Eating
Marinette tried the door to the library. It was locked. There was a message that the librarian was absent temporarily on a meeting outside of school.
"Well, this option is excluded." She sighed. She opted for the classroom next door, but most of the classrooms were locked up this late in the afternoon.
"Why don't we go back to your home?" Adrien grinned. He was getting hungry just at the thought how he was met each time he dropped for a visit. Her home felt safe ad it offered food.
Marinette dreaded going back to her room. She clearly remembered how she almost admitted that she loved him. She admitted to a few other embarrassing things instead. Well, she knew that her mouth and her brain are going to be there with her wherever she went, they might as well go to her home.
"We can go to the bakery." She smiled back, but it was slightly forced.
"Hi papa." Marinette greeted her father when they entered through the side door.
"Hi Marinette, Adrien." The large man greeted. "I am just cleaning up, your mother is upstairs, making dinner. You will join us for dinner, Adrien?"
"I, um, thank you." The boy smiled straight from his stomach.
The memories of the brunch with Chat Noir passed through her head together with a big red no.
"You don't have to if you don't want." Marinette cut in. "Adrien is used to food planned by a dietitian and prepared by a professional chef." She told her father. There was something in the was her father looked at Adrien, she could not tell what it was, but she feared the next Weredad.
Tom's smile fell just for a fraction of a second because he noticed Adrien's smile fell too, for much longer, and the boy stared at Marinette. He recognized a hungry boy when he saw one.
"Well, your mother is perfectly capable of preparing a dinner." Tom grinned, his tone was teasing.
"Actually, I'd like to join you for the dinner." The boy said with a shy smile. "Besides, I had so much of your excellent pastry already that one more dinner would not matter."
"I thought you are not allowed to eat out of the schedule. I'm sorry." She apologized to both Adrien and her father and stared at her feet. She felt guilty for her earlier panic induced outburst.
"As long as you don't tell my father about it, or Nathalie. My driver will not talk." The boy shrugged. Apparently that settled soe thoughts in Tom's head.
"Of course, go upstairs and make yourself comfortable, son." Tom smiled and winked.
"Thank you." The boy smirked.
"Oh wait, I have some treats over here." Tom handed him a box.
Marinette was already running up the stairs.
"Please, please, just not Sweethearts' vol-au-vent for two again." She muttered. "And no soufflé."
Adrien followed and carried the box with him. The lid was not transparent, he tried to guess what was inside by the smell, but failed.
Marinette ran into the kitchen. Adrien was entering the flat.
"Hello dear." Sabine greeted loudly.
"Hi maman." Marinette almost shouted.
"I thought Adrien was coming over again this afternoon so I made a bit more for dinner." The woman spoke as she stirred the contents of the pot.
"He is. Maman, please tell me papa did not make another show." Marinette pleaded.
Sabine glanced back and noticed Adrien was coming over.
"What show? I do not know what are you talking about." Sabine replied teasingly.
"You know!" Marinette sighed and took a breath. "When ..."
"A cooking show?" Adrien asked at the same time Marinette started speaking as he thought she was finished.
"No." She screamed. "I mean yes." She flailed her hands. "I mean no. Not a TV show. It is just that papa sometimes makes this exaggerated .."
"It is okay, Marinette, I can eat anything. Don't worry. Just as long as my father doesn't know." The boy put the box on the table and put a hand on her shoulder.
"Well, if you are expecting a show, you will be disappointed." Sabine smiled to both of them. "Dinner will be in fifteen minutes. Why don't you find something to do in the meantime."
Both kids went up to her room as if that was something they did every day (well they did, but just this week). Adrien felt like he was at home there. There was his chair, his spot on the chaise, the place where he left his school bag.
"Why don't we go through that homework Mme Mendeleev gave us?" Adrien proposed instead of games or some other activity.
"Okay." Marinette reached into her backpack and pulled out the book and the notebook. She put it on her desk and started to pull up the chair closer when she got interrupted.
"We can't solve it now, I was thinking of just reading the problems to be able to think about them and how to solve them." The boy was sitting on her chaise and patted the seat next to him.
She approached slowly and carefully as if she was some wild animal that sneaked towards David Attenborough who was waiting patiently.
They read the problems together. The homework was a variant of the experiments they did few days before, but this time they were not supposed to do the experiments and compute the results, but to use appropriate formula. They were discussing one particular problem when Sabine called them down to set the table.
Adrien opened the same cupboard he saw Marinette use on Monday and took out four plates without thinking. Sabine looked at the boy and then again at Marinette and kicked a small stool that both of them used to reach the top shelves back under the table.
"So if you have one litre of boiling water and add five litres of water at a room temperature of let's say twenty degrees … " Adrien was explaining while Marinette distributed the plates and the cutlery.
"I just don't understand." Marinette sighed.
"It is simple." The boy smiled.
"It is not." She took a small pot with the sauce. "This is a pot of one litre and the sauce inside is boiling, weather or not it is one hundred degrees is irrelevant."
Adrien raised his eyebrows.
