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The pizza parlor was slammed that Friday evening, but Adrien didn’t mind the noise or the wait. He was just thrilled to be with his friends doing something as normal as hanging out and waiting for their pizza like everyone else. Sure, he had signed a few autographs and taken a few selfies when they first got in, but most folks were too busy to pay him much mind for a change and he was grateful.
The group had managed to grab a corner booth at the back of the restaurant and had been chatting about everything under the sun - or at least he, Alya, and Nino had been. Francios Dupont’s resident couple had crammed into one side together, leaving Marinette sitting next to Adrien and that always made her nervous for some reason. She sat and smiled a rather tightlipped smile, saying little even when he or Alya made a point of trying to draw her into the conversation.
Adrien could understand the awkwardness to a degree. As the best friends to the relationship, he and Marinette had been third wheeling for Alya and Nino for the last three years so it wasn’t new to either of them. That didn’t make it easier to see the love and utter confidence they had in each other every day and without making him wish he had someone like that in his life too. The look he saw Marinette give their friends as Nino grumbled about the wait and Alya taunted him with her breadstick said she felt the same way.
“I still can’t understand why she and Luka broke things off last year,” he thought, absentmindedly stirring the ice around his empty cup with his straw. “Or why she doesn’t have a boyfriend now. Half the guys in the school have probably had crushes on her, not to mention all the looks she got when we first walked in here. You would have thought she was the model, not me!”
Not that he wanted her to have a boyfriend. The thought of his sweet, cozy, beautiful friend being carried away from him on the arm of a handsome stranger made his stomach churn unpleasantly and his hand itch to take her and not let it go. “She has always been there for me, but what have I ever really done for her that would show her I care?”
Marinette laughed at something Alya was showing her on her phone and Adrien took the time to take in his friend’s appearance a second time. She wore a long, chenille cardigan in a dusky pink over a cream top and a pair of long pants in a charcoal grey that billowed around her trim ankle boots. She wore her raven hair in a bun today and the tendrils that normally fell in front of her ears were curled softly. Her hands were wrapped around a cup of hot tea, completing the portrait of a cozy winter’s evening.
Except for the feeling he had had for a while now that something was going on with Marinette that she was bottling up. He saw it in the tense set of her shoulders, the way her eyes wouldn’t meet his as often, and the unnatural stillness of her normally moving hands. He could hear it in the short, shallowness of her laughter and it was a constant prick at his heart. Marinette shouldn’t have to carry something that heavy alone.
“But how can I ask her about it? Whatever it is, if she isn’t talking about it to Alya and Nino, she probably doesn’t want to tell me and every time I try to get close to her she either gets nervous and more stressed or scuttles off! Could I have hurt her feelings somehow?”
Worse yet, could his cousin have said something when he was pretending to be Adrien, just like he had last time? Adrien had never asked what Felix had said to his friends that caused Alya, Juleka, and Rose to get akumatized. Maybe he should have. It was bad enough Felix had betrayed Ladybug and handed over the other miraculouses to Monarch, but if his cousin had hurt Marinette, who was kindness, thoughtfulness, and sweetness personified, well…
Adrien clenched his fist tightly under the table where no one would see it. “If Felix hurt both my girls, then he’ll be getting a visit from Cat Noir and he won’t be able to ride a horse for a month!”
“Hey, dude!” A brown hand snapped twice in his face. “Earth to bro, you still with us?”
Adrien jerked back to the conversation and blushed. “Yeah, sorry. Just kind of zoned out there for a bit.”
“I don’t know, Sunshine,” Alya said with a pleased smirk. “You were staring at my girl for quite a while there. Have something you want to share with the class?”
He rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment and chuckled awkwardly. “Hehe, I was just thinking that Marinette looked more like a model tonight than I do.”
