[Part one] [Part two]
(this part is nsfw)
-
are we going on a coat ride?
well, we’re off and definitely stumbling ♫
-
Later, Myles strolls into their room to find Dipper slouched in bed under the covers, surrounded by balled up pieces of paper and chewed up pens. A beat-up looking notebook sits propped against Dipper’s knees on top the the blanket—his old book of lists and schedules, which for the last few hours he’s been using to try to formulate a working plan to get his shit back together. They’ve all been pretty pitiful ventures. The harder he tries to come up with something that’s actually practicable, the more he feels like a very scared, very cornered animal.
He still hasn’t heard anything from Mabel. He made a few attempts to text her, typing out huge chunks of text, slowly stringing words together to form careful apologies, trying to explain himself without worrying her even more than he already has… but whenever it came time to hit send, he would chicken out, deleting everything and dropping his phone on the bed right before dropping his face into his hands. It was a very productive afternoon.
“How’s it, Dip,” Myles says through a mouthful of dining hall to-go food, kicking off his shoes.
“Hey…”
Damn. If he’d known how bleak and scratchy his voice was going to sound, he never would’ve opened his mouth. Dipper clears his throat, keeping his eyes fixed on his notebook.
Myles lifts an eyebrow, walking over into the cluttered space between their beds, setting the to-go box and a bottle of Coke down on his desk. Dipper unconsciously ducks his head down further, a stiff attempt at hiding beneath his hat. The last thing he wants is for Myles to notice that he’d been crying earlier. He’s not in any shape to explain himself to anybody, especially not to his ‘brooo, why the long face, everything’s alllll good allll the time, bro’ roommate. His eyes are sore and droopy, and he has a stress headache, and also that pungent taste in his mouth due to his stomach trying to tell him that it hasn’t been tended to all day and to fucking feed it already.
“Yo, think you got some ink on your mouth, there… man. You look rough.”
“Ha…” Dipper nods and chuckles dryly, rubbing the ink from his bottom lip with the knuckle of his thumb. “Yup. Probably do.”
Myles gestures at all the crumbled papers scattered around. “Whatcha workin’ so hard on?”
“Stuff for class,” Dipper says flatly. Myles seems to accept this answer and turns away to stoop over his desk and open his laptop, scrolling through his music library. Meanwhile Dipper jams his pen between his teeth and rips out another sheet full of his crossed out (then erased, rewritten, crossed out again), tiny scrawls. Another shit, nonviable plan. This one wouldn’t work for the same reason a lot of the others wouldn’t. It involves too much coming clean. Would probably result in his parents pulling his cooked ass out of school, their failure son who they thought they could trust. The paper gets crumpled it up in one bitter fist. It falls lifelessly from his hand, rolling into the others.
Myles finally decides on a song, the beginnings of an easygoing hiphop number breaking the silence. He tugs off the shirt he’s wearing and flings it onto the floor, pulling a different floor shirt over his head in its wake. It’s when he picks up the Coke again to take swig that Myles pauses, looking over at Dipper, this time really, actually looking at him. Dipper keeps his eyes glued firmly on the empty sheet of college-ruled notebook paper. The emptiness seems to go on for a hundred miles rather than eleven inches, the dull throb in his head escalating into more of a pinch. He can feel himself bristling under Myles’ continued stare, and starts to count the thin blue lines on the white sheet, thumb rhythmically clicking the button on his pen.
One, two, three…
“Hey, are you okay?”
Nope. Thanks for noticing.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Eleven, twelve, thirteen…
“You sure?” Myles sounds uncharacteristically uncertain, like he just now woke up and is having his first look at the guy he shares a room with after months of being blissfully half-asleep. Dipper’s grip on his pen tightens.
Screw off. Twenty-four, twenty-five…
“Yup. Pretty sure.”
“Uh, okay… kinda seems like you’re not, but okay.”
Dipper says nothing to that. Just keeps on with the pen clicking, his back hunched and tense, no eye contact. Myles slowly screws the cap back on his Coke bottle and scratches the side of his face. “Mm, would you be down to smoke? Would that help whatever’s going on that you don’t wanna talk about?”
