Chapter Text
Spending an entire afternoon cutting the blond, beautiful head off Adrien Agreste’s body was probably considered weird in some parts of the world, but to Marinette, fashion-designer-wannabe, most of her afternoons were spent this way—snipping and cutting until only the fashionable outfit remained.
The odd pass-time had dug under Marinette’s skin the first time she’d done it, but after months and months of cutting, crumpling, and pasting headless pictures of Adrien to her walls, there was nothing more normal, routine, or mundane.
Chopping magazine-Adrien’s head off (only so she could analyze Gabriel’s latest) had become the only structured routine and mundanity in her busy, constantly-spinning world.
Really, the secret super-heroines life ranged from crazy to crazier, so no amount of decapitating fazed her anymore—even if the head belonged to a boy who she’d seen around school.
Marinette sighed.
Realistically, she’d probably never even meet the headless boy. They’d never crossed paths before, nor glances, nor the same air; Adrien had never been close enough for any of those things to happen. As far as she was concerned, the boy barely existed. He was a wrinkle in her favorite magazines or a constant image in her head, but he was far from real to her.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Three precise cuts, and the new (headless—very, very headless) picture was complete, ready to be hung along her wall.
Marinette slid against the fuzzy pink carpet in her Cat Noir socks, slipping around mannequins, sewing needles, and stacks of glittering fabric. The cold wall pressed against her palms, smooth, and she plastered the doodled-on outfit to her shrine-like wall.
“He looks terrible in pastel pink,” was all she muttered, indifferently turning from the mutilated image.
Marinette slipped through her trap door and into her homey kitchen, breathing the hot, spiced air down her throat.
Adrien had a certain charm about him, she decided, pulling the blue fridge open. The dip of his shoulders where fabric met skin strangled his fans, and the curve of his Cupid’s bow intoxicated all who stared at it long enough; his eyes glimmered mischievously—no doubt a skill he’d perfected—and his lips quirked like an invitation, luring any and all into his lair of wealthy evil.
Marinette grabbed an apple, turning the fleshy fruit over in her palms with a frown. “Tsk, it’s rotten.”
Digging for something else—something edible —her brain conjured an image of the charming boy.
Unique, eccentric, daring, as most would call him; Marinette opted for the title ‘boring’. Attractive but plain, and so far from her type (dark-haired boys that talked in poems and played instruments).
Heaving a giant sigh, Marinette thumbed through the vegetable drawer, coming up empty. A smile quickly replaced her unhappiness, though, when heavy thumps headed toward her.
Marceau was home.
The sounds came closer, and she slumped into the fridge’s chilliness.
“Hey,” she said, letting her eyes roam what little her fridge had to offer—fruit, veggies, and some kind of dough mixture. She frowned, muttering, “It’s time to grocery shop,” before pulling her hand back to her side and shutting the cold metal door.
“So”—she turned—“where’d you and—AHHH?!”
Marceau’s hair wasn’t as dark, dull, or short as it usually was, instead sitting shaggy and blond. His smile wasn’t crooked, lips thin; it was perfectly plump and straight and dazzling, like something out of a magazine.
She’d cut the face out enough to know who it belonged to—studied the curve of his symmetric brows, now raising as she took his features in.
Marinette flung back, taking a deep breath while she quickly thought of the possibilities: Adrien Agreste had broken into her home, was a guest of her parents, or she’d gone completely, absolutely, entirely bonkers.
She immediately crossed off the second option because no—Adrien wouldn’t be visiting her parents. And the first option was too far fetched; Adrien had enough money to last him a very long, fruitful lifetime, and he’d have no need to rob her humble bakery of anything but pastries.
It was official: Marinette had lost every existing brain cell still in her head, which was why her next idea seemed so very smart.
Marinette threw a quick glance around her kitchen, eyeing each bright wall, the couch beside it, and the rolling pin calling to her from next to the stove.
Her imagination just needed a whack, and Marinette’s carefully honed Ladybug instincts were more than happy to provide one.
Muscle memory overtook her movements, drawing her insanity into a nightmarish situation.
Adrien’s (the hallucination of him, at least) eyes blew wide, green and sparkling like he’d come straight out of a magazine, lips falling into a panicked rush. “Wait, wait, wait!”
