#mlfic

“Chlo, stop,” Marinette finally tells her one day, somehow finding the strength to pull away from a wonderfully heated kiss.  Chloe is hovering over her on the bed, the blonde’s hands splayed across her own above her. 

“No,” Chloe groans into her neck, sliding her knees closer in to tighten the straddle she had on Marinette, and capturing her lips again.  She nips playfully at her shoulder before 

“Seriously, Chlo.  Stop and just talk to me for a minute.” Marinette cups Chloe’s face in her hands. She brushes her thumb gently across the other girl’s cheek and cranes her neck up so she can rest her forehead against the other’s.  “Let’s just talk.” “Fine,” she finally huffs, sitting up and soothing off of her so she can get off.  She takes a moment to smooth down her hair and straighten the tank top on her shoulder before looking at Marinette. “What do you want to talk about?” 

Marinette sits up as well and stares at her in contemplation before speaking.  “Mainly why you don’t want to talk.  Don’t get me wrong, Chloe.  I love doing this,” she gestures in between them and back at the bed, “but, I want more than just this.  Don’t you too?” 

Chloe fiddles with her bracelet, avoiding Marinette’s eyes.  She takes a couple of deep breathes before nodding, and brushing away the tears that hates herself for letting flood her vision.  Marinette gasps when she notices the tears and pulls the other girl onto her lap, wrapping herself as tightly around her as she can.  “Chlo, wha- No, don’t cry.   What’s wrong, Chloe?  It’s okay,” she whispers frantically, planting light kisses on her head and cheeks.  “Just talk to me.” 

Chloe nods against her shoulder, but doesn’t pull away from her.  “I just wanted this for so long, Marinette- wanted you for so long.  I’m so scared that you’re going to change your mind, or realize I don’t deserve you.  All those years I was too afraid to love you, so I was so terrible to you instead. I’m terrified that every time I kiss you is going to be the last.” Her sobs are pathetic whimpers now, and it breaks Marinette’s heart in two. 

“Chloe Bourgeois, look at me right now,” Marinette tells her softly, but firmly.  Chloe looks up at her, her face blotchy and eyes bloodshot and wet. Marinette cups her face and stares at her so intensely that it sends a shiver down her spine.  “I love you.  I’m not going anywhere.  You’ve changed, Chloe.   You’re so good now, and I’m so proud of you for it.  I love you for it.” 

“You do?” Chloe smiles through a sniffle.  She feels like her heart could burst through her chest any second.  She starts crying again, this time tears of elation.  “You really love me?” 

“I really love you,” Marinette nods with a bubble of happy laughter, wiping her tears away. 

Chloe captures her lips in her own, nearly clanging her teeth against Marinette’s through her grin.  She kisses every inch of her she can, trailing kisses down her neck, across her collarbone, and back up to her lips again.   This time, when she pins her to the bed, Marinette does not protest, but only pulls her closer, soaking in how glorious it sounds to hear Chloe whisper “I love you, too,” with every kiss. 

A rude and snarky retort sat just behind her teeth ready to tear into him, but there it sat. Whether it was the migraine or her new and confusing feelings directed at Nathanael that held it back she couldn’t tell. Instead, she pressed her fingers into her temples and asked, “How long was I asleep?”

“A few hours. It’s just a little after one.” He pointed his pencil towards the kitchen. “There’s some pain pills on the counter if you need them. I would have made some coffee, but…”

“But you don’t know how?” She rounded the island in the kitchen and spotted the tiny red bottle. A quick search through the cabinets and she finally found a water glass.

“I know how to make coffee, but…” He turned his eyes back down to the album. “There’s nothing but whole bean in there.”

“Of course, I refuse to live under the same roof as pre-ground bullshit.” She found the beans and a grinder, paused, then turned back to Nathanael. “Get in here, Red. I may not like you, but everyone deserves to know how to make a decent cup of coffee.”

When she saw Nathanael blush at her invitation, she had to fight against the word ‘adorable’ crossing through her mind. He set the books aside and joined her in the kitchen. She taught him the proper proportions of beans to water, the proper grind settings, then set a kettle on the stove. As they waited for the water to boil, she asked, “What were you doing with the album?”

