#twindoodle

But the point was, being sort-of friends with Adrien throughout the whole of lycée was interesting because she got to see the slow progress of Adrien gaining confidence.

When he'd first started coming to school, he was shy.

Very shy.

It hadn't been something she'd realized at the time, but looking back, he'd faded into the background unless he was called out. He never spoke out against anyone without being extremely pressed, and even then only Chloé was able to push his buttons that bad. The only person he'd initiated contact with was Nino.

It had emphasized how polite he was, how selflessly kind he was, but it also kept him at an arm's length from just about everyone. Marinette's picture of him was pieced through the lens of her crush, the little moments where he was kind and understanding and gentle, and through the copious number of modelling ads that moved from her favorite magazines to her walls.

He played piano and basketball, he fenced, he volunteered at animal shelters, and... that was all she knew. For the whole first year of lycée she was able to recite his schedule off the top of her head at any given moment, but she hadn't known how he felt about any of them.

It was funny to think about now, but she'd spent all her time learning everything she could about him... and in the end, knew absolutely nothing about him.

Thankfully, that started to change by the end of seconde year, and she was pretty sure she had Nino to thank for it. It was Nino being his usual self, complete with careful care and omnipresent Friendship, that had slowly brought Adrien out of his shell.

Marinette hadn't noticed the start of the change, still too busy worshipping the pictures on her walls to see it happening. But sometimes he would stop and talk to her when he hadn't before, or stand close enough to Alya to get tugged into her strike range for physical affection, or speak up in a class discussion with a quiet joke instead of his normal attentive seriousness.

Their second year, in première, did more for him. In première he had friends.

This also took Marinette a while to notice, but he could sometimes be seen brushing Juleka's hair in the halls during their shared free period, or spending at least an hour in the library with Max every week nerding out over video games, or being fairly tight texting buddies with Alya.

Première was also the year that Marinette learned how to string together a complete, coherent sentence in front of him. That was the year they had their first real two-sided dialogue involving a mutual exchange of information --- and her first real, true glimpse at who Adrien was under all that polite shyness.

He was sweet. He was kind. He was enthusiastic and dorky and had a sense of humor that she was almost contractually obligated to roll her eyes at.

That was about the point where Marinette's crush went from 'mildly obsessive' to 'actually debilitating.'

It was made even more debilitating by the fact that Adrien truly, honestly seemed to enjoy her company.

She would walk into the classroom where her friends were having a debate, and catching sight of her was all it would take to turn Adrien's frown upside down. He laughed at all her jokes, even the terrible ones. He hugged her after his fencing tournaments and called her after school to talk about the most random, stupid things that came to mind, like he was just looking for an excuse to talk to her.

Eventually she knew enough about him to fill a textbook, and every new thing she learned just made her crush harder to bear.

Sure, she could string together a sentence in front of him now, but at what cost?

(This was made even worse by the fact that première was also the year that Chat had toned down his showing off.

She'd already been having trouble ignoring the tiny little crush she'd developed on her cute, loyal partner, only to discover that said crush got several times bigger and harder to ignore when his outrageous flirting was replaced by open, crystal-clear, heart-on-his-sleeve honesty.

It was a lot easier to brush off a casual, winking, "Ah, the sparks between us must have shorted the elevator out," than it was to brush off a dazed, awed, "You're the most amazing person I've ever met."

All of this meant that Marinette was caught between a crush that was getting more casually affectionate all the time, and a suitor that was getting decidedly less casual --- and yet no less respectful or trustworthy --- all the time.

Long story short, Marinette spent much of her première year screaming into her pillow.)

And then came year three: Terminale.

And during terminale, Adrien somehow, somewhere, learned how to flirt.

Marinette wanted a refund.

Oh, it had started subtle enough: little innuendo-laced comments that he didn't go out of his way to avoid, innocent touches when they talked, watching her out of the corners of his eyes and not looking away when she caught him. Little things that managed to imply that he wouldn't really mind if she wanted to kiss him.

Given that Marinette had very much wanted to kiss him for a good two and a half years by that point, it was just enough of a not-invitation to make her go out of her mind.

