At 15h00, Chat Noir landed on the roof of the bakery. On the table where they had tea the night before, he saw there was a note, held down by a flower pot that he had given her for Christmas last year.

'Hey minou,

I didn't know what time you planned to come by today, so hopefully, you see this note. Maman and papa asked me to make some macaron fillings today, so I'm down in the apartment kitchen. Feel free to come in and hang out with me.'

The note was signed with her name, but he loved the fact that the M from Marinette doubled as a doodle of a little crown to signify the princess nickname. He knew the macarons that were usually sold in the bakery and decided to start trying to think of puns on his way into the apartment.

He tried to be quiet as he came in and made his day down the steps to the family's kitchen where he saw Marinette standing over a few bowls of ingredients. Each of them was color-coded so that she could keep track of every flavor as she worked and there were index cards of ingredients next to each of them.

"Hey, princess," he greeted. Marinette jumped and dropped the lime that she had been zesting. His cat-like reflexes drove him to catch the lime that she dropped. "Anyone ever told you you're bad at pick-up limes?" he asked, holding it out so that she could take the fruit back from his hand.

"Anyone ever told you that line died in the 90s?" she asked in response. "I don't even think you can use one of your nine lives to bring it back." She took the fruit from his hand and went back to zesting it into the green bowl on the counter.

He sat down on one of the stools next to the island, prepared to keep her company while she worked. "I think they've probably tried," he assured, "but you know just how passionate I am about making great jokes." He pointed to the pink bowl that was filled with the passionfruit filling and Marinette rolled her eyes.

"Wow," she responded sarcastically, "first you almost made me drop my lime, and now you're lying to me about the quality of your jokes. That's just rude, minou."

"I would never lime to you, princess," he responded with a bright smile on his face. "Especially about the quality of my jokes. It isn't my fault if you can't get a rasp on how wonderful they are." He pointed to the red bowl that contained raspberry filling and Marinette had to bite her lip to keep from smiling at the joke.

"I disagree," Marinette said simply, "I think I have a pretty good idea of just how 'wonderful' your jokes are." She added a wink onto the end of her statement, teasing him about the quality of his jokes overall.

"Are you trying to hurt my coffeelings?" he accused, making a small motion with his hands to provide a visual of his heart breaking in his chest. "This is the last straw, princess, I'm starting to feel blue."

Marinette rolled her eyes at him in fond exasperation as she watched him indicate toward the coffee, strawberry, and blueberry fillings in the bowls in front of her. She kept a carefully stoic look on her face, trying not to encourage her partner too much, but he could see how hard she was working to not break.

"I thought our humors were a perfect matcha, princess," he continued dramatically, "but apparently I've been wrong this whole time. You're going to make me cry and you don't even carrot all!" Marinette couldn't help the smile that overtook her face at her partner's theatrical display.

"I caramelful lot about you and your jokes," Marinette assured and his heart started soaring in his chest. "I just can't comprehend how much of a ganache darn dork you are." Listening to her make jokes back to him made him wonder why she never made these types of jokes with him as Adrien. He couldn't help but to think about the fact that she probably only liked him as a civilian enough to get along with him for Nino and Alya's sakes.

"Oh, good," he sighed with relief, "I was starting to go a little coconuts when you weren't responding correctly to my jokes. I was starting to think something was wrong because you weren't appreciating how grape my jokes are."

"Well, I'm just glad you didn't leave too soon," she added, "you just got here and I would have to see a mango before he's even had a croissant."

"Sounds like you would have rose to the occasion to keep that from happening," he added in response and Marinette's smile was even bigger than it was a minute ago. She washed her hands and grabbed him a pain au chocolat to eat while she worked on making the fillings. There weren't many flavors left, so they both stopped making puns so Marinette could focus.

"So, how was your day?" he asked before he took a bite of the pastry she'd given him. She sort of shrugged, not planning to get into specifics unless she had to.

"I had lunch with some friends of mine," she told him. She had a little bit of an irritated expression on her face and he didn't know what had caused it. As Adrien, he thought that they'd had a nice time at lunch that day, but if Marinette disagreed, he needed to figure out what happened so that lunch would be better in the future, especially if she got accepted as an intern.

"Did something bad happen?" he asked, trying to keep from physically gulping under the intensity of her look. He bit the inside of his cheek, thankful that the action couldn't be seen on his face when she looked at him.

"I had fun with my friends," she assured before accusing, "but thanks to somebody, I was stuck thinking about stupid cat puns during the entire lunch at that catfé. It was a catastrophe! I had to keep these jokes bottled up because I'm purractically certain that my friends would think that I've gone mad if I just started spewing puns at them."

'Is that what Marinette was so distracted by at lunch?' Chat Noir found himself thinking, even though he knew he was being gently chastised chatstised by the girl in front of him. He knew he had felines for her, but was becoming more and more certain that he was falling in love with her, which just meant he needed to tell her as soon as possible.

"Since I've had to deal with puns all day thanks to you," she added after a few minutes, "you're now legally required to help me with some baking I have to do for maman and papa. Go wash your paws and I'll get everything ready for us." He couldn't help but to be awed by her and he nodded. He went to the bathroom to take off the gloves of his costume and wash his hands.


Words used as puns in order: pick-up lines, passionate/passionfruit, lie, grasp/raspberry, feelings, straw/strawberry, blue/blueberry, match, care at all, care an awful, gosh, nuts, great, man go, rose, café, catastrophe, practically, chastised, feelings