Chapter Text
Adrien Agreste just barely managed to suppress a yawn. He was at one of the seemingly infinite galas that Paris’ elite hosted around the holiday season, just one in a list of nearly-identical parties of underhanded comments and not-so-subtle social politics, and he was bored out of his mind. All of his friends that were there were busy with their own things; Kagami was sticking to her mother’s side as the older Tsurigi mingled, Chloe and Alix had vanished off somewhere, likely in an attempt to avoid Audrey (why was she still invited? Chloe had nearly cried when they had seen the RSVP list for this gala, dammit!), even Mari and Juleka, who had recently gotten a part time job at the bakery, were helping Tom and Sabine with catering duties. While this was all well and good, it unfortunately left Adrien at the mercy of complete and total ennui. He had been to approximately a million of these things, and he had grown thoroughly tired of them. His suit was itching, the people were too loud, and his feet were starting to hurt from standing still for too long in shoes that were more for show than they were for support. At this point, the only thing that could make the evening any worse was an akuma.
The wall promptly exploded inwards.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
He fought an urge - to cry, to groan, to slam his head against the wall, he didn’t know - and ducked into a nearby hallway. He ran down a few passageways, taking a couple turns before swinging into an empty conference room that, as far as Adrien knew, had never been used for its intended purpose, only ever housing mischievous small children when they were bored at parties (They didn’t get that luxury anymore. They couldn’t vanish away and act their ages anymore. They had to be visible, be gawked at- focus, Adrien). It was empty though, and there was a window, so he ducked out of sight from the glass and flipped up the top of his right jacket pocket to allow Plagg to float out.
“Plagg, please tell me I didn’t accidentally bring an akuma down on us by thinking,” Adrien groaned. A resigned smile spread across the little god’s face. “Wish I could, kit, but Irony’s got a cruel sense of humor. Literally, Skenn is a jerk.” Adrien blinked, firmly deciding to not question it. With that, he transformed, punching through the floor-to-ceiling window (with an “OW- SON OF A BITCH” - he had forgotten the windows were damn near bulletproof) and leaping over to the skylight above the grand hall. He tried to ignore the dread creeping down his spine, the sensation that this fight was about to go terribly wrong.
___
Marinette Dupain-Cheng was, quite frankly, having a terrible day. There had been a teleporting akuma from 2 to 6 that had her and Chat Noir running across the city trying to catch them, she was late to school AGAIN, Mme. Mendeleiev had sprung a test on them that she was NOT prepared for, Lila was still up to her usual tricks, and to put the rotten cherry on top of this shit sundae of a day, there was an Agreste gala that they were catering. And knowing how long these things normally ran, the chance of her getting any more than 4 hours of sleep was damn near nonexistent. And THEN, as if her day hadn’t been hard enough, said gala had been attacked by an akuma. The worst in 2 months.
She called herself “Offenserveuse”, and despite her name being… that, she was dangerous. Her main power was firing razor sharp trays super fast, with a backup of hors d'oeuvres bombs that left the area covered in exploded food. It was a sensory nightmare, it made her inner baker squirm, and it had already pushed her to the edge when-
She needed to stop thinking about it.
Currently, she’s hunkered down in some random, dark room, having broken down as soon as she detransformed. She could barely make out Tikki flitting around her head, trying to get her attention as her mind ran a bajillion kilometers an hour.
Because here’s the thing. She needed to stop thinking about the fight, thinking about that moment, thinking about how Chat’s taunts cut off in a wet choke, how blood started to coat the floor, how Offenserveuse had crowed in triumph, how she reached for his limp hand, how the akuma’s jaw crunched as she landed a firm punch on her chin to knock her out.
But
she
just
couldn’t.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it, about the blood, about the sounds, about the punch, about everything, and it was tearing her apart! She was an rc car running a figure 8 over and over and over and over and over until the wheels wore down and the engine blew out and she couldn’t breathe oh kwamis she couldn’t brEATHE AND-
-And someone touches her arm. Lightly, they’re not grabbing her, but it’s enough to startle her out of her spiral, at least a little. She looks through blurry eyes, and sees piercing green eyes and blond hair and black clothes, and it reminds her that he’s alive, he’s alive and he’s still there and she’s not alone and she just- She just breaks. She collapses into her partner’s arms, sobbing raggedly. He tenses for only a second, enough to make her wonder if she had crossed a line, before he just hugs her tighter. She doesn’t remember how long it is until she succumbs to the tidal pull of sleep, only that after a while, choked sobs give way to quiet nothingness.
