Hey guys!

Forgot to say that this story is actually finished already. It's gonna have 9 chapters, I wrote them all and so, I'm gonna upload every day! Isn't this great?

So, in now eight days, the story is gonna be uploaded entirely ;)

Oh, and I decided the disclaimer at the beginning of the story, in chap one, will be enough, won't it? :D

Eeeeeeeenjoy!


The Bubbler grinned, his hands gripping Marinette tightly by the shoulders, not letting her go. She screamed and cried out his name, both his names, Chat and Adrien.

He still couldn't move.

"Not so strong now, aren't we?"

Adrien looked up at the Bubbler, his feet unmoving, tears burning in his eyes.

"Marinette, we're gonna get through this. Please, don't be afraid!"

"No, Chat! I don't wanna die! Save me!"

His eyes began to water and he tried his best to move but found himself still being unable to.

"Please, stop moving Mari. He's gonna hurt you if you-..."

"I'll hurt her regardless!"

"Bubbler, I'll give you my Miraculous, I'll do anything!"

The akumatized victim just cackled, throwing back his head and pressed the knife harder to her throat, resulting in a scared cry.

"Marinette, remain calm, please..."

"I don't wanna die, Chat! Chat, Chat, I wanna live, I don't want to die, save me! Adrien, Adrien, save me!"

The Bubbler grinned and slit her throat open. Blood escaped the wound and she fell to the floor, choking and crying. Eventually, her body stopped working and she was dead, sprawled on the green grass. Her eyes became empty and she was gone.

"No! NO! Marinette, Marinette, please, COME-..."


"-... BACK TO ME!"

Adrien suddenly sat upright in his bed and shivered uncontrollably.

"Kiddo?"

Without another warning, he doubled over and began sobbing, harder than the nights before. Plagg flew over and sat down on his arm, looking at his boy sadly.

"Adrien, seriously, you should get help. Maybe from Marinette herself. Perhaps then your dreams will go away?"

All the blonde could do was to shake his head and remain in his seating position until dawn.


"Dude, you look horrible. Seriously, is there anything I can do for you?"

Back off from Marinette, Adrien thought to himself and glanced over to his best friend, checking if Nino would be the bluenette any closer than he himself.

"No, it's alright. Thank you, Nino."

"If you say so...", Nino shot a helpless gaze over to Alya who shrugged, "Hi Marine-..."

"Hey Marinette!", Adrien fell the boy next to him in his words, waving to the girl who just entered the classroom, "Good morning!"

He received a confused look from both Alya and Nino and made Marinette blush again.

"H-Hey A-Adrien-...", she stuttered, waving him as well and sat down on her seat behind him.

He turned around, facing her smiling.

"Hey, you look good, how did you sleep?"

She looked caught off guard and opened her mouth to say something but found herself unable to. After a nudge from Alya, she finally responded.

"F-F-Fine, just-... Just fine, uuh... H-How did you s-sleep?"

"Hm, same as yesterday. Tried to cover up the dark circles but...", he pointed under his eyes grinning, "Didn't quite work, eh?"

Her expression changed to a concerned look and she leaned forward.

"You know, that's n-not really he-healthy. Maybe you should t-talk to s-someone about it?"

She is so cute when she worries about me, Adrien thought, maybe I could really talk to her about these nightmares? Maybe she would understand...

"Nah, I'm gonna be fine... I bet it's gonna be over in a few nights."

She shot him a glance and pressed her lips together.

"S-Sure you a- Uh, Are y-you sure?"

He smiled and reached out to lightly touch her hand that rested on her desk, stroking it to feel she was warm and alive, unlike his Dream-Marinette.

"Don't worry.", he smiled wider when her eyes shot open and she blushed again, "Not about me. I'm fine."

"I-I-If y-you s-sa-say so...", she stuttered, attempting to smile but failed.

He grinned and winked at her before he turned to the front again and sat down to pay attention to the lesson that was about to begin.

After ten minutes a note flew onto his desk, it was from Nino.

Nino: Hey, dude, what was that with Marinette?

He rolled his eyes and wrote back. Normally he didn't do that in class but his best friend had made him curious.

Adrien: I just made Smalltalk man. What's so special?

Nino: Nothing, nothing, I'm just saying... She might interpret something more into this.

Adrien: What more?

"The boys in the first row, would you care to take part in this lesson?", Mme. Mendeleiev stood in front of their desk, her hands in her hips and a frown on the face.

"Of course, Mme. Mendeleiev!", they both blurted out in unison, "It won't happen again!"

She nodded and let them be, but only because Adrien was the best student in math class and was always polite and reserved. She believed that he would stop whatever he had been doing that had nothing to do with the lesson.

