“Most would rather smell like cookies than camembert cheese. Your food cravings have historically smelled horrid. Your poor charges...”

“You take that back! Camembert smells delicious!”

Adrien winced. “Okay.” He plucked Plagg up by the scruff of his neck and placed him up on one of the shelves of the utility closet they were all sitting in. “If you’re not gonna play nice, then you have to sit up here.”

Plagg frowned. “Tikki started it!”

“Oh, you’re thousands of years old,” Tikki scolded. “You could act a little more mature.”

Marinette tapped on the top of Tikki’s head and handed her another cookie. “Okay, you two. Don’t make us put you in the mop bucket so that you can bicker. Again.”

Tikki turned her nose up, took a bite of her cookie, and floated up to the shelf right across from Plagg, making faces at him the entire time. Plagg pulled his cheeks apart, made a rude sound, and purposefully took a gigantic bite out of his cheese to spite her. Adrien rolled his eyes, put the rest of the cheese wheel next to Plagg on the shelf, and turned to Marinette with an exasperated smile. “So, how much time left until class?”

Marinette laughed and checked her phone. “Like twenty more minutes, they’ve still got time to eat.”

Adrien sighed and slumped against the wall of the closet. “You’re so lucky. Cookies are so cheap. Do you know how weird it is for Natalie to look at my credit card statements and see all these orders of gourmet cheese? She thinks I’m eating it all for myself and ruining my diet. I still haven’t come up with a good enough excuse for it.”

Marinette snorted. “What excuse have you been using this whole time?”

Adrien looked down at his feet. “...my fencing team really likes cheese platters?”

“That was the best you could do?” she chuckled. “Man, you weren’t kidding, you’re really bad under pressure.”

Adrien pointed at her. “ Social pressure.”

“Right, it must be terrifying to be put on the spot by your peers about your cheese purchasing habits.”

“There’s so much stigma, Mari,” Adrien said, shaking his head sadly. “It’s really hard to talk about it publically like this.”

Marinette leaned back against the mop bucket at her back and felt her entire body shaking with laughter. It wasn’t the best hiding space they’d ever thought of — it was a tight fit, there was a lot of cleaning equipment that was crowding the closet, and the shelves above them were so overfilled that they wound up having to sit on the floor in order to spread their legs out — but it was the first door that Adrien opened up when they had snuck back into the school to detransform, recharge their kwamis, and leave them just enough time to sneak back into class. She had to remember to insist that she’d pick their hiding place next time. She was pretty confident her good luck would come up with something a little bit more comfortable.

She wanted to say that the close quarters wasn’t bothering her, and in a way they weren’t. It wasn’t as if she was a stranger to being close to Adrien anymore. Leaning her head on his shoulder or having him hug her around the waist from behind was just what they did and Ladybug had been dealing with that kind of intimacy with Chat Noir since very early on in their relationship. But there was something decidedly different from being this close to each other out of choice and being this close due to circumstances out of their control. Most of the touching they did during the day was very unconscious and was always mitigated by bickering and joking and talking which Marinette could concentrate on more.

But for some reason, she was heavily aware of his leg pressed along the length of her own, the fact that she could reach her arm across and only have to lean forward just a touch in order to brush the tip of his nose, the sounds of his every inhale and exhale coming from his nose. It made her want to press her leg closer to his, or reach out and touch him for no other reason than that she could. She was afraid if she thought on it too much, the uncertainty would show on her face, and sitting as close as they were Adrien might see it. So she swallowed back her thoughts and tried to focus on something else.

Suddenly remembering their battle, Marinette nudged Adrien’s knee with her own and pointed to her ribs. “Are you okay, by the way? That was a pretty nasty hit you took at the end.”

Adrien frowned and lifted up the side of his shirt, prodding the skin along his ribs. “I think so. Still a little sore, but no bruises. Thank you, magic.” He pointed a finger to his temple. “How’s the head?”

Marinette shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Just a little bit of a headache. It could’ve been a lot worse.”

“You scared me for a second back there,” Adrien frowned. “You weren’t moving for a few seconds when you landed. I thought something bad had happened.”

Marinette winced. She was tired from the night before and wasn’t paying as much attention, which meant the akuma got a good hit in and smacked her clean against a building where her head took the majority of the blow. It left her dizzy for a few seconds, and she had to really try to catch her bearings, but her senses came back to her quick enough and she was business as usual. “I’m fine, I promise,” she assured.

“I know you are,” Adrien smiled. “I mean, magical properties of our suits aside, I know I shouldn’t worry about you.”

Marinette smirked. “Shouldn’t?”

“I do anyway,” Adrien muttered. “I mean, I’ve always known we were just regular people underneath the masks, but it’s different knowing exactly who that regular person is.”

“Different how?”

Adrien chuckled and propped one of his knees up and started drumming his fingers on his knee cap. “I dunno, it’ll probably sound weird if I try and explain it.”

“I have the utmost confidence in you,” Marinette assured.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he sighed, trying to get his words together. “Ladybug always seemed like this indestructible person, you know? Like no matter what, superhero or civilian form, I always sort of knew she was going to be okay and knew she’d kick my ass if I bothered fussing over her.”

Marinette nodded with a grin. “Accurate.”

“But with you…”Adrien sighed heavily. “Something about us walking away from battles and just seeing you sitting there in class, taking notes and just being normal...I start to think of that girl getting flung across the city and slammed against buildings and it makes me restless.”

The mood suddenly switched between them, and Marinette suddenly felt pressed to give a serious answer. She wrinkled her nose in thought and stared down at the place where their legs were still touching. “I’m not actually getting hurt you know,” she promised him. “You know that better than anyone.”

“Still,” he said. “I always want to know that you’re okay. Moreso than usual now. And I’m trying to figure out why that is and the only explanation that I can come up with is that...Ladybug has a humanness to her now. I mean, she’s you. And seeing you in danger really bothers me. Makes me feel like I need to go out of my way to protect you.”

“Which you don’t,” Marinette said sternly. “Because you don’t need to be putting yourself in unnecessary danger, and I can handle myself.”

