Days came and days went, centuries seeming to pass by and being so full of war and so boring at the same time for Marceline, and at times it felt like she had merely been biding her time for Finn to hurry and be born, and then for him to grow older and come move in with her after Jake and Lady had the kids (and she had to fireproof the place after Flame Princess kept hanging out with Finn even though they had broken up several months before Finn got his head straight and hooked up with Marceline – as according to Marceline's plans, of course – but Marceline didn't mind, hanging out with her was nice but not nearly as nice when she and Finn and Bubblegum and Jake and Lady and the kids and the rest of their family-of-friendship got together).
And here he was, sitting by her side, quietly strumming an acoustic guitar Marceline had found for him as they sat side by side, plucking chords in quietly perfect synchronism; the busy hours of the night had come and gone, for once little of interest happening between them. This had been a quiet day, and now a quiet night, the hours passing with introspection and pleasant companionship; Bubblegum, having stayed over for dinner about a night ago with the two of them, had playfully said that since Finn and Marceline were so active, it did them good to calm down and just sit still for a moment, and Marceline and Finn had agreed with her even though they didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about.
Now, the two of them sat on the roof of Marceline's cottage, the skylight she had punched out through the very rock of her cavern, both of them strumming their guitars; Finn's motions were slower and uncertain, the notes his strong but untrained fingers made hollow and not quite as lively as hers (and he had sadly observed that his music sounded like the guitar was full of cotton). He needed to build up the calluses and strengthen his fingers for proper use of the guitar, and while in the past Finn had been so impatient and too quick to find shortcuts in everything he did, he had matured of late and knew better than to question Marceline's advice. Stolidly, even cheerfully, he plucked at the guitar strings in mimicry of Marceline, his motion the same, the positioning of his arm identical to her, he was even unconsciously sitting just like she was.
Marceline was a little flattered by this, but mostly it just made her smug; there were a lot of girls out for her human, her knight (well, she thought after a moment, hers and Bubblegum's, and perhaps Flame Princess as well), and here he sat with her, practically drinking in her every motion with a totally unconscious attention to even the slightest different of motion, drinking in the sight of her in a way both innocent and loving.
It was dopey, she thought with a faint smirk, but nice. Sometimes she wondered about the slight problems of being romantically involved who was both much younger (both physically and chronologically) than her and was something of a student under her. Trailing after that thought was a snickering laugh in the echoes of her head that sounded like Lumpy Space Princess calling attention to her accidental innuendo.
She glanced down at the shorter boy, the top of his hat rising his head by several inches and somewhere just below the swell of her shoulder. Muscles worked imperceptibly in his wrist, a slight pause every few seconds in the movements of his pinky and ring fingers. The muscles for those fingers were pressing against the skin, made rigid from effort, and Finn was making small pained sounds, just under his breath and plainly trying to ignore it, when he moved those fingers.
For a moment, she considered bringing up the 'student under her' thing; it was just too much fun seeing him squirm. She hesitated, just for a moment, and Simon's voice spoke in her head; the real Simon Petrikov. 'Don't be mean, Marcie-girl,' the voice of the man who'd been more of a father to her than Hunson Abadeer could ever hope to be, and just like that the urge to mischief left her, and she let the thought go roaming off inside her head like a beast with the collar off its neck.
In ordinary times, Simon's voice echoing inside her skull and bouncing off her brain-meat was sure to make her want to lie down and cover herself and not want to come out for years, but when Finn was around, it was just so hard to feel bad or lonely. Without thinking about it, her hand started to move for his shoulder and her palm came firmly there, and gave him a soft squeeze through his shirt.
