Adrien Needs To Talk It Out
"Adrien! Wait up!"
Adrien registered his name but he was just too lost in his own head to truly hear Nino as he dashed up the street towards him.
He had made such a fool of himself. Who jumped away from a friend when they tried to comfort them? Who ran away, like an actual child faced with a nightmare? Sure, he now realised how Marinette felt about him but she was first and foremost his friend. He was absolutely sure she would never overstep her bounds when she could see something was bothering him. Yes, the way she'd taken her time to slide her hand across the table in little stops and starts had belied her nervousness but that had been enough to remind him that she was nervous to touch him. That she was nervous around him in general. Once again he wondered how it had taken him this long to see it. She was always so hesitant when she was around him.
"Adrien! Dude!"
Nino had finally caught up to him and he stopped, turning to face his friend while apprehensively pulling at the strap on his bag where it crossed his chest.
"Hi, sorry about taking off like that."
Nino was crouched over, hands braced on his thighs as he gulped in mouthfuls of fresh air. Without glancing up, he held up a finger in front of Adrien, an indication to wait. Adrien was suddenly overcome with a fresh wave of guilt. Not only had he flown from Marinette, he'd run away from Nino too in his hurry to get out of there and now the poor guy was bent double in his effort to recover from the sprint he'd done to catch up to him. He was going to have to get him something for putting up with him today.
When his best friend finally seemed to have caught his breath, he straightened and looked him directly in the eye, his eyebrows quirked and head tilted slightly, like a curious dog.
"Okay man, what the hell was that?"
"What was what?" He smiled awkwardly and knew immediately there was no way in hell Nino was going to buy it. His best friend might be a little dense at times, but apparently Adrien had no right to talk about people being dense these days. Nino probably knew him better than anyone, maybe with the exception of Ladybug, so he was going to want answers. Awkward answers that Adrien didn't really want to give right now. Scratch that, didn't want to give ever.
"That! Back there! And this morning at school. What's wrong with you man? This is not a headache. You're acting weirder than I've ever seen you. Something's up?"
Adrien sighed, resigning himself to the fact that he was going to have to tell him something. He clutched the strap tighter to his chest and swallowed down the anxiety that was churning in his stomach and making his chest tight and uncomfortable. There was going to be some serious teasing over this and his defences were already worn away from Ladybug doing the same thing last night. It would feel less like a tease and much more like a torment.
"Promise you won't make fun of me?"
Nino narrowed his eyes and took in the skittish appearance of the boy before him for a second before his face broke into a amused smile.
"Why, what happened?"
He closed his eyes, tensed his shoulders until they were close to touching his ears and dipped his head before saying in the quietest voice he could muster, "I get it."
"Get what?" Nino's voice was sounding even more confused than earlier.
He took yet another deep breath and looked at Nino, shoulders still tensed, waiting for the onslaught once his friend understood. "Yesterday, when you called me clueless. I get it. I'm not clueless anymore."
"Clueless?" Nino said with a mystified expression, "When did I call you-? Oh...Oh my God," his face relaxed into a much more neutral blank look, "M. Clueless. Yesterday morning."
Adrien couldn't help feeling mortified by the look of astonishment that Nino wore while staring at him, and he felt a tinge of heat creep over his face, but that turned out to be nothing compared to the sadistic grin that suddenly split across his supposed friends face. Adrien's eyes widened exponentially and he felt that small flush expand and redden his entire face as Nino grabbed him by the shoulder and pumped his other fist in the air.
"Finally! Dude! It's been hellish keeping quiet about this man."
"You promised you wouldn't make fun of me!" Adrien said rapidly, trying to get a handle on the situation in a panic, trying to turn away but finding Nino's grip was harder to shake than he'd thought.
"I never actually promised that dude."
"Yes you-"
Shit. Adrien replayed the conversation back in his head. No he hadn't. Oh God, he was so screwed.
"Niiiiiiino, please. I'm freaking out here man."
"About what?" Nino glanced at him suspiciously and his free hand came up to point in his face as he spoke, "I need you to tell me specifically what you know or Alya will kill me for saying anything if I'm wrong."
He gulped. It was bad enough thinking about it, and talking it over with Ladybug and Plagg had been horrible. He really hated having to voice aloud the reason for his discomfort. He glanced down at his feet to avoid Nino's gaze as his best friend let go of his shoulder and pulled back from him, dumb grin back on his face.
"Marinette," he said to his feet, "She likes me."
"Yes. Yes she does," Nino said through his grin, slinging his arm over Adrien's shoulders and guiding him down the street again, "This is why you're acting like a freak?"
"Am I that bad?" he asked, an awkward and crooked smile appearing on his face. He wasn't entirely sure why he was even asking. Even he, M. Clueless that he was, could tell his behaviour was demented.
"Duh. So what happened back there that made it so bad you had to, you know, run?"
