28. Chapter 28

in which I finally make use of time skips to jump over a month #yayatlast

Ben had been right about the number of research papers and other writing assignments that Adrien had for his second semester of classes. The two of them had spent one tutoring session inspecting all of the rubrics that Adrien had been handed in his first few days of the semester and putting together a rough schedule of where he should be for all of his papers and projects at certain points in the semester. It wasn't nearly as overwhelming broken down like that, but Adrien still pushed himself to get ahead of the schedule, spending all of his days finding research papers that he could reference whenever he wasn't in class.

The twinge in his back that had popped up during his first semester got worse. Adrien spent several minutes every hour trying to twist and stretch it out before returning to his readings, but it only alleviated the ache for a little while.

The extra work early on in the semester was going to be worth it, in the end. Adrien wasn't sure that Ben had taken into account the fact that it took him a bit longer than most of his classmates to read the research papers and articles that he was using, since they were largely in English instead of French, so really, he was just putting the extra work now to make sure that he would be on schedule later on.

Adrien wasn't the only one who was intensely busy. Marinette had gotten a fair number of inquiries about commissions after Jagged Stone's album dropped and it got out that she had designed covers and dressed several other singers and bands, and she had spent several hours responding to those emails once the holidays were over. A surprising number of the inquiries had been dropped after Marinette informed people about her prices (and Adrien had to grin remembering Marinette's infuriated spluttering whenever someone complained and tried to counter with a much lower price offer; she had blocked several people instead of replying, since her reply probably would have included a bit of rather unprofessional swearing), but there were a couple more bands that had reached out with legitimate requests and they were completely willing to pay Marinette's prices. Adrien had spotted his girlfriend creating some sort of spreadsheet to keep track of the requests before diving in to her first round of preliminary sketches.

(The sketches that he had seen so far were really cool.)

"Are you still reading that stupid paper?"

Adrien sighed as Plagg's voice jolted him out of his thoughts. He turned around to see his kwami lurking behind him, looking utterly bored. "It's not stupid, it's a highly researched and peer-reviewed paper. And no, I was, uh..."

"Daydreaming about your wife?" Plagg jeered, grinning and spinning around Adrien's head. "She'll be home soon enough and then you'll get to see her face then."

Adrien rolled his eyes, trying not to blush. "That's not- never mind." A pause. "And she's not my wife. Yet."

Plagg gagged loudly and Adrien aimed a swat at him. "Did you need something, or did you just come over to annoy me?"

"Cheese!"

Adrien groaned- he should have known- and hopped up to go fetch Plagg's snack. He had to roll his neck to get the crimps out of it, and something cracked loudly. Adrien cringed- that didn't sound good- but at least it seemed that he hadn't injured anything. Plagg wasn't paying him any attention, too busy zipping impatiently around the fridge and rambling on about what kind of cheese he was most in the mood for.

Naturally.

Once Plagg was settled down with a variety plate, Adrien headed back to the table and woke his computer back up so he could resume reading his way through the paper's summary to see if it was something he could use. He was just working his way through the introduction and taking notes on some of the things they mentioned when hands slid over his shoulders and started massaging. Adrien sat back with a purr, letting his head loll back far enough to see Marinette and Tikki behind him.

"Working hard, kitten?" Marinette asked. Her hand slid over his shoulder and under his jaw, tilting his head back so she could kiss him. "How was class?"

"It was interesting," Adrien told her. "I had my class about space today, and that's my favorite. And the lab class was pretty good, too. And then I got together with Ben for an hour and a half to talk about my Electromagnetics class. That one is a doozy to try to keep up with."

Marinette could only smile and nod at that. Adrien grinned. He knew that she tried to keep up with what he was talking about in his classes, she really did, but she hadn't had any math or science classes since back in lycée and he had gotten to some seriously higher-level stuff. The fact that she was willing to sit and listen to him rambling on about some theorem or another when he got excited about something was amazing, it really was. She could be completely lost but she wouldn't interrupt him or try to change the topic. She even tried to ask questions about whatever it was that he was talking about, which proved that she actually listened, even if she couldn't follow what he was saying at all.

It was more than Adrien could have ever said about his father. Even with the topic was one of his photoshoots, Mr. Agreste only ever listened with one ear at most.

