Beyond the Sea — Drabbles & Shorts [1]

hello all !

I’ve been here for a while but haven’t had the courage to post :confounded: :confounded: I like to write sometimes so I thought I would post a collection of my drabbles. I hope you like them. Overall the word count is 1,031.

:no_entry_sign: warning :no_entry_sign:

there is some mild swearing in one of the stories. If that makes you uncomfortable you can skip the one called sick day.

Alone

Alone he faced a darkness equal to a thousand sunless days. They were dark and cold, leaving the planet embittered and lonesome. The winds howled in his ear, echoing the Earth’s undying agony. Eternal is the world; even when the sun casts its final dying embers into the sky, it must rotate on.

Nino tries to have a similar resilience. Even when the others are too busy to miss him when he’s gone, or too preoccupied to realize how heavy his own body’s begun to feel on his bones, he wanted to keep his chin up. Wouldn’t it be selfish to beg for their attention? Wouldn’t it be selfish to insist they spend more time doting on him, showing him platonic affection, and including him in their group activities?

“Hey Nino,” Alya greets him as she shuffles into class with a yawn. Her eyes are underlined with heavy bags. Her red curls are frizzy and unbrushed. Another busy night, he figures. Another evening he had to spend alone.

“Hi Alya. Did you get any cool pictures of the akuma attack last night?” He asks.

“Sure did! And another exclusive interview for the Ladyblog. I’m sorry to do this to you again, but I really need to get this stuff up after class. Do you mind if —.”

“We don’t have to hang out tonight if you’d rather do that instead.”

“Thanks! I’ll call you when I’m done,” Alya presses a quick kiss to his cheek. Then she heads back to her assigned seat, where she starts to gossip with Marinette. Marinette and Adrien were always busy too, running off to run mysterious ‘errands’ around the same time Alya disappeared to capture Paris’ heroes on film.

He closes his eyes. Nino tries to brush it off; they’re just busy. They don’t mean to exclude him. Someday they’ll realize. But the sinking feeling in his stomach and chest makes him wonder how much more he can take. Nino hates feeling so alone.

Sick Day

Of all days for there to be an akuma attack, it had to be this one.

Despite the attacks becoming an almost daily event over a year ago, Marinette held onto the belief that the universe would give her a break today. Instead it seemed to punish her hopefulness, hitting her twice as hard as normal. She coughs into her elbow and glances at Tikki, who returns her tired look tenfold. Even the kwami seemed to droop more than usual today.

“Come on, Marinette. I know you’re tired but Paris needs you,” Tikki urges softly.

Marinette groans and rolls over in bed. She brings her knees up to her chest. “Can’t Chat just destroy the akumas?” She reasons.

Tikki flutters around to the other side of the bed and settles next to Marinette’s face. It’s sticky with sweat and her breath reeks subtly of stomach acid. Her eyes are blotched with purple and black shadows and her face is gaunt, as if her skin were inverting into the depths of her skull. “You can’t make him fight an akuma and a sentimonster on his own, Marinette. You have to get up.”

“Riiiiing, riiing. I’m calling in sick today!”

“That’s now how it works.”

“Why not?”

“Because heroes don’t get sick days, Marinette.”

Marinette finally pushes herself up into a sitting position. Her hair — damp from sweat — sticks up on the sides as if ruffled by the winds of a Midwestern tornado. She purses her lips. “That’s bullshit.”

“Marinette!” Tikki gapes with the disapproving click of her tongue. “Language, please. As a guardian of the miraculous now, surely you understand how your duties outweigh everything else in your life.”

Marinette continues to grumble as she peels the blanket off of her body and rises to her feet. Her core feels out of alignment, her muscles ached, and her head felt as heavy as a bowling ball. If the bowling ball has been filled with cement. Just as she was about to concede the battle, she got a brilliant idea. “Heroes don’t get sick days, right?”

“Right,” Tikki affirms. “But we’ll make sure to get you plenty of rest after -“

“Well,” Marinette interrupts, “then for today, I just won’t be a superhero.” With that, she takes out the ladybug earrings, and places them back into the miraculous box. If Paris was still standing tomorrow, she’d deal with the akuma and sentimonster then. For today, Marinette was having a sick day.

Study Buddy

Chat Noir watches Marinette as she types away at her keyboard. She’s been working on schoolwork all night. Imagine being that responsible. Especially when he was there? How was he supposed to pester her when she opted to ignore him for her important class work?

With an irritated huff, he releases an exaggerated sigh. “I thought you said this would only take ten minutes.”

“It will. I just have two more slides to finish.”

“It’s been twenty-five. And I’m bored.”

Marinette grabs one of her old sticky notes off the side of her computer monitor, crumbles it up into a ball in the palm of her hands, and tosses it at Chat’s head. It hits him square on the temple. “You’re the worst,” she groans, “how am I supposed to get anything done with you around?”

“How are you supposed to get anything done when it takes you over half an hour to do the same two slides?”

“All right, all right! I give up. What do you want to do?” Marinette throws up her hands. Her cheeks are flushed pink with exasperation.

Chat Noir pauses. He sits up from the edge of Marinette’s bed. The black clad hero didn’t think he would actually get this far; he focused so much on badgering her to do something with him that he never paused to think about what they might do. “Uh,” he drawls, running his tongue over his lips slowly, “well...you mean besides be with you?”

“Oh my god. You’re impossible!” Marinette says. She laughs a little, spinning her chair around to look Chat Noir straight in the eye. “I love you, Adrien, even when you’re being a total idiot.”

“And I love you, Marinette.”