A/N: Part II! Sorry it's late—forgot to post it here!

Hope you enjoy it!

Words: 2,827

WATCH IT WORK – [PART II]

"Tell me about boys," Bubblegum requests.

Marceline looks up from where she's strumming her bass on the smaller monarch's bed, splaying her fingers over the strings to shush them quiet. She blinks and stares at the princess, who is fiddling with her hair and pretending not to steal glances at Marceline in her mirror. Bubblegum's cheeks are pink. Well, pinker than usual.

"Tell me about boys," she says again.

Marceline sighs and hikes up her sleeve. Despite that there's no watch there, she slaps her thumb against her wrist and asks, "Weren't you a kid just five minutes ago?"

"My birthday was last week. I'm thirteen," the princess insists, like that's actually supposed to mean something. "Thirteen," she stresses, and pivots on her vanity bench to give Marceline her full attention. She puts on a pitiful face, the kind wherein her eyes do that weird slick-shiny thing and her cheeks puff out and her lips turn into a rosebud. Marceline, who was recently given reason to hate roses, finds it nauseating. "Please, Marceline?"

"Bug one of your other friends about it," dismisses the vampire. Dropping her head back onto one of Bubblegum's various pillows—the princess probably has about sixty scattered around and geez, they're all pink—Marceline drags her hand down hard over her guitar's stem. The strings grind out a hoarse skreee.

"I did! I asked Lumpy Space Princess and wow, let me just say this, okay?" Grimacing, Bubblegum confesses, "Her version of a boy is a semisolid cloud filled with noxious gases."

"Hey, that's pretty accurate." Marceline grins and curls her fingers, softening her instrument's protest into a purr. "Stick with your friend. She sounds like a genius. And besides"—the vampire flicks her elbow in; her guitar shudders with the force of its next chord—"I'm not the best person to ask about dudes."

Throwing her arms out, Bubblegum denies, "What? You're the perfect person to ask! In fact, you're my number one reliable source!"

"Feel free to keep the flattery flowing, babe, but it's not gonna get you anywhere."

"Marceline." The younger monarch's voice garners a note of pleading. "I'm serious. You are my number one reliable source."

Marceline glances over at the princess, her brows arched, her hand's heel drumming down into her guitar's frets. Spang! Bubblegum's expression is serious enough to merit a smirk. "Yeah?" the queen murmurs. "And why's that exactly?"

"Well, you've got that Ash guy, right?" the princess starts in eagerly. "You two have been together for like a hundred years—"

Marceline looks away, her teeth clicking together in her mouth, her lifeline—spent long ago—pressed flat to the strings. Bubblegum stops. Between them the guitar's whine fades into nothing, a slow, seeping twnnnnn, and the smaller monarch frowns and tips her head and surveys Marceline with a gaze suddenly too sharp to belong to someone so young.

"Marceline?" she ventures.

Turning her eyes ceilingward, the vampire shrugs and allows, "Yeah, about that. We broke up." But that's not quite true and Marceline's no liar, so she amends, "I broke up with him." She laces her fingers over her guitar's stem, pressing the instrument tight to her collar. It's a comfortable, solid weight there, pressing sharp just above where her sleeve joins the body of her shirt.

There is a moment of quiet. Maybe it's a moment of startled quiet, or thoughtful quiet—Marceline's never been very good at deciphering the difference. Next the bed dips as Bubblegum crawls onto the mattress, a delicate press of palms and knees nearby the vampire's hip. "Why?" she asks.

Marceline shrugs. "Because he was a dbag."

"I'm not familiar with that abbrevia—"

"Douchebag, Bonnibel. He was a douchebag."

"Oh." And then, "Like… all the time and you just got tired of it, or he did something that was unforgivable?"

Edging up along the bed's lavender comforter, Bubblegum's hand finds Marceline's kneecap and folds over it. Squeezes. Marceline smiles and answers, jiggling the leg, "He sold my favorite thing so he could go buy himself a stupid magic wand."

