Chapter Text
Chapter 1:
School wasn't exactly what Adrien had pictured in his mind.
When he first started coming out to school, other students would gather around him and follow him everyday as he made his way to class. They would shout over each other, asking him for an autograph. Adrien found it a bit overwhelming at first, but got used to it over time. It was an indication that his father's efforts for his modeling career were successful, and he knew he should be proud of that fact. In spite of that, there was always a gnawing feeling in the back of his head, a craving almost, for his classmates to actually get to know him.
It became somewhat of a routine for him now. After he signed an autograph for a classmate, his fellow peers would thank him and nervously eye the girl clinging on to his arm, before taking off.
Chloé.
Chloé declared that it would be her utmost priority for her childhood friend to be properly settled in at his first public school. This meant constantly waiting for him at the entrance everyday to walk together to class. She would grab his arm, bat her long eyelashes at him while cooing, "Adrien-kins!" as they walked together. She would grin proudly each time someone asked for his autograph, but glare if anyone tried to interact with him further. Chloé even made her friend Sabrina move seats so that Adrien could sit next to her in class, much to the quiet dismay of the said girl. Adrien tried to reject, but Chloé was so insistent on it that she ignored his words of protests.
It was a bit overbearing, to say the least, but Adrien was still a bit thankful to Chloé. He was nervous about attending school with people his age for the first time in his life, and having someone he at least knew was a bit of relief. They had been friends since childhood, and she was the only one his age that his father would allow him to hang out with when growing up. Sure she was abrasive, arrogant, stuck up, rude, and a bunch of other things… but deep down Adrien knew that she had a good heart.
Somewhere very deep down.
It became quickly evident to him that Chloé was intimidating or, dare he say... disliked in their class. After a few days of him entering school, Chloé's possessiveness over him was well known. As a result, the other students in their class were cautious in approaching him since Chloé was almost always next to him, eyes like a hawk. She had a tendency to put down anyone who became too friendly with him, especially any of the girls.
Adrien could feel himself tense up as Chloé turned her attention to the short-haired girl approaching them with a tray of cookies. The girl, who Adrien knew was named Rose, had baked cookies for their class in honor of finishing their first quiz. It was a sweet gesture, and she had passed out the treats to the others in the class before making her way to them. There was a wide grin on her face, and it was obvious that she was oblivious to the air of disgust that was emanating from the blonde girl beside him.
“Want a cookie?” she asked.
Chloé narrowed her eyes at the tray of cookies, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Is this from store bought dough?"
"Yeah! Is there a problem?”
" Yuck," Chloé hissed, pinching her nose one with one hand. "You think me and Adrien would even touch something like that? Please, how revolting! Get it away from me.”
Rose's smile faltered at her words. Adrien frowned. She was taking it way too far, and he knew he had to step in. “Chloé-”
"Just shut up and take one, Chloé."
The voice rang loud and clear from the front of the room. The whole class shifted their attention to the dark-haired girl in the front of the room, whose blue eyes were glaring daggers in their direction. Adrien remembered that her name was Marinette. She seemed like a nice girl, judging from the interactions he had seen of her with the other students in their class, although she seemed to prefer to keep to herself and Alya.
But the look she was giving Chloé sent chills through his spine. It seemed to have had the same effect on Chloé as well, as she kept quiet and merely exchanged a nasty look back at the other girl.
The room was tense for a moment, before others in the class also began to voice their agreements with Marinette.
“Marinette’s right!”
“A simple no would have been fine.”
“Geez...poor Rose.”
Chloé scowled, drawing her lips into a tight line as she muttered something about, "stupid Dupain-Cheng", under her breath. She begrudgingly took a cookie from the tray.
“Thanks Rose. These look amazing.” Adrien gave the girl a grateful look before taking a baked good for himself. He glanced back at the front row, and was surprised to see Marinette staring at him with an unreadable expression. When she noticed that he was looking at her, she turned back around and started talking to her seatmate, Alya. For a second he wondered if she actually had been looking at him or if his mind was simply playing tricks. He shrugged it off and took a bite of the cookie.
Adrien walked to his locker after class had ended, relieved that he had some freedom now. Chloé wasn't glued to his hip now, since she had left school early that day for "extremely important business that no one was capable of understanding".
