41. Chapter 41

Adrien spent a good chunk of the morning of Valentine's Day wondering if maybe he should go out and brave the crowds (and potential lurking fans) to get a different present for Marinette. He knew that they had agreed on a simpler date this year- they were going to one of their favorite comfy stay-in dates, where they just lounged around in their matching pajama sets and played video games and ate take-out- but this was their second Valentine's as a couple. Surely he shouldn't make it too laid-back.

"Marinette will love your present," Tikki assured Adrien, making sure that her voice stayed low so that Marinette, who was getting up one room over, wouldn't hear. "She doesn't need you to be spending a ton of money on her just because you can. It's a cute present, and she'll like it a lot."

Adrien worried his lip but nodded anyway. He knew that Marinette liked the cute gifts instead of the expensive ones, but it was hard to escape all of the advertisements about buying loved ones jewelry for the holiday. They were plastered across billboards all over the city, played across TV screens, danced in the little ads on his computer screen, and were sandwiched in newspapers and magazines alike- buy jewelry! Rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets! Make her happy for Valentine's Day!

It was exhausting, and Adrien didn't appreciate the way that the ads made him doubt his gift to Marinette.

"It's your version of a teddy bear, and those are common enough presents for Valentine's Day," Tikki reminded him, clearly picking up on what he was thinking. "She'll love it!"

Adrien nodded and continued making crepes for breakfast, making sure not to burn any. He had had to sacrifice a little sleep to get up early enough to start breakfast so that he would have it ready before Marinette had to go to work, but it was worth it. They would taste delicious.

"I smell something tasty!" Marinette sang, appearing around the corner. She grinned when she spotted the crepe pans on the stove. "Oh, yum!"

"Happy Valentine's Day, Bugaboo," Adrien told her, leaning forward to kiss her. "You look gorgeous this morning."

Marinette laughed. "I haven't even gotten dressed yet."

"Mm-hmm. Your bedhead is adorable." Adrien grinned at Marinette's blush and reached over to ruffle his girlfriend's hair up a little more. "And you'd look adorable in anything. Or out of anything."

"Adrien!"

Adrien just laughed. "Go get ready, Bug," he told her, giving her a gentle push out of the kitchen. "I'll get the crepes ready."

"Best boyfriend ever." Marinette vanished back around the corner with a grin, a bounce in her step. Adrien watched her go, then went back to making sure his batter was the right consistency.

(He had once packed his flour while measuring it instead of keeping it loose and fluffy and, well...that was definitely not correct. Crepes were not meant to be that thick.)

By the time Marinette emerged, dressed and ready for the day, Adrien was placing the last of the crepes on a large platter and bringing it out to the table, setting out plates and pouring juice for them both. He had set out an array of jams and a bottle of maple syrup on the table as well, just so Marinette could choose what she wanted.

"You are amazing," Marinette proclaimed, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "This looks fantastic. Best morning ever."

Adrien just grinned. "I wanted to make it special."

The (proper) kiss that he got in return made the early(ish) wake-up call and all of the dishes he would have to wash up well worth it.

They made an interesting little group, Adrien had to admit once they were all settled. He and Marinette sat on one side of the table, their knees bumping occasionally as they ate. On the other side, Plagg had refused any crepe and was nibbling his way through a generous slice of Brie. Next to him, Tikki had gotten a full-sized crepe, because Adrien had forgotten to make a small one, and strawberry jam and icing sugar were clinging to her cheeks as she ate. They would have to remember to help her clean up later.

...well, at least it would be good practice for when they had kids that needed their mouths wiped after eating.

After they had finished breakfast, Marinette kissed Adrien good-bye and trotted off to work, sounding very cheerful indeed as she greeted Abbey in the hallway outside of their apartment. Adrien grinned as he started rinsing the dishes, sticking what could go into the dishwasher in and hand-washing the rest.

"Are you going to spend the rest of the day cooking some ridiculously meal for your lover?" Plagg wanted to know as Adrien dried the last of the dishes and put everything away. "Because that's boring."

"Is it so hard for you to say girlfriend? And no, I have to go to class. And we've agreed to do pizza for dinner, so I'll get that dough going once I get home." Adrien wrinkled his nose at the thought of having to knead the dough for the pizza. It wasn't his favorite thing to do, even if he did enjoy the end product. They didn't have a dough hook to do the kneading with, so he had to do it all by hand instead.

