A/N: This chap isn't exactly action packed, but stick with me until the next chapter! There might be some actual romance coming up ;D -hint, nudge-
Disclaimer: (im)Perfect © me; Adventure Time © Pen Ward
The Candy Queen scarcely let her son out of her sight since his kidnapping. All of the other royals were on their guard. Who knew which prince the Ice Queen's next victim could be? Queen Carmen was terrified that the witch would come back for her precious son, and the thought of even leaving him alone while he slept was a chilling thought. There was no better time to strike than when their guard was down at night. Banana guards had been commanded to work in alternating night shifts so that the prince's room was never left unprotected.
Between lessons, holding court, and having guards patrolling everywhere he went, Gumball never had time to relax anymore. He tried to explain to Marshall Lee that he wouldn't be available to go to any parties in the near future, but as soon as the kidnapping hysteria started to ebb, he'd have a smidgen more freedom. At least, he hoped so.
Prince Gumball was somewhat annoyed with his mother. He would never slight her for taking precautions to protect him, but it irked him that she still didn't trust Marshall Lee. After Marshall brought the prince back to the candy kingdom, the vampire told Queen Carmen that the Ice Queen had kidnapped Gumball, and Marshall Lee saved him. Gumball backed up his story – which was basically the truth – but neither Queen Carmen nor MoChro seemed to fully believe it. They were both still distrustful of Marshall Lee. And for that, the queen refused to allow her son to associate with the Vampire King. She believed that she'd finally stomped out the odd "friendship" the prince had struck up with the undead teen.
However, no one ever seemed to notice the bat that flew in through Gumball's balcony every few nights.
As usual, Gumball was alerted by the gentle tapping on the glass door, and he sprang out of bed to open it. Once the bat fluttered inside, it took the form of a lanky boy. He flipped his hair from his eyes and grinned down at his younger companion.
"Hello, Marshall Lee," Gumball smiled.
"What's up, kid?" the vampire gave the prince's shoulder a soft punch. "You ready to sneak out tonight?"
The prince frowned. "I wish I could. Mother says we're going to visit the Duchess of Nuts for her birthday party tomorrow, and we'll have to be up before dawn to make it there on time, so I'm afraid I can't stay out late tonight."
Marshall let out an exaggerated sigh and flopped down on the prince's bed. "Laaame. Why do you have so many lame-ass parties to go to?"
"I have responsibilities, Marshall. Unlike a certain vampire I know," Gumball added with a playful smile.
"Pff. Responsibilities are for sissies."
The boys shared a laugh and Gumball walked over to the computer he kept on the other side of his room. He booted it up and said, "It's my turn to pick the music tonight, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Just don't pick something bad."
Gumball rolled his eyes as he scrolled through the playlist he'd created and started it up. "I don't listen to bad music."
As the sweet melodies drifted over him, the candy prince smiled and walked out on his balcony to enjoy the spring breeze wafting around the castle. Scents of the many flowers populating the castle gardens reached him and the soft wind tickled his skin. With the company of his dear friend and the music to serenade him, Gumball was content. He closed his eyes and wished that he could live in that moment forever.
"It's a beautiful night," he sighed.
"Full moon, too," the vampire said. He'd appeared on the balcony beside the prince. "Just ditch your plans for tomorrow. It's the perfect night to jam out with Party Pat."
Gumball glanced over at his friend. "You know I can't do that. We'll have to wait for another night."
Marshall Lee groaned and dramatically slumped over the bannister. "I thought I taught you to be a better rule-breaker than this."
He nudged the vampire with his elbow and said excitedly, "We can still be rule breakers without leaving the castle."
When Marshall Lee only grunted in response, Gumball took it upon himself to climb up on the bannister where it met the castle wall and start to scale the uneven surface. Marshall Lee turned his head and chuckled, "What are you doing, goofball?"
