Fake It ('Til you make it)

Passing Notes (Marinette)

Marinette hadn't heard from Adrien in a day. A whole day! Which was completely unheard of. He was always first to message in the morning and she was last to message at night. She'd done her deed, sending the final goodnights of the day before she climbed into bed and tried to stop dreaming about him. However, when she woke up that morning her inbox was empty.

She'd checked multiple times if her message had gone through, and turned her phone on and off repeatedly in case there was an issue with it. The device currently sat with a black screen in her bag.

Tikki thought she was crazy, telling her that Adrien must have a reason and not to panic...but this was Marinette Dupain-Cheng and if she could do anything perfectly, it was panicking!

She headed into class at the normal time (5 minutes late), sat in her normal seat (next to Anthony) and attempted to focus, but all she could think about was Adrien lying in a ditch somewhere, needing help (her common sense attempting to telling her Plagg would have come and found her if that was the case), or that he'd ran off and eloped with Elise. She honestly couldn't decide which would be worse.

"And so the flare originated..."

Marinette continued to doodle and draw in her notebook, her attention switching off from the history of the flare to her best friend once again. Her eyes flickered down to her phone. Maybe she should just turn it on again and check to see if he had messaged. Her hand slowly moved in the direction of her side bag, only to stop when something hit her in the back of the head.

She jumped, glad that she hadn't made a bigger fool out of herself, and yelped. Finding the balled up paper that hit her, Marinette peeked over her shoulder to see where it had come from, only for a second to hit her square in the forehead.

This time she did yelp!

"Ms. Dupain-Cheng, am I interrupting something?"

Her face bloomed, a pink spark igniting in the centre before spreading like blossom all over her cheeks. "N-n-no, Sir. Just a muscle spasm. Sorry. Please, carry on."

She sank down in the seat, covering her face as those around her snickered. Oh, grand! Because she wasn't an oddball already, she had to go and make herself stand out even more.

Calming herself to stop the intense prickling in each cheek, Marinette found the paper and unravelled it, her heart rate increasing as she realised she recognised the handwriting.

Adrien.

She wanted to turn around and seek him out on the seats, but she was quite sure that would cause her to be removed from the class...just another unneeded hassle for her already growing isolation from the others in the class — everyone except Anthony, that was.

Hands trembling, she unfolded the note and began to read, praying it wasn't bad news.

I need to meet up outside asap when class finishes. It's really important.

Adrien's neat calligraphic writing was like a balm on a burn. He was here. Not in a ditch somewhere and definitely not in Las Vegas getting married by an Elvis impersonator.

Don't look at your phone yet! Please, trust me!

The trust was most certainly there, but now the curiosity was too. Maybe they hadn't eloped to Las Vegas. Maybe they'd tied the knot in a side chapel in London. Oh goodness, he'd probably been married by King Charles at St Paul's Cathedral. Wasn't he a fan of Adrien's?

Marinette looked at her watch and pressed the buttons to show her heart rate. Fat burn! Great! Her resting heart rate of 62 bpm had also doubled... Was she going to have a heart attack?