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jennagrinsoverml · 3 months

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Summary: “Marinette. My bestie. My platonic soulmate. You are a kleptomaniac.”

In which Marinette is forced to confront her habit of thievery

Word count: 2k

Rating: G

A/N: Written for the pre-reveal, pre-relationship section of the @adrinettezine!

Marinette, Kleptomaniac

“Girl. You can’t be serious.”

“What?” Marinette asked defensively. She attempted to shield the open trunk from view, but this appeared to have no effect on Alya.

“All this junk is stuff you’ve taken from Adrien?”

“It’s not junk!” Marinette said. “They’re my treasures. My Adrien treasures.”

“Right. Your stolen treasures.”

Alya was giving her the “Bestie, this is simply not it” look—pursed lips, arched brows, arms folded in a very judgmental way that Marinette did not like.

“I didn’t— they’re not stolen,” she said. “They were gifts. Like… this! He gave it to me on the first day we met.”

Marinette pulled the black umbrella from the depths of the trunk. She ran a finger over the curved handle, remembering how Adrien’s hand had brushed hers, and couldn’t stop a dreamy little sigh from escaping her lips.

“Uh-huh. And what about this?” Alya wrinkled her nose as she held up a sock, pinching the cuff between her fingers. “You’re telling me Adrien gave you this as a gift?”

Marinette looked down, blushing. “Some of the gifts were… unintentional.”

“Where did you even get this? Did you sneak into his house and raid his laundry basket?”

“Of course not.” Marinette snatched the sock away. “It just fell out of his locker after fencing class one day. And I just, you know, happened to be passing by. And I figured— ”

“— ‘hey, Adrien probably left this stinky sock just for me! Because he saw me creeping around his locker and he was like, “Aw, there goes my Very Good Friend Marinette. I know how much she loves sweaty socks and other soiled clothing items. Maybe next time I’ll leave her my dirty underwear.”’”

Marinette’s face burned. “Alya!” she hissed. “You can’t talk about people’s… you-know-what.”

“Why? Because now you’re thinking of his cute little tushie?” Alya grinned. “Wonder if he’s a boxers guy or a briefs guy. Maybe you should ask him. When you return his stinky sock.”

Marinette opened her mouth, but she really couldn’t form a coherent thought once Adrien’s butt had entered the equation. She stared down at the sock instead.

“It’s not stinky,” she said finally. “I washed it.”

(At first she had decided that she wasn’t going to wash it, because how could she eliminate Adrien’s natural scent, which came from his own perfect skin? But it turned out that even Adrien’s perfect skin had working sweat glands, and soon she had no choice but to put the sock in the wash and douse the remaining contents of the treasure trunk in his new fragrance, Pure.)

“Oh my gosh. Is this… ?” Alya turned over a small box in her hands. “The constipation meds? Really? I thought you were going to burn them after how embarrassed you were about the whole thing.”

“Yeah, but— he got them for me!” Marinette said. “That’s kind of like a gift, right?”

“You have a very strange concept of gift giving.”

“Whatever.”

“What else do you have in here?” Alya started pulling item after item from the trunk—the jacket Adrien had left at her house after a group study session, the crumpled love note he had thrown in the trash on Valentine’s Day, a manga box set he had lent her after her enthusiastic response to his summary of Fruits Basket.

Alya inspected a small drawstring pouch. “What— ”

“No!” Marinette lunged for the pouch, but Alya had already opened it and peered inside.

“Marinette,” she said, “is this hair? Like, actual human hair?”

“It’s not real! I mean, it is real, but— ”

“What did you do? Just pluck it right off his head?”

Marinette bit her lip.

“Oh my gosh, you just plucked it right off his head.”

Marinette let out a huff. “Well, in my defense, I thought he was a wax statue at the time.”

Alya closed her eyes and let out a sigh, the way Papa did when she dropped a plate of pastries for the third time in one day. Marinette squirmed.

“Marinette. My bestie. My platonic soulmate. You are a kleptomaniac.”

“I am not!”

“Girl, listen to me.” Alya put her hands on Marinette’s shoulders. “You know I love you, right?”

Her lips slid into a pout. “Right.”

“You know that I think you are good and wonderful and smart and hot and totally worthy of any person you want to date, right?”

“Right.”

“And you know that I am the number one Adrinette shipper, right?”

“Right.”

Alya straightened. “Well, I regret to inform you that this is officially an intervention. No more stealing from Adrien Agreste.”

“But— ”

Alya held up a hand. “Nope. Everything in this treasure box has to be something Adrien actually gave you. On purpose. We’re gonna go through it right now, and anything that you shouldn’t have, you’re going to give back. You’re supposed to be stealing his heart, not his stuff. Okay?”

Marinette’s shoulders slumped. “Okay.”

It took them nearly an hour to go through the box (mostly because Alya insisted on hearing the backstory of every item). Finally, the trunk was empty, and the items were sorted into two piles—a “keep” pile and a “give back to Adrien” pile.

The “keep” pile was relatively small—the umbrella, her lucky charm, the empty constipation pill box, and various wrappers and scraps of paper that Alya deemed unworthy of returning, because “this is literally a piece of trash, Marinette.”

But the “back to Adrien” pile—well, that one was much bigger.

“I can’t give all this back!” Marinette wailed, draping herself dramatically over the edge of the chaise.

“We talked about this,” Alya said. “It’s not right for you to keep what was never given to you.”

“No, I mean, how am I supposed to give all of this back to him? It’s so much.” She tugged at her pigtails. “He’s gonna think I’m some sort of freak, or creep, or— ”

“— kleptomaniac?”

