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“What in the world is Father thinking with this new line?” Adrien asks, flipping through pages of sketches. “I’m going to look like I’m forty.”
“It’s a formal line,” Nathalie says, accepting the tablet back from Adrien as he slumps into his seat. “You’ll look dressy.”
“Forty,” Adrien grumbles.
“You can’t keep modeling teen fashion forever,” Nathalie chides gently. “Your father is merely trying to ease you through the transition a bit early.”
“All right,” Adrien says after a sullen few seconds.
“We’ll need to fix your hair, though,” Nathalie says.
“What’s taking so long?” Nathalie says after an hour.
“I’ve used three tubs of product and it still won’t stay down,” Adrien’s stylist tells Nathalie with a shrug. “Might not be able to get exactly the look Gabriel wants.”
“He’ll get the look that he envisions,” Nathalie says coolly.
“Not if his hair doesn’t cooperate,” the stylist counters.
Nathalie sighs and directs a level look at Adrien. “Fifteen minutes,” she says after a moment. “Do the best you can.”
“All right,” Adrien’s stylist says as Nathalie walks away to harangue the photographer. “Mathilda, get the hairspray, please!”
“Adrien’s new photos come out?” Alya says with a knowing look as she and Marinette walk to class.
Marinette, vibrating with excitement with a magazine clutched in her hands, nods happily beside her.
“The new line, too,” she hums as she opens it carefully and starts flipping through the pages. “Oh, he’s going to look so handsome.”
Alya sits back with a roll of her eyes and a smirk, waiting for Marinette’s usual babble of praising adjectives.
After a few seconds of silence she glances sideways to see Marinette staring at the magazine with a half-wooden, half-contemplative air.
“Uh oh,” she mutters to herself. “Hey, Mari? What’s up?”
“He’s,” Marinette says, “he’s, he’s, uh.”
Wordlessly, she hands the magazine over to Alya, who raises an eyebrow.
“Emo?” Alya suggests.
“Alya!” Marinette hisses.
“He does.”
“He looks,” Marinette says, a mite defensively, “uh, professional. Older. More mature.”
“Emo.”
“He does not look emo,” Marinette hisses.
“Speaking as an objective, third-party observer, he looks emo,” Alya says, handing the magazine back to Marinette with an amused grin. “Or hipster, if you want to go that route.”
Behind them, Adrien is reddening steadily while Nino tries and mostly succeeds at stifling his laughter.