A/N: A pretty long chapter purely because I was enjoying myself too much. I mean c'mon Marinette running around Paris with Adrien in pjs? That's so fun
ALSO IVE ADDED ART OF THE KISS SCENE TO LAST CHAPTER
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"Radient... Carefree... Dreamy..."
Marinette had stitches – the kind of ones that were sewed tight under your ribs after what felt like hours of giggling, of which were loud enough to drown out your kwami's 'reminders' that 'laughing at Adrien wasn't nice'.
On a pink desk chair was a pyjama-clad, hauled over seventeen-year-old fighting harder for her breath than she did in any akuma battle as Gabriel's newest perfume ad featured Adrien frolicking (did you hear her? He was frolicking) off a building (not a real one unfortunately) basically dressed as a tampon. The wispy chimes and commercial smile on his face were just a bonus for the piling dirt she now had on him, but what did it for Marinette was his mid-air running-pose before "dreamy" that she cackled so hard at the first (of fifty) times she saw it, her parents had to rush in when hearing a hard body fall off a chair.
Amidst the fifty-first replay of her new favourite video (not including Ladyblog clips of Chat Noir looking adorable, obviously) her phone buzzed with the contact 'Nino's Girlfriend' (Alya had named it herself during their everlasting honeymoon phase).
Violently rubbing the mirth from her eyes, she shut off the computer and answered the face-call as Tikki ducked.
"Marinette! I've been waiting for you for fifteen minutes! Where are you, girl?"
Oh.
Oh. Oh. Oh. The pool!
"Uh– I was deciding which swimsuit to wear!"
Something clicked from behind and the computer lit up.
"Radient. Carefree—"
She squeaked as Alya's face turned sly recognising the add.
"Uh-huh," Alya said. "And the Adrien ad helps you pick out a swimsuit, girl? I have to admit, that's pretty cute that he's distracted you this long."
Out of frame, the rest of the girls giggled.
Marinette looked up as if watching her pride float away, then scratched her head awkwardly. "Eh-heh, um yeah! I'll be right there!"
As the face-call shut off, Tikki's round eyes stared into Marinette's humiliation.
She folded her arms. "I know you turned the computer back on."
"It's not nice to make fun of something Adrien had no choice in doing," the high-pitched lecturer said back.
"Pfft, yeah, as if he'd choose not to be a model. He loves the attention." She reached for her duffle bag and a foreboding feeling settled in her gut as if she knew that wasn't true, but she didn't pursue the thought.
Even while racing out the door with a half-opened swim bag flying over her shoulder, Tikki decided she wasn't done. "You're just trying to remind yourself you don't like him after you kissed him out of nowhere the other day."
"Hey! I don't like him! And it wasn't out of nowhere!" Now outside the bakery, the wind splattered harshly against her cheeks that were still sore from laughing. "They were going to find out eventually! Do you seriously expect me to let my boyfriend flirt with Kagami right in front of me?"
"Fake-boyfriend."
"That's what I said."
Tikki rolled her eyes. "You were just as bad with Luka."
She spat out the hair that kept flying into her mouth. "Bleh! You know what, Tikki? Just – Let's have a silent sprint to the local pool, shall we?"
Those were her last words before realising, a block later, that she was still wearing her pyjamas. Outside. In public. During the early afternoon of Sunday.
"Argh!" She froze, glanced down, and turned to bolt back the other way. "Tikki! Why didn't you tell me I'd forgotten to change?"
"You wanted a silent sprint."
Yeah, she walked straight into that one.
Speaking of walking into things—
"Gah! Adrien?!"
"Marinette!?"
Or– you know, running into problems, same difference.
She hadn't seen him since smashing her lips into his. Now her cheeks were flushed, ponytail disarray (from laughing on the carpet), and the breeze sifted through her attire. Out of all the upcoming snide remarks she could've braced for, nothing left her prepared to handle Adrien quickly blurting,
"You live near here! Can I hide out at your place?"
