The love dare

Day 8&9 (chapter-9-)

"Marinette's all in," Tikki excitedly shared with Plagg that night. "Well, almost. She's starting to get it."

"Good, because Adrien's two steps away from getting a bat over his head."

"Why?"

"The new fencing teacher is giving shit advice."

"Language," Tikki chastised.

"She has no business sticking her nose into Adrien's love life. She barely even knows him. And worse yet, I'm scared he's going to listen to her."

"Plagg, you must try to talk sense into him."

"Now's not the time, Tikki," he said. "I know my kitten, and I know when he's not going to listen."

Tiny shoulders suddenly feeling heavy, Tikki frowned. "Then let's hope he becomes more open soon."

_________

Day 8

Marinette rarely liked ripping pages out of notebooks, much preferring to keep everything together, but as she completed part of today's dare, she couldn't care less. She didn't even rip it cleanly, preferring to leave a jagged edge where she ripped out the page as a reminder of what exactly she ripped out.

She lit a candle then held the page that read "Adrien's Negative Attributes" over the flame. Fire licked the edge of the pink paper, catching hold of it before quickly eating it away. She had to be careful so as not to burn herself, but soon enough, the paper was nothing but ashes she swept up with her hand and tossed away.

She headed into the kitchen, hoping that she would see Adrien when he headed out.

Luckily, she did.

"Aren't your tryouts for the National team today?"

Adrien paused before he could take another step. "Uh... yeah," he said, his tone thankfully free of sass.

"Good luck today."

Adrien stared at her skeptically. "Thank you."

She gave him a smile that was mostly true. Facing him was hard, but like Tikki said, this wasn't going to work if she didn't put in the effort.

Adrien turned to leave after that, leaving Marinette alone in the kitchen. Her expression fell as she went back to finishing making her breakfast.

________

"If they don't give you the spot on the team, Adrien," Plagg commented when they were driving home, "they're terrible judges of fencing."

"What's going on with Marinette?"

Plagg hid his surprise with an impassive, "What do you mean?"

"She's being nice."

"She's your wife."

"She said she was done, and now she's all sweet-talking me? Telling me 'good luck' for tryouts she didn't even know about in the first place."

Plagg bristled at Adrien's tone. Apparently, it was too much to ask for him to take her kindness at face-value. "Maybe she realized it was a mistake to say that and is sorry about it."

"Then why didn't she just apologize?"

Kwamis have mercy, Plagg was going to beat Adrien over the head. "Would you have accepted it?"

That got Adrien to freeze.

"Maybe it wouldn't kill you to be nice in return instead of being all testy over her wishing you luck."

Adrien grunted, but Plagg knew he wasn't convinced. There was a long road ahead of Adrien, but the fact he had listened to Plagg at all was a start.

________

Day 9

Dear Diary,

Today's dare should have been simple. How hard could it be to tell Adrien "welcome home. I hope you had a good day."

The saying was easy. Keeping a smile was hard, especially when he looks at me like skeptically like that. It hurts because there's no breaking through this. He's set on thinking I'm the bad guy for some reason and I don't know why. What did I do that's so wrong? That I'm working to keep his father's company alive? That I've tried to talk to him but he never wants to open up. I'm not in the wrong here and I don't understand why I'm the one even caring about fixing this marriage when he's refusing to look at himself and think that maybe possibly he's the one in the wrong.

I'm just so tired and I fear for tomorrow.

Wish me luck.