Marinette is thrilled. She's spending her afternoon at the museum with Adrien, and even Manon's unexpectedly tagging along with them can't tarnish her happiness.
After all, what can go wrong for two seventeen-year-olds watching over a seven-year...
Her pout was adorable, honestly, and Adrien smiled at her, "Do you want me to help you? I lucked out, I still have my good hand free."
Marinette was now a shade of red he honestly didn't know existed. She squealed, hiding her face in her free arm. That's the moment her father chose to take pity on his offspring, and handed her a fork, still obviously trying (and failing) to suppress his laughter.
The remaining of the meal was without any further embarrassing incidents, even considering Tom's hopelessly shaking shoulders, indicating that he still found humor in the teenagers' unfortunate situation.
Once Marinette had finally managed to eat properly and Adrien was full to his contentment, the young woman looked at him slyly, "Sleepover noob, and model on a ridiculous diet. I guess you never made popcorn?"
It was Adrien's turn to blush this time, admitting reluctantly, "Save from the stuff you can buy at the theater, I never had any popcorn, no."
Unbeknownst to him, Marinette was currently really busy giving herself a serious pep talk. If she had to spend the following two days in close quarters with her long-term crush, she was going to make the most of it, or she wasn't Ladybug! " Come on, Marinette ," she internally chastised herself, " you're a superheroine. You can do this. Just imagine you're talking to Chat Noir! You can talk to him just fine! "
Pulling some corn kernels from the pantry along with fresh oil, Marinette somehow managed to get her anxiety in check and stated in a voice way more assured than she felt, "Okay, so the first step is to heat the oil in the wok."
He blanched, looking at her with bedazzled eyes, "We're really doing it from scratch then?"
Marinette chuckled, gently nudging him, "Well, yeah? What did you expect?"
She dropped a few kernels in the pan, smiling, "Now we wait for them to pop."
They fell in a comfortable silence, both of them carefully watching over the heating pan, Adrien absentmindedly searching for her tied hand between them. He unconsciously clasped it, neither of them willing to mention that, despite the unexpected weirdness of it all, there was something also comforting about it.
Seconds later, the few kernels she had dropped into the pan popped, prompting an over eager young man to squeal inelegantly, "They popped! Mari! They popped! Now what?"
She smiled, adding a handful of kernels to the wok and moving it out of the fire. "Now, we wait about thirty seconds so the heat is distributed evenly. Then we put it back on the burner, and enjoy the fireworks."
Waiting those thirty seconds might have been the hardest thing to do in Adrien's life just yet. For, in those thirty long seconds, he had nothing better to do than to stare at his friend.
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