30. Chapter 30

Adrien was concerned.

As winter turned to spring, Marinette had been contacted by more bands (as well as the occasional individual singer) as different rock and alt metal groups discovered that Jagged Stone's album art designer was a talented fashion designer as well. It was good for Marinette, of course- she was going to have one really impressive resume after this- but spring runway was also coming up, and it resulted in one very stressed Marinette as she worked to stay on top of the requests while still keeping up with her work at Madam Rosalie's.

And because Adrien had been wrapped up in his own concerns about finishing the projects, papers, and tests he had for his classes plus getting his applications in and interviewing for summer internships, he had taken far too long to catch on to just how much work Marinette was taking on . It hadn't helped that she had moved her sewing setup back to her apartment after Ben came over for dinner back in February. Since he had been working hard on papers and she hadn't wanted to distract him, she had just kept it over there and spent her evenings after dinner and before bed working in her apartment, unless she was working on album art or doing concept sketches.

He had thought that she maybe was pushing herself so hard because she had a long wait list formed and she didn't want any of the bands dropping her because they had to wait too long for their turn to come up, but that wasn't it.

There weren't any bands that had been wait listed. Marinette had accepted them all (well, all of the ones that agreed to her pricing), and so she had an insanely long list of in-progress commissions that nearly all had deadlines coming up in the coming weeks.

"Bug, you don't have a full time job and a couple commissions on the side," Adrien said in utter disbelief late Sunday evening- or, rather, Sunday night, when Marinette should have already been getting ready for bed, considering how early she was going to have to wake up the next morning to get ready for the Fashion Week runway- as he looked at Marinette's spreadsheet of commissions and the progress and due dates for each one. "This is two full-time jobs plus some, what with the spring runway this week. And you still have spring photoshoots at work after that. How on earth did you even find the time to make the heat pack for Plagg?"

"It got out of hand," Marinette admitted. She looked utterly stressed as she looked at the list of commissions on her computer screen. "I just... they're famous people, you know? Or on their way to getting famous. They're visible. And the styles are something I haven't had the chance to do at Madam Rosalie's place, really, and they have so many fun ideas... I just didn't want to turn anyone down and miss out on that exposure."

"And Plagg?"

Marinette finally smiled, just for a moment. It wasn't even a quarter as bright as her usual smiles. "I did his bag right before bed one night, when I was too tired to do a good enough job on the commissions. It was just a matter of sewing a few straight seams and pinning the fabric right so that the rice wouldn't get under the needle." A pause. "Also, his whining was annoying."

"Most of these people would have been willing to wait a bit for their commissions, I think," Adrien said, trying not to laugh at that last comment. His eyes scanned down the list. It was very organized, he had to admit, with notes on sizes and measurements and themes and links to other sheets with more information. Thankfully there were quite a few that were close to being done, but they also had due dates that were coming up really soon. "How often are you getting contacted? With real requests, I mean. Not individual weirdos that have no idea what it would cost."

Marinette worried her lip as she thought about it. "Every couple weeks, maybe? It's just that there was a whole slew of them after Jagged Stone's album release that I had to put off working on until after Christmas, and there was that article about the outfits I designed for those other groups that got me more attention again, and I'm still working on finishing up everything for those ones. If I just had a break in the requests I would be able to catch up and then be working on commissions at a decent pace and be able to actually enjoy them again, but that's just not happening!"

"Buginette." Adrien rested his hands on Marinette's shoulders and tugged her into a hug. Part of him wanted to get frustrated with her- she should have known better than to take on so much work- but getting frustrated wouldn't help anything. Or anyone. Besides, there were better ways of expressing the same sentiment without being an arse about it, and the last thing Marinette needed right now was any sort of fight. "Love, that's when you tell new people that you're busy. Or if someone you're working with is requesting more pieces, you tell them it's going to have to wait. You put them down on your lovely spreadsheet as on the waiting list, and then contact them once you've caught up and had a little break. You'll do your best work for them then."

Marinette was still not entirely convinced, Adrien could tell. She was scanning her spreadsheet with a worried look on her face.

