Chapter Text
Alya and Nino had been skirting along the edge of friendship and something more since the beginning of the school year. And, not gone unnoticed by their respective best friends, their seating arrangements in class had made for the perfect chance to constantly pass notes back and forth. After the whole fiasco at the zoo, Nino and Alya were finally on the same page. Not only did it bring them closer together, it formed a team to bring Marinette and Adrien together as well. Plus, Alya enjoyed using Project Adrienette (yes, of course she’d made the two morons a ship name) as an excuse to drag Nino out on double dates.
This brings us to today, fifteen minutes before class let out for the day, when Marinette heard the familiar sound of a Post-It note being folded into quarters. Smirking to herself, she watched out of the corner of her eye as the DJ, eyes trained on Ms. Bustier, slipped a blue note into the waiting palm of the girl sitting behind him.
Marinette couldn’t help but glance over at Alya’s movement, a pretend stretch that reached forward to covertly retrieve a Post-It. Alya snuck Mari a wink and pulled her hands into her lap, quietly unfolding the note. “You, me, and the idiots -> arcade? ;)”
Alya kicked the leg of Nino’s chair, twice for ‘yes’, hard enough for him to feel but gentle enough not to make the chair move and scrape, catching the teacher’s attention. Marinette had to stifle the hysterical giggle that threatened to bubble past her lips when she law Nino do a victorious fist pump under the table. She loved seeing this part of a relationship, when it was new and light-hearted and every little thing could make her heart skip a beat. Marinette hoped that someday she and Adrien would be the same way. The bell rang a moment later, and Nino was the first to spring up out of his seat.
“Dude, they finally opened that new wing of the arcade,” he said to Adrien, who was still gathering his notebooks into his bag. “We have to go check it out.” Adrien checked his schedule on his phone, and was relieved to see he had no shoots planned for the day.
Alya held her tongue until Adrien agreed before butting into the conversation. “Ooh, I’ve been wanting go since I saw the flyers! I’m so in,” Alya said. She turned toward Marinette and slung an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll come too, right? You’re much better at games than I am, girl.”
Marinette chortled at the compliment. “At video games, not arcade games! Besides, you know those things are rigged.” She chided her friend, shaking her head at her complete lack of subtlety.
“Oh, Adrien’s great at claw games,” Nino offered up, slinging an arm over his friend’s shoulders. “Guess he’s just lucky!”
Adrien grinned and held up his wrist, where a red thread strung with colorful beads was wrapped. “Well, I do have my lucky charm. It makes all the difference, y’know.” He winked at Marinette, who turned a warm crimson. She still couldn’t believe he’d kept her charm, much less started wearing it every day.
“Besides, today’s adventure will not be spent on mere arcade games,” Nino declared as he led the group out into the hall and down the stairs. “We’re gonna go a little more hard-core today.” Alya giggled and pulled away from Marinette to link arms with her might-as-well-be-boyfriend.
“Um… what exactly counts as hardcore?” Mari squeaked as Adrien fell into an easy step beside her. Nino and Alya didn’t reply, but instead both turned and shot the other pair a wicked grin over their shoulders. Marinette looked up at Adrien, and they shared a small, worried smile, as they followed their friends blindly into hell.
And hell it was. Adrien knew this was going to be an utter catastrophe as soon as he saw the neon sign over the black sheets covering the entrance to the new wing of the arcade.
“Laser Tag”
He could practically hear Plagg howling with laughter from the secret pocket inside his shirt. He glanced over at Marinette, and was surprised to see she looked excited. Really excited, he thought, judging by the cute little wiggle she was doing, shifting on her feet, while clutching her hands close to her chest and trying to bite back a smile. Adrien mentally shook himself. What are you doing, saying Marinette is cute? You like Ladybug! LADYBUG!
His train of thought was interrupted when he realized the others had already ducked under the sheet and into the darkened hallway leading to the arena. He followed them inside and joined in putting his school bag into the lockers on one wall. Then the group turned to the opposite side of the hallway and retrieved black leather vests from hooks.
