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The akuma had been ridiculous - equipped with way more avenues of attack than was fair. Flung tires on their own would have been enough of a weapon, you’d think, but no, he had to have tentacles, too. Adrien carefully spread the arnica gel over his still-stinging skin and hoped Ladybug was faring better in the aftermath.
--
Clearing out a room for Alya’s new club was a new and special kind of torture with the way his side was throbbing. The ibuprofen Adrien had taken at lunch was wearing off, bringing his injuries into sharper relief. But he’d agreed, and Adrien Agreste had no good reason to let down one of his few friends, because Chat Noir’s exploits couldn’t be anything to do with Adrien. Turning to hand Nino a box made his skin stretch painfully over where it was swollen, but Adrien kept his face blank. This had to be over soon, right?
“Can we call it for today?” Nino asked plaintively. “Maybe leave the rest to the actual club members if they show?”
Adrien winced internally. That definitely seemed like the wrong tack to take. Nino seemed to realize it, too, eyes widening slightly in direct proportion to how Alya’s narrowed.
“What do you mean if? I can’t be the only aspiring journalist at this school, can I?”
“I’m sure you’ll get plenty of applicants,” Nino said placatingly, his hands raised in surrender. “And when you do, you can make them haul the rest of this dusty crap out as the club president slash founder slash Holy Journalism Tyrant for Life.”
“I…that’s a good point. Didn’t think of using freshman as a labor source before…”
“Thank you,” Nino said, sagging in relief. “Can we split? That Composition paper isn’t going to write itself.”
“What are you so worried about? That’s not due next Friday,” Alya said, packing up her stuff with Marinette.
"Uh, no, actually it's due tomorrow," Adrien said.
“…you know today is the fifteenth, right?” Marinette asked, looking worried.
“Eh, I’ll just do it tonight,” Alya shrugged, grabbing her bag and heading out with Nino.
Adrien surreptitiously checked on Plagg in his bag where he’d been napping, then grabbed a last bundle of recycling.
“It’s fifteen pages! You can’t do that in one night!”
“Don’t underestimate the Holy Journalism Tyrant for Life,” Alya said, mock-stern. She turned and popped her head back through the door, demanding of Marinette, “Coming?”
“Yeah just give me a sec,” Marinette said.
Alya didn’t wait, just took off, absconding with Nino.
“You don’t have to wait up for me,” Adrien said, trying not to make any involuntary noise as he sat and finished gathering his things. Home. Painkillers. Meet up with Ladybug later to make sure she was okay. “I’m sure you’ve got somewhere you need to be.”
“Not really,” Marinette said, shrugging. She seemed a lot more nonchalant than usual, which was kind of nice. “I took care of the Comp paper last weekend so I don’t really have anything I need to do tonight.”
“Can Alya really do fifteen pages in one night?” Adrien asked. He knew he’d have trouble churning out that much even if he skipped patrol and didn’t sleep. He still had his conclusion to go on his own paper, but it was only a matter of a couple hours’ work.
“She’s done more in less time. She’s been able to pull out some pretty stunning essays out of nowhere,” Marinette said.
“I believe it,” Adrien said, then chuckled. Okay, now just to stand up again, then out the door, along the hall, down the stairs, and if he was very lucky Gorilla would have painkillers in the car. “I remember that paper she did for History where she actually convinced the teacher that Robespierre was actually pretty reasonable and-ah!”
Trying to get out of the chair had been a mistake. His entire side throbbed, and trying to sit back down went even worse. The chair flew out from under him, and his reflexes were only human, so he landed on the floor with a clatter and a flash of pain. He sucked in his breath, trying not to scream as agony spiked through him. Oh, God. He tried to steady his breathing, tried to at least look normal.
Marinette knelt beside him, exclaiming, “Adrien! Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he wheezed. Hell, now he had to get up before she thought it was serious. He struggled up on his elbows, though it shot pain all through him. “J-just-mngh-stomach cramps; th-that’s all.”
“A-Are you sure?” Marinette asked, hovering in concern.
Adrien leaned back, and wished she weren’t quite so sweet. He wanted privacy to curl up in the fetal position and cry a little bit before he dragged himself upright and hobbled to the street. But no, she was nice, and solicitous, and, oh, shit, reaching for the hem of his shirt where it’d ridden up. He tugged it back down to cover the bruising, holding it firmly in place. “Yeah, just some bad cheese. D-don’t worry, I just need to-”
Marinette interrupted him by tugging his hem free, face intent and not brooking any disagreement. He looked away from her, trying to come up with some better reason, one that would make her stop.
“Cheese did this?” Marinette asked, sounding wildly skeptical.