He was quiet for too long to Chloe’s liking. He finally said, “References. I thought I’d...practice drawing a wedding.”

Chloe moved across the kitchen to stand in front of him and crossed her arms. “You’re a terrible liar, you know that? You have the internet, a window into the next ten years of fashion and design. Getting to see that before literally anyone else? And you choose our...the wedding album?”

Nathanael matched her glare for a few seconds before he rolled his eyes and looked away. “Okay, I got curious too. I didn’t get that good of a look at it this morning, so I started flipping through it and...wanted to draw a few things. There, happy?”

“No. What about that book could have piqued your curiosity?”

A subtle movement dropped her gaze to his hands, where she noticed him twisting his wedding band about his finger. “I guess...it’s like I said to Marinette and the others last night; I want to know how this happened. How did we go from being bitter enemies to…” He lifted his left hand, fingers still playing with the ring.

Chloe stared at his hand for a long while. The Chloe and Nathanael of this world obviously had a strong relationship, but where had it come from? Sure, ten years was a long time, time enough for her to move on from Adrien and possibly to...but that was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. There was no way she’d choose someone else over Adrien...except she had. Or this world’s version of her had. And the Adrien of this world seemed happy with Marinette. Her thoughts flashed back to what Nathanael had said about the Akuma. Fairytale was supposed to make people live their happy endings. Did this mean that her happy ending wasn’t with Adrien?

The low whistle from the kettle broke her out of her thoughts and she finished showing Nathanael how to properly use a coffee press. Chloe found herself inexplicably smiling as he took his first sip of properly pressed coffee and melted into his mug. She raised her own mug to her lips to hide the smile, but had the slightest suspicion she hadn’t been quick enough. The damnedest thing was that she didn’t care. Maybe it was because he’d seen her at quite possibly the lowest she’d ever been in her life, but she wanted him to see her smile.

“Do you want to go through the album together?” Chloe looked to him and raised a brow. “You know, actually take a good look at the photos now that you’re…umm...” He turned away and bit his lip.

“Now that I’m not obsessed over my mother. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“No!” Chloe stared at him. “Okay, kinda. You know what? This was a bad idea.” He squeezed his way past her and made his way back to the couch. “I should probably just-”

“Sure.”

Nathanael whipped around and gaped. “Wha?”

“Sure, let’s look at the album together. It’s not like I have anything else to do until Ladybug gets us out of here. Besides, if I do get all weepy over my mother, I have…” You, she was going to say, because he had been her sole source of comfort since waking up in this strange world. As much as she hated his guts, having him around, that sense of familiarity, was better than nothing. She bit the inside of her cheek and reminded herself exactly who he was, who he worked for, and continued, “I have to get over it eventually.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, but soon shrugged and slid over on the couch to make room for her. Okay, not what she expected. She grabbed her coffee and sat down beside him, then turned her attention to the album on his knee.

An outdoor wedding. Flowers everywhere, rows upon rows of chairs set in...Chloe reached over and flipped another page, searching for an identifying landmark. Ah, there. The Jardin du Luxembourg. A nice venue. Several women in yellow sundresses. Marinette, Alya, Kagami, and...Sabrina. Chloe pulled the album into her lap and ran her fingers over Sabrina. When had they made amends? How long after Sabrina walked out on her, tired of Chloe using her superhero status to shove more and more schoolwork onto her? More tears pricked at the corners of Chloe’s eyes, but she wiped them away and turned another page.

She blushed at the picture of Nathanael, wearing black slacks, a purple button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black kippah. Somehow the purple worked for him, and...was he wearing a bee charm bracelet? He looked...really nice, especially with his hair tied back like thaaaa-no. No, she wasn’t going to think about him like that. Focus on something else, Chloe. He wasn’t wearing a jacket or a tie, so maybe they were going for a more casual wedding? Which didn’t make sense, if one of Paris’ superheroes were getting married, it would be a huge event, right?

