A/N: I thought the fact that this show hasn't been released in English yet would stop me. I was wrong.

the transitive property of love

"If 8x is equal to 12y, and 12y is equal to 3z, then 8x equals…3z!" Marinette whispers to herself, pleased that, for once, a problem set makes sense. Her pencil skims lightly down the page to the next question, but just as she starts to copy it into her notebook, someone calls her name.

"Huh?" Her first guess is Alya, but Alya sits at the other end of the room in mathematics since the teacher complains that they get too chatty otherwise. Still, Alya senses Marinette's gaze and looks up, making a face; Marinette goes cross-eyed and sticks her tongue out teasingly in return.

"Marinette," the voice repeats.

"A-Adrien!" Marinette realizes, too late, that the person addressing her this whole time has been male—and sitting right in front of her, no less. "Ahh—umm, what did you need?" she stammers, all the while thinking, please tell me he wasn't watching while I was being weird, please tell me he wasn't watching while I was being weird—

"Do you have an eraser?" Adrien asks sheepishly. "I seem to have lost mine."

"Oh, yeah!" recovers Marinette, proud of herself for answering with relative ease. She's gotten better at talking to him ever since their moment at the race—if it can even be called that—but she has occasional relapses.

Like now.

"Ahh…umm…I mean, I'm pretty sure," she revises as she starts to dig through her pencil pouch, pushing aside glittery gel pens and the charcoal pencil she likes to use for her fashion sketches. Where is that darned thing? There's a kneading eraser that she quickly rules out since it looks more like a wad of chewed gum. She wants to give Adrien something nice; her scented strawberry-chocolate eraser would be the perfect choice.

If only she could find it.

"One moment," says Marinette, pausing her search to look back up at Adrien, who is still waiting patiently.

She pulls out a gum wrapper from who-knows-when and a wrinkled note from Alya (smoothies after school?) but still no eraser.

"Argh!" Frustrated, Marinette turns her whole pencil pouch upside down, reconsidering just as its contents crash loudly onto the top of her desk.

The classroom falls silent.

"Miss Cheng?" asks their teacher, stopping her progress on the chalkboard as she turns and studies Marinette over the rim of her half-moon glasses, "is there a reason for this disruption?"

Marinette wishes for a pigeon or even some new villain to come crashing through the window—anything to save her from this embarrassment. Why me? She opens her mouth to speak when out of the corner of her eye she spots—

"Aha!" Cheeks burning, she snatches up the pink and brown eraser and hands it to Adrien. "Here you go."

"Thanks," says Adrien, looking at her with a mixture of pity and sympathy as he turns back to his work. Marinette can hear the whispers beginning to start; someone in the back titters, and she groans, knowing that by the end of the day she'll be that girl behind Adrien, did you see?

Alya makes a gesture, like, you poor girl, and Marinette sighs, flopping facedown into her math book.

o.O.o

Ladybug stops in the middle of the street to stare up at the moon.

"I know you're following me," she declares after a beat.

Behind her, something heavy lands. Ladybug turns around to see Cat Noir rising from a crouched position, looking not the least bit remorseful.

She frowns at him and crosses her arms. "We had an agreement. Our secret identities stay secret." In her mind, she's all too aware of Tikki's warning: ten minutes left until your transformation wears out.

"I wasn't going to peek," Cat Noir insists, holding his hands up in a gesture of appeasement. His green eyes survey the rooftops around him. "I just wanted to see where you live."

Ladybug suspected as much, which is why she's calling Cat Noir on it while they're still a few streets away from her house. It's not that she doesn't trust him, but she also isn't sure what he'd do with the information. And the thought of her superhero life brushing up against her regular life still weirds her out.

She steps forward, reaching for the bell around Cat Noir's neck and shaking it gently as she scolds, "Nice try, but not tonight. Bad kitty."

Cat Noir's eyes widen, startled; Ladybug can feel his throat bob when he swallows. For all his posturing, Cat Noir is frighteningly easy to fluster, and Ladybug isn't sure what it means that she gets a slight thrill in her stomach when she sees his eyes following her every move. There's something about his gaze, like he's drinking in the very sight of her, that makes her feel—lucky.

