Work Text:
As Marinette loses her grip on her overpacked carry-on suitcase that is currently over her head and less than halfway into the overhead compartment, she entertains a brief fantasy in which the (shiny red, black polka-dotted hard plastic) suitcase slips out of her hands and onto the crown of her head, killing her instantly or at the very least conking her out just enough for her to miss this flight. But then a pair of hands shoots out and catches the suitcase, right before it would hit her head.
Marinette sighs in both relief and disappointment, looking at her savior and opposer. “Sorry,” she says, her eyes traveling up a broad chest clothed in a soft-looking pale green trench coat. “And also thanks.” Her gaze catches on a face.
A familiar face. A familiar face with sun burnished skin, a straight nose and sharp jaw, long and pale eyelashes framing eyes the color of winter grass and those fancy candles that always smell like spearmint and pine - a familiar face haloed by waves of gold hair that is somehow shimmering in the frankly shit airplane lights. A familiar face that is currently staring at her, lips marked in a surprised sort of ‘o,’ as if he is also staring at a familiar face.
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” Adrien Agreste says, and his familiarly perfect face splits into a wide, outrageously charming grin.
“Adrien,” she says with a laugh.
He smiles wider, casually pushing her suitcase the rest of the way into the overhead storage as if it was so easy and Marinette hadn’t been stubbornly struggling with it for five minutes, and then he wraps her into a tight hug.
As her face presses into his pale green coat, she half expects him to smell like those fancy spearmint-pine candles just off visual cues alone, but instead, he somehow smells like roses and sunshine. Like summer, exactly.
“How have you been?” he asks, swaying her back and forth and giving her a squeeze before pulling back. His hands, big and warm, stay on her shoulders.
“Good!” she says as his eyes sweep over her, and she feels the all-too-familiar heat begin to spread up her cheeks. But she swallows it down and shakes her head with a laugh. “What about you?”
“So good,” he says, and he gives her one last squeeze before letting her go.
They stare at each other. The air feels full.
They laugh.
“So where are you sitting?” Marinette asks.
“Actually,” Adrien says, glancing down at his ticket, “I’m in this row.” He gestures to the row Marinette is currently blocking the entrance of.
“Me too,” she says, and Adrien’s smile sparkles.
“Gosh,” Adrien says after they’ve managed to get into their seats (Adrien is at the window - just as well, she would’ve definitely thrown up at a window seat - she’s in the middle seat), “how long has it been?”
“Since a little after we graduated?” Marinette asks, as if she doesn’t remember the exact date and time and situation (a winter chill that burned, a sunset that felt a little too much like goodbye).
“Ah,” Adrien says, and something quiet happens in his spearmint-pine eyes, but he brushes over it with a smile. “It must’ve been, huh? I didn’t really keep up with people much after everything happened with my father.”
“Right,” she says, wishing she hadn’t reminded him but figuring trying to brush past it now would only make her look even more awkward. “So, um, how’s your mother?”
“She’s doing well,” Adrien replies with a sigh and a warm smile. “It’s been a few years now, and she’s really coming out of her shell. We’re comfortable, I’d say.”
“That’s good,” Marinette says, and she means it. Adrien looks over her face, and he smiles.
“I know, the whole ‘how are you after your terrible dad’s arrest and subsequent life sentence’ conversation isn’t exactly a nice one to have without any warning,” he says, and Marinette shrugs.
“I’ll admit it was daunting,” Marinette says, and he laughs. “But I don’t mind. I… was a little worried, you know?”
“Thanks, Marinette,” he says, and he looks at her with such warmth that Marinette desperately wishes she had missed this flight simply for this interaction to never have happened. “So what are you on a plane to New York for?” he asks, and she unfortunately remembers exactly why she wished to have missed this flight in the first place.
“I’m actually going to visit my girlfriend for the holidays. You know, Christmas, New Year’s. That whole thing.” She tries to say it like she’s excited, but the words come out a little bit manic. She laughs, also a little bit manically, and then scrubs her hands over her face.
Adrien raises his eyebrows at her. “Sounds fun?”
“It is! It will be!”
“Okay!” He mimics her manic excitement in a silly enough way that she laughs, and he smiles.
“Enough about me!” Marinette says, slapping her hands on her knees. “What about you? Why are you going to New York?”
“I’m actually going to be visiting my girlfriend, too,” Adrien says casually, and Marinette feels nothing about that whatsoever.
She claps her hands together. “That’s exciting! How long have you two been together?”
He hums. “About three years?” He looks down and picks at a nonexistent piece fuzz underneath his nails.
Marinette stares at him. He looks up at her. “That’s nice?” Marinette offers.
“She’s definitely breaking up with me during this trip,” Adrien tells her, sounding as if this information means nothing to him.
“Oh my God?”
“Yeah, no, it’s fine, I’m actually really looking forward to it,” he says, as if that explains anything.
They take a momentary pause in order for the flight attendant to give everyone instructions on proper airplane safety, and, as soon as that’s over, Marinette twists as much in her seat as the seatbelt will allow and plants her hands on the armrest between her and Adrien’s seats.
“I know you are under no obligation to tell me because, although we have been acquaintances in the past, we are next to strangers now, and strangers have no obligation to each other other than to not manspread in public spaces” - here Adrien glances down at his lap as if to make sure he’s not manspreading, which Marinette finds unfortunately very endearing - “but. But. Adrien, I am dying to know.”
“Honestly? I’m dying to tell you,” Adrien says, and he shifts in his seat, too.
So, for a good chunk of their seven hour flight, Adrien tells Marinette the story of his three year relationship that also encompasses kind of the entirety of what’s been happening with him for the past seven or so years. Apparently, after his father’s extremely public and extremely violent breakdown, Adrien had to change his career path since his original plan of becoming a teacher wasn’t going to pay off all the debt that his father owed. So, in order to support both himself and his mother, he went back into his money-making teenage career of modeling, since his well-known face and traumatizing family history were apparently really big selling points (“That’s really messed up,” Marinette had said, and Adrien had shot her some finger guns and said, “that’s showbiz, baby.”). A couple years and a few good paychecks later, Adrien was propositioned by some ‘it’ girl named Lila to get in a PR relationship to boost both of their images. It worked, but Adrien found Lila absolutely unbearable, and Lila felt the same about him. Now, three years in, Adrien had finally managed to pay off all of his father’s debt, and he was planning on telling Lila he was going back to teaching in the new year.
“And then I’ll finally be free,” Adrien finishes with a happy sort of shrug. “There’s no way she’ll stand dating me anymore if it means less monetary gain for her. And, honestly, she’s been saying she’s jealous of other couples’ ‘breakup eras’ for a while now, so. I have high hopes.”
“That’s really wonderful, Adrien,” Marinette says with a laugh. “I gotta admit, this isn’t the sort of story I thought was behind all of those pictures of your face I saw popping up around the city.”
