(A/N: All right. This was where the fanfic originally began. But now it's Chapter 2 of this revision! Let's see what our friends are up to now after finding out how lucky it was that they got Peach out of one of the worst situations of her young life!)
Hours had passed since Princess Peach had been rescued from Bowser, and she, Mario, and Cappy were still on their way back to the Mushroom Kingdom. Cappy was a lot calmer than he had been after hearing the princess cry, but he was still angry that Bowser had the gall to physically and emotionally harm his little sister for no good reason.
Peach had calmed down because she was with Mario again. She knew that as long as she was with Mario, she was as safe as could be. He loved her very much, and he would never do anything to hurt her or betray her trust. And after thinking he was dead, the princess was glad to be reunited with the man she loved.
Mario was feeling relaxed because he knew that his princess was safe and sound in his arms once again, and not in Bowser's evil clutches. He also knew that Daisy would most likely teach Bowser a valuable lesson for treating Peach the way that he did. He would not be getting away with any of the horrible things he had done to her.
On their way home, Mario and Cappy told Peach everything they had been through since they agreed to work together, and even though she was listening to them, she was quietly making plans to go on a new world tour soon, perhaps after Bowser was dealt with. She also made plans to take Tiara on the tour with her, for she too needed to have some fun after what they'd been through.
Peach also told the boys more of what Bowser put her and Tiara through. It made Cappy angry to hear how frightened and upset his sister had been, but he was glad that she had faith in him; that he would come and get her back. He also felt grateful that Peach had been there for her. Now he hoped Daisy would keep her safe from that awful tyrant in the fruity white tuxedo.
At one point, Cappy looked out the window and saw that it was dark outside. So it was nighttime now, but he didn't know how late it was. Maybe Mario would know.
"Hey Mario, do you happen to know what time it is?" Cappy asked.
Mario stopped his quiet conversation with Peach and checked his watch to find that it was 8:00. He said, "It's-a 8:00, Cappy. Why do you ask?"
"I was just wondering. I looked outside to see that it's nighttime, but I wasn't sure how late it was." Cappy said.
"Nighttime?!" Mario and Peach exclaimed in shock. They hadn't been thinking about what time of day it was when Cappy asked. They both looked out the window, and sure enough, the sky was dark, and the stars were out.
"Mama-mia!" Mario said. He hadn't thought it was that time already. Last time he'd had a look out the window, the sun was still up.
"Wow, it's really nighttime? We've been travelling that long?!" Peach said. Apparently, time flies when you're with the person you love, and they just got you out of a nasty situation.
"Non me ne ero reso conto. I didn't realize it. It felt like only a few hours to me." Mario replied.
"And we're not quite home yet, are we, Mario?" Peach asked.
Mario checked the GPS and said, "Nope. Not yet... The Mushroom Kingdom is still a good way from here."
"Do you think we should stop and find someplace to stay for the night?" Peach asked as she looked at the starry sky, unable to find any constellations that looked familiar to her.
"Non lo so. I don't know, Peach. I'm not sure if there are any places in these kingdoms for tourists to stay. Whenever I go out to save you, I don't often think of looking for a place to stop for the night unless I have to. Saving you is my top priority." Mario replied.
"Every second counted, Peach. We had no time to stop and rest for the night because you and Tiara needed to be rescued, and fast. Well, at least until that no-good jerk, Bowser, decided my sister had to stay with him for his stupid wedding..." Cappy said, grumbling during that last sentence.
"Don't get too worked up about this, Cappy. I know Daisy, and I'm fairly certain that she will be able to keep Tiara safe from Bowser and ruin his wedding. You can trust my cousin as much as Mario and I can." Peach assured him.
"Okay..." Cappy sighed.
"And besides, I'd rather not stop on the off-chance Bowser is suspicious that he might have been lied to. È' un rischio troppo grande. It's-a too big a risk, especially now that he's seen the Odyssey. He'll know what to look for if that's the case." Mario added.
"So, you just want the Odyssey to keep on flying until we get back to the Mushroom Kingdom, right, Mario?" Peach asked.
"That's right. If you don't mind flying all night to get back home..." Mario said.
"It's okay, Mario. I don't mind the thought of an all-night flight; it's something new to me because I've never really been on one before. It's just that... where are we going to sleep?" Peach asked.
"Well, there's un letto, a bed over in that corner. See?" Mario said, pointing to the bed.
Peach looked in the direction Mario was pointing, and sure enough, there was the bed.
"Oh, I didn't notice that was there." Peach said.
"It was one of the first few things I noticed when I came in here for the first time. And I have been taking catnaps in it since Cappy and I took control of this ship." Mario said.
"Okay. In that case, you can sleep in the bed." Peach said to Mario.
"Me? But what about you, Peach? Where are you going to sleep? C'è solo un letto. There's only the one bed, and I was going to insist you take it for tonight." Mario said.
"But Mario, after all you've done for me, you earned the right to continue sleeping in that bed. I'll just sleep right here on this chair. I'll be okay. I promise." Peach said, patting the arm of the chair she was sitting on.
