Chapter Forty Two – Background Noise
"Ow!" Marinette cries as Nino tugs on her hair sharply.
He winces on her behalf. "Sorry. I'm trying to be gentle." He pulls her hair again as he crosses the left over the right, and she cringes, biting her lip so she doesn't cry out again. She keeps biting her lip for the next two painful minutes before Nino finally ties her plait off with a cheerful cry of 'Done!'
He moves around her so he's no longer sitting beside her on her chaise and watches eagerly as she pulls her twin plaits over her shoulders to look at them. Even though they're already half–fallen out, and the hair tie isn't tight enough, and one is definitely bigger than the other, and the three sections of hair used for each plait are noticeably uneven, it's pretty good for a first attempt.
"Do I look pretty?" She asks, putting her hands together, like she's preying, against her cheek and tilting her head, hitting Nino with a dazzling smile.
Nino snorts. "Yep. Totally. Adrien's not gonna know what hit him." Marinette giggles, getting up to look at the plaits in her mirror. "What's the deal with you two? Are you going out?" He lifts his feet onto the chaise and stretches them out in front of him, wriggling his sock–covered feet.
"No," She pulls the hair ties free and starts untangling her hair from the plaits Nino made. "Why do you ask?"
"'Cause I'm not blind?" He grins at her innocently and she gives him an unimpressed look. "I can't believe sunshine hasn't asked you out yet." Nino continues, watching as Marinette destroys his work, now brushing her hair. "You have to tell me the second he does. Or make him tell me. Or just both of you tell me. Actually, can I be there when he does? I definitely want to be there so that way I can take pictures and tease you about it endlessly and–"
"Nino," She cuts him off, giggling as her cheeks flush in embarrassment. "He hasn't asked me. And I haven't seen any signs that he's going too."
That's not true, obviously, but Nino doesn't know Adrien's Cat Noir or that she's Ladybug, and she's also not about to tell him that they kissed (not that it was the best kiss anyway, since it basically set off her panic attack) or that they can't be in love because she can't fight Cat Blanc again.
"Come on," She chucks his shoes at him before grabbing her school bag from her desk. "We're going to be late."
"Eh," Nino waves his hand dismissively, pulling on his shoes without undoing the laces. He jumps to his feet and grabs his own school bag from the floor. "It's not like it would be the first time."
"True," Marinette agrees, giggling.
Despite the fact that Nino arrived over an hour earlier to take Marinette to school – with extra time for croissant eating and for Marinette to change out of her pyjamas – they walk through the school doors just as the bell goes, and join the crowd moving towards the classrooms. Today they have Ms Mendeleiev, then recess, then Ms Bustier, then lunch followed by two 'study' periods where they can go home if they want to. Not a bad last day, Marinette muses, following Nino up the stairs to Ms Mendeleiev's classroom.
"Mari! Nino!" Adrien calls and they both look up, seeing their little ray of sunshine moving against the crowd to get to them from down the hallway, having been waiting outside for them. "I was starting to think that you weren't coming." He grins at them, sharing a fist bump with Nino before kissing Marinette's cheek.
Marinette glares at the massive grin Nino has on his face, trying to hide her own embarrassment, before returning the gesture with Adrien, reminding herself that they are French and this is what they do. It doesn't mean he's falling in love with her. Like she's pretty much forbidden him from doing.
"We lost track of time." She tells Adrien.
"Doing what?" Adrien loops his arm through hers and they follow the last few stragglers – not from their class – down the hallway.
"Lahiffe Hair Designs," Nino says, making a face that's supposed to look dignified but just looks like he's a sad clown. "It's an up and coming new business. Right Mar–Bear?" He nudges her arm.
"It needs work," She tells Adrien, ignoring Nino's mock–affronted 'hey!'. "Quiet now, we're entering the dragon's lair."
They muffle their giggles behind their hands and step into the classroom, muttering their apologies for being late as they find their seats. They don't have time to talk as Ms Mendeleiev jumps right into the lesson and demands the classes full attention.
She puts two stacks of textbooks on each front desk and instructions for them to be passed to the back, with everyone taking one each. Adrien winks at Marinette as he passes the stack back to her, and she scrunches her nose playfully, earning a barely muffled snort form the blond. The rest of the class is a blur as they get stuck into their work, occasionally reading aloud from the textbook, and copying the notes from the board into their notebooks.
Lila complains that she's having trouble writing the notes because she sprained her wrist giving a small child CPR over the weekend (because, why not?) and perhaps someone up the front could copy her notes for her (the Marinette is implied), but Ms Mendeleiev is having none of it and says that the rest of the class are busy writing their own notes, and if she's sprained her wrist and is unable to write notes at school, then she should've brought in a doctor's note.
