Chapter Text
“I’m sorry, Chat, I just don’t feel that way about you. It’s… you need to let it go. It’s just not going to happen.”
His heart was breaking.
No. Broken.
He leapt across the rooftops of Paris, struggling to keep the tears that blurred the vista from falling. Ladybug didn’t love him back. She didn’t want him. The knowledge felt like a ball of ice in his stomach.
As he landed on the roof closest to his house, he found himself stopping. When Ladybug had given him her answer, all he had wanted was to escape into his room and hide from the reality of it. But now that he was here, looking at the cold, formal, empty building—his father was out of town—he couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.
Alone except for Plagg. God, he just could NOT with Plagg right now.
His mind raced desperately, trying to think of someone he could turn to for company at a moment like this. Nino? No, he would want to know details and would not let it go until he got them, and obviously that was out of the question under the circumstances. Alya would be even worse. Chloé? He couldn’t even work up a dismissive snort to that one—it was too horrible to contemplate. One by one, he mentally flipped through everyone he knew, trying to think of someone who could possibly not make him feel worse…
Marinette.
Of course.
She was so kind—she always went running after people when they were hurt (usually by Chloé). She was always trying to fix people’s problems, encourage them, and cheer them up. And she wasn’t pushy in the least; he suspected she was too shy to try to drag details out of people who didn’t want to share them.
Marinette. She was the perfect choice. He felt calmer, less desperate, just thinking about it.
Adrien Agreste, still wearing his Cat Noir disguise, turned and began making his way across the city toward the Dupain-Cheng patisserie.
He didn’t go in as Chat Noir, of course. That would be weird.
He dropped to the ground in an alleyway two blocks from the bakery and detransformed.
“Not now, Plagg,” Adrien said as soon as the kwami started to question him, grabbing him and stuffing him into his bag as he stepped out onto the crowded Paris street, forestalling any arguments.
It was a short walk to the bakery. He was greeted warmly by Marinette’s mother, who was working the counter.
“Is Marinette available, Mrs. Cheng?” he asked politely.
“She’s in her room,” Mrs. Cheng answered with a smile as she helped a customer. “You can go on up.”
As Adrien climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the entrance to the family’s living quarters was, he wondered if this was a mistake. Marinette was kind, certainly, but he always secretly wondered if she didn’t like him very much. She was so friendly with most of the class (not Chloe), but she barely talked to him. Things had gotten better in the past few months, but she was still kind of… off… when he was around.
For a moment he considered just turning around and going home. But the thought of that echoing, empty house… he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So he took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
Marinette, of course, was not in any way expecting Adrien Agreste to knock on her door that day. And the shock of opening the front door and finding him standing there would have set off a really epic spaz if it had not been for the fact that he looked completely devastated.
And that was when Marinette Dupain-Cheng discovered the trick to not freaking out when Adrien was in her general vicinity. All that was necessary was for him to show up at her door with a broken heart.
Adrien didn’t even have to say a word. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but five minutes later he found himself ensconced on Marinette’s chaise lounge, wrapped in a fluffy pink blanket, holding a mug of steaming tea, and with a plate of baked goods from downstairs on a plate at his elbow. And Marinette seated on a stool next to him, looking at him with wide, concerned blue eyes.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.
“I… I don’t know.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to. But you can if you decide you want to.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I’m sorry to intrude on your afternoon. I’m sure you have better things to do,” Adrien said, looking down.
“Don’t worry about it,” Marinette said. “I was just working on some designs, but I was a little stuck, so a break is welcome.”
“Can I see them?” he asked. He knew she was talented, and it might take his mind off of... Ladybug. His stomach sank again as he remembered the finality of her words to him.
“Um, sure,” said Marinette, a slight blush creeping across her cheeks. She lifted her sketchbook from the desk and handed it to him.
Adrien had been right—the sketches did distract him. There were an assortment of styles, beautifully rendered. There was a creativity to them, a blend of cute and elegant, that was uniquely Marinette’s, as if her personality was waving at him off the page. They were amazing, and he told her so (she blushed much darker at that). He especially liked her problem design, a men’s shirt that paid a subtle homage to the male half of Paris’ superhero team. When she pointed out the design element that she couldn’t get right, he made a tentative suggestion that earned him a blinding smile.
“Perfect!” she said, sketching the new and improved lines in the margin. “I’ll do a new rendering tomorrow. Thanks, Adrien!”
“You’re welcome,” he replied absently, flipping through the book. There were a couple of designs that seemed to be inspired by Chat Noir, but none at all by Ladybug.
