Marshall often basked in a stream of inspiration for music, flipping up poetic words and able to easily mold them into touching, emotion-riling lyrics. But for some reason, a tree of mental block collapsed and backed up the river; he was at a complete loss. He had been floating around his room for hours, notepad and pen resting on his stomach, waiting for a spark to come and fill the pages with art. Tired of seeing his closet wave by for the one-hundred sixty-eighth time, he groaned and collapsed onto his bed, stuffing the pillow over his face to muffle the howl.
"What the butt is wrong with me today?!" The vampire shouted to himself. Letting the pillow rest atop him he lay limp, frustrated seemingly with the lack of fruitful song writing. Of course, deep down, he knew damn well what it was. This heavy feeling inside was a massive boulder, barring him from the completion of a very important task: the creation of a new setlist for his band to play at their latest concert. Groaning from the stress the vampire king rose up, angrily punching the innocent pillow off of him. "What! Just because of Fionna, I have to just put my whole life on hold!?" Panting turned to sighing, and sighing turned to exhausted silence. Marshall cupped his head into his hands, desperate for alleviation from this...haunting.
Suddenly, a hard pounding on his door shook him back. A nervous wave came slithering into him, only to be peeled back away once a familiar voice was heard.
"Hey Marshall! You okay in there man?" It was Grissom, thank Gob. Marshall flew over to the door and let it open only a crack. Through it he could see his bandmate: a green-skinned fellow in punk rock garbs with a down-swoop haircut to top it off. Hoping to shoo his friend away indirectly, the vampire nodded his head.
"Hey,Griss. Sorry about that, I'm just having some writer's block. I guess its getting to me, heh." Griss' brow floated upward.
"Really? That's kinda surprising; you were able to crank out our last setlist in a night." Griss stroked his chin, thinking of possible explanations that Marshall knew would all be false. "Do you know exactly what the problem is?" Lee fibbed and shrugged.
"It's like...I know I can come up with lyrics and words in no time...I just don't know what I should d-...want to write about." Griss may appear like a dense metalhead, but he knows confusion and worry when he sees it. Pushing the door open the rest of the way, the bandmate spoke.
"Is something...bothering you, Marshall? You know, we're not just drum and bass machines. You can talk to us too." The both of them chuckled, Marshall welcoming the lightening of the mood. Wiping one of his bed-head bangs out of his eyes, he sighed.
"Just a...personal issue with a...friend of mine." Griss noticed the purposeful vagueness of the description, a sign not to pry or prod. Raising his hands up in a surrendering fashion, the punk rocker leaned off.
"Alright, I hear ya. I'll leave that to you, good sir." With that, the guitarist began to step away, leaving Marshall to shut the door...or at least attempt too.
"You know, maybe you should write a song about the thing thats bothering you. With like maybe the person who needs to hear it...will." The vampire king squinted his eyes through the door crack, seeing the hopeful face of his friend for a moment before he continued off. Closing and locking the door, Marshall gave thought to his friend's advice.
If he couldn't reach Fionna directly because of Cake or her own reasons, maybe a literary middleman could work. So many different emotions, phases, ways the whole thing could go, for better and worse...Marshall's brain flooded with ideas, the familiar rush of inspiration spreading a grin across his face. He grasped his pen and started to ink down the entirety of his thoughts. One way or another, he was going to let Fionna know just exactly was going through his head.
Well...okay maybe not everything...
...
Fionna had spent the past few days in her room, curled into a small tired ball of confusion. Her mind was spread out way to thin in all different directions. But they all had one common element: Marshall Lee. She hated herself for what she did, but she also hated him for not stopping it, for making her so mad that she socked him. She hated him even for his unproven deeds of using her for a quick boink, how dare he do that do anyone, especially her?
At the same time, she was glad it was especially her. In those moments they spent, Fionna knew that she didn't want to stop, even with logic and reason trying to batter her back into a respectable position. She enjoyed making Marshall feel that way...
When it came down to it, Fionna narrowed down her position on the vampire. "He's hot, he's a cool person to be around when its not serious, and he knows how to...overpower me." She tried to avoid certain senses of that term, but it didn't stop her from blushing hard. "At the same time, he's inconsiderate, he's mean to certain people, and he's...well a vampire. That's got to play a role somewhere in this." Fionna groaned, pulling the bunny hat completely over her head in frustration. Then she wondered, what would Marshall be doing right now? Is he thinking of these same things? He would have to be, right? She couldn't be trapped alone under this mountain of questions...
