#starscrumbling

Do they follow me: Yes | No

Do I follow them: Yes | No | Now

What I think about their blog: hmm idk “anon”, if that is your real name, i actually love fiona a lot??? she’s rlly sweet and has a lot of that Good Gay Content <3

?

……… *frantically grabs her keyboard*

Words: 1809

Chloe heard her name and Marinette’s name called out by their teacher, and she wanted to freaking die. 

After the first couple of projects where work wasn’t handed in, two separate projects were handed in out of spite, and presentations just dissolved into heated arguments and angrily waving laser pointers, it became an unspoken rule amongst their teachers that Chloe and Marinette could not be partnered together for projects. Seriously. It was for the safety and sanity of the whole class. For the greater good. For peace and prosperity. 

Clearly their art teacher didn’t give a single crap about that. 

Marinette just let out a flat, stern, “No.”

“Ditto,” Chloe snarled. “Keep her five hundred and ten feet away from me or I swear to god I’m going to have an aneurism.” 

Their art teacher sounded much to patient with them, and Chloe found the whole thing suspicious. “Darlings, it’s actually wonderful that you two don’t see eye to eye. The whole point of the project is to display two different interpretations of the same scene. Disagreements are encouraged!”

“I don’t think you understand,” Marinette explained. “You put us at the same table, and I will not be held responsible for any damages when I kill her.”

“Oh bite me, Dupain-Cheng! I’m wearing heels today. Don’t make me dropkick you.”

Marinette snorted. “Sure you’re not going to break a nail putting in some actual physical effort?”

Chloe smirked cruelly. “Oh, I’ll be breaking something alright….”

“Girls!” their teacher interrupted. “Enough of this nonsense, you’re young ladies! Group assignments are final. But since you two seem so privy towards enacting bodily harm, you’ll be sitting at my desk at the front of the room so I can keep an eye on you. One argument, and I’ll mark you both down 3 points. Is that understood?”

Chloe felt her eye twitch. She’d already been getting notes home from her teachers about issues regarding homework assignments that looked to similar to others in her class and group projects where she admittedly contributed a minimal amount of effort. She really couldn’t afford to be knocked down points because Marinette decided to be a literal nightmare. She didn’t think her father would be too pleased to see her come home with another note to sign and another pile of extra homework. 

Crap. She was going to have to be civil. Gross. 

Their teacher clapped her hands impatiently. “Move along now, ladies. Grab your sketchbooks and come sit up here. Time is precious!”

Chloe made a show of grabbing her art supplies, huffing as loudly as she could, and stomping over to their teacher’s desk. Marinette slumped down in the seat right next to Chloe, both of them keeping their gazes straight ahead and refusing to acknowledge each other. They had a full view of the entire class that was already hurriedly getting to work on their own projects, meanwhile Chloe was quickly trying to calculate how she was going to survive this period without wanting to bang her head against the chalkboard. 

Marinette broke first. “We get this over with as soon as possible. Agreed?”

“Well, duh. No need to sit here with you any longer than necessary.”

“God, would you stop for two seconds? Look, we don’t necessarily have to talk to each other to do this. We have the prompt, and we can just sketch our interpretations on our own. We’ll…..just pretend we talked together about it afterwards and bullshit the reports later. Sound like a plan?”

“A plan where I don’t have to interact with you? It’s like freakin’ heaven on Earth. I wonder where the choir of angels is.”

Marinette let out a withering sigh as Chloe smirked and turned to her sketchpad. “Let’s just….work. And not speak to each other. Can we do that?”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Chloe answered. “You make it sound as if I’m dreading the very thought.”

Admittedly, it wasn’t as horrible as Chloe was anticipating it would be. Once the two of them buckled down to do their own work, it was very easy to pretend that Marinette didn’t exist. Plus there was nothing more encouraging than having their teacher stare them down critically from across the room to make sure they didn’t attack each other in the middle of the class period. Chloe supposed that the impending threat of a failing grade was also a pretty good motivator as well. However, Chloe wasn’t much of an artist and personally didn’t see the point of the art classes they took anyway. It only took her about 15 minutes to grow completely bored before she dropped her pencil and peeked over at Marinette’s work. 

It was so annoying that Marinette was such a good artist. One, because Chloe hated admitting that Marinette was better than her at anything, and two because there was no way for Chloe to spontaneously become a better artist to spite Marinette back. Chloe wasn’t a bad artist per se, but staring in between their two sketchbooks was downright infuriating and Chloe was so tempted to make a biting comment just to piss Marinette off. She remembered to reign herself in and instead pulled out her cellphone to take a break for a couple of minutes before trying to draw again. 