“Not a Ladybug fan, I take it?” he asked, then held up the sketchbook at her quizzical look. “Nothing red and spotted in here.”
“Oh, um, I guess I don’t feel like that particular look is really me, ” Marinette replied, giggling nervously. “I’m more into pink than red. Obviously.” She gestured wryly at the admittedly very pink room around her, then, noticing that Adrien was looking notably more miserable than a minute before, placed her hand comfortingly over his.
Adrien, who had been suffering a wave of pain and heartsickness brought on by his own mention of his unrequited lady love, looked into her sweet, caring face and found himself blurting out the problem.
“There’s this girl I like,” he said. Some emotion crossed Marinette’s face for just an instant, but he couldn’t tell what it was. “But she doesn’t like me back. That’s really all there is to it.” It wasn’t, of course, but what could he say? I’m Chat Noir and I’m in love with Ladybug and she doesn’t want me. Yeah, right. Funny, though—put aside the superhero costumes and it was the same story anyway.
This is when he’d learn if he’d really made a terrible mistake. This is where Nino—or anyone else he could think of—would demand details. Aggressively.
“That seems somewhat… unbelievable,” Marinette said.
“What? Why?” Adrien asked.
“Well—um.... I… I mean, you’re pretty a-amazing. I g-guess I have trouble imagine anyone n-not being into you.” She was flustered. And blushing again.
Adrien shrugged one shoulder, looking down. “I don’t know. This girl knows me pretty well. I have a lot of admirers, you know, but really I’m just a pretty face with not much behind it.”
A finger touched him under the chin and gently lifted his face up to meet her eyes.
“Don’t you ever,” she said quietly, “say something like that about my friend again.”
It took him a split second to understand, and then to his horror the tears he had been holding back for the past hour overflowed and spilled down his face.
“You are smart,” Marinette’s was soft but firm. “You are talented. You are kind, and people really truly like you for the person you are—not because of who your father is or the modelling do for him. And no, you’re not particularly hard to look at, but that is the least of who you are, Adrien.”
Warmth spread through his chest, combatting the ball of ice in his stomach.
Marinette slid onto the chaise next to him and put her arms around him, pulling his head to her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, just held him and gently stroked his shoulder until he was done. Then she handed him a box of tissues with a crooked, encouraging smile.
“Thank you, Marinette,” Adrien said. “You’re really good at this.”
She blushed again, then jumped up. “I know what you need!” Marinette went to a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard box, which she handed to him. The top was printed with their class picture—the one they had taken in the park. Adrien slid off the top and found a tangle of brightly-colored, irregular pieces of cardboard.
“I need to do a puzzle?” he asked, confused.
“You need to do this puzzle. To remind you of all the people who like you and care about you,” she said.
“Did you have this made?”
“Yep. There’s a place that will make any picture into a puzzle for you. I’ve done it with all my class photos. I like this one the best, though.”
Adrien had noticed something sticking out of the pile of puzzle pieces. He dug it out and found that it was three pieces of the puzzle, pieced and glued permanently together and tucked into a miniature ziptop baggie. From the pieces, Juleka’s face beamed happily, a section of Rose’s head to her left and his own shoulder visible behind her.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Couldn’t risk losing that part. It’s the most important,” she replied.
Adrien remembered that day, of course. Juleka’s “curse,” Chloé’s bad behavior, and how it led to Juleka’s akumatization and an epic battle that he spent most of wearing platform heels and a pink dress. And how, after he and Ladybug had defeated and purified Reflekta, Marinette had been the one to talk the photographer into taking another class photo at the end of the day. Ladybug had solved the akuma problem and disappeared, but Marinette had fixed the underlying issue.
Looking at Juleka’s radiant smile, he couldn’t help but think that her part in the incident had been just as vital as Ladybug’s. “You’re pretty amazing yourself, you know that?”
He looked up. Marinette was bright red, avoiding eye contact, and fussing with some stuff on her desk. She’s great at giving compliments, he thought, but not good at taking them. After only a few seconds, Marinette pulled herself together and ushered her guest downstairs to a more puzzle-appropriate table.
She was right. It was exactly what he needed, distracting him from his troubled thoughts while reminding him that people cared about him.
Adrien left the patisserie feeling fairly decent. But with each step he took away from the warmth of the Dupain-Cheng home and toward the coldness of his own, his spirits sank. He could feel despair rising inside him. He discovered, though, that thinking of Marinette’s warmth and caring made him feel a little better. So he focused on thinking of Marinette instead of… her. And that made things a little easier.