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It had been three hours since Adrien had left to go home, after they’d wrapped up their group project for the night. Marinette had only just wearily dropped back through her skylight from an akuma battle that had taken the greater part of the last two hours. And then she’d immediately started brainstorming for her new and nerve-wracking idea for Valentine’s Day next month–which may or may not include the idea of giving Adrien his gift directly for once instead of as a secret admirer–only climbing into her bed when midnight had passed.
But when Marinette dropped onto her bed, she didn’t expect to turn her head and see a familiar white hoodie innocently laying next to her.
She shot back up instantly, reaching for her phone in a panic.
What would Adrien do when he realized he’d forgotten his hoodie? Had he been cold on the way home, despite having another light jacket with him? And had he texted her about it, asking if she’d bring it back to him while she was out dancing across rooftops with Chat Noir?
Okay, so they weren’t dancing, they were battling, but still.
When she was assured that Adrien wasn’t missing his hoodie–yet–her fingers faltered over the keyboard.
It wouldn’t hurt for her to borrow it for a little while, right? After all, Adrien had plenty of sweaters and hoodies–she’d even made him three that she’d been courageous enough to give him in person over the last two and a half years as their friendship had developed.
Her confessions still kept getting lost in translation, but that was okay.
The point was that Adrien probably wouldn’t miss his hoodie for a while, especially if he didn’t remember it now. After becoming closer friends with him, she realized that he tended to lose track of simple material possessions like hoodies and jackets because he had so many already. There were a few, like his trademark button-ups, that he’d never leave anywhere, but hoodies? Marinette knew for a fact that the faded blue hoodie that Alya had stolen from Nino a month ago had been Adrien’s before the model had left it at his best friend’s house two years prior.
To this day, Marinette wasn’t even sure Adrien had realized it had once been his–especially when he’d smirked and teased Alya in a friendly manner when he noticed she’d swiped one of Nino’s hoodies.
A small part of her felt incredibly guilty, but as the white fabric drowned her tiny figure and she smelled a faint whiff of Adrien’s cologne, she didn’t care quite as much. She snuggled into the hoodie and texted Alya instead of Adrien, omitting the hoodie now in her possession as she and her best friend bantered.
With a soft giggle, Tikki’s voice chirped, “Adrien’s hoodie looks good on you!”
Marinette flushed and shushed her kwami friend, burying her burning cheeks in her pillow. Tikki only giggled again, in that cute little voice she had, but she let the topic drop. Marinette was thankful for that.
She drifted off without changing into pajamas, cozy and comfortable in the hoodie that didn’t belong to her.
Yet.
Nearly two weeks later, Adrien Agreste was thumbing through the various sweaters and hoodies in his closet, searching for one to wear. He wanted a lighter colored one to contrast his dark jeans, but he wasn’t really in the mood for the sunshine yellow that Chloe had gifted him a month before for Christmas.
“Huh,” Adrien mused aloud, puzzled. “I thought I had a white one. Maybe I outgrew it?”
Instead of worrying about it, Adrien pulled out his newest self-indulgent hoodie instead. It was red with black spots and his friends would tease him relentlessly for being such a shameless Ladybug fan…but it would be fine. They were just all going to hang out at the bakery and play Ultimate Mecha Strike III, after all.
When Alya and Nino arrived first and were helping Marinette set up, she nearly missed the knowing look that her best friend cast her way. And when she did catch it, she paused and stood straight, hand on hip.
“What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Marinette’s sleeve fell over her hand and she shook it back without a second thought.
“Nice hoodie,” Alya commented, reaching forward to tug at the blue string, tightening the hood. “Never took you for the type to like baggy things, girl.”
“I don’t…” know what you’re talking about, Marinette had planned to say, but as she glanced down, her words trailed off as a heat rose to her cheeks. The white hoodie she was wearing all but dwarfed her form, and the blue logo on the front was for a brand that Marinette had never really cared for one way or the other. “Oh.”
“‘Oh,’ she says,” Alya mocked, teasingly and all in good fun. “Adrien’s forgetfulness strikes again, huh? How long have you had it?”
Marinette couldn’t even pretend she didn’t know–not with Alya. So, with a sigh, she grudgingly admitted, “Two weeks.”
“Ah, since you guys finished your group project?” Nino piped in, dusting his hands off after he finished attaching the cables from the game console to the TV.
