#so apparently this was supposed to be posted yesterday but I misread my posting spreadsheet and thought it was today whoops

[quicksilversquared]

How to Fake a Marriage ch. 10

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(AO3) (FF.net)

"Madam Rosalie chased most of the reporters off," Marinette told Adrien that night as they sat down for dinner. "And then Emily and Rachel walked back with to the apartment building with me so no one could try to get me alone. Hopefully the reporters will leave me alone within a week."

"That's good. I did an interview today with one of the better reporters," Adrien told her. "If she posts the whole thing, they'll probably pick through it for quotes. I made it clear that I wasn't going to be talking to all of them, thought, and hopefully I channeled my father enough that they'll listen."

Marinette looked interested. "Did it go well?"

"As well as it could, I think. I talked with Madam Addison. Someone leaked the wedding video," Adrien added, figuring that it would be a good idea to give Marinette a heads-up in case any of the other reporters had gotten their hands on it and decided to spring questions about it at her. "So I said that Madam Rosalie had been planning a photoshoot and we used the opportunity to pull a prank. She thought it was hilarious."

"It was hilarious. I couldn't believe so many people actually thought we would get married like that."

"I think that learning about the prank was enough of a distraction for her," Adrien finished. "She really didn't ask too many questions after that. How was your day? You said something about the other interns making a scrapbook?"

Marinette groaned, burying her face in her hands. "They're trying to embarrass me. They were getting all of the photos from the wedding photoshoot, plus ones they've taken, plus all of the tabloid articles..."

"The press will find another target soon enough," Adrien said soothingly, reaching over and patting her shoulder. "And your coworkers will get bored of teasing you eventually."

"I'm more concerned about the press than my coworkers," Marinette said with a sigh. "I just don't like them digging around about my life."

"Ah, but what would they find?" Adrien said, giving Marinette's shoulder a gentle shake before going back to buttering his bread. Marinette really didn't have much anything to hide, as far as he knew. "Class president, designer of Jagged Stone's favorite glasses and three CD covers, most popular kid in class all through collège and lycée-"

"I wasn't the most popular kid in class," Marinette protested, a blush rising on her cheeks. "I- I wasn't- Why would you think-"

"You were, though," Adrien said with a laugh, grinning as Marinette turned even redder. "Chloe might have tried to claim that she was the most popular, but you were the one that everyone actually liked and listened to. Wherever you were, that was where people wanted to be."

Marinette closely resembled a tomato at that point and she seemed to have forgotten her dinner completely. "B-but- okay, but they didn't- I mean-"

"Don't even try to deny it, Mari," Adrien said with a laugh, ruffling Marinette's hair and grinning even more when she squealed and ducked away. "Ms. Most Popular Girl."

"I didn't even have any real friends before Alya came!" Marinette blurted out at last, batting away Adrien's hand. "I mean, I hung out with people sometimes, but I didn't, like, sit with anyone, or have someone I hung out with when I wanted to do something."

Adrien blinked. He hadn't known that. He had always assumed that Marinette had always been popular, simply based on the photos he had seen of the class in previous years. "But everyone has photos with you from before Alya came!"

Marinette bit her lip. "I hung out with people, sure, but it was more during whole-class things instead of small groups. I was shier then, and Chloe always picked on me. I was a floater, really."

"And then you came out of your shell, and people flocked to you," Adrien pointed out. "Does it really matter what you were like before? That was more circumstance than it was actually you."

"I suppose," Marinette admitted. "But I still think that you're exaggerating."

"I'm not. Ask anyone- actually," Adrien corrected himself. "Not everyone, I guess. Chloe and Sabrina would disagree, probably, but they're biased."

"I think you're the biased one," Marinette muttered with another blush. Adrien grinned, then changed the subject before he made Marinette too uncomfortable.

"So what do you think next week's tabloid headlines are going to look like?" Adrien asked, cutting into his dinner. "Will they just drop things, or will they pick and choose quotes from the interview?"

"They'll pick apart your interview to try to find inconsistencies, and then they'll make as big of a deal as they can about the wedding video. They'll play the kiss over and over on T.V.-"

"And a damn good kiss it was too."