He watched in amused pleasure as the girl in question dropped her jaw in surprise, her whole face darkening in several rosy shades. Her jaw worked soundlessly for several seconds, leaving Nino to burst out laughing and Alya to roll her eyes, reach across the table, and close her mouth with a finger. Marinette’s gaze flicked to his for just a moment, before she grabbed a glass of water and took a large swallow that bulged her cheeks out. Too large a swallow, apparently, because she just managed to choke it down before she started coughing, making her pink face turn darker.
Adrien hastily patted her on the back. “Are you okay, Marinette?”
“Yes… fine… all fine,” she managed between coughs, making Alya chuckle.
“You better watch what you say in the future, Sunshine,” she quipped, handing her friend a napkin with which to wipe her streaming eyes. “Or next time you sweet talk my girl she might have a heart attack!”
Adrien was confused and concerned, but Nino fell into another fit of laughter, Alya looked pleased, and Marinette put her rosy face into her hands and whined, “Alya, stop it!” as if she would die of mortification.
Not knowing what else to do, he rubbed Marinette’s back comfortingly and shot the other two a glare. “Come on, guys! Lay off a bit, will you? You know Marinette gets easily flustered. It’s not like either of you to make fun of her insecurities, even if this is just a friend thing.” He looked down at his very cute seat mate and smiled, giving her a sideways hug. A perfectly platonic friend hug, no matter what Alya’s eyebrows implied or the way his arm tingled when he wrapped in around her shoulders. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Marinette. I was just trying to give you a compliment and I guess I messed it up. Sorry.”
Her eyes widened and her hands waved a hasty negative. “No! No no no! You’re fine, you’re good! I just wasn’t expecting it.”
He blinked in surprise, then shifted on the bench to see her better. “But you should expect compliments, Marinette! You’re amazing! Right, guys?” He looked at their friends across the table for support.
“No arguments here, bro,” Nino said, holding up his hands in surrender.
“M is amazing, but you didn’t say that the first time.” Alya crossed her arms and gave him her best, a.k.a. her most intense, reporter’s stare! “You said that you thought Marinette looked like a model. You may be Paris’ Golden Boy, Agreste, but you still have a lot to learn about girls. You, being a model, -“
“Alya,” Marinette hissed hiding her face from him with one hand and waving her friend to be quiet with the other. Neither warning made a dent in Alya’s verbal stride.
“- just compared your “very good friend” to a model. You know that laymen like us don’t think of the time or work or training that goes into a job like that. We think of cute girls and hot guys. So you need to enlighten us with more details before my girl gets the wrong idea… or did you just get the right one?”
It was Adrien’s turn for his jaw to drop. Alya wore the same expression she had worn when she had won the school debate, namely impossibly smug. Nino’s eyes kept switching back and forth between them like they were in a sudden death tennis match, and Marinette squeaked and tried to slide under the table
Adrien squirmed in his seat. It was true he was very attached to Marinette. She was the only person he felt like he could truly trust at this point, someone who was unerringly honest, and he knew his trust was not misplaced. She had seen his distress when his father had just arranged to send him away with no warning, she had supported him to tell his father what he, Adrien, wanted to do. She was as sweet as macarons and soft as eider down, but with a hidden strength that always left him speechless when it came rushing out of hiding to help someone. She… knew him, the real him, without having to try.
And his biggest regret, after Cat not being there for Ladybug the way she truly needed, was that he had probably realized Marinette’s many virtues too late.
“And now… I was just trying to be nice, tell her she looked pretty, and … ugh! Its no wonder Marinette was blushing like a fire hydrant! Way to go, Agreste! You over did it! Have you learned nothing as Cat Noir? Romance is out of the question for a black cat like me and she is way out of my league anyway! Why can’t a hole just open and swallow me up so I don’t have to figure out how to fix this?!”
Then, as if the universe had heard his mental rant, a swirling, blue hole opened above their table. They scrambled out of the booth as two yelling bodies crashed onto the red and white checked tablecloth.
Two very familiar bodies.
One in black hex leather and the other in red with black spots.
“Ladybug?!” Alya and Marinette both cried out in astonishment. The hole swallowed itself and disappeared as quickly as it had formed.