“No one knows that better than I do, I swear,” Adrien grinned. “It’s just...I’ve always cared about what happens to you. But now I really really care. So much so that our battles are getting scary again. I guess I’m still trying to mesh Ladybug and Marinette in my head a little. Like Ladybug I know can take a blow to the head no problem, but Marinette?” He stopped for a moment and moved his leg closer to hers. “Marinette makes me feel like it’s our first battle all over again. And I’m excited, but just a little scared because this is still new to us, and we put our lives on the line every day and...I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

He paused for a moment and laughed at himself, as if he couldn’t believe what had just come out of his mouth. “Sorry, that was a lot. I hope you don’t see it as me fussing or me not trusting that you can take care of yourself. It’s just how I feel.”

It was a lot, but Marinette didn’t mind it in the least. In fact, she was pretty sure she could listen to him go on about how much he wanted to protect her and keep her safe for as long as they could manage to stay in this closet together. In fact, she wished she had her phone out so that she could’ve recorded the whole thing and played it back for whenever she wanted to hear his voice again, or was ever unclear about what went through Adrien’s head when he thought of her. It made her smile so wide that her cheeks were tingling and she covered her mouth with her hand to cover the stray giggles.

Adrien was wiping his hands on his jeans and whistled a short little tune. “So, yeah, great job Adrien, you made the mood way too heavy, so uuhhhh….how’s the weather looking tomorrow?”

Marinette cackled and hit her elbow too hard on the wall behind her. “I think it’s clear skies tomorrow,” she chortled.

“Oh good,” Adrien nodded enthusiastically. “That had been bothering me all week.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

“Yup! Rain makes me nervous.”

“It’s because you’re a cat. Isn’t it?”

“Low hanging proof. And wow, that felt like a personal attack.”

Marinette said nothing and winked at him, making the two of them dissolve into more laughter that Marinette hopes wasn’t catching the attention of anyone from the hallway. The air was getting stuffy and her hair was starting to stick uncomfortably to the back of her neck, but Marinette didn’t mind it in the least. Adrien’s hair was all askew and she was pretty sure they were both getting dust all over their clothes, and it was all just fine and perfect, nothing wrong.

Adrien was wiping tears out from under his eyes when Marinette sobered up enough to tell him, “You’re not the only one who feels that way. I care about what happens to you all the time.”

He was still panting from the exertion, but he was staring at her intensely. “Really?”

“I always did,” Marinette elaborated. “But, I get what you mean, I do. There’s a face behind the mask now. A face I know. And all those protective feelings got twice as strong. But that’s not a bad thing. If anything, it just comes with the territory now I guess.”

“Good,” Adrien smiled softly. “Because I really do care about you.”

God, and that just melted right through her and made Marinette bite into her lip so hard just to force back the noise that might have come out of her mouth at the sound of those words. Because she knew all that, she did, of course they cared about each other, they wouldn’t be fit to call each other partners if they didn’t. But something about Adrien looking so pure and disheveled in front of her, letting the words slip out like an afterthought, like it wasn’t a hard thought to make, like it was so damn obvious...all that felt too good.

Suddenly something Alya said came back into her head. That her feelings weren’t self destructive. That they didn’t have the power to ruin anything. In moments like this, that very much felt true, because nothing that felt this good could possibly be bad, it just wasn’t how things worked. Some insanely idiotic part of her brain started to force her mouth open, make her look like she was prepared to say something, something that could quite possibly ruin everything or make everything perfect. Probably the former if her luck was to be trusted. Usually, it was such an easy task to shut it up and move on like normal, but Marinette wasn’t closing her mouth, wasn’t pushing the thoughts away, felt like doing something stupid, because why not? They were in a closet by themselves. It was Friday. It was a nice day out. Why not?

“Marinette?””

She blinked at Adrien who was staring at her curiously. “What?” she forced out.

“You looked like you wanted to say something…”

Marinette licked her lips, bit the inside of her cheek, and heard herself chanting in her head. Tell him. It’ll all be fine. Tell him.

But her nerves had always been stronger than her head, always made her overthink, always made her second guess, and now, made her shake her head and smile reassuringly at Adrien. “Nothing,” she told him. “Just lost my thought.”

Adrien didn’t look like he wanted to push the issue, and was distracted by the cheese crumbs that Plagg had decided at that moment to unceremoniously shove off the shelf and make land in Adrien’s hair. Adrien twisted his whole body around, glared up at the shelf, and watched Plagg innocently shrug his shoulders. “What?” he said innocently. “You two were getting all mushy down there, I was suffocating!”

“In my hair,” Adrien sighed tiredly. “Always in my hair. Why?”

“I don’t have reasons for the things I do, Adrien, I just do them.”

By the time Marinette helped Adrien get all the bits of cheese out of his locks, it was already time for them to head back to class. They tucked their kwamis away, quickly looked both ways down each end of the hallway, and slid into the hall to walk to their next class as discreetly as they could.

On their way back, Adrien had completely forgotten about the huge Literature review they were going to have in class today about the book they just finished, which meant that Madame Bustier was probably going to spend much of the period randomly calling on students to ask them about the last few chapters of the book they read. So they walked into the classroom with Adrien’s arm around Marinette’s shoulder, leaning down close to her face so that he could read her short review sheet that she was showing him on her tablet.

They’d walked into class around ten minutes early like that, not looking at the rest of the students who were quietly reviewing. Adrien was skimming while Marinette was answering some of his occasional questions, and neither of them even batted a lash when Marinette sat down in her own seat and scooted over just a bit to let Adrien share. Alya and Nino looked at the two of them, shared a private laugh, and ignored them in favor of their own conversation.

If anyone else in the class had anything to say about it, Marinette and Adrien either didn’t notice or didn’t particularly care. By now, their closeness was a common if not strange occurrence nowadays, and many people just watched from afar with little amused smiles or left them to their own devices. Of course, the one and only possible exception to that rule had decided at that moment to come busting into the classroom, gossiping loudly with Sabrina about the new cell phone her father had just gotten her for her birthday last week.  

“Adrien, darling!” Chloe cooed, quickly jogging up the steps to stand next to Adrien. She smiled too widely and brushed his bangs away from his eyes. “Sabrina told me there’s an awful review happening in class today. Let’s go study together!”

