"So, now explain yourself!" Marinette smiled coquettishly. "Why were you picking me up as both selves?"

"It wasn't intentional, believe me!" Adrien admitted. "I just… I just couldn't keep away from you…" he added and pulled her closer.

"Yeah, right…" she rolled her eyes not believing a word. "Why did you start as Cat Noir, then?" she asked and wrapped her hands around his neck.

He couldn't miss the opportunity of kissing her again. He had a feeling that when he'd started, he would never stop. That was something new for him, because he'd never felt that way before. Even… Even when he'd dated Kagami…

Suddenly, a thought about his ex-girlfriend made his blood curdle. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead on Marinette's forehead. For a moment he stayed that way, with his eyes closed, and she was stroking his neck, as if she knew what was happening in his mind.

"Tell me about Kagami…" she whispered.

"Now?!" he jerked his head and looked at her in shock.

"You haven't yet." Marinette smiled.

"Now it's irrelevant…" he shook his head. "A fire-fire method worked faster and more efficiently than in your case."

"In my case it would be faster if you didn't make me confused by picking me up as Adrien and as Cat Noir. How did it happen that after months of sitting in your room you chose me to help you instead of Nino who was at hand? Theoretically we hadn't seen each other for years!"

Adrien glanced at her, uncertain. For a while he was struggling with thought, but finally he sat down in the armchair and pulled her to sit down with him. She sat on his lap and put her legs through the arm of the chair. She leaned her head against the backrest and – watching Adrien carefully – waited for his story.

"On that day I had enough of all this deadlock. I knew overworking on programming was my excuse to stop thinking about losing my time. But that led me to wasting it more and more. Suddenly I realised that it had been like three years of not moving on…"

"So, not months but… years?" Marinette asked in whisper and reached his hair to stroke it softly.

"Seems like that…" he glanced at her, and her heart ached when she saw so much pain in his eyes. "I was sneaking out sometimes as Cat Noir, prowling around… And two weeks ago, somehow… I just came to you. When I saw you on your balcony, I thought it was quite natural to visit you and to ask you for support. We used to be good friends, right?"

Marinette nodded without a word, but she knew that they were so much more for each other. They were partners. And he also was her first love…

"At that moment I thought that maybe if I tell you about my problems, I'd be able to move on… I couldn't foresee that your house was about to collapse and instead of talking about my life I'll be saving yours. When I recall that moment, when you told me about collapsing, my heart stops every single time. It was so close… I could lose you and I wouldn't even know about it! If I didn't visit you that day, you could…" he stopped suddenly and tears appeared in his eyes.

Marinette smiled tenderly and ruffled his hair. He didn't know that she could have saved herself on her own. Besides, the danger wasn't that serious as they thought. The house was still standing…

"But everything had a happy end…" she said softly. "You brought me here and all of you took care of me… However, I was so confused that day…"

"It wasn't an easy evening for me either. I had to be careful not to blurt out my superhero identity…"

"Oh…" Marinette blushed suddenly when she remembered that dinner. "All those jokes… About kittens… That must have been killing you…"

"Didn't you see that I stopped eating?" Adrien laughed.

"Oh, Alya was unbearable that evening! She insisted so hard that you should have an opinion on my dating Cat Noir! And all that investigation…"

"At least I have told you my name before the wedding…" he joked, recalling what Marinette had said that evening.

"I don't remember you proposing…" she muttered.

"You preferred to shack up?"

"Seriously, Cat?"

"Well… that's what people say about a couple who's not married but living together, right? But honestly, I'd prefer our kittens weren't illegitimate."

"So in hurry to have kids?" she glanced at him suspiciously and it suddenly occurred to her: "Everything to avoid the answer, right?"

"What was the question?"

"About Kagami…"

"You told me that you didn't want to know what had happened!" he reminded her with reproach, but she only rolled her eyes.

"I don't want to know details!" she winced. "Probably I'd jump out of the window…"

"I know that feeling…" he muttered, and when she glanced at him, intrigued, he explained: "I wanted to jump out every time you mentioned Luka…"

"You asked!"

"I know. I was a fool. I don't know why I asked… Maybe to feel worse…"

"Or maybe to help me?" she smiled and put her fingers in his hair, slightly moving between strands. Her eyes followed her palm as if watching a light in his hair was a kind of therapy. "I think that I wouldn't be the same person if I wasn't with Luka…"

"Don't tell me I should thank him!" he winced.

"Are you jealous?" she chuckled and glanced at him. "You should thank him. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't with him…"

"And what… What if he came back?" Adrien asked, feeling a knot in his throat.

"Probably he would be happy that I'm happy…" she whispered and continued observing the light in his hair. "I don't know… Maybe not… Our break up wasn't amicable."

"But if he came and begged you to forgive him and…"

"No, Adrien." she stopped him by putting a finger on his lips. "That's the ended story. You know… It wasn't easy but I have forgiven him. I didn't want to keep that sorrow in my heart. But I'll never get together with him again. He cheated on me. He broke my heart…"

"I broke your heart too… I betrayed you." Adrien whispered.

"When?" she was surprised.

"Ladybug, Kagami…"

Marinette hid a smile when she thought that Adrien counted her alter-ego as her own opponent. On the other hand she realised that it was high time to share her big secret with Adrien – as if Tikki sent her a message with a reminder, using a telepathy or a virtual glare. It awakened a hint of anxiety.

"How could you betray me? We were friends, Adrien. We weren't a couple. All I could do was to support you when your heart decided…"

"I don't know if my heart decided… Kagami was the first girl that I felt comfortable with. Besides, she gave me a sense of safety. I knew she cared about me, the real me. Not the famous Adrien Agreste, the model, but me, just Adrien… We became friends. She… She kind of domesticated me… Just later…" he hesitated and winced. "I needed some time and some distance to discover how toxic was our relation. When I left for a few weeks I saw our relationship, finally free from her influence. And I realised how possessive and jealous she was. She cut me off from all my friends. I was to be only hers. She was the same like my father. He also wanted to keep me locked in the house, completely isolated. Now I get it why he was so happy seeing me with Kagami. He knew I was protected from the world. And under control. So… When I understood that all, I broke up with her. Immediately after coming back to Paris. God, she was so furious!"

"Oh, I remember…" Marinette sighed. "I didn't know that akuma was caused by your split. Oh, it was such a tough fight. I was afraid that we wouldn't defeat her."

"But… you weren't there…" he was surprised. "How…?"

"Adrien… I think I should have told you earlier… Uhm… I was there… By your side."

He glanced at her in shock. So many thoughts crossed his mind, so many memories hit him at the same moment, but he couldn't believe that two the most important girls in his life turned out to be one…

"Wait…" he muttered.

"Just calm down, Adrien…"

"How can I be calmed down?!"

His reaction surprised her. No expected delight, relief or maybe a hint of disbelief… He kept her in his embraces, on his lap, but looked at her, frowned – as if something was growing inside him, something that was about to explode. And finally it exploded, indeed.

"So, now I get it, at last! Your questions on the rooftop this afternoon and your advice to come to my girlfriend. You knew I was talking about you! And you didn't tell me anything! No wonder that you kissed me as soon as I get here. I'd already confessed my feelings even though I had no idea I was confessing to you!"

"Let me remind you that I confessed my feelings to you a week ago. And I also didn't know that I was confessing to you!" Marinette answered back wryly.

"So you decided to pay back?"

"Do you think it was easy to reveal my identity?"

"I do hope it wasn't. At least I understand finally why you were asking about Ladybug at the beginning…" he said with reproach.

"Why?"

"To make sure I don't blame you for breaking my heart?"

"Nonsense!" she replied outraged. "I'd rather say that you were questioning me about yourself, hiding under your mask! How will you explain all those allusions to the programmer living next door? Then you came here as Cat Noir, despite taking care of me as Adrien, so you could come normally, in your civilian self… But no! You preferred to ask a million questions about Adrien as if he was a stranger to you…"

The guilt appeared on his face immediately. He glanced at her remorseful.

"I'm not proud of that…" he admitted after a while. "But… After all that… it was so difficult to believe that someone could… you know… so selflessly… and not so possessively… just love me…" he confessed and her heart melted instantly.

"My poor sunshine… And how could I argue with you?"

"See? I'm so pathetic that you even can't quarrel with me…"

Marinette began stroking his hair, and he hid his face in her neck, as if he needed her comforting him. He hugged her closer and then he looked up. For a while they were staring in each other's eyes, but at the next moment Adrien muttered something under his breath and kissed her – but not like he'd kissed her before, but passionately, as if he couldn't express all the feelings suppressed for so long. They were so focused on themselves that they didn't react neither to short knocking nor to a sudden opening of the door. They broke their kiss when they heard Alya's:

"Nino, I think I have a heart attack…"