She leaned her head against the cold plastic, not caring that the hum of the plane was magnified tenfold by doing so or that the vibration of the engine was slowly rattling her brain into oblivion. After three months in China, her brain felt like a jumble of nothingness anyway. Just when she'd finally gotten used to speaking Chinese, they were leaving and she had to switch back to French. She had literally forgot the french word for sock that morning. Sock. She learned that word when she was what? Two? But, nope. Her brain had become a jumble of her native tongue and her approximation of passable Mandarin and it was an exhausting yet fantastic sensation.
At the start of the journey, one of the redeeming factors about having to spend her summer visiting family halfway across the globe was how impressed Adrien would be with her superior Mandarin skills when she got back. Not that she wasn't excited to meet her mother's family, but leaving all her friends and her partner for so long was not something she did easily, so she found positives where she could.
Her partner.
That was one of the unexpected benefits of this trip. A confusing one...but she was pretty sure it was a positive. She may have left with thoughts of impressing Adrien, but the longer she was away the more she found her longing for Adrien replaced with the face of a very different and unfortunately more elusive blonde boy. She had a group chat with Alya, Nino and Adrien and was able to keep in touch with them that way, but it wasn't like she had Chat's phone number or email to send a quick hello. Finally, about two weeks into her stay, she transformed for the first time and realized that her yo-yo's reception had no limit on distance. From that night on,she would find herself staying up until the wee hours of the morning hoping to see his icon pop up on her screen so she could catch him on patrol.
Luckily for them both, Hawkmoth seemed to have taken a vacation the same time as she did, or at least there weren't any akumas for him to deal with. He didn't have to patrol, but he still did so nightly. A part of her selfishly hoped he transformed to see her just like she did to see him. More than once her parents had to rouse her after only a few hours of sleep because the two superheroes had ended up talking until the sun came up where she was. She would tell her parents that she had been up late talking to Alya and they would just nod and tell her to get more sleep the next night. Thankfully, she had her own room and they were in a relatively rural area, so her parents weren't too suspicious of her nightly chats with Chat and no noisy neighbors took notice of a girl in red spandex just chilling on the roof of her grandparent's home.
Those talks were the highlight of her trip and she found herself craving the ascent of the moon because it meant it was almost night in Paris. She honestly wasn't sure when it happened. Maybe the old saying is true and absence really does make the heart grow fonder or maybe the distance finally gave her the perspective of her partner she had been lacking. With nowhere to run off to and no akumas to fight, she and Chat would just...talk. In vague terms, of course, but about his life and her travels and their dreams outside the mask. It was so familiar and right and one night as Marinette stared at his face on the screen, the dawn breaking in a haze of turquoise behind her and them both resting in an easy silence, Marinette realized she loved him. It wasn't just that he was her partner and she trusted him with her life, and it wasn't like the crush from afar she'd held for Adrien. It was an ember that had been smoldering in her heart and suddenly a burst of wind brought it to full flame. When the puns and the flirting fell away and she saw him, she recognized who he was in a part of her soul she didn't realize had existed.
Their dynamic had shifted. She found herself revealing more and more personal details about herself. She wouldn't give her identity away, not until she was back, but she wanted to tell him everything and she didn't care anymore if he somehow figured it out. She went into detail about what she did everyday, what it was like meeting her cousins and fumbling through Mandarin and he told her about a summer internship he'd gotten at a big company and about his guilt over enjoying his father's extended business trip. He listened so attentively to her and she found herself just as interested in the minute details of his day. It was ridiculous, but she was also ridiculously happy.
They didn't get to talk everyday. She was in China for a large family wedding that they were helping her grandparents prepare for and his internship made him work long hours on top of the patrols. Some nights she would start to fall asleep on the roof just waiting to see his icon pop up and would transform the next day only to see a video message he sent apologizing for missing her. It was hit or miss, and she longed to be back in the same time zone. In the same city. Their city.
