Chapter Text
The park outside of Marinette’s place was simultaneously her saviour and her demise. On the one hand, Alya’s twin sisters would have plenty of room to run around, but on the other hand, more room meant more chance for mischief. It was lucky then, that Marinette was with Alya, Nino and Adrien. The more hands the better.
Alya and Marinette had been at a function earlier and ran into Adrien and Nino there. Turns out Adrien had snuck out of his house and the two were looking for places to hang out.
Sitting in the park near Marinette’s place, the teenagers were doing everything in their power to keep the girls entertained. Ella and Etta had a knack for attracting unspeakable mischief that the group had unanimously agreed they were not prepared to deal with. The energy invested in playing chasey was worth their collective while if it could save them from cleaning up some horrendous mess later by tiring the girls out before they could get into trouble.
It was definitely too much to hope that they’d stay out of trouble. Adrien, in the course of his child entertainment duty, slipped and hit his head playing chasey. Marinette didn’t see him fall, but she sure as hell heard the thud that resonated loud through the park, quiet now that the twins were startled still. She was first on the scene, dropping to her knees beside her friend.
“Adrien! Are you okay?”
Adrien blinked at her from his spot on the ground, making no move to get up.
“Mari… nette?”
Then, to her dismay, he started giggling.
Marinette was pretty sure that life hated her at this point.
Adrien was very obviously concussed. Of course.
And Adrien had snuck out – there was no way he could go home in this state. It would be obvious he’d left the mansion and he would be in so much trouble and-
And Alya had made it very clear to them an hour ago that she had to take the twins to the optometrist and being late was not an option. In that same conversation, Nino had seconded her need to leave on time. They both had to leave by 3pm.
Wouldn’t you know it? It was 2:45.
Okay, so maybe she’s just cursed.
Nino and Alya raced up behind her, the former inspecting the damage and the latter presumably already having come to a similar conclusion as Marinette, judging by the way she was wincing. She grabbed the twin’s hands pulling them to her side and cautioning them to be quiet.
“Adrien, you good man?” Nino asked, setting himself on the ground to level his head next to the blond’s.
Adrien smiled vacantly, still giggling, and reached out to carefully place a fingertip on the other boy’s cheekbone. His gaze turned sharp, intensely focused on Nino.
“Your face is hard,” he said seriously.
Marinette put her head into her hands while Alya winced even harder.
“He’s definitely got a concussion, Nino,” she said.
Nino sighed, picking himself off of the ground, “That can’t be good.”
“Is Adrien okay?” Etta asked quietly, obviously concerned for her new playmate. Alya bent down to comfort the girls.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be just fine-” she shot a grin at Marinette that was an impossible mixture of apologetic and sly- “Marinette will take good care of him.”
She knew it was coming, but it didn’t make her any less panicked or irritated to hear it confirmed out loud. How could Alya still be teasing her right now?
She glared at her friend over her sister’s heads, and promised the girls that she’d take good care of Adrien.
“Alya!” she hissed. “What am I supposed to do with him? I can’t deal with Adrien on a normal day, let alone when he’s like this!” Marinette gestured towards the boy, who was wide-eyed and trying to pinch Nino’s hat as the other boy fussed over him.
“I’m really sorry girl, but you know I can’t help you with this one,” her expression seemed sincere, but it shifted into something mischievous far too easily to be genuine. “Besides, maybe you’ll be able to handle Adrien when he has the same capacity to make rational sense as you do.”
Marinette didn’t have the energy to be outraged. At least she was self-aware enough to recognise the truth in Alya’s words.
“And anyway, he might not even remember all of this, so don’t worry too much,” she paused, taking in her friend’s hunched shoulders and the way she was chewing her bottom lip, and her expression softened. “You can do it, I believe in you.”
And with those words of encouragement, Alya grabbed her sisters and swept away, dragging Nino in her wake and yelling something about not dying. Suddenly, Marinette was alone with Adrien.
Their eyes met, and Marinette found herself holding her breath for a split second before she tore her gaze away.
