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Marinette isn’t really looking forward to the last day of collège. Of course it’ll make her double life a lot easier. Saving the world is hard enough without also worrying about saving her grades. But she won’t see Adrien at all during vacation. He’d told them several weeks earlier that he would be attending lycèe with the rest of the class, but Marinette was no where near comfortable enough to, you know, talk to him outside of school.
So she was looking ahead to three Adrien-less months, with only Alya and a certain leather-clad cat for company.
Still, she puts on her best cheerful face for the last day of school, and proudly carries a box of macaroons into class without having dropped a single one. She slides into her seat next to Alya without incident, and pokes her friend until she looks up from her phone. “Hey, since you only got half of one last time—“
Alya perks up instantly, snatching the proffered cookie and crunching into it delightedly. “This is great! I told you they’d come out awesome!”
Marinette mumbles something self-deprecating, rubbing the back of her head, when—
“Ooh, macaroons! Can I have one?”
Adrien’s turned around in his seat, focused on the box in her hands with unusual intensity, and she tries her best to respond. “Of course I can—I mean, you can.” The tongue-trip is fairly minor (for her, anyway) but she still feels like melting through the floor as he takes the sweet and turns away.
Alya’s hand finds her knee under the desk, giving a reassuring squeeze, and Marinette drops her head to the table with a groan. “I told you, I can write scripts for you if you want them,” the brunette mutters, quiet enough to avoid attracting attention from the boy in front of them.
“Won’t help,” Marinette mumbles into the tabletop. “My brain melts out my mouth whenever he looks at me.”
Alya pats her reassuringly, then looks up to wave at Nino as he comes in. “Marinette brought cookies!”
“Cookies?” The voice comes from behind her, and Kim vaults his own desk to get to them. “I want one!”
Marinette pulls together her shattered dignity to offer one to him—then to Max, Alix, Juleka, Rose, and Nathanael. Everything is fine—great, even—until Alix slings an arm around her shoulders. “Marinette is the best!”
She apparently completely misses the way the girl goes stiff against her, and Rose is the next to pile on. Her arms slip around Marinette’s waist on the other side, squeezing slightly.
“Group hug!” Kim bellows, loud enough to make her wince, and then she’s pressed from all sides, everyone touching, holding, caging her, and her breath catches in her throat. Alya’s touches are okay, gentle and expected, but this is too much, too much—
She lets out a strangled whimper when Juleka’s hair brushes her cheek, igniting a flash of over-stimulated pain. Her breath is forced out as her heart kicks into overdrive. Too much too much too much!
“No, no, no!” she yelps, squirming away from her over-enthusiastic classmates and falling right into Alya’s lap.
“You okay, girl?”
Alya’s trying, Marinette knows she is, but her voice feels like a blow to the sides of her head and her hands burn white hot into the skin of her upper arms. “Need out,” she manages to squeak before she stumbles out of Alya’s hold, pushes roughly past Nino on the way out the door, and flees for the safety of the locker room.
There are still students straggling to class, but she ignores them. The girl’s locker room is blessedly empty, and she slams the door shut before burying her hands in her hair and yanking. It helps a little, provides an outlet besides the scream that constricts her lungs. She can’t, she can’t, that would draw more attention, but she wants so badly to yell. Maybe it would release just a bit of the tension coiling in her stomach.
She can’t think past the pain, the raw sting of over stimulated nerves, but she’s been taught on a sub-conscious level that screams will only bring more unwanted concern. She settles for pulling her hair harder, sinking to curl up on the floor as she fights for a full breath. Closing her eyes helps, cutting off searing light.
When she starts to tip over sideways she fetches up against the metal supports of a row of lockers, and lets her head swing back to impact it.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The rhythm of three is soothing, and she pauses to breathe before repeating it.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Slowly, slowly she’s calming down, her skin prickling as awareness returns to her extremities, and she shifts her hands down to the sides of her neck. Her fingernails are digging crescents into her flesh, but it continues to ground her.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Finally, finally her racing heart starts to slow, no longer deafening in her ears, and she’s suddenly conscious of tear tracks drying on her cheeks.
