Chapter Text
(EIGHT YEARS LATER)
It was a day that ought to have been like any other.
Get up. Shower. Dress. Breakfast and coffee. Head to work.
Work was a small school for gifted teens where he taught physics and often covered other science classes depending on the need for the year. Perhaps it wasn’t what his father had in mind for him growing up, but he loved it and wouldn’t have traded it for the world.
He was still a majority shareholder for his father’s company, but Nathalie had flown in the position of COO. She consulted him on major decisions but for the most part, he let her do as she pleased and it worked perfectly. Both of them were content in their jobs, and that was about all they could ask.
Adrien Agreste preferred stoking the fires of curiosity that his students had, helping them learn and helping them on their way to bigger, better things. The kids saw him as a bit of an oddity, the teacher who could have been a professor at Uni, who was always in his room tinkering with something and happy to explain. They saw him as a bit absentminded sometimes, but he was the teacher everyone loved for his terrible humor and ability to empathize with them.
And Adrien, well, he wasn’t a hero anymore. He hadn’t been in years, but there were ways he could help those kids. He’d seen firsthand how many awful things his classmates had in their lives, terrible feelings the akuma could latch onto and hijack. So he taught and mentored, and he felt more rewarded by his work than he did in his entire time in the catsuit. If he could save even one of the kids from themselves, it would be enough of a difference.
He knew about the rumors, of course, but what could he do? People saw him as a bit eccentric, and some of the rumors were true. He let them pass without comment, shrugging them off when asked directly.
There was a box and a small package sitting on his desk when he arrived, and something smelled delicious. As students filed in, he opened the box to find it full of a variety of pastries and breads, enough for the entire class and then some. A quick call to the office explained that they’d been delivered and signed for, nothing out of the ordinary.
He opened up the wrapped package and found…a book. He stared at it for a moment before it registered and then his jaw dropped open slowly.
“What’s that Mr. Agreste?”
He looked up at the teenagers around him and cleared his throat. “Snacks from an old friend, help yourselves to whatever you want.”
“Ew why is this bread purple?”
“It’s taro bread!” One of the other kids snatched it up, excited beyond belief. “I love taro bread! It’s got sweet stuff in the middle.”
“Alright, let’s give everyone the chance to try things, alright?”
As the kids swarmed the box, he turned the book over in his hands. An autobiography, of all things, with the name Marinette Dupain-Cheng emblazoned across the bottom. His stomach turned in anticipation.
“Is that the new Ladybug biography?” one of the girls chirped.
“Oooooh, it wasn’t supposed to come out til next month, how did you get an early edition?”
“What? There’s no way…”
He flipped the front cover open, his heart pounding. He couldn’t help but smile at the familiar script.
Thought you ought to have a copy. Thanks for everything.
-M
One of the girls gasped. “It’s signed, how did you get a signed copy?!?”
The room exploded into loud chatter and only came back down to a normal as Adrien passed the box of pastries toward the back of the crowd and held a finger to his lips. “I’ll tell you if you get things and sit down.”
He’d never seen the students scamper back to their desks so quickly. “Well?”
“I dated her for awhile, near the end of her career as Ladybug.”
The classroom exploded into chaos again.
That evening, he sat down and read the entirety of the book, a cup of tea slowly going cold at his side.
It was biographical, written from Marinette’s perspective as Ladybug, and told the story of her growing up and the story of her eventual downfall. The latter part of it was thankfully falsified, just enough truth to seem true and just enough drama to quiet the public desire for knowledge of the events leading up to the disappearance of Ladybug and Chat Noir. It had nothing of his identity, his father’s fate, or the real endgame they’d been forced to play.
The last chapter discussed her life in the present. She’d moved back to the city, and occasionally worked in the bakery with her parents. They had managed to reopen where the original bakery was, and though she didn’t work there often, there were a number of people around her own age, now with kids of their own, who came by and told their kids stories of how Ladybug and Chat Noir saved Paris from a seemingly neverending stream of villains. They had a couple of pastries named for Chat and Ladybug, and Mr. Dupain still couldn’t resist going overboard when he got requests to decorate cakes with superheroes.
The end of the book was a couple pages of how she wished she knew who Chat was, but as her own identity ruined her life, she was glad she never knew and she hoped that he had a better retirement.
Once he’d finished it, he sat back in the chair, curling up with the book on his lap.
