#celestewrites
trope twist: the dramatic airplane scene, except character A is being confessed to by their asshole ex and character B is the flight attendant who’s way too tired of this shit.
okay i am perfectly willing to chalk this up to Just Fanfiction Logic but like. how the heck does the oh no i spilled coffee on you meet-cute even work?? like, unless the character is a total dumbass and doesn’t put a lid on their drink there would be minimum spillage at the max.
although this does give me an idea - imagine a character who’s such a hopeless romantic that they don’t ever put a lid on their drink. it gets them into troublesome situations sometimes - maybe they spill it on someone who they hope to be their One True Love but ends up being a total asshole, and then someone defends them and that’s who they end up with? idk, but now i’m thinking of other trope twists that could be done.
How to (Not) Fall in Love with a Vigilante: A Guide by Marinette Dupain-Cheng
Alternative Title: Do as Marinette Says, Not as She Does
1. Do not, under any circumstances, make stupid decisions, like walking around Gotham at night.
To the average, non-magical person, this much seems obvious. But in Marinette’s defense, she carries around pocket-sized deities in her purse, so she throws caution to the wind whenever she needs to buy fabric supplies in the dead of night. She doesn’t normally make detours, but she’d been feeling peckish one night and decided to take a different route after stopping by the fabric store.
-
Marinette is on her way home when it happens—after successfully acquiring a carton of strawberry ice cream and a bag of chips, she walks beneath Gotham’s flickering lights, trying to remember which way she’d come from.
She speeds past the alleys, because they’re frankly creepy. Well, all of Gotham is creepy, but alleys have that generally sinister, horror-movie air about them. She’s about to merge onto her usual path when she hears a noise come from somewhere behind her.
It doesn’t sound like the battle cry of a criminal, nor does it sound like a stumbling drunk. She pauses and listens, and is that a groan?
This is where things go wrong. Instead of ignoring it like a sane person (though would a sane person really be walking around Gotham at night), Marinette actually heads toward the direction of the noise. Despite her attributing alleys to horror movies, she decides to walk headfirst into one and act exactly like the protagonist of said movies by following the source of a creepy sound. Great job, Marinette.
She treads carefully, and though there’s no more noise, she can soon hear the ragged breathing, courtesy of a figure on the concrete.
Don’t walk up to the sketchy person, Marinette tells herself. She walks up to the sketchy person. They are, fortunately, not dead. Unfortunately, they seem pained. It prods at the natural instinct Marinette has to protect, which is good for them but not so good for her.
Kwami, what did I just get myself into?
2. When you see a vigilante bleeding out, don’t drag them to your apartment to stitch them up.
Okay, this one seems cruel, but hear her out.
Bystanders don’t get noticed. In fact, that’s kind of the whole point of being a bystander. Forcing yourself into a situation will only draw unwanted attention. Sitting on the sidelines means nothing can go wrong! Well, other than the crushing guilt of inaction.
As a hero, Marinette shouldn’t be preaching passivity, but oh well. No one’s perfect.
Besides, interacting with a vigilante proverbial push that causes the first domino to tip over, until all you can do is helplessly watch the disaster of downed dominoes unfold. Then again, Marinette had never been one to follow her own rules.
-
Marinette feels like a serial killer.
No, really. She’s dragging a bleeding, unconscious body along a dark alley in the middle of the night in the world’s most crime-ridden city. Contrary to popular speculation, donning the mantle of Ladybug doesn’t give her any sort of superhuman powers outside of the suit. She really is just a regular girl. Although Marinette supposes regular people don’t do what she’s doing right now.
“Come…on…” she grunts, trying in vain to lug the person’s body to her apartment. She works out often, both for health and superhero reasons, but asking her to carry a 6-foot, muscled human is out of her expertise.
“Oh, forget it. You better not make me regret this,” she glares at the helmeted figure. “Tikki, spots on!”
Marinette lifts her cargo with ease, remembering to grab her groceries and snacks on her way up. She keeps them as far away from the bloodstains as she can.
3. Don’t use magic on strangers, especially the masked kind.
This one doesn’t seem so unreasonable—as both Ladybug and the Guardian, Marinette needs to keep her identity as secret as possible. She hadn’t spent years keeping it hidden from Chat for no reason.
But where civilians are more likely to brush off strange occurrences as a trick of the mind, vigilantes and villains investigate. After all, you don’t get very far without knowing a thing or two.
This rule applies to Marinette’s every day, but even more particularly to the situation at hand. She’s broken it a few times, though—what’s one more? As it turned out, a lot could go wrong with one more. Curse her bleeding heart.
-
“This is a bad idea.” Tikki flits around her head nervously, and it only plays up Marinette’s already-present anxiety. It’s a bit funny, the resemblance between guardian and sprite. It seems the latter had picked up the habit of pacing from her.
“What, would you rather I let him die?” Her hands don’t stop their ministrations, tracing flowing shapes onto the air above the person’s body. She’d already cast a simple sleep-inducing spell—not that her patient needed it with their horrid state, but it didn’t hurt to be too careful.
Theoretically, Marinette could heal with much more ease than others, being a true holder of the Goddess of Luck. But healing is a delicate process, even more delicate than the human body. Too much healing power could cause something dangerous to occur. She’d be better off using it on a smaller scale to give her patient a subtle nudge in the right direction, accelerating their progress by a bit. Nothing too extreme.
In the end, she decides to go through with a stasis spell, giving her time to pull out her medical kit and take as much time as she needs to attend to them properly. She uses a touch of healing magic, just to make sure their injuries won’t act up again, and sits back for a moment before moving on to her next problem.