Chloe had refreshed her Facebook news feed three times when she suddenly heard humming coming from her right. She rolled her eyes and was about to tell Marinette to shut the ever loving hell up – Facebook required concentration for God’s sake – but she turned to Marinette and felt her jaw go slack. 

….oh. 

She must’ve really not been paying attention because she didn’t even notice when Marinette pulled out her pigtails and threw her hair up into a bun. The baby hairs at the back of her neck were hanging loose, and there was one strand of hair tickling the side of her cheek. Chloe didn’t think she’d ever seen Marinette in a bun before. It was….odd, but in a way that didn’t fill Chloe with annoyance. If anything, she had to grudgingly admit that she looked….nice with her hair up. Softer somehow. 

The sleeves to her button down were rolled up to her elbows, probably because the charcoal sticks she was using were getting all over her fingers and forearms. There was just a small smudge of black on the bridge of Marinette’s nose – like she’d rubbed her face and didn’t realize she’d accidentally dirtied it – and damn it all, it was cute. Chloe glared at the thought. Well that was ridiculous. Since when was Marinette cute? That was such a wrong word to use for her. Marinette was infuriating, unsupportable, and most certainly not aesthetically pleasing, adorable messy buns and charcoal smudges aside. 

It was then that Chloe recognized the song that Marinette was humming along to – some new, catchy hit that had been repeating on the radio all week. Marinette was bobbing her head and swaying her body along to the beat while she worked, as if having a song and a rhythm in her head helped her work. She started smiling when she got to the chorus, and just as she started brushing her middle finger across her project to smudge her lines, her tongue came poking out of the corner of her mouth as she began concentrating even harder. 

Chloe blinked. Shit. Okay. Fine. That was really precious. Super adorable. She didn’t think people actually did that, yet here was Marinette doing that and looking downright charming while she did it. The whole image was just so completely non threatening, and it didn’t make Chloe want to hate her. It made Chloe want to tuck her loose hairs into her bun, rub the smudge off her nose, and watch her while she worked. Marinette was so often fighting with her, it wasn’t often that Chloe got to observe her sit so still and act so absorbed in her work. It was surprising, was all. So surprising that Chloe just kept staring at every little detail just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. After all, she didn’t really want to work on her project. And she had nothing else better to do…

“Um….can I help you?”

Chloe blinked, shook her head, and was suddenly meeting eyes with a very perplexed looking Marinette. She’d stopped sketching and was regarding Chloe cautiously. Chloe realized that she was still facing Marinette. Crap. Had she spaced out? Had she caught her staring? Dammit. 

“N-Nothing,” Chloe scoffed, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t need anything from you, Marinette.”

Marinette raised a brow. “You were staring…”

“Was not!”

“Yes,” Marinette replied patiently. “Yes you were, you were totally spaced out and staring right at me. What is it?”

Marinette didn’t sound angry or annoyed. She just sounded confused, which meant that Chloe hadn’t done something irritating like she normally did. She’d done something weird and that was enough to have Marinette looking at her like she’d suddenly started handing out presents and compliments to her entire class. God, what the hell was she thinking? How had she not noticed where her gaze was falling? How on Earth was she supposed to explain her way out of this one?

“Don’t flatter yourself darling,” Chloe tried to recover. “This project is abysmally boring, and I was trying to drown out everything around me. Like I would waste my time staring at someone like you.”

It seemed to have worked because Marinette responded by rolling her eyes and turning back to her project. “Whatever you say, Chloe….”

Chloe breathed out a quiet sigh of relief and decided now was as good a time as any to go back to her own drawing. The fewer chances she gave herself to stare at Marinette, the better. 

Not that it mattered anyway, because Marinette was still humming next to her. Which made Chloe think of her cute head bobbing. Which made her think of her lovely hairstyle. Which made her think how nice Marinette looked in button downs. Which made her think how darling it was that Marinette pouted her lips while she sketched. Which made her think how in the hell she hadn’t noticed that Marinette was freakin’ beautiful this entire time?!

Chloe paused. 

Okay. Okay, yeah, so she definitely just thought that. Shit. 

Shit. 

SHIT!

“Chloe Bourgeois!” her teacher hollered from the other end of the room. “Mind your language please!”

Chloe bit down on her bottom lip and covered her mouth with her hand. She looked sideways at Marinette who was staring at her oddly again before shaking her head and turning back to her drawing. Chloe pressed her fingertips to her temples and leaned her elbows on the table, staring at the desktop in abject disbelief.