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Marinette gulped, holding the bouquet of daffodils behind her back. This was going to go… poorly. Her heart did somersaults, her brain buzzing with all the ways this could go wrong.
She looked behind herself, smiling awkwardly as Alya and her friends nodded with thumbs up. She really didn’t want to do this… not now.
Her heart was like a plane shaking violently, just waiting for it to crash and burn in the ocean. What was she thinking, planning on confessing to a guy she didn’t even have feelings for. Stupid, stupid, stupid!!
“Come on girl, you can do this.” Alya whispered, and somehow it didn’t make her feel better.
“I don’t know about this, I…”
“Adrien will love it, promise! No backing out now!” Rose added, and Marinette tried her best not to look uneasy.
“You don’t know that…”
“He’s nice. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Juleka continued.
Marinette’s hand shook with equal nervousness and discomfort. Stop… that’s all she had to say, was stop forcing this…
Mylène was the next to interject. “Remember the house, the three kids, the hamster named—”
…of course this would get interrupted by an akuma attack, and a giant baby no less? Ugh.
Out in the distance, Marinette’s stomach twisted when she saw someone she recognized… oh no.
Felix.
Felix was in the lineup of things being chased by the akuma. Not even caring if her friends were watching, Marinette immediately dropped the flowers and sprinted as fast as she could, slamming into Felix’s chest and tumbling to the ground..
…taking him with the motion and landing with her above him, pinning Felix to the concrete and being centimeters away from his face.
Oh. No.
“Ack!” Marinette bolted upright and offered Felix her hand, now both of them a blushing mess. “S-Sorry, Felix! Are you okay?”
“No worries, Mar. I’m alright.” Felix dusted himself off with a laugh, smiling even though he still felt reasonably awkward.
They’d only known each other for a couple months when they met at an art studio, Felix being one of the students at an independent class the building was hosting. They kept meeting again and it turns out they were both regulars of the same hobby store.
She internally laughed as she recalled the hours spent on call with him as they rambled on and on about their projects, bouncing ideas off one another until it devolved into yawning and half asleep nonsense.
“What about you, though? No offense, but you look…frazzled.” Felix’s question shook Marinette out of the reminiscing, and she rubbed the back of her neck.
“Oh, haha, you know… same old same old friendly shenanigans!!”
Felix stared at her, then at something she hadn’t noticed until he pointed at it: stray daffodil petals stuck to her jacket despite the brash movement pushing herself and Felix out of the akumas way. “Doesn’t look like it’s going well…”
Marinette swallowed the truth so he wouldn’t worry, her eyes falling to the ground as another rumble from the akuma shook the ground. No more stalling, she had to go.
“Ah, well, it’ll all work out eventually! Talk to you later Felix, bye!!” She said that last part so quickly it took him a minute to process.
He blinked, then took a moment to ponder things before sneaking back out of the alley he was pushed into, making sure to steer clear of the akuma.
Another round of Ladybugging led Marinette back to the bridge where she dropped the bouquet, her friends standing around it and looking at her.
Alya picked up the daffodils, their petals wrinkled and some dirtied by the ground and trampled by panicking citizens. “We can salvage… some of them? No turning back.”
“Forget it…” Marinette sighed into the ruined gift, the declaration of forfeiture muffling how numb she felt.
“Come on, girl! Just wait a little bit longer, ‘Buttercup’ will show up soon.”
‘Stop it… stop pretending to know what I think’ Marinette thought, eyes dead and tuning out of any of what her friends were saying. Why… why couldn’t she just say it? She didn’t even want to be with Adrien, let alone confess, but they focused on romance so much that she just… couldn’t bear it.
Marinette ‘stumbles over her words because she’s in love with a model’ Cheng was practically all her peers knew her for.
It was always a lie.
The kids Marinette didn’t even want, the hamster with no name, the extravagant house shared with a guy Marinette grew to almost despise with how connected to this facade he was. All of it was nothing but a dream projected from her wishes to be loved and appreciated beyond what was on the surface.
