The day after her panic attack, Marinette walked into the courtyard and Adrien came over to her. His movements were slow enough that she could let him know if she was uncomfortable, but fast enough that no one thought it was suspicious. He didn't want to draw more attention to her than she was comfortable with.
He held out a small, black, cardboard box when he was close enough for her to take it. "I got this for you," he told her. The smile on his face was gentle and filled with all of the love he held for her.
"Thank you." She picked the box up off the palm of his hand and removed the lid. Inside of the box lay a watch. The face was black and the hands were green. When she took it out of the box, she could see that the strap was stainless steel.
"I noticed you've been overexerting yourself and losing sleep lately," he said, purposely ignoring the fact that spending time with Chat Noir was one of the reasons she had been staying up too late. "Maybe with this, you'll be able to keep better track of time and actually get a reasonable amount of sleep. At least, that's what I'm hoping happens."
She rose on the balls of her feet to place a kiss on his cheek. Now that she knew he was her Chat, she could take comfort in knowing how best to kiss his cheek. Her lips lingered on his skin more than they had with Adrien in the past, but less than they usually would with Chat Noir. "It's perfect," she said quietly, "I love it." She placed it on her left wrist, opposite the cat's eye bracelet. "Thank you," she struggled to find a nickname for a second because she was afraid to accidentally out his identity, "Buttercup."
Adrien's face lit up in recognition of the nickname she had chosen when she had practiced her love confession. He held out his arms, silently asking for a hug and she rushed in to wrap him tightly in hers.
On Saturday, Chat Noir showed up on Marinette's rooftop. She went to join him on the balcony with both of their mugs filled with cocoa. He held out a surprisingly large bag to her. In response to the bag, she held out his mug of cocoa to him.
"Can you please stick to small things," she jokingly begged. "I'll run out of room at this rate."
"Nope," he responded excitedly. "But I'll make you a deal." Marinette raised an eyebrow at her boyfriend, so he continued, "if it's something you'll use, I'm not going to limit the size. If it's something that's just for decoration, I'll keep it small." Marinette considered the possibilities for a moment before nodding.
"Fine," she relented, "but if I don't think I'll use it, I reserve the right to make you return it."
"Deal," Chat agreed enthusiastically. He held the bag out to her once again, now shaking it to try to tempt her into opening it. She rolled her eyes and took the bag from his hand.
She opened it and was excited to see a pink and grey keyboard to go with the Multi-mouse he had given her a few weeks ago. She wanted to be annoyed by how much he had spent, but she saw the excited look in his eyes and couldn't bring herself to be upset.
The keyboard was another thing that they had talked about the first night he had stayed for cocoa. She mentioned that her keys had been sticking and that she was considering taking it in to get professionally cleaned.
She squinted suspiciously at him. "I shouldn't have made that deal," she said. His smile was huge, obviously pleased by the outcome of their deal. She released a fondly exasperated sigh. "Thank you for the keyboard, minou." She leaned up to kiss the tip of his nose which caused him to blush. She put the keyboard down on the table next to their mugs and pulled Chat in for a long hug.
On Sunday, Adrien invited Marinette to a movie with him. She agreed and they decided to meet at the theater at 15h10. When Marinette went up to Adrien, she saw that he was holding an envelope. Her heart stopped when her feet did, about 2 meters away from him.
Adrien knew her and had connections in her dream industry. She was momentarily terrified that inside of the envelope there are tickets to a fashion show or a sneak peak at Gabriel's next line. She calmed herself down by holding the necklace and reminding herself that he's only been bringing her Chat Noir merch. She let out the breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Hey," she greeted. He smiled at her.
"Hey," he said, adding "Princess" almost silently to the greeting. "Fancy seeing you here." They exchanged les bisous. "I brought this for you." His voice was jovial and that helped Marinette to relax slightly.
