Anonymous

22

Bonnibel sipped on the mug of chamomile tea and leaned back in her desk chair. She listened attentively, her gaze occasionally flicking over to her open bedroom window. She knew that it was kind of sad that she was waiting, but if Marceline was late it'd look weird if Bonnie hadn't noticed, and if she didn't scold her for it.

If she was being honest, Bonnibel was actually kind of dreading this. Seeing Marceline in school was one thing, but seeing her outside of it? Another in its entirety. It was far more nerve wracking.

But the main reason that Bonnie was dreading things wasn't because it was Marceline she was meeting; although that was a contributing factor. No, it was because of the things going on in her head. Ever since M had suggested that she might be gay, it'd started to become more and more of a problem in her life. Every time one of her female friends so much as smiled at her and she thought something along the lines of 'wow, they're pretty', she would scold herself. If she felt anything, she'd take a few minutes to tell herself off. And even though she didn't particularly like Marceline, she was an attractive girl – Bonnie couldn't deny that – which made everything a little bit more complicated.

Marceline had freaked her out enough before. She didn't need the added trauma of her possibly not being straight.

No, Bonnie was quick to correct that, stop it, Bonnie. You're straight. You just haven't met the right boy yet. Just because you can look at a girl and think 'yeah, she's pretty' doesn't mean you want to be in a relationship with her.

Thankfully, before she could get into yet another argument with herself about how she wasn't attracted to girls, there was a knock on her bedroom door. Shaking her head to clear it, she spun around on her desk chair and called out. "Come in."

Her bedroom door swung open and Marceline sauntered in as casually as ever. "Sup, nerd. How come you're suddenly asking to hang out with me? Got a little crush on me, eh?"

Naturally, as soon as Bonnie's head was clear, Marceline clouded it up again. Bonnibel shook her head fast enough to give herself whiplash and scrambled to deny that as quickly as she could, all while a little voice in her head taunted her. See, it said, even Marceline can tell you're not straight. You're just in denial.

"I- I'm not, uh- I'm... no, Marceline," Bonnibel sighed in exasperation as she was unable to form the words and turned away from the other girl to wipe her watery eyes. She didn't want to be gay, and she wasn't going to be. Because she wasn't, and she couldn't be something she's not.

Marceline shot her an odd look and it made Bonnie feel more alien than ever. "Chill. It was a joke."

Bonnibel cleared her throat and tried to push it out of her head. "Yeah, okay. Just-" she tried to think of something else to talk about. Something that wouldn't bring her back to the subject of her sexuality. "Uh, I'm not asking to hang out with you. We need to start meeting up regularly to study if we want the next project to go better than the last one. We only got a B, and I'm a straight A student. Obviously it was our extreme incompatibility that was the cause, so we need to work on that."

"We already did," Marceline made herself at home and flopped down on her bed, "I promised to be civil. Problem solved."

"Problem not solved." Bonnie quickly corrected. She dropped her pen on her desk and stood up, crossing over her room to sit next to Marceline on her bed. "Problem still there. We need to stop being so... hostile. I know you don't like me, and that's-"

"I don't dislike you," Marceline completely surprised her with that, and Bonnibel's stomach twisted. She tried putting that down to excitement – she was always happy to make a new platonic friend. "I don't really... I'm just neutral. You know?"