"Looks like the Chat's out of the bag," Adrien said.
"You're spot on there, minou," she responded with a quiet groan. She turned toward her friends. "Rena Furtive, Carapace, none of this information is allowed to be shared with anyone outside of us four, do you both understand me?"
Alya and Nino nodded in unison at the Ladybug tone that Marinette hadn't taken outside of battle since she was their class representative when they were still in collège.
"So, you're," Nino trailed off, pointing to Marinette. From next to him, Alya pointed to Adrien.
"And he's," Alya added, trailing off after a moment. Marinette and Adrien both nodded.
"Yeah, we were planning to tell you once Alya got home from the market, but you guys put it together faster than I expected you to," Marinette admitted. She bit her thumb nail once again, trying to consider any repercussions from them figuring it out instead of being told. "Honestly, I'm kind of impressed at how quickly you two got it."
"Your furiends are quite smart, Bug," Adrien said, causing Marinette to roll her eyes lovingly at him. "Purrsonally I would have expected them to take a few puns to put it together at least." He nudged her side a little to try to coax a reaction from her, but she pointedly did her best to keep the smile off her face while he could see it.
"You put together Viperion's identity after meeting him from like 2 meters away for 30 seconds," Marinette reminded him, looking to meet his eyes, "it isn't unheard of to think that they'd be able to figure things out after a short period of time, too. They are our oldest teammates, after all. I'm more impressed that you spent hours with Pigella and Purple Tigress without any suspicions."
"Oh," she added, looking towards Alya and Nino after a moment, "that reminds me. Guess who Adrien modeled with this morning." Marinette tried to not get too excited, not wanting to give the answer away too quickly.
"Who?" Alya scoffed a laugh. "Was it Lila? Maybe Chloé?"
"No, definitely not Lila. And not Chloé either. Adrien's co model was the one and only Juleka Couffaine! I got to spend part of the shoot catching up with Luka and Rose before it got rained out." Alya couldn't help but to laugh.
"I'm sorry," she said after a moment, "are you seriously telling me that you spent part of your first date with Adrien catching up with your ex? What happened to all that Ladybug Luck you've told me about?"
"It wasn't a date," Adrien and Marinette both corrected in unison. "Adrien just offered to take me to his shoot to be nice. It was a nice gesture from a good friend." Adrien, on the other hand, was blushing over the fact that Marinette apparently had dated Luka in the past. "Plus, Luka and I only dated for what, like 2 weeks in collège? That was almost 7 years ago and he, apparently, already knew about our identities."
"He knew he was dating Ladybug and kept it to himself," Alya barely kept from shouting.
"No, no," Marinette corrected quickly. "He just implied that he knew our identities while we were talking at the shoot. Apparently, Adrien and I have 'resonating songs' now? I don't know what that means, but he's happy for me. Happy for us, I guess. I think he found out during a Second Chance and kept it to himself until we figured it out, too."
"I'm sorry. Luka Couffaine is a hero," Nino asked, "Luka is Viperion? Pigella and Purple Tigress, those are Rose and Juleka, aren't they? This whole time. Alya, you're acting like you knew this. How many of our school friends are heroes?" He looked at Marinette, but she averted her eyes to look back to Adrien.
"So," she began, "anyway. I was wondering if the two of you wanted to play Mecha Strike with us. We can talk about hero stuff later, right? It's not like we have to tell all of our secrets right now, right?" She went around to the other side of the couch and picked up her controller once again.
"Nettie, you can't just drop half of your bombshells and then just go back to playing video games," Nino told her with an exhausted look on his face. He stared at her and half-heartedly held back Alya from going over to join Marinette on the couch. Adrien sat down on Marinette's right side, not wanting to insert himself where he didn't belong.
"Nino," she began, "you know that the more identities you know, the more danger you and your family could be in. That's how it's always been."
"None of the temporary heroes are going to put Alya or I in more danger than knowing the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir," he retorted. Marinette leaned back on the couch and bit her lip, considering how much he… how much they all deserved to know, now that their four identities were out in the open.
"Fine," she sighed. "Okay, so you guys know us, yourselves, Queen Bee, obviously. Alya and I just told you guys about Viperion, Purple Tigress, and Pigella. Uh, Kim became King Monkey when we were still in collège. He originally found the Miraculous at a party when the old guardian was there." She kind of counter off the heroes on her fingers.
"Pegasus is Max," she added. She considered the older heroes before she added the newer heroes. "Marinette was Multimouse before Polymouse appeared, and Adrien accepted the snake Miraculous before it was given to Luka."
"Aspik," Adrien chipped in. The three looked at him, silently asking for more explanation. "My snake hero form was called Aspik. I told you that during one of the circuits, but you probably don't remember."
Marinette unconsciously moved an arm around him to offer him comfort as they sat on the couch. She scratched small circles on his back and he relaxed into the touch, not used to such casual levels of affection.