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Adrien knew his leg was fine. Ladybug’s magic always managed to stitch together the gashes, smooth out the burns, and even bring him back to life—or so Marinette explained through tears. He never pressed too much more on that topic, both for her sake and his own.
That didn’t mean it still didn’t hurt. Phantom pains were the closest thing he could compare them to. The idea that he was hurt, because he had been, manifested itself inside his head and played out across his body. This time a barbed wire had wound around his entire leg, before the akuma-victim tossed him aside like a ragdoll. The barbs bit and tore through suit and skin. It had hurt. Oh God, did it hurt. Still hurt. Would continue hurt for at least the next few hours if he was lucky, days if he wasn’t. His nerves were on fire as if his leg fell asleep and now six-inch pins and needles seemed to stab every square inch of his leg.
He fought back the hiss of pain as he and Ladybug landed on the Dupain-Cheng rooftop a bit harder than normal. Then again, he usually didn’t need to be carried away by Ladybug because he used Cataclysm prematurely in the fight; his miraculous timed out too early. As soon as her feet touched, Tikki let go of the transformation and Marinette unwound her arms from Adrien’s waist.
He immediately missed the pressure of her arm around him, supporting his weight. Now he had no excuse to lean into her, lessen the force that he put onto his aching leg, without her knowing something was up. And so he bit the inside of his cheek and tried to stand as straight as he could without wincing.
“That was a nice study break,” Marinette mumbled, catching Tikki in her cupped hands. She brought her kwami up close to her face for a quick peck of thanks and a promise of cookies soon enough.
Adrien nodded absently, trying to focus on the way Marinette’s eyes lit up and cheeks were still flushed red from practically flying through the air. He tried to think of how Plagg had yet to fly out of his pocket and complain about how he was so starved for cheese. He thought about the physics that he and Marinette left behind in her room once their phones pinged with an update about an akuma attack. He tried to think about anything that wasn’t the thrumming pain in his leg.
Marinette sighed next to him. Her bangs fluttered up before they fell in disarray. Piercing blue eyes looked up at him and for a moment all Adrien felt was his heart doing a flip instead of his leg aching. “Come on, Handsome Boy. My parents will kill me if I don’t bring up my grade. Back to the books.”
Adrien grinned at the nickname. He followed behind her as she made her way to the hatch, each step a flare of pain. “I highly doubt that. Your parents are pretty great.”
Marinette looked up at him from where she squatted with one hand on the hatch. Tikki hovered over her shoulder. “Do you remember Simon Says? Because I was grounded that day for missing too much school. And a notice has already been sent home about how many classes I’ve skipped this year. It’s a surprise they haven’t brought it up to me yet. I saw it sitting open on the counter the other day.”
She dragged a hand down her face. Her fingers caught against the bags under her eyes and Adrien sympathized with her. He wanted to pick her up and hold her and tell her to get some much deserved sleep. That physics could wait until after dinner and they could curl up together for a nice cat nap. When was the last time he’d seen her without the dark circles under her eyes? When they first met, maybe.
“I’m surprised your father hasn’t called you in for a meeting about all the skips you have accumulated,” Marinette continued her voice taking a bitter turn that only happened in reference to his father
"The school probably thinks I just have shoots and work to do,” Adrien said with a shrug. “Besides, the only perk to having a detached father is the fact that he’s never around to be aware that there are questions he should even consider asking.”
Marinette paused with the hatch half open. Her eyes widened and mouth dropped open to a small ‘o’. “Adrien… I’m so—”
“It’s fine, Mari. I’m the one who said it. Besides I’ve got you and your family.” He smiled at her. Usually he would’ve stooped down next to her to peck her cheek to emphasize his point and partly to procure a blush from her. But this time he made do with just ruffling her hair and laughed when Marinette swatted his hand away and tried to flatten her hair out. The sorry look melted into a playful glare. A faint blush dusted her cheeks, to Adrien’s delight. “Which, it’s like I said. Your parents are cool. I’m sure they’ll understand your situation.”
The playfulness dampened. She snorted. “Yeah, my situation. ‘Hey Mama. Hey Papa. Guess what? I’m Ladybug!’” Marinette said in a voice painfully sweet and terribly mocking. “That will go over just swell.” She sighed again, shoulders sagged slightly. “Like I said, come on, Adrien.”
