The third time Adrien visits, it's, surprisingly, by invitation and entirely on purpose this time around.
[ come over to mari's place tomorrow ]
The text pops up innocuously in Adrien's inbox, and he jumps halfway into an affirmative reply before he realizes it's Alya who sent the message.
His fingers hover over the screen for a perplexed moment as he wonders if the text had been meant for Nino instead. Another text pings through, saving him from his confusion.
[ if you leave me to fail physics, i will come after you with permanent hair dye ]
Clarity flashes through his mind with little fanfare: that's right, a date with an akuma had replaced his tutoring session with Alya earlier that week. It completely slipped his mind to follow up with her, but he isn't surprised that she had forgotten as well up until now.
They both, after all, have a vested interest in the superheroes that show up to save the day.
A brief bubble of amusement balloons in his mind at Alya's threat and pops promptly when he imagines his father's face at seeing his hair in blinding technicolour. Hurriedly, he taps on the calendar app on his phone and scrolls through to find his Sunday blessedly free.
Despite the instincts that clambered to an immediate yes! at her very first message, Adrien goes for clarification rather than confirmation.
[ You want to meet at Marinette's place? ]
[ she's practicing making dumplings and i refuse to miss out on that ]
If the feeling in his gut hadn't already been on board with the idea, it's certainly fast tracking to the boulangerie-pâtisserie now, outpaced only by the shameless hunger of his stomach. Adrien indulges in the briefest thought of savoury meat and broth folded within delicate wrappers glistening with sauce before Plagg unceremoniously shoves a pungent piece of Camembert under his nose, yanking him back to reality.
"If we ever have to face an akuma that cooks, you'll be fried," Plagg grumbles before wheeling away to snack on his treat.
"Seasoned and sautéed," Adrien agrees absent-mindedly. "Delicious." Maybe he should grab an apple from the kitchen to appease his stomach and mind because none of this is helping him formulate his answer to Alya.
Hesitation simmers beneath the hunger; as much as he would love to go back, discomfort stops him from responding positively. His mind tangles over the fact that it is Alya who invites him to Marinette's, and the thought of whether or not she has the right to do so.
His thought process promptly reins itself up. Even though he and Alya aren't the closest, she's a good enough friend for him to know that while she's shrewd and quick to act, she's also extremely loyal, especially to Marinette. Memory's fingers come to soothe his worries as he remembers that they have been best friends for years and years, long before he knew either of them.
And if Tom and Sabine had been so welcoming to him from just one meeting, he wouldn't be surprised to find Alya unofficially adopted by them.
Assured and faintly amused at the turn of his thoughts, he taps out his response.
[ Alright that sounds good. Is 11h30 ok? ]
[ perfect. come hungry! ]
Well that certainly wouldn't be the problem. Now that he knows what lies ahead for him in tomorrow, he will seriously have to channel mind over matter to get any work done.
An idle thought nudges at the back of his mind of whether or not Alya purposely planned for competition against their physics work. Adrien chuckles as he inputs an event in his calendar, letting Nathalie know where he'll be tomorrow.
He's lived with the expectation of winning, succeeding in everything he does; but losing seems to promise a certain satisfaction too.
xXx
The next day greets him with a monotone drizzle that washes the world in a stifling grey. Adrien spends the morning stuffing Plagg with Camembert in hopes of curbing his insatiable desire for more gougère, to limited success. The car ride over to Marinette's is filled with half baked excuses and explanations for any food or- more likely- cheese that's made a sudden and suspicious disappearance.
Plagg only snickers before burrowing deeper into the inner pocket of his jacket.
Adrien does not want to be known as the boy who prefers exclusively gougère for the rest of his life. He likes cheese, but undeniably of a different kind than Plagg. He wonders if the kwami understands the meaning of 'moderation'.
("And you call me dramatic," Plagg snarks. Adrien doesn't dignify him with a reply.)
Walking into the boulangerie-patisserie reminds him of all that is still out there for him to taste and savour. The chorus of buttery croissants and baguettes greets him first, accompanied by delicate notes of fruit, sugar, chocolate, and spices spun in mouthwatering tarts and cakes. Macarons pipe brightly from their dedicated display by the ringing cashier.
In the center of all the colour and noise and smells stands the conductor, who raises her arms to greet him. Everything else falls away into a quiet interlude when Sabine leans up to press air kisses to Adrien's cheeks, a gesture that echoes in a hollow buried deep within his chest.
But she smells like honey and cinnamon rather than vanilla and rosemary and that's enough to prompt Adrien into following his cue. He kisses her cheeks back in greeting and warms under Sabine's motherly smile.
"The girls are just upstairs and to the left, in the kitchen," she tells him before an incoming customer hales her attention.
