After their 'impromptu date' picnic in the park, Marinette and Adrien started running into each other more and more often. It seemed like they were always around different parts of the city at the same time. It was strange that they seemed to usually run into each other after an akuma attack, but they were both hoping the other wouldn't notice, so neither of them ever drew attention to it.

The picnic was their first impromptu date, but it wasn't their last. Over the last few weeks, they'd gotten juice twice, coffee three times, went to a movie, and even went bowling on one memorable experience. They even ended up having dinner with Marinette's parents after Sabine made the suggestion again on a night Adrien had free.

'Adrienette' was plastered on the front page of about a third of the magazines in the city. Another third was plastered with 'Adrinette' instead and Marinette and Adrien had been joking around since the first articles came out about what their proper ship name was. Marinette was team Adrienette and Adrien was team Adrinette.

The rest of the magazines were still plastered with the same articles as usual about the 'love story' between 'LadyNoir! Paris' Favorite Couple!' which Adrien and Marinette both chose to ignore. The heroes had been 'Paris' Favorite Couple!' for the last five years no matter how much they denied being a couple.

Adrien had offered for Marinette to stay at his apartment one evening when she complained about the fact that Alya and Nino were too loud when he spent the night. Adrien understood that it would be annoying to have your roommate up all night talking to someone, especially if they were laughing and just being too loud that you couldn't sleep.

The two of them were sitting on Adrien's couch and Marinette had suggested that the two of them play Ultimate Mecha Strike III when she saw it sitting on one of his shelves. He agreed and the two of them played a few rounds. They were surprisingly evenly matched and Marinette was impressed because she had never played against someone who could so closely match her Ladybug reflexes.

"Okay," Marinette said at the end of their 6th round, "how about we make this game a little more interesting?" She was curled up in a little ball with her knees pulled up to her chest as she played. Adrien raised an eyebrow at her, curious about what Marinette had in mind.

"Are you implying that playing video games with me isn't interesting enough?" he asked, feigning dramatics, "betrayal! From my own girlfriend. Œuf, ouch, owie. And here I was thinking we were trying to convince the world of our epic love story. Adrinette could have even been bigger than the heroes, Marinette. The heroes!"

Marinette picked up a small pillow from her side of the couch and jokingly hit her fake-boyfriend with it. Hard enough to get the point across, but soft enough that it wouldn't actually hurt him. "First of all, how dare you imply that Adrienette isn't already the biggest thing in Paris! Second of all, we could play truth or dare, the winner of the round asks the loser."

"You have my attention," he told her, expecting more explanation. She didn't have any more explanation to offer, so he just rolled his eyes fondly at her and chuckled. "Yeah, fine, I guess that sounds pretty fun or whatever. It's your turn to choose the stage this round." Marinette chose one she didn't think would give her an unfair advantage.

Regardless, she won the first round. "Truth or dare," she asked him with a smile on her face. He considered both of his options for longer than Marinette thought was necessary. He landed on truth and Marinette accused him of being boring while she tried to think of a question for him. "Are you more of a cat person or a dog person?"

"I'm definitely a cat person," he said, smiling a little more at his own inside joke of being an actual cat person as a hero. "But my dream pet growing up was always a hamster. I just think they're great."

"Yeah," Marinette said excitedly. She extended a hand toward him for a high five. "I always wanted a hamster, too."

"Shouldn't you have waited until I asked you a question?" he asked with a chuckle, giving her a high five regardless. She shrugged.

"I don't think there are any hard and fast rules for Truth or Dare," she responded, "the entire 'truth' side of the game is just a 'getting to know you' game. I think that we can play with whatever rules we want to and I decided that the rule I chose was to tell you my truth that round."

"I guess that makes sense. Next round?" Marinette nodded and Adrien got to choose the next stage that they played on. He used his slight advantage on that stage to pull through and win the round against Marinette. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"You're really going to call me boring for choosing truth, then choose truth for yourself," he teased. She posed to look like just an innocent angel and giggled.

"If you want to give me a dare, I'll take it," she told him. He shook his head.

"I think I'll save it for later," he told her with a smirk. "For now, though…" He found himself immediately wanting to ask her if she'd ever been a miraculous user, but that wasn't a question he'd want to answer, so he decided not to ask it, just in case. "Why weren't… or aren't… you interested in a real relationship instead of just pretending to date me?"