He doesn't mean it, became her daily mantra. He doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it, he doesn't---

(Chat, on the other hand, definitely did mean it, and had no problem with making that perfectly clear at any given opportunity --- without ever actually pushing her boundaries.

You see what Marinette's problem was here, right?)

And then, as Marinette spectacularly failed to reject him, it. Got. Worse.

Kisses on the back of her hand, jokes about dating, jokes about kissing --- Adrien wouldn't make the jokes himself, but the little smirk on his face when someone implied that they were doing things was just as bad, if not much, much worse.

There was more innocent touching, more slightly-less-innocent touching (arms under her thighs on the few occasions when he picked her up, hugs that lasted a little too long, hands idly rested on her waist when she stood next to him...), and a general lack of shame about touching her all around.

Marinette, frustrated beyond belief (in many more ways than one), hadn't been sure if she was in heaven or in hell.

Then, somehow, it got worse.

Because, you know, of course it did.

Now Adrien stretched if he caught her staring, always with an unbearably cocky little grin that she wanted to smack off, kiss off, and sit on by turns. Marinette discovered first-hand that no, Adrien actually making the dirty jokes was infinitely, infinitely worse than simply not denying them. He kissed her cheek and complimented her appearance and smiled at her when he thought she wasn't looking --- only to smile wider when he found she was looking back.

Hell. It was definitely hell that she was in.

(And all of this was chased by deep midnight conversations with Chat; by races across rooftops that ended in slow-dancing on the top of the Eiffel Tower to the sound of their own humming; by Chat actually swooning into her arms when she kissed his cheek; by Chat dropping hints about his civilian identity, practically begging her to figure it out once she'd implied that she wouldn't mind knowing; by Chat kissing her knuckles while his eyes offered a promise he didn't have to voice...

Marinette was in trouble.

Marinette was in major trouble.)

The final straw came somewhere around finals season, when everyone was preparing for their baccalauréats.

She and Adrien were studying together with Nino and Alya in the library study rooms, as friends do --- and Marinette, exhausted right past the point of being able to focus, was starting to derail every question they tackled.

Alya, hoping to threaten Marinette back into focusing on the material, pulled the straw out of her smuggled latte and waved it in Marinette's face. "I swear, if you take us off course one more time..."

Then one her feints swung a little wide, and Marinette found herself thwacked across the cheek with a whipped-cream-laden straw.

"Hey!"

"Oh, whoops," Alya laughed, incorrigible, looking over the study-material-covered table for napkins. "You gotta dodge, girl!"

"I didn't think you'd actually hit me!" Marinette whined, hand only hovering by her cheek because a life spent in a bakery meant that she was practically hardwired to never touch her face when food was involved.

Across the table, Adrien looked pointedly up at the ceiling, incidentally doing nothing to hide his grin.

"Oh you hush," Marinette grumbled, folding her hands on the table and submitting to her fate of whipped cream showcase.

Adrien looked down from the ceiling, expression softening the moment he laid his eyes on her, just as it always did lately.

Marinette, just as she always did lately, felt her heart stammer to a stop, cheeks heating at a furious pace.

(She really wanted that refund.)

The corner of his mouth quirked kindly, and Marinette watched it in blank fascination.

He'd always been unbearably pretty, but there was a saying about how a soul could make a body beautiful, and Marinette was of the firm opinion that Adrien's could've made any body beautiful.

That was the thought floating around in her head when Adrien leaned out of his seat and reached across the table, and it distracted her so much that she didn't realize what he was going to do until he was already in the process of doing it.

Fingers on her cheek, Adrien dragged them through the sugary mess --- warm, rough fencing callouses on her sensitive skin and a soft smile on his face.

Marinette couldn't do anything but stare and burn.

He withdrew his hand, studying the cream on his fingers for a moment before opening his mouth and---

Marinette's hand shot out entirely of its own accord and wrapped around his wrist, halting it halfway across the table.

In that moment, Marinette was absolutely sure that he was about to lick his fingers clean, and that if he did, it would be the one thing she couldn't survive.