"-and say that we look too into it, or something." Marinette was on a roll. "And they'll probably make a big deal about the signing thing, even though you showed her the picture of the fake certificate-"

"I'm tempted to bring it in if they don't believe me," Adrien said with a laugh. He gestured to where the framed piece of paper hung on the wall. Plagg groaned about it endlessly and Marinette didn't understand why he kept it, but Adrien still thought that it was hilarious. Besides, he didn't exactly have a ton of photos or posters to hang up, and the walls looked too bare without a little decoration. "It's not like they can deny that it exists then."

"Except they could just say that you printed that up yesterday and we both sighed it last night," Marinette pointed out. "Or that we signed two papers, one a legal wedding document and one a fake decoy."

Adrien grinned at her. "Wow, that's some nice speculating. You planning on giving up on the designing and becoming a gossip reporter instead?"

Marinette snorted. "I'm fairly certain that it would be considered a conflict of interest if I were to report on myself."

"Oh, but you'd get the best scoops! Imagine how the world would go mad if they knew that we ate dinner together every night, or that we share a blanket while watching movies on the couch, or-"

"Or if they found out how much of a dork you are," Marinette teased, flicking his nose. "That cool guy image, gone in an instant-"

"Someone released the photo of me dipping you for the wedding kiss," Adrien reminded her smugly, tapping her nose in retaliation. "And I look pretty darn cool."

"You're lucky I didn't freak out when you did that," Marinette said with a laugh, dodging out of his reach before spooning some fruit salad onto her plate. "You gave me, like, a half second's warning before I was falling backwards."

"Your squeak was adorable," Adrien assured her, pulling the bowl of fruit towards himself. "And thank you for not looking supremely uncomfortable with the kiss. I was worried that it would be really awkward, but it turned out looking like we were both really into it."

Marinette turned red again and stuffed a forkful of food into her mouth instead of answering.

  That night, Adrien just happened to see Ladybug streak past his window. Grinning- it had been so long- he transformed and raced after her, glad that Marinette had opted to turn in early tonight. He only had to run over a couple buildings to catch up with his partner as she raced along.

"Chat Noir! What a coincidence!" Ladybug exclaimed in delight, only slowing her pace slightly as he joined her. "I was hoping I would see you tonight, but we really don't have a schedule at all or anything and London is so big so I wasn't sure-"

"You went right past my living room window," Chat Noir admitted with a grin. "I was lucky that I glanced up at just the right time. And I wasn't particularly busy tonight, so here I am!"

Ladybug had gotten a weird expression on her face at his words, making Chat Noir's grin falter. He hadn't said something weird, had he? He mentally reviewed his words- and no, nothing weird there. So what...?

Ladybug shook herself and her expression settled into something more normal. It wasn't completely normal, though. She was still distracted by something. "I'm glad to see you, Chat Noir. I'm sorry I haven't been around recently, but I was terribly busy."

"So was I," Chat Noir assured her. "I haven't gotten out for forever. I wanted to go out Thursday two weeks ago-" he wasn't going to tell her it was because he had seen her, she had already reacted oddly to the same comment tonight "-but I couldn't go. I probably could have spared the time for a quick run, but then my kwami would have insisted on a trip to the store as well for more of his favorite cheese and I really couldn't spare that much time."

"It's fine. It's not like we're actually doing anything while we're on patrol." Ladybug snorted a laugh. "Did we ever get anything done on patrol?"

"I think we might have caught a shoplifter once," Chat Noir said, returning her grin. "Not exactly busting huge crime rings or anything."

"I'm sure the shopkeeper appreciated it, but there were probably better uses of our time."

"There's no better use of time than spending it with you, my lady," Chat Noir purred back automatically, sweeping into a deep bow. He knew she was right, of course- when they were in collège and lycée, both of them had had homework to do and sleep to catch up on and patrols got in the way of that and sometimes left him scrambling (and probably her as well). Still, he wouldn't trade it for anything. Akuma attacks really hadn't been good times for goofing around and learning about each other.

Well, learning as much as they could about each other without giving themselves away. It had actually turned out to be a surprisingly large amount. And Chat Noir had fallen deeper in love with her with every little detail she let slip.

"I remember a few nights where another hour or two of sleep would have definitely been a better use of time," Ladybug said with a short laugh, raking her bangs back with one hand. "I was running on caffeine and a few hours of sleep. Not exactly top form to fight akumas."

"You always did a fabulous job," Chat Noir claimed as they started up their run again. They leapt in easy unison over the street and landed with a roll on the rooftops on the other side. Ladybug managed to laugh even as they rolled to their feet and continued their run.