That gets Dipper to stop counting lines in a borderline-livid way and finally look up. He gets hit with a wave of guilt about all the shitty thoughts he was having about his roommate not more than ten seconds ago; Myles’ intentions are pure, even if he still doesn’t actually know Dipper that well. The pressure behind Dipper’s forehead relaxes a little at the prospect of relief. He cracks a smile. “God, yes, that would be amazing.”
“Ahhh, there he is! Just in need of a little therapy from Dr. Greenthumb, I feel that, I feel that.” Myles smirks and dips his hand into one baggy jeans pocket, pulling out a royal blue vape pen and clicking the silver button several times. “Here, freshly loaded. You’re welcome.”
Dipper takes it, examining it between his fingers. “Did you just get this? I’ve never seen you use it before.”
“It’s a friend o’ mine’s. Treat it with love and kindness.”
“Gotcha.” Dipper goes to lift the pen to his mouth, then takes it away at the last second. “Do I hold the button down the whole time, or…”
“Just hold it down a few seconds and inhale.” Myles makes a skeptical face, looking down at Dipper from the end of his long nose. “Honestly, do you even vape, broh?”
“Fuck off,” Dipper laughs. “Jeep your sad dead memes away from me.” He takes a hit, then a second one, unsure if he got anything the first time. He tilts his head up to breathe out but Myles puts up a hand.
“Wait, hold up. Just in case ol’ Larry’s walkin by outside.” The dryer-sheet paper towel roll gets chucked to Dipper’s side of the room, with Myles softening his voice to the closest likeness one could ever hope to achieve of stoner Obi-Wan Kenobi, “use the splooof, Luke.”
Dipper nearly snorts smoke from his nose, laugh-coughing it into the end of the paper towel roll. “Da-ammit, Myles…”
Myles keeps the weed and the jokes and the music flowing, never faltering in his lifelong, self-designated task of lightening the mood. Before long they’re both moderately high and Dipper is feeling good enough that the need to apologize rises up in his throat.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry for acting like a dick earlier. Today was kind of a bad day.”
“Yeah, I figured. No worries, bro, we all have our shit days.” A shifty grin starts to bloom across Myles’ face. “And shit days can always be turned around. You know—you know what you need?”
Dipper raises an eyebrow, watching as the smile on his roommate’s face moves into unsettling territory. “Um, I don’t know if I wanna know what I need.”
“You, my friend,” Myles says with blazed conviction, “need to be drunk. Me and Kenz and a couple of our other buddies are going to a party on Third tonight, you should come out with us.”
“Nah, I’m…” Dipper averts his reddened eyes, “not really in the mood to go out.”
“Well, yeah, are you ever actually in the mood to go out?” Myles laughs, rummaging around in the cluttered space under his desk. Dipper shoots him a dead-eyed look. “Ohhh, don’t be that way. It’ll be fun, you can help me break in this sucker right’chea.” From under his desk he pulls out a jumbo handle of Fireball whiskey, standing up straight and waving it back and forth. “Come on. Bear necessities, son. Forget about your worries and your strife and shit. By getting crunk. With me. Your favorite roomie in this whole wide world.”
“Wow, that logic is. Just so foolproof.”
“Oh, don’t I know it.” Myles touches his tongue to the sealed cap of the bottle, then brings it down to his butt and makes a hissing sound. “Come onnn! It’s Friday, live a little.”
Dipper looks at Myles, and then at the bottle, and then down at his hands, turning the vape pen over and over between his fingers. Sure, it’s a Friday night, but he’s still up to his ears in labs and papers and upcoming exams he should’ve started studying for ages ago. He should also call Mabel back. He should’ve done that hours ago. He should write his chem professor an email making his case (i.e., begging) for a second chance at that test. He should sweep all these balled up piece of paper off his bed and actually do something about his problems instead of just forever dog paddling around in them aimlessly, stirring them up, making them worse.
The area behind his forehead starts to pinch again. He takes another hit, eyeing the the two shot glasses Myles is currently pouring Fireball into.
“Ah, I dunno…” Dipper rubs at one eye with his fingers, sighing. “Maybe.”
