Breaking Free

14) Fears

Marinette's POV
The next morning, Marinette was met with glares and whispers at school.

"A-Alya... what's going on?"

"Girl! Have you not checked your phone? I've tried to call you like twenty times!"

"No, I was out late last night and I almost slept in again. My phone was on silent all evening."

She turned the screen on before suddenly understanding what was going on.

Besides tons of calls and texts from her bestie, she was met with missed messages from her other classmates, each of them giving links to a site.

Not just a site, Instagram. Lila Rossi's Instagram page.

That lying bitch...

The pictures were from last night, on she and Chat's walk home. One was of them holding hands and laughing, another of them kissing. At one point, he had swooped her up bridal style as a joke and that was captured on camera as well. They were captioned, "Who's the lier now?"

After being tackled with questions and odd looks from her classmates, Mari was actually quite eager to make it to home room.

"Lila!" Her voice sounded almost like a war cry as she entered the class. None of her friends had ever seen her so angry before, and saying they were scared would be an understatement.

"Marinette? What's wrong?" It seemed like Adrien hadn't seen the post either.

The bluenette just walked past him and growled, making a beeline towards a smirking Lila.

"You! What makes you think that my life is your business?! What gives you the right to post something like that? You little b-" by now, Alya had grabbed her best friend, holding her back.

"What gave you the right to call me a liar, Marinette? Isn't this just evening the playing field?"

"All I did was call you out to protect my friends," she glared at her classmates who were clearly trying to determine their stance on the argument, "it's not my problem if they don't believe me, at least I know I'm telling the truth. What you did... what you did was completely uncalled for and an invision of privacy. Do you want the truth?! Yes, yes I have a boyfriend. I'm not ashamed to admit it. But there's no chance in hell I'm telling you his name, I refuse to let anyone like you or Chloe try to tear him down. And frankly, it's not your business. So I would appreciate it if you would keep your nose out of things that don't concern you, because two can play at that game."
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Adrien's POV
Annoyed Marinette? Not fun. Sad Marinette? Even worse. Mad? Scary during the rare occurrences. But this, full out death mode? No one was willing to stand within six feet of the girl as she fumed towards her seat, grumbling.

Their usually curious and teasing classmates kept their distance instead of trying to find out details, which was probably a good bet if they wanted to avoid a hospital.

In fact, Adrien was probably the only one to ever see her this riled up, and that was when she was venting to him as Chat.

By now he had seen the pictures, and he was mad too. Not a murderous rage like his girlfriend, who was running off of caffeine and a hatred for this girl, but the kind in which he would happily help if Mari tried to strangle her.

It really wasn't Lila's business, and it was a new low for her. However, Adrien couldn't stop smiling at the pictures. Even though you could never see his face with the hood, he loved watching Mari light up and seeing her hold onto him. He could tell just looking at the pictures that she loved him, really loved him, and the feelings were mutual.