Dearly Despised, (I love you)

What Note?

A/N: whatever you think is gonna happen at the end of the chapter doesnt happen

i mean, to say you guys have.... asked for this chapter a lot, would be. an understatement. i mean some of yall went feral and i enjoyed watching every second of it. but guys. guys i finally got a chance to sit and write. and it's only cos i got sick. so this is written under a lot of writers block and panadol so strap in TIGHT

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"Marinette, what note?"

Panic clawed through her. "Don't lie."

"I'm not lying."

No.

No.

"You never got the note?"

"No! I never got any note from you besides the ones in class we've passed."

The air around them stilled. Marinette's hands covered her mouth, the tide of grief in her eyes rising.

"Are you being serious?"

"Yes! Since when did you want to be friends!? You never gave me anything!"

Oh no oh no oh no oh no.

"You... actually thought your dad gave you that scarf?"

You could hear a pin drop.

Adrien went white.

His frame stiffened, eyes wide and as still as the billboard print of him in the distance. She could visibly see something dreadful come alive and reveal itself to him.

"The one... for my birthday? The blue one?" His face went brittle. "That you... stomped on?"

"That I gave you!"

"That—"

Oh. No.

After a fretted silence, Adrien's voice emerged at a new, wavering octave. "...You gave me that scarf?"

Marinette felt like someone was playing a sick joke on her. She held her arms close to her chest in self-consciousness and stared at the ground. "I... I made you that scarf."

"What?!"

She stared.

"Marinette, are you serious? You made me that scarf?!"

She nodded, weakly.

Adrien's exasperation featherly lifted. He now, too, had realised something that neither of them could put into the words.

She clustered further into herself. "I wrote you a letter with the present. I wanted to start afresh in case the umbrella really was an accident. Your dad's assistant told me to put it in the mail chute, and then—"

The scene flashed. She'd stormed, yelled, and ripped the hand-sewn scarf out of his hands and threw it to the mucky ground, symbolising the retraction of the peace offering he'd rejected.

"'He' didn't have a letter with it?"

"Letters don't mean anything!" he'd said, and she grated him about the worthlessness of the rest of the gift – speaking in metaphors, but Adrien would've thought...– oh boy. The things he would've thought...

"You made me that scarf?" he cried again, like it would help him believe it, or like she would admit that this was joke. Adrien surged forward. "You – And I said... But Nathalie— But!" He gripped his hair like he could pull it out. "Ah, they lied to me. I was told that it was— Man. She must have gotten rid of your letter and told me it was from my father, and I was... I was the hopeful kid that believed it..." The silence put on a few pounds and a new, trepid light entered Adrien's sovereign eyes. "My Father didn't..."