He halts his amusement in favor of flexing an arm in front of her.

“Not with these muscles, you couldn’t—Eep! ”

It is her turn to laugh something fierce and relentless as he squeals his surprise—a tinny, high-pitched and utterly girlish sound that tickles her to no end—and scrambles for the metal balustrade, though it remains stationary beneath him.

“You were saying?” she inquires sweetly, guilelessly, even as her hold on his bicep remains his only salvation from slipping off his precarious perch on her railing.

(As if he couldn’t catch himself! And not that she would let him fall, of course.

...maybe)

“Marinette,” he whines. She does not capitulate, seeking retribution for herself with another cackle.

“Say the words,” she coos. He narrows his eyes at her. “What words?”

She sticks out her tongue before huffing. “You know…”

Another mewl from Chat, before he sighs. Marinette crows her victory and delight.

“I’m sorry,” he yips through gritted teeth. She tuts.

“I’m sure you can do better than that,” she comments, leaning into his space in feigned flirtation as she drops her voice and teases him airily. Something shifts just then. It drains the mirth from his face, slips the smile from his mouth—but not the light from his eyes. No, that is ever glowing… ever present. But there is something serious about the way he looks at her every time he does it, and he has done it more often than not in the past week since they played the piano together at midnight, her falling asleep on his shoulder, him taking her home and then tucking her in.

Internally, she groans as the memory of the morning after comes to her and she saw she was no longer in the school but in her room. In her bed. There was only one way she could have gotten there, considering her last recollection was of Chat Noir’s elegant fingers flying over the keys, the stark contrast of his ebony gloves against the white scales enticing her designer’s eye as remnants of the music he played swirled within her mind and lulled her to slumber.

Thinking about it still makes her blush like mad, though nothing salacious happened. Yet no one but her parents, Alya and Tikki had ever seen her asleep. So for Chat Noir to, it was a moment of vulnerability, and it was… private. It felt intensely intimate. It was sacred. She doesn’t know where they stand because of it, and now it's as though they are not in the same place in their companionship—is it a parallel plane or has it ascended? Or maybe they hadn’t moved at all and she was building it in her head? And it isn’t as if she’s uncomfortable with this new stance they are taking with each other. If anything, their friendship feels stronger than ever despite the masks they continue to wear, both the literal and figurative kind. But even that armor is slowly chipping away, chink by little chink, so that she has to be careful around him lest she give herself away. And she wants to. Bon dieu, does she ever want to.

(To the point that she begins to ask herself, in the nights when Tikki falls asleep before her and she has only her thoughts for company, so what am I waiting for? Why don’t I just tell him? )

(She knows why)

But she doesn’t tell him the truth of her identity, and here they are. And it’s moments like these, when he looks at her and it’s as if everything apart from the two of them fades, she just, she does. not. know. She does not know anything except everything is changed. Somewhere between him saving her and promise me and a forehead kiss. Between sunsets and macaron snacks and late night rooftop conversations. Between the smiles and the laughter and the music and his arms around her… things are different.

They are different.

“Marinette,” he murmurs, hands easing so that one finally grabs hold of the bannister while the other… the other one inches ever so gently up the length of her arm. She's never been more grateful for her blazer, as it conceals the goosebumps that trail in his wake, his fingers dancing up her porcelain skin so it feels more like the ivory of a piano than flesh.

“Marinette,” he trills once more, her gaze ripping from the path he makes so she meets his eyes. He bites his lip, as if to contain his smile. She pouts, and that's when his hand meets its journey's end at her chin, his thumb tracing the bow of her bottom lip.

“I am sorry, princess.”

She groans at the nickname he can't seem to let go of. He chuckles at her obvious ire, though it doesn't dim the sincerity from his apology.

“Ok, not a princess then,” he yields, albeit with a hint of that omnipresent mischief. “But do be an angel and save me from this perilous height.”

She rolls her eyes, all the while she ducks her head to hide her own grin.

Angel, he called her. She likes that.

She steps back so he has room to put his feet down but she doesn't stray far, not that she could even if she wanted to.

(She doesn’t want to)

The hand that had been holding the railing now nestles comfortably on the curve of her waist, as he lands on both feet in front of her. When he straightens, she finds their bodies have aligned in—what she is increasingly finding to be—addicting ways. He is pleasantly firm in all the places she finds herself to be doughy, and from all the times they’ve been tangled up in each other in their superhero personas, she is entirely too aware of how he is lean beneath the leather of his suit. He is grounded, stable, which her all too clumsy self finds reassurance in.

His hand moves lazily, sensually, from her waist to the dip of her spine, just shy of her derrière. The wind feels crisp despite the heat bearing down on them from the sun’s unhindered radiance and she feels taught with it, her muscles alternatively coiling and relaxing so that her hand twitches against his biceps. He lets out a soft breath as she (reflexively, she tells herself, it’s a reflex) cossets the leather where she holds him, wishing with all her might she was touching skin instead.

Yes, the shift in them from that fateful night is never more evident than it is now—the air around them filling with a strange yet not unwelcome charge that makes the hairs on her arms stand on end, her belly tingle with an inexplicable excitement and her heart cry out for more of his touch. It feels as if there is a thread around her that binds them and all it would take is a slight pull from him for her to unravel right before him.

There is a look in his eyes, hungry and desperate but oh so fragile too—as if he would just as easily come undone if she so much as tugged at that string. He hums Angel of Music under his breath when he takes a step closer, drawing her to him with the hand low at her back. Hope tinges his dark gaze when she doesn’t protest at his proximity.

Pull, pull, pull.

It makes her wonder if he would unwind if she plucked at that invisible connection, only to twine himself around her. She tilts her head upwards just as he cants his forehead against hers. He closes his eyes, his droning of Angel of Music fading into something unfamiliar yet calming all the same.

Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull—

“Marinette!”

She sucks in a sharp breath and reels back, opening eyes she hadn't realized had shut in the first place until they meet orbs shrouded in rueful, tourmaline hues.

The thread stiffens for another second, just as loathe as the two of them to let go, before finally falling limp and taking all the static electricity of the moment with it.

“I think,” he rasps, voice low and gravelly that he has to clear his throat twice before continuing. It flatters her, especially as she remains feeling weak at the knees. “I think,” he tries again, “that's my cue to leave.”

She knows this. Agrees, even.

If only her hand would cooperate and surrender him.

She curls her digits just a bit tighter, a shudder going through her when she feels his muscles bunching powerfully beneath the suit as he treads impossibly nearer, accommodating her clutch.

You could stay, she wants to utter.

“My dad baked macarons for dessert. It's his specialty…” she says in lieu of such ridiculous pronouncements or a more appropriate goodbye.

(And there goes her mouth too, oh will nothing of hers ever follow her command?)

He grins lopsidedly though his eyes insist on narrowing. “Oh, you don't fight fair,” he returns though she gleans that what he really means is, I wish I didn't have to leave.

Her name pierces the now stale air once more.

“Your mother calls,” he says, rather unnecessarily, a grimace set upon his mouth. That he didn’t want to go as much as she herself wished he wouldn’t gave her the strength to withdraw her hand.

“À bientôt, minou,”  she bids in strained articulations, with an even more strained smile, before swiveling on her heel towards her trap door and trying in vain to disperse the bereavement she gains when his gloved hand slips from her back.

She has not taken two steps when she senses the touch of leather on her own hand. He drags her back into his atmosphere and she endeavors to tamper the flutter that arises in her stomach by pasting a faux frown upon her lips.

“Yes?”

His answer falls from his mouth, though not in words. He raises their clasped hands to his chin so that his every measured inhales, his slow exhales, bathe her skin. She expects a kiss upon her fingers, as he is so fond of them whether she is Ladybug or Marinette. And though he does this indeed, she is jolted when he retreats only to wrap warm lips around another knuckle, and the next, and the next, till the entirety of her is ablaze and his kisses seem scored into the very marrow of her bones.

“Till we meet again.”

With the sun sinking low in the horizon behind him, Chat Noir’s face is a study in shadows. But if his visage was the night sky then those eyes, oh always his eyes… they were the glistening diamond stars of the eventide.

“Mon ange.”

And then he is gone, taking all the oxygen with him.

She almost sinks to her knees, having not apprehended how much she was leaning on him till he had disappeared. She braces herself against her metal balustrade to catch her breath, the hand he had marked clutched close to her chest as it continues to buzz with the feel of him.

From her purse erupts a giggle, then Tikki is floating serenely in front of her.

“What was that about?”

Marinette huffs, albeit still in a bit of a daze.

“I hardly know anymore, Tikki.”

The Kwami, never missing a thing, narrows her gaze pointedly onto her hands—the same one still cradled delicately close to her chest while the other fans her overheated face. At her observation, she stills.

“Are you okay?” Tikki inquires, not bothering to hide the teasing glimmer to her tone.

Marinette bites her lip before she rolls her eyes.

“Shut up.”

Tikki's laugh is so hard Marinette is certain it echoes all the way up into the galaxy.

Her mother summons her for dinner one final time and with seemingly Herculean fortitude, she follows. But ensconced as she is within the comforts of her own home—her parents laughing jovially before her, her belly full with a hot and delicious meal prepared lovingly by her father—try as she might she cannot escape Chat Noir. How every time he looked at her his gaze crept along her skin like a living touch, how his actual touch felt branded onto her soul, the manner with which he kissed her or held her—as if she was invaluable treasure—and the effect with which he breathed her name, so softly but with so much gravity, like her name was both too precious to be uttered in anything but humble inflections yet it held so much power, too, because he believed her to be strong and fierce that to say her name any other way would be a fault (and it was only her name! Who knew one could divulge so much meaning onto a name? Of course, only Chat Noir could)—it all drove her wild with wanting.

Though she refuses to answer Tikki's question aloud, it is how she knows—without a shadow of a doubt—that no, she is not okay. So long as he is around her, stealing her breath and making her go weak in the knees, she would never be the same again.

Strangely enough, she is just fine with that.

And even stranger though, is Adrien.

He is different around her, a change she traces all the way back to Con Rubato as well. He is more engaging with her, more conscientious. He would stand when she entered a room then sit only once she had, like a modern day Mr. Darcy. He takes her words in with an air of devout seriousness, as if everything she says has the power to change the world, even if she were just rattling off the afternoon specials in her parents’ bakery. Not three years ago, she would have squealed then died at his attentions. But now it merely confuses her. It is as if she has entered an alternate dimension where Adrien is the one who scrambles for any excuse to talk to her only to stutter his way through their conversations, whether to borrow a pen or copy her notes or set up study groups that she finds herself declining more and more.

The part of her that is still 14-years old rejoices at every look he sends her way, every genuine praise or bolstering shoulder graze. But Marinette has always been an all or nothing sort of girl. No, as Alya would put it, she is a “Ride or Die, Bitch” which would appall her were it not so true. She doesn't know how to do lukewarm or in-betweens, and so the Marinette of now would merely receive such affections with a befuddled slant of her head and a small, appreciative smile. That being said, her head is entirely too filled with thoughts of an overgrown, leather-clad, ridiculous yet charming cat. She should be embarrassed, or she would have been, if said cat was not showing up on her rooftop on an almost nightly basis under the guise of her house being on his “patrol route” when they both recognize it for the lie it is, a rose in his hand and a Phantom of the Opera tune purring low in his throat. Though, more often than not these days, each time he is around her he hums that same indistinct harmony—one he resolutely refuses to name with such stubbornness that she doesn't know whether to hate it for the vagueness or love it for its soothing quality.

(Who is she kidding? It's the latter. Definitely the latter)

Still, it is refreshing, for once, to not be part of a story wherein her love is one-sided. Because though they skirt around the topic, both grown yet still too awkward and shy to broach their feelings, it is there. She feels it, that heady tension… that ever-present pull in her navel that magnetizes her to him. It conquers her so keenly it is nearly impossible now to concentrate when they don their superhero personas; when every part of her is abuzz with his nearness—always close enough to touch but never quite able to bridge that gap. Never the right time, never brave enough.

But she knows he feels it too, even if he does give her funny looks when she's Ladybug and she's a little too late to throw her yo-yo or too slow to move despite the tapering of his flirtations because she's too busy being distracted by his, um, assets (she has become that girl now, bon dieu), and that's all that matters.

At least… at least, for now.

Because it's unthinkable to be anything but deliriously content during periods like this, where he arrives onto her rooftop and settles onto the chaise—right across from her—as if there's nowhere he'd rather be, as if he belongs there. Him and the smell of clean boy sweat and leather and that mysterious melody spilling from his lips like chimes hung out on a beachfront porch, light but resonant too. It ripples down to her sinew, till she is teeming with quiet satisfaction and unexpected fondness for the song.

“What is that?”

“What is what?” he replies coyly, though he knows that she knows that he knows he is perfectly cognizant of exactly what it is she's asking for.

“Dumb is not a good look on you, Chat Noir,” she grumbles.

“Everything's a good look on me, Marinette.”

She blinks, deliberately. He, too, is stunned into silence—his mouth intermittently falling agape and clicking shut, as if wanting to take the words back for the unintentional self-degradation but perceiving the futility of it. Wisely, he swallows the protest that no doubt wants to extricate itself from his mouth, clearing his throat instead before continuing as if he never said the quip at all.

She wants to laugh but recognizes the fragility of the moment, and allows him this one free pass.

“Right,” he says, and she picks up where they left off.

“You were about to tell me what it is you're always singing underneath your breath?”

