So the website has been buggy and a ton of people didn't get update emails for the last chapter. So if you didn't read chapter three, go read before this one or it's not gonna make sense!
A quick note on pansexuality; I don't have time for people who think it's not a real thing. So either suspend disbelief for the duration of the story, go google it or just keep your opinion to yourself, kay? But don't get all over people for identifying in a way that you personally don't agree with. Representation is the key to a better future for everyone and I like to think I'm one little drop in that ocean. Anyway, that's my social justice rant over for today. TL:DR be good to each other. And read some Judith Butler.
I'm setting up a (P)atreon account and I'd like to encourage those of you who can/want to to patronise me! Authors need to eat too, and yes I do have a job but with the way bills are and all a little extra income would be appreciated, especially since I put such a lot of time into my writing. Anyway, don't worry if you can't afford to or simply don't want to help me out. Writing is it's own reward.
Content Warning: Tension, mother-fucking jokes, mild objectification of women, tension, allusions to no-pants-dancing.
The atmosphere was still pretty charged in the laboratory when Bubblegum arrived on Monday morning but she didn't really know how to address it so she just carried on setting up her equipment and handing out coffee like nothing had happened last week. It was getting to be par for the course that things were tense between her and Marceline at least and it hadn't gone unnoticed. Bubblegum got the feeling she was about to have another uncomfortable conversation when Jake sidled up to her as Marcy and Finn went to fetch some fresh supplies from the main store room a floor below.
"So. You and her have this whole... eye blazing thing going on." he started. "You, um, playing on that team?"
She sighed and repressed the urge to tug on her hair in frustration because she didn't want to accidentally pull a handful out.
"Not expressly, no. If you must know I'm pansexual." Bubblegum replied with an uncharacteristic frown.
"I'm gonna go ahead and guess that that doesn't mean you're attracted to cookware, yeah?"
"Good guess. It means I don't consider gender important when choosing a potential partner."
"So, like, you're bi?"
"No. Pansexual. It's a separate thing, it's sorta more inclusive. Instead of saying "I like men and women" I can acknowledge that the range of human gender performance falls outside of the two neat cookie-cutter stereotypes they paste on toilet doors. Geez, read some Judith Butler some time. The way we play dress-up as 'male' or 'female' has very little basis in our physical shape or even our biology and a lot to do with the cultural performance expectations we're raised with."
Jake blinked at her. Then he frowned, lips moving silently like he was trying out the term 'human gender performance'. Then he shrugged.
"You're a strange person, Bubblegum." he finally told her.
"Yeah, I've been hearing that a lot recently. Any particular reason why you're asking me ignorant and impolite personal questions?" she asked, not in the mood to explain herself more than she had to.
"Yeah. Cause I dunno if you know but Finn's in love with you-"
"The whole English-speaking world knows that."
"Exactly and I don't want him to get heartbroken. Especially since you're apparently in love with Marcy."
It was Bubblegum's turn to stare. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again because she didn't know what to say, took a breath, tried to think, then finally found some words.
"That's ridiculous. We're friends, we enjoy each other's company." she finally managed to mumble.
"Uh-huh. You never take your eyes off her, you hang on her every word like she's some kind of elder god revealing secrets lost to the ages, you spend all your free time hanging out with her...Marceline doesn't just have casual friends like that, do you understand?" Jake asked, not unkindly but in a tone that suggested she was kinda dumb for not knowing.
"Oh my God, I don't know how you're even talking to me right now. I'm not trying to get between the two of you, I swear. I'm not a home wrecker."
"Woah, hold up. What? We're not- what do you think she and I are, other than research partners?"
"You know so much about each other and you work so closely and you guys always go everywhere together, Finn called her your partner so... I just... you're not together?"
Jake's eyes bugged out and he looked for a moment like he was going to choke.
"Me and... Marceline? Oh my God no! I mean, wow, no. Nope. Not ever. Oh hell no."
Bubblegum giggled at the look of pure horror on his face; when she really stopped to consider it she supposed they would make a pretty odd couple.
"What, you don't think she's hot?" she teased, grinning again and more than a little relieved.