"I need to talk to him." She thought, quickly unraveling from the quilt cocoon she had made for herself. Her bare feet found their way to the floor, helping her travel out towards the open window. Good thing the window banister was high, otherwise the world would be treated to the sight of the heroine in only her blue t-shirt and black panties. She looked out towards the northeast, the direction of Marshall's house, and began to plan how she would be able to gain audience with him.
"I can't just shotgun it to his house, Cake would just go all zilla and catch up with me in a second. I can't sneak out because that would require me going outside, in the dark, with no light. I'd be bear chow in seconds, or hacked up by undead skeletons...they come out on tuesdays right?" Fionna shook her head wildly, trying desperate to get back on track.
"Maybe some sort of signal? A flashlight...or a smoke? Could I use BMO? Nah, BMO is beans at keeping secrets." The blonde girl groaned, letting her hand mush into her cheek as she looked out to the sun. "I wish this didn't happen. I wish Gumball never showed us that stupid red crystal and brought into that cave. If we avoided this, I'd have probably gotten over the stupid graveyard incident and Marshall and I would be paling around at the mountains or something."
OW! A sharp point pricked right into Fionna's bare bottom cheek. She spun her head to see what it was; a paper plane with a bent nose lay at her heel, no doubt caused by the impact with her rear. Fionna wondered how it got their, quickly picking it up and inspecting it. The paper was commercial and colored darkly, black spaces and thin purple lines making the majority of the design. Her curiosity peaking she quickly unfolded it and read.
"The Annual Aaa Festivus?" The paper held the illustration of a carnival-like event, complete with games, rides, tents and a large concert stage in the center of it all. The paper's arrival, both style and timing, was just too perfect. Fionna rushed out to every open window in her room, lashing her gaze out and across every which way for any sign of either the vampire, or some other intruder.
When no one was discovered, Fionna just decided to read on, learning that it would occur a five days from this day and that...Marshall Lee's band would be one of the main acts on stage. Right at the bottom in big bolded blue letters read "Marshall's Lee and the Kings of Scream" with some other lesser bands printed right below them. This was her chance, if she could convince Cake to let her go, she'd have her chance to confront the vampire. The constant dread and drear that had loomed over Fionna lifted up a tad; things had finally gone in her favor.
Now, there was the hard part...getting Cake to let her go without letting her know of Marshall's presence...
All of the possibilities from before repeat themselves, each one thwarted by their countering measure. Fionna groaned, her brain feeling overstretched in its wrapping around the problem. Finally, she turned and leaned against the window sill, a look of seriousness spread across her face. The most drastic of ways had wormed into her brain, but at this point it seemed to be the only way she'd make it out.
She'd have to sneak out, right before night time so as not to be caught in dwelling claws of the dark.
She rushed off of her seat on the banister, shooting towards her dresser and ripping one of the drawers open. Whipping out a marker and paper, she kicked it closed with the heel of her foot, leapt onto her bed, and began to scribble. Eventually, Cake was going to find out and come after her, whether she gave it a straight shot or snuck out. Might as well, try to make her see a reason as to why...
…
The rapid, whipping sound of ink against paper had been hissing from Marshall's room for the past four or five hours. Hovering over his bed, the vampire had outlined his bed with lyric pages, four piles of be exact with each one being its own song. Griss was an absolute genius; the key to fruitful, honest writing was to tell of the feelings of something you never had gotten to before. It was such a rush, the words were piling up behind Marshall's hand, itching to splash out onto the paper. As the vampire had finished stamping a period at the end of his final song's verse, a knock rung on his door. Tossing the page behind the rest, the vampire flew over to it, squeezing a look through the cracks.
"Who is it?" He asked.
"It's Ash, Marshall, you should recognize my knock already. Griss and Jame wanted to know how the songwriting is going. They're almost done writing the music for the ones you already gave us." Marshall turned back to his lyrical collection, giving a bit of a smirk at himself.
"It's...it's going good, actually. Already got like, five new ones ready. Guess I got my niche back." Marshall blushed at himself.
"Really? Mind if I see?" The girl practically squeaked from the other side. The vampire king was hesitant, he still wanted to fine tune his work, rearrange some cutoffs and change some of the working. I guess it wouldn't be bad having her look them over, a critique would be nice.
"Yeah sure, hold on." He replied. Unlocking and sliding his door open, before him stood his band's second guitarist. He said second because they would often juggle the roles of rhythm and lead during their sets. Ash was clad in a strapless green dress with a shortened skirt, black knee-high boots, and her white hair wrapped up in a pony tail, no doubt her outfit of choice for the event.
Why she was wearing it now Marshall didn't know, it seemed like a needless second wash before the big concert. The girl led herself into the room, flashing Marshall a smirk before leaping onto his bed. Angling to the side that overshadowed the mound of paper, she took a random one and gawked. As she read Marshall slunk over, laying on the carper beside his work in a relaxed position.