"Rule breaking!" Gumball panted. Climbing up the castle wall was hard work for someone who lived only a moderately active lifestyle, even if the wall was only a few feet tall. Gumball felt the shingles scraping against his palms as he tried in vain to pull himself over the lip of the roof. "A little assistance would be appreciated," he called.
Marshall's hands grabbed him around the waist and the vampire effortlessly hoisted the candy prince onto the roof.
"So, what exactly are we doing?" he asked.
Gumball smiled and continued to climb up the roof until it leveled off. Once he reached the flat surface, he sat down triumphantly and announced, "No one is allowed on the castle roof. But I do it all the time."
Marshall couldn't seem to believe his ears. Gumball was sitting there with his chest puffed out and a smug grin on his face like he'd just outwitted every last person in the Candy Kingdom… because he'd climbed on the roof. He couldn't help it; the vampire doubled over laughing until tears came to his eyes.
"What? What are you laughing at? Marshall!"
Gumball was so naïve and innocent. He lied to the Candy Queen, snuck out to go to outrageous parties once a week, and chose to spend his free time getting into all kinds of shenanigans with a vampire – and yet the little prince's crowning achievement – in his own eyes – was this. When Marshall finally got control of his laughter, he reclined lazily beside Gumball. The little prince did not seem pleased that he wasn't in on the joke, and Marshall figured he wouldn't see the humor in it anyway. He asked, "So what do you come up here for?"
"Star gazing," the prince said uncertainly. "When MoChro is here to give me a boost, I bring my telescope. I find it relaxing."
"Do you know the constellations?" Marshall Lee asked.
"Of course!" Gumball said. "I know all of them. I've been going to the planetarium since I was four."
"All right, brainiac. Show me Scorpio."
Gumball laughed. "Is that a trick question?"
Marshall raised his eyebrows at his younger companion. Gumball chuckled and replied, "There isn't a constellation called Scorpio."
"'Course there is," the vampire pouted. "It's right there." He pointed up at the stars and traced an outline of the constellation with his fingertip.
Gumball tried to follow the pattern, chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought. "Hmmm… You mean Sucrose?"
"Sucrose?" the vampire snorted.
"Yes. It's part of the Trifecta – look there. Fructose north of Sucrose, and that little one over there is Glucose."
Marshall Lee rolled his eyes. "Those ones are Ursa Major and Ursa Minor."
"You're just making these names up, aren't you?" Gumball frowned.
"Nope. Those are the names humans gave the constellations."
Gumball was taken aback. "Humans? There haven't been any recorded sightings of humans in eight hundred years. How would you know that?"
Marshall Lee looked up at the sky. Forever stretched on before him and all he could see were stars and stars and stars. Without the interruptions of the rest of the world, he felt like he was back in the wreckage of a destroyed building with a backpack for a pillow and the warmth of his father beside him. He remembered his forehead wrinkling in concentration as his father pointed up at the smog covered sky and told him where all of the star formations were when there was no pollution to hide them. One hundred years later, when humans became an endangered species, the pollution finally cleared and Marshall Lee saw the stars for the first time the way his father dreamed he would.
"I was human once. Kind of."
Gumball stared at the vampire as if seeing him for the first time. He eagerly leaned over Marshall Lee with fire in his eyes unrivaled by any passion the undead teen had seen before.
"You were?"
Marshall Lee shrugged. "Well… half-human. Vampires aren't just born, Gumball."
"Half-human… and half-what?" Gumball asked.
This was not where Marshall Lee wanted this conversation to go. He was spiraling down a road of memories best left untouched. He swallowed uncomfortably, and replied, "It's not important."
"But it is! Hybrid species have always fascinated me. Would you allow me to take a blood sample from you? I'd love to study—"
"I'm not your science experiment!" Marshall Lee snapped.
