Chapter Text
The sun was setting over the rolling green hills of Ooo, reflecting beautifully off of the small waves of Lake Butterscotch. A slight wind breathed life into the fluffy clouds floating above Bubblegum’s new lakeside residence and beckoned them ever so slowly to the west. It was the perfect time for some late night gardening, and with the sun beginning to fall just below the horizon, Marceline would make her appearance any minute now.
The kitchen smelled of delicious cherry pie, freshly baked in the oven by Princess Bubblegum for her special guest of the evening. It was the least she could do for her. She honestly wished she could have done more, but with time running out before the Vampire Queen got there, there was only so much she could fit into the schedule. For most of the day she had been working on her bioengineered fertilizer, and with Peppermint Butler sleeping away most of the day, she was left without an assistant to speed up the process. This effectively put her way behind schedule - a very rare occurrence for her. To keep her motivated she told herself that designing Ooo’s best fertilizer for her Garden Kingdom citizens was imperative for building a thriving society. If she wanted to succeed she was going to have to dedicate more time to her work and less time on fun. Not a problem in the slightest.
The oven timer went off with a beep. Bubblegum slipped on her oven mitts and pulled out the golden cherry pie from the oven. It smelled even better outside of the oven, but would it be good enough to satisfy Marceline? She felt those knots in her stomach again…or maybe it was butterflies. It had been so long since she felt butterflies that it still wasn’t really clear to her what they felt like anymore, but regardless of what they were she wasn’t a fan.
She placed the hot pie on the counter and closed the oven. Now everything was ready for tonight. Marceline would be there soon and they would work on the garden, eat some pie, and then head off in their separate directions again like Bubblegum felt no different about their relationship than she did last week. Simple stuff really. And then tomorrow she would dive back into work and begin trials for her fertilizer version 2, throwing away any wishes to see Marceline again. Her work was most important.
A knock at the front door flooded Bubblegum’s stomach with anxiety as she snapped her head to the source of the sound. Marceline was there. She took off her oven mitts and walked over to the door, fixing herself up to look presentable to her friend. Yes, her friend! She didn’t need to feel this way for someone who was just a friend, she reminded herself. Now just open the door…
…
Just turn the knob and open the door.
Her hand wasn’t turning the knob...
Oh for the love of Glob just open the door. OPEN THE DOOR!
There was another knock at the door, unfreezing Bubblegum’s body and allowing herself control again. She opened the door quickly. Maybe a little too quickly.
Marceline was standing on the other side in a maroon tank top and navy coveralls hanging off of her waist. Maroon Converse covered her feet and her hair was up in a ponytail, exposing the vampire bite on her neck. “Hello, Bonnibel~” she smiled.
Bubblegum tried to hide any and every behavior that could signify nervousness (or perhaps infatuation) in any capacity. It was a skill she developed from being the ruler of an Ooo superpower - one that she was super grateful to have in that moment, “Hey, Marcy. Come on in!”
Marceline entered the quaint cabin . She immediately smelled the rich cherry pie waiting for her in the kitchen, “Oh man, what is that smell…”
Bubblegum felt the blood leave her face. Did she think it smelled bad?
“It smells awesome! You must be a really good baker!” Marceline hovered over to the pie to take a big whiff. “Ahhh…that’s amazing. I can’t wait to eat this.”
Bubblegum took a gigantic internal sigh. Crisis averted . “It’s just a simple thank you for coming over on such short notice. I’m sure you’d rather be at a concert than be here getting your hands dirty with some fertilizer.”
Marceline looked over at her, still hovering near the pie, “Ah don’t worry about it. I didn’t have anything planned today. Plus this pie is gonna be totally worth it.” She opened her mouth to begin sucking the red out of the rich pie, but Bubblegum stopped her before she could sink her teeth into it.
“Nuh uh, nope! Not until after the gardening.” she teased.
Marceline sighed, “alright, alright…I’ll just do this job hungry.” She rubbed her stomach and moved away from the pie groaning, “so, so hungry…I might die from hunger. Bury me with my bass, PB. I won’t make it through the night.” She put her palm to her face and hovered over the floor.
