Edit: Thank you to all who alerted me to the fact that the previous version was in the formatting. It's been fixed.

A/N: I'm on a bit of a posting jag. Enjoy!

Sometimes, he sees the girl on the bus.

She's dark haired with clear blue eyes, pale china skin, and freckles like stars in the sky. (Her name's Marinette).

Sometimes, he sees her at school. She's ever present in his math class with the upperclassmen, and he catches glimpses of her in English Lit. If he's lucky, he sees her around campus: toting her peach and rose pink bag around campus, nibbling on a croissant from her parents' bakery (he's been there a few times, but he's never seen her), and laughing with her group of friends.

She's simply brilliant, radiating light like the stars her freckles resemble.

Adrien loves her laugh. Not because it's like the tinkling of bells or because it's crass like a donkey's bray, but because she's so unashamed of it. She lets it go, flying free into the air, rising and twirling and twisting in the sun.

It makes him want to make her laugh. He wants to be the one that's made the giggle come out of her mouth, as silly as that sounds. But the most he ever elicits is a nervous chuckle, stilted and contained, as if she's bored or scared of him.

But why would she ever be scared of him? He's got friends, and she laughs freely with his friends (but never around him), and he knows he's funny, his friends have told him so, so why doesn't she laugh with him?

It makes him confused, and one day, he realizes something new. Marinette leans away from him whenever he's near. Leans away like there's a magnetic field he's projecting and she's projecting the one with the same charge and it forces her away from him.

Oh, he realizes, so she's scared of me.

That makes him sad, and then frustrated for feeling sad about a classmate that he's never really talked to. And then Adrien decides that it's a waste of time feeling frustrated about feeling sad about someone he doesn't know, so he just leaves her alone. Stops talking to her or noticing her.

Well, he tries. But it's hard not to notice someone you've trained yourself to see. When he stops talking to Marinette, she relaxes. Her shoulders fall down and even when he passes by, she doesn't lift them unevenly. Ignoring her, it seems makes her feel the most comfortable.

Which was why it surprises him when she voluntarily begins speaking to him again a year later. Marinette asks him about their chemistry homework, and then about the English assignments. From what he knows, she's always been a good student, so these overtures are either out of general curiosity or interest in him. Adrien doesn't think she likes him, but he doesn't know why she's asking him about homework either; her friends are in the class, so why doesn't she ask them?

It's a little odd, really to see her talking to him so readily and suddenly, confident and happy. This is the girl that was here all along, he thinks, because she's smiling at him and laughing with him like she does with everyone else.

Adrien hesitates to talk to her sometimes, but he thinks she's alright when he does. It's a bit harder to parse her facial expressions, to see when Marinette's frustrated or sad or irritated, but he notices that he can always make her smile.

They become friends, bit by bit. These days, when they walk off the bus, Adrien doesn't walk alone anymore. They talk about teachers and school and pop culture. She agrees that burritos, while overrated, are one of the best things on earth. He learns that allergies aren't the minor complications he'd once assumed. Sometimes, Marinette muses about her inability to properly pronounce his middle name: it's a mess of vowels and consonants that few people get right. He shares that only his mom could say it correctly.

She has bad days. Sometimes, when he says hello, she doesn't look at him. She stares straight ahead, blinks, and then slowly turns her head to look at him. The first time Marinette did that, she caught up to him the day afterwards and told him that she wasn't feeling well. In fact, that tended to happen when she was upset. It wasn't anything against him (at this, she had blushed, but he let it go since there were bigger things to resolve).

Adrien sends her a cat gif. It's all good.

It isn't really a surprise, then, when he finds himself developing feelings for her. It's not much at first. Maybe there's a warmer than normal feeling in his chest when she smiles at him, a skip when she laughs at his particularly funny joke, a flutter when she bumps into him casually. He's far too deep when he realizes, and he knows he's not getting out soon. His crush is a fragile thing, a baby bird to be held against his chest, and it grows stronger every day.

It comes to a head when Marinette throws him an apple one day. Adrien catches it neatly, and when he turns to look at her, it hits him how much he enjoys being next to her. He makes up his mind the next day: he's going to ask her out. Maybe she'll turn him down, maybe he won't, and maybe he'll lose a friendship out of this. They're close enough that this won't break them, at least he doesn't think so, and these feelings need to get out of his chest. She needs to tell him no so he can move on; hope for an impossible dream is headier than morphine and more painful than the drug withdrawal.

He knows that she doesn't enjoy flowers (pollen makes her sneeze, she's told him), so he selects a funny, pun-filled card and a box of maple syrup candies (they're her favorite) and decides to go to her door. He has his pride, and his romantic side begs to be fulfilled, so her house it is. He gets her address from Nino, whose girlfriend Alya is Marinette's best friend.

It's now or never. Adrien takes a deep breath and presses the doorbell. Marinette appears moments later, hair disheveled and clothing sweaty. She looks frustrated and annoyed, her eyebrows pinched and her eyes narrowed.

He's gotten good enough to see what she's saying without her verbalizing it, and it seems to him that she's had a bad day. (Today's one of the days he doesn't have any shared classes with her). Adrien hopes he doesn't make it worse, and opens his mouth to speak.

It turns out that his feelings are wholly reciprocated and he ends up cuddling with her on the couch. She leans into him, warm and soft, and when it's nearly five and he knows that he needs to get home, he gently eases her off his shoulder, placing a throw pillow to support her head. He scribbles a quick note and drops a kiss onto her sleeping head, closing the door behind him so she doesn't wake up.

An hour later, he sends her all the pictures that he snuck while she slept. She attaches an audio recording of her laugh. It makes him feel happy and glowing inside (because he made her laugh).

Now, he sees the girl on the bus all the time. Her name's Marinette, she's simply brilliant, and she's with him.

A/N: Thoughts, anyone?

If anyone's curious, I like to imagine that Adrien and Marinette are in their last year of high school. So, about seventeen. Adrien's picked up by Nino in the second to last scene.