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Marinette dragged a hand slowly down her face, fingers pulling at the skin and drawing it into a distorted expression.
She couldn’t concentrate. It didn’t matter that she was sitting in the middle of class, or that the teacher was reviewing material for an upcoming test, or that her best friend was side-eyeing her without even trying to pretend like she wasn’t. Marinette’s eyes kept flicking in the direction of a certain blond-headed bimbo sitting in front of her.
She wanted to kiss him.
She wanted to slap him upside the head.
She more or less wanted to alternate between the two, a few konks on her own noggin thrown sporadically in there for good measure.
Allowing her arm to drop to the tabletop, she released a long, heavy sigh.
Half the class turned around to stare at her.
Alya, already looking anyway, smothered an amused smirk with her hand.
Marinette had the good grace to blush in embarrassment.
“Something the matter, Marinette?”
“S- sorry, Miss Bustier. I’m just… extra tired today.”
The redheaded woman gave Marinette a look of compassion.
“Try to pay attention. You’ll be testing over this.”
Marinette nodded and gave a sheepish, self-conscious smile. In her peripheral, she realized Adrien had turned around to look at her.
His dreamy half-smile-slash-sympathetic-look almost turned her knees to jelly. It also stimulated a sudden spike in her blood pressure.
Slap. Upside the head.
“I hope you get some rest tonight,” he offered, just as the bell rang to end class.
Marinette’s gaze flickered erratically for a moment before she shot out of her chair, grabbed Adrien by the arm on her way down the steps, and practically yanked him out of the room. Alya’s surprised yelp (or was it Adrien’s?) and Nino’s confused expression weren’t enough to slow her down.
She fought her way through the hallway crowds, passed the locker room she would usually stop in (there were too many witnesses, she decided immediately at a glance), all the way to a maintenance closet at the end of the corridor.
“Uh, Marinette?”
With barely any hesitation, she twisted the long handle and swung open the door. Part of the handle (which she accidentally, apparently, broke. Curse the residual strength her miraculous left her with.) clattered to the cement floor. She gave it a fraction of a second of her attention before pushing Adrien into the closet and closing the door behind them.
A few seconds of quiet hung heavy in the dim space.
“...Marinette?”
She couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“You reek of magic.”
“Uhh… huh?”
Marinette began to pace, rubbing both sides of her forehead with opposed thumb and fore/middle fingers. She couldn’t see that well in the dark room, despite the bit of light streaming in from a tiny window up by the ceiling. She was also aware, somewhere in the afterthought region of her mind, that Adrien could probably see better than she could.
He would have his own miraculous side effects, after all.
“You reek of magic,” she said again, coming to a stop. One hand rested on her hip, the other dropped to her side. She did her best to meet his questioning gaze, but it was a little difficult to focus on anything by looking at it directly. Curse the dimness.
Stupid Chat.
“Um, Marinette, I’m not sure what you me-”
He was cut off by her hands on the collar of his overshirt, pulling him abruptly toward her and smashing their lips together. Befuddled, he staggered backward from the momentum and ended up landing with his bum on a stack of boxes, their heights suddenly more even.
His eyes bugged (ha, bugged) out dramatically, but he didn’t react, and before he could, she had already pulled away and was looking at him, apparently annoyed.
“This is not how I planned on telling you,” she murmured, breath a little labored.
Adrien just stared at her with wide, wondrous eyes.
“...huh?”
Marinette released her grip on his shirt at the same time that she released an exasperated breath. She began to pivot away, chuckling humorlessly to herself.
“Well, you wouldn’t get it, would you?”
Her back was to him now, and he could only watch it, struck dumb and speechless.
What was happening?
All of a sudden, she spun back around.
“He never told me it would be like this,” she said, as though that explained everything. “He didn’t tell me I would be able to smell you…” Adrien’s mouth gaped a little like a fish. She drew a deep breath. “This is not…” she repeated, hesitating. A step or two closer. With his Chat Vision (no, that was Plagg’s idea, and it still sounds stupid, but his brain is too fried to think of something better, dammit!), Adrien could see the determination flashing in her bright, bluebell eyes. They flicked back and forth between his own, searching for something, but he had no idea what.
Whatever it was, they didn’t find it, or maybe they did, but her shoulders slumped, and she exhaled like a deflated balloon. Slowly, her hands rose up and framed his face, and she leaned forward until their foreheads were pressed against each other. Her eyes fluttered closed. “Goddammit, kitty, why do you have to be so slow? Are you really going to make me say it?”
She pulled away, looking into his eyes again, but with more desperation. It was like she was begging him to understand…
Adrien fought for words, something-- anything.
“Wha? Marinette, I- I don’t underst-” He didn’t so much trail as he did cut off his own sentence. Gulping, his brain caught up with him. This time, it was him searching her eyes for some sort of answer. She seemed to sense it, sighing in relief and giving him a tired quirk of one corner of her mouth. Adrien swallowed again, licking his lips. “Ma- my lady?”
Her wan little smile blew into a full-grown thing, and her eyelids fell shut. For a second she could only nod, but before he knew it, she was throwing her arms around him and holding him close.
Adrien could only gape in amazement. He belatedly, absent-mindedly returned her embrace as he found his chin tucked into the junction of her neck and her shoulder. Her wispy, blue-black pigtail tickled his nose, and he smiled, closing his eyes in return. In the background, the bell to signal the start of the next class rang, unheaded by either of them.
She was so close that her scent was everywhere. It was sweet and earthy and somehow just felt like home.
Marinette pulled away slowly, suddenly abashed. Her eyes remained focused on the floor.
“S- sorry for, uh, for jumping you earlier,” she mumbled. Her fingers fidgeted at her sides where they landed after she let him go.
“What?” Adrien cocked his head, unsure for a moment what she was referring to (that was becoming a trend today, wasn’t it?) before recollection steam-rolled him like a freight train. “Oh, you mean… you kissing me?”
Her face flamed red so bright, he didn’t even need his Chat Vision to see it. He couldn’t help it. It was the Chat in him-- he laughed.
Marinette covered her face with her hands, all bravery and impatience from before already melted away. She wished in the moment that she had never done such a stupid, impulsive thing.
Adrien framed her face then with his hands, his laughter dissipating into chuckles and then into nothing. With one, he patiently peeled away the appendages obscuring her face from view.
“I guess I have to make us even, then,” he said, ducked his head, and returned the favor.