And the dough had to be kneaded for something like ten minutes, all constantly. While it wasn't difficult to knead, necessarily, it was tiring and it tended to make his arms start to ache. But they got pizza out of it, so it was worth it. And Marinette had sworn up and down that they would get a proper mixer once they moved back to Paris, so they would only have to hand-knead their dough for a few more months.

"That's not very fancy."

"Valentine's Day isn't about being fancy, Plagg. It's about spending time together, and this year Marinette and I decided that we wanted to go for something laid-back and relaxed." Adrien headed back into the bedroom to change and get ready for the day. "It'll be fun."

Plagg snorted. "You spend the evenings together all the time anyway. How is this any different?"

"Easy. I won't be studying at all, and she won't be designing. We'll just hang out and talk and play video games and eat tasty food." It wasn't as though they never did that- they didn't spend all weekend on homework and commissions, after all- but it was the intention that counted. They were calling it a date, so therefore it would feel more datelike than playing a few rounds of Mega Strike on an average Saturday afternoon.

"And you always do that, too."

"Fine." Exasperated, Adrien turned to his kwami. "You really want to know what's going to be different? Fine. The difference is that you aren't going to want to be out here when Marinette and I are, and you definitely aren't going to be in the bedroom once we head back there."

"Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew! I didn't wanna know that!"

"I'd wish you a happy Valentine's Day, but I'm sure that you and Marinette are being boring and not even remotely romantic even though we all know you should be, so I don't see the point." Paul said as he sat down next to Adrien. "And just FYI, my sister made up this giant glittery obnoxious card for you for Valentine's Day with, like, a poem that's three pages long and obnoxiously sappy that she wanted me to deliver to you today with a bouquet of roses, but I binned the card on my way here and gave the flowers to my mom."

Adrien tried not to laugh at Paul's long-suffering expression. "I appreciate that, thanks."

"Do you normally get a lot of cards from your admirers?" Paul asked while they waited for class to start. "At home, I mean."

"Oh, gosh. Yes. But my father's secretary started filtering out the cards after I complained about the, ah, contents of some of the letters once I reached lycée." Adrien made a face at the memory. The contents of some of the letters had gotten creepy, to say the least. His father had ordered Nathalie to look through the cards, and Adrien had told her to just bin everything rather than wasting her time with the sorting. After all, if any of his friends wanted to give him any cards for the fun of it, they could give them to him in person. "So I have no idea how many cards I get nowadays, because she knows that I don't really care to see any of them."

"Brutal."

Adrien shrugged. "None of them know me. Why should I open all of those cards and read them, just because someone thinks that they're in love with me because they've seen some ads that I'm in and read a few magazine articles about me? I don't have the time."

"Fair point."

As class started, Adrien wondered when he should tell Paul that he and Marinette were actually dating. After all, Marinette had told her team at work the truth about their relationship. But she had told them because Abbey was moving into her old apartment, and it would be impolite to make Abbey lie about where she was living to her friends and coworkers, and impossible to do besides with Sarah and several other people working at Madam Rosalie's also living in the building. And Paul lived at home, with a sister who seemed to be a big fan of his. If she heard that Adrien was dating Marinette...

Well, he could deny it again, but Adrien had long since gotten tired of that. Maybe he would wait until the end of the semester, just to be safe. It never hurt to play on the safe side when it came to keeping secrets.

Lecture went by in a flash, and then Adrien headed to his discussion class. Paul hadn't managed to get into the same section- he had gone for an eight o'clock discussion instead- so he waved good-bye to his friend and headed to discussion. That went by in a flash, and then Adrien was headed back to his neighborhood, a bit of a spring in his step. A delicious smell tickled his nose as he headed down the street, and he was struck by an idea.

Grinning, Adrien spun around and changed course, ducking into their favorite bakery to pick a few things up instead of passing it by. He knew that Marinette was going to be whipping up some cookies for them to have with their pizza later- or maybe she was going to dig into their stash of chilled dough from previous too-large batches to bake, he wasn't sure- but there was nothing wrong with a midday treat.

Well, as long as he could brave the crowds in the bakery, which was far busier than usual with plenty of people who had had the same idea as Adrien.

Adrien headed out of the bakery nearly twenty minutes later with a bag in his hands and a whistle on his lips. He had managed to snag the last of Marinette's favorite treat plus one of his own favorites (plus a cookie for Tikki and a cheesy breadstick for Plagg, he wasn't cruel), which he was going to count as a success.

