Adrien forced himself to look away from the blue eyes before him to glance at the red creature beside its partner. The creature, her kwami, looked back up at him, unvoiced concern shining clear in its own bright blue eyes, but it was obvious its real focus was on his own kwami who was surprisingly jovial about something that wasn't cheese for once.

With no other possible help to be found, Adrien's eyes drifted back to blue. They passed over the dark hair he should have paid more attention to, the pale skin and the smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose, finally stopping on the bright blue irises that, twenty minutes ago, he'd have claimed he could recognise on sight.

His companion didn't give him long to look at them though, flicking them down to look at her feet. There was a knot in his stomach that only tightened as the silence following his near fall continued to spread between them. He should have had at least two minutes of his transformation left so why it suddenly cancelled out when he was mid-jump had left him perplexed. He was, however, more perplexed by the sudden detransformation of Ladybug just as she looked up to see who he really was, having caught him mid-fall.

He wondered if the shock on her face had been from seeing him or from having lost her mask.

"Marinette." Her name felt different on his tongue and he hoped it wasn't a permanent change.

Her eyes rose to meet his again, her body going rigid as if she'd received an electric shock. Adrien could see the hint of panic in her face that he was more accustomed to seeing at school, and not on a rooftop five miles from the Eifel Tower, as she opened her mouth to speak. A small part of his mind wondered if she would sound like Ladybug or Marinette or if there was even a difference between them. Before he could entertain the thought more, Marinette's hand shot out and grabbed her kwami.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Adrien. Bye!"

By the time his brain had processed the rushed string of words the door leading to the building's stairwell had already slammed shut, leaving him alone on the roof with a now pouting Plagg.

o0o

It was odd, Adrien mused, to be actively avoided by a classmate. What made it perhaps more so was how he hadn't noticed how prominent Marinette's presence was in his school-life until she was obviously trying to hide it. He was still trying to understand how she had managed to hide being Ladybug not just from him but Alya too.

On the topic of Alya, the looks she had been sending him all morning were arguably worse than any of Hawkmoth's villains. They screamed that she wanted various painful things to happen to him and it certainly made talking to Marinette harder than it was already.

And hard it was. He had been trying to talk to the dark haired girl all morning with no success. He came in extra early to try and catch her before lessons, she arrived late with only a mumbled apology to their teacher before sitting down; he tried turning to her to speak and she was suddenly engaged in a conversation she hadn't been in a moment ago. The only reason he hadn't resorted to note passing was his fear of Alya intercepting them.

When lunch finally arrived he planned on catching her, thinking maybe they could leave the school grounds and actually talk about what they'd discovered, but Marinette was out of the door with a burst of speed normally reserved for when she was Ladybug, leaving him face to face with Alya.

Alya had always seemed nice as far as Adrien was concerned. A little obsessive perhaps, but nice. If someone was to ask, he would probably say they were friends. However, the scowl she wore and the way she crossed her arms over her chest was anything but friendly.

"What did you do to her?"

"I-"

"Don't try and lie to me, Adrien!" Alya's voice rose with emotion, "I'm a journalist, I know when someone's lying to me. Mari's been off all morning and the only thing I can get out of her is 'Adrien found out' so. What. Did. You. Do?!" Each word was punctuated with a sharp jab to his chest.

He looked down out of embarrassment. "Nothing," he could sense the way she seemed to snap with fury and he forced himself to look at her, raising his hands in front of him in an effort to slow her reaction, "But she ran off before I knew what to do."

Alya's eyes scrunched shut and she let out a long sigh. Just like that her body and anger seemed to deflate. "Trust Mari to run off after finally doing something," she glanced up at him and frowned, "And trust you to be too socially awkward to say anything."

If he wasn't more interested in placating her anger, Adrien firmly believed that he would have argued against her statement. But, as he was more concerned with not getting his ear verbally chewed off, he settled for a small, disapproving frown.

Alya sighed again and ran a hand through her brown hair.

"Listen, Marinette's liked you for a long while. I'm not going to tell you that you have to like her back or anything, 'cause that's not fair, but you need to talk to her. It must have taken so much courage for her to confess to you and she deserves to talk to you at the very least. It would be best if you spoke in person, but if your dad's making you do stuff then I can give you her number so you can call her."