Adrien groaned loudly and slapped his hand over his face, running it back into his hair and rubbing the back of his neck as he recalled the awkward atmosphere from earlier. He recounted to Nino how Marinette had reached across the table to touch the back of his hand. How despite it fact that she was just worried about him, it had panicked him that a girl who liked him was trying to touch him and how he'd felt guilty about it because she was just genuinely trying to look out for him.
He found that once he'd started it was hard to stop and all the fears he'd had about things being uncomfortable between them came out. Nino was relatively quiet at first and simply listened but he found this much more helpful than Plagg's incessant laughing which he had interjected with whining from time to time about how he didn't really care.
Of course, he never mentioned that there was anyone else he'd spoken to about it and actually tried to give Nino the impression that he'd kept this all bottled up since last night.
"So...if no one else knows you know...how did you manage to work it out?" Nino asked as they approached the steps to the school.
"Um," he said eloquently as his mind raced to find a believable reason he had suddenly become deductive enough to work it out on his own. Okay, think. How did people figure this stuff out on TV? TV!
He gave a mental sigh of relief as it occurred to him how he was going to answer the question.
"Last night I was watching...something. The girl in it met this guy in it for the first time and then she got all stutter-y and mixed her words up and stuff. I was just thinking she was acting just like Marinette does to me and then-"
"And then someone pointed out she had a crush on him, right?"
Adrien nodded. It was a complete lie and he felt awful but there was no way he could tell Nino that someone else had told him because then he would want to know who and he couldn't navigate that conversation safely.
"Dude, was this anime?" Nino snickered, "You've got the weirdest taste in stuff man. But seriously!-" he held his arms up to defend himself as Adrien gave him a half hearted shove for the ribbing, "you've got to get a handle on this man. You're gonna give everyone the wrong idea."
"Alya, I swear you have the wrong idea in your head again. There's no way he likes me," Marinette said glumly as they slowly made their way out of the front doors of the cafe.
"I dunno girl, he seemed awfully uncomfortable around you – in a good way!" Alya added suddenly upon seeing the look sweeping across the other girls face, "I mean, from what you said, he ran away because you tried to touch him. How would you have acted if he'd done that back when you first started crushing on him?"
"Probably freak out and fall over my own feet," Marinette added with a smirk.
"Exactly. You've seen how he's been all day. Everyone's noticed. Even a boy that oblivious has to know he's acting strange."
"Wrong idea?" Adrien asked. What was Nino talking about?
"Dude," Nino said, dragging a hand down his face as he spoke, "All morning you've acted on edge, you've stuttered around her, you've mixed up your words, you've nearly fallen over trying to keep your distance around her. Sound like any anime characters you've been watching lately?"
What!? Oh crap. He hadn't thought about that. He'd been so concerned with what he'd learned about Marinette and how much it freaked him out that he hadn't been thinking of exactly how he was acting. He knew they'd noticed his awkward behaviour but hadn't considered how they'd interpret it.
"Unless...you know...it's not the wrong idea?" Nino said, his voice gentle like he was talking to a startled cat and was afraid of getting scratched. A far more accurate comparison than he probably realised. He continued as Adrien glanced up to look at him, confusion evident in his expression, "I mean, before you knew about this you were always so concerned with what she thought of you."
"Yeah...but I was afraid she still hated me after my first day. With the gum, I mean," he responded, understanding no better than a moment ago, "I don't have many friends Nino."
It was true. Even now that everyone in his class seemed friendly, he was never entirely sure if they considered him a friend. He was never quite sure how to just walk up to a group of people and hold or maintain a conversation with them. He tended to just stand on the edge of the group and listen awkwardly with a smile pasted on his face. He really hated how uncomfortable he felt whenever he tried to insert himself into a group setting, but he was getting better at it. He was just worried his father would take him out of school again and his graceless social interactions would never have a chance to progress at all.
"I get it man, but...you're always saying you think she's awesome or 'so nice'-" he used his fingers to mimic quotations in the air, "and I've personally seen you wink at her a total of four times. It's like you get carried away and don't even realise it."
"Wait, what? No, no I-"
He cut off when Nino started snickering at him. He had no idea how to defend himself. He might have said Marinette was awesome once or twice but he had no idea he'd ever winked at her. He knew Nino liked to tease him but there was no way he was lying about that now; he sounded too sincere.
"He has winked at me a lot in the last couple of months," Marinette said, her cheeks glowing slightly at the thought.
"See? And didn't you say he got nervous when you two went for the same controller when you were training for the gaming tournament? Because your hands touched."
"Well, yeah but, Alya, what if we're wrong?"
Her mind went crazy with imaginary scenarios in which he'd decided he didn't want to be friends with her anymore and humiliated her in front of the whole school, where he found her strange and creepy and called her out on it in the bakery in front of her parents and customers, where he couldn't like her because he-
"Alya, what if he likes someone else?"
"I like someone else Nino, you know that."
