Ever since Valentine's Day, Marinette and Adrien started spending as much time together as they could. Adrien started to come over whenever he didn't have work meetings in the evenings and Adrien would cook with Marinette any weekend that he had available. By the middle of March, he knew that she was busy with making Alya's wedding dress and trying to get started on designing a new line for MDC.

Adrien would often show up with dinner when he came by and Marinette always felt bad about it because it felt like she was taking advantage of his friendship and money. Marinette had a lot of detailed hand stitching to do and didn't want to sit at her desk anymore, so she went out to sit on her couch one day while he was there.

"Do you want to watch something while I work?" Adrien had brought a bunch of paperwork with him to do while Marinette was making the dress, but it felt wrong to be doing that while Marinette was sitting right next to him, so he put his files back into his briefcase and stretched out his back.

"Sure, what do you want to watch?" She turned on her tv and gave him the controller so that he could be in charge of what to watch. She sat on her knees doing the hand stitching and Adrien put an arm around her. She snuggled up toward him a little bit and Adrien seemed to enjoy it, so she didn't try to stop herself.

She had barely noticed what he had put on and he seemed to not really notice either. After about 30 minutes of her doing work with his arm around her, he drifted off to sleep. She didn't want to move, loving the comfort she felt in his arms. Eventually, her eyes started drifting closed and she couldn't help but to want to fall asleep in his arms.

He put his arm around her first. She justified that that meant he was probably comfortable with the closeness, right? She wasn't sure, but she was hopeful. She got up and turned off the light then switched off the TV. She placed the dress onto the table where it couldn't be accidentally stepped on then moved back to her spot under his arm where she almost immediately fell asleep.

The next morning, Adrien woke up with a faceful of Marinette's hair. His phone's alarm was going off in his pocket, obnoxiously reminding him that he needed to get dressed for the interview he had scheduled with Nadja that morning. Alya had offered to cover the interview instead, but he knew it was going to be a lot of juicy details and that wasn't what Alya liked to do.

Adrien grabbed a paper from his briefcase and after making sure it wasn't significant, he wrote a short note 'Sorry for crashing last night. -A ' He placed it on top of Alya's wedding dress, making sure there was no risk of the ink staining the dress. He kissed the top of Marinette's head, then he left.

'Feel free to crash here whenever. I promise I don't mind. Just make sure Plagg doesn't miss you too much. ' Marinette's text came through at a much more reasonable time, just before 09h30. He smiled at the text, focusing on the little heart that came with the message.

He wondered if it was too early to tell her that he loved her, because he did. If he was being honest, he probably loved her for a while even before they started dating, but there was something about falling asleep and waking up with her. It had been the best he'd slept in a while, despite the fact that he had been sitting up on the couch.

He had been smiling down at his phone as Nadja came over to greet him for the interview. Their interview was supposed to be at 09h30 and would be printed in the next copy of Paris du Jour. The plan was for him to officially talk about his time as the new CEO of Agreste and the charity soccer match that he was going to take part in during April, but he knew that Nadja would also ask about relationships unless he specifically said ahead of time that he didn't want her to. This was the first time in his life that he was hopeful that she would ask him about his relationship status.

Nadja shook his hand and led him to the part of the room that was specifically selected for the interview. She didn't ask any questions about Gabriel, which Adrien found himself appreciating more than he thought he would. She did ask a few questions about the business side of Agreste, then she got a few details about the charity soccer game, including which team he was on and the names of a few of his teammates. It took longer than he had expected for her to finally ask him about his relationship status.

"I'm seeing someone," he told her, with a huge smile on her face. "I've been with them for about a month at this point, but I don't think that we're ready to go public with our relationship yet. I really care about them, but I know that they've been working hard to make a name for themselves and I don't want them to think I'm just letting them ride my coattails to success."

Nadja was happy that Adrien finally had someone good in his life. She had been interviewing him occasionally for years and this was the happiest she had ever seen him. "How did you two meet?"

"If you'd believe it, we met at a coffee shop. Totally simple, totally not how I expected to meet someone I'd end up dating. I was going there to surprise a friend after I said I couldn't meet with him and there weren't any available seats in the café, so I asked if I could sit at their table. They agreed and we hit it off. It turned out, they were there to meet with the same friend I was planning to surprise." Adrien added a chuckle to the end, thinking about his initial meeting with Marinette. Nadja could see the loving look in his eyes as he spoke about his significant other.