"That was the caffeine, not me."

Chat Noir laughed at that and was about to argue his point- it wasn't all the caffeine, she really had to give herself more credit- when something wet hit his face. He let out a quiet hiss, wiping away the droplets just in time for more to hit him.

"It's raining, I think," Ladybug said with a sigh, slowing to a stop. Chat Noir did the same. "We should probably cut this sort and head back home before the rooftops get too slick."

"As much as I hate to leave you, I think you're right. I don't want to fall." Chat Noir spun around, following Ladybug as she jogged at a slightly slower pace than before back towards his building. "And I don't want my kwami to get sick. I don't know if there would be any kwami doctors in London and the dude never told me what he did to cure Plagg whenever he got sick."

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to have to try to explain that sudden trip back to Paris if my kwami got sick again," Ladybug agreed. Her bangs were starting to get plastered to her face as the rain soaked her hair. "Hopefully we don't have a lot of nights like this. It's bad enough trying to see in the dark; I can barely see my own hands in front of my face with this rain- whoa!"

Chat Noir reacted immediately, catching and steadying his partner before she could fall on the slippery rooftop. His brow furrowed in concern. "Do you want me to escort you back to your place? I can see in the dark, it's no problem for me-"

"I'll be fine," Ladybug assured him, as he had suspected she would. "There's enough lights near my place that I'll be able to see where I'm going. I'm just being grouchy."

They jumped over a street and Chat Noir paused to make sure Ladybug had landed all right. He could see the lights from his building up ahead, only a couple blocks more. Hopefully Ladybug didn't live too far past the building.

"You might want to take the streets back home, Bug," Chat Noir said as Ladybug slipped again and he caught her before she could hit the roof. "You okay?"

"It's not far," Ladybug assured him as they slowed to a brisk walk over the rooftops. He kept his arm wrapped around her waist to steady her- well, and because she was warm and smelled nice, but he wasn't about to tell Ladybug that. She probably suspected it anyway. "I'll be fine, promise. We've fought akuma in the rain before, remember?"

"Not when it was dark and raining!"

"And now it's dark and raining but I don't have any akuma to dodge," Ladybug teased him with a laugh as he poled them across the street. She hung from his side as naturally as ever as they swung through the air. They landed lightly and headed across the next set of rooftops. "That makes it easier for sure."

"True, true." Chat Noir couldn't argue with that too much. Still... "Are you sure?"

"I'm wearing a supersuit," Ladybug reminded him. They reached another street, and Ladybug reached for him again. "We've fallen off of roofs before and been fine. We've fallen from higher than roofs before- higher than the Eiffel Tower before- and have been fine. If I slip and fall, I'll still be fine."

He knew that. He just fussed a lot when it came to his Lady and her safety.

"We should probably split up here," Chat Noir said as they landed across from his building. He could see his room- he had left his dining room light on in his hurry to chase after Ladybug. From their position, he could see that across the hall from his apartment, Marinette's lights were already off.

Apparently she could really get ready for bed quickly when she wanted to. He had rather been under the impression that she dragged her feet and got distracted most of the time when she was tired, which made her whole going-to-bed process a hundred times longer.

"Sounds good," Ladybug said with a smile, stepping out from under Chat Noir's arm. She pulled her yo-yo off of her waist and gave it a little spin. "It was good seeing you tonight, kitty. Don't forget to dry off when you get home."

"And the same goes for you, bug," Chat Noir said, ducking down to kiss her hand. "Get yourself a hot chocolate or something."

Ladybug nodded and waved to him before she tossed her yo-yo and took off. Chat watched as she vanished over the building next door before he made the easy vault across the street and over the building to his balcony. He didn't waste any time in ducking in his door and detransforming. Plagg spiraled out of the ring, groaning the whole way.

"It wasn't raining that hard," Adrien said with a sigh, digging a fleece that he kept just for this purpose out of a drawer in the kitchen. He bundled Plagg up and plopped him down next to the baseboard heater before digging in the fridge for a slice of Camembert. "And I wasn't out for long."

"It was long enough."

"It was not! I haven't seen Ladybug for forever and we only got to talk to each other for a few minutes before we had to head back." Adrien sighed as he opened his refrigerator and pulled out his milk to make some hot chocolate. "It's really a pity. I wanted to hang out with Ladybug again. We don't get to do it often enough here."

