26. Chapter 26

Their relaxing week up north ended with a much less relaxing few days once they got back to London. They found out within a day that someone had taken pictures of them having dinner together and had posted the pictures online. A reporter had apparently come up to investigate, and they had discovered that the two of them were sharing a hotel room.

Naturally, the articles and rumors flared right back up again. Adrien got a very displeased call from his father- or, rather, from Nathalie on behalf of his father.

"It was cheaper," Adrien explained, completely exasperated. "And of course we were going to have dinner together, it didn't make sense not to."

"Your father wants you to speak to the tabloids again to dispel the rumors," Nathalie told him. "Again."

Adrien scowled. It wasn't his fault that reporters insisted on harassing him and Marinette, or that someone at the hotel had decided to completely disregard confidentiality rules and share their reservation information. He didn't particularly want to have to carve a chunk of time out of his day to talk to some nosy reporter. If he could chose, he would rather just ignore them until they found some new target to pester, but his father did pay for his tuition and rent.

Grudgingly, Adrien agreed to at least talk to a reporter. It probably wouldn't do much, but maybe he could manage to get the majority of the reporters off of their backs again.

"And one more thing- what is that noise on your end?" Nathalie wanted to know. Adrien cringed.

"Marinette's neighbor down the hall is moving out soon," Adrien explained, flinching and shuffling as far away as he could manage from the source of the noise as the bass dropped and raising his voice a little so Nathalie would be able to hear him. "They've been such a nuisance all year that they haven't been allowed to renew their lease, and they're moving out this weekend. And they're being as big of a pain as they can before they leave."

"I see."

"They'll be gone by Monday," Adrien told her. "No clue who is gonna be moving in in their place, but they can't possibly be worse. But I think they're being so obnoxious because they're sore about having to move in the middle of the semester."

"Report them," Nathalie suggested. "They might get a mark on their police record. That would teach them not to behave so poorly."

"Of course." Adrien didn't plan on doing that, not really. It was only going to be a couple more days. If it got too bad, Tikki would probably go over and break something in the speaker system to give them a bit of a break. "Bye, Nathalie."

The phone clicked in his ear.

"Well, that could have gone better," Adrien sighed. He glanced over at Plagg, twisting and stretching as he did to try to shake some of the stiffness that had settled in the small of his back from being bent over his schoolwork earlier. "I suppose I just have to happen to find and talk to one of the better reporters before the trashy ones find me and not let myself get cornered anywhere."

Plagg yawned and burped, letting out Camembert-scented air. "Do you really gotta do a proper interview? Just answer the hotel room thing by telling them about the cost and how there were two beds and then if they ask you about your relationship, ask them why they're so thick that they need to keep asking the same question over and over and over. And then leave. They're trash and they don't deserve your time." Another burp, louder this time. "Also, their voices are annoying."

Adrien laughed.

Down the hall, one song wound down and another started up. Adrien groaned, shooting a nasty look towards the source of the "music". Clearly he wasn't going to be able to study right now. Maybe he should just go out and get some grocery shopping done, and hopefully their neighbor would have quit their little hissy fit by then.

Grumbling, Adrien gathered up his grocery bags and snagged the shopping list he and Marinette had written up and his wallet. He would have preferred to get a chunk of writing for several of his project papers out of the way, but now he was too distracted to do that. Maybe the shopping would give him some time to clear his head.

...or maybe he would run into a reporter ten steps outside of his building. At least Marinette hadn't had that problem when she left for work earlier that morning.

Adrien did his best to not let his exasperation and apprehension show. Instead, he did his best impression of his father, smoothing out his expression into something absolutely disdainful and icy as he made to stride right past the reporter.

Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy to shake the absolute pest of a reporter. He trotted after Adrien, microphone at the ready.

"Mr. Agreste! You were recently spotted traveling with your 'friend' Ms. Dupain-Cheng, and reports say that you two shared a hotel room-"

"I'm a university student and Marinette is an intern," Adrien snapped before the man could even get to his question., not even slowing his pace. "We like saving our money, and it was cheaper to share one hotel room with two beds than to pay for two rooms for five nights, as anyone with half a brain would know."

"And your 'friend' was comfortable with not having separate rooms?"

Adrien scoffed at the frankly insulting question. "Of course. I'm a gentleman, and Marinette knows that. I'd be more worried if she wasn't comfortable with me after us knowing each other for so long."

"Ah. And, uh..." The reporter glanced down at their notepad, then shoved the microphone in Adrien's face again. "You two had dinners together, and looked very close-"

"What, should we have sat alone at two separate tables?" Adrien snapped, ice dripping off every word. He had never so much like his father before. "Should we have sat with straight faces and not talking at all? You people are ridiculous."

He was pleased to see the reporter falter.

"And, uh, what do you have to say about the state of your relationship with Ms. Dupain-Cheng-"

"I have already answered that question endless times," Adrien said, his voice going a few degrees chillier yet. "How many times do I have to repeat myself? Do you people have memory problems or something?" He screeched to a halt, and turned a truly Gabriel Agreste-esque look on the reporter still tailing him. Unsurprisingly, the man faltered. "You people have been harassing us for a year now. Enough is enough. I'm not going to entertain any more of your ridiculous questions. Good bye."

Turning, he stalked off. The reporter didn't follow.

"Oh, that worked well," Plagg cackled. Adrien could feel him wriggling into his collar so he could see the reporter. Plagg sniggered. "He looks like someone slapped him across his face. Good job, kid. All those years of mocking your father behind his back really paid off, it seems."