“Ahh, ahhh! Almost got him! Say the words with me bro — ‘I, am, coming…” Myles pauses, gesturing his hands in encouragement, “Ouuttt… withhhhhh….’ ”
Dipper lets his head lull forward, closing his eyes through a long exhale. What’s one more bad decision in a fucking ocean of them, anyway. His head pops back up. “Fine, I’m in. But wherever we end up going you have to promise not to leave without me, alright? I don’t wanna end up walking home by myself for the billionth time.”
Myles claps his hands together and snaps some victory fingerguns, before handing Dipper one ridiculously full shot glass. “Caaan do, bro. Kenzie has a bunch of out-of-towner friends crashing at her place this weekend anyway.” Myles raises his own shot glass solemnly in the air, prompting Dipper to grin and do the same. “Tonight the boys of Wampler Hall are stickin’ together.”
Dipper humors him with a “hear, hear,” and they toss back their shots, both pulling faces afterwards, laughter ensuing.
Dipper doesn’t quite believe his roomie’s promise not to ditch him. Myles is hard to stick with at parties, his girlfriend and closer friends usually hauling him off somewhere Dipper never gets the memo about. But empty promises aside, the weed has calmed him down, the tears have long dried, and the burst of alcohol sits warm in his stomach, and now the idea of a chance at temporary escape—even if it’s just a chance—is growing more and more appealing to him.
One more shot of Fireball gives Dipper a pleasant weed-to-alcohol-ratio buzz, and that sells the decision. Off come the sweatpants and on go the cleanest pair of jeans he can find, along with his favorite comfy t-shirt (a Twin Summits shirt, gifted to him by Mabel two birthdays ago) and the first flannel he comes across. He snarfs a bag of chips for dinner and heads off with Myles into the night, still hanging onto that pleasant buzz, maybe a little too desperately.
-
Two hours later, Dipper is at the house party on Third Street and a lot more than buzzed, but there’s nothing really pleasant about it anymore.
Earlier he and Myles first stopped off at some-guy-Dipper-doesn’t-know’s place to “chill and pregrame” as Myles put it. As soon as he stepped foot in that apartment, thereby immersing himself in a small, intimate gathering of people who were friends with Myles and not him, Dipper knew coming along tonight was probably a big mistake. It was a mistake, because everything, everything was hard. Way too hard to be worth being here. Making conversation was hard, playing background-friend-of-a-friend-no-one-cares-about was hard, trying to smile and pretend he was having a good time was hard, looking people in the eye at all was hard.
When did looking people in the eye get to be so fucking hard?
Dipper found that the easiest course of action against the uneasy feelings swirling around inside of him was to keep drinking, and so he did. One drink and then another drink and another after that.
Now, he leans against a wall in a dimly lit living room of someone he doesn’t know, red solo cup of Pabst in hand. Every thirty seconds or so he mechanically brings it to his lips, sipping and glancing out from over the top of the cup with cloudy eyes, warily taking in the party that rages on around him. Looking at the people here makes him feel like he’s looking down the wrong end of a telescope.
His roommate drifted away from him over an hour ago, leaving to go smoke some more upstairs probably, too baked and too caught up in having a good time with his real, non tag-along friends to remember to invite Dipper along. Loneliness and dread have taken Myles’ place, making themselves at home on Dipper’s shoulders, heavy and blanketing, as if they never really left.
Some temporary escape.
Dipper stares down at the pale liquid in his cup, swishing it around, lifting it to take a long gulp. A trap remix of a song he doesn’t recognize starts to boom through the house. He sighs, leaning further into the wall, pulling out his phone for lack of anything else to do. As usual happy Christmas-themed Mabel and Dipper look back at him, and for some reason, they catch him off guard—probably due to his lack of soberness. His face falls like a stone. The phone gets stuffed back into his pocket, where his hand stays as well. He sips his drink, eyes on the floor.