Little did she know that Adrien was curious now that Nino had written that.

He nudged Nino and gestured to the little piece of paper that his best friend had hid under his notepad. The brunette nodded and pulled it out to answer his message.

Nino: You're oblivious, aren't you?

Adrien: Why? What is it, spill!

Nino: Man, open your eyes and look at her from a different point of view...?

Adrien: What?

Nino: Don't you see her face when she looks at you?

Adrien: Red? :D

It was meant as a joke. But when Nino just nodded and pulled his eyebrows up, Adrien understood. He had seen enough Anime to realize what his best friend meant. Marinette had a crush. On him!

Quickly, he got out another piece of paper and wrote back.

Adrien: No way!

Nino: Yes way! Since you came to school.

The blonde leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, not able to stop smiling.

She liked him!

For a while he had thought that she didn't because she hadn't spoken to him like she spoke to others. Maybe she had still been angry because of the chewing gum. Then, he believed she was just shy because he was new at school, but Alya was also and the girls had become best friends the day they met each other.

Another theory had been that she had been intimidated by his last name. After all, his father was one of the – if not the – most famous designers in Paris.

But everything had been proven wrong by different occasions:

She obviously had forgiven him the chewing gum incident and it wasn't that she didn't like him either, after all she worried for him not getting enough sleep.

And the way she had talked to his father on the derby competition had impressed him. Not even he, Gabriel Agreste's own son, dared to speak up to him like this.

It was because she had a crush on him! Now it all made perfect sense.

Of course she was stuttering and blushing when he tried to talk to her or wanted to get to know her better.

Was that also because he kept having these dreams?

Instantly he shook his head.

No, that was him and him alone. He had just now found out that she liked him and his nightmares had been torturing him for almost a week now.

But he couldn't stop thinking about her, about her and him, about her actually being in love with him and about, well, being with her.

Marinette was a kind and smart girl, always putting others before her and always insisting on justice. She really reminded him of Ladybug sometimes...

Ladybug!

He was in love with her, wasn't he?

His thoughts ran with such a speed at that thought, it was almost too fast for him as well.

He loved her, but she was definitely out of his league. And she didn't even want to be with him. She kept pushing him away, kept her distance.

Of course his heart still leapt into his throat and his face heated up when he looked at her or when she was a bit closer to him than usual, but he really began doubting.

Marinette wanted to be with him, probably more than anything else according to her cute behavior in front of him. She was wonderful and pretty and caring...

Ladybug was bold and clever and brave, but was she really the one?

He shook his head in disbelief.

Where were his thoughts leading him? Of course she was the one. She was his true love... His true love who didn't want to be with him.

Marinette could be bold, clever and brave too, he realized. She had so much of Ladybug but Ladybug had so little of Marinette.

Could the cute girl sitting behind him in class, his princess, really be that much closer to him, maybe even already, than his lady?

His eyes widened as he understood that a princess outranked a lady.

Could she really be... No, she couldn't! He was a knight and knights normally ended up with ladies, not princesses. Only the ones in fairy tales got princesses and his life definitely wasn't a fairy tale.

He loved his lady, his partner in fighting Akumas, his ally in fighting Hawkmoth. He loved her! But then again...

Why did he constantly want to turn around and look at Marinette?

Why did he have the sudden urge to get to know her better, to talk to her, to-... Make sure she was safe?

Maybe that was just his nightmares, his fear of her being killed. He was being overprotective, for sure. That's why he caught himself glancing at Nino from time to time, because of the Bubbler tonight. Who would not worry when a classmate died every night in someone's dreams?

But he felt that there was something else, something deeper that seemed to draw him towards the sweet girl that lived above the bakery by the school. He knew that there was something that begged him to look at her with different eyes.

Was it for her sake? Was it because she liked him and he didn't want to disappoint her, to make her happy and be with her?

Was it because he couldn't be with his lady? Because he thought Marinette could fill the hole in his heart Ladybug had torn in?

Was he just yearning for love, begging for someone to see in him the boy he was and not the young man his father wanted him to be?

But did she want to get to know him for who he really was, the dorky, pun-loving gamer and Anime freak or did she see him as the fencing and Chinese-speaking model that he played for everyone?

He didn't think she would not want to get to know him, for that she was way too kind. Maybe she would like him for who he was and not for the obeying son he pretended to be. After all, she defended Chat Noir wherever she could when people took him as Ladybug's sidekick rather than her partner again and Chat Noir was way more him than Adrien had ever been able to be.

