Marinette and Adrien were hanging out.

Well, "hanging out" is a bit of a stretch. A more accurate description of the situation would be "Alya and Nino and Marinette and Adrien were hanging out, but 'something came up' with Alya and she dragged Nino away with her, promising to be back in ten and winking so often and so conspicuously that onlookers would assume she had some kind of chronic eye twitch."

So now they were alone, and things were awkward.

Well, only a little bit awkward. Yes, Marinette's stutter was more prominent, and yes, Adrien's pun usage skyrocketed almost instantly, but as the minutes passed it seemed that the punnier he was, the less Marinette stumbled over her words. In fact, she was almost talking to him like a normal person, and he was pretty sure she'd even thrown back a few puns of her own.

When the group had first started hanging out, Adrien had the sneaking suspicion that Marinette didn't actually like him, and only hung out with them because she was best friends with Alya (whose boyfriend was Nino, whose best friend was Adrien).

Both Alya and Nino assured him that was absolutely not the case — "Marinette loves you," Alya told him earnestly, with a grin that looked just the slightest bit wicked.

"Yeah," Nino had agreed, "she just, uh… takes a while to really let her guard down around new people! Trust, dude, she doesn't hate you or anything."

"She stuttered nonstop around me for like, a year after we first met," Alya offered, "and we're best friends today. I promise, it just a thing Marinette does."

Which sort of made sense, because he technically was the newest person in their class. She'd been around everyone else for way longer than she knew Adrien.

And her stutter wasn't even a big deal. Maybe one day it would fade completely, maybe not — it didn't matter in the long run. They were friends, which was pretty great, and frankly, it'd be just rude to drop a friend for something as inconsequential as a speech impediment.

But back to the present. Their conversation had transitioned to Alya and Nino, because they had definitely been gone for ten minutes by now. When Adrien pointed that out, Marinette rolled her eyes good-naturedly and said she wouldn't be surprised if they had conveniently "gotten lost" behind a tree in the park. She didn't seem terribly upset about it — in fact, no sooner had she said it than she was gushing about how cute they were together, and how Nino seemed to be a great boyfriend for Alya and she was so happy for them. She was definitely a romantic at heart, Adrien thought — it'd be interesting to see how she'd be with her boyfriend.

Now that Adrien thought of it, Marinette didn't have a boyfriend. Which was odd — there wasn't a single guy in their class who wasn't at least somewhat attractive. And Marinette was probably the sweetest and most interesting person he'd ever met, not to mention pretty, so it really didn't make sense that she wasn't seeing anyone. People in class were pairing up left and right, so why wasn't she?

Unless…

"Marinette," Adrien started, suddenly serious. "Can I ask you something?"

For a split second, Marinette forgot what oxygen was.

Oh my god what if he knows I'm Ladybug? What if he knows I'm obsessed with him I mean I'm not obsessed with him but what if he knows I like him OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE'S ASKING ME OUT? No wait what if he knows I'm obsessed with him and HATES ME FOR IT yep that's definitely it the literal love of my life hates me — "S-sure! Um, fine that's — I mean, um, that's totally fine. Yeah. It's fine."

It was not fine. She was panicking.

A beat of silence. Two beats. Three.

"Are you gay?"

Marinette choked.

Poor Adrien stared at her in bewilderment as Marinette doubled over and proceeded to hack up her lungs. His hand instinctively flew behind her, only to hover there uncertainly — did he thwack her on the back? Find some water? Call the police? CPR? Dammit Adrien, you're Chat Noir, you save civilians all the time and don't fucking know CPR!

To his great relief, Marinette made a relatively speedy recovery. She straightened up, looking embarrassed, and pushed a lock of hair that had been displaced by her coughing fit back behind her ear. Her face was flushed a brilliant scarlet. Adrien, being the kind and oblivious soul he is, immediately assumed this was a product of Marinette's brief period of oxygen deprivation and advised her to take deep breaths, and would she like some water, I'm sure there's a corner store nearby —

She waved his offer away, cheeks still flaming. "I'm fine," she insisted rather breathlessly. "I just… didn't expect that… that was the question you were going to ask.

A pause. "…What question did you think I was going to ask?"

"Never mind," Marinette said quickly. "But um, I'm not actually gay."

"Oh," said Adrien. His hand moved to the back of his neck self-consciously. "S-sorry, I know that was super personal and actually really inappropriate for me to ask, I just didn't really think — you've, uh, just never really shown any interest in any of the guys at school, so I thought maybe if someone told you it was okay to be gay, I —"

His voice died immediately when he saw Marinette staring at him like he'd just told her he was secretly Ladybug.

There was an uncomfortably long silence.

Marinette really wanted to laugh, but she also kind of wanted to set herself on fire. Could she do both simultaneously? Would that look creepy? It would probably be less creepy than having to explain to Adrien that the reason she didn't show any interest in the boys at school was because she was only interested in one guy. The one who just asked her if she was gay.