“Oh you poor thing! Here let me help you.” Bubblegum picked up the pie and began to act like she was going to serve some to Marcy, but quickly changed trajectory and put it in the fridge. “There! Now you won’t have to look at it while we work!”
“I was hopeful there for a moment,” Marceline chuckled, “I guess I need to improve my acting skills.”
Bubblegum gave a smirk and sent a light shove to Marceline’s shoulder, “Yeah, ya dork.” If her eyes weren’t deceiving her, she could have sworn she saw the vampire blush, but if she thought about it any longer it would have engulfed her entire brain.
At that point the sun was almost entirely down and Marceline could roam free without any protection, so it was prime time to start gardening. Bubblegum and Marceline walked outside to the garden, still varmint free thanks to their attack on the mother varmint last night. A red wheelbarrow filled to the brim with fertilizer sat by the pumpkins, ready to be emptied for use. The moon was shining brightly above their heads, and although it was a pretty view, it didn’t provide enough light to really see the garden all that well.
“Hey, Bonnie. How are we going to see what we’re doing? It’s pretty dark.” She asked.
“Don’t worry. I thought of everything!” Bonnie reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a little remote. She pressed a button and work lights fastened to the wooden fence surrounding the garden lit up, illuminating the area with enough light to see everything perfectly.
“Oh, rad. I should have known you’d be ready.” Marceline chuckled.
Princess Bubblegum smiled and said, “it takes initiative to start a kingdom. I plan on making these citizens my finest yet.” She walked to a fence post and picked up a shovel and a garden hoe. “We can start by clearing this area with the garden hoe. Then we can use the shovel to lay down some of my fertilizer.”
“You got it, P-Bubs,” Marceline made a clicking noise with her mouth and winked, causing Bubblegum to blush, “You can clear the area with the garden hoe and I can shovel the fertilizer in the areas you finish.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Bonnie handed Marceline the shovel.
They worked collectively to hoe the garden and lay it with fertilizer, a process Bubblegum didn’t want to admit was going much faster than it would have if Peppermint Butler were helping. She didn’t mean that in a rude way. It was just that his arms and legs were shorter, so one square of the garden would have taken twice as long to finish. Marceline’s legs were much longer and more capable of consistent manual labor, which expedited the shoveling process tenfold. And although she didn’t care to admit it, watching her work was more fun, too.
Bubblegum looked up from her side of the garden and caught Marceline wiping sweat off of her forehead with her hand. Her skin glistened under the work lights and her hair managed to stay neat in her ponytail, albeit a couple more hairs loose than from when she arrived. The vampire gave a rejuvenating sigh and picked up her shovel again to continue her duties, lifting pounds of dirt from the wheelbarrow and spreading it evenly across the garden. With every lift of the shovel Bubblegum could see Marceline’s muscles tense up. She knew she shouldn’t stare, but it was hard not to. When one is staring at perfection in the face, how can one look away? It was too late for her to answer the question though because before she knew it, Marceline was looking right back at her. She sent a bright grin in her direction, “what’s up?”
Oops…
In an effort to justify why she was staring at her, Bubblegum quickly said the first thing to come to her mind, “sweat.”
Marceline stopped shoveling and laughed, “Yeah I am. It’s not easy work!”
Bubblegum turned highlighter pink, “I mean you look really sweaty. Not that that’s a bad thing. You still look pretty…”
“You think I’m pretty?” Marceline blushed.
That was not how Bubblegum wanted to save herself in the slightest. She began thinking of things to say to recover from what should have been an easy exchange for the experienced diplomat, “P-pretty tired. As you should drink some water. Do you want water? I think you want water. Let me go get some for you,” she began to stumble backwards towards the cabin, “Electrolytes are important for people doing strenuous work. I think you need some of that. I should put salt in your water. That will help with the- WAHH!”
Bubblegum fell back first to the ground, tripped by some traitorous pumpkin vines. Her head smashed into a ripe pumpkin and sent pieces of it flying in all directions.
“Bonnie!” Marceline yelled. She threw her shovel down and ran over to Bubblegum. The princess sat up and wiped pumpkin guts out of her eyes, desperately trying to keep any dignity she had left. Marceline knelt down on her needs to check for any injuries, “Oh glob, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she spat a seed from her mouth, “I wanted that to happen.”