"He did what?" fumes the princess immediately. She slaps her hands down, one against the mattress and the other straight down onto Marceline's thigh. The whole bed rocks, and one of the pillows—fuchsia and frilled, also heart-shaped—goes sailing off across the room as the vampire jackknifes aright. "Do I need to go find him?" Bubblegum seethes, narrowly missing a bonk on the head from the guitar's flailing neck. She furls her fingers into fists and maintains, "Where does he live? Because I will make him pay—"

"You," Marceline disagrees, "will take a chill pill, whoa."

"No! No, I will be righteously indignant on your behalf because—because you moved in with him and let him touch all your stuff and… and you said you even made him sandwiches!" With a splutter, the princess demands, "Who does something so mean to someone who's willing to make them a sandwich? That's just—that's just—ooooh!"

Before Marceline can get in another word edgewise, Bubblegum springs off the bed and starts for the door. Once there, she looks back at the vampire and commands, "Don't move. I would also say don't breathe, but you've got that covered already."

"Bonnibel, look—"

"Stay," reinforces the princess, "right there." And then she's gone, a flurry of pastel fast disappearing down the corridor.

"Sheesh," Marceline informs the now-silent bedroom.

A few minutes later the younger monarch's footfalls patter in the hallway again. Marceline, knee-deep in working out the finish of a song, only glances up when the princess reenters the chamber.

"Marceline, I brought—"

"Hang on, hang on." Frowning down at her guitar, the vampire mutters, "Listen to this. You've got a good ear—you can tell me. What's missing?" Shifting the instrument into her leg's groove, Marceline strums out the melody she's been chipping at for a few days now. It's slower than her usual stuff but it isn't a dirge either, and when she reaches the last bit of it she sighs, "It's off. It—"

"Here, trade me," interrupts Bubblegum. Without fanfare she scoops the bass from Marceline's lap and replaces it with a bowl of ice cream. The lumps in said bowl smush together as Bubblegum plops down next to the older girl, carefully cradling the bass in the cage of her elbows. "It's your ending," she supplies. "You're sliding into a deceptive cadence. That's fine if you're trying to write, I dunno, a death march, but—"

"Back up, back up," Marceline insists, palming the bowl. "Not all of us take fancy theory classes on everything. A deceptive what now?"

"Cadence," Bubblegum repeats. "It's, uhm—it's the sound in a song that signals an ending or a stop to the music. And what you're finishing with now is a deceptive cadence, like… you're ending it but it doesn't sound like you're ending it. Not to your audience, anyway." Bubblegum summates, "It's confusing."

"…yeah. Tell me about it." The ice cream is strawberry, done up in liberal red sprinkles and doused with cherries. Plucking one of the last, the vampire sucks free its colorful essence, lobs the stem into her mouth to chew it, and asks, "So how do I fix it? Show me."

Leaning easily back into Marceline's shoulder, Bubblegum hoists the bass up between her knees and rests it lengthwise over her lap. It's too big for her to hold properly. "You create a stronger cadence. Like this," she says, and spanks her fingers down against the strings. The resulting sound is pleasant if not off-key. Wincing, the princess insists, "Wait—let me think how to transpose it."

She hunches over the bass, eyes closed. Marceline watches her and uses the nail of her pinky to ferret individual sprinkles from her bowl, draining them and flicking the gray remnants behind Bubblegum's bed while the princess is preoccupied.

"Okay," says Bubblegum after a moment. "Okay, yeah. It should go like this…"

She hits the strings a second time, pulling from them a series of notes that do admittedly sound better than Marceline's earlier attempt. The vampire perks. "Again," she encourages the younger musician, setting the bowl of ice cream aside. "Slower, so I can see."

