I know the glass ceiling pun probably doesn't cross over into French but just let me have this one okay? 3


Guard Dog


"That's what you get for ducking instead of headbutting," Marinette giggled as she pressed some ice borrowed from Mylene's cooler to the gnarly bruise on Nathaniel's forehead. After Kim had punted the ball straight at him with a battle cry of "Nathaniel, for the win!" he had panicked and ducked. Alya's knee had then promptly made friends with his face. "Seriously," Marinette went on, stepping into her most motherly tone, "who taught you to play football anyway?"

Nathaniel had to laugh at that. "No one? I've never played."

"Oh, uh… yikes. Rough first game."

At that point Max called half time, and the group of friends broke from the stretch of grass between the makeshift goal posts they'd crafted with secondhand fishnets and trash cans. Alix and Kim stayed out kicking the ball around while everyone else fanned out to the drinking fountains and bathrooms, and some toward the picnic table under the ramada where Marinette was treating Nathaniel's injury.

As their friends filled the space under the ramada with laughter and jokes, Marinette gave Nathaniel a quick smile and then passed off the ice to him, moving from her crouch in front of him to join him instead on the concrete bench. He waited for her to glance back at him a few moments later before returning the smile with one of his own, albeit shyer.

Marinette was just glad they were on speaking terms again. Maybe it was by small degrees, but every time they spoke she could sense their friendship healing.

But Adrien, who had just entered the ramada with Nino in search of his water bottle, was not privy to the private musings of Marinette's mind. What he saw was Nathaniel sitting a little too close to Marinette for his liking and smiling a bit too much in her direction.

"Hey guys," he grinned, feigning nonchalance with all the ease of a trained professional as he plopped himself into the tight space between Nathaniel and Marinette on the bench. The tentative smile on Nathaniel's face evaporated. "So was it bad?" he wondered, peering at the melting ice cubes in the boy's hand.

"Could have been worse," Nathaniel mumbled.

"True," Marinette agreed. "Alya has the thigh muscles of an olympic runner, so it really could have."

Nathaniel quietly excused himself from the table as Max attempted to get everyone back out on the field for the third quarter.

"Start without me," Adrien called out through cupped hands. "I'm gonna run to refill my water bottle."

Marinette watched Nathaniel slump out onto the field, then screwed up her face at Adrien's retreating back. Love of her life or not, something had to be done. "Me too!" Marinette yelled, then ran to catch up with Adrien as he crossed the park to the drinking fountain. "Hey, wait up!" she breathed, her heart beating like a war drum in her throat as she steeled herself for what she was about to do. "Can I talk to you about something?"

Adrien paused with a benign, puzzled look on his face, setting his empty bottle down on the back of the fountain. He was thrown off by the seriousness of her expression, which was totally at odds with the light, carefree afternoon they had all been enjoying since Alix invited them out to play football. "Of course. What's up?"

For a couple of seconds Marinette fretted, trying to decide how best to phrase what she needed to say. In the end she just blurted it out. "Could you maybe lay off Nathaniel?" She slapped a hand over her mouth after that, shocked by her own choice of words, but then peeled it away to add an intense, "Please?"

Lay off? Adrien's jaw flapped. "What do you mean? What did I do?" Did he black out and punch the guy without realizing? He'd definitely imagined it once or twice.

"I'm sorry," Marinette relented, "that didn't come out right. You didn't say anything wrong, it's just… Ever since the Evillistrator incident you've…" She petered out, gesturing her hands at him in a vague swooping motion.

Adrien was nonplussed. He honestly didn't know what she was getting at. In light of certain events, he thought he'd shown remarkable restraint in not allowing Chat's knowledge of what has transpired between Mari and the akumatized Nathaniel to bleed over into the Adrien side of things. Where had he slipped up? What did he say?

A little of Marinette's ire melted away into the sunny afternoon as she drank in his complete confusion. Leaning against the fountain, she looked up at him with her arms folded loosely across her t-shirt. "You really have no idea what I'm talking about?"

"Sorry, no." It was apparent that he had stepped over the line between Chat and Adrien somehow, but he still needed to hear how. "Help me out, Mari."

Marinette sighed, the use of the pet name tickling her the way it always did. Loads of people called her that. Yet only when Adrien said it did her knees buckle.

"Ever since the Evillistrator incident last month you've been really… distrusting of Nathaniel."

That news made Adrien blanch. Was it that obvious?

Marinette went on, missing the stricken look on Adrien's face. "Every time he tries to talk to me, you wedge yourself between us. Every time he so much as looks at me you step in front of me."

Remembering the first time it had happened, Marinette felt her cheeks heating up. Nathaniel had come to her the day after the incident with an apology on his lips, and Adrien had slammed his locker shut, edging around Marinette until she was behind his shoulder. Even after the boy had apologized, Adrien hadn't budged an inch, broad shoulders squared and hands balled into casual fists as he stared their classmate down with a cold, calculative look in his eyes.

For her part, Marinette was too surprised by Adrien's reaction to do anything but stand there. There were many words she could use to describe Adrien Agreste. Mostly, before that day, those words would have included but not been limited to dreamy, genuine, adorable, caring, generous… Many, many words.

But you probably wouldn't have found the word intimidating in that word bank, or protective, or scary.

Needless to say, Marinette had updated her internal bio on him.

But now, as Adrien floundered for something to say about her accusation, Marinette had to wonder how someone so pure and gentle could possibly be the same person that refused to let Nathaniel within three feet of her.

"I don't know what to say," he finally admitted, which was the complete truth. Hastily he reviewed all his interactions with Nathaniel over the last month. Had he really been so forward about it?! "I didn't realize I was doing that at all."

"It's alright," Marinette soothed. "I mean, wait, sorry, no it's not," she changed her mind. "Sorry, it's not okay." Damn his beautiful innocent face, she needed to get this out but he was making it so difficult! "I'm not mad," she assured him. "But it's been really hard getting Nathaniel back out of his shell after that whole debacle, and every time you do that it pretty much deletes all my progress with him. It's been so awkward," she confessed. "He definitely doesn't have a crush on me now, after the way I embarrassed him. We're barely even friends anymore. And you acting like my guard dog-" (Adrien bit back a laugh at her misfired metaphor) "-is just, not, helping." She finished on an embarrassed whisper, pressing her hands together in a prayer-like position in front of her lips, silently begging him to understand and not be upset.

It was like he could read her mind. "I understand, Marinette." His hand shot to the back of his neck as he went into damage control mode. "Honestly, I do, and I'm really sorry. It's just, I was so taken aback by what he was willing to do to get you to date him, you know? It rubbed me the wrong way. I try to forget about things people do when they're under Hawkmoth's influence, but I guess this one just stuck with me. Anyway, I had no idea I was doing that to him. I'll stop."

"Thank you," she sighed with relief, freshly reeling over the fact that Adrien was so bothered by this particular akuma. Whew. That went better than expected! Now, just one more thing… "Also," she went on, channeling Ladybug with all her might, "I need you to know that I don't need protecting, from Nathaniel or anyone."

She offered him the most charming, most confident, most Ladybug smile in her arsenal. Because really, if there was one thing that bothered her more than Nathaniel still struggling with guilt, it was Adrien seeing her as some sort of damsel in distress.

There was silence, punctuated only by the chirping of birds as Adrien processed Marinette's bold statement. Oh boy, he had really blurred the line this time.

Because hadn't he daydreamed about Marinette for weeks after the Evillistrator? Hadn't he reminisced about saving her, savoring the way she had gushed over him, cherished every loaded, charming glance they had shared? He had gone to sleep every night for two weeks with her on his mind, and all the tantalizing possibilities that arose when a dashing superhero met a charming civilian. It was the showboater inside him, clamoring for more of… whatever that weird magical connection was that had sprung up between them when they worked together that night. What could be say? He loved being a hero, and with Marinette, he had never loved it more. He had saved her; and maybe, just maybe, he was dying to save her again.

Or maybe more accurately, he was dying to make sure that she would never need saving again. Was that a different story?

Regardless, he obviously allowed these very Chat feelings to leak into the world of Adrien, and that was something he couldn't abide. Of course Marinette didn't know he was Chat and didn't know he had been there for that whole creepy ordeal, so she wouldn't know why he reacted so vehemently to Nathaniel's proximity to her.

"Of course," he nodded. "I wouldn't want you to think that I think you can't take care of yourself."

"I know." Marinette tapped her fingers on her arm, loose hairs from her bun slipping into her eyes. She blew at them. "I know you mean well. I just want you to know that I'm fine. Really," she pressed. "I can take care of myself, Adrien. If Nath was in any way a threat to me, which he's not, by the way, then I wouldn't hang around him. Or I'd kick his ass. I know self-defense. Plus, I bet you didn't know this, 'cause I didn't really tell anyone the whole story, but I actually saved Chat Noir's ass that night."

Aaand Adrien's eyebrows shot into orbit.

"Yeah," she snickered, "I know. That silly cat would have been stuck forever if I hadn't helped him lift the glass ceiling off our heads." Belatedly she recognized her choice of words as hilarious. Chat would have busted a gut at the unintentional pun and she was so glad (and wrong) that he hadn't witnessed such filth coming out of her classy mouth. "Ironic, no?"

Too aghast at this development to find any humor in her wordplay, Adrien waved away Max, who he could see coming over to check on them and bring them back into the game. This was more important. Max gestured at him in exasperation, but turned back nonetheless. "Marinette," Adrien began, that glass ceiling pun still ringing in his ears, unsure how he could have screwed up this badly. "I haven't been acting this way because I think you're weak, and I especially haven't been acting this way because you're a girl." He shoved his hands in his pockets. This was going to be a little embarrassing, but he absolutely could not have her thinking that. "It's not because you're a girl, Mari, it's because I care about you. That's not the same thing."

Marinette blinked up at him, totally dumbfounded. "Oh, Adrien," she sighed, and before she could talk herself out of it she stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. Then she backed away, her confidence receding back to the bottom of her shoes, unable to look him in the eye and judge his reaction. "I care about you too."

With that she ran off to rejoin the game, leaving Adrien to press his hand to his cheek and try to calm his frantically beating heart.