A/N: Hey guys, this is a Marriage Act/ML idea I had. This has been edited. Enjoy!

They told him that she was the yin to his yang, the sun to his moon. They told him that she was the perfect match for him.

They were wrong.

After going through four possible partners by this point, Adrien liked to think that he knew himself better than the matching system ever would. So why the computer insisted on matching him with a variety of people was lost on him. Really, it would be better at this point for him to just date someone. Having the opportunity to date was extremely rare, but Adrien thought the system could make an exception in his case. They didn't.

After rejecting four of his five possible matches, surely they wouldn't want him to fail on the fifth? Of course, there was always the option of being spouseless, but that would be akin to suicide. Unmarried people were shunned in society, seen as failures in life. They often had no job, no insurance, and no welfare after retirement.

He groaned, letting his head fall against his apartment door. After locking it and tucking the key into his pocket, Adrien began the long walk towards the restaurant he had agreed to meet his match at. In his opinion, the Spousal Act of 1978 was one of the worst pieces of legislation that had ever passed through Parliament.

In the mid-1900s, after the two world wars, there hadn't been enough children. Instead of the baby boom the government had predicted would happen, people stopped having kids. Apparently, no one wanted to bring a child into the world where world wars occurred within forty years of each other; it just wasn't right to bring a new generation into a war-torn era. Few people could argue with that.

But the government still needed people. There had to be workers churning out products, managers overlooking production, and politicians leading the country. A young generation needed to support the older one or nations would be dominated by the elderly. A country without people was a weak country, and since no country wanted to be weak, spousal acts were gradually passed.

Resistance to the laws, while strong, was futile. The government batted the opposition away like a cat batting away a mouse.

What happened to free choice? the opposition asked.

Who is ever free? the government replied. We choose pairings based on compatibility. Our models project a decrease in divorce, and you can always abstain from having children. But studies do show that couples who are married are more likely to have more children.

Well, what about doing what's right? The opposition pursued the issue.

The government had laughed at this one. Doing what's right? We've always done what's in the best interest of our country. We need people. And we've given you time; the population just isn't growing.

We'll be reasonable, Parliament had answered. You'll be matched to someone based on compatibility; you can start asking to be matched at any time after you turn eighteen. You've got six months with them to decide whether or not you want to be with them. If you don't want to be married, then you'll be able to petition for another match. However, you can have at most five potential partners, and you must be married by the age of twenty-five. Breaking any one of these conditions means that you'll stay single for the remainder of your life.

You can date, of course, under a special set of circumstances, they had added. But why date when your match is already there?

Adrien stood, pushing his chair back. He had petitioned for his first match a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, and he had met her two weeks later. She was fun, engaging, and kind, but after five months together, they both agreed they weren't meant to be. So they split up, and Adrien petitioned for another match again.

And again. And again. There just seemed to be no one who captured his attention the way he always dreamed of, and no one came close enough to the girl he had in mind. Well, there was someone, but what were the chances that Ladybug would be assigned to him?

Besides, Ladybug might not even exist. She could be a mask someone else put on to defeat akumas, and then put away just as easily. But he had accepted he was in love with a persona a long time ago, and starting the doubt himself now wasn't the time to start.

But he had to get married before twenty-five, so here he was at the ripe old age of twenty-two to petition one last time, resolving to stick with this match, no matter what may happen. Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the file had read. A smiling Asian girl stared back at him from her photo, and he quickly skimmed over her basic information, taking into account her birthday, eye color, height, and profession.

Hmm. A fashion design student about his own age? Interesting. It would be nice to talk about his job as a model for once without someone rolling their eyes at his stories. As a model, his years in the fashion industry meant picking up knowledge about everyone and everything that had even touched fashion. It was exhausting, honestly, when the only jokes he knew were ones that dealt with professional jargon. Even Nino had sighed, patted him on the shoulder, and handed him a book titled One Hundred Tried and True Jokes.

The lights of the restaurant in front of him shook him out of his reverie. He was here. He checked his watch. 7:00pm. Right on time.

Pushing open the door, he shot a dazzling smile at the waitress. "I think there's a reservation for a table for two under Agreste?"

She nodded. "The other person has already arrived. Right this way, sir."

She led him to a table near a corner, dimly lit with lamplight and decorated with a hanging pot. It was the most stereotypical date look Adrien had ever seen a table give, and he pulled the waitress aside, asking if she could turn up the intensity of the light.

She gave him a confused look before acquiescing, and the warm glow of the lamps vanished to be replaced by the bright glare of the lightbulbs.

A girl sat there, dressed in a casual cardigan and skirt. She looked up and smiled, holding out her hand. "Thanks. I'm Marinette Dupain-Cheng. You're Adrien?"

He nodded stiffly. "Yes. Nice to meet you." He took her hand, noting the warm, dry palm and the firm shake. She wasn't nervous at all. He reminded himself to smile.

Her face faltered, before she pulled it up again with a twitch of her cheeks. "I hear you're a model?"

He nodded. "Yes. You're a fashion design student, right?"