Pale hands flung in front of her, outstretched and begging, but it didn’t stop Marinette. With a solid swing, Adrien was on the ground, groaning.
“Adrien’s head is in my kitchen!” She screamed, bending to whack her delirium-induced vision against the butt. “Adrien’s head is in my kitchen !”
“Stop, stop!”
“The head is speaking!” Whap, whap, whap.
“Marceau!” The blond screamed. “Ow!”
Whap. Whap. Whap. “Maman, I’m seeing things!”
“I’m real ,” he insisted, skidding across her tiled kitchen floor to rest his broad, real-looking back against the stove (as if that, of all things, would protect him).
Real.
The boy certainly looked real, and his screams certainly sounded real—a little girlish, but real nonetheless—and his angelic frown and horror-soaked expression were way too glorious for her imagination to make up.
Marinette’s eyes went wide, and the realization drenched her, sending a chill down her spine: bludgeoning a hallucination wouldn’t make such a loud noise.
Marinette screamed, letting the sound rip from the depths of her chest. It rose in her throat, scratchy and achy, as she hit him one last time. “An Adrien Agreste impersonator is robbing us!”
Adrien stumbled back, sliding around the kitchen and away from the insane woman in front of him. When Marceau, a newer friend of his, invited him over—ensuring his sister was a lovely little thing, at least to company—this was not at all what he expected.
“I’m not robbing you!” He said. “Why would I?”
Wrong thing to say. The girl’s eyes narrowed, and that innocent sky-blue color turned colder than the Atlantic. Adrien shuddered, preparing himself for another hit to the head.
“I don’t know! Maybe you’re planning on stealing a bunch of pastries to experiment on, and then you’ll steal the recipes, start your own franchise, and ruin our life!”
“Why would I impersonate a model for that?”
Marinette didn’t know. Logically, it made no sense, but she’d never been known for her logical ideas, and she had already freaked herself out too much.
“To make me fall in love with you!” She blurted, clutching the rolling pin to her chest. “You think you can charm me with that awful mask? Ha! You can’t! And you can’t rob me, either, Mr. Fake Agreste!”
“I’m not robbing you!” He paused before adding, “And it isn’t a mask!”
“Well, yeah,” she said, pressing a hand to her hip with a scoff, dangling that deadly, terrifying weapon by her waist.
If Adrien examined her close enough, he’d say she looked… proud? Of what, he didn’t want to know; hitting a human being was nothing to smile about, and stopping a robber, though admirable, was only praise-worthy if one was stopping an actual robber!
(Which Adrien was proud to admit he was not).
“I swear I’m—” He sorta defended himself, trying to ignore the fearful (and untimely) crack in his voice.
“Maman!” Marinette screamed. “Call the police!”
“Marinette, please!”
The girl only gasped, heaving a screech. “He knows my name!”
Marinette swung, lifting the rolling pin high above her head of midnight hair. The thing was three seconds away from reaching the fake-Adrien’s butt (again) when cool skin pressed into her wrist. Knobby fingers squeezed her, roughly tearing her away from the cowering boy on her kitchen floor.
“Marinette, you idiot!” Black hair swung in her vision, eyes cold and dark as they clashed with hers. “Why are you attacking a dude whose only income is his face?!”
Marinette paused, scanning the ball of a boy curled on the floor beneath her.
Crap.
“Adrien?” She screamed, flinging her bakery-weapon in the air. “Adrien Agreste?”
Marceau loosed his grip on her wrists, moving between the two and extending a hand to the blond. With a muffled laugh, he nodded and said, “Good luck with getting an internship after he tells his dad about this.”
“No!” If he did that, her chances would quickly spiral down the drain, dripping below her until nothing remained. “He can’t!”
Adrien stood, brushing a hand over the curve of his collarbones, his chest, his legs. Slowly, the coruscating, devastating green of his eyes met her terrified gaze, and Adrien tipped those perfectly sculpted lips in her direction.
“You can’t,” she begged (threatened), pointing the rolling pin at him.
The only thing Adrien could do—aside from flinch and cry and beg for mercy—was nod. Enthusiastically so, slamming his head in motion until he felt like his neck would snap from the impact.
