#starmate

High school is bigger, busier than Felix was used to. Marinette is always rushing off someplace or another, and she always finds her way back to him at some point, but there are hours in the day where Felix finds himself spending a lot more time alone with Nino, getting slowly sucked into a spiral of analysis over musical techniques and their application in theatre and media. He hadn’t realized Nino knew anything other than whatever popular songs were playing, that he had his headphones in listening to the radio, but Nino actually writes music, and while he might not study in class, he’s learned a lot about musical theory. Nino seeks it out, no matter how tedious and mind numbing it might be. Marinette slots into these conversations easily, dropping down onto the bench in the middle of a heated discussion and picking up the thread like she’d never left. She’s picked up a fair bit of knowledge just existing next to Nino  and Felix is… impressed, and a little jealous. 

He likes how applicable this becomes to the speech and debate team he chooses to join, partly to fill the time when Marinette is busy with art club and commissions (with her other friends, with the people she likes more than she likes him, whispers the worst part of Felix), but also partly because when he walked by the club room at the beginning of the year, he watched a girl take down someone twice her size with nothing more than a casual recitation of brutal, weaponized facts, swinging her legs perched on a desk and casually checking out her nails. Her opponent ended the match falling dramatically to his knees, exclaiming over his wounds and flailing and throwing himself across the floor, and the girl finally broke character to laugh with the rest of the club. Felix found himself laughing too, and when someone waved him in, he followed.

Felix likes it, likes getting to use his words to hurt people and tear them down and still laugh with them afterwards. He likes the way Nino’s points about key changes and pitch bleed into the way he modulates his voice and intonation to pull pathos from his audience as he gives a speech, likes the way Marinette’s rambles on color theory find their way into the presentations he pulls together. 

He likes the way he has friends at school now, people outside of Marinette and Nino, people who are his and who like him for more than who he knows. 

He also likes the way speech and debate usually ends around when art club does, so he can walk home with Marinette afterwards. He finds himself lingering to finish conversations more and more, the way she does with her own friends, and likes the way that she’s always waiting for him once he’s done. She makes a point to leave a note in his texts if she has to leave, and every one sends his heart racing. She walks him to the library on the days they don’t have extracurriculars, and finds herself getting to know his kids, getting to fall in love with each of them as she drafts commission projects as he reads. Later, she tells him his voice is soothing and asks him over and over to read her to sleep until he caves. It doesn’t take very long. Every now and then, he'll pop into art club to say hi to Marinette, or she'll do her homework in the back of the speech and debate room, and being able to exist in the space as her without being fully engaged in what she’s doing is healing in a way he didn’t know he needed. 

The most unusual part about having friends outside of Marinette is how oddly disengaged it feels in comparison: it’s not that he doesn’t care for them; when it’s just them Felix feels the affection lapping at his ankles in steady persistent waves and it’s good. But with Marinette, he’s drowning in the intensity of what he feels. 

Felix starts to reconsider the words he chooses to put on that feeling. 

It’s something he chews on throughout the bus ride to camp, throughout counselor orientation and the first few tentative weeks of learning how to be an adult to children who don’t know yet that he’s not. Being responsible for them makes Felix feel incredibly mature, and also incredibly young, the way that he sees himself in them, the way that he can’t anymore. 

The first night the campers come to camp, Felix and Marinette take their group of campers up the mountain trail to see the night sky, unfiltered by pollution for the first time in their lives. When they pass through the clearing to the open horizon, a hushed awe falls over the group, same as seven years ago when Felix first walked this path. Then, he crossed his arms and refused to let the beauty of the night shape his features beyond anything more than a scowl. Now, the light plays over his features and he tilts his face up to meet the starlight. 

It doesn’t last long. A cloud passes overhead, and one of the youngest campers starts crying, overwhelmed and missing home and scared by the dark. Marinette pulls them into her arms and starts bouncing them back and forth, and Felix stands there, at a loss. All he’s ever done is tell stories. That’s all he knows how to do. 

Something shimmers in the sky, and the north star catches his eye. Words spill out of Felix that he didn’t know were there, and he refuses to hold them back. 

