“Miraculous! Adrinette where Marinette is an upperclassman. Her main interaction with Adrien is at her parent’s shop, where he always grabs something during lunch break. She’s still a hot mess around him, and he’s still a complete flirt with Ladybug. Go.” For @littlestartopaz , on the AU meme.
C’mon now, we’ve all basically agreed that I’ve co-opted this meme as an excuse to get AU prompts and write a lot on every single one of them. So Marinette is seventeen here and Adrien is still a lonely fifteen-year-old kid who gets devoted to anyone who seems like they care about his feelings. There’s no regard whatsoever for the canon timeline here, we’re pretending that they’re already working together by the time he starts public school.
- The
first time Adrien Agreste walks into her parents’ bakery, Marinette hides
behind the counter and hyperventilates for a solid minute while he looks
around. She stutters her way through
taking his order, and he gives her a small smile that genuinely makes her heart
stop a little. (She’s going to feel bad
about that later, once she knows how much it bothers him when people get fluttery
over him, but look, just look, he’s a
very handsome boy and she’s awkward, this is a matter of record, Alya has the
proof.)
- And
then he actually sits at the counter and picks through his sandwich and talks
to her, and he’s nice and funny and wry, with a sweet self-deprecating
smile. Marinette can barely string a
sentence together, but he doesn’t make fun of her or question her and he seems
fine with pretending that she has no idea who he is. She might die, she might have a heart attack,
but what a way to go, that’s all she’s saying, under those bright green eyes.
- When
a man who, honestly, looks like he must have some gorilla in him turns up at
the door and Adrien droops in his seat, Marinette almost can’t stand the
crestfallen look on his face.
- “I kind of broke out,” Adrien admits, and doesn’t address how utterly alarming that sentence is at all. “It was really nice to meet you, Marinette.”
- “Uh—you too,” she says, blank with shock. “Broke out?”
- “I’m supposed to be at a tutoring session,” Adrien says, another wry twist to his lips. She doesn’t like it as much as she did before, but there’s nothing she can do about it, so instead she packs up the rest of his sandwich and slips a few chocolate macarons into the bag. Everyone likes chocolate, right? And her papa’s macarons are literal gods’ food.
- Adrien
leaves with the gorilla and Marinette stands there, stock-still, for five more
minutes, until another customer comes in and shakes her out of it.
- Ladybug
goes out that night and she swings by the Agreste mansion. Adrien’s room is empty—or what must be
Adrien’s room, given that it’s the only one with any textbooks in it—but he has
a whole mansion to wander around in. It
was silly to think he’d be there. Chat
Noir finds her sitting on the roof of the building, her lips pursed in a frown. She means to keep chewing over what happened
today, what Adrien said about breaking out, but Chat Noir knows her by now, and
teases her gently out of her dark mood, until she rolls her eyes and laughs at
him as he catches up her hand and makes to kiss her knuckles.
- “None of that, kitty,” she says, smiling, and pokes his nose affectionately as she pulls her hand away. “Weren’t we going to go look at the site of the last akuma tonight?”
- “If my lady is so determined to investigate, her wish is my command,” Chat says with a sweep of his arm and a bow. “Why are you sitting on the Agreste mansion anyway? The kid always seemed kind of useless to me.”
- She frowns at him and pokes him again, reproving. “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Chat, he seems perfectly nice.” Chat makes a noncommittal humming sound, but doesn’t press the point, and she doesn’t really want to argue right now. “Come on, I’ll race you,” she says, mustering another smile. It doesn’t come up again.
- He
comes back a few days later, takes her by surprise as she’s arranging a display
of breads, and she almost whacks him in the head with the tongs in her
alarm. As it is, he takes a fair amount
of flour to the face, and it makes him look like he’s been turned into a
ghost. She apologizes until she’s
tripping over her words, handing over a damp cloth, and he laughs, the sort of
startled laugh that suggests he might not do it often. She makes him another sandwich, and the
gorilla comes to collect him, and she slips a couple of madeleines into the bag
this time.
