"You seem to be in such a hurry. What's the rush?" Plagg asked Adrien as he flew out of his coat pocket once Adrien got home.

"I was planning to cook Marinette dinner tonight but of course my father needed to ruin my planning. Now I got like 2 hours to prepare everything." Adrien said annoyed as he put the bags with all groceries for tonight's dinner on the ground so he could put his coat off.

He kicked out his shoes before picking up the grocery bags again and rush towards the kitchen. He was supposed to have a day off, but of course his father had other plans. He has added a winter themed photo shoot for some magazine's article about fashionably seasons clothing to his cleared schedule last minute. Of course he couldn't go against his father, he couldn't risk it to ruin the Agreste name because he went against him even though he was already a grown up man that had moved out some years ago.

Besides that, Adrien was afraid that Marinette had to pay for his action if he did something his father wasn't amused over. He wasn't sure if he would really do it through, but he knew his father his whole life so it wouldn't surprise him if he would really made Marinette pay for it. He could easily imagine his father giving her a huge pile of paperwork that needed to be checked, made her clean up the work space, make sure the restocks of all the fabric is correct on paper or let her get coffee for the whole company. Or worse she had to do more than just one of those tasks. He didn't want that to happen.

Marinette was a great designer who started from the bottom in the industry. She rolled in at Gabriel as an intern after his father had seen her own designed dress she wore at the dinner where he would introduce her to his father as his girlfriend. His father was really impressed by the dress, saying that she was gifted with talent and that it was one of the hardest things to make a simple dress with not much detail to look so stunning. He also asked her if she had her sketchbook with designs with her, which she had. Marinette and her sketchbook are inseparable after all. That fact gave her some extra points with his father, since according to him a good designer never leaves the house without a sketchbook no matter where they go, even if it's just a trip to the supermarket.

All through the dinner was awkward, the evening went well. After they had finished eating his father wanted to speak with Marinette in his office and look at her designs. He wasn't allowed to go with her as she should be doing it alone. That was also one of his father's requirements, his employees need to be able to do things on their own. Since he couldn't always be there to help them and he wanted to be able to trust his employees blindly.

After half an hour Marinette rushed over to him saying she got an internship at Gabriel. He was very happy for her. However after her first day of her internship he realized that his father was testing her. She had been through a lot of things on just one day. Mostly just the chores that didn't had anything to do with designing. His father probably wanted to see how much pressure she could take and if she was really qualified for the job. He had seen her getting home completely worn out by the amount of work she had to do. She had even been there at the point she wanted to quit just because the work was inhuman to keep up with. In the end she didn't quit.

Adrien was glad that she had passed his father's test and was now able to do the designing work she loved to do. Of course it was still a tough job that tires her out but at least she was part of the designing team. So because it finally went well with her, he didn't want to ruin it again by going against his father. He guessed that that was one of the downsides of dating the son of the famous Parisian fashion designer Gabriel Agreste.

Just like every year Gabriel let his employees work on Christmas day. The December month was one of the best months when it came to their sales due to the fact that everyone wanted to have fancy clothing to wear with Christmas and New Year's Eve. And because of that fact, he knew that Marinette would be dead tired after work. So he decided to surprise her with a romantic dinner with candle light and a glass of sweet red wine.

"So what are you going to make?" Plagg asked, causing Adrien to get back from his thoughts.

"For starter a spicy pumpkin soup, for the main course roasted pheasant with wild mushroom and bacon ragout and I bought some fancy ice cream for dessert." he said.

"So no cheese?"

"No, there is no cheese in it."

"Well good luck then making this dinner tasty."

"Hey, not everything needs cheese to be considered good food. And besides that I can cook perfectly fine."

"Like Pasta and omelets, but a pheasant? Have you cooked that before?"

"No. But how hard can that be?"

Adrien had found a recipe online on some hobby cooking website. It had the complete list of ingredients and a step by step list of how to prepare it all. It should be a piece of cake, right?

Right?

He was wrong. He was so wrong that it couldn't be that hard. At first it went fine, he had followed all the steps for the soup according to the recipe, however once he began on the main course things started to go wrong.

"Um… Adrien… The soup… is boiling over." Plagg said as he munched on a piece of camembert.

"Ha. Ha. Very funny Plagg." Adrien said as he put the Pheasant into the oven.

However his expression changed to one at shock when he saw the soup boiling over the edge of the pan, causing the stove to get dirty by the thick pumpkin liquid.

"Oh God no." He exclaimed as he turned it off. "How did that happen?"

"Don't ask me. I'm not a chef."

"You're not helping Plagg…"

"I never said I was here to help you to begin with. I'm just here to see you struggle cooking."

Adrien let out a sign, he cared for Plagg a lot and he couldn't imagine a world without his Kwami. However those moments were the ones where he wished Plagg was more like Tikki.

Adrien took a potholder and used it to remove the lid of the pan. Lots of smoke escaped the pan once the lid got lifted, Adrien coughed a bit before he took a step back and waited for it to disappear. He then looked back into the pan to check on the state of the soup. Not only did it boil over, it got burned as well. The bottom of the pan was almost completely black.

