Just Us
- Shlohmo
Last chapter: Land of Aaa shenanigans, Marshall Lee and Marcy run off together.
This chapter: 100% accurate guide to bromantic relationships.
The fact that she's a half-human, half-demon mortal again doesn't change a thing between them.
Except, of course, when it does.
"Marcy get outta the sun!"
"Not until you lemme play Marshall Lee's Most Fire Mixtape of 3005!"
It's been a few days since they started house-sitting the Scream Kings' boat while said band goes on tour ("You owe us for that one ride that one time you see," was Kenny's rationale). Floating around the Sea of Something on a small yacht is chill and all—but the space isn't much and the only place to hold Marshall Lee's super-old, super-secret mixtape hostage is out on the deck.
Under the bright, noonday sun.
Right where his pasty vampire self can't go to wrestle the cassette from her human fingers.
Marshall Lee can only scowl from the shade of the doorway. "Marcy I swear to Glob…"
Marceline holds the tape up to the breeze: "'A-side, track 1: Mo' Money Mo' Problems [the remix]… track 2: Life is pain but at least I have bitches." She glances back at him. "Younger-you was way edgy. I can't wait for the B-side…"
Marshall Lee's outraged face is priceless. Marceline gloats, the sunlight warm on her skin like a radical anti-vampire barrier. The short ends of her hair sway slowly to the waves.
But then Marshall Lee shoots back, "I'll toss your AC/DC shirt overboard."
These days, he's much faster than her mortal eyes can follow.
"Marshall Lee I swear to Grod!" She bolts inside after the afterimage of him, his evil cackle resounding down the hallway.
"This means war!" he hollers back.
Some things definitely don't change, even if she's human again. Even if the wrestling matches don't go in her favor anymore. Even if it's all too easy for Marshall Lee to pin her on the rug, then sit on her stomach, then go about ransacking the closet as she lies trapped by the sheer power of bony arse.
"You can't treat me this way," Marceline huffs underneath him. "I'm an endangered species now."
Marshall Lee raps back. "I don't give a fuck if you… something, something, Asian-Hispanic… fuck yo ethnicity."
"What kinda rapper forgets the words!"
"Gimme my damn mixtape!" Marshall Lee pauses mid-rifle to glance down at her fingers undoing her green flannel. He rolls his eyes. "Marcy, I'm not gonna fall for you taking your shirt off."
Marceline unbuttons away. "You so are."
"I can too ignore your perfect boobs, and your collarbones, and, uh…"
But of course he can't, and the mixtape and the AC/DC shirt are tossed aside somewhere. If someone told younger, axe-toting, demon-hunting human Marceline of 1,000 years ago that she'd end up with a vampire, she'd probably say
"You're on."
Marshall Lee moves slowly when he feels like it.
So yeah, Marceline supposes that some things do change now that she's mortal again, but not the way they bicker or the way he wants her or the way she can laugh, actually really laugh oh Grod what's happening she's all up in these feelings these days? Marshall Lee pulls away somewhat and by now they're on the bottom bunk, and for all that her supernatural strength isn't what it used to be, pinning him down by the shoulders is as easy as it ever was.
He looks up at her with that smile and that everything and she thinks damn, even as they say in tandem,
"I know, babe."
"I wasn't gonna say it."
Marceline thinks she'll never get used to her human heartbeat thumping wildly in her chest, sinking and rising and taking everything into the stratosphere along with it.
\/\/\/\/
Their third anniversary falls on a Wednesday.
Or, as Marshall Lee announces it, three years to the midnight he stumbled into her bathtub then cracked his skull on the toilet.
"But you bro-zoned me for months," Marceline points out as she steers the new and improved yacht-turned-banana-shaped-flying-submarine-blimp through starry skies (they're going to have to explain that bit about sky pirates and Party God to the Scream Kings later). "We didn't date-date until… Burning Man?"
Marshall Lee turns around to frown at her, swiveling in his personalized, bedazzled, co-captain's chair, complete with a pimp-cup-holder and a co-captain's snapback askew on his head. "Naaah girl, we started doing Tier 11 at Burning Man. Also, you bro-zoned me."
"Flob that dude, I had to make the first move…"
"Babe that was all me at the cemetery…"
This goes on until they temporarily compromise that there was just too much bromantic tension from the start, and Marcy just put Bananarama on autopilot and come upstairs, c'mon.
"We did not agree to name this sick new ride Bananarama." But autopilot it is. Marceline follows his soaring form up the ladder out the hatch and onto the deck, noting all the extension cords dangling along the way. Night breezes ruffle her shoulder-length hair and the long folds of her skirt. The moon is a large, full sphere that spans the horizon before them as Bananarama lazily traverses the sky. She follows the trail to the ledge where the cords connect to amps and speakers…
"Noooo way," Marceline gapes, then grins, then laughs out loud. "Are you…?"
