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“I like the color of your eyes.”
“I like your face.”
And so it began. Had Marinette been just a tad bit more conscious, she’d have thought twice about her response. But alas, she was on her third coffee in the last hour alone and slowly but surely going insane. Alya wasn't with her this time because she decided that she would study with Nino today.
Who in their goddamn mind had decided to place all her exams in the same fucking week? She’d very much like to have a stern talk with them.
So here she was, sitting at the campus library on a Friday night with a to-go cup in one hand and an open textbook in the other. Go to uni, they’d said, you can party all night, they’d said. So much for that. At least she had company, Marinette had thought when she’d first come in a couple hours ago; another sad soul who was spending his Friday night studying.
Yet all that comfort had vanished the moment she had opened her mouth and let out that, quite frankly, dumb response. She could feel her cheeks already turning a beet red, all the caffeine only worsening the colour.
At least it wasn’t a lie by any means. Marinette could admit that the guy looked good, especially for so late at night (or early in the morning, depending how you looked at it). He was in a black hoodie a size too big, the sleeves curling over his fingers in the most endearing way as he had paged through his own textbook for the last few hours. World History, Marinette read from the header. Huh, interesting.
Oh wait - now that she thought about it again, Marinette was pretty sure that the guy used to be in a class with her.
His hair had a golden glow to it, the harsh fluorescent lights that made everything else look tacky somehow amplifying its colour. And his eyes, God. Marinette may or may not have been stealing glances at him every now and then, and the one thing that stuck out the most were those goddamn eyes.
Okay, so maybe Marinette was just a little gone for this stranger. But no matter how attractive she found him, she’d just blown all her chances with that one dumb comment. Great job Marinette, she thought to herself.
The two had both paused their work at the same time, the attractive stranger stretching his arms out while Marinette opted to do the opposite and slumped forward in her chair, head resting on her arms as she took the moment to relax. And maybe also so she wouldn’t be caught staring.
That was exactly when the mysterious handsome green-eyed man had spoken up. “I like the color of your eyes.”
And Marinette, who’d apparently lost any filter between her brain and her mouth, had replied, “I like your face.”
To her credit, she let out a whine immediately after, stuffing her face back into her arms in an attempt to make the whole situation disappear. A moment passed in silence, and Marinette even got her hopes up that maybe all, just maybe her manifesting had really worked and she’d somehow taken back her comment, but that simply wasn’t the case.
“What?” the other man exclaimed. The sudden noise startled Marinette, and she quickly raised her head from its perch. The man didn’t seem to look nor sound too offended – instead, he seemed more curious, and possibly intrigued, by her words.
Now that completely threw her off. Yet now that she thought about it, the other man had been the one to comment first on her eyes, so what she replied with was only a reasonable response.
Yeah right.
If this went badly, Marinette would blame it on the caffeine and sleep deprivation, but in a split-second decision, she decided to say fuck it and throw caution to the wind. “I said I like your face.”
She sounded a lot more confident than she felt.
And the other man seemed to think so too. He started spluttering, which soon transitioned into laughter as he tried to calm himself down.
Okay, now Marinette was confused. Was this strange man laughing at her? It stung a bit, if she were being entirely honest, but Marinette found solace in the fact that she’d probably never cross paths with him again after tonight.
After a couple seconds (minutes, hours? Marinette wasn’t really sure), the man seemed to have calmed down.
“Are you okay?” She asked, raising an eyebrow in question as she all but faked nonchalance.
“Yeah, no, I’m fine. It’s just- I… I like your face too,” the man seemed content with his words, but they just confused Marinette even more. Was he mocking her now? The resentment must have been clear on Marinette’s face, as he quickly backtracked. “No, like seriously. You’re really cute. Do you wanna get coffee sometime?”
And oh. Oh.
Oh my god, this cute as hell boy just called her cute? All of a sudden, Marinette was glad she’d spent the last couple hours in excruciating pain if only so she could hear those few words.
If only her mouth had gotten the memo.
“Uh, I have coffee here,” she replied in a monotone, raising the nearly empty cup in her hand.
What the fuck. What was she doing?
Marinette liked kittens, she loved them, and she would never do anything to hurt one. So when she saw the other guy’s expression looking exactly like how her cat had the one time she’d accidentally locked him out in the cold, she felt her heart sink.
The cute man’s demeanour changed entirely as he tidied up his already tidy books and did absolutely anything to avoid Marinette’s gaze. “Oh okay, that’s fine.”
He sounded like a kicked kitten too.
“No!” Marinette yelled out. She winced as she realised just how loud she was, before continuing at a more reasonable volume. “I’m sorry, I’m tired and the caffeine isn’t helping. Hi, I’m Marinette, you’re also really cute, and I would absolutely love to get coffee.”
There, that should fix things right? It seemed so, as the man was now beaming right back at her.
“Awesome! I’m Adrien,” he said. Then after a moment, “Should we exchange numbers?”
Marinette felt her face heat up as she completely didn’t expect him to ask that question to her. “Oh. Uh, Erm. Sure!” She chirped back.
The pair pulled out their phones, quickly exchanging numbers and each sending a text to say hi before they put their phones back down.
The room settled back into a comfortable silence like it had been for the majority of the night, but this time, Marinette kept her gaze unashamedly on Adrien. He didn’t seem to mind, as he too was staring right back, with a sweet smile.
Suddenly, Marinette caught her open textbook in her periphery and remembered why she was there at midnight. She averted her gaze first, a blush blooming across her cheeks but for a different reason this time. Adrien seemed to catch the drift too, and he began sifting through his textbook as well.
So that’s how it continued: the two of them, sitting opposite one another at a library table, each reading their own textbooks into the early hours of the morning.
The only difference this time around was the ankle Adrien had artfully hooked around Marinette’s own, and the soft glances they’d share every once in a while.