Adrien let himself relax as Marinette's hands worked magic on his shoulders and neck. She wasn't a professional or anything at it- her hands had a tendency to wander a little aimlessly, and sometimes they wandered into his hair and petted him for a few minutes instead before going back to massaging his shoulders- but it still felt fantastic.

"What about you?" Adrien asked after a further few minutes of massaging. "How was your day?"

Marinette grinned. "Oh, it was good. We did a few collab designs, and they turned out pretty well. There were a few silk-and-leather combinations, and I think one of them might make the runway."

"Oh, cool."

"And I heard from Alya, too," Marinette added. "She's still gloating that she got her Ladynoir interview before Mrs. Chamack. Apparently the traffic on the Ladyblog has been higher than it has been in years."

Adrien tried his best not to laugh at the smug look on Marinette's face. Mrs. Chamack hadn't gotten any interview from the superheroes about their newly-confirmed relationship at all, while the duo had specifically orchestrated their 'patrol' to run into Alya and talk to her. Adrien suspected that Marinette was perhaps still a little bit sore about the woman interrogating Ladybug and Chat Noir about their relationship status so often and putting them on the spot in her studio the few times they came in.

(Also, he wasn't going to argue with her about that. Alya, overeager as she could be at times, could apparently recognize when to back off with her questions. Madam Chamack, driven by gossip-focused ratings, would push and push until the superheroes snapped and took their leave abruptly, and that never reflected terribly well on them.)

"And she's obsessing over the contest forms again," Marinette added. She looked much less smug about that, and Adrien had to try not to laugh at her exasperated expression. "And getting all of her research summarized and organized. There's some things that she has to leave out for space, and she keeps wondering if she should try to shorten her other sections so she can fit little details back in."

"Doesn't she get to submit a more lengthy summary of her research if she gets to the later stages of the contest?" Adrien wanted to know. "I thought that was what she said at Christmas. And she knows that it'll be a better idea to focus on the users that she does know a lot about and has gotten a lot of research done for right away. If she just does little odds and ends on everyone, the committee might think that that's all she can find and it isn't worth the money to send her places."

Marinette gasped. "Oh! Yeah, that's exactly what she needs to hear. Hold on a second, I have to text her that." Her hands left his shoulders, and Adrien mourned. "I don't mind hearing about her progress, of course, and I don't mind offering my opinion to help her, but all the back and forth and second-guessing herself is starting to drive me a little crazy."

Adrien couldn't blame her. Now that she mentioned it, he remembered a series of texts from Nino groaning about how Alya kept pestering him with questions about things that they had already discussed. She kept second-guessing and running herself in circles with worry.

Hopefully Alya would calm down soon. It wouldn't do her any good to be stressing out and potentially ruining a perfectly good application.

"Did anything else interesting happen today?" Adrien asked after Marinette's phone had returned to her pocket and her hands had returned to kneading his shoulders. He was startled when she suddenly groaned.

"I got another idiot trying to get a commission," Marinette said, sounding suddenly grouchy. "Someone who wanted something ridiculously fancy for a ridiculously low price. I told them how much it would actually cost, not that I would actually accept them when I have so many other things to do, and then they sent back a message accusing me of highway robbery. There were some curse words, so I blocked them." She groaned. "I just have to hope that none of these idiots start complaining to Madam Rosalie about me, but I suppose she wouldn't take them seriously."

"How are these people getting your email in the first place?" Adrien asked, completely baffled. "Do you have, like, a website for commissions that I don't know about or something?"

Marinette shook her head. "No, I don't. If I did, I bet I'd never get any rest from answering emails. Most of the legit inquiries I get are from bands and singers that probably just asked Jagged Stone how to get in contact with me. Everyone else got my work email from the company website. A couple of those inquiries were legit, but most are just idiots who expect an original designer piece to only cost as much as something from a department store. And a cheap department store, at that."

"Could you ask to have your email removed from the company page?" Adrien suggested. "It sounds like it might be a problem to have it up."

Marinette shook her head. "I have to have it up. And there's fewer people bugging me every week. It really wouldn't do much at this point."