“And what sort of story were you expecting?” Adrien asks, framing his face with his hands and making an exaggerated model-esque face for her to laugh at.
She laughs, of course she laughs. And she also thinks about what it was like to look up at those pictures of him blown up so that he was right next to the sky, larger than life. Squinting up, hands in coat pockets, that weird feeling in her chest.
“Hm. Handsome golden boy from my youth returns to his golden days?” she offers, a little white lie, and he laughs.
“Funny,” he says, and she smiles. He looks her over. “Okay, Marinette, I want to hear about you. Tell me about you.”
Only since he was so transparent with her and also because Marinette has realized that they’re halfway through this flight and she’s therefore halfway through to dying, Marinette decides to tell him.
“I think Zoe - my girlfriend - is going to break up with me,” Marinette says, and Adrien takes this sentence with about as much grace as can be managed with how frantically it was delivered. He nods, puts down his complimentary water.
“And I’m assuming this is upsetting for you? Like this isn’t like my situation at all?” he asks, just to be clear, and Marinette drops her head into her hands. She makes a sound which she hopes translates thoughts. “Okay,” Adrien says slowly. “What makes you think she’s breaking up with you?”
“We’ve been dating for two years - our anniversary was a couple of months ago, so like, more than two years,” she says, dragging her hands over face as she looks up, staring blankly at the little screen mounted to the back of the seat in front of her. “And, you know, we’re fine! She’s cool! Love her, you know? But she moved back to New York earlier this year, and you know! I don’t think it’s actually been that fine! I work a lot - do you know I work a lot? Because I work a lot. I mean, starting a fashion company and getting it to actually be profitable instead of a drain on your financial, physical, mental, and emotional resources isn’t exactly a piece of cake. It’s actually quite hard, like, really fucking hard. But it’s good now, right? Like I’m making money, doing what I love, all that. Except when my shit was down the drain, I wasn’t being the best girlfriend. When she was living in Paris it was easier for both her and myself to pull me out of my work, but, you know, long distance, and all that. Whatever. Anyway, I’ve been trying to be better, and you know, it’s been better. I proposed this trip, I thought it was a great idea! Just to clear the air, but, oh my God, we’re either breaking up or she’s going to convince me to move to New York and we’re going to get married.”
“Do you want to get married?” Adrien asks. Marinette squints at the little screen mounted to the back of the seat in front of her.
“I’m pretty resistant to change,” she says, and Adrien snorts.
A tension that had built up in her shoulders since the beginning of her spiel releases, and she looks over at him to see that he’s looking at her with an expression caught between amusement and sympathy.
“This sounds like a really tough situation, and I’m very sorry about it,” Adrien says, sounding very genuine, which Marinette thinks is nice. “And at the end of the day, all I can really say is that it’ll wind up okay in the end.” He pauses, and then he shakes his head with a laugh. “God, what a generic platitude, I’m sorry. Did it make you feel better?”
Marinette snorts. “Yeah, actually, hit me with another.”
“Just follow your heart,” Adrien says with wide eyes and clasped hands, and Marinette shoves his shoulder with a laugh.
They spend the rest of the flight talking and laughing and Marinette has a good time.
Somehow, in the midst of all the sifting through memories she did, she’d forgotten how fun it was to be next to him.
He helps her get her suitcase out of the overhead, and they get out of the plane together, still talking, still catching up, and they get all the way to the entrance of the airport before they realize they can’t keep talking forever. And Marinette only realizes because she sees Zoe by the doors, headphones around her neck, looking down at her phone - probably to call Marinette.
“Oh,” Marinette says, and she feels her stomach twist.
“Is that her?” Adrien asks, and Marinette nods. “Hey, listen,” he says, and he grabs hold of her shoulders, “it’s going to be so fine. No matter what happens, you’re still super brave, strong, and cool.”
Marinette looks at both of his eyes and finds that he’s being completely sincere. The bubble of tension in her stomach pops, and she laughs, wrapping her arms around him and tugging him in for a hug. “Thanks, Adrien. Good luck with your break-up. Don’t be a stranger.” She hugs him a little tighter before she lets go.
He smiles at her. “I won’t be a stranger, Marinette, I promise,” he tells her, and a surge of emotion tugs at her throat because he looks like he means it. She looks in his eyes, and she feels, for a split second, like he remembers it the same way she does.
And then they’re breaking away from each other and waving goodbye. And Marinette turns away, shaking her head into a smile, and she half walks, half runs to Zoe. She surprises her with a hug, and she only looks back once.
He was looking back.
---
When Marinette walks into her airport gate, sobbing both freely and openly while wheeling her hard plastic polka dot suitcase behind her and smearing snot into the sleeve of her sweatshirt, her first reaction to seeing Adrien Agreste sitting at the gate looking both alarmingly handsome and infuriatingly happy is to stop about five feet away from him and sob, “why the fuck are you at my airport gate?”
Adrien looks up from the book he was reading, and Marinette gets to watch every thought play out on his face as he sees her. Happy recognition to alarmed worry to sympathetic understanding. She also takes note of an angry red welt on his cheekbone.
“Oh, Marinette,” Adrien says, and he stands up from his seat to envelop her in a frankly very comforting hug.
Marinette sniffles. “I’m gonna get snot on your really nice green coat.”
“It’s snot, it’ll blend right in,” Adrien says in such a gentle, sincere voice while petting her hair so softly that it makes her laugh. It’s a watery sound, and it stretches her face in a really weird way after so much crying, but it feels good.
She wipes her nose with her sleeve again and looks up at him, still letting him hold her. “What happened to your face?”
“My face?” he asks, blinking. She points to her own cheekbone, and his eyes widen in realization. “Oh, my face! I’d nearly forgotten. Yesterday Lila and I were talking about how we were going to announce our break up, and she joked around that we should ‘leak’ a video of us getting into a fight where we had a dramatic she-slaps-me break-up. She meant to fake slap me, but she has terrible depth perception, so she real slapped me. She was wearing a ring, so, you know.”
“I’m sorry about your face,” Marinette sniffs. “Congrats on your break-up.”
“Thanks, Marinette,” he says with a little smile. He gives her a little space, looking her over. “What do you want right now, my dear? Can I do anything to help?”
“To be honest,” Marinette says, pressing her fingers to her eyes and wiping away the last of her tears. “I just really want a drink.”
They’d both arrived at the airport gate several hours early for their flight, and so they had the time to not only find a bar in the airport, but also to sit down at its counter and waste some time there. Marinette downs her first two glasses of cheap wine like shots, and she only briefly entertains the cons of sloppy airport daydrinking before ordering her third.
Adrien nurses his own glass of cheap wine and looks her over.
Marinette takes a sip from her third glass, looking over at him. “Now that I know we have the same flight, I’m making it your job to get me on that stupid plane.”
