#thank you notte and nebula for beta-ing!!!!

[rosalineandrosemary]

he reached for the sun, and the sun took his hand.

Ao3

There are benches both inside and outside of their school, even without counting the cafeteria, but they’re all encompassed by the hustle and bustle of their school. And so, when Marinette starts walking away from the school after the lunch bells ring, Felix follows like a moth to a flame. She walks past her house, waving at her maman through the windows of the bakery, and he waves too, stiffly. Her maman smiles at them, and points to the display cases to ask if they want anything. Marinette shakes her head and raises the bag she’s holding, to which Mme. Cheng nods, and they keep walking.

Marinette stops them at one of the benches in the park, and sits down in the shade. He sits down without prompting, and Marinette beams at him, a smile that could challenge the sun. He freezes and looks away, trying to hide the warmth growing in his cheeks, and pulls his lunch out of his bag. 

“Did you hear what Lila was saying in class today? Talking about her latest trips to far off places but all the images she showed you can find online with five minutes of searching. Like, it’s nice to sit by you during class, but sometimes I wish I could still sit by Alya in the seat we earned, you know?” 

He hummed in agreement, perfectly content to let her talk while he ate his lunch, but she instead let the statement hang in the air before pulling out her own lunch. 

The silence was companionable, broken only by remnants of conversation from other small student groups and the laughter of some of the playing children. Around halfway through their allotted lunch time, Marinette puts away her containers with a content noise and a full body wiggle before pulling her sketchbook from the confines of her backpack. “Do you mind if I sketch? I have a couple ideas for some outfits that I really want to get down!”

“Feel free.”

“Thanks, Fe!” She smiles again and he’s lost in it, left staring even after she’s turned away. It’s as if her smile is burned into his eyes, an entoptic phenomenon that steals his breath from his lungs. By the time he pries his eyes away, Marinette is already immersed in her designs, her tongue poking out from between her lips. He reaches into his bag to pull out his book, but none of the words stick in his mind, eyes trailing back to stare at Marinette’s quiet joy. 

Eventually he gives up, placing his book back in his bag and sitting there, staring into his own personal sun, sitting right next to him. The ice in his chest is melting into a pooling ocean and it feels like he’s about to overflow with it, surface tension being the only thing keeping his feelings from spilling out and he can’t bear to stare at her for any longer. 

He tears his eyes away, trying to turn the water back into ice, to freeze the feelings back in his chest and keep it contained, but there’s too much water and too many feelings and even if he can turn some of them into icebergs it doesn’t change the amount of water and finally everything comes spilling out. 

“It hurts to look at you sometimes, Marinette.” His words, soft as they may be, break the silence between them. She turns to look at him, endlessly blue eyes piercing into his skin, eyebrows furrowing with worry, an expression he’s seen time and time again: when he gets too close to akuma fights, when the bags under his eyes are darker and he forgoes his usual coffee order for something with more caffeine, or when she’s worrying about other people and he gets to watch the all-consuming flames of her care. 

“Felix?” Her voice is soft and confused, and it takes everything within him to not turn to look at her, to not let the words freeze on his tongue, to not shove everything he’s feeling back underneath his infamous “ice prince” persona that she so carefully took apart. 

He watches her out of his periphery, continuing to stare ahead and try to figure out how to melt the ice in his chest that he had tried so hard to freeze. He can’t take this back now. He can’t leave her with just that phrase, not with the twists and turns and dark corners all throughout her brain. “You’re incandescent, a sun of your own volition, and I fear that I am forever just going to be orbiting you at a distance.” He tightens his grip around the strap of his bag, white knuckled and shaking softly, before releasing it and stretching out his fingers. Felix sees her move, place her hands down on the bench, moving to get up, to stare him in the eyes. Her mouth is opening, an indignant cry of his name on her lips, and he feels like he’s going to burn from the inside out. 

“Please,” he croaks, voice unsteady. “Please, let me finish, Marinette.” His tone is worrying her even further, and so are his words. It’s written plain on her face, a book she never chose to lock. Her emotions are her strength and it’s awe-inspiring to see from inside his several layers of ice, carefully frozen to keep everything locked inside. She continues to melt it with ease, leaving him scrambling, but he needs to tell her.

 “Try as I might, I can’t keep this in any longer. I feel as though I am bursting at the seams, combusting. You melted the walls and pillars of ice I formed for years, nosing your way into every nook and cranny of my being, and I believe I have fallen for you.” Marinette lets out a soft gasp and he turns away, lacing his fingers around the strap of his bag once again. 

He can’t bear to see the look on her face when she rejects him. Disgust? Horror? Her quiet kind of upset, where her eyes fill with tears and she tries to stifle it, to push away her own feelings over and over again? 