"So...what you think so far." As the witchy girl read on, she giggled. No words, just small sweet laughs. "What?" The vampire king asked.
"Gob, this stuff sounds so full of mush and gush." Ash let out in between snickers. "I didn't take you for a 'love song guy' Marshall. Would have been nice if you wrote one for me." A smirk and a wink followed the girl's words. Marshall rolled his eyes, his mind dragged back to the reminder of his and the girls' previously failed relationship. Ash was a party girl: reckless, impulsive, and somewhat selfish. Seemed like a perfect match to Marshall's own little attitude, but alas it was not meant to be, on his part at least.
Flipping the page over, Ash began to slowly hover across the room, reading the words out loud. "I can't feel this way, I can't feel the same about you, anymore." For some reason, hearing his work read aloud irked Marshall, making his teeth grind a tad as Ash spoke. Once she had finished, she had found herself laying beside the vampire king. "You know, this sounds very heartfelt, Marsh. Whose it for?" The witch said, giving him a slight nudge to the shoulder. Trying to avoid eye-contact, Marshall landed his arm behind his head as a makeshift pillow, staring at the ceiling.
"Who said it was 'for' anybody?" Ash flashed a grin, letting the paper fall back atop the rest of the pile. But she didn't stop, letting her fingers float towards the vampire's neck. Letting them glide and circle around his vampiric holes, she continued.
"C'mon, Marsh. You don't have to play mind-gaming renegade with me. I broke through that little facade once before, didn't I?" Her hands had slithered away from his neck, moving to stroking the top of his shirt. As she did this, she leaned her head against the vampire king's. While Marshall tried his best to ignore this, Ash's hair was cotton soft; he couldn't help but find a bit of comfort in it. Finally, he sighed and let his head crank over, meeting Ashley's jade-eyed gaze. It was a false innocence, a kind of cutesy-eye frontage that Ash had used multiple times before.
"You know, Griss and Jame are gonna be busy working on their melodies if I give them these songs now..." Fingers wormed their way through the buttons on Lee's shirt, rubbing lightly across his chest. She pushed into Marshall's neck, letting the breath from her words warm the nape. "You wanna have some fun?" With that, Ash let her lips fly, planting a gentle, yet alluring kiss on his skin. While Ash had occupied Marshall's right hand, his left was slowly crumpling into a frustrated fist.
Under normal circumstances, while the two of them had broken up, Marshall was still a guy, and guy liked things girls had. Ashley was perfectly willing to give him those things, as demonstrated by what she was currently doing, and at times, Marshall would indulge in her generosity. But these were different times, times full of conflicted hearts and confusion of the mind. Marshall was stuck in between a rock and a, regrettably self-inflicted hard place. He now knew why Ash had worn that dress today, and truthfully, she looked stunning and sensual in it. The skirt was cut right at the thigh, letting the vampire get a nice view of her full, slender legs. The top was no disappointment either, parading the witch girl's cleavage with no form of resistance.
But despite it all, he couldn't do this with Ash, not with these mixed feelings for Fionna and the current need to find out where they had stood.
At this point, Ashley's hand was already elbow deep into Marshall's shirt, her other one stroking the vampire's cheek. She pushed her body up against his, letting her chest glide and rub against the boy's arm. At the corner of his eye he could see the clothing's hold at her breast begin to loosen, so he quickly grabbed the hand floating around his maw.
"I'm sorry, Ash...not now. As much as I do want to...I'm admittedly on a roll with these songs and we've only got a few days till the Festivus." Marshall braced for a frown, but instead was met with another one of the girl's mischievous smirks. She slowly let her hand exit out of the shirt's opening, but quickly re-trapped the vampire, lobbing her booted leg across the vampire's waist. With this support she pushed up and mounted him, their lower torsos practically grinding against one another.
"C'mon, Marshall. You already have 75% of the work done right next to you." Marshall was getting nervous, seeing the girls hands begin to snake behind her, no doubt getting ready to unclasp her dress. "You can afford to take a break for a few minutes...maybe an hour or two." Just as he predicted, the dress soon collapsed, dragging down the girl's shoulders and revealing her chest. Loosely supported by a purposefully skimpy black bra, she gave her body a light shake, letting the 'girls' so a little dance for Marshall. The vampire's mind and body grappled with one another: Ash was good at what she did, masterful to say the least...but...Fionna...Marshall couldn't just let this happen. It was disrespectful and scummy...it was...evil...
But, Marshall was evil...wasn't he?