Adrien hoped that she was right. He didn't like the idea of people calling Marinette names or trying to cause problems for her just because she dared demand that she be paid fairly for her work.

(He wasn't going to lie- if someone actually did cause trouble for her, he wouldn't hesitate to transform and show up on the idiot's doorstep with a few choice words for them. No one messed with his Lady and got away with it.)

"And I suppose I really shouldn't worry at all about people emailing Madam Rosalie," Marinette continued, oblivious to Adrien's mental plans of destruction. "If they mention pricing at all, she would just laugh at them. She's been there before, back when she was just starting out. And she helped me set my prices too, her and Mrs. Kelly. Otherwise I probably would have set stuff too low, and that's no good when establishing a customer base."

"Are all of your customers bands, then? Or are there some individuals, too?"

"It's all bands or singers. Any private individuals who wanted me to design something ended up being idiots about the price, or at least they just dropped the idea when I gave them base price estimations." Apparently done for now with her massaging, Marinette finally sat down at the table next to Adrien and pulled her tablet out of her bag. The protective cover for it had come in the mail just over a week after Christmas, and Marinette had picked out a leafy pattern. It was really pretty, and more importantly, Marinette loved it. Adrien glanced over her shoulder as she powered it up and caught sight of an in-progress album cover. It was darker and had more black and grey than she ever did with Jagged Stone's albums, but it still screamed rock, or maybe metal. It looked really cool. "And I'm busy enough that I think I would just accept bands at this point anyway. They kind of provide free advertisement."

"Hopefully that's the last of that kind of requester, then." With one last glance at the paper he had been perusing and his notes, Adrien stood up and stretched. His back let out a loud crack, making Marinette jump. He gave her a sheepish grin as he headed into the kitchen, shrugging when she looked concerned.

His back cracking had actually felt kind of good. It relieved some of the painful pressure that had built up over the afternoon. Adrien twisted and stretched again, and this time was rewarded with a series of pops.

Much better.

Adrien started work on dinner as Marinette worked on her commission. He paused often to glance over at his girlfriend as she worked, her brow gently furrowed as she added details to the piece. Tikki alternately perched on Marinette's shoulder and flew around the room, occasionally popping into the kitchen to check on Adrien and snag a cookie from the jar that Marinette had sitting on the counter. Plagg napped on the window ledge, curled up in the last dying ray of sun.

Adrien spooned the casserole mixture he had been working on into a pan and slid it into the oven before sticking his head back out into the living room area. Marinette had left the table and was kneeling on the floor, cutting out some pattern pieces from her special patterning paper.

"Done with the cover art?" Adrien asked. That was fast. Marinette had gotten a lot of the piece done, sure, but he hadn't thought that she would be able to finish it so fast.

Much to his surprise, Marinette shook her head. "No, not yet. There's still a bit of work to be done with sharpening up some of the shadows and contrast, but I can do that whenever. I just figured that I should get some of the outfit work done while I'm at home."

Adrien nodded and headed back into the kitchen to chop up some fruit for a salad. Tikki swooped down to steal a few pieces before Adrien tipped everything into a bowl and stuck it in the fridge.

"Your dietician would be proud of you for eating healthy," she told him as she settled down on the counter. "It's hard to when you first move out, I know. I've heard people complaining about not wanting to make more dishes just so they could have a fruit salad, and that they would rather just stick to the main dish."

Adrien grinned and raised his voice slightly so he could be sure that Marinette would hear. "I see. And would I be correct in assuming that by people you mean Marinette?"

The "Hey!" from the other room came in loud and clear. Adrien's grin widened and Tikki giggled.

"That's exactly what I meant," Tikki whispered loudly. "Whenever she was on a designing kick, she wouldn't take the time to eat right if she wasn't eating at the same time as her parents! And then she was starting to do the same thing when she came here, before you moved to London."

"What is she telling you, Adrien?" Marinette demanded from the next room over. "Don't believe any of it!"

Adrien just laughed.

It wasn't long before dinner was done and he was pulling it out of the oven. Plagg had finally moved, his ray of sunlight long gone and the windowsill now a bit chilly. Now he was situated on top on the back of the stove, munching on a slice of Gruyere and relishing in the heat floating up.