She slipped through the opening and climbed down without waiting for him to counter her sarcasm.
Well, Adrien thought before he frowned at her words and at the fact that he’d have to climb down there as well. He bit the inside of his cheek as he gradually kneeled. His kneecap flared with pain as soon as it brushed against the ground and continued to do so with each bend of the knee as he climbed down. The pins and needles felt like they’d been soaked in flames before they poked at him now.
“Mari, you know—“ Adrien started, voice as tight as his white-knuckled fingers were around the rungs. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Marinette had gotten out of the way for him. He expected to see her laying at the bottom of her bed, exhausted. Or maybe she’d be standing along the side of her bed, expectant for him. Adrien did not expect Marinette to sitting frozen on the edge of her bed. She looked like she saw a ghost. Her back was ramrod straight as if she was stuck at a socialite event. “Marinette?”
“Are you two okay?”
Adrien’s head snapped from Marinette to look down by the entrance of her room where Sabine stood. He let go of the rungs in surprise. Thank God for his cat-like reflexes that made sure he twisted and at least land on his back—which was also sore from being whipped into a wall, but decidedly less so than his leg. That did not mean that it still didn’t stir his leg the wrong way. He laid still on the bed, waiting for the burning pins and needles sensation to die down as much as it could. His mind buzzing at the fact that Sabine was standing right there and we were just talking about Ladybug.
“Mama, what are you- what, why- uh, how long have you been here?” Marinette started. She tried to keep her voice even, but Adrien could hear how it sounded higher than normal, just a couple beats faster than normal. She was nervous, borderline frantic.
His own heart thudded in anticipation for the answer to the unasked question How much did you hear?
“Not long. I knocked and you didn’t respond. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“We took a study break. Fresh air. Rooftop. Sorry.” She paused to collect herself. Marinette wrung her hands behind her back. “Why are you up here again?”
Adrien gritted his teeth so he could sit up on the bed. Sabine made eye contact with him and Adrien, though he didn’t know why, immediately looked away.
“Your father needs help in the bakery. Would you mind going down there before you start studying again?”
It took a couple of seconds to realize none of that involved the word Ladybug, but Adrien saw Marinette relax in front of him. He let out a breath himself. “Of course! Come on, Adrien.” There was a spark in her eye and an energy about her that wasn’t there before. Relief. Adrien grinned as she offered him her hand.
He placed his hand in hers and with a tug, he was on his feet. Adrien staggered and squeezed her hand so that he wouldn’t make any uncomfortable sound at the force he was pulled up onto his feet. He tried not to lean into her. She would notice. Marinette was perceptive with him—something that came with the time they spent together all these years fighting side-by-side. And if she suspected something, she’d question him, and then he’d have to lie to her questions and he hated lying to her and then he’d get guilty and then—
“Actually, Adrien, can you stay here? I need to speak with you.”
And that’s when Adrien’s legs truly stopped working. His grip tightened around Marinette’s fingers into what he was positive was something painful. If it was, she didn’t show any sign of it. Marinette simply looked at him with wide blue eyes clearly asking What do we do? Adrien could only look back with what he hoped looked like a calm façade, except he could feel how frantic his eyes searched hers for an answer to What did I do?
He wasn’t used to parents needing him unless it was to be critiqued and scolded. And he nearly always had a heads up when his father needed him by a ping on his phone and a slot filled in on his calendar by Nathalie.
“It’s nothing bad, dear,” Sabine calmed. Adrien broke eye contact with Marinette to look at the older woman. She wore a genuine smile—warm, kind, and trusting. Adrien let out another breath at that and his shoulders relaxed some. “I just want to talk to you about something if that’s okay with you.”
Adrien nodded, cleared his throat, and let out a small “Yeah, no, that’s fine.”
Sabine’s smile grew. “Good. Now come on, Marinette. Don’t leave your father waiting.”
But Marinette screwed up her face and gave her mother a squinted stare. “What are you up to?” she drew out slowly, unsure.
“Marinette, the bakery.”
“But—“
“Marinette, if you don’t get going then I’ll start telling him stories about you as a kid,” Sabine said, her smile laced into her good-humored words.
