Chapter 2: Bathing in Boys

The muscles of the eyelids rippled with life as a beam of light passed across them. With a squint of annoyance, the head of unkempt hair lifted off its pillow and the face that it sat atop let out a lengthy yawn. Blinking half-heartedly once or twice, the boy turned to his window. The horizon gleamed with the glimmers of a dipping sun. He'd slept all the way til sunset. One eye having slumped shut, Marco blinked the other and stood up at the side of his bed. Knowing why his body had so easily stirred he made his way to the bathroom. When he exited the memories of what had happened that day hit him like a ton of bricks. Frantically he dashed to the room at the end of the hall. He just had to be sure!

With a slam the door to the girl's dwelling opened allowing Marco to stare into it. What he saw...was...normal. Well, normalish. What qualified as normal for the foreign exchange student would only truly pass under the scrutiny of those that lived with her on the human world. Slowly Marco's eyes scanned the room. There was the giant bed, the spiraling stairs, the rug which jumped up and down every so often from the legs that stuck out from underneath them, but no sign of the resident of the room.

Looking things over again, Marco noticed an item that wasn't normally there. A bathtub. A bathtub full of magazines. Hesitantly he started walking towards it. About halfway there he noticed one of the magazines propped up near the back end of the tub. The closer he got the more he could see golden strands of hair sticking out from behind it. With a gulp he bent down to its level and poked his head out from behind it. Instantly he locked eyes with the girl that was literally bathing in the reading material, her face plastered with a smile.

"Hiiii Marco..." Star greeted, her eyes staring into his. Marco's mouth shrunk to a smaller state. There was something...weird about her stare. She wasn't looking at his eyes, she was looking at him. He didn't quite know how to rationalize it in his head, or if there was a way to properly do so. But it felt as though her pupils just flew right into his, their observing features sinking into his sockets and down into his body. It felt like she was viewing all of who he was, his body, his thoughts, all of it all once. A view that was clamped open by the girl's sight. He had to force himself to tear away from the sight. Only once he was looking at the rim of the tub did he realize that he'd been holding his breath. Shakily he put a hand to his chest.

"Marco?" Star hummed, "is something wrong?..." Marco realized only a second too late why he'd looked away to begin with, but thankfully the worry had no merit on the return trip. Whatever had happened the first time didn't seem to pay the boy another visit when he glanced back at the princess. All he saw now was his housemate looking curiously at him, though with her eyes half-lidded. After a few seconds she giggled softly.

"J-just...checking up on ya..." he murmured looking away from her face between words, "You uh...haven't been out of the room have ya?..."

"No," she replied, "Glossaryck suggested I do something to keep myself entertained in here. And what better way than, as the magazines put it, read in the tub?"

"Star, you're supposed to be ACTUALLY bathing in water when you-"

"Oh, well alright, just gimme a se-"

"NO!" Marco yelped grabbing her arm as she started to dig around for the bottom of her dress. The princess's face drooped slightly at the disapproving gesture. For Marco though it was completely out of left field. Even for being the strange Mewnian that she was, complying with beginning an actual bath right there was something of a startle.

"No, I...just...this'll do for here..." Marco told her flipping Star's frown back into a smile, "I just...came to check up on you is all. Make sure you haven't been, you know, jumping out the window after any guys out there or anything..."

"Marco, I ain't goin' through Mewberty again," she joked patting his cheek. His brow's furrowed in annoyance at the touch, "But it is nice to have someone that cares. While you're here what do you think of this?"

"GYAHHH!" Marco blurted falling backwards as his face was suddenly greeted with an...unexpected sight. Printed on the magazine page that was shoved into his vision was staring back a rather smug-looking muscle-bound man, probably twice his age and shirtless. Star's eyes drifted from Marco, back to the magazine, and then back to Marco. Shrugging she sunk back into her bedding of reading material and looked the image over herself.

"Well I know it's not from the front or anything, but do you see those shoulder-blades? Pretty nice toning I'd say..." she commented curving the sides of her mouth upward as she continued her viewing. Turning the magazine on its side, a longer page flopped out reddening her face before her grin widened. More bewildered than anything, Marco leaped up and scoured across the surface of the tub's contents, pressing Star's magazine down into the pile in the process. After a few seconds the gravity of the "reading" session clicked in his brain and his eyes widened. Star was covered in piles upon piles of...rather suggestive magazines, their covers lined from end to end with male models and other eye-catching sights for the female gender.

