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if i look back, i am lost
Peter Solarz
cherry valley forever
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
RMH
Game of Thrones Daily
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
pixel skylines
Cosimo Galluzzi
hello vonnie
Discoholic 🪩
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
styofa doing anything
#extradirty
Monterey Bay Aquarium
noise dept.
ojovivo
Love Begins
blake kathryn
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Japan
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Malaysia
@mlsquaredance
Posting period is here! Head out to our AO3 collection to browse the fics written for the event! You can find the fics these remixes were inspired by linked to each of the works as well. Don't forget to check back later, as our writers have until the 1st of December to post their pieces.
We hope you'll enjoy reading both the new and the old fics alike. Happy reading!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Additional Tags: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Identity Reveal, Identity Reveal, Trapped, Chat Noir Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Lady Noir, Adrinette | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng Summary:
Adrien and Marinette are trapped under a building when an akuma attacks. Adrien hopes Ladybug will fix everything without needing Chat Noir. Marinette hopes Chat Noir can get her out so she can fix everything.
This is a remix of Crushed by P_Artsypants! I had this like 90% done for over a month… and then I wrote a bit more than the last 10% I had planned. Seriously though read Crushed, I got to reread it so many times while I was writing this and it was amazing every time.
@mlsquaredance
a taste of cherry
by thelibraryloser
“Everything needs to be perfect for tomorrow, Chat! I can’t just show up to the Gabriel charity ball wearing the wrong lip balm! What will happen to our children, and the hamster…”
“I’m not following.” As far as he knew, there were no children invited to his father’s gala. And there certainly wouldn’t be any hamsters. “You… you have kids?”
She groaned. “I just found out that I’ll be sitting next to Adrien Agreste at the ball. You’ve met him, right?”
“He’s fine, I guess.”
His partner turned to him with an incredulous stare. “Fine? He’s only the most beautiful human being on the planet!”
“After you,” he corrected automatically. Then her words hit him over the head with the force of a giant cartoon hammer. “Wait, what?”
“What flavor of lip gloss do you think he will like best?” She waved the tubes in front of Chat’s gobsmacked face like smelling salts in front of a hysterical fainting maiden, though it did little to clear his mind.
“Do you… do you think you’re going to find yourself in a situation where…” Chat tugged at his collar, causing his bell to jingle merrily. “You think Adrien Agreste is going to be in a position to know how your lip gloss tastes?” He could feel his voice shooting up at the end, but Ladybug seemed too distressed to notice.
“He’ll be able to see it, won’t he? And maybe smell it! And suppose I happen to choose his favorite flavor. Then he might… or suppose I chose his least favorite flavor, and he has to sit there with a clothespin on his nose all night so he can’t smell it! Or what if he’s allergic to apples, and I choose apple and I kiss him and he dies!?”
“He’s not allergic to apples,” Chat replied faintly.
“I know he’s not allergic to apples. That’s just one example of what could go wrong if I don’t plan for every eventuality. What do you think of this one?” She uncapped a tube and thrust it in his face. “Pretend you’re Adrien Agreste and I’m wearing it. What would you think?”
read it on ao3
this fic is a remix of cherry lip balm by @rosekasa as a part of the @mlsquaredance
A Mari/Griffe remix of Partners in Clown by @miabrown007
And with that, my participation in the @mlsquaredance 2023 event comes to an end! This is my final remix! Thank you again @ladyofthenoodle for organizing and for encouraging this little brain worm. Thank you @wield-the-mighty-pen for beta reading!
And without further ado, enjoy some angsty teens flirting badly.
Read below or read on Ao3.
Adrien leaned towards his reflection and tilted his head to get a better look at his neck and jawline, the way a young man might search for a sign of his beard growing in. Instead, jagged lines like lightning spread out of his chest and climbed up his throat. He had grown used to the sharp black lines and had taken to wearing turtlenecks to hide them, but the claw-like cracks that spread out onto his cheek were new. He thought it all looked rather cool. He certainly wasn’t scared of what it might mean, not in the least.
But Adrien was a liar, especially to himself.
He poked curiously at the black wound centered over his heart. A sharp ache pulsed in time with his heartbeat. The pain, however, wasn’t the thing he was concerned about. Adrien reached for his bottle of concealer.
He finished hiding the marks on his jaw and cheeks then smeared foundation and matte powder over his marred face. He was putting the finishing touches on his heavy eye makeup when he heard his bedroom door open.
Of course his father didn’t knock. Gabriel never knocked.
“Adrien!”
Adrien immediately thrust his shoulder against the bathroom door. Had he been dressed, he might have kept Gabriel out just to be a nuisance, but he certainly didn’t want his father to see him like this.
“Adrien, open this door.”
Gabriel tried to yank the door open, but Adrien held it closed firmly from the inside. His father gave up, as he always did, with a heavy sigh.
“I only wanted to remind you to stay in your room tonight. It’s for your own safety.”
Gabriel had already texted him this—twice—but Adrien hadn’t replied to the texts, and he didn’t bother to reply now. He could lie easily and promise to stay inside. It wasn’t the lie Adrien had a problem with; it was the talking to his father that he took issue with.
Adrien hadn’t exchanged more than three words with Gabriel since his mother’s funeral. Not since Adrien had dared to stand at his mother’s coffin and say, “But couldn’t the Supreme—” and Gabriel had cut him off with, “Don’t speak.”
So Adrien had stopped. What was there to say, anyway? The only thing Gabriel ever wanted to hear was, “Yes, Father.”
Gabriel tried to pull the door open one more time, but Adrien kept it firmly closed.
“Just stay in here tonight, please,” Gabriel finally said with a sigh weighted with defeat.
Adrien listened to his father’s footsteps fall away and waited until he heard the familiar click of his bedroom door’s deadbolt, sealing him inside.
Adrien used a hand towel to cover his face as he pulled the turtleneck over his head, an old trick he’d learned on set—not that he was ever on set these days. Once upon a time, he and his mother had frequently visited the shooting locations for Gabriel’s designs. His mother had even modeled once or twice, and Adrien had been allowed to attend shoots with her. Even though he had never been allowed to model himself, he had enjoyed watching his mother work. Now, Adrien was lucky if he was allowed into his own dining room.
He double-checked his appearance to confirm that any sign of the cracks in his skin had been covered and that the edges of his eyeliner were as crisp as when he had applied it. He thought about fixing his hair, but that didn’t matter too much. No one was going to see it.
Adrien was going out, but not as Adrien.
Gabriel had a good reason to keep Adrien locked in his room tonight. There would be people visiting, people whom Adrien was not supposed to know. The fashion designer and recluse, Gabriel Agreste, was hosting a competition to find his next new designer and his next season’s iconic model. Designs and headshots had been submitted, and tonight, Gabriel was supposed to announce the winners.
There were always concerns that something celebratory might spark Hesperia’s interest, so the Supreme had asked Griffe Noire to crash the event in order to keep the chaos and tension high. And, if possible, chase any purple butterflies back into their holes.
That was fine with Adrien. He probably would have done it anyway.
When Griffe Noire arrived at the event—it was merely a leap out window with the loose catch and a short slink across the lighting rig strung up over the stage in the Agreste Manor garden—he found that there was already plenty of tension and chaos present. He could practically taste it in the air.
Modeling culture’s competitive nature didn’t exactly induce a pleasant, warm atmosphere. Still, there was plenty of room for him to cause trouble.
The miraculous themselves were supposed to be secret, so he kept his destructions small: crumbling the leg of a chair so that when someone sat down, it collapsed beneath them; brushing his Cataclysm against a portrait wall of the model contestants, leaving their faces half-eaten with rot; catching his claws against a blazer; plucking a hole in an elbow or waistline. His chest burned with each tiny Cataclysm, but he didn’t mind. If anything, it made him feel alive in a way few other things did.
As he approached the food table, wondering just how many gowns he could manage to stain with a single bowl of punch, the sight of a girl with a familiar pink streak in her bangs stopped him in his tracks. Though her dark hair was pulled up into a bun instead of tied back in her usual pigtails, her makeup was still just as heavy. For the event, her smudged eyeshadow flared with bright pink and blue. Her dress was black, but the tulle over her skirt was a vibrant pink, and roses of fuschia sequins spiraled over the black bodice. The square neckline fell on top of a dense black mesh that climbed her throat and covered her arms. Griffe Noir’s insides did a full somersault, and he practically skidded to a stop.
He didn’t know her name, didn’t know how to get her attention, but he knew he had to talk to her. He might not have another chance. Every other time he had seen her had merely been an opportunity to stare at her, him sealed away in his car and her encased in her bakery.
He plucked a cupcake from the stand and proffered it to her with a low purr. “A sweet treat for the purr-incess?”
Her shoulders drew up tight as she turned to look at him and, before she even quite saw him, she smacked the cupcake from his hand. Her blue eyes stared at him with a combination of fury and disdain, a look he was fairly familiar with on his partner. He didn’t like seeing it on this baker anymore than he enjoyed it on Toxinelle.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a tight voice.
It was the first time he had ever heard her speak. He wondered if she always sounded so nervous.
“Making trouble,” he grinned and reached for another cupcake. “Are these yours?” As he peeled off the paper and took a bite, the lavender frosting smeared across his nose.
“I don’t own the cupcake table, you stupid cat,” she grumbled and folded her arms over her chest.
“You didn’t make these?” He swallowed the last of the cupcake and reached for another.
“No. And I don’t even think you’re supposed to eat them.”
“No?”
“It’s a fashion event. No one actually eats at these things.”
Griffe Noire hummed thoughtfully. “Who told you that?”
“Do you see anyone else eating?”
She had a point. The plates and napkins sat untouched. No one gathered near the punch; only a few guests bothered with water. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that models would prefer to feast on the scent of food rather than its substance, but he didn’t know how anyone could ignore these sweets. He checked the cupcake wrapper and sure enough, her bakery’s logo was embedded into it.
He leaned against the table. It creaked under his weight, but didn’t collapse. He could Cataclysm a leg and make a bit more trouble for the event, but the girl next to him looked so intent on avoiding attention. He didn’t want to make it worse for her.
He took another bite of the cupcake and through a mouthful of cake and frosting said, “So you do modeling, too?”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Are you insane? I entered the design portion of the contest.” And then she bit down on her fuschia-stained lips and turned away, as if she hadn’t meant to confess that much.
“Did you design your dress?”
Though she didn’t answer, he could guess by the way her shoulders tightened up and curled in on herself like she was trying to hide her dress, that he had hit the mark.
“It looks nice,” he said, then immediately bit down on his tongue. He wasn’t supposed to be sincere. He’d had enough warnings from the Supreme about letting his Cataclysm out of control. The last thing he needed was to be scolded for being nice to people. “You know, for—pink,” he finished lamely.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You still have frosting on your nose,” she said.
He swiped at it with his thumb, but it only smeared over his cheek.
“You stupid cat,” she grumbled. She took a napkin and wet it with the condensation that clung to the base of the punch bowl.
His heart went perfectly still as she stepped closer to him. She smelled like sugar and fresh bread, just like that first whiff each time he opened the pastry bag. The bakery was the closest he ever came to the outside world as Adrien. How could he have done anything less than fall in love with her?
But he couldn’t risk her smudging through his layers of concealer. When he ducked out of her reach, she balled up the sopping napkin and threw it at his face.
“Oh, come on,” he complained as it fell short of its mark and struck his shoulder. With a grin, he swiped his finger through the frosting of a cupcake and smeared it over her cheek.
“Hey!” she protested and tried to push him away, but he grabbed her arm.
“But now we match,” he grinned. “Partners in chaos.”
“We are not partners,” she hissed with a rather venomous ferocity.
He gave her an insincere pout, hoping that the true hurt in his chest was masked appropriately. “So fur-ocious, princess. What did I do to deserve such bite?”
But before she could answer, a familiar shrill voice cut through their conversation.
“Is that Dupain-Cheng?”
The girl in front of him went so stiff, it was as if Chloé’s loud sneer had sliced its way up her spine with a force that made even Griffe Noire’s heart lurch.
And then she disappeared. She was in front of Griffe Noire one moment and gone the next, vanishing through his fingers like smoke. Chloé stalked up to him and looked around with a sneer on her face.
“Where did that girl go?”
Griffe Noire turned behind him, but he saw no sign of the baker and designer. “I think she took a dive into the punch bowl. Care for a swim, Queen Bee?”
Chloé didn’t like that. Her sneer turned to a snarl and she shoved him back into the table. It was bold of her to pick a fight with him, but he was glad she did. He was itching for a real fight. It was a shame Toxinelle wasn’t here to antagonize as well.
“Too soon?” He picked up a cupcake and peeled the paper wrapping back with his claws. “Don’t worry; I think only half the world thought Chloé Bourgeois’s dip in the Seine was funny. The other half probably doesn’t think about you enough to care.”
She drew her hand back to slap him, but he was ready. He ducked beneath her hand and shoved the cupcake into her face. He hissed, “Cataclysm,” and his power crackled in his other hand. He crouched to swipe low—obliterating one heel was the funniest, most irritating thing he could think to do to Chloé—but something tugged on his tail and he froze.
Chloé didn’t seem to notice. She stepped away from him, face burning with fury but eyes trained warily on his Cataclysm. She was familiar enough with his brand of power. He’d never used it on her actual body, but he’d used it on enough of her accessories that she’d learned to fear it.
She tried to wipe the cupcake from her face, but only managed to smear her makeup and the frosting further. “You stupid cat,” she shrieked, voice on the edge of tears. “I’m going to tell Daddy, and he’s going to tell the Supreme, and—”
“And what? You think the Supreme will just give you back your miraculous? After you let Hesperia get one of his moths into it?”
Chloé shoved him backwards again, no longer concerned by the black power crackling in his hand. This time, when he hit the table, he felt certain he heard a muffled yelp from beneath it.
Chloé didn’t seem to hear it, though. She stalked off and, to Griffe Noire’s satisfaction, snapped a heel as she crossed the lawn. Her scream of frustration echoed across the manor grounds.
He dismissed his Cataclysm and the burning in his chest dimmed. There was another tug on his belt and this time, he followed its source to beneath the table, where he found the baker, crouched with an arm around her knees, glowering at him.
“She’ll be worse now because of that,” she grumbled.
“So I take it you know Chloé Bourgeois,” he said.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Then why didn’t you let me Cataclysm her? She deserves it.”
She let go of his tail and looked away. Something shimmered in her blue eyes, but even with his night vision, it was hard to make sense of.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” she whispered.
“That’s kind of the point, isn't it?”
“I mean, doesn’t it hurt you?”
For Adrien, the answer was unchanged. But instead, he lied. “No.”
She frowned at him and suddenly, he felt seen in a way he never had been before. Even his father’s ever-perceptive assistant didn’t pause to examine Adrien’s lies. Something tugged in his chest, like a line had been pulled taut between him and the baker girl. Suddenly, he didn’t remember how to breathe.
“You’re a terrible partner in chaos,” he finally said in an effort to undo whatever had just been done, “leaving me to face Chloé alone. We could have done a real number on her together.”
It worked, though it hurt his heart in a fully different way to see her curl back in on herself. She was no longer looking at him, no longer looking through him. He felt like he’d just stepped out of a warm bath and into cold air.
“I can’t stand up to Chloé,” she murmured into the tulle bunched over her knees.
“You stand up to me,” he said.
“You’re an idiot.”
“I am the smartest, funniest person in this entire house at the moment, I’ll have you know. I’m the best at absolutely everything.” He paused to consider her, then added, “Though I suppose I may not be the best fashion designer here.”
“Gabriel Agreste literally lives here.”
“Gabriel Agreste sucks like a supernova gone dark. I wasn’t talking about him.”
She frowned again, and it occurred to him that he didn’t like it when she frowned. It hurt somewhere near where his Cataclysm burned in his chest, but like a dull, persistent ache rather than a sharp, throbbing pulse.
“Why are you being nice to me?” she said. “You don’t even know me.”
Though she was technically right, he didn’t know her in any real sense, he certainly felt like he did. He felt like he knew the draw of her shoulders and the pout of her lip. He felt like he knew the way she tied a scarf around her throat to bury herself, the same way he was constantly burying himself, like maybe if he died enough times, his father might miss him, too.
“I’m not nice,” he snapped. “I smeared frosting on your face.”
“You still have frosting on your face too, doux minou.” She reached out and swiped her finger against his nose.
He grabbed her wrist as she touched him, heart pounding from the contact between them, from the strangely delicate affection in the nickname he had never heard before.
Her eyes were wide, too, like she hadn’t heard it until after she had said it. That line between them pulled taut once more and his breath hung suspended in his chest. Griffe Noire was so terrified of what it might become that he knew his only choice was to unravel it now.
He pulled her hand down to his lips and licked the frosting off of her finger.
She went very still but didn’t try to pull away. He wondered if that was because she could feel the press of his ring against her wrist and knew how easy it would be for him to summon his Cataclysm against her, or if it was because she genuinely did not mind.
He leaned in closer, and still she did not move. She had stood her ground against him all night, had stopped him from using his Cataclysm against Chloé, and had dared to ask if using his Cataclysm was dangerous to him. He didn’t see why she wouldn’t back away now if this wasn’t what she wanted.
He got close enough that her knees dug into his chest. His lips hovered over hers. He tasted fresh mint on her breath, cool and inviting. Could taste the sugar on his, too?
But instead of closing the space between them with a kiss, he tipped his head and licked the frosting off of her cheek. He murmured into her ear, “Still think I’m a sweet kitty?”
She both pushed him away and scrambled backwards in a single flurry of motion. Beneath her makeup, he could see a blush rising in her cheeks and her chest rising and falling in a new rhythm.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Why did I do what?”
Her shock turned into a glare and this time, he was prepared for the ache in his chest. He braced himself against it the way he braced against his Cataclysm. He relished it the way he relished his Cataclysm.
But instead of folding in on herself the way she had all night, she crawled closer to him. She leaned in, just as he had done to her. His lungs filled with her cool breath once again and a shiver curled down his spine and coiled itself in his stomach.
Her hand reached for his chin and pain lanced through the growing wound buried beneath his makeup. She brushed her fingers along the smeared crystals of sugar along his cheek, wiping them away, then drew her hand back to her own lips, licking the sweet off of her own fingers.
His heart stuttered in his chest as he realized that she was teasing him, that the glare in her cool blue eyes was revenge as much as it was anger.
Her fingers slid carefully through the spikes around the bell at his throat, like a gardner used to working with thorns. She yanked him towards her until their lips were separated only by a breath. “I never liked sweets much anyway,” she murmured, and pulled him into a kiss.
It was too short for Griffe Noire’s tastes. She pressed her lips to his and the moment he leaned into it, the moment he pushed his tongue against her, she dragged her mouth up his cheek and to his ear. He wanted to chase her, to follow her taste, but she held him firmly in place.
“You don’t have a monopoly on chaos, minou,” she whispered, then let him go.
He blinked, and once again, she disappeared. He tried to go after her, but all the dexterity and wit that normally pulsed through him seemed slow and sluggish. He struggled to crawl out from under the table and back onto his feet, and by the time he finally did, she was gone.
He ran his hand through his hair and tried his best to keep his breathing even. He slipped through the crowd, past models and designers and socialites, past displays and vendors, but she was nowhere to be found. Desperation grew in his chest and seemed to eat away everything else.
He wanted her. He wanted her more than he wanted anything else.
He glanced down at the ring on his finger and knew, whether it would upset the Supreme or not, he wasn’t going to use his power for the rest of the evening. For the first time in a long time he wanted something other than his own destruction. For the first time in a long time, it felt like living was chaotic enough.
Hello hello! I had the pleasure of remixing things we never said by @jennagrinsoverml for the @mlsquaredance event!! The original is such delicious PRPR and if you haven't already, you should all check it out immediately!!
You can read the remix on Ao3 or under the cut. It's Ladynoir flavoured oh-shit-we-lost-our-single-shared-brain-cell-what-do-we-do-now?!
...
All About You
Summary:
Chat Noir was enjoying a perfectly pleasant rooftop picnic/movie night/oh-so-platonic date with Ladybug—until she decided to question his feelings out of nowhere. (What does she mean, when he used to be in love with her?!) It turns out they have some things to talk about.
...
“Remember when you used to think you were in love with me?”
The question barely registers at first—and it’s not because the movie projecting from Ladybug’s yo-yo onto a nearby chimney is that good. In fact, Chat Noir doesn’t even know the protagonist’s name.
All of his attention is taken up by Ladybug. By the way she sits in his lap and giggles at the film.
(Well, she was giggling. Now he realizes she’s been silent for a suspiciously long time, and he’s a little worried it’s because she noticed him sniffing her hair.
In retrospect, he’s probably had enough wine.)
He carefully sets aside the plastic cup they’ve been sharing—they’ve learned the hard way that thin-stemmed wine glasses and rooftops don’t mix—and forces his mind to properly compile the beautiful sounds that spilled from her mouth.
Somehow they make even less sense once he’s managed to decipher them.
“When I used to what?”
She scoffs. “So you’re going to pretend you didn’t used to profess your love for me three times a week?”
An icy feeling trickles through him—one he can’t quite name, but definitely doesn’t want to contemplate. He wants her to go back to watching the movie. Maybe he’ll even pay attention this time.
But when he glances back at the chimney, the credits are already flickering.
“I never said that,” he mumbles uselessly.
Ladybug gives an indignant Hmph! and starts struggling to escape from his lap. He helps her stand—hands easily steadying her thighs when she wobbles.
(She always forgets that the wine goes right to her head.
But he always remembers. He’s always there to catch her.)
After years of loving Ladybug loudly, Chat has learned the hard way—a few too many times—that he’d only lose her if he kept on like that. He’s learned to love her quietly—to be the one she depends on, to accept whatever she gives.
