This one has no cliffhangers, so I won't have to write a disappointing follow up when you hate on your own imaginations. X3

I own nothing of Miraculous.

An AU without miraculous, where they're kinda towards the middle-end of whatever the French equivalent of high school is (I'm thinking 11th grade-ish in the American time frame). Inspired by a book I saw that had coded messages in the gold edging.

Updated January 2020

It was embarrassing, really, how addicted she was to his very presence. Every breath he took stole hers, every beat of his heart doubled her pulse. He didn't even have to look at her for her to freeze up, and when he did, she felt like all her insides were switching places. The feelings she got around him were so deliciously painful.

It was unavoidable, she could only go back for more.

"Hey, Marinette?"

She blinked, then two more times in quick succession. Her focus on the air in front of her slowly slid to that rapturous voice. "Hmm?"

He smiled, and her stomach clenched. "Do you have a pencil I could borrow? This was my last." He cringed sheepishly, holding up a pathetic stub of wood, sharpened down to the eraser.

It took her a moment to catch up with herself. She stared, and he stared, until she remembered he had asked her a question. "Oh! Yes, of course!" Hurriedly reaching down into her bag, she pulled out a pencil and made sure it was adequately sharp. "Here." She reached out to pass it to him. When he took it, his fingers almost brushed hers. They didn't, but it was enough to send her fingers sparking with fervid shocks. She withdrew her hand swiftly, tucking it with the other between her knees.

"Thanks," he grinned, hunching over again to continue on his homework.

The two were seated at a picnic table in the park, under the sweet smelling shade of a flowering tree. The early spring breeze was gently, brushing at their bangs and shaking loose the occasional petal. Marinette watched as one floated down to land on Adrien's head, but he didn't notice. She had to bite her lip to keep from smiling too wide. The effort didn't accomplish much to hide it.

Alya and Nino were working there as well, the four of them independently studying and conquering homework in the company of friends. The couple had left a few minutes ago to gather a few books from the library, so she and Adrien had some time alone. Her eyes fell to where he was scribbling out some logarithms, then down to where her own unanswered history review questions sat expectantly.

There was no way she could focus on history in such comely weather as this, so she traded it out for her design book. Flipping it open to a new page, she started to lightly sketch out the figure of a boy that looked suspiciously like Adrien, before pausing and tapping the eraser of her pencil on her bottom lip. She chanced a glance at the boy across from her, only to catch him angling himself in the effort to sneak a peek. She drew the book up to her chest, laughing. "No peeking," she admonished, grinning, heart sent aflutter by the boyish expression he sent back.

"Come on, Marinette," he moaned, biting his lip in the way he knew would send her into a fluster.

And curses if it didn't work.

"H-hey now," she spluttered, "don't play that game."

He laughed mirthfully, sending her a wink. "Okay, but you have to show me when you're done," to which she nodded and cautiously laid the book back on the table. Her arm hovered protectively in front of it so he couldn't see, and she still caught him trying to peer around it.

About a half hour into repeatedly hiding the drawing from those curious green eyes, Alya and Nino returned. Arms laden with books, they sat next to their respective best friends. "Flirt much while we were gone?"

"Alya!" Marinette protested, scandalized, at the same time Adrien offered an offhand "Just a little."

Her face warmed to fascinating degrees, and all Alya had to answer with was a generous round of laughter. She glanced over at Adrien to try and send him a desperate glare, just in time to catch him smiling fondly at her. And his gaze was so oddly… intense. He jerked his head back down to his homework then, leaving her to stare at him in awe.

Her heart thundered, and she bit her lip. Marinette had been on the receiving end of looks like those before, but she was never sure how she should react to them. So, every time, she just stood there and let all the butterflies in her stomach swarm around.

Adrien was flirtatious with her, but never in a way that suggested he was flirting as more than a friend. So these looks couldn't possibly mean anything. Right? Right.

"So what are you working on, Marinette?"

