Well I'm working through the requests, bit by bit. This one was a request by the lovely FantasticMxFox who requested a real world Role Reversal AU. So in this universe we have serious scientist Marceline and local musician Bubblegum, which I won't lie was quite challenging to think of a decent backstory for why they chose the opposite paths from usual. But I think I got it all sorted out. It might not all be completely obvious at first but I have some more backstory planned for the next few chapters too, at the moment it's looking like it's gonna be a 5 chapter medium length story. Now that I'm in the swing of it I'm enjoying writing it more and more.
So drop a review if you have thoughts, I'd love to know what you think! But be aware that if something doesn't quite make sense there's a good chance we'll get to that in the next chapter or two.
Content Warning: Openings that won't make a huge amount of sense until the end of the story, lab animals, mystery.
Violins. Where were they coming from? Violins and... heavy drums? It was an unusual combination but not jarring; it gelled weirdly and after a minute or two she became aware that she was trying to tap her foot along with the music. It wasn't responding too well and that's when she realised that she was lying someplace soft with her eyes closed. But that music, it hummed through her brain and it didn't stop or quieten at all; it just changed subtly as her thoughts did. When the light grew brighter beyond her closed eyelids the pitch of the violins changed and she was aware of a solid bassline like a heartbeat underneath it all. Was it her heartbeat?
Words flowed in with the music. Oh, it was one of those very modern kinds of music wasn't it? With words that were sort unusual, like... postmodern? She thought that was the term for it anyway, when the words were just like normal stuff that didn't really follow a pattern or theme. They didn't rhyme but they fit perfectly around the odd music anyway.
"She's starting to come around." someone sang quietly beneath the complex rhythms of the drums.
"Sweetie, can you hear me?"
She knew that voice. Why was her Mum singing? It was a hallucination or something, right? Or a dream. Yeah, it was a weird dream. That made a sort of sense, it was an explanation anyway. And she struggled against the leaden weights that seemed to be attached to her eyelids and finally succeeded in getting them to open onto bright blurry lights. They resolved into the walls of a hospital room, soft pale pink walls covered in stencils of daisies. She recognosed those too, she was in a private room on the children's ward.
"Mum?" she rasped, confused.
"Sweetie, how are you? They said the surgery went well, how do you feel?" her mother crooned softly, following the bass instead of the fading violin melody.
"C'n you turn the music off?" she asked instead. What surgery? Why did her head feel heavy? There was a big hole in her recent memory, like she'd accidentally turned a couple of pages ahead in a book and ended up at the start of the next chapter. It made no sense. Where was the music coming from?
"Sweetheart, nobody's playing any music." her Mum sang with a confused frown.
"But... th'singing..."
The doctors said later it was very rare, that nobody was really to blame for it. Surgically acquired synaesthesia had only been documented in a handful of cases. Temporal lobe resectioning was fairly simple insofar as brain surgery ever could be but it would never be completely free of the risk of complications. They wanted to study her but being a stubborn thirteen year old she refused, clammed up every time anyone asked about the effects of the surgery. Still, it was there all the time, playing like a personal jukebox in the very back of her brain. And every night when she took her medication and lay down to sleep the music swelled, filled her whole head until she felt like her teeth were vibrating with it. It was relentless, it was inside her. And piece by piece she slowly learned to live with it until she couldn't remember a time when there had ever been silence.
...
"Jake."
He leapt almost a clear foot off the ground; he hadn't even known she was in the building yet, much less standing right behind him. Damn woman walked on cat paws sometimes, he grumbled in the privacy of his own brain as he tried to calm the adrenaline spike.
"Marcy. Good morning, coffee's not brewed yet. I wasn't expecting you in this early-"
"Why is there a manic pixie dream girl in my laboratory?" she cut him off flatly.
"A mani- oh! That's the musician we hired for the emotion study! She didn't introduce herself?" he asked, turning to face his colleague's blank, unimpressed stare.
"I didn't give her the opportunity. She's dressed like a giant fantasy cupcake, why is she here? Is this really the best we could do?"
