"I hope I wasn't interrupting," he mumbled sheepishly.
Alya shook her head rapidly to snap out of her surprise. "No, no, you weren't interrupting," Alya said reassuringly. "I...I don't mean to be rude but why are you here? I would have thought your father would have the perfect Christmas scheduled. He sounds like the kinda guy that would have Christmas scheduled to the last minute."
"He has," Adrien said, "for himself. The only things I had scheduled was gift giving early this morning and dinner later this evening. I'm a free agent all day." Alya's heart went out to her friend who must be so lonely on a day that was supposed to be about families. It was just on the tip of her tongue to invite Adrien to stay for dinner (Mum wouldn't mind she cooked enough to feed the whole army) when Adrien smiled radiantly and spoke up again; "So I thought," he said a little more nervously, "that since Marinette put so much effort in not only making our presents but making sure we got them despite being sick that I should go round and play Santa. Do you have a present you want me to give her?"
Alya was stunned.
First - for literally the first time ever! - Marinette had finally signed a note to Adrien. That was enough to shock Alya's heart into temporarily stopping because she honestly thought with the scarf incident and Valentine's Day and several other attempts of writing a love note that Marinette would never remember to sign her name to anything.
She would have gotten over that completely but then there was the fact that Marinette managed to not just sneak into Alya's house to leave her present but into Adrien's mansion. The gigantic fortress of solitude that was armed to the teeth with security and probably weapons of mass destruction (she wouldn't put it past Gabriel Agreste installing a missile for the crazy fangirls).
And finally there's the fact that for once - for once! - Adrien actually seemed to notice all of this and wanted to do something just as sweet and wonderful back.
Alya's shipping senses were telling her that something amazing was going to happen.
"Yeah!" she grinned. "I have a present for Marinette. Hold on one second." She quickly dashed back to her room and rummaged around before she found the poorly wrapped present (gift wrapping was not a talent of her's) and dashed right back to the front door. "Here!" she panted slightly "Give my love to her, won't you?"
Adrien turned an interesting shade of pink that almost bordered onto red that made Alya smirk knowingly. "S-s-sure!" he stuttered. "Thanks," he hastily slipped Alya's gift into a large bag. "I better be off. I still have several houses to go before I have all of Marinette's presents."
"Wait," Alya said disbelievingly, "are you telling m you're visiting all of our classmates to pick up Marinette's presents so she can have them on Christmas Day?"
"Y-yeah," Adrien said nervously as he scratched the back of his neck, "is that a problem?"
"No, no, that's very....sweet." trust Marinette to fall in love with the sweetest guy in Paris. Urgh, Alya could just picture their children. They'll be so sweet that people would think they were made of sugar. "Just...do yourself a favour, yeah? Don't go to Chloe's. You'll never get out there alive."
Adrien chuckled at that. "I won't," he reassured Alya, "while Chloe is a good friend to me," Alya snorted at that. Adrien really needed to work on his definition of a good friend if he thought Chloe's clinginess and aggressive behaviour towards anyone that tried to approach Adrien was good friend material. "I know that she and Marinette don't really get on and I doubt Chloe would have a present for Marinette."
Alya opened her mouth to say something about Chloe and coal, she wasn't sure what, but it would have been really witty and funny. However Adrien suddenly interrupted her with his goodbyes and hastily went off on his way to finish his quest for Marinette's Christmas presents.
17.0 The Santa Claus Reveal part 2
Start from the beginning