Plagg only rolled his eyes and let out a long sigh.

  Ladybug circled around the block and waited another three minutes for good measure before swinging down onto her balcony. She yanked open the door and dashed inside, just starting to shiver as she did. She detransformed as she dashed down the hallway to her room.

"I h-h-hate the rain," Tikki complained, even as Marinette grabbed a fluffy wool scrap to wrap around her. "The cold is fine, but I can't stand the rain and the wet!"

"We'll get you warmed up in no time," Marinette promised, bundling her kwami up and pulling a sweatshirt over her own head. She picked Tikki up and headed back out to the kitchen, turning her lights back on as she did. "Do you want hot chocolate with your cookies or just warm milk?"

"Hot chocolate, please!"

Marinette fell into thought as she heated up the milk and stirred in chocolate. A small crease formed between her eyebrows as she puzzled over what Chat Noir had said earlier. Tikki watched, confused as she nibbled away at her cookie, and finally spoke up.

"Marinette, what's wrong?"

"Chat Noir lives in my building," Marinette murmured, then repeated herself louder. "Chat Noir lives in my building! I've probably talked to him as a civilian, oh my god-"

Tikki looked startled. "He does? How did you find that out? Are you sure?"

"He said I swung past his dining room," Marinette said with a frown, remembering what Chat Noir had said. "But I had literally just gotten out."

"You were several rooftops away when he caught up with you though, right?" Tikki asked. "So couldn't he live in one of those buildings?"

Marinette shook her head. "Once I got past this building, I was running across the rooftops, not swinging down in the street between buildings. If I really did swing past his window, it would have been someone in this building."

Tikki looked curious. "Do you know which windows you swung past?"

"No, because I swung away across this side of the building and then decided that I wanted to go the other way, so I kicked off the next building over and swung back around the building to the other side. It could be almost anyone living here." It had definitely taken her by surprise. Part of her itched to look up who else lived in building, while the other part knew she shouldn't. She needed to respect her partner's privacy.

"Do you think he saw you two weeks ago?" Tikki asked.

"Maybe. He mentioned wanting to go out two weeks ago, specifically on Thursday- and that's when I went out." That had been strange. Why mention such a specific day? "Either he saw me or we were just thinking eerily in sync again." It had happened before, not just with akuma fights but also with things like heading out for spontaneous patrols. Still, she was putting her money on Chat Noir having seen her either heading out or coming in.

Frustratingly, she couldn't even remember which direction she had gone out on that particular night so she couldn't even narrow down which side of the building Chat Noir lived on.

Not that she wanted to. Obviously.

"Do you think he knows you live in this building?" Tikki asked. She took another big bite of her cookie, finishing it off, and reached for the next one. "Should we be more careful leaving the apartment?"

Marinette shook her head. "I don't think he knows. And would it really be so bad if he found out now? Hawkmoth is gone. If anything else pops up, we might need a way to contact each other, especially if we're in different countries."

Tikki looked pensive.

"But if you think it would be a problem, I suppose I can go down to the street to transform," Marinette said with a sigh. She poured out two cups of hot chocolate, one normal-sized and one in a shot glass for Tikki. "It's just so much easier to transform in here and jump off the balcony. I really didn't think anyone would find out. I mean, I transformed in my room and headed out from my balcony for years back in Paris."

"I think it might be fine," Tikki said at last. "If he just happens to find out, I mean. You're right, it's easier to transform in your room, especially with Adrien next door. He'd ask questions if he just happened to open his door and saw you heading downstairs when you said you were going to be going to bed. And unless Chat Noir sees you leaving your room or if you say something about happening to see him going past your room, there's not a huge chance of him figuring you out."

"Yeah, well, I'm not about to tell him that," Marinette said. His confused kitten expression would probably be hilarious if she let him on to the fact that they were in the same building, but it wasn't worth it. If Tikki wasn't 100% on board, then she wasn't going to tease her partner.

No matter how fun it would be.

  The tabloids, as expected, had varying responses to the released video of Adrien's interview. Madam Addison was, of course, the friendliest of them all. She had clearly believed him and had focused quite a bit on the prank. There was of course some speculation about if Adrien and Marinette would get together- or, rather, how soon they would get together, if did not seem to be a question- but nothing too bad there. Other tabloids were a bit more skeptical of what Adrien had said.

