Put Your Heart In It, by @purrfectlypunny

Based on a prompt submitted by @halcyyonn: Rivals to lovers Felinette as opposing debate team captains arriving at a competition

AO3; Rivals to Lovers, Slow Burn, Team Bonding, Debate Team AU, Fluff

Summary:

In this multi-chapter fic, Marinette Cheng and Felix Sphinx are rivals on opposing sides of their debate team. What starts as a friendly debate about writing instruments turns into much more as they *gasp* start to fall for each other.

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Chapter 1

“Fe, please.” Alan groaned. “We still have time, the debate is not the end of the world.”

“To you .” Felix pointed out. “Marinette is ruthless. No doubt, she’s scheming something that’s completely out of our respective playing fields with something that doesn’t even make sense just to throw us off.” 

“We need to be prepared because Marinette is our biggest threat. We know, we know.” Claude raised an eyebrow while he twirled a pencil in his fingers. “It’s not like you haven’t talked about it before, and we still have, like, two weeks left to prepare.” 

“The results for who battles who in the debate comes out tomorrow. This will be a good thing to watch out for because who knows how this will go… Then we can work on identifying logical fallacies in the arguments to look out for and exploit.”

“You talk about this like someone’s going to die.” Alan sighed, resting his head on his hand. “It’s just a debate.”

“A debate that I have never lost. I’ve never even had a threat of losing until Marinette.” Felix sighed.

“Who you might not even get assigned with.” Claude shrugged. “Why worry about something you have no idea about?”

“I hate to say it, but he has a point.” Alan agreed. “Just give yourself time to think.”