“There have been stars in the sky for as long as the sky has existed. They’ve been called gods, fairies, balls of gas that shimmer when the light refracts against the atmosphere of the earth, a conspiracy, something beyond our comprehension, something a part of us. The sky you see tonight won’t be the same sky that you see tomorrow. You’ll never have this view again.” Someone whimpers behind him, and he rushes to continue. 

“But every time you look up, the stars will be just as beautiful, if you care to find the beauty in them. Maybe it’ll take a moment before you find one winking at you. Maybe you’ll see them all, bantering back and forth on the horizon. Maybe you’ll point at the north star, and know that it is always there to guide you home, that it will always come back even if it’s hidden right now.” The sobs are quieting into messy hiccups, and Marinette adds her quiet hum to the rhythm of the story. 

“Look at the stars, the moon, the sky. Let them change, and let them be constant. Find it in yourself to give them space to do both, and you will find that they will give you the same.” At that, Marinette picks up the thread, kneeling close to the campers and pulling them all in as best as she can. 

“You are all made of stardust. Feel it, here, in your pulse. Find it when you feel lost, and let the stars remind you that you are so much, that you can be multitudes, that finding change and constancy both within yourself is not contradictory but human.” 

They walk back in the dark, in silence. No one is scared. Felix can feel it in the air. He revels in it. 

He's not much older than them. But he has to try to be the kind of person that keeps them safe, and Felix has seen so many kids get hurt in ways that don't show up on their bodies. Felix has been one of them. He wants to show them how to love and to do it safely. He wants to show them how to be messy, and vulnerable, and kind. 

Felix wants it so much, so badly, that it consumes him. It pushes him into making friends, talking to people, calibrating his emotions one conversation at a time. These skills have atrophied for so long. He will build this muscle: for himself, for his kids. For Marinette. 

They dance around each other all summer, building their friendship, edging into something flirty, something vulnerable. Sometimes Felix hears the older campers whispering and giggling about how he and Marinette are "like, definitely dating, right?" He doesn’t know how to answer.

He wishes he were, kind of. He loves Marinette. It’s taken him seven years to realize, or seven years to fall in love and maybe one year to realize, or something unquantifiable by any means he has. She fits so perfectly into his side by the campfire at night. She exists in her own light but never hesitates to pull Felix into her space, never hesitates to let him pull her into his. They exist outside of each other but cherish the spaces they share. But he loves her, so he worries about what it means, to be fourteen and in love, to be fourteen and just learning how to make friends. He worries about trying to put words to something that is bigger than human labels and breaking it with the weight of expectation. 

He tells her, the night before camp ends. The campers have been sent to bed, and the counselors are enjoying the dying embers of the summer’s last campfire. There’s no urgency, no pressure in his heart to push the words out. He does it anyways, and it feels right. 

“I love you, Marinette.” 

“I love you too, Felix.” Her voice is soft and warm, and Felix basks in it. 

“...what does this mean?” And then, before she can respond, he adds: “What does it have to mean?” He feels her shrug by his side, and grins. 

“I don’t know. I don’t think it has to mean anything. I want to… keep loving you, and keep being your friend. And just… see how that goes. See where we end up.” 

“What if we end up apart?” He’s too safe with her to sound timid. He puts the question out into the world, and waits. 

“Why would we?” 

“If we stop caring about each other, maybe.” 

At that, she turns to him.

“I won’t. I promise. I’ll always care about you, Felix.” 

“How do you know?” It comes out insecure and Felix makes no attempt to hide it, just leans in closer to Marinette. 

“"I'll work at it. I promise to be here for you when we need to be, and we'll grow as people and find the best in each other. I'll make you a pillow if I need to," and she bumps into his shoulder. 

"What if you like someone else?" 

"What if you like someone else?" Felix wants to say he can't, he won't, he never will. Nino walks by and waves, and Felix knows that isn't true. There are so many people in the world. Felix wants to get to know them all, find out the ways he fits with them, find out what they bring out of him. 

"...I guess... we'll date them. And love each other too, in whatever way we can.” 

“What was it that you said? That the stars are constant and ever-changing, always there no matter how they move or shift. We’ll love each other like the stars, Felix.”

He hooks his pinky into hers. When she falls asleep on the bus ride home, sun shifting on her lap and glimmering against her hair as she leans on his shoulder, Felix squeezes her hand thrice.