But Adrien moved his head away from her hand and looked up at her apologetically. “Sorry, Chloe, but uh...I’m studying with Marinette already. She’s letting me use her review sheet.”

Marinette tried not to smile victoriously at the rejection, but Chloe was that type of person that really didn’t have to do anything more than breathe in order to rile Marinette’s annoyance and make her want to get her as far away as possible. As if to further emphasize Adrien’s point, she pretended as if Chloe wasn’t even there and grabbed his hand that was slung over her shoulder, pulling Adrien just a couple of inches closer to her, not bothering to look up from her tablet.

Chloe didn’t seem to take any of this as a deterrence. “Well, Sabrina spent all night making a fabulous review sheet that’s pretty much got anything you’d ever want to know on it. Guarantee you it’s much more detailed than Marinette’s over here. If you want to do well today, you should come over and look at it with me.”

Adrien’s brow furrowed, but Marinette was quicker to respond. “My review sheet is just fine, thank you very much. And we’re also doing just fine sitting here and studying by ourselves. So you can go ahead and leave now.”

Chloe scoffed. “Well, excuse me, Ms. Dupain-Cheng, but I believe I was talking to Adrien.”

“Well, so was I,” Marinette snapped back. “We’re trying to review for class today, and you’re distracting us. So if you don’t mind, the two of us would very much like to get back to it.”

Adrien shifted in his seat in discomfort, and struggled with his words before answering. “Look, Chloe,” he said softly. “We can talk later, alright? Or maybe we can study for maths sometime later. But I’d rather study with Marinette.”

“And why on Earth would you want to study with her when I’m right over here?” Chloe said with her hands on her hips.

Marinette smirked and muttered under her breath. “Maybe because I’m much better company…”

Chloe had clearly heard it because she slapped her hands on the table and leaned over the desk until her face was only about a foot away from Marinette’s. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class, Marinette?”

Adrien was squeezing Marinette’s hand, probably his silent way of telling her not to get involved, but Marinette was never able to leave well enough alone when Chloe was involved, especially when she expected a direct challenge to her words. So Marinette calmly unwound herself from Adrien’s grasp, slid out of out her seat, and stood in front of Chloe with her chin up high and her face schooled. She replied calmly and loudly, “I said that the reason anyone would prefer studying with me over you is because I’m exceedingly better company than you are. Which isn’t surprising when you consider how you treat people on a daily basis.”

Chloe’s nose was wrinkling in anger, and her shoulders were bunching up in that way they did when she was two seconds away from letting loose a serious tantrum. “Well look at who’s deciding to be all high and mighty just because Adrien is pitying her with some attention. Now all of a sudden you think you’re better than everyone else?”

Marinette chuckled. “The words never came out of my mouth,” she said. “And if you’re trying to bait me into thinking that time spent with me is just an act of pity, then you’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that to bother me.” She glanced a quick look at the clock above the door. “Six minutes left before class. I’d very much like to keep helping Adrien study if that’s alright with you.”

She was about to turn back to her seat and ignore Chloe until the start of class before the other girl laughed harshly and garnered the attention of the entire class. Marinette turned back to her with an eye roll and saw Chloe staring at her with a knowing glint in her eyes. “You think you’re so worth his time, don’t you? And you dare call me someone not worth hanging out with?”

Marinette smirked. “If there’s a point you’re trying to get at, you might want to hurry up and do it. Class is going to start soon.”

She wasn’t taking Chloe’s condescension seriously. And maybe she should’ve, because Chloe merely crossed her arms and spoke as if she’d finally discovered her trump card. “I’ll bet he wouldn’t even look at you if he knew how you really felt.”

“What are you talking about?” Marinette responded tiredly.

“It’s funny you should ask,” Chloe tittered. “Because a little while ago, Sabrina told me about some very interesting things she saw in your room while she was there.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “What on Earth are you talking —- ?” And then she froze in the middle of her sentence because she remembered. The time when the two of them were battling it out for the class representative position. The time where Chloe sent Sabrina to her house to snoop around her room and try to grab her diary. The diary might’ve been safe, but Sabrina had definitely seen her room.

She’d seen her room .

The discomfort must have been showing on her face because Chloe’s smile only got wider. “Ah, I see you know what I’m talking about,” she laughed. “Honestly, it was sort of pathetic in a cute way when Sabrina told me, but looking back on it now, it’s just plain old creepy. I mean, Jesus...pictures plastered all over your wall? How sick can you get?”

“Shut up,” Marinette said through gritted teeth. “That was and is none of your business.”

“Oh I think it very well is, Marinette ,” Chloe sneered. “Because weirdoes don’t get to monopolize on my Adrien’s time. In fact, they should stay far away from him.”

Alya must have sensed where the conversation was going because she immediately stood up her seat and glared in the girl’s direction. “Chloe, you shut your mouth about that, or I swear to God…”

“You’ll do what? Tackle me? Gag me? You can’t do anything to me.”

“Chloe,” Adrien said sternly from his seat. “Enough. Just let it go. Class is about to start.”

“No,” she snarled. “Because Marinette here seems to think that she’s so worthy of your time and so deserving of your attention, when in reality she’s some freak who has your damn face plastered all over her walls like a serial killer.”

Marinette saw Adrien blink out of the corner of her eyes, and she was already feeling her heart drop to her stomach. “Chloe…” she forced out.

“Oh yeah, did no one else know?” she announced to the entire class. “Freakin’ desktop picture is just his face with hearts all over it like she’s in primary school. And let’s not even talk about that ridiculous calendar you have of his entire schedule. I mean, talk about a stalker, huh? She’s totally obsessed and frankly it’s downright pitiful that you’d sink that low over someone who was completely out of your league.”

“ Chloe!!” Alya shouted.

“Oh don’t pretend like you don’t know about it,” Chloe said back to her. “Admit it. This girl thinks she’s a gift to have graced this entire classroom, when in reality she’s a freak who’d sooner swoon over the little altars in her room than actually treat someone like a normal person! Honestly, what a bizarre way to crush on someone.”

