Summary:
After Gabriel arranges for Lila to be his date at Paris Fashion Week, Adrien rights a wrong as best he knows how: with a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of subtlety, and a lot of social media magic.
Notes:
I've always thought that living with toxic parents makes you good at lying in a particular way, and I've never read a salt fic where Adrien exposes Lila while remaining perfectly pleasant and non-confrontational. Ergo, this.
It was a bright, beautiful morning in the most beautiful city in the world, and Adrien Agreste was fucking furious.
Planted in front of the doors to Collège Françoise Dupont like a particularly well-coiffed theme park statue, he returned each of his classmates' greetings with a tight nod and an even tighter grin. Nino had been waiting for him when his car pulled up to the curb, but he'd asked his friend to go on alone. One look at Adrien and his stitched-on smile, and the other boy had backed away slowly, as though arguing might provoke him to charge like a bull at the scent of a crimson cape.
The bell for homeroom had come and gone by the time Marinette came tearing up the sidewalk, an assortment of items spilling from her backpack as she spluttered apologies to passerby.
When she saw him, she froze—face red, mouth open, pupils shrinking to pinpricks—but Adrien was already hurtling down the steps.
"Hey, Marinette. I know you’re late, but can I talk to you for a second?”
"Wuh," she said faintly. "Sure—s-sure, Adrien, what can I do you for, I mean, what can I do for y—"
"I have to tell you something before you hear it from the rest of our class.” Adrien leaned a fraction closer, distantly registering the flush across her cheeks. “Père is making me take Lila to the gala next week."
She blinked, and then her expression flattened. Dropping her gaze to the concrete pavement, she knelt, scrabbling for her lost possessions. Adrien bent to help her, then slowly retracted his fingers as Marinette skidded away from him and rocketed to her feet.
"That Fashion Week party in the 1st arrondissement?"
"You know about it?"
"Yeah," she muttered. "Since when does your dad even like Lila?"
"Since that stunt she pulled with Kagami,” he replied flatly. “They had a heart to heart at my house, apparently. I guess he decided it was fine for her to stick around.”
"Okay, um. Okay. Wow.” Marinette balanced her bag on one knee and unceremoniously stuffed her belongings into it—pencils, homework, books, phone, and a monogrammed notebook she quickly shoved out of sight. “We are talking about the same Lila, right? The one that broke into your house and tried to drop you off the Eiffel Tower?”
“I don’t know what he’s thinking, Marinette. I’m sorry.”
That was a lie, at least in part. Adrien could predict his father’s changes of mind the way he could smell a storm before it blackened the horizon. If he decided something, then Gabriel decided against it. It happened with the consistency of clockwork, and arguing the point with the back of his father’s head was rarely worth his wasted breath.
Marinette looked back at him with genuine sympathy, her abused backpack clutched to her chest.
“Well,” she mumbled, “thanks for telling me, anyway.”
"I just needed you to know that it wasn’t my idea.” Pausing, Adrien studied her more closely. Marinette looked precisely as adorable as always, marshmallow pink from head to toe in a cable-knit sweater and matching flats. But her eyes were ringed with bruise-colored shadows, visible even through her concealer, and her shoulders drooped in a tiny slump as she considered the climb to the doors above them.