"You're right," she admitted after several more seconds of silence. She let out a huffy breath. "I just- we always heard in school about how it's hard to break into the fashion industry and that even to get hired by a company can be hard because designers are a dime a dozen, it seems, and I didn't want my chance to slip past me."

Adrien could understand that fear, honestly. He had seen the pile of applications on his father's desk before- and those were the ones that had already made it past several rounds of eliminations. There were a lot of strong candidates, and even people who graduated in the top of their class in university weren't guaranteed to get a position.

Still, Adrien didn't think that Marinette had to worry about that- and no, he wasn't just being biased. Marinette was crazy talented, and she had an impressive resume to back her up, even as young as she was.

Stepping to the side and crouching so that he was looking Marinette in the eye, Adrien put his hands on her shoulders so he could get her full attention. "Bug. Listen to me. You've already broken into the fashion industry. You'll have three years of interning at Rosalie on your resume, plus all of the stuff for Jagged, plus all of this stuff that you have right now. If people are asking after you to the point that you're getting overworked, you are solid in the fashion industry." He gave her shoulders a little shake for emphasis before sliding one hand up to cup her cheek. "But if you overwork yourself like this, you know the quality is going to suffer. It's better to put people on a wait list and work at your own speed than it is to churn out things that aren't original and aren't you and end up falling out of favor because of that. If people want a Marinette Original, they can wait. That's how the fashion industry works."

"I guess." Still, Marinette looked overwhelmed as she looked from Adrien to her spreadsheet. "And I can start putting people on a wait list now, but what about the commissions I already have lined up? I don't know any of the people on here well enough to ask if I could push their due dates back. And it's just so much work, I don't know how I'll get them all done by the deadlines."

Adrien had to think about it for several moments. It didn't take long before a plan started forming in his head.

"How about this- instead of having to cut off by our normal time, I can finish with my homework then or during the day and then come over and help you however I can?" Adrien suggested. "You said you had rivets to put in on some things, right? If you just mark with, like, chalk where you want them pounded in, I could do that. And I can sort out finished pieces into which commissions they belong to, and get shipping labels printed, and stuff like that. I can't sew, obviously, but if you think of anything I can do to help..."

Marinette looked slightly distressed at that. "But Adrien! You have your own stuff to do, with your papers and your midterms and-"

"My papers are largely done, they just need some editing. I'm going to have Ben look at them tomorrow for grammar and spelling and word choice, so I won't have to do that, and then I'll have a few days to go back and make sure that I have everything just the way I want it." Adrien rubbed Marinette's back, working at the tense muscles in her shoulders. "And one of my tests was yesterday, and then I only have two more for midterms. Most of my classes don't really do midterms at this point. They have tests when they want to have tests. I can handle it."

"That would help," Marinette admitted. She sent a slightly rueful look at the pile of finished clothes on her couch. "There's stuff from four or five commissions there and I know they're there- I check off each outfit once I finish it- but I just don't have the time to sort it out."

"Do you have a sheet with descriptions of which outfits are meant to be in each order?"

Marinette pointed to a folder sitting on the low table next to the couch. "Yeah, in there. There should be copies of the designs attached to each one, too."

Adrien headed over to pick up the folder. It was thick, and when he opened it he found a packet for each of Marinette's commissions. There were a dozen of them, all with multiple pieces. That surprised Adrien a bit, considering that none of them had ever worked with Marinette before and she didn't exactly have a site or anything online with photos of her past work. A couple had cover art commissions as well, and from what he could tell, only one of them had that part of their order completely finished- though once again, there were a quite a few that were nearly done, only needing a round of requested revisions.

It was a lot.

Adrien sorted through the pile as the sewing machine whirred furiously in the background. Marinette was right when she had said that there was stuff from several different commissions all mixed together- only instead of four or five commissions, there were eight. Tikki found sticky notes for him to stick to each pile of outfits, and Adrien wrote down the customer's name, what pieces were in each order, and checked off each piece that he had found and put in the pile. What was still needed was written on a different colored sticky note and put on top of the pile.

Slowly but surely, the couch was becoming much more organized.

"This one says that it just needs one more piece before it's complete," Adrien reported after everything was sorted out into neat stacks, flipping through one packet of commission information to double-check. "It looks like a fairly basic tank top, except with some screen printing."