On the next page...ah, her dress. A black lacy bodice with a low-scooped neckline, halter straps, and pearl adornments dangling from the front. From the waist down, a pure white sheath skirt with gold embroidered hem and a pale yellow sash tied about her waist, the knot somehow tied in such a way to resemble a flower. Lace fingerless gloves in the same yellow as the sash. A simple diamond and pearl tiara with her veil flowing from the back, her hair tied up with a plain white ribbon, and a bouquet of yellow dahlias. She squinted and looked closer at her necklace. Stones of purple, blue, and green. Paon’s colors. Now that she got a better look at it, it was subdued, but still spoke to her color pallet. Light fabrics to let it breath in the heat of summer. Marinette outdid herself.

“Are you nervous, Nath?” Chloe turned to the laptop at the sound of Nino’s voice. It was a shaky video of Nathanael buttoning up the shirt she had just seen, and another blush crept up on her face.

“Nervous? No. Relieved that we’re finally here? Yeah. Relieved that all of the planning and prep is over.” He chuckled. “Not that Chlo let me do much. She insisted on doing almost everything, including pay for all of this.” He turned to face the camera. “You know, her original budget was over a hundred thousand euros? Do you know how long it took me to talk her down from that? I mean, she justified it as a ‘charitable donation’ to expand the gardens, but that was still a bit much.”

“Well, Queen Bee is the face of the international ‘Save the Bees’ movement,” Nino said from behind the camera.

Nathanael smiled again. “Yeah, she is, however accidental it may be.”  He leaned over to grab something off of a nearby table. “I didn’t even really want a wedding if I’m honest, but the moment I mentioned the word ‘elope’ to Chloe, she became a living nightmare until I relented.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you,” Chloe heard from her left. She elbowed Nathanael in the ribs, but kept her eyes on the video.

Nathanael stood back up stuffing whatever he searched for in his pocket. “But I’m glad we’re here. I’m glad she’s…” He turned his gaze to a nearby door and somehow, Chloe knew she was...no. Her alternate self was beyond that door. “If you’d told me ten, fifteen years ago that I’d eventually be married to Chloe Bourgeois, I would have laughed in your face. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Not Marinette, not Marc. She…” He chuckled. “She’s come so far since we were in lycee, and I’m so happy…” When he turned back to the camera and smiled, Chloe felt her heart skip a beat. “I’m so happy she’s about to be my wife.”

The screen faded to black, and when color bloomed back in, Chloe stood in the center wearing her wedding dress, her hands fidgeting and her eyes trained on a mirror in front of her.

“Chloe! Stop squirming!” came Marinette’s voice from just off frame.

Chloe looked down and mouthed ‘sorry’, then looked back into the mirror and sighed, her frayed nerves evident in her eyes.

“Don’t know what you’re so nervous about, girl,” Alya said behind the camera. “You’re Le Grand Paris’ chief event coordinator so you obviously know what you’re doing and you’ve triple checked every-damn-thing. This is probably going to be the smoothest wedding ever, granted Mayor Bourgeois doesn’t break down into tears like M. Dupain did.”

“Okay, just because my dad sobbed so loud the priest had to start over three times, that does not mean our wedding didn’t go smoothly.”

“It’s not the ceremony!” Chloe stomped, eliciting another swear from Marinette. Chloe apologized again and wrung her hands together. “I’m...kinda waiting to wake up.” Marinette’s head lifted into frame, a couple of pins hanging from the corner of her mouth and an inquisitive look in her eyes. “I treated Nath like shit for years, treated all of you like shit, and now look at us. Marinette made me a custom dress, Alya and Nino are handling our album, Sabrina agreed to be my maid of honor, and Nath…” She turned her eyes down to her left hand, her engagement ring sparkling in the light. “He proposed. After eight years of probably the rockiest relationship ever, he...chose me. Chose to spend the rest of his life bound to me. Me.

“I feel like this is a dream. I feel like the moment I say ‘I do’, I’ll wake up, I’ll be a teenager again, and Paon and I will be back to kicking each other’s teeth in.” She turned down to Marinette. “Did you ever go through this whole ‘too good to be true’ thing with Adrien?”

