Part 20

Word Count: 4845

A/N:

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 5K+ VIEWS and all of the support from you guys in general!!! 😭🤍

-♡-

"How would you manage to help with his obvious issue of letting go of a dead person?" Adrien asked, feeling ridiculous that this was even a topic to talk about.

"I have quite the affect on your father," Marinette chuckled ironically, " he could lose a lot if he lost our partnership, you know."

"True," Adrien laughed, "let's go home, alright?"

Marinette agreed with Adrien.

It's been a pretty long and exhausting day for both of them. Luka's sudden ties to possess Marinette recently weren't much of a help either.

"Maybe we should get Nino and Alya first, though. I doubt they can stay at the party without us," Marinette rolled her eyes.

She truly didn't want to get them.

Marinette loved Alya, and she valued her friendship with Nino, but they could get pretty exhausting sometimes. No to mention Alya's little act earlier was pretty draining as well.

She had no idea what had gotten into Alya back at her house. Alya was never the one to push Marinette into going somewhere she didn't want to go. But recently, ever since she was back with Nino, Alya tried to go anywhere with Marinette.

Anywhere where possible journalists could be. Or people that could make Alya something big in the future.

"They'll be fine. No offence, but Alya kind of deserves to get thrown out anyway," Adrien shrugged.

He would then intertwine his hands with Marinette's, giving it a light squeeze before they began to walk home.

Marinette had suggested to call a Taxi, but Adrien wanted to walk home. He wanted to spend as much time with Marinette as only possible, even if that meant walking home for good an hour in the pouring rain.

Something about this rain felt great, though. Rain could be pretty freeing if one lets it be.

They've been walking for about fifteen minutes in complete silence. Either of them just enjoying the other's company. Enjoying the pouring rain. Ignoring the fact that both of them were by now dripping wet from the rain.

But it was a lovely night.

It was silent in the streets of Paris. Most lights inside of the houses and apartments were shut off. Everything was dark, except for the Eiffel Tower and some outside Halloween decorations that happened to light up.

Every now and then there would be a street light burning, giving just enough light to see the street for the next few meters until the next one would do the very same.

The sky was dark, lit up with millions of stars that were shining through some spots. Of course it was impossible to light up the whole sky with stars since there were some heavy clouds covering most of it, but some spots were visible.

And there was no one interrupting Marinette and Adrien walking down the streets of Paris. No one that wanted to take a picture. No one that was waiting to take a picture to make some drama out of it.

It was just Marinette and Adrien.

"Mari?" Adrien squeezed Marinette's hand yet again.

She hummed in response, showing she was listening.

"Would you have said yes if Chat Noir proposed to you, even if we still didn't know each others identities?"

It was an awful question. One that was difficult to respond to.

On one hand, Marinette sure would have said yes. She loved Chat Noir, and she would have even if he was anyone but Adrien underneath that mask. On the other hand, what if Chat Noir would have turned out to be a criminal?

Chat Noir being a criminal was such an absurd thought, and something that didn't suit him at all. But everything would have been possible.

"Our wedding would have been just you and me. Perhaps I would have invited Alya and Nino as Rena Rouge and Carapace. We would have been living a long life, never knowing each others identities." Marinette tried to make his question less of a serious one.

"I am being serious," Adrien said.

"Adrien, that's such a difficult question to answer, you know," Marinette looked down to the wet floor.

"I don't think it is." He furrowed his eyebrows. Adrien would have been able to answer that question in less than a heartbeat.

"It is to me," Marinette sighed.

"If you have to think about it that much, I think that makes a pretty obvious answer." His voice was tight.

"You know I love you, Adrien. But this is just a lot to ask, you know," Marinette tried to defend herself.

"It's not. We've been dating for a while. Have you never seriously thought about it?" Adrien totally did think about it. In fact, he had been thinking about proposing to Ladybug ever since the day he met her.

"I did. But all I've ended up with was you not liking who was underneath that mask," she admitted.