Finn's head tilted, a mild shirt, his eyes flickering towards her and his almost girlish lips (and it was adorably ironic that one of the most masculine guys she'd ever met looked so girly and pretty, she thought) spreading in a wide winning smile, just right to make her muscles relax and something warm like fire and lightning as one churning up somewhere around her stomach. His fingers kept moving the whole time, strong and slightly oversized for his arms (and Finn was a wonderfully chubby dude, but he was smaller than he should be; Marceline hadn't seen humans in a long time before she met Finn, but she knew that they had been bigger at his age, and Bubblegum had quietly believed that it had been inadequate nutrition growing up but she refused to say so around Jake), and just for a moment the chords were pulled right and deeply, Finn's nails almost like a guitar pick, and the notes were honest and true-
Finn winced and cried out, his hand jerking back. The notes faded and he rested the guitar against his leg, still whimpering under his breath and trying like crazy to stop making the sounds (and Marceline's ears pricked up at them, such lovely and alluring noises that perked up the attentions of both the predator in her and a not-so-suppressed maternal side and both of them mixing together like that happened a lot around Finn and didn't he just drive her crazy and she just knew he was doing it on purpose). He winced again, bringing his hand up.
"Your wrist hurts?" Marceline said, grabbing his wrist as though his entire body was her personal property and she didn't need to ask permission to manhandle him like that. If it bothered him, he didn't show It; he made a small of brief protest and quieted, making a more pained sound when she squeezed his wrist. It was as gentle as she could, but it still hurt. Marceline winced, not liking it when she hurt her friends like that "Yeah. Sorry, dude. Didn't meant to."
"What's wrong with it?" Finn asked, frowning slightly at his uncooperative hand.
"You just pushed yourself too hard at this," Marceline said. "Too hard, too fast, something usually gives if you push it too long." (She was faintly aware that if she stretched a bit, she could definitely find another innuendo in there but she chose to let it pass.) "Don't worry about it; just take it easy for a while and it'll feel better soon."
"Aww!" Finn whined, voice hitting a high note when the little computer he swallowed chimed up, "But I wanna get good at it now. Like you!"
Marceline laughed. "Please. No one's as good as me at anything."
"I beat you at video games on Beemo last night."
"Psh! That was a fluke."
"And when we met, I got a good punch on you!"
"Yeah, that was the first actual hit anyone gave me in a long, long time… uh, but I let you go, remember?!"
Finn thought for a moment. "…Last week we entered into a sing-like-Marceline voice contest and I won but you were disqualified because you didn't sound anything like you. Wait, that's confusing-"
Marceline shuddered. "Ugh, don't push it, Finny." Finn crossed his arms, wincing a bit, but he gave her just the most smug look ever. "…Seriously, that doesn't count as you winning the argument. I could totally push you off the roof. Like, right now. One push and bam! Down you go!"
"But you wouldn't."
Marceline turned around, setting her own guitar down, and put an arm around Finn's back, one hand pressed firmly against the small of his spine. Her arm rested against him for a moment, almost companionably. "Oh yeah?" She said, grinning toothily, moonlight shining on her razorblade-teeth.
She pushed, just a little. Finn's confident smile didn't so much as flicker; from his expression, she might as well have been cuddling him. "Yeah!"
"And why not?"
"Because you like me." Finn smirked, and raised an eyebrow. With a small movement, his free hand adjusted his hat, so that several thick strands of golden-blonde hair fell down over his eyes, so delightfully boyish and cute-
Marceline made a long low noise of mingled frustration and irritation, and finally sat back with her cheeks puffed out. Her arm slipped away from Finn, and she tapped him lightly on the head with enough force to push his hat down over his eyes. "You're lucky you're so cute," She grumbled.
"Why?" He said, still smirking even as she pushed his hat over his head again. "Because it's why you like me?"
She covered her face in her hand so he couldn't see her blush.
Eventually, things settled down again; Marceline began playing her guitar and humming the lyrics of songs she had thought of but had not yet recorded; Finn watched her curiously, arm at rest, wanting to see precisely how she did things so he could do them too and improve on them, watching and learning from the mechanics of her musical style.
Finn's long and deep friendship with Bubblegum, Marceline decided, had at least given him some of the Candy Princess's scientific outlook. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.
The two of them just sat there, saying nothing but merely enjoying each other's company; Marceline's fingers coaxed music from her axe-bass, and her voice brought meaning and life to that music. Finn watched, his cockiness ebbing for an almost childlike wonder at the beauty of her music. She watched his expression, wide-eyed and mouth open in a broken-toothed grin, and her heart started to beat, irregular but true, when she saw that the expression on his face was nothing short of worship.