"Hopefully that gets out soon enough," Adrien muttered. He had absolutely no desire to repeat that several more times. "Otherwise I'm tempted to get a restraining order. Or ten, maybe."

At the grocery store, Adrien could tell that he was attracting a few more stares than normal. Even if people hadn't read the articles written about him, the fact that they had just seen his face at the end of the check-out lanes was enough to make them curious. He shopped faster, speedwalking down the aisles, and he specifically chose a checkout lane run by a bored-looking middle-aged guy who didn't even give him a second glance. He could see a uni-aged cashier from two lanes over glancing over at him excitedly, but thankfully she was busy with a customer and Adrien was able to escape with his groceries unbothered.

"Hey, there's a new article about you," Plagg reported from Adrien's pocket, where he was fiddling with Adrien's phone. "From that reporter you told off. He's claiming that he got an "exclusive interview", but at least he got the details right." A pause. "Also, he says that you seem to just be in denial about your feelings for Marinette, or maybe you got turned down at some point because you were super-defensive about the whole thing."

"Well, Ladybug did rebuff my flirting a bunch," Adrien pointed out. "That was rejection." He smirked, just because he knew it would bug Plagg. "But she's much more receptive now, hmm?"

Plagg gagged, Adrien snickered, and they continued on their way.

The music was still pumping when Adrien and Plagg got back to the apartment. Adrien sighed, grumbled, and started putting food away. Once he finished, he pulled on his headphones, turned up his own music to a comfortable volume, and tried to buckle down to work on his papers while Plagg curled up on the kitchen counter to try to take a nap, snarling impolite words in the neighbor's direction as he tried to settle down.

The faint thud-thud-thud that he could still hear through the headphones was utterly distracting. Adrien grumbled, adjusting the headphones and wishing that he could just head over to campus and study in the library or something there. But he was pretty certain that buildings were closed for the break, and he also didn't want to get cornered by any reporters while there.

Maybe he should just go over to Madam Rosalie's and ask if he could study in a corner there. Surely Marinette had enough space in the corner of her workspace for him to sit and write. There might always be a hum of activity there, but at least it would be disruptive than the so-called music he neighbor had been playing.

Shaking his head, Adrien forced himself to re-focus on the lab report he was trying to complete. It was most of the way done, and he just really needed a really solid conclusion to cap it off before he could do a first edit and then hand the paper over to Ben to look over. However, trying to write in a language that wasn't his first language could be difficult, and the nonstop thudding wasn't helping matters.

Maybe he should take Nathalie's advice and call the police. The immature idiot would deserve the mark on their record.

Still, Adrien instead just adjusted his headphones, turned his own music up a little, and tried to refocus on his paper. Maybe he should try moving outside to his balcony. It might be quieter there, though he would have to bundle up.

He had just gotten up to get his coat when there was an earsplitting screech followed by deafening silence.

Adrien yanked off his headphones, frowning towards the door. It sounded like something had gone suddenly and seriously wrong with their soon-to-be-ex-neighbor's speaker system. Adrien wasn't about to complain- the idiots shouldn't have been playing their music so loudly- but he couldn't help but wonder what exactly had happened. Had they accidentally knocked things over, breaking something in the speakers? Had playing music loudly for so long finally affected the speakers somehow? Had a ticked-off neighbor broken in and taken a sledgehammer to the sound system?

There was no yelling, though, at least none that Adrien could hear. Still frowning in confusion, he sat back down at the table. Well, whatever had happened meant that for the time being at least, he could get some work done. The ringing silence was a little disorienting, but at least now he could actually hear himself think. Adrien started typing and had only gotten a couple sentences written when Plagg phased straight through the door, whining loudly and clutching at his ears as though in pain.

In a split second, it became completely obvious what had happened to the soon-to-be-ex-neighbor's sound system. Adrien tried not to laugh.

"Oh, my ears," Plagg whined, collapsing onto the couch. "Oh, they ring. They hurt. Oh, I think they're bleeding. I'm deaf for life."

"What did you break?" Adrien wanted to know. He grinned over at his kwami. "It must have been something important."

Plagg gave him a green-eyed glare. "Me? Break something? I would never. I was just innocently exploring when that machine started screeching and nearly made me deaf."

...Adrien did suppose that it probably wouldn't have been pleasant to be inside the sound system when it made such a loud noise. He wasn't sure why Plagg was trying to play innocent, but he couldn't deny that it was pretty funny.

"I see. So, uh..." Adrien regarded his kwami, biting his lip to try to hold back the laughter. "In your expert, God of Destruction opinion, how long will it take for the neighbors to fix their sound system?"

"Oh, they won't be able to fix it, I don't think," Plagg reported, yawning widely and showing off his little fangs. "Every last wire in that thing got fried- all spontaneously, of course. Not my fault at all, obviously. I certainly had nothing to do with it. So, do you have any Camembert that I can enjoy while I get my hearing back?"

Adrien showed up to the last of his tutoring sessions before finals with a bag of cookies for Ben and a grin, and with Paul trailing somewhat anxiously behind him. Since Adrien felt pretty ready for finals and Paul had been increasingly curious about the tutoring after Adrien sailed through several exams with ease, Adrien had asked Ben if he could bring along a friend to their final tutoring session of the semester. Ben had agreed, of course, and so for a day his normal one-on-one tutoring was instead one-on-two.

