Work Text:
There had been a lot of new things when Marinette and Adrien had agreed to move in together. Not all of it necessarily bad! Adrien still tended to get butterflies when he realized that he could just see his Lady any time he wanted. Whenever he came home from a long day of classes, he knew that she would be there!
But there were also some unexpected challenges. After growing up in a way-too-big house, Adrien didn’t realize how used to silence he had become at home. If he wasn’t doing anything, none of the noise from the house staff would reach his room. All of that changed when he began dating Mari.
Suddenly noise had filled his life again. In the hours and days he spent in the Dupain-Chengs’ apartment, he realized what a home filled with life sounded like. Her father would always be humming while he worked in the kitchen (it turns out that man can hold even less of a tune that Adrien, to his utter delight), and her mother, when she wasn’t working the storefront, was flitting about checking in on them and working on whatever side project had her fancy at the moment.
And then, of course, the princess herself. Once she had gotten over the nervousness and klutziness that her crush had caused her, it turned out that Mari was a master at holding a conversation while in the middle of many tasks at once. When they would get together to do homework (and occasionally get distracted from said homework), she would easily be talking to him, checking in on the Ladyblog, and doing her homework all at once. Usually with some study music in the background (that only sometimes turned into lip-sync battles).
But most of all, the sound he’d gotten used to was of Marinette’s sewing. So many of her classes at school had required the construction of garments that it became a common occurrence for Adrien to come back from a patrol to the sight of Marinette eye-deep in fabric, with the mechanical whirring of the machine still going.
Adrien had been working on lesson plans for a few hours that night. One of his biggest surprises in school was realizing how grueling the education part of his science education degree was. He had entered the Teacher Zone, as Mari at christened it, which was why when he finally looked up from his molecule-filled pages that he realized what was wrong.
It was silent.
He knew that his girlfriend had a rather large project coming up, involving multiple outfits, so he couldn’t fathom why she, the workaholic, wouldn’t be working on it. She couldn’t be on patrol, it was a night off for them. Plus, he could see Tikki and Plagg curled up together in the Kwami Korner.
“Mari?” he called out. Rubbing his eyes, he got up and walked into their workroom/all-purpose room. He took in the dark room, and giggled to himself a little.
Mari was slumped over in her chair, hair tied back in a ponytail as she often did when she was working. There wasn’t anything in the machine, but it almost looked like his bug had fallen asleep in the middle of grabbing a new piece of fabric.
Having learned long ago the perils of attempting to wake Marinette up, he instead went to plan B. Moving over to one of the baskets in the corner, he pawed through until he found what he was looking for. Holding his prize, he walked back over to Marinette, and draped the blanket he’d grabbed over her. Mari had always called it her favorite one, but Adrien couldn’t really see why. The stitching was all uneven, some of the spots he’d tried to sew on were coming up, and he was pretty sure that some blood had soaked into the red fabric from all the times he’d poked himself with a pin or a needle. But it was one of the first things he’d made himself (well, with her help), so Mari had always held it in high regard.
He smiled to himself as she shifted, pulling the blanket in closer to her. She murmured something that sounded an awful lot like “silly chaton” before falling back asleep. Departing with a quick kiss to the top of her head, Adrien padded back out to let the princess get her beauty rest. He’d make sure to make her some coffee in the morning. The sound of the coffee-maker did seem to wake even the most tired of bugs, after all.