The entire classroom rung in silence and no one could say anything or even will themselves to move. Marinette’s entire body felt numb, because she’d had nightmares about this sort of thing, dreaded the day where Adrien would find out about something so embarrassing, dreaded when the whole class would find out about this sort of thing, and spent hours swearing Alya to secrecy about it just for cover. Now it was just hanging out in the room for everyone to look at, prod at, laugh at, and Marinette felt like she wanted to die. The backs of her eyes were building up with tears that she didn’t want to let fall in front of everyone, and she didn’t even know what to say to recover.

She didn’t want to see Adrien’s face. Didn’t want to see his reaction. Didn’t want to see anyone’s reaction. Because in a weird way, Chloe was right. She treated him like an oddity and not an actual person, and she had spent much of these past two weeks realizing how cruel that was to Adrien. Those pictures were gone. That calendar was gone. She’d learned. She knew it wasn’t a fair way to treat someone. But she’d just had that point blown back up and thrown in her face, and Marinette suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

“Chloe, what the hell is your problem!?” she heard Adrien shout, the loudest she’d ever heard him raise his voice to Chloe. Not that Marinette cared. Everything was out there and in the open and she just felt horribly exposed and on display. Her breathing was starting to quicken as everyone started shifting and as little whispers started dotting up around the classroom.

She needed to leave.

She needed to leave right now.

Marinette shoved Chloe out of the way, ran down the stairs to the front of the classroom, and barrelled out of the door, passing her teacher along the way. She could vaguely hear Alya, Nino, and a few of her other classmates calling after her, but Marinette didn’t want to talk to any of them. She walked down the empty hallway, not sure where she was going, rubbing at her eyes and hoping, praying that her tears wouldn’t fall until she locked herself in the bathroom and never came out.

She was almost around the corner when she heard someone chasing after her. “Marinette! Marinette, come on, wait, please!”

Her entire body wanted to curl in on itself because, for once, Adrien was the last person she wanted to see right now. So she ignored his calls and started running down the rest of the hallway.

But Adrien wasn’t going to leave her alone, and his legs were longer, and he could run faster, so he easily caught up to her in the middle of the hallway, ran in front of her, and held both of her shoulders in his hands to get her to stop. He bent down a little so that they were face to face. “Marinette, please, come on, talk to me. It’s just me.”

The calm, understanding in his voice made a sob escape from her throat without her meaning for it to, and it just made her want to sink into the floor even more and pretend she didn’t exist. “Please, let me go,” she said, her voice thick with tears that desperately wanted to fall.

“Please, wait, Mari,” Adrien soothed, using his pet name for her to try and get her to calm down. His fingers were rubbing circles into her shoulders and she could see the confusion and confliction on his face. “Was...was any of that true?”

Marinette dropped her head and swallowed the huge lump in her throat, but Adrien shook her gently to try and get her to look at him again. “Please, Mari, I just want to know, so I can go say something to Chloe — ”

“No!’ Marinette insisted. “I mean….yes, a little, I mean….I don’t know.”

Adrien bit his bottom lip. “Mari, you’re not making any sense…”

She stomped her foot petulantly and looked at him angrily. “God, yes! Okay, fine! Yes! It was all true! I had a gigantic crush on you, and it was huge, and embarrassing, and childish, and yes! Okay?”

Marinette stepped away from him while he straightened up and stared at her with an expression she didn’t recognize, an expression she couldn’t read. “But that was before I got to know you,” she kept going. “A-And I found out that you were Chat, and you weren’t this perfect, amazing boy that sat in front of me, you were a person with flaws, a-and feelings, and I realized how unfair that was to put you on a pedestal like that. S-So I ripped everything down, and I hid it away, because it wasn’t like that anymore…”

She was crying. She couldn’t see past her tears. All of the feelings mounting up inside of her were making the words just spill out on their own. She was rubbing the balls of her hands under her eyes to make the tears stop coming down. Adrien wasn’t saying anything, and Marinette didn’t know how else to salvage this. This is what she’d been afraid of. This was everything falling apart. This was everything being ruined.

Adrien swallowed, and found his voice. “Why didn’t you…?” he trailed off.

“You weren’t supposed to know,” Marinette sniffled. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, I never wanted you to know! Because of this! Because it ruined everything, everything is messed up now, and I can’t fix it.”

“Wait, wait, come on, there’s nothing for you to fix,” Adrien tried to soothe. “Marinette — ”

She was still backing away from him. “I didn’t want you to know,” she repeated. “We were friends, things were normal, and it was fine, everything was fine. That’s all I wanted, I just wanted us to be friends, I didn’t want it all to get all messed up. Nothing had to change.”

Marinette would have almost preferred if he’d been immediately embarrassed or disgusted by her. If he never wanted to see her again, or she’d gone and probably freaked him out enough that he wanted to just keep his distance from her and leave her alone to wallow by herself. It was this understanding, calm Adrien that didn’t make sense. The Adrien with a facial expression that she couldn’t for one second decode, and that scared her even more. She could always read his face. They were so good at that, because they needed to be, because they needed to understand each other, that was the whole nature of their relationship.

But there were mixes of worry, pity, hurt, confusion, and so many other emotions that when clumped together didn’t make any sort of sense. Was he angry? Relieved? She couldn’t tell. And she very much didn’t want to know. Things were slipping through her fingers and she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see anyone. She just wanted to be alone.

So she turned around, forgot her plans to go sob in the bathroom, and instead headed for the courtyard so she could get back home. Alya could get her things later. She didn’t have the energy to go back for them.

But Adrien was still following behind her, still pleading with her. “Marinette, talk to me — ”

She whirled around and screamed, “Just leave me alone!!! ”

That shocked him back within himself. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, his hand still outstretched like he was about to reach out for her again, and his eyes widened in shock and hurt. Some deep part of her wanted to go up to him, hug him, hold him close, tell him that it wasn’t his fault, it was entirely her own. But looking at him hurt now, bubbled up all the shame in her chest, and she just wanted to make it all stop.

“I charge forty euros for my cultured advice. So it’d have to be forty per answer.”

“You suck!”

“If you need help , I’ll gladly give it.”