She can’t exactly dump her patient outside, but she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. Maybe she can leave them in the apartment lobby, though that would draw even more attention from the other residents. Besides, if she’s right about her suspicions, it would be bad for anyone to see them. Kwami, why does she get herself into these kinds of situations?
Marinette jots a quick note, then remembers to put her ice cream back in her fridge, which is definitely melted at this point. After a small lightbulb moment, she goes back to the living room to add something to the bottom of the paper.
P.S. There’s ice cream in the fridge. Don’t eat all of it.
Hopefully they’ll be gone by the time she wakes up.
4. When you see a vigilante in your house, do not engage.
This one is simple enough: avoid confrontation at all costs. Don’t entertain the vigilante, or they’ll be, well…entertained. If you feed a stray once, they’ll just keep coming back for more.
This seems like common sense, since the normal reaction when one realizes their house has been broken into is notto walk right up to the culprit, but no one said Marinette made good decisions.
-
There’s a vigilante in her living room.
Marinette had just come back from another midnight snack run, nudging open the door gently so as not to disturb her neighbors. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees the figure shrouded in darkness, then relaxes a smidge at the familiar red helmet.
Of course, being on the radar of a vigilante can’t be a good thing, but at least it’s not someone from the League of Assassins. Not that she can confirm that, but she’s taking a shot in the dark.
In a moment of impulsivity she moves forward, the door closing behind her with a clear thump. The vigilante turns around slowly, and the fact that she can’t see his eyes is reallyunnerving. He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, so Marinette simply keeps an eye on him as she puts her bags down on the kitchen counter. Looks like she’s in for a long night.
5. Don’t speak when spoken to. In fact, don’t speak at all.
Ah, Etiquette 101. Marinette doesn’t know much about that, considering she’d never really needed to know anything besides basic manners and the unwritten rules of customer service. Despite growing up in a well-off area, she had been on the lower end of the spectrum and never needed to learn which was the proper fork. This held true until she became friends with Adrien, then Chloe, and started to attend events of her own in the fashion realm. But one doesn’t need to know anything past basic manners to realize that not speaking when spoken to is a bit rude.
But even when standing in silence accompanied by only a stranger whose life you saved last week, try to bear the uncomfortable quiet. Turn it into a staring contest. Who knows, maybe your unblinking gaze will intimidate them into leaving.
-
To Marinette’s credit, she tries to bear the silence. The way he’s staring at her unblinkingly is likely an intimidation tactic, but it comes off as more of an asshole move to her. Though maybe everything he does seems a little menacing with that helmet. It doesn’t even have a nose! Actually, scratch that. A nose would make it even more horrifying.
Her nose involuntarily scrunches at the thought, and the vigilante takes a step closer.
“Why are you here?” Her voice comes out much more irritated than she’d intended, but she’s already opened her mouth and she can’t stop.
“I told you I didn’t take off your helmet, if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean, it’s not like you could prove that, but I didsave your life instead of letting you bleed out in a dark alley.”
He shifts almost imperceptibly.
“Actually, I could. If you tried to take off my helmet, it’d have exploded.”
Marinette hadn’t expected him to speak, and certainly not with that voice, so the processing of his words is a bit delayed.
“What?! Why do you have explosives in your helmet? That would kill you!”
His next words are too muffled to hear, and she tilts her head curiously. The vigilante shakes his head and simply levels her with a look.
She frowns, unsure of what to do next.
“So…Red Hood, right?”
If she could slap herself, she would. Marinette may not be able to see him, but she knows there’s an amused expression plastered on his face. She really shouldn’t have opened her mouth in the first place.
6. Don’t indulge your vigilante’s strangely friendly partners.
This one is a half-truth. Not allof their partners will be friendly, because Red Hood’s sure aren’t. She’s pretty sure “partner” applies in the professional sense and not the romantic, because from the way they act she’s sure they’re related. Until proven otherwise, she’ll keep referring to Spoiler, Hood’s purple-bearing associate, as “the energetic sister” in her head.
Referring to him as “Hood” is another thing Marinette has to stop doing; it makes them seem like friends, and that’s something she definitely can’t have happening. Then again, it ismore efficient and easier on the tongue. And maybe she shouldn’t call him hervigilante, but differentiating between all of Gotham’s bat-heroes is very important.
There’s Robin (hostile and oddly cute?), Red Robin (polite yet distant, really only comes to rein in Spoiler), Nightwing (amiable yet cautious), Signal (friendly but with a potty mouth as bad as Hood’s), Black Bat (silent and a total riot), Spoiler (an absolute gem and one of her favorite people), and Batman, who she has yet to see around. She’s surprised he hasn’t questioned her yet, considering half his crew stops by her apartment on patrol, but she’s also sure he knows her identity.
But back to the topic at hand—don’t even thinkabout being familiar with your vigilante’s partners. It’s a weird, pseudo meet the family dinner in costume party form, and Marinette should really know better at this point.
-
The first one to stop by her balcony is Spoiler.
Her apartment is on one of the top floors, which has its benefits and drawbacks like anything else. The vigilante crew she’s accumulated since Hood’s first visit is one of the two, and she has yet to decide which.
Marinette is working on a design when she hears a knock on glass. When she looks to her sliding door, it’s not a red helmet she sees, though she hadn’t been expecting one. Hood never knocks—he simply appears in her apartment through means unknown to her.
She opens the door, a bit confused but not particularly worried for her own safety. She hasn’t heard many horror stories about Spoiler as she had the rest of the vigilantes, though she knows better than to underestimate her.
