Marinette was accepted as Gabriel's newest intern a few weeks after she submitted her application. She got the email with the contract attached to it and everything. Nathalie had told Adrien, but Marinette hadn't. She hadn't told Chat Noir or Adrien about the fact that she had been accepted, but she knew that she needed to accept or reject the offer by the end of the week.

Chat Noir left Marinette plenty of chances to tell him her news, but she didn't say anything about the program when he was over, so he decided to change tactics when the final date to respond was coming up. He landed on her balcony on Thursday evening, earlier than he usually would. He arrived at close to 18h00.

Marinette was sitting on her balcony, working on her tablet with an earbud in. She had a small bowl in front of her that she was occasionally grabbing crackers out of it. He sat down in one of the chairs across the table from her and picked up one of the bright orange goldfish crackers she was snacking on.

He looked at it and seemed surprised by the snack. It seemed like she usually had sweet snacks, usually cookies, instead of savory snacks. He looked suspicious of the cracker in his hand. "You can eat it, you know," Marinette told him with a little giggle. "It isn't poissoned or anything." He tossed it into the air and caught it in his mouth.

"Hey, did you ever offishially hear back about the internship? I thought you said you were supposed to hear back atrout whether you got accepted or not by now." He knew there was a chance she'd call him out on the fact that she never told him that, but he knew she had been super focused on designing and probably couldn't say for certain what she'd told him or not.

"Oh," she reacted. She swiped to the notification bar of her tablet and checked the date. "I guess you're right. I should have heard from them recently. I just haven't checked the email that I submitted the application under in a while. I guess I just lost track of time." She wondered if her claim was believable or not.

She was planning to send a rejection email, but she now knew that Chat wouldn't let that happen once he knew she was accepted by the company. She was feeling nervous as she opened the email app on her tablet and she put it down onto the table next to her as she waited for the emails to load.

"My hands are feeling kind of clammy," she admitted shyly. She pulled her knees into her chest and a blush overcame her face. Marinette had read the email a dozen times, marking it as unread afterward each time. She was thankful she'd been doing that because she didn't know how Chat would react to her getting accepted and not telling him.

"Well?" he asked, excitement clear in his voice. "You can't just leave me perched on the edge of my seat, princess. Did you get accepted into the internship or not?" She'd never thought his puns would be able to help her, but they were.

"Mahi-mahybe,," she responded, biting her lip. She was glad he was there with her. As overwhelmed as she was about the fact that he was about to learn that she was accepted to the internship. She wouldn't have rather been there with anyone else. If anyone was going to talk her into accepting the internship, it was him.

"Well, tang," he responded. "That's not a very helpful answer. Are you trying for an angler? Don't make me read the email myself." They both knew that the threat was empty, and it was just silly enough to make her giggle.

"Cod," she said through her giggles, "all of your puns are going to give me such a haddock one of these days." Marinette lifted her hand to rub at her temples to pretend to stave off the headache she claimed to be developing. He stuck out his tongue at her.

"Weel? What's the verdict? Are you going to be Gabriel's newest intern or not?" She blushed brightly and nodded.

"I got accepted," she said quietly. He could see that she was nervous about it, but he was always happy to shower her in praise, especially over something as important to her as this internship.

"Of course you did," he responded confidently, "those judges would've had to be morayns to reject you, princess." She felt her heart pounding in her chest, knowing she should be excited about getting accepted, but she was mostly just feeling stressed about the situation.

"What if I can't do it, though?" Marinette asked quietly, "what if I was accepted as a mistake and they just sent someone else's acceptance email to me and sent my rejection to someone who actually deserved to be accepted?"

He placed a hand onto each of her arms, gently holding the area of her bicep. "You're only worrying yourself," he responded quietly, trying to not overwhelm her. He gently rubbed across that part of her arms and Marinette felt her heart involuntarily skip a beat as she looked into her partner's supportive eyes.

"I know you've been floundering lately, because of the commission that you messed up, but they want you there, Marinette." She couldn't remember the last time he used her name off the top of her head, it seemed like that was the main indicator of when he was being serious about something because his puns were definitely *not* an indicator of his seriousness.

He, mentally, added that the company wasn't the only one that wanted her around, but he kept that to himself because he knew she already had a lot going on mentally. "Gabriel Agreste doesn't choose subpar interns, there have been years when he didn't choose any interns because no one in the candidate pool deserved it."

Marinette didn't know why Chat knew that off the top of his head, but she decided it would be better not to ask about it. She didn't want to learn too much about him as a civilian, so she decided to assume he only knew because he was doing research for pretty much this exact conversation. It wouldn't have surprised her if he did.

"I know you're afraid of letting people down again, but you won't," he assured. "You're one of the smartest people I know, and you've already come so far in the last few years. I believe in you, and I know that probably doesn't actually help, but I'm here and you can talk to me about anything you need to. You know that, right?"

She'd never seen him as serious as he was in that moment and the glint in his eye made her heart feel like it was pounding in her chest. She blushed and nodded, moments away from tears welling in her eyes. "Thank you, minnow," she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear, even with his enhanced hearing. She moved to place a quick kiss on his cheek before she lifted her tablet to draft an acceptance email.

"Help me figure out how to approach my response?" she requested. He sidled up to her with a smile on his face.

"Of course, purrincess," he responded with a soft smile on his face. "I'm so happy for you. You deserve this. You're gonna do great, plus if you do need to sign an NDA or something for this one, you should still be at least able to talk to Adrien about it. He's your friend, right?"

This was one of the first times that having Adrien referred to as her friend didn't hurt and she was proud of that, but she wasn't going to tell Chat that. She nodded and smiled instead. "Yeah," she responded, "he's a good friend of mine." She couldn't help the big smile on her face as she and her partner worked together on the email.


Words used as puns in order: poisoned (poisson is the french word for fish), officially, about, clammy, perched, maybe, dang, angle, god, headache, well, morons, floundering, minou, approach, princess