Miraculous: Le Balcon (The Balcony)

Tale 3

Marinette Adrien

Marc Nathaniel

This is very much inspired by the "Pound It" fan comic by, I believe, Tumblr Artist Terrible Nerdery

"Pound it!" The pair started as they fist bumped, the boy and girl paused and stared at each other with eyes wide.

"Are you?" She asked.

"Can it be?" He asked.

"Do you guys really think that Ladybug and Cat Noir would accidently reveal their identities to each other that way?" Ayla asked as she flipped back through the comic that Nathaniel had drawn. Marc hid behind the artist.

"Not really." He said. Marc just joked about it, so we added it as an Omake to our most recent issue."

"I thought about how well they work together, and just imagined if they ended up working on something like a school project together, and would automatically do their fist bump thing, even without realizing who they both were. I thought it would be funny."

"It is funny." Rose agreed rereading her copy of the book.

"I noticed that your superheroes aren't flirting with Ladybug anymore too." Marinette mentioned looking through hers." Pretty much everyone in class bought the books from the pair, to help pay for the printing costs.

"Oh yea, well, you know with the two new hero's based on the good version of our Akumatized forms, we found a bit of tension between ourselves when we were working on the more romantic stuff, I mean you can only have so many love triangles going on before it become too much."

"Um yeah, that's why w I started to write the Cat Noir Ladybug romance for up front." Marc added from his hiding place.

"Oh, yeah, Cat Noir." Marinette deadpanned. "Why does everyone think that Ladybug will end up with him anyway? Don't get me wrong, he's nice and all, but you know, kind of a flake."

"Oh I don't know, I think Cat Noir is pretty cool, and didn't he protect you from . . . "Adrien trailed off when he looked at Nathaniel.

"I know, I know." He sighed. Now that she thought about it, Marinette realized that Nathaniel's infatuation with her had vanished and moved to Ladybug. They were still friendly to each other, especially in the art room, but he didn't try to flirt with her anymore. Not that she had originally noticed that was what he had been doing before.

"Anyway, thank you all for reading our comic." Marc commented softly. He'd joined more of the class's activities since he began the comic with Nathaniel, but he still hid himself away from shyness. Adrien touched Marinette's arm and motioned for her to move to the side a little. She felt a bolt of electricity from his touch and moved with him.

"I um, I have a favor I would like to ask you for." He stated softly, looking around not wanting anyone to overhear.

"Of course, I would love to favor you." She replied mentally slapping herself for it.

"You don't even know what it is."

"I would do anything for you." She breathed.

"What?" He asked.

"I mean, I'm always happy to help you." She corrected.

"Okay, well, I have an art project I need help with. I'm more a fencer then a artist, and you and I get along pretty well, that I thought you'd be the best to ask."

"Of course we get alone, I mean along well, and of course, I'll help you. I can meet you at your place after school."

"No, no, lets do it at your house, my father doesn't really like when I have friends over." He said sadly.

"Okay, well, meet me at my house then after school."

"We could walk together." He suggested teasing her a little. Marinette thought she would drop dead right there, but she felt panicked too, mostly panicked.

"I would love love love to walk with you to my home, but you really need to give me a chance to clean up my room." She stated. Adrien laughed.

"I already know about your fangirl collection of my photos Marinette, it was on TV after all. You don't need to hide it." He gave her a charming smile with a hint of teasing once more present.

"Ah, ha ha ha ha." She laughed embarrassed. "Okay, okay, I'll home walk you, I mean I'll walk with you to my home", another mental slap to herself. As soon as she was alone, she opened her bag. "Tikki, can you rush home and hide my new Adrien pictures and posters?" She begged.

"But Marinette, what if you need me."

"I do need you , right now." She pleaded.

"Okay Marinette." Tikki gave in, mostly amused though.

BREAK

Marinette and Adrien stood at the makeshift table on the Balcony above Marinette's room. On said table were a few canvases; paints, brushes, and other assort art goodies. Adrien was busy painting in the lines of the drawing on the his canvas while Marinette stared at him like a hungry lion stares at a fallen gazelle., complete with a little drool out of the corner of her mouth with a canvas set up in front of her.

"I can't thank you enough for helping me with this." Adrien stated for what must have been the 100th time.

"I didn't really do much, I just helped you with the line work." "You probably would have ended up with something better if you'd gone to Nathaniel for it." She added.

