Warning! Some minor cussing here. Took a while because I was afk a lot and am learning guitar. I promise there will be serious GumLee in the next part but I do have to clear some stuff up first.

Adventure time girl 123: thanks a lot and you'll see

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huston boy: *puts on shades* deal with it (;

YoiNagi247: Hah, thanks so much for that review! You're awesome!

IwasBornaRainicorn: Heh, maybe I should have been a bit more specific. I meant that Marshall paid for the phone reparations, not that he did it himself. But maybe he's actually a wizard! OMG! Lol just kidding, thanks for reviewing (:

GoodByeNotGoodnight: Thank you so much (: it's true the high school thing is overdone but that was kinda the only setting a plot like this could take place. I'm trying to make it work!

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iamPG: Thanks for the reviews on both chapters and I promise they'll make up and be all romantic and junk soon (:

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Isabella: thanks for both reviews, really! By all means, suggest whatever you want. I take it to heart and consider everything and how it can go into my story.

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A thin cigarette hung between Marshall's middle and index finger. A trail of grey smoke escaped its burning end and scattered into the winds signifying both release and destruction at the same time. The nicotine soothed the itch growing in the back or Marshall's head, the bad kind of itch that got him in trouble because it meant he was thinking about disturbing stuff and needed to do something awful to take his mind off it.

He'd been doing awful things a lot lately and found that instead of giving him comfort like they used to, they were just making him feel worse. But at least sitting in the cubby hole he made from an old and giant tree beyond that trashed kids' park whilst sucking on a cigarette and enjoying the quiet was enough to calm the storm raging inside him.

"Dude, what's your problem? You're acting like a chump."

Except it would have been had Marshall been sitting in that cubby alone. Ash Evans leaned the front of his body over a gnarled tree branch and frowned at Marshall behind bleached white bangs. Marshall could see the tips of his canines peeking out over his lips; Ash thought of himself as some kind of vampire king – down at the club his brother owned, everybody knew him by that name. Marshall thought it was lame, especially when Ash filed his teeth to look like fangs.

"Shut up man," Marshall said simply, taking in another lungful. He glared when Ash filched the cigarette for himself and took unnecessarily long drags. The glare became a laugh when the white haired boy began to cough, his eyes watering while he struggled to breathe. Marshall knew Ash didn't like smoking but only did it because everybody thought it looked cool. He didn't need the nicotine or the comforting scent of tobacco or the grey fog in his lungs to feel ok after a stressful day, not like Marshall did.

"I'm, ugh, I'm serious man…geez, ugh." Marshall received the cigarette back in worse shape than before it left. He eyed it, close to the bud, distastefully. Ash lathered up a wad of spit and jetted it as far as it could go. It landed on the grass with a dull splat, wrinkling Marshall's nose. "The fuck is in that cig, dude? Sawdust?"

"Wuss," Marshall snickered. His tongue poked out and waggled for extra effect.

"Whatever. Anyway, the guys are starting to think you're wigging out. Like, where were you the other night when we were gonna light up at Wendy's place?" The "guys" were Ash's self-proclaimed gang, a group of teenagers with a penchant for loud music and smashing things up. Ordinarily this was meant to be Marshall's type of crowd and he did hang out with them a lot, but Marshall didn't really like Ash's friends. Ash met most of them at his brother's club The Wizard and they were all delinquents who dropped out of school and ditched their parents and had a rap sheet as long as their left arms. While Marshall was also called a delinquent, he didn't like associating himself with Ash's dweeb friends. They were the reason the cops busted him for spraying up the apartment blocks downtown.

But Ash wanted him there as part of the "gang" because he and Ash had a different kind of friendship than what the former shared with the rest of his group.

"I had stuff to do." Marshall's reply was curt. He flicked the cigarette bud away and it went sailing into the grass somewhere. He wondered briefly if it'd catch fire.

"Yeah right," Ash laughed, "like what?"

"Stuff, ok?" Becoming irritated, Marshall heaved himself out of the cubby and dusted off the back of his jeans when his feet hit the floor. His nose throbbed lightly as it did every now and again when he stood up too fast and blood rushed to his head, and he thought about a clenched fist flying at him and furious eyes and pink hair.

"Ok man, chill." Ash scoffed and let it go. He shoved his thumbs into his torn jeans pockets and waited on idle feet to see what Marshall would do. "You coming to The Wizard tonight? Big Bro says he's having a rave on and he's getting a legit band this time and whatever."

Marshall shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe. Whatever."