Adrien leaves her with a quiet murmur of thanks before ducking through the back door and climbing a set of stairs set to the side up to a wide landing.
The door is open just enough to reveal a sliver of light pink and for him to catch a wail of "Alya!" coming from within. He knocks and when no one answers, pushes the door open and gingerly steps in.
Ombré curls fanned out across the back of a pink couch is the first thing Adrien sees. He assumes it's Alya, since the top of her head barely peeks over the edge of the couch and the rest of her body is obscured by the furniture; that, or Marinette has a very impressive imitation wig of her best friend's hair.
A quick glance around tells him how very different Marinette's home is to his: a cozy living room dressed in soft pinks, warm woods, and comfortable fabrics is a far cry from the large, marble echo chamber that's his front hall. The high kitchen table, visible just around the frame of the staircase to his immediate right, bears a few large colourful mixing bowls, several thin sheets of dough, and a liberal dusting of flour; the cook in question, nowhere to be seen.
Her voice on the other hand is readily apparent. "Dieu but what am I going to say? I can never think of the right words- argh- I can't even think when I get too close to him! You know what we should've done, we should've made a script for me because then I would know what to say and I wouldn't be such a babbling mess and Alya you have to help me out here instead of laughing at me because it's almost time and I'm not ready."
The ombré curls shake from the peals of laughter sounding from the couch.
"Mari, Mari, Mari," Alya chides. "I love you girl, but you need to calm down, especially when you're so close to a bunch of knives."
Alarmed, this more than anything is what nudges Adrien into clearing his throat and injecting his presence into the middle of their conversation. Panic and anticipation saturated Marinette's voice, clearer than the torrent of words that spilled out, and the last thing he wants is for her to accidentally hurt herself from waving hands and tripping feet.
The curls in front of him snap up and Alya's glasses glint as she whips around to look at him.
"Hey Adrien!" she greets brightly, waving a hand. "We, uh, didn't hear you come up. Or in."
Any answer that rises to Adrien's tongue gets swallowed into a choke as a magnificent crash sounds from his right. Without hesitation, he races around the staircase to find a kitchen tucked against the wall, and Marinette in the process of pulling out and precariously balancing several baking trays.
"Adrien!" she yelps, and her mouth opens and closes a few times at the sight of him. Despite her earlier loquacity, the only sound that fills the air is the drumming of rain against the windows.
Without warning, she slams the baking trays back in the cupboard and hops up straight at the same time, directing a nervous but dazzling smile at him.
"Hey Marinette." He relaxes when he doesn't see any immediate danger. "Do… you need help?"
"I'm fine!" she chirps, and a flush steals over the bridge of her nose as she glances quickly over his shoulder. Her gaze snaps back to his after a moment and she gestures nervously around the kitchen. "Do you eat something to drink? Drink anything? Want some eats?"
He can't make heads or tails of what she's saying, so he focuses on what he does know: that the way she scrunches her nose and the way her freckles brighten over the flush of her cheeks is endearing. Adorable, actually.
"I'll have some warm milk, if that's ok?" he interjects, saving them both from themselves.
"Ok, yeah, sure!" Marinette sends another look over his shoulder before turning around to the fridge.
Adrien only has a moment of watching Marinette thud her forehead gently against the fridge door instead of opening it before Alya's voice calls him over to the couch. With a concerned look at Marinette that she doesn't seem to catch, he slides his bag next to Alya and settles around the low coffee table. Notes scribbled with formulas and writing already sprawl over the surface and a textbook lies forlornly on the floor.
Alya's dramatic slump over the couch tells him exactly how much she's looking forward to this.
"What can I bribe you with to just trade homework and call it a day?" She wrestles a couch cushion in her hands and glowers at her incomplete papers.
"Jokes on you because I haven't started yet either," Adrien chuckles, pulling out his own homework from his bag. He shuffles the papers on the tables into an organized pile and sets his notes out neatly in front of him.
"You mean," Alya sits up, incredulous and a hint mischievous, "Marinette's actually beat us both for once in getting physics work done?"
"Hey!" A cry sails over from the kitchen. When Adrien looks up, it's to catch Marinette pointing at Alya's head with a glass cup in hand, her expression indignant. "I'm great at completing work on time!"
"Yeah but at what cost?" Alya rolls her hazel eyes but a fond smile plays on her lips. "You're always so tired that you end up running late to class or taking cat-naps during breaks."
Adrien sympathizes; he knows how it feels to run on little energy and sleep. His tightly packed schedule of lessons demands a lot from him, and his responsibilities as Chat Noir only steals more time and energy from him at the end of the day. Exhaustion is something he's learned to cope with.
"You should look after yourself, Marinette," he offers up, and is rewarded when said girl turns to him with a wide-eyed stare. "If homework's taking you that long to finish, or if you're having trouble, I could help if you want?"