Adrien blinked. That was... not the thing he thought he had to discuss with Marinette. A whirlwind of memories came to the forefront of his mind and lots of things that had puzzled him about her suddenly made sense – like how she always seemed to have trouble talking to him unless she had a specific goal in mind, or why Alya kept nudging her closer to him at any possible time. The sudden realisation that it also explained why Ladybug never reciprocated his advances as Chat was almost enough to make him laugh at the absurdity of it all. That was definitely another thing they would have to discuss it seemed.

"Even if I have to sneak out to do so, I'll visit her today. I promise."

Alya surveyed him for a whole minute before she turned and headed to the door. "I'll hold you to that, Adrien."

o0o

When Adrien landed on Marinette's balcony fully transformed at five-thirty he was concerned that she wouldn't be around. She'd spent the whole day avoiding him and if she really didn't want to talk to him it would make sense if she left her room. His fear was soon displaced by a quick glance down her skylight; she was sat on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest and one hand absently fiddling with a pillow. She looked drained. It wasn't something he was used to seeing from her, either as Ladybug or Marinette, and he briefly wondered if it really was the best time to talk. In the end though his desire, his need, to talk to her won out and he knocked one fist against the glass.

She rose, almost on automatic, and began climbing without looking at him once. She reached up, unfastened the lock with one hand and then pushed the pane up just enough for him to finish opening it. Her blue eyes remained pointedly downturned as she swept an arm out to invite him in.

Adrien waited for her to climb back down the ladder and sit on her bed before he climbed down. He skipped the last few rungs, dropped his transformation, and mimicked her position. Plagg had barely left his ring when he was crashed into by a fast red blur and pulled off to somewhere else in the room.

Marinette finally raised her eyes to look at him. They looked tired, the bags under them noticeable at his current distance, even with her attempt to hide them with makeup. He wondered if she was always so tired, her mask hiding it from him normally. Mainly though, her eyes just looked guarded, something that didn't surprise him. She made no attempt to say anything and so he took it as his cue to start.

"You were avoiding me."

"I wasn't sure how I'd react." Her voice was small, tempered as if she still didn't know how she was going to react. It didn't sound like either of her.

"Do you hate that I'm Chat Noir?"

"Do you hate that I'm Ladybug?" She shot back immediately.

"No." He hope the speed at which he had answered didn't lead her to believe that he was lying. He'd spent all day thinking about that very question and had come to the conclusion that Marinette being Ladybug was probably the best thing to come out of the whole mess.

"I don't hate that you're Chat either."

"At least no more than you dislike Chat, huh?" He was fishing for answers to questions he hadn't voiced and he hated himself for accusing her in order to do so, but he had to know where he stood with her.

Her forehead furrowed and she frowned. "I've never disliked Chat. I just didn't want to get too close," she paused and let her eyes fall to where her hands were in her lap, "I just didn't want him to know who I was and then be disappointed in me."

"I'm not," Hesitantly, he pulled her hand towards him, giving her plenty of time to change her mind and pull it back. When it was closer to him he started rubbing circles on the back of it, "I never really paid attention, but all of the things that made Ladybug special were things that you were doing too, Marinette. You're brave and a great leader and an amazing friend, but you're also creative and supportive and you know how to stand up for yourself, which were things I never really got the honour of seeing when I was with Ladybug. I swear I am not disappointed to find out that you're Ladybug."

Her eyes remained firmly glued to her hand in his, but Adrien didn't miss the hint of a smile on her face.

"Thank you."

They stayed like that for an indefinite amount of time; Adrien rubbing circles on the back of her hand and her watching it, the closest he'd seen to a smile from her all day resting lightly on her lips. Eventually she broke the silence.

"I won't stop being Ladybug; I can't just leave the city."

He felt himself grin at how much like her masked self she sounded in that one statement. If he'd had any doubts about the girl in front of him being his partner they were immediately erased. "Well, if you'll still have me, I'd like to continue being your partner: Chat Noir."

She finally smiled and he felt his heart rate speed up a little.

"Okay, but only if you stop acting quite so recklessly – whatever would the photographer's say if their best model got all beaten up?"

Her tone was teasing and it suddenly felt like they were on a Parisian rooftop following a particularly uneventful patrol. He couldn't have stopped the Chat Noir grin from settling on his face if he tried.

"I would imagine, my Lady, that they would be so distraught that they would cancel the photo shoot. Not that I would mind if it meant that I had more time to protect you," she rolled her eyes, obviously much more at ease with their familiar banter than the solemn tone their conversation began with and he felt so much happier for it.

"But if you so desire it, I will be more careful to make sure you don't worry, Princess." Feeling empowered by her change in mood, he winked at her before he could lose his nerve.