"Oh, thank you," Ben said in surprise, taking the offered bag. "These look amazing."

"Marinette made them," Adrien told him. grinning. "So you know they'll be good. And I helped in between study sessions, but not too much. It's never a good idea to get in between a Dupain-Cheng and their baking."

Ben looked a little puzzled. Paul noticed and grinned.

"Marinette is his wife," Paul said helpfully, snickering when Ben blinked and turned his startled gaze on Adrien. "He talks about her all the time."

Adrien groaned and leveled an annoyed look at Paul. "Marinette is not my wife, she's my friend from Paris who lives across the hall from me."

"Who you got married to once."

"It was a prank! I'm not actually married!" Adrien was pretty certain that he had mentioned Marinette to Ben before, but of course he hadn't actually mentioned the wedding prank at all, because that was ages ago and not that important, even if he had kept the fake marriage certificate. "And anyway, I didn't invite you over so you could tease me the entire time. We have exams to review for."

Ben was grinning. "Maybe, but I'll have to remember to ask about that in the future. So Adrien apparently forgot his manners and forgot to introduce us," he added to Paul, reaching out a hand to shake. "I'm Ben, and you must be Paul."

"Right," Paul confirmed, shaking Ben's hand. "Thanks for letting me come. I've been curious about the tutoring for a bit now, since Adrien has been acing everything this semester."

Ben laughed. "Well, I can't take credit for everything. Adrien usually just needs a nudge to understand what was taught in class. But I can certainly try to help." He glanced over at Adrien. "Do you have any more papers for me to look over, Adrien?"

Adrien shook his head as he sat down at the table. "No, the ones that you edited on Tuesday were the last of the batch for this semester. Thanks for that, as always."

"And as I always tell you- seriously, it was no problem."

Adrien just grinned and shrugged as he opened his bag and pulled out his books like normal. The politeness was ingrained at this point, and that was the way he preferred it. It was better than automatically expecting other people to do things for him.

Their tutoring session continued as normal, with the exception of Paul sometimes chiming in with a question about something. As Ben explained a concept that he and Adrien had already gone over, Adrien let himself sit back a little and think about the upcoming break.

He was looking forward to the break, even if it would be filled with fittings and photoshoots and filming for commercials (seriously, Adrien wanted to know which one of the staff members was responsible for writing commercials. More often than not, they were cringy and terrible, no matter how hard Adrien worked to deliver the requested emotions believably). Seeing Nino and Alya again would be fun, and of course being able to transform and run around freely on the rooftops without having to worry about staying hidden would be amazing.

Adrien wasn't looking forward to Christmas Eve dinner with his father (it would surely be painful as always, since Mr. Agreste still didn't approve of Adrien's field of study; to say that Adrien was fully done with listening to his father's opinion would be an understatement), but that would be a couple hours at most. He would be spending more time with his friends (upon his request, Nathalie had agreed to be sure to schedule his photoshoots and other activities while Alya and Nino would be at work and therefore busy as often as possible, so he could have evenings and even parts of the weekend off to spend with them (and of course with Marinette as well, when she wasn't busy helping her parents).

The thought of Marinette spending part of her vacation working made Adrien frown slightly. She had been working on commissions for most of the fall- never that many, though Adrien suspected that there would be quite a few more requests after Jagged Stone's album came out right after the holidays, and she kept the number of hours worked each night (or each day, during the weekend) reasonable- but more recently, she had thrown herself into making presents for her family and friends (and had put off finishing a few commissions to fully focus on that). He knew that it was an act of love when she made presents for those people she knew, not a burden, but it also meant that she threw herself into working on the pieces without regard to how long it took. It meant that Adrien never felt guilty when spending the entire evening studying for finals and polishing up the last of his lab reports and papers, but he was concerned that she was going to end up overworking herself- especially because she apparently had been working on his present during her breaks at work.

Mr. Dupain had warned him about Marinette's tendency to overwork herself. Maybe he should check in with her to see how much she had left to do on her gifts, and if there was any way he could help between the end of his exams and when he had to head back to Paris.

"Ah, I get it now," Paul said suddenly, snapping Adrien out of his thoughts. "Hopefully I'll remember it, too. That's always the worst, learning something and then forgetting it completely when it's actually important."

"Even if you've already done the problem set for the chapter that theorem is in, I'd recommend you do it over while you still have that understanding fresh in your head," Ben told him. "Then you get more practice with it, and it's more likely that you'll remember things."

Paul nodded. "Right, of course. I'll do that tonight. Man, I should do this tutoring thing more often," he added to Adrien. "I've been spending ages trying to figure that theorem out."

Ben was grinning. "Great! And you don't have to have regular meetings with a tutor throughout the semester if that's not what you need. We do once-off meetings too, though you might get bumped from one tutor to another with those based on who's available."

"I might look into that, then," Paul decided. "I never needed tutoring at all when I was younger, but there's no sense in making things more difficult for myself. Now, what about-"

And they were off again, covering a few different topics. They switched between Paul's questions and Adrien's until time was up and they had to finish up for the day.

"Good luck on exams, both of you," Ben told them as they packed up. "Be sure to read the questions carefully, and several times over before you start trying to answer. I've known several people who lost a lot of time on their exams because they realized partway through answering something that they had interpreted the question wrong."

Adrien nodded, nervous. He suspected that he would probably be more likely than Paul to misunderstand a question- or maybe he would be less likely to misread a question; after all, he tended to read through the exams more slowly than the native English speakers, since he couldn't just skim through.