"Uh, I'm trying to read here..." Star's voice wormed its way into Marco's overreacting head. Looking down he realized he was still smashing her current magazine into the pile beneath him. Cautiously he lifted his hands. "Thank you," she quipped lifting it back up to eye-level, "grumpy...Hey Marco, what do you think of this-"

"Are you hungry?" the boy quickly asked. It took a pause, but Star lowered the magazine and looked up at him. With a smile she nodded. "Well then I'll be right back!" Sighing with relief, he excused himself from the room. Upon sliding onto the wall beside the door he put a hand on his chest. What had just happened? What was all of THAT about? The tub of magazines? That was expected. But having those...muscles shoved into his face? Star's trying to pull her dress off? That...LOOK that she shared with him when he first saw her? And come to think of it something had been off about the air as well. He hadn't been able to realize it until he'd left, but the room had been filled with a fragrant aroma of some sort that he couldn't quite place. It'd been like a chamber designed to grab him with how...hypnotic it'd seemed.

...then again...it was Star. What was to be expected with her? There was the normal oddities sure, but when it came to newer expeditions there was never any telling what the girl might get into. Perhaps this was just some...new venture. After all, she hadn't done anything specifically to him, and it was relatively tame if this was a phase of the spell's effects when compared to what Marco had envisioned when they first performed it. From the looks of it she hadn't even made an attempt to escape from the confines of her room. Not a danger to anyone else. Maybe it wouldn't be Mewberty all over again.

It was the dulled lighting of the TV that his parents were viewing that reminded him where he was headed. Reaching the bottom step, still in thought, he walked into the kitchen and instinctively got out a bag of chips and some cheese.

"Oh Marco!" he heard his dad from the living room, "We thought you were in bed! How are you son?"

"Oh just fine dad, just fine," he murmured only half-paying attention as he started putting together the bowl of snacks, "Just getting some stuff for me and Star."

"Aw that's so sweet!" his mother chimed in, "and how's she doing? We haven't seen her pop out either. It's been pretty peaceful."

"Yeah, is something wrong?"

"Oh you know, just helping clean up one of Star's messes..." Marco replied starting the microwave. Sliding a knife out, he put a jalapeño pepper on the cutting board and began chopping.

"Oh, one of the fun messes or one of the dangerous ones?" the older male of the household asked through the clacking. Marco could hear the faint sound of chipmunks.

"Nah, not dangerous," Marco said. Hearing the microwave beep he took the bowl of chips and melted cheese out before adding, to himself, "Not yet at least..." Flaking a few slices of the pepper over the top of the nachos he wrapped the rest of the pepper up and put it in the fridge. Still somewhat asleep, the boy started to head back up the steps, the television just barely catching his eye with some showing of a warthog with boxing gloves on.

"Well you two have fun!" his mother told him.

"Oh don't worry," Marco said forcing some enthusiasm into the reply, "I'm sure it'll be a whole week of it..."

"Don't you just love those two?" she asked her husband once their son had disappeared from earshot.

"They are quite loveable," the man agreed with a big smile. The chipmunk leaped onto the warthog's back hammering it with a volley of punches as puppies rolled around on the floor beneath the TV firing off lasers in various directions.

- 0000 -

Sticking a finger to her tongue, Star wettened the digit slightly and used it to flip to the next page of the current magazine. Her lowing grin heightened back up to its previous exuberance with the reveal of another figure. Number five hundred and twelve. That's the name she gave the 20-something-year-old before her eyes. Muscles finely crafted beneath the supple layer of skin that decorated his chest. And sitting right atop a pleasant set of abs. She could practically see the strong ribs supporting the frame of the body. She didn't know how long she absorbed the image, but she didn't care. It always went the same. When she'd had her satiation she'd feel her mouth beginning to dip indicating the flip to the next page. Speaking of which...

Another flap brought her to a piece of paper that brought new life to her expression. Beaming back at her was no face, but a good portion of the lower backside of a male, the elastic he wore clinging tightly to whatever resided beneath it. Star could feel her eyes squinting with how much her toothy mouth had widened. Just like his cousin two hundred and thirty, Mr. five hundred and thirteen bore the same mouth-watering thighs. And the constricting undergarments...to die for...

"Hm...I wonder if Marco would like those..." she mused to herself putting a finger to her lip.

