Chapter Text
After a five minutes walk, two minutes of waiting at the bus stop, and ten minutes of fidgeting on the uncomfy leather seat, Marinette was finally standing in front of her new school. Kwomi Shouka École.
Teens around her age, older, and kids younger wandered and idled around her on the building’s front steps and the on the hallways she rushed through. Familiar walls and postures in the sense they were recognizably school’s corridors and workers and students. And unfamiliar walls and faces in the sense they were unrecognizable workers and students and a different pattern of wallpaper and floor tiles.
Arriving at her locker was the break she needed after all this influx of new sights, where she rested her forehead on her locker’s door, sliding her bag off her arms from behind her back.
Her only goal for this year—for high school—was to go through it undetected and just focus on getting good enough grades before she could work in her parents’ restaurant full time by the end of it. Not that she wouldn’t like to meet some people and maybe do some extracurricular activities, but that’d only be a bonus, she wouldn’t take on more than she could handle.
Marinette sighed through her nose and searched her pocket for the locker key the nice—if jittery, Marinette could certainly relate—vice principal gave to her when someone stepped up to the locker besides hers. She immediately straightened her back, hand gripping her key without turning it.
She looked down at her tapping foot, weighing the pros and cons of greeting her locker neighbor as she opened her own locker’s door and—with some struggle, since she wasn’t looking at it—relieved her bag of the textbooks she wouldn’t need yet.
There didn’t seem to be any; after all, it was just politeness to at least know the name of someone you’d be often bumping into, right? And it wasn’t like a simple introduction meant friendship, that wasn’t how it worked, it was just out of polite curiosity.
With that, Marinette took a deep breath shut her locker; after making sure her key was safely tucked away, she turned to the first peer she’d be greeting.
“Hi! It seems like we’ll be locker neighbors for the year.” Marinette smiled brightly as she fixed her bag on her shoulder. “My name’s–”
Murky gray eyes—almost blue—turned to hers as her neighbor clicked his locker shut. A gray and black formal attire that should give him a strict look only served to accentuate just how soft his features were. Light blond strands tucked behind his ears in a half-hearted attempt to tame his hair—or was it purposeful? He looked so– so–
Heat rose to Marinette’s face.
Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!
She shook her head, hunching her shoulders.
No! She was not doing this again!
“I-I’m Marinette!” she managed to get out, snapping her hand up for a handshake, chancing a glance up at the pretty boy– her locker neighbor and nothing else!
He flicked his eyes to her hand then back to her face.
Sweat accumulated on her temple as her muscles tensed up the more the seconds ticked by and he just stood there, staring at her with eyes that bored into her very being. Eyes and murmurs rose around her, and she heard some scoffs and snickers that made her hand twitch and scrunched Marinette’s inside.
Of course she’d be laughed and sneered at! Look at the boy she was trying to talk to and look at her!
She was about to jerk her hand back to herself and dash out of there and never look this boy in the face ever again when she noticed movement.
He was shaking.
“U-uhm, are you OK?” Marinette stepped forwards, whipping her head around for help. “Do you need–”
One moment, she was reaching for the trembling boy, the next, she was swept back at the thumps of footsteps going down the lockers corridor and out of sight.
She blinked. Then breathed the tension out of her chest, bending over her knees.
Well… there were worse ways to start a new school year.
~•~
At her homeroom seat, Marinette couldn’t help the pang in her chest as she watched her classmates catching up with each other and making quick acquaintances with the faces they didn’t seem to recognize. No one approached her though, and she didn’t approach anyone nor really made that much of an effort to seem approachable—she also wouldn’t want to bother the girl hunching over the sketchbook she violently scraped onto with a pencil instead of trying to familiarize with the class.
Then all the noise stopped and everyone gasped and squealed. Marinette peered around through her fringes, frowning, then let out an ‘eep!’ when she glimpsed at the pretty– her locker neighbor standing on the threshold.
“I hope he sits in front of me!”
“Move! I need this seat vacant!”
“He looked at me! Did you see it? He looked at me!”
“Oh my God! That spider is so huge!”
Marinette looked up, and they were right! That was an impressively large spider.
A chorus of Oh my God’s that got increasingly more unrecognizable as the boy entered the classroom almost yanked her soul out of her body. She shut her eyes and clutched at her sketchbook and just waited till her locker neighbor chose a seat already.
The chair by her side screeched back and the classroom fell into dead silence.
Marinette cracked her neck to look to her side, stupefaction and horror stretching her face as the dark aura of her classmates fumed behind the boy methodically laying out his materials on his desk without a care in the world.
Marinette just prayed their homeroom teacher would arrive soon to divert her classmates’ attention.
“Whoop!”
The homeroom door swung open with a bang, a raised foot, and a clap that startled all of the students’ souls out of their bodies.
Not how she expected to go, but attention successfully diverted! Thanks whoever answered her prayers!
“What do we have here?”
The foot thumped onto the classroom, bringing afro hair pulled into a bun into view; eyes almost as green as the neon highlights of his curls scanning over the rows of stupefied students.