"What? That crush you've got on Ladybug? Who doesn't?-" Adrien found himself frowning and feeling uncomfortably possessive about his Lady at that- "But who would ever have a chance with an actual superhero man? You've got to think closer to home."
If he was a real cat he would have growled at the insinuation that he wasn't good enough for her. He knew that wasn't what Nino had meant though and so kept it to himself.
"Not just her-"
"This chick you work with? But I thought you said she wasn't interested? There's no point in beating a dead horse man. Model chick's probably too stuck up to ever change her mind."
"Nino!" He'd never said she was a model. But after gushing to Nino about this girl, and saying he was close with her, he couldn't admit it was Ladybug because he'd never be able to disclose that he actually knew her. But he'd also needed some way to explain knowing someone his age that didn't go to school with them. And he did work with his Lady so it'd been natural to call her a work friend. After that he'd just never corrected the assumption that he must know the girl from modelling.
"Okay, okay. I'll drop it. Sssooo...can I let Alya know what's going on with you? 'Cause if I thought you were acting like you might like Marinette, you know she got there three times as fast."
Adrien made a sound of misery as the situation continued to get worse before his very eyes. Alya was Marinette's best friend so any suspicions she had were going to be passed on to her immediately and this thing could get super complicated before he knew it.
"Oh God. Just tell her so she doesn't go giving Marinette any strange ideas, okay? But ask her not to tell Marinette I know. Things have already gotten pretty weird between us."
He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding in and let the conversation move forward with just a little less dread sitting in the pit of his stomach. Nino assured him that everything would be fine if he just learned to chill out and promised to coach him through being normal around her again. It didn't do as much to assuage Adrien's fears as he'd hoped but he was pleased to have some kind of back up to look forward to from now on.
"So..." he started as the school came into sight ahead of them, "You've known about this for a while then?"
Nino chuckled at him. "About a month, dude. Remember back in May, when I liked Marinette?"
Adrien cast his mind back and nodded dumbly at his best friend, not completely sure what that had to do with anything.
"Well when Alya and I first got locked up together in that cage during the akuma attack, she was doing her best to make it pretty clear she was not interested in me. Turns out, she'd been listening in to me and Marinette the same way you were so she knew what I'd said."
Adrien listened as Nino explained that in his attempts to convince Alya he wasn't trying to date her, he'd admitted he liked Marinette. It had taken quite a while for him to do so from the sounds of things and Adrien noticed there were several gaping holes in the recounted conversation. He wondered how much Nino was trying to hide about what had happened with Alya.
"Wow." He gave his best friend an apologetic look, "How'd that go for you?"
"She point blank told me not to waste my time because Mar was just far too hung up on someone else in class. Like crazy hung up. She actually seemed amazed I didn't already know about it."
"Ah."
As Nino continued his story where – surprisingly – Alya had never outright named him but had been spectacularly obvious about it in other ways ("She called you 'the literal poster-boy', man"), Adrien switched to automatic responses to allow him to consider everything.
Nino had thought he liked Marinette too. Apparently he'd been a little too affectionate to be interpreted as friendly ("You know, Rose and Juleka noticed the way you touched her hands at the hat competition and have mentioned it a few times since"). He hadn't realised he had been over the top. Although in hindsight his behaviour kinda was a bit much. Why hadn't he thought it was too much then? He didn't even remember the winking Nino kept bringing up but there was something he remembered clearly. He gulped as Nino touched on the subject in question.
"Hey, have you thought about how excited she must have been when Alya volunteered her to take over Mylène's part in our film? Especially when you didn't seem to be put off about kissing her."
He gulped again.
"He was practically preening in front of you when you took over our film lead. Boy was posing during make-up once he realised you were watching, I swear."
"Ehh...It was just for a film though. Surely she knew that?"
Nino's laughter faded back into the background gently as he nervously pulled at the collar of his shirt which suddenly felt stuck tight to his clammy skin. He recalled how nervous he'd really felt about that, and how he hadn't wanted to lose face by admitting it to anyone. When he'd been expecting to kiss Mylène he'd felt uncomfortable, and when it'd been Chloé insisting she take the part and fudging the scene just to jump ahead to kissing him, he'd been prepared to grit his teeth and endure it but he'd also been praying to whatever deity was up there to get him out of it. But when it had been Marinette in front of him...
"Well..." she giggled, "he did seem much happier once it was me he was going to be kissing."
Honestly he'd felt scared. And a bit sick. He'd been jumpy and skittish but he'd kept it all internalised and tried to project some facade of confidence so no one would realise what he was going through.
He'd thought it was just nerves because...well he was about to kiss someone for the first time. And it was going to be in front of other people. That was bound to make anyone feel uncomfortable, right?
But he also remembered the way his chest had fluttered when she'd leaned up to him. And how exciting it'd had all seemed at the time. Did he like Marinette?
Before Adrien had a chance to let that rare thought sauté a little, Nino was gripping him by the shoulders, a look of panic strewn across his face.
"We need to run! Akuma!"
