A/N: This is a gift for omgfoxygrandpa on tumblr who won one of my Lonely Bar Giveaway stories. Enjoy!

"Why are you blushing?"

Alya scowled. "I'm not."

"You so are," Marinette teased, leaning forward across the library table to poke her best friend's cheek.

Alya swatted her away. "Shut up."

"I think your not-a-thing for Nino has officially crossed over into thing territory."

"It has not." The redhead squeaked, scandalized by the implication. She looked over towards the reference desk where the boy in question was talking with the librarian and lowered her voice. "It's just hot in here."

"I'm not hot, are you hot Adrien?" Marinette grinned, glancing over at her partner. The blonde smirked and waggled his eyebrows. She rolled her eyes."Temperature wise, I mean."

He shook his head. "Then no."

"Aaaalya."

"If you don't shut your mouth I swear to god."

"There's no shame in a crush, Al." Marinette sing-songed as she poked her friend in the side.

Alya batted her away. "You're one to talk, M."

A sound that could only be described as a high pitched whine escaped Marinette's mouth.

"Oh ho ho not so smug now are we Mlle. Dupain-Cheng?"

Marinette covered her rapidly heating cheeks with her hands. "Okay, I'm done now."

"Nah uh. You brought this up."

"I will seriously hit you." She growled, reaching forward to grab her textbook and raising it in a (mostly) joking manner.

"I'm just saying, it can't be healthy to keep all those hormones bottl–hey!"

Marinette grinned as Alya rubbed at her arm where she'd smacked her. "I warned you."

Her victory was short-lived however when Alya retaliated by pulling at one of her pigtails.

"Ouch! Oh, real mature. What are we, seven?"

"You started it."

"You have a crush?"

The two girls stopped their bickering and looked over at the blonde boy they'd momentarily forgotten. Marinette was suddenly very pale, her mouth frozen in a small, shocked 'o'.

"No!" She squeaked, a shame-filled blush giving her away as she avoided her partner's curious gaze.

There was no way that Marinette was going to tell Adrien Agreste aka Chat Noir about her (not-so-secret) crush of the past two years. There were a lot of things she was willing to do for Paris but sacrificing her remaining dignity on the altar of Public Exposure was not one of them.

Not when they were still navigating this new, unfamiliar terrain.

Adrien didn't looked convinced, but then again, she hadn't been very convincing. Marinette shot Alya a glare as she steadfastly avoided his searching gaze.

"Alya's just trying to change the subject." She said, throwing her best friend under the proverbial bus. Friendship be damned she was not going to have this conversation with Adrien.

"There is no subject," Alya growled.

"I'm just saying, if you wanted to ask Nino to the dance he would totally say yes."

"And I'm just saying that reverse-asks are reductive and based on the idea that girls should only ask out guys when it's been officially sanctioned."

Adrien shrugged. "I think it's kind of nice."

"No one asked you," Marinette and Alya snapped.

Well then.

"So don't ask him to the dance. Just ask him out for coffee or something."

"But I don't want to ask him out."

Marinette rolled her eyes. "Okay."

"I don't." She insisted, casting a nervous glance towards Adrien.

He laughed. "If it helps, he'd definitely say yes. To coffee or the dance. Or both really."

Alya was blushing but held on tight to her denial. "Well it doesn't help because I don't want to ask him or go to the dance."

"What's so wrong with the dance? It should be fun."

"For you, maybe, Mr. I've-Been-Asked-Out-Four-Times-In-The-Last-Hour."

Marinette snickered into her textbook.

"It wasn't four."

"Well it wasn't zero either."

Adrien threw a helpless look at Marinette who patted his arm in consolation.

"Leave the poor guy alone, Al. It's not his fault people find him irresistible."

He scowled and pushed away her hand. The girls giggled a little too loudly and were quickly shushed by a nearby librarian.

"Poor Agreste," Alya cooed, her voice low. "It must be hard to be universally adored."

A familiar snort came from beneath the table and Adrien kicked his backpack in retaliation. He could see Marinette's scolding frown from the corner of his eye but he chose to ignore her. Easy for her to be self-righteous when her kwami was the embodiment of sweetness and good.

"Not universally," He said instead.

"Ooh?" The reporter asked, dropping her chin on her hand and looking at him eagerly. Dammit. "Maybe we're not asking the right questions, M. Maybe there's someone special Monsieur Agreste is waiting on."

Adrien loved his mother, he really, really did. But it was moments like these when he cursed the fact that in addition to her eyes and smile she'd also passed on her horrendously telling penchant for blushing.

He would not look at his partner.

Desperate, Adrien cast a hopeless glance over towards Nino who was still wrapped up in a conversation with the librarian at the reference desk.

"No help from that quarter, Sunshine. Fess up, who is she?"

Alya looked entirely too pleased with herself. Adrien chanced a look at Marinette who seemed like she was wondering about his answer as well.

This was not happening.

"Weren't we teasing Alya?" He asked his lady who wasn't his lady. "Let's go back to doing that."

"Stop trying to turn my best friend against me!"

"Your best friend?" Adrien scoffed, scooting closer to the girl in question. Marinette ducked away when he tried to throw an arm over her shoulders. The sweet smile she sent him shone bright against his scowl.

"Yes, my best friend." Alya grinned. "Your best friend is still floundering over there with Mme. Vilande."