It wouldn't be a big thing, it wouldn't be the worst thing --- heck, it wouldn't even be a notable thing in the long run of truly mind-blowing things he'd said and done to her over the past year --- but she was tired. She was unfocused. She was distracted and frustrated and just last night Chat had dropped yet another hint as to who he was, and...

And Marinette was starting to suspect.

And if her suspicions were correct, then she really wouldn't be able to take that.

She just wouldn't.

So, of course, her solution to the issue was to drag Adrien's hand back over and lick his fingers clean herself.

Logic.

She got as far as tasting the salt of his skin beneath the sweet, creamy flavour before she realized that she'd made a very big mistake.

Mouth watering, she glanced up to find all traces of Adrien's smile gone, wiped clean by naked shock.

She considered for a second, and then gave his fingers a gentle, experimental suck.

Adrien's pupils visibly dilated, his jaw going slack.

If he asked, she planned to protest that his fingers were already there, and what else was she supposed to do with things in her mouth, really?

He didn't ask.

Marinette, emboldened, swirled her tongue around the digits in a motion just this side of too-suggestive to be excused as an attempt to get all of the cream, heat tingling low in the pit of her stomach.

(She'd had fantasies, okay?)

A low, pressurized noise escaped Adrien, slightly more than a wheeze but distinctly less than a groan, and it took all of Marinette's reservations and threw them bodily from the nearest tenth-story window.

She let her eyes slide shut and went after every trace of whipped cream with a vengeance.

(A sweet, seductive, suggestive vengeance, but a vengeance all the same.)

(Fantasies. She'd had them.)

When she opened her eyes back up, she found Adrien staring at her, flushed from hairline to collar with still more of the blush peeking out from the sleeves of his t-shirt. She was pretty sure he'd stopped breathing altogether. The moment their eyes met, his mouth shut with a click, his adam's apple bobbing with an audible gulp.

Marinette, in a show of spectacular self-control, did not attempt to clamber over the table.

Rather, in a show of a spectacular lack of self-control, she pulled his hand out of her mouth with a combined purr and suck, smirking as soon as his fingers were free.

Impulse had her licking her lips, hunger settling low in her belly at the taste of salt and glee spiking in her veins as he tracked the motion. Impulse also had her smirking a little wider as she purred, "Thanks for the treat, mon minou."

If it wasn't him, it would just be a pet name. If it was him, she'd know.)

His entire face went lust-slack, lips numbly forming, Ladybu---

"Um. Do we need to leave the room?"

Marinette and Adrien leapt about a foot in the air as one.

(It was him, it was him, it was h i m---)

Alya and Nino were also acting as one, staring hard and quirking their eyebrows in eerie sync.

"Uhh," said Marinette.

(---it was him, it was him, it was him---)

Adrien wrenched his hand out her grip, yelping, "Nope! Nope, we're--- we're f-fine---... We... We're... Um."

"I mean," said Alya, eyebrow game still going strong, "if you need us to leave so you can clear out that UST, it might help."

(It was him.)

"Nnn..." Adrien started.

"Well, I mean," said Marinette, cutting him off and glancing at him pointedly, because never let it be said that she hesitated once she knew what she wanted.

She didn't think she'd ever seen Adrien shut up so fast.

Alya looked from Marinette to Adrien and then to Nino, who raised his eyebrows back at her, then pushed herself up.

Marinette blinked. She hadn't expected to be listened to.

"Well then," Alya said over the scrape of Nino's chair as he followed her. "I'm getting another latte. Let us know when you can focus on test prep again."

"Um," said Adrien.

"Right," said Marinette.

They left.

To her credit, she waited until the door had clicked shut behind them before actually climbing over the table.

(It took her a while to get around to it, occupied as she was by Adrien's eager mouth and eager hands, but somewhere in the middle of all of it she managed to accuse, "You found me. When?"

"It's been a year, slowpoke."

"Oh my god, Chat."

He just laughed --- laughed and laughed and laughed until she captured his mouth and proved how very potent her crush could be, and let him prove to her just how much confidence he'd gained.