“Fresh meat all around, I’m seeing.” His grin flashed white over dark skin as he strode purposefully to his desk and took a chalk out of the shelf. “I’m your homeroom teacher, Doctor–” He scratched several strokes under the ‘Dr.’ on the blackboard. “Plagg.” He dotted the bottom of the second ‘g’ then threw the chalk on his desk, picking up a stack of papers as he plopped on the rolling chair behind the desk. “Remember this name. I won’t be remembering any of your names, but this is obligatory procedure, so let’s get on with the cat call.”
The student seated right in front of the teacher’s desk cleared their throat. “Don’t you mean roll call?”
“No. This is a cat call. Meow when I call your name.”
There was no time to express their astonishment, as the name “Angus Darius” was shouted out followed by a surprised “MEOW!” from a boy on one of the wall seats by the back.
Giggles burst out in the class and Marinette couldn’t help the grin she pressed her knuckle on as Dr. Plagg cheered in delight.
“That’s what I’m talking about! Catherine Karter!”
A smaller meow, accompanied by curled hands from the girl parallel to Marinette, who dropped her red face in her hands as she was cheered and shook by the person besides her.
“Purrrrrfect Cath.” He winked to her. “Demetri Pairfeir!”
“WOOF!”
Marinette craned her neck to see her teacher’s reaction as a chorus of “ooooooohhhhh” took over the place.
“Want to stand out, huh, Doggo?” He smiled at the boy failing to muffle his snickers. “I can respect that. Diego dos Santos?”
“Muuuuuu.”
“OK, OK, I see how it is. But you lost your chance, Cowboy, now you’re nothing more than a copycat. Emi Celeste?”
Marinette turned around at the sound of beatbox, beaming widely at Emi moving a hand to the beat she did behind her other palm, applauding with the others by the end of her small show as she bowed on her seat.
“Ohohohoh.” Dr. Plagg’s eyes glittered as he clapped too. “Good one, Little Rapper. Let’s see if you can beat that, uhhhh–” He pulled out the name’s list from where he had put it under his armpit then folded it out again. “–Félix Sphinx.”
Marinette saw her locker neighbor jerk up the slightest bit on the seat by her side in the milliseconds between complete silence and all heads turning in unison to him.
It was familiar; in the sense she recognized the way he looked at the hands fidgeting with the hems of his oversized sleeves instead of at any of the eyes on him. Unfamiliar; in the sense that she couldn’t put her finger on why he didn’t just say a small “meow” to get this over with.
Was it possible that he couldn’t–
“Incredible!” Dr. Plagg enthused. “Not a single word, and yet, everyone was still able to find you Félix! What a skill. Now let’s wrap this up.” He snapped his fingers in a ‘hurry up’ gesture. “Indus Tarbela?”
While whines about not hearing a meow from Félix overrode Indus’ enthusiastic meow, it didn’t go unnoticed by Marinette how Félix’s shoulders sagged in relief as Dr. Plagg turned to a student pouting at their phone to ask why they had pulled it out during Félix’s turn.
~•~
The rest of the period went by surprisingly smoothly. Dr. Plagg wasn’t only a fun teacher, but a good teacher. Marinette didn’t remember the last time listening to her teacher talking about romance authors had been so enthralling. Well… not exactly just her teacher, Dr. Plagg would stay quiet for a long time while the students debated ice cream as a metaphor for compatibility, which was very cool—pun unintended—for Marinette to just lay on her folded arms and listen to.
Was it because this was lycée? She’d thought it’d make things harder, but this was a nice surprise.
She was honestly surprised—and even a bit saddened—when Dr. Plagg said to save the toppings symbolism for their next lesson, lunch break was coming soon.
Breathing out the morose for the first two periods ending so soon, Marinette contently put away her things and got ready to get up.
Then, next thing she knew, she was being body-slammed by the onslaught of teenagers eager to ask the boy next to her if he’d lunch with them, forcing her back to her seat, where she curled into a ball, covering her face and bag as she tried to make herself as small as possible.
She scanned the sea of limbs for an escape, but any movement just earned her a knock to the head or arm, so she recoiled to her chair and hoped they’d let up with enough time for her to eat something before next class.
~•~
“Why is it so hard to talk?”
Haze lights caressed the back of Marinette’s head as the groggy clouds clinging to her eyelashes slowly dispersed.
“Everyone else can speak… So loud though…”
She rubbed her eyes, blinking at her desktop coming into focus.
“I wish someone would listen more…”
It seemed like her classmates went all to lunch. Good, the silent and empty classroom was way more peaceful. Well, almost empty, Félix was still in his seat, holding a hand-sized black cat plushie over his lap; its green eyes reminded her of Dr. Plagg and his weird roll–
“Meow.”
Marinette gasped and snapped her eyes to Félix.
Who heard her gasp and turned wide fearful eyes to her.
“I didn’t hear anything,” she blurted.