It seemed he had a few things to wrap up.
The bell on the door rang and Mrs. Cheng looked up. The young man was fairly nondescript, blonde, with glasses and an unassuming tweed jacket. The bouquet of flowers in his hand, however, caught her eye.
She couldn’t help being excited for the lady the flowers for, and she hummed pleasantly as she stood at the counter, waiting. He looked about the shop for a moment, then turned to her. “Can I help you pick something out? Something for a date, perhaps?”
His eyes widened and he looked surprise. “What? Oh, ah, not exactly.”
“That’s alright dear. Let me know if I can help you with anything, take your time.” She sipped some hot water from a thermos as he seemed to wrestle with something internally.
He hesitated for a moment. “Actually, is Marinette here?”
She inhaled so quickly she choked on her water, coughing into her sleeve for a minute before she could recover. “Marinette?”
She gave him another quick once-over, looking at him in a new light and making the switch to hawkeyed mother in an instant. His jacket was nice, his shoes were carefully polished brown leather, and though the tie seemed a bit quirky, it didn’t seem out of place. He wasn’t bad looking, either. She had the nagging suspicion she’d seen him before, but Marinette hadn’t brought anyone home in years. The observations were made in the space of a beat, and she recovered masterfully. “Oh! Well…no, she’s not, but you could leave your number for her?”
“It’s alright, I can leave her a note.” He rifled about in his breast pocket for a moment and dug a pen out. “Ah, is there any chance I could trouble you to get a note and flowers to her? I hate to impose but…”
“Oh of course, it’s no trouble at all.” She was quiet for a moment as he scribbled, then spoke up again. “Are those flowers fresh-cut? If you like, I’ve got a couple vases. I’m not sure when she’ll be home but sugar water should keep them fresh.”
He looked up, surprised and then relieved. “If she might not be home for awhile, that would be great. I’d hate for them to wilt.”
“Give me just a moment, I’ll go find one.”
She went to the back, pulling her husband away from where he was slowly mixing up a buttercream icing. “There’s a man out front looking for Marinette!” she hissed.
“What?”
“And he’s got roses.”
“And?”
“Go talk to him while I get a vase!”
“I’m sure he’s alright out there, maybe he’s just…”
“Thomas Dupain, you put that piping down right now and go strike up a conversation with him while I run upstairs or so help me I will…”
The bigger man laughed, leaning to kiss Sabine on the cheek as she bustled to the back, heading upstairs to their apartment to fetch a vase.
A text from an unknown number buzzed that night as he was reading.
Unknown Number: I can’t believe I missed you by less than ten minutes today.
Marinette. His heart leapt. I was wondering if you might want to lunch and catch up?
Of course. When and where are you thinking?
He hesitated, then tossed out a couple suggestions.
At the end of the conversation, he sat staring at the wall, dazed. He was going out for lunch with Marinette on Saturday.
It took him two days to start panicking.
Waiting at the café was the most excruciating thing. He kept checking his phone to see if he’d missed a message from her, or fidgeting with the menu, or watching the passerby on the street outside. He checked his messages again, reassuring himself that he had the right place and time, and when he looked up again as the chimes on the door rang, a bit of his heart seemed to give out in a way it hadn’t in years.
Marinette had aged gracefully, to say the least. It had been eight years since he’d seen her and if anything, she was more beautiful than he remembered. Sure, her face had gone a bit leaner and she’d grown her hair out again, but there was something about her he couldn’t quite place.
He stood up at the sight of her, and a small part of his mind reminded him he hadn’t been quite so tall last time he’d seen her. He’d continued to grow in college…wait. Yes he had been, it was just that he didn’t remember as much of the wedding as he hoped.
She spotted him and a smile of recognition lit her face as she wove her way between the tables.
And that was the moment he fell in love with her all over again. No warning, no premonition. Just a warm smile that lit his heart up with a glow he’d barely felt since she’d left. The drop was like sunshine after months of snow, or looking into the night sky and feeling the sensation of falling into the eternity that was the endless stars.
“Hello Adrian.” She stood over the table and it was like looking up into the night sky at the moon. He gathered his wits and jumped to his feet, pulling a chair out and ushering her into it.
“How are you?”
“Very well, I think. It’s been a rather long road to get to where I am, but I think…I think everything is alright.” She smiled. “You look well.”
