It wasn’t until after eleven that Marco and Star came home, entering the living room via a Dimensional Scissors portal they’d taken from the dojo, where Marco had picked up his stuff. The entire downstairs was dark and quiet, his parents having gone to bed knowing that they’d be home later than usual, and the Laser Puppies were all asleep in a pile on the couch.

“Finally home,” Marco said as the portal closed. “Man, what a day.”

“I know,” Star agreed. “But it wasn’t all bad, the party was fun, right?”

“It was, but I’m still drained from Brantley’s crap.”

Star’s pleased smile faded with his reply, and she looked down at the floor.

“… Oh.”

He headed for the kitchen. “I wanna just lie down and sleep it all off so I can train the guys tomorrow. Night and… thanks for helping me get my stuff.”

“It was nothing!” She said brightly, before she lowered her head and continued in a quieter voice, more to the floor than to him. “Good night, Marco.”

After he grabbed a glass from the cupboard, Marco looked back. Star was still standing in the archway, looking down at her wand held loosely in her right hand. There was confliction in her eyes, betraying a struggle going on underneath. He set the glass on the island countertop, and turned to her.

“Star, are you okay?”

Star looked up at him. “Huh? Oh, I’m fine! Just thinking about stuff… and… stuff. You know…”

Her gaze cast downward again. “… Stuff?”

A moment of almost smothering silence passed, before Marco replied. “Yeah… stuff.”

Star turned her back to the archway and leaned against it, her hands resting on her locked knees. “You know… crummy stuff, like how your Sensei treated you. And how you really, really like Karate and it sucks that you can’t do it at that cool dojo place anymore because of that.”

There was Star, being a lot more open than she normally was. “Usually you don’t really care too much about my dojo stuff.”

Star raised her head to look at him, aghast he’d think that. “I totally care!”

“Sorry, I mean more that you never really paid attention to how much I cared about Karate or if I was doing anything important in it. Remember the Banagic Incident?”

His point struck home and rendered Star without words for a moment. “Oh… well… I care now–I mean, I always cared! I just… you know… didn’t think it was that big a deal…”

She grimaced as the words ground out of her. “… Until today…”

Marco frowned and opened his mouth.

“And I’m sorry,” Star cut him off before he said something they’d regret.

“You don’t deserve to be treated like that. Not by your teacher, or by me, or anyone!” She looked off to the side, her eyes narrowed thinking about Jo’s attitude in particular.

“You’re a great guy who deserves better than that, and I want to try…” Star trailed to a stop as it hit her how that sounded.

“What?” Marco asked, his own mind starting to race with what Star was saying.

“I want to try being…” Star tripped over her own racing thoughts, struggling for a word that didn’t make this more awkward than it suddenly felt. “… Better…”

She clamped onto it. “A better friend, a better best friend!”

Star wanted to take her declaration and run away so she’d not have to talk about this again. She stayed stuck to the archway however, like she was glued to it.

Marco’s expression softened, and he smiled.

“You already have,” he said, stopping her from enacting her cut and run. “Lately, you’ve been talking to me differently, like you’ve started being more, I dunno, real?”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Star’s face fell. “I’ve always been real with you!”

Marco backpedaled. “Okay, that’s not what I meant. On Monday, you really opened up about how you feel about being underestimated, and with how things are with your mom. You never mentioned anything like that before.”

He walked around the island counter, leaving nothing standing between him and Star. “I like when we can talk like that… kind of like right now. It’s not about adventure, or magic, or fighting monsters… when you tell me how you really feel about stuff, it’s like you’re trusting me with something I’ve never heard you talk about to anyone.”

Star began to respond but stopped short. She looked down at her wand, she was wringing it in her hands as feelings bubbled up into her chest from the pit of her stomach, her guts making strange noises as they seemed to twist themselves in knots.

“You’re not mad that I haven’t done that until now… are you?”

“I said I like it,” Marco reassured her.

She looked up at him and met his gaze as he continued. “Besides, sometimes it takes big changes to help you see things you couldn’t before. Everything already felt different after the whole thing with Toffee… and getting into the kind of fights we’ve been in now… it feels really different.”

Star averted her eyes. “Yeah… really, really different… and stuff.”

Silence fell in the kitchen again. Star kept looking out into the living room and towards the stairs, wringing her wand harder as her face colored. Marco watched her, his grip on the counter’s edge tightening as he felt his own insides tie themselves around each other.

