Hey so I made a tumblr where you can scream at me about stuff. Hmu at speakswords. There will be little drabbles posted there that are too short to really make it into this collection. In fact, I've put one up over there already!

As for this story, this was supposed to be very short and sweet (ONE PAGE ONLY) but it got out of hand. Extremely out of hand. 800% out of hand. Apparently I have absolutely no self control when it comes to these two. /SHRUG/

I sincerely hope (but highly doubt) that in the show, when the reveal does happen, they don't get together right away. Because we would be missing out on some GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES. Think about all the awkwardness and flirting and aaghhhhh please give me this. Please. PLEASE. Just, the idea of them knowing for a few months before dating is so alluring to me. Think about how close they would get in the meantime and how much more they would love each other and how more more keenly they would pine. Think about it.

And hey, now that you're thinking about that, I have a convenient fic for you…


How to Flirt


The day Adrien moved out of his childhood home was also the day he realized he didn't know how to do anything.

It caught him off guard, when it happened. The idea of escaping the shadow beneath his father's wings had tempted him for years, and he'd gotten it into his head somehow that as soon as he slipped out of the nest he could just fly away to greater heights with the wind at his back. It didn't quite work out like that. As it turned out, growing up in a mansion with a silver spoon superglued to his hand had some lasting effects that he never saw coming.

For instance, what the hell were you supposed to do with dirty clothes? Wash them, right? Sounded easy enough in theory. But, like… how though? There were so many different kinds of detergents that he almost gave up and sat down on the floor of the grocery store during his first official shopping trip for his newly rented uptown flat. The first load of laundry came out splotched and ruined. Apparently the red from his jacket had decided to make friends with all his other clothes. Hoping to salvage at least some of them, he transferred them all to the dryer anyway. But at the end of the day when he tried to put one of the unruined shirts on, the cotton clung to his skin like spandex, absolutely drenched with static electricity.

"What is that?" he pouted almost inaudibly when Marinette walked in on his struggle and asked him if he'd remembered to put a dryer sheet in with the load.

With many a suppressed giggle, Marinette cancelled movie night and showed him how to clean his clothes without ruining them.

Them being partners in justice and all, he'd always leaned on her. Even now, a few months after the accidental reveal. Things were… weird, between them, but not bad. They were closer than they'd ever been before, as partners in the moonlight or as friends in the sun, and yet they were simultaneously separated by a new aching chasm that he longed to bridge. It seemed like a good idea not to rush into this too fast, since the recent revelation was incredibly confusing for the both of them. But he was having a difficult time slowing down here. They talked more. They got together more. They touched more. They leaned on each other more, mainly toward the end of their bi-nightly patrols, when they were both yawning and keen on getting home but also filled with unspoken reluctance to leave the other's side.

Yeah, he knew he should be taking this slow. She wanted that; he could tell. But, honest to god, he needed her now more than ever. Living alone was hard. And weird. The strangest things tripped him up, reminding him that despite all his efforts, he was still miles behind in certain walks of life.

So he leaned on her even more.

Marinette was a good sport. She could always tell when to make fun of him for his lack of knowledge of basic household functions, and when the subject was touchy and to just be helpful instead. He couldn't have been more grateful for that. Especially when she zipped across town at four in the morning on a Monday before work, responding to his groggy, irritated, borderline teary phone call.

In the farthest corner of the bedroom (because it was the farthest point in the house from the source of his dismay) Adrien tried to hold it together. "I don't know what's happening," he groaned into the phone, his free hand covering his other ear. "Marineeette. Help." The shrill, intermittent beeping of his smoke alarm had been plaguing him for almost two hours, and he was sure his apartment neighbors were plotting his murder as he spoke.

"Please," Plagg wailed into the phone. "My ears are bleeding!"

Twelve minutes later when Ladybug slipped through his window and promptly grimaced and covered her ears as yet another beep filled the apartment, he could only grimace an apology for waking her at such an hour for something so stupid. She inspected the offending smoke alarm with narrowed eyes and then called forth a lucky charm. Hands still smashed over his ears, Adrien peered into her hand as the dazzling pink light faded away to reveal… batteries? Seriously?

With a soundless yawn, Marinette absentmindedly transformed out of her spots to reveal a set of barely-there pajamas, whereafter a very disgruntled and sleepy Tikki flitted away to join Plagg under the covers on Adrien's bed. Adrien watched her go jealously. He should be asleep in there…

Marinette was saying something now, but it got lost amidst yet another deafening beep. "What?" he asked quickly as it faded again, knowing all too well how soon it would be back.