He should’ve called her back. Why didn’t he call her back? He basically told her to fuck off. And then he just left it like that? The fuck, Dipper. You should’ve called back. You should’ve—
“Wow. Umm, hipster alert,” comes a voice from right next to him, jolting him out of his downward thought spiral. Dipper’s head swivels around to find the source, much more drunkenly than he meant it to. He finds himself having to tilt his gaze further down than he’s used to, because although he’s not the tallest guy around, she’s still a good bit shorter than he is. Short, and also curvy; he can tell, because she’s wearing a crop top-skirt combo that accentuates every one of them. Her eyes are large and dark, her hair long and glossy and even darker, and she’s gesturing at his chest with a hand that holds a red cup identical to his.
“Tell me you’re just wearing that for show, I mean did anybody actually even watch that shit?”
Dipper blinks at her for a second, this random girl who came out of nowhere, before looking blankly down at his Twin Summits shirt and back up. He squints at her, surprised and annoyed. Wow. Did she really just come all the way over here just to blast his choice of clothing?
“Uh…”
“I’m kidding, man, I love that show. The series finale blew my mind, you don’t even know.”
Since the vibe has switched to friendly, Dipper cracks a grin. “Yeah, if you could call that a series finale. I’m still mad it didn’t get another season. Rip, actual satisfying Twin Summits ending that will never be… what?” He asks when she starts pointing a his mouth. “Do I have something on my face, or?”
She shakes her pretty head. “No, you’re smiling. That’s good, you seemed kinda pissed at me before for the lame shirt joke.”
“Oh,” Dipper says, starting to chuckle along with her, scratching self-consciously at the hairs on his chin. “Sorry, yeah, no, lame jokes are fine. Just kinda slow on the uptake right now, this isn’t my first one of uh, these.” He holds up his cup and swishes it around a little, giving her a little smile.
“Trust me, you’re not alone there.”
“Haha. Cool, cool.” A moment or two goes by while she sips her drink and he bobs his head faintly to the music, inwardly grasping around for something else to say to her. He ends up going down the most obvious route. “What’s your name?”
“Arianna,” she calls. He almost misses it, the music is so loud. “Ari works too.”
“Nice to meet you,” he calls back, keeping his voice raised so she can hear him over the thumping bass, “I’m Dipper.”
“Dipper?“ She giggles incredulously, but it’s a good natured, albeit tipsy, giggle. “That’s cute. Are your parents just weirdos, or is that a nickname for something?”
Dipper squints his eyes and pretends to give the question some actual thought. “Uhm, the second one? Yeah, nnnickname.”
A beat goes by and her eyes shift away from his and then back. “Arrre you gonna tell me what it’s for?” She laughs.
“Hey, woah, uh, we just met. I need to keep some of my secrets, youknow?” He gives her coy smile, keeping his eyes on her as he takes another sip of his drink, finishing it off. He’s feeling oddly confident—aka, he’s a lot drunker than he thought he was. “We gotta, we gotta work our way up to that one.”
Arianna bites her lip as she grins back, and then pokes him playfully in the chest with one manicured fingernail. “I bet I can get you to tell me before the night is over.”
“You’re on, kid.” He points at her, cocking his head challengingly. “Don’t think I’ll make it easy for you,” he scrambles for her name, and miraculously manages to recall it at the last second out of the drunken smog of his brain, “—Ari.”
Okay. Flirting. Nailing this. He must be, because she’s standing a lot closer to him than she was a minute ago, a lot closer.
“Pff, wouldn’t dream of it. So what do you do for fun, Dipper?” She nudges his arm, practically purring the words, if you could call any voice that involves lowkey yelling over loud music a purr.
“Ah, you know. I, uh,” His brain buzzes around for an answer, but comes up empty, and Dipper’s confident voice dies away. Ariana continues to look at him expectantly. All of a sudden it’s a lot hotter in this crowded room, and his hand comes up to tug the collar of his loose flannel on its own.
Okay Dipper. Say words. You can do it. Uh. Jeez. What does he do for fun anymore? He stopped going to all the university clubs he joined in the fall ages ago. The same pile of overdue library books has been sitting next to his bed since February. His journals, his camera, his conspiracy blog, his Youtube site, his sketchbook, even his video games… all untouched for… he doesn’t even know how long. Damn, what the has he been doing with all his time lately? He can’t even fucking recall. His brain feels like the equivalent of tasteless mush. The only things that come to mind are smoking, sleeping, watching Netflix documentaries, staring at the ceiling… somehow he doesn’t think any of those things will sound all that impressive to this girl.