Adrien laughed at how comically wide Marinette’s eyes grew. “Mama,” she breathed, scandalized. “You wouldn’t.”
Sabine simply smiled. Wrinkles formed around her eyes. “The sooner you go downstairs and help your father, the sooner you can come back here to ensure I don’t tell the story of what happened on your 8th birthday.”
Marinette’s gaze flickered between Sabine and Adrien several times before she concentrated on just him. Dropping his hand as if it shocked her, she spat out a quick, “I’ll be right back, I swear. Don’t listen to any of her stories until then.”
Adrien couldn’t help but grin at that even as Marinette was already climbing down from the loft. “I can’t promise you anything there, Princess,” he called. His grin grew wider when Marinette looked over her shoulder and pouted.
And with that, she was gone. Sabine stepped out of the way as Marinette rushed down the stairs. There was a break in her steady pace and Adrien winced, knowing that meant she had to have tripped at some point on the stairs leading down form her room. He was about to call out for her, but her voice floated up with a hasty “I’m fine”. Another moment, and Adrien caught the faint click of the front door shutting behind her.
Sabine shook her head at her daughter’s antics, but did not follow her daughter downstairs like Adrien figured she would. In fact, Sabine took the final step up into the room and crossed her arms. She watched him as if there was something on him and she was trying to figure out the nicest way to tell him about it.
“Um,” Adrien rubbed the back of his neck. “What did you need me for? To talk about?”
Sabine continued to study him, a comforting smile—a motherly smile—tipped her lips. “Are you able to come down here first?”
The wording wasn’t lost on him. Judging by the way Plagg shuffled around in his shirt pocket, they hadn’t been lost on him either. And so Adrien nodded. “Of course,” he said, though the words faltered as he looked towards the ladder that led down to the main floor of Marinette’s room.
He shuffled to the edge of the loft, turned around, and squeezed his eyes shut. He pinched the soft underside of his arm. He read once how the body could only feel pain in one area at a time. How if you wanted to stop feeling pain in one area, you should pinch yourself on a different part of your body. It had to be bogus, what with the way dull pain managed to radiate throughout his entire body at once sometimes. But for once, with Sabine watching him, he hoped that it was true.
It was not.
Each step throbbed throughout his right leg. He bit into his lower lip, sure to draw blood even if he couldn’t taste the copper just yet. Then finally—finally—he found his left foot on the stable ground, with his right leg hesitantly following behind, gingerly testing the rest of Adrien’s weight as he settled it onto the floor. His hands twisted around the sides of the ladder and his forehead rested against a rung as he slowly let out a breath through his teeth in a painful hiss.
And he counted. One, two, three. Inhale. One, two, three. Exhale.
His leg was on fire.
Inhale. One, two, three. Exhale.
It wasn’t always this bad. Why was it this bad this time? It had just been a wire. A barbed wire, but a measly wire nonetheless. A wire that at one point he thought was going to slice through his leg as if it was nothing more than sun-warmed camembert.
Inhale. One, two, three….
He felt Plagg patting his chest from inside his shirt pocket, trying to comfort him. He appreciated the gesture, he did. It wasn’t often Adrien could claim that Plagg exerted the effort to actually comfort him and show concern in the same way Tikki did for Marinette, but right now it was not helping. He needed to steady his breath, steady the pain. He needed to stand up on his own and put on his act. He needed to—
A small hand settled onto his shoulder and Adrien nearly jumped, startled. “I’m sorry. Adrien, come here. Sit down.”
Adrien shook his head and with a final breath, pushed away from the loft’s ladder. He stood and ignored the pain that still shot up his leg. When he turned, Sabine’s hand fell off his shoulder and once again he found himself missing the human contact. He forced a smile that ached as much as his leg and felt faker than anything he created for the cameras. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Now what is it that you wanted?”
Sabine frowned and her brows furrowed at him. She had to stretch both arms up in order to place her hands on his shoulders now. His growth spurt last year had left him towering over both her and Marinette. “You’re not fine and I want you to stop pretending and sit, that’s what I want.”
“My leg just fell asleep. Really, Sabi—“
She squeezed his shoulders and Adrien, no matter his newfound height, wanted to shrink away from the sharp look she gave him. “Adrien, I don’t want you to hurt yourself any further. So you are going to use me as support and we are going to get you situated onto the chaise and you will stop resisting because your leg is hurt. You are hurt. And no son of mine is going to suffer alone.”