Because saying you didn’t hear anything is exactly how you’ll convince someone, you didn’t, in fact, just heard something. Good job, Marinette!
Félix scrambled out of his desk, heaving his bag onto a shoulder as he hugged his plushie to his chest and rushed to the exit.
“Wait!” Marinette almost tripped on her chair in her haste to get up. “Félix!”
What was she trying to do? She didn’t know, but she felt like she needed to say something.
“Félix, you can’t talk, right?” she shouted.
The frantic thuds of footsteps eager to get away halted by the door’s threshold. His shoulders heaving up and down as he turned his head to her, eyes still blown wide, but with something searching instead of anxious.
“A-and–” Marinette sighed, her outstretched arm slumping by her side. “It sucks, right? When you just want to be left alone but can’t say it?”
Félix fully turned around and cocked his head, opening his mouth to speak:
…
…
…
He started shaking.
“I-it’s OK!” Marinette frantically looked around. “You don’t need to talk! We can just– we can–” Her eyes fell on the teacher’s desktop. “Write!”
She lunged for the chalk on the teacher’s desk as the clatter of teeth was replaced by a quizzical “Hm?”
“Here!” She whirled, beaming, to Félix with the chalk on her raised palm then gestured widely to the blackboard when he cautiously took it from her hand.
He looked from the white chalk to the blackboard, and Marinette was pretty sure she saw star in his eyes in the milliseconds between his last look at the chalk and the veer to the blackboard; quick strokes from left to right, left to right, then he hesitated in front of whatever he was writing—Marinette didn’t want to read it before he was done—then he stepped sideways, waving from Marinette to what he wrote, and focused on another line as she read over his block of text.
‘I don’t know why, but my mouth just won’t work properly when people are around. I can talk, it’s just difficult when people are around, and no one’s willing to wait around for the weird scrankly boy to find his voice.’
“Having all our classmates all over you must be a nightmare then,” she joked.
A small heh fell out of Félix’s lips and sent Marinette into the stratosphere.
The scrape under the other line pulled her back to where Félix turned curiously to her.
“How I figured out?” She flicked her eyes from the writing to him. He nodded. She shrugged. “It’s kinda obvious. The way you ran away when I talked to you– Oh, don’t worry, it’s fine!” Marinette waved it off when Félix dipped his head in shame. “Uhm, how you freeze up during roll call…”
Félix cleared his throat and held out his cat plushie.
“Oh, sorry.” She laughed at his fussed expression. “Cat call. And– well, you didn’t talk all morning even though so many people were around you.”
He turned again to the blackboard and steam poured out of the chalk by the end of the ‘I don’t like it.’
The chalk’s fuming tip stayed in the period for a moment then it was moving again.
‘I hate it, actually. I don’t think it’d be harsh to use this word.
‘I know they see something in me, but I also know that they’d hate me if they saw past whatever lens they’re using.
‘During my initial collège years, others just tolerated me for however long they could talk without a response.
‘Sometimes I liked listening. Sometimes I’d wish they’d stop and just listen too.
‘I always had trouble speaking, anyway, so it was just the natural course that I’d eventually stop bothering.’
The steam dispersed by the last period, where Félix’s tight grip on the chalk gradually loosened. He sighed through his nose and turned to another free space to write.
‘I apologize for the rant. I’ll leave you be now.’
He returned the chalk to the desktop and wiped a sleeve on his eyes before opening the shelf to pick the felt eraser. He put his plushie on the desk then turned to the almost completely filled blackboard.
Marinette stared at the speck of white on the wooden surface as the swipes of felt on the board cleaned the chalked release of so many bottled words that weren’t able to find a vehicle to communicate till today. And if his demurred posture was anything to go by, he didn’t expect it to be anything but a fluke.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
“Hm?”
Marinette stepped away from the blackboard, clasping her hands behind her back as Félix slowly blinked at her then turned to her own piece of writing:
‘What do you like listening to?’
A ghost of a smile crossed his face and he raised a hand to her, clenching his fingers in grabby motions.
‘Musicals, mostly. But also some lyricless songs. I’m not really sure what they’re genres are, I just like listening to them. Do you want to listen to some of my playlists?’
A squeak sounded out from him the moment he finished the last sentence; his face instantly boiled to alarming levels as he desperately looked for the eraser.
Marinette grabbed his wrist and took the chalk out of his hand.
‘Sure!’
Marinette grinned up at him, fiddling with the chalk between her fingers, and when he seemed to have processed what happened, she turned to the blackboard again.
‘You also haven’t lunched yet, right? How about we listen to it while we eat?’
Félix took the chalk from her again.
‘That sounds nice. Can we eat here? I really don’t want to deal with the others.’
‘Of course!’
‘Thank you, Marinette.’
Marinette gaped at her name carefully written in the curly calligraphy she had quickly become fond of as she read Félix’s words today. The most logical theory was that he learned it from the cat call, but she couldn’t help the flutter in her chest at the possibility he paid attention to her first introduction.