“Right now just trying to get through the semester in one piece,” he tries to go the vague, lighthearted route, and crosses his fingers that he doesn’t sound as uncomfortable as he feels. She laughs with him, nodding for him to continue, and he swallows. “But uh, yeah, I’ve just been… hanging out a lot, and…” Hanging out a lot? The fuck does that even mean? On the verge of panicking, Dipper’s brain latches onto the Netflix documentaries part of his lame life, specifically on one he watched last week that took place in Indonesia and also had subtitles. “I’m uh, really into foreign films right now?” He scratches at his face again. God, that sounded so dumb, so dumb, somebody stop him–
“Oh, that’s awesome. I love Amélie, have you seen that one? ”
His first impulse is to laugh, just a small, short, tipsy chuckle—because everyone and their mom who’s “into foreign films” has seen Amélie, which was eh, charming but tried too hard in his opinion—but no, that would be douchey, don’t be a pretentious douche, Dipper, she still seems to like you, Dipper, don’t ruin this.
“Yeah, that’s ah, yeah! A good one. Love the part where she fucks with the grocer guy.”
“I bet you just looove watching people get fucked with, huh, Dipper?”
“Ooh. Sensing a little innuendo in your tone there. Sneaky. I like it.”
“I am very sneaky,” she agrees, lightly poking his chest again, “so um. You better watch your back.”
He raises his empty cup to her, nodding with a faux-serious face. “Oh, noted. Will do.”
She laughs, moving a step closer. “Soo,” her hand latches innocently onto his, “would you wanna come dance with me, new friend?”
It’s a superfluous question, really. She’s already stepping in the direction of the room where all the grinding-poorly-disguised-as-dancing is happening, pulling Dipper along with her. Yeah, okay… why not, he’s drunk enough for this. One corner of his mouth quirks upwards, and he answers her anyway.
“Sure.”
-
Looking back, there were instances, several instances actually, where the little voice in Dipper’s head yelled for him to stop fucking drinking already. But for various reasons, the voice gets ignored each time. This is his first time he’s been out in a while. He’s thrown everything he has into playing the role of ‘normal college dude at party,’ and there’s no turning back now.
The point where Dipper really should’ve cut himself off probably passed him by somewhere between his new lady friend grinding all up on him on the dance floor, and then her dragging him off to play a round of flip cup with her friends. Luckily he seems to be one of those people who plays better when they’re fucked up, because he sure as hell isn’t failing at this, gradually making his way up to life-of-the-party status. And god does it feel good. He can hear himself whooping and hollering along with everybody else, can feel strangers clapping him on the back, a pair of full lips pressing playfully to his cheek every so often. It’s so good to feel good for once, even if it’s fake, alcohol induced good. He becomes so beautifully detached from himself that he’s no longer Dipper, pathetic guy with pathetic problems, at all. Seriously, fuck that guy. Right now he gets to be some other guy, a fun guy who looks people in the eye when he talks to them, who has lots of friends and girls interested in him, a guy people actually want to be around, a guy nobody would ever forget to call or text or Skype. In this moment he’s regular college kid who’s just here to have a have a good fucking time with everybody else and holy crap alcohol is awesome and he should probably go get some more of it, stat.
Dipper loses count of the number of times his red solo cup gets refilled, and the night blurs by. Sometimes he’ll close his eyes and when he opens them again he’ll be somewhere completely different; leaning against the rail of a back porch, his head thrown back with laughter; standing next to some dudes playing beer pong he just met, cheering them on loudly like they’d all been best buddies since kindergarten; in the bathroom taking a leak for the second time—third time? Eh, who gives a fuck.