"Like what?" a voice asked causing her to jump. Blinking, Star dropped the magazine and looked up. There was the boy she had just said the name of, almost as if summoning him. In his hands were grasped a hefty bowl of chips and cheese, the smell of which nearly poured saliva from the girl's mouth. Chewing her lips to swallow back the sensation she pulled her reading material back up, but her eyes didn't follow. All she could see was the person holding her food. The eyeballs wouldn't lower back to the page.

"Uh..." her voice drawled. Marco gave the princess a funny face. Whatever just happened to Star was not something he was used to. There was the usual long pause for if she'd been caught doing something, but this was different. Her eyes just stayed fixed where they were and her voice kept up the same steady dull tone from her slack-jawed mouth. It was as though her brain had suddenly died leaving her body in a state of disconnected unlife. After a good fifteen seconds of the voice, Marco grew annoyed and sat down forcing a chip into her mouth. The chewing started slow, but it did start. Life siphoned back into her face as the chewing quickened and by the time she had swallowed her face was beaming a pleasant smile once more. Giving a guilty smile of his own, Marco lifted another chip to the eager girl's mouth. For a minute or two they just sat munching on the chips, the princess continuing to look at Marco.

"So..." he interrupted awkwardly, "...WHAT were you wondering that I'd like?" Scrunching her face at the effort of having to use her brain, Star soon peered back down at the magazine she was holding and brought it over to Marco.

"These underwears that number five hundred and thirteen is wearing," she told him not even paying attention to the expression he was giving, "you want em?"

"...okay, first off, it's better to say "the underwear" instead of "THESE underWEARS,"," Marco corrected eliciting an eye-roll from his companion, "and secondly...why the hell would you be asking this?"

"I 'unno," she shrugged bringing the magazine back towards her and flipping to the next page, "Oh five hundred and fourteen. You naughty boy..." Marco felt his skin crawl across his body at the display. Grabbing a handful of the chips for himself he placed his feet on the ground to get up, but was stopped just as his knees began to bend.

"Marco, what do you think of these arms?" Star suddenly asked. His pupils lifted to the top of his head as he inwardly sighed. Reluctantly he glanced down at the model. He had to admit, they were a nice set of...muscles. But what of it?

"I dunno. They're...arms?" he told her. Taking a bite of a chip, he proceeded in his quest to get to his feet, but was interrupted once more.

"What about these uh...calves?" Star wondered bringing out another page of the magazine. Marco's mouth caved to a small O on his face as his brows bent towards the lower middle of his eyes. Taking one quick look he shut his eyes and replied.

"They're...toned..." His eye twitched as he heard the flapping of pages from the tub. He was halfway to a standing position when the girl's voice piped up again.

"These deltoids?" Star's voice cracked a little as if straining for a question. Marco didn't even bother to look this time.

"They sure are deltoids..." he gritted. Crack. Normally he'd be annoyed at having felt his knees pop, but this time he was glad he sat so long with the indication the joints gave to how close he was to his goal. But it wasn't over as just as he pulled himself to his full height he'd heard numerous degrees of rustling beneath him in Star's frantic search through the tub.

"These um...um!...the abs on this one!" she desperately cried. Irritated beyond normal Marco glared down and prepared to bark something in resistance but instead his features softened a bit.

"...wow, those are some pretty good-wait-NO!" he yelped. Seizing his chance, the boy attempted to bolt towards the door of the room. It would have worked perfectly if nothing had been connected to him, but to his misfortune he soon found that something had gripped his wrist. With a gulp he looked down. Tightening around it as he pulled was his friend's hand. Feeling his former annoyance surging through him again he glared at the girl herself. This time though his face softened at the sight of her. Those eyes. Her brows. That lower lip. Star looked to be on the verge of crying.

"Whoa whoa, hey, what's wrong?..." Marco asked kneeling down to get a better look at her. Her eyes squinted in a mixture of sadness and confusion.

"I...I don't know..." she replied rubbing the palm of her hand across her upper cheek, "I just...I..."

"Hey...it's okay Star..." Marco told her. She gasped softly feeling his own hands cupping around her cheeks. She could feel the middle of her face heating up as she stared up into his eyes. "Look, I got you into this, I'm not gonna leave ya hanging or anything," he assured her. Closing her eyes, Star bent her head downwards in his grasp. Her face heated up even further feeling his running delicately across her hair. She could feel his cheek and nose stroking the back of her head within the squeeze his arms were giving it. "It's gonna be alright."