A blush rose to Adrien’s face at the reference of him as her son. It was something Sabine and Tom both said on a handful of occasions, but he couldn’t recall ever hearing it said with such a ferocity behind it before. It warmed his insides as much as his face and Adrien watched the older woman in awe as she gave him no more time to argue and already moved to stand next to him. She cleared her throat in a pointed manner and he fumbled next to her, clumsily settling an arm around her shoulder as her arm supported his back. It was so easy to see where Marinette got her strength from now. Her figurative and physical, if Sabine easily shouldering his weight was anything to go by.
“I knew as soon as they showed you limping on screen that you weren’t okay and if you’re anything like Marinette—which you are—that you’d be stubborn and try to hide it,” Sabine continued to chastise him as they hobbled the short distance to the chaise.
Adrien frowned. “I’m not stubborn,” he said and would’ve crossed his arms if he could like a petulant child he was never able to be if they weren’t wound around Sabine’s shoulder at the moment.
They stopped in front of the chaise and Sabine carefully extracted herself from under his weight, careful not to jostle him too much. She moved her grip to his arms as he gradually sat down. “That’s exactly what Marinette says.”
He did cross his arms now as he gingerly leaned back into the back of the chaise. Slowly with the help of Sabine, Adrien brought both legs up onto the cushion. A cross between a stubborn huff and a content sigh escaped him as he relaxed for the first time since before the fight.
“But,” Adrien started as Sabine sat down on the edge of the chaise close to where his outstretched knees were. And then he stopped as he got past the stubborn statement and realized.... Adrien’s eyes widened and he could feel the color fade from his face. He tried to get up, only to be stopped short by the pain.
She had said on screen. That he had limped on screen. Only… only it had been Chat Noir who had been limping with the news crew around filming.
“How’d you know?” Adrien said, silently berating himself for not playing off the comment like it was nothing. But he had been the one who wanted to expose his identity to Ladybug immediately after meeting her. He was the one who just told Marinette her parents would be fine with this information. He studied Sabine as she sat there, looking for any sign that he had been wrong earlier.
She only smiled generously rested a hand on his shoulder to push him back down. He obeyed and slowly leaned back into the chaise, still studying her, waiting to see. Hoping that he’d been right. “Careful there, dear. A mother simply knows,” The smile turned wry as she looked at him. “Plus between you and me, Marinette is a terrible liar.”
Adrien snorted and shook his head in agreeance. The corner of his mouth twitched into what could’ve been a smile. “I still don’t understand,” he muttered.
“There’s only so many excuses she can use, so many times she can come home late at night without making a sound, so many times that she can go missing throughout the day without Tom and I noticing.” He watched Sabine roll up his pant leg as she talked.
He flinched, not in pain, but from almost expecting to see a bloody and mangled leg beneath his jeans. Instead he looked down and saw flawless, tan skin. He resisted the urge to squirm at the unsettling vision that didn’t match the way he still felt. It made his stomach spin.
“And me?” Adrien said once he finally managed to loosen his jaw enough to speak. “How did you know I was Chat Noir?”
Sabine stopped and glanced up at him, a coy smile across her lips. “You started to come around more after the gaming competition and we got to know you better. Certain mannerisms and details just clicked. Between you and Chat Noir and with how similar you acted when an akuma attacked to the way Marinette did.”
“But that was so long ago,” he whispered, more for himself than for her to hear. But she still looked at him again and nodded. And if that was him that meant… that meant they knew about Marinette being Ladybug before that. Marinette, who’d been stressed about her parents’ reactions and meanwhile…
“But what really assured me,” Sabine continued in a teasing tone, “was when Ladybug and Chat Noir were sighted as an official item. If Ladybug was Marinette, I knew she wouldn’t give up on her crush for Adrien so quickly.”
“Oh.” Adrien scratched at his warming face. He sifted through his thoughts for something to say that wasn’t on the topic of his and Ladybug’s photographed relationship. The two of them had been careful with their two identities. Ladybug and Chat Noir went official months before Marinette and Adrien did. They’d intended for it to throw of suspicion of both their identities getting into relationships at the same time. To think that’s what confirmed their secret identities in the end.