She hummed. "I love it, really. Do you know anything about fashion?"

He smiled. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. "You're talking to the model who's been born in the industry."

The conversation was stilted, but it wasn't the worse one he had had. The food came, and they continued conversing over their meals – duck for her, salmon for him. His mind occasionally flickered to Ladybug, and he surreptitiously checked his watch during the meal, wondering when it would be over. He just needed to put in enough effort to get her to marry him.

The conversation began to stutter towards the end of the meal, and Marinette's face began to twitch. It wasn't until he was signaling for the bill she said something.

"You're obviously uninterested in me. I've seen you looking at your watch every minute, and it's clear that you don't want to be here. So why apply for a petition when you don't want to even talk to your match?"

She leaned forward, placing her hands on the table. "This a waste of time, for me and for you. You're wasting a petition, too."

He hadn't presented a good enough impression. Irritation flared as he concluded that he would have to work to make her marry him; she wasn't going to fall into his arms like the other people he had been matched with.

He tamped it down, already planning a way to get back into her good books.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to give you that impression," he replied, smoothing his voice out with honey. "First impressions can be false, however. If you give me another chance, I'm sure you'll see something different." He leans back, satisfied. There was something about his voice people found irresistible, and he doubted she could withstand its thrall.

She gives him a saccharine smile. "I'm sure I will. I've been observing you for the hour we've been here together, and your consistent behavior patterns simply tell me that you're someone I'm not interested in, and someone who doesn't even have the decency to try to make it a good meeting."

She shook her head. "I can't believe they tried to match you with me. What kind of system is this?" She placed her share of the money on the bill, and pushed back her chair roughly, scraping the wooden legs against the tiled floor. "I'm done. I'm leaving. The system can't think that I'm your fit."

But it did, and he would marry her to save his own life. He had to.

"They did. How else would we have been matched together? Clearly, we must be compatible in some way," he retorted, desperate to keep her here. "Surely you wouldn't want to waste a petition?"

She stiffened, and sat back down. "No, I wouldn't."

He smiled. "So why don't we give this another chance. Try to make it work."

"I don't think it's worth the effort if you won't work with me," she stated. "You've been looking at your watch all evening so you clearly want this meeting to be over. Now, you want me to stay. You're desperate, aren't you?" She leaned closer. "It must be your last match."

He felt the blood draining out of his face. She knew, and that boded disaster for him. She could do anything to him, and he would stay. She could even refuse to marry him after six months, denying him the privileges he had been hoping for.

But her willingness to stay meant something. If this was only her second or third petition, she would have left him without a second glance. But if it were her fourth, or even her fifth, she would have treasured her petitions. She would have no hold over him.

It was time to take a gamble. "This must be your last match as well," he said into her ear.

She recoiled, sending a poisonous glare his way. "It's none of your business." He could see by the way she tightened her shoulders and how she drew into herself that it was.

"It is," he replied. "Because, you see, you're my last chance at happiness as well."

"Happiness?" She laughed harshly. "What happiness? Meetings after meetings with none of them going anywhere. None of the people they said would match me fit my personality."

"Maybe you weren't trying hard enough," he suggested.

"Maybe," she conceded. "But I can find my own happiness, and that happiness clearly doesn't include you. I'm leaving."

"It does," he countered quickly, leaning over to block her exit. "Do I need to explain it to you?"

She looked furious, blue eyes flashing. "No," she snapped.

"Unless you're willing to commit social suicide, you have to stay." He gave her the all-knowing look people detested.

"Do I?" She glared. "I'd rather be second-class than tied to you for the rest of my life."

"Really?"

She huffed. "Yes."

"Truly?" he arched a brow. "No welfare, no insurance, no job. You'll be practically a slave if you don't marry me."

She looked pained. "I know, but I don't want to live with someone I can't stand for eternity."

"It's not eternity, darling. It's just some seventy-odd years."

What a smart aleck. She could tell that he was amused from antagonizing her. Like a little boy pulling a girl's pigtails on the playground, he just wouldn't stop. And like the girl who was being antagonized, she refused to make life easier for him bycalling the teacher each time.

Truth to be told, it was her last match as well. She'd already petitioned four times for a new spouse, and the system was already exasperated with her.

How many different people do you need to meet until you settle down? the receptionist had asked her. Most people only petition once or twice. Five times is almost unheard of.

It wasn't that she wanted to sabotage her pairings; it was that she didn't want her partners. Marinette already had the idea of a picture-perfect prince affixed in her head so strongly that any partner who didn't fulfill her imagination was rejected immediately.

Poor Nathanaël had tried so hard to be the charming spouse she wanted, but she'd broken it off with him just before the six month period was up. He kept changing himself for her; she could tell. And although she liked him, she didn't want to be with a chameleon the rest of her life.

Ivan, bulky and large, was still hung up over the last potential spouse he'd seen. They'd gotten back together, she'd heard, after much encouragement from Marinette. She was torn up about the whole thing, actually. Why waste a petition to meet new people when you obviously weren't over the last one?