"Hot? Yeah, she's a doll. Homicidal? Yep. Also homicidal. And homosexual? Gay as a fucking picnic basket. Homicidal homosexual and also fucking terrifying. But sure, she's pretty, and even hot." Jake relented with a sheepish grin of his own.
"Who's hot?" Marceline asked, making them both jump as she strode back through the door.
"Your Mum. I was just telling Bubblegum what I did over the weekend. Spoiler. I did your Mum." Jake shot back at her with a huge grin, not missing a beat. Bubblegum could have her heart attack at almost getting caught gossiping without fear of Marcy noticing since she was glaring at Jake with murderous eyes.
"You think you're a fucking comedian, Jacob Madigan." Marceline snarled dangerously.
"Your Mum seemed to think so."
They bickered in a sort of best-friends-who-mock-each-other way for the rest of the morning and Bubblegum watched them with fresh eyes. So Jake wasn't Marcy's boyfriend, that explained the odd lack of any obvious signs of intimacy between them. When Finn had first approached her about helping with the music for the emotion study he'd said "Come work with me in my lab, it'll be awesome, my brother and his partner are setting up this thing with music and seeing if it can like, directly mess with your brain waves" which, yeah, since she knew Finn it really shouldn't be a surprise when none of that turned out to be quite the way he'd phrased things. By 'my lab' he'd meant 'the lab I am pretending to work in to avoid getting a proper job for the summer' and by 'my brother and his partner' he'd meant 'my brother and the woman he's writing his thesis with who is a strictly platonic friend and academic colleague'. And Jake had said she was as gay as a picnic basket before they'd been interrupted. That was an interesting discovery and the more Bubblegum thought about it the more she could see it. She wondered why she hadn't noticed before. But despite being fiercely intelligent there were some things that she apparently missed, like Marcy batting on the other team, like Jake noticing the way she watched the fascinating and beautiful young scientist. Like the fact that she was staring again. But even Bubblegum couldn't ignore the way the music swirled to a dizzying crescendo in her head when Marceline smiled at her.
...
"Dude. Hey, Jake."
"Hm?"
"Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Humming. Is that- is Marcy humming?"
Jake paused from arranging his box of micropipette tips into a neat order and frowned up at his brother before his eyes flickered to the prep room door where Marceline had disappeared a moment earlier with the rat cage. She was cleaning up and heading home early because apparently she and Bubblegum were going to do some mysterious female thing that the boys weren't invited to. Since it was a girly night of some kind Jake could only assume it involved painting each other's toenails and testing out makeup. Or... maybe not. Maybe it was a date? In all the years he'd known Marceline he'd never once heard her hum like that, never seen her face light up as instantaneously as when she walked through the doors every morning and Bubblegum was waiting for her with a coffee and a smile as bright as the sun. He sighed, put down his box of tips and made his way over to his younger brother. Time to let Finn down gently since nobody else appeared to be too worried about the boy's feelings but him.
"Hey man, listen... I, uh, I'm not sure that our master plan is working. It's been, what, five weeks? And she hasn't accepted a single invitation to hang out with you outside of work. Might be time to accept that Bubblegum just isn't interested." Jake started as gently as possible. Finn fumbled the glass flasks he'd been washing out onto the dryer before turning to stare at his brother with a frown creasing his brow.
"What do you mean?" Finn demanded quietly, glancing towards the prep room to make sure they weren't overheard. The cheerful humming continued just as enthusiastically as ever and his gaze flickered back to his brother's face. Jake sighed and gave him that trying-to-break-bad-news face that Finn had always hated.
"I just think she's into someone else, is all. It's not that you've done anything wrong, man. Just... Bubblegum's attention is focused somewhere else right now. You know what I'm saying?"
Finn nodded but his eyes had gone hard and angry. Yeah, he knew what his brother was saying.
"So you expect me to be happy for you, is that it? You use me to get close to her then steal my girl out from under my nose and-"
"No, dude, not me! I mean-"
"You guys seen Bubblegum? I'm supposed to be driving her." Marceline's uncharacteristically cheerful voice interrupted them from across the room. She was smiling benignly, oblivious to the tension that filled the room. Jake looked guilty; Finn stared.