“Deal,” Adrien says with a smile that says he’d like to laugh but doesn’t know if it’s appropriate. Marinette smiles wryly at him and then promptly bursts into tears again. Adrien reaches over and pats a soothing hand across her back.
“Thanks,” she sniffles, wiping her eyes and taking another sip from her wine. “Sorry, I know this is a lot.”
“No, it’s alright,” he says gently. “It must’ve been tough.”
Marinette’s bottom lip trembles. “Yeah.”
A few more drinks in, and Marinette is feeling so much better about this whole thing.
“I mean, yeah, I loved her. Really, I did,” she says, spreading her fingers out to Adrien as if to show him how much she loved Zoe. “But the truth is that I was just as terrified of the idea of marrying her as I was of breaking up with her. I loved her, but I always knew we weren’t going to be the end all be all, you know? And she knew it too. I think…” She trails off, pressing the palm of her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes. “I think maybe I’m so sad about it because I’ll miss it all. How it was with her when we were happiest, how she made me feel. I’m okay that it’s over, but I think I’ll miss it for a while. And that’s probably okay, right? That’s okay?” She opens her eyes to see Adrien listening intently, fully twisted to face her on his bar stool.
He nods when he realizes she’s finished. “Of course it’s okay to mourn the places someone had in your life, to mourn a past that you were a part of. I think that’s a beautiful sentiment,” he says, nodding vigorously.
“Remember that it’s still your job to get us back to the gate,” she says, pointing at him accusingly. He squints down at his watch.
“I remember. I remember so well.”
“I believe you.”
“You know,” Adrien says, looking up at his watch to level his squint at her. “I never knew when we were in school together that you liked girls.”
Marinette’s mid-sip when he says this, and she laughs so hard she chokes a little bit. When she recovers, she wipes her mouth and takes a moment to appreciate this current moment. “Well,” she says, looking over at him with his stupid perfect face and spearmint-pine eyes, “I will admit I was a little preoccupied in school.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Adrien says, nodding understandably. “I was pretty focused on my studies, too.”
“No, idiot,” she says, flicking him on the shoulder. “All through collège and lycée, I had a crush on the same boy.” She feels like maybe she shouldn’t have said that. She keeps talking anyway. “I knew I was bi basically the whole time, but, well, I was preoccupied.”
“Oh,” Adrien says, and he giggles. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he squints at her. “Who was it?”
“Unbelievable,” she says, and she laughs, and he laughs, too, but she gets the feeling he has no idea what’s funny. And that’s funny, too, so she laughs even harder.
They do get to their plane on time - after Adrien by chance happened to glance at his watch while making a silly gesture and then proceeded to begin screaming and slamming money on the counter before dragging her up and making her run tipsy to the gate - and Adrien helps her stuff her carry-on in the overhead while they’re both still heaving breaths.
“I guess this is where I go to my seat,” Adrien says, looking down at his ticket. He frowns, looking at the row they’ve just stuffed Marinette’s carry-on above. Marinette looks down at her ticket. Adrien looks back up at her, a smile twinkling in his eyes, and he shows her his ticket.
She laughs, and she shows him hers.
They collapse into their seats, right next to each other, in a fit of laughter.
“Wait wait wait,” Marinette says, pulling herself into standing. “Trade with me, I can’t ever have the window seat or I swear I’ll throw up.”
“Don’t throw up,” Adrien says as they trade seats.
Now in their proper seats, Marinette turns her head to look at him, and he turns his head to look at her.
“Do you think it’s the universe trying to tell us something?” Adrien says, except he whispers it like they’re the only ones on the plane, like they’re the only ones in the whole world.
“I don’t think I could ever be normal about you,” Marinette says, and she whispers it, too, feels the way the words push off her lips and meet the air between them.
Time and space stretch and contort, and then they’re both laughing, doubling over in their seats. Marinette presses her hands to her cheeks and shakes her head, warm and buzzing.
“I think I drank too much,” Adrien admits beside her, pink-cheeked and smiling messy.
“I think I did, too,” she replies, and they laugh about it some more, comfortable and content about it all.
Marinette wakes up at the end of the flight with her head on Adrien’s shoulder and his head on top of hers. She rubs her eyes and jostles him awake, and he stretches and looks over at her with a smile.
When they part ways outside the airport, Marinette pulls Adrien into a hug. He returns it with the same amount of vigor she gives him, and she sighs. “I realized I forgot to tell you before,” she says into his chest. “Merry Christmas, Adrien.”
He pulls away, smiling down at her. “Merry Christmas, Marinette. Here’s to a new year and a fresh start for both of us.”
“I really do think you’re great at platitudes,” Marinette says, finding a little bit like she wants to cry. Adrien laughs, squeezing her shoulders. “Don’t be a stranger?” she asks.
“I won’t,” Adrien says. He smiles a little funny. “Now you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”
Marinette smiles. “Good,” she says, and then she steps back, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “See you later, Adrien.”
“See you later, Marinette.” He waves goodbye.
Before she can say anything stupid, she turns and walks away, going to find Alya where she said she would be waiting, and she only looks back once.
He was looking back.
---
Nearly the moment she finds everyone at their airport gate, Marinette pulls Adrien away from where he’d been chatting tiredly with Alya and Nino. She only stops momentarily to toss her jacket and red plastic polka-dotted carry-on in the direction of where Alya and Nino are standing, giving out a hurried hello before continuing to drag Adrien all the way to the water fountains three gates away.
“Good morning, Marinette,” Adrien says through a yawn, rubbing his eyes. He looks soft and warm in his mint green coat over pajamas, and Marinette wants to call attention to how cozy he looks but finds that she’s overwhelmed with the new information she acquired approximately five minutes ago.
“Chloe and Kagami are dating,” she blurts out, and Adrien immediately wakens, clapping his hands over his mouth.
“What! No way, that’s so awesome!” he says, beaming, and Marinette grabs hold of the lapels of his coat, shaking him back and forth.
“No, Adrien! This is not awesome!” she says, and he raises his eyebrows at her.
“Have we not been making bets about this for months?” he asks. “Are you that mad that you owe me five bucks?”
“Forget the five bucks!” she shouts, shaking him again, and he laughs. “Adrien, this is a serious situation,” she says because he is clearly not getting that this is a serious situation. “They’re dating! On our best friends trip!”
“Alya and Nino are dating on our best friends trip,” Adrien points out, and Marinette groans exasperatedly, letting go of his coat to throw her hands up in the air.
“Yes, but Alya and Nino date in a best friends way, so it’s fine,” she says, running her hands through her bangs.
“I guess that is true,” Adrien says, and Marinette begins to pace.
“I mean, Chloe is clearly doing this to annoy me. Like she couldn’t have waited to ask Kagami out until after the trip? Not even until New Year’s?” She scoffs. “As fucking if, she just had to do it now, and then post the picture announcing they’re dating the literal morning that we leave. She’s doing this to spite me. I can feel it. I can taste it in the air.”