He smiles archly before tutting. “Not so fast.” He wags a finger right between her eyes.

“Such impatience.”

She swats his hand away.

“Hard not to be, when I don't know exactly what it is I'm impatient for?”

He sighs, as if the confession requires a gargantuan effort on his part.

“If you really want to know,” he straightens from the sprawl he has settled himself upon his arrival, repositioning his arms which had been behind his head so that they are folded between his criss-crossed legs. She mirrors his stance, figuring that she ought to put some seriousness into her mien for all the pomp and circumstance he is displaying for her.

“It's a song I'm composing. On the piano.”

She gasps.

“That's wonderful! What's it called?”

His eyes widen, as if it hadn't occurred to him to give it a name.

“You know… I'm not quite sure, yet.” He stares at her for a beat, and his voice is rough when he declares, “I do have an idea, though.”

For reasons unbeknownst to her, she blushes. To hide this, she stands then, her hand outstretched towards him. His brows are furrowed but he accepts it all the same and follows when she pulls him to his feet.

“Well?”

This time, his dumbfoundedness is sincere.

“Well, what?”

“Let's go!”

“Go where?”

She rolls her eyes heavenward and fixes him with a look of utmost disappointment.

“What?” he exclaims again, arms crossing defensively across his chest before muttering, “Sometimes, I don't understand you.”

“Believe me,” she retorts, haughtily. “I know. ”

But excitement colors her countenance once more, till she is bouncing on the tips of her toes.

“I don't have a piano but there's one in the school! Take me there so you can play me the rest of the song. I've only heard bits and pieces and, mon dieu, I've never had a friend who could compose before. I know an actual composer! Can you believe it?”

She'd been talking a mile a minute and would have gone on, but she really does want to hear his original and with the school closed for the day, it means they would have to sneak in (not that it would be their first time). She couldn't exactly transform in front of him so she would need him to break the both of them in. Except he hasn't moved from his place in front of her. There is only that enigmatic smile and his bright eyes, gazing upon her like she is made of moonshine and starlight.

The ardor of his stare has her feeling all the blood in her body has rushed to her cheeks.

“What?” she retorts. “Is there something on my face?”

“Besides your beauty?”

She groans. He is such a cheeseball but damn if it doesn't get her. It gets her so bad that her blood redoubles its efforts of turning her face into a permanent tomato.

He laughs at her obvious modesty, amusement making him bold when he frames her hips between careful claws and gathers her in his arms.

“It's not entirely finished, you know.”

She pouts. “Oh.”

He chuckles again, thumb tracing the plump camber of her bottom lip before resting it on her chin.

“But when it is, I promise you mon ange,” (cue her breath hitch. Blushing intensifies) “you will be the first to know.”

He lets go of her chin so his hand can join the vine the rest of his limbs have made around her waist. And because he is a good head taller than her now, she steeples her fingers on his chest so she can rest her chin upon it as she murmurs, “Deal.”

“Deal,” he parrots.

Then, he adds, “Besides,” he shrugs. “I don't think you're ready to hear it.”

She scoffs. “What is that supposed to mean!”

Rather than answer her, he giggles a final time then nuzzles his cheek atop her hair. She grunts but obliges him by tangling herself around him as well, partly because it's not as if she can force him to (nor does she want to!) speak. But mostly, she likes this—the unconscious ease with which they fall into each other's arms, the subliminal fashion that compels them to gravitate towards each other's orbits and just stay there, like it was always where they were meant to be.

She likes him.

She wants to smack herself when the thought hits her. She likes him, like, really likes him! She might go so far as to say she…

Well, ironies upon ironies that after years of rejection, she now finds herself in the unique placement of desiring to return his affections, granted under a different skin.

And as if somehow linked to her thoughts, he shatters the silence (and her world) when he finally answers her.

“It means,” he starts in a solemn and susurrous murmur, “that I like you, Marinette.”

Her heart beating a tango and a salsa in her throat that her voice comes out hoarse, she replies, “I like you too, Chat Noir.” And because she is an idiot and a fool and afraid, she remarks, “As a friend.”

For a brief moment, he tenses beneath her hands. Then, with a steady sigh, he loosens, his arms travelling from her waist to grasp her biceps.

“And that is exactly what I mean when I say you're not ready.”

There's something broken there, when he says the words and she meets his eyes. It is with growing horror that she realizes she is the one who put it there—that ache and the hurt and the unabashed longing and she wants to eat up her words or not have said anything at all, just held him, tighter and tighter instead, till she was losing herself in him. She wants to take the last 30 seconds back, just anything, anything to erase the sadness that paints his face in the kind of darkness that swallows you rather than emphasize the points of you that are filled with light.

“Chat,” she cries, but he is all ready turning away from her.

And she lets him, because she knows. She knows that even with her powers, even with all the knowledge she claims of the Miraculous and the magic of this world, she cannot turn back time.

“It's getting late.”

“Wait—” she tries a final time, pleading with an invisible force, yanking with all her might at their unspoken tie, to get him to stay.

Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull!

But all the warmth and color is leached from her universe—

He is gone.

Later, much, much later, after begging off dinner from her parents under the pretense of fatigue, when the house is quiet and the bustling sounds of the Parisian streets fade as slumber wraps its lethargic arms around the city, Tikki comes to her and asks, “Marinette…” in that sweet, tinkling tone of hers, so free of judgment and eyes wide with concern, “why did you say that?”

She cannot help but begin to cry.

“I—I don't know.”

How could it have gone so wrong, so quickly?

Tikki touches a paw to her cheek, halting one of the tracks of her tears.

“Try, dear heart.”

Suddenly angry, she turns from her Kwami in such brusque movements that Tikki is forced to float away from her to avoid being crushed. A pang of guilt goes through her. It isn't fair to lash out at Tikki when truly, she's mad at herself. But she holds on to her anger because it grounds her and it feels so much better than the cloud of despair that looms over her, threatening to engulf her and whisk her away to where she feels empty.

“What is the point, Tikki?” she bellows, a bundle of limbs and blankets as she moves from her chaise to stare out her round window.

Waiting, always waiting—for a shadow, a flash of flaxen locks or a pair of sparkling emerald orbs

“It's done. A week has gone and he hasn't visited, not once. There's no point going over what could have been. It's better to move on.” She scoffs. “What am I even saying? There's nothing to move on from, we hardly started. ”

“I wouldn't call a three-year partnership ‘nothing', Marinette,” Tikki reminds her gently.

“It's done,” she snaps again with watery convictions, refusing to hear her Kwami out. But her voice still breaks when she emphasizes, “We're done.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Does it matter what I want? It's over.”

“But don't you see? It doesn't have to be!”

She whirls towards her and snarls, “You're such a hypocrite, you know that?”

Tikki doesn't deign her with an equal accusation or denial. She does not speak at all. She just stares at her with that unwavering comfort and understanding. The quiet brims Marinette with blind justification and the fortitude to hurl more vitriol, because if she doesn't fill the silence with words then she would surely fill it with sobs and she is so tired of crying over nothing.

So tired.

“First you tell me we have to hide our identities from everyone, even each other, and now you want me to run into his arms, shouting to all and sundry who I am. Make up your goddamn mind Tikki!”

“I won’t deny that. Yes, it was necessary in the beginning,” Marinette grins, something sharp and sarcastic and devoid of all humor. Though she confesses, the ease with which Tikki accepts blame takes away most of the exhilaration of her supposed victory.

“But you have to remember, Marinette, I have been here before. I have seen countless Ladybugs and Chat Noir incarnates for more than a thousand years. While we and the Guardians always hope for the best, a peaceful partnership, that is not always the outcome.”

It is odd, she thinks. She has always known Tikki was as old as time itself. But when her Kwami moves and speaks and thinks and views the world with such childlike wonder, it is simply too easy to forget. Now though, it becomes difficult to deny, not when the adumbrations that obscure her expression add years to her countenance so that she lists to the side with the weight of her age, her all too palpable grief.

“For every harmonious union there has been an equal and terrible clash. Even with all this power, we are not perfect. Humans are such…” a struggle crosses her eyes then, “well. I suppose that's the beauty of your species, isn't it? That even with so many things binding you together, each one of you is still made so differently, so inimitable, that your actions can never be one hundred percent predicted. It's wonderful,” she smiles briefly, before her sadness ultimately wins out. “But it also makes our jobs difficult, and not all Ladybugs and Chat Noirs are what we desire them to be. Every contretemps has led to any human-mitigated disaster you know—famine, plague, conflict, war. ”

Tikki's eyes transform to a haunted, bottomless well that is awash with misfortunes and loss that Marinette will never fathom in her lifetime. It depletes the anger from her sinews till only the despondency she had been fighting unremittingly to avoid, is all that endures.

“Tikki,” she snivels, sinking to her knees in absolution. “Tikki, I'm sorry. I didn't—I didn't know— ”

“It's alright, Marinette,” the Kwami coos, and it is with slack-jawed awe that Marinette regards Tikki's reformation from ancient, weary god to artless and optimistic Tikki, the Tikki she is more accustomed to. “You couldn’t have known.”

She drifts back to her cheek, pecking serenely at the curve before nestling there. “But what's not alright is this evident denial of your feelings.”

Marinette groans, bringing a hand to her face to swipe futilely at her tears.

“What are you afraid of? Don't you see how lucky you are, that Chat Noir has fallen in love with all sides of you?”

At the word love, her heart rattles beneath her ribcage.

“Is he though?”

“Is he what?”

“In love with me?”

Marinette detects a hint of mirth when Tikki replies with, “would that be a problem if he was?”

“Could I really be that lucky? For him to fall in love with me, twice over?”

Marinette yelps just then, when Tikki bites at her skin.

“Ow!”

“Only you could find some fault in a situation that would benefit both parties.”

Nursing her cheek, Marinette grumbles, “I just think it's too easy, is all. If something's too good to be true, it usually is.”

Tikki stares at her in horror. “Look at you, Marinette! Exactly what part of this has been ‘easy'? No,” she shakes her head. “You're afraid, and it's about high time you admit it to yourself!”

“Alright!” she bursts. “Maybe I am scared! But can you blame me? If we're to start a relationship, I want there to be no more lies. I want us to be together, like Alya and Nino are together or like my parents, properly together—not sneaking out, always waiting for the sun to set. That means no more lies, no more hiding, no more masks. It means, revealing our identities.”

Tikki's brows furrow in confusion.

“Well, we both know Chat Noir has no objections to that. And I've all ready said that I'm fine with that, too.”

“But I'm not!”

And there it is.

“Hawkmoth is still out there. If we know each other's identities and one of us gets Akumatized,” she shudders—real, quaking, anxious tremors rocking her body at just the idea, “I couldn't bear the thought of hurting him, if it were me. And if it were him, Tikki, I don't think I would be strong enough to fight him. No, I know I couldn't fight him. And I can't let Paris suffer because of my emotions… because of my weakness.”

It is a long time before either of them speak. And when the pregnant pause is broken, it is Tikki who offers a final piece of advice.

“You are worrying about something that hasn't even happened yet.”

It is a reproach, but Tikki manages to deliver it with such gentle sibilance, it merely makes Marinette weep harder despite her want to protest.

“Say you don't confess or reveal your identities to each other, or he confesses before you and you reject him, again, ” (she winces) “because of your fear. Who's to say that won't be the act that tips him over the edge to being Akumatized? Don't you see, Marinette? Either way, confess or not, the misery would be inevitable.”

“There must be some way to stop it? To control it?” she wails, desperately.

Tikki sighs, lovingly ruffling her hair.

“That's the thing about life, isn't it? There can be no peace without chaos, no joy without anger… no love without suffering—for how can we know happiness, true happiness, if we don't first know what it feels to be dispossessed?

“When we open our hearts, Marinette, we expose it to everything. Yes there will be pain, but there will be such pleasure, too. Such merriment behind the agony, such sweetness alongside the sourness of humanity. Wouldn't you rather have someone experiencing it with you, always by your side, than carry it all on your own?”

Softer, Tikki adds, “And wouldn't you rather that someone be Chat Noir?”

Marinette remains silent for a couple more heartbeats, before she breathes, “Yes.”

Tikki smiles.

“It's okay to be afraid, Marinette,” she affirms. “Just don't let it hold you back. In fact, if you're going to be afraid,” she pats her head and presses on even as she darts to her bed.

“At least let him hold your hand. Then you can conquer your fears, together. ”

Marinette thinks that's the end of this emotionally draining conversation when Tikki dispenses a final valuation.

“And if I could just counter one more of your arguments?”

She cocks her head in acquiescence because why not? She has nothing to lose.

“You don't reach my age and not learn a thing or two about humankind, particularly when it comes to love. There is a great deal of things, too great a deal of stupid things even, that one does for love.” At this, she shoots Marinette a playfully insinuating look, having been witness to all her teenage antics over Adrien. She blushes, scarcely stifling an embarrassed squeak.

“But they are great. From sweeping, romantic gestures to a simple birthday card from one child to a parent—each act of love possesses their own power, from the ability to launch a thousand ships to war or the persistence to find one's way home when lost or merely putting a smile on a friend's face. I suppose what I'm trying to convey is, love isn't a weakness. It never has been. Love has always been magic. Dare I say, it's more than that, even.”

Tikki smiles.

“It's strength. ”

She mulls over her Kwami's words for two more days which turns to a week before she gathers any semblance of a backbone. But then an Akuma attacks and there he is.

How has she never noticed how handsome he is? How dashing and strong and courageous?