It was impossible to tell now. He would just have to be careful on his finals, just like he had been with all of his exams earlier in the semester.

The three of them trotted down the stairs together to return their study room key, then they exited the building. Adrien waved good-bye to the other two boys before turning and heading for the bus stop, yawning a little as he did.

Exam week couldn't be over soon enough. He was pretty certain that he was ready, and much more time spent studying would just straight-up drive him crazy.

"Can't wait for next semester, eh?" Plagg asked, finally popping out of Adrien's bag. He had managed to behave throughout the entirety of the tutoring session- he had probably been sleeping- but now Plagg was very much awake and ready to be a pain in the neck. "I heard you guys talking about hating this part of the semester."

"I like the learning part better than the testing part," Adrien said by way of answer. "As for next semester... well, I guess? Paul will be in more of my sections, so I'll see him more often than I have this semester. But I'm a bit worried about it, too."

Back when Adrien registered for the classes his advisor had told him to take, Ben had looked the list over and commented on the number of research papers and lab report write-ups and writing in general for those classes. The thought of so much writing was intimidating, even with Ben's help with proofreading. Adrien had already decided that he would have to really push to get ahead on those projects early in the semester- so much reading thick, technical papers in English (though Ben had suggested that he also look through papers in French; while perhaps not quite as numerous, it was not against the rules) would probably take quite a long time. The thought of all the hours he would have to spend hunched over digging through the papers made set off an increasingly familiar twinge in the small of his back.

Ugh. He was getting old if his body was starting to have random aches and pains already. If this kept up, before he knew it he wouldn't be able to run and flip over the rooftops of Paris anymore and his bones would be brittle and shatter into a million pieces when he fell on the ice, just like an old man.

(So maybe he was exaggerating, just a tiny bit. But Adrien didn't exactly like pain, and it was stupid that his back- which he hadn't even injured, ever- was acting up like this.)

Once he reached the bus station, Adrien opted to stand instead of sit, since it seemed that all that he had been doing lately had been sitting. He stretched, turning his face turned to the sky as he waited for the bus to come.

Above him, the first snowflakes of the season floated down.

Marinette couldn't help but have a little skip in her step as she headed down the sidewalk. There was only another week until Christmas, and it was really feeling like the holidays. A light dusting of snow was sifting down on London, and Marinette let herself spin around on the sidewalk, arms open to enjoy the snowflakes fluttering past.

It was going to be a good holiday, even if she and Adrien would have to pretend to be just friends for the entire time. Adrien was already planning on coming over and joining the Dupain-Chengs after Christmas dinner with his father, and he had also put a limit on the number of shoots that he was willing to do over break so that he could have more time with her and with Nino and Alya. They had both given up on hoping that Mr. Agreste might ease his stance on Adrien dating, considering his reaction whenever she and Adrien were once again pronounced a couple by the tabloids, but Marinette wasn't going to let that spoil her mood.

"It looks like a snow globe," Tikki chirped, poking her head out of Marinette's scarf. "I can't believe it's so pretty out! How long do you think the snow will last?"

"No clue." Marinette pulled out her keys and unlocked the door to her apartment building before stepping inside. "Hopefully it sticks around for a bit. It doesn't feel like Christmas without snow."

Tikki giggled. "You know, there are some parts of the world that would be worried if they got snow for Christmas. I've been places where it never snows!"

"Oh, that's no fun!"

They both giggled as Marinette made her way up the stairs She only made a brief stop in her apartment- really, it was more of just a storage space at this point; maybe she should have considered asking about doing a half-year lease instead of a full-year- before heading over to Adrien's apartment.

She opened the door and stepped into holiday heaven.

Christmas music played from Adrien's computer speakers. A wreath hung (crookedly and somewhat precariously, but the effort was there) across from the door. A small tree- really small, and sprayed with glitter to boot- sat in the middle of the table, several tiny green and blue ornaments hung from its branches. A slight movement caught Marinette's eye and she glanced up to see mistletoe hanging at regular intervals from the ceiling.

Clearly Adrien was planning on a whole lot of kissing in their not-so-distant future. Her kitty was ridiculous.

"Hey, Kitty!" Marinette called, closing the door fully behind her and pausing to kick off her boots on the rug by the door. "I like the decorations! But how did you manage to buy so much mistletoe? Am I going to start seeing tabloid headlines again? You only just got them off of our backs from the last time."

"There's even more in the back," Plagg told Marinette morosely as he floated out to greet her. "So much. I'm not sleeping back there again until it's all gone."

"Ignore him," Adrien called around the corner. A second later, he came striding around the corner, dressed in a dorky Christmas sweater. He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips, then drew back slightly. "And no, no tabloid headlines. I wore a disguise and paid cash instead of using my card so not even the store clerk would recognize me."

Marinette giggled at him. "So you mean that instead of seeing headlines about 'Adrien Agreste buys ridiculous amount of mistletoe; does he have secret holiday plans with a lover?' I'll be seeing headlines about how 'Adrien Agreste spotted wearing a ridiculous outfit while buying large amounts of mistletoe- secret holiday plans!'?"

"You have far too much fun coming up with those headlines," Adrien informed her, grinning. "Were you a tabloid journalist in a past life or something? And it was a good disguise. Plagg, tell her."

Plagg made a rude noise and flew off.