His brows were arched with plead and panic, palms pressed together in a praying gesture. It was a sight she wasn't trained for but the phrase 'hide out' sounded a sense of alarm.
"Uh, at my place? Hide out? What's going on?"
A screaming crowd steamrolled past the outer bridge beams they had found themselves behind. "Adrien!"
He seized up. "Too late."
Someone in the stampede carrying a cardboard-cut of Adrien in his napkin outfit from the ad halted when he caught them. "There he is!"
Ladybug-mode activated itself.
"Come with me!"
The frantic locals screaming his name ploughed into the park with them. Marinette noticed the empty fountain and threw them in to hide, wiping her hand against her sweats after having to hold his to drag him along. They remained lying on their sides, curled into themselves as more screams rolled past.
Adrien cleared his throat. "Um. Thank you. For saving me. People are going crazy over... um... my ad."
She feigned a gasp. "What! You stared in an ad?! I had no idea!" A giggle punctuated her words. "It seems—" hilarity bubbled in her throat, "it seems—hehe—it seems it hasn't really left you carefree—bahaha!"
Adrien's face didn't find it as funny.
"Oh c'mon," she said, a fist pressed to the corner of her mouth to stifle the noise of her lingering outburst, "what happened to that radiant smile?"
He blinked, slowly, mouth thin.
She crossed her arms. "You were more dreamy in the video."
"Ha. Ha. Yeah, whatever, it's embarrassing." His unimpressed eyes shifted down her figure, taking in her sleepwear apparel.
She squeaked and shot up. "Okay! All good now. I really should get going—"
Her arm felt a sharp tug. Adrien had cowered behind her, pulling her down as his shield while his terror-stricken eyes peered past her ponytail.
"Huh?" she noticed a sleek grey Mercedes crawl near a bus stop. "Isn't that your bodyguard?"
Adrien looked up sheepishly. "Actually I, heh, I stuck out. Without permission. I'm supposed to be at home right now and—"
A bright flash.
Her neck snapped to the direction of a park cleaner with his phone extended.
"Adrien and his girlfriend in the fountain!" He said along as he formed a caption for a public post.
Well. That wasn't good.
"Great," Adrien muttered with a kind a gloom that read 'my day could not get any worse'. "Now all of Paris thinks we're dating."
Marinette's mind reeled with all there was to take in. 1) Adrien had snuck out. That wouldn't have surprised her months ago. After all, his father banishing him from school for being a 'rebellious pest' by sneaking out was one of the first descriptions of him she heard. Yet... an unbiased gut-feeling sensed there was a lot more to this story than she knew. 2) A picture of her in pyjamas with Adrien was not floating around online and she didn't even have her hair brushed. And 3)
"We have to run!"
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For a model, fencer, basketballer, lacrosse player, and master at running away from reality, Adrien was not in great shape. In his defence, he'd been running from Wayhem (a fan who could fit a cardboard cut-out of Adrien in his pocket, apparently) all day. Plus, sprinting from one subway station to the next would just about do anyone in.
Needing a break, him and Marinette hauled over to catch their breaths beside a panel of his latest ad—Ugh. That thing. He just knew from the moment the director explained the pitch that Marinette was going to have a field day when it came out. He wasn't going to hear the end of it. And he hadn't When they'd first entered the subway tunnel, she'd made endless comments about why he wasn't, "walking on air" or "just frolicking away". Worse part was, his hard expression almost cracked few times. Her laugh was contagious, and if it wasn't directed at him (and if it wasn't even hers), he might consider it cute. Notice the word 'if'.
Perhaps—invertedly—dragging her into his escape from fans was a fitting revenge for her blatant bullying. Even though the whole running-through-Paris thing wasn't even in his agenda after he snuck out from an emotional eruption caused by his father.
"I'm so sorry I got you into this crazy mess, Marinette," he said honestly. Though she was his enemy, he wouldn't wish the consequences of his 'life of fame and family angst' upon anyone. "Plus now everyone we know thinks you're my girlfriend."
She caught her breath and straightened up. "Oh that's terrible! Yeah! Imagine making people think we're a couple. That would literally be the worst. Why would we want that?"