"But you see, if I had proposed to you as Chat Noir, wouldn't that have meant that I loved you no matter who was underneath the Ladybug mask?" Adrien was confused.

"Yes and no," she said truthfully. "You have always liked Ladybug. No need to deny it. And I was afraid you just did because I was someone. Marinette was no one when we met. I was of none importance-"

"No, hold on there," he interrupted, "you've always been someone to me, Marinette."

"Yeah, I know that now," she chuckled, giving Adrien a delightful and soft smile, "but I didn't know it back then."

"And yet you said no," Adrien crossed his arms in front of his chest, giving Marinette a hurtful look.

"Because you weren't thinking, Adrien. Your brain works like fireworks sometimes. You just do stuff and not think about the consequences. You haven't thought this through. It's just been a split moment where you liked the idea of marriage. But you didn't think about what that means for our future, for your future."

"I'm pretty sure I know what I'd be getting myself into."

Marinette stopped walking, worrying Adrien until he noticed why she stopped.

She was shaking out her legs, trying to make her feet hurt less.

Just then he noticed how rude he was being by wanting to walk.

Marinette was wearing high-heels. Not even ones that were comfortable enough to walk in, at least not for longer than an hour.

Sure, he knew Marinette had gotten used to wearing high-heels, but she never had to walk in them for too long.

He had mentally beaten himself up as he saw how much in obvious pain his lady was.

"Take them off," Adrien said.

He went down on his knees, untying the laces around her ankles.

"Are you crazy?" Marinette squealed, "I can't walk home not wearing any shoes, I'll get sick!"

Adrien ignored what Marinette had said and continued to undo her shoes.

"Adrien," Marinette tried to get his attention, but he ignored her once again.

"You don't have to walk, I'll carry you," Adrien said, but Marinette wasn't down for it.

"You can't carry me home for another thirty minutes," she laughed and stepped out of her shoes.

"Questioning my strength once again, Milady?" Adrien raised an eyebrows, laughing along with Marinette.

"You're weak. You can't even open a bottle of water at night."

"In my defence, I had sore muscles from working out!"

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that."

Adrien picked up Marinette's shoes, while slipping out of his own.

"Wear mine then. I don't mind getting sick. I have a beautiful girlfriend who'll take care of me," Adrien said.

Marinette laughed, but eventually stepped into his shoes anyway.

To Adrien's luck, he didn't have to walk home without shoes all the way. Marinette eventually gave in and let him carry her, at least for the last 15 minutes.

And then they had finally made it home.

As soon as they were inside, Adrien dropped Marinette's high-heels and technically ran into the bathroom to take a rather lukewarm shower.

If Marinette had to judge his water temperature, she would have said it was cold.

Although Marinette laughed at Adrien for sprinting into the bathroom immediately, she ended up doing the same. After all she wanted to get rid of that nasty fake blood and makeup she'd been wearing all evening.

To her own surprise, she finished showering earlier than Adrien did. Usually she was the one taking long showers. Way too long showers. But

Anyway, she was happy to finally wear something more comfortable. Well, a sweatshirt of Adrien's, but definitely way more comfortable than what she had been wearing before.

Marinette wanted to go to sleep almost immediately, given that it was already 2 in the morning. But something about Adrien taking a shower, longer than he usually did, just had her worried.

So instead of hopping into her warm and cozy bed, she walked over to Adrien's room.

Standing in front of his bathroom door, she was debating wether or not to knock. The water was still running, but it didn't sound like someone was showering. She eventually decided against knocking and just walked inside.

"Adrien?" Marinette said, her eyes immediately spotting his figure.

Adrien was standing in front of his counter island, looking into the mirror. It didn't seem as if he was doing anything but stare at himself. He had his hands resting on the counter top.

He was still naked, well, except for that towel around his hips.

He turned his head to look at Marinette when he heard her sweet voice streaming through his ear. Then gave her a warm smile, holding his hand out for her to take it.