“And how exactly is Chloe and Kagami mutually liking each other and getting together about it spiting you?” Adrien asks, and Marinette throws her hands up, around, out.
“Six people going on a best friends trip where the majority of the people are dating is not a best friends trip, it is a constant forced triple date,” Marinette finally supplies, and Adrien nods slowly.
“Forced?” he asks.
“I mean, we’re not dating,” she says, and she feels her cheeks flush despite herself. “Forced for one couple.”
“I see,” Adrien says. He steeples his fingers as if thinking hard. “Have you ever considered that you are overthinking this and it won’t be that bad?”
“Oh, sorry, that makes it all better- of course I’ve considered that,” Marinette snaps, kicking at his shins, and he laughs, dancing away from her. “But even still, you have to admit it’s a real concern.”
“It is a real concern,” Adrien gives her, raising his hands. “All I’m saying is maybe it won’t be that bad.”
“Maybe it won’t be that bad,” Marinette mimics in a rather squawky and rude falsetto. Adrien raises his eyebrows at her, and she slaps her hands over her eyes, letting out a groan. “Sorry, you know how stressed I get about trips.”
“And I’m sure my generic platitudes aren’t helping,” he says, hooking his arm with hers and gently beginning to take her back to Alya and Nino.
“No, no, hit me with another,” she says, letting herself be pulled along.
“Well,” he says, sighing dramatically, clasping his hand over her arm where it was looped with his, a little spot of warmth. “If you just follow your heart-”
“Shut up,” she snorts, bumping him with her hip, and he laughs.
“But really, Marinette,” he says, looking down at her with a little smile, “would it really be so bad to hang out with me on these forced triple dates?”
Marinette crinkles up her nose to hide the way her heart bounced against her ribs. “I guess I could stand it.”
As soon as they get to Alya and Nino, Marinette lets go of Adrien to grab hold of the front of Alya’s zip-up hoodie. Regardless of her (i)rational drama before, her information is still hot gossip that deserves excitement. “Alya, Chloe and Kagami are-”
“We’re dating!” announces a smarmingly cheery voice from behind her. “Kagami and I are dating, officially official as of five hours ago, official on Instagram as of twenty minutes ago,” Chloe says, and Marinette turns to see her glide up in her expensive yellow athleisure, her arm hooked with a very tired looking Kagami. Chloe pushes up her sunglasses (it was still dark outside), and grins, particularly smug at Marinette. “I’m expecting applause.”
Everyone applauds.
Chloe and Kagami bow.
“Tell. Us. Everything,” Alya says once the customary period of applause is over, and they all sprawl out on the seats and carpet by their gate to hear Chloe and Kagami explain themselves. Last night, in order to ensure that she was on time for this early flight, Chloe invited Kagami over to her apartment because Kagami was far more punctual and able to drag Chloe out of bed than Chloe is (“I was there just to be her hot human alarm clock,” Kagami said; “Don’t make me sound rude,” Chloe replied). One thing led to another, they kissed, and now it’s official.
“Vague,” Nino accuses, and Chloe flips her yellow hair over her shoulder.
“I don’t feel like sharing my utterly glamorous life with the likes of you,” she says, nose up in the air.
“She just doesn’t want to tell you guys she stuttered for three hours when I got to her apartment, got up and tripped on her coffee table after I leaned my shoulder on hers while we were watching a movie, and blushed so hard after telling me she liked me that she had to go stick her face in the freezer,” Kagami says.
“Do you have a recording of that?” Marinette asks.
Chloe flips her the bird.
After the initial excitement, everyone settles down and realizes that they have a good deal of time before their flight as well as a good deal of an appetite. Alya and Marinette are appointed to go find breakfast and bring it back to their gate, which Marinette is completely fine with because it allows her the privacy to freak out with Alya as they walk past tired looking families and tense looking business people.
“I mean, don’t you think she did it on purpose? Don’t you think she’s doing this to spite me?” Marinette asks, throwing her hands up in the air. “She’s been teasing me about Adrien all year, basically ever since she found out we were friends. This is exactly the sort of thing she’d do to annoy me.”
“It does seem like something she would do,” Alya says, and Marinette claps her hands together and makes a noise that is halfway between ‘thank you’ and ‘duh.’ “And it does sound like something Kagami would think was interesting enough to agree with doing. I think you have a valid point.”
“Exactly! See, when I told Adrien-”
“But,” Alya interrupts, slicing the air with her pointer finger and poking Marinette in the forehead as they walk. “Even if they conspired to annoy you on our best friends trip, they’d have to know that getting together would push your buttons and why it would push your buttons.”
“Well, that’s easy for Chloe since she’s the most experienced in jabbing her designer nails at every single button I could possibly have,” Marinette says, demonstrating Chloe’s jabbing ability in the air in front of them, but Alya shakes her head.
“Why does it annoy you that Chloe and Kagami are dating, Marinette?” Alya asks, and Marinette gestures to all around them.
“Best friends trip,” she says as way of explanation.
“Right,” Alya says. “And?”
“And now it’s gonna be a couples trip, and me and Adrien are going to be…” She trails off, gesturing vaguely around.
“Mhm,” Alya says. “Do you think maybe it also annoys you because you think being in an environment of mostly couples with Adrien will make you have to face your feelings for him? Do you think maybe it annoys you because Kagami and Chloe reconnected after you and Adrien did - reconnected because of you two, actually - and they got together before you did?”
Marinette presses her lips together. “That is absolutely not what I think.”
“Sure,” Alya says graciously, and Marinette fumes.
They walk on.
“There’s a McDonald’s,” Marinette says, pointing at the yellow lit McDonald’s a little ways ahead of them.
“Perfect,” Alya says, pulling out her phone to get everyone to text their orders.
“I don’t have feelings for Adrien,” Marientte says as Alya types the text in the groupchat.
“I believe you,” Alya replies, not looking up from her phone.
“You’re such a dick,” Marinette says, and Alya flashes her a grin.
When they’re boarding the plane, Marinette lets Adrien take care of her (red and black polka dot hard plastic) carry-on by their seats while she drops by Chloe and Kagami’s seats a few rows behind them. Chloe is actively complaining about not being in first class, Kagami is mostly ignoring her, already flipping open a book she’d brought with her, and they both look up when Marinette leans against their row, crossing her arms. “Just to be clear, I know what you two are scheming,” she says.
“Of course you do, you’re not dumb,” Kagami says bluntly.
“Aha!” she near shouts, looking around the plane to see if anyone else heard, but Alya and Nino are a few rows away scanning through the movie selections and Adrien, also a few rows away, looks like he’s fiddling with the air vents above him with enough concentration that she knows he didn’t hear a thing.
Chloe rolls her eyes. “Come on, Dupain-Cheng, don’t be ridiculous. Everyone is scheming to get you and Adrien together. I think the only one not scheming is you, for once.”