“Her cure is amazing,” Sabine whispered with pride, saving Adrien from his embarrassment. The pride quickly turned into concern, though. “But it still hurts?”
“For now. It- it goes away. At least, it usually does.” His left wrist still hurt on regular intervals, but he’d come to accept and live with that. Though he’d thought about going to one of his father’s top physicians for it under the mundane claim that it was carpal tunnel or something.
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long will it hurt for?”
Adrien shrugged one shoulder. “A day, a couple days. Sometimes longer. A week, a month.”
“And Marinette, does she--?”
“No.” And Adrien immediately felt bad for sounding so harsh when Sabine drew back her hand and looked at him with wide eyes. He dropped his gaze to the cushion where he scratched at the fabric with his nail. “I mean, I don’t want her to—she can’t know.”
“And why is that?”
“Because,” Adrien thumped the back of his head against the chaise and studied the beams across Marinette’s ceiling. “She’ll get angry at me from keeping this from her and lecture me and then she’ll tell me to stop protecting her. And I can’t just let her get injured instead. Because she’s Ladybug and Paris needs her to fix everything and because she’s Marinette and should never be in pain. Not to mention she’ll feel awful that she hasn’t been healing me fully every time.” He lowered his gaze to look back towards Sabine, but not able to meet her in the eye fully. He focused on the pink wall behind her. “I just can’t do that to her.”
He felt, more than saw, as Sabine began to unroll his pant leg just as gentle as she rolled it up. Whatever she was inspecting, Adrien figured she was content with what she saw. “Just as you can’t continue doing this to yourself,” she said quietly but sternly.
“I told you, it gets better eventually. And it won’t be this severe forever. This one is worse than usual and hopefully by tomorrow it’ll dull and—“ Sabine stared evenly at him causing Adrien to swallow the lump that formed in his throat. He was wasting his breath, he realized. Definitely wasting his breath. He wouldn’t be able to talk circles around her like he could Nathalie at times. “And I’m sorry.”
“As you should be,” Sabine said, seemingly proud of herself for forcing his hand. She pulled on the hem of his pants to straighten out the wrinkles in the denim. Done with keeping her attention elsewhere, she looked up at him, eyes soft, and just in time to see him flinch from a slight surge of pain he couldn’t ignore. “Do you want any Advil to help with it?”
He was quick to shake his head, eyes wide. “No!” he hurried again. This time, Sabine didn’t pull away at his sudden shout. He lowered himself back against the chaise again, embarrassed. “I mean, no. I—“
It was Plagg who’d made the off-handed comment at one point when he’d first started to take a generic pain medicine before bed to sleep easier. It was a throw-away comment to the kwami, one that Plagg refused to elaborate on later about how some of his other kittens experienced pain. How not all of them were strong and grew dependent on some sort of medication. How it was simply the bad luck that did it. That night Adrien threw away the innocuous bottles he had always kept inside his bathroom’s medicine cabinet. Plagg watched on silently from the bathroom sink.
“Adrien,” Sabine said gently. “I understand.” And Adrien believed her when she said that. That it wasn’t just something said to comfort him, even if she maybe didn’t know the full story. “But maybe I can go downstairs and make you some tea? It’s nothing much, but I always make it for myself after I do heavy lifting around the bakery.”
He nodded, not entirely sure it would work at all, but also couldn’t find it in him to decline the gesture.
Sabine started to get up before she carefully sat back down next to him. She waited until they made eye contact before she spoke. “Adrien, I want you to know that Tom and I decided not to tell Marinette that we know. We want her to tell us when she’s ready. Knowing Marinette, she has thought herself into 101 reasons as to why we shouldn’t know.”
Adrien was unsure of where this was going. Did she believe that he would tell her? Marinette, who hadn’t even wanted her own partner to know her identity? “She’ll appreciate that,” he whispered, not knowing what else to say, but knowing it was all true
Sabine nodded, though she seemed lost in a series of thoughts.
“Until then, we’re just trying to go easy on her. Be silent helpers, you could say. Less hours helping in the bakery, a later curfew in case of late night akuma attacks, we’ve grown more lenient on--"
“That’s why you haven’t grounded her for missing classes yet,” Adrien said, the thought dawning on him suddenly enough that he didn’t mind cutting the older woman off.
