Wanrning: Upcoming story does not properly depict how excited Californians get about rain. I apologize.

It was proving to be a very rainy, very sleepy day at Echo Creek Academy. No one seemed to be entirely awake that morning, and even as lunchtime approached the entire student body seemed rather sluggish. Two of these students included Marco Diaz and Star Butterfly, the former checking his phone with his chin propped on his fist while the latter used their designated lunch hour to nap in her folded arms. Marco glanced over at his best friend and mumbled something he clearly hadn't intended anyone to really hear under his breath, but of course that meant the slightly more observant of the two girls sitting across from him at the table needed to comment on it.

"Diaz, she's asleep and drooling all over the table, you don't need to say you think she looks cute," Janna said, her usually flat tone laced with a mocking sort of amusement.

His face immediately heated to a light but fairly obvious pink, but he still managed to shoot her a glare. "I didn't say that!"

Jackie laughed, distracting Marco from the fact that Janna was stealing his phone. "Don't freak, Marco. You're allowed to call your girlfriend cute," she said, giggling again as she saw the girl next to her scrolling through their friend's pictures in her peripheral vision.

"I- Wait- What?" he stammered, still too flustered to notice that his phone had been stolen. "She's not my girlfriend!"

"Your camera roll says otherwise," Janna said, her eyes lighting up with a familiar mischievous glimmer.

Marco finally looked down at his hand to see that it was missing his phone, and immediately looked back up to see his supposed "friend" scrolling through it. "Give me that!" He leaned over the table to try and snatch the phone back from Janna, only for her to hold it up over her head, just high enough that he couldn't reach it.

"You've got a looooooot of pics of the princess on here, Diaz," she said, craning her neck so she could keep looking through his photos while still keeping her arm extended high enough that he couldn't steal it back.

"I- That's not my fault, she puts those on there herself!" he argued, seriously considering crawling over the table to try and get his phone back from his Janna's clutches.

She pulled up a particular picture and dramatically placed the phone down in the center of the table. "Then how do you explain this?" she asked, gesturing to the photo on the screen.

It was a picture from a week or so ago he'd taken at the end of a Friendship Thursday. Star had fallen asleep on him during their last movie, which wasn't unusual, but that day she'd fallen asleep physically on top of him. Well, technically she'd fallen asleep sitting up, which eventually lead to her falling over on top of him, and he'd happened to be lay on his back next to her on the couch, which meant that she'd accidentally landed on him in optimal cuddling position. He hadn't had the heart to wake her up (nor did he particularly want to), so instead he settle for taking a picture to preserve the moment (and how cute she looked unknowingly snuggled into him) before carrying her up to bed.

Clearly he should've known taking private, but still stupid cute, pictures of the girl he liked cuddling with him would lead to some form of mockery.

"Okay, maybe I took one picture myself, but that's it!" he defended, quickly swiping his phone off the table before one of the girls across from him could.

"Whatever you say," Jackie laughed.

Janna opened her mouth to make what would surely be some snide comment just as the bell rang, interrupting her while also waking Star with a start.

Out of instinct Star grabbed the most wand-shaped thing she had immediate access to, which turned out to be Marco's discarded fork, and yelled her signature "Narwhal Blast!" Of course it did nothing, though by the time she'd realized that fact she was awake enough to see that there was no imminent danger.

Marco's previous look of annoyance from talking to Janna (and to a lesser extent Jackie) melted into an amused smirk as he placed what was hopefully a comforting hand on Star's shoulder. "You slept through lunch," he explained, "it's time for class."

"Noooooo," Star whined. She threw herself into him, almost knocking him over in the process, and wrapped her arms around his middle. "After Lunch classes are No Marco classes," she said, jutting her lower lip out as she looked up at him with her stupid big blue eyes.

He sighed and rubbed her back with one hand, the other reaching up to pat her head. "Star, it's been almost three weeks, aren't you used to being in class without me by now?"

"Come on Star, I'm still in those classes with you, remember?" Janna said, picking up her bag and walking around the table to offer a hand to her distressed friend.

"Yeah, and I have class with Marco, I can make sure he leaves class the second the bell rings," Jackie added as she got up and tried to help Janna pry Star away from Marco, with little success.

Eventually they were able to talk-slash-drag the princess into going to class, where she would spend the next hour and a half trying to concentrate until the bell would ring and signal that she was free for the day.

