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“This is so dumb, are you kidding me!!!”
Marinette swallowed a fifteenth snicker as her boyfriend squirmed beneath their shared blanket, doubling over from laughter as the movie kept playing. They’d been swarmed by a bunch of children wearing DIY costumes of herself and her kitty on the street the other day during patrol, and in trying to please them, got word of a movie of all things that was made with their name, still playing in theater and dvds already flying off shelves and back.
So, being the curious cat he was, Felix dropped by an old thrift store after and picked one up. Movie theaters were the bane of his existence, loud and sticky and overwhelming for almost all of the five senses, and Marinette understood that so she had no complaints about the current situation.
The main villain of the film was hilariously bad at appearing threatening, and Marinette had to fight her inner design critic as she saw each major character pop up on screen. Why did the character based off Ladybug have those salmon colored pants?! And why wasn’t it an accent color? It’d go great with black but all on its own?!
Marinette pouted to herself as she made a mental note to pay extra attention to the credits if they showed the names for the film's character designers. A good lesson in who not to look up to if she wanted to remain stylish.
“Honestly,” she began, reaching for the kettle corn segment of the bowl of popcorn on the table nearby. “Who was this even made for?” She asked mid chew. Marinette swallowed, then continued as Lady Beetle’s civilian identity tripped over a bug statue. That was the fifth time the girl had tripped over her own feet in the scene. “Even kids could find this irritating. It’s not even close to how it went!”
Felix covered his mouth to stifle another hearty laugh, then wiped one of his tears away. “Really.” He said, the smug grin creeping out from beneath his fingers.
Marinette turned to him, giving him a half accusatory stare paired with a matching smirk. “What?”
“You, talking about how annoying and inaccurate this movie is, when we wouldn’t even be here had you not tripped and broken an ancient artifact.”
Marinette went pink in the face at Felix’s bullseye of a point, then bopped him on the nose. “You know what I mean. I don’t trip nearly that much anymore!”
“The amount of times I’ve had to crack open the first aid kit downstairs begs to differ.” He teased, smiling genuinely a second later as he pointed to the medical gauze wrapped around Marinette’s elbow. “You always lose your footing whenever you’re super excited to go do something… it’s kind of cute, honestly.”
Marinette’s face darkened to an even deeper red shade at the compliment— at least, she thought of it as one, then went back to watching the movie. The girl on screen recoiled when she saw the beetle with gemstone wings, swatting at it as if it were a fly. What was her name again? Maretta? Who was coming up with these names…
“Ooh, this parts gonna be good, I just know it!” Felix said, leaning forward on the couch as Lady Beetle was about to make her appearance. “It’s time for your big entrance!! I really really hope they kept your ray guns in!!”
Marinette sighed. “I doubt it. This thing was clearly meant for children, so they wouldn’t advertise my bug zapper as being cool… but let’s see, what’d they… doooo…”
What.
The laughter between the couple died slowly and awkwardly as Lady Beetle appeared on screen, leaving the two staring and in abject shock.
Lady Beetle’s design was horrid. Nothing but a shiny off red bodysuit with almost checkerboard spots and an out of place slinky around her waist. Not a single sign of the spotted inventor anywhere.
“Oh my god… they RUINED you!!” Felix gasped in horror, then hugged Marinette close to him. “You’d never wear something like that!!”
“Isn’t Maretta also like… 13?” Felix’s embrace tightened as Marinette said that, and she returned it. “Don’t make it worseeee!!” He fake sobbed, averting his eyes from the screen.
The movie continued on but Marinette and Felix could no longer take it even the slightest bit seriously and now frequently interrupted it to make jokes at its expense.
The scene came when the Chat Noir lookalike appeared, and Marinette was now bent over laughing so hard her stomach hurt.
“They BABYFIED you, oh my gosh!!” She exclaimed, struggling to catch her breath as Felix huffed, narrowing his eyes at ‘Minou Noir’ continued to flirt with Lady Beetle despite this being their first fight together. He had a marginally better design than her, with full on armor and cat paw shoes but his face was completely rounded out and there was not a single bit of the rebellious cat that he was in the design.
“I save Paris from reality collapsing in on itself, and this is the thanks I get?!” Felix complained, crossing his arms as Tikki and Plagg continued throwing popcorn at the other like they were snowballs. “This is my legacy, huh? Just some kid who doesn’t know what no means?!”
“To be fair,” Marinette said, grinning. “You had it bad for me when I was my spotted self.”
“I had enough self respect to pine in silence! Shush!!”
“Yeahhhh, no you didn’t.”
“Excuse you, can’t you at least vouch for how much class I had compared to this baby faced kid?”
Marinette giggled and snuggled up to him. “If by class you mean being a giant dork? Then yes, I will vouch for you.”
“Hmph.. alright then, you win.” Felix admitted, ruffling her hair a bit.
“Do you think that we’d be a couple in every universe?” Marinette asked, leaning on his shoulder and using it for a pillow.