Marinette perked up and the sewing machine's whirring slowed to a stop. "Really?"

"It looks like it, yeah." Adrien handed over the packet. "I've found the two skirts and one completed top. It just needs this one shirt and then it'll be ready to go."

"I think I was waiting to do the screen printing all at once, since I have a bunch to do among all of my commissions and it's more efficient to do it all in one go," Marinette said, scanning the page. "But yeah, I should maybe do that this weekend and I can get a bunch of stuff checked off. Is it supposed to be sunny then?"

Adrien blinked, puzzled- what did the weather have to do with anything?- but checked his phone anyway. Maybe she just needed the sun for the shirts to dry or something. "Yeah, it'll be sunny, for once. At least that's what they think right now. Why?"

"I gotta set the screens in the sun," Marinette explained, which... yeah, honestly, that really didn't explain anything at all. Adrien was still very much confused. "I should have most of the materials for screen printing, but I just have to make the screens themselves. And- oh, if I'm gonna make all of the screens at once, I'll actually need to make more frames. Shoot, and I don't have the time to pick up more materials, and the copy shop is never open when I'm off and it's always packed during lunch and-"

"If you tell me what you need, I can pick up the stuff for the frames and the other materials, and whatever you need from the copy shop, I can run all of those errands," Adrien told her immediately, before she could get too far into one of her panic spirals. "I can go whenever, I just need a list and where to buy stuff. And for the screen printing- do you sew your own shirts for that?"

Marinette shook her head, looking marginally less frantic. "No, I just ordered some pre-sewn ones that I'll print on. Even if it only takes an hour to sew a shirt like that, I have so many orders for them that it would just take forever." Marinette pointed at an unopened box wedged in the corner of the room with a pile of papers sitting on top. A closer look told Adrien that it was the name of each commission, the color and size of the base shirt, and what design was meant to be printed on it. Once again, Marinette had absolutely impeccable organization. "I should check and make sure they're all there, probably, and get them sorted out with their commission sheets, but I don't have the time."

"I can check on that, too," Adrien piped up. He slipped up behind her and hugged her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Are you feeling better about everything now?"

"Better," Marinette agreed. She twisted around to kiss him. "Not perfect, because there's still a lot to do and I feel really stupid for letting it get to this point... but I think I might focus on the little stuff this week, all of the easy commissions and finishing up the orders that just have one piece left and finishing the pieces I have mostly completed and then doing album cover revisions. Once I have all of that done, then I think I'll have a better view of what I really have left to do." She glanced over at her laptop and the spreadsheet on it and let out a sigh. "I might end up having to email some of my customers and asking to push back the completion date a little bit. I've been scrambling so much lately that I just keep hopping from one piece to another because I see the due date and just freak out, and start working on one of their pieces, then see the due date for another and switch again."

"That sounds like a plan," Adrien agreed. He straightened up and glanced around the room. There were four in-progress pieces on the mannequins, and what looked like a couple others sitting around on the floor and on Marinette's kitchen counter. Just by standing here he was starting to feel overwhelmed. "Then you can finish orders and get those pieces cleared out of here so you aren't being buried under an avalanche of clothes. It won't feel quite so overwhelming then."

Marinette nodded in agreement, biting her lip as she glanced back at her computer. "Yeah. And I suppose I can bring my tablet along to Fashion Week and work on the cover art stuff between runways, too. I've got some requested changes to finish up and then a couple complete ones to design. Or maybe it's just one complete one left to design, I don't remember." She reached over, scrolling through her list of commissions. Red, yellow and green boxes told her what was finished, what was in-progress, and what was still woefully untouched. There were way too many yellow and red-coded boxes for Adrien's liking, and he was sure that she felt the same. "I still have to go in every day and go to other presentations and runways for inspiration, but there's enough downtime between stuff that I can probably get some work done. And I could bring my sketchbook and work on some of the preliminary sketches that I still have to do once the covers are finished up. And then I could take a day or two off to catch up, too, maybe, after Fashion Week is over. Or maybe not. It depends on what we have to do at work."