“Yeah right, P-Brain,” Marceline quipped. She picked a piece of the skin off of Bubblegum’s head, “I’m sure you did.”
If there was a color brighter than highlighter pink, that was the color of her face at that moment. Under all the orange, at least. “I can still get you that water,” she half-heartedly shrugged.
Marceline brushed some pumpkin out of Bubblegum’s hair with her hand, “how about I get you that water, hm?” She gave a smile soft enough to save a man falling at terminal velocity from any injury. She stood up and offered a hand to the deflated princess, “come on.”
Bubblegum hesitated to take the gray-skinned hand asking for hers, but ultimately found it more beneficial to accept the help than to resist it. It would speed up the moment of embarrassment by a couple seconds at least, and that was enough to convince her. She stood up and they both walked towards the cabin.
___________________________
Princess Bubblegum sat on the couch with a cup of water in her hands and an ice pack on her head. She didn’t think she needed the ice pack, but she entertained Marceline’s wish for her to use it anyway. The quilted blanket that laid across her lap gave her comfort in the otherwise uncomfortable situation she landed herself in, giving her something to fidget with while she waited for Marceline to come back from the kitchen. She felt utterly humiliated for what happened in the garden. Even more so than when Marceline had to carry her to bed the night before. She would rather relive that again than go through what happened 30 minutes ago, but the Cosmic Owl never gave her what she wanted. She had taken a quick shower to wash away the orange goop from her hair, but it couldn’t wash away the shame.
Marceline came back to the living room with a plate of cherry pie in each hand, “How’s that head of yours feeling?” She handed a plate off to Bubblegum, who was looking down at her drink.
She took the plate and replied, “It’s alright, thanks. You know you don’t have to do all this. I’m totally fine.” Half of that statement was true, she really was fine, but the half that claimed she didn’t need the help was a lie. Or a partial lie, at least. There was a part of Bubblegum that secretly wanted Marceline to coddle her, to care for her, and that part was living it up at the moment. On the other side of the fence, though, and the part that took up a huge chunk of her mind right now, was still mortified about her fall. As a princess she shouldn’t be getting flustered like that, she thought. How could she let that happen?
“Yeah, but I want to. That was a crazy fall and I want to make sure you’re okay,” she put a hand on Bubblegum’s shoulder, “I care about you, y’know?”
Hearing Marceline say that out loud must have pulled on a certain heartstring of hers because before she knew it, Bubblegum’s eyes were welling up with tears that she couldn’t stop.
“Oh, hey, don’t cry. I’m sorry, did I say something?” Marceline asked. She removed her hand from the Princess’s shoulder not knowing if that was the right move or not.
Bubblegum wanted nothing more than for her to put it back. In fact, she would have loved to feel the embrace of both arms around her welcoming her to cry it all out, but there was no way she was going to ask for that. “You didn’t say anything wrong,” she sniffled, “I’m just really embarrassed…”
Marceline gave a lighthearted chuckle at that admittance, “You don’t need to be embarrassed, Bonnie. It’s okay, really. I’m just glad you didn’t get seriously hurt.”
Despite the reassurance, she didn’t feel like it was okay. She hadn’t been doing a good job presenting herself as someone who was put together, and that’s what really bothered her. Before the King of Ooo came along and won the barely legal election, the Princess was doing business as usual: attending to her citizens, conducting diplomatic relations, and maintaining the order she’d kept for centuries. Now all of a sudden she was living in her Uncle’s rundown cabin trying to rule over a garden of inanimate fruits and vegetables.
They sat there in silence for a second, but Marceline must have known Bubblegum was still in her own head when she hadn’t responded. She crossed her legs up on the couch and faced Bubblegum to give the princess her full attention, “What are you thinking about?” Her eyes harbored every ounce of genuine concern and interest she could muster.
