Miraculous One Shot Compilation

InternShip

In all his life, Adrien couldn't recall one time that he had ever heard his father laugh. He had on rare occasions seen a twinkle appear in the cold man's eyes; that seemed to be the closest he could muster. Now was one of those occasions.

"I'm proud of  you, Adrien. It's practically been free advertising for the Agreste Company since your fans took off on this 'Adrinette' craze."

Adrien glowed in the light of his father's praise. He sought those first five words day in and day out, though he couldn't say he'd heard them since before his mother disappeared. The second sentence, however, confused him. "What's Adrinette?"

"Adrinette," said his father blandly, "is what your fans came up with when they tried combining your name with that Marinette girl's. They're absolutely convinced now that you two should become a couple. Their behavior is ludicrous - but go along with it, would you? It's good for business."

Adrien was dumbfounded. He'd lobbied with his father for weeks to get some of Marinette's designs incorporated into a shoot. He hadn't done it for his father or for himself; he'd done it for her. She'd changed his fake smile to a real one so many times, and yet he didn't believe she understood what an important friend she was to him. He intended to make this her big break. She deserved it - both for her kindness, and for the talent she possessed in designing clothes. This was how his followers repaid her? By giving her all the humiliation of being a celeberity, but with none of its perks?

He felt an indignant rage ignite within him on his friend's behalf. It was not his intent to involve her in any of this. He figured that before going anywhere, he had better surf his fan-sites to assess the damage. He closed his eyes, mentally preparing himself for what he would see as he typed the web address for "Under Agreste" (the most cringy and therefore - by the strange logic of the internet - the most wildly popular fan-site in his honor that he had ever found).

That website was founded by tech-savvy hormonal teenage girls, for an audience composed almost exclusively of other hormonal teenage girls. It had moderators, but he wasn't sure what they actually moderated, because it certainly wasn't explicit content. The "trending stories" list usually featured fictional accounts of his love affairs with girls he'd never even heard of before. If all these stories were true, he would be - by his count - the father of somewhere between fifty and sixty bastard children in Paris, all of them under the age of two.

Suddenly the plurality of the stories were not about himself and a stranger, but himself and Marinette. He skimmed them with a morbid fascination. No one got her personality right; he had to award points to the writers who gave her much of any personality at all. In one of them she was far more self-confident than in reality, and the end result was something like Ladybug. Marinette's looks combined with Ladybug's personality was kind of hot... he shook that thought away almost as quickly as he'd had it.

Soon Adrien felt the urge to throw up along with a caricature of Marinette in one of the stories. He knew what the author was trying to imply. That was just charm- no. He couldn't apply a positive adjective to this, even out of sarcasm. This was outright disrespectful to a close friend of his and he wouldn't stand for it!

--

"Adrien! Do you have feelings for Marinette? Adrien! Have you ever been alone with her?" Adrien kept his head down as he plodded through town trying to avoid the newly declared Adrinette fanclub, yet these girls weren't pestering him quite as badly as when they had been just the Adrien fanclub.

Before, they had thrown themselves at him in such a way that the gorilla had more than once had to wrestle aside a screaming fanatic intent on getting her hands on the model.

Now, they gave him a more respectable berth. Attempting to foster an atmosphere about him that would be more conducive to the monogamous relationship they hoped would spring up.

Before, they had squabbled among themselves, each one vying for the boy's attention to be solely on her.

Now, they had banded together on their cause and Adrien was pleased to see girls -who had previously pulled each other's hair - whispering and giggling together.

The changes since being shipped with Marinette were overwhelmingly positive, and he could see himself getting used to it, but that wasn't fair to Marinette. She had never had to deal with people writing fanfiction about her before, and would probably be glad to see those stories deleted off the face of the web - or more realistically, at least left to rot in a corner of the internet that no one ever visited. Still, maybe he'd bring it up to her.

--

"Oh, hi, Marinette."

She blushed lightly and looked away in response to his greeting. That was understandable; those were the first words he had said to her since the first Adrinette fanfictions had popped up overnight four days ago. Even a simple "hello" was enough to remind them of the stories and their implications.

"So, I assume my fans have probably been pestering you by now."

"A little."

He suspected a little was actually quite a lot, but she was too polite to say so. "I'm so sorry to have dragged you into this."

"No! Thanks to you! It really does make a big break for me!" They'd made a lot of progress in their friendship in the time leading up to the shoot. Even if she was still a bit more exclamatory around him than around other people, at least Marinette was able to speak coherently to him now. Then, a bit of a giggle escaped her lips. "It's fine! Besides! I don't mind!"

Adrien noticed the giggle as well as the fact that her blush deepened, and that she was dragging the toes of one foot nervously along the ground. A shy smile graced her face. He couldn't help but chuckle a little; she actually seemed to be enjoying this - proof he still didn't know this girl well enough to predict her reaction. An idea was starting to form in his mind. "I'm glad of that. You know, I never intended for any of this to happen, but it has been kind of helpful to me," he admitted.

"How?" She looked up at him with inquisitive blue eyes.

He shrugged. "They're always pairing me with someone. It's nice for it to be someone I get along with for once. So, um," he rubbed at the back of his neck, "would you mind playing along?"

Marinette didn't know how to respond. Her crush wanted to fake date her? She thought that was something couples did when they really actually wanted to be together, but were too shy to say so. Well, she certainly wasn't going to refuse. "Sure! I'd love too!"

She'd love to? Adrien hadn't quite expected that. Maybe he should even take her out once in a while - you know, as fan service.