Her troubles turn out to be for naught, because she’s met with a grin and a surprisingly bubbly voice. Spoiler turns out to be great company, though, and she lets Marinette prod at and admire her costume. It’s worth it, even when Hood comes barging in and attempts to kick Spoiler out. It doesn’t work, and he has to deal with her occasionally encroaching on their late-night talks.
7. Don’t share emotionally charged moments.
Marinette is a generally emotional person, which just goes to show how the universe couldn’t have chosen a worse antagonist than Hawkmoth. Despite the bad coping mechanisms she’d gained during her time as a superhero, she now has an arsenal of knowledge about emotions and how they influence human behavior.
For any relationship to sustain itself, no matter the kind, emotional intimacy is key. The reverse is just as true—relationships without emotional intimacy will fall apart. So to not fall in love with someone, just don’t divulge anything of importance. This, however, is easier said than done.
-
Marinette’s conversations with Red Hood are unpredictable.
Some days, they talk about the mundane: what they had for breakfast, small yet memorable interactions—on others, they take a heavy turn, discussing their deepest fears and nightmares. Marinette hasn’t divulged her identity outright, but she’s sure he knows.
They’re laughing about ridiculously-themed villains one day, Calendar Man and Condiment King and the atrocities that are Bubbler and Mr. Pigeon.
Marinette sobers and acknowledges that it’s easier to shed light on the less severe akumas—it’s nothing that Hood hasn’t heard before, nothing that he doesn’t already know intimately, but she still reminds herself. There are things others haven’t been witness to, possibilities that are only between her and Bunnyx. Sometimes they’re only between her and Tikki, because everyone else has the luxury of forgetting. They have the luxury of not having seen it at all.
“Yeah, it sucks,” Hood replies when she mentions the known akumas with the highest death counts. She might have been annoyed if this had come from anyone else, but she knows his colloquial language isn’t meant to harm. In a way, he understands her more than most. “But it’s lucky, in a way. How Parisians get to take death so lightly. Coming back to life is easy for them.”
There’s something about the way he phrases it, combined with all the offhand remarks she hadn’t been able to understand. There’s a horrible, sinking feeling that accompanies the dawning realization.
Marinette doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to break the delicate silence that had settled over them. She shuffles closer and wraps her arms around his tall frame. They envelop one another like the silence that envelops them, and the weight they rest on each other is just as heavy.
8. When your vigilante kisses you, don’t kiss back.
This is your last chance to turn back before you’re in too deep. If you let it happen, you’ll find yourself in a happy, long-term relationship before you know it. (Marinette can’t remember why this is a bad thing, but she’s too deep in her own refusal to turn back.) Even if it’s a vigilante-turned-more-than-friend and it’s the best kiss you’ve ever had, find the strength to turn them down.
Let it be known that Marinette has never claimed to be strong outside of the suit.
-
It’s not a story for the ages like she’d always dreamed of as a kid—there’s no fanfare, no balloons and rainbows and riding off to the sunset.
They’re sitting on her couch like they always do, and she’d just said something she can hardly remember when Hood takes off his helmet.
She squeaks, partly because of the Kwami-damned explosives that she knows are still in there and the abruptness of it all. She looks away, closing her eyes and shielding them with her hands. After a few beats, she peeks through her fingers.
She relaxes at the domino mask covering his eyes, but the soft expression on his face sets her nerves alight. His warm hands nearly engulf hers as he gently tugs them away from her face. Marinette can only heed, lips parted in shock. Hood leans closer, and she breathes in his familiar earthy scent.
“May I?”
Marinette can’t even remember nodding, but he leans forward, and she’s drawn to him like a magnet. Hood’s lips are warm against hers, and something stirs in her chest as she hooks her arms around his neck.
It’s not a fantasy, but it feels like it could be.
-
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There’s a vigilante on the cover of a comic in the shop Marinette visits. He looks like the one from her dreams.
hiraeth
(n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past
-
Marinette’s hiraeth starts on a Saturday.
Her heeled boots cause a gentle click-clack, click-clack to sound against the polished hardwood floor of the comic book shop Alya had dragged her to. Saturdays are reserved for their best friend dates, the frequency of which have waned over time. It comes with the territory of being an adult, Marinette supposes. Growing up comes with a cost.
She roams the aisles, taking in the vibrant colors plastered on everything in sight. It’s overwhelming, almost, but sparks something inside her. She makes a note in her head to come back for inspiration and files it away, letting it mingle somewhere in her jumbled mess of thoughts.
Her eyes dart along the shelves critically, years of examining her designs for mistakes aiding her in her search for the newest limited-edition Majestiacomic. In all honesty, she’d much rather be at home, snuggled in her pink fluffy blanket with a mug of steaming hot cocoa, but she’s determined to see this through. Besides, the sooner she finds it, the sooner she can go home. She loves Alya, she really does, but she’s also exhausted from the all-nighter she’d pulled working on the costumes for Jagged’s upcoming tour.
Pushing her exhaustion down, Marinette continues her trek through the store. She’d already covered the entire left wall spanning across the shop with no luck. In her preoccupation, she shoots an absentminded wish that Alya is making more progress on her side.
The designer combs through the few shelves on the end, mentally ticking off each comic. Not that one, not that one, wait, turn right at the corner here, and—
Marinette backtracks right before turning the corner, immediately on the lookout for the somethingthat had caught her attention; it doesn’t take her long.
She finds it on the very end, nestled into the far left corner of the wall.