"That was insane," Plagg grumbled as they headed down the street. "Insane! Why are there so many people?"

Adrien gave his kwami a Look- or, rather, he tried, because it was difficult to crane his neck to look at Plagg properly when his kwami was in his jacket. "It's Valentine's Day."

"So?"

Adrien let out a long-suffering sigh. "So a lot of people are trying to pick up a fancy dessert for their dinners with their significant others tonight when they wouldn't normally bother. And clearly the bakeries are trying to account for that by making more, but they can only make so much product at a time. And they probably have people who placed orders that they have to bake for as well. And obviously the cashiers can only go so fast without making mistakes or accidentally damaging anything, so the line gets really long."

"And then there are the idiots who get to the front of the line and still don't know what they want."

Adrien tried not to laugh. It would only encourage Plagg, and while he had a point... "Well, maybe their first choice was out or something."

"Then they should have a second choice ready. And a third. It's called planning ahead." Plagg peered up at Adrien. "Don't tell me that you would have stood there looking around like an idiot if they had sold out of the kind of stuff you bought. You had options that you would have gone to next."

"And I was keeping an eye on the display cases to make sure that they had what I wanted," Adrien admitted. "And to know if I would have to change my order. It's what I always do, and I think it's a good habit to have."

"Yeah, well, other people should take up that habit too." Plagg sounded grumpy. Clearly he wasn't in a great mood, maybe because of the promise of future romance and ooey-gooey human grossness in the near future. "So are we going back home now?"

"I gotta get this to Mari first." Bag clutched tightly in his hand, Adrien sped up his step, carefully avoiding the slick spots on the sidewalk. "Otherwise it'll be cold, and she won't want to eat sweets right before dinner."

Plagg groaned and rolled over in Adrien's pocket. "Remind me how you two aren't married already?"

"It's totally a boyfriend thing to do!"

Marinette's coworkers were not surprised to see him there. Sarah's head popped out into the hallway and she eyed the bag he carried with a grin.

"Oh! Treats!" She made a big show of clapping her hands over her heart. "You shouldn't have, Agreste! You're so sweet to us."

Adrien couldn't help but laugh. "Very funny."

"Seriously, though. No flowers?" Sarah stood up from her chair and came out fully, pushing her chair back to her desk. "I would have thought that a big sappy romantic like you would have gone the flowers route."

"There really wasn't any way for me to do that without being seen," Adrien admitted, because low-key Valentine's date or no, he would have liked to get flowers for Marinette. There just wasn't a good way to hide them, and if he was spotted in a flower shop, they would end up in the magazines again and he was enjoying not having articles written about his personal life too much to risk setting them off again.

Sarah made a face. "Oh, I suppose. But you'll have to let the world know someday, Sunshine!" she added, and Adrien had to wonder when on Earth Sarah had met Alya in order to pick up that nickname. "And believe me, you guys will be seeing all of the magazines that cover it!"

"I don't doubt that," Adrien grumbled, though he really wasn't upset at all. "I think we have an entire box in one of our closets that's devoted to magazines that you guys have brought us with articles about Marinette and I in them."

Sarah snickered.

"I'm gonna do a dramatic reading of the best of the articles after you two go public and give it to you guys when you get married," Abbey told him, appearing around the corner with an armful of shimmery silver fabric. Adrien grinned at her and waved with his free hand. "Marinette said that you surprised her with crepes for breakfast this morning. That's very French of you."

Adrien laughed. "We are French," he pointed out. "And now I'm bringing her a treat before I go get dinner started. There's dough that needs to proof," he explained hastily when Sarah and Abbey looked too impressed. "It's not- we decided not to go fancy this year. Fancy meals make too many dishes."

"I suppose that would take away from the romance of the evening a bit," Sarah allowed. "Except it's you two that we're talking about, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could still make it ridiculously sweet somehow. It's, like, a superpower of yours." She grinned, mischief lighting up her smile. "Speaking of which- does your superhero-researching friend know about you guys yet?"

Adrien shook her head, enjoying the way Sarah's eyebrows shot up. "No, we haven't told her. We figured it would be funnier if we waited until we got back first," he explained at her exasperated expression. "And we didn't want to risk the news getting out early, either. The press in Paris won't care about me when we get back, unlike the people here."

