Dearly Despised, (I love you)

The Apology

"You so like her."

"Marinette?"

"Oh for cheese heavens, I'm not sure how much longer I can live with you stuck in denial."

Plagg had dedicatedly teased him about being in love with the girl he was the least in love with all year, but Adrien's face contorted as he realised for the first time, that Plagg sounded serious.

"Plagg, you can't possibly think after everything—"

"Blah, blah, blah. I've heard it all. You guys are oblivious. Point is, you may have put Chat Noir higher in Marinette's books, but she's still mad at Adrien. And she has every right to be. Not only is it your fault that you're pretending to date, but you stood her up on the only date you ever had."

For a fraction of time and space, Plagg might have been right.

He was suggesting he should apologise, (cue recoil) to Marinette. As if the day after his rejection couldn't get any worse.

Adrien brought a pillow to his face and screamed.

"Hey, Kagami," Adrien choked out as he imagined the way he'd kill himself later.

"You warned me that you had no relationship with Marinette." A metallic clang rang in the room. Footsteps came closer to the locker he stood at. "You even fooled me to believe you didn't like anything about her. Is she aware of the way you talk about her behind her back? Or that she's just a classmate to you? Explain yourself, Adrien. I'm sick of watching you be a coward and avoid me."

For clarification, he'd missed a fencing lesson due to an akuma attack. The other two... he was in fact a coward and avoiding her.

"I... Heh, see – Kagami – it's complicated," Adrien ran his sabre blade down with steel wool while committing to the theory that if he didn't look into her eyes, they couldn't hurt him. "Our relationship is complicated. We were having a fight."

"When?"

Consistently.

"The day you met me. That's how you know she genuinely thought I won the point. Marinette has a lot of integrity, unlike me." He could've sworn he had to swallow bile to get that out. Yet, the next words flowed suspiciously simply. "I was bitter and didn't explain the rules to her properly. But yes, you were right, despite our... our complicated, and perhaps odd relationship, there is something I like about her, and you saw right through me."

Kagami looked at him with a mix of scepticism and serious interest.

His situational messes cuffed him like a noose. They dragged him through his day-to-day as he covered up one lie with the next. Kagami never deserved to be a victim of his social terrorism.

"I should've been more candid with you and never brought you into our mess. I'm sorry. I do think you're really cool."

She bristled. "I'm not the one you should be apologising to."

He set down his blade, crossed his arms, and glared at the locker room floor. Usually, his internal monologue consisted of his hilarious self-narration, Plagg's idioms, or "wow something smells delicious". Yet today, this fossil of a phrase—deeply buried since she first screamed at him—had come back alive and hadn't stopped haunting him.

"Apologise to Marinette."

He had to. Not as Chat Noir trying to make up on behalf of Marinette's sucky boyfriend. So much of this was his fault, and Adrien had accepted defeat. Besides maintaining both excelling grades and the entire safety of Paris, he fought with Marinette every day, had to manage this spiralling fake-dating idea, and he had brought her into the gossamer of lies in the first place – so yes, he was tired. He'd just chug some pride and get it over with.