(( Ok, a few things before we dive in.
One – I heard through the grapevine that it was someone's BIRTHDAY yesterday. Yes, YOU, LazyWorkaholic! This is dedicated to you. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Please except my humble offering. o. And I hope your birthday yesterday was AMAZING! :D
Two – a little about the Ladybug PV universe, just so some of the stuff makes sense. From my understanding, Melodie is Bridgette's best friend. And she's spunky and fun, which really is no surprise. And Félix was cursed with his ring. He has to do superhero duties, because the only way he can be free of his curse, his ring, and Plagg was to get a kiss from Ladybug (IKR!?) But to say that he didn't secretly enjoy being Chat Noir I think would be incredibly false. Oh, and I think Ladybug knows and is completely unimpressed by his flirting because of this.
Three – this is not my most amazing work, haha. I'm flipperty flippin' tired. But I wanted to give a gift and this is the only gifty gifting idea that I could gift giftily. (See? Tired.)
Oh, and, uh, THANK YOU for reading this. You guys are, you know, miraculous. 8) ))
They were everywhere, ranging in size from little sprigs to huge bunches. Some were tied up with velvety red ribbons. Others were unassuming, hidden in hands or hastily taped above doorways or in hallways, a cheeky surprise ready to spring out on unsuspecting passersby.
Félix didn't dislike the holiday season, per se, but there were certain…traditions he could live without. Most traditions, actually. And while mistletoe in and of itself was, for lack of a better word, annoying, the most frustrating part came along with one Bridgette Cheng.
When Félix had walked into school at the beginning of the week to giggling girls, red cheeks, and mistletoe everywhere, he expected to be immediately accosted by his blue-haired classmate. In fact, it was usual, a daily occurrence, the harassment in the form of concert tickets or adoring glances. But as the morning dragged on, Félix found himself seated in the classroom before Bridgette even made her appearance.
Giggling preceded her, as it normally did. She entered the doorway, but Melodie, her arm-in-arm companion, pulled her back for a moment, placing an exaggerated kiss on her best friend's cheek. Felix flicked his eyes away, ignoring the friendly exchange, and ignoring the twinge of something unrecognizable and unwelcome that made him want to scoff. Scoff at himself or at Bridgette and Melodie, he really couldn't decide. In their dash to look anywhere but at the giggling friends, Félix's eyes happened upon the mess of green and white tied above the classroom door. He sighed inwardly.
"Good morning, Félix!" Bridgette piped brightly as she passed his seat on the way to her own.
As was usual.
And he ignored her. Just to keep with their daily routine.
(At least this time he didn't roll his eyes. It was Christmastime, after all.)
At the end of class, Félix, who had already packed his bag in favor of a hasty retreat, bolted for the door. His plan could have worked. He could be a mile and a half away from every girl in his class, let alone the one he was most anxious to avoid. In fact, Félix was sure it would have worked…if not for Plagg and his cursed bad luck.
The astute blond-haired boy had made it as far as the door, but no farther. A loopy stray thread that should not have been there caught soundly around the door handle. The sound of the rip stopped him in his tracks more than the pull itself. Another tug and a glance down at his situation, and Félix knew he was in trouble. Panic manifested itself as red in Felix's cheeks, and he scrambled as "calmly" as possible to free himself before the rest of his classmates could make it to the door. Within moments there was laughter; more and more students started to realize the predicament high-strung Félix Agreste had found himself in.
Taking a stance that he tried not to make look too much how he felt – a martyr – Félix brought his chin up and looked away from the tittering students. They passed by, some making little faces or jokes, a few girls blushing by him with smiles before being pushed away by Melodie. And then Melodie herself, the bane of his existence next to Bridgette, had the gall to pull him down and plant one on his cheek. He shoved her away as quickly as he could, and was mortified above all else by his own blushing.
"Heeeyy," she drawled out through her light and airy laughter. "Maybe you need a kiss or two, Agreste. Could lighten that mood of yours." She broke into renewed laughter when Félix made a show of wiping the kiss from his cheek. He didn't think his brow could furrow any lower.
(Or his cheeks get any redder…)
Deciding he should probably try to untangle the mess he was in before berating his good-for-nothing Kwami, Félix turned to fiddle with his sleeve. He could see Melodie out of the corner of his eye while she traipsed haughtily backwards through the throng of passing teens. He didn't miss the way she looked passed him before clearing her throat, or the way she smirked when she caught him glancing up at her. As soon as she had caught his eye, she winked, before losing herself in laughter again, and he lost sight of her through the crowd. Probably off to meet her best friend…
Her best friend…
Bridgette. Where was Bridgette!?
