"You know, you and Adrien are not what I'd imagined back in collége when you had a massive crush on him," Alya stated offhandedly as she watched Marinette fuss over the gown she was putting the finishing touches on.

Marinette paused in her work and looked over at her friend in obvious confusion.

"What do you mean?" she wondered after removing the pins that she had been holding with her mouth.

"I mean… Well, you were so head-over-heels infatuated with him at the time," the journalist started to clarify. "And so self-sacrificing. You would do anything to make him happy. I mean, you still do, but it's not the same. I had thought that if you ever got together, you would be… Don't take this the wrong way, but I guess submissive."

Alya blushed lightly, feeling like her friend was going to be mad at her, but was relieved when Marinette actually laughed in response instead.

"I don't think that relationship would have lasted very long," the half-asian young woman responded.

Of course she understood what Alya was talking about. She had had posters on her wall of Adrien Agreste, fashion model. She had made him a scarf and let him believe someone else had given it to him. She had chickened out of talking to him over and over again. But that had been before she had known that he was Cat Noir.

"Well, to be fair, I didn't think you would be marrying him," Alya answered, gesturing to the dress the other was working on. "People don't usually marry their childhood crushes."

"You're still with Nino," Marinette pointed out.

"It's still on again, off again sometimes," she stated. "For instance, when he forgets that my work is the most important thing in my life."

"You mean when you forget that 'journalistic integrity' is not a good excuse to stand up your date," the other giggled.

Alya threw a spool of thread at Marinette.

"Don't you take his side," she scolded. "Anyway, when you two finally did get together, I did not expect what you became."

"What we became?" Marinette asked, frowning in confusion.

"I expected you to fall all over yourself doing things for him and making him happy. I didn't expect him to be more that type than you. I expected you to keep quiet about your wants until you realized it was making you miserable. I didn't expect you to confidently tell him when you needed things from him. I expected you to leave him on the pedestal you had placed him on. I didn't expect you to instantly get over it one day and treat him like an equal," she explained. "I definitely didn't expect that, practically over night, you would go from two separate people who had very little to do with one another, to two halves of one whole. You move, he moves. It's natural. I don't know what I think about everyone having soulmates, but girl… You and Adrien are the closest thing I know."

Marinette stared at her in quiet surprise for a moment.

She hadn't thought much about how their relationship had looked to other people around them at the time. They had gotten together post-reveal, and it had seemed so natural at the time. They had never really had any solid form of interacting as Adrien and Marinette, so it had only been natural that the dynamic from their superhero alter-egos fell easily into place.

"Wow… Alya… That should be your maid-of-honor speech," she said in awe. "That was kind of beautiful. A little candid, maybe, but beautiful."

Alya shook her head.

"Nah, I'm gonna slay that speech," she said. "You've got a professional writer in your corner. It's going to be ten times as good as that."

"I love you, Alya," Marinette stated, laughing a little.

"I love you, too, girl," she replied.

-o-o-o-

Random fluff that go stuck in my head. I'll be back to working on 'Missing' after this week.