He rolled his eyes. "Point is, it's going to travel back to our parents."
She dropped the character, a level of seriousness taking over her face. "Do you think it's going to be okay between you and your father?"
He reached into his coat and pulled out a colourful charm. He knew didn't why Marinette gave it to him as much as he knew why he actually kept it. Regardless, he always kept it on his person in wishful thinking that maybe the luckiness of her homelife and stability could seep into his.
"How could anything bad happen? I have my Marinette-lucky-charm!"
Surprise sprang into her light blue eyes. He had meant to lighten the mood and detract from the looming stress about his father, but Marinette stared at him like her soul had been touched without warning.
Before he could add another joke on top of it about how clearly the charm was useless because they were stuck alone together again, another stampede entered the tunnel when a loud woman recognised him.
He grabbed her hand took off again, but his bodyguard faced him at the subway stairwell. He turned, Marinette yelping with his indecision, then he noticed the train doors were still open. In a beat, he'd circled her body with his arms and launched towards it, a hand bracing her head to avoid a nasty collision.
It wasn't until they had gotten off at Concorde, stolen a helmet, and entered a near-empty movie theatre, that he realised he'd lost the lucky charm. The fifth wave of panic of the day hit him. When all of this was over, he'd have to scour all of Paris as Chat Noir to find it.
"Good thinking, Marinette. Without these disguises we never would've made it here," he said to the picture-worthy sight of his fake-girlfriend in googles and a polka-dot towel on her head. "I mean you went all out. Pyjamas?! Genuis!"
Her lip curled against her control. "I was just feeling carefree this morning. This new perfume ad came out and I had to laugh at it a few thousand times." She wriggled in the cinema chair. "But it was your idea to duck into the Star Theatre. That was smart. I guess. Some people might say that, anyway."
"Actually, this was where I was heading when those crazed fans suddenly showed up. Thanks to you, my father won't ever find out!"
Marinette's expression dropped. "Wait, you weren't allowed to go to the movies?!"
Adrien suddenly felt he'd said too much. "I am! With my bodyguard or Nathalie, of course. But I'm not sure my father would have let me watch this particular movie."
As if noticing his demeanour, she opted to lighten the mood. "What, is it PG-13?"
He chuckled. "No, it's a very rare movie I haven't been able to see. It's not on the internet and my Father's hidden the DVD somewhere at home. See," he hesitated to extrapolate, rethinking to share this with Marinette, but the excitement of what they were about to watch caused him to ramble on, "my mother played the leading roll. It's only being showed once, in this theatre. I couldn't talk to my Father about it, so I decided to sneak out unnoticed." He cracked her a grin. "Bet you assumed I was pulling some rebellion act to be cool, huh?"
"Uh, um," she turned away, ashamed. "Maybe I've thought that before. In the past."
The word 'past' hung in the air like an abused piñata. The remnants of the original quarrels had scattered through their relationship like candy. A lot of assumptions from the past had carried on in their characters and came up in memories as reminders not to let their respective guards down. They stared, the word thickening the air as if both realising these facts. But before their eye contact could burgeon into anything else—
"Radient.... Carefree..."
"Oh you have got to be kidd—"
"Hahahaha!"
Marinette was hauled forward, punching the empty seat in front of her as her broken laughs morphed into wheezes as the cinema ad kept going. The few people in the theatre looked at her oddly while he felt like melting into his chair.
He never got to watch the movie.
Fans found him. His bodyguard had been akumatised (with his Marinette-lucky-charm). And now his identity was at risk because the 20-foot blue Gorilla akuma had Ladybug in one fist while he soared off a skyscraper building. To his death.
What. A. Day.
His back slammed against something and he turned his head. Ladybug had escaped Gorizilla's grasp and was beaming at him with glittering eyes and a smile that could probably be the death of him anyway.
Safe. The expression read, filling his entire entity. He was safe.
The pace of his fall slewed as she lowered them with her yoyo to the ground. His knees wobbled from the adrenaline and Ladybug's arm lurched to stabilise him.