No…no, no, no, no…!
A tugging on his sleeve brought his attention to the blue-haired girl in question.
Bridgette was there.
Bridgette was there. With Félix. Under that blasted mistletoe.
Cautiously, Félix looked down at the girl. She wasn't looking at him – something he was not used to – but rather was scowling down the hallway toward Melodie's lost form. There was barely a blush on her cheeks, and the sight was so bewildering, Félix couldn't help but just stare down at the small girl in surprise.
Another tug on his sleeve brought Félix's attention back to what Bridgette was actually doing.
What was she doing?
Oh. His sleeve was free. Well, it's obviously easier for someone to get someone else's sleeve out. He was caught. He was one-handed. It wasn't like he couldn't have done it himself, the nerve of someone even thinking that –
Wait, then what…?
Bridgette was quiet. Something new, something foreign, and Félix, who, granted, was normally quite reserved felt lost in the silence. He watched her, slightly entranced by the way her hand moved with the needle and thread. How she had the right color to match his shirt…he wouldn't even try to process, only try not to roll his eyes. Again. And mull over his disaster in peace. Etiquette would say to thank her. Good breeding taught him to try to make some sort of conversation.
Félix only looked away.
Was he really surprised that she had matching thread to his favorite shirt? No. What was surprising was the way she had swooped in to save him, how she knew him well enough to know he'd refuse her help if she had asked…but also how the stupid hole would have bothered him had it remained the rest of the day.
Maybe he was reading too much into this. But he didn't think so.
Bridgette pulled her hand from the inside of his sleeve where her fingers had apparently been to help with sewing shut the hole. How he had missed her flippin' hand up his sleeve, Félix didn't know. But he sure felt the skin-to-skin contact now. Where they were silent before, Félix had now completely frozen under the sudden feel of her. He couldn't think clearly enough to panic at this new development of…of feelings, or something like it. He could only turn back to her and watch as she finished the ministrations on the fabric there, caught off guard at the blue eyes staring up at him suddenly after the last snip from her tiny scissors.
"There you go, Félix."
And with that, she was gone from his side. Félix watched, tight-lipped, as she went back to her bookbag, the gentle way she put her tiny sewing kit away and packed up the rest of her things. He thought absently how she must have fished out the kit and come to him first before bothering with any of her things. And he was still watching when she smiled sweetly at him, approaching his waiting form under the door frame.
Waiting.
What was she waiting for?
No, wait…he was waiting.
What was he waiting for?
An atrocious thought entered his mind at this question.
Am I waiting for her!? Here!?
In the millisecond it took his brain to process a lifetime's worth of feelings, Félix, still watching Bridgette as she came closer and closer (had time slowed down or something!?) could only come to one conclusion: Maybe.
Maybe he was waiting for her.
And…maybe Melodie was – gall, could he even think it? – right.
And maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
And then Bridgette was there, and she was pressing herself against…not him. She was passing him by, back pressed against the door frame on the opposite side of him. Her eyes only flicked upward once and her cheeks reddened slightly, but she never looked at him. Instead, her eyes had bored into the plant hanging above them as if the poisonous berries had dishonored her, her entire family, her cow…
And then she was gone, rushing into the crowd of students who had busied themselves in more fruitful pursuits, like not watching the person who thought you were the love of their life walk away from said proclaimed love interest while he stood blankly under the mistletoe.
Félix could only register two thoughts as he kept his eyes on the blue-haired beauty – GIRL, blue-haired girl as she bobbed bouncily through the crowd.
1, Bridgette had avoided a perfect opportunity to kiss him under the guise of holiday tradition.
2, Félix was, to his ultimate horror, extremely disappointed.
qpqpqpqpqp
It didn't stop there, either.
The rest of the week continued in the same way. Plagg pushed his bad luck onto Félix every time he found himself under the mistletoe. Although he had avoided anymore ripped clothes, he had tripped multiple times, stepped on gum sticky enough to trap his shoe, had his backpack opened and its contents spilt, and, the most embarrassing of all, getting stuck in the plant itself. Somehow, through some "miraculous" circumstance, he had built up enough electricity to produce enough static cling to pull his gelled hair straight up into one of the infernal weeds and had to endure Bridgette reaching up past him to untangle himself.
(She smelled good. It was just a fact.)
What added greatly to his mortification in all of these instances wasn't the fact that Bridgette seemed to appear out of nowhere every time something like this happened, nor that he found himself in such predicaments that he needed to be "rescued" and she was always there. It was that every time they were caught under the mistletoe, Bridgette Cheng would run away from him like he was going to burn her.
