Work Text:
me and finn need your help with something please please please?!!?! we’re extremely miserable and cute :( our eyes are so huge and sad right now peebs you gotta help :(
She doesn’t have to guess who sent the message on her screen, despite the fact that no one but her own watch-bots should know how to reach her on the ultra-secret level infinity clearance lab computer she’s using. Marceline is — they both are, she supposes — nothing if not resourceful.
Bonnie keeps checking to make sure she didn’t trip and turn on the triple gravity machine by mistake, but no, it’s just sleep deprivation and dread making her so heavy. The usual. So usual, these days, that she can sort of walk through it. Like wading in bitter honey up to her chin. She can remember how good it felt to step outside of herself the other day, to just exist in Marceline’s general vicinity, underneath that teeth-gnashing feeling that everything was about to fall apart. Of course she’s too busy — she’s always too busy — but instead of saying so, this time she replies, Where are you?
She doesn’t even regret it when the answer comes.
you’re the best the ice kingdom you’re so cool thank you so much in the castle your outfit looks so good today simon needs your help too coolest princess ever we all have terrible head lice thanks bonbon 0:)
Bonnie jumps when a loud laugh breaks through the white noise of machinery. It’s even more of a shock to realize it came from her.
/
“It’s called a louse,” says Ice King, at the exact moment Bonnie says, “The singular is louse, Finn.”
“What?” Ice King blows a lock of hair, something visibly crawling in it, out of his face. “I know my creepy crawlies.”
Finn blinks, looks back down at the bug caught between his fingers, and loudly tells it, “My head is not a louse house!”
Once she takes stock, Bonnie doesn’t feel any better about the situation. None of them have stopped scratching since she arrived.
“You all have very long, thick hair,” she tells them with a grimace. Finn is likely to go with the flow, but Glob, did it have to be the two most stubborn people she knows, outside of herself? “I’m not sure a shampoo and comb each is gonna do the trick.”
“Bald buds!” Finn shouts. He and Marceline lock twinkling eyes, hands primed for a high-five, and Bonnie sighs with relief. But before they can follow through, Ice King begins a hasty, incomprehensible chant.
“What’s up, Simon?” Marceline asks, turning to raise her eyebrows at him. “You just remember a lice killing spell or something?”
“Well, yeah.” He stuffs his beard into a bundle under his collar. “It’s called freezing to death.”
“Um. You or the lice?”
“The lice, silly. Only takes, like, ten hours.” He gets to the root and starts on his hair. “But if you don’t see me in twelve, assume I’ve taken a louse wife and we’re very happy together.”
“He’s right,” Bonnie provides, shrugging just enough so that her plastic-covered shoulder brushes Marceline’s. “About the first part. The lice and all the eggs should die after enough time at a cold enough temperature.”
“But don’t you wanna be bald buds with us?” Finn presses, tousling his own pest-ridden hair.
“For the record, I’m going for more of a buzz bud look myself,” Marceline cuts in. “But come on, Simon. Your beard’s looking pretty gross.”
He shakes his head in horror, clutching his beard tighter. “This is my moneymaker, man! I can’t go back to the Nice King life!”
Bonnie doesn’t blame him, really. If she could fly, and someone tried to cut off her wings, she’d put up a fight too. Hubris notwithstanding. More importantly, she’s not about to stop him from taking care of this in a way that doesn’t involve physical contact.
“We’ll need to super-freeze all your clothes too,” she says, forcing her eyes to sweep the room for other carriers. “And furniture. And definitely penguins, unless that would kill them. The whole castle would be ideal, if you don’t mind us using it first.”
“You wanna stay here?” Marceline asks.
“I’m for it,” Finn offers. “Beats walking and stuff.”
“It also beats finding bugs stuck to my citizens for the next ten billion years.”
Besides, Bonnie doesn’t say, the moment she steps within the walls of her kingdom, there’s no hope for any task that doesn’t involve science, war, or war science. The ice castle is not a friendly place, but it’s a place that forces her to think, not feel, in order to survive. Too many good memories in the Treehouse and in Marceline’s cave. There’s no risk she’ll want to stay here forever.
/
“What am I doing for you today, Finn?”
“Shear me like a sheep, milady,” Finn says grandly. “Or, y’know— shave it all off. Are sheep bald? I wanna be a bald bud.”
He’s already cut the bulk of it off, but a shave that close feels a little risky on a guy who can’t sit still for five minutes. Bonnie nods anyway and picks up the razor. “Keep in mind that I’ve never done this before.”