"I didn't go over the top," Adrien told her after sending a glare after his kwami. "I just dressed for the cold, so I had a hat that covered my hair. And then it was sunny, so I had sunglasses. Maybe some people would think that it was odd that I didn't take stuff off in the store, but plenty of people were still in winter gear inside because they were just dashing in quickly."

Marinette made a mental note to keep an eye on the tabloids for the next few days. Even if Adrien thought that he had been subtle, Marinette sometimes wondered if her boyfriend even knew the definition of subtle. He seemed to go all-out quite a lot of the time.

"Anyway, I thought we could have a holiday date before I have to go home now that my finals are over," Adrien continued. "And I thought some decorations were called for."

Marinette couldn't help but laugh as she poked at his holiday sweater. "Lovely date attire. I don't think I have one of those, though."

"Good thing I came prepared, then!" Adrien bounded over to the coat closet and reached up to snag a lumpy package. "Merry Christmas, Bug!"

Marinette couldn't help but laugh as she took the package and tore it open. She pulled out a lovely green sweater with Mewry Cat-mas and a picture of a tree with cat faces sticking out from between the branches. It was utterly ridiculous, but Marinette couldn't love it more.

"He's been giggling over that ever since he found it," Plagg reported, floating back around the corner to tease Adrien some more. "And he was pouting that there weren't any sweaters with that pattern in his size."

...okay, so now Marinette needed to figure out the sweater pattern and replicate it for Adrien. She wondered if she could pull it off before Christmas and if not, then by next Christmas. She had already finished all of her other presents, so she had a bit of free time yet.

"I was not pouting," Adrien complained. "I just thought that it wasn't fair that the best cute pun sweaters were all small. Guys like puns, too."

Marinette laughed and shed her coat and the sweater she had already been wearing (one of Adrien's, naturally) so she could pull the holiday sweater on. The second her head cleared the collar, Adrien pulled her into a kiss.

"You were under the mistletoe," Adrien explained after he pulled away. He was grinning. "And so was I."

"They were different pieces of mistletoe, Adrien! That's not how it's supposed to work!"

Adrien didn't look at all repentant. "Maybe I made up my own rules about mistletoe, then."

Marinette couldn't help but grab hold of her ridiculous boyfriend's face and kiss him again. He was a giant dork and she loved him so, so much. Of course he would cover his entire apartment in mistletoe, just so he could have more excuses to kiss her. Of course he would buy her a cat-pun Christmas sweater so they could match and have an absolutely cheesy Christmas date together.

"So does dinner and a movie sound good, my lady?" Adrien asked as he led the way back across the room, peppering her cheek with kisses as they went. "I picked out some holiday movies we can watch, and I got a selection of treats from the bakery we like, and I made a holiday meal. I've never made cranberry sauce before, and I was surprised how easy it was! I just hope I got enough sugar in. I swear every recipe said something different."

Marinette laughed and kissed his cheek. "That's the nice thing about putting in not a ton of sugar to start. You can add in more later."

"Aaand now I'm worried that I put in too much sugar."

Marinette couldn't keep the grin off of her face as she helped Adrien finish up the cooking (well, "helped"; she gave her opinion that the cranberry sauce could, in fact, use a little more sugar, and that was pretty much it) and as they served up. Even though they always ate together and more often than not cooked together and spent their evenings together as well, she always enjoyed their stay-in dates. It was time for them, to spend the entire time focused on spending time with each other.

Besides, it was always fun to see what Adrien had thought up.

"Oh, this looks good," Marinette praised him as they dug in. She slipped the first bite in her mouth and hummed happily. "Oh, it's really good."

Adrien preened and leaned over to kiss her again. When he pulled away, he wriggled his eyebrows and flicked his eyes upwards.

Sure enough, a spring of mistletoe dangled right above her chair. An identical bundle hung above Adrien's seat, because of course he would cover all of his bases like that. Marinette glanced over to the couch and- okay, wow, Adrien had definitely gotten that area well-covered.

"How did you even have the time to do the shopping and the cooking and all of the decorating?" Marinette asked partway through the meal. The meal by itself was an incredible amount of work, and the decorating (well, the separating out and hanging up all of the mistletoe) would have also taken a lot of time. He would have had to keep moving a chair around to get everything hung up... unless he had help.

Adrien was grinning "I managed to persuade Plagg to help," he admitted. "With lots and lots of cheesy popcorn as a bribe. He hung up most of the mistletoe. I got the ones above the chairs and the couch." His grin grew wider and he wriggled his eyebrows at her. "And the bed."

Marinette threw a pea at his head.

Once dinner was done, they had to clean everything up before they could retire to the couch with their bakery-bought treats and a movie. Marinette couldn't deny that it sort of threw her off to transition from date to chores and then back, even though she and Adrien kept teasing and talking as they worked to clean things up. It ruined the mood just a bit, even though she tried not to let it. At least Adrien had taken care of most of the cooking dishes before she had gotten home.

It would be really nice to be able to go on proper dates once they were back in Paris for good, but they still had over a year to go before that happened.

"At least we have a dishwasher we can use," Adrien said, taking the dish Marinette had just rinsed and sticking it in the dishwasher. "That speeds things up a lot, I think."

"This one is gonna have to soak," Marinette said, making a face at the last pan. She rinsed off her hands and reached around Adrien to dry them off on the towel hung over the oven handle. "Movie time?"

"Mmm, almost." Adrien spun around and caught Marinette's face in his hands again, pressing a kiss to her lips. "There. Now it can be movie time."

