Author's Note: Special thanks to mayuralover who pointed out a glaring error that I missed in editing. I have adjusted this chapter to reflect what I meant, as opposed to what I wrote, and she was gracious enough to confirm it makes sense this time. Thanks again for the catch, mayuralover!

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir and I make no profit from this story. No copyright infringement is intended I'm just enjoying some time with a few of my favorite television characters. The story is mine, except where directly quoting or referencing episodes.

Alya's jaw dropped. Then she closed it. It dropped again. The effect left her looking a little fishlike. Nino just stared at his wife, shocked into total silence.

Adrien was surprised, too; Nino had never told him a thing. But he quickly realized that it meant they could come completely clean with their best friends and his face took on a mischievous gleam. If they were shocked by Marinette knowing their secret from back in the day, what would their reaction be to knowing who now sat in their living room? This was going to be fun.

"Alya! You're Rena Rogue?" Adrien's gasp was a little over the top, but he was feeling a bit Chat-like tonight, especially if they were going to tell them the whole story.

"How—how did—I mean—w—what are you talking about?"

Adrien pulled out his cell phone and pretended to start a video. "Mrs. Lahiffe, can you confirm that you are indeed Rena Rouge? This is for your blog, so please, speak clearly."

Alya grabbed a throw pillow and used it to shove Adrien's phone back toward him. "Shut up, Adrien." She seemed to be recovering.

She turned a sassy glare Marinette's way. "I think that finally kissing Adrien has caused a short-circuit in your brain, girl! Where are you getting this nonsense?"

Marinette blushed intensely. Adrien grinned. And here he thought she had largely outgrown blushing around him.

Thinking she had silenced the inquiry, Alya got up to refill her long-since empty coffee cup and catch her breath. From behind her, Marinette said, "Alya Cesaire. Here is the miraculous of the fox, which grants the power of illusion. You will use it for the greater good. Once the job is done, you will return the miraculous to me. Can I trust you?"

Alya turned slowly and sank heavily onto the arm of the loveseat. The fish imitation returned as she struggled for words.

"What exactly are you telling me right now, Marinette?" she finally choked out.

"If you want the real story of how Adrien and I became a couple, there are several things you need to understand first. Ladybug and Chat Noir had to keep their identities secret to be effective superheroes—from their family, their closest friends, even each other."

Alya looked at her, listening but unsure what them being a couple had to do with the secret identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir, or how she knew the exact words Ladybug had spoken to her all those years ago.

"Wait. Are you telling me that Ladybug gave you a miraculous back then? Is that how you know what she said to me, since she said the same thing to you?"

Marinette just smiled and waited as Alya continued to process. Three, two, one—

Alya let loose a loud squeal and jumped to her feet; the sound was quickly muffled by Nino's hand over her mouth after he leapt from the loveseat to silence her. "Aimee, love, remember Aimee. Let her sleep if you want to hear all of this, 'cause I'm not going anywhere if you wake her up. This is too good!"

She nodded, but while the sound coming from her was quieter, there was no doubt she had pieced together the identity of Ladybug. Nino drew her to sit down beside him on the loveseat, his arm around her waist.

"All this time? It was you this whole time? Every time you disappeared from school? All those times you were late for class? When you had 'something' come up and you cancelled plans we'd had for weeks? I totally should've known!"

Marinette laughed. She could see Alya's memory replaying all the lame excuses she had ever used for what happened to her at the weirdest times. "Adrien and I had this very conversation a couple days ago, Alya. We hid in plain sight. It was the most effective disguise we had."

"We?" Her head pivoted toward Adrien. "We! How long have you known?"

Adrien raised his hands in surrender. "A couple days is all, I swear!"

"We?" She looked down, mumbling to herself for a moment, then her eyes snapped back toward Adrien. "I told Marinette you looked like Chat Noir back in high school—she denied it! Right to my face! She said you were way more—never mind."

Adrien laughed. "She had no idea, either. Not until a few days ago. But I would like to hear more about this conversation you had back then." He looked at Marinette and drew her closer to him, kissing her cheek, then leaving his hand cupped around the top of her arm.

"Later, Kitty." She leaned into the side hug. "I think Alya may still have a few questions for us."

"Questions? Oh, no. No questions. Because you're going to tell me. Everything. Now."

"Most of what you already know is the truth. My huge crush on Adrien, how you helped me get over it and act mostly sane in his presence, his disappearance after your wedding. The part you don't know yet is that Chat Noir had been dropping by my balcony."

"I started back in high school. The first time was a fluke. I had—ahem—been stood up by Ladybug—"

"Chat—" Marinette warned.

"Sorry. That's how it felt, even if it isn't strictly the truth. I didn't feel like going home, so I just roamed the rooftops, until I came across Marinette's balcony. She was looking out over the city, and didn't look much better than I did. We talked for a bit, and she admitted her heart had been broken, too. So I decided to cheer her up."

"Hold up. Are you seriously telling me that you cheered Marinette up on her balcony, as Chat Noir, when she was upset over Adrien?"

Now it was Adrien's turn to look shocked. "Me? I had put that look on your face that night?"

"You didn't know." Marinette shrugged her shoulders. "And to be fair, I had put the same look on yours as Ladybug."

"Dude! You two were an even bigger mess than we knew! Marinette liked Adrien, who was Chat Noir, who liked Ladybug, who was Marinette. And you still didn't get together!"

They all laughed at that. It was easy to do with the misunderstandings now behind them and Adrien's arm wrapped around her.

"It gets better, Nino. As Chat Noir, I visited her balcony occasionally for a couple years, and enjoyed talking to her, getting to know her better, then more often as we neared graduation. In college, I started wondering if I should let you guys set us up finally, but I didn't want to mess up the friendship, like I said earlier. But I couldn't stay away, so I kept going as Chat."

"I knew it! I knew one day you'd see how awesome our girl was!" Alya, at least, hadn't ever lost hope, even though she stopped mentioning it to Marinette.

"I did. But at your wedding, I realized my mistake. I wanted to be able to openly pursue her, date her, but there was no history for her and Adrien beyond friends. And I couldn't stand the thought of starting over, and she would have figured it out anyway and wondered why I never told her. So I decided to turn in my miraculous and tell her the truth. We could start with a clean slate and tell everyone else we'd been secretly dating for a while."

"You were the only problem, Alya. I knew you'd be hurt I hadn't told you about Adrien, so we tried to come up with a story you'd believe." Marinette shrugged. "This is better, anyway. You should've seen your faces!

"The gifts were made up as was him helping at the bakery, but he had been coming by almost every evening as Chat. The rose was true, but he left it on my balcony. I knew it was from him, just not that he was Adrien, too."

"You had no idea then, that you were falling in love with Adrien, all over again?" Alya shook her head, then gave them both a fake glare. "You do realize you guys have been dating for years," her emphasis on years was heavy, "on your balcony, and you didn't tell me?"

Marinette blushed. "I was hopeless, Alya. I had already had a crush on one guy who was completely out of my league, only to recover and then start falling for another, this one a superhero? It was embarrassing."

Alya moved across the floor, sat down on the other side of Marinette and grabbed her free hand. "Girl, you know that never mattered, right? It was only a matter of time until someone" she speared Adrien with a look, "woke up to the fact that you are the most amazing woman on the planet. Until then, I was here for you, whatever you needed, whoever you were crushing on and however rotten you may have felt."

Adrien rubbed her back, lending support with a thoughtful look on his face. "To set the record straight, you were always the one out of my league, Milady." He kissed her temple and waited for a more private moment to tell her what was burning in his chest at that moment.