Bubblegum complies: twice, thrice. She hands back the bass and Marceline fingers through the chords with ease, mumbling, "Yeah, yeah baby—it's good you're gone. Yeah, yeah baby—you did me so wrong, oh—" She looks up, smiling, but Bubblegum's face is solemn versus excited. "Hey," she murmurs, "good job." And then, "Bonnibel, wow. It's okay."

"No it isn't. You're writing a song about him," Bubblegum points out. "A sad song. With a deceptive cadence."

"Eh, you helped me ditch the cadence, didn't ya? And it's a cleansing song." Leaning the bass against the bed's edge, Marceline hooks her arm about the princess and assures her, "I'm cool. Seriously. I mean, how could I be anything but? I've got you here to make me feel better. And"—she reaches out with her free hand to pick it up—"ice cream."

"Lumpy Space Princess said it was an anesthetic for boy-related wounds," acquiesces Bubblegum. Peering anxiously at the vampire, she pursues, "But how can you be okay so fast? I might not know anything about boys, but I do know that variables kept together for extended periods tend to leave lasting impressions on one another even if they're separated later. And Ash was with you for a long time…"

There's not much of the ice cream left now. Spooning up one of the remaining livid cherries, Marceline pops it into her friend's mouth and murmurs, "I've had a couple weeks to get all the crying and crud out of my system. Yeah," she affirms as Bubblegum scowls furiously around the spoon's handle, "I cried. But I'm done now, all right? Done."

Swallowing, Bubblegum licks her lips and responds doubtfully, "It's possible to do that? You can just stop caring about him? About what happened?" Handing back the spoon, the princess goes on, "You can stop… you know. Missing him?" Her fingertips brush Marceline's and she wonders, "You do miss him, don't you?"

Marceline drops the spoon into the bowl and thinks of her stupid blue wizard ex-boyfriend: his chortling laughter and the umbrella he so often shared with her despite not needing it himself, his hand curled over hers on the handle. Her throat tightens and her chest throbs, a sharp, shivering pain lancing down cold where her heart used to beat. Her eyes water, sting. Bubblegum notices and makes a noise low in her throat, belting her arms about the vampire's middle.

"Yeah," Marceline agrees when she feels she can trust her voice not to wobble too much. "Yeah, I miss him. Plop," she adds, and scrubs her sleeve over her face, "so much for being done with crying, huh?"

Bubblegum's arms constrict a little more. "He is indeed a dbag," the princess seethes. "The—the biggest."

Mute, Marceline nods. She dampens her sleeve and Bubblegum holds onto her with all the tenacity of a leech, and when the tears are done the queen manages, "All right, so yeah. Maybe I'm not okay yet."

"I can go get more ice cream," volunteers Bubblegum. "There's black cherry too. And watermelon."

"…watermelon ice cream?" Shaking her head, Marceline determines, "I'm good. I mean, I'm not—you know." She waves a hand. "But the point is I'm trying to be okay with it. I'm trying to move on."

"You're sure you don't want to plot his demise? Because my teachers say I show a great penchant for creation in chemistry and I have to agree with them—I'll bet I could whip up something that'll give him, I don't know, fatal diarrhea—"

"If I wanted him dead, Bonnibel, I could've killed him myself." But Marceline drops her face into Bubblegum's hair, chuckling, and husks to the princess, "You're really sweet to offer, though."

"Said offer will stand as long as you're even a little sad, Marceline. I promise it will."

"Noted, noted." With a sigh, Marceline allows, "But it's not good to dwell on shit like this, believe me. You wanted me to tell you about boys? Not worth drawing a line over. Let me act all old and sagely and junk and tell you about relationships instead, yeah?"

"Relationships?"

"Uh-huh." Lifting her head again and shifting away from the princess a little, Marceline takes up her bass again. She leaves the strings alone, though, and settles for simply holding it. "Relationships with boys, with girls—"

"Girls?"

"You heard me. Relationships," stresses Marceline, "with anyone, whatever they are, how long they last, how deep they go—yeah. There's only one thing you need to keep in mind about them, okay?" Holding up her index finger, she reinforces, "One."

