A Masked Deal

Forbidden

Marinette ran into the 'Gabriel' offices twenty four minutes later than what she wanted to be. Now, if she could just get up the correct floor in the next eleven minutes she'd save her ass, and her job.

Standing in the elevator she began to hit the button repeatedly at a speed which might cause the elevator to malfunction. Adrien was going to murder her. He'd told her he needed to leave by noon to attend a meeting with Chloe. She'd promised she'd be on time.

The doors began to close and she let out a sigh of relief. A quick glance at her watch told her she had nine minutes, she'd be fine. The doors sprang open again and she realised they'd been blocked by someone's foot.

"You've got to be -"

Before she could finish the sentence, a disheveled Adrien stepped into the elevator next to her.

"Good morning, little lady." He bent down and placed a kiss onto her cheek.

"You look rough."

"I love you too." He laughed out loud.

"I'm so glad you're late." Marinette sighed, as finally the elevator started to make it to her floor.

"I knew my fitting as with you so there was no point rushing here."

She smacked him on the arm, how rude? The elevator chimed signalling that they'd made their way to the correct floor.

"What am I wearing today?" Adrien asked once they'd exited the elevator.

Marinette stopped and looked him over; from the top of his head, to his toes.

"Clothes." She responded with a shrug, before heading off into the room allocated to them for the morning.

"Really?" He laughed, following after her. "You have such a sassy side, Marinette Dupain-Cheng."

She stopped and turned around. Reaching up on her tiptoes she tapped his nose with her finger.

"And don't you forget it."

She took a step backwards, completely oblivious to what was behind her and tripped over the roll of fabric left out of the floor. As she began to fall, Adrien stretched out and grabbed hold of her waist, pulling her into his chest.

The moment froze in time as they looked at each other, eye to eye, nose to nose. She couldn't help the fluttering taking over her stomach, there was no doubt, she still loved him, after all this time. Even after he turned her down, and Gabriel brought in a rule forbidding any inter office romance, she couldn't help it. She loved him.

Adrien blinked, coughed and moved to pick up the fabric roll. The more Nino was mentioning her, the more she was bedding into his conscious thoughts. He was beginning to think that, maybe, he was getting cold feet. After all, he found out last night his dream girl, who he thought was perfect, was actually a petty thief.

"Hey, Marinette?"

She hummed in response, moving around the room to position her supplies. She attached her pin cushion to her wrist and began to load it with multicoloured pins; pink all together on the right, red on the left.

"What would you do if someone stole your phone to delete a message?"

"Who told you?" Her voice was high pitched. Had the floor just collapsed? She was sure the floor had collapsed and she was falling into the deep firey pits of hell.

"What?" She turned to look at his face. Confusion written all over it as he questioned her.

"Um," she began to twist her fingers together, he couldn't know about that? Could he? Did Chat Noir tell him? Wait, Chat didn't know she was Ladybug. She'd covered herself well, he'd never know. "Who told you they'd stolen your phone?"