“Do your worst.” He slips off his hat and angles his head back in the ice salon chair. Bonnie runs a hand over his hair and grimaces. She’ll need a distraction for this one, and she’s been meaning to ask anyway.
“Hey, I haven’t seen Jake around lately. You guys aren’t fighting, are you?”
“No! That’s cold!” He giggles as she spreads the shaving gel over his head. “I mean, no. We don’t— He’s just on a solo adventure. He left a note.”
Bonnie hums and shaves off a stripe in the middle of his head. Gotta start somewhere.
“How’s Neddy?”
“Oh, y’know.” Another slow stripe, blonde hair falling down in chunks. The usual.”
“Do you have any other siblings?”
“Nope,” she says, a little too firmly. “It’s just us.”
“Do you and Neddy ever dream together?”
“Hm?” Another stripe, this one a little crooked. She cleans the razor and adds a bit more gel.
“Like, you’re dreaming, and Neddy is in the dream, but he’s not just part of your dream. You’re both dreaming the same thing. Together. Do you ever do that?”
The straightest stripe yet. “Why do you ask?”
Finn shrugs. “Have you ever met Jermaine?”
“Who?”
“My other brother. He’s kinda like you, a little bit. All grown-up and responsible and stuff.”
Bonnie shaves another stripe, careful as she nears his ears. “Sounds like a cool guy.”
“We don’t have a whole lot of common interests, but he’s super cool. He’s my bro.”
“And he… dreams with you?”
“No, with Jake. He’s a dog.”
“Right.”
“But I get to live with Jake. And be his best friend. Sometimes I wonder if Jermaine feels left out, even though I know he likes living alone. We’d drive him crazy.”
Bonnie pushes one ear down, earning another giggle, and holds his head steady as she shaves along the contour of his ear. It’s smooth up until the last second, a tiny nick down by his neck.
“Sorry!”
“Can I get a candy bandaid?”
“Of course. When you’re all done.”
He shrugs. “Nothing to be sorry about then.”
She doesn’t think he really believes that, but pushing the issue would only turn his scratch into a gaping wound. She moves to the other side and begins the same careful stroke.
“We used to dream together,” she says quietly. “Me and Neddy. It’s been a long time. I guess it’s— it’s been a really long time since we were parts of a whole. If we keep growing as we get older, then it makes sense that we keep growing out of that too.”
“Oh. That sounds...” Finn sucks his teeth. “Kinda lonely.”
“No, it’s okay. We’re very old, Finn.” She dips a washcloth into the bucket of rinse water and wrings it out. “And he’s safe.” She brings it up to cover his bare head. “I’m keeping him safe. That’s the most important thing.” The only thing, she thinks, right now.
“Is it?”
She wipes over his skull, satisfied when the blood stops running from those few little cuts. She dries them and replaces the cloth with a coat of Ice King’s old aftershave. Finn hisses at the stinging contact.
“Sorry,” she says again, and he shrugs. A cute candy bandaid for each tiny scratch. And she’s still sorry.
”Is it though?”
“You’re good to go, Finn. Can you tell Marcy she’s up?”
/
“You can cut it all short, but only buzz the sides, okay? Like a baby mohawk?”
“As long as there’s any hair left, I’m gonna have to shampoo and comb you.”
“Works for me,” Marcy agrees. “I just wanna look cool.”
It’s hard not to feel warm with her hands in Marceline’s hair, but she does her best to remove any significance from the action. Bonnie’s impulsive. She’s dangerous. These things keep her and her loved ones safe sometimes, but they have to be monitored as closely as any outside threat. If not more so. The messy sweet feelings she gets with Marcy are too volatile, too close to being too messy and too sweet. Feelings like that, just as easily as a living battery and an ancient destiny to fulfill, could gum up the gears of her heart and twist her into a catastrophic caricature. Her biggest, most horrible self.
Those memories are distant, like she’s watching them through a tiny window. She wonders, when her mind catches her idle, how much of that self was hers at all. But wondering is a luxury she can’t afford right now.
Bonnie survives — they all do — because she never stops working to shut that self up. If it shuts up her capacity for kindness too, then so be it. As surely as she knows she isn’t happy, she also knows that she’s better. A coldhearted tyrant is better than a smothering tower. A rigid commander is kinder than an unreliable friend. A distant ex can’t cut as deeply as a devoted lover.