"She didn't want paying so... honestly? Yeah, she's the best we could do. All the other pros I called wanted an hourly rate outside of our budget. Besides, she's a buddy of Finn's, I'm trying to set them up since he's soooo in love with her and all. Her name's Bubblegum." Jake explained. He was getting more and anxious the longer he spoke since Marceline was staring at him like he'd left a warm turd on her desk. That look never boded well, even worse than usual with her. Finn had been heard to remark that the stick up Marcy's ass had a stick up its ass but luckily not within her earshot or else he'd be lying in an unmarked grave someplace. Jake managed to meet her steely gaze for a couple of seconds before looking down guiltily. Marcy always managed to make him feel guilty even if he'd done nothing wrong.
"No it isn't. Nobody is named Bubblegum because that is not a name. Get rid of her, Jake." she commanded before sweeping from the postgrad lounge and presumably away to their cramped office while he fired the only musician in the city willing to work for free.
Nope, not happening. Not when he'd faithfully promised Finn that signing up as a tech intern for them that summer meant spending a lot of time with his crush, not when they all had their theses riding on the results of the experiments. She was a good musician, she was free and she was also pretty much from what Jake could tell the Anti-Marcy. It might be nice to have someone cheerful around for once. But when Jake finally finished brewing the coffee and took it down to their office it seemed like he'd been saved the trouble of making his case because Finn's impassioned voice could be heard begging for Bubblegum to stay right through the door.
"-nd I promised her she'd be able to hang around for the summer, and I can't let her down! You don't understand, Marcy! This girl is special, you've gotta at least talk to her before you write her off! Come on, you're not usually the judgmental type!"
"Fine, fine. I haven't had my damn coffee yet so if you'd just shut the fuck up and let me read this stuff then your dumb Cupcake Goth can stay." Marcy growled as Jake shouldered the door open.
"It's called Pastel Goth. It's cute, you should look it up on Pinterest." Finn retorted.
"Part of the deal was shutting the fuck up." Marcy reminded him with a scowl.
Jake handed her a coffee and shot his younger brother an apologetic looking smile. Finn just rolled his eyes and shrugged before unfolding from where he'd been leaning on the desk and slouching off out of the doorway towards the lab where his crush was setting up her laptop and equipment. Marcy avoided Jake's eyes and sipped her coffee, reading through what he was certain would be their experimental data again on her desktop monitor. He waited, counting silently in his head. Marceline had been his friend since their first year as undergrads, he knew her pretty well. Any second-
"Don't say it." she growled. Jake smiled and sipped his coffee. "I mean it. It's not funny. Just, shut up, ok? I don't like your stupid kid brother or the stupid goth marshmallow he wants to have stupid babies with. I also don't like being whined at when I'm trying to work. It was one hundred per cent an attempt to shut him up. So don't even say it."
Jake just raised his eyebrows and waited some more.
"I'm not going to be nice to her." Marcy announced. "She dresses like a deranged toddler."
Jake shrugged; he wasn't in any position to criticize anyone else's fashion choices since he usually just wore whatever his girlfriend said he looked presentable in.
"I bet she doesn't even know anything about science. I bet she's one of these eco-hippy save-the-whales types who wants to free all the poor ickle bunnies and ratties that get used in nasty science- and she's alone in my lab, with the rats, with Finn-"
Marcy's face paled and she shot upright from her seat, hurrying to the door and muttering under her breath. Jake still didn't say anything, just took a long drink of coffee and let out a contented sigh. Finn was flirting his butt off with the cute girl he liked, Marcy was out being her usual uptight self trying to ruin their fun and he had the whole office to himself. He kicked his shoes off and went to rest them on his desk, tilting back in his chair, when his phone buzzed with a message. He pulled it out and rolled his eyes. It was from Marcy, clearly they'd been sharing an office for way too long.
If the desk smells like feet when I get back you're in trouble.
Jake sighed and put his feet back on the floor. Even from three rooms away Marceline still found a way to be a massive buzzkill.
...
"Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Bubblegum. This place is amazing, thank you so much for letting me help out!"
Marceline could almost feel her teeth grinding together with annoyance. She pointed to a lab stool and repressed the eye roll she could feel trying to force itself across her face.
"Sit there and don't touch anything." she growled. The girl just nodded happily and hummed to herself, sliding onto the seat with her laptop. "Finn, go get the rats."
He hurried into the prep room and came back with a large carry cage with three grey rats inside. Bubblegum 'awwww'd as soon as she saw them and Finn put the cage down right in front of her so she could examine them.
"Hi there little cuties, are you gonna help us with science? Aww look, that one has a little white chin! What are their names?" she cooed happily.
"They're literally lab rats, they don't have names." Marcy replied with a curl of her lip.
"I call the chubby one Scabbers." Finn supplied helpfully. "Like in Harry Potter."
"That's adorable, so long as he's not really a traitor in disguise. But you're too cute to be a traitor, aren't you sweetheart? Can I hold him?" Bubblegum asked.
"No. First of all, they're all female. Second, they're lab rats, they're not pets. And I'm gonna need you two to shut up and let me explain what we're doing today. You, Pink Goth, what's your real name?" Marcy ground out between her teeth. There wasn't enough coffee in the world to make her cheerful against the combined forces of Finn and Not-Bubblegum-Because-That's-Not-A-Name.
"Um, it's Bonnie. Bubblegum's my stage name. You know, Princess Bubblegum? The DJ? But, uh, you can just call me Bonnie." the girl replied softly, hopefully finally noticing that she was pissing Marceline the fuck off with her relentless good mood.
"Bonnie. Right, that's actually a name. Ok, you can call me Dr Abadeer-"
"Marcy come on, you're not a doctor yet. Her name is Marceline, you can just call her Marcy like everyone else does." Finn interjected with a frown.
"Or whatever, listen to Finn because this is totally his research laboratory and not an unpaid internship he's doing as a favour to his brother. My friends call me Marcy." she muttered angrily. "I've got to go get some paperwork and set some things up. Wait here and don't touch any of my equipment and for the love of God, I don't want you handling the rats while I'm gone. They need as little human interaction as possible."
She spun on her heel and strode away, leaving them both staring after her. They could hear the click click! of her angry footfalls disappearing down the corridor and then the door onto the stairwell very nearly slammed shut. Even Finn who was perfectly happy to admit he had no idea how to read women's moods knew she was pissed about Bubblegum being there.
"Is she like that with everyone?" Bubblegum asked quietly. Finn sighed and ran a hand through his hair before he replied.
"Pretty much. Don't take it personal, Marcy's just super focused on her work. Like, she needs to be the very best scientist who ever lived or something. Her mother puts a lot of pressure on her and her aunt is some kinda big name in science too. She just thinks she's got a ton to prove I guess. But she's fun when she loosens up a little, you just gotta get past the spiky exterior. Listen, don't say I told you this. But Jake said one time she got drunk and opened up to him, like way up. Her father died when she was little and her Mum put a ton of pressure on her to be this high achieving genius in his memory because he was super clever or something. So she's always pushing herself too hard to please her Mum and live up to her Dad's memory and stuff, I don't think she means to be rude to people. Marcy's just... I guess she's still traumatised and junk. But I didn't tell you that, alright?"
"Of course. Poor girl, she must be dealing with a lot. Maybe I could try to help." Bubblegum murmured, gazing thoughtfully at the door Marceline had disappeared through.
Finn rolled his eyes. There were a lot of things he found attractive about Bubblegum; her soft pink dyed hair, her gorgeous smile, her sunny disposition and boundless optimism. But he had a bad feeling that if she was planning on pitting her enthusiasm against Marceline's limitless ill humour all that would happen would be that Bubblegum would end up emotionally drained and upset. He'd never seen her less than perfectly composed and cheerful so the thought of suddenly having to comfort an emotional Bubblegum was unexpectedly terrifying.
