Gabriel Agreste's Christmas Eve soirée was spectacular, as usual. The food was exquisite, the decorations were ornate, and the tree was magnificent. Everyone chattered among themselves, though all were making attempts to approach Gabriel himself. Adrien would have attempted to sneak out hours ago, except his father would call him over every few minutes to "introduce" him; Adrien knew that it was mostly to prevent him from leaving.

"I hope you don't have plans for tonight, Adrien," Gabriel had said, "because your attendance is required. I don't want anyone to be under the impression that I can't control my own son."

Yeah, imagine a world like that, Adrien had thought bitterly. "I know. I'll be there, so don't worry."

So, Adrien forced a smile, and gave a warm handshake (he'd been keeping his hands in his pockets, blowing hot air on them every minute or so to keep them warm) to everyone to whom his father introduced him, and utilized every small-talk question he'd learned over his years of entertaining his father's associates.

A thought struck him, well into the night. What was Ladybug doing tonight? Was she with her family? Did she have a lot of brothers and sisters with which she shared her holiday cheer? Did they watch Christmas movies over hot chocolate and bûche de Noël? Did they have a tradition of opening one small gift on Christmas Eve? If so, was she opening hers right now?

Was she thinking of him, too?

Adrien suppressed a lovesick sigh. He knew that his every move was being watched not only by the press, but also by his father; even still, he couldn't help it. Ladybug made him giddy and nervous whenever she intruded his thoughts without warning.

He wondered if she was a fan of him as a model. He hoped not. If she was, then she didn't see him as a human, just like everyone else with the exception of his friends. He was just a body, a doll that the photographers could pose any way they wanted, and they made millions because of it.

Adrien shook his head. He didn't want to think about that now. No need to add that to his sadness. He just had to take things as they were and deal with it.

All he knew: later tonight, he had to get out of here.

Marinette pulled her coat tight around her, burying her face in her scarf as she hurried home. She shivered, and gripped her grocery bags tighter as a frosty wind bit her cheeks and nose. Her parents had received so much business today that they were very low on ingredients—after all, Christmas Eve is one of the busiest days of the year for them. They were closed Christmas Day, of course, so Christmas Eve was the last opportunity for people to get their favorite holiday confections.

A strange wondering slipped into her mind as she hurried. What was Chat Noir doing tonight? It wasn't a common thought; in fact, she rarely thought of the cat when he wasn't present. She remembered once casually asking about his family. When he dodged the question, she decided not to ask again. She wondered, still, what his family might be like. He must not be very close with them, she guessed.

Marinette checked her watch. It was 7:59, so the bakery would be closing up by now. She felt guilty; the line had been so long in the grocery store, and there had been a lot of traffic. She hadn't realized it would take her that long. Hopefully her parents hadn't ended up needing what she got.

She heard quiet shuffling in an alley across the empty neighborhood street she had taken. "Tikki," she whispered, readying the kwami if needed. Marinette approached the alley carefully. "Hello?" she called.

A familiar pair of cat ears perked up from behind a trashcan at the sound of her voice. "Chat Noir?" Marinette relaxed with the recognition. But what was he doing, sitting in a cold, dark alleyway on Christmas Eve?

He glanced up at her, and then looked back down. "Oh. Hey, Princess."

"What are you doing here? Aren't you cold?"

Chat shrugged. "Suit keeps me pretty warm." Marinette knew he was lying; the suit wasn't thermal at all, she thought, recalling the time Lady Wifi had locked him in a freezer.

She frowned, and sat next to him. He scooted away slightly. "Are you okay?"

He looked at her briefly and smiled. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine."

"I'm not sure that's true."

Chat's smile hardened. "Marinette—let me ask you something. Right now, do you have a nice, warm home and a nice, warm family and a nice, warm bed waiting for you?"

Yes, I do, Marinette didn't say. "I'm—"

"Then, please, trust me when I say I'm fine. Rather, I will be fine. Just go home. I know you'd rather be there than out here in the cold."

"If you say you will be fine, then I'm sure you won't mind my staying here until you are," Marinette said firmly.

Chat shrugged. "Suit yourself."

The two teens sat together in silence. Marinette shivered and scooted closer to Chat. With a sigh, he wrapped his arm around her, and she could feel his own shiver deep within his torso, as much as he tried mask it.

"So, Chat," she said finally. "Why are you out here?"

"Do you want the bullshit answer, the short answer, or the full answer?"

Marinette smirked. "I think you know what I'll say."

Chat sighed. "Yeah, I thought so." He groaned indecisively. "Where shall I begin…?