He keeps talking, a desperate bid to keep himself away from the truth for as long as he can. “I apologize for the hastiness of my confession, and I hope I didn’t upset you too much. I’m sorry if I did, I truly had no intention to, but I understand if you reject me and I’d even understand if you never wished to see me again, I just wished to--”

“Felix.” Her voice stops him in his tracks, body tensing. “Felix, do you mind if I touch you?” Her voice is soft and her words kind but he flinches regardless, giving a jerky nod. He didn’t expect her to want to touch him, not after he ruined their friendship, but he tensed further as he thought of all the power contained in her body and prepared for backlash. He knew, intrinsically, that someone as kind as Marinette could never hurt someone maliciously, but that knowledge fell into the chasm of fear in his chest, and all he could hope was that she would choose to spare him, even a little. 

One of her hands enters his line of sight and he flinches, closing his eyes, before her warm hand is placed softly on his cheek, slowly turning his head to face in her direction. “Felix, I could never be upset with you for that.” Her tone is impossibly tender, her hand is still cupping his cheek, and he exhales slowly before opening his eyes. 

There are tears dripping down her cheeks, rolling down to the beaming smile stretched across her lips, and she raises her other hand to hold his face like he’s something precious. “I adore you, did you know that?” She smiles even brighter, looking him in the eyes before continuing. 

“Each pen has a specific place in your pencil case, and you change which pen you use each school period. You take your coffee with cream and sugar even though you say it’s black when anyone asks. You pretend you’re made of ice because it’s everything you’ve known, but you still care even if it’s not in your best interests. Everything about you is something to love, and I do. And you’re here. Despite everything, you’re here, not orbiting some foreign sun or wasting away in a cavern of ice. You’re right here, with me, and I am holding your face in my hands and you are beautiful.” She’s still crying, tears catching the sunlight, and she presses her forehead to his but it’s just warm. Nothing burns and she is so close and she’s not a sun, she’s simply Marinette, and he loves her more than anything he’s ever known. 

“Thank you, Marinette.” Those words, choked out his throat, try to compact everything he’s feeling into one simple statement. The love, the awe, the feeling of reaching something he never thought he would be able to reach, the pure joy filling in every gap where fear laid just moments before, like the sun rising over Paris. But instead of being that sun, Marinette is here and she is right in front of him and she is watching the sky turn pink and the darkness retreat and it may be noon but he thinks this is the prettiest sunrise he has ever seen. 

“There’s nothing to thank me for, Felix.” He smiles at her, leaning against one of her hands, placing his own on top of hers. He feels ridiculous holding his own face but she brightens impossibly more and there is blush flaring on his cheeks and he tries to look away but she’s still right there.

“Well then, how about saying I love you instead?” He tries to put confidence in his voice, but he is putty in her hands and she can tell, her smile turning from something big and beaming to something small but so fond it almost makes his chest ache. 

“I love you too, Felix.” And she locks eyes with him and looks down and he tries to nod but forgets that she’s that close and bumps heads with her instead. 

Marinette laughs and it’s joyful and he just stares at her and hopes that she can see the fondness building in his chest when he looks at her. She stops laughing and her cheeks flush to a pink color that he thinks could be his favorite color. Every part of her is his favorite color. The blue color of her hair in the light, the blue color of her eyes, the color of the faint freckles on her cheeks and the pink of her blush and he’s staring again, he knows he is, but she just smiles and places her forehead back against his. 

“Can I kiss you?” She whispers it, like they’re in their own little world, and he presses forward and kisses her first. Her lips are soft and she tastes like a fruit flavor he can’t quite recall, not with her hands on his face and her lips on his.

There aren’t fireworks, or sparks. There’s no burning or fire or hurting. There’s just him and there’s Marinette and a feeling of home and rightness like everything he’s ever wanted. 

He breaks away first, offers another whispered “I love you” against her lips before she pulls away too, far enough away that he can actually see things beyond her eyes and her cheeks and her hair. 

She moves one of her hands and he lifts his so she can take it back, and she puts on a mock-serious face that can’t hide the joy in her eyes. 

“If you ever talk about yourself that way again I’m going to fight you.” She waggles one finger at him, lips curling to conceal her laughter, and he raises his eyebrows even as he melts further into her remaining hand.

“You’re going to fight me?” 

“Yes! With love and affection and pets.” He doesn't get a chance to ask what she means by pets before her nails are scratching through his hair, and he wished he could deny the way that his eyes flutter shut at the feeling.

“You make a formidable opponent, my dear.” She giggles, moving to scratch behind his ear before the alarm goes off, telling them that they have to make their way back to school if they don’t want to be late.

She reaches her hand out to him and he takes it, lacing his fingers between hers.