Marinette walked into the living room holding takeout containers. After placing them on the coffee table, she looked back at Adrien who was fiddling with the connections of an old console loaned to them by Max.
"You ready?" Adrien asked once the screen came to life with the logo of the game they were playing that night.
"Yes, food is all laid out. I bribed Tikki so she'd keep Plagg from jumping us again. I have a backlog off cute cat videos for whenever we need a break. Oh! And I have a spoiler free guide loaded in my tablet just in case." Adrien shot Marinette a look at that to which she explained; "Max said we might need it, specially if we pick the super hard puzzles, said these older games were designed differently."
Gaming nights had become a staple of their weekends since they first moved in together. It came as a way to relieve stress and spend time together away from their packed schedules. Whenever the controllers were picked up, life outside their cozy apartment was left behind for the rest of the night.
They traded types of games they would play, sometimes it would be a friendly competition on the currently trending fighting game. Other times it would be one of them taking the reins of a story heavy one player game with the other one serving as emotional support/personal hype crew. Or, on nights either of them needed an extra pick me up, the game of choice would be a quirky cooperative game that quickly devolved into seeing how many times they could 'accidentally' kill each other, those nights always ended with good natured name calling, teasing and lots of laughter, the perfect balm to a stressful week.
Tonight, however, was a special night. One where they would arm themselves with comfort food and warm blankets in front of the TV to tackle a horror game.
The night's contender was an old psychological horror game recommended to them by Max. Heaping praises on the story and puzzles, and how the specially scary parts had made Kim jump in his seat whenever they played it together.
"Okay." Adrien leaned over to grab the controller. "Remember we'll trade off life, level or sanity. No shame in backing off if you get scared."
Marinette grabbed one of the food container in the table, "Aww, nervous already, kitty? Do you want me to take the first turn?"
"Ha, you wish, how bad can this old games be anyway, the graphics aren't even that good."
One and a half hours later found Adrien clutching the controller sitting at the edge of his seat and sanity. Marinette fared no better, she was pressed to the corner of the couch, her legs in front of her and clutching a pillow to herself, ready to use it as a shield at a moments notice.
Both of them glued to the screen, doing their best to keep their character alive. Progression had be thrown out the window at their last scare and now they were just trying to find a save point so they could turn off the console and drown themselves in cat videos.
"I think there was a save in this floor. Can you check the map?" Marinette muttered around her pillow.
"No, I would need to turn on the flashlight and you know what happens when I do that" Adrien answered while slowly navigating their character through the confusing corridors.
They had reached a decrepit building that was dark and crawling with monsters, every corner hiding all sorts of dangers. They were low in healing and ammo and there was a persistent scraping sound like something very heavy was being dragged around. They were not looking forward to finding whatever it was that was making that sound.
"Okay, try this door" Marinette said while clutching her shield/pillow to her chest, this particular floor gave her the heebiest of jeebies.
"This one right here? I thought it was locked" Adrien maneuvered the character to face the door, unconsciously leaning farther from the couch and closer to the TV while Marinette did her best to try and get the the couch swallow her whole.
Instead of finding the safe haven they expected, they were surprised by an enemy that stepped out of the room welding a giant weapon that hit their character so hard over the head it broke the ground and flung them into the lower, completely unexplored, floor of the building.
They both were frozen for a second, then Adrien shot up from the couch and thrust the controller at Marinette.
"WELP!" he said, all fake cheer and nervous smiles, "I count that as a level break! Wanna take over, My Lady?"
"Oh, no, I couldn't possibly! You were doing so well, I think you got this one." Marinette answered while piling up more pillows and blanket around her.
"C'mon, who better to get us out of this mess then the one and only Ladybug, fearless protector of Paris. Remember how you solved that puzzle with the gross hair like two floors ago? You'll be great!" Adrien pressed again.
"But kitty, remember how you found that special ammo cache? I think you'll do better" Marinette could barely be heard around the mountain of fabric surrounding her.
Before Adrien could try to bribe his girlfriend into taking the controller and relieving him of his torment the sound of their character being hit caught his attention. They watched in horror as the screen went black with the words 'Game Over' displayed on it.
After a solid minute of silence where they both contemplated all the progress lost. Marinette throws up her arms, pillows and blankets flying around her and exclaims with fake enthusiasm; "That takes care of that then!"
She pulls a laptop from under the couch and opens the queued list of cat videos.
"Haha, what a wacky adventure we just had, how about we never touch that game ever again and we just sit down right here and watch cats play for the rest of the night, hmmm?" She puts the laptop on the coffee table and not waiting for an answer she starts the playlist.
Adrien, all too eager for the comfort of his girlfriend's arms and cute animal hijinks dives straight into Marinette, holds her close and starts piling up blankets around them again.
They spent the rest of the night huddled together in a cocoon watching videos, going so far as to beg Tikki to queue up more content for them so they wouldn't have to move. They couldn't ask Plagg, he was too busy laughing himself to death.