____
Adrien’s feelings at the moment are very complicated, to say the least. On one hand, his crush very good friend was asleep in his arms. On the other hand, they had ended up in this situation because he had happened upon her having a panic attack. When he tried to bring her back to reality, at least a little, she had hugged him like the world was ending and promptly fallen asleep in his arms.
And that’s not even MENTIONING the akuma from earlier! That was- nope don’t think about it don’t think about it.
He was pulled out of his (rapidly spiraling) thoughts by the careful cha-chunk of the door opening. His eyes went wide, and his head whipped around to the door to see- Juleka. Smirking. Oh no. He quickly brought his hands up to sign, hoping against hope that she could see in the relative darkness of the storage room.
‘Walked in on her having a panic attack. Tried to calm her down, and…’ his signing trailed off.
Juleka’s expression softened. ‘Got it,’ she signed, ‘I’ll tell her parents.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No problem, Sunshine. Go get your girl.’
Before he could question her on what that was supposed to mean, she had already vanished into thin air, the door closing behind her. He sighed. Since he was probably gonna be here a while not like he’s complaining, he figured he should shift to a more comfortable position. He slowly untucked his legs out from under himself, stretching them out across the floor. That done, he carefully guided them down so his back was leaning against the wall. After shuffling a little more, he eventually decided that they were as comfortable as they were gonna get. He felt his eyes struggling to stay open. He fought it as best he could, but eventually, he, much like the girl in his arms, fell to the siren call of sleep.
___
As the two young heroes slept, they were unaware of the hushed conversation occurring on the shelves above their heads.
“…Plagg?” Tikki’s voice was, to almost everyone, quiet enough to be inaudible. Of course, her conversation partner’s sharp hearing was more than enough to catch her words.
“Yes, sugarcube?”
“A. Stop calling me that. B. One cheese danish says this is what gets them to finally talk about their feelings.”
“Time frame?”
“Mmm… 24 hours. Max.”
“I’ll do you one better. This sets up a convoluted chain of events that eventually leads to them getting together, but only after a concerning amount of will-they-won’t-they. 1 month at most.”
“Deal.”
__
A couple hours later, Juleka and the akuma victim, a young woman named Esme Smith, were working together to clean up the remains of the gala’s catering. Juleka had actually managed to work up the courage to break the ice by complimenting the embroidery on the woman’s jacket, and from there the conversation had just kept going. It turned out she was in Paris to study fashion, and she had done the embroidery on her jacket herself. That embroidery was actually what had gotten her akumatized, as it (and her French, which was admittedly Not Great) had been insulted and then ruined by none other than the Style Bitch herself, to the suprise of absolutely nobody who had both a lick of sense and experience with the woman. Unfortunately, Esme, who, while sensible, had never met Audrey, and had, in fact, idolized the woman.
It was safe to say that she no longer idolized her, especially after hearing Juleka’s increasingly long rant about her, emphasized even more by the fact that the teen had switched to Scots, both for Esme’s benefit and access to a wider range of colorful insults to hurl at the woman.
It was in the middle of a particularly heated part of the “Bitchdrey Rant”, as her friends had dubbed it, that she overheard something that caught her attention. She stopped talking completely, earning a confused look from Esme, turning her head to glance at the two speakers. She recognized both in passing, as they went to Dupont with her. She only really knew that they had the reputation of being the worst gossips in the school. If there wasn’t a juicy rumor circulating the school, they’d make one. One of them, an aspiring mean girl (“Vigne”, her brain produced, although whether that was her first or last name was anyone’s guess), murmured quickly into the ear of her little lackey. Juleka couldn’t quite catch everything she was saying, but she did catch the words “Adrien Agreste”, “That baker girl”, and “Storage room”.
“Ah, shit.”