"Nah, I get along better with you." He looked up over the canvas to see her rather beautiful blue eyes. He shook his head to clear the thought out and looked back down at the canvas. An image of a stylized Ladybug in a slinky ball gown dancing with Cat Noir in a tuxedo was nearly finished. He'd originally hoped that Marinette would do all the drawing for him, but she didn't. She did help him with the basic design and then showed him where to shade, but he had to do most of the drawing himself. He was actually surprised at how well it had turned out. It wasn't as good as what Marinette could do, but it was a hundred times better then when he tried it himself. He looked up again at her. She was doing a painting of her own.

"What do you think?" She asked as she turned her canvas around to him. Adrien had to admit, he'd been expecting her to paint an image of him, so he was surprised by what he saw.

"Okay, now, as Chloe's long time friend, I have to say, having her about to be burned at the stake is terrible, and far below you." He watched her frown a little and grinned, "however, as one of her classmates, I totally understand the sentiment."

"I can't really use it for my project, but it was fun to do." She laughed. He really hadn't expected to enjoy himself with her like he was, and weirder still was he couldn't stop looking at her. He didn't feel an attraction that often, and although it was nothing like his attraction to ladybug, he was definitely attracted to her.

"If I were you, I also wouldn't show it to anyone else either, not unless you want Chloe after you."

"Yeah she'd probably try to get her dad to have Roger arrest me." She laughed and set her canvas down. Adrien scooted over toward her before showing her his work.

"I'm done." He stated.

"That looks great Adrien." She replied.

"I couldn't have done it without you." He said sweetly and raised his hand. She did the same and a moment later they did a fist bump.

"Pound it." They said in unison and then froze with him looking at her earrings and her looking down at his ring.

"AHHHHHH" She screamed and in a show of surprising strength flipped the giant wooded spool, that served as the table, over. Adrien was knocked down to the ground by it.

"Ouch." He groaned.

"Sorry, I panicked." She cringed.

"And I was just going to suggest that we did it because of the comic book." His voice still sounded a little pained. Marinette cringed again.

BREAK

Now back to Nathaniel and Marc. (yaoi warning)

"Okay this is turning out better then I thought it would. Nathaniel stated as he finished putting on his Mighty Illustrator costume. He'd worked on it for weeks, trying to get it right. He knew he wouldn't actually do anything in it in public, except maybe cosplay at the next comic convention, but he did have more private ideas. Leave it to Marinette to figure out something had changed with the comic though. Man she's more observant then I thought. His train of thought was interrupted by another voice.

"That does look good on you." Marc commented as he peaked out from the other side of the privacy screen they'd set up. "I just feel a little silly in this costume." He sighed.

"Oh, you have nothing to feel silly about, yours s far more normal looking then mine is." Nathaniel smirked. Marc rolled his eyes, with his cheeks fully blushed.

"I really don't want to come out and show you anymore." Marc ducked back in.

"Are you sure? I bet you look great in it. I did show you mine too, so you gotta show me yours." He finished, trying a little peer pressure.

"Fine." The shy young man replied and stepped out wearing a Ladybug costume, compete with wig and mask.

"Wow." Nathaniel breathed. "You look beautiful." He stated causing Marc to blush hard enough to make the red in the costume look dull. "But you don't need the wig. I want to see you, not Ladybug."

"Are you sure?" Marc asked softly.

"If course I am. You're the one I have the hots for, the costume is really just a bonus." Nathaniel closed the gap between them. "We can roleplay some of my earlier scenes." He smiled seductively as he closed in on Marc wrapping his arms around his partner.

"I would like that." Marc breathed softly raising up on his tiptoes so the two could kiss. It was their first kiss, and it lasted so long, but felt to short. They pulled away and Marc ducked away and jumped behind the screen again. "I also got this outfit when I bought the ladybug costume." He said as he held up a pair of pink pants, white Chinese style blouse and a dark, three quarter sleeved jacket. "Since I knew you use to like this style as well." Marc actually winked at Nathaniel.

"God, I love you." Nathaniel replied before pouncing on Marc.

Fin.

Notes:

I thought about having Marc make a comment like, "and I only needed to get one wig for both costumes, but that seemed a little too telling for me.

It should be obvious by now, that I tend toward the Yuri Relationship over the Yaoi ones, but seriously, how can you not be inspired by Marc and Nathaniel? Nathaniel was also very Tsunde.

I've been having trouble both uploading and formatting my stories recently, getting a server error. I've had to hope the upload works on the computer and set the formatting with the mobile app, so my formatting has been a little off.