Chapter Text
"Marinette! I'm dying girl!!! You HAVE to tell me who this third statue is." Alya said as she finally was able to catch up to Marinette before Marinette could disappear to the art room for lunch, which is where she had been hiding the past four days, to avoid questions from her best friend about her relationship situation. Marinette couldn't help but laugh at her and Alya's little inside joke. After the music festival a few years back, when Juleka's mother had cautioned Marinette and Alya from putting anything metal near the ship's compass as it threw off the compass and made it go crazy, the two girls had referred to Marinette as the compass and any prospective love interests as the metal statues.
"I really can't tell you much about him..." Marinette said truthfully, as she twiddled her fingers. She really couldn't. Alya would be all over her if she told her it was Chat Noir, and if she ended up switching quickly to Adrien in public later, Alya was sure to deduct that Adrien was Chat Noir, and then another realization would soon come after; a realization that could not only reveal Marinette's identity but also possibly destroy a friendship. One built on unconditional trust if not complete honesty.
Unnoticed by the girls, Nino and Adrien were coming up quickly behind them as Alya had successfully thwarted Marinette's attempts to escape the lunchroom and therefore her inevitable interrogation. Just in case though, Alya had slipped her arm through Marinette's. Though on the outside the gesture looked chummy, it was as much to keep Marinette from escaping, as it was an amiable gesture.
"Sooooo....come on girl! You can't leave your bestie hanging like this. Who's the third statue to your crazy compass?" Alya shook Marinette a little with anticipation.
Adrien looked questioningly at Nino while gesturing toward the girls and their conversation about statues and compasses. Nino put a finger to his lips in a shushing motion, then motioned to Adrien that he'd tell him later. Adrien nodded and listened intently. Worried about several aspects of the ensuing conversation. He knew Marinette would never out him, but Alya was amazingly tenacious and smart. She'd be able to sniff out any inconsistencies in Marinette's story and that's the part that worried him. Still, Marinette was smart, and he had every faith that she'd come up with something. This whole statue and compass conversation had him wondering though. He had a notion of what they were discussing and that made him a little nervous as well. To satisfy his curiosity, (and his nerves) he'd have to pick Nino's brain after lunch.
"I'm telling the truth Alya, I can't really tell you much about him...because I'm not for sure myself who he is." Marinette ducked her head a little and blushed as she got in line to get her tray and pick up some food for herself.
"Whoa! Back up! Excuuuse me?" Alya stopped getting her tray mid-motion to turn to her friend, Alya put a hand on her hip and her other hand up in the air in a stopping motion. "I'm confused now, you are in a relationship...with someone you don't even know??" Alya's eyes went wide with incredulity and a good amount of horror at the prospect.
"No!...yeeess.....It's complicated." Marinette sighed as she picked out a juice for her drink and moved on down the line a little. "We've been talking for years you see. Just as friends though. I've just never seen who he really is..."
"Wait a second. Marinette did you meet this guy on the internet?? Are you being scammed? Did he ask for money??" Alya was in full freak-out mode now. She was just randomly grabbing food to put on her tray, barely paying attention to what she was grabbing as she followed Marinette, who was bound and determined not to look back at Alya. She felt that the more she said, the worse the situation seemed to be getting.
"No! It's not like that. He's never asked me for a single thing. He's been there for me a lot when I couldn't always share my secrets with anyone, even you." Marinette looked up at Alya sheepishly and continued. "He is a really nice guy, he goes to the same school we do, and he knows who I am, but I'm going to find out who he is at the masquerade ball next Saturday." Marinette finally hit on an idea that might get her out of this mess and turned to Alya as she finally sat down with her lunch tray on the opposite side of the table. "He's...my secret admirer."
"Your secret admirer? Who's been stalking you for years apparently." Alya said over her glasses dryly at Marinette's supposed naivety.
Marinette laughed and shook her head as she took a fork and poked at her lunch a little, "No silly. He barely found out who I was about a week ago through the conversations we've been having, and he wants to reveal who he is to me at the masquerade so we can finally have an actual relationship."
Alya pursed her lips worried before reaching for her own drink and sipping on it. "And you're okay with that?"
"Well...yeah," Marinette said nodding and looking at Alya who seemed genuinely concerned. "Look I know it sounds weird, but...I trust him. Wholeheartedly. Whatever he says he'll do, he always does. He'll be there. You'll see." Marinette nodded with certainty, trying to put her best friend at ease.
Alya looked at Marinette a moment more before sighing, closing her eyes then nodding and opening them again. "Well, you usually are a pretty good judge of character. So, if you trust your judgment on this guy, then I'll stop worrying too." Alya gave Marinette a smile then a wink as the boys sat down to join them for lunch.
