"'The Big Book of Puns? Yes, sir, it came in yesterday," the librarian told Adrien. "We just haven't put the books that came in then out on the shelf yet. Hold on one minute, and I'll go grab it for you."

"Thanks!" Adrien said happily. He grinned as he dug in his wallet for his library card. The Big Book of Puns (And Other Assorted Jokes) had been his favorite book from the day he found it. While he (in his own opinion, at least) had already been fairly good at puns, he couldn't deny that the book had helped him a ton with coming up with jokes on the fly and in the middle of battles. He had also gotten pulled into a pun competition of sorts with Ladybug recently, which only spurred him on in his quest to stay the Pun Master of their dynamic duo.

Thus, the Book.

"You've checked this one out a million times," Plagg whined after Adrien had checked the book out and started heading to the door with his favorite book under his arm and a spring in his step. "Why do you need to check it out again?"

"I can't read it all at once, Plagg, not with my university classes and akuma fights to take care of," Adrien said with a sigh as he headed down the sidewalk towards the car where the Gorilla waited. "So I read it in chunks, write the best bits down, and then go practice those out while that other person has my book."

Plagg sniggered from inside Adrien's jacket. "I still can't believe that someone is requesting that book as often as you. Nerds, the both of you. Maybe you're soulmates."

Adrien rolled his eyes at that. The librarians had told him a month before that the reason he could never renew his loan on the pun book was because someone else kept requesting it. The book had been bouncing back and forth between the two of them for nearly two months now, a fact that seemed to be amusing the librarians greatly. Adrien was somewhat curious about this other pun-loving person, but he didn't care enough to go to their library (yes, he knew which one it was- not just one, but two of the librarians had told him "accidentally" in passing, which he was fairly certain was not entirely legal) and sit around waiting to meet them when they picked up their book.

If he lived in a rom-com, that would surely be what he would do. He would return the book and then head over to their library the next day to anxiously sit on the bench in the front of the check-out desk, fiddling with a bouquet of roses until a girl his own age came down and picked up The Big Book of Puns from the holds shelf. The librarians would introduce them when she checked the book out, they would stammer a bit, and then they would go out dating, get married, and live happily ever after, punning the whole way. That was what the librarians seemed to think would happen. Adrien thought that they watched too many romantic movies.

For one, they probably didn't even know who this other person was. Since The Big Book of Puns always got sent to another library in the area and there were different librarians working at each one, it meant that the librarians didn't know who they were. It could be a middle-aged dude. It could be an old grandmother or grandfather. It could be a kid. The other person could even be married already, for all Adrien (and the librarians) knew. Besides, Adrien was still completely and utterly in love with Ladybug. No number of potential "meet-cute" opportunities could ever change that.

Ever.

"Ugh, Chat Noir really was on his pun game tonight," Marinette grumbled as she headed down the stairs from her loft after returning from patrol. Tikki floated along after her, eager for her cookie. "Tikki, I'm gonna have to check out that book again."

Tikki giggled. "I thought you just swore the book off after Alya nearly found it? You said that just last week!"

"I changed my mind." She hadn't intended on getting into a pun (and joke) war with Chat Noir, but after an attempt to silence his puns buy out-punning him had (spectacularly) failed, her competitive nature just hadn't let her gracefully back down. She had found the best book at the library to help her catch up on her punning abilities, and yet it still hadn't gotten her up to Chat Noir's level. She had had to return the book a little early the last time after Alya had tripped over it and only a well-timed (for once) akuma attack had distracted her from asking what the giant book sitting next to Marinette's lounger was. If Alya had found the book...

Marinette didn't even want to think about it. The responses could have ranged from "puzzled" all the way to "still has not gotten over the Adrien crush and is trying to use puns in a new and impossibly lamer yet form of flirting".

(While it was true that Marinette was not over Adrien in any way, shape, or form, she wouldn't ever stoop to punning to try to get his attention. Doing that would probably just make Adrien think that she was weird beyond belief.)