‘A lovely little thing’—a sentence that usually described scary-looking puppies, people with wonderful personalities, or dolls.
Marinette had nothing in common with any of those things, especially the puppies. Whatever twisted image he had of her (the one that made her seem like a sweet younger sister who’d greet them with tea and cookies) faded the second he met that crazed blue stare.
Adrien let his gaze flicker between the siblings, mentally trying to piece their resemblances together.
Black hair, dark as night itself, sat atop their heads. It cascaded down Marinette’s frame messily, prisoner to an elastic, but rested trimmed and short against Marceau’s scalp.
He noticed the freckles scattering Marinette’s cheekbones, light and only visible if he squinted. Then her nose, the jutting pout of her lips, and the delicate bob in her throat.
Adrien sighed. The girl, with her big round eyes, looked close to tears. He sent her his best model smile, pressing a hand to the back of his neck. “Believe it or not, this isn’t the most violent meeting I’ve had.”
Marinette ignored him. “You’re friends with Adrien Agreste?”
“Right here,” he mumbled.
Marceau rolled his eyes, brushing past her to open the fridge. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Considering you’re an idiot, yes. Yes, it is.”
“Do you want me to put in a good word or not?”
The girl scoffed, crossing her arms over her torso with a threatening glint. “What, to him ? No thanks.”
Okay, so Adrien was learning a lot more than he wanted or honestly cared to about the girl.
“Woah, you’re a designer?” His voice flitted through the air all-too softly, politely, rolling from his tongue like a practiced, memorized scripture.
Marinette shuttered. “Aspiring.”
“Adrien, don’t talk to her; she bites.”
“Will you shut up!”
“Meh-meh-meh-meh-meheh,” her brother mocked, sticking his tongue out. “I’m Marinette, and I attack people.”
Secret superhero Ladybug had always hated meeting her brother’s friends, and she hated meeting Adrien even more. She hated how quickly her stupid, delusional assumptions had ruined her future, how nice he was being about it, and—ugh, would he ever stop staring at her?!
Marinette spun, offering an awkward smile. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he soothed, flashing a gleaming, gorgeous, sparkling smile of his own. “I’ve been through worse.”
“Do you make getting beat up by baking instruments a habit, Adrien?”
A wickedly polite laugh. “No, no.” Adrien waved her off, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Unless you plan on doing that every time I come over.”
“You startled me, is all,” she murmured, flushing from the tips of her painted toes to the top of her forehead.
The laugh grew louder. “This might just top the time a fan dropped from the roof and tackled me.”
Marceau hid a choked giggle from behind his glass of milk, patting himself on the chest, and Marinette rolled her eyes.
Was he making fun of her? Just because he was in the grade above didn’t mean he was older—he wasn’t. Well, he was, but only by a few months! Homeschooling allowed him to skip a grade, and no—knowing this didn’t make her creepy or obsessed in the slightest.
She just liked celebrity gossip.
“How nice; you have people falling from the sky to meet you.” She tried to hide her eye-roll.
Adrien shrugged. Technically, he did. “They definitely fall from roofs.”
“Maybe you should invest in a disguise, dude,” Marceau said, rinsing his cup out.
“Apparently my face is disguise enough, right, Marinette?” He let his eyes wander her face, desperate for any sign that he’d successfully broken the ice better than she broke his ribs.
“Yep.”
“Maybe I should start wearing a mask and sunglasses. Or would a ski mask fit me better?”
Marceau frowned. “A ski mask? How stupid are you?”
Adrien lifted his weight off the counter shooting his best wink to Marinette. She seemed weirded out by the niceties earlier, so he’d try a Cat Noir approach.
It seemed to charm everybody but his precious Ladybug.
With the most feline smile he could comfortably muster, Adrien said, “I’ll be a wanted criminal if I don’t cover up. I wouldn’t want to rob every bakery in town, now would I?”
Unfortunately for Adrien, Marinette was Ladybug, and his jokes were a lot less charming than he thought they were.
Poor, naive Adrien took one look at the wide, slightly boorish (?) smile on her face and figured it was good—he’d broken the ice! Call him one cool cat.
Marinette glowered at him, hoping he caught on to her twitching eyes. Who did this guy think he was? A Cat Noir impersonator? All he was missing were the puns.