"It will be funny. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when they find out, honestly." Abbey grinned at him. "They'll never trust the two of you unsupervised again. But I should let you get whatever that is to Marinette- we have a meeting in ten minutes, so you came just in time, really. She'll probably be in her cubicle."

"Thanks, guys!" Adrien headed past them, through the familiar rows of cubicles. He waved to a few of Marinette's other coworkers as he passed them, and then ducked into her cubicle. It took a minute for Marinette to notice that he was there, and that was only because of the tempting smell drifting out of the bakery bag.

"Hey, Adrien!" Marinette bounced up out of her seat to press a chaste kiss to the corner of his lips. "I didn't expect to see you here today! Are those treats I smell?"

"Mm-hmm. I got your favorite." Adrien fished out the almond crème-filled pan au chocolat and handed it over to her. "Last one in the bakery, too. I got there just in time."

"Oh, yum." Marinette took the treat and a napkin and bit into it with a blissful expression on her face. "Just what I needed. We just have a lot of meetings scheduled today, because the Spring runway collection needs to be really revamped so that it's actually cohesive. We have too many different ideas going on right now, so the Men's runway outfits look like they're from an entirely different fashion house than the Women's line and the kid's stuff as well."

Adrien gave her a hug, careful to dodge the powdered sugar from the pastry puffing off as Marinette bit into the flaky layers. "Good luck with your meetings. I'm sure it'll work out. And I should probably get home and get started on the pizza dough so it's all ready to load up once you get home."

Marinette perked up. "Oh, yeah! Pizza and video games and relaxing. I can't wait!" She polished off the last few bites of her treat and licked the sugar off of her fingers. "But I, uh, have a meeting-"

"Yeah, Abbey told me. I just wanted to get your treat to you." He reached down into the bag and pulled out Tikki's cookie, wrapped in a napkin. "And for Tikki, since I was there."

Marinette grinned, taking the cookie. Adrien heard a quiet cheer from inside of her bag. "Great! I'll make more cookies when I get home."

"A fresh batch or should I get some of the dough from the freezer thawing?" Adrien wanted to know.

"Fresh, though we probably won't bake all of it tonight. I'll bake a trayful and throw the rest in the fridge." Marinette turned back to her desk, gathering up some papers into a folder. "Then I can bake more tomorrow, when we aren't trying to make pizza at the same time and have a date."

There was another cheer from inside of the bag. Adrien muffled his laugh.

"Well, someone is happy about that," Adrien commented. His pressed a kiss to Marinette's forehead and then stepped back. "I'd better go, then. Have a good rest of the day at work."

She kissed him properly. "I will. And you remember how to not kill the yeast, right?"

"That only happened once, I swear. Once." Adrien resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at his girlfriend, instead contenting himself with a quick kiss pressed to her cheek. "See you later!"

Adrien was trying to wrestle the pizza dough into a vaguely circular shape of the right size and thickness when Marinette arrived home.

"Where do you need me?" Marinette called as she kicked off her shoes. "Do you need help with the pizza, or should I go straight for the cookies?

"I need the Queen of Breads to come win an argument with this dough for me," Adrien told her. "And I'll get some of the you-know-what ready."

Plagg appeared, suddenly awake. "Did I hear you say something about cheese?"

"I just fed you and no, you did not." Adrien pushed his kwami back out of the kitchen. "Can you ever not interrupt us making dinner? And don't you remember that it's Valentine's Day? It's gonna get sappy in here really fast."

Plagg gagged and zipped away.

Marinette laughed as she washed her hands in the sink and pulled out an apron. "You're so mean to him."

"He deserves it most of the time, really." Adrien handed her the rolling pin and went to go grab the mozzarella out of the fridge. "And he knows perfectly well that it's Valentine's Day and I don't necessarily want to have him hanging around like a nosy third wheel all of the time."

"Do you want me to go to the back room, too?" Tikki inquired, flitting around the corner. "I was planning to eventually, of course, I was just hoping to maybe have a warm cookie first."

Adrien grinned at Tikki. "You know we don't mind having you around. You actually know when we need to be alone."

Tikki giggled. "Plagg knows, too. He just likes to ignore that sometimes so he can play up the being a grumpy old sourpuss."

"Ah-hah. I knew it!"

With Marinette's help, it didn't take long for them to get their pizza loaded up and in the oven. She got started on the cookie dough and Adrien took the short break to warm up Plagg's little heat pad and bring it back to his kwami, who was napping on their dresser. Even asleep, it didn't take long for Plagg to register the heat and wake up long enough to flop face-first on the pad.