"Lift me up," she repeated, pointing up at the evil alarm. "I can't reach it."

Despite the countless times and infinite different ways in which he'd held her as Ladybug, he couldn't help but feel his blood quicken in his veins as he bent down to close his arms around her bare thighs below the end of her shorts in order to heave her toward the ceiling. He turned his head to the side to avoid an extremely awkward encounter with the shorts themselves, but reddened anyway. After a moment the alarm cut off mid-beep. His ears were still ringing though as he slackened his grip, letting her slide all the way down his body until her toes touched the ground.

When he didn't immediately let go of her waist, she tilted her chin up to survey him directly, still blinking sleep from her eyes.

The urge to kiss her then was a force of nature. Resisting that urge felt like holding a cellar door closed with his bare hands as a tornado ripped the house apart above them.

Instead, he cracked a grateful smile and released her. "My ears are gonna be ringing for days. Thanks, Mari."

And, like always, she smiled back. "What on earth would you do without me?"

"That's a good question." The truth was, he'd been thinking about that question a lot lately. The answer was that he had no fucking idea.

The day after the smoke alarm incident, Adrien invited her over for a surprise. To say thank you.

"A surprise?" she said over the phone as he zoomed around his kitchen with ingredients in hand. "I thought I told you," she scolded jokingly, "no more dead birds on my pillow, Adrien."

On his end, Adrien was preoccupied with making sure all the bubbles of dry flour in his mixing bowl were stirred vigorously out of existence. "But dead birds mean 'I love you' in Siamese," he replied absently.

The following silence on the other line made his heart stumble flat over the next beat. He reassessed the pun, far too late. Was that too much? Too far?

After the reveal, his running flirtatious banter had flatlined. After all, she needed time and space to sort this out, as did he, and Chat's relentless flirting with Ladybug didn't exactly feel prudent in the aftermath. But it had been awhile now. They were more than partners, now, too. More than friends. They were best friends. Andㅡif he was reading the road signs correctlyㅡthey were on the fast track to something far more wonderful. So he'd recently begun to pepper that Chat Noir charm back in. Nothing crazy. Just a flirt here or there. A quick wink as they separated during battle. A dazzling smile in response to her sass.

Doozy lines like the one he just said, thoughㅡhe hadn't said anything like that since before. Before, when it was safe. When neither of them knew and there was nothing to lose. But now… now he had everything to lose. So he opened his mouth to play it off as a joke.

Marinette beat him to it. "Did you know that cats leave dead birds for their owners because they think they think their owners don't know how to hunt?" she giggled a bit late, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. "It's because they think their owners are helpless when it comes to feeding themselves. So if we want to get technical, I'm really the one who should be leaving you dead birds, M. Adrien I-didn't-know-you-can't-microwave-metal Agreste."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Adrien tucked his phone between his cheek and his shoulder to start rummaging through one of his cupboards for a pan. "Well, get ready to eat your words," he said haughtily, then after a brief pause tacked on, "and soufflé."

"Oh god," she groaned. "Tell me you didn't."

He did.

When she arrived at his flat two hours hours later, she sniffed the air the moment she walked in, not bothering to knock. "You did. You actually did. I better call out of work for tomorrow now," she laughed, ignoring the pouty look Adrien was giving her. She pulled out her phone and held it to her face without actually calling anyone. "Hello, yes? It's me, Marinette, and I'm about to get food poisoning, so I thought I shouldㅡhey!"

Adrien snatched her phone and held it aloft, out of her reach, delighted as always to be a full foot and a half taller than her. "I resent this distrust, you tiny little speck."

Crawling halfway up his body toward her phone with ruthless fervor, she growled at the you're short jab. "I will bite you. Do not test me, Adrien." But then she suddenly released him, frantically wiping at the fresh white dust on her lavender dress. "Ah! What the heck! You're covered in flour!"

He gave her a wink before handing back her phone. "And now you are too, princess." Still wiping at the flour on her dress, she followed him warily into the kitchen, eyeing the recent mess he had made of his cooking supplies. "Okay, so, I know I don't have the best track recordㅡ"

"Straight F's," she quipped, then bit back a laugh at the look on his face. She jumped up onto one of the cushioned stools that sat at the bar top, facing him where he stood on the other side of the counter. "Sorry, I'm listening. Go."

