"What?"

"What!"

"Did you just call me-"

"No!" Adrien shot his arms up in front of him and began waving them around frantically.

A cold sweat was starting to form on his forehead, realizing that he had let his Chat out the moment the words had left his mouth. What was he supposed to do, what was he supposed to say? The only thing he could think of was to stare back at her shocked expression in complete fear.

Marinette on the other hand was wide-eyed. Never had she ever expected those words to come from Adrien's mouth. 'Puur-incess,' wasn't that Chat's nickname for her? The name itself sounded a lot more natural coming from the flirty Chat rather than her sweet and innocent Adrien.

"I-I said, shall we go, Marinette."

"No, you didn't," she replied flatly.

What was up with Adrien, she knew for a fact that he just referred to her by the nickname Chat had given her as Marinette the one time they worked together. But what was confusing her the most at that moment was Adrien's reaction. It was almost as if he was...was...hiding something.

"Ok, you caught me," he stuttered, straightening up as his body visibly calmed down, "it looks like the cat's out of the bag. I haven't told anyone else this before, you're going to be the first to know. You have to promise not to tell anyone, ok?"

Marinette nodded.

Adrien took a deep breath. "You see, I'm actually..."

Marinette cocked her head, waiting for what he would say next. 

"I'm actually a really big fan of Chat Noir!" He blurted out.

"Oh, so that's it." Marinette replied, seemingly unimpressed as she turned her head to the side.

He almost missed it, almost. The very obvious yet familiar roll of her eyes which she tried to hide by turning her head. It looked out of place coming from Marinette, but at the same time so very normal. But where, where had he seen it before?

"Just as a word of advice," Marinette interrupted his thoughts, "Chat Noir probably isn't the best role model for you to look up to."

Adrien stiffened, getting a little defensive.

"Why not? He really cares about the people of Paris and does everything he can to help them."

His words came out a little more demanding that he wanted, but Marinette didn't seem to notice.

She waved her hand. "That's not what I meant. Those qualities of him are admirable, but the rest of him..." she trailed off.

"The rest of him what?"

"Well, to be frank, he can be pretty annoying."

Adrien held back a cry of pain as Marinette's words shot into his heart like an arrow.

"A-annoying how...?" He asked, gripping his wounded chest.

"For starters," Marinette drawled, holding up her fingers as she numbered off her points, "he's so cocky and full of himself, and his flirting is irritating."

Adrien could feel two more stabs of pain slice through him. Was Marinette trying to crush his spirit? Since when did she hold such a resentment towards Chat anyway? From what he could recall, she was barely able to contain her excitement when she got the chance to work with him during the Evillustrator incident.

"And then there's his puns-"

"Wha- hey! What's wrong with his puns!" Adrien cut her off. "I think they're hilarious!"

Marinette rolled her eyes again, this time not even trying to cover up the action.

"If by hilarious you mean lame, then I agree."

Where was all of this sass coming from? Adrien had never seen Marinette talk this way to anyone other than Chloe, and himself when they first met, but that was justified due to their little misunderstanding with the gum.

"You talk as if you know Chat fairly well, how many times have you met him again?"

"Err, uhh, o-only a couple, I only, uh, know what Alya tells me about him, that's all." Marinette tried to stutter her way out of his question. She had gotten so caught up in the moment that she didn't realize how familiarly she was speaking about Chat. "You know what, I'm starting to get really hungry now, l-let's go get those cheese and cookies!"

With that, she turned on her heels and began making her way towards the nearest grocery store. Adrien decided to drop the conversation as well and follow her, his first priority was getting Emma back.

~.~.~.~.~

At the store the duo split up shortly so Marinette could grab a couple of cookies from the bakery section and Adrien could pick up his wheel of camembert from the dairy aisle. They met back up together at the front of the store after paying for their food.

Marinette bit into one of her cookies and dropped the rest of the cookies into her purse.

"I'm saving them for later," she informed Adrien as she did so.

After finishing up her cookie, which ddin't compare at all to the ones her father made, Marinette glanced curiously at Adrien who had stuffed his wheel of camembert into his pocket.

"Didn't you say you were hungry?" She asked.

"O-oh, right! I did say that didn't I..."

Adrien pulled the camembert out from his pocket and stared down at it in his hand, then up to Marinette who stared at him with big blue eyes, curious as to what was wrong.

"Actually," he started, trying to quickly think of something on the spot, "some people get grossed out when I eat camembert straight from the box. I was just going to wait until I was alone to eat it."

"I won't mind, you look good eating anything." Marinete froze"Or I mean, you look good doing anything - no wait, that's not what I meant! I-I!" Marinette slapped her red face at her accidental screw up, but Adrien didn't take notice of it, only hearing her say that she didn't mind him eating the cheese.

He slowly opened the box and looked down at the contents, the strong smelly scent already drifting up into his nose. He glanced up to Marinette again, then looked back down to the box and picked up one of the triangles, hovering it in front of his mouth.

'You can do it,' he motivated himself.

Fighting the urge to gag, Adrien placed the entire triangle of camembert into his mouth, assuming it would probably be best to eat the entire thing at once. He slowly started to chew, the flavour of the cheese invading his taste buds. With each bite he grew more and more nauseous.

"Are you ok?" Marinette asked. "You look a little pale?"

Adrien reluctantly nodded and mumbled around the mushed up cheese in his mouth. "I'm just...really enjoying this camembert..."