"You're welcome," Adrien said a bit sarcastically as he stripped out of his flour-covered clothes and pulled out his Ladybug jammies. He wiggled into them, making face at a loose thread that he found. It wasn't hard to find a pair of scissors to clip it- a side effect of living with someone who was heavily involved in the fiber arts, and Adrien really wanted Marinette to count all of her scissors when they packed up at the end of their time in London because there had to be at least half a dozen in their apartment- and then Adrien headed back out to help Marinette.

Well. "Help". He really wasn't contributing to the forward progress of cookie-making. In fact, he was rather hindering Marinette's progress.

"Oh, go set the table or something," Marinette said with a laugh, swatting him away from the cookie dough. "First I have Tikki trying to steal the dough, and then you do. Shoo, shoo."

Laughing, Adrien dodged the swat from the towel she was holding and darted out to the living room to set the table. He had gone for a few romantic notes, of course- there were the presents that he had picked up, and then the ruby red candles in the center of their table. Lacy placemats- paper, not actual lace- were set out across from each other, just for a touch of Valentine's, and napkins matching the candles added the final touch.

"Oh, that looks nice," Marinette said from the kitchen. "Festive, but not too upscale for a pajama date."

"I hope you know that I'm going to take you out for a ridiculously fancy dinner next year," Adrien told her, grinning. He had already started thinking ahead, to when they could be open about their relationship. "And there won't even be dishes to do afterwards. It'll be amazing."

"Woo-hoo! No dishes!"

With the table ready, Adrien headed back into the kitchen to start on the dishes before their date properly began. With the cookie mix made, Marinette covered the top of the bowl and stuck it back in the fridge to chill a little before baking, out of reach of both Adrien and Tikki.

"I'll go change," Marinette told Adrien, one hand brushing down his back. Adrien grinned when her hand wandered a bit far south, cheekily giving his rear a squeeze before darting back into their bedroom.

Oh, they were going to have the best cat-and-bug chases across the rooftops of Paris once they moved back. Nothing inappropriate in the public eye, of course- they were still superheroes and role models- but they could tease and chase and pounce and wrestle all they wanted.

It was going to be so. much. fun. and Adrien couldn't wait.

He had cleared most of their prep dishes when Marinette came back, dressed in her Chat Noir pajamas, a pair of fuzzy cat ears perched cheekily on her head. She grinned at his expression, hip-checking him as she reached for the dish towel and started drying.

"Where did you get those?" Adrien asked with a laugh. "And are they staying on all night?"

Marinette shrugged. "If they don't bug me, they'll stay on. And I got them at a costume shop. It was easy enough to find." She grinned. "And if you don't remove them first."

Adrien flicked the water off one hand and reached over to bat at one of the cat ears. "I like them. They're cute." He grinned. "Not as cute as the wearer, of course, but still adorable."

The blush he got from that was welcome. He liked making his Lady blush when he showered her with compliments, and it truly never got old.

Once the first round of dirty dishes was washed and put away, they headed out to their living room while they waited the pizza to cook. Marinette pulled up Mega Strike on her computer, setting it up on their side table and handing Adrien one of the controllers. They set up a two-on-two game against another pair online, and then plunged into battle together.

Their opponents never had a chance. Even in online robot format, Ladybug and Chat Noir were a force to be reckoned with. They got three battles in before the kitchen timer chimed and they had to set aside the controllers for a bit to eat.

"I wish there were difficulty levels online," Adrien commented as they headed for the kitchen. "I mean, the people we played weren't complete beginners or anything, but they weren't exactly a challenge."

"I think there's some way to find more advanced players to play against, if we go to the forums first. But then we'd have to find a pair that's actually online." Marinette shuffled the pizza from the pizza pan onto their largest cutting board. "Which can be difficult sometimes. I mean, the site has some way to filter out who isn't online at the moment, but when people keep their computers on and stay logged in, that messes with the program."

"Ah-hah."

Marinette cut up the pizza with a few deft strokes of their pizza cutter, and then they dug in. Adrien piled a couple slices of the gorgeously cheesy pizza on his plate and headed over to the table to set it down. While Marinette got her own slices, Adrien pulled out a pair of wine glasses and poured them each a glass of grape juice to go with their meal, since Marinette wasn't a huge fan of wine and really, neither was he.