“Can you imagine the horror,” he said, eyes wide and sad. “I’ve heard of some terrible crimes, but robbing a bakery?”—Oh. Maybe he wasn’t so—“Man, that one really takes the cake.”
Marinette could feel the already-thinning straw of patience fade into nothingness, snapping just as he went to make another joke.
Normally, she wouldn’t have minded; Marinette had developed a tolerance to these kinds of things thanks to her crime-fighting partner. But Adrien was a friend of her brother’s now—one who thought it was okay to make fun of her—which was an unforgivable identifier in her book.
“Oh, you’re so charming!” The sarcasm was clear. “I bet you have a waterfall of people falling at your feet, Mr. Dashing! Robbing bakeries and throwing jokes around! I can’t even imagine why somebody would want to beat you with a rolling pin!”
Adrien’s smile fled, slipping into an open mouth. “Uh. Tough crowd?”
“Very tough,” Marceau whispered.
The last thing Adrien wanted to do was offend his new friend’s sister, but, clearly, it was the first thing he’d done. His jokes usually charmed the pants off people; Marinette’s pants were (thankfully) still on (because it’d be weird if they weren’t). Adrien didn’t know why his impeccable sense of humor went unappreciated, but he knew he needed to fix whatever offense it’d brought her.
Sighing, Adrien offered up his best guilty face, hoping his eyes looked more lost and upset than he felt. “I’m so sorry if I’ve offended you, Marinette—“
“Offend?” Her high-pitched laugh edged on maniacal. “How could The Adrien Agreste ever offend me?”
“I dunno,” he replied. “You seem pretty offended right—“
“Isn’t it impossible for you to offend somebody? Adrien can do no wrong—no wrong can he do!” She scoffed, muttering, “Give me a break.”
The blond narrowed his eyes, rolling her sentence around his tongue. Something about the words—the accusation—seemed so familiar, so close to his soul, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
His lovely (crazy) fans had named him a ‘cinnamon-roll’, which usually came with a protective bubble wrapped around him like he was a China doll. Three blogs, in particular, coddled him, each one choking his personality like little parasitic thorns as they valiantly dueled his haters.
He clamped his mouth closed. Opened it. Closed it. Huffed an incredulous breath. “Okay…?” He enunciated, shaking his head with a lighthearted smile. “Regardless of my fans’ opinions, I’m very capable of hurting feelings. And if I’ve hurt yours, I sincerely apologize.”
Marinette’s glare only sharpened, prickling his innocent skin—he did nothing!—uncomfortably. “I’m not offended.”
“Good!”
“Good?”
“Yes,” Adrien drawled, not understanding how his happiness at the resolved issue was a bad thing. (Was it? Was he missing something? Was this girl just really crazy and passive? Did she have a grudge against models?) “It’s great that you aren’t offended. I’d hate to not get along.”
One breath, two breaths, three, and Marinette slid her gaze to her brother, relieved to find him already looking at her.
She shot him a raised eyebrow, sending the question: he’d hate to not get along?
Marceau’s answer came in a shrug .
Marinette didn’t feel any better about the situation.
Before meeting Adrien, she had no thoughts about him other than how wonderful his father’s designs were and how lovely they looked on him. She didn’t expect ten minutes to ruin her carefully crafted vision of him, changing her feelings from indifferent to irked.
His atmosphere bled importance, and each word seemed to be hand-picked—not to mention unoriginal. (Seriously, his jokes sucked.) Marinette didn’t like it, and she’d rather die than let him think she did.
“Yeah, well, I think I could live,” she said.
Adrien’s brown furrowed, well-shaped and perfectly plucked. “Without getting along?”
“Yup. I’d be perfectly fine—no, more than perfectly fine! It’d be super fine, like, divinely fine. Without you. Getting along. Us. Without us getting along!”
Silence played tug-o-war between them, pulling and winding and taunting until each one’s thin line of patience and kindness sat frayed within their chests, balling into something dreadfully familiar: heated anger.
Adrien forced a deep breath down his throat. He was Cat Noir; he could handle a prissy, passive little girl like the adult he (almost) was.
“If that’s what you want.”
“Ha!”
“Is something funny, Marinette?” His eyes twitched at her sickening smile.