It’s a comic, sitting inconspicuously on the dark walnut shelf, a light sheen on its glossy cover.
There’s a hero on the front, guns blazing and a fierce stare that burns into her through his striking red helmet. Marinette’s feet take her closer as she stares at the cover. She’s never seen a drawing look so human.
As a being of Creation, life calls to Marinette. This sensation is intimately familiar.
She’s taken aback by the crashing wave of closeness, the kind of yearning for warmth she’d only ever felt towards people she considered home. Marinette is sure she’s never seen this character in her life.
Her fingers reach out and ghost over the page, a moth drawn to a flame. They linger over his face and trace a line down his arm, settling on the guns strapped to his side. Red Hood. The name tickles her brain, like a reminder of a vague childhood recollection.
She stands there, staring, studying his face and tracing each individual feature until the sound of footsteps shatter her trance.
Shaking her head, she sticks her hands in her pockets and walks away with carefully casual steps, already trying to block out any stray thoughts of heroes in red. She tries to dismiss the tug in her chest that pulls harder the farther she walks away.
Surely there’s a rational explanation to all this—Alya, ever the comic fan, had likely mentioned the hero in passing, and something in Marinette’s subconscious mind had recognized the name.
Yeah. That’s it.
“Now where’s that comic book?” she mutters, ignoring the strange itch that compels her to turn back around. Willpower is what moves her feet until they mechanically turn the corner.
She swears she can feel a stare burn into her as she leaves, but when she whips back around, the aisle is deserted. There’s nothing but the comics lining the shelves, and there’s no one there but her.
-
Marinette returns to the shop a week later without Alya in tow.
The bags of fabric in her hand jostle with each timid step, unsure of her own decision. She’s hardly visited the shop, let alone without company; she’d never really had a reason to do so.
Marinette is more than happy to leave the fangirling to Alya. Her best friend has an insatiable thirst for anything regarding superheroes; Marinette, on the other hand, has had her fill.
She enjoys helping people, and being Ladybug puts her in a unique position to have a more direct impact on their lives, but she has no interest in integrating superheroes into her leisure time. Against all odds, though, here she is—walking into a store with posters of caped crusaders and vengeful villains alike.
It hadn’t been her intention to visit again so soon. In fact, it’s completely coincidental that the fabric shop she frequents for supplies is only a block away, and that she needs to buy a birthday gift for Alya. (She decidedly ignores the fact that it’s June and Alya’s birthday is six months away.)
Nevertheless, it’s a brief reprieve from how stifling her home had been feeling lately. Despite Marinette being a more anxious individual than most, something had heralded a recent spike in restlessness. She had been designing like crazy, trying to catch up with her running mind, tossing and turning until her limbs tangled with her bedsheets.
Something had been telling her to visit the shop again, an incessant nagging in the back of her mind. She’d have ignored the irrational pull if it hadn’t been distinctly reminiscent of her Ladybug instinct, but there’s another voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Alya’s, whispering I think all those pastries are getting to your head.
Nevertheless, here she is, hand hovering over the chipped silver handle of the door. The cool metal bites into her palm as she swings it open. Her feet make a beeline for the corner, and the knot of tension in her stomach unfurls when she catches a glimpse of a familiar glossy cover.
It’s automatic, the way she steers herself to it—like she’d been here a thousand times before. The feeling of deep familiarity is unsettling, and it ignites a painful part of her heart.
Marinette doesn’t know what to do. So she stands there, looking at the strange hero in this strange shop and the strange situation she’s gotten herself into. When the bell at the top of the door chimes, she nearly jumps out of her skin. Her face warms, and she leaves the section before someone catches her standing there like a maniac. She dawdles a bit, then grabs a charm for Alya on her way out and places it alongside her bolts of fabric, casting one last cursory glance before exiting the store. She has a feeling she’ll be back soon.
-
Marinette doesn’t return for another month, a byproduct of the all-consuming fashion week.
Despite her tendency to plan down to the last minute, her life had become an indiscernible blur of airplane flights, last-minute alterations, and high-tension situations. The payoff had been great, aside from her nearly tearing her hair out in frustration, but now she’s back in Paris, trying to get used to the strange feeling of not being on call every second.
In the past month she hadn’t had much time to think of anything other than designing, but Marinette’s whirlwind of action had been accompanied by a startling lack of stress-induced nightmares, replaced by something more haunting than the prospect of having an elaborate design fall apart on the runway.
Somewhere in the din had been flashes of emerald eyes, snippets of a rumbling voice and calloused hands, a broken film reel fading in and out. A soft voice and soft hands and even softer words, yet always just out of reach, like trying to capture the wind in her hand only for it to slip through the cracks.
She doesn’t remember, exactly, but she knows. Knows that the split second of confident gait she’d seen is something important, that the scarlet in her visions is the same as that of a certain helmet-bearing vigilante.
So she trusts her gut, emulates that same assured strut and walks through the door with purpose. This time, she is the one to guide her feet through the aisles.
She stops right before the corner-turn and knows the answers she’s waiting for all lay within those pages, and she motions to flip open the cover.
She hesitates.
It’s not like her to falter at the moment of truth—or maybe it is. Ladybug always has a plan, always bears the responsibility of being a beaming dawn of hope in Paris’s darkest times. She cannot be unsure; she cannot afford to. The girl behind the spotted mask has no such pressure.
Marinette stumbles, she trips, she falls, so Ladybug can make impossible leaps and bounds. Because at her core, Marinette will never live up to her superhero moniker: impossibly unblemished, like the sculpture an infatuated artist had once made. She bears the burden of both lives and the glory of one, and she’s long accepted that reality.