The Akuma, Bridezilla, as she aptly names herself, was jilted from the aisle (“thanks for the encouragement, Universe,” she mutters upon finding out). Though her real beef is with men in general, and her runner of a fiancé specifically, she aims her weapon—a bouquet that shoots wedding rings that cut off the victim's movements—at Ladybug, as they've reached the portion of the battle where the Akuma gets desperate for their Miraculous.

In her distraction, having not seen Chat Noir for so long and now getting a sensory overload of him, his touch and his voice and his scent, she hadn't seen Bridezilla till she was upon her. Lucky for her (and this she muses in barbed resonance), Chat Noir jumped to the line of fire so that he bore the brunt of the attack, which meant that he fell in a heap on the floor. He was bound in rings that tightened further the more he moved, ensuring he couldn't use his Cataclysm to free himself.

“Chat!” she bawls, dropping to her knees in front of him and trying in vain to free him. She gasps when an inadvertent squeeze from her efforts causes his leg to twitch and consequently, the metal to contract.

“Looks like she really wants to tie the knot with me, eh?”

She laughs, even as tears spring to her eyes.

“Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now.”

Floating above them, Bridezilla cackles.

“With her?" his frown deepens. "I can see why anyone would run.”

“Give up your Miraculous!” she snarls, having heard the tail end of their conversation.

“Mon dieu, shut up!”

Chat Noir spews a shocked chortle while Bridezilla flusters at the unexpected burst of her temper. Ladybug is known for her grace under pressure, after all, this is hardly becoming. But with Chat's oxygen depleting with every minute movement, her patience runs thin and her cool begins to simmer.

“I've just about had it with these putain de Akumas!”

Chat's eyes widen and she should be embarrassed but she is literally beyond caring at this point. She calls on her Lucky Charm in a most uncharming way that her ladybugs don't even bother to show up, the charm just lands in her hands. A stiletto. Personally, she would have poked the Akuma's eye and called it a day, but her Spots Vision urge her to use Chat's baton and a fire hydrant, from which she vaults herself and throws the heel like a boomerang, knocking it from the ex-bride's hands.

Ladybug extends her yo-yo to a lamp post and swings just in time to catch the Akuma victim before she falls hard on the ground. She lands them on her feet before sprinting for the bouquet, which she breaks to purify the butterfly, all in quick succession. Grabbing the shoe, she throws it in the air and cries out, almost hysterically when she sees Chat turning an alarming shade of white that is made even more deathly prominent against the blackness of his suit, “Miraculous Ladybug!”

The moment her ladybugs clear Chat to his feet, she bypasses his outstretched fist and launches herself at him at such top speed, they fall back to the ground.

“I'm sorry!” she wails even as she doesn't let up.

“Err—Ladybug? I kinda just got free from one bind but I'm pretty sure you're cutting off my oxygen this time.”

She squeals, apologies spilling from her lips as she springs from him. She propels herself to her feet, holding a hand up to him. She has to refrain from crumpling her face when she discovers they had been in a similar position not two weeks ago, her helping him to his feet so that he might take her to the music room in their school and play her his composition.

(A composition which she has rewound what little of it she knows in a merciless loop in her head in his absence, just to feel close to him again)

“So, you're good? Nothing hurts?”

He bevels his head quizzically. “Your ladybugs took care of it, like they always do.” He gives her a searching look. “Are you? Okay, that is?”

“Yeah,” she gulps.

This is it, she thinks. This is my chance.

“Actually—” she starts lowly just as he asks, “Are we near the Dupain-Cheng Bakery?”

She blinks her surprise.

“Um… yes. Why?”

He startles, having been focused on the direction of her home, as if he had forgotten she was there despite asking her a question. As if he were all ready somewhere else.

“N-nothing. Listen, I gotta go. Unless there's something else you need me to do?”

Upon her transformation, Bridezilla's bridesmaids had taken care of her, so there truly was no need to linger. Seeing this, he doesn't wait for her instruction. He nods his goodbye and leaps off in the direction of her street.

Her Miraculous trills, and Marinette races to the back door of her building just as Tikki releases her glamour. Her footsteps thunder up the stairs, her clumsiness nowhere to be seen for once, as she zooms past her parents and straight to her room in record time.

“Marinette?” Tikki inquires bewilderingly.

“He's here, Tikki,” she whispers in breathless timbres. “He left me, Ladybug me, just as I was about to confess because he's coming here. To me, Marinette me!”

She can hardly hear Tikki's excited chirps over the roaring of her blood in her ears. He's come back. He's come back to her!

“Chat!” she shrills, as she opens her trapdoor.

But when she pops her head to the roof, he is not there.

She waits, thinking she might have arrived before him. She waits for the sun to set. She waits, even as the cold seeps to her bones with a piercing quiver. Still, he does not come.

No, he has not come back after all.

“Did you and Adrien have a fight?”

Only nibbling on her sandwich lunch and half paying attention to her surroundings, she absentmindedly replies to Alya, “What?”

“You—Adrien—fight?”

The sound of Adrien's name stirs something in her, like wading through really thick mud before reaching the safety of the bank.

“Adrien and I?” she frowns. “I've hardly spoken to him these past few weeks.”

“Yeah?” Alya mirrors her downtrodden mouth. “Maybe that's the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something's been up with the kid, but you know how Adrien is. You ask him if something's wrong, he'll just deny it with his stupid, phony smile. Although, Nino and I have caught him off guard a couple of times. It obviously has something to do with you though, because we ask him how he is and he'll say he's fine, it's just stuff with his dad or fencing or Chinese, blah blah blah. But,” she fixes Marinette with a suspicious glare over the rim of her glasses, “he thinks we don't see, but he gets this look in his eyes after, it's like, really sad—as if he's lost something? Then he stares at you.”

“Me?” she squawks.

“You really haven't noticed?” she returns, distrustful of her plain obliviousness.

“N-no,” she stutters.

“Hey,” Alya's attention becomes a blade, right through to her soul. It makes her sit up taller. “I know something's up with you, too, girl.”

“What?” she says, dragging the vowel out. “No way,” she denies, feebly. Alya does not buy it, it is written on her face, clear as day, just how much she doesn't believe her.

“Okay… then explain how you and Adrien just happen to get into this weird funk right around the same time. That's why I thought you might have had a row or something.”

Marinette shakes her head. Alya sighs.

“Be that as it may, Nino and I aren't making any headway. So,” she nudges her shoulder. “We were hoping you could talk to him. Now that you can speak more than two words to the guy without stammering up a storm,” she pouts at the reminder (will no one ever let her live that down?) “Who knows? He might actually open up to you.”

It is all too clear that her forlornness at, what she deems as, losing her chance with Chat Noir has made her selfish and blind to her other friend's apparent distress. She colors with contrition. So though she is hardly an authority in dealing with emotions healthily, she stows away her lunch and scrambles to her feet in a show of obedience. But a quick perusal of the courtyard shows no sign of Adrien, not even with Nino, who is conversing with Kim and Max.

“Where is he?”

“Nino says Adrien is practically glued to a piano, nowadays. You might wanna try the music room?”

Merde, she wants to shout. Of course, he is in the music room.

Her feet feels leaden but she forges on, walking an all too familiar path, all the while chanting, I am a good friend, I am a good friend, I am a good friend, in her head to bolster herself. She's operating under the adventitiousness that if she thinks it enough, she will become it. Power of attraction and all.

Besides, she does want to be a good friend, so there is that.

(But did it have to be the music room, bon sang! )

When she reaches the door of the place, she can hear All I Ask of You wafting through the wood. It steals her breath and seizes her limbs so that it takes her a better part of a minute to regain control of her faculties.

She will not cry. She will not be one of those girls who associates songs with people, thereby removing the joy from listening to said songs if the memories are not… optimal, when they hear it.

(Oh god, she has become that girl now, too)

He doesn't turn his head to her when she enters, doesn't acknowledge her when she sits beside him on the bench, doesn't even miss a beat when she joins him and plays the melody to his lower register.

When the final note is played to fruition, they sit there in silence—neither willing to break it, lost as they are in events brought on by the song.

Finally, when the quiet becomes too stifling, Marinette opens her mouth to say something reassuring except the connection between her brain and aforementioned body part seems to have fried somewhere along the way.

“He must have come to you, in your dreams.”

He startles, the movement oddly familiar, though she dispels the recognition that it pothers within her.

“Who?”

“You know,” she wiggles her eyebrows then abruptly stops. She wants to slap a hand to her forehead. How dare they! How dare her eyebrows betray her!

(Is she channeling Chat Noir now? Seriously? Is that where she is? Putain)

Adrien shakes his head, a perfect picture of puzzlement.

Shut up, Marinette, she implores herself. Don't say it.

But nope, her wires are still cut, as her lips form, no—it levels up and sings the words without her consent.

“The Phantom of the Opera!”

She cringes the moment she stops then pivots so that her back is to the keys of the piano, and Adrien is away from her line of sight. She is going to barf. She can string complete sentences around the guy now sure, but apparently she has traded the spluttering for... she shudders, singing. She crosses her arms, as if it could stop her from embarrassing herself further. She almost wishes for the stutter back.

What even is my life right now?

She expects him to leave, but Adrien has always been a kind soul. He chuckles, albeit a subdued sound, as if he's forgotten how, his sadness (so obvious, now that she is here and seeing, truly seeing, him) chasing any associations he might have had with happiness. When was the last time she had even seen him smile?

Too long, she concludes.

“Well, he is there,” he taps his temple then croons, in an exaggerated baritone, “inside my mind…”

It is her turn to be shocked and for a beat, they stare at each other, disbelief adorning the air between them at what they had each done.

And then, they are laughing.

They are laughing and it is as loud and as forthcoming and as fun as it had been that day in the rain, when he offered her an umbrella. For a moment, she allows herself to fall back into that girl. She dusts her old feelings off from the shelf she had placed them in and she allows them to come rushing back. She remembers then, why it is Adrien who occupied her thoughts for so long. She can see how easy it would be, too easy, to fall in love with him again.

But his blond hair and his green eyes invoke the wrong memories. She feels her heart whinge with longing for another man and she just can't. It wouldn't be fair to compare Adrien, to keep comparing anyone, to a shadow.

Drowning as she is in her thoughts, she doesn't notice Adrien has all ready turned away, fingers back to the piano as he plays Music of the Night, which then fades to Think of Me, till eventually he settles onto Angel of Music.

Mon ange.

She can hear Chat Noir’s voice forming the words, almost as if he were here in the room and she is taken back to that first night he played for her so that he is sitting beside her—his beautiful digits deftly serenading her, her head on his shoulder, their breathing syncopated.

She isn't aware she is crying till warm fingers touch the skin of her cheek.

Adrien has stopped playing.

“I didn't mean to make you cry.”

She didn't think it possible, but he looked even more upset than when she first entered.

So much for being a good friend.

“Ignore me,” she laughs awkwardly, his hand falling as she reaches into her bag, meeting Tikki's big, round eyes when she surreptitiously gives her a tissue. “Oh, I'm such a mess. I'm so sorry, Adrien. Ugh,” she sighs, wiping at her glistening cheeks. “This is not how this was supposed to go.”

“And how was this supposed to go?”

“Truthfully? I don't know. Alya and Nino were worried about you and honestly, I can see why. I came in here to try to cheer you up, which is stupid, I know now. I can hardly console myself. What can I possibly do for you?”

At that, she meets his eyes and all of a sudden, she understands what Alya means. There is something soft in his green gaze when he looks at her and something fond when he directs his endearingly crooked smile at her. It brightens his face and again, there is something so distinct about the twinkle in his orbs that it arrests her, stops the babble of her mouth and calms the restlessness of her wrung heart. A thought brews in her mind then, something big and something reckless and something dangerous, to be sure.

But the way her soul calls out to him, the thread of recognition in her belly going taut after so long without its other half, the look of him, his knowledge of Phantom of the Opera. It had taken her so long but now that it is here, it is like waking from a really deep sleep or rising from the pull of a frigid ocean tide—it is too difficult to ignore.

If she was right, bon dieu, if she was right...

“What troubles you, Marinette?”

Could it be this easy? she wonders, for the umpteenth time. If something's too good to be true, it usually is.

It's okay to be afraid, Tikki's sage voice floods her head then, overriding her doubts and lending her strength. Love is magic. Love is strength.

“What else?”

“I wonder if it might be the same thing that ails me.”

She gasps mockingly, “A boy?”

Marinette internally rejoices at the laugh she manages to wrangle from him. God, even his laugh!

Then, at the same time they utter, “Love?”

He nods, as if satisfied with their synchronization. She can hardly contain her beam. But the solemnity returns to his countenance and he asks her, “Are you in love, then?”

She nods, emphatically. “To the best guy I know. Next to you, of course.”

He looks so taken aback, she almost laughs. “Me?”

“Don't pretend you didn't know!” she points an accusing finger at him.

“Know? Know what? ”

“Oh my god,” it sinks in and she raises an incredulous brow. “You really didn't know?”

He throws his hands up in the air in frustration. “What are you talking about?”

“Adrien,” she starts slowly, as if he were a skittish animal she didn't want to scare into bolting from her. “Up until two years ago, I was madly in love with you.”

He blinks.

“What—what— ”

“I'm not anymore, obviously,” she continues flippantly, biting her lip to hide her amused grin. He is turning a peculiar shade of red, the hues of which had only ever been displayed by her before.