"No, you mean, her?" he whispered under his breath to Jake, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
"What? Is there something in my teeth?" Marcy asked with a smile that faded after a second as they just stared back at her.
"Hey, you ready?"
It was Bubblegum, arriving equally oblivious and cheerful in the main doorway. Marceline shot one last confused stare at the boys before she followed with a shrug. Looked like another Madigan brother bust up and she had no interest in getting involved in whatever they'd decided their problem was this week.
"Have a good night!" Jake said loudly over Finn, blocking out whatever he'd mumbled. It sounded suspiciously like he'd muttered "Judas" under his breath but Marceline couldn't be certain, he might have been saying anything. She let one last glance linger on the younger man's face for a second before the door swung shut and she followed Bubblegum out into the hall.
"Did you notice something weird about the guys today?" Marcy asked in confusion as they made their way out into the late afternoon sun together.
"More than usual? No, not really. I mean, I try to avoid Finn as much as possible anyway. He's been following me around like a lost puppy for a while now and I've tried to be polite about it but I'm just not interested in him like that. I'm running out of patience waiting for him to take the hint." Bubblegum sighed in reply as she slid into the passenger seat.
"He's, ah, not your type?" Marcy hedged carefully. She ignored the way her pulse sped up when she asked, told herself that she was only curious because Finn was her friend and she wanted him to be happy. Bubblegum shrugged and avoided her eyes.
"He's a nice guy. Very enthusiastic. But just, you know. Too young for me." she relied softly.
"He's only a couple of years younger than you."
"But he also acts young for his age. I dunno, I'm sure plenty of people find his Labrador-puppy personality charming but I prefer the people I date to be more... I don't want to say intelligent? Because I don't think Finn's dumb. But, you know, I can't have a conversation with him about, like, how to construct a statistically probable family tree for dinosaurs or anything. He wants to tell me about his beat boxing competitions and the sweet Dungeons and Dragons campaign he just played through. Those are good too, I just feel like... I don't know." she finished in frustration.
"Like Finn lacks depth?" Marceline asked with a knowing glace across to the other girl.
"Yeah, depth. Like he doesn't have many layers. I like layers."
Marceline nodded but didn't reply, squinting through the bright afternoon light to keep track of the other traffic on the road and lost in her own thoughts. So Jake's brilliant idea to get his brother and Bubblegum together by forcing them into the same lab hadn't worked then, and as far as she knew there were no other suitors on the horizon for the pastel girl. Not that she cared, she told herself hurriedly. She had exactly zero interest in Bubblegum beyond being friends. That weird almost-moment the weekend before had been a fluke, obviously.
"You taking stuff to the charity shop?" Bubblegum asked unexpectedly, glancing at the bags piled on the back seat.
"Nah, I have to go stay with my dumb mother for a couple of days while they fumigate my building. Apparently the people downstairs have gotten a nasty infestation of bed bugs and I'm taking no chances that they've found their way up to my place. Urgh, just the thought of it makes my skin crawl." Marceline replied with a shudder of revulsion. "And you can imagine how much I'm looking forward to staying with Maman again and getting treated like a particularly stupid four year old."
"If you don't mind the sofa you can stay at my place." Bubblegum offered, looking away out of the window again.
"Are you sure? I thought you didn't like house guests?"
"Only because they tend to ask about why everything's pink. And you already know. Besides, Peppermint likes you and he's an excellent judge of character. I mean, I understand if you don't want to."
"No, that'd be cool. If you're ok having me there."
"Yeah."
"Cool. Thanks."
They lapsed back into silence again for the rest of the drive and Marceline couldn't quite decide if she felt awkward or just really nervous about spending two nights rooming with her... crush, she finally admitted in the very darkest and most private section of her brain. Fine, fine so she had a damn crush and Keila had been right and, dammit, now she'd just agreed to spend two nights on Bubblegum's sofa and it was quite probably going to be torturous. It was still better than staying with her mother, though.
...