Hands obedient to her mind, Bonnie cuts with the precision of a surgeon. The shape of Marceline’s skull takes form beneath her shears, and she refuses to look at it with love. It’s clear, somewhere distant and nagging and infuriating, that love is the only reason she’s spent hours in a freezing castle today, removing bugs from two tangled, oft-neglected heads of hair. Love is so often the only reason, and that might be what scares her most.
“Hey, don’t worry about Simon,” Marcy says between cut and lather. “I’ll take care of his stuff when he thaws out.”
“Is he gonna let you?”
She snorts. “I’ll manage.”
“I don’t know.” Bonnie’s eyes shift nervously toward the block of ice that holds him. “He’s been less kidnap-y lately, but…”
“Oh, it’s okay. He never does that stuff with me.”
“Really?”
Marcy nods. “When we’re together, he kinda just acts the same way he does with Finn. Except without the duels and stuff. And sometimes we play music, and sometimes one or both of us cries, which is… whatever. Blah blah.”
“Maybe you’re still a kid to him, in some ways.”
“I guess. Maybe.”
“Then maybe he’ll be the one taking care of you again sometime. Or, y’know— you’ll take care of each other. Maybe it’ll be different, is what I mean. Sometime.”
Marceline shrugs uncomfortably.
“Sorry.” Bonnie squeezes a bit of the shampoo into her gloved palm. “Right now, I’m gonna take care of you, if that’s alright.“
“I— yeah.”
She places her hands on Marcy’s head and starts, tentatively, to move them. “Does it hurt at all?”
“Little sting where I scratched too hard. It’s okay.”
“Next time we’ll have to get you a cone.”
Marceline gives her a brief sarcastic laugh and begins to hum, like she can’t help herself. “It feels really nice, actually,” she mumbles. “When you put it on. Like your hands or whatever.”
“Oh, good. Dr. Ice Cream told me there could be therapeutic benefits to scalp massage. To ease tension, I guess.”
“I wonder how that came up.”
“Well, anyone who tries to massage my scalp is gonna need their hands surgically removed from my head.” Bonnie moves to the edges, holding her breath as she grazes Marceline’s ear. “I think she just does it to herself to help with brain freeze. Something else I didn’t get quite right, I guess.”
She would smack herself if her hands weren’t covered in medicated shampoo. Is this really the most casual conversation she could come up with?
Marcy’s breath hitches just slightly. She lets it go with a sigh. “If that’s how you feel, you can always quit the princess gig and massage scalps for a living.”
Bonnie laughs awkwardly. “I don’t like touching people enough for that.”
“You seem okay touching me.”
She doesn’t say anything. Her glasses are starting to steam up just a bit on the bottom, and she hopes the heat doesn’t travel through her gloved fingers. Marcy leans back into them.
“Thank you for helping, Bonnibel.”
Bonnie continues kneading the shampoo into her hair, meticulous as ever.
“My pleasure, Marceline,” she murmurs back.
Bonnie looks with love for a moment, on the walk back to the kingdom. Marceline insists on accompanying her, and while the it’s too globing cold excuse holds up, Bonnie’s grateful for the parts she doesn’t say. Walking with Marcy feels okay, and good, and terrifyingly familiar. She can’t help the giggles that pour out, can only hope it doesn’t sound as puppy love as it feels.
“What are you looking at?” Marceline glares back. “Did you miss a bug or something?”
“No, you just— You’re adorable.”
“Stop.”
“But it’s true! You always have nice hair, but this is a new look, and I— I just think it’s really cute.”
“I think you’re really cute. Your face is so red right now.”
“Don’t change the subject, Marceline the Cutie Pie Queen. I touched a lot of lice for you today.”
She rolls her eyes. “You wanna pet it?”
“Pet a— a louse?”
“No, ew!” She laughs at the horror that must show on Bonnie’s face. “Pet my hair. It’s really soft like this! It’s almost dry now, so, y’know… feels different.”
“Your hair is always soft.”
“Well, right now, it’s just like Schwabl after that time he went through the washing machine.”
“That’s a lot better than Schwabl on any other day.”
“Oh, come on,” Marceline laughs. “He’s gross, but you love him.”
“Yeah,” Bonnie relents, quietly. She never considered it before, but it’s true. And it’s been a while. “What’s he been up to anyway? Still, uh…”
“Undead?” Marcy fills in. “I assume so. Haven’t seen him in a bit, but he always comes back.”
An odd thing for anyone to sound so sure of, let alone Marceline, but then, she says the same thing about Simon. Lately, she says it like it’s a good thing.
