Once upon a friendship

The mask 2

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As Adrien watched, half inside the shop, the man caught his eye and gestured him inside.

"Welcome to the Boulangerie Patisserie, young man," he said wiping his hands on his apron and walking to the counter. "What can I do for you this evening?"

"Um, I'm here to see Marinette," Adrien said walking to the counter shyly, eying her father's large size warily.

"Ah! You must be Adrien!" he said smiling, mustache moving upwards. "Marinette said you'd be stopping by. Really, it's quite a pleasure to meet you at last; she goes on about you and your father's fashion shows all the time."

He stuck out his hand, covered in a slight dusting of flour. "Tom Dupain, Marinette's father."

Adrien shook the man's hand, his fingers quickly swallowed by Tom's larger palm. "Adrien Agreste."

Tom nodded and lifted the removable counter top, inviting Adrien out of the shop and into the kitchen. "This is my wife, Sabine," he said gesturing towards the black haired woman Adrien had spotted earlier.

"So nice to meet you, Adrien," she said smiling warmly, walking towards them. "Forgive me for not shaking your hand, but as you can see, it's quite covered in icing."

"It's nice to meet you too, ma'am," Adrien said smiling back at her. Compared to her husband, she was positively miniscule, dwarfed by his large frame. Though they were completely different in appearance, Adrien could see a bit of Marinette in both of them. The color and texture of Mrs. Cheng's hair matched Marinette's almost perfectly, and Marinette's smile was nearly identical to her father's.

It was at times like these that Adrien wondered how much he looked like his parents and whether people gave him respect because of it. Gabriel Agreste was a powerful man; many people expected him to be like him. It was because of this fear that Adrien tried to distinguish himself from his father as much as possible, replacing Gabriel's cold demeanor with kindness, or Gabriel's dismissiveness with encouragement.

"Marinette's upstairs," Sabine continued. "If you go up the stairs, she's in the attic room up the ladder. Sorry we can't show you ourselves, but we're a bit busy down here."

"Thank you, Mrs. Cheng," Adrien said walking towards the door to the house. "I'm sure I'll find it." With a quick wave to her parents he went through the doorway and into the apartment.

The interior of their home was just as warm as the shop, with colorful paints and bright pictures lining the halls. He could tell Marinette had a hand in it too. Spending so much time around designers had given him an eye for recognizing artistic touches in everyday things like upholstery and decorations. Little bits of Marinette lay around the house in the spindly knick-knacks and carefully placed photos of her family.

He looked, with slight amazement, at the flow of the pictures down the hall to the attic ladder. Each picture, taken about a year apart, showed Marinette's growth from a small baby to a round faced child to a young adult. Each picture looked completely natural, her family smiling together happily in a park or on a beach, all three totally content with where they were and who they were with.

A longing went through Adrien, stronger longing than he'd ever felt before. As he gazed at the pictures of Marinette and her family he felt a yearning for something like that; a family who cared for him, loved him, looked after him. He craved a warm home and a mother's touch. It had been so long since his father had smiled or he had seen his mother's face.

With a pain in his chest he cast his eyes to the attic stairs, to Marinette. I can't see her like this, he thought. One look at me and she'd know how pathetic I am, how upset.

He took another deep breath and set his face to model smile mode. He may not always be Chat Noir, but he was used to wearing a mask long before Plagg claimed him as a Miraculous.

"Marinette?" he called out cheerfully towards the ladder. "I'm here! Your parents let me in."

Above his head he heard the scuffling of feet and seconds later, Marinette appeared at the top of the ladder.

Her face was flushed with surprise and her eyebrows shot so far into her bangs Adrien thought for a moment that they'd disappeared forever. "A-Adrien," she stuttered, "Sorry I thought that someone else...never mind, um, welcome home!"

She almost slapped herself in embarrassment, Welcome home? She thought, blushing even more. Who even says that?

"I mean, not welcome to your home, but welcome to my home, and, um, hi?" She swallowed nervously, this was so not going the way she wanted it to. "You can come up the ladder, I have the phone- your phone up here."

Blushing crimson, she turned away from the ladder and headed into her room, quickly doing one last sweep to make sure all the posters of Adrien she had plastered on her walls were stowed away out of sight. Convinced that her insanity was safely hidden, she turned towards her desk to retrieve his phone.

Her hypersensitive ears heard Adrien clambering up the ladder and entering her room, but for the purpose of maintaining her cool, she did not turn around.

"I'm sorry all this happened," she started to babble, still facing away from temptation. "I really need to start watching where I'm going. I mean, when we were in kindergarten they had us watch videos about looking both ways before crossing the street and I think the same should be applied to hallways. If I was looking where I was going this wouldn't have happened at all and you wouldn't have had to come all this way-."

"It wasn't all your fault," Adrien said from behind her.

Marinette jumped slightly, and turned around to face him, phone clutched in her hand. He was closer to her than she had anticipated. Hypersensitive as her ears were being, they hadn't picked up on his cat like footsteps into her room.

"I bumped into you too," Adrien said smiling and putting his hand into his hair abashedly, "If anything I should be apologizing to you. I picked up your phone by accident first."

"You don't need to apologize," Marinette said quickly waving her hands. "I wasn't hurt and now that you're here, we can give each other's phones back. No damage done!"

Adrien chuckled and held out Marinette's phone to her. "It's dinged a few times," he admitted as he placed it in her hand. "Don't worry though, I didn't look at any of the messages."