#inside scoop

They argued on a piece of paper if that doesn't scream sibling energy idk what does!

Adrien somehow made it through the whole day. Marinette had never shown up. He had texted her, but she hadn’t responded yet. He tried not to panic.  “Do you think she’s okay?” Adrien asked Tikki.  Tikki smiled warmly. “I’m certain that if she wasn’t, you’d be the first person she would call.”  He let out a sigh of relief. Tikki was right. He normally got pulled from class for a day for all sorts of reasons. There was no reason to freak out.  But he missed her. Her presence had a way of soothing his anxiety if only because she could give him hints through every interaction.  He slipped through the doors of the bakery. Marinette’s mother was at the front and smiled at him brightly. Something in his chest squirmed. Marinette’s parents were so nice.  “Hey sweetie! How was school?”  “It was great!” Adrien assured her with a smile, but Sabine’s smile actually faltered. “Come here, Xīngān.” Adrien stepped around the counter, every muscle locked in tension as his heart pounded in his chest, once again completely uncertain as to what he did wrong. Sabine’s arms wrapped around him and pulled him into a hug. “You don’t have to pretend, you know. Not when you’re at home.” “Pretend?” he echoed. Had Sabine already figured him out? He didn’t think so. She was holding him and referring to him by the sweetest of Mandarin nicknames. She wouldn’t do that if she knew.  “Pretend that you’re okay,” she said, like it was obvious.  Adrien didn’t know what to say. What was she asking him to do? Break down into tears in her arms or whine about his day?  Neither would have been tolerated by his father.  She was stroking his hair, and he finally felt himself melt into her embrace. “I know, m-maman,” he said, trying hard not to stumble over the familial title and failing. After a week, it hadn’t gotten any easier. “I’m just tired.” Sabine nodded. “Well, if you want to take a nap, I’m sure your papa would understand.” “What?” “It’s Wednesday! Did you forget?” “I guess I just lost track of the days. He’s in the back?” Adrien pointed towards the bakery.  Sabine smiled. “As always,” she said. She kissed his forehead. “Have fun, okay?”  Adrien entered the back room of the bakery with only a little trepidation. Sabine has just told him to have fun, so it couldn’t be anything bad, right? Was this an every Wednesday thing that Marinette had forgotten to mention? Or a this Wednesday thing? Marinette didn’t have a calendar telling him where to be and when.  He was rapidly discovering that he didn’t know what to do with himself and all the unstructured time.  Tom’s whole face lit up when Adrien entered. It was surreal. Adrien’s father never looked at him with such open joy.  “There you are, cupcake! How was your day?”  “It was fine,” Adrien said. Tom was in the middle of decorating cookies and there was obviously a spot right next to him, waiting for Marinette to fill.

At some point, I had read an article about people who grow up in abusive dynamics - where a lot of the time they actually have a hard time in healthy relationships because their brain doesn't believe that it's real. They're actually more stressed out because they're waiting for the other shoe to drop at all times and when it doesn't, that just puts them even more on edge. I was trying to capture a little bit of that dynamic in Adrien's interactions with Marinette's parents.

He's always ready for his father to start in on the criticism, he's bracing himself for it at all times. So when he's Marinette with her parents he's still expecting that to happen at some point. That he's going to make a mistake at some point and they'll come down on him hard. This is all exacerbated by the fact that he's trying to pretend to be Marinette at the same time and is nervous about them figuring out that he's not.

Then it's all made just a little bit more stressful by the fact that his own mother is not around, and so just addressing anyone as mom brings all that up for him. And that in some ways, this is what Adrien wishes his family life was like. So he wants it, craves it, but is also terrified of stealing it from Marinette. ... Director's Ask Game if you want me to do another scene/snippet from any of my fics!