"...I know..." she eventually muttered. Her eyes were merely slits in his grasp. She didn't need to see with how close they were. She could feel everything. The bends of his slightly defined muscles beneath the loose hoodie he wore. The rise and fall of his chest. Even the beat of the organ beneath it. And what she couldn't feel she could smell. The whole atmosphere that he brought. She didn't even need the candle's she'd placed around the room with how much more easily the presence calmed her.

"...hey Marco?..."

"...yeah?"

"...I need my head back..."

"Oh!" smiling in embarrassment, Marco allowed Star to lift her head back up to eye level. A smile also returning to her own face she peered into his face. "So...you good then?"

"...yeah..." she confirmed, her mouth hanging on the word.

"No you're not," Marco told her unsatisfied by the answer, "what can I do to help?"

"Well I...just...I could really...I don't know, use your opinion on these guys here," she told him splaying her arms out across the tub she resided in. Her attention was drawn back to Marco after hearing a "thunk" from his head hitting the side of the bathtub. "Look, Marco, "I got you into this Star, I'm not gonna leave ya hangin'"." Marco's eyes slid to the side of his face.

"Star I don't know why ya need me for this, but just...try to look at this from my point of view...like...like...imagine if I was trying to get you to give your opinion on a bunch of hot girls that I was looking at. It wouldn't exactly be the most...enjoyable thing," Marco reasoned. He grew a bit hopeful seeing that the princess was actually thinking about it a bit.

"Yeah, that'd be weird..." she agreed. He was at least happy she could understand. "But we're not doing that, we're talking about hot guys." Another "thunk" echoed from the bathtub.

"Finnneeee..." Marco growled thrusting his hand into the bowl of nachos next to the girl's face, "fine...let me see what ya got..." Star's smile stretched from ear to ear.

- 0000 -

Click.

The images of the wildlife disappeared becoming replaced by a new set of visuals that illuminated the darkened room. The man and woman let loose a sigh of relief. They'd nearly missed it! Fortunately, the kids only just began talking the moment that they turned the channel.

"It's so hot..." one complained.

"And I'm so bored!..." the other added. The adult's smiles spread to the sides of their faces as they got ready.

"The Banagic Wand!" the announcer declared as the viewers joined in, "A little bit of banana! And a little lot of magic!" Cheering, the man threw his hand up into the air as the commercial continued while his wife clapped ecstatically.

"I can't believe we almost missed it!" Rafael Diaz commented as he slumped back into his seat on the couch. Gently his wife leaned into him while he flipped the channel back to their viewing of the boxing match between the chipmunk and the warthog. Then she noticed something. Another light was beaming into the room. Realizing their son had left the kitchen light's on, Angie got up and flicked them off.

"You know Marco really does take quite good care of our guest," she said proudly as she sat back down.

"And why not? With such parents he knows how to treat all the foreign exchange students!" her husband smiled, "and with the fun little senorita we have this time it's only natural!"

"You're right," she agreed leaning back on him again, "those two get along so well together." A tooth fell to the ground on the television from the latest punch of the chipmunk.

- 0000 -

"Bwuh bluh?" Marco garbled shaking his head around. He was less surprised to find himself on the ground this time. After about the fifth instance of dozing off he'd become accustomed to the hard resting spot. He'd gotten to the point where he didn't even question the dreams he'd been having about the scantily clad male models. He just rose up for another slew of questions from Star.

"What do you think about these pecs? What about these abs? These cheekbones? Leather or elastic? 20s or 30s?" Whatever the question might be he had long since become desensitized to the unnatural interviews. What he was not used to though was the soreness of his legs. While his back was having a fine time on the flat surface of the girl's room, his knees practically screamed whenever he had to prop himself up next to the tub for questioning. And then there was the...was the...the...

...

"BLAH!" he spurted as his eyes jolted open. They rolled around in their sockets wildly until they came to rest in the middle of his head where they stared at the set of fingers that had given a series of snaps to wake him up again.

"Come on Marco! You keep falling asleep!" Star whined, her lower lip sticking out at him. Even her pathetic face didn't deter his glare this time. Eyes heavy and dark, he gave two slow blinks and pursed his lips.

"WELL EXCUSE ME!" he grumbled, "It ain't my fault that answering all your questions about every little magazine is tiring as fuck!"

"...actually it kinda is your fault since you-"

"I KNOW! The spell! I-I...I'm sorry..." he sighed slumping halfway into the tub, "It's just...look, if you want me to stay awake you're gonna have to have something in here to keep me up..." Star looked down at her current magazine in thought before snapping her fingers and lifting her wand with a smile.

