41. “You did all of this for me?” + Ladynoir or Adrienette (your choice!) Hope you get past your writing block! --chatstronaut
41. “You did all this for me?” (au, adrinette)
It starts so simply. Just a small apple pie and a smile to welcome the very attractive neighbour who just moved in the apartment across from hers. Marinette exchanges pleasantries, gives the pie to Adrien, and thinks that’s that I guess.
A week later, there’s a knock on her door and Adrien sheepishly bearing five flowerpots in his arms outside asking do you want these, I bought too many for my place and thought maybe you’d like them instead?
Marinette ends up adopting all five blooming flowerpots and doggedly keeps them alive despite her atrocious track record with plants, all the while plotting ways to outdo this act of kindness because she knows exactly what this is: a competition.
(I don’t think that was the point- Nino feebly tries to convince Marinette otherwise when she comes over to borrow some tools, but it’s a lost cause. He knows that particular gleam in her eyes all too well and can only pray that her new neighbour is ready for the challenge.)
So, she more or less invites herself into Adrien’s apartment and single-handedly fixes the sputtering water pressure of his shower and the leaky pipes under the sink because my apartment does this too and it drives me nuts so I thought you could use a hand!
Adrien merely laughs and thanks her by knocking on her door when a sudden storm blows the power out through the whole building. A basket of flashlights, candles, and blankets swings neatly from his arm. Just in case, he grins, you don’t have any and need a little something extra. He’d even slipped a pair of fuzzy slippers at the bottom, that cheat.
Payback comes when Marinette learns he’s sick. She wastes no time in marching to his door, bearing a massive bag of medicine, tissue boxes, and bowls of soup. She spends the week going in and out of his place, restocking tissues, heating up soups and teas, and watching Adrien’s entire collection of Ghibli movies with him as he drifts in and out of a fevered sleep.
(Marinette gets a key to his apartment somewhere in the midst of all that, and it looks like victory in the palm of her hand.
She probably should’ve realized then that it was no longer really about friendly neighbourly competition, but something tentatively different, something wonderfully else-
but she simply gives him a key to her apartment and considers them even.)
Adrien gets back at her, of course, with a stunning spice rack that he helps set up in her tiny kitchen. It’s beautiful, and thoughtful, and impressive… but not quite as good as her taking care of him while he was sick.
Marinette’s not sure if that means she wins. It doesn’t feel as satisfying as she thought it would.
She doesn’t back down though, and retaliates with helping him repaint his apartment. They keep at it, Adrien playing his keyboard with both their doors propped open when she’s up ridiculously late studying, then her spending all of a morning teaching him how to makes crêpes, then him procuring opening night tickets to Star Wars: The Last Jedi for them, then her helping him assemble the new furniture for his place that they’d spent all day together picking out-
Then it all sort of- stops. They’ve built such an easy and familiar rhythm of give and take that when Adrien grows too busy to see or talk to her for a week or so, Marinette’s left reeling. Usually, she’d just let herself into his apartment; but now, her hand wavers upon even knocking on his door.
She bites her bottom lip in thought and retreats. She leaves little baskets of fruits and pastries by his door instead, with simple notes reminding him take care of yourself! He responds always by sliding another note under her door saying thank you, I’ll be around again soon- but it’s not quite the same.
Marinette refuses to let it hang heavy in her mind, so she soldiers on through school and work with a single-minded intensity. She leaves early and gets in late so then it’s ok, they’re both a little too busy at the moment to catch each other.
Except she’d come to look forward to Adrien’s little surprises, his quick-witted if corny humour, his thoughtful care. Coming back to her apartment and seeing his door shut hurts a little each time.
It’s especially worse after a particularly long day, where she was late for work, and had pulled an all nighter for an assignment before, and no one remembered it was her birthday all day except for a brief text from Alya. Seeing that shut door when she comes home that evening is just salt in her wounds at this point, and she’s ready to just collapse onto her bed and sleep the rest of this awful day away, so she jams her key in and pauses when she finds the door unlocked. Fingering the pepper spray in her purse, she cautiously opens her door and-
SURPRISE!!!! deafens her eardrums as everyone she knows pops up from every conceivable corner of her apartment. Confetti rains down on her head, streamers and balloons pack the ceilings, and the pile of gifts on her couch have formed their own mountain range.
It’s all so colourful and wonderful and overwhelming, and Marinette hardly knows what to say or who to look at first until Adrien steps out of her kitchen, birthday cake in hand with candles gently illuminating his beaming face. He starts the birthday song himself, and winks when she manages to blow all the candles out but one.
Marinette doesn’t even realize there are tears on her cheeks from the incandescent happiness overflowing her emotions until a million tissues are thrust under her nose by all her friends, and she can only laughingly say thank you, and who-?
Every hand with those tissues dangling from their fingertips turn to point to Adrien, and Marinette is incredulously, ridiculously, breathlessly radiant as she wonders, You did this all for me?
Of course, is all Adrien says, but the incredible smile on his face says the other thousand words she already understands.
Marinette doesn’t even think twice about enveloping him in a tight hug and pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth in thanks. The way his arms tighten around her and the solidity of the curve of his body as he fits into her space feels entirely right in a way she’s suspected for months. Now, she knows, and it’s all thanks to the humble beginnings of a small apple pie and the first knock on his door.
You win, Marinette laughs, feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.
Adrien presses a smile that she can feel against her hair, and corrects, We both win.