She drops her hand and turns away.
Maybe it’s a moment of strength, to go against everything she wants and yield to a single gut feeling that something is wrong, that she’d be invading a sacred space not meant for her eyes. She’s yielding to something she doesn’t understand in the hopes that she will someday, and maybe somewhere during those formative years, she had learned something important: she had learned to trust herself.
Marinette walks out the door, more unsure than when she had walked in but no less yearning. Her dreams are still filled with red.
-
It’s her last time back, Marinette promises herself. She’s only going because Alya had insisted on dragging her along—awfully convenient that a glimpse of a certain vigilante would appease her apprehension, but truthful nonetheless.
Try as she may, she cannot eradicate the dreams that pursue her relentlessly, begging for her attention. When she closes her eyes, she knows she will slip away into the strange world comprised of adrenaline and calm, of punches and combat and comforting arms and hushed professions.
Marinette keeps herself deliberately casual, meandering for a good portion before treading her customary path. Her eyes linger on the shelves like they had that very first day, and when they wander to the very thing she had been dancing around, she freezes in place.
The comic is gone.
The shelf is bare, the empty of the wooden stand reflecting the empty in her chest.
She snaps out of her shock, trying to shove down the rising panic that grips at her with ice-cold claws. It’s just a book, she rationalizes. Only ink on paper and a well-drawn figure. But those sweeping lines make up an achingly familiar face, an indelible brand in her mind.
She doesn’t have time to process the situation before she’s being pulled away, Alya’s mile-a-minute chattering not louder than the roar in her ears but enough to drown out any discernable thought. This time, she doesn’t look back.
-
Marinette has dreams.
They hover in the back of her mind and just out of reach, pounding on the thin veil of reality. She’s not sure if she can even call them dreams anymore—memories, more like.
When she’s asleep there are flickers of recognition, of skin on skin and whispered “I love you”s. There’s the recollection of distinctly-streaked hair deep in the recesses of her mind, bits and pieces waiting to be strung together.
When she wakes, all she knows is sleepless nights of tossing and turning, and the fruitless battle of trying to forget. Thoughts of the helmet-bearing vigilante won’t leave her mind, and her insomnolence doesn’t go away. The two seem to work in tandem, feeding on the other’s strength, burgeoning like an out-of-control vine.
After weeks of increasing disquiet, Marinette collapses into her bed, hoping for an ounce of repose. She doesn’t expect anything to change.
Somehow, they do.
“I’ll come back to you,” she hears a voice choke out, thick with tears. It’s her own. “I won’t forget.”
Warmth and an overwhelming light that floods her senses. Marinette wakes up with a gasp and a name on her lips.
“Jason.”
-
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* @bluesimani
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@heart-charming
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@maskedpainter
@moongoddesskiana
@nathleigh
* @no-username2544
@phis-corner
@too0bsessedformyowngood
@ultimatetornshipper
this fic is a collab with @nightlychaotic,@ramos123,@thedragonbug, and @miraculousmelodies!
Jason is, for lack of a better term, a loner.
He’d never really been a people person—growing up in Crime Alley does something to your sense of trust—and he largely prefers books to the company of others. There had been few exceptions to this rule before his death, and even less afterward.
He knows how to maneuver himself around others; growing up with Bruce had led him to become intimately familiar with the ins-and-outs of Gotham’s higher class, but he hates their plastic smiles, hates how everyone hides their intentions behind grandiose acts and saccharine words.
They peacock and parade about, flashing their opulence in displays of false magnanimity. Every socialite dons a perfectly curated mask—and it could be considered hypocritical for him to condemn such an act, but Court of Owls aside, none of them wear the same kind.
Despite his misgivings, he’s tried to let people in, from the stilted relationship he has with Bruce and the rest of his family, stitched together with fraying threads of a five-year-old’s poor handiwork, the camaraderie he’d built with the Outlaws since coming back to life, the pigtailed teenager from Paris he’d met a few years back and claimed as his little sister.
But through it all, his dislike of high society and stuffy galas remain. Despite the capacious size of the ballroom, the environment is stifling. It’s bustling with splendor and the kind of people his alter ego would label as targets. Sure, there are a few he’s impartial to, but he can’t look anywhere without seeing at least one unethical, sleazy magnate.
He tugs on the lapel of his suit, trying to abate some of his discomfort, but he still feels smothered. The girl that’s been chatting off his ear for the last five minutes doesn’t help, her words running a mile a minute. She’s not bad company, per se, but with each passing second she seems to lean closer, her ringlets nearly brushing against his arm.
Normally, Jason has no problem telling people to fuck off, for lack of a better term. But he’d recognized her as the daughter of some important businessman and reluctantly decided to entertain her as a courtesy to Bruce. You owe me, old man. If Jason was going to suffer, he might as well get something out of it.
He doesn’t speak unless prompted, giving answers long enough to be considered socially acceptable but curt enough to lack anything of substance. It seemed to work fine at first, but he can tell his company is trying to prompt longer reponses out of him. Her questions are more direct, more thought-provoking. He doesn’t have any qualms with that particular aspect, but he’d like them more if they came from a book.
There’s a strange silence, and Jason looks down to realize that the girl is now blinking at him questioningly. Ah, shit. What did she ask?
Before he can even begin to respond, a whirlwind of fluffy pink comes barreling towards him. Marinette halts right in front of him, ruffled from her run over. “Emergency,” she pants, and pulls him along with surprising strength. Even knowing all of her exploits as Ladybug, the ease with which she manhandles him still catches him off-guard. His protective instincts are on in an instant, though, and he trails after her, not even casting a backwards glance.