Adrien set the table as the dish cooled a little so it would set, then waited until Marinette had sat up from her work before interrupting. She had moved on from the patterning paper to cutting actual fabric, and he didn't want to startle her and make her cut something wrong. "Bugaboo, dinner is ready."

Marinette set her rotary cutter aside and popped up. "Really? Great!"

It didn't take long at all to eat, and then Adrien shooed Marinette off to keep working while he cleaned up. It was a fairly transparent attempt to avoid his papers for just a bit longer, but Marinette didn't tease him about it at all. It wasn't that long of a delay- having done some of the washing-up while waiting for the casserole to bake had that effect- and then Adrien was settling back down in front of his computer to finish reading and taking notes on the paper he had been partway through when Marinette arrived home. He had just finished with that and was about to open the next paper (this time the paper was thankfully in French, which would make reading it just a bit quicker) when he remembered something that he wanted to ask Marinette.

Adrien turned around in his chair, once again waiting until Marinette's scissors and her fabric were no longer in contact before saying anything. "Hey, Marinette?"

Marinette sat back on her heels, glancing over. "Yeah?"

"What would you think about having Ben over for dinner some night?" Adrien asked. "I'd cook, of course. But I just realized earlier today that I've been talking about him for months but you two haven't ever met."

"Oh, sure!"

"He's got a lot of interesting stories to tell," Adrien said, spinning around in his chair to straddle it backwards and watch Marinette instead of going back to reading his paper. Marinette had gone back to cutting out pieces of fabric, but she was clearly still listening. "Since he took a gap year and all. And his family always traveled when he was a kid." He grinned. "They apparently went to France one year, so he was trying to tell me about it in French. And, uh, I appreciated the enthusiasm and all, but he hasn't taken French classes or practiced at all for, like, five or six years." He grinned at the memory. Ben had tried, he really had, but the story had finally ended up being told in a strange mix of French and English. "Maybe he can try again when he comes over. Will any time in the next, say, two-ish weeks work?"

"Any day except next Thursday," Marinette said, and Adrien frowned. Had he missed something going on at Marinette's work? He had thought that he knew everything that was going on at Madam Rosalie's.

"Wait, what's next Thursday?"

Plagg snickered. Tikki looked appalled. Marinette just gave him a Look.

"Adrien?"

"Yeah?"

"Next Thursday is Valentine's Day."

Adrien and Marinette's Valentine's Day stay-in date ended up being planned half by Marinette and half by Adrien. Once he realized that the holiday was approaching (and how he had forgotten, he really had no idea) Adrien had wanted to be the one to plan it. After all, he did technically tend to have more free time than Marinette, since he was only at school for a couple hours a day and could easily move his study sessions and homework to other days, and he had romantic ideas practically bubbling out of his head. But Marinette hadn't been content to let him do all of the work, so they finally agreed that he would cook dinner and she would make dessert and they would both contribute to the decorations in their (well, technically still just his) apartment.

Adrien called dibs on the music soundtrack, though. He knew what songs he wanted to play, and he knew Marinette's favorite songs, and he had spent several hours brainstorming with Tikki while Marinette worked on her latest commissions. It had turned out well, he thought, mixing soft romantic music with music that was a little more their style but that still had a definite love theme.

And once they got everything set out and prepared, their Valentine's date was definitely romantic. Marinette had somehow managed to get a large vase of roses and baby's breath flowers smuggled into the building (she swore up and down that there was no chance that any reporters could have found out, but she refused to tell him how she had managed that), and Adrien set out cookie-scented candles around the room and set up a lovely red tablecloth and fancy place settings. They both dressed up, and then sat down to a steak dinner.

(The kwamis agreed to stay out of the way in Marinette's apartment, accompanied by a large wheel of cheese and a stack of cookies.)

Thankfully, it had turned out perfectly. Adrien had been really worried about accidentally under- or over-cooking it. His cooked vegetable medley- a recipe that he had gotten from his family's chef over the break- turned out just as well.

"You know, if someone told fifteen-year-old me that you would be able to cook so well, I wouldn't have believed them," Marinette told Adrien as she polished off her last few bites. "Remember that time that you and Nino tried to make snacks for one of our study sessions back in our first year of lycée?"