She nodded, reaching up to cover her face with her hands. Hands that were, once again, covered by the sleeves that were too long for her. She’d washed it a time or two, so the traces of Adrien’s cologne were all but gone. She silently lamented that even as the knock rang at the door.
“That’s gotta be Adrien,” Nino said, perking up with a silly grin. “I’ll get the door!”
“Wait!” Marinette tried to snag Nino’s sleeve as he passed her, to beg for time to change her own sweatshirt, but Alya knocked her hand down with a devious grin and steered her to the couch, shoving the second controller into her hands.
“Nuh-uh, girl, you gotta live with the consequences of your thievery.”
“It’s not thievery if it was left here,” Marinette whined, struggling futilely against Alya’s grip as she heard Nino greeting Adrien at the door.
“Well, regardless, I’m curious to see if he’ll notice it’s his or not,” the blogger shrugged, plopping down on the couch beside Marinette. Alya took the third controller, and when the petite girl thought through everything, she realized what her friend was planning.
With the second controller in her hand, it meant that the end of the couch next to her would be for the player with the first controller, and since Alya and Nino were practically joined at the hip, he’d obviously be controller four.
It meant that Adrien, whose sweater she had conveniently ‘forgotten’ was in her possession and was currently wearing, would be sitting next to her.
“Alya, no,” she murmured as the boys came into the room, playfully shoving each other.
“Alya, yes,” the redhead quipped back, grinning.
“–can’t believe you, man. How many times can you embarrass us all?” Nino’s voice heckled, and the girls lifted their gaze to find what he was teasing Adrien over.
The bright red sweater with black polka dots was the obvious answer, but Adrien grinned unabashedly.
“We’re not going out anywhere, are we?” he asked with a wide grin. “I can’t embarrass you if we’re not in public, because everyone else already knows.”
“Knows what? That you’re probably the biggest Ladybug fan ever, aside from me and Chloe?” Alya chipped in, raising a skeptical brow. “I mean, that’s entirely true, but we can still be embarrassed to know you, can’t we?”
Adrien groaned, and Nino clapped him on the back with a laugh, pushing him towards the couch.
“Fine, I guess,” Adrien conceded, tossing his hands up. “Just like I’m embarrassed when the two of you get all mushy in public.”
Alya’s cheeks tinted pink and Marinette laughed, nudging her friend lightly as she agreed, “Adrien’s right, you know. Even I’m embarrassed to know you guys, sometimes.”
“Then pretend you don’t,” she nudged back with a snort, trying to hide her flush. “That’s what I do when you trip over nothing in public.”
“Wha–rude,” Marinette leaned away from Alya, crossing her arms with exaggerated indignation. “I resent that. I’m not nearly as clumsy as I used to be, and you know it. Mom’s told you enough horror stories as it is!”
“Let’s just agree that we all embarrass each other,” Adrien suggested brightly before Alya could respond. Nino hopped the back of the couch to settle by Alya while Adrien walked around, polite as always. He took the controller that Alya leaned across Marinette to hand over and said, with a grin, “Who’s ready to lose at Ultimate Mecha Strike III?”
“We are,” Alya and Nino chorused.
“You know that literally none of us can beat Marinette at this game, Adrien,” Nino deadpanned, getting comfortable as Alya leaned against his shoulder. “It’s been like, three years since that tournament thing that she crushed you at, and you’ve still only tied three times, bro.”
“Four,” Adrien and Marinette chimed in unison, and Adrien laughed, holding out his hand for a high five. Marinette obliged, and tried to hide the soft flush across her cheeks.
“Oh, sure, because that’s so much better.”
“It’s something,” Adrien shrugged as the loading screen for the game finally popped up. “And there’s a first time for everything!”
There may be a first time for everything, Marinette thought smugly as she remembered the way that he had slumped over after his twelfth defeat of the night. But tonight was not the first time that Adrien would beat her at Ultimate Mecha Strike III.
It also wouldn’t be the first time that Adrien had been completely oblivious to the fact that one of his friends was wearing a sweatshirt that technically still belonged to him.
In fact, he had looked at Marinette and her sweater paws and averted his eyes when he remarked, “I didn’t know you had any oversized hoodies,” and Marinette had to tell herself, repeatedly, that she imagined the faint dusting of pink across his cheeks and had to play off the ungainly squeak she made at the fact that he noticed but still didn’t recognize his own hoodie.
He ended up leaving another sweater tossed haphazardly over the arm of the Dupain-Cheng’s living room couch, which ended up folded at the bottom of Marinette’s wardrobe in all of its red polka dotted glory.
