about the moon, a miraculous: tales of ladybug & cat noir fanfic

about the moon

He was perfect in an unattainable way. The kind of crush that makes you feel like you're flying when you're with them but fills you with hopelessness as soon as you step away. The sort of person that makes you make up reasons for them to notice you when deep down, you know that there are none. He was the guy that made her count the petals on flowers and pretend the littlest of his actions meant something (they never did). It hurt her, but she loved to love him.

So she did this for years.

She devoted so much of her time and attention to this one boy. The boy with the shy smile and hair like the morning sun, with the soft voice and the sad, beautiful eyes. Loving him was like looking at a fire at nighttime. Even though it blinds you, you find it hard to look away. You look into the flames and you think you could sit still and watch them dance forever...

In freshman year, she'd tripped in gym class and had found herself sprawled on the hard floor in front of him. She'd felt the flames on her cheeks burn so hot, she'd thought she could melt the wax right off the polished wood flooring. Some of her classmates had laughed and to her complete embarrassment, she'd started to tear up. But he hadn't laughed. He'd asked if she was okay and helped her up, and when she had looked into his clear green eyes and told him she was better than okay, she'd meant it. He had offered to take her to the school nurse and she'd leaned on him the whole way. The nurse had told her she'd twisted her ankle and Marinette had spent the next two weeks on crutches. She hadn't focused too much on the gentle boy with much darker hair who loved music and the colour blue, the boy who had carried her books for her every day during those two weeks, who had opened all her doors, helped her sit down, and steadied her whenever she stumbled. Instead she'd just stared at her crush, so enamored with her sun ray of a boy that she didn't even notice how beautiful the night sky could be.

In sophomore year, she had snagged the locker adjacent to her perfect crush. This year, she'd thought. This year we'll become good friends. And they would have, but she'd wanted so badly for him to think highly of her that when she spoke to him, nothing coherent came out. She had spent that entire year stressed out over every interaction she had with him. She thought about him so much that she barely noticed how the other boy had climbed the stairs to where her locker was and waited to eat lunch with her every single day, how he would patiently stand there with his guitar, watching with his heart in a neat little knot, saving the conversation if needed. His hair had bright blue streaks now, but he doubted it was anywhere as bright as the hair that belonged to the boy he wished he could be (if only for her).

It was junior year when she started to lose hope. Surely if Adrien liked her that way, he'd have done something about it? She became insecure. Was something wrong with her? I'm ugly, she thought. Why would he want me? She changed her clothes, she changed her hair, she wondered if she could try on different personalities too. Her friends were all worried about her. You're gorgeous already, they told her, but she didn't think so. If you feel like you have to change for him, then he's not worth it, they said, but she didn't believe them.

Then the day came when Adrien, her perfect, beautiful boy, wasn't single anymore. She had cried for hours in the arms of a blue-haired boy who hid his pain for both her and himself, and comforted her with the sweetest of words. He played his heart song for her that day, and they both cried to it for different reasons that were all too similar.

It was senior year when she became more independent. She grew up a bit. She found herself in her art, sketching up wondrous designs and sewing her soul fervently into all sorts of fabrics. That year, she created some of her favorite pieces, and she showed them all proudly to the quiet boy who loved music, the boy who had always been one of her best of friends. She spent more time with him and her other friends, and discovered the value in all the little things she had missed while she was lusting after an unrequited crush. One day, she took a deep breath and spoke in full sentences to him, the boy that was once her sun, and realized that he was just a guy. A kind of dorky guy who really liked physics, of all things. She put away his schedule that she had hidden away in her room. His pictures took up too much space on her phone, so she deleted them. She stopped waiting around spots she knew he'd be in. She prioritized herself, her family, and her friends for the first time in a very long time, and if you ask her now, she'll fondly tell you that it was like opening your eyes in our world after living in a black and white one for years.

It was in early June on the floor of his room when Luka finally played her heart song for her. The guitar was a deep dusty blue, a sort of boring colour, but she remembers that it shone with a subtle pearlescent glow, as if it knew of hundreds of valuable secrets. She listened with her eyes closed and the melody was green, fresh like the grass in the yard outside the open window. Her heart song smelled like new beginnings, tasted like orange juice, and felt like the soft down of a newly fledged bird. And she reveled in it. When it was over, she opened her eyes and looked at him, really looked at him, and her heart skipped a beat. It was then that she realized she had never been in love before.

But oh, she was in love with him. The patient, quiet boy, who let her choose, who would always be there to catch her, the boy who knew her soul well and whose soul she knew well too. She thought that maybe she always had been.

A few months later and she's wrapped up in the arms of her lover.

I'm going to tell him, she says to a mop of blue hair.

Tell Adrien?

Yeah. I think it'll be good closure, y'know?

Well, if it's what you want, go for it. I'm here for you.

She smiled.

You always are.

So she told the boy she had once cared so much about that she'd crushed on him all throughout high school, and got an "oh I had no idea, I'm so sorry but I just didn't think of you that way" sort of cookie cutter reply. She shrugged and told him that it was okay. And for once, it really was.

The moon doesn't go away when the sun is out. Sometimes, if you look for it, you can see it in broad daylight, its features just a muted pale blue against the brightness of the sky. Even at nighttime, when it's at its full brightness, it doesn't blind you when you look at it - something about its glow is comforting, in that you know you can stare at its beauty for hours on end without consequences. It's a brilliant light, but so unlike campfires or the sun. It's a steady companion, quiet and patient. And it knows your heart song.