raises her eyebrows at the dress, she feels a lot less pretty and she wants to go home, but then everyone gets turned into wood and it’s not a problem anyway.

It’s in the sweaters that are overlarge, large enough she can pull her head into the neck, pull the edges over her hands, soft enough to wear in the heat of the summer and made to fit exactly what she needs out of a sweater. She doesn’t have to visit Sweatertown too often, in Gravity Falls. It fits in a way Piedmont didn’t, fits in her head, fits in her heart, it belongs, the world makes sense from the view of the upstairs window. She hides her hands in the arms of her sweater anyway.

It’s in the bathing suit she spent four hours going from shop to shop to find because it couldn’t tie around the back and it couldn’t itch and it couldn’t have anything heavy to it and it had to have a skirt and she’d like it not to be a bikini top but a twopiece is okay, and a onepiece isn’t. It’s in the bathing suit she’ll have to do the same ritual again next summer, even harder, because the older you get the more limited your options are and she refuses to wear the ones with the strings, it has to be STRAPS, it pulls her head down if she ties it around her neck and that won’t do.

It’s in the clothes.

It’s in the music. It’s in the songs she plays, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, same song repeating all night, same song repeating all day, mouthing along the words no one else can hear. Her mom says it’s rude to keep her earbuds in. She thinks it’s ruder to make everyone else listen to the same song, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

It’s in the concerts she goes to and doesn’t always like. Being with Candy and Grenda is wonderful, but concerts are VERY LOUD; they ring in her ears for hours afterward. But seeing the band was fun, and she’ll try anything once. She just probably won’t do this particular thing again.

It’s in the music.

It’s in the makeup. It’s in the fact that too much makeup is uncomfortable but the right amounts can do what the fluffy pink dress did, can make her feel powerful even if it’s not the kind everyone else wears. It’s in the fact that she understands how to put it on, knows how to control this small thing, knows that it’s entirely hers.

It’s in the makeup.

It’s in the girls. It’s in Candy and Grenda and the fact that they are her people more than anyone else has ever been. They don’t care that she pulls her sleeves over her hands and her turtlenecks over her head, that she said she didn’t want to go to another concert and listens to the same five songs over and over and over again. They’re just as eccentric as her. She doesn’t know if it’s for the same reasons, but she’s….grateful. Yes, she’s grateful anyway, that something in the world has seen fit to give her a place where her mind calms and she meets her people, if only for a summer.

It’s in the sleepovers that she was never invited to as a kid but that she hosts now, it’s in the budding relationship with Pacifica (even though the slight about the dress still smarts), it’s in the fact that—

It’s in the girls.

It’s in the fact that

It’s in the fact that something in the world has seen fit to give her this summer, where the world makes sense. She can understand the Shack, where they don’t comb their hair or change their underwear and the carpet is ratty and the kitchen is messy and everything’s slightly askew (Dipper doesn’t like that last bit, but she does. It’s still a constant, even if it’s all slightly different. Little things can be different). She can understand Gravity Falls, she can understand her girls, her grunkle doesn’t care if she plays her music loud again and again and again and again, her other grunkle learns that she makes her sweaters too big for a reason and very, very quietly asks if he can have one too. Her brother, she knows, loves it there too, in this place where the world that makes no sense is put aside for one that’s supposed to be strange, supposed to be fantastic, but somehow, it fits better and stronger than anything else has before.

It’s in the clothes, the music, the makeup, the girls, the summer—it’s in everything she has for two months, everything she does for two months, it’s in knowing that this small family doesn’t care and likes her for who she is and that most of them are like her when only Dipper, only Dipper had ever been like her before, had understood—but Grunkle Ford has a large sweater for when the world is too loud now, and Grunkle Stan taps and clicks things rhythmically and never ends on an odd number and knocks on the doorframes going in and out, and things are going to be okay.

Notes:

I'd like to do one at least for Ford, maybe the others...there's not enough of this headcanon/AU out there.