Star anxiously waited outside at the top of Echo Creek Academy's steps for her best friend, standing just barely under the tall overhang to shield herself from the rain that'd been pouring on-and-off since they'd gotten to school. She wasn't exactly looking forward to the walk home, not because of the rain in itself per se, but because of how cold the rain could make her. They didn't have this kind of weather on Mewni, or even much here on Earth (though Marco told that it was really just California, not Earth as a whole), but either way she hadn't quite decided if she was a fan of it yet.

As she was pondering over this she felt something warm and slightly heavy fall over her shoulders, and turned around to see her best friend standing behind her, sans hoodie. "Marco!" she said with a grin, quickly grabbing his hand and tugging him forward to stand next to her, looking out towards the falling rain. "There is water falling from the sky!"

He chuckled and reached a hand out past the overhang into the rainfall. "Yeah, that happens sometimes," he confirmed with a nod before shaking his hand out of hers and gently elbowing her side. "Put my hoodie on. I don't want you catching a cold," he said with a hint of blush and a lopsided smile.

She nodded and quickly shoved her arms in the hoodie's sleeves and zipped it up, taking a moment to inwardly enjoy how it was a bit too big for her before suddenly looking towards her friend with a small frown.

"What's wrong, Star?" he asked, taking her hand again as quickly as he'd let it go a moment ago.

She grimaced and took a baby sidestep towards him. "Aren't you going to get cold though?" she asked, her eyes laced with concern as she tilted her head to the side and slightly worried her bottom lip.

He shrugged and casually slipped his free hand in his pocket. "I'll be fine, I'm more worried about you," he said with a shy smile before stepping out into the rain, gently tugging on Star's hand to coax her to follow him.

"Marco Diaz," she huffed as he pulled her along. "You worry about me too much, safe kid," she said with a small smile, hidden behind a pulled up hood and curtain of hair.

"It's kind of my job, Princess of Mewni." He threw a wink in at the end of his sentence, probably more proud than he should've been at his use of her title to emphasize his point.

She giggled and pushed some hair out of her face to look over at him, her smile growing more obvious by the second. She was starting to forgive the rain for making her cold, solely due to the fact that it let her wear Marco's hoodie, and maybe a bit because it made him look even cuter. It wasn't especially often she saw him wearing anything besides his signature hoodie or pajamas, so even just seeing him in a regular t-shirt and jeans was new enough to make some sort of impact, let alone the fact that the downpour of rain was making his clothes cling to him. She hadn't noticed she'd been gradually slowing their pace to stare at him until she found herself standing still, with a very confused looking Marco looking over his shoulder at her.

"Star, are you okay?" he asked, tugging slightly on her hand to pull her forward. While he did want to know why she'd stopped walking alongside him, he would be lying if he said he wasn't immediately a bit distracted by how stupidly cute she looked all rain-soaked in his hoodie, a couple rogue droplets of rain decorating her eyelashes as she looked at him, seeming just as confused as he was.

"Yeah! Duh, of course I'm okay, Marco!" she said quickly, her attention suddenly laser-focused on the strings of her- or, technically his- hoodie.

He turned towards her and placed a finger under her chin, gently guiding her head up to encourage her to look at him. "We both know I'm not buying that. Now I'll ask again, are you okay?"

She let him keep her face towards him but still glanced just to the side, not quite looking him in the eyes. "You just look cute, that's all," she said as she scuffed the toes of her shoes against the rain-spotted sidewalk.

He gave her a blank look, the gears turning in his head clearly visible for a minute before he burst out laughing.

"It's not funny, Marco!" she protested, turning her head away and out of his hand in an attempt to hide the blush decorating her cheeks.

"Hey, hey, come on princess," he cooed, while still trying to stifle the last of his giggles. "I didn't mean to laugh at you, okay? I like you, you know that," he said. When she didn't immediately answer he took both her hands in his, only hesitating a second before bringing her knuckles up against his lips.

"That's not fair," she mumbled. It really wasn't fair, she knew that he knew that she couldn't be annoyed with him when he was being all mushy. Well, she could, but it was more effort than it was worth really. So instead of trying to stay angry with him she just rolled her eyes and shook her hands out of his before running a few feet down the sidewalk to stomp in a small puddle that'd pooled by the curb. "Come on!" she yelled back to him. "These puddles aren't gonna jump in themselves!"

He chuckled and ran after her, calling out too-late reminders to not get too wet, wearing his hoodie didn't make her immune to the cold.

She had a serious case of the sniffles the next day, but she insisted it was more than worth it.

Please leave a review if you have any comments or ideas for future chapters! Thank you for reading 3