Tikki giggled when Marinette didn't elaborate. "I don't think Chat Noir thinks of it as a competition, you know. He's probably just thrilled that you're punning along with him. He's gonna think that you're flirting back."

Marinette couldn't help but roll her eyes at that. Chat Noir knew her too well to think that she was actually flirting. And she wasn't so sure that her partner hadn't caught on to the competitive spirit as well. She could spot the same glint in his eyes during their punning battles that often showed up in her eyes whenever she played a particularly difficult video game or knew exactly how to take down an akuma.

No, Chat Noir was just into their competition as she was, and she wasn't going to give up now. She would just have to put in yet another request for the pun book from the library. The librarians would no doubt tease her again when she came in to pick up the book (again), but it couldn't be helped. She didn't have enough spare money on hand to go around buying pun books just so she could avoid a little ribbing from the local librarian.

"And the librarian is gonna try to set you and the other pun book person up again," Tikki added when Marinette didn't respond. She flitted along behind Marinette as her Chosen sat down in front of her computer and jiggled the mouse to wake it back up. "You know that, right? Are you gonna go see who it is this time?"

Marinette really rolled her eyes at that one. "No, I'm not. It's gonna be some old dude who's getting a kick out of playing a game of pass-the-book with someone else. The librarians don't even know who this other person is." She passed Tikki a cookie out of the stash she kept behind the computer before turning her attention back to the screen. "Even if it isn't some old guy, literally all the librarians know about us is that we're both interested in puns. That's not a basis for a relationship. That literally isn't even a good basis for a friendship."

"I think it could be," Tikki said as Marinette pulled up the library home page and logged in so she could request the book again. "It would be an interesting start to a conversation, at least. Asking why they've wanted the book so many times in a row."

"But then I would have to explain too, and what would I say? I've gotten into a punning war with my superhero partner? I'm sure that would really go over well." Request entered, Marinette returned to the design assignment that she had been working on. Her piece just needed one more element to really make it pop, but what exactly that was, she couldn't quite figure out. She had been staring at it before patrol, and now she would probably end up staring at it again for another hour before giving up for the night and doing another assignment.

"You could just say a friend. Chat Noir is your friend, after all." Tikki broke off a chunk of cookie, stuck it into her mouth and then spoke around the slightly too-large piece. "Just make up a name if you must if they ask."

"And then when they want to meet that friend because they both love puns and I'm just doing it for the competition? That's just spinning a web of lies that I don't want to get involved in."

"It could be interesting," Tikki tempted, swallowing her cookie piece with a loud gulp. "And I'm sure you could come up with some excuse. You've gotten better at thinking up excuses since when you first became Ladybug."

Marinette could only snort. She didn't even want to think back to that time, when she had spouted some absolutely cringeworthy excuses in order to sneak off to transform (or to try to excuse those absences). Looking back, she had to wonder how half of those excuses even flew. She certainly wouldn't have accepted most of them if she had been the one on the receiving end.

And yes, maybe she had gotten better at thinking up excuses, but that was mostly a side effect of having more things to do and having different classes than most of her friends. After all, it was very easy to tell people that she had to go work on a project for a class when they weren't in that class and therefore didn't know that the project in question didn't actually exist. It was easy to tell one person that she was meeting up with other friends when the person she was talking to didn't know the other friends well and wouldn't know that the friends in question were busy doing other things. When she was expected to attend classes but it wasn't mandatory (and when there were plenty of snobs who thought that they were too good to learn anything from class), it was easy to fly under the radar when she missed a class because of an akuma attack or came in late. If she missed an meeting with her family or friends, she could claim that she had gotten swept up in working on a design and lost track of time.

Getting older, in this case, meant that she had more believable excuses at her disposal. Still, she knew full well that that wouldn't be the case forever. Once she got into the more intensive classes, or once she had to get an internship, excuses wouldn't fly.

