Work Text:
“No.”
“Marine-”
“No.”
The class tension crackles, even those who couldn’t care less (Alix, Juleka, Max, Ivan) are tuning in just to see the disbelieving expressions of everyone who passionately does (Nathaniel, Marc, Adrien, Marinette, Alya, Rose- Yeah everyone practically - this is intense).
It’s been however long—time doesn’t matter anymore—and she can’t even describe how much she’s wanted to smack her face into a desk during this whole pressuring discord.
“Marinette, please, who else? You’re the perfect Ladybug!”
She scowls at Nathaniel’s praise.
“Anyone else is better.”
She’s not doing it. She’s not! Sure, they‘re right, but it’s exactly that reason keeping her from accepting their request:
She is Ladybug.
Marinette heads to bounce back in the argument, but an electric touch surges through her shoulder. She jolts and swears she sees only angelic light when she glances up at the power outlet.
“I think you’d be a great Ladybug,” Adrien says, soft and assuring, because he’s just so… Adrien like that.
“Yeah!” someone agrees. She doesn’t know who, she’s still staring at her weakness.
Of course, she was flattered and most definitely internally screaming when hot-stuff Agreste himself stepped up and nominated her to be ‘Ladybug’s identity’ for Nath and Marc’s latest comic, but that glee soon turned to sever oh no as people—a lot of them—actually began to agree, and now no one can fathom her squealish joy-turned-panic-turned-crankiness in the span of one minute.
She can’t offer herself. She can’t even hint at her identity. Not even for a comic.
“I think… I think someone else should do it,” Marinette says again, less stern this time with Adrien’s magical touch turning her to goo, “like, like Alya!”
“No way, girl.” Alya has her camera out for no apparent, but neither questioned, reason. “I’m not taking your special role. Besides, everyone who's going to see the comic remembers I’ve been akumatised!”
“Obviously not everyone,” Nino murmers, feet kicked up on the desk.
“What do you mean? I was such a cool akuma! I was even put in Max’s game!”
“Babe, we all—”
“Okay, couple squabbles cease please,” Marinette lurches forward, stopping when it almost takes Adrien’s hand off. With a slight mourning, he does a second later anyway. “Alya, why don’t you pretend to be Rena Rogue’s indentity for a comic idea instead then? That’d be way cooler than Ladybug’s.”
It’s a low jab (one Tikki will surely hound her for later) as recognised by the inward pallor that ascends Alya’s darker skin. She shrinks in her chair, mouth opening and closing like a broken auto door, until finally managing,
“No. No I’m fine. Carry on.”
Nino does nothing to hide his chortle.
Marc sniffs and touches his pencil to the teacher’s desk he’s suspended upon. Nathaniel slides his sketchbook between hands. His look is pathetically pleading, and Marinette scolds herself to stop feeling as bad as she does.
It’s simply not her fault.
But she’s said nothing to actually make a point, and that’s the worst of it all.
Why can’t she be Ladybug?
“I’m not the best option.”
That… could be true, even though… you know she’d prefer it isn’t, considering she is Ladybug and that’d make a whole lot of waste out of how much work she has to do.
Kim scoffs. “Sure you’re not. You even look like her.”
And she realises, she has to give another option, someone plausible but who isn’t her.
“Marinette,” Nate begs, and she truely, truely wishes she could please him. “We can’t throw away our best shot! It’d make so much sense that you were Ladybug!”
She feels the sting all to close to home. It physically cringes through her, panic seething under her ribcage and heat racing to form perspiration.
She catalogues every expression in the room real quick to assure they’re not looking at her in a new light.
“I’m really not.” She waves her hands, heart scaling. “You know… You know who’d be better? Someone really interesting for your story?”
Think, think, think.
“Who?”
“Uh-”
Marinette’s thought before, she swears, today the function’s just not working properly.
She has to offer another person. Someone else. Someone! Now! But not just anyone.
And fast.
Someone… someone who… well, someone good? Yeah, good. Like they don’t do much bad (She’s real specific like that). But even then, they can’t be akumatised in a way people ‘remember’, or maybe not akumatised at all. They just can’t be her.
Wait.
She seizes up.
Can… Can she even say that?
Well, they’re not her…
…They’re not even a her.
But, then again, who says the magic can’t change that aspect?
Pff.
Why not.
“Adrien.”
Everything halts.
Every classmate, every conversation, every background noise, just quiets.
It seems the whole universe has found interest in her plead.
“Did- Adrien? You- Adr- You said-”
“Adrien,” she reiterates, firm and suddenly very at ease and confident with this decision. “Adrien is Ladybug.”
Adrien is Ladybug.
She pauses.
That- That’s a sentence right there.
Marinette dares a glance to the figure behind, not exactly sure what reaction she‘s expecting but Adrien’s current expression is surely close.
His mouth is hanging, comical, hand holding his bag strap and clear ‘what?’ tinged with ‘excuse me?’ dripping off every perfectly shaped plane of his face. His brows are close to tightening, green eyes so passive and natural but unblinking all in a way that just forms the look.
“What?!” at least three people cry.
“Adrien! Adrien can be Ladybug! The magic can do anything,” she begins to rant, relishing in every baffled and flabbergasted face she takes note of as she scans the room. “He’s never been akumatised! No one suspects it! Think of how cool that plot twist will be for your story!”
The boys glance at each other.
There’s more stark shock, before there’s loud, breaking, unhindered cackling from the back. Their peanut galery is lapping this all up and honestly Marinette can’t blame them.
Nathaniel looks scoldingly at the loudest.
“Sorry, sorry!” Alix pants, patting her hand at them and bracing the other on the desk. She’s the only one Nate isn’t shy about reprimanding, but the others hold their mouths next to her anyway. “We’ll totally shush now. Just go back with your soap opera. Oi, Ivan, stop hogging the dried fruit you turd.”
Marc and Nathaniel stare directly at Marinette.
Adrien steps up beside her. He tries a few words - she thinks - or sounds, or, whatever. Before giving up on expressing any sort of feelings with slumped shoulders and a defeated exhale.
“Adrien? You think Adrien would be a better Ladybug?”
“Yes,” she states, 100% on board with all of this. She grins with, dare she say it, an inclination of pride. “Even better, you could write about how he always targets me as Ladybug because he’s hiding his secret.”
Adrien looks mildly panicked. She doesn’t quite know why — not like he actually is Ladybug (‘—hang on…- wait no! Idiot. You’re Ladybug you absolute-’), though she is quite surprised by how believable this all sounds.
The writer and sketcher take on artsy-thinking poses, hand under chin and all that pensive stuff. Marinette licks her bottom lip. She shouldn’t feel like she’s just given an advertising campaign idea, but their decision could, distantly, lead to the end of her secret identity.
While Adrien’s just…
There. Adrien just— doesn’t know. He’s just… yeah.
Whatever, he guesses?
(At least they didn’t say Chat Noir.)
“That would be a really epic plot twist,” Marc says quietly to his partner, the entire class definitely hearing. “And why can’t the magic do that? It’s magic.”
“Defeat the cliche.” Nathaniel’s grinning. It’s a good grin. Marinette’s thrilled by it.
She’s practically buzzing with hilarity and nerves when Nate looks directly at the paralysed center of attention.
“Adrien. How about it?”
“Uh…”
Marinette’s the first one he looks at it. She’s slightly red just by the eye contact, but she’s pleading and, admittedly, very adorable.
“I’m… in I guess?”
And the room quiets once more, everyone catching up with what on earth just went down.
“Right.”
A throat clears.
“I guess Adrien’s Ladybug then.”
(Alix riots another chain of cackling.)