"Oh, she won't tell you, Nino," the blond said snootily, dropping his borrowed pencil in the crease of his book. "It's not finished yet." Then, like an absolute child, he stuck his tongue out at her playfully.

She shrugged apologetically. "Sorry guys, you know my rule."

Alya leaned over to eye the drawing, and Marinette moved her arm just slightly to make it easier for her to see. "Huh," her friend noted. "I like it."

"H-Hey!" Both boys stumbled over their complaints, hands waving in protest. "How come she gets to see?"

"Best friend privileges," the best friend herself stated, as if it were too obvious of a concept to bother explaining. Still muttering in disappointment, the boys turned back to their own work. Alya was a fruitless opponent to argue against, and they were well aware of it. Marinette shared a smile with the girl next to her before they returned to their papers. The table was quiet again, save for the sounds of pencil scuffs and the ruffling of paper.

Once she'd finished up two more sketches, Marinette convinced herself she really did need to work on her history. Whatever the weather. She noticed, too, that Alya was at the same place, and they could work together. So she went to trade her design book for her history, managing to drop them both in the process. Her history book was closest, so she grabbed that, and looked up to find that the design book had fallen open at Adrien's feet.

He picked it up, about to hand it over when he saw what she'd drawn. Usually, Marinette drew her designs on a roughly shaded outline of a person, the main focus always being the clothing.

This one was different. It was almost as if her pencil was the camera at a photo shoot, mapping out every detail of the boy and his expression. The clothes were warm and soft, a knit sweater over jeans in touchable texture. He was sitting against white space, curled up and nursing a steaming mug of dark liquid. Cocoa, he guessed. She knew he liked cocoa. He was mostly sideways to the camera, or in the drawing, rather, but his face was turned to the depth of his generous eyes and comfortable smile were clearly visible.

Adrien's breath was taken away, and his eyes remained still focused on his hands when the book was ripped from his grasp. "You weren't supposed to see that!" Marinette cried in embarrassment. His eyes flicked up to meet hers, and she pressed the drawing against her chest so it was no longer visible.

"That was…," he trailed off hesitantly.

She didn't say anything, but her blush and averted eyes were confirmation enough. It was him. Him, that she'd imagined wearing those clothes, that she'd traced so delicately, that she drew out in a way that made him seem so much more heart-melting than he'd ever thought he was. He never knew that anybody ever looked at him that way.

Always too little to achieve his father's adoration, and always too much to garner a teenager's true feelings.

He tried to catch her gaze, but she was adamant in ignoring him. "Marinette," he started, but she just jumped up and shoved everything in her bag.

"I forgot I have to help around the bakery," she mumbled before walking off at a pace close to running. He stared after her for a second, utterly bemused, until Nino elbowed him in the ribs and he launched out of his seat to race after her.

"Wait, Marinette!" She stopped, head ducking below her shoulders in a cringe and arms tightening their grip on her belongings. Hi breath fell out of him all at once as he slowed to a stop as well, standing finally in front of her. "What's wrong?"

All of a sudden her shy demeanor vanished, dropped to the ground like something vile. She blinked once, twice, and then all she seemed to be able to express was an anger he'd never seen her wear before. "What's wrong? What's WRONG?" His eyes widened and he took a step back. Despite the tone of her voice, she actually looked close to tears. "What's wrong, you ask," she seethed. "I can't believe you don't know! How oblivious are you?" If she hadn't been yelling at him, he might have been offended. As it were, he was a tad too scared.

"I-" he paused, hesitant to speak. She looked up at him, expectant. "I don't know what you're talking about. Please, Marinette, you're my friend. Just tell me."

And it all disappeared, replaced with a calm that was nowhere near patient, more terrifying than the anger. "Of course. I'm your friend. You're my friend. I'm sorry, Adrien. I haven't been treating you as much like a friend as I should have, I should start doing that."

Her awkward voice and repetitive use of the word 'friend' had his mouth bobbing like a fish. "No, Mari- I, you-"

She smiled kindly at him, but it seemed so reserved compared to usual. "Maybe then you'll catch on." That said, she twirled back around and stalked off, leaving Adrien to stare after her, sickeningly lost.