“It was, uh, very aggressive cheese,” Adrien joked. If he was lucky, she’d let it drop. “One of those stinky, runny cheeses…must’ve had a bad reaction or something.”
“Adrien,” she said, shaking her head. He was never lucky. His superpower was bad luck - he really had to remember that. Murphy’s Law was going to persecute him into insanity.
“I…look, it was just an accident,” Adrien said soothingly. “Got a little careless, that’s all.”
She touched his bruise lightly, and he’d have flinched away from the soft touch except he knew it would hurt more than her hands.
“Careless?” she whispered distantly, staring at his stomach.
“Should be fine,” Adrien said. “So as long as I get some ice on it.”
She gasped at that, gaze flying to his. Marinette stared at him like she’d never seen him before, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She looked utterly horrified, and what must she be thinking? “L-look I know this doesn’t look good but it was just an accident,” Adrien assured her. “I’m not…that is to say things are fine at home…well fine as they’ve ever been but I’m not getting…my dad didn’t do this, I promise.” His dad would never leave marks on a commodity, which was how Adrien ranked on good days. On bad days he didn’t rank at all.
“I…I can’t… Are you…are you serious?” Marinette backed away from him, sliding down to sit against the wall. She was staring at him thunderstruck and it was more than a little disconcerting.
Adrien struggled to sit upright, because she was acting strange enough that he felt the need to keep her in sight. “Marinette? Are you okay?”
She wrapped her arms around her shins, eyes now perfectly round in some kind of shock. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then just gaped.
“You’re starting to worry me,” Adrien said, perturbed. He rose to his feet and walked towards her slowly, as much for her sake as his. She looked really freaked out. “Marinette?” He sank down onto his haunches in front of her. If he sat again, he’d never get up, but he wanted to be at least kind of in her line of sight when she stopped staring into space.
She blinked, hard, and her gaze snapped to him, slingshotting from focusless to laserlike. Abruptly, she grabbed his face.
Adrien froze in shock as she traced some invisible line on his cheekbones. She rolled up onto her knees, kneeling between his legs, very little space between them.
“I’m fine,” she said, and shook her head. Her gaze darted from his face down to his side, where his shirt has fallen back into place, hiding his bruises. “I’ve…I’ve actually been worried about you, though.”
“M-me?” Adrien stammered. He was tempted to back away, some instinct screaming that it was the only route to self-preservation, but the glitter in her eyes kept him frozen. "You...why were you-”
“Yeah.” Marinette laughed, an edge of wildness in it. “All day, actually.”
Adrien frowned at her.
Her thumb traced over his cheek again, strange and intimate and hinting at something else. “All night, come to think of it. I thought you were…I don’t know, bleeding internally or something. If I didn’t see you I was going to-”
He put his hands over hers to still them. There was something in that gesture, but he couldn’t think about that and decipher what she was talking about at the same time. “Marinette, what are you talking about? Why were you worried about me? I said I was fine and I-”
“Liar,” Marinette said, and reclaimed one of her hands.
Adrien’s face felt oddly cold where she’d stopped touching it. “I’m not lying! I really don’t-”
“You don’t have to pretend to be such a tough guy," Marinette said, her cadence slipping far out of step with their conversation. "That...that must sting like crazy, huh?”
It struck him then, all at once, and he swayed away from her at the impact of it. “I…you…”
Adrien brought up a hand to cover his mouth, to hold in the wild speculation. She couldn’t be. But if she was - she’d been hurt, too. His eyes drifted to where he knew she’d been injured, and before he could say anything, she lifted her shirt. An angry bruise marked her side, exactly where it would have been if - his breath fled him. "T...tire?"
"Tire," she said, and chuckled, like she’d regained all of her equilibrium. Which of course she would - she always did.
Adrien had to confirm. "T...tentacles?"
"Still don't know what those were about," Marinette said, then bit her lip as she stared up at him. Her eyes were bright with mischief and confidence and affection, and they were so, so blue. He’d rhapsodized about that particular shade of blue, had fallen in love with that particular light in them. He couldn’t believe he’d never noticed before.
“…your eyes are blue,” Adrien said softly, starting to smile. They looked bluer surrounded by red, but they were still a perfect depthless marine blue.
“Yes,” Marinette said, wrinkling her nose at him. “Thank you for noticing.”
“It’s really you, isn’t it?” Adrien said dreamily, so happy that the pain in his side didn’t matter for the moment.
“Yeah,” Marinette said, and her smile started small, but it was like the sun rising even as outside the classroom it started to set.
Adrien let out a contented sigh as his world settled into perfect alignment, his Lady before him and dazzling.