“I do not scheme,” Marinette scoffs. “And what do you mean everyone?”
“Everyone,” Kagami says with a shrug. “And yes, you do scheme, Marinette. It’s not nice to lie to your friends.”
“I would hardly call you and Chloe’s first date a scheme-”
“God, it’s like you’ll never get over how he made you feel when we were kids,” Chloe interrupts bluntly, flicking at Marinette’s arm. Marinette snaps her mouth shut, feeling her jaw clench, and Chloe looks her over. “I thought you were miss goody two-shoes, Mar. Since when do you hold grudges?”
“Since you put gum on my seat in college,” Marinette says, tugging lightly at Chloe’s nose just to make her snort and swat her hand away. “I can’t believe you let her treat me like this,” she says to Kagami, and then she walks back to her seat.
She flops down next to Adrien with a huff, and Adrien looks over at her, raising his eyebrows. “All good?” he asks.
“Peachy,” she replies.
He’s quiet for a moment. “Nectarine-y,” he says slowly, as if testing it out, and she looks over at him to see that he’s looking at her with raised, expectant eyebrows.
She snorts.
“How was that? Should we add it to the lexicon?” he asks, bumping his shoulder with hers, and she shakes her head.
“Nectarine-y? Oh, sure, it’ll take the lexicon by storm,” she says sarcastically, and he laughs.
“I don’t know, I feel like it might catch on with the hip kids these days.”
“Come on, Adrien, ‘the hip kids these days?’ You don’t have to practice your endearingly out-of-touch teacher act on me,” she says, and he hums smugly, cradling his face with his hands and grinning at her.
“So it is endearing?”
“Idiot,” she says, shoving him with her shoulder, and they both laugh.
The plane kicks off into the air, and Marinette promptly falls asleep against Adrien’s shoulder, her jacket draped over her for a blanket. She wakes up some time later with an ache in her neck and a criminally dry mouth, sitting up and rubbing her eyes and her neck maybe harder than she should.
Adrien passes her the water one of the flight attendants had given him while she was asleep, and she takes it in sleep-clumsy hands, taking a sip and leaning her head back against her seat. “How much longer do we have?” she asks.
“About five more hours,” Adrien says, and Marinette makes a face, handing the water back to him.
“I’m gonna go stretch my legs,” she says, and he nods.
She unbuckles her seat belt and stands up, sliding into the aisle. She walks carefully through the aisles of drowsy adults and antsy children, mindful of everybody’s space. She messes up Chloe’s color-by-number by swiping her finger over Chloe’s phone screen, and then gives Kagami a cute pose that Kagami dutifully takes a picture of as she walks by, just for fun. When she gets to Alya and Nino, she leans over Nino’s seat to press a kiss to a sleeping Alya’s temple.
“How are you doing?” Nino asks, pausing the rhythm game on his phone to look up at her.
“I am wishing we are at the cabin already,” Marinette says, and Nino nods sagely.
“Do you think Kagami will let us roast marshmallows in the fireplace?”
“I’m thinking she’s going to have to,” she says.
“It would be criminal if she didn’t, you’re right,” he says, and they both take a moment to imagine roasting marshmallows in Kagami’s New York winter cabin, sighing in the image’s perfection.
“Hey,” Nino says, and Marinette leans her chin on top of his head as she stretches out the backs of her legs.
“Hi.”
“If ever you feel like things are getting too couple-y, just shoot me a look, and I’ll pull Adrien aside for some bro time.”
“You better be pulling me aside for some bro time,” she counters.
“How could I have been so blind? Of course, Nettie, we have to have our bro time,” he says, smacking a light hand against his forehead. She smiles.
“What should my look be?” she asks, lifting her head from his so that they could look at each other. “Should it be this?” She makes an ugly face.
“Actually, it should be this,” Nino says, making an ugly face in reply.
“I like the nose element, but what if it was like this?” She makes another face.
“I can see you’re learning, but if you just tweak your chin a little you can get this,” he says, making an uglier face.
“I think I could make it work with-”
“As adorable as I think you two making ugly faces at each other is,” Alya says groggily from Nino’s shoulder, “I’m trying to get some sleep, my dear loves.”
“Sorry, dude,” Nino says, giving her a peck on the top of the head. She scrunches up her nose, looking up at Marinette, who kneels down and takes her hand.
“A thousand apologies, my dear,” she says, kissing Alya’s knuckles with a flourish. Alya pats her cheek affectionately, smiling at her with a little bit of a stink eye. Marinette stands, twisting Nino’s cap so that its bill is facing backwards, and she blows them both a kiss before returning to her seat.
She picks up her backpack from the floor, setting it in her lap to riffle through it for something to do. She finds one knitting needle stuck in the ball of yarn she brought, and she digs through the contents of her bag in an attempt to find the other.
“Hey, Marinette,” Adrien says beside her.
“Hey, Adrien,” she replies, still looking at her bag.
“I just wanted to say thank you for inviting me on this trip,” he says, and she looks up to see that he’s watching her in that sappy warm way he has.
“What? We’re going to Kagami’s cabin, you know. She’s your side of the family, and the trip wouldn’t be happening without her. It’s not like it was my invite alone that got you here,” she says, idly moving her hand through her bag.
“Yeah, but still,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. “I know how close you, Alya, Nino, and Chloe are. You guys have been doing best friend trips for years now, and it’s very nice of you guys to let Kagami and I into your group.”
Marinette scoffs. “Adrien, we were destined to all go on this trip together since you said I wouldn’t be able to get rid of you and meant it. We’re all best friends now since somebody” - she picks up something from her bag to waggle at him - “insisted on us sharing friends.” She looks down at what she picked up and finds the other knitting needle in her hand. She picks up the ball of yarn with the knitting needle sticking out of it and hands all of it to Adrien so she can put her backpack back on the floor. “And really, it’s not like this was a last minute invite. We’ve been planning this since, what, June?”
“It was June, yeah,” Adrien says, he hands both knitting needles to her, keeping hold of the ball of yarn as she gently tugs on its end to unravel some.
“See? Best friends since June at least. No need to thank anyone for an invite anymore.”
“I was feeling particularly grateful,” Adrien says with another little shrug, smiling at her as she begins casting the yarn onto one of the needles. “Sometimes I just can’t believe we became such good friends so fast after running into each other around this time only last year.”
“You getting sentimental on me, darling?” she asks, and he snickers.
“You know I’d never even dream of it, my dear,” he replies. “But still, what a happy coincidence, you know? That we were on the same flight, that we got to see each other again.”
Marinette looks up from casting the needle, studying his face, and he’s looking at her in much the same way. She looks back down at the needle, running her thumb over the yarn. “It was a happy coincidence,” she says, looking up to meet his gaze with a smile. “I’m glad that we became friends again.”