"Five minutes," Tikki reminds, clearing her throat.

Ladybug blinks, letting go of Cat Noir. "Stay here," she commands, gauging the distance between herself and the nearest outcropping as she steps back.

"Enjoy the rest of your evening!" Cat Noir says cheerfully as he watches her send up her grappling hook, and it's only once she's launched herself upwards that Ladybug hears the rest of his message, floating through the Paris night air: "And dream of me!"

o.O.o

Be cool, Marinette.

Be cool.

It's a beautiful day; the walk to the café was blissful, and Marinette can't help noting the clear blue of the sky every time she glances out the window.

She's scheduled to meet Adrien. Adrien! Granted, it's not for the most romantic of reasons. By some stroke of luck (and, okay, maybe some careful planning on her part), she ended up as his Chinese tutor of sorts. Despite her Chinese background, she's far from fluent—hence why she's still taking classes, to supplement her reading and writing—but her mom speaks it at home with her enough that Marinette feels she can do a solid job of pronunciation.

If she remembers how to form a coherent sentences.

Which she will. Because today Marinette is going to be 100% cool. Like, Ladybug levels of cool.

The bell over the café door tinkles and Adrien rushes in, cheeks tinged pink from exertion. He spots her and heads straight for her table.

"Hello, Adrien."

Adrien shoots her a slightly confused look as he pulls out his chair, and Marinette winces. Okay, maybe that was a little too cool, too…stiff. Act natural, Marinette.

"Sorry I'm a little late," says Adrien, taking out his books. "I overslept." His hair is a bit tousled—he must have run part of the way, Marinette thinks fondly—and the collar of his white over-shirt is rumpled. Marinette fights the urge to reach over and fix it.

"So where should we start?" asks Adrien, looking to her for guidance.

Marinette twitches slightly, hurriedly flipping her book open. "Well I was thinking, we could read the chapter together first to review the vocabulary, and then we could do the conversation practice." She keeps her eyes trained on the pages in front of her as she talks; it's easier to speak to Adrien this way. In fact, the more time she spends not looking directly at him, the more confidence she feels. "And we can even get the homework started now, if you want. I also have some extra phrases I know that my mom taught me that I could show you…" she trails off when she doesn't hear a response.

When she looks up, she finds Adrien's head pillowed on his arms. Her mouth nearly drops open. He's asleep. She'd be offended if she weren't so amazed—he looks so peaceful and more approachable this way, almost like a little kid.

Marinette bites her lip and pokes his arm cautiously with her pencil. "Adrien?" she tries.

He shifts, eyelids fluttering before his head snaps up suddenly. Marinette suppresses a giggle as his expression quickly transitions from bewilderment to embarrassment.

"I'm so sorry," he says, rubbing his left eye with the heel of his hand. "I'm not usually like this, I just—" he yawns, "didn't get much sleep last night."

"No, it's okay, I understand," Marinette assures him, knowing that Adrien will never know just how much she can relate—last night, she and Cat Noir stayed up past midnight trying to gather leads on where all the akumas were coming from.

"Really?" asks Adrien, looking relieved and, dare she say it, a tiny bit interested.

"Yeah." Marinette hesitates before adding, "You know what helps me?"

"What?"

"Coffee. My mom thinks it's going to stunt my growth which worries me a little bit because I want to be at least five foot five, but…it helps," she finishes lamely, mentally berating herself for getting carried away speaking again.

"That's why you're always so…energetic," says Adrien.

"I am?" blinks Marinette. "I mean—yeah, I guess I am."

"It's a good thing," Adrien says, almost as if he can read her thoughts. He smiles and Marinette immediately brightens, feeling warmth rush to her cheeks. She wants to savor this moment, capture it all in her mind's eye so that she can recount it to Alya later: the way a piece of Adrien's hair falls right between his eyebrows, how the right corner of his mouth crooks a little bit higher than his left—

"So! Um, chapter two," she says abruptly, forcing herself to snap back to reality, and the two of them finally start on their Chinese lesson.