Adrien nodded. He couldn't say that he entirely liked the plan- Marinette was going to be working herself to the bone with barely a moment to catch her breath, and that wasn't healthy- but if she overworked herself now, then hopefully she would get enough done that she wouldn't be keeping herself awake stressing over the unfinished commissions with their ever-looming due dates. And with his tests and paper due dates more spread out this semester than ever before and Ben's help in keeping him on top of his coursework, he should be able to help Marinette without falling behind in his own studies.

Besides, even if he hadn't admitted it to himself fully, Adrien was far ahead of schedule on the essays. His early push meant that his 'rough drafts' were more like fully completed papers at this point, and he probably wasn't going to need to do much editing between when he got the graded draft back and when the final copy was due.

Hopefully, at least. Barring some complete disaster.

"Are you almost done with that piece?" Adrien asked as Marinette turned back to the jacket she was working on. "Because I can understand wanting to finish it, but it's late and you have to get up early for Fashion Week. And you actually have to be awake for that."

"I want to get one more seam done, and then it'll be at a good stopping point," Marinette decided after a pause. "And then I'll be over- unless you want me to sleep over here so I don't wake you up when I get up?"

Adrien shook his head. If Marinette slept over in her apartment, then there would be no way of knowing if she had actually slept. He would rather deal with being woken up briefly when Marinette's alarm went off early in the morning than have her make the last-minute decision to stay up even later to finish a piece and not know. "I'd rather sleep next to you like normal. How long do you think you'll be?"

"Five minutes, tops."

"Sounds good." As he turned to leave, Adrien paused. "Oh, and one thing... Marinette?"

Marinette looked over at him, eyes wide. "Yeah?"

"Everything will work out, I promise. We're Ladybug and Chat Noir, after all." He grinned at her, and was pleased to see her smile back. It was a little muted, but it was a start. "Together, we can do anything."

For the first time in nearly two weeks, Marinette found that she could actually focus entirely on what she was doing at work. She didn't find her mind floating back to the piles of unfinished commissions sitting in her apartment, or fretting over everything she had to do.

Even if she hadn't made nearly as much progress as she wanted to over the weekend- well, she had had ridiculous expectations in the first place. She had done a good bit of work, and now that Adrien had caught on to her problem, he was solidly on her side. He had managed to get the messy pile of commissions sorted out and organized so that she had a better idea of what she had left to do, and together they had come up with a plan for her going forward.

Well, maybe she had come up with most of the plan, but Adrien's presence and willingness to help had settled the jittery nerves in her stomach and cleared her mind so that she could actually focus. The mountain of commissions to finish didn't seem so insurmountable now that she had Chat Noir at her side and a plan in her mind.

And that focus was needed as Marinette helped models change clothes quickly and got them back out onto the runway. The work was fast-paced and needed all of her attention to make sure the right collars were popped and everything was tucked in in the right places and no wrinkles were visible. Once the last model went through and headed out to the runway, a sigh ran through the changing area and there was a distinct drop in tension. Seconds later, though, everyone pulled themselves back together to start steering models back to their area so they could get changed back into their street clothes and all of the outfits could be packed up and sent back to the office.

Once the last of the things from Madam Rosalie's show were packed up, Marinette snagged her bag and followed her coworkers out of backstage and towards the first of the shows that she had wanted to see. As she walked, she pulled out the wrap that Adrien had made for her- best boyfriend ever, honestly- and dug in hungrily.

"Oh, I'm jealous," Sarah said, eying the wrap. "I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that's it. I can't cook all that well."

"When did you find the time to put that together, even?" Emily wanted to know, partway through her own turkey sandwich. "I thought you said that you were super-busy with commissions to do, too."

Marinette swallowed her bite and then grinned. "Yeah, I've been swamped," she agreed. "So Adrien has been doing most of the cooking, and he made this for me. He's an absolute godsend."

"D'you think I could bribe him to pack a lunch for me for the rest of the week?" Sarah joked. "I kid, I kid," she added before Marinette had time to think about it. "I should have time to make a proper meal to pack tonight. But that really does look good."