"After that, we had been friends for a few months. I asked them out on Valentine's Day and I could barely believe that they said yes to me. I showed up at their apartment with 5 yellow roses with red tips, the kind of roses that mean that you're developing feelings for someone. When they accepted the flowers, I felt like the happiest man in the world and they've been on my mind ever since."

"You sound happy," Nadja concluded. "What do you like about them?"

"They're motivated," Adrien said almost immediately, "they've worked so hard to be where they are now and it's such an inspiration to me. It's also just comfortable to talk to them, or not talk to them. Sometimes we'll just sit in silence doing our own thing, but it's so nice to just be there with them. I'd never met someone before who was genuinely just so filled with love and warmth like they are and I don't know how I've made it 26 years of my life without someone like that. Plus, they get along really well with my cat and that means a lot to me. I don't know what I would do if they didn't."

"They sound like quite the partner," Nadja said and Adrien found himself smiling at the notion of Marinette being his partner. He liked that idea. "When you two are ready to go public with your relationship, I hope I'll get the chance to meet your special someone."

He gave Nadja one of his model smiles and reached out to shake hands with her. "I'm looking forward to that, Nadja." The interview was over and Adrien went to the back room where he had gotten ready for the day. The lights of the interview were messing with his eyes and he chose to take his contacts out and spend the rest of the day in his glasses instead.

He left the back room and heard a familiar voice coming from the side of the set of the interview. "I finished Manon's dress for the wedding," he heard Marinette say. He looked over to her voice and saw her standing there speaking with Nadja. She was holding out a black garment bag with her MDC logo on the front.

Nadja took the bag from Marinette's hands and was excited to see what it looked like. She held the bag between both of her hands and Marinette unzipped the bag and took out the dress. It was a pretty burgundy color with a square cut neckline and an a-line skirt. She had brought some of the silk she'd used for the bowtie to the fabric store when she chose the color for Manon's dress and decided that the colors would pair well together.

"Oh, Marinette," Nadja said excitedly, "it's gorgeous. Thank you so much for fitting it into your schedule. Give me one moment to get my checkbook. How much do I owe you?" Marinette told her the price for the dress and Nadja began to write the check, just in time for Adrien to approach.

"Hey, Marinette," he greeted, coming over to the two women, "what are you doing here?"

"Adrien," Marinette greeted excitedly. "Long time, no see. I didn't expect you to be here. Nadja's daughter is going to Alya and Nino's wedding with Noël and asked me to make a dress for it. What about you, what brings you to the station?"

"I just finished an interview with Nadja." The two were wrapped up in their own conversation and Nadja could see the smile on his face was the same as the one he'd had while talking about his partner. She was slowly becoming certain that Marinette was Adrien's secret significant other, but she didn't want to draw attention to their blossoming relationship if they weren't comfortable with it. Now that she knew it was Marinette, she understood why Adrien, CEO of Agreste, didn't want it to seem like she was trying to become a fashion designer by attaching herself to the name that his father had made.

Nadja wrote Marinette her check and folded it in half. When there was a brief pause in their conversation, Nadja stepped in and handed the check to Marinette. "Manon is going to look beautiful in her dress. Thank you so much for this, dear." Marinette exchanged les bisous with Nadja and smiled brightly.

"It was my pleasure," Marinette said politely. "I'm always happy to help out a friend. I can't wait to see her wearing it in November. In the meantime, please let me know if I need to adjust it at all. It was lovely seeing you again, Nadja." Nadja had work to do, so she excused herself from the two.

Marinette didn't even think about why Adrien would have gotten interviewed by Nadja because she was so surprised by him being there in general. They walked out of the building together, still talking. Marinette was planning to get started on Nino's tuxedo that day, but now that she's run into Adrien, she was kind of hopeful that she'd be able to spend time with him that afternoon instead.

Adrien joined Marinette in stopping to get groceries on the walk back to her apartment and they got ingredients for a soup recipe from her Maman that she was planning to make that night. Adrien thought that the soup sounded great and Marinette offered for him to join her.

Adrien accepted and helped her carry the groceries home before excusing himself to 'check on Plagg,' which he did, but not before going to the Dupain-Cheng bakery to pick up a loaf of fresh baked bread for them to have with dinner and a single pink rose. Again, he made sure Plagg couldn't come close enough to the flower to destroy it while Adrien changed into a pair of jeans and a polo.

Marinette didn't expect Adrien to have changed before he came over. When he arrived at her apartment, she definitely wasn't expecting for a 'Tom and Sabine's' bag to be extended in offering toward her. She smiled at the bag, then looked at what he was wearing. It was nicer than the t-shirts she was used to seeing him in but less nice than the suit he had been wearing earlier.