“I'm in love with this guy, but,” she sobers when she returns to the heart of the matter. “I don't know,” she sighs, jerking frustratedly at one end of her right pigtail. “I think I blew it.”

For a while, he doesn't answer. The silence becomes so oppressively awkward, she contemplates leaving when he, at long last, replies.

“What makes you say that?”

It is a quiet thing, the way he phrases the question. But it is made all the more compelling for its lambency, when there is an overabundance of hope lining every letter and syllable. She senses her own hope rocketing straight to the heavens.

“He told me his feelings, and instead of reciprocating I,” she gulps, the shame of her actions threatening to pull her down to her demons as she recalls that dreadful day. “I turned him away.”

He seems lost in his thoughts too, but rises just enough to mumble, “Why?”

She closes her eyes.

This is it, she psyches herself again. This is really it.

“Because I was afraid. I had loved you for so long, you see, that I had grown so comfortable with the thought that whatever love I gave could never be returned. But then he did, god, he did and suddenly I was afraid that I would mess things up so badly and then eventually, I just wouldn't be enough. There were… other factors, I was afraid of,” she glosses over this, just in case she is wrong. But if she is right, then it seemed prudent he be aware of it, too. “But it's not an excuse. The point is, I'm tired of being afraid, you know?”

She turns back so that she is facing the keys and then she is looking him in the eye, dauntless and ready.

“I'm tired of being afraid,” she reiterates, before altogether deflating. “I want to tell him, really, I do. But how?

“How do I tell someone that he is the first person I think about the moment I wake for the day and the one who fills my dreams at night? How do I tell him that his arms around me bring me the sort of warmth no blanket, jacket or heater could ever replicate? That for me the sun rises and sets in his eyes? That if I were a moon then he was the planet with which I choose to gravitate around? That my whole world is centered around him? That his soul seems bound to mine? His name scrawled across my heart because it belongs to him?

“How do you tell someone you love them? ”

The words had been building for so long, she gasps the moment they are out, like she had been holding her breath for just as long as she had been holding them in.

When she sneaks a glance at Adrien, there is an air of serenity about him that she hopes, hopes, hopes, is born from the baring of her mind, heart and soul. She feels naked, but invigorated too, a certain potency in the vulnerability—especially when he looks at her like this, with commensurate admiration, her words playing in his mind's eye to echo to his very actions.

“I imagine it goes something like this.”

His fingers poise gracefully over the keys, and then they are flying, singing, painting— a captivating scenery of a boy cloaked in shadows and a girl with midnight hair, the moonlight as their surface and the open air their dome and how they find sanctuary in each other. It pierces their heady atmosphere, that beautiful and mysterious tune that had kept her going on the days when loneliness comminated to cripple her.

—that same melody Chat Noir would hum to her, in the exposure of her rooftop and the moonshine pooling at their feet.

It starts soft, tinkling... excited, before climaxing to something sorrowful and dejected. But then, the tone shifts, and it is enchanting, bringing with it hope and passion and the happy chimes of church bells and an infant's laughter and above all else… love.

The last note fades from the room though it reverberates all throughout her body, leaving a pleasant tingle in its wake. She is crying again but she doesn't bother to hide it, doesn't bother to reach for a tissue. Not when he is there, cradling her cheeks like she is a most cherished gem, and catching her tears before they can journey the length of her face.

“Mon Ange,”  he whispers, breath lingering like a zephyr on her lips as he answers a question asked long ago. “It's called Mon Ange. ”

Only one person in the entire world would know to call her that.

But she dare not let herself believe, not until she too is cupping his face, her fingers splitting into diamonds around the sides of his eyes in a facsimile of a mask.

Those eyes, oh always his eyes…

(It should have been her first clue)

She gasps.

(She should have known better)

“Chat… you… you— ”

His hands retreat from her face only to deluge her own, hold her to him.

“Yes,” he sighs. “Yes, it's me.”

(She really, really should have known)

He rests his forehead on hers, and then she is laughing as she is crying, gazing at him in uninhibited astonishment.

“It's you,” she breathes, “it's always been you.”

His smile stretches the breadth of his face, it's any wonder it doesn't hurt his cheeks or fly right off his visage. It is then she remembers, with another laugh.

“I suppose…” he pouts when she withdraws but she, too, cannot contain her smiles when she opens her bag and reveals, “now is as good a time as any to tell you.”

Tikki floats placidly up to Adrien's blatantly jarred exterior and touches his nose in greeting.

“Hello, Adrien. I'm Tikki,” she giggles, tipping his jaw up with a paw before resuming her introductions. “It's nice to finally meet you.”

But before he can formulate a reply, something or rather, someone, is shouting, “Sugarcube!” and whizzing between them to collide right into her Kwami.

Plagg.

Tikki squeals, waving apologetically as Plagg whisks her away to the vents without so much as a by your leave.

Adrien has yet to say anything, and she grows worried at his lack of response.

“Adrien?” she waves a hand across his face. He captures it and holds on, tight. And she has a sneaking suspicion he thinks what he says next might be unpleasant to her and his grip is so she won't float away in the aftermath.

(She harrumphs. This is three years in the making, nothing could possibly make her leave now)

“So close,” are his first words.

“Okay…?”

“So close, I could have figured it out and we might have been together sooner!”

His eyes are dilated with regret, bordering on hysteria.

“The Valentine's day card, the one shaped in a heart with a poem written inside.”

She blushes. “Oh yeah,” she coughs to hide her embarrassment. “That.”

“It wasn't signed but I knew, I knew it was from Ladybug because it directly answered my poem for her—word per word. Then you! You left me a note with that assignment and I thought your handwriting looked a lot like the one of the poem's but I brushed it off because I could hardly believe it. I couldn't possibly be that lucky? I'm so used to disappointment, otherwise, it just became easier to accept that I couldn't deserve you… both of you.”

He trails off.

“And are you?”

“What?”

He seems feverish now at all the little hints she might have left that spoke of her admiration for him. She remembers Papa Garou and feels a little bad.

“Disappointed?”

He hugs her then, his arms around her a habitual balm that feels like coming home.

He feels like home.

“I couldn't be farther, Marinette. I've fallen in love with you, twice now. Once is coincidence but twice?” He hums. “Twice is a pattern.” He runs his nose along the arch of her neck, before rubbing it against the bridge of her own. “One I hope to make again,” he kisses her forehead, “and again,” her eyelid, “and again,” one cheek, “and again, ” then the other.

Pull, pull, pull.

There is that force again, the one that links them together, in a nature so insistent, she is a slave to its command. She finds herself clambering to his lap and anchoring her hands in his golden tendrils. He receives her weight with nary a blink of an eye, like they have done this countless times before.

Pull, pull, pull.

Like it is right.

“Well then,” she says, her lips hovering exhilaratingly close to his. “What do you suppose happens now?”

With her towering over him, his answer comes in the form of the crane of his head as he gives chase to the succulent curve of her smiling mouth.

But the day has other plans when the alarm rings and an announcement blares from the school speakers.

“AKUMA ALERT, AKUMA ALERT!”

They simultaneously turn their heads to the windows and it is there Adrien walks, carrying her all the while as he surveys whatever damage the Akuma might have all ready caused. It's an inappropriate thought given the circumstances but the way he doesn't even think about letting her go, his muscles flexing beneath his shirt as he hauls her to him with ease—it makes her quite dizzy.

(She's in love, okay? Sue her)

“Duty calls?”

He sighs. “Duty calls.”

She gets down on her feet, her body sliding in delicious thrills along his on the way to the ground. They let go of each other at the same time, calling for their Kwamis, suddenly shy.

“I'm gonna—”

“I'll be—”

He waves to one corner of the room while she gestures to the other.

“Right,” they trill jointly before laughing.

They move to their respectfully claimed parts of the room, Tikki giving her a wink before she calls out her magic words and hearing the tail end of Adrien's too.

When the magic settles, she turns. Seeing Chat Noir standing before her and knowing it is Adrien beneath the mask makes all the air leave her body while also breathing so much energy into her core.

It's real, she says to herself. He's real.

It restores her confidence and she is leaping into his arms for a hug, one that takes no time at all for him to reciprocate so deeply, she is lifted onto the tips of her toes.

Pull. 

“I've waited for you my whole life," he sighs. "It’s reassuring somehow, to know. You were always with me.” He cups her head. “My lady,” he whispers into the corner of her mouth. “Mon ange.”

“Mon minou,” she murmurs in kind before conceding, “I'm scared.” It's a hard thing to admit but with him, it is as effortless as a heartbeat.

Pull.

He holds out his hand.

“I won't let go if you won't.”

Pull. 

She grasps his hand, before twining their fingers, loving the weight of him in her palm like that of a steady promise.

Pull.

“Never.”

Because it is one, she understand now. And like all promises made by lovers, they seal it in the only way they know how.

Pull. 

With a kiss.

AN: Hope you had fun! Tell me what you think! :)

The mansion was out of the question—the place more prison than home, possessing a frigidness that had nothing to do with the rain but was all the more potent for it. Because no amount of his cook's world-class hot chocolates or the piles of comfy sheets from the multitude of linen closets that littered the rooms could erase the perpetual feeling of cold that filled his house, so vast and so achingly, achingly empty yet suffocating too. He was drowning in his own supposed sanctuary—in silence, in loneliness, and in memories that should have filled him with happiness but only served to remind him of the void in his heart. Shaped like that of his father whom he hardly saw, then of his mother, and the Adrien he could have been had she not left him behind—passionate and alight instead of this straggling, broken, thing, fumbling through his dreary days with only fractions of himself.

(It was any wonder he kept attaching himself to Ladybug, whom he was assured of was his other half, despite her steady rebuffs of his affections—just anything to feel even marginally whole)

He hated how conscious he was of every frosty sluice that wiggled its way along the planes of his body, snuggling into every line and corner of his skin, over and under his suit, and the tendrils of his hair from root to scalp till he felt submerged beneath an ocean—but he hated the thought of the solitude that would greet him at the mansion even more. So though he was sure to get an earful from Plagg once he detransformed, he continued his aimless wandering throughout the city. At least people on the streets waved when they saw him, their smiles filling that hole in his heart with soft embers however temporary it was, so long as it tempered the frost in his veins. Perhaps he could perform a solo patrol, no matter that the most recent Akuma had been dealt with a little under an hour ago. He might assist the local officers who were managing petty crimes or the regular bystander with a menial task, someone like—

Marinette?

There was no mistaking her, he'd know those bobbing pigtails anywhere, even if they were soaked and plastered to the skin of her neck. Her brows were furrowed the way they did when she was frustrated though her pace betrayed this, her walk measured and leisurely, he nearly forgot it was pouring. Her gaze was trained on the pavement with narrowed concentration, as if the muggy cobblestones held the relief to her vexation and would offer it if she looked hard enough.

The rain may have been uncomfortable for him but it did possess that seductive allure of quiet security as it casted everything in a lethargic haze. She looked so small and so soft, granted she was both those things—

But even against the misty haze of the afternoon deluge, she stood out.

In all honesty, she looked adorable and he couldn’t help it.

He chuckled.

Chat Noir made sure to let it all out because she may have been petite but Marinette gave as good as she got, and it was a lot. Most days it tickled him, she was such an enigma and he was eager to puzzle her out. Other times, it saddened him, that she could be so bold and impassioned with everyone except him, or the Adrien him at least. He thought they were long since past grudging first impressions but that didn’t explain the constant shyness around him. Was it because she could sense that his civilian self was the true mask and Chat Noir the more comfortable, open side of him? Marinette radiated genuineness, after all. It made sense that she wouldn’t take kindly to insincerity from anyone, least of all him. All of a sudden he understood her reservation—thought that he deserved it even.

He sighed and willed the gloomy thoughts to go away, no matter how much the dreary weather attempted to drive them to the forefront of his mind.

Deciding that he had watched her unnoticed long enough, he pounced to the building ahead of where she was walking and prowled on soundless feet down the fire escape, just in time to greet her upside down from where he was hanging upon the suspended ladder.

He smirked when she shrieked in a rather undignified manner, halting her steps gruffly so they wouldn't collide.

“Chat Noir!” she scolded once she had recovered, her hands bound in fists atop her hips and her head cocked to the side as she glared at him through slitted, blue eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he returned as he flipped and landed on the balls of his feet right in front of her. “I saw you and thought I'd drop by.”

He waggled his eyebrows. She was evidently not amused but that didn’t stop his mouth from twisting into a smug grin.

“I thought you were going home?”

“What made you think that?”

Her eyes widened, almost comically, and he gave her a curious look for it. “B-because the Akuma… I-I mean you… defeated it, right?”

His curiosity melted into concern as she turned into a flustered sight before him, the Marinette he was more familiar with as Adrien.

“Were you nearby?” he stepped closer, grasping at her shoulders and trying to be level-headed while surreptitiously scanning her for injuries. “Were you hurt? Is that why you’re walking so slowly?”

Whatever had frazzled her seemed to have evaporated along with what little of his good humor had remained. But her face softened, and so did the tense set of her shoulders that he was unaware of till it was sagging beneath his palms. Her hands cupped his elbows as she calmly coaxed his grip from its firm grasp on her shoulders, till his hold too rested on her elbows.

“No, chaton,” she whispered against the skin of his cheek as she placed a light kiss there. He breathed a sigh of relief. “I locked myself inside the fabric store I was visiting around the area, after helping some other passersby, of course—” he grunted because of course she did, “—and afterwards, I decided to walk home. I just… I happen to love the rain.”