“I never expected to see Marinette in such a big sweater,” Adrien mused, absentmindedly staring at the ceiling of his room that night. He remembered the way the vaguely familiar white sleeves fell over her delicate hands and how the fabric practically pooled around her. “It was…cute.”
“Wow, calling someone other than Ladybug cute is a new one for you,” Plagg drawled from his perch on Adrien’s bedside table. His tone was amused.
“Shut up,” Adrien groaned, rolling so that his back was to the kwami.
Plagg laughed.
“Wait, repeat that,” Alya scrambled up from where she’d literally fallen from her chair as she and Marinette talked in the designer’s room. Marinette paused in pinning the new dress she was working on–a birthday gift for Juleka that Rose had commissioned–and looked back at her reporter friend.
“What do you mean, repeat it?! Do you know how hard it was to say in the first place?!”
“If it was hard to say, imagine actually doing that! But I need to hear you say it again just to make sure mine ears do not deceive me. Did you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, just say that you were going to give Adrien your Valentine’s Day card and gift and handwritten love confession up front this year?”
Marinette flushed as she stepped away from the dress, mostly so she didn’t accidentally stab herself again.
“You were looking right at the card when I told you,” she responded, eyes darting away from her redheaded friend. “And you know that I’m going to make his favorites from the shop the night before so I can give them to him. It makes sense that I should just…do it in person this year.”
“Of course it does!” Alya tossed her hands up. “I’ve been telling you to do it in person for years!”
“But Alya,” Marinette flopped onto her computer chair, sprawling back and staring upwards. “What if he doesn’t like it? What if he doesn’t like me? What if it ruins our friendship? I’ve worked so hard to be able to talk to him normally, Alya, so what happens when I screw it all up by giving him this stuff on Valentine’s Day? What if he doesn’t want to hang out anymore because he’ll feel weird since I like him? What if mmmpf–!”
She had to stop speaking when a hand clapped firmly over her mouth.
“No ‘what ifs’, girl,” the redhead demanded. “Just do. If you don’t go for it now, you’ll regret it for ages. Lord knows you regret every other time you’ve messed up when trying to confess to him over the years. And all the gifts that you forgot to sign so he thought they came from someone else.”
“Don’t remind me,” Marinette groaned, dragging a hand down her face. “That’s part of why I decided to do it in person this time, but it’s three days away and I still haven’t worked up the courage to do it.”
“You got this,” Alya pumped her fist in the air, fierce grin on her face. “Just pretend you’re Ladybug or something–cool, calm, and confident. Ooooh, and on Valentine’s Day, you should totally wear the Ladybug sweater he accidentally left here a few weeks ago, complete the image and make a better impression.”
She winked, and Marinette sank further into her chair.
It was an idea, though.
“You look purrty deep in thought, my lady,” Chat Noir teased as they sat amiably side-by-side on a cross beam of the Eiffel Tower. “I’m all ears!”
As if to emphasize that, one of the black leather ears atop his golden hair twitched, and Ladybug laughed, pulling herself back to the moment instead of continuing to dwell on the day that loomed nearer.
Tomorrow.
“It’s nothing, Chaton, I’m just thinking about a few…things.”
“Who’s the lucky guy?” she couldn’t see it for the mask, but she could tell that her partner was arching a brow. She turned to him quickly in surprise, and he gave her an open, honest grin. “What? We’ve been friends for years, Ladybug. It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and I know there’s that one guy you’ve liked for ages. You’re finally telling him, right?”
Somehow, the words came so easily when she said, softly, “Yeah, I am.”
She’d lacked confidence right up until that moment, when Chat Noir had easily read her and acknowledged exactly what she was planning without her even needing to speak. But now…now she felt like she could do it.
All day, Marinette had been fighting with the overlong sleeves of Adrien’s Ladybug sweater. Now, as the sleeves dropped to conceal parts of the box and card in her hands, she let them, fidgeting nervously as Alya gave her that look.
“He and Nino are walking out of that door,” she pointed to the class that they, unfortunately, did not share with the boys, “in the next thirty seconds and you have to give that to him. It’s the last class of the day and if you miss him I won’t speak to you for a week.”
“Alyaaaaa,” Marinette whined, clutching the box of treats to her chest. “You wouldn’t.”
