The winter show was approaching at a dead run. Everything was busy. Final fittings were in progress. The set was finished enough that they had done a walk through so Milo and the designers could throw a fit over ordering and who went first. The mock ups for everything going to print had been made but not finalized. It would have made going to work enough to give him an ulcer on the best of days. As it was, with his head full of worry, setting foot in the building mostly made him want to kill people.
He was running away from a meeting that had dragged on for an extra hour and hadn't even been about the models when he detoured past the design studios. There was a good chance that he was just going to run into Elijah and Stefan still having the same argument they had been having in the meeting room but there was also a small chance he would run into Marinette.
The studios were quiet and most of them dark behind the big glass partitions. Design's work slowed down as the show went from development into production. The active workshops weren't working on the runway lines, they'd be working on the department store productions or private commissions or Spring. With winter about to go on, Spring was already well into development. The higher-ups were working on the actual design of Summer and next Fall as well so they'd be ready when the next show dates were released.
He heard a sound as he went by the studio room where he'd bothered Marinette as Chat Noir. It was dark but he stuck his head inside. The Great Squirrel Invasion of 2013 had left everyone in the entire building with the near pathological need to make sure that any open window or unidentified sound did not lead to baby squirrels chewing their way through thousands of dollars of imported silk to build a nest.
He thought he caught a bit of movement by the window but when he looked again there was nothing there but winter sunshine. He shrugged and turned to leave the room and noticed her. She was sitting on the floor with her knees draw up and her back braced against a file cabinet. She rubbed her eyes and looked up at him with a weak smile.
"Marinette?" he said.
He moved faster than he had intended, swinging around a table and sitting down in front of her. She startled and looked at him with wide eyes. Her hair wasn't as neat as it usually was. The skin around her eyes was swollen. He reached out and pushed a piece of hair away from her face as she watched him.
"Marinette, what happened?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said.
"You're crying in a dark room, something happened," he said.
"I just haven't been sleeping well, it's nothing," she said with a smile that was very well faked. If her cheeks weren't red and tear streaked, she would have looked perfectly happy.
"I can tell you with some experience that Design Studios aren't the best places to cry. Let me take you home," he said.
"That's very forward, Mr. Agreste," she said with a little giggle.
"I did tell you once that I was charming," he said.
Adrien stood up and held out his hand to her. She tilted her head back and hesitated before she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. She took her hand back immediately. She shoved her feet back into a pair of little pink shoes with low heels and picked up a jacket from a chair and shrugged into that as well.
"If you ask pressing questions then I will ask pressing questions too," he said.
"I don't understand," she said.
"I'm going to show you tricks for making sure that no one in your workplace can tell that you've been crying in empty offices. Those are my first choice but empty design studios don't change any of the principles," he said.
"No questions," she said.
"Good," he said.
Most of his crying in offices had happened when he was younger. Having an apartment to retreat to made it far easier than being eleven and abandoned in an office while some meeting took place next door. The worst had been the back to back shoots with strange call times that left him exhausted and frustrated. Sometimes it felt like those days were long gone. Sometimes it felt like he was the same lonely overwhelmed kid and he always would be.
Adrien wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her along to the sink in the back of the room so she could wash her face with cold water. He held a wet towel over her eyes. She was tense but smiled at him when he pulled it away. He knew she had blue eyes but for some reason they caught him by surprise. Her smile didn't reach those eyes and she looked sad and lost for a moment before she recollected herself and turned away from his stare.
"See? The cold helps get rid of the puffy blotchiness which is the biggest tell," he said.
"Thank you, but you don't need to fuss over me," she said.
"I don't do it out of the goodness of my heart, I fully expect you to return the favour the next time my life falls apart and I find myself sobbing in a corner," he said.
"That's not funny, your life is not falling apart," she said.
"It is, I just keep it well hidden. Let's go steal a car and a driver and I'll take you home," he said with a wink. He took her bag and her coat and she scampered after him a few steps to fall in beside him as he led the way to the elevator.
"Adrien?" she asked.
"The deal was no pressing questions," he said in answer to her tone more than what she had said.
"Fine so a general question then: Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yes. I was going for dramatic to distract you from your own worries," he said but she kept looking at him until he shrugged and added, "Girl problems."
"Ok," she said in a tone of voice that said she knew he was lying or at least not telling the entire truth. He leaned against the wall beside her so that his shoulder brushed hers and shrugged. She looked up at him and then away but she nudged him back. A silent agreement not to ask.
They borrowed a car and a driver. There was always someone just sitting in the little lounge just inside from the parking garage in case some important designer needed to be whisked away to some important meeting. This wasn't going to qualify on the important list but Adrien was prepared to pull rank if that's what it took. He wasn't putting her on a bus while she looked ready to pass out on her feet. Joe, the driver in question, didn't put up any argument. Either they were overstaffed or he just didn't care. He just shrugged and grabbed the keys.