At another point he blinks back to himself and finds himself back on the dance floor, his back pressed to the wall, his hands holding on to a pair of wide hips, a plush, short-black-skirt covered ass grinding back into his pelvis to the beat of a song he can barely make out the tune of. He moves back against her sloppily, heedlessly, sometimes bumping into the other dancing couples crammed on either side of them without even realizing it. She spins around in his arms, and he can see her giggling, although he can’t really hear the sound that comes with it. They share a beat or two of foggy eye contact before he drops his head and his lips crash onto hers, and then a second later a tongue that tastes like beer and cigarettes is writhing around in his mouth–the ashy taste doesn’t bother him at all, his eyelids slide shut like weights. He’s so audaciously out of it that he doesn’t feel the sweat that has the shirt stuck to his back, doesn’t notice the way his legs teeter and sway, doesn’t feel the storm clouds gathering in his stomach. Right now there’s nothing on his radar but a low bass vibrating in his chest, a wet mouth on his, a faraway tingle in his groin.
This is fine. This is good. He’s gone. And whoever has taken his place is having a damn good time.
Everything is a-fucking-okay.
-
The next time Dipper comes back into some real awareness (‘real’ being a damn loose term here, since he’s a person floating around near the edge of blacking out), it’s thanks to a dorm room door slamming shut. He jolts, becoming aware of the fact that it’s finally quiet, and that his head is swimming badly, partly from the jostling he’d received from being dragged inside this dark room. Next he registers a giggle. Next the sound of a lamp clicking on, after that the light that comes with it. His mind is only capable of processing one thing at a time, slowly.
His lips throb a bit, swollen due to his new friend here practically eating his face on the short bus ride back to her dorm from the party, her hands all over him. He becomes vaguely aware that they were being that couple during the ride, and he’s usually the person rolling his eyes at that couple, but Dipper is four hits and who knows how many drinks into tonight, so usual sense of judgement and self-awareness be damned.
Now, she’s suddenly in front of him again, and wraps her arms around his neck, pulls him down for another slapdash kiss, then another, another. Dipper feels himself responding out of reflex, his arms snaking around her waist. Her body is warm, and soft, and his brain acknowledges these facts, but that’s about it. It’s hard to tell if he’s enjoying this anymore. This kiss with… uhhh… uh.
Crap. What was her name again? Allie? Alexa? A… something. Fuck. He’s so, so, drunk.
She starts rubbing a hand quickly back and forth over the crotch of his jeans, whispering breathless words here and there to him in between kisses. Her hand is almost too rough, but he can feel himself hardening at her touch anyway. Dipper cracks his eyes open, squinting thoughtlessly around her dark bedroom as he continues to be a willing, participatory party in drunk-ass sloppy makeouts. He tries to recall how he even managed to get this girl to look his way earlier, and gives up after three seconds of scattered thinking. And recalling how he’d ended up back in her dorm? With her tongue down his throat? Forget about it. His brain is gone. Good riddance to that thing, anyway. It was way more trouble than it’s worth.
He doesn’t usually do the random hookup thing, and he’s kind of wasted off his ass, so it vaguely surprises him when she suddenly strips off her shirt along with her bra. It clicks with him after a long second. Right, right. He came home with her for a reason. He’s here to do stuff. Fuck, and stuff. Tch, fuck yeah, he is. He’s an eighteen-year-old virgin who can barely stand without falling over, but he’s definitely good to fuck whatsherface. Totally.
One of his hands reaches out for a handful of her breast with probably the least bit of grace possible— because boobs are soft and great, obviously, and also because for some reason she still seems to be into this, and him, despite his graceless tactics. Probably because she’s not exactly anywhere close to sober herself. He dips down to mouth at her neck and rolls her nipple under his thumb and she moans loudly, pressing herself into him. The sound seems kind of over the top to Dipper, but what the hell, he’ll take it. The front of his pants gets unzipped, and then his jeans are around his ankles, his boxers soon to follow. A small yelp escapes him when a cool, was-recently-holding-a-cheap-beer hand abruptly cups his junk.
"Shit,” he slurs. “Your hands'r cold.”