Marinette spluttered out a laugh. "Why are you kissing me now? The nearest mistletoe is all the way over there, Adrien." She pointed out towards their dining area. For some reason, the kitchen was completely free of mistletoe. Either Adrien and Plagg had run out of mistletoe to hang or they had decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea to have it in the same area as the food prep. Marinette had some vague recollection of someone- probably Max- telling her that mistletoe was actually poisonous.

Yeah, definitely a good idea to not have any mistletoe in here, then.

Adrien grinned. "There's no rule that I have to wait until we're under mistletoe to kiss you. Why don't you go ahead and pick a movie while I get the treats I bought earlier out?"

It didn't take long for Marinette to get settled down on the couch and pick out a movie. Adrien wasn't far behind her with a couple plates and forks and a bag from their favorite London bakery.

"I knew I couldn't bake up to your standards, so I didn't even try," Adrien said with a laugh, pulling over a side table to set everything down on. He dipped down for a couple kisses, because the mistletoe above the couch demanded it. "And I know that a Yule log cake is traditional for Christmas meals, but they were out when I went. Or they hadn't started making them yet, I'm not sure which."

"It's probably all for the better, honestly," Marinette admitted. "Papa makes the best bûche de Noël, and I've never found another bakery that can make it as well." Maybe she was biased, but she doubted it. Her dad put in just the right amount of chocolate- lots without it becoming overwhelming- and the right amount of frosting. Other cakes always had too much chocolate or not enough, or the cake was too dry, or too sweet with too much frosting, or overbaked, or-

Well, there was a lot that could go wrong with a bûche de Noël.

Adrien grinned. "Well, it's a good thing I stuck with your favorite treats instead, then. I got several flavors of eclairs, and some cookies, and...oh, I don't know what else. I got a lot of different things."

Marinette hummed happily and reached over to kiss him again.

The kwamis kept themselves scarce until the movie was nearly over. Tikki ventured over to snag a half-eaten eclair off of Adrien's plate, and Adrien had to extract himself from Marinette to go get some cheese for Plagg.

"I wish I didn't have to leave tomorrow," Adrien grumbled as he burrowed his way back under the quilt wrapped around Marinette. "I'd rather spend the time with you, but instead I have boring photoshoots."

Marinette poked his nose. "You know we have to avoid suspicion. Your father would start asking questions if you just quit the modeling altogether. And you'll have Nino and Alya to hang out with for the three days that you're in Paris without me." When Adrien still pouted, she giggled at him and leaned over to kiss him again. "But we have each other for tonight. Let's make the most of it, yeah?"

Even with as busy as Nathalie and his father kept him and with the time he spent with his friends, Adrien still found himself missing Marinette. He texted her a bunch, but punning at her wasn't nearly as much fun when he couldn't hear her groan and feel her banging her head against his shoulder in exasperation. Their banter was slower, and worst of all, he couldn't kiss her via text.

Also, Adrien was pretty sure that whoever he was with- whether it was Nino and Alya or Nathalie or his photographers- would notice if he spent all of his time smiling like a sap at his phone. That meant that the texting Marinette had to be limited to times when people wouldn't try to read his messages over his shoulder.

And then once Marinette arrived in the city, he had to remember to keep his hands off her.

"I smell like sugar," was the first thing Marinette said when she saw him again on their way to visit Alya and Nino, which really didn't help Adrien's self-control at all. "I swear I've done so much piping of frosting and fillings in the last couple days that I never want to taste either again, but I know that's a lie."

"I'd ask if you taste like sugar, too, but I probably shouldn't," Adrien said with a laugh, linking his arm with Marinette's as they headed towards Nino and Alya's apartment. "I don't know if I'd be able to keep myself from kissing you."

Marinette laughed at that. "I haven't been doing that much sampling, actually," she admitted. "I've been smelling the cookies and everything too much to want to eat them. I'm glad that we're just doing orders on Christmas rather than opening the store, because then we can be done early and have some time to not be around all of the treats before we eat them."

Adrien couldn't even imagine not wanting to eat all of the lovely things baked in the Dupain-Cheng bakery, but he also had never spent nearly as much time as Marinette did in their back room, and had never visited their kitchens at all during the holidays. That was the time that, according to Marinette, had the most cookie and cakes and other sweets being made.

"It isn't bad at all during the rest of the year," Marinette had told him once. "Actually, it's not bad at all. It's just during the holidays when there's all the cookies and everything when it gets overwhelming."

He supposed that he would get to see for himself soon, though, since he had volunteered his morning to help out in the bakery and get them finished up for the holiday.

"Do you want to go out as Ladybug and Chat Noir sometime today or tomorrow?" Adrien asked as they headed down the street. "It would be nice to run around again. We haven't been doing it nearly as frequently this year."

Plagg scoffed from inside Adrien's jacket. "And why should we be transforming you? You were just doing it to hang out with Ladybug, and now you and Ladybug spend every evening with your lips glued together."

"We don't spend the entire evening kissing," Adrien argued, flushing. "And it's fun to transform and run and leap and everything. It just wasn't safe to go out in London really often after being spotted."

"Let's go out tonight," Marinette proposed before Plagg could say anything else about the frequency or duration of their kissing. "We can do a loop of the city and then end up on the Eiffel Tower for some cookies before going home."

Adrien couldn't keep the grin off of his face.

"Hey, you took your sweet time!" Nino greeted them once they got to Nino and Alya's apartment building. Nino had been hovering in the doorway looking for them and had grinned upon spotting the two of them approaching. "And you came together, mmm?"

