Chapter Text
Chapter Eight: On the Subject of the Flourish
Many young witches find the flourish required to complete a spell the most difficult aspect of casting to master. Nights spent memorizing components and rituals or meditating to solidify intentions can feel wasted when confronted with the nebulous nature of selecting an appropriate conclusion to a spell. Though many aspects of witchcraft can be taught, the flourish has long been considered something instinctual and unteachable. And indeed, many intuitive casters perform a flourish without even articulating such a feature, but rather sensing when a spell is simply concluded.
Despite the elusive nature of the flourish, the greatest spells rely on variations of the three strongest and oldest magical flourishes. The most common is a flash of prestige, often used to conclude an illusion or a spell performed for entertainment. The most unpredictable, though perhaps the most powerful, is to add the spellcaster’s or even the target’s blood to the end of the spell, which can make for particularly potent charms and conjurations. But it would be remiss of this author to fail to address the most neglected flourish, despite—or perhaps because of—its reputation as a cliché. That is, of course, the flourish of true love’s kiss.
The arrangement that made Tom and Sabine happiest was to let the boys sleep downstairs by the fireplace and the girls sleep upstairs in Marinette’s room. When the morning’s work started, the boys were roused and sent to finish sleeping in Tom and Sabine’s room.
Most mornings, Adrien couldn’t fall back asleep, and he found himself in the kitchen, helping with the earliest rounds of bread-making. He took to the process in a way Marinette never had, and she was surprised to feel a bit of jealousy as she watched her father teach Adrien how to use a rolling pin. There was no bitterness in the jealousy, though, just a bit of longing. Mostly, Marinette felt that something her father had been missing was set right now that Adrien was here.
While Adrien enjoyed helping out in the early morning, there were some mornings when Adrien couldn’t fall back asleep and Félix also could not fall back asleep. On those mornings, Adrien slipped up to Marinette’s room and roused Kagami so that she could slip downstairs.
Those first few weeks, Félix, Adrien, and Kagami hardly left the bakery. There were gifts delivered, food sent, even trunks of belongings sent from Félix and Adrien’s home, but as Sabine had ordered, all of those things were refused. The only gifts that crossed the threshold of the kitchen were letters from Amélie, signed and sealed, with the occasional financial assistance enclosed inside.
The only things sent for Kagami were dictated letters filled with tirades and demands, lengthy speeches about the burdens of her birthright that she was foolishly denying. Kagami tossed each of these into the fire with little more than a glance.
One letter arrived for Marinette, detailing an offer of apprenticeship to the jeweler who had helped her repair the brooch. Marinette followed Kagami’s example and burned it in the fireplace, as she did the second and third letters. It wasn’t until Luka came by to deliver the man’s offer himself that she finally believed that the apprenticeship was real. She accepted the permanent position, and used her evenings to teach Kagami about charms and potions. She kept her weekly stall at the Midnight Market, and found it was particularly nice to have a friend with her while Alya was busy performing.
On one of the mornings that neither Adrien nor Félix could sleep, Adrien made his way into Marinette’s bed and pulled the blankets tight around them to keep out the deep winter chill. But despite her warmth and the blankets, sleep refused to follow.
“Sometimes,” he murmured, as the yellow sun began to creep into her windows, “I wish I could be a cat again, just to curl up in your lap.”
She ran her fingers through his hair and scratched the space behind his ear, just like she might have when he was a cat. “I like getting to have all of you,” she murmured, and hooked an ankle through his, only to yelp and draw back. “Your feet are freezing! Maybe I would prefer some squishable paws covered in fur.”
“Being a cat had some perks.”
Marinette let the silence settle in around them, until she heard that gentle hum in the back of his throat that was almost—but not quite—a purr.
“Alya and Nino set a date for their wedding,” she murmured.
“Oh?”
“The first day of spring.”
“Hm… that’s a bit early.”
“Early?” Marinette laughed. “They’ve been courting for years. I’m surprised they didn’t get married last month.”
“I was just hoping for the first day of summer,” Adrien murmured sleepily.
“Why do you care what day they get married?”
“Because I thought you’d like to get married at the same time as Alya.”
Marinette’s heart stopped and her hands stilled in his hair. It wasn’t that it was an unwarranted statement, but it was not one she had prepared for.
“You can’t decide we’re marrying on the first day of summer when you haven’t even proposed yet.”
“I was waiting for you to propose.”