“Whoa!” Nino stared at the wreckage of their table, his eyes as big as platters behind his glasses.
The black clad body on the table shifted and Adrien stared open mouthed in shock as he came face to face with Cat Noir.
“Nothing seems broken,” Cat groaned, rubbing his head between his cat ears and shaking a shaggy mane of blond hair that Adrien knew for a fact he had never worn, though he secretly thought he would look good with a ponytail. “You okay, LB?”
“What there is of you broke my fall,” Ladybug said, her voice strained. “Remind me to feed you more treats when we get back, Kitty Cat.”
“But then I wouldn’t look as good in this cat suit, LB, and you know my Princess -“
His words were cut off as Ladybug elbowed him in the back as she got off him. Seeing his partner standing there, Adrien realized something.
This was not his Ladybug.
Yes, she had the same blue-black hair, the same pink lips that used to haunt his dreams with smiles and smirks, and the same inherent confidence. But she was a little taller, more filled out through the chest and hips - a fact that made Adrien blush scarlet and swallow convulsively - her hair was longer and in a high ponytail, but, most obviously, her suit was different.
Gone was the red spotted bodysuit. It had been replaced with a red and black spotted bomber jacket, black cargo pants with red pocket zippers, and sturdy boots with red wings tapering up behind. A pair of aviator goggles replaced her mask and hid her bluebell eyes from view. The yoyo was still slung around her slim hips, but the zipper pull at the top of her shirt collar, the only remains of her original suit, had been replaced by a pink diamond that sparkled in the hollow of her throat.
She looked a few years older, as tough as nails, and a lot less stressed than his bug. It gave him a sense of relief, knowing that things were going better for this version of his partner.
When Adrien glanced at the form of Cat Noir in front of him, he was stunned with a second important fact.
Cat Noir was older than him. As he straightened himself, Adrien could see at a glance he was quite a bit taller and his hair was longer and wilder than ever. His shoulders were a tad wider with some additional muscle onto what Adrien knew was already there. The suit was still the same, but with armor added in the form of wrist guards and greaves as well as a pauldron on his right shoulder. One of the cat ears even had a tear in it, but what confounded Adrien the most was the lack of a bell.
In its place hung a gold circle.
“Why would I have gotten rid of my bell,” he thought, his mind racing in a million directions at once, unable to land on anything to say or do in the face of, well, his face!
“Are you guys okay,” asked Nino, apparently the least shocked of the group.
“Yeah,” Cat answered, grasping his shoulder and rolling it around in its socket. “Hey, LB, remind me to throw a mattress in first next time. To avoid the crash landing!”
“Well, Max didn’t call it a “time cannon” for nothing,” Ladybug replied, rolling her neck and sending out a sickening series of dry pops around the suddenly silent restaurant. She looked around and blushed slightly. “Um, sorry! We’re just passing through. Nothing to worry about here.”
“Ugh! That thing should come with a warning label,” Cat groaned again as the other guests slowly went back to their meals and conversations while still casting nervous or excited looks over at them. “It gives the concept of ‘terminal velocity’ an entirely new meaning, doesn’t it. Oh!” He suddenly locked eyes with Adrien and an amused smirk took over hero’s face. “Hey, check it out! It’s not every day you land in the lap of Adrien Agreste, my lady! Care to take a picture?”
Ladybug cuffed him gently on the back of the head and Cat grinned lazily at her annoyed affection. “Play nice, Kitty! We didn’t risk meddling with time to grab selfies!”
Then, turning to Alya and Nino, she said. “Alya Cesaire and Nino Lahiffe, if you are willing, I need to you come with me. It is rather urgent.”
Alya’s eyes flickered from Ladybug to Marinette and Adrien then back again. “But what… how?”
Ladybug sighed. “To make a long story short, Cat and I are from your future and we need your help to fix a problem in our timeline. We are dealing with some pretty heavy stuff at the moment and now we have someone creating copies of the original akuma villains. We need the backup files from your version of the Ladyblog to help us figure out who is responsible.”