"Are you okay?" She took his hand, and he pulled her in, wrapping his arms around her from behind.

Adrien would rest his chin on her shoulder, resting his hands onto Marinette's abdomen while continuing to look into the mirror.

"Adrien?" Marinette asked again as she didn't get a respond from him before.

"You know," Adrien began, smiling softly at the sight of Marinette in his arms, "I'm so ridiculously in love with you, Marinette."

She couldn't hold her smile back. Grinning widely at his words.

"How is that ridiculous?" She asked.

"I jumped right towards my death cause you asked me to. And you can't even agree on marrying me," he spoke softly, yet somewhat angrily.

"Adrien," Marinette began to tear up. "I never meant to hurt you with my response."

"You didn't." Marinette's eyebrows raised in surprise. "I get where you're coming from with it. I understand your doubts and worries. I have those, too. But you can't always live in a bubble."

Adrien was right. Marinette was just living in a bubble, praying she wouldn't get hurt that way. But this bubble also brought more pain to her that could have been avoided.

Not only did Adrien make mistakes, but Marinette did those, too. She used to force herself to stay away from Adrien cause she was mad.

The only reason she said no to him now was because she feared he didn't think it through. And maybe he didn't, but that also didn't mean he would regret it later. If anything, it proved his love for her.

"You avoided talking about an obvious problem we've had. And for what?" Adrien asked, hinting at the way Adrien had treated her.

"I didn't want to lose you," Marinette whispered, trying to hold back her tears.

"You couldn't lose me if you wanted to, Mari," he spoke. "Why do you think I moved in with you back then?"

"Cause you felt bad for me?" Marinette shrugged.

"Because I've always loved you. I was hoping we would get closer when we lived together. Plus I could see that cute face of yours daily without it being creepy. But you were so busy with your boutique and I didn't want to keep you from pursuing your dreams just because I was so totally in love with you."

A tear ran down her face, but Adrien immediately wiped it away as he saw it in the mirror.

"I wanted to go on dates with you. I wanted to make you fall in love with me, but I couldn't do that to you. And you, well, Ladybug, eventually ended up paying more attention to Chat Noir, so I thought maybe I should just move on from you. But I never did, Mari."

"Same person," Marinette giggled in a teary voice.

"I saw everything you are in Ladybug, except for that very little detail," he tightened his grip around her, "Ladybug wasn't clumsy and way too bossy."

"Are you trying to tell me you love or hate me?"

Adrien chuckled.

"I always knew you were Ladybug. I was just missing a couple more puzzle pieces."

"Well, I never thought you could pull off being Chat Noir, so I guess we had two very different expectations."

Of course Marinette couldn't stay serious. She never could. But that was one of the many things Adrien loved about her.

After a good laughter, Marinette finally said something more serious.

"I think February sounds good."

"What for?"

"A wedding, well, our wedding. It will have to be inside cause February sounds cold, but I hate outsides anyway."

Adrien's eyes widened as he realised what Marinette had just said. Yet before he could react, Marinette would have to say something else in order to distract him from squeezing her to death.

"Like, I know you have money, but maybe you shouldn't waste all that water for nothing," she said, pointing towards the still running shower.

"I didn't even notice it was still going," he laughed and went to turn off the water.

Marinette shook her head in disbelief and was on her way out.

She had left the bathroom, and was about to exit his bedroom, but of course Adrien had to stop her.

"Nuh, uh." He grabbed Marinette's hand into his, pulling her right into his embrace once again. He then picked her up and carried her to his bed. "No way I'm going to let you sleep in 'your' bedroom all by yourself ever again."

Marinette rolled her eyes at Adrien as he gently laid her down on his bed.

Adrien then placed a gentle kiss onto her forehead before stepping away to get changed.

But Marinette had other plans.

As soon as Adrien tried to leave, Marinette grabbed onto the towel around his hips. So while he was walking away, the towel loosened which led to a completely naked Adrien.

