fan the flames and face the fire (all these sparks make me a liar)
Some glass is crystal clear, with all the world behind it to behold. This glass sends color ricocheting off the walls, brings light where there was none and makes the world look brighter, more valuable than it was before. It makes the world look worth exploring, worth loving. Worth being vulnerable for.
They’re both glass. Just glass, right?
Felix was used to the feeling of eyes on his skin like judgement, like insects or shame crawling up his spine. It was easy to ignore; years of practice made shedding stares like shedding a coat after stepping indoors.
Hanging out with Marinette made his nerves tingle, every curious glance like a spark waiting to set him alight. He itched, squirmed under the attention, didn’t know how she could bear it so poignantly. It took him two months to ask. By the time she responded, head tilted cutely, bangs falling into her eyes, he wished he’d never even thought of the question.
“What stares?”
She didn’t even notice! Marinette had spent her whole life existing in a circle everyone wished they could be a part of, for good or for evil, curious and conniving and hopeful and horrible and everything in between, and she had no idea. Being in the middle of a hurricane that he had spent five years caught in the winds of was surreal. It was like floating on the same clouds that had left him drenched and drowned for so long.
Marinette handed out pieces of herself so casually, as if this information wasn’t unbelievably precious, as if they were scraps of paper like notes dropped onto his desk instead of gifts of gold he hoarded like a dragon, as if Felix didn’t desperately want to make up for the last five years of distance. I like to sew, she mentioned, I want to be a fashion designer. Do you want to see my sketches? Baking is stress relief for me, she explained when her parents dropped off the mini cinnamon buns she’d made in the shape of little cats. I don’t like to bring them to school myself though because I’m either confident or clumsy, and I haven’t figured out how to choose yet. She brought him notes when he was sick, because catching up when Chloe got me wrongfully suspended was so hard, and even when it was overturned the teachers didn’t offer much time for recovery. She was astonishingly good at science and never learned how to subtract; she liked to quilt and cross stitch but she knew how to bind her own books too, because reading on the screen gave her a headache.
Felix learned all of these things like they didn’t matter, like the way that she hummed off key under her breath and the way that she swung her arms in time to his footsteps when they walked together wasn’t important, wasn’t as essential to Felix’s life as his own breath, his own heart.
Felix grew up without friends. By choice, by necessity, by whatever he chose to label it: but now he was here, and he wanted everything. This being friends thing was so… was so intense, with the way his heart pounded in his chest and his words disappeared with one glance of her playful blue eyes. Felix had never felt so flustered in his life, like he was always a step behind her, like every time he managed to catch up she disarmed and sent him reeling long enough to race forward again.
Felix had spent so long learning how to be a good boy, a mature boy. A young adult confident in his skin. Being around Marinette meant learning how to be messy, wild and spiraling out of his body, taking up space and throwing words against a wall to see what sticks.
Marinette made him feel like it was okay to do that.
Marinette made him feel like he was good when he did.
It’ll be the first year they’ll take the bus to camp together, really together, the way they should’ve at age seven. Felix is bouncing in his seat, clenching his fists over air when he can’t find anything to grab, to hold onto or tear at. He’s clutching at the windowsill waiting for her signature ponytail to bounce into sight.
She does, and his pulse races. Her tank top stretches over her shoulders, rides up against her stomach, and Felix nearly topples out of his seat. She’s here!!
Immediately, two campers rush to grab her wrists, already pulling at her. Felix remembers them from last year, so scared to be away from home for the first time, and it looks like they remember her well. Another child is crying quietly, and Marinette makes her way over, kneels until she’s at their level.
“Hey there, little bird!” She tugs at their t-shirt, hanging loosely off of their shoulder. A cartoon bird is ironed onto the pocket, and Marinette pokes at it gently. The child hiccups a laugh through tears, and Marinette scoops them up into the air. “Gonna fly away from me, little bird?” They laugh and kick until Marinette pulls them into her chest, where they bury their face into her neck.
“No!! I’m gonna stay here with you!!!” Suddenly shy, they peek up at her. “If… if that’s okay?”
