Chapter Three

The vampire king rolled over as he opened his eyes, blinking the sleep away in the darkness and stretching his arms. The boy stared at his bed below him, messy, the blanket shredded, and slowly came to the realisation that he had floated to the ceiling in his sleep again. Sighing, and cursing the fact that he would need a new blanket, he decided to ignore the signs of stress that he must be feeling.

Descending from the ceiling, he floated lazily to the bathroom, stopping before the door. He could feel the steam from the shower radiating from the wood, and pressed his forehead against the frame.

"Fionna?" He groaned. "Are you gonna be long? I don't have the patience for you to be braiding your hair and painting your nails or whatever."

"I'm just having a shower," came the annoyed response. "And if I want to do those things, I will. Now leave me alone."

Marshall rolled his eyes back into his head for a full minute before heading towards the kitchen. As it turned out, he and Fionna shared a hatred of mornings with a passion, which fueled an immense hatred for other people at that particular time of day. Her nasal voice swam in his brain like a parasite, eating away at his patience so much that his predator instincts told him repeatedly to bite her and get it over with. He walked to the fridge, and again pressed his head against the door in frustration. It would be so worth it, he thought, smiling to himself. He could feel the red swirling around her body sometimes, her supple body that had grown nicely since he had known her before the War, all plumped out with red in all the right places. Even now he could sense the red, heated up from the shower, waiting for him, collecting in that meaty thigh of hers.

"No, no, no, no," he murmered, opening the fridge and grabbing a handful of strawberries, draining the colour in a matter of seconds. "You're just hungry."

He collapsed in the kitchen chair and rubbed a hand over his black hair. "Not cool."

After a few minutes to settle, the hunger passed and Marshall realised that Fionna was singing. Her voice was childish, he smirked, but in tune, so he picked up his guitar and began to play a few notes to match her melody. Who sings in the shower anymore, he thought, tapping his foot to his song. His mind wandered over her silly face, puffy from the shower, and her long hair wet trailing down her spine, clinging to the curve of her hip and hugging the small of her back. He stopped playing. I'm not even hungry, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief.

Was that a scream? He concentrated his hearing.

"Fionna?!" He yelled, flying to the door in a manner of seconds and trying the handle, which was locked. "Fionna, are you ok?"

"Yeah, I-I'm fine," came the response, strained. "I slipped in the shower. I'm f-fine."

Marshall narrowed his eyes, listening to her breathing through the wood.

"Just leave me alone. Don't come in!" She whined. Marshall hung back for a second before his ears picked up a sudden change in breathing, her breaths getting faster until they culminated into a small squeak. In one kick he had the door swinging from the hinge, causing Fionna to shrink in surprise from her seat on the floor in the middle of the bathroom, her body sitting on her knees clad in white towel. Her eyes peeked through the curtain of wet hair that was hanging over her face and Marshall was struck by the look of fear that reflected back at him before noticing the long scratches that ran down her left shoulder, little rivers of blood collecting in a pool at her elbow.

"Fionna what have you -?" He asked, bewildered and nervous, rushing towards her to do anything to stop the fear that was sharp in her expression. The girl shrunk away from him, doubled over and grimacing.

She was holding her arm. "I don't know how to stop it." She growled, with a surprising amount of anger. "I can't stop it."

Marshall could only see her left side but breathed in sharply when he noticed her right arm, the black bruises had grown even bigger since he had last seen her bare skin, perhaps even penetrating the skin from underneath to ooze a strange liquid that shimmered in the light. It looked mottled, like rotting flesh. "What do you mean? Be more clear."

"My arm," she growled, again. "Every time I stop focusing I just - I don't know." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "It moves by itself."

At that, her arm lurched towards her neck and the nails dug into the skin, slowly dragging down towards the left shoulder leaving little canyons of red. The girl screamed in pain but the movement did not stop, tipping over the bend in her shoulder towards the same arm that had received punishment minutes earlier.

"Dude!" Marshall barked, rushing forwards to pull the arm down, having to use more strength than he expected to yank the arm behind her back and locking her body between his legs to achieve the optimum holding position. Her feet kicked and pushed against the floor in surprise, pressing her body tight into the curve of the boy's torso and yelped when he pressed his arm over her collarbone to keep her there.

They struggled for a minute before their breaths aligned with eachother. Marshall could feel Fionna's heart beating through her back, his grip still so tight that his face was buried in the groove of her neck.

"Marshall Lee, you can let go of me now," Fionna whined. "I think I'm ok."

"I don't wanna risk it," he murmered into her neck. "Why didn't you tell me about this? Do you think it's the infection? Dude, this is messed up. I don't even know how to deal with this stuff."

She scoffed. "You don't have to deal with it. I can handle it by myself."

"Clearly. Look at you, you're bleeding everywhere. You practically carved yourself up as a Sunday lunch."

"Get off me!" She yelled, struggling again. Marshall tightened his grip against her collarbone and she quickly stopped resisting with a sigh of irritation.

"Marshall?" Her voice was small, he thought, and girlish. "Do you remember when we used to hang out all the time? Before all this stuff happened in Ooo?" He made a small noise in response; thinking back to the times when he would creep up on the little chubby girl in the white hat and laugh when he made her mad, all before they would go to their homes at night and snuggle up with a blanket knowing that they would be safe whilst they slept, and still safe in the morning. He smiled.

"Do you remember when I cried about Gumball saying that he liked girls with brown hair? Geez, I was such a kid back then." Her laughs were light, and beat against Marshall's chest.

"Yeah," he replied, "you're a bit of a loser sometimes."

"Shut up." She snapped. "What I'm saying is - do you remember putting some weird dye in Gumball's shampoo that turned his hair into worms that crawled off of his head? We spent hours trying to chase all the worms to fix it. And then you two got into a fight and I took his side and punched you in the face for being such a creep? I didn't understand it but you told me after I punched you that it didn't matter if my hair was blonde or brown or made of worms, Gumball still wouldn't deserve a five minute date with me."

Marshall felt a sweeping wave of embarrassment and was very thankful that she couldn't see his expression. "Uh, yeah, I guess," he muttered. "What are you getting at?"

"I just wanna go back to being a kid," she blurted. "I want my biggest problem to be that some dude doesn't like the colour of my hair - not that I have an arm that is trying to kill me and will one day consume my entire body!" He felt the girl wither in his arms. "I'm not a kid anymore, and that really sucks."

Fionna's body loosened and relaxed against Marshall's so that he could suddenly feel every inch of her against his body. From his position behind her, he pulled the arm that he was holding further behind her back so that she swung sideways an inch to be able to look at her in the eye, almost a little pleased to see the soft, dreamy look that had covered her face.

"You're right." He smirked, receiving a confused turn of the head from Fionna. Boldly, and for no real reason, he gave a suggestive glance down at the towel that concealed Fionna's body - which was beginning to look a little loose around the sides. "You stopped being a kid quite some time ago."

Marshall Lee watched her stomp out of the room from his position on the floor, rubbing his eye where she had just punched him with absolute rage in his smug face.

He definitely deserved it.