"But if I add five litres of water inside it will flow over, it just won't fit inside." The girl finished.
Adrien laughed his heart out. This girl was so funny.
"You can laugh all you want, my Marinette tried it, she knows." Sabine teased her daughter.
"Maman" Marinette whined.
"She would always start to prepare something in a small bowl and then move it into larger and larger one as she had to add the ingredients." Sabine was not going to back down from this story.
Tom arrived with a box of pastries and they sat down to eat dinner. To the girl's relief it was just a simple dinner of rice and sauce with cooked vegetables.
"So help yourself." Tom grinned and looked at the boy.
"I um" Adrien looked at the empty plate and a full pot of rice. "Can you go first?" He looked at Marinette. The truth was, he never filled his own plate, he never determined what goes inside and which amount. It was always someone else who made those decisions for him.
"Ever the cavalier." Tom smiled.
Marinette blushed and took her plate, she put one spoonful of rice and then the vegetables and the sauce. The Adrien repeated the offer to Sabine but she motioned for him to go first, so he did, everything, exactly as Marinette did, including the amount.
"Come on, you can take more." Tom was eager.
"Wait, Tom, perhaps the boy doesn't like it." Sabine scolded.
Adrien was confused. He looked at Marinette's plate, then he looked at his own. Everything was exactly the same, well more or less, perhaps some pieces of rice and vegetables rolled to the side differently.
"You can take more if you like it." Tom concluded and grabbed the serving spoon. Once everyone had food on their plates, they started to eat.
Needless to say, Adrien could eat more. And he was quickly encouraged to take more food. And he ate it again. And Tom insisted that it was perfectly okay if the boy took a third round. Adrien reluctantly did so.
"You mean I can eat as much as I want?" The boy asked while he was filling his plate again.
There was long odd look exchanged between Tom and Sabine.
"I told you why he was skinny." Tom whispered.
"You usually don't?" Sabine asked quickly to mask what her husband just said.
Adrien shook his head.
"To be honest, I never filled my own plate. It was always served before me." The boy was not sure if his admission was not hurting them. "I don't mean that you were supposed to serve me, I just … "
"You mean you never chose what you eat and how much?" Marinette furrowed her brows.
"No, it is always chosen, calculated and determined by someone else." The boy shrugged. That was how they lived. He knew that was how Chloe lived too, in a hotel, between chefs and the servers. He knew Kagami had similar strict regime imposed by her mother.
"And you are not supposed to eat the pastry I brought?" The girl continued.
"Nah, but I like it, and you won't tell my father." The boy smiled back.
To say that Sabine and Tom were currently speechless would be correct. To say that Tom just might get akumatized after the same boy ate in his kitchen for the second time because of the rightful anger towards the said boy's father would also be correct.
Sabine put her hand over his. Tom was taking deep breaths. Marinette watched her own father worried that a violet butterfly might once again flutter into the kitchen in her home.
"It is okay Tom. Marinette would not mind to bring this boy some of his favourite pastry each day." Sabine cooed gently. Tom was calming down.
"Son, you are always welcome here." Tom finally spoke.
Marinette smiled shyly and looked at the boy. Adrien could not believe his luck. This man was calling him son. He played games with him. They practically invited him to drop by for an all you can eat experience whenever he felt like it or needed it.
"Adrien, this is serious." Sabine said gently. "You are teenagers. You are still growing. You need food for your growth. I know that overweight is now much bigger issue than it used to be, but you are very slim. You need to eat more to let your hormones do the job."
Well that last statement in her lecture was a bit too much for her daughter who started to choke on her food. Adrien merely blushed.
"Growth hormones." Tom cut in. "Sabine was talking about growth hormones."
Marinette was breathing again. She decided she was red in her face because she almost choked seconds ago.
Later they examined the contents of the box. Tom brought some leftovers, some unsold slightly crushed items and a few more experiments with the most recent idea for the new kind of muffins.
"So, I wanted to make a more fruity version, these are with blackberries and green decorations." Tom pointed to a new set of Chat Noir muffins.
"I think that those with the dark chocolate were better." Adrien shared his opinion but finished the muffin anyway.
"That is excellent, but I need more options." Tom grinned. "These will be made per order. The one with dark chocolate might be available on a daily basis in the shop."
Adrien perked up. He felt flattered as the wielder of the Chat Noir miraculous. And this was the man who got akumatized because the said superhero refused his daughter.
They continued to eat cookies and cakes. Marinette reached for the macarons, more than once.
There was one being unsatisfied. Plagg scratched and scratched until Adrien managed to sneak a piece of cheese pastry into his shirt.
Later that evening, a pigtailed girl was having her rant and her kwami listened.
"Gabriel Agreste is worse to his own son that Hawk Moth is to all of his victims." Marinette groaned.
"What do you mean, Marinette?" Tikki stared at the girl with wide blue eyes.
"At least I can undo everything Hawk Moth does with miraculous ladybug cure, but I do not have any cure that could simply undo what Adrien is going through."