“You tell me. I mean, you’re the one with killer jokes, Adrien.”
Under normal circumstances, he’d have no trouble dismissing her terrible attitude, but something in her voice as she spat his name—accusingly, he might add—made all sanity slip from his grasp.
“It’s not my fault you wouldn’t know humor if it hit you in the face with a rolling pin,” Adrien said, narrowing his eyes at the glaring girl. “You’d only know violence because hitting people in the face with a rolling pin is violent !”
Marinette was ready to throttle the stuck-up model, fists clenched by her sides, cheeks set ablaze. His clever quips settled in her brain like fuel for a fire—a very deadly, huge, out-of-control fire, but she refused to put it out.
She was Ladybug. A superhero. And Adrien Agreste would have hell to pay for making fun of her like she wasn’t—like she couldn’t throw a round-house kick to his face and end his career (which she could).
He saw it burn within her big blue eyes—the violent thoughts, that murderous spirit, her willingness to strike at any given moment—and, honestly, Adrien was slightly offended that she thought he wouldn’t be able to dodge whatever kick she threw his way. Cat Noir was used to sparring with the best fighter (and lady) in town; Marinette couldn’t compare.
Though, a line of goosebumps traveled down his spine at her terrifyingly dark stare, spiking his skin into thin codes of brail. He shivered as she said, “You call that violent?”
“Is it—“ Adrien sucked a breath down his throat. “Is it not?”
A sweet smile split her face, drawing her cheeks upward like a pretty, precise routine—like she’d been terrifying men out of their minds for millennia.
“Do you want to find out?”
Adrien turned to Marceau, raising a brow. “Is this, like, a threat?” He asked.
Marceau shook his head of dark hair, shoving a handful of popcorn past his smiling lips. “Yup.” Another handful. “She’s always like this.”
Marinette wanted to wipe the stupid smirk off of Mr. Perfect Model’s face, and she instinctively tapped the counter for her rolling pin, cursing when she realized Marceau must’ve shoved it in a cabinet.
With a snide snicker, Adrien shrugged an inch closer, narrowing his green eyes. “Ah.”
“Ah?” She gritted out.
“No, it’s nothing.” That sick smile twisted slightly, dragging up into a victorious smirk. “Don’t worry, Marinette. I used to be bad at handling social situations, too! I could help you if you’d like. Maybe teach you a thing or two about… being nice?”
One.
Two.
Three.
Adrien’s smile only grew, and he slunk forward, pushing himself off the counter with a sigh. He turned, tilting his head at Marceau, silently asking if they could go to his room. Her brother giggled the entire way downstairs, only stopping to throw her an amused look, eyes crinkled and lips curled.
“You tried,” he whispered.
Adrien spared her less than a glance, only shrugging. “Think about it, Marinette.” His stupid smile lit up his entire face, and every inch of her body burned with hatred because, this time, her scissors couldn’t (legally) make each line of his wonderful face disappear. “I’m willing to help whenever.”
She cringed at his closeness, scowling and crossing her arms over her chest. “Yeah, right. Take care of the scandals first, Adrien, and then get back to me.”
It was a low blow—she knew that. But it was also (somehow) the only insult that made her feel better. Adrien threw her a wink, yawning, and followed after her brother.
“It really is a pity,” he said lowly, stopping just long enough to give her one last distasteful look. “I would’ve loved to help you improve as a person.”
Each of his steps creaked, thundering against each corner of her mind. Creak. She would kill him. Thump. She’d hate him for all of eternity! Creak.
Marinette took a deep breath, channeling a wave of calmness. “I’ll never see him again,” she whispered, eyes closed as she countered her breathing. “This will all go away.”
Tikki made a noise at the back of her throat but nodded nonetheless, smiling. “That’s right! Don’t let him get to you!”
As Adrien walked down the steps, he swore he heard the insane—uh, lovely —girl curse him out, and a smile permanently glued itself to his face. He won, and he knew she hated it.
But Adrien didn’t care what she felt—she was prissy and passive and rude; she could feel anything, and he wouldn’t bat an eye her way. Still, he couldn’t wipe the smile off of his face when he thought about her red-dusted cheeks, parted lips, and glaring eyes.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that she hated him, and, as it just so happened, he disliked her enough to find it funny.
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