"I knew I could count on you, Milad—uh, Ladybug."
Most people wouldn't be grateful that the battle didn't end there, but because it did, he got to be carried by Ladybug (oh he would so be squealing into his pillow when he got home) and hear her express concern over him and his safety. Then, of course, as Chat he fought beside her after turning Wayhem into 'Adrien' to distract the akuma.
Well, there was also the part where Ladybug fingergunned and told him to "stay dreamy" when leaving him to hide. Which he'd otherwise fangirl about if not for the snicker of giggles that echoed from her yoyo-ing away. But he'd pretend that part didn't happen.
Ladybug didn't see him in his civilian form after the battle.
But Marinette did.
"Adrien!"
She'd lost the towel and goggles, now sprinting at him before he could make it to the mouth of the subway tunnel. Cheeks flushed, outfit adorable, she pressed a finger to his chest.
"I—I've looked all over the city for you. Are you okay? Where have you been?!"
"Oh, you know, jumping off buildings and stuff."
"Yeah, and then hiding from Ladybug when she told you to stay put!"
He didn't know what she'd witnessed to make that conclusion, but she sounded concerned for him. He instantly noticed he liked it. He didn't know why. Maybe it was the power trip of it all.
"If I didn't know any better, it sounds like you care about me."
"Well good thing you do know better."
He shrugged, corners of his lips upturning. "I really don't. Sounds like you care."
She wasn't amused. "Just... don't be so reckless."
"Ha! Says the girl who kissed me spontaneously the other day."
Marinette stiffened up as the colour in her cheeks saturated. Surely feigning confidence, she crossed her arms. "Says the guy who enjoyed it."
He tilted forward. "And you didn't?"
She turned so his breath wouldn't fan so close to her mouth, dark lashes low. He straightened out her cowardliness by sharply grabbing her jaw and yanking it back. Her frazzled eyes stared at his like her brain had short-circuited.
He grinned. "You didn't answer my question, princess."
She hated that nickname. And he loved that she hated it.
The was a tremor in her bottom lip as if the array of insults she had in inventory refused to leave her throat. Before he could lean in any further Marinette's phone buzzed and she whipped it out instantly.
"Alya! Hi—"
"Ok Marinette, we saw your pics online but we are totally lost!" Adrien popped his head over Marinette's shoulder to see all their female classmates squishing their heads into frame. "Oh, hey Adrien! You really weren't kidding about him helping you choose a swimsuit, huh girl?"
Marinette chuckled nervously and rubbed her neck. "Aha... I—!"
"I couldn't pick my favourite," Adrien chimed in. "She looks cute in all of them."
He heard the chorus of 'aww's from the girls and relished in the quick glance Marinette shot him that read 'shut your face before I shut it for you'.
"I'll go home and change then be right there. See you guys!" She hung up the phone after the round of 'byes!', and they stood on the subway step with a lingering scent of the tension.
Adrien mourned the realisation that they were about to part ways. Despite the weird day, it was fun. Marinette just happened to... be there.
She cleared her throat and spun the other direction on the staircase to leave.
"Next time you jump off a building," she said, "make sure it's only in perfume ads."
He smiled, genuinely. "Can't make any promises!"
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A/N: Dudes, bros, hoes, Idek if I should share this with y'all BUT (get ready for a story time) like a week after I posted the last chapter, this dude in my friend group at church that I am very much NOT fond of proposed we trick people who won't stop shipping us into thinking we're a couple. Now . I know. i know. Stop looking at me like that. No I don't like him but you think I was gonna turn down FIELD RESEARCH?? It's been - Look, yknow what. Shut up. Just - YOU GUYS UNDERSTAND THE IRONY OF THIS RIGHT? Anyways, It's been like 2 months and we're about to stage our fake break up. Sure, now i like, don't DESPISE him AS MUCH but. I mean. Moving on. There's so many stories in those 2 months my word. I'd love to incorporate them into this fic but it's pretty situation-based so here's me getting it off my chest now
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