(And if she sneaks glances at him every once in a while, so what?)

o.O.o

As their tutoring sessions progress, Marinette learns more about Adrien. His favorite color is blue (a fact she'd already gleaned through careful observation, but it doesn't hurt to have the evidence corroborated) and it seems he rarely gets presents, if the way his face lights up when she brings him a miniature cake from her father's bakery is any indication.

He's started moving his chair over to her side of the table (mostly so he can watch her copy down the characters) but that doesn't stop Marinette's stomach from fluttering. Sometimes their arms brush, and one time his knee bumped against hers when he leaned closer to watch the order of her strokes, and while he might have given her a strange look when she made a slightly strangled noise, that's beside the point—

So Marinette is very, very miffed when another akuma-possessed villain shows up out of nowhere and makes her late. The café where she and Adrien meet is just across the square, and after Marinette transforms she sneaks a quick peek to see if Adrien has arrived. He isn't one of the frightened faces in the window, so at least she isn't keeping him waiting. For now.

"Let's make this quick," she says as soon as Cat Noir appears.

"What's the rush? Got a date?"

"None of your concern," she says, poking his chest and nodding toward their adversary. "Can you lead her near the lamppost?"

"Anything for you, my lady," Cat Noir says, squeezing her hand—Marinette makes a small noise of outrage and tries to slap him on the wrist lightly, but he's already gone.

They finish the villain off in record time, and Marinette is already turning to go after their celebratory fist bump when Cat Noir catches her by the wrist.

"Wait," he says. "Don't I get a little something extra? I did a good job, didn't I?" His eyebrows dance over the edge of his mask.

"You always do a good job, Cat Noir," she says, turning back toward him.

"Yes, but…" he halts, studying her face more closely. "You really have somewhere else you want to be, huh?"

"Don't you?"

"Not when I'm with you."

His earnestness surprises her. Part of her mind is still fixated on Adrien, I've got to meet up with Adrien, so she isn't completely thinking when she swoops forward and presses a quick kiss to his cheek.

"Thanks, Cat Noir," she says again. "But I've got to go. I'll see you next time, okay?" and then she dashes away from the fountain, leaving him standing there, shocked.

When she finally enters the café, she finds Adrien already at their usual table. His Chinese book is open in front of him, but he's staring out the window at the park across the street.

"Whew, it was crazy getting here," says Marinette as she collapses into the seat across from him. "There were all these people running around, and then all those lights exploded—but it was a good thing Ladybug and Cat Noir fixed it, right?" she babbles, trying to make up for her delay. She hopes he hasn't been waiting long.

"Yeah," Adrien says absentmindedly, and Marinette frowns at the sudden distance between them.

Adrien tries to hide it, but his attention returns to the window, and that's when Marinette sees it for the first time—the longing in his expression. She doesn't know what or whom it's for, but it's enough.

Marinette's chest aches.

She can save Paris as many times as she wants, but this, here, is a losing battle.

Maybe it was never a fair fight to begin with.

o.O.o

"Cat Noir," she asks one evening while patching him up, "do you have someone…special?"

Cat Noir has his suit unzipped down to the waist, exposing the black tank top underneath and his bare shoulders, which Ladybug is tending to now. Ladybug can't help noting the way the moonlight washes out his skin, but she quickly brushes that thought away because this is Cat Noir, and they haven't even talked about the cheek kiss from a few days ago.

"Of course," he says, shifting under her touch.

"Who?" asks Ladybug, trying not to sound overly interested.

Cat Noir tilts his head back, grinning lazily. "You."

"That's not what I meant," she says, rolling her eyes. She finishes bandaging him up and settles down next to him, her hands in her lap. "I meant during the daytime, is there someone you like talking to, who you want to spend more time with, who you don't wear a mask around."

Cat Noir shoots her a curious look, a sudden seriousness passing over his face. He shifts away ever so slightly, so that their knees are no longer pressed against each other's, before he answers, "I don't know yet."

Her heart thumps. Once, twice.

"Oh."

"Yeah." Cat Noir looks straight ahead as he fiddles with his belted tail, eventually sneaking a sideways glance at her. "And you?"