The door to the classroom was opened invitingly, and it would be maybe five minutes before class started. Stepping through, Adrien could see that roughly half the class was in there already, his three friends included. Nino saw him first, smiling and waving him over.

"Hey guys," he greeted, putting his bag on the ground next to his seat. They all responded in kind, and he looked at Marinette oddly. Usually, she sent him a beaming smile and a bright hello. This time, just a simple 'hi.' She'd already returned to her sketching, though, so he couldn't catch her eye.

Alya raised an expectant eyebrow at him, but he had no idea what she wanted from him. When he shook his head in confusion, she sighed in what seemed to be disappointment and started tapping away on her phone. He turned to Nino, who just shrugged.

Marinette's treatment of him was no better at lunch. While being no less friendly than with Alya and Nino, she was so much colder than usual to him in particular. He never really noticed it until it wasn't there. Observing her now, though, it was unmistakable. Marinette was especially sweet to him before.

Instead of her sketchbook, her face was buried in the latest fashion magazine. He glanced at the cover to find no trace of him on it. She tended to stick to the ones that did, he thought askance. It wasn't a conscious observation, because he honestly couldn't care less if other people read the magazines he posed for. It was always nice to see it, though, and he figured that was the reason he's noticed what Marinette read.

She sensed his gaze and glanced up at him, flushing a little but otherwise unmoved. "Would you like to take a look?"

Confused, his eyebrows drew together, so she shook the magazine a little. "Oh," he said smartly, "um, no thank you."

She shrugged and turned back to the page she was on. "Alright."

"Are you mad at me," he blurted, "for yesterday?"

Her eyes turned up to him, wide. Questioning, almost, why she should be mad. But she remained silent, magazine tilted just enough so that her mouth was masked to him. He could only assume she wasn't wearing her usual grin.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, nodding once as if it would help. "For looking at your sketchbook. It was an accident, I swear!"

Her lips twisted into a gentle smile. "I know," she said simply, looking away from him once more. "I'm not mad."

That confirmation was worse than if she'd said she was livid. Now he had no clue as to why she was behaving as she was around him. It would have been so much easier for her to have just said yes. He would know how to fix it, then, and get his old Marinette back. Nino had no idea what was wrong, or at least he told him that. Alya flat out said that it was the most obvious thing in the world, but she refused to clue him in.

He decided that Chloe wouldn't be of much help at the moment, either.

Throughout this whole situation, he felt like the most helpless scrap of boy on the face of the planet. He frowned, watching her for another second in case she might give something away. "I don't get it," he said at last.

Her head lifted up slowly towards him, eyes rushing to skim the last of her sentence before following the movement of her face. "You don't get what?"

"You said that you'd treat me more like a friend, which you were doing pretty great at before! But now I feel as though I kind of... I don't know. Miss you."

While one eyebrow creased, the other raised to create a very perplexing expression. "Miss me? I'm right here."

His shoulder rose and fell quickly in a short breath as he tried in frustration to find better words. "I know that," he told her, running a hand through his hair. "But you were always so bright around me before, I guess. I don't know why, but you seem a little colder," he explained hopelessly, not sure how to word these ridiculous feelings he had.

She slammed the magazine shut in a tight slap of the papers, expression less angry than just frustrated. "You're smart, Adrien. Think about it." With that, she shoved the magazine into his chest and stalked off. Somehow, he felt more confused now than he was before.

"It's like he just doesn't want to see it, Alya," Marinette complained to her friend, pacing around her room. "I can't tell if he really doesn't get it or just wishes it wasn't true."

The other girl snorted from where she was sprawled over the chaise on her back. "As obvious as you are, Girl, he's also just really clueless when it comes to the girls in his life. Chloe, for example."

