Chapter Text
When Adrien’s mother left, his father stopped being his father.
Not literally, of course. Gabriel Agreste was still – unfortunately – one hundred percent Adrien’s biological father. But with his wife gone, Gabriel retreated into the world of fashion like a perfectly-dressed hermit. His passion for his work grew into an obsession with being the best in the business, at the expense of everything, including his fourteen-year-old son.
So most of the time, Adrien was alone. He discovered quickly that he wasn’t good at being alone.
The first thing he did was force his father’s assistant, Nathalie, to let him attend public school. The second thing he did was become such a problem child that he bounced around public schools at a neck-breaking pace, expelled from each one for something different. He was out on plagiarism charges at his first middle school. Then, out for smoking cigarettes in the lunchroom. Cursing out teachers before exams. Selling weed on the corner outside his classroom. He became Adrien Agreste, family disappointment. It was just for attention, and bad attention, at that, but he was too angry to care.
Four years later, eighteen-year-old Adrien didn’t give a fuck about anything.
It was his father’s fault, really. He had driven Adrien’s mother away, and ruined all of their lives. He had ignored his son and pushed away everyone in his life. He had made Adrien hate everything, even himself.
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Marinette hated Wednesdays. They were the half-point of the week, and they were always a disappointment. Not as hectic as Monday, not as welcome as Friday. Wednesdays were boring, plain and simple. So she sat in her seat, second row, in the aisle, next to her best friend Alya, doodling in her notebook instead of listening to her teacher.
“I expect you all to turn in your papers to me via email before midnight on Sunday,” the teacher, a pretty young woman in a tight pencil skirt with her hair in an even tighter bun, lectured them, glancing at a boy in the back of the room, “Right, Kim?”
Kim, a tall, muscular track-and-field star, protested, “Hey!”
Chuckles came from all corners of the room, and Marinette smiled to herself. Madame Bustier looked less than pleased.
“Full credit only if it’s on time! Now…back to Gautier.”
Marinette had no interest in Gautier, no offense to the classic French author, so she kept drawing. The clothing design sketch on the margin of her notebook was starting to take shape. It was a dark, form-fitting men’s suit, the jacket cut long into a tailcoat. Literature class always made her want to design something retro.
“Marinette? Marinette!”
Caught. Damn. Marinette gritted her teeth, not ready to let go of her sketch just yet. Her teacher was walking toward her desk with all intention of confiscating her work, when all of the sudden the classroom door banged open as if it had been kicked.
“Excuse me!” Madame Bustier exclaimed, forcibly distracted from Marinette and her misdeeds.
Standing there in the doorway was the most beautiful boy Marinette had ever seen. He had messy blond hair, and big green eyes, and he wore an expression of careful disinterest that rivaled the smirk twitching on the corners of his mouth. He looked, in short, like he had definitely kicked the door open.
Madame Bustier, teetering between shock and anger, eyed him, “Who are you?”
“Adrien,” he replied, simply.
“Adrien…oh, Adrien Agreste? You were supposed to be in this class starting on Monday. What happened?”
He looked at her, sizing her up as he answered, “I didn’t come.”
“Okay, well, I’m afraid you have a lot to do to catch up,” the teacher said dubiously, “Someone will have to give you the last few assignments and explain them…”
Before Marinette knew it, before she could stop staring at this exquisite specimen that had appeared in front of her and think up a good excuse to worm her way out of the spotlight, the teacher’s eyes were on her.
“Marinette, you’ll do it, yes?”
Alya elbowed her sharply, eyes wide, but it was too late.
The teacher looked satisfied with her lack of protests, “Believe it or not, you’re one of my best students, Marinette. And maybe this will keep you focused on your own work, too. Now, Gautier…”
Naturally, the only open seat in class was right in front of Marinette, so this boy, Adrien, settled himself there. She stared at the back of his head, mesmerized, as the teacher began lecturing again.
He was gorgeous. She had never seen someone who looked so much like a runway model. Besides his dirty skinny jeans and the purposeful disarray of his hair, he could be on the cover of a magazine. Or on a billboard.