"I'm still not going to meet them," Marinette said decisively, finally setting the design aside to start to sketch something else, hoping that maybe a new design would help her pinpoint what was wrong with the old one. She wasn't going to waste any more time thinking about her mysterious book pal. It wasn't worth the time, especially when she had classes to worry about and projects to finish.

Two months later, the book had gone back and forth several more times. Every time when she returned it, Marinette swore that it would be the last time. And maybe she would have been right, had Chat Noir not been seemly anticipating all of her jokes.

Her only consolation was that, thanks to the book, she was managing to anticipate quite a few of Chat Noir's jokes as well. She got to toss in his punch lines before he did, just like he did to her. So really, there was no way that she could stop checking the book out, not unless she wanted to flat-out lose.

"You could check out other joke books," Tikki suggested. The kwami had gotten sucked into the competition somewhat against her will, and now she was helping Marinette practice her joke delivery so that there wouldn't be any awkward pauses.

Or course, the practice didn't help if Chat Noir knew every single joke under the sun. She could have the smoothest delivery in the history of humankind and it still wouldn't matter if Chat Noir already knew the joke.

"Maybe Chat Noir had that book at some point," Tikki continued when Marinette didn't respond. "So he knows those jokes. If you look up other books, maybe you'll find new jokes. And then you don't have to keep playing pass-the-parcel with this joke book."

"Except if Chat Noir had this book at some point, that makes it even more important to keep working my way through that book," Marinette argued. "So that I know his jokes. And if he improved his pun game with this book, then I need to do the same thing."

Over in the Agreste Mansion, Adrien was having much the same complaints.

"She's getting almost all of my jokes before I get to the punchline," Adrien grumbled, faceplanting in his sheets. His phone chimed, and he glanced at it to see that it was an email from the library, letting him know that the book would be due in four days. He grumbled, since he definitely hadn't gotten to look through the book as much as usual. A busy modeling schedule paired with several projects for his classes (and, of course, akuma attacks) had meant that he could only peruse the book while he was being driven around Paris.

Of course, that meant that Nathalie saw him. While she definitely supported his hobbies most of the time, Nathalie, well...

She didn't really do jokes. Or puns. Or funny stuff in general. She thought that it was a waste of time. His one condolence was that she hadn't told his father (yet), who definitely thought it was a waste of time and would probably pile on more activities to try to put an end to it.

"When did being funny turn into a competition?" Plagg grumbled. "And you really can't complain too much, you've been doing the same thing to Ladybug. Also, this is completely ridiculous. You two can't hold a simple conversation without punning your way through it, unless there's an akuma right there threatening to take your Miraculous."

"Competition is fun," Adrien said, only sounding moderately more cheerful. "Especially when it's with Ladybug. She's adorable when she gets frustrated over something silly like that."

It was his favorite part of this whole competition, actually. The little face that Ladybug made when he finished one of her jokes for her was a hilarious little pout (it was honestly strange how many of his jokes that Ladybug knew, and vice versa), and then the triumphant little wriggle she gave when she cut off one of his jokes or crammed more puns into a sentence than he did. He wouldn't have gotten as sucked into their little competition if it weren't for Ladybug's reactions. If he could get away with it, he would take videos of Ladybug and make a compilation of her little reactions.

If he tried, Ladybug would probably toss him off a roof. Either that, or she would stop punning.

That would definitely be worse.

Marinette grumbled as she hurried along the sidewalk. She couldn't believe that she had forgotten about her assignment until so late, and now she had to go and waste more of her precious time tracking a couple of the books down at the library instead of having them requested and waiting on a shelf for her. To make matters worse, the library that had the two books she really, really needed wasn't her regular one. It wasn't crazy far away, thankfully, just a quick fifteen-minute bus ride over and then a short walk from the bus stop, but it was fifteen minutes (thirty, counting both ways) that she really couldn't afford to waste, not when Hawkmoth might attack any minute and take up even more of her time.

(She and Chat Noir really had to finish off their battle with their nemesis this summer, no matter what. Marinette wasn't completely sure that she could handle her final years of university and crimefighting at the same time.)