The pacing paused, and she shrugged in agreement before going right back to it. "Yeah, I guess so." She thought that even now the boy was probably completely ignorant of the blonde's circles around him. Still, Marinette was more obvious than she wished she was, and she was hard-pressed to find anyone in all of Paris who wasn't aware of her extreme infatuation with the boy.

Alya watched her friend stomp around, a sympathetic smile lifting at her lips. This whole situation was crazy. Poor girl. "I'm just proud of you for actually going through with telling him. How long have you been trying now?"

"For forever," she groaned, "and he still doesn't get it!"

Alya rolled over onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows. "He will, you just have to really shock him into it," she assured her.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this, though," she sighed, dropping down next to her friend, who just laughed in response.

"I know, I keep waiting for the day you just fall over in a swoon while trying to be angry at him." She smiled when she got a small giggle out of Marinette, happy to have relieved at least some of the negativity.

"He looks so cute when he's confused," she admitted sadly, sighing at the tragedy of it all. If only she wasn't in so deep, she thought. As it were, she could hardly look him in the eye without turning into a lump of useless goo. It made this whole 'just-a-relatively-good-friend' act so much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

All she wanted was for him to finally realize what was smacking him in the face all along. At this point she didn't really need him to care for her the same way she did, but it was this wondering that killed her. The fact that she didn't know what he'd say was torture on the inside, and she could hardly believe that it was still a problem.

How many times does a girl have to fall off a bench for a guy to realize she's falling off the bench for him?

"So what are you going to do now?"

Marinette was silent for a second, mulling over her options when it hit her. She turned to her friend with a satisfied grin, thinking that she finally had it now. "I think I have an idea," she started, pointing one finger to the ceiling and then lowering it slowly to direct at Alya. "But I need your help to perfect it."

Adrien was elated when he got a text from Marinette to meet him at the library during lunch. Perhaps the rift between them was finally closing. He cavorted his way down the hallways at the appropriate time, realizing that he'd missed her closeness even more than he already thought he did.

Which was a lot.

There was just something about being too far from her that burned him a little on the insides. It was far from a need to see her every second of every day, but more so a strong desire to see her smile in his direction, to listen to her ramble to him in discussion. He missed the warmth that even the cool colour of her eyes couldn't dampen with every look passed between them, he missed the absent-minded touches here and there, when he'd gently guide her shoulder or she'd faintly graze his arm.

He missed her, he summed up. What he couldn't decide, though, was what to do to remedy the problem.

The doors of the library seemed unusually heavy when he pushed them open, perhaps a reflection on the weight this held over his nerves. She never actually explained why she needed him here.

It took him only a moment to find her, situated at a table and surrounded by books. In her hands was a copy of what Adrien assumed to be Shakespeare's Othello. It was what they were reading in lit. When she heard his approach, her attention tore away from the text and she glanced up at him. She smiled, and though it wasn't as reserved as lately it had been, there was something about it that put him off. Like she knew all his secrets and kept all of hers hidden from him.

"Adrien," she spoke quietly, adhering to the rules of the room, "I'm glad you came."

His eyes shifted uneasily across the room. Something was most certainly off about this. "Yeah... so what's up?"

Her hands, trembling just slightly under some sort of peculiar unease, shut the book she was reading and slid it across the table until it sat just in front of the chair opposite her. "What's the name of this book, Adrien?"

The sheer oddity of the question had his brow furrowed, and he stepped forward curiously to glance at the cover. It was blank, a flat leather slate unmarred by the plight of text. He lifted the cover and shuffled through the next few pages, which were all a pure off-white. Again no text, just the glitter of their golden edges. Eventually he picked the entire thing up and fanned through every page. They were all blank. "There's nothing in here," he said.

"That's where you're wrong," she disagreed, standing up as well. "You just have to look harder." The sentence trailed off with what seemed like distance, and by the time he looked up she'd left the library. Incurable confusion blossomed within him again, and he stared after where she'd left at a loss. Slowly, his eyes drew back to the blank book in his hand and he flipped through it again. Nothing. Just off-white pages, edges dipped in gold and void of text.