The girl obviously liked him still. (Right?) She had brought him Christmas cookies, invited him to parties she had to know he would never go to, and even invited him to her own home for Christmas Eve (something that he actually had stared at her for a full minute after she asked before declining). After all this, after all of the requests and the offers and the gifts, there was one invitation she had yet to extend, one that his answer was, much to his chagrin, leaning more and more toward acceptance.
It was this frightening thought that left Félix motionless in front of his locker on the last afternoon before the holiday break.
"Merry Christmas, Félix!"
Félix jumped, Bridgette's sudden presence jarring him roughly from fleeting thoughts into abrupt reality. In place of his usual scowl, though, Félix looked down at Bridgette with wide eyes at the present she extended to him. After a moment of blank staring, he blinked into reality again when Bridgette shook the brightly wrapped gift under his nose.
"Merry Christmas, Félix," she repeated, voice softer now. A blush lit up her eyes in an almost feverish way. The sight wasn't not pretty. This thought process wasn't not unpleasant either, and Félix, much to his growing mortification, felt a blush start to grow on his face. Again.
Trying to push through the embarrassing betrayal of "feelings", Félix gingerly reached out and gripped the present. Their fingers brushed (oh my gosh, how cliché could this get!?) at the transfer, something Félix may or may not have done accidentally on purpose.
Bridgette's eyes flicked up to his at the contact, but before he could even thank her for the present, he found himself looking instead at her retreating form.
Félix frowned at this…but it wasn't out of anger. He sighed, turning his attention instead to the package in front of him.
Etiquette told Félix to wait until he was home before carefully taking the paper off the box in his hand.
Félix tore into the gift like a madman.
His heart was hammering against his chest as he pulled out the silky blue material. He reached the end of the soft fabric, and realized, with fondness, that he held a scarf in his hand. He looked around and found no one watching him, no one still in the school when the promise of hot chocolate and Christmas break loomed happily around them…so he wrapped the scarf around him, pulling up the fabric momentarily to nuzzle into it. His eyes closed in unrepressed mirth.
It smells like her.
With a contended sigh, Félix opened his eyes again.
And found Bridgette Cheng standing there, watching him.
From the look on her face, she had been there long enough.
Neither teen moved; neither one seemed to know what to do. Félix was fighting the urge to either pull the scarf up over his eyes and walk away or strangle himself with it. But the blue eyes looking back at him kept him locked in place.
"That's a nice color on you, Félix," Bridgette finally said, breaking the silence and saving him again.
"Did you make this?" he asked, bypassing the compliment as always.
"Yes."
Her voice sounded breathless. The tone of that one word sent an unsolicited warmth into him, down to his toes. Félix shifted his weight.
"I knew you could sew, but I didn't know you could knit so well." The warmth spread to his cheeks at his own admittance, matching that of his companion. Though he didn't think it would highlight his eyes so well as it did hers. There was nothing to be embarrassed about, as he tried to remind himself over and over again. The scarf was nice, it was well made – beautifully made. This was not a compliment, just a fact. "Thank you, Bridgette."
There it was. Bridgette's face exploded, the pink in her cheeks flushing her skin to her ears and down her neck. It was low, and selfish, maybe, but knowing he was able to put a pretty girl – no, Bridgette wasn't just a pretty girl, she wasn't just any girl – to put Bridgette into this state gave Félix some sort of sick gratification. Although he fought the smirk trying to jump onto his face (how very Chat Noir of him), he couldn't stop the corners of his lips from twitching. With this new confidence, Félix finally lowered his hands from his new scarf, the covering falling comfortably around his neck.
Call it the circumstance. Call it repressed anxieties manifesting through unresolved tension. Whatever the reason, Félix continued to feel quite Chat-like. He forgot himself for a moment, but knew he probably wouldn't regret it later, and took one long slow step to close the distance between himself and Bridgette before leaning on one of the lockers.
A question burned on his tongue, had been there all week, and he finally found the opportunity to voice it.
"Is there a reason you've been avoiding the mistletoe all week?"
Bridgette took a small step back from him, and he mused that it was probably the first time in her life that she had done so.
"I-I haven't been," she almost whispered.
Now Félix couldn't fight the smirk any longer. He was a cat in this moment, prowling toward his prey. Moving himself away from the locker door, he took up the scarf in his hand, fingering the edges lightly, and took another step toward Bridgette.