Marinette groaned, burying her face in her hands.

“Relax.” Alya slung an arm around her shoulder. “We’ll come up with a plan for you to return them one by one. We’ll keep it casual. He’ll never know about the junk hoard.”

Marinette shot her a glare.

“Treasure box,” Alya corrected. “Okay, so which of these items was stol— acquired most recently?”

Marinette looked over the pile. “Um, the pen.”

“Right. That’s the one he dropped in Mendeleiev’s class yesterday and it conveniently rolled directly under your chair.”

“It did!”

“Okay, okay.” Alya picked up the pen and handed it to Marinette. “Tomorrow morning, you walk up to him and say, ‘Hey, Adrien, is this yours? I think you dropped it.’ Say it with me.”

“Hey, Adrien, is this yours? I think you dropped it.”

“Good.” Alya grinned. “Let Operation Kleptomaniac commence.”

Marinette crouched behind the stairs with Alya, watching Adrien and Nino across the courtyard.

“Girl, get that out of your mouth,” Alya said. “It’s not even yours.”

Marinette jolted, slipping the pen out from between her teeth. She inspected the cap. There were a few telltale scratches and dents in it, but maybe that was because Adrien had the same bad pen-chewing habit that she did.

A blush crept over her face. If Adrien had chewed on this pen too, then her lips had touched the same spot as his. An indirect kiss, just like the one she had not-exactly-shared with him a few weeks ago at the movies when he accidentally took a sip of her drink. Alya had almost thrown away that straw, but after an impassioned speech from Marinette about the preservation of cherished memories (and the trace amounts of Adrien’s cellular tissue that come with them), Alya had sighed and agreed that she could keep it.

“What are we still waiting for? It’s time.” Alya yanked Marinette out from behind the stairs and dragged her toward Adrien and Nino. Marinette tried to tug away, but she tripped and tumbled forward.

She braced for impact, but it never came. Instead, she was met with something warm and soft that smelled just like her treasure box—clean linen and citrus.

“Whoa,” Adrien said. “You okay, Marinette?”

Her eyes snapped open, and she jumped out of his arms. “Yar! I mean, yeah! I’m— it’s— it’s all grood. Good.” A too-wide grin stretched across her face, her neck growing hot under her collar.

Adrien smiled. She fixed her gaze on his nose to avoid his unfairly beautiful eyes. Unfortunately, his nose was just as beautiful, and it was even closer to his lips, which made her heart hammer like that weird construction-themed akuma from last week (Bob le Builder, a name which she found both tacky and lazy, but which Chat Noir loved, of course).

“Um,” she said intelligently. What was she supposed to tell him again? Her mind had melted into goo. It was probably spilling out of her ears at this point. Oh no—what if Adrien saw her disgusting brain goo??

Alya was miming something behind Adrien’s back. Paper? Writing?

Oh. Right.

Marinette lifted the pen and let the well-rehearsed words spill out. “Adrien, is this yours? I think I’m in love with you.”

She froze. Adrien’s eyebrows shot up, perfect lips forming a tiny o of surprise. Behind him, Alya slapped her hand to her forehead.

“It!” Marinette blurted, much too loudly. “The pen. That’s what I’m in love with. It’s like a pencil, but more darker and, um, smeary-er. I mean, it has such a great… writing— smooth— ink… ness. W-where did you get it?”

Adrien blinked. Then a laugh bubbled out of him.

“It’s just a pen, Marinette. If you like it that much, you can keep it.”

“R-really?”

“Of course! I’ve got a bunch more.” He smiled warmly, sending a golden shimmer all the way down to her toes.

“Well, how about a trade? You can have one of mine!” She shrugged off her backpack and pulled out her pack of pink gel pens. “Um, unless you don’t like pink?”

“How could I not like pink? It’s your signature color.” He grinned, taking one of the pens. “Thanks! And, by the way, you might want to disinfect that other pen. I have kind of a bad habit of chewing on the cap. Sorry. Would you rather have a new one? I’d be happy to—”

“No!” she said quickly. “No, that’s fine. Thanks.”

“Okay, then. See you in class!” Adrien waved, and then she watched him walk away with Nino, slipping the gel pen in his pocket.

“Well, that was… interesting,” Alya said. “But I guess it was technically a success. Nice work, klepto.”

Marinette smiled down at the pen in her hand.

Maybe Operation Kleptomaniac wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Adrien sat in his desk chair, rolling the pink gel pen between his fingers.

“Man, that Pigtails is so weird,” Plagg commented through a mouthful of cheese.

“She’s not weird,” Adrien said. “She’s just… ”

He paused. He didn’t quite have the words for what Marinette was. Smart, definitely. Kind. Funny. Passionate. Brave. Talented. A good person. A good friend.

“… she’s Marinette,” he finished.

Adrien pulled open his desk drawer and took out a little box. Inside were various items he’d collected since he started school. An old CD from Nino. A sparkly invitation to Rose’s birthday party. A spoon from an ice cream cone he’d shared with Kagami. The wrapper from the piece of gum Alya had offered him on his second day. The ticket stubs from the movies he’d seen with Marinette last month.

Now that he thought of it, most of the things in the box came from Marinette. There were ribbons from bags of homemade pastries, knicknacks she’d made for all her friends, a dozen handwritten notes (always signed “Your friend, Marinette”).

“I don’t get why you keep all this stuff,” Plagg said. “It’s just a bunch of junk.”

Adrien carefully placed the pink gel pen in the box, between his Kitty Section mask and the pair of fake glasses “Marino” had left behind.

“They’re not junk.” He smiled. “They’re treasures.”

#ml fic recs

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