And he wouldn't have to worry about their secret identity if he wanted to be with Ladybug. She didn't want him to know who she was and didn't want to know who he was, so they would be forced to have a relationship based on lies and a lack of trust.

He knew of course that she didn't want to reveal because she wanted to keep him and her family and friends safe but basically it was a lack of trust. In him.

He knew that. In her eyes, Chat was just a dorky flirt, not serious enough to be trusted with something as important as a secret identity other than his own.

Additionally, they would have to keep their relationship a secret because of the media and especially because of Hawkmoth, along with the struggle to keep their identities to themselves in front of them as well as in front of the public.

With Marinette he could be together, as Adrien. He could hold hands with her, could be seen with her, could be happy...

As long as his father approved. He could imagine his father forbidding him to have a relationship with her because she was no famous personality and would only ruin the Agreste's name. And he was still a famous model and son, he had fans and a few of them could be pretty... Quick tempered.

But regardless, he could be with her without worrying that they would accidently discover their identities. He could be with her and ask what her favorite color was and he would get an answer. He could ask when her birthday was and she could give him a date. He could meet her parents and they could hang out with friends and they would be able to kiss in public and he could go eat dinner with her somewhere nice and-...

Math class was over.

He had spent the whole time thinking about Ladybug and Marinette and who he would rather be with. A bit cruel when he thought about it like this now.

Nino nudged his shoulder to get him moving and Adrien flinched away, suddenly remembering his dream from last night again. The Bubbler.

Out of an impulse he turned around and someone smaller than him bumped against his chest. He smiled down at Marinette who turned red the second she recognized that shirt.

"Oh, u-uh... A-Adrien! I-I'm-..."

He wrapped his arms around her to steady her and smiled even wider. All his doubts about Ladybug and Marinette had vaporized into thin air and he was just glad to have her in his arms.

"It's alright. I'm always happy to catch you."

"T-Too nice o-of you th-thank you…"

He nodded and held her in his arms a bit longer than necessary, then let her go out together with Alya. The brunette had looked at them the whole time and now giggled into Marinette's ear, making her wave at her best friend and shush her.

"She's cute, eh?", Nino put a hand on his shoulder and grinned.

"Marinette? Yeah.", don't you dare and touch her today.

"What, I meant Alya. But Marinette's cute too."

"Huh, guess so…", Nino, I swear to god, if you keep-…

"C'mon bro, we've got biology now."

"Yeah, I'm coming.", you're glad you don't have chemistry with Marinette.


Lunch Break arrived and Nino had the great idea to go out together.

That is if he stayed away from Marinette far enough for Adrien to enjoy this. He would make sure they would not be too close to each other.

The only problem was that Marinette had been with Nino in the same class since Kindergarten. They were pretty close and of course neither of them had any fears of touching.

A slight brush of their shoulders, one smile too bright, a playful punch against the shoulder, it all made Adrien want to jump on his best friend, drag him to the next graveyard and bury him alive.

Nino joked around again while they walked down the street and Marinette doubled over laughing. Adrien moaned silently and watched the brunette male with suspicion. Alya walked next to him instead of trying to fit on the sidewalk along with the other two in front and her gaze wandered over to him. Pulling together her eyebrows, she slowed her step and lightly held him back on his sleeve to get a bit of distance between their friends and them.

"Everything alright, Adrien?", she questioned frowning as soon as they were four steps behind the two laughing teenagers, "You look like you could shoot Nino right on the spot."

"Huh? Oh, no! I just-… I didn't sleep well last night. Sorry, I wasn't aware."

She nodded, still trying to make the distance bigger between them but Adrien refused to be farther than five steps away from Marinette.

"You sure you okay? In the morning you sounded like you had something weighing you down that kept you from sleeping."

He sighed and his shoulders slumped.

"Well, yeah. I'm dreaming weird stuff."

"Nightmares?"

"Yeah. You know about interpreting dreams?"

Alya looked thoughtful for a moment, then slowly nodded.

"Well, I know the general things. The purpose of a dream is to make you aware of something your subconscious noticed. It's the only way for your conscious and your subconscious to communicate and if it's important, the dream repeats itself until it's either forgotten or out of the way, solution or no solution doesn't matter."

He bit on his lip, wishing the walk to the little café would last longer than the few meters they still had ahead of them.

"And do you know about interpreting certain dreams? Like falling means something or flying or stuff like that?"

"Hm, if you're willing to tell me what your dream is about then I could maybe interpret something but you don't have to."

Adrien nodded, then patted her shoulder thankfully.

"Maybe that's something for the way back, if you want to listen to me?"

She grinned up at him and entered the little café.

"Of course."