"Let me rephrase," he started, stopping again at her hunched form and putting an elbow out to resume his lazy lounging. "Is there a reason you've been avoiding being stuck under the mistletoe with me?"
"Yes," she answered immediately. The answer seemed to shock both parties momentarily. Félix blinked a few times while Bridgette shook her head, seeming to regret her answer as soon as she had said it.
"No!" she finally said loudly. "I mean…yes?"
Etiquette told Félix to back off his questioning. He shouldn't have put himself in this position in the first place.
Hot dang, she's adorable.
"Why?"
Félix almost flinched at how desperate that sounded. All semblance of Chat Noir was gone. The mask of Félix Agreste had started to crumble as well, and he hated it. He hated the vulnerability of being just himself. But something in him needed to know, needed to know why this (disgustingly) sweet girl who took (advantage of) every opportunity to just be nice to him suddenly avoided him like the plague.
Because…if he was being honest with himself (which he hardly ever was), he didn't think he would be able to handle one more person he lo – cared about – walking out of his life.
So he had asked the question. But now that it floated in their shared air, he was afraid of the answer. The vulnerability must have shown from somewhere – his tone, his face. Bridgette studied him for a moment as her own color lost its feverish quality in lieu of something closer to normal. Her long hair swayed when her head tilted to the side in a look of worry. The look in her eyes made him turn away.
Something warm touched his cheek. The soft pressure of a hand fought softly against his intense urge to bolt, to get as far away from this as possible. Instead, Félix met Bridgette Suddenly-Too-Close-For-Comfort Cheng's eyes again. She dropped her hand from his cheek, but it didn't go back to her side, as if she hadn't wanted to lower it in the first place.
"I never want to make you do anything you're uncomfortable with, Félix." A smile touched her lips for a moment before it passed, but the small touch of emotion seemed to fly into her eyes, making them sparkle with suppressed feeling.
Now, there were a lot of things he could have imagined this girl saying. A. LOT. This – THIS – however, was nothing even his subconscious could have dreamed up.
"I…" Felix wanted to say something. But just wanting to say something and actually thinking of something to say were not wholly connected. "That's not what I was expecting?"
She starts to lower her hand now, but he takes it instead, holding it in both of his. She's trembling.
"I-I guess I'm full of surprises."
She sways on the spot, maybe a little closer to him. Maybe he gets a little closer to her.
"I hate surprises."
"I know."
She's so close…he can smell her now, the crispness of green apples, the warmth of vanilla, the sugary sweet of berries. Her eyes are heavily-lidded. Her breathing is labored.
(Or was that his?)
"I…don't hate you though," he whispers to her. She shudders under him when he brushes his fingers across her cheek.
"I know," she answers simply.
The answer surprises him.
I didn't.
Félix didn't like many things about the holidays. But he decided in that moment, that some traditions were worth the trouble.
Fin!
Bonus:
There was a brief fleeting moment when Félix thought of his insecurities, his vulnerability, and his gosh darn inexperience. The pause was torture, but he couldn't make himself push any farther. A small sound of protest came from Bridgette.
"Félix, I-" she shuffled uncomfortably under him.
Hold still, darn you, he thought, reaching both hands to either side of her head to keep her still. Can't you see I'm trying here!?
"Félix if you don't kiss me right now I'm going to pass out."
Oh.
Inexperience forgotten, Félix dove in.
And if he thought Bridgette Cheng smelled good…well, she tasted even better.
Two minutes – two hours? – and Félix shifted his weight to try to get more of this going on. One hand slipped into Bridgette's hair while his right hand tentatively reached out to her waist. As his hand reached down to find purchase at the small of her back, a physical shock wove through his body. The sound of metal clinking and then rolling down the hall broke the two teens apart, their combined heavy breathing making Félix want to forget about everything and just…gall, just go in and keep kissing her until –
His ring.
His ring was…it was gone.
But…that's not possible. The only way his curse would be gone is if…if he…if he kissed….
"Ladybug?"
Bonus Bonus!:
"Ah, c'mon, Bridg! It's just me! Hey, thanks for freeing me and all, but I didn't do it on purr-pose I promise!"
Bridgette had collapsed in his arms, a high-pitch whistling sound the only confirmation she was still alive.
But…he should have known better.
Because unconscious or not…she was still Ladybug.
And at the sound of his punderful pun…she reacted on instinct.
…And, uh, punched him in the face.
(( Pffft. Sorry. The bonuses were completed unneeded. But…yeah. So maybe that part was a little gift to myself. I hope you enjoyed this, and Happy Birthday again, LazyWorkaholic! (3 ))