Jake hadn't been far off in thinking they were doing girly things that night. It was just that they were doing very Marceline and Bubblegum girly things, like checking out her recording studio and staying up late to have a movie marathon. The studio at least was fascinating to Marceline who'd always harbored very secret desires to be a famous rock star. She'd never even thought about expressing that to her mother though, there was no way she'd have been allowed to waste her time messing around with guitars when there was serious science to be done. In another life, maybe, Marceline thought wistfully as she cast her eyes over a row of expensive looking electric basses.
"Do you play at all?" Bubblegum asked, noticing the way she was eyeing them.
"Wow, no, not even a bit. I'd never have been allowed to waste the amount of time required to learn when I was a kid and there's no point picking it up as an adult, I'll never be any good now."
"Sure you will if you practice. And wouldn't you just have fun with it for the love of music?"
Marceline shrugged, she'd never really thought about it like that.
"I could teach you." Bubblegum pressed with a persuasive smile. She could tell her friend was tempted, Marcy blushed a little and looked away with an embarrassed smile of her own.
"I suppose, if you didn't mind." she muttered to the floor.
"Well your experiments will be done in a couple of weeks and I'm gonna miss hanging out with you. You know I don't deal well with change, you don't want me to get sick do you?" Bubblegum pressed playfully. She was staring up into Marceline's face and hadn't realised how close she'd leaned until the other girl looked up to meet her eyes and her breath caught; their faces were only a few inches apart and that same nervous churning from the weekend before was coiling through her stomach except this time she wasn't held back by any terror of Jake's broken heart. Bubblegum stared into soft green eyes that stared back every bit as hesitantly and tried to decide if she felt brave enough to close that small distance between their lips and find out for certain if she'd read the other girl right.
"Hey Bubs, who's your friend?"
She was whipping around at the familiar voice calling cheerfully from the doorway and yet again the moment was lost.
"Lady! This is Marceline, my friend from the lab." Bubblegum replied hurriedly, hoping she wasn't blushing as hard as she felt like she was. "Marcy, this is Lady, my producer."
She was a tall, thin Korean woman almost drowning in a rainbow streaked caftan with shoulder length hair bleached to a platinum blonde framing her pretty face. From the way she was smiling at them both it was easy for Bubblegum at least to see that Lady knew exactly what she'd just interrupted.
"So you're the dork who stole my best DJ, huh?" Lady asked with an easy smile.
"Hardly 'stole' her, the hard part is getting Bubblegum to go home at the end of the day." Marcy replied. She shrugged and tried to look casual but there was definitely something a little defensive about her posture.
Despite the obvious tension it was fun to hang out in the studio, discover how their array of space-age looking equipment worked and unravel the mysteries of what actually happened day-to-day at a small, independent record label. Crystal Dimension Records might not be the most famous studio but they had a loyal fanbase and easily enough paying customers on their books to provide Bubblegum a steady income just for playing her music. To Marceline it seemed so much easier than the constant grind of securing grants and rushing to publish data before someone else ran the same experiment. And Lady was cool and fun to hang with despite her knowing glances between the two of them. Marcy of course was certain that she'd just imagined the whole atmosphere just before the producer arrived, she couldn't think of a single good reason for someone so amazing and gorgeous to want to kiss a boring nerd like her. Still, there was something a little assessing in the way Bubblegum was watching her from the corner of her eye as they left the studio a couple of hours later. Marcy was hyper aware she was being observed for the entire drive back to Bubblegum's apartment.
"You sure you don't mind me crashing on your sofa?" she asked for the eight hundredth time that hour, making the pastel girl laugh again.
"I told you, it's fine. I met your mother, remember? I totally get why you'd rather stay anywhere else than at her place, even my freaky Barbie apartment."
"I like your apartment. I just need a little bit of time for my retinas to adjust to the colour scheme and we're good." Marcy shot back as the other girl unlocked her front door. Peppermint tried to shove his way out into the hall to greet them the moment the door opened and Bubblegum swept him up in a hug which resulted in instant purring.