Lila's still fuming twenty minutes later when the bell goes for the end of first period and Ms Mendeleiv takes the textbooks back in favour of instructing everyone on how to do the coloured celery experiment, which they will need to write the practical report for while they wait for the dye to set into the celery. The result of this is Alix and Kim flicking the dyed water at each other, trying to stain the other's clothes, and Max saying that surely there's something more difficult that they could do instead, like Pasteur's swan neck flask experiment, which Ms Mendeleiev is quick to point out they will be doing next year in lycée during their biology unit.
"Look! It's working!" Adrien exclaims, pointing at the celery stalk through the beaker glass.
Marinette, Alya and Nino (Adrien's partners, since they've been put into groups of four – or three, in Rose, Juleka and Lila's case) lean forward to see where Adrien's pointing. Sure enough the dye has started making its way up through the celery stalk to the leaves.
"Cool," Nino says, with noticeably less enthusiasm. Like Marinette, he too has a lack of love for the sciences. Also, he's pretty sure this is a waste of celery. "Do we have anything to talk about?" He asks, looking back at his notebook where he's at the end of his report, the last heading being 'discussions'.
Marinette shrugs, twirling her pen around and around. She, too, is up to the last heading. "I don't think so. There's not much to talk about."
"I know what we can talk about, girl." Alya says, turning to Marinette and wriggling her eyebrows.
Marinette raises an eyebrow and gives her a deadpanned look. "If it has something to do with the male sex organ, I don't want to hear it."
Adrien chokes on his breath and Nino snorts, patting Adrien's back as he coughs, but he doesn't take his eyes off of his childhood friend and girlfriend.
"Plus," Marinette continues, tearing her eyes from Alya's to look at Adrien in concern. He turns around in his seat, resting his arm on her desk, and looks up at her, tears in his eyes from coughing, and smiles. "Now isn't the time or place."
Alya huffs, crossing her arms and sitting back in her seat, clearly not impressed. "When is the time and place? We haven't hung out properly in months."
Marinette doesn't point out that that isn't entirely her fault, or that Alya hasn't been the nicest as of late. "Not in school, and definitely not in the middle of class." Marinette says, before turning back to her notebook.
"We can talk at recess then," Alya says, her tone a little condescending, not happy with the way their conversation has gone.
"Didn't you say that you and Mari were going to practice your speech at recess?" Nino says to Adrien.
"I did?" Adrien asks, frowning at his friend. Nino's eyes flick to Marinette pointedly and Adrien's eyes widen as he gets what Nino's saying. "Oh, right, I did. Yeah. Sorry Alya." He smiles at her politely and is met with narrowed eyes.
"You know," Alya says, turning to Marinette. The smile she suddenly has on her face is out of place after her previous mood. "You've been spending a lot of time around my boyfriend lately, and I think we're overdue for some girl time." She grins at Marinette and nudges her side, making Mariette flinch and slash her pen across her page. Alya looks at Adrien and gives him that funny smile again. "You had all weekend to do the speech. Nino and I have finished it so M and you will be fine. Plus," She turns back to Marinette – who is staring at her blankly – and smirks. "You need to fill me in on how you and your boyfriend are going."
Adrien and Marinette's eyes widen at the same time and Nino snorts at the twin expressions on their faces.
"Excuse me?" Marinette asks, frowning.
"Luka. Your boyfriend." Alya gives her an annoyed look.
Groaning, Marinette drops her face into her hands and shakes her head, rolling her eyes. "Luka and I are not going out, we never went out, and we will never go out." She raises her eyebrows in a 'do you get it now' way. "And yes, I have told him as much."
Alya gapes at her, before she frowns and leans towards her, poking her breastbone accusingly. "Why didn't you tell me earlier!" She hisses. "I thought we told each other everything! That's what best friends do!"
Marinette blinks at her in surprise, before her expression drops and she leans back from Alya, hunching her shoulders as if to hide from her. "Best friends are supposed to believe each other, too." She says quietly.
Nino inhales sharply, his eyes flicking between the girls. Somehow, despite their conversation being mostly quiet, they have attracted the attention of the rest of the class and now all eyes are on them. Beside him, Adrien shifts slightly and his hand slides closer to Marinette's, but he hesitates taking it. He's surprised that Ms Mendeleiev hasn't put a stop to their conversation yet, since she hates when non–topic conversations occur in her class.
Nino expects Alya's face to crumple or for her to apologise for believing Lila, but instead she rolls her eyes and scoffs.