Alya reached over the table, sitting across from Nino, and used her pencil to turn his textbook two pages back. “They tell you how to do the problems right here. Just follow the directions!”

Nino frowned. “Textbooks tell you how to add two and two to get four. Then your teacher turns around and asks you to calculate our distance from the sun.”

“These problems are not that hard,” she deadpanned.

“Says you! You’ve only done two of them!”

Adrien made eye contact with Marinette sitting directly across from him and comically rolled his eyes, making Marinette laugh into her notebook and nudge her foot against Adrien’s under the table. They’d been given a truly monstrous Chemistry problem set due in class tomorrow, and Nino had taken one look at it and decided that they were all going to camp out in one of the study rooms and figure out all the problems together, because no human being could possibly be expected to complete all these problems by themselves. They’d been at it for the past hour and the only person that seemed to have having any luck with them was Adrien, who horrified the whole table by calling these types of problems “fun” and compared them to “little puzzles.” Needless to say, he wasn’t going to be going home until everyone else had made some serious headway.

Marinette didn’t mind at all. She was probably going to transform into Ladybug and swing over to Adrien’s house later that night anyway so that he could help her, so the four of them studying together now just meant that Marinette could get her homework done quicker and maybe actually get some designing in tonight if she decided to be particularly productive.

Marinette laughed, still looking down at her calculator and circling what she hoped was the right answer. “Apparently these are the easy ones. The harder ones we’re gonna get tomorrow for over the weekend.”

Nino pulled his cap down so that it covered his face. “Don’t remind me.”

Alya groaned loudly, scooted her chair around the corner of the table so that she was sitting next to Nino, and dragged her books over. “Alright, I’m tired of hearing you complain. I’m at least four problems ahead of you, so come on.”

“I want the rich kid to teach me!”

“That rich kid is too nice and is going to coddle the answers out of you. I lack that patience which means you’ll finish your homework quicker.” Alya grinned at Adrien. “No offense.”

Adrien lifted his hands. “Hey, no offense taken. I entrust him to you.”

Nino rolled his eyes dramatically, but pillowed his head in his arms and watched Alya start to set up the first problem for him. Adrien patted him encouragingly on the top of his head and turned back to Marinette. “So how are you doing?”

“Okay, I think?” she said. “I’m through with more than half of them, I’m just stuck on number fourteen.”

Adrien peeked over at her notebook. “Is that the barium dichloride problem? Yeah I messed that one up a couple of times before I figured it out.”

Marinette pouted. “Can you help me? I keep getting the wrong answer.”

Adrien waggled his brows. “So now you’re asking the rich prince for help? How flattering.”

Marinette’s face fell. “Get over here and help me, you silly boy.”

“As the lady wishes,” he winked, before he dragged his chair over to settle right next to hers.

It took a little over a week, but Marinette was at least at the point where watching Adrien transform into Chat Noir and vice versa didn’t make her blink in disbelief or make her think she was daydreaming anymore. It was hard to let that sort of thing take you by surprise when they realized that they spent so much time together between school, patrol, and akuma attacks. Once all that novelty was smoothed away, it made hanging out with Adrien exceedingly simple since he’d suddenly seemed so non-threatening to her now and very easy to deal with. How could she possibly stand to be intimidated by a boy who came to her skylight at two in the morning, scratching at her window panes with his claws, and begging for the palmiers she promised she’d bring to school for him but didn’t? Or by a boy who’d pop up from his couch when she came to visit him at night, prepared with movies and cartoons and animes that Marinette simply had to see, no questions asked?

It had the novelty of Adrien with the familiarity of Chat, and Marinette was only thankful that process was turning out to be more fun than it was daunting.

So when Adrien rested his chin on her shoulder and nuzzled up into her neck much like a cat would as she showed him the problem, Marinette didn’t think anything of it because that’s just how they worked. Ladybug was so used to Chat Noir’s affection that it was second nature at that point, and the best part was that they never had to explain it to anyone because it was something just between the two of them. It carried over wonderfully to Adrien and Marinette, and it was more comforting than anything else to find things about them that didn’t have to change now that they knew their identities.

But just because things were normal for Chat Noir and Ladybug didn’t mean they were necessarily normal for Adrien and Marinette, at least in the eyes of people like Alya who was looking at the two of them sitting so close to each other with one of those suspicious, calculating glances, like she was desperately trying to uncrack a mystery that was unfolding right in front of her. Adrien’s arm was over her shoulder, she was wrapping her hand around his wrist while he started to talk her through the parts of the problem she had messed up, and Marinette glanced up at Alya to try and shrug off the scrutiny.

Not that it seemed to be working because Alya just pushed her glasses up her nose, nodded at Marinette, and pegged her with a look that meant they were going to be talking about this soon. Marinette tried not to roll her eyes at her, but Marinette always found Alya’s poking and prodding to be really overwhelming to deal with when it was directed right at Marinette herself. She was going to be in for an earful later.

Adrien was writing little notes in her notebook so that she wouldn’t forget his instructions. “You balanced the equation just fine, but the reaction actually leaves you when a few hydrogen ions in addition to the precipitate. So it should make more sense like this.”

Marinette unconsciously leaned her head against Adrien’s and nodded. “Got it. Oh, that’s why it took forever to balance before!”

Adrien laughed. “Yup, should be way easier now.” He was doodling a little cat with a thumbs up in the corner of her notebook and snorted in laughter when she snatched her pencil back.

“Go doodle over there,” she smirked.

“It was my stamp of approval,” Adrien insisted as she pulled his chair back over to his own spot. “Chemistry Help a la Adrien! You could say thank you.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Thanks I guess. ”

He put a hand to his chest and did a small bow. “Why, you’re very welcome.”

She was giggling behind her hand, but happened to catch Alya’s eye again who was smirking unabashedly and darting her eyes between Marinette and Adrien. Nino was to her side, groaning and leaning his head on her arm as he circled another answer to one of the problems. “Can we take a break?”

Adrien snorted. “We just started.”

But Alya stood up from her chair and walked around to Marinette’s side. “Actually, I don’t mind a break. I need to go to the bathroom anyway. Marinette, come with me.”

