Chapter Text
Alya watched Marinette cry, sitting on her chaise in her bright pink room after school, and decided. She was done. She was done watching Marinette cry, she was done watching Marinette mope, she was done watching her BFF be unhappy over the ridiculously oblivious Sunshine Boy.
It had been months since the New York class trip, since Marinette had finally been forced to admit that she loved Adrien. With that realization, her stutter had somehow disappeared, and she’d finally been able to talk and act almost normal around him… and it hadn’t mattered, because right after that Adrien asked Kagami out on their first official date (Alya supposed maybe the ice rink had been a date, but she wasn’t counting it since Marinette had been there too). It was so depressing, Alya had thought that was rock bottom for her friend, but as it turns out, nope, that really wasn’t. The next few months kept getting worse.
It was worse because she had to watch Marinette go through all the stages of grief trying to get over a boy who’d never admitted he liked her as more than a friend (even though he obviously did), all while trying desperately to hide her feelings from said boy because her being unhappy would upset him. Alya helped Marinette tear down all of her Adrien posters, pictures, and erase him from her schedule. She tried to get Marinette to burn it all, but Marinette apparently wasn’t into that kind of catharsis, so it went out anticlimactically with the recycling instead. They changed her screen saver and donated all of the (so many) gifts Marinette had made for Adrien because Marinette couldn’t help herself, she made things for people she loved, and she loved Adrien with her whole crazy giant heart and had for years. Alya watched Marinette break things off with Luka before they really started, even though she liked him and he adored her, because Marinette couldn’t be with Luka while she was mourning Adrien. And then Alya had to watch Adrien be sympathetic and comforting to Marinette because he thought she was sad about Luka. Alya had almost murdered him at that point; it was a good thing for Sunshine Boy that Nino was there to hold her back that day.
It was worse because since Adrien and Nino were best friends, Alya and her boyfriend had repeatedly gotten roped into double dates with Adrien and Kagami. And they. Were. Horrible. The two socially inept teens made awkward conversation, Adrien would occasionally crack jokes that Kagami didn’t laugh at, and then they’d randomly engage in occasional super awkward unexpected PDA that made Alya want to vomit. She might be a little biased because, hello, Marinette’s BFF, but seriously, even Nino admitted it was bad. She got that they had a lot of things in common, but seriously, there was like zero chemistry there. If they’d been anyone else, they would have realized that a while ago and moved on, but since it was Sunshine boy and emotionally stunted ninja girl (she still hadn’t come up with a good nickname, mostly because just about everything that occurred to her sounded too spiteful even in her own head), Adrien and Kagami kept dating. It was infuriating, and it was worse because of her forced front row seat.
It was worse because she had to watch the way Adrien’s eyes continued to light up every time he talked to Marinette, especially since she’d finally stopped acting like a spaz and reined in her more stalkery fangirl tendencies, and the way Marinette’s eyes sparked and then dimmed every time she saw Adrien coming. It was awful because she had to listen to Adrien whine to Nino and herself every time Marinette wasn’t around about why Marinette seemed to be avoiding him, and she couldn’t say anything, because she knew Marinette wouldn’t want her to. It was worse because she had to watch as Marinette continued to befriend Kagami, which included listening to her plan and discuss her dates with Adrien. At this point, every time Marinette called her in tears, it was a toss-up on whether she’d just talked to Kagami, or whether Lila had done something awful again.
It was worse because Lila had started picking on Kagami every chance she got, mostly by trying to spread awful rumors about her to their classmates, hoping they would get back to Adrien. Marinette had defended Kagami, of course, meaning that now Lila was attempting to bully both of them, though her attempts to do so with Marinette were…oddly restrained given the lengths she’d previously shown she was willing to go to.
Alya was still embarrassed about how long it had taken her to see through Lila. It was actually some of the truly awful things Lila had tried to get their classmates (and Alya) to do to Kagami on some of their group outings that had finally clued Alya in on how fake Lila’s niceness really was. Once she saw it, she couldn’t un-see it, and after that it was a hop, skip and a Google search to realize that Lila was full of shit. Alya still felt stupid. She’d been apologizing to Marinette for weeks and she still didn’t feel okay; thinking about how she’d defended Lila and all of the ways she’d let down her best friend made her feel dirty. Lila had almost gotten Marinette expelled and while Alya had stood by her, she was ashamed to admit there was a tiny sliver of doubt that had wormed its way into her brain about the whole thing for a while. Alya was still trying to figure out how to get revenge on Lila. She couldn’t talk to Marinette about it, because she was aware that Marinette was trying to take the high road and rise above it, and Alya definitely didn’t want to be the one to rain on that parade. She also knew she’d have to be careful since she didn’t want a repeat of the Marinette expulsion fiasco. Lila was a terrible person, but she was clearly good at lying. Alya still hadn’t been able to convince any of her other classmates that Lila was a liar; she had them all under her spell, and the few times she’d tried to urge them individually in private to question her stories, it had almost blown her cover. The only one she’d been able to convince was Nino. Alya realized that her best chance for a Lila take down was to keep seeming as snowed under as everyone else, so while she had apologized to Marinette profusely in private, and now backed her up as much as she could in class, she was trying to do it in a way that kept Lila in the dark about her true motivations. It was starting to drive her a little crazy.