He sighed, putting his books away. Chloé’s fiasco in their last class only seemed to widen the distance he felt with all his other classmates. Yet another day had gone by with him not being able to befriend anyone other than Chloé.
He felt Plagg rustle around in his book bag. “Adrien,” the kwami groaned. “Got any spare camembert? I’m so bored that I want to snack on something.”
“Later, Plagg. I’ll give you some after school’s done, ” he whispered. He grinned to himself. The best way for him to unwind from how stuffy he felt would be to turn into Cat Noir and leap around Paris. He felt so free being able to soar through the air and not have to deal with the mounting pressure from his schedule and...his father.
"Adrien,” a voice interrupted.
Startled, Adrien had to steel himself from slamming his locker out of surprise. He turned his head to see a dark-haired girl peering up at him with a blank stare.
Marinette.
Marinette had only introduced herself to him briefly when he first became a student in her class. But besides that, it didn't seem like Marinette had much interest in him, so it was strange to have her suddenly approach him like this. He gave her a friendly smile. “Hi Marinette. What’s up?”
“When are you going to stop being her lackey?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Chloé. You let her do whatever she wants with you."
Adrien had been approached a few times before about the same topic by some of the other guys in their class. "She's an old friend of mine. We've been friends since childhood, so it's always been like this," he said. It was the truth after all, and people would always let him go from the topic after that response.
She frowned. "You look miserable though."
Adrien was taken aback by her honesty. "What?"
"You're popular. People want to be around you, and they're trying too to. But I've seen the look in your eye. I can tell that you're unhappy with this whole situation."
Adrien was surprised to hear that. She had been that observant with him? "I'm...lost. What are you trying to say?"
"You need to stand up for yourself," Marinette said, crossing her arms, "stop being a pushover that lets everyone do what they want with you."
"A pushover?" Adrien repeated, mild irritation seeping into his voice. Who was she to judge him like that when they barely knew each other? "Hold on, I am not a pushover . "
Marinette shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. It sure seems that way though to everyone else." Her gaze hardened. "Alya told me that you’re a famous model from a rich family. If that’s true, then you probably came to this public school for a sense of freedom from whatever your life is, right? So it doesn't make sense why you're allowing Chloé to hold you back from getting what you really want." She paused, waiting to see if Adrien would reply. When he didn’t, the edges of her lip quirked up in a subtle smirk. "Unless you like being a status symbol for her to show off. If that’s the reason why, then keep this up. Anyways, that's all I wanted to say. See you." Without so much as another glance in his direction, Marinette left him at his locker.
Adrien stared after her, dumbfounded. He could hear Plagg snickering from his bag.
"Well, she hit the nail on the coffin, didn't she?" the kwami whispered snarkily. Adrien shushed him in response, but his grip on his book bag strap tightened.
Cat Noir soared through the Parisian night, letting out a gleeful cheer as the wind swept through his blonde hair. He landed on the top of a building, and searched the area for any signs of something going amiss.
Akuma attacks had been happening less frequently nowadays, so most of his superhero duties had been dealing with petty criminals he spotted during his nightly runs. To be honest, fighting criminals had become rather mundane for him, since he couldn't exactly use his superpower of destruction to take out a normal civilian.
Plagg had told him that the lack of akumas was a good thing however, since apparently, he lacked the power to properly get rid of them. When Adrien asked why, the kwami told him how typically the Cat Miraculous holder was always partnered with another Miraculous that did have the power to cleanse the akumas, but the master had not been able to find anyone suitable for the role. Whoever this master person was had been taking care of all the previous akumas that Cat Noir had fought before, but was apparently desperate to find someone for the role due to his old age. Plagg had told him that whoever was behind the recent akuma attacks was now waiting for a clear Miraculous holder to show up.
The lack of akumas however, meant that there was nothing much for Cat Noir to do.
Still, even if the streets of Paris were safe from harm, Cat Noir always had an itch to transform and soar through the city with his staff. It was a way for him to take his mind off of all the stress of his normal life, and gave him a sense of freedom.
Tonight, he was doing his best to relieve his pent up frustrations from the events of the day.
Cat Noir considered himself to be rather good-natured, but it would be a lie to not acknowledge what Marinette had said to him had hurt. He had no idea that the girl who preferred to keep to herself would turn out to be so blunt, especially in their first ever conversation together.