The camera lowered to Marinette, who huffed and flashed a wry grin before returning to her work on Chloe’s dress. “When he agreed to date me after two years of stalkery pining, kind of. After I found out he was Chat Noir, definitely. I thought there was no way the guy I loved and the cat who loved me were the same person. Even on our wedding day, I expected it to be some kind of Akuma spell, but here I am, six years deep into marriage with a pair of five-year-olds, and I couldn’t be happier.”

She smiled up at Chloe. “I assure you, this isn’t a dream. You deserve to be happy. After everything you’ve gone through, you deserve this.”

“Especially after all the bullshit you went through with The-Bitch-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

“Alya!” Marinette scolded, but the smile on her face betrayed her true feelings.

“What?” The camera shook in time with Alya’s laughter. “Chlo put the kibosh on mentioning her name, so how else are you supposed to know who I’m talking about?”

“You’re right.” Marinette and the camera refocused on Chloe. “You’re both right. I deserve this. I’ve changed so much since I was a stupid kid, and Nathanael sees that. He believes I deserve to be happy, and you know what?” She turned back to the camera and the smile on her face was bigger and brighter than Nathanael had ever seen. “I believe it too.”

That particular video file ended and Nathanael turned back to Chloe, who had her eyes down on the album in her lap. She seemed focused on a picture of her dress, which was strange since she described it as ‘lackluster’ earlier. “Are you alright?” he asked.

Chloe ran her fingers over the picture, and when she spoke, she spoke with an odd mix of wonder and sorrow in her voice. “I...she was right. It feels like a dream. This is me. I know this is me but it still feels like I’m looking at someone else’s life.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and all Nathanael could make out was, “I’ve never seen…”

“Never seen what?”

She shook her head and blinked at him, his voice jarring her from her stupor. “N-nothing.” She looked down at the album, stood, and held it out to him. “I’m done for today. You can look through it if you like.” When Nathanael accepted it, she collected their empty coffee mugs and strode into the kitchen, seeming all too eager to put distance between herself and him. Or maybe the album.

Nathanael looked down at the photo Chloe had been looking at. The Chloe in the photo wore the same smile she had in the video. Judging from the background, Nathanael guessed this photo was taken moments after that segment of the video ended, when Marinette had finished her last adjustments on the dress. That smile...he’d never seen Chloe smile that big or that bright. He’d never seen…

He paused and looked back up at Chloe, slowly realizing what she’d whispered.

Fighting akumas was easy, because at the end of the day, the person was just dealing with a bad day negatively. All they needed was a smile from Ladybug and the reassurance that they could move on with their lives. They forgot their moments of desperation in a heartbeat, caught up in the excitement of Ladybug and the idea that her butterflies had purified their entire souls.

It wasn’t like that with Chloé. It couldn’t be like that. Chloé had years of burying her emotions and pain borne out of loneliness that couldn’t just be wiped away with a yoyo, magic or not. But Marinette wondered if maybe, just maybe, a tiny part of Chloé hoped that they could be, and that’s why she loved Ladybug so much.

“You did the right thing by walking away,” Tikki told her, nestled comfortably in her purse. “Staying there would just have provoked Chloé further.”

Marinette smiled, watched her reflection in the mirror and wondered if she always looked so small. “I know. It’s just…”

The words wouldn’t come to her, wouldn’t make their way to her vocal cords and then her mouth and into the air. Tikki gazed at her quietly, patiently, and Marinette was hit once again by the startling realization that she’s most likely been in similar situations with other holders.

“I wish she wasn’t so closed off,” Marinette finished lamely, her eyes concentrating almost painfully on her clenched fingers. “It would make things so much better.”

Tikki smiled then, the way she always did, but this time Marinette saw centuries and millennia of experiences that she herself would never even come close to. It was so easy to forget that Tikki was part of the very fabric holding the world together, that she was as embedded in the mechanisms of life as oxygen was.

“People being open with one another would improve a lot in life,” Tikki said. “But people love to hold onto their secrets and guard their hearts close. Even if they’ve been hurt in the past. Especially if they’ve been hurt in the past.”