It’s worth it, so long as he gets to keep her in his life.
But pretend is a rather cruel word to explain the way he’s forced to constantly to shove his feelings aside every time they’re together. The way he has to ignore how his heart speeds up every time their eyes lock or their hands brush or he just remembers she exists.
“You’re not being fair,” he says. “Just because the way I feel is…inconvenient to you doesn’t make it any less real.”
Her back is turned as she kneels down to clean up their snacks—rather forcefully slapping the lid back on the spinach dip she brought—but he can hear her breath hitch. “I know that! Don’t you think I know that?!”
“Well, then—” He breaks off, wondering why he’s yelling. “Good,” he finishes lamely. “I guess we’re on the same page.”
“I guess we are,” she huffs, which only confuses him more.
(Never mind pages. He’s not even sure they’re in the same book.)
Chat climbs to his feet, dragging the blanket they’d been sitting on with him. He whips the quilt angrily in the wind, like maybe while he’s shaking off the crumbs he can also shake off how much this hurts.
It doesn’t help. If anything, the lump in his throat only grows larger as he watches Ladybug shove containers haphazardly into the picnic basket that had been so carefully arranged when she’d shown up. The fabric inside is dotted with pink hearts—which are now getting slammed around nearly as much as his heart—and it’s that tiny detail that reminds him of everything he has to lose.
(It took years to get to know Ladybug half as well as he wants to. No matter how in sync they are in battle or how well they complete each other’s jokes, Chat’s always been all too aware of the things she can’t—no, that she won’t—tell him. Surely in a city of two million, he won’t figure out who she is by learning what she studies in school.
But the hearts that line her picnic basket? Those are a memory of something she has shared with him—after laughing herself silly over his story of a recent wardrobe malfunction.
“You don’t know how to sew on a button?” she’d asked after finally catching her breath. He’d shaken his head, and she’d gone back to laughing some more.
The next time they met for patrol, she taught him how to thread a needle. He learned to stitch buttons onto scraps of fabric, poking his needle through tiny pink hearts.)
Chat takes a deep breath. No matter what she thinks, Ladybug means the world to him—and he’s fairly sure she always will. So he ignores the suffocating anger that bubbles in his chest, and he fights back the tears as he carefully aligns two corners of the blanket.
Two more folds and he’s calm enough to speak. “Ladybug…”
She ignores him, squeezing a bag of chips so hard that the bottom pops open. Its contents spill onto the roof, ready to be crushed like Chat’s spirits.
“Ladybug,” he tries again. “Please. At least tell me what I did wrong.”
That makes her feeze, fingers grazing the edge of the plastic cup he’d set aside before. It tumbles over, wine spilling across the rooftop. Her hand curls angrily around a stack of napkins. “Nothing,” she snaps. “You haven’t done a thing.”
“Well, then—”
“At all! Even after months of all this.” She waves an arm around wildly—at the disaster of wine-soaked chips and the overflowing picnic basket. “I don’t know how more obvious I could have been, and nothing.”
“And you’re…mad at me for that?”
Ladybug responds with a growl—or maybe a screech—of frustration. “No. No, I’m not mad.”
Chat knows better than to point out that her tone belies her words.
He still has no idea what she’s talking about, though he’s starting to get the sense that maybe it has something to do with how frequently they’ve been hanging out these past few months—usually at her suggestion. Perhaps she’s frustrated he hasn’t taken more initiative in helping to organize their hangouts? He’d assumed she enjoyed taking the lead—she always seemed excited to hear his opinion on all of her ideas—but it must be lots of work.
“Do you want me to bring the food next time?” he asks, kneeling down behind her. He contemplates setting a hand on her shoulder, but decides on clutching the blanket to his chest instead. “Is that it?”
Ladybug whirls around, her eyes narrowed in a way that makes him shrink back. But when they lock eyes, her entire face wilts. “You really don’t know, do you?” Her lower lip trembles. “You just don’t think of me that way at all anymore, so…it never occurred to you, what I was trying to do.”
“I guess…not? But I’d really like to understand.” He sends a hesitant smile her way. It doesn’t seem to land.
She sits back on her heels, staring at her fingers as she tugs on them. “God, I’m so stupid.”
Chat feels a twinge in his chest. “Hey, no. Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true!”
“No.” He barely notices when the blanket slips from his arms; he’s already moving to sit beside her. “Never.”
She shakes her head adamantly, hiding her face in her hands. When Chat sneaks an arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer, she resists at first. But he gives another gentle tug and she all but melts into his side. He rubs her back slowly as she lets out a sob.
Her cries tug on his heartstrings, but some part of him can only feel relief—that she doesn’t hate him, and that she’s back in his arms. He leans his cheek atop her head, relishing the way her arms tighten around his waist.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she sniffles eventually.
He bites his tongue before a reflexive “it’s okay” can slip out. Instead, he keeps on rubbing her back, stomach swooping when she relaxes further against him.
“I wasn’t even mad at you, I was just—I’m so mad at myself. Because it took me too long to realize what I wanted. How I felt. So, of course you’d moved on by then. And—”
Moved on?!
“—it’s really not your fault! You never did anything to lead me on or anything.”
Chat is starting to feel a little led on. There’s no way her words mean what he wants them to.
“I mean, you don’t even call me your lady anymore!”
He…doesn’t? He knows he cut back at some point—he’s never wanted her to feel uncomfortable—but he never intended to stop.
“I’ve been so completely delusional.”
“Ladybu—I mean, my lady, I think there may have been a misunder—”
“And now you’re going to hate me, and I’ll never get you to fall back in love with me, and Shadow Moth will win, and I’ll die alone, and…”
She keeps rambling on, but Chat’s lost the ability to follow. Maybe because his heart skipped a few beats too many.
He notices when she stops talking though—mostly because she pulls away and fixes him with her wide, worried, beautiful eyes.
“Chaton? Please say something.”
His mouth flops open and closed a few times—not unlike a fish—until he finally remembers how to make sounds. “I…can’t fall back in love with you.”
“O-oh.” She turns away, wiping her eyes. “I understand.”
“Hold on. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that—”
“No, no, no. It’s fine, really.”
She tries to stand, and Chat’s heart plummets. How can he have screwed things up again?
But this time, it seems like the universe is on his side.
(She always forgets that the wine goes right to her head.
He’s always there to catch her.)
This time, instead of steadying her, he pulls her back into his lap. Her head falls back against his shoulder with a dejected squeak.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers.
Heart racing, he trails his hands down her arms. “I’m not.” A giddy smile sneaks onto his face. “You want me to be in love with you.”
She groans. “Look, you don’t have to make fun of me.”
A short laugh slips from his lips. He can’t help it. “That’s the last thing I’d want to do right now.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Seriously! My lady, I…” He takes a deep breath, resisting the urge to run his fingers through her hair. But he can’t think of a good reason as to why he should hold back, so he catches the ribbon on her ponytail and carefully picks at the knot. “The only reason I can’t fall back in love with you is that I never stopped loving you to begin with.”
She whips around to stare at him, hair falling loose around her shoulders. “B-but you changed! You stopped flirting when we started having date—I mean, completely platonic hangouts."
“Well, I didn’t want you to think our friendship wasn’t enough for me. Just spending more time with you meant so much, and…I was afraid I’d mess that up. In the past, I was always too much for you, so…”
Chat’s not sure which of them moves first, but suddenly their fingers lace together.
“You were never too much,” she says. “I just… I wasn’t ready.”
“And now…you are?”
“Now…” She hums softly and leans closer; her breath lands hot on his chin.
It would be so easy—just a slight tilt of his head—to have everything he’s ever wanted. She’s already closing her eyes, ready to answer his question with her lips instead of her words. Except…
“Wasn’t there some other guy?”
Chat wants to pinch himself as soon as the words slip out. Why would he bring that up now? Why tempt fate when he might finally have a chance?
But if this is finally happening, he needs to know it’s real.
Ladybug leans away. “I did. And maybe, in some ways, I still do. I mean, he’s still my friend and all, so—wait! No, this isn’t how I practiced this at all. This has nothing to do with Ad—him. It’s about you.” She pokes him in the chest, a shy smile creeping across her cheeks as her eyes drifted up to meet his. “It’s all about you.”
The breathy way those words tumble out do something to his insides. He’s tempted to ask her to repeat them, but he still has enough functioning brain cells to bite his tongue. Barely.
“What’s all about me?” he asks instead—which really isn’t much better.
Her head dips down, and he thinks he’s ruined the moment until her hand starts sliding slowly up his chest. “Everything. All the time.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know! One day…I just realized you’re the first person I think about when I wake up. And you’re the person I wish I could have beside me when I fall asleep. And—”
He cuts her off with a kiss. It’s on her temple, the only spot he can reach from this angle, but it’s enough to render her speechless. Her head snaps up. Their eyes meet. And Chat has only a split second to appreciate the freckles dotting her cheeks before he’s wondering how her lip gloss can taste like chocolate. And then he’s not wondering anything at all.
There’s no room for questions when she’s the answer to everything.
“Wow,” she whispers when they finally pull apart. Then she claps a hand over her mouth like she’s horrified she said that out loud.
Chat feels giddy. He feels stupid.
Later, he’ll blame the lack of oxygen for his next words.
“Hey,” he whispers. “Remember when you used to think I wasn’t in love with you?”
Ladybug smacks him on the shoulder. Then she kisses him again.
...
Thanks for reading!! 💜
The Weather Outside Is Frightful (But You Are So Delightful)
Uh oh! A snowstorm has Ladybug and Adrien snowed in at the hotel. And there's only one bed! 4,900 words, rated G
Ladybug stood behind a line of picked over snack tables, not realizing she was so lost in admiration of Adrien that she’d been slowly lowering her hand, until the napkin she was holding was nearly submerged in a punch bowl. With a yelp, she pulled it out, flecks of red staining the white tablecloth (Why couldn’t it have been a red tablecloth? That was a Christmas color!) and threw the ruined napkin under the table, before looking around and hoping she wouldn’t find anyone watching her.
Everyone seemed like they were having a good time, not paying her any attention. The party was almost over, and they’d all gotten used to her presence, thank goodness. It had been difficult playing the perfect superhero up close like this, under everyone’s scrutiny. Fortunately, there’d been enough splendor and good company to draw their attention.
Mayor Bourgeois’ annual Christmas party at Le Grand Paris was always a sight to behold. The food tables had been piled high with treats from the city’s best restaurants and bakeries. Every surface had been covered with glittering decorations. The guests were all classy and well dressed.
Especially one of them, Adrien. His hair shone in the soft twinkling lights of the Christmas tree next to him. His smile was warm and genuine. And when he laughed, Ladybug heard the music of it carry across the room, just for her.
She savored what she knew were the last moments. In a few minutes, the mayor would come in and thank everyone for coming, and announce that limos were arriving and rooms were ready for the guests spending the night.
Just on cue, a set of polished double doors swung inward. The crowd turned as one, smiles floating and wine glasses sloshing. Mayor Bourgeois tiptoed in, his pale blue tuxedo making his ashen expression all the more grim, and Ladybug’s heart clenched. Years of fights had made her hypersensitive to signs of impending doom.
“Thank you all for coming,” he called over the crowd. “It has been a joyous evening, filled with cheer!”
There were a few scattered claps as he dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. Several more people murmured in concern.
“A few cars have arrived, however–” He wiped his upper lip. “The storm has arrived sooner than expected. Not to worry! Not to worry!” he said before anyone could panic. No one did. Even Ladybug was relaxing. Just some snow.
“We have plenty of rooms available for those who will be unexpectedly spending the night. Please check in at the front desk if you have any questions.” His dire pronouncement over, the mayor retreated back through the doors, leaving them open for guests to follow through. The howling of the wind, which she hadn’t given any thought to before, shrieked to draw attention to itself. Or tried to. Ladybug still wasn’t paying it any attention. How could she when Adrien was looking so cute? He was adorable when he was concerned.
Partygoers started to trickle through the open door, and as the crowd thinned, she decided it was time to make a move: she would watch him as he waited for his driver.
In the hallway, guests shuffled through the front door out into the storm. Adrien waited patiently, not tapping his toes or drumming his fingers. He was perfectly poised and immaculately dressed.
Ladybug stood by the wall behind him, waiting for the perfect combination of catching Adrien alone and her own rising courage to converge together. But when the time came, the mayor beat her to him. She stalled between them and the safety of the sidelines, close enough to hear their conversation.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Agreste. I’ve just heard from your father, and your car is stuck.”
“Is the driver all right?”
Ladybug smiled. It was just like Adrien to think of others’ safety before his own convenience.
“Of course, my boy. Merely delayed.”
“Until?”
The mayor cleared his throat. “Until tomorrow. But don’t worry, don’t worry,” he added quickly. “There’s plenty of room for everyone. Come to the front desk and they will fix you up.” And away he scurried to find the next guest.
Which was her.
“Ladybug, thank you so much for coming! It’s a shame my Chloe wasn’t here. You know how much she loves her favorite hero!”
“Yes, I do!” she said with a smile that was even faker than it was wide.
“I insist you stay here for the night! I can’t have our city’s favorite hero subjected to the horrible elements.”
“Thank you, but Chat-”
The wind’s howl rattled the front door, and the mayor wrapped an arm around her shoulders and shuffled her to the front desk. Adrien trailed behind.
Ladybug watched him out of the corner of her eye. He seemed reluctant to get too close, but they were the last two people in line, and she was thankful for the social norms that dictated he come a little closer. By the time Ladybug’s turn came, he was standing only a few feet away.
The receptionist was decorated as elaborately as the hall had been. The Christmas tree perched on her head had lights that twinkled. The bells on her ugly sweater jingled as she typed at the computer. “You are lucky, Ladybug,” she said. “You can have our last room!”
“Oh.” Ladybug stepped to the side, directing the woman’s attention to Adrien behind her. “Please, I don’t need it. Adrien can have the room. I’ve faced worse storms than this fighting akumas.”
The weather begged to differ. Snow pelted the windows so hard she swore she could hear them rattle.
“I can sleep in the lobby,” said a soft voice behind her.
She and the mayor turned to gape at Adrien.
“I mean,” he started. Ladybug flushed as he stared directly at her. “You deserve the room, after everything you’ve done. Paris needs you safe. I can sleep on a couch down here. I don’t mind.” And he smiled as he said it all.
Ladybug wanted her mouth to move and for words to come out, but she didn’t bother trying. The sentences were soup in her brain. Speaking wouldn’t help anything. Fortunately, the mayor came to her rescue.
“We can’t have guests sleeping in the lobby. Check the computer again. There must be something available. An unused adjoining room? A last-minute cancellation?”
The receptionist looked back at him impassively. “I checked three times. Everything is booked.”
“Really,” Adrien offered. “I–”
“No,” Ladybug squeaked. “I can’t– I can go. Now. The room can have Adrien! I mean, Adrien can have Adrien. And the room. They can have each other! Because I’m sure they’re both perfect.”
Ladybug burst through the front doors with a face hot enough to melt all the snow that hit it.
---
Within minutes, the storm had covered her in a thin slush, and the wind kept trying to blow her back toward the hotel. She threw her yoyo anyway, up and over the street, and back into the brick wall of the building. A few more throws gave her the same results, until she faceplanted and slid down the smooth surface of glass.
A flurry of movement fluttered on the other side. Sliding glass doors, she realized. With the curtains pulled back to watch the snow.
Before she could peel herself away from the glass, the door opened, and Adrien was extending his hand. If only the storm had swallowed her up. She wasn’t sure if she could live with the shame of having to be rescued from a snowstorm. But she let herself be led inside, unable to refuse Adrien’s shy smile.
---
“I can still sleep on the couch downstairs,” he said.
Ladybug was toweling her hair dry. Her hands slowed but only for a minute as she considered what the offer meant. How much she must matter to him.
“You can’t,” she said, her face still hidden by the towel. Which was by design. Her face was warming up again, and it wasn’t because of the suite's electric fireplace.
“I’m sure the mayor-”
“Would say no. And I don’t want to make a fuss. Thank you for offering, but once the wind dies down, I’ll be on my way.”
Even with the curtains drawn, she knew the storm was still raging outside.
“You can’t,” he repeated. “It’s not safe.”
Ladybug peeked out at him from under the towel. Adrien’s eyes were wide at his own outburst. “I’ll be missed at home.” It wasn’t true. She was having a sleepover at Alya’s, but her friend would miss her. It was close enough.
“Why don’t you call to let them know? You can use the bathroom.”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll do that.”
Adrien was the perfect gentleman, as always, leading her to the bathroom and pushing the door open for her. The bathroom was as large as her entire bedroom, with tiled and chrome everything. When she detransformed, warmth rose through her socks. The floor was even heated. Through the door, she could hear Adrien on the phone, talking to the woman on the desk probably, asking where he could stay for the night.
Alya was going to fix that problem for them. She picked up before the first ring ended.
“Girl, what is taking you so long? Did you get stuck out in the storm?”
“Hi to you, too. And yes, kind of. Stuck in the hotel. Adrien’s insisting I stay the night in his room because there’s nowhere else free. I’m going to tell him that my mom definitely needs me at home, though.”
Silence.
Marinette glanced at the door, then whispered. “Alya?”
“I’m locking you out. You’re no longer invited over tonight.”
“Funny.”
“A chance to have a sleepover with Adrien? You’re taking it.”
“I can’t stay here!”
“You don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You wouldn’t really lock me out.”
The line clicked. Marinette pulled the phone away from her face. Call ended. Alya wouldn’t really lock the doors. If she went over there and knocked on the window… but what if she had told her parents that Marinette was stuck at home, and then how would she explain her appearance the next morning? She huffed in annoyance.
Tikki, who had been admiring all the sweet-smelling soaps, looked over. “Are you staying the night?”
“I shouldn’t, but…”
“It will be fun. Don’t worry.”
Marinette threw her face in her hands. If Tikki, Alya, Adrien, and the weather were all conspiring against her, what could she do? But she couldn’t just… stay. He would have nowhere to sleep. And she’d only talked to him a few minutes but had slipped and tripped over her words like they were covered in banana peels. Or something. Ugh. She ground the heels of her hands against her forehead. Even her thoughts made no sense when he was this close.
A soft knock, followed by Adrien quietly calling her name, didn’t prepare her for him tripping and crashing into the door. It whipped open and crashed into the wall with a crack. Marinette, still not transformed, held in a shriek. Adrien tumbled forward, covering his eyes instead of catching himself. He landed on the floor in a heap.
“I didn’t see anything!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” With his eyes firmly closed, he pushed himself to his knees and rubbed at his elbows.
Marinette’s grabbed under his arms. “Let me help you.”
“I can do it. Please, you don’t need to-”
It wasn’t as easy as it would’ve been if she were suited up, but Marinette got Adrien to his feet and guided him toward the door.
“I am so sorry,” he moaned.
“It’s fine,” she said. He hadn’t seen anything. It was fine. But her heart still raced.
“I am already messing everything up. They won’t let me sleep downstairs, and now I almost- I promise I won’t mess up like that again. I am so-”
“Adrien.”
He looked absolutely agonized. She thought she had been the only one who was nervous, but was it possible that he was too?
“Have you ever had a sleepover before?” she asked. She knew he hadn’t.
He shook his head.
“I’ll be right back. I have an idea.”
The door closed with a quiet click. She could push aside her fears to make Adrien feel better. Especially if it was just for one night. Plus, she thought as she transformed, the forced proximity might help her get used to him. And then she could prove to herself that they would be a good couple someday.
---
“So, what’s the plan?” Adrien asked. The bed covers were tightly pulled in and the pillows were fluffed to perfection. He sat on the corner of the mattress, stick straight, like he was too uncomfortable on it to make himself at home.
“The plan is to have fun. That’s how sleepovers work.”
“Oh.” He looked around the room, expecting something fun to materialize now that she’d said the word. “What do we do?”
“Haven’t you ever had fun before?”
He spluttered a response. “Of course, but there’s nothing here!”
“Truth or dare!”
Someone out in the hallway laughed while Adrien’s face went white. “Isn’t that game a little dangerous?”
“It’s not that bad,” she said, sitting down on the couch, which was too hard to be comfortable. “I’ll go first. Truth.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, giving himself more time to think of a suitable question. “What do you think of Chat Noir?”
“Come on. That’s an easy one. He’s great. He’s my trusted partner. I would–”
“No, I mean…” A shy, almost sly look crossed his face. “What do you feel about him?”
Ladybug felt her face heat up.
“I’m so sorry,” Adrien said. “I overstepped.”
She was not going to fan her face, even though she wanted to. “No, you get the idea of the game. Good job.”
“I’m bad at sleepovers. Strike two.”
There wasn’t any way to salvage the game. Maybe it would just be easier to suggest something else entirely. “Hide and seek?”
---
Adrien stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed and listening for her. When they’d realized there weren’t any good hiding places in the suite, they’d decided on a slightly altered version of the game. Ladybug was standing out in the open, perfectly, and not making a sound. Adrien had stopped moving around the room, hoping to bump into her, and was trying to be more strategic. It wasn’t working.
Ladybug liked this version of the game. It still required effort to find each other. Plus, it gave her a reason to look at him, and she could spend her time admiring him without fear of being caught.
Giving up on listening for her, Adrien started moving again, only to immediately bump into the bed.
“Sorry,” he said, trying to smooth out the covers and only making them more wrinkled.
Ladybug tried to cover a giggle. Adrien pointed right at her.
“Yup, you found me. My turn!”
Adrien blinked as he focused on her, posing in the middle of the room. “Were you there the whole time?”
“The whole time! Definitely didn’t move around when you got close.”
“Cheater.”