The harsh tone caught the candy prince off guard. His words drove a knife through his heart, and Gumball couldn't imagine why. It was an innocent enough request, wasn't it? Wasn't it flattering to say that someone like Marshall intrigued him? Gumball didn't understand why he was so angry, why he was now sulking with his knees drawn up to his chest and a scowl on his face. The candy prince wanted to insist upon his request, but Marshall was in no state to acquiesce and Gumball had a terrible feeling that the vampire was going to leave altogether if he pressed the matter any further. But now that the initial damage had been done, Gumball didn't know how to fix it. As he panicked, he cursed himself for not taking care to read Making Friends: Vol. 3 Arguing & Apologizing.
"I'm sorry," Gumball said, hoping that he was going about this the right way.
When Marshall refused to reply, Gumball knew for certain the vampire had taken far more offense than the prince ever could have intended. He worried that he'd ruined their friendship already, and frantically tried to find a way to amend it. After wracking his brain to find the solution, he finally asked, "If you were part human, that means you lived with humans before, right?"
"So what," Marshall grunted.
"If you did, does that mean you really were alive a thousand years ago?"
Marshall hesitated before saying, "Yes."
Gumball took care to sound as innocent as possible when he asked, "Could you tell me about it?"
"About what?" he muttered.
"About… about humans. And what everything was like a thousand years ago."
"Why?" he snapped.
"Because I want to know. I don't know anyone else who survived the Great Mushroom War, and there are few enough intact artifacts from that time period, so I… well, I was just curious. I wanted to know more about the time you lived in."
Marshall Lee was silent for so long that Gumball feared he'd stepped on another landmine. Was it wrong of him to want to know more? Marshall was so unique. A hybrid species, eternally youthful, royalty in his own right, and now, a primary source of historical information. Gumball had never been more fascinated by another being before. There was so much he could learn from the vampire. But to begin, Marshall would have to be willing to talk. The prince was about to throw in the towel and resign himself to the fact that his intellectual pursuits concerning the past stopped there, but Marshall finally spoke.
"A thousand years ago, there were seven continents. Four oceans. The majority of the world was water, and humans were the dominant species. We called the planet Earth."
Gumball looked over at the vampire and saw starlight glittering in Marshall Lee's blood red eyes. He saw some sense of longing in them that the candy prince could never comprehend. A thousand years was an unfathomable length of time. To imagine that Marshall had lived at least that long… It struck the prince that Marshall must have once had parents and friends, and some of them must have been human. And Marshall would have stayed as he was, forever young, forever immortal, as they all died. As Gumball watched his friend, he wondered how much pain he'd experienced that he would never show. Part of him wanted to tell Marshall Lee that it was all right. That he didn't have to continue talking about things that would only upset him. But the words kept coming and not even Marshall seemed to be able to stop them. He told Gumball about so many things. About animals that no longer existed, plants that were once abundant, and the stage of technology humans reached before their complacency destroyed their entire race. Gumball listened, astounded, as the stories poured out. There was much Marshall Lee didn't know, as the Great Mushroom War had already happened by the time he was born. Most of what he knew was second hand information, or things he'd learned later from a handful of books he'd salvaged. Marshall Lee wanted to save the memories of the Earth he remembered, even if he would never see it again.
Hours passed, and Gumball, as enraptured as he was by Marshall's discourse, found his eyes drooping. The little prince fell asleep next to the vampire under the silver moon.
Marshall noticed how Gumball's breathing had slowed, and he paused to look down at the prince. He was fast asleep and balled up like a cat. The vampire had to smile, and then realized how sore his jaw was from talking. It'd been forever since Marshall had spoken so much. He stretched the muscles he hadn't used in several hours and wondered just how long he'd spent talking. He let out a sigh and figured that he'd might as well head out and see if Party Pat's rave was still going. That would take his mind off of things. Before he left, he scooped up Gumball in his arms and floated back down to the balcony and into the prince's bed room. As carefully as he could, Marshall set him down on the bed and pulled up the covers. For a moment, he simply watched as Prince Gumball slept on peacefully. Marshall smiled. He was so fragile. So young. So trusting. His mother was right to worry about him. It wasn't every day that a mortal put his life in the hands of an undead bloodsucker. But it made him happy to think that, after living a thousand lonely years, he'd found someone to rely on him.