"Would it really have saved any time to have things requested?" Tikki asked from Marinette's purse. She peered up at her Chosen. "And think of it this way- you're getting out for some fresh air! That's a good thing, right?"

"I get plenty of fresh air fighting akumas, thank you very much," Marinette said tartly as she trotted up the steps to the rather imposing library. "And when I go out on walks with Alya, and when I go to the park to draw, or when I go to gardens for inspiration. It's only when stuff is due that I don't go out much."

"I guess that's true," Tikki admitted. She peeked up at the library. "Hey, we've been here before! Remember, when you were helping Adrien with that research project of his that he forgot about?"

Marinette had not, in fact, remembered that. At Tikki's reminder, though, she recalled the one time that Adrien had somehow forgotten an assignment, just like she just had. He had had too much on his plate to deal with and it had simply slipped through the cracks. She, Alya, and Nino had all showed up to help Adrien with the research and they had met up at his local library, aka the one Marinette had just arrived at. It was larger than the library that was closest to Marinette's house- like, a lot larger- and confusing as anything.

She should have asked Adrien for help navigating around his library. He probably would have been more than willing.

Sighing (there was no point in asking now; Adrien was no doubt busy with photoshoots or something), Marinette entered the library and headed up the stairs. The site online had told her that she would have to begin her search on the third floor.

And a search it was. Marinette scoured her way through row after row without success for a good twenty minutes, stress level rising higher and higher every time she checked the time. She couldn't help but think about how she could have been using that time to be writing her paper, to be reading, to be making progress. But no, instead she was stuck poking through the shelves of dusty books.

At twenty-five minutes, she recruited a librarian to help her. Three minutes later, she had both books she wanted in hand and was heading back down the stairs to check them out. They were thicker than she had expected, so it would probably take forever to find the passages that she wanted.

Ugh. Another time-suck. At least her time with the pun book had finished yesterday, and she wasn't just letting it gather dust while she rushed to get her projects done. She had gotten lucky this time around, and she would be getting the book back just after her final projects all got in. Of course, then she would be juggling a million engagements with friends and a handful of commissions that had piled up over the last part of the semester. It wouldn't be too difficult to manage- it never was- but her schedule never quite entirely freed up anymore.

Honestly, that was probably a good thing. If she had nothing to do except practice puns and jokes all day, she would go a little crazy.

Marinette's thoughts didn't stay stuck on jokes for long. As she finished descending the staircase, her mind was already whirring with what she needed to get done for her project. She had a few online sources that she wanted to pull in, and then she had to polish up her outline. It was a relief to discover that she had at least gotten a tiny amount of work done, a sort of framework that would make her last-minute rushing go a little more smoothly. She would really have been in deep trouble if she hadn't already decided on her research topic, back when the project was first assigned.

She was so deep in thought that she only just barely missed running over a very familiar blond heading for the checkout counter.

"Adrien!" Marinette exclaimed, delighted. What were the chances of her running into her friend here, now, in the middle of the day? Surely he had somewhere to be. "I didn't expect to see you!"

Adrien, who had turned around the moment he heard his name, beamed over at Marinette. "Mari! I thought you used a different library!"

"Normally, yeah. But I needed some books for a project that I, ah, forgot about, and it's too late to request them and have them actually arrive on time." She waved the two thick books at him and then immediately yelped and scrambled to catch them as the books nearly escaped her grip. Adrien grinned and quickly put his own book down so he could help her steady the books before they could slide to the floor.

"Do you need any help finding stuff in the books?" Adrien asked as they straightened back up, books safely back in Marinette's arms. "I still owe you for your help that time when I forgot an assignment."

"If you have time to spare, sure," Marinette said, somewhat surprised. From what she had heard from Nino, Adrien didn't normally have any time to spare. He was busy (or, rather, was kept busy) with university courses, modeling, and the assorted other lessons and practices that his father insisted on. "But if you're busy, I can totally take care of it on my own."