"Hey my little man! Did you miss me? Ah who's my little snuggle puss?" Bubblegum cooed as the bald red and cream cat rubbed his head lovingly under her chin. "Aunty Marcy is gonna be sleeping on Mama's sofa tonight, ok? And don't do your weird ass-wiggling thing on her blanket when she's trying to sleep, ok? It's rude."
"Am I gonna need to worry about him getting all up in my face in the middle of the night?" Marcy asked, only half joking.
"Nah, he usually sleeps with me. Unless you wind up sharing my bed you'll probably not see him until morning." Bubblegum replied distractedly. She was kicking her shoes off and trying to persuade Peppermint to jump down from where he was clinging stubbornly to the lace shoulder of her baby-pink shirt and she missed the way Marceline's shoulders tensed up at that comment. Of course she'd meant it innocently, Marcy berated herself. She needed to get her damn mind out of the gutter.
It was pizza and classic sitcoms on the TV that evening, they never managed to decide on a film so in the end Bubblegum just flicked through the channels until she found something they both felt like watching. Marceline spent most of her time trying to sneak glances at the other girl and basking in the warm glow in her chest every time she laughed. Probably it wasn't anywhere near as subtle as she wanted to be but Bubblegum didn't seem to notice and if she did she didn't say anything.
Every time Marceline caught her gaze lingering too long on the sofa she blushed and looked away. Meeting Bubblegum's eyes for more than half a second left her a bit dizzy. How could someone's mouth curving up like that have the power to make her feel like she was gonna pass out? Bubblegum must be a witch or something, Marcy decided. Because the longer she spent curled up on the beanbag cushion next to Bubblegum's sofa the more bewitched she felt.
"So, um, are you... uh... playing any gigs soon?" Marcy asked during a commercial break, casting around to find a topic of conversation that might ease the electric atmosphere in the room.
"Yeah, Sunday night. You can come along if you want, unless you're sick of my music already."
"No, not at all. I mean, yes. Uh. Yes, I'd love to come along. And no I'm not sick of your music. You know what I mean, right?"
Bubblegum laughed and turned her attention back to the TV as their show started again. Marceline stuck to silently yelling at herself inside her head about how much she sucked at making conversation with hot girls. Especially when they were lounging across the sofa wearing teeny tiny pyjama shorts with absolutely miles of long shapely legs everywhere. Marceline was pretty sure she got caught staring a couple of times but it was hard not to let her eyes wander to those heart stopping curves, they were drawn like magnets. They watched another couple of episodes in relative silence while Marcy tried not to hyperventilate every time Bubblegum glanced her way and smiled. Witchcraft, she thought dizzily.
Eventually the pink haired girl looked around and frowned like she was trying to work something out.
"I'm so sorry, why are you sitting on the floor? I'm taking up too much of the sofa."
"No, it's fine, I'm fine." Marcy tried to argue but the pastel girl wasn't listening. She sat up and pulled those amazingly long legs up so she was curled into a ball on one end of the sofa. It would have been rude to continue sitting on the floor so Marceline reluctantly got up and sat next to her, hyper aware of every place their bare legs touched.
"Thanks." she squeaked, and Bubblegum smiled at her again.
So that's how they spent their first evening together; sitting awkwardly on the sofa giggling over random sit-coms and sharing sidelong glances that were definitely less than entirely innocent.
...
"Marcy?"
"Nuh, whu?"
"Hey, wake up. I, uh, I need to ask you a favour."
Marceline opened her eyes and stared around in confusion, trying to work out where the hell she was from the unfamiliar surroundings of the dark lounge. Then she noticed Bubblegum's outline in the gloom and had a mini heart attack because she wasn't used to there being anyone else around in the middle of the night.
"Woah! What the hell! You can't just sneak up while I'm sleeping like that!" Marcy gasped, hurtling upright from where she was lying on the sofa and almost falling to the floor in shock.