"Wow bro, you really are acting like a chump," Ash grouched. "Like, seriously! What're you, turning into one of those emo kids? I thought you didn't hang around with them in school. You know how I feel about them…"

"Dude, shut up." Meeting Ash square in the eye, Marshall delivered his warning. "I'm not acting like a chump or an emo and stop digging at it. You got that? Besides, I can hang with whoever the hell I want there. It's not like you go to school."

"School's for chumps," Ash sneered. "Can't believe they haven't thrown you out yet for all the junk you pull. Like pranking that nerd you talk about, what's his name? Gumdrop?"

"Gumball," Marshall corrected. Ash missed the tightening of his friend's expression and the arsenic in his tone of voice. He'd never been a very observant character, the kind of fish that took the juicy bait before realising there was a hook at the end and by that time it was too late to do anything but wriggle.

"What a stupid name. I bet his first name's something retarded, like Bobo. His parents must be all about clowns or something to give their son such a dumb name like that. Chumps. Seriously, I – hey man, where're you going?"

During his tirade Ash had become so self-absorbed he failed to notice Marshall Lee getting steadily further away. A rock sailed to nowhere when Marshall kicked it and he offered a vague, "home I guess," as his reply. Once again Ash missed the venom poised and ready to strike him.

"Can I come? I can kick your ass on Mortal Kombat or something."

"Mom'll probably be there," was all Marshall needed to say in reply. Ash's expression vaulted, becoming a frown of trepidation.

"Oh, bunk that. Um, so I guess I'll see you at The Wizard later?" He asked hopefully, in that soft tone he rarely used except when he wanted something. And he obviously wanted Marshall to be there for whatever reason and Marshall decided he'd think about it rather than just straight out saying no.

"Maybe," he offered, a slight shrug raising the sharp ridges of his shoulders. Then he left Ash in the dust to do whatever he felt like doing, probably spraying graffiti somewhere (which Marshall was not allowed to partake in whatsoever if he wanted to stay out of a jail cell, something that was beginning to look inviting).

Contrary to his words, his mother's car was not in the driveway which meant she either wasn't home or the vehicle was in the shop again. She'd bought the run down Volkswagen from a shoddy dealer and had a lot of trouble with it, something that incurred her wrath on her family more often than it should. Marshall fished his keys from his back pocket, old and rusty from where he'd thrown them in a river once or twice (then had to fish them back out) and used them to scratch up some cars here and there; he turned the lock and wondered, that dull ache pulsing in his nose again, if his mother would be inside. It no longer brought tenseness or fear to his throat. He just couldn't give a damn anymore.

The TV was on. Marshall could see the back of his father's form in its usual spot; the armchair positioned right in front of the watch box. The house smelled faintly of alcohol so Marshall deduced that no, his mother wasn't home. His father didn't drink when she was.

"'Sup dad," he called out over the sounds of boxing commentary floating through the air. Three week old newspapers littered the ground through the hallway serving as cheap doormats, replacing ones thrown in the trash because blood and muck was hard to wash out.

"Hey son," his father replied. He didn't lower the television's volume but he did crane his neck over his shoulder to glance at his boy. He was still wearing the bandages around his head that his daughter wrapped to cover the bleeding from that bottle incident and he hadn't bothered changing them. Whether or not it was time they came off, Marshall didn't know. "There's meatloaf in the oven if you want some. Your mother cooked it this morning."

"I'm not hungry," Marshall replied, already half way up the stairs.

"Suit yourself." And then his father was immersed in the game again, hooting along with the spectators when the fighter of his favour landed a good hit.

The upstairs of the household was a hell of a lot quieter since his sister moved away. She could always be counted on to play some kind of tune with her bass, either to fill the silence or piss their mother off or just to lull Marshall to sleep. Her bedroom door was still covered in posters and upside down crosses (anarchy, she said) and the huge words she'd written in what she claimed was blood but Marshall knew to be old red paint from the garage: Marceline's Lair – Stay Out! Sometimes he slept in there, in her old bed, because the shadows at his window and in his heart were moaning and demanding attention. He couldn't hear them from Marceline's room; often he suspected that was why she'd demanded to switch rooms with him when he was ten. He'd wanted it back for so long but when she left he realised her being in there was most of the appeal.

It didn't feel the same without her. The room was empty and her stuff had been gone a while, but she'd been gone in spirit even longer. Marshall passed her door with nary a glance and entered the mess pit he called his own lair. The door shut behind him and he slid home a few of the locks he attached to the inside himself. Mostly they were for peace of mind but sometimes they kept at bay a raging woman from battering her son's skull in.

He fell on his bed, a lumpy mattress and a collection of covers in a heap, and started at the ceiling.

