A/N: I do not own Miraculous Ladybug.
Adrien stands in front of the bathroom mirror, glaring at his reflection with slumped shoulders and bags under his eyes. It took him far too long to fall asleep in the night because of cars driving down the street outside his window. The noises made him feel like he should've been outside, already at task at some chore because his father was. Then when he did fall asleep, he woke up two hours before he needed to, just because it was the time that he usually went out to feed the cattle and horses, especially around calving season.
So now he wears a faded burgundy t-shirt with dark blue jeans (his nicest) and his socked feet will soon wear the same faded leather boots. He fiddles with the blond hair on his head, desperate to make it look less flat and messy. Eventually, he makes it to look like something he can be happy with.
Adrien walks out of the bathroom and picks up the blue satchel of stuff that his mother left for him to take for school. He walks out to the front door and is just about to open it when Nathalie walks around the corner.
"Adrien, did you not eat breakfast?" Nathalie asks.
"I had a yogurt that was in the fridge. Is that ok?" Nathalie frowns.
"I suppose, although I did have something ready for you," she says. Immediately Adrien feels the weight of guilt fall on his chest.
"Oh... I'm sorry I didn't know," he says. Will every meal be planned and prepared with them?
"Whatever," she says, waving her hand once, "Go on to school."
"Nathalie... What were the directions?" he asks.
"Oh! You walk down the street to the bakery then you turn left. Then you walk down that sidewalk until you come across the school. It's big, and beige, and I'm sure you won't be able to miss it."
"Thanks," he says, before walking through the door and giving Nathalie a smile.
There's a slight wind when he goes outside, and he likes to think that the wind is carrying the smell of hay from the barn, or the rich scent of fuel or diesel of a tractor. But all he smells is baking.
Adrien begins to walk down the sidewalk toward the bakery. He feels out of place — odd even — to be walking here, on this street, in this city, around these people. He feels alien.
The scent of the baking grows unbelievably strong as he walks by the doors. He peers through the windows briefly.
A woman stands behind a counter at the back of the room, and a tall man with wide and large shoulders and a square jaw stands beside her. They look down at a paper on the counter. In the shop are shelves and shelves of goods, and even through the dark haze and glare of the window Adrien can see the perfection of them. But then again, how will he know if they weren't?
Adrien makes it a far ways down the street when he hears the distant sound of a bell. The kind that rings when a store door is opened. He looks back curiously, and sure enough he sees the girl with the dark hair walk out of the bakery.
Now he can tell her hair is black, even though with the reflection of the sun it could easily be pegged as blue. She holds her hair in two pigtails, and a large chunk of her bangs hangs loosely on her forehead.
She looks down and into her bag, and Adrien looks away as soon as she looks back up.
Marinette. Her names Marinette.
How can he make it so that he can walk right beside her as well not make it so obvious that he's trying to?
The plan forms quickly in his head, and Adrien reaches into his bag and tears a piece of paper from a notebook. He lets the paper drop, and as he hoped, the wind carries the paper down the side walk a few meters before settling on the cement.
He walks back to the paper, and Marinette nears him quickly. It's hard to pick the paper up as slow as possible without making it look odd.
To finish it off he picks up the paper and makes a hassle of putting it back in his bag.
"Hello?" Adrien looks up quickly, and the girl, Marinette, stands before him. There's a strange solidity to the sight of this girl in front of him, aside from the almost dream like view of her through her window. It's overwhelming how much she makes him want to talk, and maybe talk a little more. Yet, only one word leaves his mouth.
"Hi," he says. Consciously he takes his hands away from his bag and straightens it at his side. He can feel as well as see her eyes as she looks him up and down.
"Are you the new student in College Francoise Dupont?" she asks. Adrien's heart jumps in panic. Is that what the school is called?
"That's uh, the school down the street right?" His cheeks are burning. Is it a trick of light, or is she blushing also? Thankfully she smiles.