He tried to forcefully swallow it but every time his throat would reflexively clench up and make him gag. In the end he had to settle for swallowing the cheese in small portions. His stomach hated him at that moment, threatening to release the camembert back up from the way it came in.

With one final shiver, he managed to get the rest of the camembert down his throat, letting out a shuddered sigh of relief before running back into the store to buy a bottle of water and down the entire thing in one sitting.

"Are you sure you're ok?" Marinette asked again once he was finished. Adrien only nodded in reply, not wanting to torture Marinette with his horrible camembert breath.

He stuffed the remainder of the roll of camembert in his pocket. "I'll save the rest for later," he muttered.

"Well, now that we're both full we should probably get back to searching for Emma." Marinette said.

Her comment jolted Adrien back to reality, forgetting his upset stomach and nodding. 

"We haven't had much luck looking for her, maybe we should split up."

Marinette laughed. "It's like you just read my mind. I'll, uh, go this way." She pointed to her left.

"Right, then I'll go in the opposite direction." Adrien said.

The two headed off in their respective directions saying they would call one another if they found her, and each of them turned off onto either side of the store.

Marinette opened her purse. "Ok Tikki, it's time to transform and finally give Chat his Emma back."

"Wait, but Mari-" The little kwami didn't have the chance to finish her sentence before Marinette transformed.

Ladybug took out her yo-yo and dialed Chat who answered after the first ring.

"I was just about to call you, My Lady, I assume this is about Emma."

"Right, you need to take her off my hands quickly, she's been nothing but a pain." As she spoke, Ladybug leapt onto the balcony of the store and then onto the roof. "I'm at-"

She paused when Chat jumped onto the roof just moments after her, his face looking as surprised as she was. His shock, however, quickly turned into a grin.

"This must be fate, us both happening to be at the same place at the same time."

Ladybug ignored his comment and continued. "I'm busy at the moment, so take Emma quickly."

There was silence for a couple of seconds as Chat looked around. 

"So, where is she?"

"What do you mean whe-" Ladybug stopped mid sentence and smacked her face, suddenly realizing what Tikki had been trying to tell her before transforming. She forgot Emma with Adrien!

"Sorry Chat, I forgot her with somebody else."

Chat jumped back, fear on his face. "You left her with a stranger, what if they try to steal her, or harm her, or-"

"Calm down," Ladybug cut him off with a roll of her eyes, "that person won't do anything to hurt your doll."

A little giggle sounded from behind her partner and Ladybug moved a little to the side to peer behind him. She hadn't noticed before but he was wearing a baby carrier with a doll inside.

She pointed to the doll, saying nothing but with confusion written all over her face.

Chat looked behind him where Louis was attached to his back. The baby had been fairly quiet recently so he hadn't noticed that he was still carrying her when he split up from Marinette.

"I'm just taking care of my friend's baby for a bit," then he added with a smirk, "I hope you're not jealous."

"I just thought that it was weird that you're taking care of someone else's baby when you can't even seem to take care of your own."

Chat clutched his heart with mock hurt. "Your words are like knives, My Lady, but apparently you can't seem to take care of my baby either."

She sighed. "Whatever, I'm going to call the person with your Emma and tell her to wait in front of the store."

"Right, then I'll have my partner for the project pick her up."

Normally the two would be more careful with their identities, but they had both had long days and knew using the excuse of having other people pick up and drop off the doll would ensure that their identities weren't discovered by one another.

The two jumped back down to their sides of the store and de-transformed. Marinette turned around the corner to wait but stopped as soon as she saw the person who walked out from around the other side of the store.

"Adrien?"

He looked up after hearing his name, green eyes filled with confusion.

"Marinette? What are you still doing here?" 

"I found Louis' owner, we planned to meet here."

"What a coincidence!" Adrien exclaimed, "I found the person who has Emma and we're also meeting here."

Marinette laughed. "Wow, that really is a coincidence. Do you...do you want to wait together?"

She looked up at him with a slight blush.

"Sure," Adrien nodded.

The two sat down on a bench in front of the store together to wait.

~.~.~.~.~

The sun was starting to set as the two teenagers continued to sit on the bench, talking about random topics as they waited.

"This isn't even funny anymore, it's just plain aggravating now!" Plagg hissed from around the corner of the store. "I've never seen any human so oblivious before in all my life, which is quite a long one may I add."

"Really?" Tikki piqued in from beside him. "I think it's kind of cute."

Plagg grumbled as he watched Marinette check her phone for about the millionth time and comment on how late the owner of Louis was.

"Watching them suffer used to be hilarious, but they ruined it for me, ruined it!" He glared at them for a couple more seconds and smirked. "I'm gonna tell them."

"Don't you dare!" Tikki had to grab onto his tail as he started to make his way towards the two idiots. "You have to let them figure it out on their own."

Plagg grumbled at her statement. "And how long will that take? Months? Years? Decades? At this point I'm willing to give up camembert just to finally have them figure it out!" He paused to reconsider his statement. "Ok, so maybe not camembert, but I would willingly give up cheddar!"

Tikki smiled. "They'll take however long they need."

~.~.~.~.~

I apologize profusely for such a long waiting time for this chapter to come out. School and work and life just got in the way, but exam period has started now so I have around a month of no school until the next term starts up again, giving me plenty of time to write!

On another note, who else here is super pumped for the Christmas special of Miraculous Ladybug! I already know I'm gonna spend the entire day of the 11th sitting at my computer refreshing the page until the subbed episode is released.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter!