Marinette strode into their homeroom classroom with a sense of confidence Adrien had never seen her carry before. He followed closely behind her without being too close, and he was proud to say that he was able to witness the rest of their classmates' reactions to Marinette's newfound discovery in herself.

Everyone's eyes lit up when they saw her. Most of their mutual friends rushed to greet her, welcoming her back to school and to the new year. By now, everyone in school had been made aware of Marinette's sickness at the end of summer and beginning of the new school year, so to see her back in school was surely a wonderous sight.

Even Chloé made a... somewhat encouraging remark about Marinette's return to school.

Marinette blatantly ignored her, but Adrien was still shocked that Chloé had even bothered trying to be nice.

What shocked him even more was that Chloé didn't have a tantrum when Marinette ignored her.

"We're glad to have you back, Marinette." Mme. Bustier greeted her with a smile. Their teacher, despite having her first child when they were freshmen, was pregnant with her second child, and was expecting a daughter with her wife.

Marinette returned that smile just as genuinely. "I'm glad to be back, Mme. Bustier."

Adrien was glad that she was back too.

Marinette took a seat in her usual spot, which was directly in front of him. Alya sat down right beside her. Neither of the girls spared a look over their shoulders, but Adrien didn't even mind. It meant that if Marinette was refusing him to give him the time of day, he could admire her from behind without having to worry that she might catch him in the act.

Their teacher went on with their homeroom announcements, but Adrien wasn't paying attention. He simply watched Marinette as she pulled her tablet out of her bag, intending to copy notes off of Alya's tablet that she had missed from the week she was absent.

From the corner of his eyes, he watched as Nino scooted closer towards him. Then, his best friend elbowed him lightly in the side.

"Stop staring at her." Nino hissed out. "It's lowkey creepy, and you're making it noticeable."

Adrien discreetly tried to spare a glance across the room, but it was impossible. Most of their classmates were already looking at him, and most of them were not expressing their support through gentle smiles.

They all looked extremely disappointed in him.

Adrien turned to face Nino with wide eyes. "Does everyone know that Marinette and I didn't work out?"

Nino simply raised his brows. "You mean, does everyone know that you rejected her? Then yes, yes they do."

"How?" Adrien ran a hand through his hair, suddenly terrified. It was bad enough that Alya already saw him as some horrible. The last thing he needed was for their whole class to see him that exact same way.

"Word gets around, dude."

"What did you do... tell everyone?"

"I didn't tell anyone." Nino replied with a scoff. He sounded offended, as if he couldn't believe he was being accused of ratting his best friend out.

Personally, Adrien wasn't sure if Nino was lying or not, but if Nino was telling the truth, then there was a pretty good chance Alya had been the one to tell everyone.

He only hoped she hadn't told them that he was Chat Noir. But he wasn't even sure if she knew that, so he needed to stop jumping to conclusions—

He quietly groaned into his hands. "So... you're telling me... that from last week to today, word got around to everyone that I fucked things up with Marinette?"

Nino nodded. "Yeah... pretty much."

"Nino... Adrien... is there something you would like to share with the class?" Mme. Bustier suddenly spoke up. Hearing his own name caused the blonde to lift his head from his hands in an instant, finding their teacher's narrowed gaze with wide eyes of his own. Apparently, despite what he deemed to be pretty good whispering, she had still heard them.

"No Madame." The two friends answered in embarrassed unison.

Adrien could feel the entire class staring him down—all except for Marinette, that is. Seemingly satisfied with their answers, Mme. Bustier continued on with her announcements, deciding that neither Nino nor Adrien deserved further punishment beside embarrassment.

Adrien leaned over the side of his desk and pulled out his tablet from his bookbag, intending to make it seem like he was taking notes of his own. In reality, he wrote out a message and then slid the device over to Nino.

So... do you think Alya was the one who told everyone? If so, how should I go about asking her if she did? Should I just confront her?

He handed his pencil to his friend. Nino's eyes briefly skimmed the message before he shot Adrien a deadpanned look. However, he quickly wrote out his response.

idk man. also, you're still on about that? i thought you said she would never listen to what you have to say?

The friends shared a silent look at that. Adrien raised his eyebrows in uncertainty. The only thing he expected from Alya was anger, but he had no idea what else to expect.

Will she? You know her better than I do

if she's as pissed at you as you think she is, then I think you don't stand a chance. also, confrontation with alya is a bad idea... especially by yourself

Adrien huffed a frustrated sigh through his nose. As much as he believed he would be unsuccessful at trying to talk to Alya, he really needed to know what she knew. He needed to know if she knew that he was Chat Noir.

So talk to her with me. You'll help me out, right? It's really important

Nino scoffed down at Adrien's written words before he quickly wrote out his response.

dude, i already tried easing you on to their good side. alya's not having it, and neither is marinette. whatever you did really fucked everything up

Adrien suppressed rolling his eyes. He didn't need the reminder. He knew he had screwed up.

I know

Nino raised a single brow at him.

maybe if you told me the whole story, i could help you out better

The blonde narrowed his eyes at his best friend. That look was enough to make it clear that he had no intensions of being the one to tell Nino the full story.

Nino's eyebrows furrowed in frustration. His written response was clipped and clear.

if you're not going to be honest with me, then don't fucking ask me to help you

"Fine." Adrien huffed underneath his breath as he snatched his pencil from Nino's hand and slid his tablet across the desk back towards himself. He didn't need Nino's help anyway.

He'd do this all on his own... even if he didn't make it out alive.

____________

When their break for lunch finally rolled around, Adrien found himself sitting outside, leaned up against a giant oak tree in the courtyard behind their school. He wasn't the only one who chose to sit underneath a blue sky to eat lunch, but he was certainly the only one who sat alone.

He would've asked Nino to join him, but Nino had gone to sit with Alya and Marinette without so much as saying a word to Adrien... and honestly, Adrien didn't blame him. After their strange tiff over writing in homeroom, Nino had decided to ignore him for the rest of the day.

Adrien didn't take it to heart. Nino had every right to be frustrated for being left in the dark. It only bothered him slightly that Nino had chosen them over him.

"Adrien."

He looked up from his salad, which he had barely touched, only to find Chloé standing in front of him with a tray of food in her hands.

"Chloé." He acknowledged her with a tight, thankful smile. At least she was still willing to keep him company. He patted the space beside him with his free hand, inviting her to join him.

She did so silently, and situated herself comfortably beside him. He spared a glance at her tray, taking in the contents of her meal. Apparently the cafeteria had decided to serve meatloaf... which tended to taste extremely bad.

"You got cafeteria food?" He noted with a light chuckle. "Since when?"

"Since I decided I needed to be more like everyone else when it comes to my... attitude." Chloé poked at the meatloaf with her fork. The meat—if you could even call it that—wiggled like Jell-O. "But this looks utterly disgusting."

"Here." Adrien chuckled as he pulled out a small tray of sushi from his paper bag and handed it to her. He didn't have much of an appetite for it, anyway. "If you eat that, you'll have the runs for the rest of the day. Believe me... been there done that."

Chloé scrunched up her nose as she flipped open the plastic lid of the sushi container. "TMI, Adrien."

"Noted." He chuckled sheepishly. So far, Chloé seemed to be the only one who wasn't pissed about what had happened between him and Marinette, and it wasn't because she didn't know. Chloé knew everything, especially when it came to gossip. But then again, he wasn't even sure if Chloé cared enough to make it a concern of hers.

Adrien cleared his throat. "You're not... upset with me... are you, Clo?"

With a pair of wooden chopsticks he had provided, she popped a sushi roll into her mouth before she turned to look up at him. "Why would I be?" She asked him after she had swallowed the bite.

Adrien shrugged unsurely. "Everyone seems to be pretty upset with me right now."

"About the whole you and Marinette thing?" She said it so emotionlessly, as if there was no real significance behind the subject. "That's not really my business, Adrien, and even if it was, I don't really care what goes on between you two."

"So, you don't think it was wrong of me to slee—uh... I mean, reject her?"

"People reject each other all the time. You can't be forced to like someone if you don't."

It should've been as simple as that, but it wasn't, because there was never a rejection to begin with. Not in the way that all of their classmates believed.

"What if there was more to it than that?"

Chloé simply raised her brows as she took another bite of her sushi. "Is there more to it?" She questioned curiously after she had swallowed her food.

Adrien let out a defeated sigh. He needed to vent to someone. He couldn't vent to Nino unless he wanted to risk exposing his identity, and he didn't exactly want Nino knowing that Marinette and him had had sex either.

But Chloé was neutral. She wouldn't go blabbing to anyone else about what they talked about, and she wouldn't lecture him like he knew Nino would.

She might judge him, but they had been doing that to each other since they were kids.

He sighed again, louder than the last, and decided he might as well come clean. "Marinette and I... we... well—we had sex."

Like he knew she would be, Chloé was unfazed by his confession. She simply hummed around another piece of sushi as she popped it into her mouth. "How was it?"

"I-It was good." He tried not to choke on his own saliva and burst out into a fit of coughs out of embarrassment. "Great, actually."

Chloé simply hummed again and asked, "Then what went wrong?"

So many things... but mostly because He had screwed it all up. He was an idiot. He had been afraid. He had gone and revealed his identity, the one thing a superhero was never supposed to do. He could only imagine how furious Ladybug would be if she found out.

No one else could know... but he had to talk about it with someone. He had to talk about it with someone who wouldn't bother prying into the details he purposely let out.

Nino was the kind of person who would press for every detail, so Adrien couldn't talk to him about it no matter how much he wished he could. He couldn't tell Chloé that he was Chat Noir either, but... unlike Nino, Chloé wouldn't be bothered if he chose not to disclose his 'secret'.

So, he decided to tell her.

"I have this... secret..." Adrien started off a bit unsurely. "I haven't told anyone about it. It's very important to me, and... and I didn't want anyone knowing about it, but Marinette found out and I...I freaked out."

Chloé turned her eyes from the almost empty sushi container to meet his gaze. "How did she react when she found out about your secret?"

"She looked shocked... confused maybe." He replied with a shrug. In truth, he hadn't really taken much time to gauge her reaction. He was too busy trying to run away at the time.

"So, not angry?"

"Not that I could tell, but she's definitely angry now."

"So, fix it." Chloé replied with a shrug as if it were that simple.

"She doesn't even want to talk to me." Adrien said with a frown. He would give anything to fix this. He would give anything to have Marinette back in his life—as a friend, as his girlfriend, as whatever she wanted. He would do anything.

Chloé didn't seem to care about that. She merely shrugged again. "So, you're just going to accept that and leave things as they are?"

He shook his head briskly. "That's not what I want to do, but shouldn't I respect what she wants?"

"Sure... after you try to fix things."

Adrien wasn't sure if Chloé's advice was good or bad, but he had a feeling it probably wouldn't be his best move to just blatantly defy Marinette's wishes—which was to stay as far away from her as humanly possible in their every day-to-day life.

However, maybe he didn't need to approach Marinette to fix things. Chloé did make one valid point: he wasn't interested in accepting their new arrangements and leaving things the way they were. He wanted to fix things, even if that meant just restoring the peace and nothing more.

With that, an idea came to mind—and it didn't involve blowing up Marinette's phone, approaching her, or getting anywhere near Alya (for now, at least).

He would write her a letter and mail it to her. He would apologize the old fashioned way.

"I have an idea." With a smile suddenly beaming on his face, Adrien set his unfinished salad aside and reached for a notebook inside of his bag. He rummaged even further until he found a mechanical pencil at the bottom of his bag and with his thumb, pressed the eraser down several times before a piece of led poked out.

Chloé watched him with a raised brow as he pulled his knees up close to his chest and opened the notebook, using his legs as a prop.

However, her confusion wasn't directed at what his idea may be. Instead, she was pointedly staring at the fact that he had a physical notebook. "Why do you have one of those? We literally do all of our work electronically."

"It's for emergencies." Adrien replied idly as he twirled his pencil around his fingers.

Chloé's confusion only intensified, and he didn't need to look at her to know that it had. He could hear it in her voice as she skeptically asked, "So, what does your idea have to do with an old notebook?"

He briefly turned his head to meet her eyes. "I'm going to write Marinette a letter." He said a bit giddily behind a wide grin.

Chloé's eyes widened slightly at that, the idea seemingly unexpected to her. However, Adrien quickly realized his thoughts were going in the right direction when her expression seemed to relax and she hummed and silently nodded, as if she were encouraging him.

"You think it's a good idea?" He asked sheepishly, just to be sure.

She nodded again. "Writing a letter is like a grand romantic gesture. I don't know a single woman who wouldn't swoon."

He would trust Chloé's word on that. She knew everything woman, after all. Literally.

Adrien's felt his smile widen all on its own. Chloé's assurance was really all he needed.

Well, that... and he needed to figure out how he was going to start this letter.

His smile dwindled slightly as he turned to face Chloé again. "So... how should I start the letter? Should I just start it with 'I'm sorry'? Or should I—"

"Mhm." Chloé shook her head at him. "I'm not writing it for you, Adrikins. Every single word you write on that page has to come from you and you alone."

Adrien frowned slightly at that. As much as he wanted to write something astonishing to win over Marinette's forgiveness, he wasn't a poet, and he certainly wasn't the best with words. He needed help.

"Could you at least give me a vague idea?" He asked almost pleadingly. "I'll come up with my own spin from your example."

Chloé shook her head again. His frown deepened, revealing a bit of a pout, but it didn't persuade her in the slightest. Instead, Chloé shook her head again and a faint smile pulled at the corner of her lips. She moved away from him slightly before he could make a comment on it, and was a bit surprised when she pulled out her laptop from her bookbag and slid it across her lap to his.

"The internet is at your fingertips." Chloé said with a slight smirk on her lips. "Get researching."

He let out a genuine chuckle as he opened up her laptop. Already knowing the password, he quickly typed it in. However, as if karma was slapping him in the face, the bell rang in the near distance, signaling the end of their lunch period and the beginning of their next class.

"I guess it'll have to wait." He sighed in defeat and moved to close the laptop, but Chloé's hand stopped him almost instantly.

Their eyes met again, his own wide in surprise. Chloé simply arched a brow. "I told you I'm striving to become like everyone else, which includes skipping class." Her eyes lowered to her laptop before they raised to his once again, her orbs twinkling in rebellious amusement. "Want to skip history with me?"

Adrien chuckled as he reopened the laptop fully. He shot her a mischievous look of his own, despite the fact that if his father found out he was skipping a class, he would be furious. But Adrien could deal with his father later.

"Since when did you become so rebellious?" He asked cheekily.

Chloé shrugged and flashed him small smile. "Like I said, trying to be like everyone else. That includes the popular rebellious stage of a teenager, apparently, however late."

"Does that mean doing your own homework now too?"

That earned him a sock in the shoulder. Adrien reached to rub the spot, knowing fully well it wouldn't bruise, and feigned his pain with an exaggerated wince. Chloé rolled her eyes. "Don't get sarcastic on me. I'm offering to stay with you until you finish that letter."

Somewhat surprised, Adrien's eyes widened slightly. "But that could take hours... and you might miss another class or two."

"So will you." She noted as if it were nothing to be worried about. "That just means we'll both have to face our fathers once they find out. I wonder who will be more angry?"

"My father for sure." Adrien replied with an amused roll of his eyes. "He'll probably ground me like he always does and take away my phone. Oh, and lecture me about responsibility."

Chloé leaned back against the tree trunk and sighed. "I'd say same, but daddy won't take away my phone or ground me. He'll just stand there and talk to me like a child... he won't even yell. Is it weird that I want him to?"

"Is this part of your sudden goal to be like everyone else?"

"Maybe?" Chloé turned her head to look at him. He copied the motion. With their heads both resting against the large tree trunk, they simply searched each other's eyes. "I don't know... it seems like such a weird thing to want, but lately, I just wish I could be normal."

Adrien frowned at that. He really wasn't sure where all of this was all coming from, but considering Chloé had willingly heard out his problems and advised him, he planned to do the same. "You are normal, Chloé."

She shook her head against the tree trunk and chuckled a bit bitterly. "But I'm not. I mean, I haven't been. I've been privileged all my life... which you know what that's like, but unlike me, you have always been selfless and grateful for what you have. I've just been a brat."

Adrien let out a sigh through his nose as he considered her words. "Maybe, but you've been trying to change. That's what matters. Besides, you've already helped me tremendously, which are points that you can add to your selfless card, right?"

Chloé rolled her eyes playfully at him. "Yeah yeah. Quit trying to make me feel better and start working on that letter of yours."

Adrien did as he was told, but not before adding: "If you can sit there and listen to my problems, you know damn well I'm going to do the same."

"I know." Chloé's voice was fond as she smiled at him. "That's what makes you such a good friend."

_______________________________

Adrien and Chloé bonding? Adrien and Chloé having a healthy relationship? We stan this. We don't see enough of this. We need more of this.

See you again on 4/14/2023!

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