"To give you a pretty good background of the situation, my father's always been this cold, unfeeling businessman who doesn't give a shit about actual human beings' feelings. It's gotten worse since my mother's disappearance a little less than a year ago." He sucked in a shaky breath, and after a second, let it all out. "So tonight, as he does every Christmas Eve, he held this giant soirée that's really all for publicity, and every year I have to play the part of Perfect Son. I've just gotten sick of it.

"I didn't have real friends throughout my life, so sorry if I'm kind of closed off. I don't know how to connect with people well."

"You… didn't? What about now?" Marinette prodded gently.

Chat laughed once without humor. "I was homeschooled up till this year; my father thought he was 'protecting' me. I had a friend… she's still my friend technically, but she's not a very good friend. She has a tendency to be cruel to people, but really I think that's her way of protecting herself from painful relationships. Our childhood was very complicated.

"I won't tell you her story, because it's hers to tell and I don't think she would want to tell it to you."

"I can respect that," Marinette said softly. "Besides, I'm here to talk about you."

Chat winced. "Right. So I finally convince my father to let me go to public school this year, and because of it I've made some friends. They're nice people, too. Though, I'm not sure how much this one girl in our friend group likes me."

"Why is that?" Marinette asked gently.

He shook his head in confusion. "She always avoids me. She's always nervous around me like she doesn't want to talk to me but doesn't know how to say that politely or something." He sighed. "Never mind. I probably shouldn't bother you with this."

"No, I— I want to help you if I can." Marinette pursed her lips. "Maybe she's nervous because she likes you and she doesn't know how to deal with it."

"How could she like me? We haven't interacted that much. I try to be her friend, but she shies away."

"I'll bet that's what it is. See, there's this boy in my class and…" She stared off with a small smile. Chat glanced at her, noticing that her cheeks were a little pinker than usual. "Initially, I thought he was a jerk. But I got to see how he really was, and he was really kind and now I can't help myself around him. I just turn into a stuttering mess." She buried her face in her hands. "Sorry," she said, her voice muffled beneath her pink knit mittens.

Chat sighed. "Anyway. So that's why I'm out here. You should go home, you'll get frostbite."

"What about you?"

"I'll be fine. This suit's—"

"The suit isn't thermal, Chat. I know it isn't."

Chat didn't respond for a moment. Finally, he replied, quietly, "So what?"

"So you could get pneumonia or something. Look," Marinette said, "why don't you come over to my place, we've got hot cocoa, a fire, bûche de Noël—"

"I appreciate the gesture, Mari, really," Chat said, standing, "but if I'm out any later, I'm sure my father will have a cow." He lengthened his staff, ready to vault away.

"Wait!" she said as he was turning around.

He turned back around, impatiently expectant.

"You said that you weren't good with connecting with people, and I get that," she said carefully. "But wouldn't it make sense to try it more if you wanted to get better at it?"

Chat narrowed his eyes, suspicious, but waited for her to continue.

She sighed. "Listen. What I mean is, your shutting me out like this isn't helping your situation. You can't learn to trust people if you don't first try."

"So?"

"So try, Chat Noir. I've seen you with Ladybug. You're not this distant. You know how to trust people."

"No offense, Princess, but you're not Ladybug."

Marinette opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, but seemed to think better of it. She chewed on her tongue for a moment before sighing in defeat. "Fine. You're right. I'm not Ladybug. So what? That doesn't mean you can't trust other people."

Chat Noir smiled, pain twinging his eyes. "Merry Christmas, Marinette. I hope you get everything on your wishlist." With that, he vaulted away.

Marinette's eyes burned. "There's only one thing on my list," she said to the crisp December night. "I want my best friend to trust me."

Adrien didn't go home like he'd told Marinette. At that moment, he didn't really care what his father, Gabriel Agreste, thought, because at that moment he was not Adrien Agreste, Perfect Model Son™. At that moment, he was Chat Noir, hero of Paris. He followed no one's rules; he didn't have a curfew. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, and no one could tell him "no." He was his own boss (with the exception of his Lady, of course).

So, there he sat on the beams of the Eiffel Tower, some two-hundred meters in the sky. Alone. But he didn't care. He liked it that way.

So he told himself.

"Rough night?"

Chat turned his head slightly, some deeper part of him glad that she had shown up just then. "What are you doing out, M'Lady? Don't you have a family?"

"You're my family, Chat."

Chat snorted. "Good one."

"I'm serious. What's going on, Chat?"

Ladybug had taken a seat across from him, close enough so that she could look him directly in the eyes and he would have nowhere else to look but at the vast ocean of the love of his life's passionate stubbornness. He knew he couldn't avoid her question.