“But what about future me,” Alya demanded. “I would never leave you hanging like that. Why didn’t I help you then?”
Cat Noir patted Alya kindly on the shoulder, leaving Adrien with the strangest feeling of not being real at all in this moment. “Don’t worry. It’s just that those files were sealed by order of the French government after the passing of the Akuma Victim’s Protection Act of 2025. Our Alya would have been more than happy to help, but she has a lot on her plate at the moment.”
Alya’s eyes widened and she balled her hands into fists. “What could possibly be more important than helping you two save Paris,” she demanded.
Ladybug chuckled and checked the time on her yoyo. “Going on her thirtieth hour of labor delivering twins during an alien invasion,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper and nudging Alya in the shoulder gently. Nino, meanwhile, blushed fiercely and swayed on the spot so Cat had to reach out and steady him. Ladybug continued. “She has her hands full which is why we need the best, which is still you, but we need to get moving. Time is crawling for you, but speeding for us… or something like that. Bunnix handles this better. Cat, did you bring the tracker?”
Cat shook his head. “We couldn’t get the transtemporal beacon to emit a high enough signal. Sorry, LB.” Then a mischievous grin took over his face once more. “But Max did say you could still track my miraculous, even if we are in the past. It’s on the same temporal wavelength as yours.” He checked his baton. “He says you have thirty minutes. I’ll stay here, have a slice of pizza, and guard the aperture.”
She look at him with a shrewd expression that her goggles could not hide, then sighed. “Fine, but be good, Cat. I am not pulling Bunnix out of Alexandria again just to clean up after you.”
He chuckled and gave a low bow. “I’ll be the very best of cats while you are gone, Ladybug. I purromise!”
She flicked the ring around his neck, before turning back to Nino and Alya. “Ready to head back to your place?”
The two nodded.
“Then, come on. I can create a portal for us once we get outside.”
The three left the restaurant and took most of the stares with them.
“Well, nothing to do now but wait,” Cat Noir said, stretching widely and using it as an excuse to put an arm around Marinette and pull her back into the bench with him, leaving Adrien to sit on the opposite side.
She stared up at him, her cheeks flushed darkly. “Um, maybe I should go with-“
Cat pulled her into a hug. “Now, you know you can’t leave me here with Blondie, Marinette, and I certainly can’t leave my princess without a chaperone!” The hero flashed him such a loaded grin that Adrien had an intense desire to slap himself in the face. He shook his head to clear it. This was surreal!
“Besides, I can protect you from all the guys here who can’t keep their eyes off you. Honestly, why did Papa Tom allow you out of the house looking that gorgeous? Is he getting anxious to retire and hand over the bakery again?”
Marinette glared at Cat through narrowed eyes. “What has gotten into you?”
Cat chuckled. “I’m just not a kitten anymore, Prrrincess. I’m a full grown tom who wants to look out for his queen. Interested in a promotion? If my calculations are correct, Valentine’s Day is coming up and it might be fun if I swung back through to treat you like the princess you are!”
Adrien’s cheeks burned in embarrassment. How could he just say something like that?!?! Out loud?!?!? In public no less?!?!?! To Marinette?!?! Had older him lost his mind?!?!
Just as he was pulling himself together, Marinette rolled her eyes and slipped out from under Cat’s arm. “In case you didn’t notice,” she replied in an unimpressed voice. “Your Lady went that way.” She crossed her arms and cocked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the door.
Cat’s face shifted to genuine surprise. “What?! Me and…” He laughed, his lips twitching in a smirk that Adrien felt was positively indecent and promised himself he would never ever wear again. Cat shot Adrien a glance and the smirk widened devilishly. He raised three fingers and put a hand over his heart. “I can assure you that Ladybug and Cat Noir are only now and forever more shall be nothing but…” Here, his eyes drifted to Adrien once more. “…good friends.”
“Somehow, I can’t see them allowing cat boys to join scouts,” Marinette declared, still not convinced.