Adrien groaned. "Don't remind me. Oh, those were awful. We definitely screwed something up when we were mixing up that dip, and who even knows where we went wrong with the mini pizzas. I'm so glad that we had prepackaged stuff that we could still snack on, or that would have been a long study session." He polished off the last of his vegetables, dragging one of the potatoes along the plate to wipe up the last of the sauce. "I'm glad that Alya was willing to teach me how to cook. I hated not knowing what I was doing when we were cooking. And I like being able to actually eat what I make."

"You learned well," Marinette told him. "I know some people who got taught and still can only make the basics. This?" She gestured at her now-empty plate. "This is far, far more than the basics."

Adrien preened.

"Do we want dessert right away?" Marinette asked several minutes later as Adrien brought their dishes out to the kitchen. "Or do we want to have a break first and let dinner settle?"

"Let things settle, I think. Then I can fit in more of your amazing chocolate cake." Adrien made sure that all of the dishes were out and what needed to be soaking was filled with water and soap, and then he headed back towards the table. On the way, he snagged the heart-shaped box of chocolate that he had picked up on his way home from school and the smaller box that he had wrapped earlier in the day. "Besides, I wanted to give you something before we have our dessert."

Marinette twisted in her seat to watch him and her eyes went wide when she saw the box. "Adrien..."

"I couldn't go and buy anything fancy," Adrien assured her as he pushed the box of chocolates and the small box on top of it across the table. "I'm pretty sure people would notice if I went to a jewelry store or something. But I couldn't go completely without any gifts."

"I don't need anything fancy," Marinette assured him. "Or any gifts, really. The drawing tablet you got me for Christmas was already more than enough. And spending time with you is a gift, too."

Adrien grinned over at her. "I know. But I wanted to get you something. What kind of cat would I be if I didn't get you a present?"

Marinette paused, hand hovering over the small wrapped box, and gave Adrien a deeply suspicious look. "Why do I get the sudden feeling that I know what this is?"

He just pasted on his most innocent look. "I'm sure I don't know what you might be talking about."

Sighing, Marinette pulled the wrapping off and opened the box. Inside, a dove-shaped bar of soap sat among pale pink tissue paper. She lifted it up and sniffed, then looked pleased. "It smells like baking spices! Cinnamon and nutmeg and-" another deep breath- "and allspice. I love it! Thanks, kitty."

"I spent a couple days hunting that down," Adrien told her, delighting in Marinette's loud groan. "But I couldn't show up empty-pawed."

"Adrien."

He just grinned at her, unrepentant. The soap had been a great find and he was totally going to stock up on more of them before they left London, just to be sure that he would have them for presents for years to come, because watching Marinette groan and roll her eyes while trying not to laugh was never going to get old.

"I do love it, even if you're ridiculous," Marinette said again, setting the box back down and leaning over to kiss him. "And I have something for you, too. I managed to find the time to make it at work during one of my breaks, and I think you'll like it." She handed over a shoebox-sized box wrapped in what looked like homemade paper, with hearts and cats stamped all over light pink paper. It was adorable, and Adrien did his best to not rip it as he opened the box. Something made with cat-patterned fabric sat inside, and Adrien picked it up curiously. It was stuffed with something small and grainy, and Adrien looked to Marinette for an explanation.

"It's a heating pad," Marinette explained. "Filled with rice, because that seemed to be the best thing to use. You stick it in the microwave for a minute and then put it on your back, or your neck, or your lap, or whatever you want. I know you like heat, and I thought it might be nice to use on cold days or just to curl up with. And they're really good for back aches, too."

"I love it!" Adrien was always planning ways to use it. Maybe he could stick it in his bed to warm the sheets up before he slid in when he went to bed before Marinette, or just hang out with it on the couch, or use it when he had sat at the table for too long doing homework and his back started to hurt. The cat pattern was adorable, and- Adrien unrolled it- yeah, he hadn't been seeing things. The fabric on the back side of the heating pad was green with little red ladybugs scattered all over.

It was Ladybug and Chat Noir themed, and he loved it even more.

"I know I've loved heated blankets when I've had them on tour, and this is gonna be like a miniature heated blanket," Adrien continued happily. "Thank you! And it's so cute, too."