And then they could really get their date started.

Perched at their table, eating cheesy pizza and vegetable salad in their pajamas, it was about as far as they could get from the previous year's fancy dinner, with their best dress-up outfits and their several side dishes and steak that wouldn't have been out of place at a restaurant.

But Adrien loved it. They didn't have to make everything fancy and go out of their way to dress up for their date to be romantic. They could be relaxed and as giggly as they wanted.

"Oh, you have some cheese trying to escape," Marinette said, interrupting herself mid-sentence to lean over and swipe the cheese off of the corner of his mouth. She popped the bit of cheese in her mouth, then glanced back over at him. "Oh, wait, you still have a bit of sauce-"

She leaned over to kiss the sauce off at the same time Adrien stuck his tongue out to try to lick his lips cleaned. They broke down in giggles when Adrien accidentally licked Marinette's lips instead.

"Here I was trying to be romantic, and instead you licked me," Marinette complained, but she was giggling. "Fail."

"To be fair, I wasn't expecting you right there." Adrien grinned over at her. "But I have to say, pizza sauce tastes very good on your lips."

"Oh, just eat your pizza."

When he got up to get another slice of pizza, Adrien was amused to see that the pizza still had all of the cheese on it, which must have been a first for them. Clearly Plagg had been squicked out enough by the idea of seeing him and Marinette be all romantic and gooey together that he had decided to actually stay away from his favorite food for once.

"Okay, the plates can probably wait until later," Marinette said once they had both finished both pizza and juice. "I have something for you."

Adrien grinned. "What a coincidence, I have something for you as well!"

Marinette scampered to their bedroom, while Adrien recovered her presents for her from the very top shelf of their large closet in the hallway. He stashed them under the table for the time being, knowing full well what Marinette's response would be when she saw the bulky package.

"Ta-da!" Marinette announced, returning with a slim, rectangular package. She handed it to him. "For you, kitty-cat."

Adrien took the present and pulled off the wrapping, revealing a book. It was from a series that he had wanted to read, but had never been able to find in stores when he was in Paris. He opened it with a grin, flipping through the first few pages. "I've been wanting to read this! Thanks, Mari!"

Marinette grinned, pleased. "Plagg said you would like it."

"He does make himself useful every once in a while." Adrien set the book down to grab his gifts for Marinette, putting the smaller one to the side to hand over the large one first. "For you, my Lady."

Marinette gave Adrien a fondly exasperated look as she accepted the larger package. "Kitty, this is too much-"

"You haven't even seen what it is yet!" Adrien protested with a laugh. "At least wait to open the box."

"It's big, and that's enough to tell me that it's too much." Still, Marinette tore open the wrapping paper and pulled out the box inside. With one last wary look at the still-grinning Adrien, she pulled off the tape and opened the box.

And then Adrien was pleased to see a grin spread across her face.

"It's so cute!" Marinette squealed, pulling the ladybug pillow out from its bed of tissue paper and hugging it to her chest. "It'll go with my cat pillow."

"Are you referring to me, or to an actual pillow?" Adrien teased. "Because if you're referring to me, I've already found my match." He leaned over to press a warm kiss to her forehead. "I already have my Ladybug."

"I'm talking about an actual pillow, silly. I had to leave it at home in Paris because it was too big to bring over." Marinette giggled. "And it would be a bit too big for our bed, I think. It's already a bit cramped with the two of us as it is. We'll have to get a bigger bed when we move back to Paris."

Adrien couldn't argue there. With too many extra blankets and pillows, they would get crowded out of their own bed. A bigger bed, piled with blankets and pillows of all shapes and sizes, would be the perfect place to sprawl and nap. "Is it cute?"

"It's a cat. Of course it is." She giggled at his expression. "But not as cute as you."

"I'm handsome, thank-you-very-much. Hardly cute." Adrien brushed his hair back, preening like the model he was. Even in pajamas, he knew his best angles. "One handsome cat."

Marinette just sighed at him, rolling her eyes affectionately. "Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Mr. Cutest Cat."

"Mr. Handsome-est Cat says that you need to open his other present for you." Adrien leaned over, grabbing the much smaller package off of the floor and placing it in front of Marinette. "Purr-ty please?"

