"You have got to see this."

Marinette blinked blearily. What was that annoying noise doing in her head? Why did it sound like her brain was thudding against the inside of her head? She opened her eyes. Nope. She closed them again. The light was too bright, the urge to sleep too strong. The thudding resumed.

"Marinette! I know you're in there!"

Marinette was almost awake now, very much against her will.

"You are in there, aren't you?"

Marinette finally recognised the voice that was not, in fact, coming from inside her head. That! That pesky alley-cat! He was disturbing her well-earned rest! He was thudding on her roof! She refused to open her eyes and instead just fumbled above herself.

She opened her trapdoor, pulled herself half out of bed and regretted her lack of covers instantly.

"Go away and shut the hell up. Goodbye."

And promptly pulled the covers over her head and went back to sleep.

By the time Marinette woke up again, it was near midday, and she had full control of her mental faculties. Enough to realise that she, in all her not woken-up-yet glory, had yelled at Chat Noir – the humiliation came complete with the realisation that it had been 12 o'clock in the afternoon, she had had complete and utter bed hair, and she'd been in her pyjamas. Brilliant. As if her day couldn't get any worse, some time later, Chat came back.

"Um hi, princess."

"I'm so so sorry, chat," Marinette apologised hurriedly, "I hadn't woken up yet and I was just a little out of it."

"I couldn't tell," he smirked, and Marinette re-evaluated her apology. The cat had woken her up with his insistent thudding and was now making fun of her. Maybe he deserved the abrupt dismissal she'd given him earlier.

"Well maybe if someone had given me prior warning before thumping around on my roof on a Saturday morning, I would have had time to be a little bit more put-together," she hissed. It felt like maybe she hadn't had such a good night's sleep last night – and she knew who to blame that on.

"Sorry, sorry," Chat cried in surrender, quailing under her glare.

"It's alright, I just didn't sleep very well last night. I was up late."

Patrol had been brutal last night, particularly because she'd been doing it solo.

"That explains the pawful reception I got earlier."

"So what were you so excited about that you had to interrupt my Saturday morning lie-in?"

"So," Chat started, and Marinette could practically see him bouncing up and down in excitement, "watch this."

Then, Chat had the cheek to go over to her computer and load up the ladyblog. No-one touched her computer except her! What if she'd still had her picture of Adrien set as her home screen? (She didn't, she'd replaced it with a picture of her and Alya having an ice-cream war in the park). But still!

"Oh my god."

Marinette knew what had excited her kitty so much now. In her defence, it had been late, she'd been tired, and she'd just taken out five muggers simultaneously.

"Oooh, y-yeah, I hadn't heard about Chat Noir's girlfriend. Wow," Ladybug stuttered onscreen.

"Are you jealous?" the interviewer asked eagerly, zooming in on Ladybug's face and thrusting the microphone further forward.

"Oh, no. I've no reason to be jealous, wait… I mean… what Chat does in his free time is no concern of mine," she squeaked.

"Did you not discuss sharing his identity with his girlfriend together? Did he ask?"

"I really don't think these are appropriate questions for you to be asking. Quite frankly, it's none of your business," she snapped.

The clip ended.

"See, she's jealous already and she's only just heard about it!"

Marinette had to physically bite down on her tongue to restrain herself from responding. If she told Chat that the real reason she'd come across as guilty and had been so sharp with the reporter was because she'd nearly let it out that she was the one he was dating – well, that would be one ~easy~ horrific way to do an identity reveal.

"Wow, yeah, the plan is working perfectly," she said blandly, but Chat didn't seem to notice, too caught up in his own excitement.

"We need to celebrate. Date no. 3?"

"Why not?"

One day earlier, at school

"Marinette, Marinette."
"Marinette, over here."
"What happened?"
"Dudette, answer me."
"Oh my god, you're all pathetic."

Adrien entered the classroom and was hit with utter chaos. All his classmates had crowded into a tight bunch in the centre and were yelling in an effort to each be heard above the din. Nino poked his head up and noticed Adrien. He beckoned him over. Adrien just stared at the chaos then looked back at Nino and raised an eyebrow queryingly. Nino shrugged and pushed his way out of the huddle to join Adrien.

"Didn't you hear dude? Marinette is dating Chat Noir!"