Marinette was grinning. "I knew I had to use those patterns as soon as I saw them," she said. "They're just perfect for us. And I got more fabric of both just to make sure that I would have some for whatever other projects I might want to do in the future. These kinds of patterns have an annoying habit of being discontinued right after I discover them."

Adrien tried not to laugh at the grumpy expression she made at her words. He had to wonder how many times she found the perfect fabric for something, only to have it vanish before she could buy it. At least at Madam Rosalie's, she could just make the perfect fabric on demand.

...well, it was probably a little more complicated than that, but from what Adrien could tell, Marinette could have free rein with fabric design if she so desired, and she had regularly been designing patterns for her team's pieces.

The evening continued with them spending some time snuggled together on the couch, talking about everything and nothing all at once. It was comfortable and warm, even if it wasn't too terribly different than what they did normally. After twenty minutes of that, Marinette pulled Adrien up so they could dance to the music still playing from the speakers Adrien had set up. They waltzed around the cramped space in the living room, sometimes turning a little sharper than normal to avoid hitting the chairs or the couch.

"The carpet is messing me up," Adrien said with a laugh as his shoe snagged a bit on the carpet and sent him tripping into Marinette for the third time that night. A second later, he was catching Marinette as she tripped over her heels. "We really need a proper hardwood floor to dance like this really well."

"I also need to know how to dance for us to be dancing really well, but details," Marinette teased him as she righted herself. The song ended and she led the way back to the table. "I haven't had the fancy-pants training that you've had. My hold is probably all wrong or something."

She was right, but Adrien wasn't about to go full nerd on her and admit it. "Have you been watching too much of that dancing show on TV again? Because that sounds like a comment that one of their judges would make."

Marinette stuck her tongue out at him instead of responding, effectively distracting Adrien for several minutes. When they finally separated several minutes later, he had more or less forgotten what they had been talking about. His distraction was fully completed when Marinette promptly headed into the kitchen to fetch the cake she had made and served it up with a generous scoop of ice cream.

It was a lava-style cake, rich and fudgy and fluffy all at the same time. Adrien hummed happily as he let the first bite melt in his mouth. Clearly it had been a good idea to agree to let Marinette make the dessert. As always, she did not disappoint.

"I was going to put heart-shaped sprinkles on top, but the store had sold out," Marinette told him as they ate. She made a slight face. "I thought that I had looked plenty early, but apparently everyone in London really wanted heart sprinkles for Valentine's Day."

Adrien laughed. He couldn't help it, she just looked so disgruntled. "It's plenty tasty without sprinkles, bugaboo."

"It just would have been good for color," Marinette grumbled. She stabbed her fork into her cake and took a bite. Her expression immediately smoothed out and her eyes closed as she enjoyed the cake. Adrien grinned.

Marinette would probably never comment like he often did about how good the cake was because that was all she was used to, but he knew that she always enjoyed her own baking.

The candles flickered lower as they finished up their desserts. Adrien scraped the bottom of his bowl, trying to get up every last delicious crumb before they brought their dishes into the kitchen.

(He would have licked his bowl, but he had been raised better than that. Besides, there were plenty of leftovers for them to have other days.)

"I haven't heard anything from Alya today," Marinette commented as they washed up their dishes. She giggled. "I'm guessing that Nino managed to distract her from the contest at long last."

"I'm just glad that the entries were due yesterday," Adrien said. He took the newly-washed plate from her and started drying it. "It's too bad the deadline was so close to Valentine's Day. You would think that they might put it a bit sooner since, y'know, Valentine's and all. People can't plan as well if they're stressing over entering."

"I think it has something to do with the contest people not wanting to have to deal with having to wade through the entries before Valentine's Day," Marinette joked. "If they have the contest closing date on the 13th, then they don't have to read anything before the 14th, and they won't be distracted on Valentine's Day thinking about the entries."

Adrien let out a hum of thought. Part of him wanted to laugh at Marinette's joking theory, but upon second thought... well, she might be right. He had seen how obsessed Alya could get when she found a topic that she found intriguing, and from what he could tell, it was a common trait among reporters. He could see where the contest council members might get distracted by some of the more original ideas being presented, and that might keep them from being able to fully focus on whoever they were spending Valentine's Day with.