He was also silent as the grave. For someone who made that grand of an entrance, Marinette was expecting Adrien to be just as boisterous going forward. But he didn’t speak another word all of class, instead, he sat dutifully taking notes on the rest of the lesson.
Needless to say, Marinette was completely enchanted, so much so that she didn’t noticed class had ended for the day until Adrien turned around and leaned on her desk.
“So, what’s your name again?” he asked, glancing between his phone and her face.
She gaped at him for a few seconds before choking out, “Are…you talking to me?”
“Do you see anyone else here?”
Marinette actually had to turn around and confirm that everyone else had indeed already left the classroom. He was undoubtedly talking to her. So she willed herself to face him again.
“I’m Marinette.”
Adrien grinned, apparently nonplussed by her confusion. “Pretty name.”
“Oh, um, thanks.”
“Of course.”
If he was really this beautiful and this charming, he was deadly. It made Marinette nervous to just be breathing the same air as him.
“And you’re catching me up on literature, is that it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess. I can…um…I can just write down all the assignments for you now, if-”
But Adrien interrupted her, pressing a sticky note onto her desk, “I’m already late for something, but let’s meet up later, okay? You can just go over everything for me.”
“Later?” she repeated.
“Yeah, we can get coffee or something,” he said, vaguely, flipping a hand at her in a wave goodbye, “Text me.”
As he strolled out the door, black boots that Marinette had just noticed tapping loudly on the tile floors, she looked down at the sticky note. It had his phone number on it.
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That evening found Marinette FaceTiming with Alya and practically crying in frustration.
“I can’t do this!” she moaned, face buried in a pillow, “He’s so pretty.”
“Pretty weird,” Alya amended.
“Why does this always happen to me?” Marinette asked, pouting.
Alya scoffed, “Always. Overexaggerating much? Girl, chill.”
“I always get paired up with the new kid! But I’m no good with pretty people! When he looked at me, I could actually feel my brain shrivel up and die.”
“Oh, yeah, remember when Juleka moved to town? You couldn’t go ten minutes without tripping over something.”
Marinette let out a little frustrated whine. “This is even worse!”
“Because you’re more thirsty for this boy than I am while watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.”
“Ha ha, very funny,” Marinette said sarcastically, “Alya, I can’t even talk to him in complete sentences. I won’t even be able to make plans to meet up. He’ll just wait up for me forever and then flunk literature because I’m an idiot.”
Alya rolled her eyes, “Text him. Like he said to. God, Marinette, it’s a good thing you’re pretty, because you have zero game. Zilch. Nada.”
“Texting might be okay,” Marinette said.
“Yep. Work those digits. Call me later, girl. Bye.”
And Alya clicked off, leaving Marinette staring at Adrien’s sticky note.
Texting the number yielded a stream of rapid-fire, one word replies from Adrien. With more than a little difficulty, Marinette managed to arrange to have him come to her parents’ bakery to meet up so she could get this task done as quickly as possible.
She had decided after Alya’s pep talk that wanted nothing to do with this Adrien, no matter how pretty he was. He was trouble, and she didn’t need any more trouble.
Or, she thought that, until he walked into the bakery.
“Hi, Adrien!” she found herself saying, far too eagerly.
So much for that.
“Hi,” he replied, leaning against the counter.
Marinette pulled out the list of class assignments that she had prepared in hopes of making some small part of the meetup go smoothly and slid it toward him, “I just wrote everything down. That way you can go.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Not-not that I want you to go. I want you to stay. No, but you don’t have to, I just-”
“Right,” he interrupted, “Thanks, thanks for this, Marinette.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I should probably get started on this right away, I should just…” he pointed at the door.
“Right, right, I understand,” she said.
“Well, alright,” he waved.
Marinette bit her lip, and then blurted, “Wait!”
He turned back, both eyebrows raised now.
“Do you…if you want, we can study together. That way you can make sure you’re caught up,” she said weakly.
“Oh,” he seemed surprised, “Oh, yeah, okay. That would be nice.”
“Okay.”
“I really do have to go, though,” he said, hurrying back toward the exit, “See you in class.”