Before Marinette could come up with a response, she heard voices outside the bathroom door, and knew other students was close to entering. With a tight smile to Tikki she closed her clasp, smoothing down her and grabbing her bag off the floor.

With a deep breath, she steeled herself for her next interaction with Chloé and made her way to class.

“You’re on time today, Marinette,” Madame Bustier called out from down the hallway, and Marinette partially turned to shoot her favorite teacher a smile.

“I guess it’s a day for miracles,” she said, laughing and stopping so Madame Bustier could catch up.

“Well I’m glad for it,” Madame Bustier replied, shortening her stride once she was next to Marinette. “Because I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with Chloé Bourgeois.”

Marinette flushed, remembering all too late that in the chaos of the previous day, Madame Bustier and Alya- Alya!- had walked in on Chloé kissing her.

“Madame, I-”

“There’s no need,” Madame Bustier interrupted, holding up a hand and failing to conceal her smile. “The less I know about your personal relationships, the better I can do my job as your teacher. I just ask that the two of you keep your interactions appropriate while you are inside the building.”

Marinette nodded as fast as she could, knowing there was no use in trying to explain that nothing like that was happening. After all, how could she explain that Chloé had kissed her after asking her to fake date her, only to end up running away later on?

“I’ll keep it in mind,” was all she could say, which turned out to be the right thing to say. Madame Bustier smiled at her, warm and happy before stopping right outside the classroom door.

“As your teacher, this isn’t my business to say,” Madame said with a wink, “but I think you will be a positive influence on Chloé.”

And then she was gone, leaving Marinette flustered and speechless in the hallway.

“So,” Alya said, sometime during their lunch hour with a casual glance towards Chloé. “How are things going between you and your girlfriend?”

Marinette froze up mid-bite, staring at Alya wide-eyed and desperately shaking her head. “It’s not like that,” she said, failing to be convincing. Which was weird, considering Chloé really wasn’t Marinette’s girlfriend.

“I’m not upset,” Alya responded, flicking off crumbs from her fingers. “I mean, I am a little but I get why you hid it.”

“You do?” Marinette said, setting her sandwich down. Her heart was pounding in her chest, fast fast fastfastfast beats threatening to overtake her body.

“I do,” Alya said with a nod. And then, with a tight smile to Marinette, she said, “I know it… seems like I might be straight and a bigot, but I can promise you I’m not.”

“Alya-”

“No, no. Let me say my piece, girl. I love you, and if you’re interested in people other than boys, I’m not going to judge you.” She glanced around them before leaning in, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I identify as panromantic asexual. So I know what is and isn’t up with the community, you know? I’m not going to hate you for identifying as anything other than straight.”

Marinette continued to look at her, unsure if she was supposed to be aware of what the words “panromantic” and “asexual” meant, but Alya was done with the conversation and occupied with staring at her buzzing phone.

“It’s Nino,” she said by way of explanation, wiping her fingers off on her sleeve before picking up her phone and shooting off a quick text. “He needs my notes to study. You’ll be fine for a minute, right?”

She didn’t wait for a response as she pulled out a notebook, picked up her trash, and walked away, leaving Marinette to reflect.

Alya Césaire, her very best friend, the person she thought she was the closest to in the whole wide world, was Not Straight.

Alya Césaire, her very best friend, hadn’t told Marinette until she thought that Marinette herself was Not Straight.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Alya Césaire’s very best friend, to her knowledge, did not have a Not Straight identity.

And yet

Yet Chloé had kissed her, and asked her to “make her swoon.”

Marinette stared at her across the courtyard, watching as the blonde tsked at Rose and no doubt made some snide comment. Juleka was standing behind Rose, quiet and angry, but Chloé was still attacking, still bullying. She remembered her promise that if she could seem genuine, Chloé would stop the bullying. It didn’t seem right to use Chloé…

But Alya was walking back now. And before she could lose her nerve, Marinette walked out of her seat, and closed the distance between herself and her fake girlfriend.