Marinette started laughing then, probably from his over the top display. He watched as the laughter seemed to bubble up from her chest, spilling out of her mouth as giggles that she tried to suppress with her hands to no avail. Her laughter was contagious and Adrien soon found himself laughing along.

When their laughter finally died down, Adrien's mind wandered to the second discovery he'd made about her. Maybe it would be best to ask about it whist she was in a good mood still.

"Marinette, can I ask you a question?"

She hummed in affirmation.

"Alya doesn't know you're Ladybug, does she?"

Marinette tilted her head to one side, bemused. "No. Why?"

Adrien took a deep breath. It was now or never.

"Well, at lunch, after I'd failed to stop you, Alya came up to me and demanded to know what I'd done to you and because she didn't know you were Ladybug she thought it was about something else. So she told me something that you probably should have been the one to tell me, and it explains a lot of stuff I was wondering about, both when I'm Chat and Adrien and-"

"You're not making any sense."

He felt his ears grow warm, but couldn't ignore the sense of irony that it was how he normally felt when talking to her. As surprised as he was that she didn't seem to have any problems whilst talking to him, he was glad if it meant they'd be able to talk more regularly.

He sighed and let his shoulders slump. That was for another time though and she was still waiting for him to explain himself.

"To put it simply, did you ignore my flirting as Chat because he had a crush on me as Adrien?"

If someone was to walk in then they might have presumed that Marinette had been frozen. The only evidence to the contrary was the steadily rising blush coming up her neck to colour her cheeks. The closest Adrien had seen to anything like it was blushing girls in various anime, but he couldn't stop his brain from thinking that it was much cuter in real life, especially when Marinette was the one who was blushing.

As if finally realising what was happening to her, Marinette threw her hands up to cover her face. Taking the opportunity as he saw it, Adrien leant forward so that he was directly in front of her and then waited until she partitioned her fingers to look out.

The smirk that he usually only wore when he was transformed seemed permanently glued to his face.

"Princess, you're paw-sitively pink!"

Marinette groaned and let her head fall forward onto his shoulder, her reactions making his smirk all the larger.

"I can't believe I'm gonna be stuck with your awful puns all the time now. Are you like this with every girl you talk to?"

He couldn't remember when he's put his hands around her waist, but as she wasn't complaining he saw no harm in leaving them there.

"I'll have you know that the only people I've flirted with are my Lady and my Princess, and since it has come to my attention that both of them are you, that would mean you're the only person I've flirted with, Marinette."

"Arguably anyone who uses puns as a flirting technique doesn't know how to flirt, Kitty."

He tutted. "But you're still blushing, aren't you Bugaboo?"

She leant back, not enough to break out of his grasp, but enough for him to see her face. Sure enough, her blush hadn't diminished. Before he could think of some other ways to tease her though, she dove forward so that her nose was almost touching his, causing him to go cross-eyed briefly.

"I'm not the only one though, am I Adrien?"

He felt his face prickle and heat up as if on command, not sure if it was because of her sudden proximity, allowing him to see just how long her lashes were, or the way she had said his name with a purr that he never would have expected from her a week, no, a day before.

He wasn't sure when they started laughing again, or when they fell over to lay on their sides but there were three things Adrien was sure of: at some point his arms had completely wrapped around Marinette's waist and her hands clung to the front of his shirt, that she smelt of vanilla (he later found out she also tasted of it), and that, finally, finding out that Marinette was Ladybug was definitely the best thing to come out of their initial mess.

o0o

"Good morning, Marinette." He greeted cheerfully. He would be lying if he said he hadn't been looking forward to seeing her all night.

"Ahh, g-good morning."

He cocked his head to one side, looking almost as confused as she was.

"You okay?"

"You're fine. No, I meant I'm fine! That isn't to say you're not fine, or to specify if that's mood or appearance and-" she slapped a hand over her mouth over her mouth before she could say anything more, pink quickly colouring her cheeks.

Adrien's lips quirked up in a small smirk. She'd been fine the night before, but it looked like some habits die hard.

"What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?"

Her hand moved from her mouth to cover her eyes as she let out a groan, much to his amusement.

Just as she finished, Alya walked in to the classroom. She placed her bag on her desk but her brown eyes flicked between him and her still blushing best friend.

"You two alright?" Her voice was laced with suspicion.

Adrien offered her a smile. "Yup, we're just purr-fect."

Even after Marinette had thrown her pencil case at him, he couldn't stop laughing at the disbelieving groan she'd made.