“Marinette!!” a voice called out her name, and she raised her head, the light returning to her eyes for a moment.
Oh… of course it’s Alya. The light faded, and Marinette turned around.
“Girl, you’re spacing out. You don’t have to be nervous! Buttercup’s photoshoot ended early due to the akuma!”
What…?!
“I don’t want to do this anymore…” the words tumbled out of her mouth, and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to care about any of her friends' reactions.
“But Mari, you’re in too deep! He’s almost here, you can’t quit now!!” Rose piped up. “The romantic date is so close! Why are you backing out?”
Marinette muttered something into the stems cradled by plastic covering, unheard by all on the bridge. Her chest constricted as tears fought themselves into her thoughts. Before she knew it, only her friends clamoring for her to continue with this fake version of herself became all she could hear. Except, thankfully… that was enough for another voice to come into the fray…
“Marinette?” His voice called out to her from the other side of the bridge, and once again the light in Marinette’s eyes returned to her. Felix’s voice never felt so relieving to hear. “Is everything okay…?”
Marinette said nothing, and dropped the flowers to follow him to the other side, ignoring the protests of her friends, the garden she’d left behind that she’d grown to hate…
“What about Operation Secret Garden?! Buttercup?!” Alya exclaimed, to which Marinette said nothing, much to Felix’s worry.
“So… it wasn’t just shenanigans, was it?” Felix asked, his voice concerned and his eyes focused on Marinette as she continued walking with her head down.
“No…” she said, her energy spent yet finally released just as it would’ve exploded had he not called for her. “They just… wouldn’t listen.”
Felix sighed, running his fingers through his hair and leaning his head towards the sky as they waited at the crosswalk. “Did they…try pressuring you again?”
“And they almost won…” Marinette breathed, her voice exhausted, yet weighed down by sadness. “If you hadn’t called me, I probably would’ve stayed…”
They walked across the street without words, letting the emotions settle and not pressing further until the waves calmed. Then, in front of a minimalistic looking art studio, they stopped.
“Are you up for art today, or do you want to skip it?”
For the first time this afternoon, Marinette’s face lit up as she took Felix’s hand. She could leave her worries and gripes at the door, where the world would believe the lie ‘ without Adrien, Though Marinette would move, she’s getting nowhere ’.
Stepping inside and taking a seat by her friend, one she’d argue was her only true friend, Marinette’s anxieties melted into colors that spilled out on the palette and blossomed into the fruits of her creative muse.
Her muse, of course, being the one info dumping about his latest fanfiction idea and what book he had completed that week as he too worked on sketching out character sheets.
Oh, this boy. This absolute treasure of a boy that nobody else seemed to approach…
The hour and a half slipped by faster than they thought, Felix and Marinette left the studio with a binder, courtesy of the instructor, full of paintings and sketches.
“So…” Felix's voice trailed off, but not in the nervous way she had grown so familiar with from experience. “Drinks?”
The bells chiming and warm flickers in her heart didn’t fade as he smiled at her. “I’d love that.”
Minutes later they sat at a table for two outside a café, a caramel macchiato and chocolate croissant for Marinette, a pineapple passion fruit boba and lemon cake pop for Felix… and an unspoken tension that still hovered in Marinette’s chest.
“Do you, um…” Felix took a sip of his tea, seemingly gathering his thoughts. “Want to talk? You know, about earlier?”
“About me tackling you to the ground like that?”
“No, Mar… I meant about, what was it… Secret Garden or whatever the Ladyblogger called it?”
Marinette froze mid drink, her eyes meeting the window to her right and her cheeks gaining a pink tint at the reminder. “Oh… y-yeah, that…”
Felix flinched, nervously raising his hands as if backtracking. “I-If you don’t want to, I completely understand! It just seems like you’re bugged about it, and I’m here to listen if you need to vent about it...”