She opened the envelope where she saw the picture that Alya had taken of Marinette and Chat Noir in the park. In Adrien's nice handwriting, across the bottom of the picture, he had written 'Find someone who looks at you the same way Marinette looks at her coffee.' She smiled, relieved by the ease of the gift.
She placed a kiss on his cheek, closer to his lips than she had ever dared in the past. Her heart was pounding. "This is great," she told him honestly. "I really like it." They went in to see the movie.
After the movie, Marinette left. When he got into his car, Adrien felt something in his pocket and pulled out the stiff paper. He saw that Marinette had edited his caption and he felt his heart race.
'Find someone who looks at you the same way Marinette looks at her minou.'
That night, Chat Noir showed up once again. He didn't want to give her back the picture with the caption she had fixed, so he had put that one back into his trophy and grabbed the other picture from that day.
He put it into the envelope he had used earlier and knocked on her trapdoor.
"It's open," she called out just loud enough for him to hear. He dropped through and landed on the floor near where she was working. She turned to face him and he took her hand to place a gentle kiss to the back.
"You're not getting that picture back," he told her.
"Good," she responded, "I wanted you to keep it." His heart sped once again and he had to actively refocus his attention.
"I brought you a trade," he said, extending the envelope to her. After seeing what was in the envelope earlier, Marinette was much less worried about what it contained that time.
In the handwriting that was slightly messier so it wouldn't match Adrien's, he had written in the caption 'That's what you get for falling for me, Princess' on the picture that was supposed to look like he was saving her from an Akuma.
She smiled at the picture in her hand and giggled. Her giggle was filled with warmth and affection. It filled Adrien's heart. He cupped her cheek and held her face. When he leaned in, he gave her forehead a firm, gentle kiss. She wrapped her arms around him. He detransformed in her arms, wanting to feel her without his gloves on.
"It's perfect, my knight," she said. She immediately started to look around for somewhere to put it. She knew she couldn't put it on her wall like she could with other pictures of her and her friends.
She considered putting it into her diary box and it seemed like the most reasonable place, but she knew that she wouldn't see it often if she put it there. She climbed up to her loft and put it on the shelf next to her bed. It was a spot where she would see it regularly and Chat could see it, but people who casually came into her room wouldn't see it.
She was glad that he had given her the picture because she wanted to use it as her computer background, but she was scared that it would make him uncomfortable.
"I think it looks purrfect there," he told her, following her up the loft to see where she put it. He reached out to hold her hand in his. "Mine is in a fencing trophy in my room. I'm sure my dad would have me get rid of it, especially since the picture is just a girl in my class and one of Paris' heroes where they're all but flirting in the caption. That is," he continued, "unless I, supermodel Adrien Agreste, am trying to steal Chat Noir's girlfriend."
Marinette put a hand over her heart, feigning surprise at the concept. "Adrien!" Her gasp was exaggerated. "Even if you are a supermodel who is totally my type, I could never hurt Chat Noir like that! I love him!" She moved her hand to rest on her forehead, pretending to swoon.
He took the hand that was pressed to her forehead. "Marinette, my beloved. I can make you far happier than that stray. I just need you to give me a chance to prove to you how much I love you." He placed the palm of his other hand against her cheek and she could see the corner of his lip quivering with barely contained laughter.
She giggled. "You're a goof," she informed him.
"I'm your goof," he corrected before he started chuckling alongside her. He rubbed her cheek gently with the flat of his thumb. She quickly raced forward to place a kiss to the tip of his nose.
The next day, when Marinette arrived at school, she saw Adrien talking to Nino and Alya in the courtyard. When she approached, she saw that Adrien was holding the baton tumbler that she had left in school on Friday.
"No vanilla this time," he said when she approached. "I have another tumbler in my bag if you'd prefer, though." She took her original tumbler from him with a nervous smile on her face. She didn't want to have the same reaction that she did last time, but she trusted him. She opened the lid and took a long sip.
"Chai Noir," she said, "this is ameowzing." She placed her hand on his arm and looked at him, her eyes were filled with adoration for him and he felt himself relax slightly with the fact that she still wanted the drink and the tumbler.