A pushover, she had said, with a stare that dug into his soul.
It hurt even more because deep down, he knew that she was right. A girl, one that he barely even knew, read him like a book and had called him out on one of his biggest flaws. He was a pushover. Someone who just blindly obeyed what was told of him.
He sighed and used his staff to leap up into the air once again.
From far away, something strange had caught his eye. Cat Noir froze when he landed on top of another building. Using his staff, he propelled himself to fly across several other infrastructures before landing in a dark alleyway. Thanks to his night vision, he clearly could see the limp figure of a man crumpled against the brick wall. Cat Noir rushed over the man's side and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey," he called. "You okay?"
The man let out a groan in response.
Good, he was still conscious. Cat Noir craned his neck to take a good look at the man's face and couldn't help but cringe at the sight. Dry blood caked his face-his nose was bleeding and one of his eyes was shut tight and swollen. Someone had beat him up bad. "Who did this to you?" he asked.
"The… the guy in the mask," the man croaked out.
‘Mask?’ Could it be an akuma? Cat Noir took a good look at their surroundings. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to have happened-like people turning into stone or being frozen in time-which a typical akuma attack brought. It probably was just another normal crime that had occurred.
Cat Noir turned his attention back to the man. "Anyways, we should get you to a hospital. Can you stand?"
The man shakily stood, and Cat Noir helped to steady him. The man then opened his good eye, and an expression of fear spread across his face. "Cat Noir?!" he screamed. The man swore and stumbled away from him. He took off running in the other direction, as if his body was in perfectly fine shape.
Cat Noir stared at the man in confusion. Screaming in fear definitely was not a typical reaction he got when he helped someone out. He shrugged it off and hopped onto the top of the closest building to scan the surrounding area to find whoever the assailant was.
Cat Noir had stayed up late into the night to find the masked person the man had spoken about, but he had found no leads after an hour of searching. He gave up after a while, since he had school early next morning.
Now Adrien suffered the consequences. He entered school feeling groggy from a lack of sleep, but he immediately woke up when Chloé greeted him and insisted that they walked together to class again. She grabbed onto his arm as they walked into the building. Marinette's voice in his head wouldn't disappear.
Pushover.
She dragged him in class behind her. Chloé was going off about something that her dad had done and how important it would be to the class as she pulled him towards their usual spot. Marinette was talking with Alya, before noticing the two of them come in. She briefly made eye contact with Adrien, and her gaze settled into one of cold disappointment after spotting Chloé's arm wrapped around his. He furrowed his eyebrows. He could tell what she was thinking.
Pushover.
"Sabrina," he said, loud enough to be heard over Chloé's monologue. The red-haired girl looked up at him in surprise from her seat. “Want to switch seats?”
Sabrina's expression brightened for the first time in what had seemed like forever. "Yes!" She quickly gathered her belongings and stood, eager to sit next to her best friend.
Chloé looked at him in shock. "Adrien! How could you?!"
"I feel bad taking your friend's spot. Let's switch for now, okay?" He managed to twist his arm out of Chloé's grip and made his way past Sabrina. He could feel the entire class watching as he took those few steps down to his new seat. Chloé let out a verbal huff of indignation and plopped down into her seat with her arms crossed, as Sabrina quickly claimed her old spot giddily.
Adrien let out a sigh of relief as he sat down. He glanced up to see Marinette giving him a smile, before turning around. If he blinked, he probably would have missed it. It was an expression that he wasn't aware that she would be capable of making after his mortifying encounter with her.
But, Adrien would admit, it was a nice sight.
A tap on his shoulder brought his attention to his new seatmate. "Dude, that was pretty cool of you," the guy next to him said. "Sabrina's been miserable ever since Chloé booted her." He was grinning at him and extended a friendly hand out.
Adrien glanced at his hand and then back at his smiling classmate. "Thanks." Adrien smiled back and reached out to grab his hand in a handshake. "Nino, right?"
There was a warm feeling bubbling up inside of him, as he realized that this could be the start of a friendship that he had always desired for.
Perhaps Marinette was onto something.
A/N: end of chapter 1! As you can see, Marinette's character/background has been changed the most in this AU (she is neither a superhero nor just a normal high schooler *wink wink*), but part of the story will be figuring that out from Adrien's POV.
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