After they land in New York and pile into their rental van, Marinette stretches her legs in the passenger seat, listening to Nino do his best to convince Kagami that marshmallows in the fireplace was a fantastic idea and not a fantastic excuse to get the cabin sticky. Adrien shifts the van in gear, and at the first stoplight, Marinette recognizes that she is strangely conscious of her place in the passenger seat beside him, of everyone else behind them. She looks over at him, in the corner of her eye.
And, in the corner of his eye, he was looking back.
---
As Marinette stares at the graffitied door of the same airport bathroom stall that she had locked herself in for the fifth time in the past hour, she rolled the idea around in her mind for perhaps the millionth time since the night before that she was being overly dramatic about this whole business and really shouldn’t be going through such pains to avoid Adrien, especially since it was, as Chloe snapped at her this morning before they drove tensely to the airport, “ruining the vibe of everyone’s new year.”
But when she finally took a deep breath and unlocked herself from the stall, washing her hands and looking up at her reflection, she made contact with the anxious crease in between her eyebrows, the tired pull at her under eyes from the night before, the downward slash of her mouth. She turned off the water and dried her hands on her sweats. She was being completely reasonable, vibe or not.
When she returns to where everyone was gathered by the airport gate, she sits down by Alya and picks up her knitting project, doing her best not to look at anything she didn’t have to. The silence around her is thick, a tense awareness all around her that she does her best to ignore.
Alya nudges Marinette’s thigh some time later. Marinette looks up. “Wanna get some drinks for everyone?” she asks.
Marinette felt like she was going to explode. “Sure,” she says, meaning ‘thank God.’
They stand up, and Alya hooks her arm with hers, gently guiding her to wherever they’re supposed to find drinks from.
“Chloe was right,” Marinette gasps once they’re finally far enough from everybody for the air to feel clearer, “I’m totally ruining the vibe.”
“To be fair, Adrien is ruining the vibe just as much,” Alya offers, and Marinette lets out a panicked sounding sort of laugh, feeling hysterical. “It’s true! Between your skittishness, his mopeyness, and Chloe’s complaining-ness, the vibe is all over the place.” She nudges Marinette with her hip. “It’s not all your fault, mignonette.”
“Gee, thanks,” Marinette says. She sighs, using her free hand to push her bangs away from her forehead and then scrub her palm over her whole face. “God, I bet this isn’t what everyone thought was going to happen. I bet all you schemers thought we’d be getting daydrunk and flirty at the airport on New Year’s, but instead we’re making everyone in a 50-mile radius uncomfortable with our absolutely rancid vibe.”
Alya shrugs. “Can’t have it all.” She leans down a little to peer at Marinette, who drags her hand down her face and stares up at the ceiling of the airport as they walk. “How are you holding up?”
Marinette chews on the inside of her cheek. “Do you remember how we all bought our tickets in pairs because we accidentally waited a bit too long to book our flights and there were only two or three seats available next to each other and then we assigned ourselves into pairs for both of our flights based off of stuck-in-a-seven-hour-flight-together compatibility?” she asks.
Alya winces. “Yikes. Yeah.”
“Any chance you’d be willing to trade seats?” she tries, giving Alya her best puppy dog eyes, and Alya twists her lips to the side.
“Will you at least try?” she asks, and Marinette groans. “Was that date that you two went on years ago really that bad?” she asks, shaking her head incredulously.
Marinette closes her mouth. She says nothing in reply, looking down at her shoes.
She (to her detriment, she’s sure) agreed to at least try, and so when they board the plane, she goes to the seat printed on her own ticket instead of nagging Alya or Nino for a last minute trade, although she desperately wants to as she attempts to push her (overpacked) (red and black polka dotted shiny hard plastic) carry-on into the overhead compartments and contemplates letting it fall onto her head to save her from the oncoming seven hours. She even lets it slip a little from her hands, to play a little roulette with herself, but, of course, Adrien’s golden hand leaps out from somewhere behind her and catches it before it can even begin to brush her flyaways.
She watches him push it into place in the overhead compartment, feeling partly grateful and partly annoyed with herself for feeling grateful. “Thanks,” she says, glancing back at him. She begins to slide into the little aisle, glancing at the window seat a little queasily, but Adrien touches a light hand to her arm.
“Wait, you’ll throw up,” he says with such a panicked urgency that it makes her let out a weird sort of startled laugh.
“What?”
“The window seat,” he says a little awkwardly, gesturing at it vaguely. “You said if you sit at window seats you’ll throw up.”
Marinette blinks.
And then her heart twists, and she wordlessly steps back, allowing him to slide into the aisle and take the window seat while she attempts to swallow everything in her head down. Then she ducks her head and sits down in the seat beside him.
They’re silent while boarding finishes, while the flight attendants give the flight safety talk, while the plane takes off. Marinette hates it, truly hates it, but she can’t figure out what else to do with the air between them. Eventually, she wraps her jacket around herself. leans her head back against the headrest, and closes her eyes.
She didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, what with their New Year’s festivities and everything that happened after. She falls asleep hard and fast, and she wakes up warm and comfortable, her cheek pressed against Adrien’s shoulder.
The nap having disrupted all sense of chill, Marinette shoots straight up, wiping her hand over her face and looking up at Adrien to see that he’s looking at her with a startled expression on his face.
“Sorry,” she immediately says, meaning to wipe off the traces of drool off his shoulder but accidentally slapping him quite hard and then unfortunately deciding to continue slapping his shoulder as if that would help get rid of the drool still on his sweater.
“It’s alright,” Adrien says, as if she is not actively slapping his shoulder.
She manages to stop slapping his shoulder, and then she looks down at herself to find that, not only does she have her own jacket wrapped around her, she also somehow has Adrien’s. She smooths her hand flat against the pale green fabric. “Sorry,” she says again, looking over at him. She moves to give him back the jacket.
“No, no,” he says, gesturing for her to keep it. “You looked cold.”
Marinette keeps the jacket. She had been cold.
They sit in silence for a moment. Adrien passes her his water, and she takes a small sip of it.
“Sorry,” she says again.
He sighs, pushing his hand through his hair. She winces. “Listen, Marinette, I’d just like to apologize for last night. I know what I said really bothered you, and I’m truly sorry for thinking it was appropriate to say to you.”
She rubs her hands over her face, forcing herself to be ready for this conversation. “Adrien, you said you had feelings for me, not that you decided to murder me. I don’t need an HR apology.”
He laughs a little, and when she meets his gaze, she feels her stomach flip. She looks away. “Still, though, let me give you a few more HR platitudes. Just for the heck of it,” he says, gently touching his shoulder with hers, as if he’s unsure if touching is allowed anymore.
“Fine, just for the heck of it,” she agrees.
