"What if she doesn't show up, Plagg?"

"Calm down. You're two hours early. Since when has Marinette or Ladybug ever failed to show up? Yeah, Marinette's late all the time, but she's pretty reliable otherwise. She'll be here."

Adrien pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He'd had to wait for two entire days to hear her decision even though his mind had been made up well before their most recent argument. As a matter of fact, that's what he was setting out to tell Ladybug in the first place. And then they'd had the argument. To be fair, his timing was awful, and he knew that Ladybug was quite touchy about unnecessary conversation when they were in the middle of something. So, not the best life choice, but he wasn't about to replicate it any time soon.

Adrien shook himself awake and looked at his phone to see how long he'd been sleeping.

She was late.

Ladybug stumbled along a few minutes later.

"You're late."

"I know. I'm sorry. I got caught by some people along the way who don't understand the whole 'important superhero business' thing. I guess it's not totally superhero business. It's personal business about a superhero, so technically superhero business, but mostly personal, but they don't need to know that, right?"

Adrien smiled to himself. Now there was the Marinette he'd fallen in love with. "Well, it has to do with the future of Paris' most beloved crime-fighting duo."

"We don't fight that much crime. Mostly just evil magic." Ladybug sat beside where Adrien was laying.

"Fair enough, but you have to admit that the crime rate's gone down since we got in the business."

She shrugged. "True."

They stayed silent for a while, watching the foot traffic below.

"Nettie?"

"Ouais, Chat?"

"Did you make up your mind?"

Her shoulders tightened as she held her gaze on a few straggling tourists. "Yes."

"Is that a, 'Yes, but I don't like it,' or a, 'Yes, but you won't like it'?"

"Both?"

"Do you want me to go first?" Ladybug nodded at him, so he sat up and reached for her hand. When his grasp was secure, he continued. "I had this whole thing written out like two weeks ago? Maybe three?"

"Where you were going to choose me over me?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Basically, yeah. That was before I knew, you know."

"I know."

"Anyway, that got thrown out the window with the revelation, but the basic premise is still there. I love you, Marinette. I don't love you because I have to or because it's destiny, but because I want to love you and show you that I do genuinely care about you and your wants and needs." He held up a hand to stop her from talking. "I know I pined over you as LB for years, and it was time for me to branch out from that prickly situation that resulted—"

"Adrien—"

"—but the fact that you were the one I wanted in the first place is just perfect. I was going to love you no matter who it was under the Ladybug mask. She may have been my first love, but I was determined to love you anyway. Now that the illusion of choice is gone, I tried and tried to figure out how to make it work. I don't just want one of you now that I can have both of you, and I want to try juggling both. If and when it doesn't work, we'll talk it over again and figure it out from there. I mean, it's not like we won't have time to spend together." He winked at her, toying with her fingers. "I guess my point is that I was never going to choose between you and you as long as it was both you and not you and someone else, but I would've chosen you if the other you wasn't really you."

"Because that's not confusing."

"Oh, I know. It took me forever to wrap my head around the fact that both of you were you. Anyway, what do you think?"

"I think you said everything. I…I love both of you, too, and I want to try juggling everything."

"Alright then."

"Adrien?"

"Ouais?"

"I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"I forgive you. For the record, you had every right to say what you said, just not how you said it."

"That's fair."

"I'm sorry that I wasn't forthcoming in the first place and jeopardized what we had."

"I can't say that I would've responded differently." She smiled at him.

"Question."

"Answer."

"I've kissed you as Marinette, but can I kiss you as Ladybug?"

Ladybug leaned over and pecked his cheek. "How's that?"

Adrien pouted. "Not exactly what I had in mind."

"In that case…you'll have to catch me for it!" She jumped up and bounded away while he transformed, leading him on a roundabout route to l'Arc de Triomphe.

He landed on the opposite side that she had, approaching at the same pace so they met almost perfectly in the middle.

"You know the tabloids will be all over this, right? They'll start saying that I'm pregnant with your triplets."

Chat laughed. "It's worth it." He reached out and held her close. "May I kiss you, my lady?"

"You may, mon chèr."

Chat leaned his head down and kissed her. It was a little more chaste than what he wanted to do in the situation, but they were on top of a popular tourist attraction in the middle of summer.

When they broke apart, she asked if he realized how many pictures would be taken of the two of them.

"I'm gonna guess at least six."

Ladybug laughed. "Well, you're not wrong. Alya's gonna kill us when we come clean about everything, you know."

"Oh, I know."

A scream from not too far off shifted their attention.

"Well, duty calls, kitty."

"Duty calls."

A/N: Not the end! Very close, though. I'm thinking one more epilogue-like chapter because I still have a priceless pun to include. Thank you so much for your support thus far! You have no idea how much it means to me to read all of these nice reviews and keep going back to them. I'll thank everybody appropriately at the end of the next chapter. -wwot