Disclaimer: I do not own Miraculous Ladybug.

Chapter 1: Warm

She had never felt like that before. Marinette didn't believe it was possible. There were plenty of moments when she felt it could have happened but nothing definitive. Nothing like this.

It wasn't love at first sight. She'd skimmed the magazines he had been on the cover of, had been devoted to his father's beautiful designs for years. His friendship with Marinette's long time bully threw a wrench into any possible relationship. But the connection between him and the heat blooming in her chest had never happened till now. His eyes were a confessional. A plea for pity; a second chance. And before she knew it, she had made a new friend. A gorgeous new friend with a laugh of gold and a smile that did strange things to her thinking process.

Nothing had felt like that before. The burning in her cheeks and the clenching of her heart and her fingers, shaking a bit as they bumped against his, was new and strange and beautiful. A new ally, a new sensation, was still swimming through her soul, swathing her cheeks a healthy pink and rearranging her words into strangled sentences.

New. All new. And pleasant in a way she had never known it could be. Pink and frothy and sweet on her tongue whenever she said his name, whenever she did anything like think of him. He was stunning in a way she never thought a human being could be. Even amidst the rain and the dreary, gray backdrop, he had seemed to emit this unconscious glow straight into her being.

So she had clutched it like a peace offering between them, a quiet breath of hope given to her from this boy with kind eyes and a rush of soft courage. It linked her to him, and him to her, and never before had Marinette wondered what it would be like to live her life without seeing him in living, breathing colour.

If this was love (as Tikki had suggested) then she was glad to have fallen in love with him.