It had all started when Nathalie had informed him about his packed schedule getting double the workload.
His photo shoots had lessened in number, but the sheer amount of schoolwork and language classes had slammed into him. He was now learning German on top of Chinese and the grammatical intricacies blended together until he was confusing the structures of the languages. Fencing became less of a stress-relief and more of a job, something that took up so much of his free time and energy he had to drag himself to the car just to barely make the next scheduled thing on time.
Akuma attacks had also quadrupled.
Chat Noir had been pulling so much patrol time, it was a wonder Adrien could still stand. Even in the little sleep he had gotten over the past two weeks, Adrien had caught himself moving in bed as if he was running another patrol over the rooftops.
And this barely included his actual schoolwork.
Adrien had lost so much sleep from the workload. Dark bags hung under his eyes, and several of his friends and classmates had asked if he was okay.
He knew that if he had extra photoshoots on top of everything else, he would have snapped after the first week.
But here he was, shuffling into his first class of the day with a giant cup of coffee in his hand, the dark liquid so loaded with espresso it would have easily competed with Nathalie's caffeine intake. Adrien's eyes watered and blurred, and the teen did everything in his power to keep his eyes open.
"Adrikins!"
Chloé's shrill yell pierced his sensitive ears. Adrien winced, nearly spilling his coffee, and froze up completely the moment Chloé's arms wrapped around him.
"Adrikiiins! That Dupain-Cheng and her commoner friends are bullying me again!"
Alya's voice reached Adrien's ears. "Disagreeing with you over the answer to the group project homework assignment isn't bullying, Chloé."
Chloé let go of Adrien and whipped around, jabbing her finger at the small group of girls. "Oh, you say that now, but then you start to question all of my decisions and then you'll be cutting me out of the entire picture!"
Marinette snorted softly, crossing her arms over her chest and looking off to the side. "Yeah, like that would be the worst thing…" she murmured under her breath, sarcasm in her tone.
Chloé, unfortunately, caught that.
Before she could shout anything else, Adrien lowered his head and pushed past her to his seat. "Please, Chloé, I'm really not in the mood-"
The moment he sat down, Lila's voice tickled his right ear.
"Adrien," she cooed, honey in her voice. "I noticed that our number of photoshoots we had scheduled together was lessened, and if you could just try to convince your father to-"
Adrien squeezed his eyes shut as Chloé's shrill voice yelled out at Lila's.
That was the spark that took it all off.
Arguments erupted around him. Alya and Alix were screaming at Chloé; Chloé was screaming at him to defend her; Lila was shouting over the fight to get her word in; Marinette was raising her voice to try and get everyone to stop-
He didn't know what came over him. All he felt was a burning fire building in his chest, and then his fists slammed down against his desk so hard it sounded like a gunshot. He shot out of his chair—eyes shut tight to block out the sight of people and his ears ringing with pain—and yelled at the top of his lungs, "JUST! SHUT! UP!"
The whole classroom fell dead silent.
All of the anger instantly drained out of the boy, and when Adrien opened his eyes, he couldn't bring himself to look at the people around him.
The next thing he knew, he was pushing around people and sprinting away from the classroom. He didn't stop running until he slipped inside the empty boys' locker room, making a beeline for the furthest lockers from the double doors.
He breathed, sucking in air before leaning back against the lockers and sinking to the floor. His knees pulled up to his chest, and his hands cradled his face.
"Well… that went well…"
"Plagg," Adrien forced out. "Please. I… I don't know if I wanna talk right now."
Silence came from the cat kwami, but Adrien knew the little god would stay close by.
Shame and guilt welled in his chest. He was never that aggressive, and he couldn't imagine the looks of fear on his classmates' faces. If stress hadn't weighed down every fiber of his being…
He heard the locker room doors open.
Soft footsteps, the sound of familiar flats, crept over to where Adrien was sitting. When he lifted his head to see who it was, the sight of Marinette holding his abandoned coffee cup met his gaze.
"Hey…" she said softly. With care in her body language, she crouched next to Adrien, holding out his cup as a peace offering. "I'm sorry about my part in the yelling. We all knew you were stressed, and we should have known better."
He reached out and lifted the cup out of her hand, unraveling his body. "And I'm sorry for yelling," he said. "I shouldn't have taken my anger out on you all."
The mint smell Marinette had grew stronger as she sat down just to his right. "Do you want to talk about what's been bothering you?"
A long sigh left the model, and his eyes stayed locked on his cup. "If you're okay with listening?"
"Yeah. I'm okay with that."
Warmth, the smallest bit of relief from the stressors that had been with him for the past two weeks, balled in his chest. "Thank you, Marinette…"
And as Adrien began voicing his worries, the weight from his shoulders finally began to disappear.