“Well gosh! I can’t imagine being anywhere else.” When Marinette winks, Felix sees their shoulders relax, draining of tension. They snuggle into her, and he knows she’ll be spending the bus ride in the back with the youngest campers. Something like disappointment and pride curls up in his stomach, a cat making its home by the hearth.
Marinette waves at him as she passes and another camper, nine years old and too hyper for their own good, throws themselves at Felix. He catches them, and grins at Marinette. His smile is crooked and the child is already yanking Felix’s shirt out of place.
She takes a picture, and Felix grins harder.
Being at camp as the eldest campers is a wildly new experience. Nino has taken over the guitar laying haphazardly by the fire pit, and there are always camp songs drifting across the fields now. His wrist is decorated with friendship bracelets from all the kids he sings with. Felix and Marinette have matching ones and Nino likes to tease Felix about them being the only pop of color on his otherwise grey palette. Being friends with Nino is new and thrilling too, inside jokes and playful ribbing that makes Felix grin. Marinette has admitted she likes watching the two of them interact, and Felix makes an effort to do it more often just for that. He spends time with Nino even when she’s not there, though, and it’s nice to have another friend, no matter how much it doesn’t feel the same as being friends with Marinette.
Camp looks the same and different now. There are so many people they already know, who are still finding all the best spots in the forest to hide in, the best trees to climb to see all the way out to the waterfalls just ahead of camp, the best foods from the great hall and the best ways to roast marshmallows over a campfire to get that perfect char, that melted inside.
Every now and then, Marinette smirks at a particularly perfect marshmallow and then glances at Felix. He refuses to ask until almost six weeks later, she adds a little shimmy of her shoulders and an eyebrow wiggle, and then he folds like a bad hand at poker.
“Okay, fine, what is it?!”
“...they’re like youuu!” She does it again, and this time her shimmy leans her into his space. Felix holds himself still and hopes the light of the fire covers his blush.
“How?!”
“Grumpy on the outside and melted in the middle!!” Her voice is sing-songing and Felix refuses to acknowledge exactly how melty being around her makes him feel.
“...you’re just as melty, okay.” His voice is gruff and he’s worried as soon as he says it that she doesn’t want his friendship in that same consuming kind of way, that she’ll laugh and prove him wrong. Instead, she stays quiet for a long moment that sends Felix into a whole new kind of panic and then responds, almost too quiet to be heard over the crackling of the fire.
“...I really am.”
Felix is suddenly overwhelmed with the way that she says it, like there are so many levels to what she’s saying that he can’t possibly burrow through them all.
“I-- Marinette, I’m so lu-- lucky to be your friend. I know that I could’ve had yo-- uh, could’ve been your friend years ago, and it’s my fau-- my fault, but I have you now and I’m… lucky, thank you.”
“I kind of like it.” She isn’t looking at him. Her voice cuts through to his heart anyways. It pulls at him, yanks his response out of him before he has a chance to grab it back, pull it into himself and tear it apart.
“Why?!”
“I like it when you fall apart like that. I feel like… I feel like I get to know you more than the polished perfect boy you used to pretend to be, like I get to see the way you think as it happens. It makes me feel trusted, and I just… I really value that, Felix. I know how special it is.” She watches the campfire spit flames at her marshmallow and turns it idly, following the glittering trail of sparks across the skyline, then peeks at him between her bangs.
“I know how special you are. I’m pretty lucky, too.”
it's so weird to see people talk about their crushes and people tell their chrush that they feel nervous about meeting them, talking to them or you can think like "maybe they do like me" and it might be true and not just a stupid thought you had
and you can confess to them and they won't make fun of you and people won't laugh at you because it's just ridiculous that someone like me likes them
and that just makes me feel that I've lost part of the fun of having a crush...
for me it's just so automatic to say that "oh I'm fine I'm nervous because of [vague and generic stuff]" and pretend that "no anything I feel have nothing to do with you that's just ridiculous" and tell others that the person definitely don't make me feel anything even tho it's clear how my eyes lights up every time I see them
and then later on I feel so embarrassed and ashamed 'cuz what in the world I was doing!? my crush could hate me for it