"Yah it is. I take it you are then," she says.
"Yah. I'm Adrien," he introduces, holding out his hand. When she shakes it he can't help but notice how warm her hand is.
"Marinette," she says. He smiles at her.
"Mind if I walk with you to school?" Adrien asks. Marinette shifts her head slightly, but it's enough to send a beam of sunlight across her face. The light causes her to squint, but it also reflects though extremely blue eyes.
"Yah, sure! Of course," she says. They both begin walking down the sidewalk again. "So I heard you used to live on a farm?" The question startles him. How much do these kids know about him? Will they see him as the farm boy? Adrien looks down at his worn and dirt smudged boots. Then he looks over at her small pink flats. Of course they will see him that way, because he looks the part. He acts the part.
He's proud of who he is. Not many people know how to rein a horse and clip a cow. Adrien's driven tractors and farm trucks like some of these people ride bikes. When he was five he broke his arm being bucked off a horse and he's broken a toe by having a steer step on it. It's who he is.
"Yah, It was a cattle ranch, and we also farmed a few fields too," he says.
"Oh wow. So what made you move?" she asks. Adrien falters slightly on the question, the words stuck in his throat.
"My dad couldn't pay for it anymore because the crops had been weak for the past couple seasons and the cows weren't producing enough. He didn't want me living in the town the farm was by, so I'm living with my mom now."
"I'm so sorry to hear that," she murmurs, and Adrien is surprised to find her eyebrows furrowed and a frown on her mouth.
"It's ok, I guess. I haven't seen my mother in a while and it's nice to be with her again," he says. That makes Marinette smile.
They stand before a large brick building, and Adrien's heart jumps.
"This is it, ready?" Marinette says. He nods, once.
"Yah." Adrien's voice comes out breathy and forced. They begin to walk up the steps at he front of the school, and he looks around at the students around him. Talking, hands placed on the backpack straps, pages of notes and homework exchanged and returned.
A girl with long auburn hair and glasses, wearing an orange plaid shirt joins Marinette's side. They drift slightly from him as they talk in hushed voices. He doesn't have to be an idiot to not know that their conversation is directed about him.
"So," the second girl says, looking at Adrien, "Your the new kid?"
"I might be," he replies with a smile, "I'm Adrien."
"I'm Alya, nice to meet you," Alya says. At the top of the steps the girls part away from him with a wave. And suddenly, he's alone.
So Adrien goes to the main office, and with his assigned homeclassroom and a locker, he heads to his first class. The first thing he sees in the room is Marinette kneeling by the only open seat in the classroom, placing a chewed piece of gum.
The breath escapes him. Her, really? He never saw her to be the mean type.
"Marinette? What-What are you doing?" he says, his voice growing louder. The stares of the rest of the class mean nothing to him as his frustration boils.
Marinette looks up at him, clearly flustered and she stands.
She stutters, "oh no I—"
"Save it," he grumbles, placing a klinex over the gum and sitting in the seat. In his peripheral he notices Marinette slump down in the seat behind him.
Great, just great.
"Dude, what happened?" Adrien looks over at the boy beside him. He wears a bright red cap, thick framed glasses and bulky headphones around his neck. His nose is quite large and wide, and his eyes are noticeably a rich brown.
"She stuck gum on my seat," Adrien explains quietly, darting his eyes briefly to Marinette. The boy glances back too for a moment, and his eyebrows knit together.
"That doesn't sound like Marinette," he murmurs. That means it's just him then, does it not? Marinette already doesn't like him.
"Well, well, well. Look, it's the new kid," a pitchy and cackley voice remarks from beside him in the aisle. Slowly he turns. "Or should I say 'hick'?" A girl stands in the aisle, hand poised on her hips. At first the bright colour of her blonde hair and yellow overcoat blinds him. To him she looks like one of those mean girls in the movies. Isn't it a given? Especially with her blonde hair in the high ponytail, the expensive jewelry on her wrists, the name brand sunglasses up on the top of her head. Her mouth seems stuck in a position of a smirk. Egotistical.