A part of her also dreaded it, because she had made her decision. She was going to tell him who she was. It was what had knotted her stomach so tightly she'd hardly eaten in two days. The wedding had been beautiful and her cousin's husband seemed very nice, at least in the clipped conversation Marinette had managed with him. Her family had been so joyful and despite the language barrier, Marinette would cherish the feeling of being surrounded by so much love. She would miss them more than she'd anticipated, but what she really wanted was Paris. And Alya. And Nino. And Adrien. But mostly, she wanted Chat, and she wanted to hear him say her name. Her real name.
She took her head off the window of the plane and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up and down over her eyes, blocking out the world as she gnawed nervously on her lip. 4 more hours.
She'd never been so terrified and excited in her life.
Adrien paced in the airport lobby. He'd gotten there two hours early, but it was fine. He'd just tell Alya and Nino he beat them by a few minutes when they finally arrived. He'd alternated between sitting and pacing, but the airport staff was already looking at him funny, so he gave up any pretense of being calm and just paced.
She was almost home. His Lady. His Bugaboo. Marinette.
He paused his pacing, to check the arrivals boards again. Finally her flight was showing up. On time. Good. He resumed his pacing.
He'd been so blind to have not seen it before. She was right there. The girl sitting behind him everyday was the same one running beside him every night, yet, somehow, it took a separation of 3 months and 8,000 kilometers for him to figure it out. Even the knowledge that both Marinette and Ladybug would be on vacation in China for three months wasn't enough for it to click in his mind. No. I was a stupid little story about a translation mistake.
They were all video chatting and Marinette was telling them how she had been talking to her grandmother and accidentally referred to her mother as a horse. It was a small tonal difference, and an easy mistake for a beginner to make. Adrien had sympathized for the group, being the only one who understood what she was talking about, and then Alya started talking about an article she was working on and the conversation moved on. He forgot about it. Then he heard the story again, but this time it was Ladybug telling Chat. He'd watched her in astonishment, her arms waving just as they had earlier that day when she'd recounted it in their group video call. Bangs hanging slightly into her eyes and nose crinkling in embarrassment over her flub and it hit him. His lady was Marinette.
The next few nights, her watched her carefully both as Adrien and Chat, searching for every detail and trying to marry the girl to the masked hero and confirm his suspicions.
He'd been shocked. He knew Marinette. She was kind, but she always seemed to hold back around him. He'd seen her stand up for other classmates and sketch determinedly in her notebook, and he could vividly see his lady in those moments, but when she was with him...it was different. She stuttered over her words and made excuses to escape his presence as soon as possible. He couldn't tell if he made her nervous or if she didn't like him and just didn't know how to tell him to get lost. When they were with Nino and Alya, it was better, but there was still a distance between them, and Adrien never knew how to bridge the gap.
When he helped her when her uncle had visited, he felt like they were finally becoming closer. Then summer break happened and when she left for China, he feared that progress would be lost. At first, it was halting, but somewhere along the line Marinette stopped stuttering. She would address him directly in their chats, and one look at Alya's face confirmed he wasn't the only one noticing the change. She seemed more comfortable and he hoped that maybe that meant she didn't hate him. Still, the nagging what if remained and he couldn't help but worry that she'd be disappointed if she found out he was Chat Noir, because while her warm up to him as Adrien may have been tepid, Chat and Ladybug lately were pure fire.
He had been surprised the first time she called him on his baton. When she told him about her trip, he'd been steeling himself for the long separation, but of course she was smarter than him and realized their magical instruments had no regard for distance or political boundaries. It quickly became a habit and he found himself skipping out of work early-there were some perks to working for the family company-just to make sure he patrolled early enough to catch her. He had the time difference memorized by now and found himself daydreaming about what she might be doing depending on what time of day it was in China. Then she'd call him, and he'd find out if he'd been right. She was detailed, more detailed than she'd ever been in describing her life, and he'd been more than happy to reciprocate, relishing every story and smile she sent his way. He didn't know what had changed, but something was definitely different between them. He wasn't complaining. Somehow he'd fallen even more in love with her across the world, her every word cementing in his mind that what he felt for Ladybug definitely was not just a passing crush.