"I know I don't have the best track record with cooking or baking," he deadpanned. She was right though, his first few attempts at cooking had been shamefully disastrous, and he'd taken to just eating out whenever he wanted anything more complicated than ramen. "But I think I've got it figured it out now. It's like science! No, hear me out," he laughed, leaning over the sink toward her when she looked like she wanted to interrupt again. "It's all just chemistry. Mixing materials, causing reactions, changing states. Chemistry is something I understand, so I figured if I looked at it that way, maybe I could understand baking a little better."

When he pulled out two little mini-soufflés and set one in front of her, he could have sworn he saw hearts in her eyes for a second. But she blinked, and the loving, startled look on her face was gone.

"I just wanted to say thanks for last night," he said. "So, thanks." He offered her a fork.

She accepted it with a bemused smile. "It was no big deal. It never is. You know that, kittycat."

"Yeah," he said, "I know that." And he wished he knew how to tell her that that was precisely why the things she did for him meant so much. "But it's a big deal to me. I guess that's why I wanted to do something nice for you. On three?" he suggested, and dug a big bite out of his own soufflé.

"Okay," she giggled. "One, two, three." In went the bites.

Adrien chewed. Thoughtfully at first, then with a growing frown, and then finally he gave up and spat the bite out in the sink. He let his tongue hang from his mouth in disgust, wondering how Marinette was still chewing. She didn't look nearly as nauseous as he felt. Ripping a paper towel from the holder by the sink, he folded it up and held it under her chin. "Spit," he commanded. She wrinkled her nose at him and pretended to enjoy it, but he insisted. "Seriously, it's terrible, please spit it out, Mari. You don't have to spare my feelings."

A glob of chewed soufflé fell from her mouth into the paper towel with a sad little plop. While he tossed it in the trash, she tried to soften his heartbreak. "It wasn't the worst dessert I've ever had…"

"I don't get it," he sighed, and pulled out his phone to scroll back through the recipe he'd used. "I followed all the directions! I used all the right measurements, all the right temperatures. What am I doing wrong?"

Toying with the inedible dessert with her fork, Marinette rested her chin on her other hand. "Baking is more like art than science," she told him. "It takes practice to make good food, and it takes years of practice to become a chef or a baker. I wasn't born an expert, you know, I just grew up in a bakery. Don't be upset, Adrien, you'll get the hang of it. Maybe you can try something a bit simpler next time. Something harder to mess upㅡlike boxed cake mix, or cookies."

"I'm not upset," he assured her. He just wanted to impress her, he supposed. So much for that. "I've only been trying to cook for a few months, and that recipe was probably a little out of my league. I suppose these things just take time. Hey, good thing I've got such a beautiful tutor to teach me, then, right?" He punctuated the statement with an accentuated wink.

"Wait, what?" Her lip pulled back in confusion and her fork clattered onto the bar top. "You're taking cooking lessons? Since when?" she fretted, and the hurt and confusion he saw pulling down on her shoulders made him want to punch himself in the face. "From who? I could have… Sorry, I'm being rude. I'm glad for you, if that's what you want to do. I just, I don't know. I thought that was our thing," she finished sadly. "I would have taught you everything I knew about cooking and baking if you'd just asked."

"Mari," he floundered, cheeks flaring with heat as he tried to figure out how to backpedal out of these shark infested waters without explaining that he had been trying (and failing, apparently) to flirt. Why was this so hard? Flirting with Ladybug before had been like breathing. It used to be so easy! Flirting with Ladybug now, post-reveal and pre-dating (maybe that last part was a bit presumptuous of him, but hey, a guy could dream), was like defusing a bomb. "It is our thing," he said weakly. "And that was my way of asking."

"O-oh." Picking up her fork again, she shoved it into her food distractedly, mashing it up so she wouldn't have to look at him. "I, um…"

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I didn't mean to upset you, I should have been more direct about it. I just don't…" Ugh. He raked one hand through his hair.

She peeked up through her bangs, her face bright pink. "Don't what?"

Oh no, she was giving him that face. Sapphire-speckled doe eyes and a pouty, puffed out lip. He couldn't lie to that face.

"...know how to flirt with you anymore," he finished.