A bell chimed in her mind as if it was a calling, a sound so sweet yet Marinette didn’t know where the sound was coming from…
Marinette fiddled with her hair tie, tugging on the ribbon for a moment before finally letting it out. “Alya— the Ladyblogger, and my friends organized this whole convoluted thing for me to confess to a guy in my class… His name is Adrien. They even made up stupid code names for us. Adrien was Buttercup, I was Lotus or something… I don't know…”
Felix’s eyebrows knit together as he leaned back, his legs crossed. “And I’m guessing you didn’t want any of this, huh?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t even like him that way…”
“How come you don’t say so?” He questioned, tilting his head to the side.
“It’s basically the glue and popsicle sticks holding my friendship together with them, if I’m being honest…”
“Some friendship, then…” Felix muttered, rolling his eyes. “But I get it. You scared yourself into thinking that that fake persona you put on is all you’ve got with them…”
“Isn’t it, though? If romantic schemes are all they expect out of me instead of… you know— the real me, guess I must be quite the disappointing friend.” Marinette’s ensuing wry laughter was interrupted by Felix putting his hand on hers, looking into her eyes with an almost comforting seriousness.
“I’ve never heard a more ridiculous thing in my entire life. Mar, if they think you’re nothing but romantic plots, a big dreamer of things like a house, kids, a pet or whatever the hell… it’s not on you. It’s their loss if they don’t want to see the real Marinette who…” he paused, blush peeking through his cheeks, though he didn’t acknowledge it. “Who I think… is pretty great, whether she’s in a relationship or not.”
Oh.
Oh.
In that moment, as Marinette and Felix shared almost unbreakable eye contact, the former’s heart was lit ablaze as she found something in Felix that she didn’t even know she was looking for…
Though she didn’t hear the question, she had an answer.
“W-well… I um… I think you’re prettyyy…” her voice trailed off, and Marinette’s face went red. “Pretyyyyy…great too! Y-yeah…”
Oh, why was her heart this way? Falling for someone she never thought of falling for…
“Marinette…?”
As much as she wanted to deny it, Marinette had fallen in love like her friends had hoped… it just wasn’t with ‘Buttercup’… it was with ‘Camellia’.
Her heart was on fire and her mind was racing, bells chiming as they sang their song of relief.
She had to let it out… she had to be honest. Quit letting love talk in a whisper…
“I… I love you, Felix… I really, really do…”
Silence, the one thing she dreaded… then a slight laugh followed by shuffling, presumably out of his seat.
“You know, it’s funny…” she heard him say.
When she opened her eyes, she saw his hand outstretched for hers, the other occupied by his drink as he threw away the cake pop stick.
“Because I feel the exact same way.”
Marinette’s face went as red as her mask as she took his hand, both awkwardly sipping their drinks as they left the café.
Again, quiet reigned on their conscience, but yet as they walked, she found herself light and bathed in a warmth she didn’t think she’d feel at all…
This. This was what true love felt like.
On their way back to her place for further art discussion, they passed by that same bridge and Marinette tightened her grip on Felix’s hand, a gesture which he returned.
He side eyed the supposed girl squad, still yelling over to Marinette about how the garden could still flourish, or how ‘Buttercup’ was here… ‘Ugh. Some friends they are.’ He thought.
That wasn’t how love or friendship worked, and Felix’s heart hurt to think about how trapped Marinette must’ve felt… he knew that feeling too well.
All her friends and foes thought they knew her, but just look who is in her heart now…
Smiling at his new girlfriend, Felix led Marinette inside, away from the weeds growing in her true garden of tranquility, trying to overtake the beauty that was the singular Lotus on her own.
There was no need for Buttercup in either of their lives, and if the garden of weeds objected, that’s fine. Their say didn’t matter.
Felix and Marinette would absolutely make sure to hold on to the love they shared, no matter if the garden tried to destroy them or not.