A few minutes later, Marinette got a text in response and opened it up to see what her roommate had responded. 'No promises. I'm wearing pants, though. See you soon. ' Marinette rolled her eyes at the text, but didn't draw attention to it.

A short while later, they came up to a simple building, one that Adrien could half-recognize as the building they'd picked her up from that morning. It wasn't as modern as other buildings on the block, but Marinette and Alya liked it because it had a relatively big kitchen with an oven and a small dishwasher.

Marinette took out her keys when they approached the front door. She unlocked the external door and stepped inside. He followed, shaking off the umbrella before he brought it inside. "Hope you don't mind some stairs, we're on the 3rd floor."

"Bring it on, Buginette," he said. The stairs spiraled up the center of the building with a landing on each floor that led to the apartments.

"So, maybe I should warn you that my roommate is the Ladyblogger," she mentioned with a blush as they walked across the landing for the second floor. "She's given up on finding our identities at this point, but our apartment is kind of 'conspiracy theorist-y'." He chuckled at the description.

On the third floor, Marinette went to the door on the right side. She unlocked the door and opened it slowly with a call of "Alya. I'm home." She completely opened the door and walked inside. Adrien followed her in and looked around.

'Conspiracy Theorist-y' was an apt description for the apartment. The first area he could see was the dining room that had a corkboard on the wall that had red string attached to evidence like 'has money,' 'wish has to be serious,' 'sounds older, M. Dupain guessed mid-late 40s based on similarly aged customer voices,' 'has too much free time,' 'has a female with him close enough to be Mayura (wife or employee?)'

The walls of the apartment were also covered in a timeline that included every Akuma, except for the Scarlet Moth Fiasco that was too difficult to accurately track. He was drawn to look at the information she compiled. He was a fan of the Ladyblog, but there was something different about seeing a physical representation of the timeline.

"The Switch is set up in the living room," she told him, looping her arm through his again to lead him to sit on the couch. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"No, thank you," he said sitting down. Marinette picked up the remote to switch HDMI inputs then grabbed both pro controllers and handed one to Adrien. He smiled at the black spotted red pro controller in his hand then looked at the green and black pro controller she was holding. He felt his heart momentarily flutter.

"Mari," Alya called out coming into the living room. "Nino wants to know if he can wait out the storm over he… there's a supermodel on our couch."

"I told you I was bringing a guest," Marinette said in response.

"You know as well as I do that a 'guest' when it comes to you is an old classmate or your parents 99% of the time. I'm still not over the time a guest meant Jagged and Fang." She shot Marinette a glare with no genuine ill intent.

"I'm Adrien," he introduced himself, extending a hand to Alya.

"I know. I'm a reporter. My job is to know who people are. What I don't know is how Marinette got you here at… 9h07 in the morning."

"She invited me to play Mecha Strike," he told her excitedly and Alya smiled in response.

"We'll come back to this discussion. Marinette, can Nino come over to hang out during the storm?"

"Of course. He should hurry though if he doesn't want to get caught in the worst of it." Alya sent him a text.

"I'm going to run downstairs to the market to get some stuff to cook, Adrien, would you like to stay for dinner tonight?"

"Oh, Marinette said she has plans, so I wasn't planning to."

"Her plans are with me and you're welcome to join us, especially since my boyfriend will be there too." He looked at Marinette to get her opinion. She just smiled and in response, he nodded politely.

"I would love to be there, as long as I'm not intruding." Alya nodded. She grabbed their reusable grocery bags from the hook by the door.

"I'll be back soon. If Nino gets here before I do, please let him in." She hurried out the door, checking her digital cookbook to decide what to make.

"So, that's Alya and she's dating Nino?"

"Yeah, she's dating Nino, who you probably know as DJ Bubbler. He apparently showed you Kitty Section's music. We should probably come up with a story of how we know each other because I don't think they'll accept that they introduced us…" Marinette bit on her thumb nail as a nervous habit.

"Right. So, funny thing… DJ Bubbler might or might not have walked in on me transforming when we first met."

"Oh, my kwami. Are you telling me that Nino knows who you are and you didn't even know his first name?"

"I'm not good under pressure. I might have run away from him." Marinette dropped her head into her hand.

"We'll circle back to that later. Alya knows my identity after I kind of panicked to her about some stuff a few years back. Do you think they'll put it together when they see the two of us hanging out like we've known each other for years instead of knowing each other for a few hours?" He shrugged.

"They're your friends," he reminded her, "I think you probably know them better than I do." She nodded in agreement.

"You're right. We should probably just tell them. Unless you're suddenly wanting to leave. I don't want you to, just to clarify, it just seems kind of like the only way to protect both of our identities."

"I don't want to leave yet," he admitted shyly. She acknowledged his answer and considered if there was anything she should do before Alya and Nino got back, she landed on no and the two loaded up UMS to play a few rounds before the others showed up.

After about 15 minutes, Marinette heard a knocking on the door and stood up to let Nino in. Nino walked through the door and the first thing he heard was Adrien's excited call of, "you have a name!" Nino didn't think the claim made any sense, but it made him laugh.

"Nice to see you again, too, Adrien," he greeted, "I'm Nino, but Nettie probably told you that already. Is Alya still at the market?" Marinette nodded. He brought his backpack into Alya's room and set up his laptop to do some work. Nino immediately took his phone out of his bag and texted Alya.

'So, apparently you and I aren't the only heroes here. Hurry back. We should talk about this asap.'

'I already knew, I'm sorry I kept it from you, babe. I'll be up there in 5. Meet me in the kitchen?' He watched the time on his clock change for the first 4 minutes, then left her bedroom to go into the kitchen. He walked in just as Marinette opened the door for Alya.

"How did you find out about her," Alya asked in time with Nino's question, "How did you find out about him?"

"Him?" Alya just about shrieked her question while Nino questioned, "her?"

The two looked over to Marinette and Adrien, silently demanding an explanation with their eyes.