Taking off his apron in order to fold it over the handle of the stove offered a convenient distraction, so that he wouldn't have to look at her, or drown in the silence that followed his vulnerable admission. So willfully engrossed in this simple task was he that he didn't see her get up from her stool. Therefore when he wheeled around to apologize for being so tactless, he bumped into her so hard that he had to catch her wrist to keep her from falling onto the tile.

"Sorry," they said in unison, and backed away from each other in embarrassment as soon as Marinette had her footing.

One hand went to the back of his neck like a magnet as he desperately sought words, and though she smiled fondly at his old nervous tick, he barely noticed. Sure, they talked. Not a single day went by now when he didn't see her, in one persona or the other. But since the reveal they'd carried out an unspoken agreement; Marinette didn't ask about Chat's crush on Ladybug and he in turn kept his lips zipped about Marinette's crush on Adrienㅡat least while they sorted out all these new and old and conflicting feelings. But he'd just shattered that silent deal into a million pieces.

What he wouldn't give to be able to read the emotions on her face right now.

"Um," she said quietly, and he sucked in a sharp breath when her fingers brushed his. With absolute awe he watched her raise his hand to her face. "Well, I liked it when you used to do this." Her lips ghosted against his knuckles.

He must have looked just as heart-stoppingly gobsmacked as he felt, because her eyes crinkled with amusement. But her confidence wavered again and she lowered his hand, biting the lip that had so recently graced him with its touch.

"And how you used to put your arm around me while we would walk during patrol," she went on. "And gave me flowers. And, um, c-called me lovebug."

His eyebrows were now raised so high that they had probably disappeared into his bangs. "Is that so?" he said thoughtfully. When he brushed her cheek with his other hand she leaned into it, the movement so miniscule that he didn't actually see it. But he felt it. Her cheek was soft and warm. He spread out his hand, seeking more of that warmth, bringing his palm flush against her skin. These were uncharted waters now, and he was delighted to throw out his map and brave them with her. "I liked all that stuff too," he confessed.

Something tickled his stomach and then trailed up his chest. It was her other hand, he realized, in some distant cerebral region that wasn't focused on her face. The hand he wasn't already holding. For some reason it took that to remind him that he was in fact holding her hand; that she had never released it. He pushed her fingers apart so he could lace them with his own. No going back now. Whatever they'd been working toward since the revealㅡall those late night talks and eager reacquainting and veiled blushes and shared secretsㅡwhatever was meant to happen between them was going to happen right now.

"So why did you stop?" she murmured.

"That," he murmured back, "is a good question."

He'd been scaredㅡno, terrifiedㅡof losing what they had, were he to make his feelings clear and find out she didn't return them as fervently. To be honest he was still scared, but somehow, between one moment and the next, it had changed. It wasn't really fear anymore. This was more like the anticipation that fluttered through his stomach on rollercoasters, on the long way up the very first mountain, the track click-click-clicking below him as it carried him toward the awesome, the exhilarating, and the inevitable. He felt her rising with him now toward some unknowable future as he leaned over her and she leaned up. Click, she stood on her toes. Click, they closed their eyes. Click, click, click.

They came together softly, and the whole world clicked into place.

The first touch was brief and wonderful. The smallest glimpse. The barest brush.

A tiny sigh escaped her as she sank a little to give her toes a rest. But he followed after hungrily, and the second touch was not nearly as brief as the first. This time he tilted his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed in intense concentration that was shattered the minute she did that sigh againㅡthis time into his mouth. He was a goner. She hadn't worn lipstick today so her lips were somewhat dry, and he was filled with a sudden delightful urge to fix that. So he did. And he was pretty sure, judging by the hands that were suddenly fisted in his hair, that she liked it.

He still had a hold of her bottom lip when she tried to speak, making it so that her words were hard to understand. "Why did we wait so long to do this?"

"Again," he sighed, and this time it was his words slurred by her lips. "That is a really good question." Something struck him as he looked down at her through eyes clouded with adoration, and he pulled back to hit her with a disarmingly sinful grin. "Also, I'm hurt that you implied I haven't gotten you flowers lately. Honestly. I got you some today and you didn't even say thank you!"

Confusion pulled her face into an adorable shape. "Really? But I didn't…" She trailed off as he tugged at the hem of her dress, his grin stretching even further into something downright absurd. It wasn't until she looked down at the lavender fabric in his hands that she understood, when she saw the white powder that had spread from his apron to her dress when he'd stolen her phone earlier.

The flour.

Marinette sighed and crossed her arms. "I hate you," she said.

"I love you too," he replied.