In response, the redhead turned her nose up, remained silent, and strode toward the classroom door when Nino stepped out ahead of Adrien, beaming and greeting him with a kiss to each cheek and then, as per their relationship, a chaste kiss on the lips. Marinette averted her gaze as Adrien rounded the couple, pretending to shield his eyes but still politely looking away as he spotted Marinette.
“Hey, Mari, how were classes?” he asked with soft smile, glancing over to where Alya and Nino were whispering amongst themselves.
“We have almost all of them together,” she deadpanned. “You should know how they were.”
“I know what I think of them. That doesn’t mean I know how you thought they were.”
She sighed, all tension forgotten, as she agreed, “You’re right, you’re right. Well, they were okay, mostly.”
He chuckled at her tone, which was still kind of flat, and tugged her lightly by the elbow towards a bench at the edge of the courtyard–when had they even reached the edge of the courtyard?–but she followed and sat with him. His eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Sooooo? Did you get any secret admirers this year?” he asked brightly, and her jaw dropped.
“Wha–me? Of course I didn’t,” she laughed a little. “I’m not the kind of person who has secret admirers, Adrien, that’s you.”
He snorted, “Please take some of the chocolate off my hands. I won’t be able to eat all of it without Dad trying to kill me for ruining my figure, or something ridiculous like that.”
Before she could think better of it, she reached forward and dropped her box in his lap, her heart thudding in her chest. When he blinked, surprised, she just beamed and said, “Sorry, can’t do that. I’m adding to your snacks. We need to fatten you up a little, model boy.” The tease came easy and she pushed herself up from the bench. And, with a motion that seemed almost second nature after the day, she shook her sleeves back.
“I’ve got to go help at the bakery now, but I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” she grinned at him, leaning forward and booping his nose–like she usually did with Chat Noir, oh no–before standing up straight and waving at him. She turned away from the slow flush across her friend’s cheeks before she could overthink it and expect too much, and she excused herself.
“Oh, sure! Later, Marinette!”
She told herself not to look back, and forced herself not to bury her face in her sweater paws.
Marinette blamed the Ladybug print. That had to be where her confidence boost and the nose boop had come from. And she tried to ignore the fact that she’d just dropped a love confession in Adrien’s lap and pretended like it was nothing.
It wasn’t working.
Adrien watched Marinette walk away in a daze, raising his hand to cover his burning cheeks. Marinette had never quite had that effect on him before, at least not so all at once, but he couldn’t say it was…unexpected.
He could admit that he was charmed by his friend. A part of him would always be a little in love with Ladybug, but that was how first loves supposedly went. They were supposed to be that tender and sometimes bitter longing that never completely left. But with Marinette, it was something slow and gradual and not at all like his instant adoration of Ladybug.
But…it was something, all the same.
Snap out of it, he told himself after she slipped out of his line of sight, ducking beyond the school doors to head to the bakery across the street.
Instead, he turned his attention to the carefully wrapped box in his lap. It was a heart shaped box, but he could tell that Marinette had personalized it herself. It made him smile, and he gently pried the lid off to peek inside, holding the card against the lid. He’d look at it in a moment, after he’d seen what goodies hed been given.
When he spied almost all of the things he adored from the bakery, he laughed a little. Adrien fished out a small cookie and held it between his teeth as he replaced the lid and then he pulled the heart shaped card into his hands. Nibbling at the snack he’d pulled out, he opened the card and began to read.
Dear Adrien,
I’m not very good at this, so I’ll start by telling you that I have confessed to you a grand total of seven times and somehow they’ve all gone astray. And by that, I mean that in five of those seven confessions, I wrote a letter or a Valentine’s Day card like this one, didn’t give them to you in person, and also forgot to sign them, and in a few cases, they were mistaken for somebody else’s confessions. The other two included one where I accidentally left a voicemail and consequently stole your phone to delete it before you heard it (I’m sorry about that…) and the other one was kind of a drunk confession at Alix’s house party over the phone that I am pretty sure you were out of the country for and it was three in the morning for you so you were mostly asleep.
I’m already rambling and I’m sorry. That’s why I wanted to write it out instead of telling you in person but I guess it didn’t change the fact that I rambled anyway, did it?
But this time I’m going to be giving you the card myself–and I’ll even sign it too.
I like you, Adrien.
All my love,
Marinette.
He swallowed the last bite of his cookie almost in a trance. He could feel his face, his ears, and even his neck starting to burn. When Marinette had teased him about adding to his pile of sweets, he’d just taken it as a friendly gesture. It was exactly what she had done last year, too. But for him to have a confession in his hands was something he hadn’t expected. At all.