He just stood still for a moment, taking a deep breath before turning around to look at Marinette.

She was smiling innocently, but then her smile grew bigger as she began biting onto her bottom lip.

"You don't need clothes to sleep, you know," she said, holding her hand out for Adrien.

He chuckled and took her hand, yet when he was close enough, he jumped right onto his bed, landing onto Marinette's body.

She groaned, but then proceeded to laugh.

"If I can't wear clothes, neither can you," Adrien whispered and sat up onto Marinette's thighs.

He helped her sit up as well so he could easily remove his sweatshirt from her body.

"Good luck fighting for your blanket then. I'll steal it from you cause I am freezing," Marinette said, but Adrien did not really care too much about it.

"That's all right. I'll just use you as my blanket," he said, then realising it sounded way better in his head.

"You're weird," Marinette laughed.

"Yeah," he agreed, "but you love me anyway."

Adrien hooked his finger into the elastic of Marinette's thong. He got off her thighs, and pulled her thong down, then throwing them right into his laundry basket.

"You didn't even ask for permission!" Marinette faked being upset as she was just more surprised that he didn't.

Adrien was back between Marinette's legs, just resting his head on one of her thighs to keep it down, while pressing the other one into the other direction.

"Why, Milady, did you want me to do anything else?" He smirked, tracing with index finger of his free hand up and down her inner thigh.

He could hear her breathing become more unsteady, even feel it from the way her body reacted to his touch.

Marinette leaned back, putting her weight onto her arms.

"Wait, weren't you on your devils week?" Adrien then remembered this morning's encounter.

"Stopped sometime this afternoon." She could barely talk as Adrien moved his hand closer to her intimate area.

"So," he began, "may I?"

Marinette nodded.

"No, no, Bugaboo, you need to say it." He always preferred to hear her agree rather than just nodding.

"God, Adrien!" She groaned, "please, touch me."

Adrien let out a chuckle, but immediately stroke his finger through her folds.

He placed a few kisses onto her inner thigh, moving up with every new kiss his planted.

Marinette groaned, letting herself plop onto her back so she could tangle her fingers into Adrien's hair.

He kissed her, then spread her legs even further apart to grant him more access, holding her in place.

Slowly, he began to circle his tongue around her sweet spot. Marinette let out a moan, arching her back in response.

He continued his movement and Marinette cried out, tossing her head back into the pillow. She tightened her grip in Adrien's hair.

Adrien sucked on her clit, then stroke his finger through her folds once again. But this time, inserting it in her.

Her legs started to tremble.

"Adrien, please," she begged.

"Not yet." He paused his movements, pulling his finger out of her.

"Don't stop," she groaned in frustration.

Adrien began kissing his way up her body, taking a quick stop at her breast.

He sucked at each of her nipple for a short moment, then continuing to move upwards until he could finally feel her soft lips on his.

She could taste herself on his tongue.

Only a moment later Marinette could feel Adrien adjusting himself to her entrance.

He eased into her slowly, claiming her.

Adrien intertwined his hands with Marinette's, holding them down right beside her head.

Her breathing was shaky, and got even shakier with every passionate thrust.

She could barely manage to kiss back.

Marinette was panting as her body started to tremble once again.

She tipped her head back, her mouth opened as she cried out, her eyes closed.

Just when Marinette let go, feeling her orgasm take over her body, Adrien released himself inside her.

-♡-

When Adrien woke up the next morning, he was soon to realise that Marinette was no longer in his bed with him.

He sighed heavily, wishing she was still in his arms. But he knew she was probably working on some new designs downstairs.

The room was still dark due to the blinds being down , so when he took a look at his phone to see the time, his eyes were nearly burning out of existing. Not that he had eyes before that anyway.

"13:24?" He mumbled to himself, throwing his phone right into his pillow before getting up.