"Uh hi," Adrien replies. Something in him was tempted to say something cocky and parry her for calling him a hick, yet the fear of those narrowed and judging eyes caught him first.
"'Uh'? Did you need to think about how to say hi?" she cackles. Adrien glares at her harshly.
"Chloe leave him alone," Marinette says from behind him. This causes him to turn so he can also face her. He makes sure not to accidentally sit on the covered piece of gum.
Words sit on his tongue that he wishes to say to Marinette, but instead he turns back to the girl supposedly named "Chloe".
Adrien breaths in deeply, he didn't walk up expecting to prove himself so outwardly today. "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me - Macbeth, act one, scene 3," he says, before turning in his seat and looking forward as a woman with red hair tucked into a bun walks into the classroom.
"Sick man," the boy praises from beside him. Adrien turns toward him once he realizes that Chloe sat back down into her seat.
"Thanks," Adrien says. The boy smiles at him.
"Hey, how about you start this school with a new friend? I'm Nino," the boy, Nino, introduces.
"I'm Adrien," he replies and he bumps Nino's outstretched fist. Adrien doesn't mention that he was hoping that Marinette could've been his first friend. Nino seems more trustworthy anyways.
The work isn't as hard as he expected. Somehow his father and mother lined up his old assignments from his old school to this one perfectly, and all he has to do is pick up where the rest of the class left off. So he listens, and he writes, and every piece of information he hears ends up in notes in his notebook.
Surprisingly the day goes by quickly, and Nino even hangs out with him during their lunch hours. But it begins to rain outside, and as he stands outside the school doors alone, he takes a moment to listen to the sound of the rain splatter against the stone. He breathes in deeply, and that sweet fresh smell fills his nose. Why couldn't they get this rain at the farm? Something like this, for maybe just a couple days, would've been enough to save the crops.
But now it only gathers in puddles on the street.
Someone walks up to beside him, and with a quick glance, Adrien sees Marinette looking back at him.
"Hey," she says gently. His first reaction is to look away and frown, and tenses as if to step forward. "I just wanted you to know that I was only trying to take the chewing gum off your seat. I swear." This makes him tense, and the sound of the rain barely fills the silence.
Adrien smiles lightly at Marinette, and he fishes out a folded up umbrella out of his bag. His mother put it in there before, knowing the forecast said it was going to rain. He wasn't expecting to use it anyways.
Marinette watches him as he opens the umbrella up.
"I've never been to a big school before. I've never had close friends. It's all sort of... new to me. I'm sorry for being so quick to accuse you," he explains. With a smile Adrien holds the umbrella out towards her. She takes a moment to look at him, and her mouth gapes slightly open.
She reaches out her hand, and her finger first taps the side of his hand by accident. Quickly he passes the umbrella off the her as his cheeks warm.
They both smile at each other as she positions the umbrella over her head. Then it suddenly closes on her.
Adrien laughs as she pulls the umbrella back open and she laughs with him with a blush on her face. Her laugh is sweet, he wouldn't mind listening to it longer.
"Hey girl, sorry I took so long!" Alya says as she rushes through the school doors. She pauses when she sees him standing there.
Adrien smiles at Marinette, "See you tomorrow."
Marinette lifts a hand in a weak wave. "Ya... see you to...mo...tomo," she stutters, and he begins to walk down the stairs with a smile.
"Are you ready to go to my place?" Adrien hears Alya ask Marinette, "And when did you get an umbrella?"
He's too far away by the time Marinette would answer.
Sorry this took so long to post, I've been really busy recently with school and hockey. And I apologize if there are any editing mistakes in the writing.
I know, I know, I changed up the famous umbrella scene. Believe me, It was painful for me too, but I think you guys are going to like how these two end up inflicting with each other ;)