Chapter Text
Fingers trailing along the spines of her books and teeth wearing divots into her bottom lip, Marinette slowly wandered the Best Sellers section of the small bookstore.
Her flats tapped the wooden ground in soft, stunted pats, echoing the noise of her fingertip as it fell from one spine to the next.
The store wasn’t usually this quiet when she visited, but Marinette had forced herself out of bed early to get to the shop right after the doors opened, hoping to wrest inspiration from her past successes in the muted atmosphere.
She found the silence only enhanced her inner monologue, a reminder that she’d never live up to expectations, a plague chipping away at her confidence and feasting on the underbelly of her fledgling ideas.
She longed for the chatter of regular customers, the commotion of books being pulled and reshelved, the squeals of children asking to pet the shop owner’s cat, the clanging of an old register opening unexpectedly and being slammed shut in annoyance. Anything to expel the thoughts which saturated her mind, suffocating creativity and motivation in their desperate bid for life.
Pulling out a book, Marinette’s eyes traced down the cover, following the sleek swirls of script of her printed name:
Ladybug
The deep red lettering shined across the bottom of the cover, a constant for all of her novels. It was modes—she’d never allow it to overshadow the beautiful artwork adorning the jacket—but written in her signature style, a font directly mimicking her own handwriting, embellished with a tiny ladybug sketch.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to take comfort in her anonymity. Her life wouldn’t be over if her next manuscript was only remembered as kindling that kept her editor warm on long nights. Her family would still love her. She would still have her friends. She could still find work. Any public humiliation would fall upon her professional persona instead of on her personal life and she could handle that.
Opening her eyes, she ran her hand underneath the front cover and flipped the book open slowly, careful of keeping the spine stiff and pristine as her fingers danced through the pages looking for a particular section.
She didn’t make a habit of rereading her books once they’d been printed, actively ridding herself of any copies her publisher sent her and stashing away the draft files into the most remote corner of her computer. A published novel felt more like a frustratingly unchangeable draft than the perfection she longed for it to be and avoiding the reminder of the sentences she could no longer rephrase and the word choices she could never tweak kept her from spending all her time stuck in her past stories.
But some days, when her mind spun particularly cynical tales of rejection and disillusion, she needed to remember the magic of a love story. It was all too easy to sink into the hopelessness of modern adulthood, but she’d claw her way out of that trench any way she could, even if it meant rereading a story she’d sworn she’d never.
She almost skipped the passage she was looking for, eyes flitting hurriedly across the pages to avoid reading more than necessary, despite her practiced fingers turning each page with caution. She stopped by mere chance, gaze catching on a piece of dialogue that settled like a rock in her stomach.
Marinette devoured the page, unable to savor the story on her palate as she was reminded of the whirlwind romance set before her.
She could hear the drumming of sneakers on sidewalk as the female lead ran towards the love of her life, feel the skirt of her dress skimming along her thighs. Heart beating wildly, Marinette couldn’t help herself as the anticipation built, characters meeting toe-to-toe, before finally making contact as the protagonist was picked up in a strong and gentle embrace, kissed soundly, and spun around. Her legs kicked up behind her in their whimsical twirl, long hair wrapping around the couple in a tangled mess, neither caring about the cars blaring beside them nor the dog barking at a squirrel across the street. They were completely spellbound, engrossed in each other’s presence.
They only pulled apart for a moment, noses still touching and breath mingling between them, long enough for her to smile and whisper “at last” before their lips were upon each other once again.
Marinette closed the novel with a muted thump and rested her forehead on the bookshelf in front of her. She couldn’t even remember writing the scene. It felt foreign. Like when her parents would tell stories of her childhood, expecting her to remember the time she crawled into a flour bag as a baby or stealing her mother’s lipstick when she was four.
Realistically, she knew she had once been a romantic at heart. She’d daydream and write, getting lost in her thoughts for hours on end. And truthfully, she missed it. The wonder and exhilaration of two people—fictional or otherwise—finding each other and fitting together perfectly. The potential in every first meeting, a future budding in each prolonged touch and lingering stare. But no matter how much she pushed, she couldn’t muster the anticipation that had once driven her creativity.
She felt stuck, unable to write anything convincing or interesting.
But she had deadlines. Novels needed to be written, and apparently, she had to be the one to write them.
Marinette sighed, placing the book back on the shelf and wishing the shop owner a good day as she practically sprinted out of the store.
It was a short walk to her favorite coffee shop, and when the door creaked as she entered, the only other patron’s head shot up from where it was buried in a stack of loose papers.
Vibrant green eyes locked with hers and she felt goosebumps rise along her skin, the wispy hair on the back of her neck standing to attention.
Their eyes stayed connected for just a moment too long, but the rapidly increasing thrumming of her heart made the time feel both endless and troublingly short.
It sparked a twitch in her fingertips and she’d slid into a booth only a few away from his with her laptop pulled open in front of her before she’d even taken her next breath.
Marinette didn’t know why, but those eyes those eyes had inspired something within her. A story which needed to be written with an urgency she hadn’t felt in far too long. Her skin prickled with nerves like hair standing on end before a thunderstorm and she reveled in the bout of nerves rushing her system.
This—whatever it was—promised to be good.