A soft smile stole across her lips and everything about her felt so familiar then—her voice, her face, even her words, and the pieces of him that were shattered tingled in excitable recognition. Her presence seemed to fill the hollow spaces he thought only Ladybug or his mother could occupy but never would because had he ever been worth staying for? Would he ever be enough?

Perhaps he wouldn’t be. But when he was near Marinette, he forgot about all that. She made him feel like he would be okay, that maybe he was deserving of affection despite how lacking he was.

So he kissed her forehead and rubbed at the soaked clothes covering her biceps when he felt her shiver. “Why am I always catching you in the rain?” he murmured. She pulled away, just enough so she could look at him without getting cross-eyed, a question painted on her visage. He merely gave her a secretive smile that in no way assuaged her.

He remembered that day well.

Even before he had been bequeathed the Miraculous, he'd had an aversion to rain that only magnified when he became Chat Noir. The rain wasn't as bad then as it was now, but he carried an umbrella with him the moment he saw the cloudy skies that morning. Giving it to Marinette at the expense of his comfort had been more than making amends. From the beginning he was intrigued by her—with the fervor and spirit she defended herself and others. He was captivated by her even then, a captivation that only intensified as time wore on and she seemed to open to him, more so when he was Chat Noir. But that instance beneath the cloudburst had been the genesis of them, and it was meaningful to him as she'd been one of the first friends he made, the first to have shared belly-aching, lighthearted laughter with. He often tried to (jokingly) sneak into her room to peek if she had kept his black umbrella—if the memory held a semblance of significance to her like it did to him. Speaking of...

He brought out his baton and after a few clicks, transformed it into an umbrella, and hoped that would serve as a better distraction from his earlier slip. He was not wrong.

“I didn't know your baton could do that.”

“There’s a lot of things you don't know about it,” he replied with a devious twinkle in his eye. “I could show you what else my baton is capable of.” He winked at her and she shoved him. He laughed heartily, having been subjected to her exasperation many times before for similar quips, expecting it and enjoying it even. For all her eye rolls and snippy huffs, they were infinitesimal compared to the smiles and the giggles she occasionally bestowed upon him if he was particularly clever.

(He endeavoured to always be clever)

“It's not something I broadcast. Not even Ladybug knows about it, I think. I gotta have some secrets to myself.”

“Yet you just shared it with me,” she prompted, teasing. He shrugged.

“I trust you,” he answered honestly because in that he had no doubt.

Straightening from his feigned wounded crouch, he propped the umbrella between them. Struck, and perhaps humbled from his pronouncement, she wrapped her fingers around the arm he offered her as he murmured, “I think it's time I took this princess home.”

She wrinkled her nose and he barely refrained from bopping it with his finger cause it meant they'd have to let go. But ugh, she was so damn cute.

“You always call me that.”

They began the trek to her residence and where he was once apprehensive of her dilatory gait, he was now grateful as it meant he got to spend more time with her.

At her observation, he offered another shrug. “You always call me kitten,” he pointed out.

You and Ladybug, now that he thought about it.

“That’s because you are one, minou.”

As if to emphasize her point, she reached up and scratched at the spot behind his cat ear that he dearly loved and he was helpless against the purr that emitted from him. When she withdrew with a giggle, he pouted.

“Does it bother you?”

That was the last thing he wanted her to be, but she shook her head and smiled reassuringly.

“Well, if not a princess then what?”

It was her turn to shrug. “I don't know. I mean, I'm… just Marinette.”

She wasn't just anything but he didn't voice that. Instead, he said, “Okay, just Marinette. You may not see yourself as a princess, but you’ll always have a loyal knight in me.”

It was the corniest thing he had ever said yet, and though he meant it in good humor it came out more staid than he intended. He felt a blush rise to his cheeks. He and Marinette had held conversations in the past, more often as Chat Noir than as Adrien, and both were appreciated by him all the same. Being around her made him feel safe, made him feel seen. When crippling forlornness threatened to suffocate him, it was Marinette he turned to for solace. Though she made it easy to talk, they had never ventured into such poignant territory.

God damn rain, he grumbled, for he was sure it was responsible for the vulnerability it provoked within him. As if privy to his thoughts, lightning erupted in the sky, followed closely by thunder. He barely suppressed the urge to mewl, however he did shudder. Was it too much to ask that Marinette not notice?

She clicked her tongue. “Is my brave knight afraid of a little thunder?”

Apparently, it was.

“No,” he muttered petulantly.

“It's okay,” she giggled, giving his arm a genial squeeze. I'll protect you if you protect me.”

It was a susurrous promise in his ear that had his heart both thudding and reposing. So he wasn't the only one affected by the stupor brought on by the rain.

“Always,” he vowed softly.

She smiled, enchanting and lovely, and huddled closer to his side. With her chin resting on his shoulder, he let out a contented sigh. The rest of the walk continued in agreeable silence—both so at ease with each other’s presence that there was no need for words, the shrieking pitter-patter of the rain the soundtrack to their stroll.

Dread, however, churned an angry storm in his stomach at the growing sight of the Dupain-Cheng Bakery. He didn't want to leave her, an impetus that constantly emerged whenever he visited her at night and one that was even larger in the light of day. As an Agreste, there was a lot he could possess with a mere word or snap of his finger, and still there was little he treasured more than the friendships he'd formed since he began public school. If this walk in the drenched and desolate Parisian streets had taught him anything it's that Marinette's companionship, even if it was with Chat Noir, was something he most coveted—had learned to rely on. He resolved to make more of an effort with her when he was Adrien, propriety and his father’s expectations be damned. He was most himself when he was with Marinette and with Ladybug too but as it was, it was her preference to keep their personal lives separate—and it was high time he wore off the mask with at least one of the two most important women in his life.

With that decision in mind, the ball of anxiety in his gut loosened albeit by a miniscule knot. He supposed it would have to do. Marinette was leading him to the front door of the building's abode where he would be dropping her off and he would have to go home some time if he didn’t want Nathalie or god forbid his father to notice his absence and Plagg was bound to be getting tired now and—

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed in utter bewilderment as she opened her door without letting go of him then proceeded to use her grip to drag him through the entrance. He dug his heels in but to his surprise, she was astuciously strong. “What’s happening right now?”

She gave him a look that clearly conveyed how idiotic she thought he was.

“Do you honestly think I'm going to let you back out in this weather?”

“I’ve got my baton and my suit will keep me warm.”

“Your little parasol—”

“Hey!” So his baton-brella was shiny. It was sleek and still very manly.

“—will do you no good. You hate the rain!”

Was he that obvious? He shot an apprehensive look at the door adjacent to the entryway, where the bakery lay.

“What about your parents?”

“Mama!” she called as she took off her shoes and placed them in a closet just across. “Papa!”

Adrien felt his eyes widen and full-blown panic bloomed in his chest. He gestured wildly at Marinette, limbs flailing in what he hoped she took as a sign to ‘abort, abort!’ but she hardly batted an eye at his antics.

He inched further from the entrance.

Through the wooden doorway that was the bakery’s back entrance, a booming voice replied. “Daughter, is that you?”

Rolling her eyes, Marinette crossed her arms and huffily replied, “Unless you have another child I don't know about hidden away somewhere here then yes! It's me!”

Under her breath, she whined, “He does this every time, who else would call him papa?”

He wanted to chortle, but all he managed was a shaky chuckle that died down anyway when the door opened to reveal the bear of a man that was Marinette's father. He bore an imposing figure, one to match Gorilla's for sure, and at first glance Adrien had been intimidated. But then he affected such a joyous air, punctuated by the smile perpetually etched on his face—piercing even through his groomed, handlebar moustache—that it was hard to imagine him as anything other than a gentle giant that radiated the sun.

“It is you!” he vociferated with unnecessary dramatic flair, sweeping Marinette into a hug that lifted her off her feet before he unceremoniously dropped her. “Ew, wet!”

Marinette cackled. “Serves you right.” Then she executed a delightful hop to kiss her father on the cheek, careful not to get any more of her damp clothes on him. He received it with an outstretched chin and a broad, close-lipped smile, as if there was no better bounty than to be in Marinette’s presence.

Adrien's heart swelled. He knew the feeling well.

But then Tom trained his gaze on him and he felt the goofy grin that had dominated his mouth slip as his nerves returned.

He may have been around adults most of his life but he'd never had to meet parents, with the exception of Chloé's father and even that felt so far removed from this situation. He'd never had the chance, the luxury, to have the kind of friends that invited him over to their houses. Not to mention the implications of Marinette bringing a boy home, and not to toot his own horn or anything, but when he was Chat Noir he was no regular boy.

He was suddenly grateful he got caught in the rain as his dampness hid the way sweat beaded at his temples.

“I see you've brought home a stray,” he observed, his manner gruff. Adrien blanched.

He tried to sound suave, and later he would despair at his lack of a backbone, but for now all he could manage was a squeaky, “M-monsieur Dupain!”

Marinette’s mouth was puckered though he couldn't tell whether it was in a pout or in pitifully contained joviality at his expense. “Be nice, papa.” She scolded airily. “It was raining cats and dogs out there, I might as well drag one in.”

“Marinette?” Adrien whispered. “Marinette, Marinette.” He was so dumbfounded with awe he forgot to be terrified. “Did you just make two cat jokes in one sentence?”

Monsieur Dupain's exploding laughter was enough answer for him, and he found himself joining in the chortles when the man clapped a hand to his shoulder and Marinette finally, finally graced him with that toothy grin he loved so much—the one that felt like every bit of light in the world came from her smile, the one he now knew she inherited from her father, who gave his hair a ribbing shuffle.

“At ease, son,” he spoke good-naturedly. “It's not everyday Chat Noir escorts my daughter home safely from the rain. You have my thanks.”

He didn't realize he was leaning into Tom's hand until the man pulled away from petting his locks. He trained his gaze to the floor. He bit his lip and shifted in his place, uncharacteristically shy at the praise when he would normally lap at any attention—the sincerity in the pronouncement, so like Marinette, disarming him. He was saved from having to stutter a reply when monsieur Dupain concentrated on Marinette.

“And you! My clever, clever girl.” He gave her a smacking kiss on the forehead that had her blushing from her scalp to her delicate neck. Adrien found himself grinning as he relaxed.

“Next thing you know, you'll be punning,” his grin sharpened into a smirk. “I'll make sure of it.”

“‘Punning’ is not a word,” she retorted haughtily before adding, “and in your dreams, kitty.” It was snarky but the comment had no real edge to it, not when they were all dissolving into bubbly giggles.

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng!” someone admonished from the top of the staircase, effectively silencing all three of them. “Did you get caught in the rain, again?”

Quick as a whip, madame Cheng went down the steps on light feet, one towel slung over her shoulder and another spread on her hands, which she promptly flung towards the sopping mess that was Marinette. She rubbed vigorously at her head so that when she pulled away, Marinette’s hair was a curling, frizzing mass of midnight tendrils. Beside him, monsieur Dupain released a snicker that fell just as quickly as it rose when madame Cheng’s disapproving stare landed on him.

“Tom!” she clicked her tongue and cocked her hip, a perfect echo of Marinette in irritation that he would have smiled if his nerves hadn't returned tenfold. “Can’t you see her shaking? She'll catch her death standing here, they both will!”

It was then he noticed he was still standing at the threshold of their dwelling, loitering around like the stray monsieur Dupain teased he was. He figured it was time he took his leave, he didn't want Marinette to get sick either and standing at the open door with the wind gusting in surely wasn't helping. He glanced at the solemn skies and quivered in his boots. He wouldn't enjoy the trudge back but Adrien knew enough about social graces to tell when he had overstayed his welcome. Knocking his heels together with a jittery jerk, he was about to give a two-fingered salute when madame Cheng threw the second towel over his head.

His vision obscured by fluffy, white cotton, he had no choice but to double over as Marinette's mother dried his head, surprisingly mindful of his cat ears as she patted him in a significantly more gentle manner than she did Marinette. Honestly, he didn't know whether to purr or laugh. In his befuddlement, he did an odd combination of both and emitted a rather choked yowl as he tried to duck away from her.

“Er, madame Cheng,” he started, stricken breathless at the strange turn of events when she finally let up and closed the door behind him. “This… this isn't necessary.”

Yet he found himself clinging to the towel around his neck where she left it after moving from his hair to mildly pat at his face. And though he stayed by the entryway, he did not motion to leave.

“Nonsense! I won't have one half of Paris’ superhero duo roving in this awful weather when he can be perfectly snug in here!”

As if privy to madame Cheng's ire—outside, lightning split the sky followed by a clap of thunder so roaring he felt it rattle his bones. He grit his teeth.

“If you think Akumas are bad…” monsieur Dupain goaded after glancing at Adrien, no doubt noticing his discomfort. He wanted to be embarrassed but found he was more grateful for the facetiousness, if not wary of madame Cheng's reaction. Marinette and her father had no such qualms, though she did bite her lip to stifle the guffaw that threatened to spill from her lips.

“Children,” madame Cheng deadpanned. “I have two children.”

Tom hummed, pressing a doting kiss on his wife's forehead that, judging by the way the corners of her mouth tilted up, negated his erstwhile badinage.

“Well, lucky for both of you—you're just in time for dinner,” she stated. “I know it's leftover night but I couldn't resist making wanton noodle soup—” damn, he speculated. That sounded, and now that he thought about it, smelled, divine, “—nothing like a little home-cooked brew to heat the cockles on days like these, oui? And there's all that extra catering food from the other day, that one's Italian so you bet we have a little bit of everything—pasta, pizza, bread, you name it. I've got chopsuey for veggies and some coq a vin too, if you wanted? You're staying for dinner, of course.”