The crying had slowed to the occasional sniffle, “I just feel like a fool all the time and like I don’t have control over anything anymore. I’ve been trying to keep it together but these last few days have been rough,” she could feel the tears welling again but tried to hold them in. “And I don’t know…I care about you too and I just- I don’t want you to see me like this. That’s why I didn’t tell you about the King of Ooo, and I’m sorry you had to learn it from him. I shouldn’t have kept that from you.” Another tear rolled slowly down her cheek.
There was a minute shift in Marceline’s face, possibly from shock. But that didn’t last long because it quickly turned into a face of immense care. She wiped the tear from Bubblegum’s pink face. “I don’t care about that, silly. I don’t care what you look like or what you’re doing or what position you hold in the government,” she joked. “I just care about you . I care about if you’re happy or not, and I’ll be there if you aren’t. I know our…relationship…hasn’t always been the steadiest, but I want you to know I’ll always be there for you.” she grabbed the soft pink hand practically begging to be held and rubbed it with her thumb.
Marceline had a point. This whole time Bubblegum felt like she had to present herself as someone different than who she currently was, but she never needed to. If anything, Marceline was the one person she could really be herself around, and she must have forgotten that when they went different ways.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Marcy. I should have known.” she said, gripping her hand back.
“Don’t apologize. I should be the one apologizing, if anything.”
They sat there for a couple minutes and listened to the popping of the firewood. It had heated the room to a comfortable temperature, inviting the two to relax a little. It was Marceline who broke the silence, “As for the King of Ooo, I have an idea.”
That piqued Bubblegum’s interest, “And what’s your idea? It sounds a little suspicious.”
“How do you feel about paying him a little late night visit?”
There was a twinge of mischief in her voice that Bubblegum felt was both alluring and a little concerning, “That depends on what this “visit” consists of.”
“Well I think you need to have some fun for once, so I suggest we pull a harmless little prank on the new “Princess of the Candy Kingdom”. Nothing too extravagant, of course. Just a classic Marcy-PB mess around like old times. What do you say?”
It had been a really long time since they’d done a Marcy-PB mess around, but Bubblegum wasn’t completely sold, “I don’t know…it’s getting late and I should probably get up early to work on my improved fertilizer tomorrow. I know we just laid some down but innovation doesn’t just stop and I fell behind schedule today. Not to mention we didn’t get to finish the garden like I’d hoped so now I have to move that to tomorrow as well and I just don’t-” Marceline grabbed both sides of Bubblegum’s face and held them in her hands. Her face was still a little damp from the crying.
“Bonnie, stop. Look at me.”
Bubblegum didn’t know how to respond, but her wide eyes and increasingly pink cheeks probably responded for her.
Marceline locked eyes with the Princess, “You have all the time in the world to do that. Literally. We’re immortal. Take a break and come with me,” she pleaded.
There were a million feelings running through Bubblegum’s head at that moment- feelings of inadequacy, of embarrassment, of curiosity. The warm, tender hands on either side of her face bred them to no end and there was nothing she could do to stop it. With every millisecond running past her, more bubbled to the surface, but among those feelings was the strongest of them all: the feeling of longing. Maybe she didn’t want to define it in fear of it becoming reality since once one acknowledges the existence of something, there’s no denying its presence. But to deny this feeling would have been useless because it had been the catalyst for so many events within the past few days. How could she even begin to twist the story in her head? She wanted Marceline. There was no doubt in her mind that something had changed in her, and the dark eyes sitting inches across from her, begging for her company, were the reason for it. She could swear that the look on Marceline's face was strong enough to move a mountain, and Bubblegum considered herself an exceptionally heavy mountain to move, but in that moment she became light as a feather.
“Okay.” she sighed
Marceline lifted her hands in the air in triumph, “Yay! Let’s go!” She grabbed Bubblegum’s hand and they walked out of the cabin, leaving the cherry pie on the coffee table to be eaten upon their return.
Bubblegum felt genuine excitement as Marceline led her out into the crisp night. She had put up so many walls since their breakup, but the more time she spent with the dark haired vampire, the more she began to question why she’d put them up in the first place. She decided it was best to leave the psychoanalysis for another day and allow herself the chance to forget about work for once. She deserved this. She was happy right now. And for the first time in a long time, she was beginning to remember what butterflies in her stomach actually felt like, and it was wonderful.