They worked their way through the crowd and into the largest of the runway areas. Once they got into their seats, Marinette wasted no time in polishing off her wrap and pulling out her commissions sketchbook. She wanted to get at least three of her designs cleaned up today, preferably more. Then she could submit all of her sketches to that particular client for approval, and then they would get back to her in probably two to three days, and then she would have to carve out the time to go to the fabric shop and get the materials that she needed, and then-

Her thoughts had started to race again as she tried to feel out a timeline for the commission. Only a sharp jabbing at her side pulled Marinette out of her thoughts, and she looked down to see one of Tikki's eyes peering out of her bag, clearly frowning at her. Marinette let out a breath and tried to calm her racing thoughts.

She was going to try to clean up several sketches today and get them ready to submit for approval. Once she got home, she was going to send the sketches off for approval and finish up the jacket she had been working on and then turn her attention to the mostly-finished pieces. Only once she had her mannequins cleared would she start anything new. If Adrien had any time free, she would have him start to put together the frames for the screen printing.

All she had to do was keep a level head and not start panicking.

As the day wore on, the side of Marinette's hand slowly darkened with smudged graphite. She cleaned up rough sketches while waiting for shows to start, scribbled out ideas to use at Madam Rosalie's during runways, and even got a few new commissions sketches very roughly sketched out. Her hand was starting to ache from being clenched around her pencil for so long by the time she left the Fashion Week grounds and headed home.

"You look productive," Adrien said with a laugh after they pulled apart from their welcome-home kiss and he spotted her grey-smudged hand. "How's your hand doing?"

Marinette wriggled her fingers, trying to loosen them up. "It hurts, but I should still be able to sew with no problem. I might use my quilting gloves, though, just so my hands don't cramp up."

She didn't miss Adrien's concerned glance at her hands, nor the way he immediately reached out to gently massage them. She stepped closer, letting him continue to work at her hands until they were back to feeling relatively normal.

How Marinette had somehow gotten the Absolute Best Boyfriend In The World she didn't know, but she wasn't complaining.

"Let's have dinner first before you do any sewing again," Adrien suggested, steering Marinette towards the table. "I made soup and sandwiches. How was your day?"

Dinner went by all too fast, and then Adrien took care of the dishes while Marinette headed over to her apartment to get pictures of all of her cleaned-up sketches taken and sent before she sat down to finish up the jacket. It would need some snaps and other bling on it later, but she was practically finished with the sewing.

"Is that pile done and ready to sort?"

Marinette glanced up from where she was sewing the pockets in the jacket. Adrien was pointing to a more-or-less neatly stacked pile of jackets and pants and tops on the kitchen counter. She had to think for a moment- why were those pieces over there?- before it clicked.

"Those all need hardware," Marinette explained. "Studs and rivets and snaps and eyelets. It's easiest to do them all at once, I've found, instead of getting all of my tools out and doing one piece at a time." She had marked them all with a marker (dark for the few light pieces, white for the dark ones) with where the studs were meant to go, so she wouldn't have to refer back to the drawings for each one. Like with the screen printing shirts, each one had the commission name on it and the kind of studs (number and size) written on a slip of paper and pinned to the piece.

Technically, it had been Tikki that had been the one to come up with the idea of labeling the pieces like that and it had also been Tikki who wrote up each slip of paper so Marinette didn't have to take the time to do it herself, but Marinette couldn't deny that it was a fantastic idea.

"Aha." Adrien regarded the pile as Marinette turned back to her jacket. "So is that stuff I could potentially do?"

Marinette bit her lip and thought about it. Part of her wanted to say no, because she would have to take the time to teach Adrien how to put things in correctly so that they wouldn't mess up the pieces, but the more reasonable side said yes, please. Adrien was smart and could pick things up quickly, and once he learned how to do the hardware, that would probably be several hours of work off of her shoulders in return for what in all honesty would probably just be a ten-minute demo.

"I'll teach you tomorrow how to do some of the studs," Marinette promised. Those had the fewest tools involved and were the easiest of the hardware pieces to put in. "But for tonight... do you think you could put together some screen printing frames? The wood and the tools are in the hall closet, and there should be an instruction packet there, too."