This is a good idea, Ladybug thought to herself as she closed her eyes. Her anxiety levels had been easier to manage since telling herself she was helping him, but not looking at him would probably help even more.
She listened, waiting to hear his feet against the carpet or a soft breath. After a few seconds, she took a tentative step forward. Her knee knocked against the side table. There was no echo of laughter to give him away.
Which was good. It meant he wasn’t laughing at her. Right? But what if he was rolling his eyes? She wouldn’t have any way of knowing. What if he thought she was clumsy? Who would want to hang out with a clumsy superhero?
She took a few steps backward, turned, and started in a new direction, only to immediately hit the bed. When did that get there?
Still no sound from Adrien. If she was lucky, he would think that she was doing it on purpose to make him give himself away. And she was luck personified, so it should be fine.
A few more minutes of blindly stumbling through the room yielded no Adrien. Had she been taking too long? It felt like she’d been searching for ten minutes already, and there’d been no trace of him. What if he’d… left?
Would he leave her here? To foolishly flail around the room until she admitted defeat?
Suddenly, his adamant desire to sleep in the lobby made sense. He wasn’t being a gentleman. He just wanted to get away from her.
A crash right behind her made her jump backward and fall into him, knocking them both to the ground.
Ladybug scrambled up, but Adrien stayed on the ground, hands over his face, the lamp he’d knocked off the table in three pieces next to him. “Third strike,” he said. One hand left his face to pull out his phone.
“Hey,” she said, wrapping her hand around his before he could dial. Adrien stilled.
They were making each other anxious. What would Chat Noir do in a situation like this? Well, they wouldn’t have been in a situation like this to begin with, that was for certain. He would set everyone at ease with a bad joke and a carefree laugh.
“Adrien.” She waited until he was looking at her. “They won’t let you sleep in the lobby.” Still holding his hand over his phone, she pulled him up. “Guess you’ll have to sleep in the hall.” Then pointed to the sliding glass door. “Or maybe out on the balcony.”
It was an effort to keep her face straight, even as his eyes went wide and he pulled away, slipping his hand out from under hers. His gaze darted down to his phone, and once he was distracted, she lunged for a pillow, smacking it into his face.
Adrien was already unsteady on his feet, and the pillow sent him two steps backward. The force of the hit sent his hair flying up every which way, and Ladybug had to laugh. “It looks like you’re wearing cat ears.”
His hands jerked up to fix it, but Ladybug stopped him with a hasty “Don’t move!” and a flick of the wrist to bring out her yoyo. Before he’d lowered his hands, she’d taken a picture and was showing it to him. He couldn’t help but laugh too. She hit him with the pillow again, pushing him back until he sat on the couch.
Chat Noir would also give her a pep talk, telling her how great she was and how much he believed in her. So she crouched down, placing a hand on his knee and looking up into his face. “You are not messing up the sleepover. And you don’t need to do anything except be yourself and be here, and you are great at doing both of those things.”
There were five decorative pillows on the couch, each with a beaded picture of a Christmas item. Adrien grabbed the star one and held it to his stomach, looking down. Maybe he’d needed to hear this more than she’d realized. She craned her neck until she was in his line of sight again.
“I don’t mind if you mess up. I mess up all the time! Didn’t you hear me stumbling over my words all night? I think this is the longest I’ve ever talked to you without getting tongue tied. I’m a total disaster! Ask Chat. He’ll tell you.” She sat back a little, letting him have his space while he took in her words. “So I won’t hold it against you if–”
The pillow lashed out, hitting her square in the face and knocking her backward onto the ground.
And the pillow fight was on.
---
“Oops. I dropped the lipstick,” Ladybug said.
Adrien didn’t flinch and didn’t open his eyes, just raised a shoulder slowly. Always the perfect model. Even if she was the only one who would see her makeup job. “Did it get on the blankets?” he asked.
She flicked it aside to check. “Yes.”
“It’s fine. I’ll pay the staff to dry clean it.”
“Or you can tell them I did it and they probably won’t charge you.”
“I will gladly take this hit for you.”
“Your father’s wallet is taking the hit.” She picked up the lipstick and twisted the cap back on, then grabbed an eyebrow pencil. “Do blankets need to be dry cleaned? How much would that even cost?”
“I don’t know how much anything costs,” he said.
He sneezed, knocking Ladybug’s hand so she gave him a unibrow. Oh well. It matched everything else she was doing to him.
It was the feathers’ fault. They were really to blame for everything that had gone wrong tonight, not her or Adrien. Messed up makeup. A pillow fight ended early. Flecks of white still dotting the carpet. One of the pillows had started leaking after a few minutes of abuse. They’d picked up as much as they could, shoving the evidence back into the ripped corner.
“I think I’m done,” she announced, grabbing his chin, “and I think it’s better than what you did to my poor face.”
Adrien quirked a lip that was generously coated in lipstick. (Which had been generously donated by Chloe, after Adrien had told Ladybug where his childhood friend kept the extras stashed and convinced her that Chloe wouldn’t ever miss them.)
“I told you I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “So really, it was your own fault.”
“All those years of modeling and makeup. I would have expected you to be an expert.”
“An expert at sitting still and doing nothing.”
“You were a marvelous subject,” she said, “and I have created a work of art.” She tugged on his arm until he stood and let himself be dragged into the bathroom, where he could admire himself in the large mirrors.
A pale white face, heavily blushed cheeks, and the cherry on top was a bright red nose. She only wished Chloe owned a rainbow wig she could have borrowed, too.
“You have tried to make me ugly,” he said, “but you have failed.”
“I did,” she admitted. “And you’re right. You are a beautiful clown.”
“My highest aspiration in life. How did you know?”
---
Adrien rudely interrupted her five-star impression of a chicken by grabbing her face and wiping the blush off one cheek.
“If you didn’t want to hear it,” she complained, “you should have picked something else.”
Even though the only bit of makeup still on his face was the gigantic red lips, that couldn’t detract from his beautiful smile. “Truth,” he said.
Ladybug tapped her chin. “If you were a superhero…”
Adrien went very still.
“What superpower would you want to have?”
He leaned back on the pillows propped against the headboard. “I thought you were supposed to ask super embarrassing, invasive things in this game.”
Ladybug sat cross-legged in front of him on top of the wrinkled, lipstick-stained covers. “I mean, if you don’t appreciate the mercy I’m show you, then–”
“Would it be terrible to say I wish I could make it snow forever?”
If the heat filling her chest could cancel out the storm, it would have been over within seconds. “Probably, but I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
They’d only inhabited the room for a few hours, they didn’t have any of their belongings, and already it looked like they’d moved in. Pictures were askew, the leftover dishes from their shared dinner were scattered across the couch and floor, extra pillows dotted the carpet (because how could they have gotten to the bathroom when the floor was lava without those pillow life rafts?), the fire in the electric fireplace bathed them with light and warmth, and snow drifted against the glass door, muffling the sounds of the storm. It was feeling cozy inside their little oasis, despite the cold a few feet away.
“Truth,” Ladybug said.
“Based on your earlier response, I’m going to go ahead and say you and Chat Noir are a steady couple.”
She rolled her eyes. How different her reaction had been the last time he’d brought this up. Had it really only been a few hours ago? “I’m not starting any rumors here.”
“I promise I won’t go to the tabloids with the details of your deep, committed relationship.”
“Don’t they usually come to you?”
“Are you going to let me ask my question?” he said. “Or are you, noble defender of truth, trying to evade?”
She waved at him to continue.
He cleared his throat and leaned forward. “In the unfortunate event that you and Chat Noir break up–”
Ladybug snorted.
“Would you ever consider going out with me?”
That wasn’t the direction she’d been expecting his question to take, and she felt her giddiness rise along with the blood that was flooding her face. Playing it cool was probably the best response. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yes, maybe.”
“Yes? I heard a yes.”
The night was going so well. They were getting so comfortable with each other, all hints of anxiety gone. And he was asking questions like this. Maybe, when they were older and all the miraculous were safely in her possession, they really would live happily ever after. The possibility felt closer than it ever had before.
His yawn interrupted her musing.
“Oh, we didn’t figure out the sleeping situation. I didn’t realize how late it was,” she said, looking over at the clock.
“I’m sleeping on our couch, obviously.”
“You really want that experience.”
“I don’t want to miss out. It sounds glamorous. But I can’t go to sleep yet. We haven’t watched a single movie! And I’ve been building my list all night.” He yawned again and stretched.
“You going to last that long?”
“Of course.”
He flung the covers back. The inside sheets were still pristine and white, almost too nice to get comfortable in. Almost. Ladybug didn’t hesitate when Adrien instructed her to sit back and relax while he started the first movie and hit the lights. The pigtails were uncomfortable while lying down, and she carefully picked them out. She left the blankets where they were, pooled on the foot of the bed, at first poking her toes underneath them, then sliding down farther, until her ankles and knees were covered, hoping he would get the hint and pull them over her, and lie down next to her, of course.
He didn’t.
Of course.
Adrien came back, kneeling with his back to her on the heap of blankets. The movie titles flashed across the screen, adding another layer of flickering light to the fire’s glow. When he found the one he wanted, he leaned back on the pillow next to hers, leaving a respectable amount of space, because Adrien was always the perfect paramount gentleman.
But after how far they’d come in such a short amount of time, Ladybug was comfortable enough - confident enough - to scoot closer to him and rest her head against his shoulder. He tensed, then relaxed, Ladybug’s head sinking lower as his shoulders returned to their natural slope.
Neither of them moved for a few minutes, pretending to watch the movie in silence. Ladybug had her eyes closed, listening to the sound of the wind, which didn’t quite drown out the sound of Adrien’s breathing, and trying to memorize exactly what it felt like to be near him like this, the press of his shirt against her face, the warmth of his body.
Adrien, finally, pulled up the blankets.
---
Ladybug blinked in the darkness, confused.
Nothing was moving. She thought there had been some movement, but there was nothing in the room. The fire had died down to a low glow. The movie was paused. The wind whistled, high and shrill outside. She rolled onto her side, and then jumped backward when she nearly rolled over Adrien. And he’d been so sure he would stay awake for his whole list.
Carefully, so she wouldn’t risk waking him up or making him shift away from her, she weaved an arm under the covers and across his stomach.
Her last thought before drifting off again was how peaceful he looked, how cute he was, even if he did sleep with his mouth open.
---
When Ladybug woke up again, Adrien was already awake, as firmly wrapped around her as she was around him.
“Merry Christmas, Ladybug,” he said, smiling at the ceiling.
The sheets and blankets twisted around them, tethering them together. Pillows were pooled on the floor. Feathers spilled onto the ground. Splotches of makeup peppered the carpet around where the compact had fallen.
She felt his eyes on her, watching her take in the state of the room, before he let go of her and scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment. “We kind of made a mess,” he said.
She grabbed his arm, bringing it back down to its home around her waist. “It’s a beautiful mess.”
He laughed. “I would have disagreed with you yesterday, but you’re right.” He rested his cheek against her hair and sighed happily. “And we can clean it up together.”
---
Author's note: This story is a remix of @thelibraryloser's fic "Since We've No Place to Go (Let it Snow)." Thank you for your wonderful fic! And thank you to @mlsquaredance for hosting this fun event.
Only one more week left of the @mlsquaredance event! I had an absolute blast working on this project and getting to play in the space of some wonderful ML fic. If you haven't had a chance, please read the originals!
Originals & tags linked here:
Partners in Clown by MiaBrown (@miabrown007)
how fair you were in summertime by MissNoodles (@ladyofthenoodle)
Full Exposure by MissNoodles (@ladyofthenoodle)
Close Your Eyes by jennagrins (@jennagrinsoverml)
A Bad Dream by walkingonthestars (@hamsternamedmarinette)
A Fair Trade by sariahsue (@sariahsue)
but princess, wishes do come true by MiaBrown (@miabrown007)
Midnight Snack by Papillon10 (@valiantlyjollynightmare)
When You Let A Ladybug Cure Your Bellyache by wyomingparmesan (@wyomingparmesan)
Another shout out to @sunshinemarauder, @ladyofthenoodle, @wield-the-mighty-pen, @rosekasa, and @ccboomer for all of your help beta reading these 9 remixes! My writing is nothing without an editor, and it was great to get to work with friends from the HP AU in a new context and to make new friends through writing and editing! Thank you all for your hard work, and a double-triple thank you to ladyofthenoodle and the rest of the Miraculous Square Dance team for putting on this event. It has been so much fun! I haven't gotten to write this consistently since I had the HP AU. I was back into doing 3-5k a week again, and it felt so good. Thank you!!
Link to all of my remixes (except for Partners in Chaos, which will drop next Friday!) Link to all event remixes!
This fic is owed to @valiantlyjollynightmare for the original and @ladyofthenoodle for a full 3 rounds of beta reading. I haven't had so much redrafting of a fic or intensive beta reader work since I was writing the HP AU. She was truly a phenomenal help, and her work paid off. Please drop her a thank you for organizing the @mlsquaredance event and all her incredible hard work on this one-shot.
Read the original work here.
Read the remix on Ao3 or below.
Marinette left her phone on her bedside table as she trudged downstairs. She was done checking messages and pictures, and she was done with tears.
Luka had made his choice. He was on tour again, probably having a great time without her, and there was no sense scrolling through his posts for any signs that he missed her. She certainly didn’t miss him. She’d spent too much of their relationship missing him. Just because she was a bit horny didn’t mean she had to be sad about it.
But the apartment sure was quiet without him.
The refrigerator’s magnetic rubber seal broke that silence with a reluctant pop, and brilliant white light flooded the kitchen. Marinette squinted at her recently filled shelves.
Alya, Nino, and Adrien had been lifesavers after the breakup. Nino had filled her fridge with fresh vegetables; Alya had stocked her cabinets with bottles of wine. Adrien, whose finances were still a legal mess in the wake of his father’s passing, gave her his time.
She’d seen more of Adrien in the past two weeks since the breakup than she had seen of him in the past year while she had been dating Luka. He’d sat with her through her BBC Pride and Prejudice marathon, through three watches of Pride and Prejudice (2005), and through one watch of Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies. He’d even offered to stay overnight, to keep her company, as if he knew that company was the way she coped, but she’d turned him down.
One of the challenges of being newly single was waking up at midnight with a very strong urge to be dicked down. She appreciated that Adrien was willing to hold her while she cried through romantic movies; she did not need Adrien to see her wrestling with the urge to roll her hips against his thigh, especially when she couldn’t even be sure that it was Adrien that she wanted. Adrien was a friend, and she wasn’t going to use him just to get some temporary fix. Yes, maybe she had liked Adrien once upon a time, but it was all too complicated now. Just creating a friendship with Adrien had been so much work. She didn’t want to mess it up and lose him.
Neither the vegetables nor the wine held any appeal, so she closed the fridge with a sigh. Marinette leaned against the cool silver door while her eyes readjusted to the dark of her kitchen. Maybe a cold shower was what she needed. She usually had no objections to a steamier shower, but she didn’t want to end up crying her way through an orgasm. She was done crying over Luka, she told herself. She was done feeling sorry for herself.
She opened up a cabinet and pulled down a bottle of olive oil and a jar of popcorn kernels. She’d just make herself a greasy, salty snack before setting into Emma (2020).
The stove clicked and sparked until the gas caught and the fire ignited with a woosh. Marinette poured in the olive oil and waited impatiently for it to sizzle with heat. As she picked up the jar of popcorn kernels, a thud on the small balcony patio of the apartment caught her attention, more muffled than the sparks of her stove, but just as sharp and sudden.
Through her gauzy curtains, silhouetted in the dim streetlight, she saw the shape of a person perched on her balcony. She might have been terrified, or at least startled, if it weren’t for the cat ears on the shadow’s head.
Marinette dumped the kernels into the sizzling oil then unlatched the patio doors.
“What are you doing here?” she said by way of greeting.
Ladybug saw Chat Noir for patrol regularly, of course. But Marinette had hardly seen him in the past year. When Luka had gone on his first tour, Chat Noir had held her while she’d cried, but once Luka had come home, he’d disappeared. Did he know Luka was gone again? Did he know that she and Luka were properly done?
“Making the midnight rounds,” he said easily. His voice was low, like a cat’s purr. “A hero’s work is never done.”
Marinette shifted the weight on her feet, unconsciously pressing her thighs against each other. It was irritating that even just the sound of Chat Noir’s voice was enough to warm her core. Maybe Emma would have to wait until Chat Noir was gone and she’d rubbed out the memory of his purr.
Chat Noir paused and his nose twitched. “Are you cooking in the middle of the night?”
“Just popcorn.”
“Midnight movie?” he asked.
Marinette crossed her arms over her chest and used her ankle to surreptitiously scratch an innocent itch on her calf. She tried not to think about Chat Noir on her couch with the low light of a movie and the weight of a blanket draped over them both. She tried not to think about scratching a different itch.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I just wanted a snack.”
Beneath his mask, his green eyes glinted with a familiar mischief. One eyebrow quirked. “All for yourself?”
She wondered if he was simply asking if she was alone or if he was implying that he wanted to join her. She couldn’t help the icy edge in her reply as she said, “I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, if that’s what you’re asking.”
His perky ears seemed to flatten. It was his turn to shift his stance uncomfortably. He leaned against her patio table, but it wobbled uncertainly and he straightened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you want company?”
There was something delicate in the question. Something in it nagged at her brain, and she recalled the text that Adrien had sent her that morning.
Do you want company today?
Of course she had said yes. She needed noise, she needed distraction, she needed to not be alone with her thoughts. And then she’d sent him home after dinner, because Adrien didn’t deserve to see her like this—sleepless, lonely, and horny.
But Chat Noir wasn’t Adrien.
She pursed her lips and quirked an eyebrow. “I’m certainly in the mood for company.”
His ears perked up again, as if they were perfectly attuned to the purr in her voice. He stepped closer. “And just what sort of snack are you in the mood for?”
“Something simple,” she said as the first kernel of popcorn popped.
The corner of his mouth twitched with a smile, but she thought—maybe she was just projecting her own heartache, but she thought—something in his eyes grew sad.
“I can keep things simple,” he whispered.
She pulled him into a kiss. It was sloppy and wet and she ran her hands through his hair to pull him against her as if she could consume all of him.
It wasn’t her first kiss with Chat Noir by any measure, not as Ladybug, certainly, nor even as Marinette. There’d been kisses done to break curses, kisses done under the weight of curses, kisses done and rejected—and one very wary, delicate kiss on Marinette’s balcony. Chat Noir had told her that he was in love with Ladybug, but, somehow, in the midst of his heartache and her longing, they had kissed. She’d apologized, promised him that it didn’t mean anything, that she was in love with Luka anyway. And a week later, she and Luka had started dating, and Chat Noir had stopped coming by Marinette’s balcony—at least until Luka’s first tour.
He seemed to have an uncanny sense for when she was lonely.
She rolled her hips against his thigh and moaned into his mouth as the popcorn on the stove began to rattle in earnest. His hand trailed down to her waist, but he hesitated as he reached her hip. That wouldn’t do.
Marinette grabbed his wrist and, without breaking their kiss, yanked him into her apartment. She backed into the kitchen counter and guided his padded leather gloves to the elastic waistband of her pajamas.
He took her invitation readily, slipping his fingers inside the soft satin of her underwear and into her damp folds. She hissed like the fire on her stove and moaned with a heat just as warm as his fingers pressed into her clit. She rolled her hips again, but he dropped his other hand back to her waist and held her in place. She whined as he set the pace of her pleasure and whined again as he broke their kiss.
He pressed his lips to her cheek and then to her ear. His hand continued to pump her as he whispered, “You’re letting your popcorn burn.”
She hadn’t noticed that the sound of popping kernels had ceased. She hadn’t caught the whiff of charred popcorn yet. And now that he pointed it out, she didn’t care.
“If you stop, I will kill you,” she hissed into his ear.
His laugh was deep in his throat, another purr of pleasure as he picked up his pace. She gasped and tipped her head back. He responded by pressing his lips against her throat. The sharp canines scraped her neck and she shivered. She was so familiar with those teeth, familiar with the way they scratched her tongue and now her exposed skin. It was those teeth that assured her that she had never met Chat Noir outside of their masks. She would know the shape of those fangs on sight.
If his claws had not chosen that moment to catch on her clit, sharp and poignant, it might have occurred to her that the canines were as conjured as his expressive ears.
Her entire body trembled and she bit down on her lip to hold in her moan, not because she was afraid to be loud but because she was afraid that her pleasure would break her if she indulged it too heavily.
Chat Noir, however, didn’t seem to notice her attempt at restraint. He flicked the tip of his thumb against her clit again and she choked on another moan. One of her hands tightened in his hair, and her other squeezed his waist like she was afraid he would evaporate. He sucked gently on her neck and curled his fingers up into her.
“Chat,” she whined and gasped as her fluids soaked his hand, as her orgasm rippled through her until she was boneless, pinned between him and the kitchen counter, and still he didn’t stop. “Chat,” she cried again, breath hitching as his thumb drew her up suddenly into another tight coil and release. “Chat, please—”
He dragged his lips back up to her ear, and his teeth nipped at her lobe. “I thought you’d kill me if I stopped,” he murmured.
“I think I’ll die if you don’t,” she gasped.
She felt the shape of his grin against her jaw. He pulled his hand out from her shorts and pulled her back into another soft, delicate kiss, just as wary and gentle as the kiss they had exchanged a year ago. Her first epiphany of the evening sparked without warning and she pulled away from him with a start.
He didn’t love Ladybug. He never had.
“You lied to me.”
“I would never lie to you,” he murmured, and moved his kiss down her chin, back to her neck. He nosed against the underside of her jaw like a cat insisting on affection.
“You told me that you were in love with Ladybug.”