That didn’t sound like she was leaving Marinette with much of a choice, which means they weren’t just going to the bathroom. She slid down in her chair and pulled her books closer to her for protection. “Um…”

“Perfect! Thanks, girlie. Let’s go!” Marinette didn't have time to protest before Alya closed all of Marinette’s books, pulled her chair out, and gently nudged the girl out of her chair and out of the study room.

There weren’t too many people staying after school that day, so when Alya pushed them into the bathroom right outside in the hallway, it was completely empty. Already submitting herself to an interrogation, Marinette leaned against one of the sinks and watched Alya lock the door to the bathroom and lean on the door with her arms crossed over her chest. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. “So. Anything you want to tell me?”

Marinette tapped her nails against the porcelain. “As a matter of fact, I do,” she said evasively. “Your eyeliner has been smudged for the past two class periods. You should touch it back up before we go back.”

Alya snorted, then paused and looked at herself in the mirror. “Gee thanks for telling me,” she said, swiping her finger underneath her eye. “But come on. You know what I’m talking about.”

Marinette smirked. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Oh don’t you start clamming up on me now!” Alya demanded. “I’m actually kind of shocked you’re not having a conniption about this.”

“About what?”

“Hon, you know damn well what about.”

Deciding that there was no sense in beating around the bush — the best way to deal with Alya was to just take the plunge sooner rather than later — Marinette sighed and dragged a hand down her face. “You’re reading way too much into this, that’s why I didn’t say anything.”

Alya tapped her finger against her chin. “Um, I’m sorry. Two weeks ago, you would take one look at Adrien and completely forget what consonants are. Forgive me if I’m questioning how you two started all of a sudden texting in the middle of class like losers and having debates about haute couture, of all things, in between every single class.”

“We’re both in and/or interested in the fashion industry!” Marinette said innocently. “That’s hardly weird.”

“And the texting?”

“We were partners on our last history project. We were communicating about our presentation.”

“Yeah,” Alya smiled knowingly. “A presentation that was done a week ago. Your excuse now?”

“Nothing!” Marinette exclaimed.

“There’s something going on between you two!” Alya said triumphantly, poking Marinette in the nose and chuckling when she flinched away and slapped Alya’s shoulder. “I’ve been patient enough about this. So spill. Right now. I’m not leaving you alone until you do.”

“Would you relax?” Marinette groaned, pushing Alya’s finger away and pressing it down against her chest. “It seriously isn’t that big of a deal.”

Alya scoffed. “Developments about Adrien aren’t that big of a deal?”

“No,” Marinette said tiredly. “They aren’t.”

Had Alya breached the subject of Adrien two weeks ago — if the major development had been something like holding a one minute conversation or getting him to touch her shoulder again — she would’ve gladly joined in the gushing, and she knew that was the reaction that Alya was trying to garner from her, if only to tease her as well as get information. But that sort of excitability lost its appeal and seemed superficial — this didn’t seem like the kind of situation where pressing his magazine covers to her chest and rolling around in her bed out of equal parts excitement and mortification seemed like the method to take up. Of course, Alya didn’t know that, nor did she know that it was because Adrien had stopped being such a lofty and unattainable goal and had become someone that Marinette desperately needed to understand.

But what was she supposed to say? No, she wasn’t necessarily crushing on Adrien anymore, at least not in the way she was before. No, she didn’t want to freak out and jump around her room about him because it felt insincere. No, she rather didn’t want to gossip about all that she’d told him and all that he’d done because it seemed personal somehow — something that only they needed to understand.

She was in a curious situation where she’d made progress with the boy that couldn’t really be measured as having moved forward or back. It had shifted onto a completely different plane of evaluation, and she was suddenly struck by the fact that now she didn’t know how to talk about him to other people anymore, especially Alya who had been privy to all of her domestic fantasies about him for the past year.

Here was Alya waiting for an answer, and Marinette had nothing to give.

She must have been quiet for a long time because Alya was looking up at her worriedly, taking her hand in hers and squeezing her fingers. “Hey,” she said softly. “Look, I was just teasing. You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. It’s just...I mean, I thought that this would be exciting for you. What’s the matter?”

Marinette shook her head. “No, no, it is. This is a good thing,” she promised. “I’m not trying to say that it isn’t.”

“I mean, you two didn’t seem to want to offer any explanations, so Nino and I haven’t been pressing it because we thought you two were shy or something, but…” Alya paused for a moment, rolling her words around for once before she spoke them. “Do you mind if I asked what changed? You don’t have to tell me everything, but I always thought you’d be jumping out of your skin about it and ranting about marriage and kids and dates and all that good stuff.”

Marinette bit her lip. “I’m not...I’m not upset or anything,” she promised. “It’s just...I guess I’m trying to treat him a little more fairly now.”

“Fairly?”

“Like I don’t want to just make out all these silly future plans about him without knowing more about him,” she explained carefully. “I guess I sort of thought that being friends first would be a better way to take this.”

“I fully agree,” Alya assented. “To be fair, you did always kind of build that kid up in your head a lot. I mean, he is just a boy — not some God that you have to keep little idols and likenesses of all over your room, and declare some kind of transcendent love for.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “ Okay . I did not treat him like a God.”

“You get my point,” she continued. “So...you’re trying to be friends, and then you’re going to go in for the kill?”

Marinette shirted her feet and looked away from Alya. “...well. That’s the thing…”

Alya blinked at her, noticed Marinette’s silence, and gently massaged her fingers into Marinette’s shoulder. “Wait a minute,” she asked. “Are you not…?”

Marinette huffed. “I don’t know!” she said honestly. “I had all these plans about confessing my feelings and maybe trying to task him on a date some time, and it seemed like a serious possibility before. But now...I don’t know, Alya, I’m really starting to become friends with him, I think. And it’s nice! I mean, we’re not all the way there yet, but it’s working for us. And now all I can think about it messing that up somehow with all of my other feelings.”

“So…” Alya said slowly. “You’re not going to tell him anything?”

