A/N: Oh my goodness! Sorry my lovies! I'm hideously late. But I'm BACK IN BLACK. And white. Because that's writing for you. Once again to Jem (yourcloudnine), Brooke, Bea, Kiki, and Burnet for being cray cray stoked about this story! And all you other lovely, sexy adventurer reviewers and readers :3 you guys makin' me happy.

-O-

"I'm sorry I attacked you, Marceline," Peppermint said rather sincerely. "Being stuffed in an old man's body can do things to me."

"So I heard," Marceline growled, but it was muffled by the table she was laying belly down on. Bonnibel shot the back of her dark hair a sympathetic look, her hands busy with their light dabbing between the vampire's bare shoulder blades. Fast healing only meant that germs got sucked in faster, after all.

"I used to caddie for your father in Put Put Kingdom," the butler continued, but Bubblegum shushed him with a frantic shake of her head.

"I've seen the pictures," the queen grumbled on. She turned her head with a scowl, her face now red and marked from the table top. "So, to avoid this sort of shenanigan again, I wasn't about to suck the pink out of her life source."

Her dark eyes darted upwards in thought. "Well, maybe out of her-"

"Any who," the princess sung, shoving Marceline's face back down, "I think we all learned a valuable lesson today, the more you know the more you sew and all that fun stuff…"

"So then you two are together," Peppermint said tightly, and Bonnibel's face blanched. Where Ricardio had been—manipulatively—gentle, the real butler would not.

"Okay, I'm going to say this once," the queen muttered almost lazily, lightly pulling Bubblegum's hands away to look up again. She sighed, her grey lips bunching till a single fang poked out, and the princess could only brace herself for whatever tact and grace about to come out of that mouth.

"I'm sorry."

"What?" Bonnibel sputtered, but Marceline sat up topless. Oh, there it is.

Peppermint waited, seemingly unfazed, but her pink hands clapped across the vampire's chest from behind, her own pressing into the older girl's back.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell anyone about Bonnie and I. She was reluctant to let everyone to know, and I wanted to respect her wishes."

"Oh. Well, thank you," the butler nodded amicably.

"But I'm better than any frozen banana will ever be at guarding," Marceline continued, hands on her hips under steadied eyes. "I'm willing to keep wolves, zombies, and flesh eating unicorns out of our dates. I'm nothing like my dad. And I'm willing to prove myself against any reason you could ever come up with-"

"You're immortal," Peppermint interjected without a blink.

Bonnibel's chest tightened, her face going utterly helpless. No, not like this. But the butler went right on ahead.

"You're the Queen of Vampires," he stated darkly. "Even if you two found a way to peacefully absorb another's kingdoms, even if you aced every soft, under handed challenge Bonnibel could make. Even if you could prove to me that you aren't lobbing the ball into the golf gator pits just to force me to make you new gator skin boots, at some point, the princess will expire. And you will be the sole ruler of both kingdoms." His face bounced back from its grave bow with a sheepish smile. "Which is what I actually meant to say when I shanked you with my popsicle shiv."

Oh Gob.

It was here then. The vampire in her arms was silent and still, like an axe swung up high to be aimed down.

Right down through Bonnibel's heart.

"Yeah, I know," Marceline snorted with a half shrug. "Pretty sure that was obvious from the start."

"It was not!" the princess snapped, and the vampire grit her teeth as ten little filed nails dug down into her breasts. "It never even crossed my mind! How are you so calm?"

"Bull spit!" the vampire cackled with a wince, her fingers prying the princess's away. "How would a brainlord like you miss that?"

"Oh come now, Princess, you had to have been in denial," Peppermint chuckled along, but his amusement cut short. "However, since Marceline is somehow throwing the great balance by mentally besting you, I am curious to know if she has a solution with such calm air."

"Of course I don't," the queen frowned. "I'm sure as hey not going to turn her into a vampire. She likes sunshine too much. But any time I've gone after something I've wanted, she's always grounded me." Marceline tilted her head up to look at the princess like someone might regard the warm sunset outside.

"She doesn't know the answer now. She'll figure it out later and come to me in her glasses and a sea of notes and that'll be that."

And she said it with such earnest assurance, her eyes soft over such a loving smile, that Bonnibel realized she was right.

That she had to be right, because that was the entire beauty of their relationship. Marceline took them to the sky, and it was the princess's job to touch them back down.

Now, how she hadn't seen that all along was worrisome.

"Miss Abadeer, wait," Peppermint started warily, rising up in his chair.

But Marceline's toes jammed into his tiny mouth, and he squirmed violently, collapsing off his seat.

"C'mon!" the vampire growled adoringly, pulling the princess down over her shoulders in a fireman carry.

"SHIRT!" Bonnibel squealed, snatching it off of the table just in the nick of time. Because the queen crouched and shot up and out of the kitchen window, barreling them into the dusk.

"Hey, what-?" Marceline drifted in bewilderment. "How'd you get this shirt on me?"

"…How did you unclasp my bra?" Bubblegum raised an eyebrow.

"Right then, up we go!" Marceline grinned too quickly, and the princess's gut dropped too fast for her to scream, the pair of them rocketing to the blended smooth pinks and oranges and reds above.

The second their heads puffed up through a thin layer of violet cloud, though, the vampire slowed, her hair first trailing behind her before it lifted up in her crawling descent. The queen hovered on the mist as if she were really sitting, her arms cradling the younger girl down into her lap.

The moon hung down over the girls like an enormous eye, the last rays of sunlight rippling about them in the wind. All around, the vast sky glowed, stretching on forever above, the ground like tiny patchwork beneath.

But the princess's breath wasn't gone for a single one of those reasons.

Marceline's eyes were pinned up to hers, searching. They were a startling crimson in this sort of twilight, her dark hair moving about her luminescent skin.

And oh, how scared she was under that determined gaze, lips licked from being dried under rapid inhales.

"Bonnibel?" she whispered with a hard swallow. "I know, okay? I know you've been given a thousand reasons to say no."

"Marceline?" Bubblegum breathed, her hands folding down on the vampire's shoulders to keep them from shaking. Marceline was too, though.

And it came as swift as it had in her dreams.

"But will you just marry me already?"