And it was worse watching as Adrien, who clearly also knew Lila was a pathological liar, stood by and did… nothing. He also encouraged Marinette to do nothing. While that wasn’t exactly surprising coming from the Sunshine child, it still made Alya’s blood boil every time he watched Lila being slyly spiteful to Marinette without doing anything about it or speaking up to defend her.
And on this particular day, it was worse for all of those reasons. Marinette had cried on her in the bathroom for fifteen minutes during first period after seeing Adrien blowing a kiss to Kagami on his video call and talking about their next date. Then Sabrina, Lila’s new sycophant after Chloe was sent to boarding school, had tripped Marinette on her way back to her seat, and Lila had made a spiteful remark about her puffy eyes and runny nose, Adrien had looked away (in what Alya was sure Marinette would interpret as disgust at her appearance, not noticing his sad, sympathetic eyes or white knuckled fists), and Marinette had run out of the room again. Alya had then missed half of second period trying to convince her to calm down and come back to class. They both got a detention for missing so much of the class, which of course just made the heaviness in her friend’s eyes that much worse. Then, Lila had been all over Adrien at lunch, cooing about their latest photo-shoot and how they looked so cute together, while Adrien said… you guess it, nothing. Luckily, that only lasted until Kagami showed up to drag him away, but then she had to listen to all their classmates commiserate with Lila about how Kagami ‘stole’ Adrien while Marinette rolled her eyes and mutilated her sandwich. And then after school (and detention), Alya and Nino got yanked into a double-date with, yep, Adrien and Kagami, watching helplessly as Marinette walked past them and halfway down the street towards her house before breaking into a run, probably in tears again. And then she got to listen to Adrien complain about how disappointed he was that Marinette didn’t want to go to the movies with all of them (so she could watch Kagami aggressively holding his hand and making attempts to engage in PDA which he didn’t notice, because he was watching the movie, and let’s face it, they had no chemistry!!!). The mental exclamation points scrolling across Alya’s brain were probably a bit much, but at this point, she couldn’t help it. Alya was done.
Grabbing Nino’s hand, she rushed out of the theater, taking deep breaths. She saw a black butterfly flapping towards her and jumped on Nino. While he was surprised, luckily the laid back dude was cool enough to go with it, and soon they were making out intensely enough that when Alya heard the scream of someone else getting Akumatized, she jumped in surprise. Nino glanced at her with raised eyebrows and she grinned, shrugging sheepishly.
Pulling out her phone, she activated the Akuma alert she’d added to the Ladyblog, hoping that Ladybug and Chat Noir could respond quickly. She turned to head down the street towards the action, only to almost get bowled over by Chat Noir as he bounded down from the roof of the movie theater. Alya grinned, livestreaming, and looked around for Ladybug as she followed him a bit more slowly. Nino walked with her, hands in his pockets and a worried frown on his face. He’d learned a while ago that he couldn’t stop her, much as he might want to sometimes, and now just did his best to protect her whenever they were together during an attack.
“I am Bedtimer, and you’re up past your bed time!”
The Akuma victim, another fashion disaster in a purple, green and red costume, was clearly a frazzled parent on their last gasp trying to make their kid go to bed. Alya cursed Hawk Moth mentally again for using people’s emotions to turn them into monsters. She and Nino dodged the sand Bedtimer was flinging just in time, watching as a couple of pedestrians walking behind them slumped immediately to the sidewalk, sleeping. Alya and Nino took cover behind a car and Alya kept filming as Ladybug showed up, the two super heroes attacking and dodging as they tried to figure out where the Akuma was hiding. Ladybug had just used her Lucky Charm to conjure a black-spotted red water bottle when she slipped and got sprayed right in the face with the magic sand.
