Chapter Text
Félix always saw Play Pretend as a way to bring stories to life—whether from books, movies, TV shows or one’s sole imagination. With their own twists, characters, and worlds to explore and make a memorable story out of. He loved the idea of this game and played it all the time—even if his tutor called it “Putting Your Head in the Clouds,” he called it “Solo Play Pretend.” Because it was the only option he had. Other kids didn’t know how to play it right. They narrated their every action like he couldn’t clearly see what they were doing and their voices got way too loud and shrieky when the discussions on who’d play who started—and that was not even entering their incoherent storylines.
He understood wanting to put pirates in space—outlaws, treasure scavengers, traveling the cosmos were cool—but the sea couldn’t literally be there and sharks would need to have a different biology altogether, they couldn’t just be thrown there and be expected to survive.
So when Marinette asked if he wanted to play pretend, he was a bit uneasy. It was usually on this part that he started getting tired of the person and interacting with them became annoying, and he didn’t want that to happen with Marinette. But he also didn’t want to make the bright smile she had as she barely kept from bouncing in front of him go away, so he shrugged and let her pull him by the wrist to the playground with a delighted squeal.
He sat uneasily behind the shrubs covering them from the rest of the playground, but the more Marinette went on, the easier it became to relax on the grass.
“Since we can’t use the monkey gym, it’ll have to be this haunted forest,” Marinette was explaining as she bounced around, hands flailing and pigtails twirling. “It could be a Halloween special level where Mario and Luigi have to pass through the forest ghosts to get to Bowser’s castle!”
“But it isn’t Halloween.”
She stopped jumping, tapping her pursed lips with a finger, humming, then she grinned as a lightbulb lit up her eyes and spun to face Félix. “It’s from last year’s Halloween! We found a rare Halloween CD in an abandoned cabin in the woods and decided to play it.”
“It’s cursed!” Félix perked up, almost hopping while sitting, but recoiled to hug his raised knees. His smile was hard to wash off though. “The cabin has only a weird console in it, and when we turn on the game, it teleports us to this forest. We think it’s only a normal forest but then we find a–” Félix scrunched up his nose. “–a…”
“A goomba!”
Félix had no idea what that was.
“Yeah!” he said anyway.
“OK!” She hopped in place and turned around, pointing forwards. “Come on, Luigi! We need to venture through this weird forest and rescue Princess Peach!”
“Uhm.” Félix slowly got up, swiping the grass and dirt from his clothes. “Mario and Luigi are brothers, right?”
Marinette turned her head to him. “Yeah, why?”
“I, uh–” He hunched his shoulders, turtleneck suddenly tingly and uncomfortable on his skin. “–I don’t want to be your brother.”
Marinette frowned, head cocked. Then she asked, “Want to be Princess Peach and I rescue you from Bowser, then?”
His head was bobbing so fast and earnestly that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stop the inertia of it.
“OK! Then you go to the end of the forest and soon I’ll be saving you, my princess.” Marinette took Félix’s hand and bent to plant a dry kiss on it.
Play Pretend was the best thing ever conceived by humankind.