Innocently tucked into a neat, pink flower vase in the corner of her room sat a dethorned rose.
Cat Noir paused as his mind spun in circles as he tried to convince his heart that that rose wasn't the rose that he'd gifted Ladybug just a couple nights before; had he given Marinette a rose as well? He doubted it when he was just friends with Marinette and hadn't spent more than a passing thought or two on possibly dating her one day.
He'd kept his feelings for the young fashion designer pretty platonic even after he'd started to see her a bit more as Adrien and sometimes even as Cat Noir.
"Ma-Marinette, where'd you get that rose?" Cat Noir asked, trying to ignore the way his tongue practically lodged itself up in his throat when he wasn't quite sure whether to address her by name or by 'Princess.'
"A friend of mine gave it to me." She shrugged though Cat Noir wasn't completely oblivious to the suddenly freaked out look in her eyes like she had a secret that she definitely didn't want him to find out about.
"It looks very familiar." Cat Noir hoped that he wasn't sounding like an idiot or that he wasn't overthinking this; not all roses looked the same, right? It had to be the rose that he gave Ladybug, right?
"Oh, it does?" Her voice rose an octave or two, but she didn't make it seem like anything other than a simple question other than that.
"Yeah," Cat Noir tried to catch his breath as his tongue dried up with his nerves and as his mind spun faster and faster, head aching, "I gave Ladybug one that looked like that."
Marinette's face turned cherry red and her eyes flickered to her hands, fingers shaking slightly, and somehow, Cat Noir felt like he'd found her at last and yet he wasn't quite sure that he didn't completely mess up somehow.
"M'lady?" Cat Noir's voice dropped down to a soft almost purr of a tone, and Marinette only looked more flustered as if her identity being revealed was the worst kind of thing to happen now and as if she had no idea how to deal with it exactly.
"Cat Noir," She answered, and her voice sounded just like the Ladybug that he'd fought alongside all of this time.
"Plagg, claws in." Perhaps it was a little rash to detransform in front of his partner right now, but he figured that may be an identity for an identity would help.
"Adrien," Marinette's face flushed as she tried to come up with something that wouldn't sound like a garbled mess.
"I'm glad that it's you." Adrien was pretty sure that that was the full truth, his fledgling feelings that somehow peeked out in waves for the fashion designer that he suppressed were finally let somewhat free, and she really was a good friend of his in and outside of the suit, but a part of his mind still felt foggy after so little time to digest this fact.
"M-Me too." Marinette smiled up at him and though Adrien was still pretty sure that she was still at a bit of a loss just like he was, he had hope that they'd recover from this somehow and be made better partners for it.