Witnesses

                                    

                                          
"Can I please have my regular?" Cousin asked, and Marinette looked at him, unamused. "...What are you staring..at?"
"Please show yourself out, sir."
Cousin blinked, and then scoffed. "Excuse me? I'm trying to get my coff-"
"I said show yourself out, sir." Marinette's voice was sharp, having an edge to it. It was also louder than she expected it to be, but that didn't matter – she wanted Cousin out, and she wanted him out now.
It's been days since Marinette had gone to work - she didn't want to confront the media outside her place, and especially not the bigger media that was surely flocking around her workplace - but she had no choice. Her boss called her and without shouting, scolded her for her absence and that she should own up to her job like a true professional, as a barista and as a model.
Thing is, she was not a model.
"I don't understand?" The blonde asked with a tilt of his head. Marinette took a deep breath.
What's there not to understand? You come to me for months, woo me with your charming looks which I found familiarly irresistible, had me use my employee discounts on your orders in hopes you would notice and fall in love with me, and then I found that you're the stalker that now puts my complacent wallflower life in jeopardy?! 

-Was what Marinette wanted to shout so bad but she couldn't, so taking a deep breath, she met the man's beautifully grey gaze. 
"Mr. Agreste," she started, noting the way nearly everyone else in the cafe looked up to them, with shock in their eyes. A camera clicked. "With all due respect, I don't want to be serving a stalker his coffee. You made me uncomfortable, and are making me uncomfortable so unless you want me to call the police on you-" 
"I am not a stalker!" He interrupted again, and that was when the aggressive typing, the barrage of flashes, and the rapid-fire questions began.
"Are you Mr. Agreste of A. Agreste?"
"Is your relationship with Miss-Dupain Cheng-" They even know her full name now. "-fully professional?"
"Your latest exhibition is definitely worth noting as a masterpiece, Mr. Agreste. Why is it that you have avoided public appearances until now?"
"Mr Agreste., how is it that you came up with the idea of your exhibit Through The Eyes Of A Lover?"
Marinette looked at Cousin. Cousin blushed. Cousin stammered and he looked to meet Marinette's smug gaze, asking for help, and for once, she was thankful about the media. If there was one thing she knew about them, it was that they listen in on everything and even the slightest leverage will have them backing you up – even if they call it just harmless questioning. So using this knowledge to her advantage, Marinette has never-
Wait. He avoided public appearances until now? She thought the lack of evidence on the man's identity was her subconscious telling her not to go looking for it. Turned out he really was hidden until now.
She stopped mid-removing her black apron and looked at Cousin. He was panicking. Probably. She could notice the sweat forming on his temples, the ragged rise and fall of his chest, his thumb by closed fists while his hangnail was getting picked on by his forefinger. Hangnail successfully picked on. It bled. She looked up to him and he looked displaced, wincing because of a hangnail even though he was slowly being devoured by the media's growing heat.
It almost made her pity him, but there was nothing she could do. Trying to fan away the flames she fueled was dumb.

"ALRIGHT EVERYONE!!! OUT OF HERE- OUT OUT OUT!!!" 
Marinette and Cousin snapped up, and so did everyone else in the cafe, to look at the short forty-something-fifty year old woman with a blonde lob cut. She appeared out of nowhere, and it was suddenly silent, except for the shouts that reverberated in the rundown shack-looking of a cafe l'Histoire was. She repeatedly slapped her palm against the glass of their once butter-yellow-turned-dirty-apricot-by-time-colored door.