“If you can find it within your heart to forgive me,” he starts overdramatically, clasping his hands over his heart, and Marinette finds herself letting out a snort, “then I’d be really happy if we continued being best friends.” She feels herself tighten, and he looks at her a little sadly. “I realize now that I was a fool to do anything to jeopardize our extremely valuable friendship, and I am kneeling, jester-like, at your feet” - Marinette barks out a startled laugh; Adrien continues with a twinkle in his eye - “because my sillies went too far this time, my lady, and I am thus humbly requesting a pardon.”
He bows as low as he can in his seat beside her, and Marinette laughs so hard that she begins to cry, or vice versa, she can’t figure it out.
Adrien’s head whips up, his joking expression transforming into surprise, panic, guilt.
“No,” Marinette says, halfway to sobbing, “no, no, you don’t get to do that.”
“Do what, my dear?” he asks, stopping himself from reaching his hands out to touch her, letting them hover just over her skin. “What’s the matter, Marinette?”
“You shouldn’t get to be funny!” she exclaims, and he looks at her incredulously.
“Okay?” he says, but she’s started now, and she can’t stop.
“You shouldn’t get to be funny, you shouldn’t get to be beautiful - you shouldn’t, at least, to me. I wouldn’t mind if you were funny and beautiful to everyone else, just as long as you weren’t funny and beautiful to me,” she says, and he looks at her with wide, confused spearmint-pine candle eyes. She continues on. “You call confessing your feelings to me ‘sillies,’ and it’s ridiculous and stupid, and it’s so beautiful of you to be so considerate of the feelings that you think I have, and I just can’t believe how much it kills me in every way to see how easy you’re able to bend over backwards to make me laugh, how easily you succeed, how much it all-” She breaks rambling, throwing her hands up in the air with a frustrated sound.
“What are you saying, Marinette?” Adrien asks weakly, and Marinette presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“I spent my childhood loving you, Adrien,” she says into the swirling blackness of her squeezed-shut eyelids. “And for a little while,” she continues, moving her hands off her eyes and speaking at the seat in front of her, “you had me believing you loved me a little bit, too, and, you have to remember- we went on that date, remember? And the date was- and the date was-”
“The best date I’ve ever been on,” Adrien says quietly, and Marinette jerks her head to look at him, look at the way his face is structured after saying that set of words to her.
And his face, golden in the afternoon halo from his window, makes her stand up, push his jacket back onto him, and grab her things. He looks up at her, crestfallen.
“You stopped answering my texts,” she finally says, and his face twists. “The timing- everything with your father- it was all off for us. I get it, that everything with your father blew up that day, that same day we finally agreed to go on a date, so I could never really blame you for needing your space, but, God, Adrien, if anyone had asked me if I believed in soulmates even just fifteen minutes into that stupid date with you, I would’ve sworn they were real, and I would’ve sworn you were mine.”
“Marinette,” Adrien says brokenly. She squeezes her eyes shut, pressing on.
“And then you said goodbye to me like it was going to be the last time you saw me, and it was, for a long time.” She feels her old hurt roll wavelike through her, that old hurt that she’d squashed down for the past year in favor of a friendship she loved so dearly, that old hurt that had sparked new and searing when he’d been standing in front of her, fresh snow dusting his golden hair, cradled by a sky full of fireworks, his lips forming the words that made her heart stop, start, freeze, burst. “You were the one who asked me out, remember?” she says, feeling her bottom lip tremble. “And you were the one who stopped answering my texts.”
She doesn’t wait for any sort of reply from him, turning around and swiping at her damp eyes, trying her best to ignore aisles of passengers that had fallen silent once she’d stood up. She makes her way to where Alya and Nino are sitting, and she stops right by them. They both look up, eyebrows jumping in concern at the sight of her, and she takes a deep breath.
She makes an ugly face.
Alya stands up immediately, grabbing her things and wrapping Marinette in a tight hug on her way out of the aisle. “I’ve got it, mignonette.”
“Bro time, dude,” Nino says, holding his arm out for her as Alya stomps over to Marinette’s old seat.
“Bro time,” she agrees, sliding down into Alya’s old seat and melting into Nino’s warm half-hug, maybe crying a little bit into his shoulder. He rubs her arm, giving her a couple of honestly very reassuring pats. She sniffs. “I hope Alya’s not too hard on him.”
“I think that is a sweet hope to have,” Nino says, giving her a little peck on the top of her head, and Marinette feels maybe a little bit bad, but she also lets out a watery sort of laugh. Nino gives her a squeeze.
She naps for the rest of the flight, fitfully.
“Having bad dreams?” Nino asks after she wakes with a start for the third time.
“I thought the plane was going down.”
“It’s still flying,” Nino replies.
“Thanks,” she says, closing her eyes and finding that the image that comes to her first is the fireworks and the snow, the way their fingers brushed when he handed her a sparkler, the way he’d smiled, soft and gentle. She clenches her fist, trying to drive the image from her mind, and she manages to succeed, but only by thinking of the way she’d looked up, teenage and sillydrunk on love, to find his cheeks burnished with a ruddy sort of red after he’d asked to hold her hand and she’d slipped her hand in his, for the first time. For the only time, back then.
She makes a beeline for the bathroom once they’re back in the Paris airport, practically sprinting out of the plane as she weaves between the people crowding the aisles. She’s not sure what she’s going to do when she inevitably has to get out of the bathroom and face everyone, but she’s feeling unbelievably silly and achey, almost like the kind of silly and achey that had grabbed hold of her for much of her teenage years as she stared at the back of Adrien’s golden head in classrooms, biting her tongue because she didn’t want to say something stupid.
Unfortunately, she was never that good at holding herself back from saying something stupid.
She thinks about saying the words “I spent my childhood loving you” out loud to Adrien Agreste, and she lets out a startling sound from between her teeth, not unlike the whispery scream of a tea kettle.
There’s a knock on her bathroom stall.
She jumps, stopping herself from metaphorically clawing out her eyeballs to clear her throat awkwardly. “Um, taken?”
“Marinette, it’s me,” Kagami says, and Marinette thinks for a moment.
“Wrong person?” she tries, and Kagami kicks at the door.
“Don’t make me wait.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she says, and she opens up the door, giving Kagami a shrug. “I had to try.”
“I would call it a valiant effort if it actually was one,” Kagami replies. She has her arms crossed, and she’s looking at Marinette with an expression that Marinette finds to be both frustrated and sympathetic despite the fact that Kagami’s mouth is set in the same smooth line it always is. She tilts her head at Marinette. “Will you come out of the bathroom with me?” she asks.
“I think I have to,” Marinette replies.
“It’s true, you do,” Kagami says, and she starts to walk out of the bathroom without much else preamble, expecting Marinette to follow. Marinette does, falling into step beside Kagami after they’ve pushed through the bathroom door. As they near where everyone is waiting, Marinette’s steps slow, and Kagami stops, looking back at her. “Marinette, do you want to take what you want?” she asks bluntly, and Marinette blinks at her.
She feels her stomach twist, her chest ache. “I don’t know,” she finally admits.
