Chapter Text
🐈⬛ 🐞
His heart is going to explode if he has to play pretend for one more day.
He tries not to glare at the lunch table as Marinette wraps herself around his arm, for show.
It had been a relief at first, both having Marinette (Ladybug) close and keeping others (Lila and Chloe, mostly but not exclusively) off of him at school.
But it hurts, too.
Knowing what she is letting others read into their actions on purpose.
Knowing that this is a ruse.
And it hurts more, the closer they get.
And Marinette and Adrien are getting closer, in spite of and because of their shared lies. Even when they’re alone, she cuddles up to him and kisses his cheeks and smiles up at him like—
Well, he’s never been the best at reading her emotions outside of battle, has he? He used to think Ladybug was flirting with him all the time. Asked Marinette if she liked him twice.
On good days, it just makes his chest ache, literal pain shooting through his sternum.
He hasn’t had a good day in a while.
The mantras he had been using aren’t working.
That he just has to make it through the school day. That he could have his stupid little break down at home, preferably in his shower. Or at least in the car. The Gorilla would buy whatever story he gave and Plagg wouldn’t but he also wouldn’t push—Adrien has plenty of things to be overwhelmed by.
He can’t breathe.
He pries her hands off his arm—it feels much harder than it should, he thinks. She never grips him as firmly as Lila did, but this feels like moving steel with fingers made of molasses.
“Adrien?”
“Dude?”
“Sunshine?”
A half dozen other voices call after him as he flees retreats.
Part of him wishes it was Nino rather than Marinette that followed him—he can hear her quick little footsteps behind him in the nearly deserted hallway.
But that wouldn’t have fit the story, would it?
He clenches his hands.
That’s not fair to her. She loves him. She’s worried.
He would walk faster if he didn’t think she’d trip trying to keep up with him on foot.
He really really doesn’t want to find out if she’d just spend all of lunch waiting outside if he hid in the restroom—she’d know if Chat Noir escaped out the window, after all.
She follows him far into the school, past several closets he could turn in to, but he just… needs a minute.
She doesn’t try to catch up.
Eventually though, he manages a deep breath, chooses a door, and waits for her.
“Kitty?” she asks softly, closing the door behind them.
He crosses his arms, hiding how his nails are digging into his palms. He doesn’t turn to face her, just looks at the dusty floor in this little used storage closet.
She lays a hand on his back.
The floor blurs.
This is awful. He’s being so stupid. She shouldn’t have to worry about his ridiculous feelings. He knows where they stand and this isn’t her fault.
His ears are ringing.
This isn’t something he can add to her shoulders.
He’s pretty sure his palms are bleeding.
As he hears her begin to walk around him, he clenches his eyes closed. Tears escape. He curls more into himself.
He’s done so well at not pushing her away since the reveal and now—
Her hand touches his cheek.
He whimpers.
Now he’s going to ruin everything because he can’t keep his shit together.
She pulls him down into a hug and then, when he can’t stop crying and his knees go weak, further down to sit in her lap as she sits criss cross on the dusty floor.
He’s quiet—he’s good at crying quietly, for the most part—and he can hear that she’s murmuring to him, but he can’t manage to make the sounds make meaning in his brain.
Leaning against her shoulder, one of her hands in his hair, one on his back, he focuses on catching his breath, first.
Slowly, her words start to make sense, but they’re still nonsense—I’m here, kitty, and I’ve got you, and we’ll figure out whatever’s wrong—so he doesn’t have to worry that he’s missed anything important.
All at once, the smell of her perfume fills his senses.
He kind of collapses against her and she cuts off her platitudes with a little, “Oh!” followed by, “Chatton?”
“I’m here,” he says because he kind of feels like he wasn’t for a while. He unclenches his hands, pulling his nails out of his palms, failing to suppress a hiss.
She notices, of course, pulling back enough to grab one of his hands and frown at the little crescents, two of which are beading up with blood already.
She kisses his knuckles.
He trembles.
It feels like his chest is collapsing in on itself. Like his ribs are splintered. Stabbing through his lungs to his ever bleeding heart.
“Are you ready to talk about it?”
He shakes his head, still struggling to keep his breathing in order. No. Gods, no.
“Okay,” she says, their clasped hands falling to his lap, and her other hand going back to scratching at his head.
