Work Text:
Putting magic into one’s craft was a difficult skill, an added complication to practice on top of the mundane skills required.
Marinette had gotten pretty good at it, but today, as she tried to sew, she felt like a beginner again. Worse than a beginner, even. As she tried to thread the magic into the fabric, it only caused the physical thread to go haywire, flailing and escaping the needle, twisting on itself and resisting being inserted into the fabric. Even when she did successfully draw it through, it puckered and caught and refused to stay where it was supposed to.
When the needle snapped, Marinette was forced to admit that this was more than just an off day. She had never had any trouble making things for her friends before, but now that it was for Adrien… her feelings for him were literally tangling things up.
Marinette groaned and thumped her head against her desk. Just how was she supposed to deal with this? How was she supposed to convey her feelings to Adrien? She couldn’t talk to him, and now she couldn’t even make him a simple enchanted scarf?
.
Marinette was stubborn, and she practiced, and practiced, and finally she managed to complete a scarf. She proudly brandished it to Alya, but pride quickly gave way to nerves again as Alya took it to inspect, then to resigned disappointment as she watched Alya’s face fall after placing it around her neck.
“It didn’t take?”
Marinette had intended to imbue the scarf with magic that would ensure the wearer’s comfort, keeping them cool in hot weather and warm in cold, but as she’d gotten well acquainted with over the past couple of weeks, magic was a finicky tool, and she very easily could have messed it up and made it run too warm or too cold, or swapped the temperature directions, or…
Alya winced and quickly pulled the scarf off.
“I’m sorry, girl, but I didn’t even look for that. All of your worries and nerves must have worked their way in, and unless you want to give Adrien a scarf that induces anxiety, I don’t think this is it.”
Marinette dropped her head down, then took the scarf back from Alya and reluctantly started ripping out stitches. It wouldn’t be as good of a gift, but it looked like she’d just have to leave the magic out entirely.
It turned out to be just as well, since Adrien didn’t even think it was from her.
.
She didn’t stop making magical gifts for her other friends. Though she worried that Adrien would catch on and wonder why he alone was left out, she knew she’d get out of practice if she stopped, and more than that, she wanted to make nice things for all of them too.
Then the thread started fighting her again.
Dismayed, Marinette tried to separate the tangle of knots that had somehow formed, before she gave up on it and cut it all free. She prepared a new length of thread and began again, only for it to keep pulling away.
It didn’t make any sense! It would be one thing if she was making something for Adrien, but she wasn’t, she was making something for Kagami. And while Marinette had never made her anything before, her nerves over making a gift for someone new had never really been a problem. Adrien was the exception, but that was because Marinette was in love with him! And even though Kagami was beautiful, and cool, and a bit intimidating but also with a kinder side when you cared to look, it wasn’t like Marinette was… in love… with her…
The realization struck as she was trying to draw the needle through, and the thread didn’t just flail but also seemed to extend itself out a thousand fold, completely covering her room in haphazard strands of thread, strung across anything it could catch on from floor to ceiling. It would be a nightmare to clean up.
But Marinette wouldn’t care much about that until later, because she was having a crisis at the moment.
.
Magic could be put into anything a person put their soul into.
Watching Adrien and Kagami trade strikes with their foils, it looked effortless, even unconscious. But Marinette knew otherwise. They’d put no less effort into learning how to fence with magic involved than she had with sewing. Every time magic danced under their precise footwork, every time it shimmered an afterimage where the foils crossed each other, or touched the opponent for a point, she knew it was because they were putting themselves into it.
It was mesmerizing to watch, and Marinette leaned forward to get a better look, until she leaned too far and tumbled down the stands.
She wasn’t too hurt, somehow, but she felt terrible that the match had gotten interrupted because of her mishap.
.
André’s frown wasn’t cruel, but it was obvious that he found the thought of his ice cream being shared by three to be uncomfortable. Distasteful, in a very literal sense.
It still stung, even though he didn’t recoil or react in disgust. Maybe it was all the worse for his gentle discouragement, the way he prodded them along back to the right path, because it just let Marinette’s own harsh thoughts do the rest. Whispering to her that she was wrong, she was selfish for what she wanted. It wasn’t the way of things, and if even the magic in André’s ice cream said three is a crowd, then why was she letting her foolish heart jump in two directions?
So Marinette withdrew. Let Adrien and Kagami share, because neither of them deserved to be dragged down by Marinette’s selfish, tangled heart.
.
“What are you working on?”
Marinette startled, and looked over to her trapdoor. Sure enough, Kagami was poking her head up, and Adrien right next to her. She hadn’t even heard it open.
“Oh! Um, it’s fine, I can work on it later if you needed something?”
“That’s not what she meant,” Adrien said. “We actually came over to see if we could play some video games together? I was telling Kagami about how good at them you are. But I guess I should have asked first,” he added, in a shy way that made her heart flutter despite all her efforts.
“Or we could just spend time with Marinette while she works,” Kagami said. “If you’re okay with that, of course.”
“Oh, sure!” Marinette said, and immediately regretted it, because she couldn’t even work with magic if she was thinking about either of them, and for them to be in the same room?
No, no, she’d been working on this. She’d been working on trying to step away, and make something for them without her feelings getting tangled up in it.
Not that it had gotten her anywhere, and the thread jumped as soon as Adrien sat down in the chair next to her.
“We’re disrupting your focus,” Kagami said.
Marinette wanted to deny it.
“We could help?” Adrien asked. “Maybe…we could hold the fabric or something?”
“Um, sure,” Marinette said, grateful that the conversation had been redirected without her input.
Adrien and Kagami each took up part of the fabric as Marinette gestured to direct them. She doubted it would help much, but something different happened as she picked up the needle and thread again.
She gasped, and saw similar reactions from the other two. Instead of fighting her, the magic flowed out readily, and pulled out magic from Adrien and Kagami, flowing it out into the fabric and into her, as hers flowed into them.
And it…didn’t feel tangled up at all.
With that thought in mind and warmth not just in her cheeks, Marinette set to work. And with Adrien and Kagami there at her sides, she was finally able to complete a gift for them to her satisfaction.