Archive of Our Own ^beta

Marinette doodled in her notebook idly. Tiny flowers dotted the top right corner of her page, a field beginning to take root further and further down the page.

“You know, usually, people take notes in notebooks,” Tim teased, letting his backpack slide off of his shoulder as he took his usual seat beside her. Going to classes had been miserable, once, he’d only really been going to college because his parents had wanted him to and he hadn’t had any better ideas… but now that she was there he was happy to attend.

“People usually come to class on time, too,” she said, grinning. “But you don’t hear me saying anything about it.”

“You just did, though.”

“Unprompted,” she corrected herself. “You don’t hear me saying anything about it unprompted.”

The professor shot them an exasperated look even as the poor guy continued on with his lecture, and they both gave him apologetic smiles that they didn’t really mean. Tim, like a good student, took out his notebook and pencil.

Only to get an idea.

He grinned and scrawled something on the corner of his page:

Does writing this count as note-taking?

He poked her with the pencil, and she smiled just slightly at the sight of the message. It was a note, after all, just not the kind that you were supposed to write in class.

I’ll count it.

He beamed, resting his head in his hand.

Awesome. Now you can be on task.

She rolled her eyes.

His eyes, however, strayed to the top of her page, still dotting the top section of her paper. They were the kind of flowers you could do in a couple of seconds, five petals surrounding a simple circle.

You like buttercups? They’re poisonous! he wrote on her page, doodling an arrow to point at them.

She gave him a halfhearted glare, less than pleased with him choosing to write in her notebook, but forgave him quickly enough.

They’re cute.

He perked up just slightly. He had been intending on pressing the conversation towards what flowers she did like, but he could work with this.

She liked buttercups, then?

She had been talking about sprucing up her dorm room. He had tried take her to the shopping district, with the intent of going back to buy everything she looked at for longer than a few seconds, but she had said no, and there really wasn’t any way he could convince her… still, if he just bought her flowers, she couldn’t really complain, could she? After all, good boyfriends are supposed to buy their girlfriends flowers (admittedly, they usually bought bouquets rather than the actual plants themselves, but this was more practical anyway), and it wasn’t like it was that expensive.

He wouldn’t let her pay him back for them, of course, no matter how inexpensive they were, but the fact that it shouldn’t be much more expensive than a cup of coffee should reduce how much she would fight him on the matter or repayment.

Still, he couldn’t let her in on his dastardly plans to treat her to something nice, because she would surely object if she knew about them ahead of time.

So, he scrawled down something before she could get suspicious:

I guess you’ll be fine as long as you don’t go shoving flowers in your mouth all the time.

She elbowed him under the table.

It had all been worth it to watch her blush and hug the tiny flower pot to her chest the next day.