Moments pass and he hopes that the bell will ring but he hadn’t made it very far into lunch before he’d lost it, so his prayers are ignored.
Eventually, he can’t stomach the idea of letting her comfort him for this weakness any longer and he pulls away, dabbing at his face with his sleeve.
He’s okay. He can breathe.
He moves to shift off her lap, but then her fingers tense where she’s holding him and she tugs, gently, and he can’t even deny her things he doesn’t want, let alone this. He stays where she’d placed him.
Her hand slides to his cheek, urging him to look at her.
He does. Of course he does.
Her eyes are so close.
“Mon Chatton, I—“
He presses his forehead to hers, closing his eyes, it’s everything he can do to keep from kissing her.
“I’m sorry,” he manages, trembling. He can feel the distressed purring building up in his chest now that he’s breathing again.
Her thumb brushes his eyelashes as she rubs his cheek. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
He scoffs. “I can’t quite manage to do things right, either.”
“I think you’re doing great, Adrien.”
“I’m in love with you,” he says, deflating with the words, because he hasn’t said it properly in three months, making due with a much more insufficient I love you, and it’s been so hard holding it in.
She… she laughs.
He shudders, grimacing, tensing, pulling away—
“I’m in love with you, too.”
He jerks upright, almost convinced he’s going to wake up, but his good dreams don’t usually start with a meltdown. “What?”
🐞 🐈⬛
He blinks at her like he’s surprised.
Like he didn’t know.
Like he hasn’t known for months.
“I’m in love with you, too, Chatton,” she repeats, petting his hair, smiling gently.
He searches her face, head tilted like the cat he is. Opens and closes his mouth like he’s going to speak and changes his mind a couple of times before he rasps, “Since when?”
Oh, no.
She frowns on reflex, just managing to bite back an unhelpful forever. “You… didn’t know?”
He shakes his head.
How…? But if he didn’t know, he wouldn’t know that either, would he?
She blinks rapidly as her eyes start watering. “Oh, kitty,” her voice wobbles. “It’s… it’s been a while.”
He bites his lip. “Since the reveal?”
She shakes her head. “I… I’ve been in love with Chat since a few weeks before the reveal.”
He exhales through his nose, reaching up to dab at his eyes again, squinting at her. “And… what? It took you a while to decide how you feel about both of me being one person?”
She makes a whining sound. “Adrien, no, I—“
The lunch bell rings, and he moves to stand but she grabs his arms in a panic— he has to understand.
“I have been in love with Adrien Agreste since I was thirteen, before I even understood what it means to love someone. And when I finally figured out what it means to love someone… I—I realized I was in love with Chat Noir, too. I have fallen more in love with you— with all of you every day since the reveal, Adrien. I thought… I thought you knew that.”
He’s shaking. “…How on Earth would I know any of that?” He pushes away from her again, and this time she doesn’t resist.
He scrambles upright, but he can’t go far in the small closet, and his back connects with the shelves behind him as his hands tug at his hair, eyes screwed shut.
She can feel it rising, her own panic, but any loved one, especially Adrien, in distress has always been the best thing to help her fight it down. She takes a deep breath, shifting to her knees but not standing up. Because I tell you constantly, is probably not going to be helpful. “I’m sorry I wasn’t clear enough, Adrien,” she decides on.
“Clear enough?” He scoffs, dropping his hands and glaring down at her.
She rubs her sweaty palms on her thighs. “I told you I loved you the night of the reveal. That I love all of you. And you… you said it back.”
He stomps one foot. “That’s not the same! You never mean it the way that I mean it!”
She gasps. “I’m sorry I wasn’t clear—“
He growls. “You’re sorry, Marinette? Really?”
She flinches back. Her lip trembles.
His eyes go wide and she shouldn’t be surprised when he turns, opens the door, and vanishes through it with a slam.
She fully intends to get up, dust off her pants, and get to class, but then her own tears come.
He didn’t even know she was in love with him. She is the worst girlfriend ever.
When she does get herself together and drag herself to class—she misses too much as is—he’s not there, of course. And their friends are sending her concerned looks which she just has to shake her head and shrug away. Not only did she fail to figure out what was bothering him to begin with, but she has managed to take things from meltdown in a supply closet bad to worse.
How is she going to fix this? How can she possibly fix this?