“Uh, so… My house?” Marinette stumbled to clarify her bitten off question. “What I mean is that I think we need to go somewhere, because obviously we can’t stay in this park forever, and I was just trying to say that I think it would be a good idea to go to my place because it’s close and also because if you go home like this your dad could find out you’ve been sneaking out and cut off your freedom forever! And then I’d never see you again! And I’d hate for that to happen, so, yeah… my place?” Marinette trailed off, feeling her cheeks heat in response to her ramblings. Why couldn’t she say a single word to Adrien without mortally embarrassing herself?
Adrien didn’t respond - well, he mumbled something about bugs, but Marinette wasn’t going to count that as a response – so Marinette scraped together all of her Ladybug courage, grabbed her crush by the wrist and firmly led him back to her house.
…
Be thankful for small mercies, she reminded herself, as she unlocked the bakery door and guided Adrien up the stairs. Her parents were at a fête a few hours out of Paris selling pastries (the organiser was an old friend of her father’s and had begged them to go), and wouldn’t arrive back until late that evening.
Plenty of time for a concussion to wear off, right?
Here’s to hoping, because Adrien was so obviously not in his right mind. Alya might have been onto something when she compared his communication skills to Marinette’s, because whatever conversation he was having did not seem to be the same one as her. Adrien definitely knew who she was, and seemed aware
(to an extent) that he was at her house. But he spent a lot of time giggling, punctuated by brief lapses into inordinately serious and then right back again. And the words coming out of his mouth?
Generous estimate: 65% of what he said made some sort of sense.
“Can you hear that?” Adrien asked her conversationally from his spot on the floor. After trying to set him up on the couch and the resulting close brushes with additional head injuries, Marinette and Tiki had decided that the closer he was to the ground, the better.
Thank god for her kwami. Marinette knew she was laughably unequipped to deal with this, and she was fairly certain that Tiki was the only reason they’d all survived this long. Thankfully she could afford to act a little more off than normal, considering that after the fact she could put any weird behaviour Adrien remembered down to his concussion. They still wanted to be careful though, so Tiki had taken up residence on Marinette’s shoulder – obscured by one of her pigtails.
“You mean can I hear the wind outside? Or the traffic?”
Adrien considered this response. “I think it’s cultists-”
“Of course it is.”
“-or ghosts.”
Marinette shot a despairing glance at her kwami, “Whatever you say, Adrien.”
The blond continued to mumble about the best strategy to avoid angering the cultist/ghosts (cultist ghosts?), and Marinette took the opportunity to turn and hide her kwami from view.
“Tiki! It’s been over an hour, and he still isn’t getting any better! What do I do?”
The kwami looked sympathetic, “I’m sorry Marinette, but there’s nothing you can do. You have to wait for it to pass.”
She couldn’t help but groan, “This is the worst!”
Tiki gave her a knowing smile, “I’m not so sure about that. You haven’t blushed in half an hour, and you’re talking like a normal human again. Maybe Alya was right, and this is helping you act less… crazy, around Adrien.”
The betrayal! Well okay, maybe her kwami had a point. But still. Marinette sighed, “You might be right, Tiki.”
The kwami smirked, but didn’t have time to respond before she was zipping back under Marinette’s hair, hiding as Adrien stumbled over.
“Adrien! You really shouldn’t be standing right now – your balance is still way off,” she led her friend back over to the couch, sitting down beside him on the floor. “You need to be careful. I don’t want you getting any other injuries!”
Green eyes met their crystal blue counterparts, and for a moment Adrien seemed present.
“You’re so good, Marinette. You’re always looking after us – all of us – even when we’ve done something stupid. Especially when we’ve done something stupid. And you’ve always got a plan and I trust you, I really do,” he seemed to look right through her. “Just like Ladybug! Always a step ahead… like with the crate. Looking out for me when I do stupid things..”
Marinette was shocked into stunned silence, but Adrien seemed to have resolved that train of thought and turned his attention to his hand, poking at his palm.
“You know your thumb is just a chicken drumstick. But flesh – your flesh,” his eyes widened every time he said ‘flesh’, and Marinette was shocked into silence again; this time, for a very different reason.
In her best attempts to not think too hard about that, her friend’s previous statement flew out of her head.
“Do you think we could summon Santa?”
In her defence, she was certainly being given a lot to think about. And Tiki cackling behind her ear wasn’t exactly helping the matter.