Just say it. Star told herself.

Say it. Marco thought.

Star looked everywhere but at Marco, and he turned his head away from her. They waited for something to happen, for Marco’s phone to ring, the laser puppies to wake up, one of his parents to come downstairs. Something somewhere to explode. They waited for a moment… then a minute. The silence stretched on into what felt for hours into the night.

Respite wasn’t coming, and Star didn’t want to just walk away. She didn’t feel like it. Marco deserved better than that. “L-Look…”

He looked at her again, and she was looking right back. “Yeah?”

She paused, one final hope that something would happen. It didn’t.

With a deep breath, she dipped down and did it. “After the fight Monday, I… well…”

She brought her wand up to her chest. “… When you were ready to kill Jara to protect me, that… oh man, that messed me up. You messed me up, I’m totally messed up, and…”

She brought her wand up higher and hit herself in the forehead with it. “Ow! I’m trying to say that I’m falling in love with you, Marco!”

There, she said it. Now she could finally die of embarrassment.

Marco’s shoulders dropped, and his smile grew warmer. “Yeah, I um… kinda figured that out…?”

Star’s face went white. “What.”

“I mean, there’s a way you look at things when you like them? It’s different with how intense it is.” He explained. “But um… the way you looked at me when we talked after we got home… it’s the same look you’ve been giving me now.”

He let go of the counter and walked up to Star. She stood straighter as he reached her and stopped breathing when he rested his hands on her shoulders.

“Star…”

She stared into his eyes and blurted it out all at once. “You’re going to tell me that even though I’m falling in love with you, you’ve still got strong feelings for Jackie and you’re not going to just throw those away easily, aren’t you?”

Star gasped for air then slapped her free hand over her mouth.

Marco tilted his head to the left as he processed Star’s rambling. He closed his eyes and let out a small laugh. “I really do like Jackie and have a crush on her, but, well…”

He slipped his arms around Star and pulled her into a hug. “An amazing girl I’d kill for came along, and here we are.”

Filled with warmth, Star slowly returned Marco’s hug and nuzzled her cheek to his. She let out a happy squeak when he tightened his embrace. “So…”

Marco asked as the two began to rock back and forth. “Yeah?”

“… Does this mean… you know… that we’re…?”

“Do you want to?”

The two pulled back to face one another, a much more comfortable silence falling between them.

“Yes,” she whispered back.

Marco nodded. “Then, yeah. Let’s do it.”

Both smiled, before Marco shuffled closer and Star was comfortably caught between him and the wall. She brought her hand up to his cheek and caressed it, beckoning him closer. Marco took the invitation, closing the distance and meeting her lips with his in their first kiss.

They pulled away, and Marco spoke. “By let’s do it, I mean let’s be a couple. I don’t mean-”

“Marco, shush,” Star said, “Don’t ruin the moment. Kiss me.”

“Sorry.” He resumed kissing her.

At the bottom of the stairs just around the corner, Angie Diaz clamped her hands over her mouth to silence her squeal of joy, while Rafael turned to her and pantomimed shushing her. When their cover wasn’t blown, the two shared warm smiles to one another and looked back. They’d let the new couple have a little more time to themselves, then step in as good parents should to keep them from getting too carried away with their new feelings.

Outside the Diaz Home, the wind picked up, rustling the autumn leaves of the trees in the neighborhood and creating a haunting, dry rattling sound that carried down the street as they swayed in the dark. The tree next to Shermie Pines’ home, still in full leaf, rocked and bent in the wind, one of its branches knocking against the side of the house at the second floor. After several blows, like a giant knocking on the side of the house, Dipper stirred from his sleep.

“Hngh…?” His eyes fluttered for a second. “What’s that noise…?”

Sitting up, Dipper opened his eyes and grew still. A faint red glow bathed the entire upstairs. “Huh?”

All but leaping from his bed, Dipper stumbled from his, Mabel, and Misao’s shared bedroom space and walked into the sitting room, where the red light was shining in through the picture windows of Shermie’s custom-built home. Walking up to the nearest window, he looked outside.

His face paled, and his left eye twitched as he watched the clear, cloudless night sky. “… What… what the heck…?”

The night sky above Echo Creek was painted red, by the light of a crescent Moon the color of blood.