"Why do I have a feeling that I know what this is?" Marinette didn't hesitate to pick this present up and tear off the paper. It didn't take long for her to reveal the bird-shaped candle inside. She laughed as she pulled it out. "Oh, kitty. How long are you going to keep doing this?"

Adrien grinned. "Until it's not funny anymore. And it's going to be funny for quite a while, I think."

"At least it's not rats," Marinette muttered under her breath, and Adrien tried not to laugh. "Most of the time, at least."

"I'll keep the rats to Halloween-time, I promise," Adrien said with a bit of a laugh. "They're not as cute, and it's hard to find anything shaped like a rat for most of the year."

"And thank goodness for that."

Adrien did his best not to snicker at that.

With presents open, Marinette popped back into the kitchen briefly to scoop out some cookie dough to bake and then they went back to their video games while they waited for the cookies to be ready. This time, they got a tougher team of opponents to fight, and so the battles took longer.

"Nice job!" Adrien said with a laugh once they once again emerged victorious, exchanging a fist bump with Marinette and then kissing her. "Ladybug and Chat Noir save the day!"

Marinette laughed at that. "And we're even using the Ladybug and Chat Noir bots. How fitting."

"I liked the catbug that we used against Gamer the most." He had hoped that Megastrike would create a similar bot in their game after that, but they hadn't. He wasn't sure if it was because they hadn't heard about it- they must have, there were dozens of Megastrike fans in Paris who had been thrilled with the security camera footage of the fight from the stadium and who had messaged the company, exclaiming over the Ladybug and Chat Noir combo bot- or if they were worried that there was some sort of copyright claim that the superheroes had over the design, or if it was something else entirely. Maybe the Catbug was too overpowered.

He would have thought that they would have at least considered trying a partners game where, like with him and Ladybug, one person controlled the movements and the other controlled the attacks. Maybe they had, but there weren't enough people who could work together on the same wavelength as well as he and Marinette could.

The timer went off, and Marinette scurried into the kitchen to pull the cookies out of the oven. Adrien followed her, but just to put away the leftover pizza for another meal.

"Now these have to cool," Marinette reminded him before Adrien could reach for any of the piping hot cookies. "And then we can eat far too many of them."

"We're going to have to go out on a run soon," Adrien said with a laugh, eying the gorgeous way the molten chocolate glistened under the kitchen lights. "It'll be worth it, really, but we will."

Marinette groaned. "A run out in the slush. That's no fun."

"Or maybe we can get in to some of the group fitness classes on campus. I'll look into what they have there when I go by the gym next."

"Ooh, that could be fun."

Once the cookies had cooled enough that they could eat them, Marinette piled them onto a tray and they headed back out into the living room.

Their next battle went a little bumpier- as it turned out, it was difficult to effectively work the controllers while eating the delicious cookies. But then Marinette put her cookie between her lips to free her hands and her adorably determined face slid into place, and within a minute, their opponents had been flattened.

"You get scary when you're not winning," Adrien said with a laugh. "Scary determined. The poor suckers never stood a chance."

Marinette giggled as she set her controller aside to retrieve her cookie and eat it properly. "It's the same thing that always happened when we got into a tight spot when fighting akumas. I just get hyperfocused and it seems like everything slows down, enough that I can plan out all of my attacks and see what needs to be done."

"Remind me to never get on your wrong side."

An hour and a half later, they were pleasantly stuffed with cookies and they had defeated several more opponents online. It was getting later, though, and they had school and work the next day, so they decided to call an end to the games for the night.

While Marinette turned her computer off, Adrien headed into the back bedroom. Both kwamis were snoozing on the dresser, curled up together on Plagg's heat pad. Tikki stirred when the light turned on, head lifting up and sleepy blue eyes peering around. She blinked twice when she spotted Adrien, and then gave him a look of understanding and zipped out of the room, heading to the more permanent kwami bed set up in the living room. Plagg stayed stubbornly asleep.

Sighing, Adrien poked his kwami. A sleepy green eye glared up at him.

"What?"

"Marinette and I are going to bed," Adrien informed his kwami. "So, unless you want to be here when she comes in-"

Plagg bolted up, suddenly awake, and phased through the wall in a black and green blur in his rush to leave the room. Adrien laughed, then headed over to their bed to straighten the sheets- not that they would stay straight for long, of course, but it was nice to make the bed look nice for a short while, at least- before heading into the bathroom to quickly wash up.

After all, Adrien had a sneaking suspicion that he might be too tired to wash up later on.