"Why the huddle though? …I mean, wow! What? She's dating Chat Noir?"

"Heheh, you can go straight for ladybug now, your main competition seems to have lost interest."

Adrien was confused and the chaos wasn't making it any easier to think.

"But why is there so much…?" He gestured expansively at the bundle of noise in the centre of the classroom.

"Marinette. Is. Dating. Chat. Noir," Nino replied slowly.

"And?"

"A) it's a massive surprise. Everyone thought she had a crush on … anyway that doesn't matter anymore," Nino cut himself off quickly," B) Chat Noir is even more of a celebrity than you and he's a superhero. It doesn't get much more gossip worthy than that."

"So Marinette's in the middle of that?"

"Yup."

Adrien felt sorry for her. He knew how it felt to be the centre of unwanted attention.

"THIS IS RIDICULOUS. UTTERLY RIDICULOUS." Chloe's voice rose out of the clamor.

"Everybody move." Her natural authoritative tone meant that people shuffled to the sides despite themselves.

"So. Marinette. What do you have to say for yourself, huh? What happened to your so called crush?" she spat venomously.

Marinette was still standing there like a deer in headlights. Alya piped up in her defence.

"It's none of your business Chloe. Marinette can date whoever she wants to."

"I just think she's moving on a little fast is all. Makes you wonder how real her other crush was in the first case. Or maybe it was just blind worship all along."

"How dare you!"
"Shut your mouth, Chloe!"
"Worthless piece of…"
"Who asked for your…"
"No-one cares, Chloe. Don't be such a …"
"It was true love!"

The chaos and hubbub started again, in defence of Marinette this time. Adrien was rather surprised that all of his classmates felt so strongly about Marinette's crush. It was up to him to be the voice of reason, he decided.

"Chloe," he called out.

Her head, and everyone else's, swivelled round to look at him. A new bunch of whispers broke out, which he could hardly hear, and didn't understand.

"I thought he was.."
"Shhh."
"He was here?"
"…talking about this."
"Welp."

"Chloe, I think you're being a little bit unfair here. Why attack Marinette for who she dates? And the things you're saying are wrong! Marinette would never celebrity worship anybody, right guys?" Adrien looked at the rest of the class. Nino gave him a thumbs up.

"I can assure you Adrien, that celebrity worship is not out of character for Marinette," she hissed somewhat spitefully.

Adrien hoped this wasn't still to do with the fact that Chloe thought he needed protecting from Marinette. She didn't celebrity worship him, she barely even talked to him.

Chloe huffed, turned on her heel and sat at her desk.

"C'mon, Sabrina, it's not worth talking to Mari-nasty, anymore."

"You ok, Marinette?" Adrien asked.

"Mhhmm. Yeah!" she muttered back.

Nino attacked from behind.

"You finally grew a backbone and stood up to Chloe, mate. I'm proud!"

Adrien submitted to his hug warily.

He hadn't thought that that was the only time he'd stood up to Chloe. Besides, Marinette didn't normally need any sort of back-up when it came to Chloe. Did she?

Present Day

Their third date was actually going pretty well when disaster struck. Marinette was beginning to believe that they were cursed. Every single date they'd had had been interrupted. Every. Single. One. Three out of three. That couldn't just be a coincidence.

She'd been having a great time thrashing Chat at bowling. Especially as he'd insisted beforehand that there was no way she could beat him.

But then disaster had struck, as it was prone to doing. Marinette was aware that she was getting quite a bit of attention in the media for dating a superhero – that was kind of the plan after all. However, she hadn't quite foreseen that people would be so overly invested in, or angry about this new development in her love life. In hindsight, that was a mistake.

"How are we going to get out of here?" Chat asked her.

They were both hidden behind the counter of the bar at the back. The lady who worked there had let them crouch there, and had warned them when she saw the waves of rabid fans entering the bowling alley. Marinette thanked whoever was up in the sky that nice, ordinary, uninterested-in-superheroes'-love-lives people still existed.

"Where are the exits?" Marinette replied.

"They've blocked them all off, I think. Definitely the one we came in through and the back staff exit. We better hurry. This crowd is ripe for an akuma."