She pulls him out of the ballroom and into a secluded hallway, scanning around them before finally dropping his hand. Marinette relaxes, but Jason is on the alert. He turns to her, doing a once-over to make sure she’s okay.
“What’s wrong? Who do I have to fight?”
She doesn’t lookparticularly distressed anymore, but, well. Fighting an emotional terrorist in your formative years does something to your ability to emote properly. And since she’d mentioned something about an emergency, it was an obvious conclusion.
“Calm down, Rambo.”
Jason does notcalm down, but he does take a hand off his belt. The motion draws Marinette’s eyes.
“ Wait, is that a gun? Jason, why do you have a gun at a formal event?” she hisses.
“Relax, Cupcake. It’s called being prepared. And besides, it’s myformal event.” He accompanies his statement with a head pat because he just can’t resist. Marinette glowers up at him.
“Uh huh,” she deadpans.
“Hey, Bruce wanted me to be here. If he gets mad, it’s his own fault. He shoulda specified no guns.”
“Yeah, it’s not like he has a rule against lethal firearms or anything,” Marinette retorts, but she’s smiling. Jason smiles back, though his looks are significantly more roguish than hers.
“Really though, what’s wrong? You did say there was an emergency.” No jokes nor quips—he seems genuinely worried. Marinette shoves his shoulder gently, rolling her eyes.
“The only catastrophe was clearly you couldn’t wait to get out of there while talking to that girl. You’re welcome for the save, by the way.”
Jason’s initial reaction was one of indignance, then an affectionate stirring in his chest.
“Aw shucks, Pixie, I knew I was your favorite sibling.” He ruffles her hair, ignoring her splutters of “This took me an hour to do!” and “‘Shucks?’ Since when did you become Southern?”
Marinette scowls up at him as she pats down her hair and smooths down her dress, trying to preserve some semblance of dignity after his attack on her person. Jason chuckles right back. Despite knowing full well that she can drop-kick him at any moment, she looks about as threatening as a hamster with its cheeks stuffed full of food.
“D’ya wanna go bother Timbers? We can laugh at his suffering together.”
Tim, unlike Jason, has CEO responsibilities and is therefore obligated to mingle with the attendees. Not even a frantic, panicked girl can get him out of it.
“You’re horrible,” Marinette says, but she places her hand in his palm anyway. Jason can see her eyes alight with mirth as he pulls her along, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. He returns it easily, and it stays on his face for the rest of the night.
Jason may be a loner, but Marinette is an exception.
-
PERMANENT TAGLIST
@astoriaandromeda
@avengerthewarrior
*@bluesimani
@enternalempires
@ev-cupcake
@flower-girll
@freesportspalacesalad
@glastwime859
@heart-charming
@iloontjeboontje
@jayjayspixiepop
@jalaluvsu
@jumpingjoy82
@kitsunebell
@maskedpainter
@moongoddesskiana
@nathleigh
*@no-username2544
@phis-corner
@too0bsessedformyowngood
@ultimatetornshipper
Marinette, for all intents and purposes, is a horrendous liar—but apparently not so horrendous that Red Hood doesn’t believe Ladybug when she says she’s in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Now she has to suffer the consequences of lying to her crush and deal with the new client who seems to be oddly invested in her relationship with Ladybug.
based on this idea in collaboration with @lady-literatureand@bunathebunny
For being sponsored by the Goddess of Luck herself, Marinette sure is unlucky.
She thought her partnership (can she call it a partnership? a you’re here I’m here we might as well work together situation?) with Red Hood had been going well. They exchanged easy-going banter, were an efficient team, and she couldn’t help but feel like there was a mutual attraction there—that is, until she had to mess it all up by putting her foot in her big mouth.
After months of their initial acquaintanceship, they’re sitting on a rooftop, enjoying a small bout of reprieve from their earlier takedown of the same trafficking ring that had brought them together. Hood is sitting next to her, arms slung lazily over his spread legs. She’s never seen him so relaxed before, if she can even call it that.
He’s still tense, eyes darting around in a way that screams experience, but it’s a start.
They start hashing out the finer details of the mission to see if there are any leads they can use to take down a bigger organization. Somewhere along the way, it turns into simple conversation—nothing too personal, until they breach the topic of significant others.
Marinette doesn’t remember how they’d gotten there, but she hopes she doesn’t find out that he has one of his own. They discuss the logistics, the possible disadvantages and dangers of having either a hero or a civilian as a partner, until she decides she’d had enough of dancing around.
“What about you?”
“Huh?”
“Do you have a partner? A romantic one, I mean.” She tries not to sound too hopeful.
Hood snorts. “God no.” Marinette tilts her head but doesn’t ask.
“Do you?” The words roll off his tongue, smooth and rich.
“No, but—”
“But?”
And she can swear he’s leaning closer, and she does too, until she can practically feel warmth emanating from his solid figure. His voice is pitched low, lower than usual, and she breaths, “I’m in love with someone,” barely hearing her own words from the trance she’s in.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
Her brain short-circuits like it always does when she’s around people she likes, and all she has to do is say you, and then he’ll tell her he loves her too and kiss her like she’s always imagined. But the words that come out next aren’t it’s you, Hood, because the universe hates her.
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng!” she blurts, panicked and much too loud for the mood that had befallen.
Even though she can’t see through that red bucket of his, she can envision Hood’s bewilderment plastered across his face just as clearly. In fact, she’s similarly baffled at the words that had just come out of her mouth.