Just then the door opens, and she hides her head in her folded arms, an animalistic mewl escaping her lips. Alya always tries to comfort her with touch, and she appreciates it, she does, but she can’t stand the thought of more overwhelming pressure on her skin. It sends her reeling with pain again, and she forces her head back against the support.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
But the expected touch never comes. Instead, quiet footsteps cross the floor, and the intruder sits with a shuffle of clothing, a respectful several feet away. “Are you okay?”
Her head shoots up because that’s Adrien’s voice, and she meets his green eyes for a split second before he glances away to the side and she ducks her head back down. A whine forces its way out of her throat, all that remains of a scream she tries to smother, and she digs her fingernails into her scalp.
“Stupid question, sorry.”
His voice is…calm. Almost toneless. So quiet that it doesn’t grate on her sensitive nerves. No high-pitched anxiety or sharp-edged anger, the things she’s come to expect at times like this. Out of everything in the past few minutes it’s the only thing that doesn’t hurt.
She risks a peek up at him. He’s not looking directly at her, gaze fixed on the floor by her side instead. “Do you want me to leave?”
Another whine slips out when she opens her mouth, unable to put her thoughts into words, and she shakes her head. His voice and presence are soothing, incredibly so, and she matches her breathing to his steady inhales.
“Do you want me to stop talking?”
Her eyes drift closed as she shakes her head, settling into a slow rock. He makes no move to stop her, and she’s grateful.
“Alya said you were probably overwhelmed by all the touching. People are so weird about that kind of thing.”
She lets out an annoyed huff, and he backtracks. “I don’t mean you! I mean other people. They get so offended if you say you don’t want them touching you.”
The tear tracks on her cheeks are getting itchy, and she scrubs at them with the heels of her palms. There’s no accusation in his voice, just a kind of shy humor, inviting her to share in his annoyance with physical contact.
“Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you calm down.”
She tries to speak, really she does, but her thoughts get lost somewhere between her brain and her lips. “I-i…words…no…can’t…no.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to use words. Just let me know if I say anything you don’t like, okay?”
He waits for her to nod then he just…talks. About his favorite video games and favorite flavors of cookies and the way his father controls his diet. He off-handedly mentions something about a climbing wall in his room, and that he wishes Nino could come over to see it when there wasn’t an Akuma on the loose. She’d seen it herself, of course, as Ladybug, but hearing him describe it so casually was different.
One thing made her pause though.
“Probably the best thing about being at school is that people don’t notice when you fake eye contact. Nathalie is big on manners and she always makes me make eye contact no matter how much I don’t want to.”
She looks up at him, and he rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t mind people touching me, but eye contact is the worst.”
A heavy, stabilizing sigh rocks her backwards, and gives her the courage to attempt words again. “Thanks.” Her voice is low and tense, and he smiles.
“Anytime. Do you need anything else?”
Speaking is next to impossible, and she focuses hard on each syllable. “Can’t…talk.”
“That’s fine.” He stretches, rolling both shoulders. “Better though?”
She nods, slowly relaxing into a cross-legged position. “Class?”
He hums agreement and stands, offers her a hand up. “After you, Pr—Marinette.”
The smile on his face is infectious and she returns it, accepts the offered hand, lets him lead the way back. He glances at her as they enter the classroom, jerks his head towards Madame Bustier, and she nods. He speaks quietly to their teacher as she trots up to her seat next to Alya.
A moment later a sheet of notebook paper slides over in front of her. Alya’s favorite red pen scrawls across it. “Now do you want scripts?”
Marinette glances at Adrien as he sits down, and giggles when he makes a little two-fingered salute in her direction. She smiles and bends over Alya’s note. “No, I think we do just fine.”