"… about to serenade you with Marshall Lee's Most Fire Mixtape of 3005, B-side?" Marshall Lee reappears with Kenny's extra guitar in hand. "Behold, Marcy, it's the one thing everybody wishes they had. Oh and this really fire, really embarrassing and personal, but mostly fire mixtape I'm finna drop live for the first time ever too just for you, I guess. You lucky girl, you."
"I'm not even gonna bring up the fact that you complimented yourself," Marceline seats herself before him, rapt with full attention. "Best. Anniversary gift. Ever."
"This one goes out to Marcy, my A-1 since day one, I like when you smile so here we go."
To Marshall Lee's credit, his face is mostly straight and only slightly on fire as he mic checks, tunes the guitar, and pulls out the mystery cassette for reference:
"B-side, track 1: I Saw That One Movie Now I Can't Eat Peaches The Same Way…"
At least they'll agree on having the same birthday, probably.
Somewhere in the distance, a green light flashes.
\/\/\/\/
"Do you miss it?" Marshall Lee asks. "Being a vampire, I mean."
He sits atop the same boulder she leans on, braiding the back of her hair—it's almost back to old length, and he swears his hairstyling game is mad strong now since the dreadlock disaster. Bananarama floats above them, anchored to the cliffs like a giant oval balloon (they finally christened the ship, and they finally told the Scream Kings, and there just might be upcoming retribution headed their way when the band finishes touring but whatever, man, that's all for later).
"Kind of." Marceline shrugs. "It's like, you live as a vampire for so long… but then you remember how to be a half-demon, half-human again… and it's easy."
"Then… do you want to stay mortal?"
The fingers on her hair slow down to a pause. For moment, there's no other sound than the waves below, crashing into the cliffs, and the weight behind his words, sinking in.
"Not that I'm gonna change feelings on you either way," Marshall Lee quickly adds. "You know that. It's just…"
Chilling out together forever?
Or should he take the anti-vampire serum too?
Are they gonna grow old and settle down and taxes, maybe even—gasp—kids—?
Marceline tilts her head up to look at him. Even upside down and up close from this angle, Marshall Lee's expression is still hard to read, swathed in shadow against the night sky and the ship overhead. But she'll always know that glint in his eyes.
She leans back into him.
"I won't leave you hanging," Marceline promises. "You got me, Marsh."
Crookedly, he smiles down at her. One sharp fang gleams against the rest of visibly human teeth. They'll figure this out together, and for now—it's enough.
But then Marshall Lee sudden looks up.
"Oh shit Marcy get the polaroid."
And, indeed, as dawn slips into view they catch the mega-ultra-rare green sunrise phenomenon on film as it flickers on the ocean's horizon, kinda like that one old human song about green flashes at sunset or something like that. They high five at how excellently the photo turns out, it's absolutely getting framed over the toilet.
But as they turn to leave and climb back up to the ship, Marceline wonders if she imagined seeing a faraway, flying person within that flash of green light.
\/\/\/\/
Marcy.
Sometimes, in a nightmare, she still remembers the Vampire Queen lurking beneath her skin.
Marcy wake up.
Lava erupts. Undead screams. A sunken place where there's no telling where she ends and the Vampire Queen begins and the world bleeds all in red through her—their— red eyes, and it's her—their—hands that drive the jagged red hilt of the axe bass into Marshall Lee's heart, crushing it. Possessed, she screams—
"MARCELINE."
The nightmare world vanishes. Familiar hands shake her awake. She gasps for air, chest heaving. Her eyes wrench open and the real world isn't red but dark, dark and comforting and there's nothing but the waves and these walls and Marshall Lee pulling her into a hug, and he doesn't get freaked out or say don't cry or don't worry or some other platitude because shit happens. Bad memories stay.
Marshall Lee has his own demons, too.
But he never balks away from her, even as she buries her sniffling face into his neck. Her hands find his chest, his abdomen, right where the jagged, grisly scars from his axe bass are fading back to smooth skin, and in the darkest, farthest corners of her mind, the voices scream all the other hurts and damage she's ever wreaked on Bonnibel, on Simon, on her father, and all those forgotten others that she could never quite completely let in in a long, and lonely, and bitter life.
Marshall Lee just holds her tighter.
She feels his lips on her eyelids, cheek, jaw, softly down her throat as their bodies move in effortless, wordless, sinking tandem.
When she comes, it's with her arms around him and his fingers in her hair and her name is a sigh, melting time and scars and everything else beyond their space into nothingness, for now.
Sex doesn't fix everything, there's no such thing as completely safe, but she doesn't worry if he'll let go like all the ones before.
