"Just a Friend?" Book 1 of "Secrets Unraveled" Trilogy (MLB FanFic) |COMPLETED|

Preview of "Faceless Future" (Book 2)

Marinette pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up, feeling it was about time for a well deserved break from her homework. She looked down at Adrien, who had been working on his homework beside her. Adrien could feel Marinette's eyes on him, willing him to take a break, too, but he wanted to finish up the last math problem first.

"Just a minute," Adrien said, spending the next few minutes furiously scribbling down the last of the numbers. "Done!" He then pushed his chair back, stood up, and raised his arms above his head trying to stretch out his complaining muscles. "Those were a lot of math problems," he said, scooping up the papers and placing them safely into his bag for tomorrow.

Marinette's phone dinged a notification. She picked it up from her desk and saw that Alya posted something on the Ladyblog, her site dedicated to all things Ladybug. "This is weird," she said to Adrien.

"What is weird?" he asked, looking down at her phone.

"Alya has posted something new, but we really haven't been doing much lately, since you-know-who isn't terrorizing the city anymore."

Adrien rolled his eyes at Marinette. "You do know that referring to my father as 'you-know-who' doesn't actually make me not think of Hawk Moth, or my father, or keep from bringing up unpleasant memories. It just makes him sound even more sinister and like we are too scared to even talk about him. We've certainly talked about him. . . a lot. Not that I have yet gotten to some okay place about him." Adrien rolled his neck and shoulders, trying to ease the muscles that tensed up at the mention of his father.

Marinette looked at him apologetically. "I'm sorry, Adrien, I just. . . I still just don't know what to do when it comes to this topic. I don't want you to be completely uncomfortable."

"It's fine," he assured her. "You're not doing anything wrong and I don't think there is any helpful book for us to read. They don't have a book called 'How to cope with finding out your parent is a supervillain', do they?" Adrien gave Marinette a lop-sided smile, which always made her heart give a little lurch.

"Okay, okay, point taken. I will refer to him from now on as 'your father.' How about that?"

Adrien smiled and nodded. "Perfect. So, what did Alya post anyway?" he asked, curious as to what would be on the blog.

Marinette brought the website up on her phone and read the post's title out loud. "What are LadyNoir up to these days? Readers want to know! Comment below if you want to hear more about our two favorite superheroes' new relationship!"

"What?!" cried Marinette at her phone. "LadyNoir? When did we become a smushed name couple? And why does everyone want to know what is up with us?"

Adrien started to laugh at her outrage. "I like the sound of LadyNoir! Very mysterious! And anyway, it could be worse. We could be CatBug!" She humphed at him, but made no comment so he continued. "The city is pretty quiet, since my father- you see how I easily referred to him- isn't up to things, well as far as we know, and people are able to focus their attention on other, less important stories. Like our relationship. We did kind of put it out there in public when I kissed you in front of a crowd. Sorry about that." The smug smile on Adrien's face made Marinette think that he wasn't really sorry at all!

"And, like it or not, we are celebrities and people are interested in us." He had had a lot of experience with celebrity since his modeling had made him a familiar face in Paris and also all of the publicity surrounding his Cat Noir persona. Despite the fact that Marinette had become a celebrity when she first became Ladybug, it was clear that she hadn't actually expected that her best friend would have turned her blog about Ladybug into a relationship gossip site. Not that Alya knew her best friend was Ladybug, of course!