Nino had been paired with Marinette as a mistake; her file had been labeled as Alya's and his had been labeled as Kim's. They met each other and had called each other the wrong names to begin with, then proceeded to confuse each other with profile references that Marinette had never remembered being in her profile. It took them a few minutes, but they figured out that there was a mistake. After that fiasco of a date, Marinette had begged the receptionist to allow her an extra petition since a clerical error had wasted a petition, but the receptionist only showed her the rules. Five petitions only, she had drawled. Errors still count.

Marinette had left, fuming.

Her next match had been Max, a video game fanatic. He'd been alright at first, but due to his tendency to quote player statistics (and his utter inability to talk about something other than video games) had caused her to break up within two months, petitioning for another match.

And now she was stuck with Adrien.

She's never lasted until the six month period. All of her partners were flawed in some way she couldn't accept, and she supposed that was a part of her character. But the only person she wanted to be her spouse? Not available. It wasn't like she could go to the receptionist and say, "You know Chat Noir? The superhero who saves Paris with me, also known as Ladybug? Yeah, I'd like him please."

Marinette sighed. She couldn't count how many times she wanted to tell him her civilian identity after turning him away countless times, but she gradually noticed his interest in her fading in recent years. Marinette assumed he had a spouse, so she dropped the matter.

Marinette leveled a stare at Adrien. "Seventy-odd years in hell. Lovely."

"Look, I'll try to say this again: I need you, and you need me. So let's try to make this work, alright?"

She sighed. "Fine. So why don't we try to start learning about each other. Things that aren't on the profile." She settled back into her chair.

He snapped his mouth shut. There was nothing he wanted to tell her other than what she already knew: his appearance, his age, his occupation, and his hobbies.

"I have nothing to say to you, then," he replied. "You want personal, and I don't give personal details on the first meeting."

"I thought you wanted to make this work. We're each other's last chance, remember?" She tapped a finger on her chin.

"Fine," he muttered sullenly. She was right; they needed to open up to each other, but at the same time, he didn't trust her. He didn't want to tell some stranger stories of his life that she'll sell to the tabloids at the next moment.

"I'll go first then," she volunteered, smirking at his discomfort. "I grew up in a bakery, and I think my mom makes the best macarons recipe in Paris. You?"

He wasn't willing to back down. "I used to fence; I was quite good."

"That's on the profile," she muttered, lifting her phone and showing him his file. "Choose another one."

"Jagged Stone is my favorite rock artist," he gritted out.

"That's better. He's mine, too," she added.

He wanted to antagonize her, to get under her skin. She was fun when she was angry. "So tell me, how come you've had to petition five times? Surely someone liked you."

She was unamused. "I thought we weren't going for personal information?"

"But this isn't personal," he replied. "Usually the petition number is on the profile. You just chose to hide it."

"As did you." She countered.

"Humor me, my lady," he drawled. He wanted to slap himself as soon as the words came out of his mouth. She wasn't Ladybug, wasn't the person he wanted to be paired with. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, at best.

"Forget I said that," he muttered. "Just, humor me."

"I was paired up with four different people. Two who didn't fit me, and two that were mistakes. One was my best friend's husband and the other was still hung up over his previous pairing. What about you? Surely your looks would've ensnared someone by now."

"You'd think that, wouldn't you? They didn't match me, and one girl wasn't over her previous pairing. One girl married my best friend."

"What was that girl's name?" She asked curiously.

"Alya. Alya Césaire. She married Nino Lahiffe. Do you know him?"

"What a coincidence," she murmured. "I was paired with Nino by mistake, and he married my best friend Alya. What are the chances?"

"One in a million?" he suggested. "That really was something." He concealed his worry with snicker. Hawkmoth had threatened to mess with Ladybug and Chat Noir's lives shortly before he turned eighteen, the accepted age to start finding spouses. He didn't realize what it meant at the time, but he did now. Hawkmoth had hacked into the matching system to sabotage his pairings. How else could he explain the utter lack of compatibility between his pairs and him?

But the fact that Marinette's pairs had been tampered with as well-surely that was a clerical error? They were rare, but they happened. She couldn't be Ladybug. As far as he knew, Ladybug had already settled down. She'd mentioned that she was happily paired a year or two back, and never said anything about pairs since. He had assumed that she was already married, and had cut down on the flirting in response.

Suddenly, the timer on his phone beeped, jerking me out of my reverie. "It's 8:30. Sorry, I have to go," he apologized half-heartedly. "Previous engagements."

She looked up. "No need. I need to leave as well." She glanced at the food. "Same place, same time next week?"

He shrugged. "You want to keep this up?"

"We do need each other," she pointed out. "And although I think you'll make a horrible romantic partner, you seem interesting."

"Same time, same place next week?"

She nodded. "Fine." She checked her share of the check was on the table and left quickly, skirt swishing around her.

He pushed back my chair and handed the check to waiter, then walked outside. Night patrol was waiting, and Ladybug hated it when he was late.

He dodged into a dark alley. "Plagg, transform me!"

A/N: Thoughts, anyone?