First Order of Business | Adrienette

Younger

Marinette is in the mess of her bedroom with fabric strewn all over the place when she gets a text from Adrien asking if he could go see her. She tells him yes and frantically starts cleaning and trying to think of a game plan to get him into her room without her parents seeing him. Of course, that would need a grappling hook and maybe superpowers.

She forgets how fast Adrien drives because her mom calls her down when there's still some fabric scraps on the floor. Maybe she could have gotten away with sneaking Adrien in if her parents worked that afternoon, but she can deal with them being a little annoying if it means Adrien is safe inside her home. This whole situation has been scary to process, and she feels for Adrien so deeply. She can't shelter him from the world, much less his own father, but she can try to make him feel secure with her.

Marinette goes down to their kitchen and sees Adrien sitting on one of the stools next to her dad, smiling and laughing along with him. Her mom is by the stove, finishing putting their lunch together. Her mom sees her and smiles, "Marinette. We invited Adrien to have lunch with us. I hope you don't mind." Maybe he parents have caught on faster than she had hoped.

"Not at all," Marinette says and walks up behind Adrien. She puts her hand on his back in an angle where neither of her parents can see and asks, "How are you?"

"I'm better now that I'm here," Adrien smiles at her. Marinette swears she sees a shooting star pass through her dad's eyes. "Your dad was telling me a funny story."

"Oh yeah," her dad says as if he wasn't there for it. "I was telling him about what me and your mom went through to get you a bottle of Adrien the Fragrance." Marinette's face has never gotten red this fast before, and she smacks her hands to her cheeks.

"Dad, really?" Marinette whines. Adrien laughs, and her dad crosses his arms as if it's nothing. Adrien's ego is going to rise through the roof. Maybe he needs it right now, but she wishes it was literally any other story. Her parents giving her boyfriend that they supposedly don't know is her boyfriend ammo on her teenage self that was in love with him is not her dream situation.

"Well, he said he knew you used to have a crush on him as a teenager and wanted more stories." Marinette glares at the back of Adrien's head, and he slowly turns his head to the side to meet her eyes. He laughs a little nervously because he knows he got caught up.

"Mr. Instigator," Marinette says and lightly tugs on his ear. This gets a laugh out of Adrien, and she's relieved to hear it. He's safe here with her family and that's all that matters.

After lunch, when her parents go down to the bakery to do some organizing and restocking, Marinette takes Adrien to her room. He teases her a little on the fact that she waited for her parents to leave, but she threatens to volunteer him to move flour bags around. He makes a motion of zipping his lips.

They go up into her bedroom, and Marinette shuts the floor door. She apologizes, "I'm sorry for the mess. I've been figuring out material for the wedding dresses."

"I don't mind," Adrien assures her. She gestures at her desk chair and a bean bag for him to take, and he throws himself stomach first at the beanbag. "Ugh. I think I might be too old to throw myself like this." Marinette laughs at him and goes to the space under her bed to look for a hidden box. Adrien adjusts himself to sit up right before Marinette comes over and squeezes next to him. "What's this?"

"What you wanted to see." Marinette takes the lid off the pink cardboard box and there is a very old, unopened box of Adrien the Fragrance. A huge laugh leaves Adrien's laugh as he takes the entire box off her lap and starts going through it. "I thought about burning it all. I didn't want you to think I was stalking you all these years and that this was some part of a very creepy scheme."

"If you were the one that asked for the secretary job, then maybe I would've been a little bit suspicious," Adrien smiles. "But I wanted you to work for me first."

"You don't think it's weird?"

"My family wins the weird competition. You having a crush on a celebrity when you were a teenager is nothing, really." A celebrity. Adrien sees it the same way she does. This teenage boy was someone created by PR teams. It's not really him.

"You and teen model Adrien are very different. Which is funny because you share faces." Adrien smiles. She understands him better every day, but she's understood this fact since she first started getting to know him.

"He's the reason I'm always scared people won't like me," Adrien confesses to her. "They think I'm him exactly. And I'm not."

"I like who you are better." Adrien looks at her with fondness and smiles again. He starts going through the photos in the box. It's folded up posters and photographs of him and other models cut out of magazines. It's not an entire box dedicated to Adrien, and Marinette is glad teenage Marinette had some sense to put other people on her wall to avoid the creepy shrine look.

"I like to think we share some similar qualities, but what makes me human was edited to make him perfect. It's weird. He's like a twin brother we keep locked in the attic and nobody talks about him." Adrien sighs. "Sorry. That sounds disturbing."

Marinette reaches a hand up to play with the hair on the back of Adrien's head. She tells him, "Sounds like you locked him away so you could be yourself."

"He was stronger than me," Adrien tells her. "But I'm glad I've moved on from this, and I'm moving on from what my father put us through forever."

"Me, too." Marinette leans her head on his shoulder. "How was it? Seeing him." Adrien pauses for a moment.

"It went how it had to go. I'll get my mom back here eventually." There's a heaviness in his voice that she can't lighten. She holds him closer to her.

"Did he ask how you found out?"

"No. I didn't feel like bringing up Lila because if he tells her, then I'll really owe her. But Nathalie owes me a favor. I'm going to ask her to take care of the Rossi's if they ever bother me again." Adrien's eyes rest on Marinette, and he reaches a hand up to fix her bangs for her. He does it in swift movements now because he knows how her hair works. "You're the best girlfriend I've ever had. Lila was a complete nightmare for me with the lying and forcing me to propose before I was ready. I know she also cheated. It was too much for me to ever relax. I thought I was never going to date again." Maybe it's not the full story, but Marinette understands why Adrien doesn't want to speak about it. She feels anger furl inside her towards Lila, but there's also this tenderness that calms it down when she realizes Adrien trusts her.

"What made you change your mind?"

"The way you make me feel," Adrien says. He sneaks his hand around her waist and leans in for a kiss. "Safe. And protected. I know you wouldn't hurt me, and I hope you know I wouldn't hurt you, either."

Adrien goes through the box for a few more minutes and pulls out a photo of Marinette and her friends when they were fourteen. It wasn't supposed to be in there, but it might've gotten lost when she was taking things down. "Oh wow," Marinette laughs. "That's the whole crew."

Adrien smiles and takes a closer look at the photo. Marinette is standing awkwardly in the back with two pig tails, doing a peace sign. "I wish I knew you when we were younger," Adrien tells her. "I think we could have been good friends."

A chuckle leaves her mouth. "I don't think I would've even been able to maintain eye contact with you back then."

"I still would've been your friend," Adrien says softly with a grin, staring at Marinette. She leans in to give him a kiss.

"And I would've been yours."