She merely shrugged in response. It was just a touch more complicated than how she’d explained it. Being friends with Adrien now that they knew about each other was absolutely lovely, just because she didn’t think that the two of them could ever become such closer friends. It was that kind of new friendship that you wanted to enjoy because it worked well, especially now that their familiarity had helped smooth out any lingering uncertainty or awkwardness that had erupted between the two of them.

But that was due partly because Marinette was doing her best to keep them from cropping up at all. Ever since that moment in Adrien’s room where something so heavily charged passed through her just from Adrien kissing her hand made her afraid of what she felt for him now — was it a crush? Was it something completely different? It certainly felt different, but Marinette was hardly an expert on these things to be able to tell why this was. Plus, it was so impossible to be able to tell what was going on in Adrien’s head amidst this mess, and she was almost afraid to ask.

If her feelings were shifting, surely his were too. A secret, insecure part of her didn’t want to know how, especially if it meant spoiling what had already been laid down.

So Marinette shook her head. “Why ruin a good thing?” she muttered. “Don’t try and fix what isn’t broken, you know?”

Alya sighed out and looked at her pitifully. “Marinette, your feelings aren’t so destructive that they’re going to ruin anything. You can’t just hold things because you’re afraid of what they’ll do. It’s terrifying, yeah, but can’t just...not tell him this. That’s not fair to you!”

“It’s not about being fair to me,” Marinette explained. “If anything, I’m being fair to him. Trust me, this would just make things so weird and strange, and I don’t want to do that. We’re friends,” she said decisively. “That’s lovely. That’s all I could ask for.”

Alya twisted her mouth. “Are you sure about that?”

No. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay, you gotta move in just a little closer.”

“My cheek is pressing against your cheek, we can’t possibly get any closer.”

Chat waggled his eyebrows. “Ah, ye of little imagination.”

Ladybug shoved a thumb into his side and smirked when he yelped and pouted at her. “Down boy, otherwise I’m cancelling this little photoshoot of yours.”

Chat Noir lowered the camera on his baton that he was pointing down to the two them and turned Ladybug to face him, deciding to repeat his point. “Look, Adrien has an Instagram. Marinette has an Instagram. Ladybug and Chat Noir should have an Instagram. Can you imagine how many followers we’d get? And Alya would flip. This is for a good cause.”

Ladybug snorted. “You’re just going to use this to post pictures of you flexing and videos of you telling all of your cat puns.”

“I’m failing to understand the problem here.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Since when was social media required of superheroes?”

“Um, because Instagram filters are cool, and we already established that we can’t download Snapchat on my baton or on your yo-yo.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s because the App Store isn’t hooked up to ancient magical devices.”

“And I will be having a chat with Plagg about that,” Chat Noir nodded. “But for now, we’ll take the pictures, and I can post them to our super-secret-awesome superhero account at home! Besides, don’t you think the whole world should be able to share in the glory that is witnessing how completely awesome and badass you are.”

Ladybug tapped her finger against her lips. “Hm. I am pretty badass…”

“See?” Chat grinned wickedly. “Come on! We’ll take a silly one. Make your dumbest face.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes, wrapped an arm around Chat Noir’s neck, and pulled him closer so that their faces were touching again and were smushed into the frame. “I’ll do my best, although I’m assuming your face won’t change much…”

Chat Noir gasped dramatically. “Rude!”

Ladybug giggled. “I’m kidding, kitty cat. Relax. Just tell me when you’re taking it.”

Chat lifted his hand and pointed the camera at the two of them. “Alright, on three.”

Chat Noir always had these strange little ideas for the two of them to get distracted with whenever patrols got boring or whenever they were too riled up for some reason to go back to their homes. Sometimes, Chat Noir would bring a handball and they’d play sets across the rooftops and start drawing crowds and referees without even asking for them. Ladybug decided to follow it up with a parkour competition across the city — no yo-yos, no batons, just them. They also got into a pretty dramatic handstand competition on the edge of a building once that got a considerable amount of attention because of how precarious their position was. Ladybug didn’t think that Chat Noir did it for fame or attention or anything like that, not really. Tonight, he’d grabbed her, pulled out his camera, and asked her if she wanted to make an Instagram profile.

“Ow!” Ladybug screamed, smacking him in the arm. “You can’t tickle me to get a good photo, that’s cheating!”

“My Lady, I already know how pretty you are,” he said simply. “You don’t have to keep your silly face looking so tame. Really sell the ugly face for me. This is our first photo!”

“Ugh, you’re so picky,” she complained. “What do you want me to do, shove my fingers up my nose?”

Chat grinned. “ Could you do that?”

“Take the photo, you awful cat!”

Chat leaned in closer to her and grinned with all his teeth. “You know what? I kinda want a tickling picture after all.”

Ladybug’s eyes widened. “No, nonono don’t you da — hahahahahaha!”

The camera clicks were going off and Chat Noir was tickling her ribs and making her roll around on the roof. “No, come on come on, you have to look at the camera!”

“Get o — hahaha — get off , hahaha!”

“Stop kicking me!” Chat laughed hysterically. “I’m trying to be photogenic!”

They rolled around on the ground for a few more seconds, Ladybug slowly losing her breath and Chat Noir championing through all of the blows she was throwing at him in between all her giggling before Chat Noir scampered away, holding his baton up in the air and laughing as he scrolled through all of the photos. “Oh man. These are fantastic. I think there are tears coming out of your eyes in this last one.”

Ladybug was on her back, panting and pointing at him menacingly. “You...are... so mean !”

But Chat Noir was laughing to himself and started sending the pictures to his civilian cell phone. “Going. On. Insta.”

He was distracted with his pictures and didn’t see Ladybug slowly get up on her hands and knees, slink over to the other side of the roof, and jump up to pounce on his back in a way that would make his feline tendencies absolutely proud. Her legs immediately squeezed around his hips while she reached over his shoulders to try and get his baton. “Give me those pictures, I’m deleting them!”

Ladybug was tipping him off balance but he tried his best to hold his much longer arm out in front of him to keep her from snatching the baton away. “Nooo, stop it’ll be funny!”

“Don’t make me tickle you back!”

“ Stop!! I’m super ticklish, come on just let me post them!”

“In your dreams!”