An employee emerged from the arena, past another set of hanging sheets, to explain the premise of the game. Small glowing orbs dotted the chest and back of the vests, different colored targets depending on their point values. A small screen on the laser gun displayed the number of points you’d earned based on the orbs you shot with your laser. At the end of a 15 minute session, a score board hanging over the vest hooks would announce the game’s winner.
The kids were each handed a gun, cool and heavy in their hands, before being released into the arena. The other three shot off into the dark maze of ramps and bunkers, scoping out the best hiding spots. Adrien hesitated, wishing he had Chat’s night vision, before ducking under a walkway and into a small cubby.
And there he waited, listening carefully for sounds of movement from the others, channeling his inner cat. He sank to the floor and pressed a hand to the tiles, balancing on his toes and ready to spring out at the first sign of an approaching opponent.
So when Marinette was able to sneak up on him from behind, he was floored. Without a sound, she ducked into his space to shoot the little blue bulb on his shoulder blade point-blank, making the light cast startling shadows on the small cubby. He whirled around to see she looked just as surprised as she felt, her azure eyes wide and her cheeks flushed. With a tiny giggle, she dashed away, faster than he would have thought she could move, back into the darkness.
That was when it all fell apart. From somewhere above, someone held the trigger on their gun as they moved, making a small red dot sweep the floor below. It caught Adrien’s eye instantly. Gun forgotten in the cubby, Adrien silently stalked the dancing light, ducking and weaving over and between the ramps and crates of the makeshift battlefield.
A red light flashed next to his head- the bulb on his shoulder had been hit, but Adrien couldn’t find it in himself to care. He needed that dot. It was moving faster now, matching with the thudding footfalls of sneakers racing across the catwalk above, trying to escape the person following.
Suddenly the dot stopped. “Gotcha now, sucker,” Alya’s triumphant taunt sounded from above, while a cornered Nino groaned in defeat. A green light flashed- straight for the heart, me-owch, thought Adrien dryly. But none of that mattered. That dot was his.
With one last shift on the balls of his feet, an adjustment of his balance in his hips, he pounced, landing atop the dot with a victorious whoop.
“A-Adrien?”
For the second time in five minutes, Marinette had managed to spook him. He tried to make an excuse about trying to find whose laser was left on, to ambush them. But judging by Mari’s face, she’d seen more than just the capture of the dot. She gave him a strained smile, shyness mixed with something else. She probably thinks I’m mental, great, Adrien thought.
“Where’s your gun?” Marinette asked, suddenly noticing his lack of weapon.
“Oh, um… I think I dropped it back there when I started running toward Nino,” he fibbed, gesturing over his shoulder toward the cubby.
Mari giggled at him again, and his stomach swooped. That’s not fair. Wait, what’s not fair?
“Well, I can’t shoot if you’re unarmed,” she decided, pulling her gun back against her chest. “I’ll, uh, see you up there? That is,” she ducked her head, looking up at him from under her lashes and giving him a coy smirk. “If you ever come out of hiding.” And with that, she was off like a shot again, slipping silently back into shadow.
The next ten minutes were a blur of flashing lights, pounding footfalls, and screeching laughter. Nino learned his lesson about only pulling the trigger when he was ready to shoot, or else he’d give away his position. Alya ruthlessly hunted him down regardless. Adrien managed to land a few shots, but missed often on account of squeezing his eyes shut against the little red dot whenever he went to shoot.
But when they made their way back to the lockers, the score board proclaimed Marinette the winner, with more points than the rest of them combined.
“Damn, girl,” Nino laughed as he gave her a congratulatory high-five. “I barely even saw or heard you in there, you sneaky thing! Were you even walking around? You could give Chat Noir a run for his money!”
“Nah,” Alya responded and hip-bumped her friend. “She was probably silently swinging around in the rafters using her yoyo, scoping us out!” She and Nino laughed as they hung up their vests and gathered their bags.
Adrien held out a hand to take Mari’s vest, and hung it up for her. She smiled gratefully at him, paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then winked. She wasn’t letting that little scene with the laser chase go that easily. Adrien blushed and rubbed the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly.
“Have fun in there?” Marinette asked, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Adrien said with a chuckle. He extended a closed fist to her, paired with a crooked, embarrassed grin. “Good job!”
A strange look crossed Marinette’s face before she returned his smile, and his fist bump. “Good job.”