Lunchtime

Before lunch, Marinette talked to her parents while Adrien answered the messages to his bodyguard and then joined the girl as they both talked to all the adults, including Marinette's uncles and aunts on the other side. They also saw their own kids, Ling and Ye, involved in the fight and were rather concerned.

Marinette persuaded her mother that they rested, had a nice walk outside to the village and talked to the monks about what happened and felt fine.

"Yes maman, we got very nice herbal tea here, last night they gave us something before we fell asleep and this morning we got something for the pain and now we are going for lunch and ..." Marinette rambled until Ling jumped in explaining all sorts of remedies that were available to them.

"How is my bodyguard?" Adrien asked when he got a chance to speak. "I know what he wrote to me, but I'd like your opinion Sabine, please." The boy expected his bodyguard did not take the news well. He was employed as a bodyguard of a resident villain's son, and that did not look good on someone's Curriculum Vitae.

"He is fine, all things considered." Sabine said with strained cheerfulness. Then she obviously changed a room and the tone of the voice. "Him and Tom have watched that video … more than once. With me and then with Ling's and Ye's parents." Sabine continued quietly. "Then they had a really long walk outside and we also had the same tea as you when they returned."

"Okay, he wrote me about that, thank you." Adrien replied when Sabine stopped talking.

"Listen Adrien, don't worry about us, just take care of yourself, okay?" Sabine begged.

Then they heard Tom who had a few things to say. He was mostly trying to keep the spirits up, on both sides on the phone conversation.

"The important thing is that it is over now." Tom concluded and everyone confirmed before they said their greetings and cut the connection.

The four teens went for lunch and took their bowls with food.

"I have disabled receiving calls on my phone." Adrien said with a smile. "It goes straight to voice mail and that is full." He then turned his phone as if he had to prove his statement.

"That is probably useful." Marinette shrugged. She studied her phone. There were messages from Alya, of course.

"Uh, I got a request for an interview from Nadia Chamack." Marinette exclaimed unsure if she should be excited or appalled. "Apparently she sent the same message to my parents and they did not answer. I thought she needed babysitting for Manon again."

"I am not even opening those." Adrien laughed.

"You said Nadia Chamack?" Ling asked incredulously.

"Yes." Marinette answered. "She is a TV News anchor, I babysit her daughter."

"I got a request from her too." Ling flipped her phone for the others to see.

"Me too." Ye confirmed.

All four of them looked at each other rather confused.

"What is new?" Pema asked as she brought more herbal tea for them all while Dorje carried two bowls with food for the two of them.

"Are you getting news from home on that?" Dorje asked quietly.

"They actually want news from us." Ye answered.

"The news are what happened here, yesterday, with those two villains." Ling added.

Pema and Dorje looked at each other.

"Everyone wants to know what happened." Adrien said quietly and looked at Marinette.

"But Ling was livestreaming the fight, what else they want to know?" Marinette asked confused.

"You mean, those people that took them? The soldiers? I thought we told them." Pema asked again as Dorje frowned while he was eating his lunch quickly.

"Nope. The people in Paris, they want to know." Adrien replied. "The defeat of Hawk Moth and his identity are probably the biggest news there."

"Are we famous?" Ling asked.

"Well you were filming, and you took no selfies, so you are not." Adrien teased.

"But I am?" Ye asked, he looked rather confused. Adrien nodded in reply.

"Is it good or bad?" The older boy asked and Adrien laughed.

"That is a good question, but the fact is you are a hero now, in Paris." Adrien smiled.

"And the two of you" Adrien turned to the two monks "Are becoming famous in Paris, according to the message from Chloe." Adrien opened the message on his phone while Marinette rolled her eyes. "Her father, the mayor of Paris, plans to invite you as heroes on the next Heroes Day celebrations." Adrien spoke solemnly as if he was announcing the prize before a large audience.

"Yes, we are going to Paris." Ling exclaimed as she raised her fist in the air and sing sang the sentence.

"We are going to Paris." Ye joined her singing.

"We are going to Paris?" Pema asked tentatively while her eyes went wide.

Marinette was reading the message on Adrien's phone and nodded to Pema.

"Where is Paris, again?" Dorje asked quietly and Pema smiled, then she nudged him with her elbow and spoke quickly and quietly until the monk had an 'a-ha' moment when he remembered.