Cat leaned in and pressed a swift kiss to her cheek that left her blushing and her eyes sparking with irritation. “Oh, I assure you, I have an entire collection of badges to prove I’ve mastered building mouse traps.”
Adrien found himself grinding his teeth and a low growl vibrated in his chest. He had to do something! This whole situation was nerve-racking to say the least and he couldn’t afford to get akumatized because he was jealous of his future self. For jealous Adrien was, with a capital J, and he didn’t want his older self to mess with his Marinette!
He stood up and leaned across the table, ignoring the remains of the dishes that littered the surface, and stared himself in the eye. “Who exactly do you think you are, Cat,” he growled angrily. “Are you drunk or something? You’re, what, four years older than us? Five? What you are doing could be considered illegal, you know!”
Cat just grinned. “What? Never touch the stuff. And who are you, Agreste to tell me I’m not allowed to flirt with my own wife? True, I’m a few years off, but I didn’t get my head on straight until my princess here was eighteen and I hate to waste such a golden opportunity.”
“WIFE?!” Adrien wasn’t sure where his voice stopped and Marinette’s began.
“Umhmmm,” Cat nodded, idly pushing Adrien off the table so he could bundle up the broken glass in the tablecloth. “For two years now. Two glorious years!” Again with that knowing smirk that Adrien wanted to punch. “You don’t know what you’re missing out on, Agreste! At the wedding, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place! I was the luckiest stray in the world the day Marinette agreed to be mine!” He leaned across the table and spoke in a stage whisper that did not hide his voice from anyone. “And let me tell you she is great in the-“
Adrien saw red. He launched himself across the table and landed a right hook to that smug smile… just as Marinette landed a blow to Cat’s ribs.
“- Kitchen,” Cat gasped, doubling over, one hand to his face while the other one squeezed his side.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but keep your filthy paws and mouth of my Marinette,” Adrien growled.
Launching himself upwards, Adrien stormed out of the booth, grabbing Marinette’s hand as he went.
“Adrien? Adrien, slow down,” she said, but offered no real resistance.
“Yeah, Agreste, what about your pizza,” Cat called from the booth.
“Its all yours,” he hollered over his shoulder before they burst through the doors and out into the wintery street beyond.
They made it three blocks before Marinette pulled him to a halt. He turned to look at her, the red fury slowly being replaced with the sick, hollow feeling of self-recrimination. “Sorry, Marinette! I don’t know what that was about, but I couldn’t let him talk about you that way any more! You deserve so much better than that!”
“Adrien, it isn’t your fault,” she soothed, taking both hands in hers. “I don’t know what is going on either, but… did you mean it?”
Confused and embarrassed, he shrugged. “I’m not sure what you mean, Marinette. I just lost my temper and mouthed off.” He smiled uneasily. “I hope I didn’t I say something inappropriate.”
Her cheeks turned rosy in the light of the street lamps and she bit the corner of her lip. “Nooo,” she said slowly. “You just… you said… you called me ‘your Marinette’.”
Adrien felt the blood surge to his cheeks like a rising tide. He raised his hands to his chest, shifting her hands into his own as he went. “I wouldn’t… I mean, I’d like…” The worried look in her eyes and the memory of Cat’s, his own, knowing smirk, spurred him on. “Would you like to be?”
She blinked in surprise, those soft pink lips falling open in a far more eloquent answer than any words could have been.
His heart pounding like war drums in his ears, he plunged on. “Cause I have wanted to ask you out for a while, but you always seemed nervous around me and I didn’t want to make you more uncomfortable. You’re amazing, Marinette! You’re kind and sweet and thoughtful and clever and beautiful and I know I don’t deserve someone as amazing as you, but when Cat was all over you, I… I just saw red!”
The most beautiful smile he had ever seen bloomed across her face like a sunrise. Slowly, her hands ran up his jacket to clasp him around the neck. “I’ve always wanted to be your Marinette,” she murmured, eyes shining like stars. “Ever since the day you gave me your umbrella.”