"They're probably just sore that we refused to do any interviews with them," Marinette said from where she was curled up on the couch, sketching on the tablet on her lap. Adrien had been glaring at one particularly scathing magazine for five minutes straight. "Just ignore them, Adrien. Your father can't say you didn't try."

Adrien snorted. "That's not going to stop him from trying to blame me for what they write. He'll say that I was too rude to them or something."

Marinette couldn't hold back her own snort. "You, rude? Wow. Pot calling the kettle black at all? Has your father forgotten what the tabloids have written about him when he's been rude to them? And that was actually justified."

Adrien ducked his head, trying to hide his grin.

"Most of the world knows that that rag is trash anyway," Marinette said, returning her attention to her tablet and erasing a line that wasn't quite where she wanted it. "And it's not that big. I think that was one of the ones that Abbey and Sarah took forever to find."

"That's good. They're speculating on your 'motives'," Adrien said with a disgusted look. "Because, y'know, up and coming designer and son of fashion designer."

"Really?" That... okay, maybe she should have expected that. But the magazines that she had bothered reading hadn't done any speculating of that kind.

"They clearly didn't do their research," Adrien sniffed, thoroughly offended on his friend's behalf. "You don't need any help getting your foot in the fashion industry. Pretty much all of the other magazines managed to figure that out on their own."

"They dug around in my life, you mean," Marinette said with a sigh. She was just thankful that they hadn't found anything questionable- no one from her school days had said anything about her obvious, cringe-worthy crush on Adrien, thank god. Clearly they hadn't interviewed Chloe or Sabrina at all.

"Nothing bad. Other magazines talked about all of the fashion design contests that you've entered and either placed in or won, and then obviously they talked about your Jagged Stone glasses line and the CD covers you did for him." Adrien beamed over at her. That was the only good part of the whole ordeal, honestly. Marinette worked so hard and she deserved to be recognized. "So people know how very talented you are."

Marinette felt herself turning red from the praise. Adrien had said it so casually, like her being talented was common, unquestionable knowledge. He had a habit of doing that on a fairly regular basis and even after years of knowing Adrien (and months of daily hang-outs), she still wasn't used to it.

"Paul thought that the articles were hilarious," Adrien added, closing the magazine and tossing it to the side. "Or, rather, he thought they were funny but he didn't get why me pranking my father was such a big deal, and then he looked him up."

Marinette snorted. It was truly difficult to understand what Gabriel Agreste was like without meeting him in person. It was one thing to hear about his strict, snappish nature; experiencing it was a whole different story.

"Paul said that he understood why everyone found it so funny once he saw a few news reports and interviews with my father," Adrien added with a snicker. "And then he was asking how in the world we actually dared to prank him. Paul said that he would have been too intimidated to pull something like that."

"I can't blame him," Marinette said with a grin. "I was really nervous about pranking your father, too." Her tablet let out a beep and she glanced down at it. There was a pop-up for a software update, and she dismissed it. She didn't want to change anything on the tablet without Madam Rosalie's permission. With the pop-up gone, she could start doodling on the designing program.

Adrien glanced over at Marinette, noticing her distraction. Interested, he pushed the magazines in front of him to the side and turned his attention to his friend. "What are you up to over there?"

Slightly startled, Marinette looked up from her tablet. "What? Oh, this?" She glanced down at her tablet- which, Adrien couldn't help but notice, was not her normal one. This was newer, and looked a lot higher-end. "I'm designing prints! Or, well, I'm trying, at least. Madam Rosalie heard about me designing CD covers for Jagged Stone through the tabloids, and then she looked at them and really liked them. So she lent me one of her designing tablets and asked me to design some prints. If she likes them, we'll produce them and use them in some of our designs!"

Adrien couldn't help but frown. Even though it was definitely fantastic that Marinette was being recognized for her design skills outside of clothing, Marinette was meant to be able to relax once she left work. Designers never fully stopped, Adrien knew that- inspiration could hit at any time, and this certainly wasn't the first time Marinette had designed something at home- but if Madam Rosalie was piling this on top of Marinette's other work without further compensation, that wasn't cool. He had seen his friends- including Marinette, at her university internship in Paris- bend over backwards trying to satisfy and impress their supervisors. Adrien could understand how tempting it was- he had certainly gone overboard to try to get his father's praise before- but it wasn't particularly fair or healthy. If Madam Rosalie was adding to Marinette's workload, maybe the older woman just hadn't realized it and would adjust accordingly if Marinette just said something.