“Sabine, mamour,” monsieur Dupain said behind an amused smile, “let the boy speak. Maybe decide for himself, hmm?”

All three Dupain-Chengs whipped their heads towards him and he felt sheepish at their concentration. He looked to Marinette, who merely shrugged haplessly before smirking. He wanted to stick his tongue out at her but restrained himself out of respect for her parents. She was throwing him out to the wolves here! Not that they were wolves, it was just—

“I wouldn't want to intrude…”

Madame Cheng laid a comforting hand on his arm, her smile welcoming as she murmured, “You are not intruding, Chat Noir.”

“But—”

Just then, his stomach growled. Like, literally growled. There was no other word for the monstrous gurgle that emanated from him.

He slapped a hand to his middle just as Marinette could no longer repress herself and cracked up, her derision long time building. Monsieur Dupain clapped a hand over his mouth. Madame Cheng was chastising her daughter, to no avail (the traitor), though her eyes and mouth were tight with laugh lines. His face felt like it was on fire.

“I guess that answers that question,” monsieur Dupain mused out loud.

He wanted to die.

Adrien tried to draw on all the bravado Chat Noir's anonymity afforded him. But they weren't Akumatized victims that needed distracting. These were Marinette's parents and he wanted to charm them, not irritate them. They'd had few interactions when he was his civilian self, nonexistent when he was Chat Noir, today notwithstanding. But even with the limited opportunities for conversation, he all ready knew he adored them the way he adored Marinette.

He liked them, and desired for them to like him.

Did the situation call for his superhero persona then? Chat Noir was boisterous and charismatic, not to say that he wasn't when he was only Adrien. But such moments blossomed when he was around friends and even then, it was significantly more reserved than Chat. He had been in public school for just shy of two years now, so it was no surprise that he fell back on Adrien in times of doubt, drawing on years of formal, etiquette training as he straightened his spine, folded his hands behind his back and gave them a bland smile.

“I am a little hungry.”

A snort. “A little?”

“Marinette!”

Madame Cheng withdrew her touch from his arm to wag a finger at Marinette who had the decency to look chagrined.

“You're having dinner. That's final.”

“Yes, madame.”

She startled. “Goodness dear, you make me sound awful old!”

“Oh,” he grimaced and refrained from rubbing at the nape of his neck. “I don't mean to make you uncomfortable, that is not my intention at all.”

“It's not really a bother,” she reassured. “But Sabine will do just fine.”

“And you can call me Tom, too. Monsieur Dupain makes me feel like my father’s right behind me!”

He chuckled and Adrien's smile became less forced.

“If it pleases you,” he murmured.

“It does,” they echoed.

Marinette glanced at him with a strange look on her face, probably questioning his formality but he couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze head on. Instead, he glimpsed at her parents. Sabine slotted herself to her husband's side as if she belonged there and only there, their bodies attuned like extensions of one another despite the glaring height difference.

Adrien tried not to stare, it was rude. He was just both flummoxed and amazed, maybe even a little sad too. To see the Dupain-Chengs so open with one another, so free with their affections—Tom winding an arm around his wife's shoulders, while Marinette clasped at his other, Sabine fussing over her with the towel once more, her tone sharp even as her eyes glowed with fondness.

A pang of longing washed over him. He had never felt more like an outsider and that was quite a feat, as Adrien lived in a constant state of isolation though he tried not to show it.

But then—Sabine extended her arm towards him.

“Come on up!”

He regarded her hand with a modicum of caution. Not at her, never at her. But what was he doing? He didn't belong here, not when he was a dark cloud of melancholy in this resplendent safe haven. He had never known such tenderness, had forgotten what it was to be cared for the way only a mother's hands could provide. He didn't want to taint this, to taint them. A selfish part of him whispered that he didn't know these people but he could be sure of one thing—everybody left.

And maybe he didn't want to be the one standing alone again.

“Chat?”

Marinette's bluebell eyes met his, and it was like staring up at a blazing, cerulean sky. He felt the harrowing, adumbration that was his tenebrous thoughts lift its foggy thrall on him.

“It's alright,” she murmured soothingly, as if she had a direct line to his head though she couldn't have possibly known what he was thinking.

“S-sorry,” he stammered. “Yes. I shall stay. Thank you for offering.”

In his state (which was, so embarrassing), he failed to notice Tom's absence, but he could hear him in the bakery. It was near seven, so it was safe to assume he had gone to lock up the shop. Sabine was on his right, patting at his cheek with the towel again as she led him by the elbow up the staircase and into their residence. On his other side, Marinette's fingers brushed his. Anyone else would have seen it as an accident but he recognized it for the sign of support it was, and not for the first time he was grateful they were friends no matter what form he took.

“So make yourself at home,” Sabine was telling. “I’ll just grab a change of clothes for you.”

Wait, what?

He must have said this aloud since Sabine shook her head at him. “You might get a fever if you stay in that suit any longer so let me fetch you something dry. Tom is certainly larger than you but I'm sure I can scrounge through some of his older things.”

“Mada—er, Sabine,” he corrected himself at her wayward, reproving look. “That really isn't necessary.”

His ring beeped and he groaned. It seemed Plagg wasn't giving him a choice in the matter.

“You're about to detransform, Chat,” Marinette said. “I have a mask for you to wear, if your secret identity is what you're worried about. We don't want to make you uncomfortable either.”

He wasn't—worried that was. But he didn't want to put them in danger by revealing himself. And honestly, as fun as it was having Marinette as a classmate, he far preferred the moments they had together when he was Chat Noir. He didn't want that to fade, he couldn't bear the shift in those depthless orbs if she knew who he was and the distance between her and Adrien yawned between her and Chat Noir.

“Do you often have masks laying around for any superhero who visits your home?” he joked, though considerably more subdued. “And I thought I was special.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you want it or would you rather perish in this cold?”

“So dramatic,” he sighed, feigning at being put out.

“You two are too cute,” Sabine cooed. He and Marinette blushed at the reminder that they weren't alone. Mon dieu, he forgot that they weren't supposed to be all that familiar with each other. Had he given them away? Her mother looked far from angry, if anything she seemed pleased.

“Stay here and keep each other company for a bit. I’ll get those clothes then you can both change.”

“Actually, mama, I've got a sweatshirt for Chat. If you could just provide the bottoms?”

“If you say so, dear.”

Sabine disappeared into a room next to the main entrance, leaving them in the living room. As soon as the door closed behind her, he whirled on Marinette, flicking his tail at her bottom. She yelped.

“Hey!”

He crossed his arms. “You don't get to hey indignantly! I do!”

Her face was a perfect picture of incredulity. “Did you just—did you just slap my butt?”

His face burned (had it ever reverted to its normal state since he got here?) at the implication.

“There was no slapping, my tail lightly grazed your derrière,” he said this very quickly, “and don't change the subject!” He held firm and willed his cheeks to cool as he pasted on a stern expression. “What was that about?”

“I could ask you the same thing!” she brought a hand to her bottom. “I can't believe you slapped my butt!”

“What do you mean? It was a light graze!” he groaned. “And stop turning this around!”

“‘Yes madame’? ‘If it pleases you’? What is this, Les Mis? ”

“I'd make a beautiful Cosette, true.” To emphasize this, he ruffled his golden locks like the model he was when his true aim was to douse her with tiny droplets of water. She screeched.

“Chat!”

“That’s just the way I talk. I call Ladybug, ‘milady', remember? It's not exactly a term of endearment you'd lump in with ‘bae’!”

“I know how you speak, but that?” she shook her head, a sudden despondency occupying her mouth, pulling down the corners in a way that made him sick to see.

I did that, he brooded.

“You were so… polite—”

“I'm nothing, if not a gentleman,” he averred, slightly affronted at the insinuation he was otherwise, though he knew that wasn't what she meant. Marinette was too discerning for her own good and he clutched the towel at his neck with both hands to quell the disquiet that rose within him at her introspective gleam.

Her frown deepened. “That's not the right word, then. You were tame?” she sighed, anxiety evident in the lines that creased her forehead as that furrow from when he first saw her reappeared with a vengeance. “You sounded… empty. It was—” she gulped. “It was haunting, and I'm worried about you. Is it something my parents said? Something I did?”

“No,” he was quick to assuage because it was the truth and he wanted no blame to anchor her, least of all on his account. “No, no.” He sensed she was far from convinced so he nuzzled first at her cheek till her breath was a balmy and measured zephyr against his skin. Only then did he move to her neck, planting a quick peck to the exposed skin above her collar before resting his forehead on her shoulder.

“It's me.”

All I do is cause pain, he wanted to say. Instead, “I just... don't like the rain.”

She brought a tentative hand up to the small of his back and rubbed small circles onto it.

“Chat…”

“I really, really don't like the rain?”

She huffed, “I won't push you,” though she did soften against him, nosing at the hair by his ear as the tension lining her shoulders gradually drifted away. “But I do wish you'd tell me, mon minou. ”

My, she said. My kitten. She'd never said that before and especially not with so much gravity—so much intent and possessiveness.

Hers.

His heart soared.

Yours, he mouthed against her flesh—he quite liked the sound of that.

It was what prompted him to confess, weighed down as he was with shame at such sentimental weakness that he couldn't find the courage to even look at her as he spoke.

So against the sanctity that was the hollow of her throat, he confided, “It was… it was raining. The day my mother…” he trailed off, unable to continue when a barrage of memories assaulted him—a rapid succession of flashing effigies he could scarcely form together and would have forgotten, were it not for the way pain tainted his recollections and tore his body every time he remembered.

She sucked in a sharp breath. “She… died?”

He laughed even if he was brimming with bitterness. “No. But I wonder if that would have been better.”

Marinette clenched his waist in reprimand, possibly shock too as she expelled a perturbed whine. “That’s not funny.”

“I didn’t think so when she left me behind, either.”

She had nothing to say for a while after that, which was fine with him. Words of consolation were inappropriate when his mother was very much alive, just... gone. Apologies were futile, it wasn't Marinette's fault nobody stayed for him.

For a few heartbeats they remained, his head on her shoulder and her hand on his waist, the only parts of them touching. The sweet scent of her overwhelmed him despite the prominent musk of rain that permeated the air around them. He breathed her in, and drew strength from her steady presence till the agonizing numbness withdrew from his bones and feeling returned to his knees, enough that he could stand on his own without leaning on Marinette.

Well, maybe just a little. He touched his forehead to hers.

“Everyone leaves. Why do people leave?” he absently pondered aloud, when what he truly meant was, why do people leave me? He hadn't really expected an answer, but Marinette had always possessed the uncanny ability to read him. In retrospect, he shouldn't have been thrown when she pushed on his shoulder and vehemently said, “She didn't deserve you, okay? Anyone who leaves doesn't deserve you. But Chat, you're the most hopeful person I know. Are you honestly going to stand here and tell me everyone leaves?” She demanded. “I mean, would you? Would you leave Ladybug? ”

Ladybug, who he loved. Ladybug, who was his partner and his other half. Ladybug, who wanted another and did not love him back. Ladybug…

Who he did not really know at all.

Still, the answer was a given.

“No,” he said with a sureness that she must have expected given her satisfied countenance. “I wouldn't leave her,” he answered. But with a little more softness and with utmost intentness, he added, “And I wouldn't leave you.”

Her eyes widened before they lowered to the ground, a flush creeping up her cheeks as she tried to wave off his comment. He would have none of that, now. Ladybug may have taken precedence in his heart, but when the dust settled and the thrill of the adventure faded, whose presence did he truly long for? When insidious doubt slithered in his mind, whose council did he seek? Who did he want to share everything with, from the quiet moments that rarely graced his day to the hopes and dreams he envisioned for his life? Who did he most want to steal time with?

Marinette had gradually crept and crawled her way in. She buried and burrowed herself, till the gaps that made up his patchwork soul felt flowing with effulgence.

Till they were molded in the shape of her.

He tilted her chin up and she followed, though her eyes remained averted.

“Marinette,” he murmured susurrously. He moved his hand away so he could cup both her cheeks, face framed between careful claws—urging her to look up, to see him. He needed her to know.

“Marinette.”

She looked up then, at the urgency with which he said her name, and Adrien started, “I wouldn't leave you. Ever. I—” I what?

What else had he been trying to say again? He rested his forehead atop hers once more, because he was a sinner seeking refuge and she felt heavenly against his skin. He wanted to thank her. He wanted to tell her that maybe his mom hadn't deserved him but he sure as hell didn't deserve Marinette. He couldn't seem to muster the right words, not when she stood on the tips of her toes so she could wrap her arms around his neck, not as she caressed the bridge of his nose with the tip of hers, nudging at the crease on his cheek and nestling there, lips finding purchase on the corner of his mouth. He could steal a kiss, or would it be a gift if she gave it freely? All he had to do was turn his head…

A jarring crash! sounded, followed by a poorly muffled curse.

They sprung apart—shock dropping like an anvil between them and breaking the glass ceiling that was their potent, emotional atmosphere. Adrien bottled his instinct to dig his claws into the walls out of fright and in lieu of doing so, returned his grip to the towel around his neck. He had leapt towards the kitchen, his back hitting the island counter. Across him, Marinette had fallen over the coffee table, her legs skewedly draped on the table top and her arms sprawled over the couch’s seat cushions. She would probably be nursing a bruise come morning if the sour and disgruntled look on her face was anything to go by. He grimaced. Next to him, a pair of portly limbs stuck out from beside the floor of the island table.