It felt nice, she thought as she sang, and slipped into a long and sustained riff while she smiled one of her rare smiles that was not smug or mischievous or threatening, but something of the girl she had been forced to grow up from too fast. Her face reddened, still-human blood moving under the skin, and it felt nice not to have to be a hundred-percent badass-awesome all the time around him.
She felt open and quiet and feeling generally good about things, and her singing voice raised a few high pitches, like the sweet inverse of a rolling guitar riff.
"Marcie?" Finn asked, face lighting up as a thought came to him.
"Mm… yeah, Finn?" She said, breaking off the lyrics and moving into minor chords so she could talk.
"Am I vampire food?"
Marceline's fingers slipped, the chords were discordant and Marceline stopped cold.
She blinked, eye-lids almost making a definite noise with how hard she was blinking. "The heck? Why you asking that?"
Finn tilted his head, a gesture familiar even though she couldn't place it for a moment. She thought of a special mirror she used that she could see her reflection in, and realized that she had seen that very tilting gesture of bemusement from herself; Finn was unconsciously mimicking her, and she found it both strange and touching. "Nothing. I was just wondering…" he gave a small shrug, as if to say 'why not?'
She stared down at him, almost imperious and distant for a moment. Her hair moved as though it was alive, impossible shapes briefly seen in the shadows past individual grouped strands of blackness, as though her hair was many curtains over portals to places strange and vast. She put down her axe-bass and put her hands together, clasping them and tapping her fingers together anxiously. Perhaps a few dozen seconds of long and cold thought passed, and the entire time, she stared fixedly upon Finn.
Her eyebrows narrowed and her jaw worked, perhaps if chewing on words she didn't want to say. Finn looked up at her, patiently waiting for her to say whatever she had to say.
Marceline didn't need to breathe, but she had moments where she just had to take a deep breath. This was one of those moments; she inhaled, disused lungs inflating slightly, and exhaled a unhappily shallow breath.
She had been looking at Finn the entire time, but now she looked away, hands dropping to somewhere around her knees and squeezing so hard the knuckles were turning white against the blue-gray of her skin. She stared glumly at the walls of her cavern, scared to look at Finn. "Yeah," she finally said.
She glanced at Finn, half-afraid that he would be backing away a little bit. To her surprise, and gratification, he was still sitting where he had been, cradling his wrist with a curious speculation, and looking up at her. He didn't look scared, or surprised, or anything other than having a suspicion confirmed.
Marceline waited. Finn didn't say anything, just looking up at her with a faint smile. Eventually she shifted uncomfortably, wiggling a bit in place, and said, "What brought this on?"
"Nothing," Finn said again, honestly. "Everything I ever read about vampires said that they think humans, like me, are made of like totally delicious. I figured it was true, since everything wants to eat me because I'm so sweet and junk."
Despite herself, Marceline chuckled. "You're right on that one," she said, and poked him in the forehead.
"Hmph," he muttered.
She chuckled again, and sat up tall. Sitting like this, and with Finn hunched over like he was, he looked even smaller (and weaker, vulnerable, fragile, like prey) than usual. "…Does that, I dunno, bother you?"
He looked up, surprised. "No! Should it?"
Marceline shrugged, and made a small sad noise. "Other guys I know," She said softly. "Heh. They find out that I eat things like them, and it freaks them out."
She didn't need to say that Ash had been drifting even before she had accidentally told him that when she was deliberately trying to scare him for fun, and Finn didn't need to ask. It seemed pretty obvious.
"Wimps," Finn said scornfully.
Marceline actually giggled. "You're all right," She said, punching him in the shoulder.
Finn laughed. "And you're still wonderful!"
She tilted her head, wondering if he was consciously trying to use a pick-up line on her or not. She wasn't sure if he even realized he had said that to her when they had met years ago. (The fact that, then and now, he'd been living in her house didn't escape her. The difference being, the first time he'd been squatting but now he was her roommate.) "Yep!" She agreed.