In Adrien's experience, though, interns in Marinette's position rarely said anything.

"Are you getting paid extra for that?"

"No, but Madam Rosalie said I could count it as working from home." Marinette made a mark on her screen before glancing back up. "So then I can have more vacation time, because I already would have worked the hours. It's nice, because then if I go back to Paris for a weekend or something I could stay a couple extra days without tearing through all of my vacation days."

He couldn't help but grin. "Oh, that is nice!" He knew that Marinette really missed her family at times, and it really wasn't worth it to go back to Paris for only two days to visit. Adrien crossed the room and scooted over on the couch so he could see what Marinette was working on. At the moment, it looked like a whole lot of aimless scribbling and random color streaks. "Is it a lot different from designing CD covers?"

"Yeah, definitely. I mean, I just got this today so I'm still trying to figure out how it works, but there's just so much to consider. Patterns can repeat normally, like you normally see on, like, couch cushions or patterned button-ups, or they can repeat in one direction only. That's easier, and it's closer to what I was doing with the CD covers."

Adrien blinked, confused. "...what? Repeat in one direction only?"

"See, it's like- oh, I'll just look up an example." With a flick of her finger, Marinette navigated out of the program she had been playing with and opened Google. In a few seconds, she had pulled up a page full of different fabric pattern images. "See, this one has a pattern that repeats along the length of the fabric, but one edge looks obviously different than the other."

"Right, right, of course." The picture Marinette was pointing out had fabric that was patterned to look like a sunset behind some trees. One edge of the cloth was purple and then it graded into red, then orange, then yellow vanishing behind the treeline. "But what would you even make with a pattern like that?"

"A dress, probably. Or a skirt, depending on the width of the fabric. Maybe a dress shirt. Mostly casual clothes."

Adrien tilted his head. Okay, yeah, he could see how the fabric might be used. It was just a little more, well, fun than most of the things his father designed. "Wouldn't the skirt be mostly the same basic pattern but with different fabrics?"

Marinette shrugged. "Yeah, mostly. But there's a lot of people who don't necessarily want the most fashion-forward, never-seen-before skirt designs. Basic can be good when we're working with a pattern like this that's already attention-grabbing. If we overdesign, then things can become unwearable."

"Makes sense. So here, the pattern would be what makes it designer and not the silhouette."

"To be fair, some high-end companies take a completely normal off-the-rack shirt, slap their logo on it, and call it designer," Marinette pointed out with a grin. "Your father's done that before, haven't you noticed?"

Adrien's brow furrowed as he thought about it, and then it came to him- the casualwear lines that his father produced. He had sweatshirts in his closet (very upscale, of course, only the finest materials but still comfortable) that were stamped with a giant Gabriel logo. They were more fitted than the average sweatshirt from a department store, maybe, but there really wasn't much anything special about them if you took the logo away.

...huh. Yeah, he hadn't thought about it that way before.

"So which kind of pattern do you think you're more likely to make?" Adrien asked. "Repeating one direction or all directions?"

"One direction," Marinette said immediately. "Especially to start. I have to make sure the pattern can repeat without it being obvious about where the repeat is."

"Is that hard?"

"A bit, yeah." Marinette turned her tablet around so Adrien could see the screen. "But this program is nice. I can move the pattern around so that- see, here it moved what used to be the bottom of my pattern up to the top, so I can draw right where that dividing line used to be, and the same thing happens for the sides. I'm mostly figuring out how the program works right now."

"Do you have any pattern ideas?"

"Some. They need work, though." Marinette drew another absentminded line. "I need to make sure that I make designs that aren't super-similar to ones that are already out there, and it's hard to visualize how wide the fabric for the pattern will be once it's printed. It was easier for the CDs, because the cover size and the tablet screen size were close enough in size."

"I still can't believe the level of detail you got on Jagged's covers," Adrien said with a laugh, shaking his head. He had every CD, of course, all signed by his friend. They were propped up next to the fencing trophies on his shelves in his room in Paris. "They're amazing. I was just looking at a picture of the last cover the other day and I kept noticing little details I hadn't seen before. How you draw so well that small is beyond me."

Marinette snorted. "There's a zoom feature. See, if I want to draw something small here, I zoom in and draw it." She picked a fairly clear section and zoomed in before drawing a star with a smiley face on it. A pattern of dots decorated the outer edge before Marinette zoomed back out.

