Chapter Text
Pacifica can’t sleep. Her jaw and cheek ache, her stomach hurts, and every time she closes her eyes all she can see is Bill’s face, laughing as he pulls back his fist.
It should probably be a surprise that a demon so closely resembles her father. Some sort of awful revelation. But she knows. She’s known for years.
Pacifica lies awake and stares at the ceiling. Someone has stuck glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. They’re faded with time, and a few are peeling off, but it seems like whoever put them up took the time to arrange them to resemble real constellations. She doesn’t know their names, save for one.
The Big Dipper. Go figure.
Pacifica sighs and pushes herself up out of bed. She tiptoes past Mabel’s bed and into the bathroom, carefully shutting the door behind her before she flips on the light.
She blinks as her eyes adjust to the light, grimacing when her face comes into focus, reflected by the puffy-sticker adorned mirror above the sink.
The bruising has only gotten worse over the course of the day — the right side of her face a mess of red and purple, the color darkest around her eye and along the line of her jaw. There’s a long cut above her right eyebrow that nearly reaches her hairline, and her nose is tender and a little swollen.
She can almost hear her mother laughing, pointing out that even a nose job couldn’t salvage the one thing Pacifica has ever been good for — a pretty face. Never beautiful, sure, but a pretty prop for her parents to parade around.
She’s certainly not pretty now. Which makes her —
Well. Good for nothing. Great.
After all the shit her parents have put her through, the fact that they’re right is just salt in the wound.
Pacifica blinks tears from her eyes and flips the light back off, opening the door and creeping — careful not to wake Mabel — to the stairs.
+
By the time Dipper makes it up the ladder, Pacifica’s already on the roof, arms wrapped around her bare knees as she tilts her head up to the stars. The ends of her hair brush the length of bare skin between the hem of her top and the waistband of her sleep shorts. There are goosebumps on her upper arms.
Dipper sits beside her, sliding off his hoodie and wrapping it around her shoulders. “You okay, Paz?”
She glances over at him. “You keep asking that.”
He shrugs. “I’m a curious guy.”
“I’m okay.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I know.”
They’re both quiet for a moment. Dipper tilts his head back to look at the stars, trying to remember the names of the constellations. Orion’s Belt, Andromeda, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor. The big dipper.
Hah.
He rubs his forehead absentmindedly and turns back to Pacifica, ready to ask her the same question he’s been asking all day -- because he knows the real answer is no, of course not -- but stops short.
She’s beautiful. Even with half her face bruised to shit, Pacifica Northwest is beautiful — hair loose and flowing, skin slightly silver in the moonlight.
Dipper is so totally fucked. He is so absolutely boned. He has fucked this whole thing up an uncountable number of times, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to keep fucking it up, because Pacifica Northwest is absolutely beautiful, and Dipper Pines has an incorrigible habit of fucking up around beautiful girls. It’s his goddamn M.O.
Fucking up around beautiful girls and over-complicating just about everything.
Anxiety. His modus operandi is anxiety.
Case in point — just looking at Pacifica Northwest is making his palms sweaty.
“Dipper?” Her voice is small and quiet and genuine in a way he could have never imagined six years before.
“Yeah, Paz?”
“Did you put up the stars?”
It’s an odd question to ask, especially when he’s feeling like maybe she hung the moon, and something makes his voice come out low and thick as he responds. Anxiety, maybe. His modus operandi. “What?”
“In the attic.”
Oh. “Yeah,” he clears his throat, flexes his hands in a way that makes his fingers press against his stupid, sweaty palms, “I did. They’re still there?”
She nods, and he realizes he’s still staring at her like some kind of freak. He’d stop if he could. For some reason his neck won’t agree to turn away.
“I don’t, like, know any of their names. Like — the constellations.”
“Not even the Big Dipper?” He can’t help but tease her.
It makes her smile — just a little — and, yup. Totally fucked.
Pacifica rolls her eyes. “I’m not a total airhead, Dipper.”
Something in the way she says it — the something that underlies her playful tone — makes his hands ball up. “You’re not an airhead at all, Paz.”
She glances over at him, the column of her throat bobbing as she swallows. “Thank you, Dipper.”
For a moment, he wants to kiss her again. To fuck it all up — modus operandi. Instead, he looks away — keeps himself from doing something stupid — and looks up at the stars. “I could teach you, if you want. The, uh—“ he swallows, “the names of the constellations.”
There’s a beat. His hands are clammy. His brain scrambles for something, anything, that he could say to make this less awkward. Then, right as he’s about to take it all back —
“I’d like that.”
+
“Who taught you the constellations?”
He glances away from Casseoipia — and fuck, he’s been rambling, hasn’t he — and sees Pacifica watching him with big, blue eyes. He’s not rambling any more. It’ll be a miracle if he manages to string together a coherent sentence. She’s just so goddamn pretty. “Oh, uh —“ he coughs to clear his throat, “my dad.”
That’s probably the wrong answer, given the last few days, but — well. Modus operandi.
“Oh.”
Yup. Wrong answer. Put another one up on the board for Mason “Dipper” Pines.
“I always wanted that.”
He asks, “Wanted what?” because he’s a fucking idiot. Unfathomably stupid.
She shrugs. “A family like that.”
His brain is screaming at him to do something stupid, and with his track record, it’s not exactly a surprise when he gives into temptation and reaches over and takes her hand — gently, gingerly. “If it helps, you have it now.”
She doesn’t reply, After a moment, her fingers slot into the spaces between his, her head falling to rest on his shoulder.
He swallows down the heart beating in his throat. His voice comes out husky and low. “You okay, Paz?”
He can feel her throat move against his shoulder as she swallows. “No.”
Her hands are cold. He can’t help but rub her thumb with his own. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” There’s a long pause. “I didn’t think anyone would want to help me.”
Dipper squeezes her hand, turns his head so that his lips just barely brush her hair. Soft enough to give him plausible deniability. “No offense, Paz, but that’s really fucking stupid.”
Just like him. Modus-fucking-operandi.