"Yes," sighs Ladybug, resting her chin in her hands as she leans slightly forward. "But he doesn't feel the same."

"What an unlucky fool," scoffs Cat Noir. "Boys really are the worst, aren't they?"

"You're a boy," she says, shooting him a flat look.

"Yes, but I'm a superhero. What does your guy do in his spare time?"

"He fences."

"So do I," says Cat Noir, looking pleased. It's not surprising. Cat Noir is agile, after all. Still, Ladybug feels a need to defend Adrien.

"He can speak Chinese," she brags.

"Ni hen piao liang," Cat Noir says smoothly.

His outburst startles her, but she quickly recovers. "Your accent is terrible."

Cat Noir pouts.

Silence slips between them again before he says, in a measured tone, "If I met you without your mask, I'd definitely notice you."

Ladybug thinks of all the exaggerated motions she makes as Marinette, the way her words sometimes run into each other and how she trips over her own feet. She thinks of Adrien and the faraway look he sometimes gets in his eyes.

"No, you wouldn't."

o.O.o

"That looks really nice."

Marinette twitches, startled; Alya left her to go to the bathroom a few minutes ago, so it's just been her in the studio.

Until now.

Adrien is standing behind her, his hands in his back pockets as he studies her painting, head tilted slightly.

"Thank you," says Marinette, suddenly conscious of the paint on her face. She tries to wipe her nose as surreptitiously as possible. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to finish my painting too, actually," explains Adrien, pointing to one of the covered easels in the corner. "It's not as good as yours, though."

"O-oh, well," says Marinette, flustered. "Maybe you could—well you could move next to me and I could—um, I could help you." They have art during different periods, but Marinette is immensely thankful for a common break time and the fact that there's only one studio.

Adrien obliges, dragging over an empty easel next to her and transferring his unfinished painting.

He unveils it and the two of them stand there for a while, studying its details.

"Like I said," Adrien chuckles good-humoredly. "Not as good as yours."

"No, it's fine!" Marinette assures, mind already racing. "I think if you add a bit more black here to darken the lines, it'll really bring out the design. And then maybe a smudge of yellow to brighten up the blue…" She starts measuring out drops of paint, growing more and more animated. "You know, this really reminds me of one of Whistler's paintings, Nocturne in Blue and Gold—have you seen it? My dad loves it—oh!" She stops just short of painting his canvas. "Oh my goodness, I completely forgot! This is yours, not mine—I'm sorry, I got carried away—"

"It's okay," says Adrien gently, and he's looking at her—differently, somehow.

Still, Marinette pushes the brush into his hand and retreats to her own painting. No, no, no. This is bad. It's bad because just ten minutes ago she was telling Alya about the weirdness at the café and how maybe she should start slowly trying to move on from Adrien, and Alya had said, if you're sure; you know I'll support you regardless, but now Adrien is right here and he's much, much harder to resist than she'd thought when she woke up this morning—

Focus, Marinette. She concentrates on adding a touch of purple to her sky.

Beside her, Adrien pauses, sniffing the air. "Do you smell that?"

Marinette looks around, bewildered.

"Smell what?"

"Something sweet."

"Oh." She touches one of her pigtails self-consciously. "That's my shampoo, I think."

"I see," says Adrien, and Marinette wonders just how strong his sense of smell is. They're standing close, but not that close…but closer than they usually stand, and—wait, shouldn't Alya have come back by now?

"What's it called?" asks Adrien, yanking Marinette from her thoughts. "Your shampoo."

"P-Peach Parfait," she stutters, embarrassed.

Adrien nods, returning to his work. "You know," he brings up, eyes not leaving his canvas, "I still have the eraser you let me borrow. The one that smells like strawberries and chocolate."

"Oh!" To be honest, Marinette had completely forgotten about it until now. "That's right."

"It's on my desk at home," Adrien admits sheepishly. "I'll try to remember to bring it back."

"It's okay, you can keep it!" blurts Marinette, before she hurriedly changes her statement to, "I mean, yes, I'd like it back."

Adrien raises an eyebrow. "Which is it?"