Nino had taken the seat next to Alya as was his custom, and Adrien walked over to the side Marinette was on, set down his own tray, and took the seat next to her. Marinette blushed profusely when Adrien was settled. She wasn't at all sure how to act around him anymore. Dinner had gone well the night Adrien came over, once Marinette had gotten over Adrien's comments that made her blush for the first fifteen minutes of the meal. Her mom had really gone all out on dinner and besides being delicious, there was even enough for Adrien to be able to take home that night (though most of the leftovers ended up being eaten by an inches tall cat Kwami). In the days since then, Marinette had gone back and forth on an emotional roller coaster, trying to reconcile the two sides of Chat Noir. The more she paid attention for Chat's traits in Adrien, the more she realized how much she had missed by being so single minded about how perfect she had thought his civilian form was. The smile that curled her lips was tender and affectionate. Of course, now she knew what an adorable dork he really is. 'Hmmm...' She thought as she poked at a bit of salad with her fork, not really seeing the salad as she mused, 'he's adorable…he's a dork....he's adorkable!'
Marinette let out a very unladylike snicker at the thought which had Alya raising an eyebrow at her friend, who she feared, may have fallen off the deep end. Alya began to wonder whether she should trust Marinette's judgement after all, as she merely gave a half-hearted shake of her head in an almost pitying gesture of her friend apparently losing her mental faculties.
"What kind of salad did you get? Why isn't mine that entertaining?" Adrien leaned over, poking at Marinette's salad in mock fascination.
"Excuse me, but I don't take kindly to my salad being tossed in such a fashion! I’d appreciate if we could kindly lett-uce leaf my salad in peace." Marinette said as seriously as she could possibly manage, the corners of her mouth betraying the smirk she was trying to hide. If this didn't bring out the Chat in Adrien, she knew she didn't have the right boy.
"My apologies Marinette, kindly don't Beet me to a pulp for the oversight." Adrien bowed as best he could from his seated position.
Nino pulled down his red cap over his eyes with a groan. "Oh Lord! She got him started..."
Alya was a bit flabbergasted at the strange turn of events. Her Marinette was playing with Adrien, without even the briefest hint of a stutter, while Adrien had to have pulled out some of the cheesiest puns she'd ever heard. And here she thought he was supposed be reserved and cool.
"Apology accepted. I admit I may have bean a bit radish."
"Not at all! Peas feel free to Kale me out on my behavior any time."
"My dudes, if you don't stop, I can't be seen with you guys anymore. This is way beyond my embarrassment threshold!" Nino said pulling his cap the rest of the way over his face while Alya shook her head in near amazement at the transformation of her friends into complete and total nerds before her eyes. She hid a smile behind her hand, Marinette’s secret admirer was going to have some pretty stiff competition.
Marinette and Adrien took one look at Nino, then each other, before bursting out laughing.
Adrien getting a hold of himself first, managed to clap a hand on Nino’s shoulder across the table and couldn't help but annoy his friend one more time before giving up. " Romaine calm avoca-bro, we'll behave ourselves." Adrien glanced in Marinette's direction, and gave a bit of a smirk and a wink.
Marinette giggled and shrugged, her hands palms up in defeat. " What can I say? Haters gonna hate. I don't carrot all."
Alya and Nino groaned in unison, to which Adrien and Marinette burst out laughing before they all settled down to enjoy each other's company and lunch at long last.
****
“Hey Nino! Wait Up!” Adrien called out to Nino. Nino turned toward Adrien with a smile and a raised eyebrow, a characteristic he had picked up from hanging around his ever-skeptical girlfriend.
“Hey Dude! How’d you ditch the Gorilla you call a bodyguard?” Nino waited as his friend came up level to him before proceeding down the hall to the library.
“I just told him I have a project I needed to stay after school to work on for a while... Which isn’t completely dishonest…” Adrien stuffed his hands inside his pockets while he walked, looking down at the floor beneath his feet. He hated being dishonest, he knew his bodyguard meant well, but nevertheless, he was still under his dad’s command, something, no matter how well intentioned, Adrien felt smothered by.
“So, what brings on this happy little rebellion?” Nino asked, head tipped down, so his eyes were slightly covered by his cap. He could tell that his friend needed to unload something on him, but like anything meaningful to Adrien, it would be a little like pulling teeth just to get to the root of the problem.
Adrien looked off toward the windows they were passing on the way to the library. Sometimes during this time of day, he could catch sight of Marinette hanging out on the steps of the school before she headed home toward the Boulangerie. As he kept an eye out for her signature bluish-black hair, he asked Nino, a little distance to his tone as he spoke, “How did you know Alya…you know, liked you? I mean, I know Ladybug kind of lumped you guys together during an akuma attack, but…” Adrien turned toward his friend who seemed to be as chill as ever, though it usually took a little bit to get Nino out of his laid back, go with the flow demeanor, “how did you know? You know? That she was interested in you, and how did you win her over?”
