After a few days, Marinette finished cutting out all the panels for her dress and handed Chat Noir a small bag that had off cuts so he could figure out his outfit. Marinette surprised him with how quickly she was able to progress with the dress.
On Friday of the second week since he asked her, Chat Noir showed up with an armful of plain black garment bags. She didn't look up when he came in, so she jumped slightly at the 'thump' that the bags elicited when they landed on her chaise. She stopped sewing and turned around in her chair and her jaw dropped at the sight of the garment bags.
"Okay, I can't decide," he said with no preamble. "I have like 3 dark blue suits and a handful of grey shirts. I also brought a grey suit and some blue shirts in case you wanted our color schemes to contrast. I just really don't want to let you down." He was pacing back and forth across her floor and Marinette could hear the nervousness in his voice. She walked over to him and hugged him.
"It's okay, Félix," she said quietly. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her in response. "I'm sure anything you would've chosen would be great, but if you want me to look at the choices with you, I will." He took a deep breath and grabbed the first bag. He walked over to where her dress was and opened the garment bag.
They spent all of that night deciding his outfit. Marinette had him try it on and he put it on with her motorcycle helmet with the visor down so she couldn't see his face or perfectly styled hair. While they were packing up the suits, Marinette couldn't help but to notice the tags, 'Agreste' read one of the blue suits and the grey suit, 'Armani' read another. She really didn't want to read the last one.
"So, when were you going to tell me you know fashion?" She crossed her arms in front of her. "Two Agreste suits and an Armani? Who are you? Who has that much nice clothing?"
"Do you want to know," he asked. He was feeling comfortable enough that if she asked, he would tell her anything she wanted to know, short of saying the words 'Adrien Agreste.' "I don't want you to learn more than you want to know." She bit her lip in consideration before she nodded.
"I don't need to know everything, but if I'm going with someone who my fancier classmates might know, I feel like I should know that going in."
"No one will recognize me, Princess. I'm pretty different as a civilian, so it would be unlikely for someone to be able to tell who I am. My family has an interest in fashion, so I have a lot of clothing and I don't get to break out the formal wear very often." He was back in his hero outfit and his suits were packed away with the one he was going to wear in the bag on top.
"Okay," she relented. "I just really don't want you to get caught, Félix." He kissed the top of her head then he picked up all the garment bags.
"I won't," he told her. "You don't have to worry about me. Thank you for helping me choose a suit." He smiled widely at her before he jumped through her trapdoor and headed home.
Unsurprisingly, Chat Noir didn't have an armful of garment bags when he showed up on Thursday the next week. Instead, he showed up with the mask that she had gotten for him. It was the same plain white as it was when she first gave it to him, but his name was slightly faded from how often he ran his fingers over it.
"What do you want me to do with the mask? I figured white doesn't go that well with either of our looks." He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and she could almost see a blush on his face.
"Yeah," she said, "white isn't really part of the color scheme I've been working with." She took the mask from his hand. "Have you tried it on? Does it fit?" He nodded enthusiastically.
"It's perfect," he recalled from the day she bought it, "thank you for picking it up for me." The mask was surprisingly comfortable.
"Great," she said, "I was really hopeful, but I can't watch you try it on, obviously. If you leave it here, I'll get around to decorating it in the next few days." He placed it down on her desk and looked at the dress' progress.
It looked gorgeous and he was excited to see it on her. He understood why she got the tulle and it really pulled the look together. He loved the sparse gems placed throughout the skirt.
"It's looking lovely, Marinette," he said with a genuine smile on his face. "We're going to be the best dressed couempaw/emle at the ball." She tried to hide her chuckle and shook her head at how bad his joke was.
"With your jokes, people are going to be too afraid to get near us to even look at our outfits," she informed him. She turned to him to stick out her tongue before she turned back around to get back to sewing.
"Whatever you say, princess," he said with a smile. He took his seat on her chaise and they co-existed while they worked independently. Marinette didn't know what Chat was working on, but she heard the gentle scratching of his pencil on paper and it made her feel happy to have him nearby. Occasionally, one of them would start a conversation, but the general silence was comfortable.
"I'm not going to be here tomorrow," she told him. "I'm ahead of schedule on the dress and I need to find accessories. I'm planning to spend the night at Alya's tomorrow after we go shopping. I'll take the masks with me because they'll be easy to work on without my machine. His shoulders dropped disappointedly, but she didn't see it because she was focused on the dress.
"You're abandoning me," he asked sadly, "what will I do if I can't spend time with my date to the ball." He draped his hand over his forehead dramatically. He was genuinely a little sad to not spend time with her, but he didn't want her to know that so he just played up the theatrics.
"I know. You're going to be so bored." She smiled at him. "I'm certain that you'll survive until Saturday night, though. And, on Saturday, I'll even let you see the dress on me for the first time." She winked at him.
"Are you sure? You don't want to save the reveal for the night of the dance?" She giggled quietly.
"It isn't a wedding, Ch-Félix," she said, correcting herself, "you're allowed to see me in my dress before. Plus, you've seen the dress. You literally just talked about it a few seconds ago."
"You're right. I've been so excited to see the dress on you since the beginning. I would wait for the night of the dance if I had to, but I really can't wait to see what it looks like on you." She smiled widely at him.
"You sound almost half as excited about my dress as I am," she joked.
"Truly an understatement, Princess," he said. He went over to her to say bye for the night. He kissed her head. "I'll see you on Saturday."
"I'll see you then, Félix." She blushed when she felt the contact of his lips on her head.
"Can I get your number," he asked without thinking? She thought about it for a minute and wrote it out on a post-it note before handing it to him.
Her handwriting was hasty, not the delicate cursive she used to write his name on his mask. He wasn't sure that he could read all of the numbers, but he did already have her number saved in his real phone.
"Saturday," she said before focusing her attention back onto the dress.
"I'll text you," he told her, leaping through the trapdoor. He left to head home with a stupid smile on his face. When he arrived, he pulled an old phone out of a drawer and started it up.
He went into their phone plan and added another phone number. It wasn't the first time he had done something like that, so he was sure he wouldn't get caught.
He typed out a text. He sent it to his own phone first to make sure the phone number wasn't going to expose his identity. When it came through from a different number, he sent it to Marinette.
'Get some sleep soon, Princess. - F' There was a picture of a cat attached to the text. He went to bed and heard a small buzz come from the phone.
'No.' Her answer was simple, but had an attachment that was a picture that was clearly taken from her lofted bed of the dress on the mannequin for the night.
He smiled at the text then locked the screen and put the phone on his nightstand, charging overnight.