His lips went still against her throat. “You said you wanted this to be simple.”
“I want you to be honest.”
He still hesitated. The sizzle of the oil hissed in the kitchen, but its delicate scent was overwhelmed with burned popcorn. If they weren’t careful, the smoke detector would force their kiss apart, but Marinette wasn’t going to let him go without an answer.
Finally, he admitted, “I was in love with Ladybug. Until we kissed.”
She swallowed, painfully aware of the way her throat bobbed against his lips. “And so this past year?”
“I’ve waited.”
“Chat…”
“You’re about to burn your kitchen down,” he murmured, and pulled away.
Reluctantly, Marinette turned off her stove and scraped the black scraps of charcoal that had once been popcorn into the garbage. Chat Noir scrubbed his gloved hands clean.
Hot tears, fueled by frustration as much as embarrassment burned behind Marinette’s eyes as she scraped the blackened mess into the pan. She’d sent Adrien away because she didn’t want to risk her friendship with him, didn’t want to need him in a way he didn’t need her. Now here she was, doing to Chat Noir exactly what she had never wanted to do with Adrien. As much as she might want to give back, as much as she might want to meet him where he was, she couldn’t, and that knowledge hurt.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. She was glad that her voice was hardly audible over the running water; maybe he wouldn’t hear the bitter anger. It wasn’t meant for him, anyway. It was directed at herself.
She tried to nudge him aside so she could clean the pan, but he wouldn’t budge. Instead, he took the pan from her and picked up a towel. She was forced to watch as he scoured the blackened pan. He looked so intent on the task, she wondered if he had heard her question at all.
Then he turned off the water and said, “You told me that it didn’t matter.”
Her hand was on the pan, ready to take it from him and dry it off, but she froze. Though a protest sat on the tip of her tongue, she couldn’t give it voice. She was the one who had said that their kiss a year ago hadn’t mattered.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said, unsure what else she could say.
He shrugged, as if indicating carelessness, but as she took the pan, he anxiously twisted the ring on his finger. Though the green, glowing paw print was dim, it seemed brilliant in the dark kitchen.
“I’m no stranger to rejection.”
Her heart lurched as it occurred to her that his familiarity with rejection was her fault on two counts. But she never knew what she was supposed to do with Chat Noir’s feelings. Somehow she always managed to misunderstand him when he did nothing but lay things bare for her.
“I guess I should make more popcorn,” she murmured.
As she set the pan back on the stove, Chat Noir grabbed her wrist. “Marinette—”
She looked at him—truly looked—at the flat shape of his ears and the slump in his shoulders, haloed by the streetlight flooding through her open balcony. Despite the darkness, his green eyes glinted like his ring and his jaw worked as he worked through his thoughts. He was always so quick with his wit in a fight, but in the quiet spaces like this, when he was with Marinette, when he was asked to be vulnerable, he was always so cautious and careful.
“It’s okay with me,” he finally said, “if this is all it is. I just want to be with you, and I don’t mind if—”
“Chat, I can’t—that’s not fair to you.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I do.”
The irony that she cared too much to do this to him, that she cared but not in the way that he wanted, was not lost on her.
He let her go and turned toward the balcony.
“Chat…” She didn’t mean to call him back, but she didn’t know how she was supposed to let him go like this. “I am sorry,” she finally said.
His hand lingered against her kitchen counter, and his claws clicked delicately against the tile. “Would you trust me if I said that it hurts less to be with you, even if I can’t have all of you, compared with the agony of being apart from you?”
If she was just Marinette, maybe she would have accepted his offer. Maybe she could have trusted him when he said that he would let it be simple, that he’d allow her to use him as she needed without ache or bitterness. But she was also Ladybug, and she knew the way her partner threw himself on swords for others. She could not fight beside him each day while also destroying him each night.
But Marinette couldn’t tell him that.
As he took her silence for denial, his hands flexed and contracted with his unspoken frustration. He managed a rather tight, “Good night, Marinette,” before disappearing into the night.
She swallowed as he left, waited a moment in her dark kitchen as the silence filtered back in, as the quiet settled into her bones and the ache settled back into her heart.
Maybe she did know what he meant about the agony of being apart.
In search of noise and company, she went back upstairs to her phone. Her thumb hovered over Luka’s icon for only a moment before she swiped away. Instead, she snapped a picture of her laptop screen with the streaming page for Emma open and sent it to Adrien. Then she left her phone on her bed and went to take a cold shower.
Adrien would get the picture in the morning. He’d offer to watch it with her again during the day, and she’d accept his offer of company and distraction. Maybe they would watch Clueless after, or even branch out their romantic film subgenres beyond Austen films and try 10 Things I Hate About You.
But when she got out of the shower, there was already a text from Adrien.
I’ll bring snacks.
She was still reading the text, still trying to make sense of it, as she stood in her room wrapped in naught but a towel and her hair still dripping wet, when a gentle knock sounded from downstairs.
A key jiggled in the lock—she forgot that he had kept the key she’d given him to water her plants when she’d gone with Luka on his second tour—and her door creaked open.
Adrien’s voice broke into her dark, quiet apartment. “Marinette? I brought cheesecake.”
She shrieked, “Adrien, I’m not dressed!” and slammed her bedroom door closed.
His laugh was a snort, muffled and distant. Hastily, she toweled and combed her hair and yanked on a fresh, dry pair of underwear and shorts. She didn’t know where her bra was and she didn’t have the time to look, so she simply threw on a t-shirt.
When she came downstairs, Adrien was standing in her kitchen with two forks in hand. She knew she must look a mess, but he beamed at her, despite her own scowl.
“I thought the picture was an invitation,” he said, head tipped to one side.
“I didn’t think you were awake! I thought—I didn’t know—”
He cut her fumbling protests off with another laugh. Adrien settled onto the edge of her couch and opened up a pale pink cake box to reveal a cake with red raspberry swirled into the cream. She wondered where he had gotten a raspberry cheesecake at this hour.
“I’ll go if you want me to,” he offered, “and leave the cake.”
“No—stay.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth before Adrien was already pulling off his coat and collapsing into her couch. Beneath his neat black peacoat, he was dressed in his own pajamas, like he had seen her text and merely rolled out of bed and into a jacket.
While Adrien plated two generous slices of cheesecake, Marinette dug through the couch cushions for the remote. She found it wedged between Adrien and the back of the couch, yanked it out, and clicked on the T.V. The pale blue light flooded over the two of them, and when she turned to get cheesecake from Adrien, she found him staring at her with an unfamiliar expression.
He was smiling, eyebrows lifted in his usual fashion, like something between expectation and excitement, but she thought—and maybe she was just projecting her own heartache, but she thought—there was something sad in his green eyes.
Then those strangely sad eyes dropped to her collar and his hand drifted to her neck. His fingers brushed against her skin and lightning lanced through her lungs. A dozen protests bubbled to the surface, all the arguments she had just used with Chat Noir—she only wanted something simple; she wasn’t ready for anything truly intimate after this breakup; things were always complicated with Adrien—but they all died on her tongue, as her words so often did when it came to Adrien.
But instead of pulling her against him like she thought he might, he asked, “What happened here?”
In her haste to dress, she hadn’t bothered to check herself in the mirror, but her heart pounded with the memory of Chat Noir’s lips latched to her neck. Was it only a bruise of blood drawn to the surface, or were there also scratch marks from his canines? Her face was hot with blush, but she hoped in the dim light of the T.V., he wouldn’t be able to tell.
“It—” Her throat lurched against Adrien’s fingers as she tried to swallow down a lie, but she wasn’t sure how to tell him the truth. “I don’t—I mean, it’s only—”
And then Adrien’s fingers curled around the back of her neck and his thumb brushed the underside of her chin so gently, so carefully. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Her heart stuttered with a familiar agony. She had promised herself that she was not going to cry about Luka tonight, that she was done with tears, but they welled up anyway.
She and Luka had tried so hard; they really had. But he always wanted more of her than she had to give. He wanted everything, and Marinette could never give her partner everything—she had too many secrets that she had to keep. She had too many bits of herself that even she was still processing, that were still too raw and rough to share.
She’d tried giving Luka everything that she could. She’d even left Scarabella in charge while she went on tour with Luka once, but nothing had ever made it better. She’d wanted time—they’d needed time—and there had never been enough.
But here was Adrien, offering her the two things Luka never could: her secrets and his time.
The tears she had been fighting all evening finally burst out, and Adrien pulled her against his chest, as he had so many times before. She didn’t want to know how many tears she had soaked into his T-shirts in the last few weeks, how many wrinkles she had worn into his clothes by clutching at them with tight fists, how much of her snot he’d had to wash out of his laundry.
With Herculean strength, Marinette rubbed her eyes dry and pulled away. She fumbled for a tissue, but the box on her coffee table was just inches out of reach. Adrien pressed a handkerchief into her hand, like he had come prepared. It wasn’t fair to him to take so much, but it was so easy when he gave so readily.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Marinette wiped her cheeks and blew her nose. “What on earth are you apologizing for?”
Without her to hold onto, his hands found each other. His thumb rubbed into his palm like he might be able to push his explanation out. Even in the dim light from the T.V. and the street, she could see his jaw working through his words, like he was turning the pages of a dictionary in his head to make sure he picked the right ones.
“I…” He paused again and swallowed. “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he finally said, which felt like so small of an apology when weighed against the length of the pause.
“It’s not your fault,” she assured him. “I just…” She didn’t need to explain how lonely she was to Adrien. He’d heard it all before, and of course he must know it, or he wouldn’t have shown up to her apartment in the middle of the night with cheesecake in tow. “I just really appreciate that you’re always there for me,” she finally said, and even though it felt small, it was earnest.
“I would rather be with you than not.”
Her heart fully stopped, and she searched for something in Adrien’s eyes, some clue that the connection between his plea and Chat Noir’s question was more than coincidence, but he was no longer looking at her. His eyes were on his hands as he twisted his ring around his finger. The dull silver still glinted in the dim light from outside.
She felt like she was looking at her Lucky Charm at the moment it fell into her hands, knowing the answer was right in front of her but unable to put all the pieces together. She followed her lucky instinct, though, and placed one hand over Adrien’s hands, forcing them still. The other lifted to the back of his neck and pulled him closer into a kiss.
It was soft, delicate, gentle. It made sense for Adrien in a way Chat Noir’s kisses had never quite made sense for him.
Adrien, who was so willing to give her his time, and Chat Noir, who was always there when the people Marinette wanted weren’t.
Adrien pulled away rather suddenly, like something had yanked him away from her. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I shouldn’t—you don’t want—this isn’t fair—”
It was unusual to watch Adrien flounder for words. Marinette, though, didn’t have it in her to be amused, not with the weight of this secret dawning. She waited a moment for Bunnyx to appear or time to reset, but Adrien continued to struggle his way through an apology, and the T.V. continued to hum its bright blue static glare.
There was no undoing what had been done, and she couldn’t exactly avoid it.
“I think,” she murmured, “that unfair is showing up on my balcony after I told you that I was ready to be alone.”
The panic in Adrien’s eyes was brief as he realized he’d been found out, but he crumpled into himself almost immediately. His hands raked through his hair and Marinette’s first thought was that she could be running her hands through his hair, but her second thought was how utterly broken he looked.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t want it to—I didn’t mean for it to turn out like it did. I just—I was worried about you. You know what it’s like at my house and—I know you think I don’t want to see you sad or something, but Marinette, being with you like this is a hundred times better than being without you.” He kept his eyes on his hands as he twisted his ring around his finger. “Please don’t tell anyone,” he whispered.
Marinette frowned. “I wouldn’t.”
“I mean it—I-I can’t let Ladybug know I’ve broken her trust.”
Marinette bit down on her lip. She wasn’t sure how to say the thing she knew she had to say next. Her throat felt tight with the secret she had kept for so long, that she had finally choked out to Alya after one terrible day.
But he looked so genuinely terrified to think he might hurt Ladybug, and Marinette had the power to assuage that fear. For once, she could offer him some comfort.
Marinette unhooked Adrien’s hands from his neck and pulled them into her lap. Then, she unfastened her earrings and placed them into his palm.
Though he did not move, did not look up at her, she watched the tension in his shoulders shift. His hand closed around the earrings and he felt the shape of them, the warmth from being fastened in her ears and from the magic that pulsed within them.
Finally, Adrien looked up at her. His eyes were still sad, but the longing was so much more prominent. His voice was tight as he said, “Are you… truly?”
She nodded.
Then his shoulders sagged and he looked away. “No wonder you keep turning me down. We have a job to do, and I suppose the job comes first. No sense complicating things, right?”
But Marinette’s need for simple had nothing to do with complicating Ladybug and Chat Noir’s relationship. It had always been about protecting her partner and protecting her own heart. But knowing that the boy she had fallen for long before Luka, the boy who was always there for her, and her loyal partner were one and the same? She was no longer interested in simple.
In fact, she felt like an idiot for thinking she could get away with only displaying the palatable parts of herself to Adrien. He knew her better than anyone, and she knew him, and it was never going to be simple when there were that many fractured pieces stacked together between the two of them.
“Adrien,” she whispered, “I think… maybe without so many secrets, it isn’t all that complicated.”
He met her eyes again and something in his posture perked; she could almost see the cat ears on his head lifting to attention.
“Marinette,” he said, so softly, so tenderly that Marinette could not help but lean in.
She leaned in until their lips were pressed together. The wariness, the gentleness, the tenderness—all of it was cast aside. This kiss transformed into nothing but want and need, as if she could draw all of him up into all of her.
Adrien’s softness and wariness evaporated suddenly. He turned his kiss against the corner of her mouth then to the underside of her jaw. “My lady,” he murmured into her neck, and his voice seemed to reverberate in her chest and curl into her stomach. He pressed her lips against the mark on her neck in a grateful, needy kiss and adjusted to sit on top of her, pinning her back against the couch as Chat Noir had pinned her against her kitchen counter.
Marinette fumbled for the remote and clicked the T.V. off. They didn’t need a movie to carry them through the evening, and they certainly didn’t need the glare of the empty screen. The dark was enough; each other was enough. The cheesecake would wait. Marinette had a much better midnight snack to get to.
Can’t Stop Thinking (About You)
by @wyomingparmesan
Rating: General Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Relationship: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Character: Plagg (Miraculous Ladybug)
Additional Tags: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, reverse love square, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Comforts Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Fluff and Angst, Season 5 Episode 6- Determination, Fic Remix, Cute Ending
Language: English
Collections: Miraculous Square Dance 2023: A Lovesquare Remix Challenge
Published: 2023-11-24
Words: 2,947
Chapters: 1/1
Summary
After his heart pounding revelation, Adrien is desperate to spend time with Marinette in any way he can, particularly outside of school. Not quite ready to confess to her just yet, he decides to use his alter ego as a way to get closer to her. What he doesn’t know is that she has had a similar revelation…oh and something about hamsters. Takes place during season 5, specifically somewhere between Determination and Elation.
Inspired by Hamster (Adrienette April 2022) by Anabear2803
words he only dreamed to hear
[@mlsquaredance]
remixed from @ladyofthenoodle 's fic, pretty lady, look at how he's smiling!
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chat noir/ladybug.
G; no archive warnings apply.
“um,” he says, glancing down at his un-bumped fist lamely. “are you good?”
her smile doesn’t exactly widen, but something in it does shift.
in two quick steps forward, she dives in, and presses a light kiss to his cheek. “bye, chaton,” she says, and wiggles her fingers at him.
he stands rooted to the concrete, staring off into the empty street.
what.
(ladybug amps up the affection, and chat noir has to deal. it's what a good friend would do, right?)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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post-episode s05 evolution; pining; oblivious adrien agreste | chat noir; identity reveal; fluff and humour.
reserved - mlsquaredance2023
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
inspired by enthusiasm by sariahsue for @mlsquaredance
“Don’t you think,” he coughed, a blush creeping up his cheeks, “this kind of thing should be.. reserved for my girlfriend?” He gestured to their poses. A squeak came from her mouth and her knees buckled, but surprisingly still had no struggle keeping Adrien up. “You know, you could always be my girlfriend.”
Ladybug, saviour of Paris and local damsel-in-distress Adrien Agreste, suggests he gets a fake girlfriend to ward off his zombie fans. While lovingly holding him in her arms, of course. Adrien, far too comfortable in her arms, suggests it could be her.
Introducing your superheroine pretend-girlfriend to your strict, uninterested father is a bit harder than Adrien realises.
Just An Ordinary Girl
A love square remix of A Friend Like That by @trainsinanime. Written for the @mlsquaredance. This fic was so much fun write. Do please read the original first. It makes this one more fun! Read on Ao3 ...
“We need to stay together!” Viperion called out. “Splitting up does not end well.”
The sheer exhaustion in Viperion’s tone didn’t bode well either. Carapace didn’t want to know how many loops Viperion had gone through this go around especially considering it was his third time loop this battle.
Even from Carapace’s less than fifteen minutes of experience, this battle was awful.
The akuma was like Miraculer - he could steal their powers. But he was worse because it could split into four clones of himself.
“Okay then!” Chat Noir called. “Ryuko, Rena, and Carapace, protect our backs. Tigress and I will guard the gap! Viperion stays in the middle.”
Carapace missed Ladybug. There was nothing wrong with Chat’s orders. Carapace didn’t disagree with any of his calls. This akuma just sucked. And Ladybug just had this insane creative genius for hare-brained schemes that seemed to be able to cut through anything.
The akuma struck. Carapace narrowly yanked Rena Rouge aside and they both fell to the ground hard. His elbow took the majority of the impact, which hurt like a bitch, but he was glad it was him who took the brunt of it instead of her. And it worked.
Except one of the other clones clipped him.
A mud brown impenetrable dome manifested around all six of them immediately.
Purple Tigress punched it with her power. Nothing.
Cataclysm dissolved it, but it was immediately replaced with another.
“Crap!”
That was one word for it. Carapace might have had a far less kid-friendly one ringing through his head. The six of them were getting their butts handed to them by this akuma.
Carapace took personal offense to the barrier that stood as a mockery of his own power.
“Viperion?” Chat called.
The snake hero shook his head. “We’re on loop number 1703. This is the best possible outcome. Trust me.”
Chat Noir winced.
Carapace really missed Ladybug.
“I think we have to call Ladybug,” Rena Rouge said, turning toward Chat Noir.
“No! We can’t!” Chat objected.
Rena raised an eyebrow. “We can’t let the akuma win. We’re trapped.”
“She only asked for one weekend off! She deserves to have one weekend off! We can handle it.”
“I hate to break it to you, but we’re not handling it,” Ryuko added dryly.
“We will not be calling Ladybug,” Chat declared firmly.
The other five of them exchanged a look.
“We can get help from someone else!” Chat insisted.
“Like who?” Rena Rouge demanded. “You’d need someone who is willing to pull off crazy stunts, who is a tactical creative genius against so many, and someone who is not intimidated by akumas.”
“Marinette!” Chat exclaimed, his face lit up in excitement.
“How do you know Marinette?” Ryuko asked, her eyebrows furrowed together.
“You think Marinette can do what six fully equipped superheroes couldn’t?!” Carapace asked.
Rena’s eyes narrowed. “Why Marinette?”
“Are you kidding? Marinette could kick any one of our asses,” Chat said. “Marinette is the only person I know who has gone up against an akuma as a civilian.”
Seriously?! Did the cat have selective memory? But it wasn’t like Carapace could remind everyone that Nino had gone up against Anansi as a civilian.
Of course, he had lost, but that wasn’t the point.
“You’re crazy,” he said instead, crossing his arms.
“I’m in.” Rena said.
“What?!” Carapace turned to her in shock, feeling more than a bit betrayed.
Viperion and Ryuko nodded in agreement as well.
Was everyone insane? He turned to Rena. “You’re going along with this? You’d throw Marinette—“ her best friend went unsaid, but Rena understood what he was saying. “—out there unsupported against an akuma?”
His girlfriend shrugged. She shrugged . “If Ladybug’s not an option. Marinette is the next best thing.”
Carapace stared at her incredulously.
Chat clapped his hands together, clearly pleased with this so-called solution. “I’ll call her!”
“You have her number?” Carapace asked. What the actual fuck?
But obviously he did because he had the cat phone to his ear and it was audibly ringing. “Hey princess!” Chat greeted enthusiastically, turning away from the group like it was a private conversation.
“Princess?” Carapace echoed. What kind of relationship did Chat Noir and Marinette have?
“No.” Marinette’s firm voice echoed throughout the dome.
“I haven’t even asked for anything yet.”
“The answer is still no! I only have twelve hours before this project is due. I cannot take a break.”
“But Paris needs you.”
“The answer is no. Call someone else! Call Ladybug!”
“No! Marinette! I can’t! Last week was terrible for her. I promised I could handle one weekend. She deserves and needs the time off. Plus, we don’t need her. I know you can do this. You can do anything . Remember Kwamibuster?”
Chat Noir spoke to Marinette like he was trying to sweet talk her. Carapace didn’t like it. Chat had always been flirtatious, and Marinette deserved someone loyal and sincere.
Someone like Adrien.
“What do you expect me to do against an akuma without a miraculous?” Marinette asked.
“Whatever it is you did against Evilustrator and Hack-san.”
“I can’t do this. Not today.”
Chat only grinned at her refusal. “You always say that, and then you do it anyway.”
“What do I get out of this?”
“Your friends and family safe and sound, free to feel their own feelings and pursue their own dreams.”
Marinette groaned. “Chaaaat!” she whined. “You’re gonna owe me so much for this.”
“See you soon, Princess!” Chat sing-songed, and turned his attention back to the group. “She’s on her way.”
As if that solved all their problems.
“Shouldn’t we… I don’t know… come up with a back up plan?” Carapace asked.