Sabine looked up surprised. “Yes, how did you…?”
“Marinette. She was just telling me she saw the notice on the counter. You left it there on purpose didn’t you? To let her know you knew about it but weren’t going to punish her for it.” Adrien said, eager now that he was piecing together all the pieces
Sabine only smiled, not agreeing nor disagreeing to his theory. But Adrien knew he was right as Sabine continued. “We didn’t plan on telling you either. But Tom and I, well, we try to watch all the news blurbs about your battles to make sure you’re both okay. And I saw you limping afterwards when usually Marinette’s magic seems to cure you completely.” Sabine looked to his knee with a look that said or so I thought. “So I came to check on you two… I know you’re trying to protect my daughter and neither Tom nor I can ever thank you enough for that. You’re the reason why we don’t worry as much as we should about Marinette being Ladybug even before we knew it was you.”
Adrien’s face heated up and he looked away, only to look back when he felt Sabine rest a hand on his knee. His good knee, bless her.
“But as you know we already consider you as a son to us and we don’t want you hurt either. We want both of you to be careful and safe. And God only knows that Marinette is strong enough to handle a couple bumps and bruises. She’s never wanted to be considered incapable of taking care of herself. You of all people should know that.”
Adrien nodded.
“What she won’t be able to handle is if anything terrible happened to you, especially if it was preventable.”
His throat grew thick at her words. It was one thing to think how important he could be to Marinette. Another thing for her to reiterate the sentiment herself. But for an outsider of their relationship—her mother, no less—to say the same was too much.
His silence didn’t stop her though. Sabine got up and grabbed one of the blankets Marinette had quilted and kept draped over the back of the chaise. She unfolded it before she delicately draped it across him. “Think about telling her, Adrien. She would want to know and wouldn’t treat you any different.”
She patted his good knee again before she stood up straight. “Well, I should probably start on the tea. Rest and don’t overexert yourself,” Sabine chided. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
Adrien shook his head but then paused. “Uh, actually,” he started and ducked his head. His arm pulled out from under the blanket and his hand cradled the back of his neck. “Could you possibly bring me some cheese? Uh, camembert if possible, but if not that then any kind.”
That was it. The odd questioning look Sabine gave him with a slight tilt of her head as if she was trying to figure out his odd request was going to finally kill him from embarrassment. He cleared his throat. “It’s not for uh, me. It’s a- uh, it’s a Chat Noir thing.”
Sabine still paused before she gave him a slow nod. A shadow of confusion still lingered in the furrow of her brow. “I’ll see what we have.”
Adrien mumbled another embarrassed “Thank you” before she left and then slumped back. He closed his eyes and frowned. “I hope you’re happy, Plagg.”
He felt Plagg crawl out of his pocket and settle down on his lap even through the blanket draped over his legs. His kwami harrumphed as he curled up. “I’ll be happier when there’s cheese.”
x X x
It did not take long after Sabine left for Adrien to begin to doze off, nor for the stairs to creak in a loud, quick rhythm that in no way could be Sabine returning already. That meant it could only be one other person. Adrien grinned as Marinette flew into the room. Her eyes glanced around, looking for him, before she stopped to where he sat on the chaise. Instead of a reciprocated grin like she usually gave him, her eyes narrowed. “Mama is humming to herself downstairs and smiled when she greeted me on my way up.”
Adrien laughed and settled back into the chaise with a roll of his eyes. “How terrible of her, Princess, to greet you with a smile. It might come to a surprise, but most people do smile when they see someone, not look so accusatory.”
Marinette frowned and rested on fist on her hip. The other held up a plate much like a waitress would. “Ha, ha,” she said flatly, but broke out into a bright smile at the end. “She also gave me some cheese and said she’d bring up some tea later?”
Plagg, who Adrien assumed also fell into a light cat nap, perked at the last bit. “Cheese? Where?”
Marinette only nodded towards the plate, eyes still trained on Adrien. She walked over to her desk and sat the plate down and only pulled her gaze off him to open her clutch. From there she pulled out some large cookies she must have snagged from down in the bakery. She didn’t even have to say anything for Tikki to dive out of whatever hiding spot she was in up in the loft.