His heart stalled and kicked back in at double time.
“Really, Marinette?”
She nodded shyly and Adrien couldn’t help scooping her up and spinning them around in circles on the pavement, his laughter ringing out for all the world to hear. Her giggle joined him until his heart was full too bursting with happiness.
“Adrien,” she said breathlessly, when he finally set her back on her feet. “I never told you before because I was scared I was too ordinary… that I didn’t deserve your kindness, your friendship, your affection. You are -“
Adrien scoffed. “I’m just a posable mannequin, Marinette. A pretty face that can sell stuff to people, a name on a list of meaningless awards. You… you have built your own life on friendship and talent, hard work, and a lot of love. You’re in a league of your own. What is Adrien Agreste compared to that?”
She looked into his eyes and her cheeks darkened. “Mine,” she offered timidly, eyes hopeful.
He wrapped the curl of hair in front of her ear around his finger, enjoying the cool softness of her skin.
“Then… would you be my date for Valentine’s Day, Marinette?”
She rolled up on her toes and pressed the softest of kisses on his cheek. “What do you think? You rescued me from a black knight,” she said, cocking her head back in the direction they had come.
Adrien was so happy, so relieved, he let out a soft chuckle. “Yeah, I guess I did at that.” Just then his stomach growled loudly enough to startle them both.
Marinette giggled. “We never did get our pizza,” she said with a grin.
Adrien offered her his arm. “Then may I treat my girlfriend to our first date?”
She wrapped her arm through his and settled against his side with a contented sigh. “Only if I can treat my boyfriend to dessert.”
Greatly daring, Adrien bent his head down and stole a quick kiss on her cheek, thrilling at the rosy glow that resulted. “I wouldn’t have it any other way!”
Bonus scene:
The temporal horizon closed behind them as Ladybug and Cat Noir stepped through it back to their own time of origin. Max waved them over to scan for anomalies before clearing them to leave the complex. They didn’t talk much, going to their office to detransform and feed the kwamis before heading down to the bunker. It wasn’t until they got to their quarters that Marinette finally spoke.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she grumbled, stomping over to switch on the bedside light, clearly in one of her angry moods.
“Ah, come on, Princess. I was just having a little fun and pointed my mini me in the right direction, that’s all.”
“Bunnix has told us time and again not to-“
“As if Alix has never mucked about with time,” he scoffed. “Or do you not remember my twentieth birthday party?”
“She pushed me though the hole in the Burrow with no explanation in the middle of the night! How was I supposed to know she was dropping me off inside your birthday cake!”
“But Alix understands that a little push is all it needs,” he replied. “That’s all I did, really, and you should have seen the look on my face when I told him Marinette and Cat were married! Priceless! Absolutely worth it!”
“You could have put our future at risk, Adrien!” She grabbed his left hand, lining it up with hers so the plain, gold band and the gold ring with a pink diamond flashed in the yellow light. “This future.”
Adrien sighed and raised her hand to his lips. “Marinette, my lady, my love, you are my future in every possible timeline and I would never do anything to risk us or our life together. This,” and he kissed her ring reverently, “means more to me than anything else. I was just making sure it stayed that way and we had more time together before… well…”
She sighed and pulled him into a hug. “I know and don’t think that I don’t still hate Gabriel for everything he put you through. If we didn’t need his experience as a holder…”
“… you would think house arrest in a refurbished bomb shelter would mellow him out a bit,” he grumbled. “But I suppose it is hard to chill when you are either locked in your magic proof room or chained to Minotaurox whenever you are let outside.”
Marinette sighed. “It’s hardly the peaceful Paris we were dreaming of during all those years of fighting, is it?”
“Maybe not,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her forehead. “But this one gives me you and for that, I would take on the universe.”
“You and me…”
“Against the world, like always,” he whispered, nuzzling her temple with his nose.
Her stomach growled loudly and Adrien couldn’t help but chuckle. “What would my bug like for supper?”
She turned and looked up at him coyly.
“As I recall, I never got my pizza…”