Purple Tigress looked at the other four expectantly, as if agreeing with him, but the others just exchanged glances and shrugged. They honestly thought Marinette was the solution.
Carapace really hoped they were right. Marinette was amazing, but did that mean she could get through an akuma that Viperion had just spent who knew how many weeks fighting unsuccessfully across three time loops?
“You don’t need to worry so much,” Chat Noir assured, and it was galling that Chat Noir could read him so well.
“How can you be so confident? Aren’t you worried about her at all?”
“Marinette would kick my ass into next Sunday if I worried about her. She can take care of herself, and she knows what she can handle and what she can’t. I’ve learned over and over again not to underestimate her. Kwamibuster was an akuma where Ladybug and I both lost our Kwamis, and therefore our transformations. Marinette pulled off a stunt the old Guardian thought was impossible with all the remaining miraculouses using the mouse to protect her own psyche. She was brilliant.”
“But she doesn’t have an entire box right now.”
“She doesn’t need an entire box. She defeated Hack-San without any powers at all. Her super power is in how she thinks!”
Carapace held his hands up. “I know firsthand that she’s brilliant. I’m just scared for her too. That akuma handed our asses to us.”
“She’s doing fine,” Rena commented, projecting a video from her flute into the air for all of them to see.
Chat Noir flipped around the projected image, so he wouldn’t be seeing the mirror image like Nino from the back.
“Some girl just took out an akuma with a trash can and a fire hydrant,” Chat read aloud. “She ran off before anyone could thank her.”
In the video, Marinette hid in the trash can and when the akuma was overhead, she leapt out of her hiding place and tackled the clone onto the ground where the fire hydrant went off in its face. Marinette used the distraction to snatch the clone’s sash, and the thing dissolved underneath her. Then she was running away before the other three could grab her, her pigtails bobbing behind her.
Chat’s expression was completely besotted. “The way she lured him in like that?! She’s just amazing!” Then he turned toward Carapace triumphantly like a proud boyfriend. “See! She just has this way of cutting to the right idea at the right time! I could watch her working on a problem or project for hours!”
Did Chat Noir realize how he sounded?
And it wasn’t fair because Nino was certain that Adrien was finally starting to realize that he was crushing hard on Marinette.
What if Chat Noir got there first?
“You think she’ll clear this up before sunset?” Purple Tigress asked.
“Why? Got somewhere else more important to be?” Viperion asked.
“Well, not more important . But something I’d like to do, yes.”
“A hot date?” Viperion teased.
“What’s it to you?” Purple Tigress growled back.
Viperion held his hands up in surrender. “Just teasing! You deserve to get to go on your date. Hopefully Marinette pulls through. She usually does.”
“I never said it was a date,” Tigress muttered. But clearly it was.
“I have another Marinette update,” Rena announced, playing another video from the Ladyblog’s fan submission page.
“This girl is insane!” the narrator exclaimed, his camera flashing toward two bungie cables dangling from the overhead railing with two suitcases attached on either end. “She set up a pulley system with two guys’ luggage and a plastic bag to set a trap for a friggin’ akuma and she won!” The video angled back to his face. “Where the hell are Ladybug and Chat Noir?”
“Wow! That’s super cool!” Tigress said, watching the video with wide eyes.
“That’s Marinette for you. She never sits out a fight when she can do something,” Chat said.
“You really like her, don’t you?” Ryuko asked, smiling fondly.
“Oh yeah, she’s absolutely amazing! Have you ever seen her designs?” His face was as bright as the moon as he spoke.
Carapace shook his head. Chat Noir didn’t just know about Marinette’s designs. He had seen them! Nino wondered again how much time Chat Noir spent with Marinette on the regular? Even Nino had only ever caught glimpses of her work and he was in almost all of Marinette’s classes.
“You know, even if Marinette manages to take out all four clones, how is she gonna break through this barrier?”
“She’ll figure it out,” Chat insisted. “She always does. I wish we had something in here to give her to show our appreciation.”
Rena smiled at him. “I’m sure she’ll know we appreciate her.”
“I just feel so bad for interrupting her project right before a deadline. I’ll have to make it up to her.”
Yeah, Chat Noir had it bad, which wasn’t good. Nino didn’t want him swooping in right before Adrien was finally seeing her.
“Ah! We have an update on the akuma,” Rena announced, projecting the post into the air again.
“My little girl almost got hit by an akuma! Luckily, this girl knocked it out of the park before it touched her at all. And then she stayed and danced until my girl was laughing again! What an absolute angel!”
“Wow!” Purple Tigress said. “Marinette’s usually so clumsy.”
But Chat was shaking his head. “Not during emergencies or akumas. Then she’s graceful. And yeah, she trips and stumbles constantly–” he was smiling fondly as he said this. “-- which can be really adorable, but she’s really good at catching herself! She kind of has this unique way of pinwheeling her arms to regain her balance. And her gestures are so creative and expressive… Honestly, I could spend hours just watching her.”
That description was remarkably specific. “Aren’t you supposed to be in love with Ladybug?” Carapace asked.
Chat turned to him, his eyebrows furrowed in total bafflement. “I am in love with Ladybug.”
Carapace crossed his arms. “Are you sure? Seems like you have a thing for Marinette.”
“Oh, he definitely has a thing for Marinette,” Rena interjected, studying the feed on her flute before flashing him a smirk. “But then who doesn’t?”
“Right?!” Viperion chimed in.
Even Ryuko was nodding. “I admit I hold more than a passing affection for Marinette as well.”
Carapace hated that he couldn’t even argue. He had harbored a crush on Marinette for months . But he buried his hooded face in his hands anyway. This was ridiculous.
“I don’t have a thing for Marinette!” Chat objected.
“God! You’re worse than my best bro!”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re totally oblivious.”
And Nino hoped it stayed that way at least until Adrien had a chance to say something.
“No, you don’t understand. I can’t have a thing for Marinette! She’s in love with someone else. You should have heard her confession!”
“She confessed?!”
“She practiced it anyway. It was silly at first, but then just so sincere. I wish someone would confess to me like that.”
Chat’s shoulders were slumped, and his gaze downcast. Carapace stared at a dejected Chat in disbelief. Did Chat Noir really not get that he had feelings for Marinette?
Chat looked up straight at Carapace. “Do you think anyone will ever love me like that?”
Nino froze. Chat Noir, one of the two primary heroes of Paris who pranced around in a catsuit and flirted with every other person he encountered, was looking to him for reassurance?!
Today was just absolutely wild.
“I’m sure there’s someone out there for you, dude,” Carapace reassured.
There was a loud bang, and they all tensed, flipped around facing the barrier read to fight.
But the dome just faded away. Marinette stood on the other side, holding out a clear glass bottle with an akuma fluttering angrily inside.
Chat Noir plucked the bottle from her hold, smiling at her like she hung the moon. He released the akuma just far enough to cataclysm it.
“See! I knew you could do it.” His eyes were so soft, he could give Adrien a run for his money.
Marinette scowled at him, crossing her arms. “You know who else could have done it? Ladybug!! She has actual powers! Do you know how hard it was to go after an akuma without enhanced agility?”
Chat took her hand. “May I offer the princess a kiss in gratitude?”
“I think I’m the knight in this scenario,” she replies petulantly, but she didn’t pull away.
He pressed a lingering kiss onto her hand.
Marinette didn’t even blush. “You owe me bigtime!”
Chat nods. “Thank you for bailing me–” he gestured to all six of the present heroes, “–I mean, bailing all of us out.”
“Why’d you ask me? I’m just an ordinary girl.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing ordinary about you, Marinette.” He said her name with absolute reverence.
Nino shook his head in exasperation. There was no way in hell Chat Noir wasn’t in love with Marinette. Nino would have to warn Adrien to get his game on. He had competition, even if he didn’t know it.
The other heroes surrounded her and offered thanks and congratulations. “Marinette! You are amazing!” Carapace told her. “Like you pulled off an impossible feat!” And then he bent down and whispered. “And I think if you’re not careful you’re going to break a certain black cat’s heart.”
Marinette’s brows furrowed. “What are you talking about? Chat’s way too obsessed with Ladybug to ever really see me.”
how fair you were in [moonlight]
This was one of my favorites to Remix (I feel like I've said that about all of them but i mean it every time). I had a lot of fun puzzling out the poetry/structure for this fic! I hope you enjoy.
Read the original - how fair you were in summertime by @ladyofthenoodle Read on Ao3 Send ladyofthenoodle a thank you for organizing the @mlsquaredance and managing this lovely event
The full moon arrived at its appointed time, and Marinette donned the glittering red earrings that had been given to her by her master. She couldn’t say what the glamor did, exactly, because it refused to show itself in her mirror, but when she looked down, she could see a gown that draped over her shoulders in long, billowing sleeves and light, airy skirts in a crimson as brilliant as any sunrise. She had to infer, though, that her mask had all the markings of a ladybug, because that was what the fae called her when they saw her.
Though her heart pounded in her chest, she held her head high and picked her way through the shadows of the trees until she arrived at the infamous fae court.
Stepping into the clearing, where the moon’s light filled the round space as fully as a spotlight on a stage, was like stepping into a dream. Everything from the gossamer-like wings edged in glowing gold that draped from one fae’s shoulder to the glittering green armor of another, as if he were cloaked in hundreds of scales like the wings of jade beetles, felt eerie and unreal.
It was easy to get lost in the romance of it all, to be swept up in the dance and moonlight, but Marinette was careful to keep her wits about her. Even as a passing masked young man pressed a goblet into her hand, she set it aside. She would accept no food nor drink, would make no deals nor offers, not until she had what she had come for.
There were a number of stories about the fae court that wove their way throughout the land. There were tales of travelers who wandered for hours, only to turn up days or months later, caught in a dream for far longer than they had imagined. There were young men and women who had stumbled into the dance and stumbled out, only to pine for the pleasure they had partaken of, however brief, until they wasted away from wanting. But lately, there were new stories, stories of a fae who offered power to the desperate and vulnerable, and the cost was their very humanity.
Marinette paused to listen to a nearby fae play a haunting melody on a reed. She wore a coat of silky red fur, and a tufted tail swished at her waist. She winked at Marinette as she passed and jerked her reed in a clear motion for Marinette to join the dance.
But Marinette stepped back to the edge of the clearing. Not only was she afraid to accept any invitation, however innocent it seemed, but she had to consider that the fox might be the very monster-maker that she hunted. She could not afford to be wrong. The iron dagger at her hip was cloaked by her glamor for the moment, but once she withdrew it, she would have only one chance to strike.
She still wasn’t entirely sure how she would know which fae was turning humans into monsters and unleashing them on the villages that surrounded the forest. Her master had told her that the monsters bore the mark of the butterfly, but she could not be certain the fae would bear that mark anywhere that she could see. Each night she slipped away from her home to join the court’s evening celebrations, but she had seen no clues yet. She hoped that tonight, at a full moon gathering when every fae slipped from their homes of hollowed oaks or abandoned the edges of winding trails for a midnight revelry, she might find something to point her to her target, but so far, she had seen and heard nothing.
“Why, my lady, do you wait in the dark?” a lilting voice curled in her ear.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as cool breath ghosted across her skin. Though her flesh pricked like a plucked goose, she kept her face calm and turned to find a fae lounging in a low branch of the tree just behind her.
His face was smeared in black, though his hair glistened like gold, interrupted only by a pair of pointed cat’s ears, as black as pitch. No silver moonlight reached him. She had never seen him at the gatherings she had tended before, so he must be one of the few who only came when the moon was full, when all the court gathered in celebration.
He stretched out along his branch, and his long, black tail swished mischievously at his waist. With a Cheshire-cat-sized grin, he added, “You are far too beautiful for shadows.”
Marinette, despite her fear, returned the compliment with a curtsy. Manners were everything to the fae. So was truth, so she had to be careful not to lie. “I wait, good sir, for the right time and mark,” she said, “and find you too friendly for such shadows.”
The fae dropped from the tree and gave her a sweeping, dramatic bow. “As the moonlight makes nightmares out of dreams, forgive me, then, for lurking out of sight.”
Her heart pounded in her chest as he held out his hand in an invitation. She wondered if his hand was a binding invitation if he did not speak his offer.
“There’s always more to the night than it seems,” she agreed, and allowed him to take her hand. His hands were smooth and soft, like the pads of a cat’s paw, and even in the dark, his eyes glinted like emeralds. Breathlessly, she finished, “but there’s plenty of joy found in the light.”
“There is enough joy to be found right here,” he said, and pulled her hand up to his lips.
Heat rose in her cheeks, and Marinette prayed her glamor hid it as well as it hid her humanity. “And if that is all the joy you receive?”
The ears in his golden hair seemed to flatten at her words. He straightened but did not let go of her hand. He took a step closer. “Then that joy is in my memory seared, and I shall take my lady’s cue and leave.”
His breath was unnaturally cool against her lips. It was no longer fear that had her heart pounding. Desire and longing curled in her stomach and climbed her spine like a rose in pursuit of the sun. She swallowed it down and reminded herself that she was prey among hunters. She could accept no food nor drink, could not partake of the pleasures of the court unless she was willing to give up all that she was.
“Give as you like, sir, but I may not take.”
He tipped his head and curiosity glinted in those green eyes. She wondered if her warm breath or her refusal to accept a trade tipped him off. But he did not shy away from her, did not slink back into the night nor find another fae and raise an alarm. Instead, his soft, cool fingers found her chin and tipped her lips towards his. “Then just enough to relieve my heart’s ache.”
It was a gentle kiss, little more than his lips pressed against hers—and it relieved no aches in Marinette’s chest. As he pulled away she leaned into him, chasing the kiss until his hand on her chin held her back.
“My lady teases me so unfairly, to try to give me what I may not have.”
“What you gave, sir, was given so sparely. Did you give at all?”
“Then let me give half.”
His wide smile softened into something far more warm and gentle, belying his cool, inhuman lips. He pulled her again into another kiss, this one deeper, slower, but just as gentle. The moment she pushed against him, the moment her tongue brushed against his and she tasted moss and worn leather, he pulled away.
She swallowed hard and gathered her breath. “And will you take my half from me—for free?”
His thumb brushed against her lips longingly. “I can’t take for free.”
“If you will forgive, may I return what you have given me?”
“As my lady may not take, she must give.”
And this time she surged into him, lips crashing into something passionate and heated. She pushed past his cool lips to find his mouth warm and pliant. His hand stayed steady on her chin, but his other hand slid up her back and to the base of her neck. He pulled her into him and it was suddenly hard to remember why she had come at all. She might have stayed there for the entire evening, content to do nothing but this, this, this—until her tongue brushed against the edge of his teeth and she tasted blood.
She drew away, reminded all at once of the danger she was in. His sharp fangs were an unfortunately painful warning about what he was and why she had come.
He shrunk back further into the darkness of the trees, hand pressed against his own lips, fear blooming in those sparkling green eyes. She wondered what the iron in her blood tasted like to a fae.
“I see the forest hides your secrets, too.” It wasn’t just his eyes that betrayed him. His voice trembled, and the words slipped past his fingers almost against his own will. “The darkness is meant to make lies unseen.”
“I have told you nothing that was untrue.” She swallowed down her panic, tempered it with hope. He had not alerted anyone else, had not sent for someone to throw the human from the fae’s celebration—or worse, force her into partaking. “I trust my good sir played no tricks for me.”
He looked away. She did not know him beyond this moment, yet she felt like she knew the shape of every thought that flickered behind those glittering eyes: sorrow, regret, and finally despair as his shoulders slumped and his hands dropped from his mouth to his sides.
“My lady—” but he was interrupted.
“Where is His Highness?” someone shouted from the court.
“Snuck away, no doubt,” someone else replied.
“Then go and find him!” another called.
“He can’t have gone far.”
He looked for all the world like a man standing at a freshly dug grave. He stepped towards her once more and it took all of her willpower stay where she stood. But he did not reach for her again. Instead, he paused beside her, on the edge of the clearing. His voice was still thick with fear, but a smile played on his lips as he met the eyes of another member of the fae court. He raised a hand in greeting, but his voice was low and desperate as he whispered, “My lady ought to leave while she can.”
“I’d be caught before I even began.”
He sighed again, and that taste of despair seemed to press against his shoulders with a fresh force. With the urgency of a man approaching the gallows, he stepped into the moonlight.
At once, the black that cloaked his face and shoulders melted away. The pale moonlight washed him out in pure white. The gold in his hair transformed into silver as his pitch dark ears turned a shade of white far paler than anything that Marinette had ever seen. The soft pads of his hands glinted with finely sharpened silver claws. He seemed to be a moon all his own, reflecting a dimmer light than its source. And as he turned to smile at someone else who called for the fae prince’s attention, she saw his face and gasped.
All the joy and mischief that had drawn her into him were doused. Beneath smears of white powder, his warm, emerald eyes had become cold sapphires that, despite the light all around him, refused to offer even the slightest glint. But that wasn’t the part that terrified her the most.
More horrible than the dramatic and tragic change that swept through him was the glowing lavender outline of a butterfly’s wings, shining on top of the pale white dust that streaked his face. It was the very mark she was looking for, revealed in the moonlight.
Marinette turned and fled.
✦✧✦✧
Marinette did not dare return to the fae court again. She shut her earrings into an iron box and buried it beneath the floorboards of her kitchen, near the hearth. She tried to put the night from her mind entirely, but like so many had before her, she often found herself sitting at her window and staring out at the stars twinkling over the forest with a sense of longing in her chest.
She had tasted the revelry of the fae court, and it had left a hunger in her bones.
She had sobbed that first night, alone in her bed. She had cried for her own foolishness for flirting with and kissing a fae, for her regret over what she would have to do to him, and pity for that poor boy and the unbearable weight that he walked with.
She had imagined facing the monster-maker so many times before. She had never imagined him heartbroken and mournful.
Her tears dried eventually, but she could not shake him from her mind. When she worked in her garden, she caught herself stopping to stare in the direction of the forest. At night, when she joined the rest of her village by the bonfire, she found herself listless, unable to take pleasure in the company of her friends.
The boy next door asked after her health one afternoon, and when she told him that she was fine, he asked her who she was so in love with then.
Marinette had very sharply told him that she was not in love with anyone. This wanting and longing in her chest wasn’t love. It was a curse.
The only way to be free of the curse would be to kill the fae. And she had to kill him. He had tormented the humans and stripped them of their sense of self for his own amusement. She convinced herself that she had imagined his sadness, that she had merely been projecting her own heartbreak onto him. She was hunting a monster, so she made him a monster in her mind and waited for the next full moon, for his return to the court, where she would strike on sight.
But she could not stop running her tongue over her teeth.
When the day came, she dug up her earrings and her iron dagger. She carried her weapons to the edge of the forest, though she couldn’t say that her glamor would offer any protection at all. He knew her mask. He knew her blood.
The sky softened into orange as the sun began to eclipse the horizon. She stood at the edge of the woods, uncertain if the way the shadows shifted was the wind or something more unnatural. Unnatural or not, she had to go in.
But as she began to fasten in her earrings, she saw those glittering green eyes, the ones that had appeared in her dreams as often as the cold sapphire ones, and she froze in place.
He did not step out of the shadows, but he approached, hands lingering on the bark of each tree he passed.
Marinette tightened her grip on her dagger and lifted her head. If he had come to kill her now, then all the better. She would not have to worry about the court witnessing his untimely end.
“My lady,” he said with a smile, though she was wearing her plain work clothes, still streaked with dirt from the gardening she had done that day, “how you’ve lingered on my tongue. Your blood and its taste bind my emotions, the memory of you aches in my lungs, and I long for naught but your devotion.”
As he extended a hand to her, she searched his posture for a threat, for a coil in his shoulders before he struck or the glint of his fangs before he lashed out, but she saw none. He was as eager and playful as he was in her memory. Perhaps more desperate and forward.
She tightened her grip on her dagger. “You think you can simply woo me back into your arms? You tell me you’ve pined for me, you’ve ached for me, and you think I’m supposed to care? I know what you are, what you’ve done to the humans who’ve dared to come to you vulnerable and lost. You’ve made them monsters, and you’re going to pay for it tonight.”
The sun slipped over the horizon, and her shadow disappeared into the darkness of the trees. All the bravery Marinette had felt as she had promised to end this fae vanished with the light. She could see the glint of the moon just over the treetops, but it had not reached her yet. They had this single moment in the dusk before the moonlight would wash him out again, before she would have no choice but to kill him.
“If it’s the monster-maker that you want,” he said slowly, “then let me offer my assistance. It’s not only humans my father haunts. For his fall, I’d trade my own existence.”
Marinette blinked at him, surprised by such a statement. It had not occurred to her that the mark of the butterfly would have shown itself not because he was the fae controlling the curse, but because he was as much a victim as her people. Her heart almost leapt for joy at the idea. How wonderful, to not have to kill this young fae, to have an answer that would let her have everything that she wanted.
But her head had always been stronger than her heart. Marinette lifted her dagger and pointed it at his chest. The silver moonlight crested over the treetops and glinted off of the dark metal.
“The fae may not lie,” she said, “but you can twist your words to tell the truth you want. Why shouldn’t the monstrous fae prince convince a human to help him kill the fae king? You get the crown and a target to pin the murder on. You think I want you so badly that I’d give up my humanity to destroy for you? I won’t let you trick me the way you tricked the others.”
He frowned and stepped closer, out of the shadows and into the point of her blade. As the moon crested the treetops and its light washed over him, every bit of black was whisked away by pure white. His emerald eyes once more turned cold and sad. The white cat ears in his silver hair went flat.
“Then kill me, my lady. Death is preferred, when weighted against carrying this curse. Trust that I would rather die by your sword than live by his word. I know nothing worse.”
The blade trembled in her hand. He pressed himself against it and a pinprick of blood bloomed in his chest. It continued to spread, staining the white dark and black, as if confirming his claim that only death would let him take back what the moon had stolen.
There would never be an easier chance. It was the moment she had dreamed of and dreaded for the last month. She couldn’t believe his words, couldn’t believe that he was as cursed as the monster-maker’s human victims.
But when she looked into those cold, empty blue eyes, she knew the truth. She had never imagined his sadness. She knew it now better than she had known it before, because now she knew what it was to want someone.
She lowered her blade.
His shoulders slumped, though she couldn’t be sure if it was with relief or regret.
“Then what else would my lady have of me?” he asked.
“All of you,” she whispered, and his ears perked up, “if you’d have all of me.”
He reached for her again and this time, she took his hand. He pulled her back into the shadows and she was happy to go, happy to let the darkness wash over them again and to press their lips together once more. This time, when she pushed into his mouth, he opened eagerly for her.
He had tasted her fruit and longed for it again in defiance of all else. She complied, and ran her tongue along his teeth. He moaned as her taste filled him once again. If the iron in her blood burned him, he did not flinch, but welcomed it, surging up into her for more.
There was more to do. There was still an iron dagger, now abandoned at her feet, and still a monster-maker to hunt, but for the moment, all Marinette wanted was this, this, this. And she would take it as long as it was given to her.
Close Your Eyes [Remix]
Remixed from @jennagrinsoverml's fic Close Your Eyes (E). I had to go the extra bit to double the smut because I wanted to make some pussy eating jokes.
Thank you @ccboomer for beta reading and @mlsquaredance for organizing! I had so much fun with this remix in particular.
They’d begun with kisses and worked their way up from that, but Ladybug was getting tired of being backed against brick walls and plaster chimneys. If she was going to rut against Chat’s thigh and smash his face against hers, she wanted to be smashed against something with a little bit of give.
“I know a spot,” she’d said.
He’d quirked an eyebrow, but he’d followed.
She led him onto her very own rooftop balcony. As she draped herself over the patio chair that she so often sat in to sketch, he asked in a wary whisper, “Isn’t this Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s balcony?”
Her heart pounded in her chest, but she kept her face cool and even tried for an alluring smirk. “It’ll be fine,” she promised him. “You can pull the table over the trapdoor if you’re worried.”
He rocked back on his heels, still clinging to the railing, like it was a threshold he wasn’t ready to cross. But his hesitation was brief, dulled to nothing by the longing stretched out between them.
He tugged her small, round table over the trapdoor to ensure that they wouldn’t be interrupted, though she knew for a fact no one was going to come for them. Her parents were visiting family, and her bedroom would remain unoccupied, at least until this was done.
No sooner had the base of the table crossed over the hinges of the trapdoor than had Ladybug pulled her Chat back into her. They tumbled onto the hammock-like seat in a tangle of limbs. She hardly noticed the way his legs dug into her side and his hands scrambled for purchase as she settled beneath him, focused on nothing but drawing his taste onto her tongue like he was her first sip of sweet wine.
He found his place eventually, lips locked with hers, hands gripped onto the frame of the chair over her head, and legs draped over either side of her, forcing their hips flush. Her hands slid down his back, finding and squeezing the base of him, drawing him against her. He moaned into her mouth as she inhaled sharply and suddenly his lips were gone—not gone, just drifting down her cheek, her neck—his breath was hot against her skin where her hair and suit left just enough room for his lips to press and his breath to burn warm and heady.
“Chat,” she whispered, breathless. The overhang provided a semblance of privacy, but she didn’t dare be loud.
“I want to touch you,” he murmured into her neck.
“You are touching me, you silly kitty,” she said. “I wish you were kissing me.”
“I want to touch you properly.” His whisper turned into a whine, keening into the space behind her ear as she rolled her hips up against his in an effort to bring him back to her.
“There’s nothing proper about this.”
His hands slid down to her hips, pressing them into the pale pink-striped canvas and his lips pulled away. His green eyes were serious as he looked down at her, and she wondered what on earth he was thinking.
“My lady,” he said, voice painfully serious, “I would like to engage in some cannibalism this evening.”
It took a moment to strike her, but when it did, she burst into a loud, brief laugh, entirely out of her control. She pressed her wrist into her mouth to stifle her laughter, and when she finally had control of her breath again, she managed, “You are ridiculous.”
“That’s not the word to describe me.” He pouted, but she smirked.
“And what’s the word to describe you?”
“Horny out of my fucking mind.”
She could tell. She tried again to push up against him, but his hands were firm. “That was six words,” she said, hoping to score at least one victory point.
And it seemed like she’d won. He collapsed back against her. His hands trailed loosely up her sides, against her arms, drawing her hands up and over her head. She leaned up for a kiss, but he turned his head at the last moment, and she only caught the corner of his mouth. His lips found her neck once more and he breathed, “Please, my lady.”
And oh mon dieu, how could she ignore a plea like that?
“On one condition,” she said.
“Anything.”
She reconsidered. “Two conditions.”
“Of course.”
“You wear a blindfold.”
“Kinky,” and his breath seemed to travel down her spine in a course of sparks and shivers. “What’s the second condition?”
“You let me return the favor.”
He went very still. She could no longer feel his breath on her neck and for a moment she wondered if she’d fully stopped his heart and her Chat was no more.
Then, in the most breathless whisper, so quiet she could hardly make it out, “You don’t owe me anything—”
“I want to.” She used his stillness to slip her wrist out of his grip; she slid her fingers up through his hair and pressed her lips against his ear. “If you’re going to eat pussy tonight, I want a taste, too.”
His laughter was buried in her neck, but she felt it reverberate through her bones, and a grin split her face. It was rare that she could turn the tables on him when it came to jokes, so she relished the moments when it worked in her favor.
“I suppose it’s only fair,” he finally said.
The trouble, they found, as they often did in their rooftop and back alley makeout moments, was logistics. The lounge chair Ladybug had led them to worked wonderfully for stretching out and kissing lazily. It was poorly suited for arranging lips to lower lips.
His hands found her hips once again and this time he picked her up off of the chair and dropped her onto the table.
“Oh—” she gasped as she he knelt between her knees and looked up at her with his eager, mischievous green eyes. There was no trace of hesitation in them and she could not help but wonder if he’d done something like this before.
He unfastened his lengthy, tail-like belt and handed it to her. She bit down on her lip, but took it reverently, as if it were his very soul bared to her.
It had taken her a long time to recognize her Chat’s sincerity. He joked so often and about so much that she had not realized that the way he loved the world was the same as the way he loved her, and that he loved her as if she were his world.
It had taken her a long time to realize that he was her world, too.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked, as if he was the one who was uncertain. She trailed a hand through his hair, gloved fingertips grazing against the base of his leather cat ears and he leaned up into her touch.
He pressed his mouth to her thigh and murmured, “More sure than I’ve ever been about anything.”
She swallowed. Then with more care and grace than she had ever taken with anything, she fastened his belt over his eyes. Once she was sure it was snug, she whispered, “Spots off.”
His hands found the fastener of her pants so quickly that she had a flash of panic that he could still see her, but she reminded herself that her Chat would never betray her trust that way.
He tugged on the waistband of her pants, and she threw her weight back on her hands to give him leverage. She kicked off her shoes, and he pulled her pants over her ankles and down to the floor. She pressed up on her hands again so he could tug off the last barrier between him and his goal, but he didn’t take it. Instead, the soft leather pads of his gloves slid along her thigh and up to the elastic edge. He pressed his nose up against her and took in a long breath, then let it out just as slow.
She shivered and her abs and arms trembled as she held perfectly still. Then he pulled, and she was bare.
His lips pressed again into her thigh and he nipped gently at the sensitive flesh. She bit back a yelp tangled in a moan. His lips curved into a smirk against her skin and he moved closer, only to nip again.
He was such a tease.
But before she could complain, his hand splayed across her hip and his thumb angled down, pressing into her clit. He was careful with the claw-like tips of his gloves and she wondered if the tips of his gloves were the very reason he had decided to be intimate with his tongue instead of trying something simpler first.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth as his thumb rubbed against her clit. Her head tipped back and her gaze flooded with stars. They twinkled overhead, winking at her wonton display. Then they disappeared as her eyes went wide and her vision faded into stars of her own. His tongue slipped between her like a needy kiss and she fell back onto her elbows. She no longer saw what was above her, but instead her mind was turned toward him, toward his warm breath against her skin, the faint scrape of claws against the back of her thigh, and the pads of leather pressing into her muscles.
She bit down on another moan as his tongue slipped up to take the place of his thumb. He was so careful with his teeth and claws now, nothing but soft and pliant, and in turn, she went soft and pliant beneath him.
He sucked gently as she drew breath, and as she exhaled his tongue turned flat against her. The rhythm of it was uneven, yet they kept pace with each other. She was unsure if she followed him or he took his cues from her, but they moved as one, ramping up as her breaths quickened.
And then he pulled away and the chill of the evening took his place. But before she could even whine a complaint, his knuckles dragged against her slit and she fell back fully, splayed out on the table and gasping. Her hands groped for purchase and as if he sensed her need, one of his hands slid into hers, fingers between fingers, palm to palm, and she gripped him as if she were falling and he was the ledge that would keep her from dying.
She pushed up into his hand at her waist, tight and taut and holding onto the ecstasy of his smooth leather knuckles against her swelling folds for as long as she could until it swept out of her like the ebbing tide. Her grip relaxed, but his hand did not slow. His knuckles still dragged across her, pressing, massaging, and she twisted beneath him with a moan.
“Chaton,” she murmured, voice uneven and breathless. “Chaton, please.”
He granted her a brief reprieve, withdrawing his hand only to plant another kiss. She whined and tipped her head back and hips up. Her vision spun with vertigo and she bit back the instinct to call for Tikki, to save herself from falling by transforming into Ladybug. She had no need for heroics here. She was in safe hands. She trusted these hands.
But she was going to lose herself if he didn’t give her a break.
She reached forward, sliding her hand along his scalp and down to the nape of his neck. She tugged gently and he obediently fell away. She followed, sitting up once more. She stroked his hair as he leaned his cheek against her thigh. She could not see his eyes, but his lips glistened in the moonlight.
She wanted so badly to peel back the makeshift blindfold. She wanted so badly to see him, to let him see her properly.
But there was nothing proper about this.
She trailed her hand down from his hair to his cheek and brushed her finger along his lips.
“May I return the favor?” she whispered.
For an answer, he took her hand and kissed her fingertips. He pressed his kisses along her wrist, the inside of her forearm, up until he hit the cuff of her jacket. Though she couldn’t see his eyes, his ears seemed to go flat with disappointment as he reached the end of her bare skin.
She pulled him up onto his feet and into a kiss. She moaned as the familiar taste of him melted into the new taste of her own musk that still lingered on his tongue. His hands pressed into her hips, pulling her up against him and her breath hitched as his leather-clad thigh slipped between her legs. She rolled her body against his as she had done so many times in her suit, but bare and exposed like this was a fully new thing. She felt her face grow hot and heat flush into her shoulders and pool in her gut. She was glad for his blindfold. He could not see how properly embarrassed she was even as she rolled her hips into him.
And even though she was supposed to be returning the favor that he had granted her, he seemed more interested in letting her chase a second high against his body as he pulled her tighter against him. His lips again moved past hers, this time to her ear where he nipped gently and another chill went through her body.
“Mon minou?” she murmured into his ear.
He hummed and it was like her entire body reverberated in time with his tune.
“Are you stalling?”
And he went very still, the way he had when she had first suggested they make this an exchange. She recalled his delicate refusal and pulled away from him to get a better look at his face, but his gaze was still hidden from her. She pressed her palm to his cheek and thumbed gently at the leather restraint.
“Chaton, you can tell me no.”
He turned into her palm, pressing another kiss into her skin and this time she waited it out, waited for him to say what was on his mind.
“I don’t want to tell you no,” he finally murmured.
Her heart surged and it took all of her self-control to stay still, to wait for him to finish, for him to name whatever it was that was still holding him back.
“I’m just… nervous,” he finally admitted.
She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Her Chat would give and give, but she knew how hard it was for him to accept something for himself.
“I was nervous,” she said, “but you took care of me. I’d do no less for you.”
“Ladybug is never nervous.”
“Oh, Chaton, I’m nervous all the time.”
He leaned in and kissed her again, long and slow, then he pulled away to murmur, “You should dress before you turn back.”
Her heart ached to lose contact with him, for however brief, but he was right. Even the possibility that he might recognize Marinette’s shoes was too much to risk.
She pulled her pants back on and slid her feet into her ballet flats before whispering, “Tikki, spots on.” As the flash of light faded, he yanked his belt down to his neck.
His eyes were so bright in contrast with the dark night and the dark leather looped around his throat. She surged in for another kiss and he stumbled back. He fell against the balcony railing, back bowing in a fine curve as he sank into her arms. She recognized the trust he was giving her, but she still waited for him to confirm.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked again.
“I am,” he whispered into her mouth.
Though she was reluctant to do so, she stepped away from him again and called on her Lucky Charm. She expected a scarf or a blindfold to fall into her hands so that she could do as she wanted and take all of him without his mask or leather between them.
Instead, what she got was a square foil packet, no bigger than the palm of her hand.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she sighed.
A smile tugged on his lips. “Tikki approves, at least?” he said.
“Yes, but how are you going to detransform now?”
“The better question is how am I not going to? It seems like I have full permission from the universe to bare all my most delicate parts to you.”
“Chat—”
His hands closed around hers and he pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth. “Just close your eyes, my lady. I trust you.”
She pursed her lips, but sank down to her knees. She looked up at him, taking one last moment to memorize the wary smile on his lips, the messy, chaotic swoops of his golden hair, and the way his eyes glinted with anticipation and masked mischief.
Then she closed her eyes and leaned against him. The smooth, cool leather of his thigh against her cheek vanished in a flash of light, brilliant even behind her closed eyes, and it was replaced by rough denim. She fumbled for the button of his jeans and tried to will her embarrassment to return to the pit of her stomach. Everything he had done to her had felt deliberate; she felt like she was a teenager again, fumbling in a dark closet and not truly knowing anything about what she was supposed to do.
But she wasn’t a teenager anymore. She had some ideas, even if she’d never actually done this before.
She found the bulge in his pants rather easily, once she started looking. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. He’d been buried nose-deep into her for so long, it was a wonder he hadn’t come already.
With an attempt at the same delicacy he had shown her, she tugged open his jeans and slid her hands beneath the waistband of his briefs. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to open her eyes for a glimpse. She just imagined that they were as black as his suit and pulled them down, freeing his cock.
It bumped against her cheek, but she ignored it. Instead, she pressed her lips against his hip and felt the firm, unyielding line of his pelvis. She would commit a litany of crimes if it meant she could see how those lines drew into a V at his waist. Longingly, she trailed one hand up his stomach, beneath the cotton of his T-shirt, and gauged the shape of his abdomen. The leather bodysuit left nothing to the imagination, true, but there was still so much she hadn’t yet considered. She wished desperately to touch him with her own bare hands, and she felt guilty that she’d hesitated at all when he’d suggested they try this. Now she couldn’t believe they had waited this long.
His breath hitched as she reached his pecs and her fingertips grazed his nipple.
He reached for her wrist and gently guided her hand back down to his groin. She was reluctant to follow his lead, but there would be times other than this. There would be time to explore each other fully later, someday, when they were free to do everything without masks or blindfolds.
She wrapped her hand around his member and rolled her wrist as she moved from tip to base and back. He moaned under her touch, so she repeated the movement. Again, she wished her hands could be bare, but she contented herself with what they had, and what they had was one lucky condom.
She unwrapped the foil and carefully unrolled the rubber over his dick with the same twisting thrusts. This, she knew how to do. Someday she’d have to thank Alya for that one sleepover they’d spent putting condoms on bananas for practice and arguing about how it could possibly be sexy.
Finally, she put her mouth over his head. She wasn’t entirely sure how to mimic the twists of her hand that had seemed to work so well, but she hollowed her cheeks and pressed her tongue to the underside of his dick and lowered herself down. She felt his hips thrust up against her and one hand went to the back of her neck—nothing tight, just steady and firm.
With one hand, she held his hip, more for a guideline of where she was in space since she couldn’t see, and with her other, she sought his other hand. She found it clenched tight against the railing and she slid her fingers over his knuckles. He relaxed beneath her touch, but as she pulled her head back and let her tongue linger over his tip, his grip tightened once more and he barely restrained a moan.
She listened for every hitch in his breath and doubled down when she caught it. He groaned when the head of his cock hit the roof of her mouth so she did it again and again. He choked on his own breath when she pressed a kiss to the base of cock and sucked gently, so she peppered those kisses along his length. He whined, “Ladybug,” as she bobbed on his cock from tip to hilt, so she did it again and again and again until his every breath was, “Ladybug, Ladybug Ladybug,” inhale and exhale, constant, like a fervent prayer.
And then she felt the tendons in his wrist flex and his hand tightened in her hair. Everything about him went rigid and he came. She stayed still, mouth firmly around his cock, until, slowly, his hands unwound from her hair and his grip on the railing relaxed. He sagged backwards and she pressed a kiss to his pelvis once more and nuzzled his thigh the way he had nuzzled hers.
His hand tightened again in her hair, pulling her up and she came obediently, rising to meet his lips with hers and though she could not see him, he guided her all the same. They kissed long and slow, and she and he both, hands working as one, pulled the condom away.
“I wonder,” she murmured between gentle kisses, “if I use my miraculous power, would the Lucky Charm reset you to full hardness?”
He laughed into her mouth and that was how she knew that this had all gone well. There was nothing changed between them, just something new and warm and delicate.
They fell into the chair together, legs hooking around each other. Her boot nudged against a laced sneaker and the cuff of his jeans. His bare hands trailed against the scale-like pattern of her suit. Her lips and his lips brushed against each other as they settled and stilled.
“Are you going to change back?” she murmured.
“Can I enjoy this a moment more?”
She stuck out her lower lip in what she hoped was an exaggerated pout. “I thought you were nervous.”
“Only because this was all I’ve ever dreamed about. Maybe I’m not ready to let it go yet.”
She thought about teasing him, asking if he kept a body pillow of Ladybug that he clung to at night, but that would be unfair of her to mock him after he’d been so vulnerable with her.
He nosed gently at her neck and breathed in, long and slow, and out in the same pace, almost like he was settling in for a nap. She trailed her fingers lazily through his hair, like she might if he were a cat curling up on her chest. She was surprised to find his hair as silky as it was when he was transformed. She had always assumed it was the magic that made his hair so perfect.
He hummed into her neck and it startled her. Not because it was unpleasant, but because she was so used to hearing him purr. Instead, out of his suit, he hummed through his contentment. It was a gentle tune, familiar…
Her hand stilled in his hair. She knew the song he was humming. She knew it because she had heard it one other place and only one other place.
“I didn’t compose it for keyboard,” Adrien had said, “so it might not—”
“I want to hear it,” Marinette had interrupted.
They’d been on the deck of Liberty after a Kitty Section rehearsal. Some of the band had drifted below deck. Others had gone ashore for snacks. Marinette and Adrien had been left alone.
And he’d played it for her. Only for her.
She pulled away from him and fumbled for the table. She practically fell into it; its rounded edge dug into her gut. She squeezed her eyes closed tightly, as if she could undo the memory that had struck her.
“Ladybug?” he asked.
And oh, no, she could already hear him in his voice.
“Ladybug, what’s wro—”
“Stop talking! Stop—stop—stop thinking, oh, please, please stop thinking—”
“Thinking? Ladybug, what are you talking about?”
“You can’t—you can’t know that song!” And as the words left her mouth she regretted them. Because if he knew the song, then she knew who he was. And if he knew that she knew the song, then he would know who she was.
She groaned, and it was the most unhappy groan of the evening. She pressed her head into the table. “I—I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t answer. Her heart pounded and her ears rang and she heard no sound from him. She wondered if he had leapt off of the balcony without a word. She wouldn’t blame him. She wished she could run from what she had just heard and said—but it was too late to undo what she’d done.
She turned and opened her eyes.
And there he was: Adrien Agreste, sitting on her chair, on her balcony, head buried between his knees and hands laced around the back of his neck, struggling to breathe.
She knelt beside him and tried again to apologize. “I’m sorry—”
“This is my fault,” he gasped. “I’m sorry—I never should have said—It was my idea—”
“No, no,” she insisted. “Adrien, I did this. I didn’t have to say anything. Or I could have said no. It’s my responsibility—”
“No, don’t, don’t do that.” He sucked in a deep breath through his teeth. “Please, Ladybug—” He squeezed his eyes closed and wrinkled his nose. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she tried, but he hardly seemed to hear her.
He seemed to have gone somewhere even Ladybug couldn’t reach.
She took in a deep breath of her own and did her best to banish every nerve that seemed to light up her veins with fear. Her fear still persisted, and though she knew she would only be less brave without her mask, she also knew that there was no point in pretending they had anymore secrets to keep.
“Tikki, spots off,” she said again.
And now her bare hands were on his denim-clad knees. She trailed her fingers along his arm to his wrist and carefully pried his fingers loose from his neck.
“Adrien,” she whispered. “Will you look at me?”
He hesitated, and she waited. She waited until the tension in his shoulders slumped and his bare hands turned hers over, examining every vein and freckle and tendon like he was seeing it for the first time.
It was the first time, but it also wasn’t.
“I’m sorry, Marinette,” he said again, voice thin.
She bit down on her lip, knowing there was nothing she could say to undo what had been done. It was his fault only as much as it was her fault. She could have kept her guard up. She could have insisted he change back. She never had to return the favor that he had granted her. There were a thousand things they could have changed to have avoided ending up here, and she wasn’t sure that she’d trade any of them.
“I’m not sorry,” she whispered back, and she squeezed his hands.
He let out a long, slow breath, as if it was losing her favor that had been his true fear, rather than this revelation of truth. “Since the beginning?” he asked.
“Imagine how I feel,” she said, “all those months pining after you when you were literally at my side, begging me to date you.”
Finally, he looked up at her, and she thought she saw a smile on the corner of his mouth. “I guess we were both a bit ridiculous.”
And she felt the double-meaning. They had both been ridiculous, pining after each other without even noticing. They had also been ridiculous tonight, thinking they would each be able to pull off this intimacy without revealing their most intimate secret. The way this had ended was inevitable.
She pushed herself up towards him and he met her in another kiss, which was, for each of them, as much an apology as it was forgiveness.
When they pulled apart, she said, “You know, I do have a bed downstairs. Like, a real proper mattress and everything.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I imagine Tikki and Plagg could find better things to do?”
They kissed again, briefly, because there was too much else to be eager for. Then they both hefted the table from the trapdoor, combining their merely human strength, and slipped down to Marinette’s bedroom, where they would be able to, for the first time, do everything the way that they wanted. No masks. No blindfolds. Nothing to keep them apart—not once their shoes, jeans, and t-shirts had been discarded.
Here's my next installment for the @mlsquaredance event!
Read the original fic, but princess, wishes do come true by @miabrown007 on Ao3! It was such a sweet fic to Remix. I hope you enjoy this Halloween treat <3 And thank you again for the grad school encouragement.
Read the remix on Ao3!
beta'd by @sunshinemarauder <3 I appreciated all your help with this event
Marinette shivers as the evening breeze picks up suddenly. Adrien readily tugs the scarf from his neck and passes it to her.
She hesitates, but takes it.
“Thanks,” she murmurs and leans into him.
He kisses her forehead and turns his gaze back to the sky.
They’re not the only couple that has sought out a star-gazing spot on the hill of the Sacré-Coeur above the light pollution of the city, but it feels like they are. The world always dims when he’s next to Marinette. Though the blanket Marinette grabbed for their late night picnic is itchy beneath Adrien’s hands and the cold winter breeze seems determined to pierce his coat, he can’t imagine being any happier than this.
“Aren’t you cold?” Marinette asks.
“How can I be when I’m snuggled against you?”
She huffs in irritation, and he can picture an eye roll, the sort Ladybug might give Chat Noir. But Marinette has always blushed and stuttered when Adrien offers cheesy romantic quips.
“Is everything all right, m—Marinette?” He stops just short of calling her “my lady.”
“Fine,” she says in a way that suggests she is not fine. But, perhaps hearing her own tone, she shifts against him and adds, “It’s just colder than I thought it would be.”
He doesn’t think that’s the truth, but he doesn’t press.
Adrien is pretty sure that Marinette’s discomfort has something to do with the kiss Chat Noir and Ladybug exchanged last week. He didn’t mean to kiss her, and he didn’t know if she meant to kiss him back, but they definitely kissed each other. It was a chilly, starry night like this one. They were just talking, as they often did after a patrol. She said something that tugged on his heart—something about the pressure of Paris on her shoulders—and he leaned in, offering his shoulder as a sort of comfort. Then he caught the scent of warm, fresh bread and the rose-scented shampoo Marinette used, and he leaned in for the familiar taste of sugar on her lips.
His kiss with Ladybug had been like every kiss with Marinette, and he was struck with the truth.
But after their kiss, Ladybug blushed and stuttered and apologized and insisted that the kiss meant nothing, that it had been an accident, that she had a boyfriend.
So he leaned back on his hands and smiled. He said, “Then I suppose your boyfriend better not find out.”
As Marinette shifts against him again, he thinks it was probably not the smartest joke to make when he knows the truth and she seems not to.
“Marinette,” he says, “what will you wish for?”
There’s not long until the Geminids decorate the sky, putting on a show to rival Ladybug’s magic. Adrien knows what he’s going to wish for: more nights like this.
“Wishing upon a shooting star is a hoax,” she mutters.
“Sure,” he concedes, wondering why she’s suddenly given up every romantic bone in her body to be sharp and acidic. He looks down at her to make sure the girl curled up against him is the same girl who insists on crafting thoughtful, personalized gifts for even the smallest of occasions. “But I don’t think the point is believing that it works, exactly.”
She tips her head to look up at him. “Then what is the point?”
“I think it’s about hope.” Adrien doesn’t know who he’d be without hope, without believing that each day had the opportunity to be better than the last, even when he’d been forced to face the worst.
“And what is so hopeful about rocks that burn themselves to ash in the sky?”
He can feel her heart racing, and her blue eyes are full of a determined fire. But he knows her well enough to know that she’s made of complex layers of feeling and expression, that whatever’s in her heart has a labyrinth of thoughts it’s forced to navigate before it can reach the surface. Just because ferocity is what’s in her expression doesn’t mean that ferocity is the word for what’s clamoring inside her chest.
He remembers what she said about the pressure of Paris, and he wonders what she hasn’t said about the pressures of just being Marinette.
“You’re right,” he concedes. “There is nothing romantic about burning yourself to nothing.”
Her cheeks color, and she protests weakly, “That’s not what I meant.”
“No, princess?” he cups her cheek in his hand and wonders if she will connect the nickname he gives her now to the nickname he’s given her time and again as Chat Noir.
If she does, it has the opposite of its intended effect. She pulls away from him and the night is noticeably colder without her body against his.
Perhaps he should just come clean.
“What would you wish for?” she asks.
He’s about to say, “More nights like this,” but the words die on his tongue. He doesn’t want more nights with a sharp Marinette who refuses to lean on him. He twists the ring on his finger thoughtfully as he searches for the right words. It’s easy to find the right words as Chat Noir, who is made of open declarations of love and purr-fect puns. It’s easy to find the right words as Adrien Agreste, who is fed his lines as certainly as if he were merely an actor for his father’s brand. But when he’s just Adrien, when he’s with Marinette like this, or even with his friends, he finds it hard to know what to say.
“I think I’d wish for the courage to be honest,” he finally says, thinking of how much easier this would be if he could just tell her what he knows.
But those words make her shoulders stiffen, and he hears how they might sound like an accusation when brushed against the kiss she still believes is a secret.
He reaches for her hand, but she pulls away to press the heels of her palms against her eyes. He glances at the sky and, though there are no stars falling yet, wishes for a second chance.
“Marinette,” he says quietly, “if I share a secret with you, will you share one with me?” He wants to ask how he can possibly convince her to lean on him again, but he doesn’t think she’s ready for him to be so direct.
“I don’t have any secrets,” she says, and though it’s a lie, Adrien admires the inadvertent truth of it. He already knows what she is afraid to say, so there really aren’t any secrets for her to share. And because he knows those secrets, he knows that what she means to say is, “I don’t have any secrets that I can share with you.”
“Do you want to know what my secret is, then?” he asks.
She turns back to him, and he can see that the ferocity has worn away. Even though this night isn’t going how he hoped, he’s burned through one layer of her labyrinth. Now she just looks sad, but he doesn’t think sad is right either.
“Is it…” she pauses and swallows. “Is it the kind of secret that we might break up over?”
He thinks about how many ways he could tell her what he wants to say. He tries so desperately to find the right words to assure her, but everything he tries in his head sounds like the words to end everything.
If he tells her that he is Chat Noir, he breaks Ladybug’s trust. If he tells her he knows that she’s kissed Chat Noir or that she’s Ladybug, he’s afraid she’ll deny it, and that’s a lie they won’t recover from. And if he tells her that he’s kissed Ladybug? What would she think of that, knowing that Ladybug certainly hasn’t kissed Adrien?
“I’d like to think,” he says slowly, “that we’d be able to take a little fall without burning up.”
She blinks, taking a moment to process his words. Then she wrinkles her nose and turns his words over the way Ladybug might survey a battlefield to find the right place for her Lucky Charm.
Her sadness burns away to make room for guilt, but he doesn’t think guilt is quite it, either.
“What if I made a mistake?” she asks. “A mistake I can’t take back?”
And he realizes what’s buried under that guilt. Yes, she’s angry and frustrated with herself, yes she’s sad about what might happen because of what she’s done, and of course she’s guilty for breaking an unspoken rule of their relationship, but ultimately she’s afraid. She’s afraid that he won’t forgive her.
“There’s nothing you could do to make me love you less,” he says.
“But I can still hurt you.”
He’s so tired of being cold and so tired of the distance between them. He pulls her against him, even as she squeaks a protest. He squeezes her as if he can pull her warmth into him.
“Loving someone means giving them permission to hurt you,” he says, and hopes that she understands how much he means it. He’s never known love that didn’t come with pain, that didn’t come with disappointment, but he loves anyway. He loves the way he hopes, because if he didn’t, if ever stopped hoping things could be better or stopped loving someone with their faults, he doesn’t know that he’d ever find happiness again.
She sinks into him and buries her face in his shoulder. “What if..” her voice is so soft that he has to turn his head down and press his cheek to hers to hear her. “What if I… kissed someone else?”
And the worry in her voice is so palpable that Adrien can’t help himself. He knows that he would do anything to allay those fears. “I’d find a way to forgive you,” he says.
She takes in a deep breath and goes still.
“Are you wearing cologne?” she asks in a suddenly hollow tone.
Usually, he is, though not necessarily by his choice. Sneaking out for a midnight date meant he didn’t have to worry about what brands he might or might not be representing. “Not at the moment,” he confesses.
She pushes on his chest and he reluctantly lets her go. He wonders if he smells bad. He is wearing deodorant, isn’t he?
She looks up at him and he can’t find any trace of the guilt or fear in her eyes. Something like that fierce determination is back as she says, “What if I kissed Luka?”
His heart stutters suddenly and his stomach drops out of him and into the ground. He swallows, wholly unprepared for how sharply that shot wounds him. “Did you kiss Luka?” he asks.
“Would you forgive me if I did?”
He searches her eyes, searches for a glimpse of the truth, but he can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“I would,” he says, and tries to think of it purely in a hypothetical sense, since that’s all she’s offered it in. “I… I’d like to know why.”
“Because he kissed me,” she says. “And something about it felt familiar, so I kissed him back before I realized what I was doing.”
“Is it…” Adrien struggles to make a coherent thought. She was right—it hurt. “Is kissing Luka something you’d like to do again?”
“That depends. You said if I told you a secret, you’d tell me a secret.”
The wound in his chest still aches, but she’s right. He has to tell her. At least he knows that his secret won’t hurt her as badly as she hurt him. “I kissed Ladybug,” he says.
She hums, considering. “That certainly sounds like something your girlfriend shouldn’t find out about.”
Adrien’s heart jerks again. He searches her face, desperate to know what she’s really feeling, and this time he glimpses a bit of mischief in her eyes. Suddenly her question about his cologne makes sense. She’d uncovered him in the same way he’d uncovered her. It had just taken her a bit longer to discover Adrien’s scent underneath Adrien Agreste’s scent.
“You didn’t kiss Luka.” The relief in his chest leaves his words breathless.
She purses her lips. “No, but you deserved that, after the week I’ve had tearing my hair out about kissing Chat Noir.”
“Okay,” he admits. “Maybe I did. But I still would have forgiven you, even though it hurt.”
She takes his hand in hers, and rubs his cold fingers. He doesn’t have the words to describe how that one small action does more to repair this evening than anything that’s been said between them.
“I believe you,” she says. “I have a question, though, about your kiss with Ladybug.”
He bites down on his tongue, an anxious habit he learned when he was taught to mask his anxiety. “I knew it was you,” he assures her, “but only the moment before I did it. I swear.”
“I only wanted to ask,” she says slowly, eyes still on their hands, “if kissing Ladybug is something you’d like to do again.”
His lips tug back into a very Chat Noir-like grin. “That depends,” he says, “on if my lady is interested in kissing Chat Noir again.”
When she looks up at him, he no longer needs to wonder what she’s feeling. There’s heat in her eyes and she places one hand on the back of his neck.
Later, she’ll confess that his smell is contradictory, and that distinct contradiction is what allowed her to connect the dots. That she’d never understood how Chat Noir could smell so crisp and clean but like worn leather at the same time. That she’d never been able to discern the scent of Adrien’s fresh soap and dry-cleaned clothes beneath the cologne he was forced to advertise.
But tonight, they just kiss. They are warm and burning and as long as they burn together, they won’t burn out.
The stars fall in the constellation Gemini, and though Adrien and Marinette are no longer stargazing, Adrien makes a wish anyway. He makes the wish he came to make: more nights like this. More nights where it’s okay if he says the wrong thing, more nights where he and Marinette can talk through their mistakes, more nights that end in long, warm kisses like this.
Full Exposure [REMIX]
remixed from Full Exposure by @ladyofthenoodle for the @mlsquaredance event! A huge thank you for organizing it. It has been such a blast and such a boost to my creativity this past month.
beta'd by @ccboomer and @sunshinemarauder
Marinette snaps her laptop closed and groans into Alya’s pillow. She is so tired of looking at empty bank accounts and red spreadsheets. “How am I supposed to afford anything at this rate?” she whines.
“Out of noodle-dollars already?” Alya asks without looking up from her tablet.
Marinette rolls over to stare at the ceiling. “It’s impossible to be a student full-time, have a full-time unpaid internship, and work enough hours to buy food and pay rent and every other little thing that comes along, while also being a full-time superhero!” Marinette ticks each list item off on her hand as she talks. “I can’t keep taking out loans or putting it on a credit card.”
“The system’s broken,” Alya agrees nonchalantly. “You could always sell nudes.”
Marinette squeals in a combination of horror and disgust and throws a pillow at Alya.
Alya takes the soft blow with the smallest of grunts. “There’s nothing wrong with it! A lot of people make a lot of money that way.”
“I’m not interested in gross comments, people photoshopping my body, or having my image fed into A.I. generators.”
Alya shrugs. “Fair.”
Marinette scrunches up her nose. “How much money?”
“A few thousand, easily.” Alya adds a note into her journalism reading, then sets her tablet and stylus aside. “You could probably make a good deal.”
Marinette rolls her eyes. “No one is going to pay a thousand dollars for my nudes.”
“They might for Ladybug’s though.”
Marinette reaches for Alya’s second pillow and throws it. This time, Alya catches it.
“Ladybug is a national icon! She can’t just post nudes!”
“Ladybug is a full-grown adult woman who doesn’t get paid by the city. She can do whatever she likes with her image.”
Marinette shakes her head as she sits up. She leans back against Alya’s wall and stares out the window. Ladybug is a hero of Paris. She has a reputation. Besides, what would Chat Noir think? He’d see them, surely. How many pussy jokes could she bear?
Marinette taps her fingers against her closed laptop. “What if they were… tasteful nudes?”
“Boudoir photography is very in,” Alya says. “You’d just have to make sure people know they’re paying for almost-nudes.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’d need you to be my photographer.”
“Girl, I’m happy to help you, but you already know someone who actually does model photography.”
Marinette squeals again and reaches for a pillow, only to find herself out of ammunition. “I can’t ask Adrien to take Ladybug’s nudes!”
“He’s your boyfriend.”
“He’s Marinette’s boyfriend!”
Alya shrugs, as if this is irrelevant, when in fact it is the most relevant that any fact could possibly be to this conversation. Yes, Adrien has turned to directing photoshoots rather than modeling in photoshoots now that they’re in university, but Marinette is not going to ask her boyfriend to take nudes of another girl! And Ladybug is, as far as Adrien knows, another girl.
“You know he’s going to look at them either way,” Alya says. “You might as well make him part of it so he doesn’t have to feel guilty about it.”
“Adrien would not look at Ladybug’s nudes. Not when he’s my boyfriend!”
Alya raises her eyebrows. “He’s loyal, not dead. You remember how he talked about Ladybug when were in school together. He won’t be able to resist.”
Marinette does not remember the way Adrien talked about Ladybug when they were younger. She was too busy daydreaming about him or trying to talk without tripping over her words.
“Adrien used to like Ladybug?” she asks weakly.
“The way a fish likes water.” Alya tips her chair back and, with a mischievous grin that’s rather fitting for the holder of the miraculous of illusion and trickery, says, “Just ask. See what he says.”
✦✧✦✧
Adrien is still not entirely sure that this is a good idea.
He’s flattered, honestly, that Alya, as the admin for the Ladyblog, recommended him to Ladybug as a photographer. He’s surprised and grateful that Marinette assured him that it would be fine for him to do such a risqué photoshoot with such a well-known celebrity. And he’s nervous, more nervous than he has ever been about anything in his life.
Chloé has agreed to give him access to one of Le Grand Paris’s suites for the day, though he hasn’t told her why he needs it—not that he thinks he can fully keep it secret from her. She’ll figure it out once the photos are released.
Zoé helped him haul up his lighting equipment. He didn’t tell her why he needed the room, either, but he imagines she’ll be one of the first people to download the photos once they’re online.
Adrien finishes tightening the C-stand beside the bed. He’ll adjust the lighting once Ladybug arrives, but he wants the grunt work done before she gets there. The last thing he needs is Ladybug standing around in her underwear while he tries to work with heavy equipment.
Adrien rubs his eyes and tries not to picture Ladybug in lacy underwear, though it’s as absurd as it is futile. She’ll be here any minute and he’ll have to photograph her while she’s actually, physically in front of him and is actually, physically wearing lacy underwear.
A knock on the balcony doors breaks through Adrien’s internal battlefield. His heart, which is already nesting in his throat, decides it’s time to run a marathon just at the sound of her arrival. He’s worried it might fully burst before he even lays eyes on Ladybug.
He swallows and reminds himself that he has a girlfriend. That he is going to see Marinette tonight, once this is over. He’ll have to laugh and tell her how absolutely innocent it was when it’s all said and done. Because it has to be innocent. It has to be.
Adrien slides open the balcony door and is relieved to see that Ladybug is still fully clothed in her usual suit. The only thing that makes her appearance on the balcony any different from an evening on patrol is the duffel bag in her hand, like she’s come for a sleepover.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” he replies, and hopes she doesn’t notice how breathless he is.
Adrien isn’t sure if the pause between them feels long because adrenaline has his brain running double-time, or if the silence between them really does stretch out interminably.
“I’m just about ready,” he finally says, “whenever you are.”
“Right! I just need to um… change.”
“Right.”
This time, he’s certain that the pause is too long, but Ladybug finally slips past him and into the bathroom.
When she’s gone, Adrien scrubs his face with his hands. His palms come away sticky with sweat. He is supposed to be the professional. If any of his photographers behaved like this while he was a model, he would never have worked with them again. He can’t let Ladybug think he’s some sort of creep.
The bathroom door opens and Adrien’s heart, again, races, but she doesn’t come out in her underwear, not yet.
Instead, Ladybug is wearing a thin, silky black robe. They discussed a color palette—one of the hardest conversations Adrien has ever had to keep a straight face for—and settled on blacks and reds, which not only keep with Ladybug’s theme, but are sensual enough on their own.
Her hair is pulled up in a bun and her mask covers her eyes—or rather, a replica of her mask. Even the earrings in her ears have to be a copy, at least for the moment. Adrien, knowing how his ring camouflages itself, asked her if her earrings bore her iconic spots when she was not transformed. If she was surprised he knew to ask, she didn’t show it. She simply confirmed that he was right, and she would have to wear a copy if they wanted to maintain the traditional icons of Ladybug.
He can tell that she’s taken his advice about makeup, too. The low dip in her bathrobe reveals perfectly smooth, pale skin. She’s covered up any blemishes and freckles, something he suggested not only because of his own experience in modeling, but because anyone who knows her, like a partner, might recognize such marks.
She blushed and said that her boyfriend didn’t know that she was Ladybug, so that was probably smart.
“I can also clean it up in post,” Adrien told her. Then, he dared to ask, “Does he know you’re doing this? Not that he has to—it’s your choice—I just… if you’re nervous about him finding out, that sounds… bad?”
Ladybug wrinkled her nose and stared down at their notes. “He sort of knows?”
But Ladybug’s relationship isn’t really Adrien’s business.
“Where to first?” She fidgets with the tie around her waist.
“I’ve set up over here.”
Adrien leads Ladybug to the bed, where he’d already pulled back the hotel bedspread and laid out a black silk sheet to cover the stark white hotel bedding.
Ladybug’s fingers slips into the knot around her waist. Adrien picks up his camera and busies himself with the settings, intentionally missing the moment she slides out of her bathrobe and onto the bed.
“I’m just going to check the lighting,” he says, and lifts his camera.
It’s easier to stare at her through the lens.
She’s not only taken her bathrobe off, but she’s pulled her hair down. Her dark hair falls along the curve of her neck and brushes over her shoulders. Adrien follows those curves down to the black cups edged in red lace that cover her pale breasts, though he catches the tiniest sliver of pink peeking out from behind the lace. Black straps fasten her bra to the high-waisted underwear that, while it covers her stomach, curves high over her hips, leaving her legs long and exposed. Her bare feet are decorated in bright red nail polish. Something about that nail polish nags at his brain—didn’t Marinette paint her toes last night?
But the shutter on his camera clicks and he forgets to finish his thought. It takes all his mental fortitude to look at the photo professionally and academically. The shadows on her skin are too harsh; her hair blends in with the black silk; one of the straps of her bra is twisted.
Adrien adjusts the bounce of the light around the room, softens it with a flag, switches the bedding from black to red, and asks Ladybug to fix her bra strap.
“And then the robe back on,” he says, “but open.” It takes all his effort to keep his voice steady and even.
He checks his settings again, adjusts his camera, and finally, they can begin to shoot in earnest.
Once he gets going, it’s fairly easy to maintain his professionalism. There isn’t a whole lot of sensuality when it comes to adjusting angles, clicking the shutter, checking the shot, adjusting the pose—it really does feel like work. But Adrien would appreciate it if his heart would stop jerking in sudden bursts whenever Ladybug turns her brilliant blue eyes to the camera, or when he has to set the camera down to direct Ladybug into a new pose.
She, at least, behaves like a professional.
“New pose?” Adrien asks, and Ladybug readily shifts so that one arm drapes lazily above her head. Her face tilts up so that her neck slopes in a soft arch into her shoulder, and one knee cocks, suggesting a subtle invitation.
Adrien very gently touches her elbow, and she moves her arm at his direction. “Have you done this before?”
“No!” she says quickly, then swallows. Her bright red lips open and close as she looks for the right words. “I mean—I just did a lot of research beforehand.”
Adrien did, too. He’d never done any shoots like this during his time as a model. He quit before he was old enough to even have conversations about these sorts of shoots. So he’s spent a lot of time looking at boudoir photos in the last few weeks. Marinette helped him, and it had certainly been nice to discuss ideas with her.
He still doesn’t know why Marinette was so calm about it all—at least, for Marinette’s standards. She fell into her high-pitched, nervous voice when they discussed the shoot; she laughed awkwardly and blushed terribly. But Adrien knew that Marinette had absurdly jealous tendencies. He still didn’t understand why she didn’t exhibit any of that during their conversations about Ladybug.
Adrien had certainly felt a pang of jealousy when Ladybug told Chat Noir.
“I just… wanted to warn you,” Ladybug said. “And—you don’t have to, er—feel bad if you look at them. I mean, not that I want you to look at them! And I think—just don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Chat Noir leaned against his staff and tried for a smile, but it was hard with the anxiety curling in his stomach. He no longer loves Ladybug, but she’s still his partner. He doesn’t want to share her with the rest of Paris this way. He also wanted to promise her that he wouldn’t look, especially if it made her uncomfortable, but he couldn’t very well promise abstinence if he was going to be the one taking and editing each and every photograph.
“My lady,” he finally said, “I would never let this change anything between us. Maybe I’ll even do my own.”
But Adrien doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to do something like this as Chat Noir. Not only does he have absolutely no desire to get back in front of a camera and let someone else take control of his image again, there are too many photos of Adrien Agreste out there. Someone will inevitably hold up Chat Noir and Adrien’s bodies against each other and put it all together, and then it will be over. He’s grown since his modeling days, certainly, but it isn’t a risk he wants to take.
As Adrien pauses to check over the photographs, Ladybug relaxes into the bed. He risks a glance away from his camera to look at her properly, to shut out the stands and equipment and take a moment to see Ladybug as she is.
Her fingers twist in the ends of her hair, like an anxious fidget. Her eyes are locked with the ceiling and there’s a pinch to her cheek, like she’s gnawing her way through a difficult thought. Her black hair fans out on the red silk just as the black robe does, and as she shifts, it falls from her neck and shoulders, revealing the sharp angles of her collarbone. Her lipstick is the same shade of red as the lace that curls around her breast and her waist. Adrien can’t help but stare.
“Is everything all right?” she asks.
“Yes—” Adrien wishes he could sound less defensive. He glances back down at his camera. “Did you want to see them?”
He sits down on the bed next to her and she leans over his shoulder. A shiver runs down his spine as her bare skin presses against his arm. He has never touched Ladybug’s bare skin before; not in all their years of pulling each other out of danger has he ever been this close with her.
“Is that really me?” she asks.
He laughs, but it sounds as forced as it feels. “Yeah. You—You look great.”
She feels warm against him, too warm. He wishes she would pull away.
“You’re really good at this,” she says.
“Thank you. I think knowing what it’s like on the other side of the camera helps.”
Her brow furrows beneath her mask. It doesn’t shift fluidly with her expression the way the magical one grafted onto her might have, but it tilts and twists with her confusion.
“Have you done shoots like this before?”
“No, no, nothing like this. This is… new for me.” Adrien swallows and stands. His arm feels cold where she had been touching him. “But if they turn out well, maybe I can convince my girlfriend to do one.”
Ladybug crosses her legs and leans over onto her knee. “Oh—do you think she’d like that?”
“She did help me plan this shoot, so maybe?”
Ladybug posed so neatly before, but now she looks small and drawn into herself, hunched over her own legs. Adrien wonders if she’s thinking about her own boyfriend, and how he’ll feel to see her like this. Does her partner know her well enough—love her well enough—to recognize her like this?
“Lean back?” Adrien says.
Ladybug places her hands behind her, fingers pressing deep into the mattress and slipping along the silk.
“Chin up, chest out?”
She does, but the worry in her blue eyes doesn’t fade. The pose should be haughty, a look Ladybug has been giving him easily for the last hour. He wonders why she’s so lost now.
He snaps the pictures anyway, then suggests she lean back on her elbows and look away. If she can’t be haughty, he can redirect and lean into pensive.
But after a few more clicks of the shutter, he has to ask, “Are you all right?”
She turns back to him and stares like she’s wandered in from another planet. “What is it?”
“You just look worried.”
“Oh. No. I—I was just thinking. Your girlfriend—I mean, my boyfriend—I mean—I don’t know if he’d want pictures of me like this.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“I just mean I’m not like this, you know, without the mask.”
“You are very pretty. I’m sure your boyfriend agrees.”
It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting, but he thinks she blushes. “I’m a lot more awkward without the magic,” she says.
“You’re not wearing any magic now.”
He doesn’t realize how much attention he’s giving to her breathing until he notices her chest go still, her breath caught in her lungs.
He snaps a photo.
“Oh, I wasn’t ready!”
Adrien glances down at the preview. Her blue eyes are wide and her red lips drawn into a small pout. It’s different from the looks they’ve been leaning towards—powerful, dominant, desirable. Instead, she looks surprised and vulnerable. It’s his favorite picture of the day so far, but it’s clearly not what she wants, not the way she wants others to see her. He deletes it.
“Maybe we should try some of the tease shots?” he suggests.
She shifts onto her knees and reaches behind her to the hooks of her bra. Adrien captures the moment of her unclasping her bra several times before she lays back down on the bed, cups still in place, but backstraps splayed out on the bed.
Then they take a few with the bra cast aside, first with her hands covering her nipples and then with a red ribbon reminiscent of Ladybug’s hair ribbons.
Adrien looks away each time she changes her minimal modesty coverings out, but he can’t help but think about how many nights he spent as a teenager dreaming about Ladybug beneath her mask and beneath her suit. It wasn’t always fantasies like this, but he’d be a liar if he said he had never dreamed of Ladybug like this.
She bites down on her lip and he snaps another series of photos.
Then she puts the robe back on and Adrien’s heart stutters as he remembers what they agreed to shoot next.
Ladybug said she wasn’t interested in full nudes, that she didn’t want all of Paris to see all of her. But they agreed that they would shoot the robe without lingerie.
She shimmies out of her underwear and climbs back onto the bed.
Adrien swallows down a host of anxiety and desire that wells up in his chest as she adjusts herself on the bed. Ladybug leans back against the headboard, one leg bent up and the other out, but her black silk falls neatly between her legs. Adrien’s heart races as she tugs the silk up at her waist so that the V covering her chest pools into something loose and inviting. Adrien can see the lines where her breasts press against her stomach.
“Can you move the knot?” Adrien gestures to her waist, where the knot of her silk tie is hiding behind her thigh. It doesn’t need to be exposed, but it would give the shot more intrigue, though he supposes Ladybug has enough of that all on her own.
She shifts the tie as he directs and shifts all the silk with it.
“May I?” Adrien asks and, with heart racing, fixes the tie for her.
He does everything he can not to brush her skin as he adjusts the way the silk falls against her chest and around her thighs. He checks each wrinkle at her waist to make sure it looks intentionally casual and comfortable. He double-checks the fall of the silk against her chest to make sure the best parts of her are hidden. Finally, he smooths the silk over her thigh and tugs on the ends so that there is only just enough fabric to cover between her legs, but leaves most of her legs visible to the camera.
He catches sight of the tiny, heart-shaped freckle on the inside of her thigh and goes very still. She goes still, too.
“What is it?”
Adrien swallows. “You and my girlfriend have the same freckle.”
“Oh—I’m sorry—I can get my concealer—”
She’s already trying to get out from under him, ruining every bit of staging he has just finished setting. He means to get out of her way and to tell her that he can hide any freckles in post but his brain is too busy trying to figure out why Ladybug just apologized to him for having the same freckle as Marinette.
She crashes into him and he tries to catch himself on the bed, but the silk is smooth and they both go tumbling to the floor.
“I’m so sorry!” she says. “I told you, I’m clumsy without the magic.”
She’s on top of him, and the red silk sheet falls onto her waist, draping over them both. Adrien stares up at her from the plush carpet. She tries to get up, but he grabs her hip and holds her steady. She freezes.
His other hand, as slow and automatic as if it belonged to a machine separate from him, drifts up to her mask. Her breath hitches as he thumbs the end of it, just where it covers her cheekbone.
“Ladybug,” he breathes. They’re so close to each other that he can see the bob of her throat as she swallows.
He knows the next logical thought, but he can’t bring it to his lips. It makes sense, though. Ladybug choosing him, Marinette’s lack of jealousy, the toe nails, the one, single mark on her skin that he’s seen a dozen nights before in Marinette’s bed…
“I’m sor—”
But he cuts off her apology with a kiss. He knew, before he kissed her, but he truly knows it now. He knows Marinette’s shy, hesitant kisses, and the taste of her tongue and the curve of her lips. He feels dizzy as years of flimsy excuses and missed flirting in all directions flood his memories, but it also feels good. It feels right to know that this is how it has always been, that Marinette has always been the girl that he loves.
He drops his head back to the floor and stares up at her with a satisfied grin.
She looks back with panic in her eyes. “Adrien, I’m so sorry,” she says.
But he only smiles. “I don’t know why you’re apologizing. I feel like the cat that just caught the canary.”
✦✧✦✧
Alya yawns and leans against Nino. He pulls the blanket tighter around them and turns the movie up.
Then Alya’s phone buzzes.
“It’s Marinette,” she says, and Nino groans, but he pauses the movie.
“If something happened between Adrien and Ladybug today, I probably should call Adrien.”
“It might be nothing,” Alya says, though neither of them believe it. She leans away from Nino as she answers.
Nino can’t hear Marinette’s words on the other end of the call, but he can pick out the frantic tone. He starts thumbing through his own phone to text Adrien.
Alya frowns and gets to her feet. “Girl, slow down, I have no idea what you’re saying.” Then a grin spreads across her face. “Ah, well, that was always a possibility… No, I’m not saying I planned this on purpose. I’m just saying it’s been years and maybe you should have told him by now… What did you just say about Chat Noir?”
A Bad Dream [Remix]
part of the @mlsquaredance 2023 Buffet Remixes
Remixed from A Bad Dream by walkingonthestars (@hamsternamedmarinette)
beta'd by @wield-the-mighty-pen
Read on Ao3 or below!
Adrien woke suddenly, shirt and sheets clinging to a layer of sweat, and breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His mouth tasted like blood and he couldn't move, not at first.
Slowly, his body caught up with his mind, and he was able to sit up and gather his breath. But the taste in his mouth lingered, and the panic that began in his gut crawled through his chest and up his throat, even as he tried to swallow it down.
He glanced down at his hands where he gripped the bedsheet as tightly as he had gripped Ladybug’s lifeless body in his dream. His silver ring glinted in the moonlight, its destructive power belied by its plain, unassuming band.
Normally, the power of Chat Noir was a comfort, a taste of freedom, but tonight the sight of the ring on his finger turned his stomach into a new set of knots. He yanked the ring off and hurled it into the darkness of his bedroom. He heard it clink against the floor, bounce against the wooden slats, and roll onto the rug somewhere beneath his couch.
Even without the weight of the ring, his panic wouldn’t fade. His heart still pounded like a hummingbird caught in a bramble. He could even feel thorns tearing into his chest.
He reached for his phone, certain that if he called Marinette now, he would feel better. He didn’t have to tell her what he dreamed about; he only had to hear her voice and lose himself in her passion and drive. He would only have to ask her what she was working on, and in thirty minutes, he would feel set right.
But he couldn’t bring himself to call her. His thumb hovered over her image for a moment before he finally at least managed to text her. Nothing demanding, nothing vulnerable. Just a simple, Are you awake?
She probably was. She was probably finishing homework or a design or a costume piece. But the night stretched on, and Marinette did not reply. And Adrien’s panic still pulsed through his veins.
Adrien climbed out of bed and pushed open one of the grand window panes. The cool evening air provided some relief. He leaned against the smooth glass and tried not to think about how many nights he had slipped away in Chat Noir’s guise. He would go out as Chat again sooner or later, but right now it didn't feel safe.
As he leaned against the window and drank in the night with heavy, long breaths, a familiar sound drifted into his room. A rhythmic thwip and spin that he knew too well.
Ladybug was nearby.
He listened to her drop and recall her yo-yo with a rhythm as consistent as his own long, heavy breaths. In and out together, like every inhale of his breath ended in the clutch of her hands. What was she doing? And where was she?
He looked across the grounds of his family’s manor but saw nothing out of place. It certainly sounded like she was above him.
Adrien climbed onto the roof of his house and found Ladybug pacing as she flicked her yo-yo back and forth, catching it perfectly on every recall—until she saw him just as she jerked her wrist back. The yo-yo sailed past her unprepared palm and smacked her in the face.
Ladybug hadn't changed much since the day that Adrien had first put on his miraculous. She’d grown more confident in her abilities and more trusting of others, of course, but he had always seen those strengths in her, even when she hadn't seen them in herself.
He was the one who had changed. He still felt the familiar twinge of longing in his chest when he looked at her, but his heart didn’t sing the way it once had. His world didn’t light up just because she smiled at him. Those feelings were with someone else now.
Someone who didn’t seem interested in answering her phone.
Adrien pulled himself up onto the roof. It wasn’t as easy of a climb without the help of Chat Noir’s power as he might have liked, but he managed it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to stand up, though, opting instead to sit on the narrow stretch of flat roof. He knew that if he did fall, he would not be able to call on Chat’s power to help him. “What are you doing up here, Ladybug?”
“Nothing! I mean—patrolling!” Her voice was a little too high and a little too fast as she manually wound her yo-yo back together. “Just patrolling, you know, normal superhero things! Because that's what I do. As a superhero. Patrol.”
“And did you find anything dangerous on my roof?”
“All safe and sound! So I'll be moving on…” But as she turned, she tipped her head to one side and looked at him properly. It was a look Adrien had always adored, had even fallen in love with once. There was a puzzle turning through her head, and she was determined to make sense of it.
“What are you doing up here?” Ladybug asked, as if it had just occurred to her that maybe climbing up onto the roof in the middle of the night was not normal for most people.
“Nothing,” he said, and leaned back on his hands as he stared up at her. It was so easy to remember why he had fallen in love with her when he saw her in the moonlight like this. The worry that creased her brow was so familiar. She’d done nothing but look worried these last few months, and that worry had not eased, not even since Hawk Moth’s defeat. It couldn’t, not with the butterfly miraculous still missing.
His own heart shuddered at the thought, but he tried to keep a small smile on his face. “You really don't have to worry about me, Ladybug. But I appreciate you coming out to check on me.”
She stammered on an excuse, but she couldn’t seem to find the words to deny that was why she had really come.
The last time they had talked, she had told him how his father had died fighting Hawk Moth, and she’d given him his parents’ wedding bands. She hadn’t offered him any details, other than to tell him that his father wanted Adrien to remember the best of him. That small wish belied a mountain of complexity that Adrien wasn't quite ready to dig through.
He’d tried to press her for details as Chat Noir, but she’d been tight-lipped, even with her partner.
When Ladybug gave up floundering for an excuse, she sighed and dropped to her knees beside him. “You really are alright, though?” The way her brow furrowed beneath her mask reminded him of the girl who had stood on top of the stadium and panicked her way through their very first fight. It reminded him of Marinette working through a difficult project.
Adrien ran his hand through his hair and looked away. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, though fine was probably not the best word to describe the complexity of his feelings. When she didn't say anything else, he felt compelled to fill the silence. “I just had a bad dream. Needed some fresh air. But I already feel safer, knowing you're right here,” he added hastily, though it was a half-truth at best.
Seeing her alive and breathing was a relief, but the knowledge that he could still hurt her pricked against his skin like a bed of needles.
She reached for his hand, something soft and sad blooming in her eyes. Adrien resisted the urge to pull away.
“Nightormenter was hard on all of us,” she said. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to stop him sooner—”
“I keep having it.” His heart stuttered as her fingers brushed the space where his ring should have been. “I keep dreaming that I’ve been akumatized. That… I hurt you.”
Her fingers inspected the pale strip of skin left behind by Chat Noir’s band, but her eyes remained focused on him. “I won’t let that happen.”
“In my dream, the world is destroyed. And the moon is split in two from whatever power Hawk Moth gave to me—”
Her breath hitched in her throat and she squeezed his hand. “I—” she bit down on her lower lip and looked at their hands laced together. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and guarded. “Sometimes, I dream that there’s an akuma to end the world, too.”
“And what do you do in those dreams?”
“I fight—well, I run. And I try to save him.”
“Him?”
“My… partner.”
“You dream about Chat Noir getting akumatized? What happens?”
“Well, the world ends—but you don’t have to worry. Hawk Moth is gone now.” Her hand drifted up to his face and his heart stuttered in his chest in an entirely new way. She brushed his cheek and said, “I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”
But he was more concerned about her. “Ladybug, when the world ends in my dream, you’re dead in my arms.”
She leaned in closer. An earlier version of Adrien might have leaned in, too.
“No one’s going to akumatize you,” she whispered.
“I think part of why it’s so terrifying is that I… I’ve never been akumatized before.”
But instead of reassuring him again, something in her eyes flickered, like panic, and she pulled away. She squeezed his hand once before letting go.
“I promise that I’ll protect you, Adrien.”
As Ladybug got to her feet, Adrien’s heart pounded in his chest. “Wait—”
He stood and reached for her. His hand closed around her wrist even as his feet slipped against the slick roof tiles. He used her firm weight to keep his balance. “Ladybug, what aren’t you telling me? What was your dream about?”
But she refused to turn and look at him. He had only the tight coil in her shoulders to tell him that she was keeping something from him.
“I dreamed that my partner knew my name.” Her voice was so soft, Adrien had to strain to hear it. “And somehow that knowledge led him to become akumatized, and he destroyed the world. And he destroyed me. But it was just a bad dream.” Despite her attempt to soften the terror of her words, she sounded on the brink of tears. “There’s no more Hawk Moth,” she continued, “and I’m going to recover the butterfly and make sure that there are no more akumas. And everything’s going to be okay, Adrien. I promise that everything’s going to be okay.”
She tried to pull away, but Adrien was afraid to let her go. He wanted to ensure that everything was going to be okay, too, and he could do that as long as she was here at his side, and as long as he wasn’t wearing his ring.
He struggled to find breath for his words, but in the barest whisper, he managed, “And how do you trust your partner after a dream like that?” He wanted to know how he was supposed to trust himself.
She hesitated, and Adrien saw suddenly just how strongly mistrust still lived in that tight space between her shoulders. She didn’t trust Chat Noir, and it was no wonder she had grown distant even before she had taken on the responsibility of being the Guardian.
“We keep our identities secret from each other,” she said, “and for good reason. We trust each other because we have to. I don’t blame him for Hawk Moth taking advantage of him—” She hesitated, then amended: “I don’t blame him for a dream I had where Hawk Moth took advantage of him. You shouldn’t blame yourself for a bad dream, either.”
Adrien swallowed hard. He wanted to trust her words, to trust her promises. But it was so hard when there were still secrets between them. He couldn’t blame her for keeping parts of herself from him, though, especially not when he now had a glimpse of why she was so adamant about keeping her secrets.
“Good night, Adrien,” she said, and pulled her hand away.
His feet slipped out from under him and he fell. Before he even had a moment to panic, before he even quite registered that he was falling from his own roof, Ladybug’s yo-yo was around his waist. But she didn’t pull him back up. She lowered him down to his own window, and once he was safely inside, he heard the thwip of her line being tossed then a zip that faded out into the night.
She’d protected him. She’d promised that she would always protect him. He had to trust that somehow, she’d protect him from being akumatized, too.
He used his phone’s light to find his ring under his couch and slid it back onto his finger as he collapsed into bed. Sleep, though, was a distant thought. His mind turned his conversation with Ladybug over in his head, like a music box wound to its tightest coil. Did it matter that they had both had the same dream? Why had she been so upset when he’d mentioned that he had never been akumatized before?
His phone buzzed in his hand and Adrien answered it without thinking, only to be pleasantly surprised when Marinette’s face filled his screen.
“Hi,” he smiled.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t see your text,” she said. “I’m definitely awake! I mean, obviously I’m awake. And you’re awake! I mean, of course you are, because you texted me! Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, and at least in that moment, at least as he looked at Marinette, it was true. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just had a bad dream.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I think I just want to forget about it. Tell me why you’re up so late.”
Eagerly, Marinette launched into a story about her design for a new fashion contest that Tsurugi was putting together to help rebrand Gabriel. She went over her drafts, the lines, the colors, the textures. Adrien could have fallen asleep listening to her talk, like her monologue was his own personalized lullaby. And maybe, if it had just been a phone call, he would have. But the way her eyes lit up when she talked made his world too bright for sleep. He was content to watch and listen. At least for now, Marinette was protection enough. He was never going to be akumatized as long as he had her.