When he saw she was comfortable with her drink, he grabbed the back-up tumbler out of his bag and opened it. Marinette's jaw practically dropped at the sight of the grey and pink tumbler he had pulled out. She knew that it was officially licensed as a Polymouse cup, but the wink that he gave her showed that he saw it as Multimouse themed.
"I have something else for you, too," he told her. "It isn't wrapped, so I need you to close your eyes." Marinette closed her eyes and felt her heart rate increase. She was nervous that he was going to make some grand gesture and she held out one hand.
He tenderly reached out to bring her other hand parallel to the hand she held out, then he let go. She heard the zip of his backpack opening further and heard him shush their friends. She couldn't tell what kind of reaction her friends had been having, positive or negative.
He placed something papery and relatively firm in her hands. "Go ahead and open your eyes." His voice was practically a whisper when he spoke to her, sending a shiver up her spine. She opened her eyes and couldn't help but burst into a giggle fit at what she held in her hand.
It was a 'personalized' sketchbook. It had grey paper and the cover of the sketchbook was the same collage of silly Chat Noir mid-battle faces that was on the controller he had given her a few weeks prior. "Oh, Buttercup," she exclaimed through her giggles, "I love it!" She gave him a hug and he could feel her shaking from the laughter. She kissed his cheek and both of their faces lit up.
That night, Chat Noir made another appearance on her balcony. She had been sitting at her table, sketching when he landed in the chair closest to her. He placed a quick kiss on her temple.
"Hey, Princess," he greeted, smiling at the blush he had caused. He pulled a bag out of seemingly nowhere and put it on top of the sketchbook she was using. He looked at his claws as though he hadn't just interrupted something probably important that she had been working on.
She looked at him with a look of fond exasperation in her eyes. Neither of them moved for a short time until he nudged the bag closer to her. She rolled her eyes, but in response, he just pushed the bag even closer to her. She laughed a little bit and he used the tip of his claw to push the bag even closer. The bag ended up so close to her that it fell off the edge of her sketchbook.
She continued to make no moves to open the bag, so he dramatically picked it up and put it back down in front of her, acting as though she just didn't notice it in the first place. "What can I do for you tonight, Chat?" She had an innocent look on her face, but they both knew what she was doing.
"I brought you something," he told her, shaking the gift dramatically in front of her.
"A gift," she asked, pretending to be shocked, "for me?" She picked it up, acting like it was the first time she noticed it. She looked inside of it and smiled fondly at the contents of the bag. It was a new set of pencils she could use for designing and a green and black pencil case to hold them.
She turned toward him and saw the loving look in his eyes. She considered kissing him and she really wanted to, but it didn't feel right. She kissed his nose instead and reached out to hold his hand.
"Thank you, minou," she said kindly, "but remember, you don't have to keep getting things for me."
"Of course, Princess," he responded, basically brushing off the reminder. He lifted her hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. "I'll see you in the morning." She nodded with a smile on her face, then he took off to go home for the night.
On Tuesday morning, Marinette didn't see her friends in the courtyard. She checked her watch and saw that it was later than any of them would usually show up. She decided to go straight up to their classroom. She saw Adrien through the door before she saw anyone else. He didn't look like he was holding anything, so she visibly relaxed.
She opened the door and opened her mouth to greet her friends, but the words got stuck in her throat with her mouth dropped open at the sight of what was in her seat.
A Chat Noir cardboard cutout.
"Good morning, bluebell," Adrien greeted with a shit-eating grin on his face. She walked toward her seat and she saw that it was uncomfortably to scale. Her head came up to the lip of the cardboard cutout, just like she did for the real Chat Noir.
She walked around the cutout a few times, scrutinizing it. The printing was perfect, the sizing was correct, the pose was perfect, it was unsettling. It looked like her Chat Noir, but it wasn't. Her Chat Noir was sitting two feet away from her, with a realer smile than the cutout possessed.
