"Why?" Bubblegum's inborn, attentive curiosity warred with a sentiment Marceline could have sworn was confusion and potentially hurt, casting shadows in her violet eyes above her carefully modulated mouth.

Marceline sneered, emitting a low chuckle that was like the dry slither of a serpent's scales. "Oh, princess. Everyone knows you are the most gorgeous thing in Ooo, just- breathtaking. But I can't believe you seriously thought that was enough to win me over, considering your gigantic, throbbing brain. I find you insufferable."

Marceline punctuated her speech with a prod of her talon into the expanse of rosy skin revealed by the intricate bodice, at the junction of the clavicle and the swell of Bonnibel's breast. The innate softness of a woman's skin was exaggerated in the candy princess- her flesh was generous, giving way to the force of the vampire's fingertip, a ripe red fruit. Marceline drew in a sharp breath, slightly derailed by the suggestiveness.

"But … ah. Yes. I find you insufferable. You are bossy and just … a know-it-all."

Bubblegum inhaled. Glob, she inhaled- her sweet pink mouth was unbearably smug. Marceline recoiled, clutching her exploratory fingertip with the other hand, protectively. The air between them was stifling as Bubblegum extended a delicate hand to the depression Marceline had left on her tender flesh, her fingertips painstakingly massaging it back to its previous pink vigor. Her mouth opened in the most minute shudder of discomfort, revealing the candy glass teeth- the sunlight caught them and spangled a dazzling prism.

Marceline felt her sulfurous black heart throb and her face contort with the accompanying pain.

"It will never happen", she asserted, spitting frigid venom as she grabbed one limp pink arm and squeezed. She felt a particular prick of satisfaction as the princess's ethereally beautiful face wilted under the crush of unwarranted cruelty.

The princess closed her eyes, shielding them from the furious heat rising from Marceline's face. "I simply cannot believe that you find me insufferable" she stated with characteristic resolution, "considering we have not spent a day apart for nearly a century." One eyelid rose under the vampire's triumph of cruelty, shining a deeply violet beacon of defiance into the well of Marceline's black spirit.

Startled, Marceline slackened her grip. In the millisecond it took to gather the momentum for another blistering tirade, she found Bubblegum's lips had crashed into hers, with all the finesse and delicacy of an ocean swell. Marceline had imagined, on occasions just before and right after a groggy sleep when she was at her weakest self-resolve, that Bonnibel's mouth would be like a cloying syrup. In reality, it was like a strawberry- bittersweet, with a tang. Taken aback, the vampire allowed herself a small sultry exclamation. Bubblegum's hands were twined unforgivingly in her hair. For someone so soft and generous, she had an iron fist.