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Marinette, in the guise of Ladybug, sat a rooftop, looking over her city as the sun sank towards the horizon. She wasn’t watching the sunset alone for very long, though, as her partner soon made his appearance.
“Rough day, my lady?” he asked, flopping down next to her without waiting for her response.
She peeked over at him, the corners of her mouth lifting into a small smile.
“You could say that,” she answered, with no small amount of exasperation. “The girls came to me today with a plan for asking you out.”
“Let me guess, it was way too straightforward for you and needed about thirty more steps?” he said, grinning cheekily at her. Marinette rolled her eyes.
“Sure, that was the problem,” she said, before leaning onto him and sighing. “I just wish they’d listen to me when I say I’m not interested in you like that.”
In truth, she didn’t know how to explain her relationship with Adrien to anyone, even if she could tell them about their superhero business. Her best friend, her partner – neither of these were insufficient words for him, yet she didn’t think they’d convey the same thing to everyone else as they did to her.
“I can kinda see why they think that, though,” Adrien pointed out, the ears of his costume twitching a little as a gust of wind came through. “I’ve seen how you are around Kagami.”
Marinette groaned.
“Shut up, you’re as bad as Alya!” she said, burying her face in her hands to hide her blush. “I can’t help that I stutter when I’m nervous; it doesn’t matter why I’m nervous. I’m always so worried I’ll say the wrong thing, and people will figure out that we’re Ladybug and Chat Noir, and then Papillon will akumatize them and take our Miraculous and everything will be ruined and…”
“Hey, hey, I know,” he said, his smile falling. “I worry about it too. The truth is, I never know how to act around you when we’re not in costume like this. Our classmates tease me about it, too.”
Everything would have been easier if they just hadn’t detransformed together after their first battle. Tikki and Plagg hadn’t been happy about it, but neither of them had warned Marinette and Adrien ahead of time not to do it (though Plagg argued in his defense that Adrien hadn’t given him much time to explain anything), so in the end decided what was done was done. At the time, Marinette thought it wouldn’t be a problem – Adrien had been a complete stranger to her, and they didn’t have any reason to think that their paths would cross in their daily lives as well. If they saw each other on the streets once in a while, it wouldn’t have given away anything.
Unfortunately, Adrien turning up in her class the next day had up-ended all of that, leaving them both flailing in an attempt to hide their shared secret.
“It would be nice if we could be friends in our regular lives too,” Marinette said, “But...”
It was painful, pretending to be strangers every day, only ever able to acknowledge how important the other was to them when they were both in costume. As civilians, they couldn’t risk getting too close to one another, couldn’t risk being so comfortable, couldn’t risk that “Ladybug” or “Chat Noir” or any one of their recognizable pet names for one another might slip out.
“Yeah,” Adrien agreed, no happier about the situation than she was. “Maybe we should go along with our friends for a bit, then stage a really messy breakup, so we have an excuse to avoid each other.”
“I feel like that would be worse,” Marinette said. “They’d probably try even harder to get us back together. And I don’t want to pretend to hate you. I don’t think I could.”
“I don’t think I could, either,” Adrien admitted.
They lapsed into silence, watching the sunset give way to dusk. This, of course, was one of the things that neither of them could regret about their situation. To see, to share the city from high above like this – next to the knowledge that they were saving and protecting people from Papillon, this was the best part about being a superhero duo.
“It is kinda funny, though,” Adrien said, after a while. “Our friends thinking we’re completely in denial about our feelings for one another. I bet if we outright told them we act so weird because we’re Ladybug and Chat Noir, they wouldn’t even believe us at this point. They’d think we were trying to hide our secret dates or something. It’s the perfect cover.”
“Please do not do that,” Marinette said, though she didn’t think he was seriously considering it. But, she could admit, he had a good point, and it gave her an idea. “Maybe we can work with that,” she said, “we can pretend we’re dating in secret but don’t want to tell anyone. It would be pretty easy to convince everyone of that as long as we don’t directly say so.”
“It is pretty believable,” Adrien said. “I can just drop a few lines about how my father wouldn’t allow me to date anyone who hasn’t been approved by the brand. It’s probably true, anyway,” he added quietly. Marinette put her hand on his shoulder in silent comfort.
“Good idea,” she said, knowing that he didn’t really want to talk about his dad right now. “Only risk is that they try to catch us on our “dates” and get pictures or something. That could make it hard to get away when there’s an attack.”
“So now you have your excuse to create a complicated booby-trap in the school that would put a Rube Goldberg machine to shame, that only we know how to escape,” Adrien said, smiling.
Marinette poked him in the shoulder.
“Don’t tempt me, Kitten. One of these days, I actually will, and then we’ll both be in trouble.”
“Why would I be in trouble?” he said, feigning innocence. “I didn’t build it. It was all your idea.”
“I see how it is. You enable me, egg me on, get me to put your ideas into action, and then I take the fall for all of it.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I’m a public figure, I can’t go to prison. It would ruin my image and my father’s fashion house.”
“Oh, so you’re saying if I get you arrested, I take down one of my future competitors in the fashion industry at the same time?” she said, tapping her finger against her cheek in mock contemplation. “I hadn’t considered that, thanks for the idea!”
“I am an innocent cat!” he protested, jumping to his feet. “You can’t do this to me! You’ll never take me alive!”
He promptly took off across the rooftops. Marinette scrambled to her feet and gave chase, an exhilarating joy taking hold as she flew across them, following the sound of her partner’s laughter.
This, too, was something she didn’t regret.