#We Are Miraculous

[galahadwilder]

We Are Miraculous

Chapter 6: Avoidance

When a bigoted politician blames mental illness for Paris's Akuma problem, Ladybug publicly reveals her own struggles with anxiety on the front page of the Ladyblog. Now, with their leader under fire for "not deserving the position of hero," the Miraculous team launches a public campaign for awareness of the struggles of the neurodivergent—beginning with themselves.

We Are Miraculous Archive

*

She needed this. Here, now, in this park with her friends, on this picnic blanket, Eduard Caron feels far away. She's got sunshine, good food, and better company, and with Alya's help, she feels... not great, she's still shaky, still jumpy, but better. The bottomless pit her heart fell into when she saw that article this morning is feeling a lot less bottomless.

She jostles Alya's elbow. "Thanks," she murmurs, smiling. "I really needed this today."

Alya grins back. "Of course."

Marinette takes a moment to breathe in the spring air, to push all thoughts of Akuma or bigoted politicians or even Ladybug away. Right now, she’s just Marinette, a normal girl with a normal life and some very good friends.

After a few moments, Alya stands up, nervously fingering the pendant hiding under her shirt. “I, um,” she begins. “I need to make a call. You guys all right for a few?”

Marinette looks up at her questioningly. Everything okay?

Alya—who’s been able to read her expressions almost as well as Chat can, at this point—just sort of shrugs with a wince.

“Don’t take too long,” Nino says, smiling. But there’s some quiet concern on his face—and past that, something dead behind his eyes. Marinette has known him long enough to realize that he’s having a bad day too. He’s having to drag himself just to act like a person instead of a vaguely Nino-shaped blob.

Alya smiles back at him. “Be right back, babe,” she says, trailing her fingers across his chin, before walking off toward the edge of the park, still fidgeting with the fox-tail pendant.

Nino watches her go, his face dopey and loving, before it falls as he turns back to Marinette. “How are you doing?” he says. “You kinda freaked this morning. Are you doing better?”

Marinette’s whole body skips. She’d almost managed to push that out of her mind, almost managed to stop thinking about it, and then—she doesn’t want to have that issue. She doesn’t want to be thinking about this again.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Nino murmurs, his hands over hers. She must have missed when he rolled forward on his knees to get closer. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. She just—she feels—“H-helpless,” she manages, trying to ignore the way her hands shake against his.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Adrien stiffen. He’s straining against something, something inside himself, and it’s clear he wants to do something, to help. And under normal circumstances, he’d do something—he’d reach out, he’d try to talk, but… it’s like the mask of composure he wears all the time has cracked. Just like that moment in the rain. But unlike then, right now all she’s getting from him is exhaustion and pain.

“It’ll be okay,” Nino says. “What can I do to help?”

Marinette meets his eyes, trying to force as much Ladybug as she can into it. “Get. Better.”

Nino blinks. “I—what?”

Marinette taps his food. “You’re not—you’re not eating,” she grinds out.

Adrien’s head snaps around, and he blinks, horror written across his face as his eyes flick between Nino’s face and his uneaten food, as if it’s dawning on him that no, Nino hasn’t been eating.

Nino shakes his head. "I can deal," he says. "You're the one who had the panic attack this morning."

Yes, thank you for that reminder, Nino. Her chest tightens, her breath coming a little bit faster, a little bit shallower. "I'll—I'll be okay," she whispers.

"Nino," Adrien says, looking at the ground, his voice devoid of inflection. "You're not helping."

Nino jerks.

So does Marinette. It's so out of left field for him—so unlike him, so curt, so confrontational, so... so rude—that for a moment Marinette's entire brain locks up.

Nino rounds on Adrien with a barely-suppressed snarl. "Dude—" he begins, before blinking to a halt. "...Right. Sorry." He turns back to Marinette. "Sorry."

She has no idea what just happened. She looks at him, then at Adrien.

"I think he's like Chris," Nino whispers, and oh. Oh, that makes sense.

"Overload?" she whispers back.

Nino nods.

Marinette bites her lip. She can see the way Adrien's shoulders are up around his ears. "Thank—thank you for..." She swallows. "...for stepping in, Adrien. It helped."

Adrien's body immediately relaxes. "Welcome," he grumbles, his voice betraying none of the relief that erupting in waves from his body.

Nino glances up toward Alya. "She's been gone a while," he says.

Marinette feels her chest collapse in relief at the distraction. "She's also had a weird day," Marinette says.

"You, uh. Mind if I go check on her?"

Marinette looks over at Adrien and purses her lips. "I, um. Go right ahead."

*

Okay. Okay, she can deal with this. If she doesn't have to think about herself, if she doesn't—Adrien, she can deal with, if she's able to get out a sentence without turning her words into soup. Anything to keep herself from thinking about—

She reaches out and presses her fingertips onto the picnic blanket. "Try, um." She drags them across the fibers, feeling the textures under her fingertips. "Focus on you what—" She grits her teeth. "What you. What you feel."