It made her blush at the knowledge that he was wearing a nice polo while she was standing in the doorway in leggings and an oversized pullover sweatshirt. She was still wearing a bra because she didn't want to risk making him uncomfortable, but that wasn't enough to make up for the fact that she probably looked like a mess regardless.

She opened the bag and saw that it was a baguette. She could tell from the smell that it was made recently. "Thank you for the bread," she said, a smile coming over her face. She placed the bread onto the counter and leaned up onto her toes to reach the soup bowls from her cabinet and Adrien could see a small hint of her skin between the waistband of her leggings and the bottom seam of the shirt. "I don't have any wine, but I have water, juice, or milk."

"A glass of water would be wonderful," he told her with a little smile. She handed him one of the bowls. "Oh, I also have something else for you too." She was back on the flats of her feet and held out a soup bowl to her while he held out a single pink rose to her. She felt her face grow hot at the sight of the rose. He took the bowl first, and she took the rose in her now empty hand.

"Help yourself to some soup," she said, turning slightly away from him. He ladelled some soup into the bowl and by the time he turned around, he saw that Marinette had already poured them each some water, found a thin vase for the rose, and was cutting pieces of the baguette. She had kept the heel for herself and in the month they'd been dating, he'd learned that it was her favorite part of the loaf.

He picked up a few slices of the bread and placed them on the edge of his bowl. He brought his soup and water to the dining table and she followed closely behind him with her own. She sat down in the chair next to him and he began asking about Nino's tux and Alya's dress. He also asked about how she knew Nadja and she asked him about Plagg and asked if there was anything new going on with him in general.

"Something new with me is that last night I got the best night of sleep that I've gotten in quite a while, if I'm being honest," he told her. She blushed again, but smiled regardless.

"Well, as I mentioned this morning, you're welcome to stay over whenever you want to. I slept pretty well, too. That's not a surprise, though. I'm just a cuddler," she admitted.

"Well, it just so happens I'm an excellent cuddle buddy." Adrien added a wink to the end of his statement and Marinette bit her lip. "I'm happy to offer my cuddling services whenever you might need them, princess."

"Well, next time you stop for the night, I'm going to ask that you fall asleep in my bed instead of on my couch. It's much more conducive to cuddling." She stuck out her tongue at him, teasing him. They kept talking while they ate and eventually, they both finished their dinners and Marinette picked up their dishes.

Marinette went back to working on the tuxedo and Adrien sat on the guest bed in her studio room, doing paperwork against a folder while she worked. The two of them had been talking occasionally, but Marinette had put on Jagged Stone's Rock Giant in the background while they worked.

Adrien was flipping constantly between watching her work and working on the fabric orders for the prototypes of the next Agreste line. Every time he looked up and saw her biting her tongue in concentration or admiring her own work, Adrien had to hold back the urge to tell her that he loves her.

A while later, Marinette heard quiet snoring behind her and looked at the tuxedo jacket in her hand. She had gotten a decent amount done and the next thing she wanted to do would have included using her sewing machine. She decided it would be mean of her to wake him up by using the machine, so she put the jacket onto the form and turned off the light. It was dark in the room when she turned the lights off, but she could see the shapes of the papers sitting on top of him.

She took the papers off of him and placed them onto his briefcase, then figured he wouldn't want to sleep with his glasses on, so she took them off of him and put them onto the night stand. She couldn't see him well in the darkness, but he had a nice facial structure. She had already known that, but she still liked looking at him. She went over to the empty side of the bed and layed down to sleep.

Adrien woke up naturally at 06h15 the next morning and looked for the clock on his nightstand. It wasn't there and after a moment of drowsy consciousness, he looked around. He fell asleep at Marinette's place last night and looked over to the other body on the bed. It was Marinette, obviously. She looked so peaceful as she slept and he found himself wanting to tell her that he loved her again.

He didn't think there would be any harm if he did tell her. She was asleep, so she wouldn't hear him, but maybe if he said it out loud, he would stop feeling the overwhelming need to tell her how much he loved her. Before he could talk himself out of it, he whispered, "I love you." He kissed her forehead and got up to head home.

He grabbed a small pad of post-it notes out of his bag and wrote on the one on top. 'Thank you again for letting me spend the night. Sleeping on the bed was much more comfortable than the couch. '

He stuck the post-it note onto her fridge, hoping that she would see it, then put the post-its onto the counter, knowing this probably wouldn't be the last note he'd leave her. He went to his apartment to get changed for work, fed Plagg, grabbed a small breakfast for himself, then headed out to his office.