She bent down and took her axe-bass back up; she was feeling just a bit frazzled, worries still hovering in the back of her head, and they started to smooth out and melt away as her quick fingers drew out strong chords from the guitar strings (and Simon's voice in her head, shyly suggesting romantic advice and stuttering over the words, and he sounded so much like Finn – or maybe it was the other way around?).
Finn sat up, head bobbing slightly in tune with her music as she played. She closed her eyes, but slyly opened one to look at him. "That seriously doesn't bother you?"
"No way!" Finn said fiercely, as if the concept of Marceline actually hurting him, for real intent to harm and maim, was so far out of the realm of possibility it was just ridiculous. "I don't get why it would bug anyone; I mean, look at Peebles; she eats her Candy People because of bio-stuff or something, and it doesn't bother her one little bit, and they don't mind either. I swear I saw some people fighting over a lottery about it once."
Marceline thought for a moment that maybe Bubblegum indulged a little too much, but she decided not to say anything. Even by Ooo's standards, Princess Bubblegum was… odd. In a good way, she thought fondly.
"And I kinda-sorta figured that you did something like that," Finn said. "Heck, most of my buds that are girls are like that; it took forever to explain to Susan Strong that she's not supposed to eat Candy People if you're not Princess Bubblegum; the Candy People don't survive otherwise. Hee, at this rate Flame Princess is the only princess that I actually really know that doesn't eat her people." Finn paused. "…I should probably ask Flambo about that, though…"
Marceline snickered. "Give the guy a little heart attack, dude?"
"Can he even get hurt like that?" Finn asked. Marceline shrugged.
Marceline when back to playing. Finn asked, in a way a bit like someone carefully edging towards a difficult attack, "So… do you need blood to survive? Like, human blood?"
Not really thinking, Marceline said, "I guess so. I, like, I survive off the color red and whatever, and I made the other vampires do the same; I hear way back before the Mushroom War, when the vampires were still divided into all kinds of clans and doing this crazy masquerade thing so regular humans didn't know about them, some vampires drank animal blood so they didn't have to kill humans, but mostly it didn't work for long."
"And do you-?" Finn stopped. Obviously he didn't think it was nice to ask Marceline if she killed when she fed.
Marceline snorted. "Nah. Killing every time you feed is for jerks who need a good axe-chop to the neck. Know what I'm saying?"
"Yeah," Finn said. "…So, you don't need human blood?"
"…That's not exactly something easy to explain, mang," Marceline said slowly, not daring to look at him.
Finn made a small confirmation noise. He moved, and when Marceline looked back at him, he was shyly extending his hand, the one with the hurting wrist, to her. He was sitting up a little, so that it was close to her shoulder.
"Finn, what-?" Marceline started to say.
Finn gulped, blushed brightly, and looked aside shyly. "You can… if you want," He said, turning his hand over so that the bottom of his wrist, the vein, was before her.
"Can do what-" Marceline stopped. "No. No way. You can't be serious-"
"I am!" Finn insisted, daring to look up at her. He scooted closer, bringing himself nearer to her, willing prey to a recalcitrant predator.
"Finn," Marceline said, trying to stop her mouth from almost watering, the sudden tension in her legs and how her teeth were sharpening inside her mouth, and the hunger rising up like water shored up behind a mountain-sized dam that was slipping open. "Don't- ugh." She pinched her nose with her free hand. "This is dangerous. I'm dangerous-"
"Not to me," Finn said, stoic and patient.
If Marceline wasn't sure that she might be cut herself, she would have bitten her lip. Her mouth was being forced open now, her teeth so long and large against her jaw that her mouth was pried open. "You're serious," She said faintly, a warm fuzziness swelling in her chest. She sniffed in, taking in all of Finn's smell and listening close to the sound of his heartbeat, calm and steady and so dear to her-
"C'mon, Marcie," Finn said. "I trust you. And I'd be a lousy boyfriend-" he stopped, just for a second. They'd been together, in that particular way, for a goodly time but neither of them were comfortable stating relationship names like that. He breathed in, and started again. "I'd be a lousy boyfriend if I was being selfish by not feeding you proper vampire food!"