Nino had a glint in his eye as he flicked his cap upward a little grinning at Adrien, “What? You finally get the nerve to track down Ladybug and ask her for a date Agreste?” Nino teased, knowing full well his friend’s not so subtle obsession with Ladybug.
“Actually…there is a girl I’m interested in, and she’s in our class.” They entered the doorway to the library and Adrien sighed, figuring in the interests of time, and dignity, he’d just get everything out in the open…a bit like ripping off a band-aid. “I’m in love with Marinette.”
“HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!!!”
The librarian turned toward Nino and shushed him sternly, glaring over the use of his colorful language.
“My bad.” Nino said apologetically, in a much quieter tone toward the elderly lady manning the library counter. He directed Adrien down an aisle with a quick jerk of the head.
Adrien, who was taken aback and a bit mortified at all the attention that Nino’s outburst had caused toward them, blushed lightly as he navigated down the aisle. At the end of it, there were some tables and a listening center with headphones that had been where Nino was originally headed when he intercepted him.
“Jeez Nino, how do you really feel?” Adrien chuckled a little nervously as he settled his messenger bag carefully down on the table of the listening area.
Nino shook his head as he flopped his own bag down with a lot less care, “She’s only been mad crushing on you since your first year here Bro.” Nino sifted through the library’s audio collection, trying to find some inspiration for tunes he could play at the masquerade ball.
“What?? When did this happen???” Adrien’s own outburst earned him a few hisses from a near-by study group a couple of tables over. More quietly, he ducked down his head and said in a hiss toward Nino, “That’s impossible, Marinette is an amazing friend, but she’s way too uncomfortable around me to like me that way.”
Nino took a deep inhale, his hands palm to palm in front of his face, as if praying for patience before pointing his joined hands in Adrien’s direction, “My dude! For real?” Nino said in a not so quiet whisper. “You never notice how she stumbles on her sentences, and feet around you? How she goes out of her way to help you with anything you need? How she always blushes around you?”
Adrien scratched the back of his head sheepishly, “I don’t know, I always took it that maybe she was too intimidated by, well, what I am or my connection to my dad to really… you know, like me in that way.”
Nino looked at his friend and the forlorn puppy dog face he was making, then shook his head and stood up, picking his bag back up. “Well it doesn’t look like I’m going to get much done here anyway, so why don’t we go for a walk?”
“Sorry bro, I could always message you later or someth…”
“Nah, it’s cool. With how clueless you are, you’ll need all the help you can get, especially if you’re going to be any competition to this secret admirer dude that Marinette’s supposed to meet…”
“Actually…” Adrien began, looking sideways, and up through his bangs guiltily at his friend after he had gathered up his bag and began walking toward the library entrance.
“No way!” Nino exclaimed, which earned him another aggravated shushing from the librarian, whose station they were passing just then. Nino ducked his head a little in chagrin but continued as they exited the library, “You’re the Secret Admirer Dude??”
Adrien merely looked at Nino sheepishly and nodded.
“Then what’s the problem? You’ve got her already then, right? She’s totally stoked to meet up with you at that dance thing.” Nino walked them down the steps and out of the school.
Adrien looked around hopefully, but Marinette was no where in sight. He sighed. “That’s just it! She’s not stoked to meet me! She’s stoked to meet the me that she thinks she knows.” Adrien kicked a pebble out of his way, trying to give some relief to his frustration.
“Uuuuh…” Was Nino’s intelligent reply, he wasn’t quite sure he was following.
“I’m just afraid that she’ll be… disappointed, I guess, when she finally finds out who I am.” Adrien was afraid that Marinette was going to find her partner lacking. The conversation they had overheard the other day with those dumb punks had stuck with him. Maybe he was just a sidekick…
“Are you kidding me? She’s probably going to be so stoked she won’t be able to put together a whole sentence for a week!” Nino said, before pushing his slipping glasses further up on his nose, “I’m not sure where you’ve been the past four years, but I know where Marinette’s been…” Nino trailed off dramatically.
Adrien looked at Nino enquiringly.
“Friendzoned.” Nino said flatly.
Realization dawned on Adrien’s face slowly before he cringed and yelled out “Shit! No! No, no, nononono, no, no, NO! Shit! What have I done?”
At this point Nino figured they’d be a while and parked himself on a nearby bench overlooking the Seine. He took out a little canister of bubbles he still kept on him and started leisurely blowing out the little rainbow tinted orbs as he waited for his friend to have a pause in his melt-down.