He rubbed at the nape of his neck. “Er…”

“Papa?” Marinette cried from her place on the ground.

A pause before a meek, “Yes?” followed.

Monsieur Dupain remained on the linoleum as he said this and Marinette groaned. Adrien bounded to her side to offer his assistance. Her pain seemed momentarily suspended as a whole new discomfort overtook her features and her blush returned.

They—they had nearly kissed. Here. In the living room of her home. In the living room of her home! And yet… they had nearly kissed. Who had leaned into who? Did that really matter, at this point? That her parents were feet away certainly hadn't warranted any significance to them at the time.

Still, the thought came to him, unbidden—he wished they hadn't stopped.

He wished they had kissed.

He held out his arm and she placed her hand in his. He pulled her up, but in his jittery state had underestimated his strength. She stumbled onto him and he wrapped the arm that wasn't holding her hand around her waist to steady her. When she straightened, she was flushed against him, the downy curves of her lithe, womanly frame in absolute harmony with the firm lines of his figure.

He gulped.

Whatever cold had conquered him during the rain had dissipated. He was a livewire and Marinette the spark to light the fuse—he was ablaze. Every nerve, muscle and cell had zeroed in on each point of contact. He inwardly swore at the way his tail flicked in response to the current of electricity that thrummed down the length of his back because it gave him away. Then again, perhaps he wasn't the only one whose actions were transparent. Perhaps he wasn't trying to hide what he was feeling from her, because of her. After all, he hadn't retreated his hold around her waist.

And she didn't seem inclined to let him go.

“Don't mind me!” Tom called and with a jolt of awareness, they let go of each other. What was the matter with him? He had to do stop doing this. He had to control himself, her parents were right there for god's sake!

He crossed his arms to stifle the pressing need to touch her, while her hands enveloped her cheeks, as if that would be enough for her to vanquish the tell-tale signs of her bashfulness.

“What are you doing on the floor?” she asked, flabbergasted when her father didn't move from his prone position.

“I was just trying to put away some pastries.” Well, that solved the mystery of where Marinette inherited her clumsiness from. “I didn't want to disturb you two so I tried to be quiet but I tripped!”

He was going to die—scratch that, he was all ready dead, and this was the ninth circle of hell where he had to endure every sort of humiliation known to teenage-kind.

Her hands now encompassed her entire face and from behind the curtain of her palms she grumbled, “You didn't have to do that, papa.”

“It's okay! I didn't see anything!”

Don't say it isn't what it looks like, he chanted to himself. You're fine. Marinette’s fine (even if she has turned an alarming shade of red by her standards) and nothing happened. Nothing here suggests that you've done something incriminating so don't say it isn't what it looks like, don’t say it isn’t what it looks like, don’t say it isn’t—

“It isn't what it looks like!”

He was an idiot.

“Chat!” Marinette griped as she balled her hands into fists at her sides as if to withhold from punching him, her glare so murderous he felt like curling into a big, mass of regretful leather. He gave her a winning smile instead, and hoped it would be enough to dim her ire.

It wasn't.

“Just pretend I’m not here!” Her father barreled on, obviously unconvinced of Adrien's words. Marinette clapped a hand over her eyes and groaned.

“Okay,” she sighed, “this has gotten way out of hand—” She took a step forward but in her temporary blindness, must have miscalculated her step because one moment she was next to him and the next, she was falling over the coffee table again. She would have bumped her head against the corner, but Adrien was quicker and wound an arm around her waist once more. What he hadn't anticipated (again) was Marinette's strength, for just as he held her, she instinctively flailed for the closest solid thing to stop her fall.

He was the closest solid thing.

Adrien only had enough time to twist his body so that he received the brunt of the impact, landing on his back next to the coffee table with Marinette on top of him, her hands splayed on either side of his head to balance herself.

She was so red he could feel the heat emanating from her body, even through the damp cold of her clothes. He felt his own temperature rise, heedless to the pain throbbing around his shoulders and back. He should have apologized that he had allowed them both to fall, should have lent her a hand and gotten them both off the floor.

He should have let her go.

But then he tightened his arm around her middle, and he nearly purred at the soft hitch of her breath, chest to chest, her legs tangled in his, the soft skin of her—

“What is going on here?”

They turned their heads towards the source of sound and found Sabine staring down at them with a look on her face that, even upside down he could tell, was one of consummate perplexity.

She turned towards the kitchen and her eyes widened from the saucers they all ready were. “Tom? Is that you?” she took a step back and surveyed them. “What are you all doing on the floor?”

Silence met her as each one tried to prepare an explanation that would make the most sense (and would be the least embarrassing version) of the past half hour.

“It isn't what it looks like!”

“Marinette!” Adrien cried, even as he swallowed a laugh. He let loose a disbelieving breath.

She did not just say that!

“Shut up,” she averred in sibilating tones and through gritted teeth so as not to further rouse her mother’s suspicions.

He couldn't resist teasing her.

“You just said not—”

“Shut up.”

He did not.

“It really is, though, Sabine—what it looks like, that is.”

Marinette’s glare ascended to volcanic levels of intensity.

“What?” he insisted. “We really all fell.”

“The kids were having a moment—” Tom supplied.

“They were?” Sabine answered and Adrien was curious at the eager tilt to her inquiry.

“—and I tripped trying not to ruin it.”

“Oh, mamour,” she lamented with a feigned woeful hand to her cheek, “I think you failed.”

“No, he didn't!” Marinette rebuffed. “There was nothing to fail because there was no moment —”

“Oh, there most definitely was a moment.”

“Papa,” she rebuked exasperatedly. “There was no moment!”

“I mean,” Adrien started, goading her evident mortification even if it meant extending his own, “there was a little moment—”

“Chat Noir!” she shrilled.

Sabine actually shoved the sweatpants she was holding under her bicep to clap her hands and do a little hop. “Well, don't let us interrupt! What do you need? Do you want us to leave or…?”

“Oh my god,” Marinette breathed, grabbing the fabric from her mother as it was now Sabine’s turn to poke fun at her daughter. Tom joined her guffaws. “We're going. Now.”

Then, with that forceful grip of hers, she dug her fingers into his arm and dragged him up the stairs to her room.

(He had to hide a wince. She was so lissom! Where was all this strength coming from? He glanced at her body from the corner of his eye. Where was she hiding it?)

“That's right hun,” her mom called up to them, “just keep living in the moment!” Adrien laughed and Sabine winked before giving him a sly wave.

Marinette tugged harder.

To avoid tripping, he followed—having just enough time to wave back at her mom and hear her laughingly berate Tom to, “get off the floor, for goodness’ sake!”

“I’m telling you, Sabine,” he grunted, then the cacophony of objects tumbling to the floor as he muttered, “moment. ”

When they reached the top, Marinette shoved him inside her room and slammed the trap door behind them, further silencing the din that was her parents’ entertainment.

“What just happened?” It didn't seem like she was looking for a direct answer, her gaze darting about her room skittishly as she repeated, “No, seriously, what just happened?”

But he couldn't help himself.

“I think your parents ship us,” he quipped, poking at her side to rouse her from her apparent shock. She batted his hand away but he dodged her, nudging the pad of his finger onto the space just above the bend of her waist where he knew she was most weak. She squealed.

“They're terrible,” she panted. “And so are you.”

He stuck his tongue out and she shoved him, but without much force. He stayed her hands on his chest.

“I think they're wonderful,” he murmured, rubbing lightly at her knuckles. “They’re raising you, after all. And you're…”

Her fingers rippled over his suit, caressing his collarbones as she seemed to hold her breath.

“What?” she whispered.

“You're exquisite,” he said, his voice imbued with all the reverence he felt for her.

He expected her to hit him again, or at the very least roll her eyes. But Marinette always was one to surprise him, as she briefly broke their hold to boop him on the nose with one hand.

“Such a tomcat,” she said, voice not so much ribbing but calm, sleepy.

He'd even go so far as to say appreciative.

“Only for you, Princess.”

She narrowed her eyes at the nickname. “And Ladybug?”

The fondness had abated ever so slightly, replaced by a carefully crafted blank tone that was only betrayed by the indiscernible tautness to her mouth. She might have pouted, if it didn't reveal the vulnerability she seemed to want to keep from him. And he might have missed it, if he hadn't known her so well.

So with a solemnity he rarely displayed when he was Chat Noir, he said, “Ladybug doesn't like me like that, and I respect that.”

“But you like her like that,” she lamented, a knowing yet sorrowful gleam he couldn't decipher clouding her gaze.

Maybe that's changed, he wanted to tell her, especially if it meant he could erase whatever it was that had dimmed her propensity for effervescence. But then his ring beeped before he could further dive into the ocean of her eyes, and he sighed.

She flattened her palm along the side of his face till the tips of her fingers brushed the underside of his mask. When she withdrew, he felt positively bereft. He had never wanted so desperately to be rid of his suit. He yearned to hold her, feel the dips and crests of her hands or the warmth of her skin. He longed to mold himself to her figure till she filled his empty spaces and all he knew was Marinette, and whatever sadness that had plagued her banished because his shadows would only serve to brighten her light.

“Marinette…”

Say it, he implored himself.

His ring blasted another strident warning just then, and like a waft of smoke, the moment had drifted from his grasp.

“I'll get that mask for you,” she said, moving towards her closet where she retrieved the fabric along with another black garment apart from the pants her mother had provided.

“You never did answer my question.”

“What question?” she grunted while pulling forcefully on something. He smiled, despite himself.

“Why do you have a mask at the ready? If you wanted me out of my suit, all you had to do was ask,” he drawled. “You didn't have to use the rain as an excuse.”

She laughed. “You are so full of yourself, minou. ”

He tried not to frown petulantly that she hadn't tacked mon before the endearment. He failed. She released a triumphant crow as he assumed she found what she sought. He tried not to be charmed.

Again, he failed.

He prowled towards her and wrapped his tail around her calf, even as he crossed his arms and attempted to maintain a miffed mien.

“So why the mask, then?” Inexplicable jealousy clawed at his stomach like bile. “Is there another superhero?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she replied coyly.

His hair stood on end and it took all his wits to smother a growl. “Who?”

She laughed again, flicking a slick strand away from his forehead with her free hand when a vexed rumble still managed to sound from his throat.

“Relax,” her giggles continued as she twisted her fingers in his hair. “My cousin asked me to make him a Zorro costume last Halloween. This was just one of my trial masks that I kept for reference.”

His unwarranted haze of envy cleared at her blithe demeanor, and he found himself joining her chortles.

“Sorry,” he murmured, leaning into her touch when her hand stayed in his locks. “It's the Miraculous. Sometimes I can't help it when the feline instincts take over me and, well,” he shrugged feebly. “You're my friend, Marinette. I feel very…” possessive “... protective of you.”

Twice over, he yearned to tell her, when he was either Adrien and Chat Noir and she was nearby when an Akuma attacked. His eyes veered towards her and his body leaped to cover her and carry her to safety—every time.

“You don't have to worry,” she said. And the jesting manner with which she strived to convey her next words was lost when her laughter faded into a gratified hum as she rubbed at the sublime spot behind his cat ear while the tip of his nose ambled along the dewy arch between her nape and shoulder.

“You know you're the only one,” she sighed.

“Ton minou?” he asked into the skin of her neck, unable to look her in they eye as he spoke the question, his voice small.

“Oui,” she declared with not a hint of hesitance. “Mon minou. ”

His ring trilled. What was it now—the third time? The fourth? Either way, he was cutting it pretty close, and Marinette knew it too as she gently pushed him away and placed the clump of ebony garbs in his arms.

“You should change.”

He nodded. “I should.”

But he didn’t move from his spot, apart from his tail, which slunk from her calf to curl around her thighs.

“Tomcat,” she said again after clicking her tongue. “Are you going to slap my butt again?”

“Oh my god!” He rolled his eyes even as his face burned. “I wasn’t trying to slap it! It was a graze okay, I lightly grazed it—”

She laughed hard at his flustered state and he twisted his lips in a sulk though in truth, he was glad for the levity. Adrien didn't think he had ever in his life experienced such a wide range of emotions in so limited a time span as he had in the past hour. He had been wet and cold and hungry and mortified and exhausted to his bones. But he had also smiled, so wide that his cheeks throbbed from the gratuitous stretch of it. And he had laughed, the kind of laugh that left his stomach feeling as if he had gone through a hundred push-ups yet he was certain he would have done a hundred more, if it meant he could induce such laughter again. And sure, he was tired but it was inconsequential, welcomed even, because above all else—

He felt love.

It was unmistakably bizarre for such a sensation to arise, in this house of effulgence of which he was a penumbral interloper. Or perhaps it was for that very reason that he felt comfortable at all. For he knew love. And he knew his father loved him.

(Right?)

What little he knew of love, he learned from the man and that surely counted for something.

And he loved Ladybug—that had never been an issue... but was in love with her? Or had he been taken by the grandeur of two superheroes destined by forces that could only be speculatively attributed to the Universe and its magic determining they were meant to be together? If that was so, shouldn't he have been with Ladybug by now, instead of this unending game of cat and bug? A game in which only he was the player, chasing his tail more often than he was pursuing her, in love as she was with someone else. Besides, what was that about? Destiny or Fate or whatever it wanted to be called, who said They got to decide? Adrien all ready had so little control over most aspects of his life, would whom he gave his heart to be willed by someone other than himself, too?