Marinette's main reason at the beginning of the whole thing was that she didn't think she'd have time and she didn't want to run off in the middle of a date to deal with an akuma. She felt bad enough doing that to Luka, even though he knew her identity. She didn't think Adrien would accept the time excuse, given how much time she found herself spending with him.

"There have been a lot of changes going on in my life recently, with moving out and starting school and breaking up with the guy I'd been dating for years, I really didn't want to change even more. The same still applies to me now. I'm not ready for things to change, yet. Maybe next semester or during my second year, but not yet."

Adrien looked like he was debating whether to answer his own question like Marinette had done with hers or just drop the conversation. "So, either you can give me your answer now, or we can waste the next round when I inevitably ask you the same question," she told him. "I think you should just give me your answer, but I might be biased."

He chuckled. "You probably are." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Mostly the same," he told her, "I went from knowing like 3 people to meeting so many. I think I need to learn how to be friends with people before I'll feel comfortable enough to be someone's boyfriend. That probably sounds silly though." He winced a little at his own explanation.

"It doesn't," Marinette assured. She placed a hand affectionately on his. "You, buttercup, need to learn to stop belittling yourself. You're a model, aren't models supposed to be filled to the brim with confidence? No one will think less of you if you're not ready to be in a relationship like… a month from getting to interact with more than a handful of people."

"Thanks, Marinette," he said with a soft smile on his face. "Your turn to choose the stage." Marinette did and neither of them were surprised when she won.

"Truth or dare?" Her smile was big and Adrien could tell she wanted him to take a risk and choose dare, which was precisely why he didn't again.

"Truth." Marinette rolled her eyes at his safe response.

"Aside from me," she began, "who was the last person you said 'I love you' to?" If he had been asked a few weeks ago, the answer might have been a photo of his mom that he'd had on his desk just a few meters away from them.

He considered, carefully, trying to look for an answer that wouldn't be suspicious. He couldn't admit that the most recent person he'd said 'I love you' to was Ladybug. Well, he could, he was certain people said it to her every day, but he didn't want to be one of the crowd like that, especially since there was no reason for Adrien Agreste to tell her that platonically.

Marinette could tell that Adrien was actively thinking about it and that surprised her. "Since we talked at the picnic, I've kind of been telling all my friends," he admitted, "I don't think I can tell you which friend I've said it to most recently." He chuckled lightly and looked over to her, expecting her to answer next.

"Alya," she answered quickly, "Alya and Nino, I guess. I just shouted out that I love them before I left the apartment today, so I hope that they heard." She was just thankful that she had because before that, her answer would have been Chat Noir and she wasn't ready to explain that to Adrien.

Adrien chose the next stage and he won that time. "Truth or dare?" His soft smile turned into a smirk as he asked the question. She considered jokingly choosing 'truth' again, but she knew he had a dare in mind.

"Dare," she chose confidently.

"I dare you," he grabbed her phone off the coffee table, "to let me choose one of your contacts and you have to tell them you love them." When he said he was saving his dare, she expected the worst, but the 'dare' just made her smile. She reached out to unlock her phone and he scrolled through her 'Contacts' app.

"Fu," he landed on, looking at the cute little emoji of a turtle that was used as the contact photo. He didn't know who 'Fu' is, but he was hopeful that she did love whoever it was. He was inexplicably drawn to the contact begging to be chosen out of the list. The huge smile that was on her face a few moments before fell and he felt his heart drop in response.

Marinette curled her knees a little bit tighter to her chest. She was quiet longer than he expected her to be. "That line is disconnected," she said honestly after a few moments longer of sitting in that position. "My grandpère lost his memory," she added after a short time, "that phone number doesn't work anymore and I don't think his partner would want me to call her this late unless there's an emergency." She swallowed the saliva in her throat and kept the tears from escaping her eyes.

Adrien placed her phone back down on the coffee table and moved a little bit closer to her. His arms were slightly extended out, silently offering her a hug. She moved a little bit closer to him and accepted the hug he was offering. A few of her tears did slip from her eyes as he held her, giving her as much silent support as he could.

The next day, Marinette called Marianne and Fu on her walk back to her apartment, just to talk to the people who had become like another set of grandparents to her. She told them she loved them at the end of the call and when Marianne said it back to her, Fu said the same. She thought she was going to cry again, but this time a happy cry.