"He does seem to be struggling," Marinette said, thoughtfully. "When you go for your date you might want to plan it yourself."

Alya's smile fell. "Never mind, Adrien. You can have her."

"Hey!"

"I don't know, Cesaire." He said, wrinkling his nose as he cast a considering glance at the girl beside him. Her arms were crossed over her chest but there was a glimmer of amusement that she struggled to quash. "I don't want your rejects."

"I'll show you a reject Adrien Agreste," Marinette said, giving his shoulder a hard shove and nearly toppling him out of his chair. He couldn't stop his loud yelp as he struggled to right himself.

Nino cast them a concerned look just as the same librarian from before rushed over to give them a final warning. Chastised, the group tried to get back to work lest they be kicked out before they could finish their project. The not-so-honest effort lasted until their accuser was called elsewhere and Marinette caught her friend glancing back over her shoulder.

She really couldn't help herself.

"Soo when's the big date?"

Alya whipped her head around to face the smirking girl. "I already told you. We're not like that."

"Does Nino know that?" Marinette asked, looking to the boy beside her.

He shook his head, solemn. "He thinks they're very much like that."

"You stop encouraging her!"

Adrien merely blinked in the face of the redhead's wagging finger.

"A gentleman never disagrees with a lady."

Alya shot him an incredulous glare. "What does that make me then?"

"A queen," Marinette said helpfully, leaning over to rest her arm on Adrien's shoulder. He was practically vibrating with suppressed glee.

"A queen." Alya said, suspicious. Their relatively new closeness aside, it never boded well for her when the two of them got like this.

"Absolutely," Adrien grinned. "The queen of denial."

Alya's incredulous groan was drowned out by their delighted cackling. She slammed her head against the table, burying her face in her arms. "I liked it better when Marinette was still a mess around you."

He stopped laughing. "What?"

"What." Marinette said, deadpan.

Her withering glare could have stopped an akuma. It was a pity it was wasted on the back of Alya's head.

Adrien looked between the two girls and frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Marinette tried to wave away his questioning look with a sheepish grin and a can-you-believe-this roll of the eyes but even her embarrassed-driven hopes could see he wasn't buying it.

Damn you, Cesaire.

"Marinette?"

"I did it!" Nino said triumphantly, dropping the holy grail of research books onto the library table with a loud slam. "I figured out what we've been doing wrong!"

He looked around the table to grin at his friends only to be met with Marinette's mortified fury, Adrien's slack-jawed confusion, and Alya's shoulder-slumping defeat.

They definitely hadn't been doing homework.

"Whoa, bad vibes. What'd I miss?"

Alya turned her head slightly away from the table to face him. "We were talking about the dance."

"Among other things," Adrien muttered, not looking away from Marinette who was doing her best to look anywhere but him.

"Okaaay." Nino said, clearly out of the loop. He took the unoccupied seat next to Alya. "Well, I guess if we're on the subject, do you think you'd want to go with me?"

"Who?" They all asked.

"You." Nino said, pointing at Alya who was now fighting the return of her previous blush.

"Isn't it girls ask the- ow!" Adrien yelped as Marinette shoved her elbow into his side.

Alya's expression asked the question he couldn't finish.

"Well, yeah," Nino said, suddenly nervous with all of his friends staring at him. He tried to focus on his not-quite girlfriend. "But I know you don't really buy into that kind of stuff. So I figured… why not do a reverse-reverse ask? Although now that I'm looking at all your faces I'm starting to think this was a stupid-"

"Yes." Alya said.

Nino froze. "Yes?"

"Yes!" Marinette squealed, adding a whispered sorry! to the disgruntled students at a nearby table. Adrien laughed at her expense which she magnanimously ignored.

Nino didn't care. Because Alya had said

"Yes, I'd love to go to the dance with you." She stood from her chair and started to gather her books. "Do you maybe want to take a study break and grab some coffee or something?"

Adrien watched in disbelief as his friend practically tripped over himself to help her with her things, his cheeks blotchy and smiley as he followed his crush out the library doors.

I can't believe he just did that.

Marinette rolled her eyes and smiled. "Going out for all of two minutes and she already forgets about her best friend. Maybe I wanted something."

Why can't I do that? He cast a considering glance towards his lady who was already digging through the book Nino procured from the librarian.

"Hey Bug," He said, leaning closer to her side of the table and resting his chin on his hands. "What do you say to-"

"Not on your life, Kitty." Marinette said, not even looking up from her book.

Adrien sighed and tried not to look too dejected as he pulled away. Well, that answers that, I guess.

He was surprised then when Marinette reached over to ruffle his hair sending pinprick shivers scattering down his spine. He caught her smirking eyes and losing grin and his heart flipped.

"Alya may not believe in reverse-asks but that doesn't mean she can ruin the fun for the rest of us."

"Oh." He said, and then when he understood, "Oh."

He absolutely could not hide his blush now.

Marinette laughed and squeezed his shoulder as she turned her attention back to her book. Adrien tried to suppress his dopey grin and do the same, failing miserably.

"Adrien," She said, after a few minutes had passed. He was floundering under the weight of his excitement, his right leg bouncing up and down, rattling the table. He'd given up trying to control it.

"Yeah?"

She caught his sheepish grin and smiled.

"Feel free to ask me to coffee any time now. Lord knows we won't get anything done without the other two. Nino never did explain what we were doing wrong."

A/N: And their grades suffered terribly. The End.