A/N: So, a few of you have requested I continue 'The Shirt.' Do the rest of you guys agree?
Chapter 4-
The waves were crashing in her ears. It was the only way Bubblegum knew she was seaside.
Everything was pitch black around her, except for the millions of stars splayed overhead. Like sparks blooming from a firework, frozen in mid explosion.
It was the only sound she could hear—the water fell back in a drain suckling rush, growing in on itself. It rose and fell, beating down on the shore with the same force it had used to erode rocks into the sand swept.
And she could see it too, if she looked at just the right angle. The stars would shimmer across it, revealing it like lanterns in cemeteries.
She just couldn't try to imagine it, or expect it for that manner. If she did, it would disappear. She saw the pattern, her brain forming around it.
Fine. Play these rules instead. Reality does not apply.
Let it be, she felt her lips mouth, over and over until the ocean bowed in front of her eyes in a large rolling wave.
Like a living mirror. Like a writhing and caged animal.
She watched the blanket of stars rush past her legs, bracing for a chill but finding there was none. She was warm all over, head to toe.
She looked up, not having to wade. She walked slowly.
And ahead, Marceline's dark hair whipped in the wind. She was standing waist deep.
Bubblegum's lips parted to call her, but like before, nothing came out. The motion of sea was too loud.
Now walking slow bothered her. She leaned forward, the galaxies rippling around her. Her hand stretched out, fingers brushing the grey ones treading asteroid belts.
And Marceline turned, her nose long and pointy. Her teeth were grinning triangles breaking out between her white and flowing beard.
"I'LL BE YOUR QUEEN," The Ice King cooed. And then his white eyes fell closed, his lips puckering as he leaned forward—
Bonnibel jolted awake with a loud snerkt! Her heart was pounding, eyes wild till Ice King's face faded from behind them.
Just a dream, her reeling brain managed. He didn't kiss us. We're okay. We made it out alive.
A leg slid down hers smoothly, a pair of hips settling into a more comfortable position under hers. And soothed, Bubblegum's head drooped back down to Marceline's chest, where the vampire's breathing came in waves—
Her eyes popped back open, alarm once again racing through her veins.
She reared up, staring down in horror. Her brain assessed the damage.
The queen's head was turned to the side and titled up. Her face was a blank slate, not peaceful but not stressed. One arm draped back over the river of her black hair, the other down her side. Their legs were still tangled.
And Marceline was in her black underwear. Of course she was in her underwear.
Thank Gob the half-naked girl remained deeply in slumber, because Bonnibel knew she wouldn't have heard the last of this.
And being the nocturnal turd she was, that meant it was morning.
Bonnibel slapped a hand to the side of her pink face, pulling the skin of her eyelid up. Her hair was lumped and tangled, her clothes wrinkled and all up in every place they shouldn't be.
After such a traumatizing nightmare, she had to pee. And her mouth tasted like sourdough.
She struggled to rewind her brain, but it was all groggy. Groggy with vampire dust. Or whatever the lump was in Marceline's skin to make it that soft. Like ridiculously soft.
"Stop being soft," she growled, kicking her legs free and awkwardly rolling away from the queen in some sort of handicapped summersault.
The vampire shifted, her back arching off the floor. Without Bubblegum's weight, she drifted upwards and rolled onto her side, her bottom cradled in black spandex above the lean curve of her grey thighs.
"I'm not that heavy, you stupid sexy vampire lady," Bonnibel grumbled. Why in Ooo had she even come here?
She knew the consequences of seeing this girl. It always ended up the same: inappropriately dressed reminders of why they had difficulties getting along.
Why she even still bothered telling Marceline that she was distasteful and immature was beyond her—
Oh, that's right. Telling her she was being immature, in a way, was why she came. Plus, it was killing her stomach.
A burp kicked out from her gut, and she slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Well, that and Finn's cooking.
She lay down on her belly, army crawling over to where Marceline's black hair twitched across the floor. She moved to grab it, but it flicked away.
"What?" she muttered. She tried to touch it again, and it danced away from her fingers once more, as if the world's messiest cat tail.
And Bubblegum had seen her some messy cat tails.
She frowned, curling her ring finger and pinky back towards her palm and raising her hand. Her index and middle fingers stood like legs beneath it, and her thumb waved shyly.
Marceline's hair paused.
Bonnibel's hand took a step forward, then curtsied.
The hair twisted, bowing back. It extended some of its strands, and she touched her thumb to it. They shook, rather politely actually, and Bubblegum gently grabbed the dark tresses.
They circled around her hand, smooth like silk. Although Marceline had some MAJOR split ends. She grimaced, tugging on the hair.
"Marceline! Wake up!"
"Mmgph you wake up," the queen grumbled, curling up into a fetal position.
Oh, so she wanted to play the Peebles way?
Bubblegum yanked down, and Marceline nosedived into the floor.
"Mother fu-!"
"Marceline!"
The vampire rolled over with a groan, clutching her nose. "Beezus bO' Bryans, bar boo brying bo break by bose?" she hissed.
Well, if it was long and pointy, yes. But enough of disturbing images and haunting nightmares. She made a mental note to lay off of spooky night walks before sleep.
Before anything, actually.
"You destroyed my library," Bonnibel said, towering over the queen. "This means you still owe me."
"I saved your life from the geeks!" Marceline spat, wiping a line of red from her bruised nostril. "We 'sealed' on it, remember?"
Bubblegum blushed, but it was across a determined face. "That was you repaying me for saving your life, not for my library."