"I hate it," she told Adrien, being very explicit about not smiling.
"I knew you would," he told her, "but he's just so dreamy, isn't he?" He leaned his cheek on one of his hands, feigning a swoon over Chat Noir. She blushed a little bit but stood her ground.
"Not nearly as dreamy as you, Hot Stuff." He opened his mouth to respond, but couldn't think of anything. Instead, his smile just widened on his face and he blushed at the compliment.
The cutout was still next to Marinette's desk and she didn't know what to do. She didn't want the cardboard cutout of him to be staring at her while she was more or less staring at him throughout their classes that day.
Marinette spent the day at school coming up with different plans to surprise Adrien in the margins of her notebook. While she was working on those, Adrien was sitting in his seat coming up with new gift ideas for her.
On Tuesday night, Chat Noir decided to stop at his girlfriend's house again. He didn't see her on the balcony, so he knocked on the trapdoor. He entered when she called out permission for him to. She spun around in her desk chair to face him, already holding two steaming mugs of hot cocoa.
His heart skipped a beat at her thoughtful gesture and he got nervous that his next gift wouldn't be good enough. She didn't see a gift on his person, so she assumed for a moment that he didn't have one for her. She assumed wrong.
He opened a pocket of his costume and extended his hand to her. He flipped over his hand so his palm faced the ceiling and unwrapped his fingers from the object in his hand. She was surprised to find that the object was a keychain. The keychain was of the two of their faces from the 'Falling for me' picture they'd taken with Alya. The keychain itself was circular.
"This way, you have something you can use to carry the key to my heart," he told her, trying to be suave. She giggled at his comment and the serious look on his face.
"I love it, minou," she told him, bringing it closer to her chest to hold fondly. "Thank you." She kissed his cheek softly. Even though she knew that it was a keychain, she didn't want to attach it to her keys where it could be scuffed up, so she put it into the small purse where Tikki hid during the day.
"How would you feel about watching a movie," she suggested, "ideally one I'll actually stay awake for."
"I'd love to," he told her.
That night, they decided to watch Spiderman: Far From Home. Again, they laid on the chaise, but they didn't even pretend they weren't cuddling that night. Her head rested on his shoulder and his head rested against the top of hers. She stayed awake that night and they talked during the whole movie.
By the time Chat Noir was getting ready to leave that night, there were storm clouds in the sky. The forecast called for a slight chance of rain that night, but they were expected to have raging thunderstorms the next day.
On Wednesday morning, Marinette was the last student in Mme. Bustier's class to show up. She looked at her watch and saw that she was running a little behind, so she figured her friends got to the classroom before she did. When she walked into the classroom a few minutes before class was supposed to start, she saw Adrien standing next to her seat. He had a huge smile on his face and his posture was more relaxed than she had seen on him as Adrien in a while.
Leaning against his shoulder, she noticed that he had a black umbrella that was covered in Chat Noir's paw prints. In reaction to seeing the umbrella, Marinette strode straight up to Adrien, grabbed his shirt collar, and placed a firm kiss square on his lips.
The entire class, including Adrien, was surprised by her action. After a moment of shock, Adrien placed his free hand around Marinette's waist and dropped the umbrella from his shoulder so that he could comfortably kiss her back. When the rest of the class saw Adrien kissing Marinette back, a few of them called out supportively.
Alya stood to the side, a little confused, taking pictures of her best friend's first kiss with the Adrien Agreste. Adrien's face was pink with a blush in the photo and Marinette's body language was oozing confidence.
"Thank you," she said to him when they broke the kiss. Adrien was slightly too dazed to respond with real words, so he nodded enthusiastically and held the umbrella out to her as an offer. She took it from his hand and looked at it for a moment. "I love it." She rose on her tiptoes to whisper into his ear, "between you and me, Multimouse Pink looks nice on you, too."
She sat in her seat, and Nino stood up to guide Adrien back to his. It took a few minutes for Adrien to come back to reality after his kiss with Marinette.