"Look, just don't take it personally if she ignores you, is rude to you or just flat out tells you to fuck off. Jake's about the closest friend she has and even he wants to strangle her half the time. We'll just get this experiment out of the way and maybe you and me could go grab a coffee or something?" Finn added hopefully.
"I was hoping to stay around the lab, maybe see if there's anything they need some help with. Science is so amazing, you know? I wish I'd have the chance to study it more, I was gonna ask Jake about his thesis and the research they do here." Bubblegum replied smoothly. Finn wasn't stupid although he sometimes acted like it. He knew when he was being politely brushed off.
"Well, maybe another time then. You wanna have a quick snuggle with the ratties?"
"But Marcy said not to."
"Yeah, she says a lot of things. I won't tell. Besides, they're gonna need to get used to you, right?"
...
The walls of the laboratory vibrated with the outlandish wailing coming from Bubblegum's laptop speakers. Marceline was beginning to get a headache, although she wasn't sure if that was a product of having been grinding her teeth constantly all morning or the sheer volume of noise assaulting her eardrums.
"Do you have anything a bit less... less?" she asked loudly. Bubblegum tapped the keyboard and the music stopped. Marceline sighed quietly in relief.
"What kinda effect are you looking for?" she asked, flicking through her playlists.
"Well it's a study of emotion. We need happy music. The point is that these rats have been genetically modified to model human depression and we want to see if music can be used therapeutically to increase their serotonin." Jake explained.
"So the ratties are depressed? Poor guys. Let me see if I can find something for that."
There went Marcy's grinding teeth again. And she wasn't completely sure if it was possible but she could very well be in danger of pulling a muscle in her eye from all the rolling they'd been doing. Of course Bubblegum was sad that the rats had depression, of course.
"We could have just played them a record ourselves." Marcy muttered to herself. Jake shot her a look and she shrugged. "Just saying."
"Previous studies established that results are more distinct when the music is live." he replied.
"So why haven't we got a pianist in here instead of a girl on her laptop?"
Jake took a breath to reply but he never managed to find the words because the next moment a soft and undeniably beautiful piece of piano music was quivering through the air around them. It was unearthly, like nothing he'd ever heard before. Even Marceline looked stunned and she usually tried to keep her face as expressionless as possible.
"This is a piece I wrote a few months ago, I've not actually played it for anyone else yet. Do you like it? I actually think it turned out quite well, it's almost pretty. Not as good as it was in my head but... yeah, it never is. I can bring my keyboard tomorrow if you want, I didn't realise you would need me to play it live, I'm sorry." Bubblegum announced like it was the most casual thing in the world.
"You... Ok. Yeah. Bring your keyboard." Marceline murmured, too shocked to even think of anything sarcastic to say.
"Guys, look at the rats." Finn breathed. Everyone's attention whipped back to the cage where the rat with the milky white spot on her chin was standing up on her hind legs, sniffling the air and looking around a lot more attentively than usual.
"Oh, Science likes it!" Bubblegum smiled.
"Did you name the lab rat Science?" Marcy asked.
"Yes! Then we'll always have Science on our side! I thought it was funny." she explained, turning to beam at the dark haired woman.
Bubblegum's smile was so disarming and genuine that for a moment Marceline was lost for words. How could she still be so happy and pleasant when Marcy had tried her hardest for hours to scare the other girl away? Even her hundred yard death glare hadn't had any effect. Marceline had never met someone so completely impervious to her attempts to destroy them and it was equal parts infuriating and intriguing. Despite her best efforts she found herself wondering about the girl with pink hair. Surely Bubblegum was more than averagely aware of the stereotypes about the kind of girls who wore whimsical rainbow sneakers and bright turquoise lipstick and carried around handmade unicorn bags? Didn't she want people to take her seriously? And that septum piercing was just asking for trouble, if she got hit in the face then the damage it would cause her nose when it got ripped out wouldn't be pretty at all. But there she was smiling around happily like the world was made of rainbows and candy. It made no damn sense, none at all. And Marceline didn't like things that didn't make sense. So as much as she wanted the annoying girl out of her lab and out of her life as quickly as possible a small part of her was curious, wanted to know what the hell was going on with her. She could see why Finn was so hopelessly in love with Bubblegum at least; he probably thought she was going to take him on some eccentric romantic adventure and open his eyes to the wonder and intoxication of simply being alive. That was usually what guys wanted from girls like her, right? Never mind that she might have motivations and desires of her own, hopes and dreams for potential relationships that didn't revolve around showing soulful, brooding heroes the beauty of living in the moment. Urgh, Finn probably thought he was in his very own Scott Pilgrim comic or something.