In the end, Ladybug couldn’t stop him in time before he sent the pictures to his phone and swore up and down to every deity that he could think of that they were going on the Internet that night. But she had managed to corner Chat Noir against a chimney and found out that he was delightfully more ticklish that she was, and was howling into the air with laughter when she dug her fingers into his sides and gleefully watched him dissolve into a mess on the ground, crying uncle and begging her to stop.

He had his arms crossed in an X as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “O-Okay, haha, you win, you win, I’m done.”

Ladybug smirked with her hands on her hips. “Now we’re even.”

Chat Noir sighed out breathlessly and shrugged. “Hey. At least I got a good picture out of the deal.” He pumped his fist in the air. “Worth it.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. She tapped his shins. “Yeah, yeah, move over.”

Chat Noir nudged over a little bit and made room for her to sit right next to him. He draped an arm over her shoulder and let her snuggle into his side when the wind on the roof started to pick up. They stayed silent for a few minutes and stared at the excellent view of the Champs-Élysées when Chat Noir suddenly chuckled to himself. “You wanna know something?”

Ladybug unconsciously leaned into the vibrations rumbling from his chest. “What, you actually have a secret Vine account that you’re not telling me about?”

He smiled. “No. Although! That’s a very good idea.”

“Not in a million years, you with a Vine account is just asking for trouble,” she teased. “But, you were telling me something.”

Chat shrugged and leaned his head back against the chimney. “I dunno, I just...were you ever scared of this?”

Ladybug reached up and tapped on her earrings. “Afraid of this?”

“Yeah.”

She thought about those first few frightening hours after meeting Tikki and testing out her powers and realizing the gravity of her mistakes after taking up such a powerful and important mantle on behalf of all the citizens of Paris. She remembered the stress, the fear, the uncertainty, and about the mounting responsibility that was suddenly piling on her shoulders, the responsibility she was so afraid to carry. “Of course,” she answered finally. “But you seemed pretty into it when I first met you.”

“Well, yeah,” he grinned. “I think it was just finally a chance to let loose in a way I never really did before, but...it scared me too.”

Ladybug frowned and shifted closer to his side. “Why?”

“I dunno, I guess…” he started. “Saving the city and saving people wasn’t the part that scared me. I always kinda knew that was part of the job.”

“So what scared you?”

Chat Noir was idly running his claws along the arm of her suit and making her shiver every time he dragged them back up. His eyes were still fixed on the lights of the city when he answered. “You, actually.”

Ladybug blinked up at him. “Me?”

“We can’t be apart, the two of us,” he explained. “We can’t fight alone, we can’t find Hawkmoth alone, and we’re partners for a reason. And maybe it was a stupid fear to have because we worked too well together the first time, but I was always just so scared of that moment where we’d stop meshing. Like, there would be one day where one of us would realize that we didn’t like the other, or that we didn’t work well enough together and we’d always have this strange rift between us.” He shrugged and raked his fingers through his hair. “I dunno, I guess I was more afraid of us not working than all of the superhero responsibilities not clicking like they should.” He smirked and turned to her. “Isn’t that weird?”

Ladybug smiled up at him softly and brushed small bits of hair out of his eyes. “No,” she promised him. “That’s not weird. That’s kind of normal actually.”

“Really?”

“Well, I know what that’s like,” she explained. “You meet someone pretty amazing, and...they seem so unlike anyone you’ve ever met before, and you just want to go through everything you can to be friends with them. Get them to notice you, and make it work. And then you just get so scared sometimes because you think you’re not good enough, or you think you’re going to mess something up, and you sort of psych yourself out. I think that happens to a lot of people.”

Of course it did. Because it happened to her when she looked at Adrien for the first time, and she spent close to a year trying to figure out some way to break through all of her nerves and fears to just walk up to Adrien one day and explain how much she admired him. How much she just wanted to be able to talk to him without being scared of how her next words were going to come out. How much she wanted them to talk and be close and be friends and maybe be something more if everything aligned the way they were supposed to. It seemed like a frustrating reality, but it was almost comforting to know that Adrien felt it too, even just a little bit.

Ladybug tapped her toes against his boot. “But that’s the good thing,” she sighed happily. “We wound up okay. I think no matter what we’re going to be okay. I mean, if we survived through the mess that was a couple of weeks ago, I can’t imagine us not surviving anything else.”

Chat Noir chuckled. “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

“And to think you thought yourself so smooth.”

“Hey, what can I say? Sometimes we have our dark moments.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes at him while he leaned his temple against the top of her head. “Anyway,” Chat continued. “I didn’t mean for that to be a downer, I just wanted to say...well, I’m glad we have this. That nothing’s weird between us and that we can be close like this. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had lost you. You’re too important to me, Marinette.”

Her chest was filling with a kind of pressure that Ladybug couldn’t quite pinpoint, but it was making her cheeks warm under her mask and it was making her want to snuggle deeper into Chat’s chest and tell him a flurry of words that had been whirling around in her heart since the moment she’d laid eyes on him. Because, she knew that Chat Noir admired her and couldn’t do without her. But this was Adrien telling Marinette that he needed her and couldn’t do without her, and something about her made her want to laugh out of giddiness and pull him close. “You’re important to me too, Adrien.”

Chat held out his first over their laps and smiled at her warmly. She beamed at the gesture, lifted her own hand, and fist bumped him, the familiar gesture of victory feeling like some sort of strong tie that was finally filling in all the loose spaces between them making them feel complete and inseparable. She couldn’t think of anyone else in the world she’d gotten this close to in such a short amount of time. Even Alya, whom she adored with all of her heart, didn’t know her quite in the way that Chat did. And she understood what he meant instantly — something this special, this unique, and this powerful, wasn’t something that Marinette ever wanted to jeopardize. If she’d ever lost it, she didn’t think she’d know what to do with herself. It’d be like missing half of herself, and that sort of emptiness seemed too terrifying to risk.

There was such a strong desire to tilt her head up and place a small kiss on the corner of his mouth. It wouldn’t be hard to reach it, and she was sure if would feel wonderful and right in the moment. But they had this, and this was perfect in a different but equally lovely way. She could keep all that energy secret if it meant being able to sit with him like this.