On Wednesday night, Multimouse showed up to Adrien's window. She knocked gently, matching how he usually knocked on her trapdoor. He rushed over to the large window to open it for her.
"Mari- Prin- Multi- Sourisette," he decided was the right thing to call her in greeting, "what are you doing here?" His face was teetering between whether to interpret her showing up as being a really good thing or a really, really bad thing.
"I need your help, Adrien," she said, trying to be playful and let him know that the 'situation' wasn't as urgent as her words implied. He led her over to her couch with him and she sat down next to him.
"Of course, Sourisette. What do you need me to do?"
"I need advice," she said quietly. She looked up slightly in order to meet his eyes and exhaled deeply. "I've started dating someone and I don't know how to tell them a secret of mine." His look at her was filled with love and support. He reached out to place a supportive hand on hers.
"A secret? What secret would you have? A secret recipe for pastries?" He chuckled. He gave her hand a fond squeeze, trying to give her as much support as he could. He was trying to seem relaxed, but the knowledge of Marinette keeping a secret from him caused his heart to race.
She giggled in response to his suggestion before she continued, "the person I'm dating, they know that I used to be a hero. Between you and me, I let my secret identity slip on purpose." She winked at him. His mouth opened in a slight gape. "What they don't know is that I still am a hero, more often than just tonight…"
Marinette released an anxious sigh before she finished. "I have no idea how to tell the person I'm dating that I, Multimouse, am actually Ladybug." Adrien's breathing stopped. She didn't know what she could do to help, so she just sat for a minute. She held his hand in hers and her heart raced from his lack of reaction.
After what felt like hours, Adrien responded, "You're Ladybug?" His voice was filled with awe and admiration, but not surprise. He looked her over as though inspecting her would provide proof of her claim. "Ma-Multimouse is Ladybug?" She nodded.
"Yeah," she almost squeaked. "Is that okay?" He didn't say anything in response, so she started speaking rapidly, "I know I found out you liked me before you wanted me to, but I really didn't mean to." She winced. "I don't even know why I called myself your girlfriend when we were talking that day, but you told me how you felt about the other me. I'd cared about Chat Noir for such a long time at that point, but I didn't even know if I had feelings for him." Her heart pounded in her chest. "I spent so much of that night trying to figure out how I felt about you and trying to figure out if I should give up on Adrien just when he was starting to notice me."
Adrien pulled Multimouse in for a soft kiss. When their kiss was released, Adrien leaned his forehead against hers. "I've always noticed you, Princess." He placed a hand on her face, cupping her cheek gently. "It took a while for me to fall in love with you, but I barely know why. If Ladybug hadn't stolen my heart so quickly, I'm certain I would have fallen for you in seconds. You're the most amazing, compassionate, creative, supportive person I've ever met, and I've known that about Marinette for years. Now I just get to add to that how clever, strong, resilient, and brave I've known Ladybug is since I'd met her."
A single tear slipped down Multimouse's masked face, and he wiped it away gently with his thumb. "I love you," she practically whispered to him. "Adrien, Chat Noir, Buttercup, Minou, Hot Stuff, Chaton, I've loved you since you gave me your umbrella and I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you. I want to be your partner for the rest of our lives."
"Well," he said with a grin on his face, "it just so happens, Marinette, Ladybug, Multimouse, Buginette, Princess, my lady, I have loved you since you stood up to Hawkmoth for the first time and I plan to keep you as my partner furever. I can only think of one thing that would make this relationship purrfect."
"And what is that one thing?" Her eyes were looking into his and their lips were centimeters away from each other.
"If Adrien and Marinette go public with their relationship." His heart raced in his chest and he was certain she could feel it through the layers of his clothes and her suit.
"I suppose they can, but in that case, that I have a condition myself." She paused what she was saying for a moment before the look in his eyes urged her to continue speaking, "Chat Noir has to agree to go out with Ladybug."
"Of course, Princess," he responded, bringing their lips together for one more kiss.