"Um," Adrien ventured awkwardly, and Marinette's train of thought crashed into a brick wall (that had an extremely realistic tunnel painted on it, but it was a brick wall all the same).

"Sorry," Marinette said hastily, trying to regain her composure (composure? What composure?). "I, uh, I guess I'm just really subtle when it comes to crushes!" She forced a laugh, but inside, she was dying. This was a mess. Her life was a mess. Maybe if she went back to coughing, she'd suffocate and die from her own embarrassment and then she wouldn't have to deal with this.

"That would make sense," Adrien offered kindly, completely oblivious to the shriveling of Marinette's very soul. "You're usually pretty open about how you feel, so I guess I kind of assumed you'd be the same with who you liked, but our class is so small I can totally understand not wanting to broadcast something like that."

Literally everyone in school knows about it, but sure, Adrien. Let's go with that.

Marinette's smile was faker than Chloe's eyelashes. You know how grape flavored things are very obviously grape-flavor imposters? Chloe's lashes were the grape-flavor equivalent of the eyelash world. "Yep! I'd hate to have people pressuring me to admit my feelings, or trying to set me up, or, you know, telling their boyfriends about my feelings because their boyfriend is the guy's best friend and is totally down to make it happen even though that would be a terrible idea that would only end in disaster!"

That was… oddly specific. Adrien chose to ignore it. "Uh, yeah, I guess. I'd feel the same…? I'd never hear the end of it if my crush got out," he added as an afterthought. Oh, shit, he'd said that out loud.

He was praying it would go unnoticed, but as it turned out, Marinette was just slightly more observant than Adrien was. Very slightly. So slightly, in fact, that she probably wouldn't have noticed if she didn't have a massive crush on Adrien. But Adrien didn't know that, and at the rate things were going, he probably never would.

"You have a crush?" Translation: who is this bitch, and how dare she?

"Um, n-no!" It was finally Adrien's turn to have a face so red that only a mantis shrimp would be able to tell you the exact shade, and even then you wouldn't be able to comprehend it because mantis shrimps can see infinitely more colors than we have names for. "I was, uh, speaking hypothetically. I don't like anyone in the class."

Which wasn't technically a lie, he reasoned. He didn't like anyone in class, and it was reasonable to assume that he didn't know anyone outside of class because, well, he didn't. Before school, he was in his room 24/7 and only came out for meals and modeling gigs. And maybe it had something to do with being a model himself, but other models were really not Adrien's type.

Adrien was so busy congratulating himself on evading the question without lying (he was totally lying, but he didn't know that, either) that he failed to notice Marinette's face fall. "Oh," she said simply.

"Yeah."

"Yeah…"

Oh, now things were awkward again. Good job, Adrien.

Thankfully, Alya and Nino saved the day by reappearing at that exact moment. Adrien thanked whatever was up there that their timing was so convenient, but this wasn't exactly a deity's work: Alya and Nino had indeed been behind a tree like Marinette hypothesized, but instead of making out, they had been spying on them. Well, there had definitely been a little making out, but most of the time was spent spying. Like, a 60/40 split between spying and making out.

The point is that Nino and Alya's arrival was just in time to immediately change the conversation to something less agonizingly uncomfortable. Honestly, Alya was certain that describing Nino's most recent dump in excruciating detail would have been a more pleasant conversation than the disaster that had just occurred between Adrien and Marinette, but thankfully she had the good sense to suggest a harmless, fun, non-awkward trip to the ice cream parlor.

Great, thought Marinette desperately. I can use the ice cream to drown myself so I never have to think about what just happened again.

Excellent, thought Adrien. If I have food in my mouth, I won't be able to use it to say anything stupid.

Thank god, thought Nino. It's fucking hot.

A/N:

Just so y'all know, Alya wasn't lying when she said Marinette stuttered around her for a year. I wanted to imply that Marinette is at the very least bisexual and definitely had a crush on Alya at some point because come on Alya's awesome and there's no way Marinette wouldn't crush on her for a while. Alya knew about Marinette's feelings (bc Alya isn't nearly as clueless as her friends) and that's part of the reason their friendship is so strong today — Alya made sure Marinette knew that she wouldn't treat her any differently for it and worked extra hard to maintain their friendship. There are no longer any romantic feelings between the two, unless you count the fact that Alya would probably leave Nino for Ladybug if given the chance.

Adrien is my smol pan child and you can't take that away from me. Also Nino is definitely bi and had a small and short-lived crush on Adrien once. Basically all your faves are queer.

Also, it is currently 3:48 am where I am and I wrote this all in a few hours which basically means this entire story is one huge shitpost. I did edit, but I'm also tired as heck, so I'm just going to pray that I got most of the mistakes.

Read and review, friends. I'm getting back into the swing of things and I don't remember what any of y'all like.