“Yeah.”
She watched him until she couldn’t make out his blond hair in the sea of people on the sidewalk.
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“Girl, you gotta think faster than that!”
Alya was yelling at her, the next day in class. It was a little unnecessary, considering the lecture had just let out and they were some of the only people left.
“What are you doing, agreeing to help him?” Alya demanded.
Marinette blushed, “Um…because he’s cute?”
“He looks like he smashes car windows for fun,” Alya replied.
“That’s not too far off the mark, actually,” said the boy who sat in front of Alya, a bespectacled aspiring filmmaker named Nino.
Alya looked at him, face scrunched with questions, “What?”
“That’s Adrien Agreste,” Nino explained, as if that covered it.
And apparently for Alya, it did. She grabbed Marinette by both arms and shook her.
“You agreed to be study-buddies with Adrien Agreste.”
Marinette blinked, “I don’t know what that means.”
Alya rolled her eyes, “He’s the son of that fashion designer, Gabriel Agreste.”
“He was a…problem child,” Nino said, “We went to school together a few years ago, and he got expelled like two months in.”
“Expelled?” Alya pressed.
Nino nodded, “He used to steal from lockers and stuff. Cut class. Vandalize. The teachers all hated him. Plus he copied my entire history essay word for word once. Name and all. Turned it in under my name, if you can fucking believe it.”
“Then why did he sit next to you?” Alya asked.
“Familiar face?” Nino shrugged, “Who knows. But you really fucked up this time, Marinette.”
But Marinette was stuck on a different detail, “Gabriel Agreste. Like…international celebrity, sells his clothes on the avenue Montaigne, outdid Christian Lacroix in a design contest once, Gabriel Agreste?”
“Yes,” Alya said.
“I didn’t know he had a son,” Marinette said.
“They don’t get along. Nobody gets along with Adrien,” Nino said, smiling dourly, “Good luck.”
And as the two girls packed their own things and set out on the walk home, Marinette tried hard not to wither under Alya’s glare.
“How are you going to get out of this?” Alya asked.
Marinette didn’t answer. She looked up at the adorned balconies of the buildings that spanned the streets. It was times like this that Marinette was glad her parents’ bakery was right across the street from the school; she and Alya liked to hang out at one of their houses after school whenever they could swing it, and her turn meant a short walk.
“Maybe I don’t want to get out of it,” Marinette said slowly.
“What?” Alya was dumbfounded.
The girls climbed the narrow staircases of the Dupain-Cheng household up to the pink-polka-dotted loft that served as Marinette’s bedroom.
She was honest, “Maybe I want to get to know this guy.”
“Mari, that is the worst idea I have ever heard, and it was your idea for us both to get Brazilian waxes for my birthday.”
Marinette looked at her best friend, blue eyes earnest as she sat down on her chaise lounge, “But Alya, aren’t you just a little bit curious about this super gorgeous should-be male model who gets kicked out of schools and hates his famous father?”
Alya considered this, lips pursed, “Gorgeous, yeah, if you like white guys.”
“Alya!”
“Kidding…kind of.”
“He’s just interesting,” Marinette said, “He’s always got somewhere to be, you know? He’s bailed out of studying twice already but from what Nino said, the only thing he does is get into trouble. Where does he go? What’s he doing?”
“I just don’t understand what’s so compelling. He’s a loser, plain and simple,” Alya replied.
Marinette scooped an overstuffed throw pillow into her lap and fiddled with the tassels on the ends. Alya had a point. There seemed to be nothing redeeming about Adrien Agreste. But he was new. He was exciting.
“I think I have a crush on him.”
Alya snorted, “You spent exactly twenty minutes in him presence and you have a crush on him? Mari, that’s stupid.”
“I want to hang out with him, not marry him!” Marinette protested, “Why can’t I make friends with the bad boy?”
“You don’t have TIME for this.”
“I can make time!”
“…At least let me get some dirt on him. Then you’ll know if he’s ever, I dunno, killed someone and stuffed their body in a trash compactor,” Alya said finally.
“Thanks for that mental image.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”