miraculous sins

luka and mari

IN THE FOREST

After moving from the city to a countryside town, Marinette's only companion is a snake boy in the magical woods behind her parent's cottage.

"Watcha drawing, Ma-Ma-Marinette?" Luka asked lazily, deathly still as he rested his head on her leg.

"Your pattern," Marinette replied, and stopped sketching to stroke his hair. "It's getting me inspired."

He let out the lightest of hums, more like a tiny happy sigh, and he shifted a little. It started with a nuzzle of his cheek on her thigh, and moved along the rest of his body like a ripple on the surface of a pond. The slow shimmy passed his hips and she watched it travel down along the entire sleek, muscly, thirteen-foot snake tail coiled around where she sat, and end with a little flicker at the very tip.

She giggled and went back to sketching.

"I might put it on a skirt, or a headband," she mused, finishing the middle rounded diamond in the pattern that adorned his scales. "Maybe a swimsuit, since summer's just around the corner. The possibilities are endless, really."

"You like my pattern that much?" Luka opened one aqua blue eye to look at her.

"It's pretty," Marinette shrugged. "Might make a nice pocket embroidery, actually."

"Mmm." Luka hummed in confirmation and moved, and she would be embarrassed to admit that she missed the weight of his head on her leg.

For a moment, she got scared that he was leaving.

He'd been hibernating all winter, and by the time the snow had finally cleared enough to safely venture into the old forest again, Marinette had missed him so much that she was tempted to stay with him forever.

Even despite the fact that the magic of the place was infamous in the little town her parents had moved to to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, Marinette found herself staying with him longer and longer each time. Luka had turned out to be wonderful, but Marinette was well aware that there were much worse things out among the old trees.

But, his tail stayed curled around her, so she wasn't too worried.

She sketched the outline of a bikini and arranged his pattern in different configurations on it.

"I don't understand clothing," Luka said from behind her head.

"What don't you understand about it?" Marinette prompted, half-distracted by imagining colors for the bikini.

"I don't get why you'd want to cover up your body," a pair of tanned arms snaked around her shoulders.

"Well, unlike you," she teased, craning her neck back to talk up at him. "We can't just go to sleep when it's too cold."

"Sure," Luka nodded. "But when it's not too cold, you still cover up. You hide your bodies even when it's too hot to cover them."

"Well, we can't just walk around naked." Marinette blushed a little.

"Why not?" he cocked his head. "You're so pretty."

Her blush got worse.

"Why wouldn't you want to show that off?" Luka moved around to hover in front of her, and it was almost hypnotic the way his tail moved so fluidly and also barely at all.

"B-being naked is different f-for us," Marinette closed her sketchbook, getting shy. "We don't exactly have fancy patterns like you."

"Then... how do you attract mates?" he asked, genuinely confused.