And when the shock at his own stupidity of finding out Ladybug was Marinette wore off, he realized it made it even more real. This girl who he'd been dying to know turned out to be the person he'd been dreaming about, and he'd been elated to finally put a name to His Lady. The only catch was that Ladybug had been adamant about their secrecy from the beginning. Her reaction to him finding out her identity, accidental as it may have been, paired with his fear of her being disappointed was enough to give him pause in his elation.
Still, he needed to tell her that he knew. He owed her that. He just didn't know how. He also didn't know how to act around Marinette until she knew. Everything in his being was screaming at him to run to her as soon as she arrived, gather her up into a hug and never let go again. He'd finally found her, but he had to play it cool. The problem was, he wasn't cool. He was a dork. Sometimes a dork with cat ears, but always a dork. And when it came to this girl? He was a stupid lovesick dork, in case arriving hours ahead of time to the airport and pacing in a never ending loop wasn't enough evidence to prove that already.
Hours later, when he'd finally wore off enough energy that he thought he'd be able to temper his reaction when Marinette finally arrived, Alya and Nino met him at the arrivals gate.
"Hey!" Alya called, waving as they spotted him. Spotted...spots...ladybug. He shook his head. He was going crazy. He waved back, hoping he looked normal.
"You beat us here! And I thought I had planned to be early."
"I just got here," he said, trying to plaster an innocent expression on his face. Alya smirked, and he cursed that girl's ability as a human lie detector.
"Well, good thing. Her flight landed super early, so we're actually just in time."
Adrien's mind went into emergency overdrive. He thought he'd had another hour to prepare, and all his hard work at being calm went out the window as adrenaline shot through his veins at the thought of seeing her sooner. Alya, of course, noticed. She opened her mouth to make a comment, but Adrien was spared by the electronic whoosh of the doors from customs opening and a mass of people starting to spill out. Rising up onto their tippy-toes, all three of them craned their neck trying to spot their short friend among the crowd. When a shriek blew out his eardrum, he knew Alya had been successful. He heard an echoing scream and his eyes shot to the source of the response in time to see a blur of black and green rush into Alya's arms.
Her hair is different, was his first thought, noticing it fall loosely around her shoulders. It was followed swiftly by, she's wearing my colors.
He watched as Marinette flew into Alya's arms the way he'd imagined her flying into his, but he was too in awe of her to be jealous. She wore black leggings, some dainty slippers with embroidery he assumed she'd gotten on her trip, and an oversized hunter green zip-up hoodie with cat-paws stitched onto the front pockets with lime green thread. It's a Chat Noir hoodie, his brain slowly realized and he felt his face crack into a wide grin. Ladybug was wearing a Chat Noir hoodie that she clearly had made herself.
Marinette pulled back after hugging Nino and turned to him, pausing briefly when she noticed the probably near-maniacal grin on his face, but she moved to hug him anyway. If Alya's expression was anything to go by, he probably held her a little too tightly for a little too long, but it took all his willpower to convince himself to let go. It was the first time Marinette had hugged him as Adrien, and he tallied it as a score in the Marinette doesn't hate Adrien column.
He stood in a stupor as Alya linked her arm with Marinette and went to talk to her parents who were waiting for the luggage. Nino stayed with Adrien, just staring at him with a bemused expression.
"Soooo, Mari looks good." Nino edged, wiggling his eyebrows.
"Uh huh," Adrien retorted, using the full extent of his wit. "I mean, yeah," he cleared his throat. "She must have had a good time in China."
Nino responded, but Adrien didn't hear him. He was watching Marinette gesture widely as she related some story to Alya, her father chiming in every so often. What really got him though was the way her hands kept going back to her sweatshirt. Was that a bell on her zipper? His smile grew wider. Maybe, just maybe, she was a little in love with Chat too.