Adrien quickly opened the blinds, then went to get dressed and brushed his teeth quickly so he could get downstairs as soon as possible.

And as expected, Marinette was sitting in her designing room, drawing into her little sketchbook.

Every now and then she would crumble up a piece of paper and toss it around the room, letting out a desperate grown as she didn't like the design.

But she needed to hurry. A new collection was supposed to come out just next week, and she had barely a handful of designs done.

Usually Marinette was dropping a collection of 7-10 different pieces, which meant barely having five was nothing.

She had so much to worry about the past weeks that she rarely even paid attention to her very own job.

Adrien would have loved to ask her what was wrong, but then he also kind of wanted Marinette to start speaking for herself, and not technically make her speak.

"I'm getting us something to eat, do you want anything specific?" Adrien asked as he walked into the room.

He rested his hands down onto Marinette's shoulder, looking down onto her beautiful sketches.

"I don't have time to eat, but thank you," Marinette rushed to say, continuing to draw lines over lines.

"You have to eat, Milady." He squeezed her shoulders lightly to which Marinette leaned her head back to look up at Adrien.

He bent down, placing a tender kiss onto her lips, kissing her hello.

"I really don't want anything, Adrien. I just want to finish this collection and get it over with. I don't have much time left."

"The Chat Noir collection?" He noticed the paw prints on almost every design.

Marinette nodded.

"I promised your fans to have them out by November 7th. And apart from that, your father is begging me not to re-think our partnership."

"Why would you re-think it?"

"Well, I told him I want your mother buried within the next week, or else I would end our partnership because it's just sick. But he said something about her not actually being dead and all that."

Adrien's eyes widened and his heartbeat quickened. He could feel his body shake, but tried to ignore it.

"Do you think she could actually just be in a magical coma or something?"

"I don't know, Adrien," Marinette sighed. "Tikki said that can happen when someone uses a broken Miraculous. She also said it only ever happened once in all of Tikki's lifetime. And Tikki was like one of the first creatures on this earth."

Adrien bopped his head, processing these information.

"Maybe we should go out to eat," Marinette suggested, knowing Adrien probably needed some distraction right now.

"No, it's fine," he smiled, "I'll go get something and you just keep on doing an amazing job coming up with designs. By the way, they're all lovely."

He pecked her lips one more time before basically sprinting out of the building.

Marinette just let him be. After all, Adrien was a grown man, or half grown at least.

She continued her pattern. Drawing one design, starting another and throwing every other one away.

Marinette hated to work without any real colour-palette.

Normally her designs were colourful. They all varied between the bright colours of the rainbow. She used a lot of pastels and colour combinations.

The last time she had struggled that much with coming with some new designs was when she was working on the collection dedicated to Alya.

But sticking to the Chat Noir theme, Marinette didn't have much of a choice.

Her colour-palette was mainly black, dark grey, and a toxic green.

She was just wishing that she could bring in some other colours, like Celadon Blue, or Powder Blue, even Honeydew. But she couldn't, because that wasn't Chat Noir's colour-scheme.

Suddenly her timer went off. She flinched at the sound but was quick to remember why she set it in the first place.

It was Monday. She opened her boutique every Monday between 14-18 o'clock.

She didn't want to open that day. All she wanted to do was finish her designs, but she couldn't possibly put her work behind even more.

So she gathered herself and went to open her shop.

Marinette was surprised at the sight of people, mostly young teenage-girls, already waiting for her to turn that little 'closed' sign over to 'open'.

As soon as she did turn these around and unlocked the door, these very people stormed inside as if Marinette was giving out free stuff. But she wasn't.

Apparently someone on the internet claimed that Marinette was selling a very unique dress. One that she had been working on for a very long time. One that she wasn't going to restock ever again because she wanted it to be that unique.

As soon as Marinette heard her customers yell for that very dress, Marinette was taken aback. She had not created such dress, nor did she plan on doing that.