How were they meant to get out if all the exits were blocked? They couldn't just stay here, or they'd be…

"Ginger! Check this out! They're behind the counter!" squeaked a young girl with neon green hair.

Chat was already on the move. He picked Marinette up in fireman's lift and vaulted over the counter.

"Where do we go?" he hissed.

"You're going to like this, aren't you?" Marinette groaned as she realised what their one route of escape was.

"We're on a time limit," Chat warned, gesturing for her to get on with it.

"Let go of me and run for the bowling pins. We're going to be sliding out of here."

Understanding dawned on Chat. "On one, two, three.."

He dropped her and she took off running.

"They're over there!"
"GET HER!"
"Chat Noir!"
"I want an autograph!"
"Can I have an interview?"

They'd been noticed, it seemed. The bowling pins loomed ahead of her. If she missed the timing on this it was not only going to be humiliating, but spectacularly painful. They got larger and larger until Marinette had no choice but to jump till she was flat on her back, feet first and she continued to slide down.

Bowling pins came clattering down around her. From the side, another fresh rattle of them filled the space. Chat had made it too.

"I got manhandled by a ten year-old!" he hissed affrontedly, "I had to pick her up and physically move her to get away!"

"Struggling with the fame, Chat?"

"No, I'm unfortunately used to it," he sighed.

"Right, so where do we go from here?"

"I'm not sure."

"Rooftops is probably best."

"Ok then, purrincess, looks like you better prepare to be carried bridal style this time."

"It's better than a fireman lift. I swear you did that one last time just to mess with me."

"Get your mind out of the gutter."

"I will let your fans murder you. One more pun and I'll hardly feel any guilt over it."

They pushed out into the light of day. Chat's eyes twitched rapidly and by the time he could actually take in what he was looking at, it was too late.

"Marinette, you're so lucky!"
"What's your secret?"
"Slut."
"Chat Noir, why don't you try and bowl me over, I promise you won't strike out."

Marinette pinched Chat's side. Some of the fans had stayed outside, apparently.

"Wake up, or we're going to have to push our way through the crowd."

"She punned," he whispered faintly.

"Oh, don't fall in love just yet," Marinette snapped back, "we need to get out of here unless you want them to rip you apart and sell your costume for pieces."

"Yep, okay, no that is not something I want to happen."

"They're converging and it's not like we fight them off. We can't vault to the rooftops because of this stupid canopy. We're gonna push our way through and run like hell, you understand."

"Yes Ma'am."

"Not funny. Go."

Chat picked her up, put her on his shoulders and started sprinting down the street.

"You didn't need to pick me up," Marinette growled.

"But darling, I can run much faster than you and I really want to get away from these people."

"Alleycat."

"Did you … just … pun?"

"Again, don't fall in love just yet," Marinette remarked dryly.

They pushed through the crowd easily – they obviously weren't expecting Chat to run straight at them.

However, after that they had more of a problem. As they were nearing the edge of the bowling alley's stupid canopy, Chat's breathing was getting increasingly laboured and the three fastest maniacs were closing in on them. Chat's insistence on carrying her meant he was much slower than he should be. Just as they reached the edge of the canopy, so close to freedom, someone jumped forward and swiped Chat's baton.

That was bad. Very bad. Now they couldn't escape. And if Chat needed his baton back to detransform properly… well they'd never tested it, but Marinette didn't exactly want to find out.

"Head towards the library, we can hide in there," Marinette ordered.

"This isn't good sunshine."

"I know okay, I know. – Do you always use increasingly random nicknames when you get nervous?"

"Not the time," Chat panted.

They'd finally reached the library. Chat dove between the children's section shelves. They'd seemingly managed to get rid of most of their pursuers, who'd been a turn behind and hadn't seen them dart into the library.

A mass of pixels began to form a blur behind Chat's back.

"I think your baton's reforming…"

"What, where?" Chat asked, as he craned his neck in a hopeless effort to see what Marinette was referring to.

The blur solidified into a baton.

"Yep, that's definitely your baton."

"Thank goodness. I'm calling Ladybug, she'll be able to get them to all calm down."

Marinette hid a smile. Somehow, she didn't think that Ladybug would be coming. Or that Ladybug would even be able to manage the fans in the first place – though she appreciated Chat's faith in her.

"Ladybug is currently unavailable. Please try again later."