What. The. Fuck. Marinette the Spaz was supposed to be dead—gone, not-so-dearly departed, six feet under, cataclysmed into dust—not creating new messes for Current Marinette to clean up.
To Hood’s credit, he recovers faster than she does. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng? As in the famous designer? You know her?”
“So do you, apparently!” Okay, so she gets defensive when backed into a corner. So what.
“Well, yeah. Hard not to when her name is everywhere. Didn’t think she’d be your type, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marinette squawks, indignant. Crush or not, she’ll defend her honor if she must. Red Hood seems to realize this too, because he chooses his next words carefully.
“She seems cool and all that, but she’s a civilian. Do you really want her to get tangled up in this life?” he questions, referencing their previous conversation.
“She’s not a civilian,” she sniffs, not bothering to cover up what’s probably Paris’s worst-kept secret. “She was a temporary hero when Hawkmoth was in power. Multimouse.”
“So you still keep in touch with her?”
“What gave you that idea?” she shoots back.
“You talk about her like you guys are close. It’s kinda obvious.” Yeah, we’rerealclose, she grumbles in her head.
“It’s whatever,” she replies, trying to change the subject before she has to pull even morelies out of her ass. Hood shrugs, and that’s that.
They chat a little more, come up with some semblance of a plan for their next stakeout, and part ways. Marinette goes home and double-checks her calendar before she goes to bed, looking at the name circled for tomorrow’s consultation. Jason Todd.
-
Jason Todd is, surprisingly, more like Jagged Stone than he is his own brother.
Okay, that’s not totallytrue—they both share the initial aloof demeanor, are somewhat reserved, but engage in clever conversation while remaining cautious of their own words. Much like Jagged, however, Jason seems to have a disregard for formality and a liking for motorcycle jackets.
Marinette knows he’s only meeting with her at his brother’s behest, but Tim had apparently been insistent on his consulting her for a new jacket. She does have somewhat of a reputation for working with unorthodox material, after all.
She chats with Jason as she gets his measurements as she does with the rest of her clients. It’s awfully awkward to do it in silence, so she avoids it whenever possible.
It starts off with small talk, then her moving from Paris to Gotham, until Jason asks what she thinks about the Miraculous Team. It catches her off-guard, but she supposes anyone would be curious.
“I appreciate what they’ve done for Paris. It’s nice to know there are heroes out there that will look after us. I just hope they won’t have to go active again,” she replies, giving the most generic answer she can as she measures around his waist.
“What about Ladybug?”
Marinette tries not to let anything show on her face at that, but she’s on edge now. She hasn’t done anything that might have clued him in on her identity, has she?
“I think she’s a decent hero. I just don’t think it’s fair that she overshadows the rest of the team, you know? The rest of them deserve recognition too.” Technically not a lie.
Jason looks down at her with regarding eyes. “Don’t you think she gets more praise because she’s their leader? No offense to the other heroes, but from what I’ve heard she’s the mind behind the team. And have you seen her in action? That roundhouse kick is something else.”
Marinette knows he’s not praising her directly, but her face still heats up. “Yeah, I suppose,” she says, trying to move on before he can say something else that will turn her pink.
He doesn’t bring it up again.
-
Marinette has at least enough self-awareness to admit that she can’t blame all her issues on the universe’s apparent problem with her. At least some of her plights can be attributed to her poor decision-making skills.
Is it a bad idea for her, a young woman, to go ambling around the streets of Gotham near midnight? Completely and utterly. Does she do it anyway? Yes, because she’s an idiot.
In her defense, she’d had minimal trouble the first dozen or so times she’d traveled from her apartment to the fabric shop a few blocks away and back.
Marinette leaves the store with a few bolts of fabric and a small bag of notions, and she’s stopped by a knife in her line of sight almost a minute after starting her walk home. There’s another glint of metal in her periphery, and she drops her fabric at their barked command.
It looks like surrender, but Marinette is far from ceding. With her purchases safely out of the way, she lets them gain on her before striking fast as a snake. She sweeps the first crook’s legs out from under him, making quick work. She doesn’t know what kind of weapon the other has, but it becomes apparent when a gunshot rings through the air and whizzes past her.
She gets on her feet and whirls around, keeping an eye on the downed crook in case he isn’t knocked out. It’s not her first encounter with such criminals, but she’s not in uniform this time. She can’t afford to get injured.
The heroine dodges the next barrage of bullets he sends her way, skillfully making her way closer to disarm him. She’s a few paces away when the first goon pops up, and it’s through pure luck that she avoids a bullet skimming her arm.
The two back her into an alley, their combined shadows looming over her.
“You’ll pay for that, bitch,”the one with the knife snarls, and she’s about to charge forward when a shot echoes through the air.
The two crooks turn their head slowly, suddenly alarmed, and Marinette takes the opportunity to jump into action. She goes for the one with the gun first, not bothering to hold back. He’s out cold in a few well-placed strikes, and by the time she turns back around, she’s met with a pool of blood.
She’d have been horrified at the sight of the spreading scarlet a few short months ago, but being partners with Red Hood had acclimated her to the sight.
Like a summons, she drags her gaze to the opening of the alley to see him drenched in torchlight, guns strapped to his side and bags of fabric in his hands. He lifts them in greeting.
“This yours?”
-
Jason wouldn’t claim to know Marinette very well, but the one that greets Red Hood seems to be from a different dimension than the one he knows in his civilian identity.