"Might as well. There's no point in walking separately when we were going to the same place." Adrien unwound his scarf as they followed Nino into the building. "So how are things going?"

"Since I saw you yesterday after your shoot?" Nino asked with a laugh. "Not much different. But I'm willing to bet that Alya is ready to talk your ear of about her research. She's really been focusing lately on getting everything lined up and ready for her contest entry."

Marinette laughed. "Oh, we know. I've gotten tons of texts lately complaining about stupid forms and poorly worded questions."

"And of course Marinette shared all of those texts with me," Adrien added. "Just to make sure that I suffered along with her."

That got a splutter out of Marinette. "I- what- suffer? I was sharing because I figured that you wanted to know what news I was getting from Paris!"

Adrien grinned and jostled her lightly. "I know. I was just teasing you."

"You flirt like an old married couple," Nino grumbled. He pushed open his apartment door and led them in. "So, who's ready for some movies and popcorn? I remembered to get the snacks ready ahead of time this year!"

"They're here? Hey, guys!"

Adrien laughed as he and Marinette were nearly bowled over by Alya. He stumbled backwards into the couch and barely managed to catch all three of them before they tumbled onto the floor. "Hey to you too, Alya. You're squishing me."

"I'm just glad to see you guys." Alya got off of them, pulling Marinette off of Adrien as she did. Adrien pushed himself back up. "I'm glad you could make it today. My family wanted us to hang out with them all of tomorrow, so we couldn't do our movie night then."

"I know that means that Adrien is gonna be bored out of his mind with nothing to do tomorrow, but we couldn't do much about it." Nino shrugged at Adrien. "Girlfriend's family, dude. I gotta stay on their good side."

Adrien just shrugged, grinning. "That's fine, really. I'll be helping out at the bakery tomorrow morning, getting the last of the orders packaged up and sent out so that they have as much of the day free as possible. And then I'm getting together with Ivan and Mylène to get a late lunch and then hang out for a couple hours. I'll manage."

"As if you don't see enough of Marinette normally," Nino laughed. "Okay, now everyone sit down and I'll get the popcorn and drinks."

"So I've heard that you've been focusing on getting a bunch of forms done for the contest," Adrien started as he sat and Nino maneuvered around a pile of wrapped presents sitting on the floor to get to the kitchen. Marinette sat next to him, and Adrien had to keep his arm from snaking around her waist. "So you've gotten enough leads fleshed out to enter this year, then?"

As usual whenever superheroes or her research were brought up, Alya lit up. "Yeah! I've gotten a bunch of leads with solid evidence and historians lined up, and then a few more than look like they're gonna be good with a little more work. It's actually really nice to have to step back and organize now- I think I texted Mari about this- because I can see how much progress I've made."

"It's also a good chance for her to look back and find patterns that she hadn't noticed before," Nino added as he set a giant bowl of popcorn down in front of them. He headed back into the kitchen for drinks but kept talking as he did. "Like, when she was sorting stuff out, then she can see some themes to the information that she's finding."

Adrien and Marinette looked back over at Alya in near-unison. "Themes?"

"What kind of themes do you mean?" Marinette asked curiously. "Like how the superheroes were dressed or something?"

"No, no, not at all!" Alya exclaimed. She was grinning. "So you know that I haven't been able to find information for all of the superheroes leads that Ladybug and Chat Noir gave me, right? There's some where there's just not that information online, or it's in another language and it's hard to search through. So I've been working on finding historians specializing in that era in that location for each of those superheroes."

"Of course, the problem then is that a lot of the historians speak different languages, so she can't contact all of them," Nino added. He handed each of them a glass before sitting down next to Alya on the couch. "Or she can try, at least, but not all of them respond when they can't understand the email. Or they think that it's a weird request and ignore it."

"Wait, so what does that have to do with themes?" Marinette wanted to know. She leaned forward and snagged a handful of popcorn from the bowl. "Is there a theme of people ignoring your emails?"

Alya snorted. "No- I mean, yes, that's a theme too, but that's not what I meant. I emailed some historians in Italy about one of the Miraculous users several centuries back- one of my colleagues speaks Italian and was willing to translate- and the historians all responded, but they said nothing happened then in that part of the country. No wars, no conflicts. Like, the most exciting thing was a poor harvest for, like, two years."

Adrien and Marinette exchanged a look. That sounded a whole lot like what they had heard when they visited the site of the historical Bee and Goat. Alya had probably found the conflict after all, but the evidence of anything weird was completely obscured.

"I wouldn't even remember the bit about the harvest if it weren't for the fact that I got essentially the same answer when I asked about an American Ladybug and Chat Noir, and a Russian duo," Alya continued. "So I think there's something there- some connection- but there's absolutely no evidence, no sightings of oddly dressed people, no nothing. I'll have to keep those in a folder, as, like, a footnote or something for my book." She let out a frustrated breath. "I just don't get it. What could superheroes do against a bad harvest?

"I thought that maybe the aftereffects of whatever they were fighting caused the bad harvest somehow," Nino chimed in. "Or maybe they were fighting the whatever-it-was so often that people couldn't go out and do as much planting and harvesting as usual or something. But you would think that there would be something that, y'know, stuck out a bit as unusual. Oddly dressed people or something. I don't know."

"There might have been, but people were too worried about the harvest to record that well enough for it to have survived for- what, centuries? It's been ages," Marinette pointed out. She swatted Adrien's hand away when he tried to steal some of her popcorn. "Or maybe it was recorded but historians just write it off as a little detail that isn't worth the time to remember."