“No!” Chat cried, grabbing her and jumping behind a car that was coincidentally close to Alya’s. She watched tensely as Chat glanced back and forth from Ladybug to the Super Villain a few times before his face brightened. Then he immediately frowned, and seemed to be debating with himself. Alya screamed, “Chat, if you have an idea, no time like the present! She’s coming!”
Unfortunately, this caused her to be sprayed with sand, but the last thing she saw before she was knocked unconscious was Chat’s face descending towards Ladybug with puckered lips. Alya fell asleep grinning.
A few seconds later she was woken up by a kiss from Nino (okay, maybe this wasn’t the worst day ever!) just in time to watch (and film) Ladybug dump water into the bowl of sand to prevent the Akumatizied villain from attacking as Chat cataclysmed the reading glasses perched on her forehead.
Alya immediately rushed over and held up her phone, asking the heroes, “Ladybug and Chat Noir, by my count this is the third time Chat has used true love’s kiss to break Akuma magic affecting Ladybug, and twice that Ladybug has done so for Chat. Are you finally ready to admit you have feelings for each other?”
They immediately blushed and looked away from each other. Interestingly, whereas the first time this happened, Chat was smiling and teasing Ladybug, now he suddenly seemed just as disconcerted as she did, and they were both vehemently denying they had feelings for each other, claiming that their love was totally platonic. Huh. Maybe this was the worst day ever. ‘My ship!!!’ Alya wailed internally, sensing it was less likely that ever that these two oblivious idiots would figure out their feelings any time soon. She sighed.
Walking home later with Nino after saying goodbye to Adrien and Kagami, who strangely had gotten separated during the attack again, Alya kept sighing. Finally, about halfway home, she stopped, stomped her foot, and turned to Nino. “That’s it, I’m done!” she exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?” Nino asked, not privy to how shitty this day had been for her. Alya had been trying not to dump all of Marinette’s emotional damage on him, since she didn’t want to hurt his friendship with Adrien, but enough was enough. She needed to do something, and she realized she was going to need his help.
“We need to help Marinette.” She ticked off on her fingers. “We need to stop enabling Adrien and Kagami, cause eww! We need to help Ladybug and Chat Noir figure out how much they love each other. And we need to take down Lila once and for all.”
Nino, clearly uncomfortable, was rubbing his neck, a habit he’d picked up from the Sunshine Boy.
“Eh, I’m not sure about that… I mean, helping Marinette, I’m happy to help her!” he added, seeing Alya start to glare. “I just… don’t want to be the reason Adrien and Kagami break up. I don’t think my bro would really forgive that, you know? I’m not really sure how you’re going to make LB and Chat love each other… And I’m not sure about taking Lila down, dudette; that might not go down how you think. I don’t want you to get expelled. Or me, I don’t want to get expelled either, babe. I really doubt my bro is going to be able to convince Lila to get me back into school like Marinette if that happens.”
Alya stared at him with her mouth open, and Nino smacked his forehead. “I mean… I mean… shit. Please forget I said that!” he begged with no hope in his voice, knowing that was the last thing his girlfriend was likely to do.
Sure enough, she was already staring at him with an evil delighted smirk growing across her face. He swallowed as she demanded, “What did you say? Adrien did what?!?”
Nino was silent for a moment as she crossed her arms and stared at him. She didn’t even have to say anything, they were having a silent conversation about what would happen if he chose not to answer, until finally he hung his head and caved. “You heard me, Als. Adrien got Lila to admit she lied, and get Marinette back into school, in return for being her friend.”
Alya stared at him while her brain whirred, processing this incredibly interesting information. “You’re telling me Sunshine Boy bribed the Liar to get Marinette, whom she hates, back into school? That explains so much… for starters why even though Lila’s been low level nasty to Marinette ever since, she’s never openly gone after her again, even though she obviously wants to.”
Alya grinned, then her eyes lit up. “Oh my God, that’s why Adrien hasn’t said anything! Yes! Thank God, I was really beginning to think he just didn’t have a spine.”
Nino nodded miserably, realizing he’d totally just betrayed a confidence, but figuring he’d better make the most of it. “Yeah, he can’t stand Lila, he just doesn’t have a choice. If he lets on that he doesn’t like her, she could do something evil to Marinette again. Adrien was really torn up about Marinette getting expelled – he won’t risk Lila hurting her again.”
“Wow… So Adrien knows Lila lied to get Marinette expelled… we can use that. Oh yes…” Alya rubbed her hands together, starting to look gleeful. Nino gulped.
“Here’s what we’re going to do…”