"That's no starter for tonight." Adrien sighed. "There is no time to get the ingredients again."

"You can always serve Cheese as an starter. You don't need to cook it so you can't ruin anything of it." Plagg said matter-of-factly.

"I won't serve cheese as an starter."

"Why not?"

"Because I just want to cook a romantic dinner for my girlfriend and serving cheese from the fridge doesn't have that much meaning compared to cooking something yourself."

"Urgh… it's this romance stuff again…"

"Oh shut up."

Plagg didn't say anything else, he knew that if he went too far that Adrien would cut his Camembert short. It had happen before after all. Adrien was glad he could continue in peace now. He felt pretty stupid for not being able to cook something simple as soup, but he still had a main course so dinner wasn't completely ruined.

Once the preparation was done he went to the living room to set up the table. He had placed the table wear on the surface of the table first, then he had placed two wine glasses and a bottle of sweet red wine on it before he decorated it with some candles and rose petals. Once that was gone he got back into the kitchen to finish dinner, not knowing a complete mess awaited him as well as his girlfriend getting home soon.

The front door opened when it was around 6.30pm. Marinette had a tough day at work and would do almost anything to get some rest. She took of her coat and kicked off her high heels before she walked further into the apartment. She just wanted to plop down onto the couch and take a nap. However that plan got thrown out of the window the moment she heard Adrien's and Plagg's conversation.

"Oh my gosh! Not the Pheasant too!" Adrien shouted in Panic.

"That's all your worried about? The freaking oven and a kitchen cabin are on fire! Put it out before it reaches the fridge and burns my precious camembert!" Plagg shouted back, he was in panic as well.

Marinette's eyes widened the moment she heard that some of the kitchen was literally on fire. She quickly took the fire extinguisher and rushed towards the kitchen, Tikki following her close. The tiredness completely forgotten as the adrenaline rushed through her veins. The panicked conversation between Adrien and Plagg still went on, but she didn't hear it as she was too focused on putting the fire out.

She stepped into the kitchen, seeing that now her Oven, stove and a kitchen cabin was on fire. She got closer to the fire and used the fire extinguisher to put the fire off. Adrien and Plagg just looked at her as she took some action to prevent the whole kitchen from burning to ashes.

"What were you thinking!? Staying close to the fire and not even trying to put it off!? Did you want to die!?" she snapped.

"Actually us Kwami's can't die." Plagg said.

"Hush, Plagg. She's probably not talking to you." Tikki said as she flew over to Plagg before pushing him out of the kitchen.

"No I don't want to die… I just wanted to surprise you with a romantic dinner for the two of us, since you always works so hard and we barely got the time to do those kind of things… But when it all got on fire I just panicked…" he said as he looked down at his feet, he felt embarrassed that he had set the kitchen on fire with something that's supposed to be an easy dish to make according to some website.

Marinette's expression softened as she looked at Adrien with a soft smile.

"You wanted to cook a romantic dinner?"

"Yeah… I wanted to make it perfect, but obviously I failed miserably."

Marinette stepped closer to him after she had put the fire extinguisher on the ground and cupped his cheeks with her hands. She then lifted his face a bit before she pressed her lips against his. He relaxed by the touch and closed his eyes as he kissed her back, arms wrapping around her waist.

The kiss lasted for a minute or so, before they broke apart. Marinette smile at him with a loving smile and a slight blush spread on her face.

"That's very sweet of you wanting to do that." she said.

"I wish that it had worked out though… Or at least that it didn't make so much damage…"

"It's fine. I've wanted a new kitchen for quite some time."

"You do? I thought you liked it."

"Like it? I hate it… The color is so hideous, it makes it look like the kitchen is dirty even when it just got cleaned."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Because I didn't want you to spend a lot of money, while all the electronica and such works completely fine."

"But we could have just painted it a different color."

"We both know that that wouldn't be possible." she said as she bopped his nose. "Because you would turn the painting project into a project to get the perfect kitchen for me, which means that painting isn't the only makeover it gets."

"You're right…"

"But now we have a reason to get a new one, but we can talk about that later. Let's eat first."

"I got ice cream and sweet red wine… that are the only things that survived."

Marinette giggled.

"I guess it's wine with takeout then."

"Sounds very romantic." Adrien chuckled.

"Want to get Burger King?"

"Sure. Burger King with candlelight and wine, that's perfect."

Marinette was glad to see Adrien joke around about his unfortunate cooking experience.

"Want to go get it together?" she asked.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay home? Work must have been tired."

"It's fine, besides that if I stay home you would find me asleep on the couch and then I won't be able to eat dinner with you and I won't be able to have a fun night with you, which I really want to."

"You know you will regret that decision tomorrow."

"That's something for me to deal with tomorrow. Tonight I just want to spend it with you."

Adrien smiled at her as he took her hand in his before he leaded her to the front door. They put on their shoes and jackets before they left to get some takeout at Burger King.