There were holes peppered in random patterns where he and Marceline used to sit on the bed and launch sharpened pencils into the plaster making a game of whose would stick. Wads of old chewing gum stretched into a smiley face and Marceline's name scrolled around it, scratched in with a penknife when the room still belonged to her. Marshall added his name afterwards but made it cooler by drawing fire licking at the letters.

In another corner of the room lay an old acoustic guitar that looked as though it had seen better days. Two strings were missing and small chunks of the wood had been gauged out. Splashes of ink and food soiled the once royal blue colour it used to be and on the back was a red hand print made of real blood, not garage paint. Marshall marked the guitar as his own when he got it as a hand me down from his sister; what better way to do that than to put one's lifeblood on something? He still had the small scar in the centre of his palm where he made the cut years ago.

He'd wanted to change the battered instrument's strings for a long time and was going to buy a new set before…well. His wallet felt emptier and yet somehow heavier in his pocket than before and he found himself occasionally staring into its blank depths, thinking about responsibility: teary eyes, frightened whimpers, the way his hands felt crushing that weak throat, how the pulse of its life thudded against his skin…it was easier to turn his thoughts away to how annoyed he was that he couldn't refurbish the guitar or buy that new video game he wanted.

But the truth of the matter was…

He couldn't get that damn boy out of his mind. No matter what he did, what he thought about, what he said, there he was. And now, when Marshall thought about him, he felt different.

He didn't even know how he'd felt before, seeing that nerd, that stupid, perfect, lucky nerd. The boy who could do no wrong, the boy who made he, Marshall, look and feel second, even third rate.

Marshall had never really had any friends who were good people and it never bothered him, because he wasn't a good person himself. But that boy…made him want to be better, and that in turn made him feel angry and resentful. Why should he have to be better? Why should he have to justify anything he did? He was fine as he was, sure, a little bit of a bad egg, but who could blame him?

But then perfect Bubba would walk by and showcase everything Marshall could never be, a good and smart student who never did anything wrong and who didn't live in a broken house and who wasn't stained by all the black and the shadows and the parent who resented him, and it burned inside Marshall that he wasn't good enough – but good enough for what? He didn't know, and he knew in the back of his mind it wasn't Bubba's fault either, but he needed something to take these confusing frustrations out on and who better than the person making him feel them?

In Bubba Gumball's presence, he was always overcome by a desire to do something to him, to aggravate him, to get a response. And they'd been fun at first; indignant, ruffled, embarrassed, angry. But then Bubba began to ignore him, to pretend that Marshall Lee didn't exist, and Marshall just couldn't handle that. Not again. Anything but that.

So he stepped up his game, became crueller with his pranks and taunts, all the while warring between his feelings of enjoyment and guilt and regret. It was like there was a part of him who didn't want to do these things to Bubba, who wanted to dust off the boy he used to be and show Bubba that he could be good, he could be a nice person, they could fit in together, get along…

But what was the point? He'd always be trash, it was in his blood, and this had never been more poignant than that day at the park.

It was one thing for him to show Bubba the mean and twisted and nasty side himself at school, but for Bubba to see the gnarled and thorny branches of Marshall's life in his home, the goings on Marshall couldn't control…

It was too much.

His blood roared in his ears no no no no no no no and then he was angry, so angry, that Bubba should stand there and look upon all of Marshall's faults and see their origins and know…Bubba didn't deserve to know.

What was the boy to him anyway? It wasn't like they'd had any contact outside of Marshall's bullying. Bubba didn't know how he affected Marshall, and in turn, Marshall didn't know why the boy did so. Bubba probably hated Marshall, and for some reason, inside Marshall Lee, this thought hurt.

Which added more fuel to the fire because it shouldn't have hurt, since, hey, he wasn't trying to get Bubba to like him anyway no one pure should like him so it shouldn't bother him but it did and he couldn't figure out why.

He lost control of himself that day, something terrible inside him whispering to get rid of the witness, and only when he felt Bubba's hot tears of fear against his skin did sense sucker punch him in the gut and he woke up, realised what the hell he was doing, saw the terror and saw the image of himself, twisted and wild with rage and insanity, in Bubba's eyes and how he was almost killing him.

Sickness boiled in Marshall, horror, and he retracted himself so quickly he got vertigo. His stomach felt like it was falling, like he was falling off the cliff of sanity and down into uncertain depths oh god no what am I doing no and then he just had to get away, away from the boy who had done all this to him.

It was the sick reality that had him puking his guts up later near his cubby, the reality that he was turning into his mother. The blood on his clothes, even if it was his own, made the sensation worse. He'd been trapped in that house for so long she was corrupting him, seeping into his skin, changing him. Or maybe Bubba was doing that.

