Chapter Text
"Kid, just trust me: give up now."
Adrien shook his head, jaw set in a determined line. "There's always hope, Plagg."
"There are some things that not even hope can fix, and this is one of them." The tiny demigod floated over to sit atop Adrien's shoulder, giving it a pat. "If you give up now, no one else has to get hurt."
"Hurt?" Adrien's eyes went wide. "What are you talking about? No one's been hurt."
Plagg covered his face with both paws. "Tell that to my poor, mistreated eyes! I've had to watch you try to cultivate that monstrosity for three weeks now!"
"Two weeks; I've been counting."
Thousands of years old though Plagg might have been, the noise he made was unlikely to have been seen as complimentary in any era. "And another two weeks of counting won't do you any good, either. I say dispose of the evidence and try again in a couple years."
Adrien sighed. "You're cruel; you know that?"
"No, cruel would be me telling you it looks great and leaving you to find out from your school pictures that I was being sarcastic." Plagg nudged Adrien's cheek, giving him a conspiratorial wink. "I doubt even Whatsername would want to kiss you with that thing in the way."
"Chloe?" Giving his fledgling mustache a thoughtful stroke, Adrien weighed the thought. "I mean, if it'll get her to stop hanging on me, I might just have to keep it the whole school year."
Plagg snorted. "No, not her. I mean..." He trailed off, tiny paws waggling in circles as he searched for a name he'd never bothered to learn. "Eh, whatever. Fewer girls pining after you means fewer distractions from your duties. Like keeping your beloved and long-suffering kwami supplied with Camembert."
Adrien shook his head, a little smile flitting across his face. "At least I can trust you to have your priorities straight."
-----
"Okay, dude, you know I love you, right?"
"Ummm..." Adrien glanced sidelong at Nino, forcing a smile. "Yeah?"
"And you trust me to have your back when it counts, right?"
Adrien's smile wavered. "You're scaring me, but... yes?"
The hand that Nino clapped on Adrien's shoulder was as solemn as a courtroom oath. "So trust me now. I'm gonna give you the spare razor out of my backpack, and you're gonna go to the bathroom and take that thing off your lip before the girls have to see it. You don't want this to be the main topic of conversation for our final hangout before we go back to school."
"Seriously?" Adrien rolled his eyes. "It's not that bad, Nino. I mean, sure, it's a little thin, but it's not like your new mustache is a paragon of bushiness either. It'll grow."
"I'm not talking about the thickness, man. The parts that have hair are... okay-ish. You're seventeen, not twenty-seven, so the expectations are different. I'm talking about the bald spots." Nino's finger hovered no more than a centimeter from Adrien's face; the proximity almost itched, but not quite. "There, and there."
"I'm blond, Nino. People won't notice."
Nino opened his mouth to retort, but his eyes darted over Adrien's shoulder and he gave a shrug instead. "Whatever. If you don't wanna take it from me, let's ask her."
"Ask who?" Adrien turned to find himself face to face with Alya.
She looked him over for a moment, eyes lingering on his face. "Well, I guess there's a shortage of razors in the Agreste mansion," she drawled, a teasing gleam in her eye.
"Nice to see you too, Alya. I've had a great summer, and you? Kicked out of etiquette school again?" He replied, tone utterly deadpan despite the grin that threatened to ruin his delivery. Of all his close friends, only he and Alya had the right dynamic to banter like this; Nino wasn't that kind of person, and Marinette... well, now and then Marinette took advantage of an opportunity to tease him, but first she had to get past her nerves enough to string together a full sentence. He wondered, not for the first time, if Marinette idolizing his father was what kept her so flustered. It wasn't like he was going to tattle on her or something for making a joke or two...
"Hello? Earth to Agreste," Alya grumbled, waving a hand in front of Adrien's face.
Adrien jerked back to the real world. "Huh?"
"Y'know, this whole back-and-forth thing works a lot better when there's some back and not just forth. But it's okay; I forgive you because you're pretty." Alya's smirk was wicked in the best of ways; she was one of the few people allowed to make that joke precisely because she'd always seen past the model image. "As I was saying, I'd be happy to let you borrow my razor if you've misplaced yours and can't afford to buy another."
Adrien clapped a hand to his chest. "Et tu, Brute? You're conspiring with Nino to make sure my mustache never reaches its full potential, aren't you?"
"Oh. Oh no. You got us. You figured it out." Alya's delivery was as toneless as a list of countries and capitals. "We're both conspiring with Hawkmoth to make sure the little caterpillars on your upper lip are set free to become beautiful butterflies."
"Hey, it's a little patchy, I'll admit, but I kinda like it," Adrien replied, giving the mustache an exaggerated stroke. "And the important thing is, my dad despises it, but I got him to agree I don't have to shave it off until my next photoshoot."
"You should keep it, then." As three heads snapped around to stare at her, Marinette shrank back, cheeks going crimson. When had she even arrived? And why was she encouraging the mustache after Adrien had admitted her fashion hero hated it? "I-I mean," she stammered, "If it's a little bit of freedom, then that's a good thing, right? Who cares about a bare patch or two if it makes you happy?"
Adrien winced. "It's obvious even from over there?"