Well, if they were spending the day with someone. He knew that not everyone paid attention to Valentine's Day (he certainly hadn't before this year), so maybe the unfortunate timing was just due to the organizers not really paying attention to the significance of the date.

"Either way, I'm glad that the contest is closed now and I won't wake up to fifteen messages from Alya asking about wording for a specific section or whether or not she should include some specific detail," Marinette said. She put the pot she had just washed in the drying rack and reached for the last plate. "I mean, I understood, because this is such a big opportunity, but I've never seen her so anxious. Also, I'm not the one with a degree in writing! How was I supposed to know which wording was better?"

"I had thought that she had been planning on having everything ready and entering as soon as the contest opened this year," Adrien said. Maybe he had misunderstood, but he was almost positive that Alya hadn't wanted to wait until last minute to enter. And then instead of entering, she spent the two-week entry period fiddling around with her submission, changing word order and fiddling with the details. "But so much for that. Hopefully she wins this year so she doesn't have to go through that again."

Marinette giggled. "Hopefully she wins this year so that she doesn't find all there is to discover before she can even leave Paris. Because she's going to, at the rate she's going."

"She really has been discovering a lot." Even if Alya had been focusing mainly on getting things organized and formatted correctly to enter the contest ever since the Christmas holidays, that hadn't meant that she hadn't found anything new. A few more historians had responded to her inquiries (apparently having the Ladyblog on her resume had been a large help in spurring them to respond), and they had each had found something of interest. The biggest discovery, according to Alya, had been what had to be an ancient Ladybug and her partner. The Chat Noir at the time had been elsewhere, and the Ladybug had been paired with what Alya said had to be another user. It sounded like it had been a Bee, just based on the color scheme.

It was the first time in months that Alya had found a new type of Miraculous holder. Adrien would not be surprised if the next few months were filled with a careful combing-through of everything she had found over the last year and a half to try to find any signs of other Bees throughout history.

"So what do you want to do after we finish this?" Adrien asked after drying a few more dishes. "A game before bed, maybe? A movie?" He flashed an impish grin at Marinette and wriggled his eyebrows, letting his voice drop into Chat Noir's suave purr. "Or purr-haps the Lady is feline more like going straight to the bedroom?"

Marinette's jaw dropped and she gave him an absolutely incredulous look. "Are you seriously trying to pick me up with cat puns?"

Adrien grinned. He could practically feel the indignation rolling off of her, and it was hilarious. "Mewby."

"I have half a mind to splash you," Marinette threatened, waving soapy fingers in his direction. "If it weren't for the fact that I don't want to get your suit wet, I would."

"And I would splash you back, but I really don't want to accidentally get that gorgeous dress stained." Adrien ducked down and pressed a kiss to Marinette's cheek. "We should have a date sometime where we just, like, don't get dressed up at all. We could wear pajamas and order takeout and play board games and splash each other all we want."

Marinette lit up. "Oh, that sounds amazing."

(Adrien absently wondered if he could get away with ordering onesies for both of them for the date. Marinette might not be happy with him if he did, but she would be so. cute. in a red-spotted or cat-themed adult onesie and it would be so worth it.)

"I know we don't really have much in the way of games over here except for video games and cards, but I bet I could borrow a couple things from my coworkers," Marinette said, clearly excited. The last bowl dangled from one hand, clearly forgotten. "I could just say that we want to have a game night, so they don't think date. And we could make popcorn, and- okay, now I'm just planning our next date when we're still in the middle of our Valentine's Day date."

Adrien laughed. "Oh, I'm glad that you like the idea." He tapped her hand, reminding her about the dish she still held. Marinette eeped and hurried to rinse it off and hand it over to Adrien. "So what do you say? Game? Movie? None of the above?"

"I'd be up to a short rom-com before finishing our date," Marinette decided after a moment. "If you want, of course."

"I suppose it would be a good idea to let our lovely meal digest a bit before we lie down," Adrien agreed. He put the last bowl away and dried his hands before holding a hand out to Marinette. "Let's go find a movie to watch, my Lady."