He curled up in the tree for several hours while it rained on him, letting the downpour soak through his skin as though it could get to his bones and wash the filth away. It didn't work. It never did.

And even still, after smoking a whole pack of cigarettes and setting fire to an old television someone left in the street to rot, he didn't feel any better. His blood thrummed in his veins and he was twitchy, jumping at every other sound. He nearly pissed his pants when the jingle of his phone began to play.

It was a text from Ash, telling him to get his ass to Wendy's because he and his gang were waiting. But Marshall was not going there tonight, not in this state. Ash would ask questions and Marshall wouldn't know how to answer them or what to say.

Instead…

Like the part of him that was morbidly fascinated when, as a kid, he'd found a dead cat rotting in some undergrowth, killed by a car – the part of him that picked up a stick and poked the corpse till maggots and flies came out – his legs took him back to the park, just to see.

To see if Bubba was still there.

To see if I killed him.

He hadn't known what he'd do if he had.

But Bubba was gone. Something like relief flowed through Marshall's veins and finally, finally, the thrumming stopped. It meant Bubba was okay, or good enough to get up and get out, and that made Marshall feel better because, despite everything, even though there was a part of him that wanted to make Bubba hurt, he never wanted to kill him.

Not even when Bubba socked him in the nose, a nose that up until then, he'd forgotten was even hurting.

Then he saw the phone, cracked and soaked through on the tarmac, and when he picked it up and flipped it open – nothing happened – it was like he'd been given a small chance to redeem himself.

He felt stupid for thinking that afterwards, but nevertheless he'd paid for the phone's repairs the next day, skipping school just because he still didn't feel right, like himself (but that was a regular occurrence lately) and prepared to return the thing when he got the chance.

Then Bubba didn't come to school.

Bubba always came to school.

Guilt and fear were crippling. What if he'd seriously hurt Bubba? Not killed him, because it would be all over the school if he had, but hurt him bad enough that…that he might never come back?

Bubba's phone, otherwise untouched in Marshall's pocket, burned into Marshall's consciousness. He was always aware of it there, the feeling growing as the days passed and still Bubba didn't come back to school.

He was getting strange looks from that girl, too, whatever her name was. Fionna? The one making doe eyes at Bubba all the time, even if he couldn't seem to see it. It sickened Marshall to the core and out of all of Bubba's friends, she was the one he disliked the most.

They ignored him most of the time. Bubba probably told them to. But the glances he kept feeling shot his way all the time from her, and occasionally from the rest of the peanut gallery, was setting him on edge. When he couldn't take it anymore, he went looking.

He'd chased the boy home enough times to know where he lived. The Pretentious Street, he called it. It was late and no one was going to see him; Marshall needed to settle this himself. He was across the street, staring up at the windows. A dim light glowed in one of them, Marshall didn't know if it was Bubba's bedroom or not, and he was contemplating throwing something up there when the curtains shifted.

Bubba looked out onto the street and Marshall's breath froze on its way up this throat. He slipped away as quickly as he could because he'd got what he came for, to know if the boy was hurt. He'd seemed relatively fine but what did Marshall know? All he had to do know was wait till he came back to school, give him the damn phone, and that was that.

Marshall knew he was deluding himself though.

Because...

Damn it!

He sprung up off his messy bed and violently shook those thoughts away.

Enough was enough. He needed to stop wallowing like some teenage girl and just get on with life. He grabbed the old acoustic guitar from the corner and sat heavily on the floor, beginning to tug out some harsh and angry notes. He wasn't really playing a tune so much as musically venting, but the effect was kind of lost on an acoustic. He should have asked Marceline to give him her bass instead.

He played for a while, eventually being carried away by the music like he always did when he really got into it. The sky was darkening outside but he took little notice, keeping his mind blank as his fingers took to life on the frets, going their own way and doing what they wanted. But like everything, the brief utopia it had to come to an end at some point. He skidded on a few jarring notes when suddenly the front door shut so hard the walls shook. It seemed his mother was finally home.

"That damn car! I had to put it in the shop again because it broke down, right on the god damned freeway! As if I have the fucking money for this!" Cabinets slammed and through the floor Marshall could hear his mother stomping around. "Hunson! You useless piece of shit! Is that alcohol I can smell? Are you wasting my hard earned money on alcohol?! I swear to god..."

Marshall tossed the guitar aside and stood in disgust. He was so not staying here right now. He opened the window and skillfully climbed out, using the ancient tree in the yard to get down.

He was going to The Wizard.