- It
becomes a bit of a trend: Adrien comes in for lunch while Marinette is helping
out, she makes him a sandwich, they talk (or, well, he talks), and the gorilla
comes to get him, along with a bag holding the rest of the sandwich and
whatever pastries were close at hand. By
the time it’s been a month since he first came in, she’s gotten to the point
where she can at least hold a conversation without heart palpitations or
hyperventilation, although she still stammers like a ten-year-old with a
crush. Alya thinks it’s hilarious, of
course, but Adrien hasn’t brought it up and seems perfectly willing to carry
the bulk of the conversation. Every once
in a while she wonders what his social life looks like that she’s apparently
been promoted to confidant through the fine art of making herself look like a
fool.
- One
day, Adrien bounces through the door
and he tells her excitedly that he’s gotten permission to go to public school
rather than being tutored at home, and she makes all the appropriate excited
sounds. The gorilla comes to collect his
charge with a smile on his face, this time, and actually exchanges a few words
with Marinette, pretending he doesn’t see her outright handing Adrien a piece
of the chocolate cake on the counter.
Adrien beams at her, a wide and dazzling smile that, honestly, makes his
pictures look absolutely solemn by comparison, and after they leave she has to
sit down with her head between her knees until she’s not so dizzy.
- She
goes out with Chat Noir, not for any reason other than to gambol over the city
because, hey, Adrien’s glee was contagious.
Chat is ecstatic for some reason, grabbing her around the waist on the
roof of an apartment and dancing her in a giddy waltz. She laughs and clings to his shoulder and hand,
letting him steer her around in the dance because she’s never done a waltz in
her life, and his glowing green eyes shine delightedly at her. He’s an even worst flirt than usual, teasing
and happy and energetic, and it’s almost horrifyingly endearing.
- “Chat, what’s going on with you?” she laughs after he swoops in and steals a peck on the cheek before she can stop him.
- “Just, you know, my dad gave me something I’ve wanted for a long while,” he says, grinning, and she shakes her head, letting him have his moment.
- She
goes to school the next day, and only realizes that she had no idea how old Adrien is when she sees
him in the year two down from her. He
sees her and grins and waves, and she numbly returns it.
- “Oh my God, Alya,” Marinette hisses, dragging Alya into an empty room by her collar. “Adrien Agreste is fifteen!”
- “So?” Alya rasps, rubbing at her throat.
- Marinette covers her face with her hands. “I’m going to Hell.”
- “You’re seventeen, not twenty-seven, Mari,” Alya says, laughing.
- And okay,
look, Adrien still seems really lonely,
so when he comes to the bakery she still lets him sit at the counter and they
still talk, and she tries to ignore her huge thundering crush that’s rapidly
turning into something a lot worse.
- He’s
at the bakery when an akuma hits it like a ton of bricks.
- There’s
a lot of confused shouting—him yelling to her to run, her yelling to him to get
down, and Marinette scrambling for a sufficiently hidden place to
transform. Adrien can’t seem to stop
playing with the heavy silver ring on his finger. Marinette is still trying to drag him behind
the relative shelter of the counter when the akuma shoots a jet of fire through
a window—they are going to need to pay
for that, she barely avoids screaming—and Adrien tackles her to the ground.
- “Look, I’m really sorry,” he breathes. “Can you keep a secret?”
- “Is this the time?” she shrieks, rolling him off and yanking him out of the way of another fiery spear. They end up behind the counter after all, and she thinks he’ll be safe back here while she transforms.
- He actually grins, a wide Cheshire grin, and she almost punches him in the face just to get him to focus. It’s an impulse she associates with Chat, who should be here any minute. “Yeah, I guess so. Plagg,” he says, “claws out!”
- Marinette wants to say she had any idea what’s about to happen before it does, but it blindsides her. “Well,” she says, voice remarkably calm given the circumstances. “I’ll be damned.”
- “Marinette, I’m sorry, I just didn’t want–”
- “Tikki, spots on!”
- It’s gratifying beyond words to watch Chat—Adrien’s mouth drop open. They take a minute and sit there staring at each other
- “We’ll have to deal with this once we’re not at risk of being en flambe,” she says when another jet of fire reminds her of their situation.
- “Yes, my lady,” he says, dazed, and gives her another one of his wide, dazzlingly real smiles.