Marinette was a passionate, determined girl when you earned her trust and her friendship. She fought for what she believed in, and never backed down, even when Chloe had pulled numerous strings to antagonize her.
And the fact that someone so bold, so independent, could possibly like him…
…and the images of how undeniably cute that person had been as of late, making him stutter or blush a time or two more than usual, made him realize that he might not be as immune to her charms as he had thought.
The way she’d swooped in and lightly tweaked his nose with a little grin, how her large sleeve had slid forward to lightly brush his skin as she pulled her hand away, the way the red shirt with black polka dots had dwarfed her in the most adorable way–wait.
“That’s…my sweater!” Adrien’s cheeks burned warmer and, with a start, he also realized that the white hoodie he’d thought he owned but couldn’t find that one time was definitely exactly the same as the one that Marinette had been wearing off and on over the last month or so.
They were his, but he couldn’t deny that he had no desire to take his property back.
They looked much better on Marinette, anyway.
And it struck him, all at once, as he pictured the way his sleeves fell over Marinette’s smaller, delicate hands. The way her figure practically swam in his hoodies, her petite form only accentuated by the overlarge garments.
I…like Marinette.
Before Adrien could think better of his actions, his fingers were fumbling for his phone and he pulled up his contact list. His most frequent personal contact (excluding Nathalie) was Nino, at the top of the list, and he hit the call button.
When Nino picked up, all Adrien could blurt was, “I think I like Marinette.”
When Marinette looked up from decorating a few desserts at the counter as the chime above the door sounded, nearly an hour after she’d started work, she didn’t expect to see Adrien. In fact, she had nearly ducked behind the counter when she recognized him, intent on hiding and never coming out, but he’d already seen her.
And only one thing ran through her mind: he had to have read her card by now.
He knew.
“H-hey,” she faltered a little in her greeting, smiling embarrassedly at him as she felt the burning in her cheeks return. She tried for a little bit of a joke and teased, “What, didn’t have enough snacks in your gift?”
“You know that’s never enough,” he laughed a little, but it sounded kind of forced.
Oh, no. Oh, no, I made everything awkward.
“Boys,” she said, shaking her head and trying to continue her task. She couldn’t hide the waver in her tone or the tremble in her hands, though, no matter how she tried.
“But that’s not why I’m here this time,” Adrien grinned, looking around the shop. She thought she saw a faint pink across his cheeks, but she didn’t dare believe it. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. Am I interrupting anything big?”
He wants to turn me down, a weight settled in her chest, but she forged onwards and shook her head with a forced grin.
“No, not at all!”
“Good,” Adrien put his palms on the counter in front of her and she gave him her full attention, surprised. “First of all, what would you say to, uh, coffee? Saturday at ten?”
The knot in her chest relaxed a little as her heart came back to life with a lurch. Wide green eyes stared at her imploringly as she stared in slack-jawed silence, not sure that she could believe her ears–or her eyes, for that matter, when the suspicious pink on Adrien’s cheeks blossomed into a startling red.
“I-I-I…what?”
Marinette could have dropped her head to the counter in front of her, and the pain still wouldn’t have erased her embarrassment at her ineloquent response.
“I, uh,” Adrien looked a little shy, almost like the new kid he’d been when they first met. It was endearing. “I was wondering if you’d like to go get a coffee or something on Saturday. With me. At ten. Like, uh…like a date. If you want.”
Like a date.
It was completely beyond her expectations. Part of her still didn’t believe that Adrien had actually just asked her on a date, even though his earnest, nervous expression should have been more than enough to convince her.
But regardless of whether she could believe it, she breathed, “Yes,” and then added, softly as she tilted her chin down, “I’d like that.”
There was a breathless chuckle, and Adrien’s voice said, “Thank goodness,” and then she jumped a little when fingers tentatively tucked her hair behind her ear. She peered up at him through her lashes, her face burning, and he quirked a half grin at her and added, “You look…really nice in my sweaters.”
Marinette opened her mouth to speak, but instead, at the shy grin and bright red cheeks of none other than Adrien Agreste before her, she couldn’t help but break into a nervous bought of giggles. Soon after, Adrien’s soft chuckles joined in, and neither noticed that their hands had joined on the countertop, almost as a natural reaction.
“Will you…” he began, softly, but then his voice grew stronger, “…be my Valentine?”
She could have cried, she was so happy. Instead, she answered with a single word.
“Yes.”