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Marinette has been dating her longtime crush for a few weeks now and it still felt unbelievable. She could still see herself panicking and stuttering whenever the young boy approached her and yet now they casually hold hands, they’re even comfortable with public display of affection! Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought she’d be able to do all that! Gabriel Agreste, Adrien’s father, didn’t seem too keen on accepting their relationship and has tried to separate them a few times already but to no avail. The young couple still tried to see each other outside of school and that is one of the many reasons why Adrien was staying at Marinette’s this afternoon.
Marinette was downstairs with her parents, baking cookies, while Adrien was seated on her desk chair admiring her room. He’s been in her room a few times already but couldn’t stop looking around. Trying to catch every little detail, every picture of her, every little thing that had a story connected to her, that could help him get to know her better because as stupid as it might be, he wanted to know everything about her. His gaze fell upon the multiple pictures of him hanging on the wall just behind her computer screen. He didn’t mind her having pictures of him, after all, she was his fan. He was used to this. And on the contrary, it made him happy. Happy to know that the girl he was so deeply in love with loved him for so long as well. Maybe not in the same way then but still, he was special to her somehow, and even more now. He knew she was back when he heard her hit a wall and muttering to herself that she was a clutz, to which he silently laughed. When she was back in her room, holding a tray full of cookies in her arms, he offered to help but she insisted he stayed where he was and gave him two cookies. She grabbed another chair and sat near her desk. As they ate the cookies she baked, she still couldn’t wrap her head around everything that’s been happening lately: Adrien confessing his love for her and asking if she was in love with her too, holding hands with him, sorting out solutions together, confessing their fears and wishes… Not that she felt alone before as Alya has always been there for her but with Adrien it felt different. She felt like she was no longer afraid of anything.
“Everything that’s happened lately, it’s…,” she started, “it’s hard to believe that it’s real. I’ve spent so much time fantasizing about all this that I… It all seems… surreal.”
Adrien grabbed the second cookie she gave him and nodded.
“I can’t quite believe it either. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like this, it’s all new and scary and unknown to me but I’m just… so happy. I can’t help it,” he confessed, a huge smile on his face.
It was true, all this was so liberating. He no longer felt the pressure of his father on his shoulders, he felt… free! And it was thanks to the cute girl seated beside him. He wanted to do everything with her. When he was dating Kagami, it was much different. They were friends but… that’s all she was to him. He didn’t feel the need to touch her, to know her better, to make her smile. Now with Marinette, he… he was looking for any excuse to hold her hand, hug her or to cup her cheek. He stopped counting the number of times he wished a strand of hair could fall on her face so he would put it behind her ear. Love was making him silly but he loved it so much. They never kissed yet, as all their attempts have failed so far but that was alright, they were taking their time after all and he won’t ever pressure her. As he was admiring her beauty, he failed to notice her stare.
“Adrien, can I ask you a question?”
He nodded.
“When did you start loving me?”
That was… sudden. So sudden he didn’t know what to do except notice the blushing of her cheeks that made her even cuter than she was. She really had no idea of the power she had over him, hasn’t she?
“I don’t actually know it myself… I think… You’ve always been special to me, Marinette,” he replied as he locked eyes with her. “Maybe not as much as you are now but there’s always been my friends. And then there was you. You were not just a friend but I had no idea what it was.” Now he felt nervous. “I think I started to notice things when you kissed me at the Grevin museum.”
At the mention of this “incident”, Marinette gulped and begged him to forget about this.
“Oh no please don’t remind me of this, I don’t know what I was thinking when I did this, I feel so miserable…”
Adrien pushed the chair until he was right in front of his girlfriend. Without even thinking about it, he grabbed her hands, drawing invisible circles on her palms, but Marinette wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“You shouldn’t. Maybe without this, we wouldn’t.. I mean… I’m sure that we would have ended where we are now regardless of what happened before but that might have taken us a bit longer without it.”
Their knees were touching and Marinette felt even more nervous now.
“You think so?”
He lowered his face so she could look at him and gave her the gentlest of smiles.
“I don’t believe in destiny, Marinette. But I do believe in us.”
Her heart was beating way too fast now. Where did he get this kind of assurance anyway? She felt him holding her hands tighter.
“What about you anyway? When was it for you? I’m genuinely curious.”
Should she admit that she thought negatively of him when they met? Yeah. Yeah, she had to be honest. After all, dating was about honesty and trust, above all else.
“I umm… You know… Actually… Actually at first I… I hated you.”
He froze before asking with a very low voice, “You did?”
Oh no, she made a mistake. Now she was the one holding his hands tighter. These… warm and comforting hands.
“You were a friend of Chloe’s and like an idiot, I assumed you were just like her but then… One day, at the end of school, it was pouring down and you gave me your umbrella and my head got stuck and then you…”, she marked a pause and smiled to herself before looking at him with loving eyes. “You laughed. And it was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t get you out of my head after that.”
He did remember that moment indeed. He still didn’t know her name back then, but her clumsiness made him laugh. She laughed as well, and truth be told, she looked radiant at that moment, with her cheeks reddened.
“Oh,” was all he could say.
They looked at their entwined hands in silence. There was so much warmth coming out of it, who would have thought? Then, Adrien let go of her hand but placed one of them between them. One look and Marinette understood what he intended to do. She put her palm on top of his and very slowly, they intertwined their fingers. None of them realized they did the same with their other hand (but these hands were hanging in the air, almost touching the floor) as they gazed upon their laced fingers between them. They couldn’t stop grinning, like two idiots in love. But that’s what they were, weren’t they?
“It feels like a lifetime ago. We’ve been through so much and now, look where we are,” Marinette whispered.
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else. I wouldn’t change anything,” he replied, his voice just as low.
She agreed, “Me neither.”