“I am, thank you.” He passed her a menu. “Hungry?”
“Hmm, you know they have the best pastrami in the city, so that’s what I’m going to get.” She fell silent for a bit as he considered his own menu, and spoke again once he’d decided and folded it back up. “I never got to say thank you for the flowers.”
His heart jumped. “It was a thank you for the book.”
She looked nervous. “Was it alright? I was hoping that preserving your identity would leave your options open, if you ever decided you wanted to go public.”
“I don’t think I ever will. And it was perfect, it answered a lot of questions I had.”
“It’s all true, up until the very end.” She grinned. “So, you tell me. How does it really end for you?”
“Nathalie is handling the business, she moved up to COO when I decided I didn’t want to do it. I went back to school and I’m teaching these days.”
“Please tell me you’re teaching Physics.”
“You know me too well.” He couldn’t help but laugh a bit. “That hasn’t changed.”
“How’s your father?”
The question struck a sour note, but he wrestled back the sadness that came with it. “He passed away a couple years ago. The demistrokes escalated, and when he had a full blown stroke there wasn't much they could do for him.”
Marinette looked surprised, as though she hadn’t known. “Oh, Adrien, I’m so sorry. I had no idea…”
“It’s alright. It was time.” He shrugged it off.
“Still. I’m sorry.”
They continued to chat as they ordered and ate, trying to make up for years of absence in a couple of hours. Once they’d eaten, they set off for the park, wandering their old hunting grounds as civilians. They headed toward the bakery at Marinette’s suggestion, and she explained how her parents had restarted the business as a fusion bakery, incorporating some of her mother’s favorite desserts into the menu as well.
The door opening jingled a bell, the sound strangely familiar. “Oh! There you are, I was just about to call you. Alya dropped by with ...” Mrs. Cheng’s eyes narrowed as she spotted him over the counter. “Alright, I know I recognized you, out with it.”
“Remember Adrien?”
The speed at which Mrs. Cheng’s expression changed was absurd. “Adrian?! Oh my goodness, I didn’t even recognize you, you look so grown up! How are you, what have you been doing all this time?”
“I’m teaching these days, actually. It’s been…an interesting couple of years.”
She stood up. “Watch the shop for me a moment, if you would? I’m going to go get myself more hot water, and then we’ll talk. I’ll get some for the two of you as well.”
“Oh no, Mrs. Cheng, I’m alright,” Adrian said.
If he hadn’t been looking directly at her, he would have missed it. Her eyes widened, just for a moment, and then she looked at him mildly, a small smile dancing about her lips. “Mmhmm, I bet you are.”
They left an hour later with a glazed red bean bun apiece and some cold-brew coffee. “Thank you for the pastries the other day. My class loved them.”
Marinette smiled. “It was a very small thing, along with the book. I owe you my life.”
“I mean, I owe you mine as well. Many times over.”
She paused, considering. “I think, there at the end, you saved us both.” Her left hand, blissfully ringless, wrapped around the cup lightly and he figured…why not? What did he have to lose?
“Marinette?” His face lit up with a broad smile.
She laughed nervously. “Uh oh, I recognize that expression. Trouble’s on the horizon.”
“Would you go out with me again next week?” The words certainly weren’t what he’d practiced in the mirror, over and over. They sounded so much more juvenile, and he braced himself for the worst sort of rejection…
“Alright.” Her smile was sweet and confident, somewhere between the Marinette he’d come to know again and his old partner, and it all came rushing in. The two women he’d fallen in love with were the same person and she was willing to give him a shot. “You still have to tell me what else you’ve been up to. If I know you, you’ve probably got half a dozen things going on alongside teaching.”
For old times sake, he couldn’t stop himself. “We really do need to cat-ch up.”
Without breaking stride, she shot back, “Look, I’m going to be honest, even after all this time your cat puns weird meow-t.”
His head shot up. “Did you just…?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Still, her mouth twisted as she tried to keep from laughing.
“That was ridiculous. I could kiss you.”
“Hmm, you could,” she agreed.
That tripped him up. He’d grown so accustomed to her teasing refusals, he hadn’t actually expected anything else. He hesitated. “May I kiss you?”
“I’ve only been waiting all day.”
“I’ve been waiting for years.”
She sighed. “Do you have to one-up me every time?”
“I could never one-up you, my lady.”