Alya made a face and shrugged. "Yeah, maybe. But no historian is gonna be willing to spend the time looking for something like that unless they were getting paid specially to do it, and I don't have those funds. Yet."

"And when you do have the funds, you're already going to have enough places for that money to go with more solid leads," Nino reminded her. "I'd say that you would need even more instances like that before any historian would agree to look into things more, and you would need a couple with more concrete ties to the Miraculous."

Alya made a face. "Ugh. Trying to find concrete ties to superheroes that were trying to blend in is hard. Like, I was thinking that it was going to be some fairly hidden superheroes but a lot of them like Ladybug and Chat Noir, where it's obvious that they're, y'know, not just normal people. But it seems like Ladybug and Chat Noir were the exception. But the challenge is fun, too. Except when it's not."

They all laughed at that.

"But enough about that," Alya said, reaching out to grab her own handful of popcorn. "I'm taking the day off from everything Miraculous-related. It's Christmas! Let's watch some movies and forget about work for a couple hours."

Adrien grinned . "Now that sounds perfect."

Adrien grinned when he spotted his partner's familiar silhouette on top of the house just across the street. He waved, then pried Plagg away from his cheese to transform, dash out the window, and join her on a run around the city.

"It's nice to be in Paris again," Ladybug said as they paused near the Arc de Triomphe. They waved to the civilians passing down below. "I'm not going to skip out on your third year, of course, but I like just having an itch to run and then just... going."

"Yeah," Chat Noir agreed. He grinned at her. "And it's going to be even better when we can just, like, spontaneously decide to go out together."

Ladybug giggled. "I don't think Plagg is looking forward to that. I think he likes lazing around without having to transform you."

"Oh, so true." Chat Noir rolled his eyes. "You know how much he complains. It's enough to make me want to transform more often, just to spite him."

Ladybug really laughed at that, even as she cast her yo-yo out and they started moving again.

"I almost want to go tell Alya about what we found at that castle after what she was telling us earlier," Ladybug said after several minutes of running and swinging around, waving to the crowds down below whenever they were spotted. "About the whole famine thing. But there was no way to tell her as us, because why would we remember a detail like that, and I also don't want to give her any hints of where Ladybug and Chat Noir have been."

Chat Noir frowned in thought. "Huh. Yeah, that's true. Um, maybe we can wait a bit and tell her, like, right before she goes on her trip if she wins the contest, or maybe... I don't know. We didn't tell her about the kwamis and those are meant to stay a secret, so how are we supposed to know for sure about other users?"

They both puzzled over that.

"I mean, I guess it's not the most important thing ever," Ladybug said after a couple minutes. "I mean, it's a side pairing from ages ago, and they were fighting what sounds like a fairly normal enemy at the time. I just wonder what it would add to her research."

"It's just one more data point," Chat Noir agreed. He waved to some people down below as they passed City Hall. It seemed that the news that they were back in the city had spread fast, and people were already scanning the skyline for them. The city was gorgeous and festive from above, with lights and displays everywhere. Some snow was starting to fall on the city, muffling the sound and coating the streets and buildings in white.

"I can't believe that there's still so many pigeons out and about," Ladybug said with a laugh as they jumped over a banister and disturbed a roosting group of birds, making Chat Noir sneeze. She sent him a teasing look over her shoulder. "You know, when we first because superheroes, part of me was worried that you were going to get me rats or pigeons as a joke gift because you seemed so into the whole cat theme."

Chat Noir made a face, but internally an idea was starting to form. "My Lady! Did you really think so little of me? I wouldn't have brought dead animals to a lady."

"I wouldn't have put it past you to catch a live pigeon in a shoebox to present to me. At least, I wouldn't have until I found out that you were allergic." Ladybug laughed and cast out her yo-yo to swing again, headed for the Eiffel Tower. "I can see where you maybe wouldn't want to risk your nose just in order to pull off a joke."

"Yeah, I'm not nearly as pretty with a puffy red nose," Chat Noir teased. "Setting off my allergies just makes it run a lot, and then I have to blow my nose a lot, and then it gets all scaly and dry and gross and I have to moisturize."

"You moisturize your nose?"

The crowds around the Eiffel Tower were thicker than normal with the holiday bustle. There were cheers as the superheroes landed on the lowest section and waved before leaping always upwards, delighting the crowds on the tower. They only stopped when they reached the top deck. The crowds weren't as thick as normal- it was late and cold, and people were slowly filtering out of the tower and going home or to their hotel- so the superheroes hopped down to mingle a bit. Some people just waved, used to seeing the superheroes around, while others- mostly tourists and kids- surged forward to shake hands and take pictures with the superheroes. The two of them worked their way around the deck, making sure that they visited with everyone who wanted to see them. Right before they were about to leave, a call stopped them.

"Ladybug! Chat Noir!"

Both of them glanced over to see a young girl waving at them. When she saw that she had their attention, she grinned and pointed at something above them. "Look!"

They looked. Above them dangled a single bunch of mistletoe, perfectly positioned to catch two unsuspecting tourists, or perhaps two unsuspecting superheroes.

"You gotta kiss now!" the girl exclaimed, grinning. "It's the rules!"

"Shall we, my Lady?" Chat Noir asked, ducking his head down with a grin. Ladybug returned his grin with one of her own and reached out to pull his face closer.

"Oh, I suppose. It is the rules, after all."