"Oh, no you won't, Peach! You're una principessa, a princess, and you deserve the bed more than some ol' chair. I'll sleep on the chair while you sleep in the bed." Mario said.
"But Mario, you know that if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here right now. You deserve to sleep in a nice, comfortable bed." Peach protested.
"But I think you deserve the bed more than I do, because if it wasn't for you, my life wouldn't be as happy as it is right now." Mario said.
"Do I really make your life happy, Mario?" Peach asked.
"Sì, Peach. You really do. My life hasn't been this happy since the two of us got together." Mario replied, giving Peach a loving smile.
"It's really sweet of you to say that, Mario, which is why I'm still going to insist that you sleep in the bed." Peach said, blushing a little from Mario's loving words.
"But I still have to insist that you take the bed." Mario tried again.
Before long, Cappy got a little irritated by their indecisiveness, and he decided to fix that problem. He said, "Here's a thought: why don't the two of you try sharing the bed? If I'm right, we'll probably be back in the Mushroom Kingdom by tomorrow morning, so you'd share the bed for at least one night. Why haven't you guys thought of sharing it? Can you tell me?"
Mario and Peach looked at each other before turning back to Cappy, and Mario said, "Cappy, there is a very good reason why Peach and I aren't thinking of sharing the bed."
"And that is?" asked Cappy.
"Now, don't get me wrong. I love Peach, and I really wouldn't mind sharing a bed with her." Mario said.
"And I wouldn't mind sharing a bed with Mario, but when Mario and I began to get really close, my longtime steward, Toadsworth, started telling both of us that we really shouldn't be sleeping together until we're married. But we both knew that sleeping together is a thing for married couples." Peach said.
"Oh, is that all? Well, then, answer me this: is Toadsworth here right now?" Cappy asked.
"No." Mario and Peach said in unison.
"If he's not here, then he's never going to know that the two of you were sleeping together unless one of us tells him about it; is that correct?" Cappy asked.
"Yes, that's correct." Peach said.
"Are either of you planning on telling him about this?" Cappy asked.
"Non glielo dico. I won't tell him. If he ever found out that I was sharing a bed with Peach, he'd probably bite off my head if Bowser hadn't already done it." Mario said, shuddering a little.
"Mario, if I know Toadsworth as well as I do, he would never go that far. All we'd get from him for something like that is a big, boring lecture. Even if he does lecture us, I could always teach you how to tune him out. I've learned how to do that whenever he lectures me. But if he asks a question, you can just nod or shake your head every now and again so he'll think you're listening." Peach said.
"But you're not going to tell him about it either, are you, Peach?" Mario asked.
"Not if telling him means suffering through another long, boring lecture on why we shouldn't sleep together until we're married. You would think our parents never gave us the talk about the birds and the bees." Peach said.
"Mama-mia! Don't even remind me about that talk, Peach. Mama and Papa gave Luigi and me 'the talk' when we were 11. It was so awkward that poor Luigi had blacked out." Mario said.
"He couldn't handle it?" Peach asked.
"Nope. As for me, I was just completely weirded out." Mario replied, before asking, "When did you hear it, and how did it go?"
"Since my parents died when I was a baby, there was no way they could give me 'the talk', so Toadsworth took it upon himself to do it when I was 12, and he waited until I got home from visiting Daisy in Sarasaland. And if that wasn't bad enough, Daisy's parents gave me and her 'the talk' the day before. It was not fun to hear him go over those things again." Peach said.
"Didn't you tell Toadsworth that you'd already heard it?" Mario asked.
"When I realized what he was about to do, I tried to stop him, but he told me I could speak after he finished giving me 'the talk'. When he finally finished, he noticed that I looked very annoyed. That's when he allowed me to give him the explanation I'd been trying to give him since he decided to start talking. Boy, did he feel stupid when he learned that I'd heard it all the other day." Peach replied.
"So now you have just proven that what he doesn't know won't hurt him. All right. Now that we've got that squared away, let's move on. I'm sure the two of you are feeling pretty tired right now, like I am. Is getting some sleep all you guys want to do at this time?" Cappy asked.
"Sì..." Mario said with a yawn. Although he was happy that his plan to save Peach from Bowser had worked, he had to admit that he was feeling very tired. He always felt like he'd earned the privilege of taking a nice, long nap after pulling off a rescue mission, or after being rescued. (A/N: The "Luigi's Mansion" games and "Super Princess Peach" are good examples of Mario needing to be rescued.)
"If you and Peach share that bed, do you think you two would be going right to sleep? You don't really strike me as the kind of couple who would leap into that bed and do the naughty things that couples tend to do when they're under the sheets together." Cappy said.
"Well, even if we were, we couldn't do any of those things. Not as long as you're in here with us." Peach said, starting to feel tired herself after seeing Mario yawn.
"Then just share the bed and go to sleep, why don't you?" suggested Cappy.
Mario and Peach decided that arguing was pointless, for Mario said, "Let's-a do like Cappy said and share the bed. It may be for just one night, and what Toadsworth doesn't know won't hurt him."