All this year, ever since she saw his familiar face, ever since her feet left the ground - that’s what she’s been trying to figure out. If it was worth it, if everyone was right, if she wanted it just enough to still be alright after if he left her behind again.
“You’ll have to make that decision eventually,” Kagami says, and she reaches out a hand to place comfortingly on Marinette’s arm. “Adrien’s already made it. It’s only fair if you make it, too.”
She gives Marinette one last meaningful look, and then she’s walking back to meet with everyone else.
Marinette follows.
She stands next to Alya, giving her a hopefully reassuring smile, and then she frowns, looking down at Alya’s carry-on suitcase. “Oh, my God,” she says, hands slapping over her mouth as she looks over to the gate that they just left, the plane they just vacated. “My suitcase, I left it-”
“I have it,” Adrien says, walking over from the other side of their group, rolling her (red and black polka-dotted hard plastic) carry-on over to her. He stands in front of her, looking at her like his heart is breaking behind his eyes. He smiles at her.
Marinette gently takes her suitcase from him. “Thank you,” she says.
“Of course,” he says. “Of course.”
They all walk to the parking garage together, and Marinette feels the air like another person in the parking garage elevator. Somehow, both Alya and Kagami’s cars are parked on the second floor, and so Alya, Nino, Chloe, and Kagami hug their goodbyes when the elevator doors open.
And then it’s just Adrien and Marinette in the elevator, waving goodbye to everyone else, who were all still clustered just outside of the elevator doors, anxious mother ducklings.
“Oh, do you mind hitting my floor?” Marinette asks as the doors begin to close. “It’s three.”
Adrien reaches a hand out, but his finger stops just over the three button.
“Yeah, it’s three,” Marinette says.
Adrien presses the fifth floor button.
“What did you do that for?” she asks, and she catches the collective gasp of their friends right before the elevator doors close.
“Um,” Adrien says, looking down at his finger in something like surprise, as if he hadn’t expected himself to push the wrong button either. He looks at her as the elevator begins to rise fast, as she grips the railing on the wall, her stomach dropping down to the center of the earth, and he smiles sheepishly. “Well, now I bet you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here.”
“Adrien,” Marinette says, unsure if she’s frustrated with him or laughing along with him.
“Marinette,” he replies. The elevator doors open on the fifth floor, and he tugs her onto the bank, yanking their suitcases out of the elevator before it closes again, and he turns back to her, grabbing hold of her hands.
“Adrien, please,” she says, turning her face away as she feels her cheeks begin to flush.
“Marinette, I just,” he starts, squeezing her hands. He bends down so that he’s eye-level with her, bends a little lower so that he catches her gaze. “I just needed you to know, my dear - I know how much it annoyed you when everyone expected you to get over Zoe so fast. I remember how you told me in the spring how hard it is for you to let go of the past you’ve had with someone. I know now how much you must still hate me for leaving you behind when we were younger.”
Marinette feels a little bit like crying. Her heart is beating, so solid in her chest. “Why are you saying this?” she asks.
“Because I need you to know that I would wait for you, if you ever decided to love me again. I would wait as long as you needed, even longer than that,” he says, and he squeezes her hands, bringing them up so that he can hold them close to his chest. “As long as there is a chance, even a sliver of a chance, I can’t let myself let you go again.”
“Adrien, I…” She trails off, speechless.
He looks between her eyes, and she sees the way that something resolves inside of him. “That date that I took you on - by the time I figured out how to make you laugh when it was just me, just us together, I was head over heels in love with you and convinced I was in a dream. It was so fun, to be with you, that I thought, when I hugged you goodbye, that I would never have another perfect day like that again. And because of my father, I didn’t, not for a long while.” His gaze is steady and clear on her, piercing in its honesty. “I couldn’t face anybody, barely even myself, and I hated the idea of dragging you down with me. I wanted to text you, so many times throughout the years, but I was a coward.”
She can feel every breath as it moves inside of her, she’s lost inside the spearmint-pine of his eyes, haloed by that white gold of his eyelashes.
“Do you know what I thought when I saw you again, on that plane a year ago?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
“I thought the stars aligned so that I could see you again,” he says. “I thought the universe was telling me something.”
Her bottom lip trembles, his thumbs brush over her knuckles.
He searches her eyes, and then he laughs, letting go of her hands. “Oops, looks like I was a bit too serious for a second,” he says, and she sees the way his cheeks turn that ruddy red color he blushes in. “While I did mean everything I said wholeheartedly, it was severely lacking in my usual platitudes, so let me just-” He clears his throat, standing up straight and tousling a hand through his hair. “If you just follow your heart,” he says in a goofy voice, giving her jazz hands.
Marinette grabs hold of his wrists, and he gasps as she uses her grip to pull him closer to her again. She scans over his face, feeling absolutely terrified. “I can never be normal about you,” she says, and he blinks at her. She presses his palms against her cheeks, still holding onto his wrists, and his hands stay cautiously stiff, even while he looks at her with clumsily concealed hope bouncing around behind his eyes. “If you want me, you have to have all of me, for as long as you can. I can’t- I can’t spend the rest of my life getting over you.”
“My dear,” he says as his hands finally come to life in relief on her cheeks, curling against her skin and pushing back until his fingertips were in her hair, his thumb brushing along her cheekbones, “if I had a ring on me, I’d be on one knee right now.”
“Can you two please kiss already!?” shouts Chloe, and both Adrien and Marinette jump, turning around to see Chloe, Kagami, Alya, and Nino clustered in the stairwell.
“We can’t hear anything by the way!” Alya calls over as Marinette’s cheeks begin to heat up in embarrassment. Adrien is still holding her face. “Chloe’s just really impatient.”
“If we weren’t already about to kiss, I would’ve murdered all of you for watching,” Marinette calls back to them, pulling out of Adrien’s grasp just to make sure she could flip the bird at them with her entire body.
“You two were about to kiss!?” Nino asks.
“We were about to kiss?” Adrien asks, and Marinette turns to see him smiling so happily that all her anger and annoyance seeps out of her body and shatters onto the floor they’re standing on.
Marinette looks at him, feeling a little weak in the knees. “Yes?” she says.
His smile widens, and he reaches forward, his hand warm on her waist, and tugs her back until they’re nose to nose. “Can we?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says.
“I believe now they are going to kiss,” Marinette hears Kagami say distantly.
Adrien wiggles his eyebrows at her.
Marinette laughs, and Adrien uses his free hand to take gentle hold of her face, her lips still tripping over her smile, and he kisses her.
As he kisses her, holding her with one hand clutching at her back and the other threaded her through her hair, Marinette thinks about fireworks erupting and new years beginning and how he kisses her like he is rediscovering, every second, that he is falling in love with her and how she is thinking much the same.
When she pulls away, the world returning and their friends’ cheering and applause falling over her ears, she looks up at him, heart pounding.
And he, steadily, beautifully, is looking back.