Adrien nodded and bounded towards the closet. Minutes later, the first frame was halfway assembled on the kitchen floor. Half an hour after that, and several completed frames were lined up next to the fridge as Adrien worked on making several smaller and one larger frame from the remaining wood. Marinette had finished what she could on the jacket and added it to the pile in the kitchen before starting work on a pair of pants.

"Okay, I think it's bedtime," Adrien announced two hours later. Marinette looked over to see him stretching, his t-shirt rising up to expose a thin line of stomach. "Unless you had something else you wanted to get done tonight?"

Marinette blinked and glanced over at the time on her phone. It was definitely later than she had thought. Clearly she had kind of zoned out while sewing. "Oh! Yeah, that's probably a good idea. But, uh..."

She wanted to keep going, in all honesty. She could feel like she was making progress, and she couldn't do that if she went to bed. But Tikki was staring at her from across the room, clearly disapproving of Marinette's desire to just ignore reasonable bedtimes in favor of working.

(Plagg was also there, only he was napping, happily curled up on the heat pad Marinette had made for him. She never got disapproving looks from him.)

"I just wish I had made more visible progress," Marinette admitted. "These pants are almost done, since I had them already started before, and I got the jacket ready for studding but it was already mostly there. And I still have so much to do."

"One day at a time, Bug," Adrien reminded her. He waited until she switched off her sewing machine and then pulled her up off of her chair. "And if you want, I can pick up whatever other materials you need for the screen printing stuff tomorrow. That'll be another thing checked off your list."

Marinette lit up at the reminder. "Yeah! I just need- wait a moment, I need to check something." She hurried to her computer and pulled up the spreadsheet that she had made for all of her screen-printed shirt orders. "I should need six more of the average-sized frames, and the inks, and-" She scrambled for a blank piece of paper and started scribbling down a list, trying to remember what she had and hadn't already bought. Since she had gotten the materials for the first set of commissions, it was just a matter of remembering which ones she hadn't bought stuff for.

Well. It was probably better to overestimate rather than underestimate. Presumably she would get enough orders going forward that she would use everything up long before she had to go back to Paris and if not... well, she had coworkers who could probably use the supplies.

"I think that's all the information you'll need for the fabric ink," Marinette said after several minutes of scribbling. "Any questions, just text me. And I think I should have enough fabric to put on all of the frames, even with six more. And I'll need the pattern transparencies to do the printing at all." She let out a small huff as she eyed the boxes of shirts to be inked. Adrien had sorted them out and thankfully they were all present and in both the correct colors and sizes (though there had been a few terrifying minutes when they thought that she was over a dozen shirts short, before she realized that there was a second box of shirts stashed in the hall closet), but it was yet another pile reminding her of how incredibly far behind she had gotten. When Marinette had initially set the due dates up she had thought that she was being ridiculously generous with the timeline and that the far-out due dates would give her plenty of wriggle room, but now those deadlines were almost here and all she had to show for her work were a million half-finished projects around the room.

"Do you have a flash drive or something with all of the transparency files on it?" Adrien asked, pulling her attention back from her mental berating. "I can run that errand tomorrow, too. I only have two classes to go to and an hour and a half meeting with Ben, so I'll have plenty of time."

Adrien was definitely the Best Boyfriend Ever.

The week continued in a blur of work. Tuesday evening, Adrien finished building the frames and then he and Marinette worked together to get the fabric properly stretched and attached. He had gotten everything that Marinette had asked for during the day, which meant that the screen printing stuff would be all ready to go later in the week. In the evening, Adrien cut lengths of chain for accents on some of the pieces and pressed in studs on a couple of the pieces sitting in the kitchen, which meant that Marinette could sew the liners in and count those pieces as done.

(The best part? Since she had already sewn the liners, putting them in didn't take long at all and Marinette got to feel super-productive as she finished off three jackets in one night. And, making the day even better, they got the news that Alya had gotten past the second round of cuts and her entry had gone on to the proper judges to see.)

During the day, Marinette worked on finishing up requested revisions on album covers in between runway shows, sending them off as she finished and waiting for a confirmation email in return that would allow her to either check the piece off for good or send her back to do a couple more tweaks. Even with all of the stress that she had been under when designing the pieces, Marinette had to admit that she was proud of them. The artwork had turned out wonderfully, and she had managed to push herself with some of the design elements, too. They showed a range of techniques and varied from minimalistic to intricately detailed.