"But, we are guardians of the temple, we are not supposed to leave." Dorje protested quietly.

Adrien furrowed his brows.

"You are not allowed to leave the temple?" the boy asked incredulously.

"But, you were with us, outside ..." Marinette trailed off.

"Oh, we are, sometimes we were away for a week." Pema shrugged.

"But Paris is in France, in Europe, that is far … " Dorje protested again.

Marinette was staring at Adrien's phone, then at the boy and then back at his phone.

"What is she writing about your house?" Marinette finally collected the courage to ask.

"The police searched the place from rooftop down, they located his lair and everything." Adrien sighed and made it obvious that it was not a pleasant conversation for him, but he continued anyway. "Chloe's father seized the Mansion and everything inside for the police to investigate, only the stuff in my room is still there. They kept the cameras out from my room" The boy sighed.

"So, you have your room back." Ye nudged the boy in his ribs.

Adrien frowned.

"You can go back home." The older boy continued as he tried to cheer up Adrien.

"Shut up Ye, imagine if you had only your room, the boy needs a bathroom, too." Ling added.

"Oh, I have a bathroom, too." Adrien continued.

"And a kitchen." Ling added with raised eyebrows.

"I do not know how to cook, it might be better to keep me out of there, I might blow the place up." Adrien joked.

Everyone laughed.

Adrien felt Plagg scratched his chest, the kwami was probably worried about his mini fridge and where was he going to have his cheese stored in the future. But the boy could not talk to his kwami and reassure him.

"But, still, to be in a small room instead of a whole house." Ling continued.

"My room is big, probably bigger than her house." Adrien continued as he motioned towards Marinette.

"Oh that is great, you can go home then." Ling said with a wide grin.

"It is a room in a house but I would not call that a home." Adrien continued.

"What do you have in your room?" Ye asked curiously.

"I have a piano, king size bed, a huge desk with ridiculous amount of screens, table soccer, basketball hoop, climbing wall," Adrien was naming things as he counted on his fingers while the rest of the group mostly watched with their mouths opened. Marinette knew that none of that made the boy particularly happy so she frowned, especially when she caught his tone while he named the things as if he was reading an inventory list.

"And a ridiculous amount of arcade games." Adrien finished. The boy noticed how Ye and Ling watched him with their mouths opened.

"Man, you told me some of that stuff, but now that I hear them again." Ye waved his head in disbelief.

"But I am not allowed to have friends over to play with them." Adrien continued as he raised his hand again, the frustration was clear in his tone.

"But now you could?" Ling asked as she tilted her head.

The boy stopped talking and looked at the older girl before him. Then he smiled.

"Yes, I guess I can." His smile was wide. "I can invite anyone I want." But then his face fell as he looked back to the (switched off) screen on his phone. "At least as long as I am allowed by the police and the mayor of Paris." Adrien huffed in the end. "But I guess I have a better chance with them than I had before." He laughed to himself.

"I seldom had friends over, but that was because we would be in the way and I had a really small room." Ling admitted.

"Once I made a party there, well my friends crashed in and … " Adrien remembered Party Crasher. "Anyway, Kim was swimming in my bath." The boy chuckled. But then he stopped talking as he remembered the akuma and wondered if his father ever actually left the Mnasion.

"We mostly played outside. There was not much to do in my room." Ye admitted.

"I like Marinette's room, it is like a sanctuary." Adrien smiled. "A very pink sanctuary." The boy teased and teased until the girl's face turned as pink as her walls.

The two older teens looked at each other while they were biting their tongues not to say the first thing that popped to their minds. They both wanted to tease the kids, but it was just a day after the fight with his father, it might be too much too soon.

"What do you have in your room?" Ye asked feigning curiosity as he expected a similar inventory list like Adrien did.

"What is your room like?" Ling asked instead. And Marinette explained slowly.

"Well, you enter the room through a trap door, it is small, but I have everything I need and ..." Marinette trailed off when she saw a mischievous grin on Adrien's face while he looked at her sideways since he sat next to her.

"And?" Ling asked from the opposite side and motioned with her hand for Marinette to continue.

"And a loft bed and from the loft bed I can climb up to the rooftop terrace." The girl continued and finished with the last part.

"Oh, I have to see it." Ling clapped her hands together.

"It sounds nice." Ye smiled.

Adrien grinned at the girl. He was waiting for further questions.

"And how have you decorated the room?" Ling asked further.

"Well I have pink wallpaper." Marinette looked around and tried to remember what else to say. But all she could see was Adrien's face with the dorkiest Chat Noir style smile. "And a few posters." She said quickly as she looked down to her bowl and took more food.

Adrien started to laugh. It was a happy laugh, because he knew that Ladybug had posters of him, Adrien, in his room.

"What posters?" Ling asked as she felt confused by Adrien's reaction.

Marinette pointed to her mouth as if to say she was chewing her food and could not possibly reply right away.

"She has a few posters with photos of me." Adrien smiled gently and wrapped his arm around the girl who almost chocked on her food.

There were several pairs of eyebrows raised at the two young teens.

"Our Marinette is really interested in fashion and … " then the boy trailed off as he remembered her admiring the designs done by his father, but he knew the real reason for the posters so he chose different words. "So she was collecting posters of different designs and I was the model for those designs so you see … " The boy winked at Marinette and she blushed to an eve more intense shade of red.

Everyone noticed how red Marinette was. Everyone understood the real reason why she was keeping pictures of the boy in her room.

"Um, yes, designs, definitely." Ling said as she nodded her head.

"Must be the designs." Ye nodded in confirmation as both older teens exchanged knowing looks and glanced towards the younger teens suppressed to burst out laughing. And then they finally laughed their hearts out while Marinette hid her face in her hands.

"You know, she also has a live size cardboard cut out of Jagged Stone in her room and she met the guy and worked for him." Adrien continued. The boy felt obliged to help the girl out of this situation as it was making her uncomfortable.

Then the two older teens spoke about the posters they had in their rooms and how they never actually met those people in real life.

Then Ling and Ye excused themselves as they intended to call their parents once more.

"Please take your tea with you." Dorje reminded the two older teens.

"We'd like to talk to Adrien and Marinette a bit more." Pema smiled cautiously as they left.

Marinette whipped her head back to the monks as soon as she deemed polite. Both monks were silent during the teenage banter, but both of them were smiling from time to time to their antics.

"What is it?" Adrien asked while his eyes were still smiling as he took the tea in his hands and sipped.

"It is about your marriage." Dorje stated simply.

Adrien almost let the tea go down the wrong tube. Marinette was completely red in the face again.

"You do know about what it means?" Pema asked cautiously.

"We share the duty of the guardian." Marinette said as simply as she could, quiet, no stuttering, she was proud of herself.

"No, I mean what adult married people do." Pema said a bit too loud because other students who sat around heard her too and turned towards them.

Both teens looked down into their tea and pretended none of the conversation was related to them.

The group of four was silent for a while until they stopped being interesting to their surroundings.

"We are pretending to be brother and sister here." Adrien whispered quietly to the two monks.

"You know, if your parents have not explained it to you, we can." Pema added quietly

"They have." Marinette raised her hand quickly as she spoke even faster. "You don't have to explain."

"Actually, my parents have not ..." Adrien started to speak and then noticed Marinette waved her head. "Spoken with me about that?" The boy looked at a flustered girl who was determined to stop this conversation.

"You. Are. Not. Going. There." She whisper shouted. She was not having that talk with two monks in a Tibetan temple. And with Adrien. That was too much. Nope. She was having none of that.

"Okay, for now, remember what teacher Tenzin told you. What he did is considered a valid ceremony for us. " Dorje whispered to Adrien quickly as he leaned over.

Adrien nodded. He could not help a gentle smile that washed over his face as he looked at Marinette. But she did not know what they were talking about.

"We have such education at school." Marinette whispered. "We do not have to do that now."

Was this day ever going to end. First they married her and now they wanted to do the talk. But then the information on what Adrien had said finally hit her.

"Your parents never talked with you about … ?" She blushed too hard to be able to finish the sentence.

"Nope." Adrien smiled. "But that does not mean I was not educated." The boy teased back. "I saw all those educational cartoons." He finished.

Marinette sighed with relief.

(There is a French educational cartoon series about the human body "La Vie". It is rather old, but I would recommend.)

"I learned everything." Adrien spoke quickly once he understood where the conversation was going. And it was going awkward. He did not want to talk about that, and with Marinette, not just yet.