"Sorry! I just... I wanted to ask you something and it's really embarrassing and I've been putting it off all night." Bubblegum confessed, sliding down next to her and wrapping her arms around herself like she was cold. Marceline automatically reached around to hug the other girl close and share body heat. Once her sudden adrenaline rush had calmed a little she felt weirdly calm, like all of her nerves from earlier had vanished and instead it just felt perfectly natural to be cuddled up with the pastel girl in the darkness. The scent of Bubblegum's strawberry shampoo hung heavy around her and as sleepy as she still was it was too hard to resist the urge to rest her face against that soft pink hair.
"So what did you need to ask?" Marcy asked quietly after a long moment of silence. Bubblegum sighed and shifted in her arms.
"This is gonna sound, I dunno... I don't want it to come off wrong or whatever. Will you come to bed with me?"
Marcy stilled, arms going a little numb and tense. There were those nerves again, looked like they hadn't gone far after all.
"You, ah, you want me to-"
"I can't sleep. I forgot to pick up my meds from the pharmacy today and I'm out of sleeping pills. I can get some more in the morning but the music's too loud in my head tonight and... I never told you this but the reason I was so determined to be your friend at first was because of your voice. It's so soft and calming, it's like... your voice sounds like the softest, pinkest thing ever. Do you know what I mean? When you talk it makes the music drop down to a whisper. And if you came into my room and just talked to me I could sleep."
"Oh. Oh! I thought- uh, never mind."
"Wait, what did you think I meant?"
Bubblegum twisted around in her arms and stared up through the gloom, searching the other woman's face intensely for a long moment.
"Did you think I meant something indecent?" she murmured, mouth curving into a gentle smile again.
"Well, you started it with 'will you come to bed with me' so, you can't be surprised if I get the wrong impression can you?" Marcy replied, voice a little breathy and strained to her own ears.
"And yet you're still sitting her hugging me, not running screaming in horror or anything. So what sort of impression am I supposed to get from that?" Bubblegum asked, still smiling enigmatically and staring almost expectantly into her eyes.
Marceline wasn't a great romantic, she wasn't even terribly experienced especially when it came to picking up on subtle signals from girls. But she knew what they were both dancing around and very abruptly she was completely done with pretending to be coy about it. She leaned forward and finally closed that small gap between their faces to press a gentle kiss carefully onto the other girl's lips. It was every bit as wonderful as she'd imagined it would be, a little hesitant and a little shy but no less tender for it. And then Bubblegum kissed back and Marceline's brain just went completely blank. It was like her heart had stopped dead in her chest, like cardiac arrest but amazing in every way. When they did part after a long moment it was to mutual embarrassed grins and racing pulses.
"So, um, if you still want me to, ah, talk you to sleep..." Marcy started, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly.
"You remember me telling you that life's too short?" Bubblegum asked instead. Marceline nodded, not entirely certain she knew where the conversation was going because there was no way it could be headed where it sounded like, right? "I mean it. Life's too short to hesitate. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow, I might drop dead for no reason. So, if you want, come to bed with me."
She stood, holding out her hand invitingly. Marceline hesitated for a single heartbeat then wordlessly reached forward and allowed herself to be pulled up from the sofa and lead through to the bedroom. Life was the longest thing she would ever do and it was too short and she didn't have any headspace at all to think about that paradox when she entered the bedroom because Bubblegum was kissing her again; her hands were skirting the edge of Marcy's pyjama shirt carefully then sliding underneath to caress the smooth skin of her stomach and hips and elicit a breathy gasps against eager lips. There were hands and lips on her skin and somehow she'd lost the pyjamas, somehow there was a naked and beautiful girl moaning beneath her touch and for the life of her Macy couldn't have explained how that had happened. She just concentrated on that moment and the feel and scent of the other girl, the way she sounded, tasted, the expressions on her face and the way her lips parted with a gasp. And when they did finally rest Bubblegum drifted into sleep feeling lighter and warmer than she had in forever, skin to skin with Marceline's effortless, silken voice murmuring softly into her ear and soothing the music down to a gentle hum in the back of her brain. Tomorrow they'd need to have a conversation about what just happened, about a lot of stuff, and it might not go as well as she wanted it to. But for now she was overwhelmed with a serene kind of lassitude and wanted nothing except to fall asleep in the arms of her lover.