Thursday evening found Marinette still furiously sewing and Adrien pressing in yet more studs in a very decorated jacket. He spent the entire evening working on the piece and Marinette noticed him making a face and shaking out his fingers every so often, especially as it got later.

She felt bad about asking him for his help, she really did- so many studs in a short period of time really made the fingers sore-but he had saved her a solid twenty hours of work so far (two jackets OR two tops OR eight to ten pairs of pants and skirts- her mind started, and Marinette shushed it), and he could ask her for something else to do if he so desired, or even go back to doing his own work.

Speaking of which...

"Are you sure you don't have studying to be doing?" Marinette asked, letting her sewing machine slow to a stop before swinging around to look at Adrien. She wouldn't put it past him to focus too much on her stuff just to be kind, even if he had work of his own. "You've been spending all of your evenings over here. I thought you had papers to write."

"Wrote 'em during the day," Adrien said cheerfully. "And did my studying during the day, too."

"And that's enough?"

"For right now, yes. I don't think I could do it forever, though." He worried his lip, just a bit. She didn't miss it, even though he was clearly trying to hide it so he wouldn't worry her. "And I'll have to take at least one evening to study next week, since I'll have an exam and two papers to finish. And then I have two exams the week before break, and one after."

Marinette nodded. She would probably be done with everything that Adrien could help with by that point anyway. "Take off whatever time you need, really. You've been a huge help." She gestured at the neat piles of clothes stacked and labeled on the couch and at the printing screens, piled neatly on the kitchen counter. "I couldn't have gotten this far without you. I would still be scrambling and panicking myself into a knot." She smiled up at him as he came over to wrap her up in a hug. "I've been able to focus so much better since we came up with the plan to get everything finished."

Adrien just grinned and buried his face in her neck.

"I've managed to get all of my designs finalized and approved," Marinette continued. "And I got revisions done for several album covers and those have been submitted, so I'm waiting to hear back from the last of those. And the one cover that I hadn't gotten a first draft of yet- it's maybe a third of the way done. I'll have to work on that and get it done- well, not this weekend, since I have to finish up a bunch of orders first, but next week at least, so I can get it submitted for critique."

Marinette also sincerely hoped that none of the other people who had had her do revisions needed any more changes. Being able to check all of them off would be a huge relief.

"So how are the studs different than the other hardware you mentioned?" Adrien asked after another minute. He released her from the hug and straightened back up, stretching and twisting to get the aches out of his back. "You said they were easier?"

"Yeah, the others need more than just the one poking tool," Marinette explained. "And they have two pieces that lock together from opposite sides of the fabric. It usually takes a couple tries to get it right." It wasn't that the studs were hard, exactly, just different. There were more steps and more tools, but not that many more. She was sure that Adrien wouldn't have any problems.

"I'm sure I'll pick it up," Adrien assured her. "I might be slower than you at it, but..."

Marinette pulled him back down for a kiss. "That's fine. As long as it gets done, the time doesn't matter. I wouldn't be able to do this without you."

She wasn't even exaggerating. Adrien had been focused on whatever task she gave to him to do, working hard to finish the job. Between the errands he had run, the organizing he had done, his work on the frames, and all of the hardware...

Yeah, it was a lot. It added up quickly.

"Well, then I should get back to work," Adrien told her. "I'm almost done with the jacket, and then it'll be ready for you again."

"No rush," Marinette assured him. She turned back to her machine and started sewing again. The machine hummed, needle a silver blur as it worked its way up the seam, one stitch at a time. "I certainly have enough to do in the meantime."

a/n: didn't mean to be two days late. In my defense, the internet in the place I'm living in has been going in and out (and it was out for four hours this afternoon) and when I arrived at my job, the whole "getting settled" thing took longer than expected. Also, the 12:30 ferry that I was supposed to take from WI to MI was cancelled to to wind/waves and I had to get up at 4 to catch the 6:00AM ferry and it was still really choppy then).

Will try to get back on schedule, but honestly it all depends on the internet and if we can actually keep it fixed or not.