She laughs out a short apology, reeling him in and kissing him fiercely one more time, then unceremoniously drops to her knees. Dipper vaguely registers her giving him a quick wink before she grabs on to either side of his hips, catches his cock in her mouth and starts to suck clumsily. He moans out a small curse at the sudden sensation of her mouth on him, his fingers clutching at the edge of the cluttered desk behind him, if only because he’s not entirely sure what else to do with his hands.
Alexa-or-Allie sticks with her signature move, bobbing her head again and again, her long dark hair falling in her face. She moans around him but it’s an awkward sound, and for some reason this feels awkward to watch, so Dipper directs his dizzy vision up to where the ceiling meets the wall behind her. He thinks vacantly that the movie she has a poster of taped to her wall was actually a really stupid fucking movie. His legs feel very unstable beneath him, and he’s pretty sure it’s not because he’s getting his dick sucked. Not that it doesn’t feel good, or whatever, like it feels good enough, but he can’t seem to keep his head in the moment… maybe his nerve endings are in sleep mode or something. He keeps having to remind himself where he is, keeps having to crush down little warning bells flaring up in his brain, keeps thinking about how terrible his stomach feels. Blah. Shouldn’t he be overwhelmed with pleasure by now? Or at least be a tiny bit distracted from how shitty he feels? Something? He doesn’t have much to compare this with. He’s only had someone go down on him one other time, and he was pretty wasted then, too.
He’s bad at hook ups, he decides.
“Mm,” Alexa-or-Allie moans again, and this one does something for him, making Dipper shiver and sigh. He shifts his jelly legs a bit, wishing he was lying down and not standing up, then lets his head flop forward so he can look at her. At first there are two of her, but then the two images combine into one of a beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed stranger in the midst of sucking him off. Oh. Man. That… that is pretty hot, actually. He watches her reach up and tuck some of her jet-black hair behind her ear to get it out of the way, and for some strange reason the way she does it, fingers curled delicately, pinky sticking out, reminds him of the exact way Mabel tucks her own curls behind her ear… Mabel. Damn. He knows he fucked up with his sister earlier on the phone but at the moment he can’t for the life of him remember what he said. The shitty feeling in the pit of his stomach grows. He wonders what she’s up to right now. He feels that familiar biting ache in his heart that bubbles up every time she pops into his brain and he’s forced to remember how much he misses her.
Dipper’s eyes shoot open. He cringes deeply, panic rising in his chest, his head banging back against the desk hutch as a self punishment. Okay, ow, that hurt way more than he thought it would, but also, what in the fucking shit. Who ponders overs what their sister might be doing while they’re getting blown! Seriously, who fucking does that? God, he has issues. God.
Somehow he manages to shove all thoughts of Mabel out of his mind, but the panic levels don’t stop rising. His breath comes out faster, all the competing sensations happening in his body clashing hard and forming a clusterfuck of anxiety in his chest. Suddenly the rising sensation transforms into something else, something that is definitely not panic. The back of his throat tingles foully, and there’s not enough warning for him to even speak, all he can do is lurch to one side and cover his mouth with his hand as his chest heaves—
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Allie-or-Alexa yelps, jerking away from his crotch as he vomits into his hand. His hand obviously isn’t going to cut it but he can’t stop, the overflow escaping onto his favorite shirt and the desk and the floor.
A small pink trash can gets thrust into his sick-covered hands. “What the fuck! Do it in there!”
Ugh. It won’t stop coming. And he can sense her watching him with disgust, can hear her cursing and freaking out to herself as she yanks her shirt back on. Oh god, please, please make it stop. When he’s finally able to stop dry heaving he sets down the trash can with shaky hands, nearly falling on his face as he stoops on wobbly legs to pull his pants back up. “Ah, fuh—” he hiccups, “—fuck, Allie, I-I’m-“
"It’s Arianna, you asshole,” she snaps. The room gets quiet and Dipper’s eyes go wide, and as inebriated and sick and out of it as he is, he at least has the decency to also feel like a shithead.
“‘M’sorry,“ he says weakly. There’s a pounding in his head. He feels like he might vomit again. He wipes his chin on his shirt, not knowing what else to do as she glares understandable daggers at him. He wilts like a sad, drunk dandelion under her stare, wanting nothing more than to disappear. Or maybe die. That would do the trick as well.