"Neither. Both. Er, well—it is my favorite eraser, but it's okay if you really like it, I can get a new one—"

"I'll give it back, Marinette," Adrien says patiently, and Marinette just lowers her gaze and says, "Okay."

He's making it really hard not to like him.

o.O.o

Cat Noir has rotten luck.

Leave it to him to get concussed. Ladybug isn't sure about the procedure for these sorts of things, so she lets him lean against her side as they make their way down the street in the misty glow of evening. Cat Noir's hair tickles the side of her neck, and she can't tell whether he's just using the whole incident as an excuse to rest his head on her shoulder. Regardless, she can put up with it for tonight.

"You smell nice," Cat Noir purrs, nestling closer. "What's this scent of yours?"

"Peach Parfait," answers Ladybug, pinching his side. "Don't get too cozy."

Cat Noir stiffens, pulling away abruptly.

"What did you say?"

"'Don't get too cozy,'" Ladybug repeats.

"No, before that."

"Peach Parfait?"

"Peach Parfait," Cat Noir echoes. There's something disbelieving about his expression. Cracked open, too, like the ground has opened up beneath his feet. "I have to go," he says, one hand going up to touch the spot where his head got hit. He stumbles slightly as he backs up before turning around completely.

"Cat Noir, wait!"

For the first time, Cat Noir doesn't listen.

o.O.o

Adrien doesn't return her eraser.

Marinette doesn't hold it against him—it probably just slipped his mind—but when he avoids her eyes completely when they pass each other in the hall, she starts to get suspicious. It'd happened earlier; when she walked by him up the stairs into school, he hadn't waved like he normally did, but Marinette assumed it was because he was deep in thought. He had looked strangely conflicted.

But this isn't just being distracted. This is active avoidance.

"I don't get it, Alya," she says. "I didn't weird him out, did I? I thought we were friends, at least."

"Just give it some time," reassures Alya, handing her part of her cucumber and cream cheese sandwich, which Marinette bites into furiously. "I'm sure it's nothing."

Across the grassy quad, Adrien locks eyes with Marinette, and Marinette thinks this time he'll nod at least, or something.

But he only looks away.

o.O.o

The night air tugs at the strands of her pigtails when she gets to the roof. Cat Noir rises to his feet.

Ladybug scans the area. "You aren't in trouble, are you?"

"No." Cat Noir shakes his head.

"Then why did you call me up here?"

"Because," Cat Noir says simply. Then: "Hold out your hand."

Ladybug follows his directions, studying him intently, but his face gives nothing away.

He lowers his fist over her palm, dropping something onto it. Ladybug's hand clenches reflexively; she gasps when she realizes what she holds.

"I'm sorry," Cat Noir—Adrien—says, pulling his hand back and leaving her with the eraser, "for not realizing sooner."

It all clicks into place. The fencing, the phrase in Chinese—how had she not noticed it? She'd been so fixated on Adrien that she hadn't paid attention to Cat Noir, hadn't realized that they were two facets of the same boy.

"Did you know?" Adrien asks. "About me?"

"No."

He nods and looks at the ground, getting ready to move away.

Marinette stops him, putting a hand on his upper arm. "Adrien." She doesn't know anymore if it's the mask that's giving her confidence or if it's just…her. Maybe it's always been her.

Adrien meets her eyes, and Marinette sees that his longing has disappeared, replaced by curiosity and uncertainty. It's a small loss, knowing that his feelings for her alter ego have faded in the wake of this revelation, but it's also better this way. Because Marinette knows that the way he's looking at her right now—he's seeing her. All of her.

And the boy in front of her is the same one who winks in the face of danger. Who still looks surprised when someone gives him a present. Who offers to help her hold things at races and who saved her life from Chronogirl.

Yes, Marinette thinks, stepping forward to hug him. This isn't bad at all.

o.O.o

On Monday, Marinette is half-asleep in mathematics, her cheek pressed against the pages of her textbook, her eyes struggling to stay open.

Someone taps the top of her head.

She looks up, blearily, to find Adrien smiling down at her.

"Hey, Marinette."

Across the room, Chloe looks at them suspiciously, but Marinette is done with hiding.

"Hi, Adrien," she replies, grinning for the whole world to see.