Adrien blanched. He hadn’t even considered what happened to Tikki. She’d been out in the open when Marinette dropped down into her room earlier. He had just assumed the little kwami had phased back into the clutch. Did that mean?
Tikki sat down next to Plagg at the plate. The cookie eclipsed her, but Adrien thought he saw a knowing look sent his way.
“What are you doing over there?” Marinette continued, oblivious to the little acknowledgement between Adrien and Tikki.
Adrien looked away from the two kwami and stared at Marinette who still held a humored smile. He shrugged, shrinking back down into the blanket and ignored the static in his leg. “Nothing. Just tired,” he said and couldn’t have tired the following yawn better if he tried to. When that was done, he raised his eyebrows. “Want to take a cat nap with me, My Lady?”
Marinette smiled despite the overused pun. “What about physics?”
“It can wait until after dinner.”
She still hesitated, looking back to her desk where their books sat.
“Mari,” Adrien whined, exasperated. “We both know you don’t want to work on physics. No matter how much you want to get a good grade. And you can’t get a good grade without a proper amount of sleep. And if that’s not enough then your parents would want you to sleep if it meant it’d help you.” She bit her lip like it was still a questionable decision. Adrien lifted the blanket up. “Come here.”
Marinette laughed in defeat. “Fine, fine. If it’ll stop your yowling.”
Adrien laughed, pathetically trying to make it sound like a cat’s holler. He moved over some to make sure she had room, careful not to jostle his leg in the process. “How was the bakery?”
Marinette paused and looked over at him. She scrunched up her nose. “Weird. It was like Papa was trying to find stuff for me to do down there.”
Adrien kept his face trained at that bit of news. He had a feeling that Marinette was never needed, but had to be preoccupied during Sabine’s concerns with him. Sabine and Tom were quick on their feet, after all, Marinette had to get it from somewhere. And if anyone were as in sync as he and Marinette to know the intention of their counterpart, it’d be those two. He feigned surprise. “Oh?”
She hummed. “And then he randomly told me that I was dismissed while I was in the middle of a job. I think my parents are up to something,” she muttered.
Marinette sat down and the cushion lowered under her slight weight. Adrien grimaced as he felt his leg shift with it. Her back was to him and she couldn’t have seen the face he pulled. He could continue playing it off like it was fine even though Marinette would no doubt knock her own knees into his as she got comfortable. He could have just bit his tongue and stomached the pain but Sabine had said…
“Mari, wait,” Adrien said. His hand brushed against her elbow, catching her attention. She twisted around and stared so imploringly at him. “I, uh,” Adrien stuttered. You should tell her, Sabine said. Adrien swallowed. “Be careful. I, uh, strained my right knee. When I fell earlier. I think. It kinda hurts.”
Marinette’s eyes widened. “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you?”
Adrien tried to stop grimacing—a grimace that, for once today, was not because of pain. He lied to her. He tried to tell her and he lied. Okay, not lied. He told her a half-truth, which meant that he half-lied. Adrien nodded. He felt the cushions move again and gripped her elbow to keep Marinette from leaving. “Don’t go,” he mumbled. “I’ll be fine. Just be careful is all.”
She nodded though he still had to pull gently on her arm to coax her to stay and lay down with him. He felt content when Marinette slipped into the empty space between his arm and his chest. She drew her legs up straight next to his so that they barely brushed against one another. “Let me know if you’re in pain at any point,” she said and nuzzled into his side.
Closing his eyes, Adrien nodded. Maybe Sabine was right and it wouldn’t be bad having Marinette know. And a half-truth was better than a no-truth. He’d just work his way up to the truth. His head lulled off to the side Marinette laid against him as they fell into a comfortable silence. Their breathing began to sync together.
And then he felt Marinette shift underneath her arm, still careful of her legs and his leg. “Adrien?” she mumbled, the beginnings of sleep collecting in her voice.
He hummed, too tired to voice anything.
“What did you and Mama talk about?”
He was quiet for some time. He tried to think of what to say other than the fact that her parents knew they were Ladybug and Chat Noir. And then he grinned. The arm around her pulled her closer against him in hopes that she wouldn’t be able to retaliate and punch him even in their half-asleep state. “Your 8th birthday.”