Adrien paced, hands grabbing at his usually carefully styled hair. “She’s going to think I’m a complete idiot. Or even worse, a jerk! I didn’t mean to friendzone her, or ignore her or anything, I was just interested in…in…”
“A mask?” Nino asked as he ribbed Adrien for the crush he’d had forever on Ladybug.
Adrien usually brushed off Nino’s comments about his crush, but that particular comment hit home. He stopped dead in his pacing and rubbed the heel of his hand over an ache he suddenly had in his chest. Nino was right. He’d been looking for an ideal, not a person before when he was trying to discover Ladybug’s identity. He didn’t allow for the fact that outwardly, though she always presented a tough, put together, and confident appearance, she was inwardly just as insecure and imperfect a person as he was.
He suddenly had a flashback to their first akuma, and how Roger, the police chief had told Ladybug how she had failed and to get out of the way.
~~~~~~~
Ladybug looking sullen and dejected, looked toward Chat and with a heavy heart and conscience addressed her fellow superhero “...He's right, you know. If I had captured Stoneheart's akuma the first time around, none of this would have happened! I knew I wasn't the right one for this job...” Her hands moved to cover her face in shame.
Chat’s heart went out to her. If she was as brand new to all of this as he was, then she’d already proven herself to be more than capable of the responsibility she was given. He reached out a hand and placed it on Ladybug’s shoulder, “No. He's wrong, because without you, she'd no longer be here.” He had gestured to Chloe, whom Ladybug had literally just moments before saved after Stoneheart had chucked her from one of the middle tiers of the Eiffel Tower.
Ladybug lowered her gloved hands to look as Chat continued “And because without us, they won't make it, and we'll prove that to 'em.” Chat raised his other hand and placed it on her other shoulder as he turned Ladybug gently toward him, getting a good look for the first time at impossibly blue eyes that he would end up seeking out from then on, “Trust me on this. Okay?”
Ladybug managed a weak smile but was none the less bolstered by this stranger’s faith in her. “Okay.” She said resolutely. If he could believe in her, maybe she could as well…
~~~~~~
Adrien smiled, that was it. He knew what he had to do. He didn’t know how he had missed it, and messed up so much with Marinette, but thank God he hadn’t with Ladybug when she needed him most. He just needed to believe in her, trust her whole-heartedly and have faith that she would adjust with some encouragement and the freedom to do so. He had done that with Ladybug straight away, and she had bloomed into Paris’ savior and his amazing partner within moments. Marinette only needed that same confidence in her civilian self as she maintained as Ladybug. THAT he could definitely help with.
There was one thing that still bothered him…
“I think I know how to fix this Nino, but I need to know one thing…” Adrien turned toward his friend who assumed a bit more attentive posture at the blonde boy’s serious expression.
“Yeah bro?”
“What was Alya talking about…Another statue and a compass and all of that? Do you know what that’s about?”
Nino pursed his lips and nodded but then his eye brows creased, and he gave as stern a look to Adrien as he was capable of, “I do…but if I tell you, you didn’t hear it from me. In fact, you didn’t hear it at all, because if Alya finds out I told you this…if either of those girls find out I told you, I’m dead, deceased, finito! Got it?”
Adrien nodded seriously, “They’ll never find it out from me.”
For good measure Nino looked around to make sure no one they knew was near enough to overhear them. “Ok, so the way I figured this out was way back at the music festival, the year you first started coming to our school. We were on Juleka’s mom’s boat remember?” Nino waved a hand in dismissal in front of him, “Anyway from what Alya told me later, Juleka’s mom Anarka had told the girls while they were cleaning to keep anything metal away from the ship’s compass because it starts acting crazy.”
Adrien smiled slightly to himself as he now realized how Ladybug had gotten the idea to defeat Captain HardRock but continued to pay attention to his friend.
“Anyways, from then on Alya refers to Marinette as a compass and anyone she seems interested in as a statue, at least I think that’s what’s up.” Nino shrugged his shoulders.
“Wait, so if I’m one of the statues, and ‘the secret admirer’ who is also me is the second…” Adrien paced a couple of steps away from Nino before turning back to his best friend perplexed and anxious, “who’s the third statue Alya was talking about?”
“Come on bruh,” Nino rolled his eyes at his friend’s naivety, “who besides you practically worships the ground Marinette walks on?” Nino stood up and stretched. “More importantly, who is the only other person, besides you, that Marinette has shown any kind of interest in?”
Adrien thought a moment, but he didn’t even need that long as the image of a blue haired, blue eyed, tall musician came into his mind. His gaze became concerned as he looked to the ground then back up at Nino, almost afraid to be right.
“Luka?”
Though Adrien was friends with him, he nearly dreaded hearing his name when it came to anything associated with Marinette.
Nino nodded solemnly and with a grim certainty confirmed Adrien's fear.
“Luka.”