Bonnie pushes away the thought that it might not be odd at all to shrug about the well-being of a loved one when there’s no apparent reason to question it. Finn was the same, albeit a bit more agitated, about Jake’s absence. He left a note.
She left the castle once, closed all her eyes but the ones on her face, and her brother’s cries haven’t left the back of her mind since. Because she assumed all was normal, she could’ve lost him. And in the blink of an eye, Marceline too.
Now she can see the castle clearly ahead, though they’re still making their way through the outer kingdom. It looms like a bad habit, as inviting as it is hostile. She knows she’ll start working the moment she enters, just like she knows she’ll never stop. She knows it’ll be worth it. It has to be.
The sound doesn’t even register before Bonnie reacts. She grips Marcy’s hand on the far side and tugs her close to her back.
“Why—?”
They hear the tree just ahead rustle again, louder this time, and Bonnie shushes, squeezing hard enough to cut off circulation if Marceline had any. The ribbony leaves of the sour candy tree stand still, and so do they, for a moment.
“Bonnie, I don’t—”
“It’s okay, Marcy,” she whispers. “It’s gonna be okay. Just stay—”
Something pink and squishy and unfamiliar jumps out of the tree. Bonnie would have punched it already if she could still see it. Or at least, she hopes so. Instead she’s shouting and stumbling back, like a scared little kid, into Marceline’s sturdy form.
“It’s just a little guy, Peebs,” Marcy says. She pushes gently away and crouches down to speak to it. “What’s up?”
Bonnie bends down too, expelling what little air was left in her lungs. She doesn’t speak. She’s not sure she can.
A tiny pink shape squints up at her, waving a toothpick-sized sword. “I’m Kent,” it squeaks. “I think I’m lost. What’s wrong with that tree?”
Marceline laughs under her breath, glancing at Bonnie with her eyebrows raised, like she’s expecting her to answer. Bonnie doesn’t. She’s pretty sure, now, that she can’t.
“It’s candy.” Marceline looks back down. “Are you Shelby’s brother?”
Kent nods, delighted, and sheaths his sword. “You know Shelby?”
“Hell yeah, we do!” Marcy confirms. “I’m pretty sure he’s the only reason Jake’s viola ever gets tuned.”
“Well, thank Glob for that!” He laughs, a chittering sound that almost makes Bonnie smile. She finds her reluctant tongue and focuses hard.
“T-reehouse?”
“That’s where I came from!” He nods and points to a tiny hole in the chocolate dirt behind him. “Surfaced right there. Kinda sticky.”
“Headed back?” Marcy asks.
“Yeah.” He shrugs his tiny shoulders. “I got a good dewdrop lawyer.”
Marceline, who looks like she knows maybe a third of what Kent is talking about, points him in the right direction.
“Good luck,” Bonnie says out loud as he leaves. She wishes he’d stay, if only to keep distracting Marceline from what an idiot she is.
“Today was fun, right?”
“I…” Bonnie smiles, still shaking, and presses her hands together.
“You like taking breaks like this. You still like hanging out with everyone. Right?”
She knits her fingers together, knuckles squishing in within their calloused outer gum. “I could’ve missed something real.”
Marceline rolls her eyes. “That’s not what I asked.”
“Once in a while, a break is fine, yes. But there’s no way of knowing which once in a while is safe.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m doing things the way I’m supposed to, okay? The way I need to.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Bonnie shrugs, feeling the ghost of the triple gravity machine on her shoulders again. “It works.”
Marceline looks like she’s searching for words that Bonnie can’t hear— or won’t hear. What’s the difference?
“You’re right though,” Bonnie says first. “Today was fun. I really hope…”
Her heart sits in her frame like a bowling ball in jello, gravity testing the mold with every wobbling moment. She studies Marceline’s face, the shadows under her bright eyes, the tiny tip of fang over her lip, the little tuft of clipped hair static-stuck to one ear. She never ceases to be so jarringly, heartbreakingly beautiful. Then, for a split second, Marceline’s skin flashes mashmallowy white. Bonnie blinks until she’s real again.
Dread radiates out from her bowling ball chest, every part of her body alive with it. She can’t look any longer, so she smiles to the side and fixes her mouth for a royal voice. When she uses it for words as raw as these, it doesn’t sound like her voice at all.
“I really, really hope I get more todays with you, Marcy.”
What she doesn’t say out loud — because then Marceline might feel the need to respond, and neither of them is ready for that — is that she really, really hopes she can deserve them.