They're on each other's side.
\/\/\/\/
One simple, spring morning, almost a year since they left, Marshall Lee takes her back home at last to his house in the cave under the bridge.
Different paint, different mailbox, same perennially-dying garden, and Marceline swears it's almost like her old place before Scorcher burnt the whole thing down. Marshall Lee lands lightly on the doorstep, lets her down from his arms, and kicks the door open since honestly he can't remember where the spare key is anyway.
Dodging cobwebs, they step inside.
It's a man-cave of dust, old records, bass guitars, a tv that he's never bothered to turn off— and it's unsurprisingly, fittingly, Marshall Lee. He pauses. She remembers it's been four years since he left this place to adventure with Fionna and Cake.
Then the nostalgia passes. His fingers twine into hers and, tugging her forward, they bounce into the old couch that's even more wretched than her old one, what with the dust and the moths flying out.
"My couch is yours, remember?" Marshall Lee reminds.
"Don't forget the loan shirts," Marceline shoots back.
"Done."
"And joint custody of Hambo."
"Don—wait, what?"
Marceline leans back into the couch. Marshall Lee's head drops into the crook of her shoulder. Their hands clap together in a blind, perfectly-angled high five. She closes her eyes, and sighs, and the scent of this place is just enough like when they first met, that she smiles.
It almost feels like they've here like this before.
It feels… right.
But then
"Erm, babe, is that your dad on the news…?"
They both straighten up. Marshall Lee grabs the TV remote and turns up the volume. Surely enough, reporting live from what looks like a smoldering warzone in the main hall of Gumball's castle, is Lumpy Space Princess for Channel 5.
"Breaking news y'aaaall!" LSP waves her arms at the camera, looking official in her reporter's coat and microphone. "Two dangerous-looking, business-suit-wearing villains are holding Prince Gumball and them hostage! I mean, I kinda get it, who wouldn't go loco in the corporate world amirite —"
Aw, shit.
Was that flying green light in the sunrise actually a sign of..?
Marceline facepalms. Marshall Lee groans. They don't even need to hear the candypeople running around screaming or see the demonic fires getting blasted everywhere to know what comes next.
"Let's hear now from our corporate demon overlords with the glowy hands." LSP and the camera guy pan around, past tied-up hostages and falling beams—to show Hunson Abadeer, who somehow found his way to Aaa, and the woman who can't be anyone but his female counterpart. "Heeeey Marceline's dad and Marshall Lee's mom! Tell us your evil agenda! Why you guys taking us hostage and setting Candy Kingdom on fire?"
"Groddammit, Hunson!" Marceline doesn't have enough hands to facepalm with, so Marshall Lee claps his onto her cheeks too. Meanwhile Hunson thunders into LSP's microphone:
"WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER! I WILL NOT REST UNTIL I FIND MY DARLING LITTLE MONSTER SHE IS LOST IN YOUR PUNY MORTAL REALM—"
"Mooom, no!" Marshall Lee gapes in horror as Hana Abadeer pushes Hunson out of the way with her formidable hip.
"WHO CARES ABOUT SOME RUNAWAY GIRL! MY SWEET MISSING MARSHALL LEE IS IN THE CLUTCHES OF SOME PERVERT-KIDNAPPER." Hana roars except for the last mumbled part about whoever it is though he or she has good taste in young men.
"Dude." Marceline tilts her head. "Did your mom just tell cable TV that you're…?"
"I WILL EAT ONE HOSTAGE EVERY HOUR—"
"Two, make it two, you're such a bad negotiator—"
"Okay, okay, just shut up—WE WILL EAT THREE HOSTAGES FOR EVERY HOUR UNTIL OUR CHILDREN ARE RETURNED TO US, STARTING WITH THIS FURRY, FELINE CREATURE—"
Distinctly in the background, Cake yowls "AW HEEE-EELL NAW, SOMEBODY OUT THERE TELL MARSHALL LEE TO ANSWERS HIS DAMN PHONE OR I WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT HIS ASS—"
It's as if a long spell has broken, or maybe a bubble that burst. They're not in that little world of just the two of them anymore. Marshall Lee catches her eye, mirrors her same wry expression. They both shrug.
"Weeeell... at least it's gonna be funny."
Marceline grabs the umbrella, Marshall Lee grabs her, and they've been back a good 5 minutes but the real world is bogus, shit happens, what else can you do?
They fly off to Candy Kingdom before their parents can start even more bogus shit.
\/\/\/\/
TL;DR: Marshall Lee and Marcy get some quality vacation time. Meanwhile, Hana and Hunson go full-on Liam Neeson.
Next chapter: Ooo and Aaa collide, Finn turns 17, Marceline makes a choice, and will LSP ever find Tony? Find out next time!