"Well, uh, no." Marinette's gaze dropped to the ground; it seemed almost as if she were willing herself to sink down into the spot where she had trained her eyes. "I just, um... I overheard the conversation. I can't see it from all the way over here."
"Then maybe you should get closer, girl," Alya said, a devious spark lighting up her entire body. Sliding up behind Marinette, she began pushing her friend toward Adrien.
"I don't think Adrien wants that!" Marinette's heels were dug into the ground, her body leaning back at a full forty-five degrees to halt Alya's progress. Marinette would hold back the whole world out of respect for Adrien's comfort; she was kind to a fault.
"It's okay." Straightening his posture, Adrien flashed a grateful smile at Marinette. "Maybe I do need an unbiased opinion."
With a gulp that turned to a squeak as she was pushed back upright, Marinette stumbled forward to within a single small step of Adrien. She raised one hand, fingers trembling. "M-may I?" At Adrien's nod, she brought her fingers toward his face, letting them come to rest on the two patches of bare skin on his upper lip. "Here they are."
Adrien's breath caught in his chest, eyes fluttering shut at the contact. How did a classmate's fingers touching his lips in an utterly platonic way feel this good? Some horrible, illogical compulsion was urging him to tilt his head up ever so slightly and place a kiss to those fingers, and it took every shred of his self control to keep from doing just that. Marinette could barely bring herself to touch him in the first place; if he kissed her, even just her hand, she'd never feel comfortable around him again.
A small eternity passed, both far too long and not nearly long enough, and those fingertips lifted away from Adrien's skin, leaving only a tingling memory in their wake. "For what it's worth," Marinette whispered, prompting Adrien's eyes to open to the sight of dazzling blue, "You're gorgeous anyway."
This time, Adrien couldn't help but gasp. Had Marinette just called him gorgeous? The same Marinette who couldn't even make eye contact with him, who couldn't seem to get over her nerves around him because of his father's work? Or was it something entirely different that made her nervous, something about Adrien himself?
Adrien had heard a joke once about the dangers of a paradigm shifting without a clutch, but he never imagined the gears of his mind would simply grind to a total halt, leaving him incapable of doing anything but watching, slack-jawed, as Marinette turned purple and bolted away.
"Gotta go I left the oven on sorry!" Marinette screeched over her shoulder, disappearing down the street.
As Nino and Alya leaned on one another, howling and wheezing with laughter, Adrien's faculties returned slowly to his body. He had a lot of thinking to do... after he'd bought a razor and taken care of his short-lived facial hair. "But... she lives in a bakery, and her parents are home," he murmured, blinking like an owl. "The oven's supposed to be on."
His friends only cackled harder.
-----
This was stupid. This was so stupid. His three closest friends had already told him his mustache was ridiculous-- well, Marinette hadn't said that, precisely, but she wasn't the kind who would say that to anyone, much less him. Why did the Akuma have to attack just as he was headed to shave the stupid thing off? It was so, so stupid.
All those years of private tutoring had been utterly squandered, apparently; not only was he acting totally stupid while completely aware of his own actions, but he couldn't even come up with a better word than stupid.
As Ladybug called for her Lucky Charm, Chat Noir's eyes widened, and he found a far less complimentary term on his tongue. A can of shaving cream? Really? The universe was just dead set against him today.
Still, the foam worked precisely as needed, blinding the many-eyed monstrosity long enough for Chat to retrieve the pair of eyeglasses nestled on the bridge of the monster's nose and snap them in half. The butterfly flitted out as usual, only to be trapped by his faithful partner's yo-yo. One purification ritual and a Miraculous Cure later, everything was back to normal, and Chat grabbed hold of Ladybug's waist, extending his baton to carry them up and away from prying eyes for their victory celebration.
"Pound it!" Chat exclaimed, holding out his fist and grinning at Ladybug... who was staring at his face, mouth agape. "Uh, sorry, my Lady, but the Akuma caught me just as I was about to shave, you see, and--"
Chat's explanation died mid-sentence as Ladybug placed gloved fingertips, soft as silk and as gentle as a whisper, on the two bare patches of skin on his upper lip. "Adrien?"
The hand Chat had been holding out dropped to his side, and he stood still, mind racing and going nowhere like a car stuck in neutral with the gas pedal to the floor. "I, uh..." He gulped. "Yeah?"
Ladybug let out a strange whistling sound, almost like an old teakettle, and she yanked her hand back as though his face were an open flame. A few seconds later, though, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and that trademark Ladybug confidence came back in full. "Just so you know, I still say you're gorgeous either way, but unless you're very fond of them, it's probably time to shave those whiskers, kitty cat. You're looking a little scruffy."
"Muh," blurted Chat, articulate as ever. As Ladybug's earrings beeped and she turned to take her leave, he managed a single word. "Still?"
Ladybug glanced back over her shoulder, a playful gleam in those dazzling blue eyes. Someone else's blue eyes had been dazzling, too. Someone special. "Still. If you haven't figured it out yet, you will soon. Come find me later, gorgeous boy!" With that, she cast her yo-yo out across the rooftops and swung away.
Chat's limbs turned to thallium-- not quite as far down the periodic table as lead, but awfully close. As he sat down hard, a single distinctive pair of syllables echoed in his head, two different voices merging slowly into one,the image of a blue-eyed girl swimming to the front of his mind.
"Gorgeous," he whispered.