"That's nice," Adrien said appreciatively as Marinette cleared her entire page and started doodling again. "So how is this tablet compared to your old one? Is there a lot of difference?"

"This is more sensitive," Marinette explained, showing Adrien the screen. He really couldn't see any real difference right away, but he was sure Marinette knew what she was talking about. "It has both pressure and tilt sensitivity, and there's more options for line stabilizing, and there's higher resolution and reports per second, and there's almost no lag when I want to zoom or rotate. My old one didn't use to lag as much as it does now."

"Well, if you look at it in electronics years, your tablet from collège is pretty much a senior citizen at this point," Adrien said with a grin, deciding not to get too bogged down in the technical talk. He could ask for more details some other time if he was really curious. "Maybe you should get a cane for it."

Marinette looked puzzled. "Electronics years?"

"Like dog years," Adrien explained, grinning. "You know how one human year is, like, seven dog years, right? So a dog might be twelve and actually be an elderly citizen."

"Right, right. I get it." Marinette was trying not to look too amused, Adrien could tell. "Yeah, I'd like to replace my old one or at least get some work done on it, but I can't exactly justify the expense. I don't do detailed enough work often enough to really need a new graphics tablet. Once the screen goes, though, then I'll buy a new one."

Adrien made a absent humming sound and made a mental note to look into graphics tablets. Depending on how expensive they were, maybe he could get Marinette a good one for Christmas. He would have to ask around to figure out what the best one for what she did would be (or maybe he could sneakily get her talking about the subject), but it would be a lovely present for her, and one that she would definitely use if or when (when, definitely when) Jagged Stone asked her to design another CD cover and if she decided that she liked doing fabric pattern designing on top of clothing design.

"So do you have to actually be actively be creating a pattern for it to count as work time?" Adrien asked as Marinette played with the color wheel. "Did Madam Rosalie say?"

"She didn't say. I'll count some of my learning time, I think, but not all of it." A streak of blue appeared on the screen as Marinette tested something out. "After a point, I'm just screwing around and doodling instead of actually learning anything new."

Adrien couldn't help his grin. "Funny, I think I've seen you doing that before when you were supposed to be designing clothes."

Marinette flushed and stuck her tongue out at him before returning her attention to the tablet in her lap.

"Do you have any more ideas of what else we could go and explore around London?" Adrien asked, changing the subject. As much fun as teasing Marinette was, he probably shouldn't get too carried away. "I've been looking around, but I'm kind of tired of museums at the moment. I asked Paul what else there was to do about here, but, y'know..." He shrugged. "He lives here. Everything seems normal and boring to him since he's used to it."

Finally Marinette set the tablet aside to focus on Adrien. Apparently she had gotten tired of the doodling. "Yeah, actually! A couple of the other interns went up to Stonehenge and Bath a few weeks ago, and they were talking about it the other day. It sounded really interesting so I asked them a few questions about their trip, and they said that we could probably do both on the same day without a problem. I've been meaning to tell you about it but I keep forgetting."

"Ooh, that sounds good! It would be fun to get out of London for a day. We would take a train there, right?" Adrien had done a bit of research on exploring those areas at one point, since they were so iconic, but he had yet to visit either despite their relative proximity to London. He had kind of been a little busy with other things.

"Yeah. They said that we would have to start early and would get back late if we want enough time to really look at things, but it would be a fun day out." Marinette pulled out her phone out and navigated to a train schedule to show him. "See, we would take a train to Salisbury. There's a bus that runs out to Stonehenge and there's a stop right at the train station. It's the off season, so the bus comes once an hour."

"So we would have to pay attention to the time while we're out there. It wouldn't be any fun to accidentally miss it."

Marinette nodded. "Right. And then we would take the bus back into town and maybe poke around the Salisbury Cathedral- it's supposed to be pretty- and then we'd take another train to Bath."

"That sounds like fun," Adrien said cheerfully, already looking forward to it. "A whole day of being a proper tourist. We can pack a lunch so we don't waste any time trying to find a place to eat. Maybe you'll even get some inspiration for patterns while we're out!"

"That would be nice," Marinette agreed. She glanced down at her phone again, checking the train schedule one last time. "Does Saturday work for you?"

"Of course." Adrien grinned at her. "I can't wait."