He slumped down into the chair that hadn't been occupied by her, studying the empty novel with mild frustration. Perhaps he'd done something to deserve all of this, but it didn't mean that he'd have to be happy about it. Deciding that he had a half hour before he had to be anywhere, he began searching slowly on each page. That took twenty minutes just in itself, and he found absolutely nothing.

Almost growling, he picked up the book and twisted it this way and that. Perhaps there would be something on the cover, he thought with diminishing hope. Nothing, just leather. His grip on the book tightened, and the top cover shifted upwards just slightly. In the time before quickly correcting the misuse of the book, something caught his eye. Making an interested hum, he opened the book so that he was holding all of the pages and the covers hung out of the way. He fanned the pages out slightly, shifting their alignment and letting the differences catch the light.

Just a mild shade darker, almost unnoticeable, were three distinct letters.

'Y-O-U'

"Did you read the book?"

"Yes," he responded after a moment's hesitation. "But I still don't understand."

She smiled, the same smile from the library last night. "That's alright," she soothed, holding out a folded paper in front of him. "This is the epilogue."

They were at the park, Adrien sitting at a bench with his schedule and a pen, and Marinette standing in front of him, bag on her shoulders. School had been let out for the day just twenty minutes ago, and since it was Friday they had a bit more of a relaxed attitude regarding schoolwork. The park was an obvious choice of residence.

He took the paper, unfolding it to find a poem of sorts. His concerned eyes switched up to glance at her.

"Why won't you just tell me?"

He was surprised when she actually laughed, and he couldn't really tell what kind of laugh it was. Maybe a little sad? Disappointed, amused, confused? Either way, he eyed her oddly for it. "I have been. Nobody can believe that you don't know, Adrien. I decided the best way to get it through to you was to get a little creative," she explained. "I always thought that learning things the creative way made it stick."

Nervous, he finally decided. Her laugh from earlier was a giant pot of mixed emotions, but more than anything it was nervous. That realization made him frown, and he looked down to the paper.

Make it end, please figure it out.
My soul can't take your snail speed of figuring this out.
Heart wrenching, really. Figure it out.
Stop being clueless, and figure it out.

What.

Slowly, he looked up, finding that she was still there, staring at him with wide, expectant eyes. He glanced down again. Then back up. Back and forth he looked between the two, drawing absolutely no leads on the subject.

Alright, well, apparently this was a poem. He could work with that. He thought about the different type of poems. Haiku? Maybe if he took the fifth word, then- no. 'Figure your this' made no sense. That was out then. Acrostic, a preferred style for its easy application. MMHS wasn't a word, so that didn't work either. Subconsciously, though, his eye caught on the pleasantness of how the first words of each line seemed to flow. The meaning of the words didn't even occur to him in that second that he simply noticed the sentence.

'Make My Heart Stop'

He went back and read it again, with comprehension this time. Make my heart stop. And if it's the epilogue…

'You Make My Heart Stop'

His own heart stopped at that moment, then restarted with a newfound vigor. Whipping his head up to look at her, he could see that she knew he'd gotten it. Her hands found each other over her stomach, dancing like butterflies around each other. Her teeth worried at her bottom lip, and her eyes trained on anything but him.

Clueless indeed, he guessed, unable to hold back a wild grin. How stupidly blind he'd been. All this time that he's liked her, and apparently she's felt the very same way. "Prologue," he corrected simply.

Her eyebrows drew together, and she finally let her gaze catch his. "What?"

"It's the prologue, not the epilogue," he told her breezily, standing up so that he was facing her head on. He head went from being angled down to up, and the action brought a blush to her face.

"I still don't understand," she stumbled out, forgetting to school herself in the pretense of being exclusively a 'friend.'

He bit his lip, grinning boyishly at her. Slowly, softly, he took her burning cheeks in his hands, stepping closer when she didn't pull away. "The end definitely hasn't come yet," he explained, drawing her in and kissing her sweetly.