She pulled her watch away, pointing to her paled wrist, and Marceline eyes adverted from the bite mark with a helpless bitterness.
"I didn't ask you to. Crashing into your torture room-"
"Library!"
"- was a mistake," she growled, pulling herself up. "And after you came to my house, I warmed your buns back into the pink bubble they are, so there."
"I do NOT have a bubble butt!" Bonnibel gasped in anger. "And that library is my life. I don't know how many precious tomes I had to toss because your blood made the pages soggy."
"What are tomes?! Why can't you speak?!" the vampire asked, shaking her hands as if she was trying not to strangle the intelligence from her.
HA! As if her brain would die from strangulation.
"BOOKS! You owe me! And I get to call the shots on what makes us even, not you!" Bonnibel demanded, her finger and nose jabbing up into the vampire's surprised face.
"Fine," Marceline hissed, her nose wrinkling in a snarl. "What are your high and mighty conditions?"
"You have to take responsibility for your shattered kingdom," Bubblegum said, crossing her arms.
"WHAT?" the older girl barked, an accusation of insanity crossing her features.
"Yes!" Bubblegum cried, seizing Marceline's arms. "You don't know how much it hurts my stomach! Thinking about all your subjects, just thinking about how they need you! They're like helpless wiener dogs!"
"Don't you put your royal complex on me! Vampires aren't baby brained lollipops, unlike someone's people!" the queen snapped, her dark hair flaring and eyes growing a snake venom green. "We're solitary predators, like tigers or aardvarks."
"Right, because tigers band together and wear pears for noses, and kiss their queen's death feet in desperation-!"
"Death feet-?!"
"Don't change the subject! I've been reading all up on your people! There's a reason why there's a king or queen. You owe them the rectifying of your kingdom more than you owe me! And rectifying means-!"
"I know what rectify means!" Marceline shouted, and Bubblegum blinked at the crumbling tone in her words.
The vampire's face was caught between anger and hurt desperation, and she almost reminded Bonnibel of a small girl in a world too big.
Like her, in a way.
The vulnerability was too odd, and she shifted her feet, looking away. "Marcy…I'm sorry. I don't think you're stupid—"
"It's not that!" Marceline bit, her features hardening at once. "GEEZ will you just go back home already? Maybe where you're actually needed?"
The vampire turned, making to hover away, and Bonnibel's fighting spirit returned.
"Where are you going?" she demanded, but shrank back as Marceline whirled, her dark hair rising.
"Look, I'm only going to say this once," she growled, jabbing a finger Bubblegum's way. "I actually like being friends with you. Finn and Jake are awesome and all, but it's nice when I can pal around with you too…"
"Marceline…" Bonnibel began, but the vampire shook her head to silence the rosy girl.
Shoving a hand through her long bangs, the queen sighed roughly. "I had fun the other night. And I'm sorry I ruined your library. So if it takes me making those morons come together, right now, over me, to stay on your good side…well, then so be it."
She slithered into the kitchen and up through a square hole in the ceiling, and the princess moved to stand under it, peering up after her.
"You can't go alone! What if they gang up on you?" she called.
"Jeff and his boogers caught me off guard. I'm on offense now," Marceline hollered back. Something black came down over Bonnibel's eyes, and she flinched, yanking it off.
It was Marceline's underwear. She seized up, throwing it down at her feet with a mad blush.
Well, at least she knew the girl changed that.
"No way," she started up again, steadying her voice. "I wanted you to go with Finn and Jake, or at least someone who'll have your back—!"
"What, you?" the queen scoffed. She lowered upside down in black leather boots and jacket, her jeans dark and shirt blood red. Her axe bass was slung across her back, the curve of the bladed side looking more wicked than ever.
"You might as well tie a horse trying to play an accordion to my leg- you guys would just slow me down and play dumb songs about hay and friendship."
It stung, but the princess wouldn't deny that she was no match for vampires and songs that weren't about friendship. Well, no match for vampires except for Marceline
Jeff too, because come on.
And if she was winning, then why did she feel like she wasn't in control here…?
"Well how else am I supposed to know you're going to do what you said?" Bubblegum raised a brow, crossing her arms once more.
Marceline cracked her knuckles, then her neck. "I'll bring you back a souvenir."
Her grey hand came forward before Bonnibel could stop it, gently but firmly grabbing the back of her pink head.
The vampire leaned in, face serious. "Promise."
Her forehead bumped Bonnibel's in some sort of ritualistic head butt.
For a moment, her cool skin lingered, and Bubblegum almost pressed her forehead back.
But then Marceline was drifting towards the door, Bonnibel hot on her heels. Well, more of under them.
Down the rocker's porch and back into the mud swamp, the princess's legs once again drenched. Marceline was heading towards the depths of the cave and away from the sunlight just beginning to pour in.
"Remember what I've said so I can say I told you so!" Bonnibel hollered.
"Go home!" Marceline dismissed, but her dark hair snuck in a friendly wave.
Unless that was just the swamp fumes making her see things.
And with that, the shadows swallowed the vampire whole.
Something popped up besides Bubblegum's leg, and she looked down to see a skull bobbing there.
"Don't look at me like that… no one can just shrug off their destiny," she glowered. The skull's loose jaw bone opened, the air from its sockets bubbling up between its teeth.
"She chose to take over the kingdom! You can't just throw it all away because it gets boring!"
The skull rolled over, face down, and she kicked it, watching it sail up to the house's roof.
Marceline would be fine. She lived to be scary and cruel.
She stomped away, pretending the memory of the girl shivering in her lap or confessing in her underwear wasn't nagging at the back of her thoughts.