Marceline gaped at him, at his earnest seriousness, and she giggled. She pinched the bridge of her nose again, trying to stifle the giggles. "Oh man, you are just perfect," she said, and took hold of his wrist.
She felt Finn's heart beating faster as her palm came around the back of his hand, supporting it, and bringing him closer to her. Beating faster not in fear, but in excitement. She dipped her head in, her hair cascading down and swallowing up his entire forearm and hand. Some of her ebon tresses moved, thickening and transforming into tendrils with a touch more substance, curling around his shoulders and moving up, sliding over his neck and around the back of his head and contracting all in a single small squeeze, a decidedly unconventional and totally earnest hug-
Finn hissed in a small breath as Marceline kissed the inside of his wrist, near where the sore muscles were. This might actually help him, she thought and considered that convenient. Her lips pressed against warm skin, a sense of good pinkness in the back of her head (and thought-Simon squeaked and said 'I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SEEING THIS!'), her lips prickling wetly on his wrist, and still kissing him, her mouth opened. Her teeth glimmered for a moment, sharp and long and larger than usual, and she sank in.
The bite couldn't even be called a bite; she was still kissed the inside of his wrist, in a manner, and her teeth simply sank into his submissive flesh, gently parting it as though it were another kiss all on its own, and hot living blood came through, not all in a rush or gushing but gingerly rising through the wound-pass she had made for it, moving almost shyly past her suddenly warm lips and over her tongue and down her throat, Finn's life freely offered and all hers, and Marceline uttered a long and fierce sound that was feminine and hungry and more things besides, and she sucked deeply.
Finn made a small noise, almost like a squeak, and wavered, about to swoon on the spot; not from blood loss, that wasn't even nearly a problem, but from feelings he was woefully inexperienced with. His mouth opened up, lips spreading wide over a silly grin.
Marceline, still suckling, adjusted her sitting position. Now she was curling her axe-bass between her legs and reaching out with her other arm to wrap around the rest of Finn, her tendril-hair covering his upper half and her arm snaring his waist and pulling him into an awkward hug; awkward it was, but it was more genuine than a more proper hug would have been. Finn, squeaking and gasping inarticulately with every breath, managed to put his free hand around her shoulder and hugged her back with all the strength in his body, eyes shut tight and still on the brink of swooning.
They held each other, and for a moment, the world just felt perfect.
It took her a mighty effort to rise out of it, and Marceline finally withdrew her teeth, forcing them to their usual size. Her lips pressed down against the warm blood on Finn's wrist, over the wound, and there was a lingering kiss again; when she moved her mouth away, the lingering blood had been sucked away and the wound had been closed with only a few small vampire's-bite marks to show. A convulsive movement, and she was hugging him again, so tightly that Finn made another squeak from the air being forced out of him.
She held him for a long moment; squeezing even tighter, and reluctantly let him go, tendrils and arms parting from him. Finn wavered on the spot, looking like he honestly would have preferred still being hugged, but managed to take a deep breath.
Marceline stared blankly into space, a silly grin on her still bloody mouth. "Wow," She said simply. "How did it feel for-"
Finn fell over in a full swoon at last, face-planting right into her lap. He wiggled faintly, making contented but totally overwhelming noises, and slipped into unconsciousness.
"…Neat. You answered me before I had a chance to finish." Marceline chuckled and sat there, running her fingers under his hat and through his hair, teasing out strands and undoing the knots in his hair, all with great contentment and a small smile. For once, she was feeling unreservedly good about herself, and her life. Eventually, Finn curled up into sleep against her, and she put a hand on the side of his neck, closing her eyes and smiling some more.
When he woke up much later on, his wrist wasn't hurting when he woke up.
Much later on, as their relationship got more serious, Finn and Marceline had to start answering some awkward questions about where those suspicious bite marks on Finn were coming from.