"I am so sorry, but I don't have a dress I'm selling only once. Well, I do but they're all not the one you're talking about." Marinette had to disappoint her customers, yet they didn't seem to mind.

"So where exactly are those 'only selling once' ones?" One woman asked, storming off as Marinette pointed towards the direction of the dresses.

She watched them fight over the dresses, not being bothering to get in between those fighting people. They would eventually figure something out.

Yet, when Marinette was watching these people fighting for their dear lives, one thought came to her mind.

Who the hell was talking shit about Marinette once again?

People knew Marinette sold unique designs. She barely had one design in stock with more than three in each size possible. It was simply too much work given the fact that she was stitching them all by herself.

She took her phone and went to scroll through her mentions on almost every social media platform possible. Until she found it.

"Dupain-Cheng exclusive News" She mumbled underneath her breath.

To her luck, she was interrupted by people screaming. And people screaming from the top of their lungs usually meant one thing, and one thing one.

"ADRIEN AGRESTE!" Marinette could hear one girl scream in a pretty high-pitched voice.

She was used to it. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

Adrien ignored the screaming girls, as he usually did since he only ever had eyes for Marinette, and went straight towards the register to find Marinette.

Of course he was being followed, but neither Marinette, nor Adrien cared enough to tell them to back off. They would eventually do that one their own, hopefully.

"I didn't know you were opening up today," Adrien chuckled before pecking Marinette's lips, right in front the other people's eyes.

He mostly did that as a reminder that he was dating the most beautiful girl ever.

Though he would have preferred yelling it right into their faces. Well, he wanted to yell something like he was engaged to the most beautiful woman ever, but he clearly couldn't be that rude to Marinette's customers.

"Just like every Monday." Marinette took the bag from him, placing it down onto a little counter space at the register.

"Can you not just close up again? I thought we were going to spend the day together, and pay your parents a visit."

"You want to visit my parents?" Marinette laughed. "The last time you saw them, my mother was pretty mad at the both of us," she spoke quiet enough for only Adrien to hear.

Adrien shrugged. "We have some big news, you know."

"Fine," Marinette shook her head in disbelief.

"It's not like you need the money anyway!" Adrien nearly shouted after her when Marinette tried to get those people to leave her boutique.

She still rang up the few that actually wanted to buy something after all before throwing them right out.

"You know what I was wondering?" Marinette grabbed the bag with food into her hands and made her way upstairs.

Adrien hummed as a sign that he was listening.

"Why did you hold me the way you did yesterday?"

"Like when we were in the bathroom?"

"Yeah."

She unlocked the house door, allowing Adrien and her to get inside.

While Marinette was setting up the plates and got some cutlery, Adrien unpacked the food he bought.

As soon as they were both seated, Marinette raised an eyebrow, impatiently waiting for a response.

"I just wanted to see what it would look like," Adrien said.

"What it'd look like?" She repeated, waiting for more information.

"Yeah, you know, when you're pregnant." Marinette almost spit out her food.

"Why would you want to know what it'd look like? Did I gain that much weight?"

"No, of course not," he laughed, "I didn't even know you gained weight in the first place."

"So?"

"I just always had this image in my mind. I once saw it in a TV show when I was younger. This man was holding his wife like that when she was pregnant. Ever since then I kind of imagined doing the same one day, and I just wanted to know what it would look like."

"Who said we will ever have a child together?" Marinette pressed her lips together, holding back her smile.

"Alix did, she even brought proof of it," Adrien winked. "Besides, now that we're engaged, I have some expectations."

"Nope, we're not due for another one and a half years," Marinette said, "besides, Alix also said it was an accident, so maybe we should get the timing right for ones."

"Ah, yeah, no, you're forgetting the very fact that, uh, it's going to be the right timing."

-♡-

Sorry for updating this part for the twentieth time now. But I just wanted to ask you something, so I would appreciate it if you could give me a quick answer.

Do you prefer longer (4000+ words) or shorter (2000 words) Chapters?