A little late, but happy ninette week! (Who would I be if I didn't participate in my own ship week? Check out @ninette-week )
Prompt: Last chance. Day 1.
Nino and Marinette were watching Doctor Who. They had invited Adrien and Alya, but Adrien had a dinner and Alya had to babysit her sisters.
When the Doctor faded away while talking to Rose Tyler, both Nino and Marinette yelled “No!” for different reasons.
Marinette was nearly in tears about the scene. “He didn’t get to tell her,” she said.
“He had plenty of time to tell her!” Nino countered. “They spend two minutes just talking and then he decides it’s his last chance at saying it? Give me a break. He even had plenty of time before she got trapped in another dimension.”
“You don’t understand, Nino,” Marinette insisted. “When you’re in love, it’s so hard to say it if you haven’t before!”
“It can’t be that hard. Look.” Nino turned away from the television, to Marinette. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” he started, copying the Doctor, “I…”
Then Nino hesitated. Looked away, rubbed the back of his neck. His face darkened with a blush.
Marinette watched with wide eyes.
“Nino,” she said. “Do you—”
“Anyway!” Nino interrupted, pressing play on the remote. “We didn’t finish the episode.”
Marinette made a grab for the remote. Nino held it up out of her reach. Marinette basically tackled him. She nearly landed on top of him, but her hands became firmly planted on both sides of his head.
They both froze.
Nino looked anywhere but at Marinette. “Fine, I guess you’re right,” he finally said.
“Huh?” Marinette said, forgetting what they had been arguing about, due to their close proximity.
Nino’s face warmed up again. “That it’s harder to say it if you’ve never said it before.” He still wasn’t looking at her.
Marinette sat up, letting Nino sit up. She leaned against him. They could both feel his heart hammering, but neither moved away.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
written for @ninette-week in the year of our lord 2025, for the prompts fashion/music and past/future. featuring trans nino and exactly two thousand words of confessed feelings
we were both awkward dorks but you were more awkward than me. you laughed like you didn’t like your throat and you wore hats that didn’t fit your head. and you’d put the hats on my head and you’d laugh, because they fit my head even less. i fell over whenever i tried to skip rope and you didn’t laugh at that, because a skinned knee mattered more than anything. we picked flowers and stuck them behind our ears, we snickered outside the locker rooms over nothing at all. i think we were born to be bullied, and maybe that made it hurt less when it happened. it felt like we were siblings of the same fate, and once we got away from the bullies we linked our whole selves together into a single hug and maybe nothing else mattered then.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Luka Couffaine & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine & Nino Lahiffe, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Nino Lahiffe, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sabine Cheng/Tom Dupain, Tom Dupain & Sabine Cheng & Luka Couffaine, Luka Couffaine & Sass, Juleka Couffaine & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine, Nino Lahiffe, Sass (Miraculous Ladybug)
Additional Tags: Pre-Relationship, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Fashion Design Student Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Music Student Luka Couffaine, Music Student Nino Lahiffe, Ninette Week 2024, Bisexual Luka Couffaine, Bisexual Nino Lahiffe, Queer Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine Knows, Nino Lahiffe Owns a Tortoise, POV Alternating, POV Third Person Limited
Series: Part 1 of Ninette Week 2024
Summary:
Marinette loved this time of day, mid-afternoon when everyone is out, going about their lives, and she just gets to bask in the structured chaos of it all. She thrived on structured chaos, the way there’s an outline for how something would work, but the getting there is something unplanned.
~
The reason he wanted to introduce them to each other was because of that exactly. The way that the three of them would come together to create such an interesting heart melody. A duet was balanced, sure, but three-part arrangements had always caught his ear more.
~
But something had called to him this time. An urge to look up and see what is out there to be seen.
And so he did, hanging his headphones around his neck and looking for an open table to sit at.
stormborns
izzy806
snowghoul
areudirty