"Okay." Bubblegum blinks attentively. "What is it?"

"When the other person doesn't make you happy anymore," Marceline provides simply, "you need to let them go so you can find someone else who will. Make you happy, I mean."

"Oooooh," says Bubblegum. "That's deep, Marceline."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"Well, you know." The moment feels opportune, so the vampire plucks out a mellow G on her bass. "I try."

They sit for a while in companionable almost-quiet then, Marceline strumming and Bubblegum thinking. The moon rises in the window, swollen for the month's end; across the kingdom the lights wink out. Night deepens its dome over the land.

"Marceline?" ventures the princess at last.

"Uh-huh?"

"I was wondering if, uhm… if I could ask you something specific about what you said earlier. If you could expand on the topic, maybe."

Marceline grins and rolls her guitar away across the bed's vast array of pillows. "Sure. What's it?" She flicks her eyes to Bubblegum's face.

The smaller monarch gazes back at her, the corner of her mouth puckered, color rising in her cheeks. "Girls," she says. She nibbles her lips from the inside and rushes on next, "You think it's okay to, uhm. To have relationships with girls?"

"What's this?" Marceline volleys back, motioning between them.

"I mean—like. A dating sort of… relationship. You think that's okay?"

Opening her hands into stars, Marceline affirms with a shrug, "Hey, whatever keeps the music moving." But she nudges, "Does it skeeve you, Bonnibel?"

"No!" the princess denies loudly. Clapping her hands over her mouth, she giggles and whispers again, "No, no. I've just never really thought about it. Is it soft, kissing another girl?"

"Who says I've kissed another girl?"

"So you haven't?"

"Who," teases the vampire, "says I haven't?"

"Marceline." Pouting now, Bubblegum drops onto the mattress facedown nearby Marceline and huffs, "You're impossible."

"Hey, I'm just trying to facilitate a better learning experience for you, Bonnibel."

The princess peeks through the gap beneath her elbow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean"—and Marceline rolls her eyes—"if you really wanna know how it is, do it yourself and find out. That's the best way to know if you like something, right?"

Slowly levering herself up on her arms again, Bubblegum acknowledges, "Yes. Yes, it is." And suddenly there's an expression on her face that's a mix of determined and intent, a kind of squinch to her eyes and a tension to her chin. Before Marceline can ask her whether she's constipated or something, the princess reaches up, grabs a handful of the vampire's t-shirt, and gives it a yank. Unbalanced, Marceline drops across the girl broadside: their foreheads smack and Marceline yelps and Bubblegum feathers her mouth clumsily over the vampire's lower lip.

She is still doing this when Peppermint Butler walks into the room a millisecond later.

Marceline's met the guy before, sure, exchanged head nods and stuff with him. She now has the delightful surprise of meeting the business end of his tea tray as he flings it straight at her head. "PEDOPHILE!" he shrieks, pointing at her. "PREDATOR!" The tray smacks into Marceline's temple; Bubblegum's hold on her lip lets go with an audible smuck. "GUARDS!" the butler wails. "GUARDS!"

Hot tea splatters down Marceline's face. She recoils, hissing and writhing and half-tempted to strangle the spherical little servant dude. The only reason she doesn't is the expression on Bubblegum's face.

The princess looks smug. Like she's just gotten first prize at the science fair. Blue ribbon, baby.

Laughter bubbles up from Marceline's guts in a geyser. Wheezing out barks of it, she dodges the butler's next projectile—a hairbrush hastily seized from the nearby bureau—and grabs her bass. Hopping to the window next, she asks the princess, "Was it soft, Bonnibel?"

"GUARDS!" He's almost hoarse.

"Like snow," Bubblegum replies shamelessly, and adds, "I think it was the ice cream."

A tube of lip gloss pings off the windowpane. Laughing still, Marceline leaps out into the night.

Covered in hot tea or not, she feels the best she has in weeks.