Her entire demeanor changes as soon as she spots him, stance going from confident to something significantly more klutzy than usual. She stumbles towards him as if she hadn’t just held her own against two of Black Mask’s gang, eyes going comically wide.
“Red Hood!” She staggers over and leans her weight against him like he’s a fainting chair, and she’s lucky that he’s not Robin and doesn’t throw her off in revulsion.
It could simply be that he hasn’t seen this side of her before—starstruck and scared—but it reminds him of Bruce’s “Brucie Wayne” persona: well-meaning yet ditzy. Her indulgent praise is reminiscent of the vultures at the galas that try to cozy up to him while their husbands attempt to worm their way into Bruce’s good graces.
It’s a caricature, and he can’t help but wonder what she’s playing at.
Jason offers, or more so insists, on dropping her off at home. He swings them through the air “to avoid any more trouble,” which she giggles at. Curiously, Marinette doesn’t shriek as they go airborne or even seem fazed at all. He briefly entertains the thought that Ladybug might have swung her around but dismisses it just as fast. Ladybug isn’t so careless as to spend so much time with civilians, infatuation or not.
They make it to her apartment in no time, and Marinette thanks him profusely, gushing her gratitudes. When she closes the door, he sees her snort and roll her eyes through the window. Curious indeed.
-
The next time he meets the designer is at his fitting a week later. She’s flitting around him, pinning pieces into place and having him shrug his shoulders and move around. He cranes his neck and discreetly scans her apartment for something he can use to bring up the topic of, well, him,and—bingo. Next to a Robin-themed mug on the nearest desk, there’s a sketch with the bat insignia in the corner.
“I see you’re a fan,” he nods towards her drawings.
“Oh!” Marinette replies, looking embarrassed. “The mug is a gift from my best friend Alya. She’s really into superheroes, so I thought I’d make something for her. I mean, there’s nowhere better to make Batman things than Gotham.”
Jason nods, contemplating her words.
“It’s not that I don’t like them!” she tacks on. “What they do is…comment dit-on…admirable. I just think it’s dangerous to put heroes on a pedestal just because of what they do. At the end of the day, they’re just people too.”
It’s a surprisingly astute observation, but Jason supposes he shouldn’t be surprised by her intelligence. There isn’t a single trace of lie on her face, and if he hadn’t been sure yesterday, he is now. This Marinette, unlike the one he’d met yesterday, is genuine. For some reason or other, she’d been faking.
-
For some reason, people keep asking Marinette about herself.
She doesn’t know what the catalyst of this apparent trend is, but it seems not even Red Hood is immune, proven when he casually brings up her feelings for her civilian identity. She nearly jumps in shock when he mentions it—after weeks of agonizing over her lie, Marinette had started to forget she ever said it. She was hoping he’d forgotten too.
She laughs nervously at Hood and waves her hand in the air. “You know, I don’t like Marinette anymore! She’s actually not all that great.”
“But you told me you were in love with her?” he frowns.
“I did!” she nods, bobbing her head up and down frantically. “She’s smart, and nice, and…cute?” her voice pitches up in question.
“Yeah, she is.”
Wait, what?!
“…So are you still in love with her?”
“Yup!” she blurts.
Dear Kwami, again? All she’d needed to say was no. One simple word.
“Oh. Okay,” Hood replies, clearly holding back.
“What?”
“Nothing important. It’s just that…from what she’s said, it doesn’t seem like Marinette is overly fond of superheroes. Not that she doesn’t like you. I could be wrong.”
Marinette frowns, turning his words over in her head. “Wait, have you been talking to her?”
“No,” Hood replies, but her mind is already whirring.
Wait. Super tall, has probably spoken to me as a civilian, and that build—“You’re Jason Todd.”
“What? No, I’m not!” Marinette barely hears his retort, busy pacing hysterically.
“Oh my god. You’re Jason Todd. Red Hood is Jason Todd.”
“Well, don’t go announcing it to everyone,” he hisses, then takes a step back when he realizes what he’d revealed. “Wait. How’d you figure it out?”
Marinette can see the moment he works it out from the shift in his body language, and she drops her transformation.
“Holy shit,” he gapes, then, “Why’d you tell me you were in love with yourself?”
His hysteria only heightens her own, and Marinette practically yells, “I panicked, okay?!”
“Why the hell would you panic?”
“Because I was too scared to say that I was in love with you!”
There’s a resounding silence in which bothof them have to process the words she’d just said.
“Oh, thank God,” Jason slumps.
“What, that’s all you have to say?” Marinette says hotly.
“Yeah, well, I was worried I’d have to wingman the girl I’m in love with.”
Marinette bluescreens, sure she’d heard him wrong. Does he mean her?
As if in response, Jason takes off his helmet, revealing that familiar white streak of hair.
“Yes, I mean you.”
“Oops,” Marinette replies sheepishly, having said her words aloud.
“I think this is long overdue,” he steps closer, moving his hand beneath her chin. “Unless you’re in love with someone else?”
“No,” she breathes. “Just you.”
Their lips meet, and when Jason’s arms wrap around her waist, Marinette smiles. Maybe she is lucky after all.
-
PERMANENT TAGLIST
@astoriaandromeda
@avengerthewarrior
* @bluesimani
@enternalempires
@ev-cupcake
@flower-girll
@freesportspalacesalad
@glastwime859
@heart-charming
@iloontjeboontje
@jayjayspixiepop
@jalaluvsu
@kitsunebell
@maskedpainter
@moongoddesskiana
@nathleigh
* @no-username2544
@phis-corner
@too0bsessedformyowngood
@ultimatetornshipper
