BREATHE | bubbline ✓

" why are you asking these questions "

BONNIBEL OPENS HER eyes. Oh — Marceline was still here, and...she was sleeping. Didn't she say that she didn't need to sleep? It was an oddly peaceful sight though: Marceline, with her long dark hair covering half of her face and her mouth slightly ajar, Bonnibel experiences a whole new, yet somehow familiar emotion growing in her chest.

She almost doesn't want to wake Marceline, but it was time for school. But...she supposes she can spare a little bit of time...just a little.

Marceline's eyelids flutter in her slumber, and her nose scrunches when the smallest sliver of sunlight which seeped through the curtains touches her skin. Slightly alarmed, Bonnibel could see — though it was really, really faint — a tiny wisp of smoke rising from Marceline's pores.

Alarmed, and chiding herself for completely forgetting that vampires were susceptible to sunlight, Bonnibel leaps off her bed as ninja-like as possible, and reaches to pull her curtains—

"What're you doing?" Marceline is squinting at her, hair tousled and as messy — yet neat — as ever.

Bonnibel furiously yanks her curtains as close together as possible, scrambling about for something more opaque when she realises that it didn't really work. "You're burning to ashes."

"Erh," Marceline says, scratching her cheek and slowly rising from the bed. "I won't die. It just hurts a little, but it's bearable. Half-vamp only, remember?"

"Oh." Bonnibel stops whatever she's doing and remembers that she has seen Marceline in the sun before — though not very often, but—glob, she was so stupid. "Right."

Marceline walks up behind her and nudges her gently. "Thanks for the concern, though."

Bonnibel leans into her touch, glad it wasn't anything serious. "Sleep well?"

Marceline blushes. "Yeah. I have not slept since...well, I woke to find you."

"Oh, yeah, how did that happen?" Bonnibel cranes her neck to be able to make eye contact with Marceline, but the latter merely shrugs her off and crosses the room to the door.

"I actually slept in the Nightosphere." Marceline rests her hand on the doorknob. "It was the closest thing to home to me, and, I don't know how to explain it, but I just knew you were here." She turns the knob and pushes the door open, tilting her head to smile, widely, at Bonnibel. "Come on, let's go to school, I guess."

Something about Marceline's expression...more pain. Bonnibel is getting slightly better at reading her emotions, she figures. But she probably shouldn't be thinking about this when she's sitting in math class.

"Pst," Finn whispers to her — over the teacher's rambling about things that Bonnibel already understood better than her own life turmoil — from where he sits beside her. "Unusual to see you not paying attention."

Bonnibel snaps out of daydreams of Marceline's pretty eyes. "I'm listening."

"You're doodling." Finn taps his pencil against his textbook, cheek in propped up hand.

Bonnibel throws a glance at her notebook, which had math equations on the left page, but on the right, a completely different set of name scrawling and figure studies that Bonnibel hadn't even realised she had been capable of.

"Pay attention, Finn." She casually flips to a new page and taps the butt of her pen on the paper, feeling the heat creep up her ears. No, she wasn't embarrassed at getting caught. By Finn, no less.

Finn glances back to the board. He bids his time, and Bonnibel knows that he wishes to probe further, judging by he was beginning to shake his leg.

"Are you..." Finn speaks a little louder than he intended, so he clears his throat as softly as he can to mask it. Both the sound and the need. "...Do you really like Marceline?"