But what could he say?

"If you don't wanna talk about it, that's fine," she said quickly, and sighed. "I just want you to know that I care about you."

He didn't respond.

After a moment, she said quietly, so quiet he was barely she he'd heard her, "Do you want me to go?"

He shook his head furiously. "No. Stay. Please."

"We should go somewhere else, where it's warm," Ladybug suggested. They had been sitting there on the cold beams of the Eiffel Tower for at least an hour, and she was pretty sure her butt was frozen solid. "I know this really great bakery… Hm. They might be closed, though."

Ladybug chewed on her lip in indecision. If the Dupain-Cheng bakery were closed, she wouldn't want to put her parents out. The only way it would work is if she were to go as Marinette, but that might require her to reveal herself, which she didn't want to do. But she was cold and she didn't want to leave Chat alone for Christmas.

"We could at least go check," said Chat, and Ladybug was almost sure she detected a note of hope in his tone.

Ladybug sighed. She had to now.

"So, it's my family's bakery," she said after a long moment of thought. "The only way it would work is if I were to go in my civilian form, because I don't want to put them out."

Chat's ears drooped. "It's fine. We don't have to."

"No, I want to. I just… Tell me it'll be okay if I show you. Tell me you won't get mad or anything. Tell me you won't hate me."

"M'Lady, I could never hate you. I'm appawled that you think I could," he said, beaming, and took her hands. "It's okay."

She smiled, but only slightly. "Okay," she breathed, and jumped off the Tower, catching herself on a nearby building. Chat followed her close behind.

Minutes later, they arrived at the Dupain-Cheng bakery, and she dropped her transformation. Chat stood awestruck, his jaw slack. "Marinette? It was you the whole time?"

A pang of hurt struck her heart, and tears pricked her eyes. Her heart raced in her ears, and she tried to swallow the thick, warm lump that had just surfaced in her throat. He didn't accept her.

Chat let out a small sigh, and approached her. She started to back away, but not before he pulled her into a tight, warm hug. She slowly wrapped her own arms around him, and he shuddered beneath her arms. "Thank you," he whispered hoarsely.

"What?" she said bewilderedly. "I don't—"

He sniffed, and she clamped her mouth shut. This moment didn't need words.

After a moment, Chat said, "Plagg, detransform me," and a green light swirled its way across his body, leaving a boy in a silk, plum-colored tuxedo in her arms.

He pulled away, a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. Marinette couldn't believe her eyes.

"Adrien?" she said with incredulity. "I— I don't—"

His smile started to fade. When she noticed this, she pulled him back into her arms to assure him that it was okay, that she wasn't mad. Quite the opposite, actually. She'd never been happier in her life. She was only upset that she hadn't revealed herself earlier.

Of course it was Adrien. Who else could it have been?

After a moment, she pulled away. "We should go inside," she said, and then a ping sounded in her head as she remembered her ingredients. "Tikki, transform me!" she said and pulled herself up to her balcony. She had put the ingredients in her room before she went to follow Chat—Adrien—to the Eiffel Tower.

When she came back down, dropping her transformation, bags in hand, Adrien was watching, wide-eyed. He grinned. "Wow," he whispered.

She laughed casually, but her stomach flipped. Adrien had been admiring her. "What did you expect, chaton?" She unlocked the shop's door, hearing the telltale jingle of the shop's doors as the two entered. "Maman? Papa? I'm home."

She heard two pairs of feet come down the staircase, and when the door opened, her parents emerged with big grins. "Hey, Marinette—oh? Adrien! What a pleasant surprise!" her father said.

"I ran into him on my way home and invited him over. Is it okay if he has stays for a little while?" Marinette asked as she placed the ingredients on the counter.

"Of course, darling," Sabine said, smiling knowingly. "We have some family over for Christmas Eve dinner, but he's welcome to eat with us if he wants."

"Oh, I don't want to intrude or anything, I just wanted to say hello—"

"Nonsense, my boy!" Tom said with a burly grin. "Any friend of Marinette's is family to us!"

Marinette sensed Adrien relax slightly, and he laughed. "Thank you, sir." The two teens exchanged a glance, Marinette smiling at Adrien's anxious expression. He smiled back slightly.

"Come on upstairs with us," Sabine said warmly, and she and her husband led the two upstairs.

Marinette took his hand and squeezed it for a second, looking at him meaningfully. "Merry Christmas, chaton."

He grinned widely. "Merry Christmas, my Lady. Thank you."

She smiled warmly back, and the two hurried upstairs to the dining room, hand in hand.