Adrien held open the door for her and she smirked at him and ushered him in ahead of her. For a moment they both hesitated before Adrien bowed his head to her and climbed into the car first. She slid in beside him. He had been expecting her to sit across from him but she sat shoulder to shoulder like they had on the way home from the Gala. Neither of them talked and before they'd gone two blocks in the late afternoon traffic, she had slumped over and fallen asleep against his shoulder.
He smiled at her and pushed the buzzer for the driver. The little divider slid down and Adrien could see the side of Joe's head.
"If I gave you a really big tip and came up with a creative lie for the accountants, would you be willing to drive around for an hour?" he asked.
"Sure, kid," Joe said.
"Thank you," Adrien said.
"Uh huh," Joe said and he hit the button to slide the divider back up leaving Adrien alone with Marinette sleeping against his arm. He slid a little lower in his seat her head was against his shoulder and then answered all his email while she slept. It was like being trapped in a bubble where the rest of the world was very far away.
It didn't make him worry less. Every other thought was still about Ladybug but it helped push everything else away. A part of him wanted to shake Marinette awake and tell her absolutely everything as though confession would fix anything. He couldn't do that so instead he let her sleep. At least one of them deserved the rest.
When the hour he'd negotiated out of the driver was up and they finally pulled up in front of the dorm, he woke her up gently. She blinked at him but didn't seem to be able to pull herself all the way out of sleep, he wondered how long it had been that she hadn't been sleeping. She had seemed fine at the Gala but that was nearly a week ago.
"Just pass me your key, I'll take you up to your room," he said.
She narrowed her eyes then yawned. She dug a key card on a string out of her shoulder bag. He looped it around his wrist and considered her for a moment. He climbed out the other door and rather than forcing her awake, he just picked her up.
"Hey," she said
She didn't ask him to put her down and that seemed like proof that there was something wrong. Marinette was independent almost to a fault and he was a little wary of touching her. She didn't always seem to like it but she had gone from freaking out when he brushed her hand to falling asleep on his shoulder. He wouldn't have thought she'd let him pick her up but here she was, half asleep with her head resting on his chest.
He managed to wave the key card at her door enough times to make the lock click open. It was a closet of a room. Two beds, two desks, two dressers, all in made out of that white plastic covered wood. The roommate was not there. He guessed that the bed with the pile of sketchbooks and a flip-book of fabric samples on the side table was hers. He laid her down on it.
He turned around and went back to swing the door shut. He had been sure he had kicked it shut behind them but it mustn't have latched. He grabbed a folded quilt, the most personal thing on Marinette's side of the room, and threw it over her.
Marinette, Mari," he said making her turn to him and blink.
"You need to stay home tomorrow," he said.
"No, I've missed too much work already, the afternoon of the Gala, the day after, I've missed too much," she said.
"You're exhausted," he said.
"You're nice," she said.
"Now I'm worried that you're drunk," he said.
She smiled and pulled her pillow in so she could bury her face in it. He was crouched down beside bed so he was level with her. He had to catch his fingers before they reached out and pushed the hair back from her face.
"I'm not drunk," she muttered, "I just meant that I'm glad you're here. You're kinder than you need to be and not everyone is. Thank you."
He sat back on his heels and tried to think of something to say to that. She turned back towards him, looking out from her hair for a moment before she clumsily pushed it back from her face. Her hand hovered for a moment before she touched the back of his where it still rested on the mattress.
"Can you stay for a minute? Just until I fall sleep again?" she asked.
"Yeah, Princess, I can do that," he said.
She gave him a sleepy smile but her eyes were already fluttering shut. If she noticed that he'd called her Princess, she didn't say anything. That was the kind of thing that Chat Noir said to her, not the kind of thing that Adrien said. She had curled her fingers around his hand and he turned his palm over and held her hand until her breathing turned deep and even.
Then just a little bit longer.
Notes:
Holy tropey shippy Adrienette, Batman.
:)
Also I haven't decided if Joe abandoned Adrien there to make his own way home or if he is still just sitting down in front of the dorms in a fancy town car reading trashy magazines behind the tinted windows and working out how big a tip he can get out of the Agreste kid.
I think I'll leave that one for you to decide.
(And yes, calling the driver Joe is another Princess Diaries reference.)
And an apology for the lack of updates. I'm not a regular user of this site and so I sometimes forget to update over here. If you follow me at ashesandhoney on tumblr I post the AO3 updates as they go up. I will also try to do better and get caught up over here as well.