"You're in luck," Adrien promised as he picked his book up again and led the way to the checkout counter. "I have a rare afternoon off- or at least I currently do. Hopefully Nathalie doesn't find out and try to wedge in an extra piano lesson or something."

"Does she really do that? That's awful!" Marinette exclaimed. "How soon do you get to escape her scheduling?"

Adrien winced. "...yeah, it's a little insane. She'll drop things out of the schedule if I explain that I had wanted to get together with you guys or need to study, but she and my father both believe in no free time so that I'm not screwing around 'rotting my brain with video games'." He rolled his eyes. "But as soon as I graduate and find a job, I'm done with her scheduling my life. I can do occasional photoshoots and runways, but that's it."

"You aren't quitting modelling?" Marinette had always been under the impression that while Adrien didn't particularly mind modeling, it wasn't something that he was particularly fond of, both because of the time drain it had on his free time and because the fangirl attention that he got from being a model had only (infuriatingly) increased over the years, to the point where particularly gutsy fans would even interrupt their friend get-togethers.

He just shrugged. "I'm not completely sure. On one hand, I'm kind of tired of it. On the other..." Adrien winced again, looking a bit guilty. "I'm good at it, and it pays well. I won't be model material forever, so I might as well take advantage of the opportunity while I have it, right?"

"Right, of course," Marinette agreed absently. Heaven knew that she would probably jump on the chance to make a bit more money, even if she would be doing something that she wasn't super fond of. Her eyes drifted down to the book Adrien was handing over to librarian, curious to see what he was reading. When she recognized the cover, her eyes went wide and she nearly dropped her stack of books again. "Wait. You're the other person who keeps checking out the pun book? Really?"

Adrien glanced over at her and then back at the book he still had in his hands. "...yes? I've been checking this book out for a couple months-"

Marinette could pinpoint the exact moment when Adrien realized the implications of what she had said. He positively froze and his eyes went big before his head swung around so he could stare at her. "Wait. The other person- that's you? I never would have thought that it would be you- I didn't know that you were into puns!" He remembered himself long enough to finish handing book and library card over to the librarian at the counter, who was watching them intently, before swinging back around to look at her. "How did I not know that? How long have you been into puns?"

"I...not long, really," Marinette admitted. She couldn't believe it. Her pun-book buddy was one of her best friends and they hadn't even known. Unbelievable. "I just somehow got pulled into a pun war with one of my other friends- from university, you know-" Adrien hadn't met all of her uni friends, so hopefully he wouldn't ask too many questions about who it was- "and I'm not great at punning, so when I found that book it was great."

Adrien looked even more surprised at that, and they both missed the librarian at the counter gesturing excitedly and pointing them out to several other librarians who were in the middle of sorting a pile of books. "A pun war? Me too! With a, uh, model friend. They've really stepped up their game recently and it's a bit of a struggle to keep up sometimes. Want to hang out and practice our puns together sometime so we can defeat our respective friends?"

Marinette only just refrained from groaning. More time punning and telling jokes? It wasn't that she didn't enjoy it, at least to some extent- she wouldn't have let herself get pulled into the pun war with Chat Noir if she didn't- but still. More conversations made entirely of puns and jokes.

On the other hand, Adrien wanted to spend time with just her, not with Alya and Nino as well. They had hung out by themselves before, of course- they had planned video game hangouts before, and had done homework together when their friends were busy, but they definitely tended to hang out together more in a group.

"Yeah, definitely!" was what Marinette said- or, rather, what she would have said had the librarians, having finally picked up on the fact that their ? couple already knew each other and weren't dating, burst out in dismay-

"Wait. You mean that we've been trying to set you guys up for ages and you already knew each other?!"

A/N: Yeah, obviously practicing their jokes together isn't going to be an issue at all in the future :D

Like with most of my stories, this is a one-shot and therefore complete (Unless I get run over by a plot bunny. It happens sometimes).

Please leave reviews! They really make my day. :)