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Sometimes Marinette misses the bakery, waking up to the scent of sugary sweets and bread and croissants wafting up into her bedroom. Other times, she misses being able to clamber up onto the roof of her house and peer across the city to look for any akuma that are running rampant. But for the most part, she loves her current apartment. It’s central in the city, fairly close to her work, and she’s able to see the Eiffel Tower from her bedroom. Why was she complaining, again?
She glances up for a split second as the apartment door opens as her roommate enters, but she immediately returns to working on her current designs. There’s a sigh and the sound of a bag hitting the floor, and she realizes it must have been an extremely tiring day. Looks like she’s going to be cooking dinner or calling for takeout. There’s the sound of her roommate yelling something into a pillow, and she sighs. Must have been a stressful day too.
It’s not even half an hour later when the sun begins to set, turning the Parisian sky into an orange-hued scene. It really is a shame that it’s getting darker earlier and earlier; the akuma are becoming creatures of the night as of late, and that means she has to go and patrol soon. Of course, she’ll just say she has a meeting or whatever.
Marinette emerges from her bedroom-slash-studio. She’s progressed a lot from her teenage years; she leaves her hair down around her shoulders, and her clothing choices have changed to more professional clothes when she’s not lounging about in the apartment. She has a smudge of charcoal on her cheek from when she must have rested her face against her palm, and she doesn’t even realize that it’s there.
“I’ll cook,” she calls out as she walks over to the fridge. There isn’t much to work with—some vegetables… and still a ton of cheese. Marinette purses her lips together as her brow furrows in disappointment. It seems like she went grocery shopping just this last week. “Or… I’ll call for Chinese. The usual?”
The only response is a murmur of agreement from her roommate.
After placing their order, she walks over to the lightly-decorated living room and peers over the side of the couch. The room’s lights are faint, and it makes her roommate’s hair shine like white gold. The rise and fall of her roommate’s chest makes it seem like she shouldn’t make any noise or disturbances. Marinette knows for a fact that she can. There’s too much movement—irregular breathing and a twitching foot—for her roommate to actually have fallen asleep.
“Okay, tell me what happened.”
“You really don’t want me to,” is the slow response.
She crosses her arms and lets out a huff of air. “I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t want you to tell me.” Seriously, sometimes she wonders why she didn’t just share her apartment with Alya. On plenty of occasions it would make life a heck of a lot easier. Knowing that her roommate’s so used to internalizing any emotion or anger, she pulls him up to sitting by the collar of his shirt. “Adrien, what happened?”
He finally opens his eyes to look at her, green meeting blue for a cold second before melting into a much more peaceable and calm expression. “I had a meeting with my father today.”
She can hear the reluctance in his voice, the regret for even bringing it up. “How’d it go?” Marinette tempers her voice—obviously she can’t be too optimistic based on his reactions, but she’s always had the fortune of seeing the better side of things.
He begins to regale the oh-so-wonderful meeting between Agreste father and son, mentioning that his father missed his last shoot because he was supposedly out of the country. A blatant lie, apparently. But that’s not even what bothers Adrien. He starts talking again, this time with more fervor about how he does have a good life and even though he never got the business degree his father wanted, how a master’s degree in physics and bachelor’s degrees in literature and history provide him with more than enough opportunities to choose other paths in life once he stops modelling.
Marinette has to pause him mid-rant when their food arrives. The delivery girl happens to be one of Manon’s friends, and the designer wishes the now-high-schooler well in her studies. She’s laying out the food when she gestures for him to continue.
His earlier anger has been diffused in those few minutes, and he sighs. Picking up his food, he says, “I’m happy with my life as it is. Why doesn’t my father understand that?”
“Because some people can’t be happy where they are,” Marinette points out, and she blanches when she realizes that she’s talking about her boss. “And they expect everyone to think the same.” She wraps her arms around him, ignoring the fact that her action knocks some of the food onto the couch and floor. “But you can see more than that,” she murmurs as she rests her chin on his shoulder and he leans his head into the crook of her neck. They stay like that until the Parisian skies are nearly black, and stars appear, scintillating what seems like an arm’s reach away.
“Thanks,” Adrien responds as he loosens his grip from around Marinette’s torso. There’s more to it than just the word, but monosyllabic is enough for them.
She smiles back at him, blue eyes filled with relief. “Come on,” she encourages as she sits next to Adrien and nudges him with her shoulder. “We gotta eat before our meetings tonight.”
They eat in relative silence, the primary source of noise being the ongoing news report. Marinette laughs when it’s Alya’s segment. She’s reporting on the newest additions to the Parisian landscape—new buildings and offices not far away from where they are.
Marinette checks her watch: she has five minutes until her rendezvous with Chat. There’s nothing she’d rather do than take a break from patrolling, just for one night, but the safety of all of Paris is more important than what she wants. Grabbing her bag, she pulls Adrien into a quick hug before darting out the door.
She still doesn’t realize that her roommate follows her to the same location less than a minute later.