“Mmm…” Felix thought for a moment, pretending not to consider it. “Who’s to say? Maybe in an alternate timeline, I never would’ve existed.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” She laughed, focusing more on him than the movie. “Of course you would. I feel like my life wouldn’t be as great as it is without you.”
Felix continued in the shenanigans and put on his best pleading face. “Mar, would you still love me if I were a feather?”
“What?” Marinette nearly choked as she laughed harder at Felix’s question. “What do you mean if you were a feather?”
“Like, I was just a feather, then poof! Magic makes me exist.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, though!!”
“Neither does wielding a magic raygun made out of metal formed from light itself, Spots. Come onnnn, indulge me a little bit, won’t you?”
“Okay then, feather boy. What about me? Would you still love me if I…” she extended the question and looked back at the screen, then cringed as Lady Beetle was ogling Felix’s counterpart’s trophies. Not even for boxing, but chess of all things! “Broke into the hotel and, uh… smelled your comforter!”
Felix flattened his lips, disgusted but also appearing half conflicted. “…No. Breaking and entering is a crime, my dear Spots, and also that last bit would be very unsettling.” He crossed his arms and closed his eyes, nodding with pride at his answer.
“You’d still have a giant crush on me though, wouldn’t you?”
Felix cracked one eye open to look at her, then blushed as he looked away. “…yes.”
“Your turn, come on! Give me more stuff to laugh about, this is actually getting fun!”
“Does it have to be… y'know, questioning if I would still love you?”
“No, no it doesn’t!”
“Ok, um, let me think…” Felix tapped his chin a few times, deep in his thoughts as he watched the movie again. “What if, in another universe, I…” Felix cringed mid sentence as ‘Calvin’ acted completely unfazed as the film’s box standard mean girl character verbally tore Maretta apart for simply looking in his direction, smiling like a blank faced statue. “Did something like that?”
Marinette squinted, unsure of what he meant exactly before going ‘ohhh’ under her breath then crossing her arms. “I’d return the fire and verbally smack you for being a bystander to the blatant bullying going on.”
“The more I watch, the worse it gets…” he said to himself. “How can someone be this…” he twirled his hand in a circle as he tried to find the word. “Unbothered?”
“It’s fiction, chaton. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Says the girl who complained that her on screen origin story wasn’t accurate.” Felix snickered, earning a light smack on the shoulder.
“What if I was the one doing all the work?” Marinette batted her eyes at him, grinning. “What if you were just my arm candy? What would you do? Would you fight me? Or, uhh…oh!” She held his hand then tapped his ring. “Would you quit?”
“Nothing a quick conversation wouldn’t fix.” He shrugged, unbothered. “I hope not. I love you too much to do that. I wouldn’t even think about it.”
Something about that statement made Marinette’s center of self, the very way words reached her ears and how she processed them feel unbalanced for but a single splinter of time. The words were Felix’s normal flavor of sweet, sugary and smooth like the most perfect of caramels, but… somehow, that affirmation, that assurance… it made the strange sourness that ebbed away as soon as it reached her stand out all the more.
She ran her thumb over his ring, looking at the gem at its center as if studying it, her eyes unreadable and cloudy…
“If… if you did have a problem with me,” Marinette began, avoiding his eyes as a familiar taste began biting at her throat as she spoke. “Would you tell me? I-I wouldn’t be mad.”
Something about this conversation felt off now, but the relieving kind.
The kind you feel when you get used to a new normal. When you’re with someone who loves you with all their heart, when one possibly angry, possibly gut wrenching heartbreak before, there was hardly any communication between you and the ex-partner…
But… this was normal. It wasn’t new to Marinette. She’d been dating this man for years.
How odd…
She was so deep in her own thoughts she didn’t notice Felix staring, half confused, but still smiling a bit awkwardly. “What do you mean? Of course I would.” He said, putting his other hand over hers, a sign of trust with a small gesture that cleared all the strange brain fog that kept her locked up in her mind.
“If you ever need to tell me anything, I’m here. I always will be. I know you’d do the same for me, so… uh…” he disguised clearing his throat as coughing, suddenly sheepish.
“How are you this sweet…” she said quietly, so comfortable that Marinette could feel a nap tugging on her eyes. “I love you so much, Lucky…”
“And I love you too, Mar.”
Oh, this man…
Some may have called him an ice prince when he was still in school, but Marinette was sure none of their peers beyond their small friend group of seven had even managed to slightly melt down those walls and see the golden hearted and absolutely adorkable hopeless romantic that Felix was.
Smiling to herself and snuggling up to her boyfriend of two years, Marinette shut her eyes and let the cringy cash grab of a film go on with its noise in the background.
They could think what they wanted about their story and twist their dynamics into pretzels all they wanted. It certainly wouldn’t stop her from laughing at the absurdity, but Marinette and Felix knew the truth.
Marinette and Felix knew that no matter whatever universe they were in, they would always be together.