"Unbelievable,” she scoffs. “Jus’ get the fuck out of here, Dipper. You’re a fucking mess.”
He nods stupidly, fully in agreement with her, avoiding eye contact as he stumbles for the door, tripping over her laundry basket in the process. “S-sorry. M’reallysorry,” he mumbles again, fumbling with the doorknob. She doesn’t say anything more as he finally manages to get it open and ducks out of her room.
-
By some miracle he makes it back to his own dorm in one piece, where he spends half the night curled next to a toilet, emptying his guts out. Eventually he passes out and groggily wakes up to someone knocking on the stall door he’s got his face pressed against, the vibration nearly splitting his already pounding head in two.
“Yo, Dip, ‘zzat you? You alive, in there?” Myles’ halting voice comes through the door, not sounding terribly sober himself.
Dipper can only manage a miserable groan in response.
“Okay, I kn–I knew thosewere your shoes. Okay, Dipper, what the fuck, man. Where did you even go, I looked for you before I left like you made me fucking promise and you were fucking nowhere. Did’joo leave with a girl’ersomethin?”
Dipper lifts his head an inch, opening his eyes just a sliver. One sliver too much. He ends up jerking back towards the toilet, his poor, tuckered out stomach trying to empty itself again, but there’s not much in there to purge out. The bag of chips he had for dinner is long gone, nothing left now but alcohol and bile.
“Ah, shhhit.” Myles mutters, and knocks again. “Okay, come on man. Lemme in.” Dipper doesn’t move or speak, breathing heavily, spitting into the bowl a few times. “…Unlock the door, Dipper… come on…” The knocking starts coming louder, slightly more worried. “Jus’ unlock the door, and y–I’ll help you from there. Oka–Alright?”
Dipper moans again, not unlike a wasted, helpless baby, his head resting limply on his arm against the toilet seat. More goddamn knocking. God, just let him die already.
“Dude. I know you can hear me, so, unlock. The fucking. Door. D’you really want fucking Larry to have to find your drunk ass in here in a few hours?”
It’s the persistently loud knocking and the bare-bones need for it to stop that gets Dipper to finally dig deep within himself for the will to move, pitching his upper body up in a ragdoll fashion so he can blindly grope around to get the bathroom door unlatched. As soon as it clicks the door gets pushed open, and then Dipper is looking pathetically up into the wide, slightly disgusted eyes of his roommate, still too fucked up to be ashamed of himself.
“Ffffuck,” Myles says, more to himself than to Dipper. His eyeline moves between the front of Dipper’s shirt, to the floor, to Dipper’s gray face, traces of vomit everywhere. “Fuck, man… Dip too lit.” Dipper’s face starts to scrunch up, like he might cry, but he dry heaves instead, although luckily nothing comes up this time.
Myles shakes his head. “There is… no fucking way in hell I’m cleaning this up. We’re blamin’ this on the guys at the end of the hall, that’s—the official story,” Myles grunts, bending down, hefting a teetering Dipper to his feet with both hands. “Oh, it reeks, it reeeks, fuck dude, did you have to go so hard? Oh fuh- holyshit—”
They almost topple over together when Dipper’s legs give way and he tries to sink back to the floor like the dead weight he is. He whines softly through his closed lips, his eyes clamped shut, his face pained. Myles lets out an exasperated sigh. “Alright. Come on bro. You gotta—stand— up—Jesus fuck, you’reheavierthanyoulook—Alright. Alright, one foot in front of the other. Theeerrre it is. Okay. You’re okay…”
Myles half leads, half drags Dipper back to their room, where he not-so-gently sheds the smaller boy of his vomit clothes. When Dipper is down to his boxers he starts to whimper and shiver, eyes still squeezed shut, no help in undressing or dressing himself whatsoever, so his roommate wrestles him into a sweatshirt with a grumble. Next Dipper gets push-pulled into bed, passing back out as soon as his heavy head hits the pillow, his limbs flopping lifelessly as Myles rolls him onto his side. One last tired curse gets uttered before Myles crashes into his own bed, and then, silence.