"I'm gonna take an early lunch." Marcy announced instead.
What else could she say? All of the strange thoughts that revolved around the annoying pink haired girl with the stupid nickname had to kept in strict lockdown, she didn't want anyone to think she actually liked the pastel monstrosity. She was still shaking her head to herself and wondering what the hell Jake had gotten her into as she slid into her usual spot on the grass behind the building and pulled her lunch out of her bag. It was a warm day and Marceline scowled darkly at the sun, squinting up as it glared back. Of course she'd left her sunglasses in her car and she didn't want to have to walk all the way around the damn building to go fetch them. Suddenly the intense light was shaded by something frilly and lilac and covered in smiling cupcakes.
"I always carry a parasol for days like this." a cheerful voice announced. Yep, there went the tiny bits of good mood Marcy had been working at.
"Scared of getting cancer or something?"
"You'd be amazed but pink isn't my natural hair colour. I'm actually a redhead, my skin's too fair to handle much in the way of UV. And I can't stand the way sunscreen smells so either I use the parasol or I get third degree burns on sunny days."
"You know, there's a cafeteria inside. And I'm sure Jake would let you into the postgrad lounge." Marceline ground out in annoyance. Bubblegum just shrugged and took a seat next to her, still holding the parasol above both their heads.
"I like being outside. It's too loud in there, too many voices." she replied softly. "I don't mind your voice though. Do you mind if I sit here? It's quieter outside."
"Depends. Are you good at eating silently?" Marcy sniped. Bubblegum just nodded and pulled out her own bag of sandwiches. They ate without a word, listening to the rustle of the breeze through trees flush with heavy shrouds of summer leaves and the distant hum of traffic and voices from the city all around them. With the balmy air and lull of almost-silence it was difficult to maintain a decent level of animosity; Marceline found her dislike of the other girl melting under the warmth of the midday sun.
"Why'd you dress like that?" she finally asked, curiosity finally overtaking her defences.
"Because life's too short." Bubblegum replied cryptically, still talking in a soft, quiet voice. Marceline frowned.
"No it isn't. Life's literally the longest thing that will ever happen to you."
Bubblegum didn't reply, just gazed out at some blackbirds rooting for bugs on the opposite side of the grass. She nodded, finally.
"And if the longest thing you'll ever do is still too short, what then?" she murmured. Then she stood, stretched and picked up her fluffy unicorn bag. "I'm heading back in, I promised Finn to listen to some music he wanted to show me. Keep the parasol for now, I'll get it back from you later."
Marceline watched her go, sprinting up the steps into the back door of their building with enviable ease for someone who was wearing six inch high platform sneakers. Well, Bubblegum was apparently an enigma. She didn't like places that were too loud but she played some pretty large local gigs where presumably the music was loud enough to make hearing anything else at all difficult. Marceline had taken a moment to google 'DJ Princess Bubblegum' and had to admit she was reluctantly impressed with the size of crowds the other girl could command. But she thought life was too short to take seriously then spoke philosophically about it like she'd really thought it all thought, weighed up both sides of the argument before coming to the conclusion that she'd just be a musician and a pastel goth and enjoy herself. Clearly she was smart. It would be easy to dismiss her as one of dumb Finn's dumb friends but Marcy had the feeling there was a lot more to the pink haired girl than met the eye and despite herself she was completely unable to repress her burning curiosity. Damn Jake and his weird friends, she really didn't need the distraction of a mystery to unravel when she was trying to focus so hard on making her mother proud and living up to her father's memory.