"You're right. It really won't. I should know because I've done something he doesn't know about, and it isn't bothering him." Peach said.
"You have? What did you do? Was it something naughty?" Mario asked.
"It wasn't anything really bad, Mario. When I was a young kid, and he and I watched "Bambi", there were at least 2 scenes he would fast-forward through." Peach started.
"Oh, I think I know what one of them was." Mario said. He remembered his mother fast-forwarding through a... certain scene in the movie... when he and Luigi were little.
"I'm sure you do. Now I asked him about just letting those scenes play one time when I was 9 years old, and he said that he couldn't let me watch them because I would never be able to handle them." Peach recalled.
"Was he right?" Mario asked.
"Kind of. One day, shortly after he told me I couldn't handle those scenes, I decided to find out for myself. I took the movie into my room and watched it while he was out running errands. When I saw the scenes he never let me see in their entirety, I wished I hadn't." Peach shuddered a little as she remembered.
"You couldn't handle them?" Mario asked.
"I didn't enjoy them, that was for sure. In fact, I didn't even ask Toadsworth if we could watch that movie again until I was 13, and by then he decided I was old enough to handle the scenes, so he didn't fast-forward it anymore. But I never told him what I had done, and he never suspected a thing." Peach said.
"What you did doesn't sound very bad." Mario said.
"Neither does the thing we're about to do." Peach said as she and Mario looked over at the bed.
"Why didn't we agree to just bite the Bullet Bill and share that bed in the first place?" Mario said.
"I was afraid that if we slept together, it might... make you want to engage in... carnal gymnastics." Peach said, turning red.
"Oh no, Peach, I don't plan on engaging in any sexual activities until I'm married. There's only one woman I want to do those with." Mario said.
"Me?" Peach asked, gesturing to herself.
"Actually, I was going to say that I will do such things with the woman I marry. After I marry her, of course. I can wait." said Mario. He didn't want to say that she was the one after she just avoided being married to Bowser.
Peach smiled and looked at Mario with respect. He was a perfect gentleman, one of the traits she looked for in a man.
"I'm glad. I too want to wait until after marriage myself before I do such things." Peach replied.
"That's good, Peach. Now let's-a get some shut-eye." Mario said as they got up from their chairs. As soon as they were on their feet, Cappy dove for the chair Mario had been sitting on. He quickly made himself comfortable and promptly fell asleep.
"Buona notte, Cappy. Good night." Mario said as he watched his friend fall asleep.
"Sweet dreams, Cappy." Peach whispered to the sleeping Bonneter.
Mario smiled at Peach, then motioned for her to lay down on the bed.
"I normally don't like to sleep in my dress, with my corsets and jewelry still on. I know I've done this a million times before, as Bowser's prisoner, but it still doesn't make the whole thing any easier for me." Peach thought, but she smiled back at Mario, then took off her shoes before lying down on the bed. It was then that she and Mario had a new problem.
"Uh-oh. I think this bed sleeps only one person." Mario said. There didn't appear to be enough room for both of them to lie in it together.
"Oh, this isn't good. I don't want you to sleep in a chair..." Peach said.
"And I'm not making you leave that bed." Mario said.
They thought for a moment, and then Peach said to herself, "Maybe there will be room for him if I lay on my side, like this." And she moved so that she was laying on her side. Now she was facing Mario, who was watching her get situated. Then Mario realized that there was room for him to get in next to her.
"Grande idea! Great idea, Peach! I'll get in now." Mario said, taking off his own shoes before getting in next to Peach. Like her, he was also lying on his side, and he had situated himself so he was facing her.
"Think you'll sleep well tonight, mia principessa, my princess?" Mario asked Peach.
Peach was silent for a moment. She thought about her answer before replying, "If you hold me close all night, I know I'll be okay."
"As you wish, amore mio, my love." Mario said, wrapping his arms around the princess, holding her close. Peach also embraced Mario, feeling good. She had been so worried about him when Bowser supposedly killed him, so being in his big, strong arms helped her greatly.
"Are you comfortable?" Mario asked.
"Very." Peach replied. She was just about ready to go to sleep.
"Peach, there is one more thing." Mario said.
"What is it?" Peach asked.
"Before we go to sleep, may I please have un bacio della buona notte?" Mario asked.
"A what?" Peach asked, looking confused.
"A good-night kiss." Mario translated.
Peach giggled and replied, "Of course I'll give you a kiss. But I'd like one, too."
"Don't worry, Peach. I'll gladly give you one in return." Mario smiled.
So Peach and Mario kissed each other good night, on the lips.
"Buona notte, principessa... ti amo... Good night, Princess... I love you..." Mario said as he closed his eyes and finally surrendered to sleep.
"Good night, Mario. I love you, too..." Peach replied, blushing as she fell asleep in his arms. Not only did she and Mario kiss each other good night, Mario even told her he loved her in Italian! She was completely convinced that he was the man she wanted to marry.
Aww, I love the romance that those crazy kids share, don't you? If so, then stay tuned, 'cause there's still more to come!