"You're not still on that, are you? I apologised. It won't happen again. It's not like it was anything bad anyway, she just lied about knowing some celebrities and told some stories, it's not a big deal. Just let it go, already. Forgive and forget, or whatever. God." She rolls her eyes again and sits back in her seat, pulling her phone out of her pocket.
Alya's words ring in Marinette's head, but all she can hear is Lila's voice coming out of the Ladyblogger. When did this happen? How did she not notice? She knows that Alya's always been pushy with her, trying to get her to do things she's not ready for (case and point with every plan to get her and Adrien together), and she does know she was impatient and annoyed when Marinette inevitably failed, but she always brushed it off as Alya just wanting what's best for her. Wanting her to be happy.
Alya is Marinette's best friend, her first real friend. When they first became friends Marinette was so sure that as soon as Alya became friends with the rest of the class she would dump Marinette for them, so she tried everything she could to keep that friendship. Even if it meant doing things she didn't particularly want to do. So Marinette sacrificed her own happiness and pushed her anxiety to the surface to appease the Ladyblogger, because she couldn't lose her, didn't want to lose her. And Marinette thought that Alya didn't want to lose her either.
But if Alya didn't want to lose her, and if Alya actually is her best friend, why did she push her away? Criticise her? Diminish her? Why did she choose Lila over her? What did Marinette do to lose Alya's trust, if she ever had it in the first place?
"'Not a big deal'?" Nino repeats, voice growing loud in his anger. He kneels on his seat and puts his hands on Alya's desk, frowning at her in disappointment as all Marinette can do is sit there in silence and try not to cry. "Come on Alya, you know as well as I do that what Lila did was a huge deal! The biggest deal! There will never be a bigger deal!"
Alya meets Nino's gaze and glares at him. "Stop standing up for her. She's a big girl; she can stand up for herself if she wants to. Besides," She looks back at her phone as if finding the whole exchange boring and beneath her. "It's not like you ever stood up for her before."
Nino has never been a violent guy, and he never wants to be. He learnt firsthand from his father how not to treat people, and he's spent his whole life trying to be a better person than his father could ever dream of being. But right now, looking at his girlfriend, he wishes he could make her feel just an ounce of pain that her statement has made him feel.
"At least I never abandoned her." His voice is quiet, but it's sharp enough to cut glass.
Fire flashes in Alya's eyes and she leans forward, fingers clenching around her phone. "I didn't abandon her. She abandoned me." She switches her glare to Marinette, who looks at her with glazed over eyes. Adrien notices that her hands have begun to tremble and he takes hers, squeezing to let her know he's there. "Why didn't you tell me Lila's a liar."
"She did." Nino says, squeezing the top of the desk so hard his knuckles turn white. "You didn't listen. You never listen. Not if it's something you don't want to hear. As soon as it goes against whatever idea you have in your mind you block it out and stop listening, even if there's hard evidence against it."
Alya turns her gaze back to him and for a second it's like he's looking at his father, standing up to him, only this time he's in a classroom with a teacher who should be helping but isn't instead of blocking his father's path to his mother, in a house that could never, ever be a home.
"How can you say tha–" Alya starts to say, but Nino cuts her off.
"That's what you wanted, isn't it?" He asks, only now his question – and his gaze – are directed at the back of the classroom where Lila's been taking everything in, sardonic little grin etched into her face. "For someone to listen to you, hear what you want them to hear, bow down to you?"
Lila shrugs, as if this has nothing to do with her. And she's right. It doesn't. This time it's all on Alya, because despite knowing that Lila's a liar and seeing what she did to Marinette, she's still not willing to admit fault.
Nino's gaze drops back to Alya's and for a second his expression softens, but hers doesn't. If anything, she looks even angrier, even more annoyed. "You've changed a lot." He tells her.
In the background the bell goes but no one moves. Classroom doors open and voices filter through the hallways as the students make their way to the courtyard, but it's all just background noise.
"What are you getting at Nino?" Alya asks quietly, but she doesn't lose the rage. She doesn't apologise. She doesn't see what she did wrong.
Nino shrugs and drops back in his seat, holding her gaze. Around them, everyone, including Ms Mendeleiev, holds their breaths.
In the end, neither say anything. They don't have to. They know. Everyone around them knows. Nothing has to be said because there's nothing left to say. They're two different people now. They fell in love and they grew up and grew out of each other. It's a tragedy, really, but so are most love stories. It'll be okay though, because Alya has her version of the truth, the one that works for her, and Nino has Marinette and Adrien and Harry Potter.
It'll be okay. And so will they.