Marshall tried not to dwell on that; he wasn't one for sappy thoughts. He tucked the blankets around the prince more snugly and murmured, "G'night, kiddo."
Bright sunset light was just starting to filter through Marshall's window when he heard a persistent knock on his front door. He glanced over at his clock, registered the time, and groaned as he buried his face under a pile of pillows and blankets. It wasn't even dusk yet; it was far too early for him to be up. If he wanted to be up until day break, he'd need to sleep in for at least another couple of hours. Whoever was knocking on his door would just have to come back later.
But the persistent door-knocker wouldn't let up. Every few seconds, the person would pause and restart louder and longer than last time. How was a guy supposed to get a decent day's rest with some jackass making a racket outside of his house? To pester the Vampire King, this person must have been suicidal.
Or Gumball.
Marshall Lee slumped out of bed, grumbling and scratching his messy mop of hair as he floated as slowly as possible to the front door. He pulled it open just as the annoying door-knocker raised his hand to start again.
Unsurprisingly, it was Gumball standing there and bouncing on his toes in excitement. Lord Monochromicorn stood off in the distance, as if he was trying to stay as far from Marshall Lee's house as he could while still keeping an eye on the prince.
"I've done it," the little prince announced, breathless in his fervor.
"Done what, pissed me off?" Marshall grunted. His voice was so hoarse that he doubted Gumball could actually understand what he said.
"I've convinced Mother and the councilors to amend the law concerning night creatures and the Candy Kingdom. Up until now, they've been forbidden, but I've written an amendment to the law that allows you to enter freely, and now we can spend time at the castle together," Gumball explained. He spoke so fast that Marshall had to take a moment to dissect the words in order to make sense of them.
Marshall rubbed sleep from his eyes and stared at the prince. "What you're saying is, you've rewritten a centuries old law… so we can have bro time at your place."
"Essentially, yes," Gumball grinned. "I explained the situation to mother, because I simply don't find it fair that I impose on you so much, and it would be rude to bar someone of your status from our kingdom."
"You told her I was out hosting you," Marshall commented. He raised his eyebrows and scrutinized the prince.
Gumball blushed. "Well… I… We are renowned for our hospitality, and in light of the situation… it just seemed silly to… All right, yes. Mother is an excellent hostess and she didn't want her image tarnished by excluding a friend of mine from the castle. I suppose you could say I… I may have… coerced her…"
The vampire let out a bark of laughter. "Dude. That is awesome!"
He and raised his hand for a fist bump until Gumball smiled shyly and returned the gesture. The prince continued, "I would like it if you came to dinner tonight. Since your first meeting with Mother was, um…"
"Disastrous," Marshall filled in.
Gumball nodded. "Quite. Since you got off to a bad start, I'd like for you to come over tonight so that she can really get to know you the way I do. I know she'll like you, and then she can become more comfortable with the idea of us being friends."
Marshall wanted to pass it up, but how could he when Gumball was looking up at him with those puppy dog eyes? He hesitated, knowing that he should refuse, that this night couldn't possibly end as well as Gumball envisioned. But instead, Marshall Lee said, "All right, fine."
"Excellent! I'll see you at seven!"
Marshall watched as Gumball ran to MoChro and the steed took flight as fast as lightning. Whether it was because of MoChro's distrust of the vampire or simply animal instinct, he couldn't be sure. But Marshall Lee sincerely hoped the Candy Queen wouldn't be as desperate to escape his presence.
A/N: So, my new job has me working way fewer hours than my old one, and between paying for bills and food, I'm hemorrhaging money right now, so I'm kinda desperate for a little extra cash … Would you guys be interested if I did commissions? Like, fanfic commissions? They'd probably be one shots, approximately 4,000 words, and maybe $4-$5 for each? ;^; mmm I dunno, still gotta work out the details… if any of you would be interested or have some suggestions, please let me know!