“I’m not the one who’s supposed to propose!”
Adrien yawned and draped his arm over her waist. “But you’re the one who works in a jewelry shop. Did you want me to propose with a loaf of bread?”
She laughed as he nestled his head into the space between her chin and shoulder. “Only you would make something that is supposed to be romantic so silly.”
“When you do pick out a ring for me,” he murmured into her neck, “just make sure that you don’t sneeze on it.”
“Stop!” She playfully swatted his shoulder and tried to wriggle away, but he held her fast. “I have told you a hundred times, it was probably my bloody nose that triggered the magical flourish at the end of that spell.”
He pushed himself up and kissed her nose, despite her attempts to wriggle away. “I’m not allowed to be romantic about your snotty bloody nose?”
“No.”
“Hm. Which parts of you am I allowed to find romantic?”
“My lips.”
“Cliché.” But he pressed his lips to hers with the mischievous smile that always made her heart stutter.
“My neck,” she added with a mischievous smile of her own, and he pressed his lips there, too.
They were married on the first day of summer, like Adrien had planned. As much as Marinette had toyed with the idea of rushing things to marry at the same time as Alya and Nino, she delayed, largely to keep her father from dying of a heart attack.
But, despite the delay, Adrien and Marinette were not alone at the altar. They took their vows and, alongside them, Kagami and Félix took their vows as well.
Amélie Fathom was the only person from Félix and Adrien’s family allowed into the church. The rest of the seats were filled with Marinette’s family and friends, who, most certainly, were also Adrien, Félix, and Kagami’s family and friends.
Tom had offered to walk Kagami down the aisle along with Marinette, but Marinette was not surprised when Kagami refused.
“I shall go alone,” she said simply, and when this appeared to hurt Tom’s feelings, Adrien asked if it would be all right for him to be walked down the aisle by Tom instead.
Adrien’s sense of humor had quickly become the heart of the Dupain-Cheng’s kitchen. And, by and by, Marinette began to recognize Félix’s humor, borne in dry comments and cool commentary on his cousin’s absurdities.
Félix’s smile, however, remained an elusive thing, caught only in moments where Kagami’s attention was called away from him, but his gaze lingered. So Marinette was surprised when, as Kagami entered through the church doors alone and strode down the aisle to join Marinette, Adrien, and Félix at the altar, a broad smile bloomed unbidden across his face.
He and Adrien never looked so alike as they did that day, both grinning like idiots at their brides.
Félix’s smile remained, even as the ceremony concluded with an outdoor picnic, until he caught Marinette’s eye. She tapped her finger to the corner of her mouth, like he’d missed a spot of jam.
He put a napkin to his lips and, once he encountered the unfamiliar shape of his face, he frowned. His cheeks reddened like he was embarrassed to have been caught doing something inappropriate and he hastily turned away from Marinette.
The embarrassment and the frown, however, did not linger. The moment Kagami took his hand to introduce him to some new clients of hers, who were quite impressed with her bottled storm charms for safe sea travel, the smile returned, and did not so much as falter for the rest of the day.
Though Marinette had never grown up feeling like something was missing from her family, she could no longer imagine her family without Félix, Adrien, and Kagami embedded within it. When Kagami and Félix eventually had the stability from Kagami’s work at the Midnight Market to afford their own small apartment—with some support from Félix’s mother—the bakery felt strangely empty.
But visits were frequent, and the bakery was never truly quiet. Between Alya and Nino, Kagami and Félix, and even Madame Fathom, their hearth was always full, and the bakery always a hub of activity. When it came time for Marinette’s apprenticeship to end, instead of choosing a spot in Artisan’s Alley for herself, they made space in the bakery, where she could ply her wares beside her husband’s, and they could craft side-by-side.
It became considered lucky to receive one of Marinette’s charms and find flour dusting its surface, and bread purchased from the Dupain-Chengs was rumored to be imbued with magical luck, though all bakers involved vehemently denied this.
But Marinette was not so certain. For what was their daily life, but a magical spell performed over and over and over again? They chose their components and tools each morning and set their intentions with laughter and pleasant conversation. Kneading dough, exchanging goods, and moving through the rhythm of business held little difference from a ritual, repeated day after day. And as Marinette undid her stays at the end of the night, and fell in bed beside the partner who had chosen her, who had sought her, who had fought for her as hard as she had fought for him—well, how different was it from a dramatic flourish, to lean over at the end of each day and kiss him good night?