"Actually," Marinette blurts out as she comes over with mugs of steaming milk and hot chocolate for them both, "I'm, uh, working on some new designs which- which is why I'm staying up so late."
Alya perks up, both at the hot chocolate and the fruits of Marinette's creativity.
"I want to see!" she declares. Marinette gives a pointed look at the homework scattered across the coffee table. Alya resolutely ignores her.
Marinette gives a huff and her eyes raise to meet Adrien's in shared amusement. Her eyes spark with an idea and a sly grin tugs at the corners of her mouth, giving Adrien a moment's warning of her impending craftiness.
"Finish at least half of this," she gestures, "and I'll show you some of the stuff I'm working on and the dumplings should be done then."
The bait dangles and Alya snatches it with a smug grin.
Patiently working through the logistics of refracted light and reflections flies by with far greater ease and pleasure when cushioned against pink pillows and soothed by gentle clinking and occasional humming from the kitchen. Rain polishing the world outside gives Adrien plenty of examples to explain geometric optics.
He loves that he can even see and hear the rain so closely, that the light that reflects and breaks through the water fills the room with cool light. That the quiet percussion compounds the coziness and warmth of Marinette's home.
Rain echoes in his own home, a hollow sound. The white rooms are so spacious that the walls always feel like they're pushing out and away, and the distance leaves Adrien cold.
He draws a cushion closer and anchors himself back to the present where there is warm milk and quiet cursing and pink pink pink.
While he waits for Alya to work through a few problems, his eyes drift over to the only other motion in the room. Careful concentration looks like a tongue poking out the corner of Marinette's mouth and a dip between her furrowed brows. Small hands cut sheets of dough into circles the size of the cup she's improvising with and confident fingers dip into one of the colourful bowls to scoop a dollop of ground meat.
"If you stare any harder, she'll feel you," Alya murmurs teasingly, and Adrien inexplicably feels a flush heating up the back of his neck.
"I'm- well, you could compare the levels of opacity of those dumpling wrappers with-" he sputters, pinned by Alya's smirk.
Her hazel eyes roll before casting an amused glance back at him. "C'mon, I think we can take a break. It sounds like you need a break."
"You're just saying that to avoid the work," Adrien laughs.
Alya doesn't even try to argue. "I'm a busy woman! I have a blog to run, places to go, people to see."
"I'm honoured you even cleared a spot in your busy schedule for me," he jokes, and grins even wider at Alya's huff.
"Well, my schedule says it's time for both of us to take a break," she declares before hopping up. With a languorous stretch, she calls out, "Marinette! Save us from the soul snatching claws of physics."
"It's not that bad," Adrien mutters as he rises up as well.
"Well," Marinette's voice draws them over like a lure, "you're in luck because I'm just about to start wrapping these if you both want to help?"
They don't need further prompting. After a quick wash of the hands, they settle around the high kitchen table and watch intently as Marinette peels a thin circle of dough from a stack and scoops a teaspoon of broth paste to spread in its center. She places a small sphere of moulded ground meat in the middle before her fingers nimbly tug the edges of the wrapper up into an elegant twist.
The dumpling is presented to enthusiastic applause from him and Alya both, and as they set about mimicking Marinette, Adrien's appreciation for how effortlessly she put the dumpling together grows the more his falls apart.
"Hey these aren't the same as the last ones you made," Alya remarks as her wrapper shreds under her ministrations.
"These are xiaolongbao," Marinette explains as she reaches over to help her out. "I have ingredients for potstickers if you want to make those instead."
Alya eyes the potsticker in Marinette's hand with consideration. The wrapper pleats over neatly to resemble waves, a more elegant but complicated process.
"I'll give those a try," Adrien sighs as he pushes his misshapen dumpling towards Marinette to fix.
Her giggles lift into the air like bubbles, light and playful. It takes no effort at all for her infectious laughter to spread, and physics remains long forgotten as dumplings and potstickers fold together one by one. They joke as they choose whose dumpling is the most creative, and laugh as they select which pot sticker looks most like a smile.
"So, girl," Alya starts as she deftly folds a dumpling together. Though not as smooth as Marinette's, it holds together stoutly and sits proudly on the tray with the other completed dumplings. "These designs. I'm all ears."
Adrien perks up at the reminder. He's seen her pink sketchbook peeking out from her bag but the only drawings he's seen from her are silly doodles on her homework. She's creative; he knows this well. Her icing sugar map and help in the bakery are examples enough, and the dumplings and potstickers she folds and creases together like edible origami even more so. He just considers the fact that his aren't falling apart anymore a victory.
"Actually, I need some advice." Marinette's lower lip snags between her teeth and she glances fleetingly at him.