"TV Teleport Teleporter!" she declared twirling the magical artifact around. In an instant the monitor was deposited onto the girl's wall and the remote control dropped into Marco's hand. In the distance could be heard some older voices from downstairs, but they soon died with a supposed proposition about reading about chipmunks and warthogs instead.

"Oh, suh-weet!" Marco grinned as he started flipping through the channels.

"Hey, see if you can find a workout channel-"

"You got your magazines, I've got this," Marco told her causing the girl's face to flatten, "And what I've got is MACKIE HAND!" Star just rolled her eyes and returned to her material as flashes of the karate superstar danced across her walls.

"Alright, what do you think of-" Star began to ask but found herself drifting off as she turned to the boy. Though his eyelids were still on the verge of closing, he was definitely more alive, and he was so happy now. Well...he...seemed happier. In truth, every few seconds she could see him wince a bit. Curiously she poked her head out of the tub and looked down. It seemed that whenever he winced he would shift his legs a bit from where he was kneeling until finally he just sat down, his head at the rim of the tub. Shrugging, Star returned to her magazine and after a few seconds found a new item to question the boy with.

"What do you think of-...Marco?...MARCO!" she yelled holding the magazine to the side. With more effort than he should've, Marco pulled himself up to the tub's level and glanced at the magazine, his lower eyelid twitching as he moved. Star's mouth hung at the sight. Conking her head against his as she looked over the edge again she could see his legs still fidgeting.

"Marco, get in here," she ordered. The nearly asleep boy jolted awake from the words.

"WHAT?" he exclaimed.

"You hurt. Get in here," Star repeated patting the area next to her as she shuffled over. Blushing, Marco looked down at his legs and then at the tub. The limbs certainly did ache, but the relaxing furniture was filled with ink-stained stationary. Just the thoughts of how it might feel on the skin was enough to make him reconsider. But his knees did hurt. To their relief though he wasn't the one to decide on the course of action. With how long he was taking Star eventually just grabbed him and pulled him up into the tub. Marco was a bit surprised, it was a lot more loose of a bedding than he'd imagined. He just kind've sunk right down into it. The ink, the plasticky sheets of paper. None of it seemed to matter as long as he had a place to actually rest.

Happy to finally have her partner in a state of some content, Star got out the magazine she'd been reading again to start the questioning only to find another problem had returned. Though this time...it didn't feel as much like a problem as before. Within seconds of joining her Marco had drifted right back off into slumber. At first disappointed, Star quickly began to just watch Marco as his figure caused the magazines around him to pulse with his breath, the pages gently rising and falling. And with him also came some more warmth. The tub wasn't exactly the biggest resting spot ever.

Peeking her head out of the tub, Star looked around a few times. After making sure the door was closed, she used her wand to turn off the television and slumped back into the magazines herself. Slowly she shuffled backwards so as not to rock loose the boy from his adorable state until she could feel Marco's body against the back of her's. Yeah, it was definitely warming with the other body in the tub. Star glanced back to see if her movements had affected the boy at all. There was no response. Smiling at the snoozing form, Star dug around as quietly as possible until she felt some segmented body parts. With a grab of the hands, she pulled Marco's until they slid around her body and buried herself deeper against his. Before too much longer she herself joined in the soft snoring emanating from the bath tub.

- end of chapter -

Well, getting back into writer is a lot easier than I thought it'd be. Not even a week I don't think and I've got a new chapter up. Obviously the thrill will probably wear off before too long and I'll be updating less and less, but while it lasts here's the latest chapter. And I certainly wasn't expecting as many people to look at the story as they are. 4 reviews in the first day? This never happened to me when I made my other stories years prior. Ah well, as long as people are enjoying.

Now my last story, a Transformers one about Miko and Jack, I drifted off and eventually stopped writing because the season that came out after I started working on it just kinda put me off. I have a serious problem for some reason with not feeling okay to continue a story if it can't fit into the actual show. But here that ain't a problem because, obviously, this is set before Bon Bon the Birthday Clown. So I've got no excuse other than me losing interest at stopping this one! Someone at work also said I should make another Star picture on deviantart with how much reception the first one got (honestly I could care less who sees my crap, but it was a surprise that it got so many views), so maybe there'll be that to look forward to in the future as well. We'll see.

Either way, hopefully this story ain't going too bad so far.