"I feel fine," Adrien grumbles.

"F-fingerfips," Marinette says. She clenches her hand. "Fingertips." She holds out her hand, fingers splayed. "Drag or drum. Focus on touch."

Adrien looks at her in confusion.

“Trust me,” she says. She presses her fingers to the pink denim of her capris, drumming them to the rhythm of Rock Giant—and as she does, she feels her heartbeat begin to slow. “Like this.”

Adrien, befuddled, presses his hand to his own jeans and starts tapping, a rhythm that seems familiar—it takes her a moment to realize that he’s doing the theme song to Miraculous: Awakening. (Which, of course he is, he probably heard it on loop while he was doing the voice work.) There’s no change in his facial expression, but his shoulders drop a little further and his back straightens, and she can see how even this little thing is making such a huge impact.

Stims. They’re practically magic.

"Why does that work?" Adrien says with muted wonder, not taking his eyes off his knees.

"Resets the nervous system," Marinette says. "Instead of focusing on everything at once..."

"You only focus on one," Adrien says. His eyes flick up to her face. "Makes sense."

Marinette leans back, pressing her palms to the blanket behind her, and breathes in the crisp, clean air. It's tempting to let her body run off and spiral, start freaking out because today has been awful and she's alone talking to Adrien, and honestly she can feel herself starting to. She swallows, trying to force it down, pressing panic into her stomach as if it were gas.

"Um," Adrien begins.

The panic explodes into her lungs like a storm of flechettes. One syllable—no inflection, no way to know what he's about to say. Did the stimming not work? Is it making things worse? Does he hate her for suggesting—

"I missed something," he continues. "Mouthwash?"

Mouthwash? Is he telling her she has bad breath? Oh no if she has bad breath he'll never want to spend time with her or kiss her and then he'll never want to date her and OH WAIT! No, that was—"The one we gave to Lila?"

Adrien nods, his brow furrowed. "Yeah," he says. "What was that about?" He reaches down and picks up his sandwich, then just sort of... stares at it, as if he doesn't know what it's for. "And why did she leave so suddenly?"

"Alya was pranking her," Marinette snorts. "Making her think she had embarrassingly bad breath."

Adrien blinks, and then a slow, genuine smile spreads across his face. "And she ran off from pride," he says, his voice more animated than it's sounded since he got here.

"Exactly," Marinette says. She grins. "You sound better. Rough morning?"

"Yeah." He tears off a bit of his sandwich with his teeth, accidentally dribbling a bit of tomato onto his chin in the process. "I, uh. Someone I... care about a lot got really hurt by that article this morning."

Care about. A lot.

The word tears at her chest, into her heart, resting inside her ventricles the way Tikki sits inside her purse. That wasn't a friend care. That wasn't a friend a lot.

"O-oh," Marinette chokes. "I'm—I'm really sorry to—to hear that." She swallows, trying to force the hot tears back into her eyes. "Is—is... she... okay?"

"I think so," Adrien says, not quite looking at her. "I think she's doing okay now, yeah."

Marinette's glad. She's glad, really. That Adrien's friend is okay.

At least one of the two of them is.

*

We Are Miraculous Archive

[buggachat]

Part 183 of my bakery “enemies” au!

I'M BACK AND READY FOR DAILY UPLOADS!!!

First / Prev / Next / All

Kofi

[jattendschaton]

Ladybug and Chat Noir hosting a podcast where they're going to interview Adrien Agreste and so Adrien has to enlist Félix to pretend to be him and Félix gets to just. Make fun of Adrien to his face and to a national audience. Chat Noir keeps arguing with Félix’s Adrien about his own opinions so the next day all the news is about how much everyone thinks Chat Noir hates Adrien Agreste

[toqiuh]

My friend showed me this new au yesterday and I've been possessed ever since

[tizzymcwizzy]

THANK YOU BUGGACHAT!!! EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU BUGGACHAT!!!!!!

[ryssbelle]

Drew a bunch of Marinettes in a bunch of different artists styles it was a lot of fun!!

Artists who's styles I mimicked: @buggachat @hamsternamedmarinette @ladybeug @sabertoothwalrus and @anna-scribbles all epic artists 🤟😎

[rwsdarw]

this was fun

[bklily]

Inside Out but its all the multiple variations of Adrichat

Bonus:

What a weird guy, huh!

Part Two Here!!

[asukiess]

OKAY !!!!!!!!

[eldritch-ace]

Wow I can’t believe this show has ladybugs and chats noirs!

[sweetgaleria]

I can have a little Marinette as a treat

[westywallowing]

wondering why he jumped out of the way,,

(a prelude for a new au I'm making :))

[ccerealbowl]

Marichat but they kiss and nothing goes wrong…

[thimbleb3rries]

Extraordinarily silly

[tizzymcwizzy]

i can't stop thinking about my son and his awful awful hair

[bigfatbreak]

one more warmup: shadybug and swarm hanging out