Instead of pulling out her sketchbook like he expects, she plucks a few extra wrappers, round and thin, and overlaps them together on the table. Pinching and arranging briskly, a skirt with rippling pleats unfolds before their eyes.
"Ah," Adrien nods as he leans over the table to get a better look. A grin splits his face. "A circle skirt?"
Alya guffaws and Marinette blows the flour dusting the table up into a cloud in retaliation, but Adrien's too busy laughing at his own joke to do more than wave his hands to clear the air.
"I guess," Marinette pouts ineffectively. The corners of her mouth keep twitching into a smile. "It could be that. I don't know what I should do about the hem. Like I was thinking, casual, high waisted with a large band-" she cuts a broad strip and lays it at the top of the skirt, "-and gathers cinched near the top so it comes down in draped waves. But maybe it should be asymmetrical? High-low?" She shoots Adrien an amused glance. "Circle?"
"You look good in anything," Alya declares. "But I think maybe circle would be nice. Are you using that blue gradient fabric you got last week?"
A finger taps on Marinette's chin thoughtfully as she nods almost absent-mindedly. Her brow furrows as she considers the dough skirts laid between cities of dumplings and potstickers.
"I think circle would be great, too," Adrien agrees. "A gradient fabric you said? Circle would be full and simple enough to bring attention to the use of colour, rather than the cut of the skirt." He smiles faintly as Marinette's eyes lift to look at him intently. Blue, he thinks, is a beautiful colour. "I hear a lot of this kind of thing from work."
He certainly doesn't see this kind of process though. Any designs that he catches glimpses of in their initial planning stages are always drawn and pinned up on boards, professional and clean and stark. Marinette's methods are unconventional; but he admires that about her. She doesn't think like anyone else he knows but her problem-solving is remarkable; better, memorable.
No, he amends his thoughts. He does know of another whose creative thinking he admires greatly. As he watches Marinette's tongue poke out when she creates another skirt out of more dumpling wrappers, he thinks she and Ladybug could be good friends.
Blue eyes squint at the new skirt folded on the table before brightening with purpose. "Yeah, I think you guys are right! I'll go with circle."
"Don't stay up too late working again," Alya mothers her good-naturedly.
"You're always up late too, working on the Ladyblog," Marinette banters back playfully. "You always text back even when it's like three in the morning."
Drawn by the shaking of Adrien's head, Alya tsks him and waves a finger in front of his nose. "You can't make that face. I know for a fact that you and Nino are up just as late playing games online together too."
"Ok, so we all have terrible sleeping habits," he concedes with a laugh.
"Some of us just manage to wake up in time for class," Alya ribs, and joins in laughing when Marinette shoots her an affronted look.
"That's it, you're getting the most burnt of the potstickers and the lumpiest xiaolongbao to eat," Marinette sniffs, though her eyes sparkle as she transfers a number of the dumplings from the trays onto a high rimmed plate. She fills a large wok with water, rests a rack in the middle, and sets the plate right in the center, before covering the setup with the wok's lid.
As she turns the stove on and leaves the dumplings to steam, she selects a few potstickers and prepares a pan to fry them in. It doesn't take long before the mouthwatering aroma of meat and broth saturates the air. Breathing the scent in is almost as good as taking a bite.
It's times like these that Adrien understands why Plagg is so enamoured with cheese. The warm smells settle around him like a memory that's faintly familiar but unmistakably significant.
The first bite of potstickers elicits sighs from them all. The first bite of xiaolongbao backfires on Alya as she sinks her teeth right into it, spraying Adrien with broth. Marinette about keels over in her chair from hollering before showing her the correct way of eating it.
Amidst his own laughter, Adrien wipes his face clean and delicately bites into the xiaolongbao cradled by his soup spoon. He did the same thing when his Chinese teacher brought some as a treat. It seems like a rite of passage, for the first time to go so awry, so he has no trouble enjoying Alya's look of surprise and shock and Marinette's peals of laughter.
Alya's quick quips keeps them all on their toes and Marinette's smile banishes gloom of the rainy day. The last time Adrien had been so breathless from laughter was when he whirled around tables of éclairs, with chocolate and pigtails and a booming voice, singing.
He's been in the boulangerie-pâtisserie and now he's experienced Marinette's living space. He wonders why he ever thought them as separate in his mind because the welcome and warmth, the laughter and ease in them both are one and the same.
They both feel like home.
AN: I wanted to switch between cuisines in each chapter, alternating between French and Chinese. Cheated a bit in chapter one since fruit tarts are pretty universal. Thought dumplings would be appropriate since the process of making them seems closer to baking than cooking- or at least, I find it to be so!
Physics was my least favourite subject in school; when I left, I kissed it goodbye without a second thought and never looked back... until now. Karma. I'm shaking my fists at you.