A Masked Deal

De Transformation

"I ... um ... what? Marinette? As if I could ever be as cool as Marinette." She fiddled around nervously in her seat.

"Mari, come on! The jig has been up for weeks, you know it has. I swapped 'Miraculous' with you for crying out loud."

Ladybug gulped. Talking about it now made it so real. She could brush it off before because it wasn't happening right then and there, but it's most certainly happening now.

"I know. I guess part of me is still scared. You're still here though, so you must be ok with me being me? Right?"

He took her hands in his own and stroked the back of her glove with his thumb.

"I am more than happy with you being you, and I'm sure you're happy with me being me. Let me prove it to you, let me show you that it doesn't matter if you have the mask on or not, I love you." Chat was looking into her eyes begging her to let him do this.

She sat there thinking about how this would change everything, was she ready to find out his identity now? Like right now.

"I have questions I wanted to ask you before we got married and I suppose now is as good a time as ever." She removed her hands from his and began to play with her fingers. "It's actually some things behind the mask more than in the mask."

"I'm an open book M'Lady, ask away."

Steadying her nerves she took a deep breath, ready to plunge in and hopefully not scare him away.

"Ok, here we go. Why did you date Kagami?"

"Not holding back are you, Bugaboo." Chat raised an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry. I know she's our friend, one of our best friends but I can't help thinking why her? What did she do that I didn't do?"

Chat looked over into Ladybug's eyes. He was going to tell her the truth, nothing more to be hidden, whether she accepted it was up to her.

"We got on very well and she said she liked me. You barely spoke to me and every time I asked you if you liked me you said no. One time you called our friendship a toilet."

Ladybug covered her eyes. She was an embarrassment to women everywhere. He was right though, until their late teenage years she'd shown zero interest in him, to his face that was. She was quite sure everyone in a thousand mile radius of Paris knew Marinette Dupain-Cheng loved Adrien Agreste. As they hit adulthood that changed but so had her feelings. Instead of being obsessed with one blonde, her obsession was split equally between two.

"I can't believe you remembered that!"

"I remember a lot about us, Marinette, you've always been important to me." Chat replied.

"So you had no idea I liked you?"

"I hoped you did? But you squashed that idea repeatedly. I swear if you had let me know you had a slight bit of interest in me I would have expressed an interest in you too. I thought you only saw me as an acquaintance."

She groaned and placed her hands over her eyes. She was such an idiot. This was all her own fault.

"I'm an idiot. I used to get so tongue tied I didn't know what to do."

"Don't worry, I knew you cared more than that once I found out my scarf was from you, and then when you started working for my father, I don't know, I just saw a different side to you and even the slightest thing you would say to me would make my heart flutter." He smiled at her thinking about all the times she'd make his stomach swirl from even the smallest of sentences.

"That's when I fell for this side of you," she signalled his costume, "that's why I suddenly got more confident around you in civilian form. You just seemed to be more and more supportive and it reminded me of this relationship. You began to remind me of Chat." Her smile was small but heartwarming. He couldn't help but smile with her. "Chat Noir was everything I ever needed, I was just too scared and stubborn to admit it. He's good for me"