Chat tried to call Ladybug again, but it just went straight to voicemail.

"Her kwami should tell her soon. She'll come. She'll come."

"What's a kwami?" Marinette asked, like she was a civilian that had no idea what a miraculous really was.

"Uhh, umm. Well you see, I probably shouldn't really tell you?" Chat muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I was kidding. It's probably some sort of special, secret, powerful thing that's the key to your success and transformation," Marinette teased, because if her kitty had let something like that slip, she wasn't above torturing him a bit over it. Might as well have some fun while they waited out the screaming horde of fans.

"No, it's not that at all, don't be silly. It's just this super mundane thing. Yep. Totally boring."

Oh Plagg was so going to kill Chat for that later, Marinette thought. Chat had told her enough about his grumpy, demanding kwami, for her to know that numerous apologies involving camembert would have to be made before Chat could next transform.

Marinette's phone rang out through the library loud and clear, like a death knell.

"Can you hear that? Do you think it's them?" asked one of the few fans searching the library.

"Noo, no, no, turn off. Turn off, you stupid phone," Marinette whispered angrily, stabbing at her phone in desperation.

"First rule of sneaking around, turn off your phone. Shall we move?" muttered Chat, once she'd managed to turn the traitorous ringing off.

"We shall. Once we've moved though, I need to call Alya back."

"Whatever you say princess."

They did an awkward side shuffle round the stacks till they reached the explicit fiction section hidden away in the darkest depths of the library.

Marinette unwound her headphones from the mess they made in her (very stylish) bag.

"Gimme a sec, Chat. Alya might be able to help."

"Why hasn't Ladybug come yet? She would be able to help. I'm going to call her again."

"Marinette! I saw the news. Are you okay?" came Alya's tinny voice through the headphones.

"Chat and I are stuck in the library. Can you convince them we're somewhere else or something?"

"Absolutely."

"You sound guilty," accused Marinette.

"No!" Alya squeaked.

"Your voice only ever goes higher like that when you're hiding something Al, I know your tells."

"I'm sorry, M. I just, may have, slightly, put on the Ladybug how in love I thought you and Chat were and how you'd be on your third date soon. To help make Ladybug jealous and everything, but I think it might have um made a few people a little bit angry?"

"Alyaaaaaa."

"I know Mari, I'm sorry."

"You were only trying to help," Marinette sighed resignedly.

"But I'll be much more helpful if I go ahead and convince all of your fans that you're stuck in some janitorial closet together at school?"

"You're a godsend Alya."

"It's the least I could do. Now go get home before your parents text me again."

"Ahh."

"Yeah."

"Oops."

"Byyyye."

Marinette took her headphones out and sure enough, when she looked at her phone, there were multiple texts from her parents. Oh well, she'd deal with that later.

"Alya said she'd direct the fans to my school, so they should be leaving soon."

"That's good," Chat said distractedly.

"You ok?"

"Why didn't Ladybug show up, Marinette?"

"Maybe she was in the middle of something, or her 'kwami' couldn't get the message to her."

"Yeah, maybe."

"C'mon, we have places to be. My parents want to check that I haven't been mauled by a jealous fangirl."

"Right."

Marinette rolled her eyes.

"It's alright Chat, I'm sure there was a very good reason that Ladybug couldn't be your knight in shining armour."

"Neh," Chat stuck his tongue out at her.

"You make a very dashing damsel in distress, don't worry," Marinette laughed.

"Dashing, you say?" Chat flicked his hair, "I guess I am."

"Dork."

"Clawful, evil cat-slayer, you wound me!"

"We're clear."

"Hgh, you don't even feel guilty?"

"Get on with it, kitty." Marinette flicked Chat's nose.

"I hope your parents ground you when you get home," sniffed Chat dramatically.

"No, dice, I'm afraid, but if it makes you feel better we can bake macarons and you can eat them when we get home."

"Deal."

A/N:

This chapter is quite disjointed, but I figured it was better to write all the short scenes in one go than to break them up into tiny chapters.

Sorry this chapter is two weeks late, but I wanted to take a break for Christmas.

I also want to apologise for the lack of stuck-together-in-a-tiny-space-to-avoid-detection trope. Don't worry, that will come later ;)