TOWER, TOWER - [Part X]
After dry-heaving another few moments, Bubblegum drops her head onto her arm and settles for crying. It isn't a practice she indulges in often, today being the exception, and she's not very graceful about it: her face is a ruin of miserable wetness, her nose running, her cheeks awash in tears. Her stomach clenches, cramps. She gags on the bitter taste in her mouth once, twice and then Marceline's hand is cupped at her lips, the knight's palm full of water from the nearby washbasin.
"Enough puking, geez. Sip this," Marceline orders, "and spit it out next. You'll feel better."
Bubblegum obeys. She has no sooner finished relieving herself of the mouthful when Marceline's hand catches her face again. It's wet, cool: the knight's fingers trace Bubblegum's cheeks haphazardly, smearing the tears away, dripping excess down into the princess's lap. Marceline's just as graceful cleaning up the princess as Bubblegum is at crying, and by the time she's finished they're both a good deal damper than when she started.
"I'm here," Marceline revisits, rocking back on her haunches. Frowning at Bubblegum, she insists, "So stop leaking, okay? You don't need to freak out anymore."
"Duly noted," croaks Bubblegum. She sniffs—her sinuses throb. Massaging her nose's bridge, she takes hold of the washbasin's edge and rises. "Thank you," she addresses her knight, "for your—ah. For your stalwart presence just now. I'm sorry you had to see me…" She trails off. Her cheeks feel too hot, too sticky to gather a blush.
"Yeah, hey, it's fine," Marceline dismisses. "Everyone hurls, Princess." She straightens too, smoothing her hands dry on her breeches. Glancing aside at Bubblegum, she smirks and ventures, one of her odd sharp-looking teeth jutting down at her mouth's corner, "Was the sight of my almost-nude torso just that repulsive to you?"
With a snort, Bubblegum slips past the knight and steps back out into her bedchamber. "Don't be ridiculous." She collects the sopping tunic from the floor and drops it into the wastebasket with Marceline's gloves. "Your torso is not repulsive. It's fine. It's—"
"Muscular and gleaming with raw beauty?"
Bubblegum looks back at Marceline: meets her gaze with cool, shameless ease. "Yes," she allows simply, and continues as the knight bristles with what might be surprise, might be pleasure, "it has merely been a trying day and my frustrations chose that moment to unexpectedly culminate in a violent outburst—"
Marceline whistles. "I hate it when that happens."
Scowling at her knight, Bubblegum huffs, "In all sincerity, seeing you shirtless inspired nothing in me but deep feelings of astonishment and sympathy."
"Astonishment because wow, look at that physique"—Marceline slaps the flat of her hand against her ribs; the resulting sound is like a whip's crack—"and sympathy because I couldn't look better if I tried, and it must be tough being perfect all the time, huh?"
Bubblegum gazes quietly at the other woman a moment. Padding back over to her next, she reaches to brush her fingers over the scooped scar at Marceline's hip and murmurs, "How did you manage to acquire so many of these, Marceline?"
Unnaturally cool and surprisingly soft, the other woman's skin compresses beneath her touch. Marceline's smirk dips into something else: something slow, simmering hot to make up for the chill of her flesh. "Aw, you know," she manages. "Roughhousing. Skirmishes here and there—things like that."
"Mm. Do they hurt at all?"
Folding her hand lightly over Bubblegum's, Marceline presses the princess's palm flat over the scar and offers, "You know, this one does twinge a bit. You could kiss it if you like." The knight's thumb rubs over Bubblegum's knuckles, pausing in the dips between them to perform idle, curious caresses. "Make it better," she finishes.
Bubblegum smiles. Touching the fingers of her free hand to her lips, she drops them then to the scar and provides, "For the knight, a kiss as requested. And tomorrow," she maintains, giving Marceline's hip a squeeze, "armor for you as well, whether you want it or not."
"As long as it's not made of candy canes or something," agrees the taller woman.
"We have a normal smithy. They should be able to accommodate your needs."
"Yeah? Okay. Good," Marceline allows.
There is a lull. It's brief and almost awkward, though again not quite: a moment wherein they hold on to one another there in the middle of Bubblegum's bedchamber, the princess studying the knight, the knight gazing quietly back.
"Stay here tonight," Bubblegum determines abruptly. She pulls her hands away—realizes what she's said. Quickly she amends, "Study the reports of the other assassinations with me, I mean. You, ah—you can share my bed later, if you like. I'll have another chamber prepared for your use tomorrow, but it's late now and I, uhm, I just—"
"Are those the reports?" interjects Marceline smoothly, tipping her head toward Bubblegum's desk and the multiple stacks of yellow parchment there.
"Y-yes. Ah. Ahem. Arranged from earliest notice to—"
"Let's get started," the knight insists, and ushers Bubblegum across the room.
Hours later, Bubblegum blinks her eyes open to the trellis of gray dawn light crawling over her ceiling. She has no memory of climbing into bed, much less of falling asleep, but she is safely ensconced in her sheets nonetheless. A quick glance beneath those sheets reveals she is also dressed in her nightgown.
"Presumptive woman," she grouches, and looks aside.
Sprawled on her back on the mattress next to Bubblegum, Marceline is asleep still, the arm nearest the princess thrown haphazardly over the monarch's waist. Her hair spreads over the pillows like an ink stain; one elongated canine, bared in a snarl at some dreamtime foe, winks ivory in daybreak's faint glow. Her lashes feather soft over her cobalt cheeks.
Bubblegum's first thought is that Marceline is quite pretty. Her second thought is that Marceline is quite still.
Too still.
Bubblegum's third thought is that Marceline is not breathing.