So… did that mean he wasn't in love with Ladybug? And then there were his feelings for Marinette to consider. For what other explanation was there for the way he felt drawn to her? For this intense, almost frantic, need to see her smile and make her laugh? And what of the safety she incited in him, that he might be the one with powers but when it came down to it, she was the true hero simply because of the way she made him feel, like he was more than he truly was, like he was brave and whole and happy. Ladybug made his heart race but Marinette— Marinette made his heart soar. He didn't think that immediately meant he was in love with her. But with the fog that had been his admiration for Ladybug gradually lifting, it suddenly seemed so easy to fall for Marinette and he felt his heart flood open with possibilities for her—for them.

He groaned. Mon dieu, he didn't know what to feel!

In any case, he was more familiar with the aftermath of love, when the novelty faded and the scars were left behind. They were unseen to everyone and yet it had him feeling ugly all the same.

But not here... not when he was surrounded by the tenderheartedness of the Dupain-Chengs and most definitely not when he was consumed by Marinette’s incandescent aura.

As perplexed as he was, one thing was becoming quite clear to him—knowing of love was an entirely separate experience from feeling it.

“Chat?”

Unbeknownst to him, pensive as he was, Marinette had led him to her bathroom door. If laser vision was a part of his superpowers, he would have drilled a hole into the wood with how hard he had stared at it. Thankfully (or not, seeing as he had been walking in the rain), the only thing heated about him was his cheeks. He looked at her with an apology in his eyes. She returned her fingers to his leather mask and traced the lower edges as she tilted her head and asked, in a voice overflowing with concern, “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” he shook his head. “I think, for once—” He pinned her with a decisive stare. He infused pointed meaning into every word, syllable and letter he dared to say next, so there was no mistaking his sincerity.

“I’m exactly where I want to be.”

AN: I JUST HAVE A LOT OF SADRIEN AND MARICHAT FEELS OKAY XD Stay tuned for part 2 :)

“Just a second!”

Her sweet, nightingale voice wafted from beyond her entryway and the sound—so crisp and sonorous and alive—had him breathing a hefty sigh of relief.

“Everything okay?” he returned, if only to quiet the little doubts that festered his mind (and would undoubtedly remain till he could see her and touch her for himself).

“Yup,” she continued. “Just, make yourself at home!”

Oh, he mused. Now that he could do—and with almost embarrassing ease. The thought of being alone in this particular place might have filled him with tension if he hadn't all ready been tasting the remnants of his satisfaction of knowing she was all right. And maybe… maybe he was brimming with excitement—a little mischief too! Though visits to Marinette's were frequent occurrences whether he was Chat Noir or Adrien (admittedly, he came over as Chat Noir more often than the latter), an overture to her room was an uncommon privilege indeed, and even then, without exception, he was consigned to her chaise (because you unfurl a whole basket of yarn one time and suddenly you're forever branded a naughty kitty, sheesh). It was kind of a bummer, really. He may have been the one with an apartment for a room but Marinette's was spectacular in that, it was a perfect reflection of her beautiful mind—cluttered sure, but charming and lovely and creative, too. He could tell as much from his banishment place on her lounge and without closer perusal.

But now, she had left him here without supervision, which basically meant he had carte blanche, which basically meant he could look and touch which basically meant he planned to take full advantage of this rare stroke of luck—wasn’t there something about curiosity and cats, after all?

A perk of an ear towards her doorway had him surmising she was rummaging for something in the kitchen, and ascertained she wouldn't be coming up any time soon. On habitually silent feet, he descended her loft and prowled first to her dresser beneath, where most of her possessions lay.

(At the foot of her steps sat the elusive basket of yarn. The temptation to unwind the tightly woven, flaxen thread was compelling enough to stop him in his tracks. He dropped beside them and bit his lip. “Later,” he promised the glistening, colorful, spun wool as he ran a gloved finger lovingly carefully over the nearest roll)

Lingering on his crouch, he clambered closer to her desk till only his eyes were visible over the wooden ledge. He scrutinized the contents of her workspace with the same intensity as a detective in a crime scene, which may have been stupid but would he have discovered such a gem as this, if he hadn't? The gem, of course, being—

Her sketchbook.

It shouldn't have been so peculiar as to pique him. Marinette was a fashion designer and had no such qualms showing her designs (although, she was usually cautious about whom and where she showed it after the whole Hat Contest Debacle). But this was not just any one sketchbook, too. It was the sketchbook. The one bound in black leather—the smell of it so lemony and new and, well, leathery that he felt his knees weaken when he took a big whiff; he did so love leather—with the thickset drawing paper. It was the one she only ever brought out when she was around him, Chat Noir him, and yet never permitted him to see.

He reached out a hand to touch it.

Then just as quickly used the other to hold it back, the force of his clutch so dominant he knocked himself flat on his back.

He huffed a frustrated breath—though with whom it was directed to was anybody's guess.

He remained on the floor as he sorted his thoughts. Marinette told him to make himself at home, yet prior to this moment she had always made it clear that he wasn't to touch her stuff. Was he really going to betray her trust and disobey her direct and concise command, all to satisfy his indomitable curiosity?

This time, he did not hesitate.

Yup!

He rose and meandered to her table once more, affecting an unhurried amble if only to declare he wasn't too eager a kitty in case someone happened to catch him unawares. Which she wouldn’t, of course, because he was a professional. And he was dignified okay? He wasn't a wild animal! He had class and self-respect and self-contr—

He slammed the pad open.

And was robbed of all breath.

He turned the paper, and another and another, and like a sucker punch to the gut, he was struck by the images before him every time.

What…?

“You found it.”

Startled, he spun and tripped over his feet, his bottom landing sharply against the edge of her desk.

(So she had caught him)

“I-I'm sorry,” he stammered, panting as if he had run a marathon mere seconds ago. “I'm so, so, so sorry, Marinette—”

“Hey,” she murmured, placing the tray he failed to notice she had been carrying on her chaise before approaching him. A frown marred her delicate features and his panic escalated at having been the one to put it there. “I wasn't, I mean, I was but I-I didn't—I didn't know—”

“It's all right, minou,” she soothed. She rubbed circles in the space between his shoulder blades and he closed his eyes. With her simple touch, so lambent and familiar, she drained him of his tension. It shouldn't have surprised him. Her presence had the natural ability to bring him such warmth, it was powerful enough to melt even his most frigid anxieties.

With a final deep and cleansing breath, green eyes peered at her and found a sheepish smile stretched across her lips. He thumbed gently at an upstretched corner, before gliding smoothly to the dip of her chin where he stayed.

“I'm sorry,” he repeated more calmly though no less sincere. She shook her head.

“Don't be,” she insisted, withdrawing the hand at his back so she could wrap it around the wrist that cupped her face. She gave a genial squeeze. “If anything, I should be sorry. I should have made it more clear, I'm relieved you found it.” It was her turn to breathe in deeply. With her eyes closed and her nose scrunched, she was utterly adorable. He wanted to hug her and he would have, if his nerves hadn't returned tenfold at the intent way she beheld him when she pronounced her next words.

“I wanted you to find it.”

His arms fell limp at his sides, perplexity making a rag doll of him. He found it incomprehensible that she would want him to seek it at all, and a million and one questions spun in his brain—why had she done this? What for? Why did she want him to find it? Why here? Why now?

But a simple, “Why?” was all he managed to splutter.

A blush filled her cheeks though for once, she did not tear her gaze away.

“You know how, when most people give gifts, they like to wait for the receiver's reaction?”

She didn't wait for an answer as she barreled on, not that he could have given her one anyway, seeing as his brain was stuck on the word gift.

“Yeah, I'm not one of those people,” she tittered nervously. “I didn't have the courage to hand it to you directly so I left it and a couple of meaningfully crafted words in the hopes that your curiosity would do the rest. It's actually nice,” she teased, levity trickling into her articulation, “how that one's without fail.”

“Me-owch,” he quipped, though a crooked grin still stole across his lips.

She rolled her eyes even as she laughed. “Those terrible puns, too.”

“Like you can do any better!”

“I'm a-pawlled you think I'm not claw-ver or punny enough to deliver the purr-fect lines—”

He gaped. “Oh my god.”

“Purr-haps you should consider the paw-ssibility that my litter-acy in the art of puns is purr-etty paw-esome—”

Two in a row! He was laughing so hard, he had to grasp her shoulders to keep upright. “Marinette.”

“And if you were my real furr-end you would sup-pawrt me with a better cat-titude than that. Don't you find me hiss-terical?”

Without quite knowing how, his arms had twined themselves around her shoulders and waist till his body was a perfect extension of hers, his tremors echoing through her as his laughs dwindled into sobs. Marinette bore it the way only Marinette could, with an understanding that negated the need for words... with that soft and quiet comfort only she could provide, as she knotted her arms around him in kind and became home. Because as he had lately come to realize, home was so much more than an incomplex word, it was a feeling, and it wasn’t so much a place but a person and this—she—was it.

She was what truly made a home.

“Merry Christmas, Chat Noir,” she averred mellifluously into the damp skin of his neck. “Or Hanukkah or, you know, whatever it is you celebrate. Happy holidays, from me to you.”

He held her to him tighter. “I don't even know where to begin thanking you.”

“Well, maybe you can tell me if you liked it?”

He pulled back just enough so that he was but half an arm's length away, limbs resting firmly on her shoulders. He shook his head, and her face fell. Then, with a knuckle, he tipped her chin up so that their gazes collided, green eyes brimming with unmistakable clarity.

“‘Like’ is… it's too small,” he whispered vehemently. “I just—thank you. A hundred, no,” he pecked her cheeks, “a thousand times,” he kissed her neck and she squealed, peels of laughter rumbling from her chest to his, “a million times,” he whispered as he framed her hips and kissed her forehead, “a billion, billion times,” and tinkling giggles gave way to heated sighs of indulgence, “a trillion times,” he soughed, making pathways of her face where he found respite on her chin, and rest on the corner of her mouth.

“Thank you,” he asserted.

I love you.

The words writhed and slithered in his brain, between the spaces where his impulses thrummed from one neuron to another, because his body was fuelled and Marinette was the fire that ignited his senses, little sparks of longing spiraling the length of his spine and blooming along the muscles of his arms so that they pulled her flush to him before he could even catch up with the direction of his mind.

I love you, he thought, unbidden. And though he was very much in love with Ladybug, when it came to Marinette—he found he quite meant it, anyway.

I love you, the intimation burned his throat.

“I love it,” he affirmed instead, tongue laden with blacken soot and the taste of ash in his mouth.

He bit his lip. Some brave lion he was! But it wasn't fair anyway—he couldn't give away parts of himself when both Marinette and Ladybug deserved more. They deserved the very best parts of someone, no matter if it were with him or another, so long as they received everything.

So he cupped her face and spoke with his eyes instead, in the hopes she might hear that which he could not yet find it in himself to say—that she might feel what he so badly wanted to reveal.

“I'm glad,” she hummed, palms molding to the curve of his own cheeks as she wiped away the remnants of his liquid emotions. Then the smile slid from her lips as a concerned frown took its place. “But something tells me you're… bothered?”

“I just…” the tips of his ears sunk into his head as he tilted his head down, silken strands brushing the bangs that lined her forehead. He struggled to grasp at the words. “I don't—”

So of course Marinette would seamlessly evince the painful right ones.

“You think you don't deserve it.”

“It’s too much.”

And it was. Marinette had given him more than a gift, it felt like she had given him freedom—she had given him life. A sketchbook with page upon page of images of him in various, almost intimate, occasions. An amusement-invoking portrait of him doubled over in laughter—so life-like—he felt the giggles reverberating in his belly. There was a depiction of one of his battles so precise in its likeliness that impossible though it may have been, it was as if she was by his side when it had occurred—a testament to Marinette's genuine talent, of that he had no doubt. Then there were the pictures that made him blush, not because it contained any scandal or debauchery, rather for it's innocence—a delineation of his profile in saddened thought, his whole face downcast from his limp locks and trodden eyebrows to the decline of his mouth. There were illustrations of his form in quiet repose just as there were of him in agitated slumber, naps he had taken in the periods when he'd visit but collapse beneath the weight of his exhaustion because he trusted her enough to let his guard down. There were sketches of his hands, his eyes, his mouth… and through it all were traces of Marinette—from her subtle signatures, to the way every line or curve was purposely done and to the evident consideration for each drawing. Because she had taken him in, had looked her fill and inspected all of him, from the literal and figurative mask he wore to the deepest, darkest, ugliest fragments of him and still, she hadn't found him lacking. Still—

She had made him beautiful.

“Why?” he asked again, voice hoarse with the aching need to know.

“Oh, minou,” she cooed, yet the vehemence with which she spoke thrummed forcefully through his veins and straight into his heart. “Because you do deserve it. Because I don't think you realize how wonderful you are. Because I believe not enough people appreciate you but I hope you know that I do. Because I wanted to,” he was hyperventilating, he was dreaming, “but above everything else—it's because I see you, Chat Noir. Here,” with one hand, she brushed feather-light fingers along the length of his forehead, “and here."

With that same artist's hand, she outlined him, from the side of his face to his neck, digits charting filigree across his collarbones till she settled on the space above where his heart lay, and every point in which she touched him felt engraved into his very soul.

“I see you,” she blazed, “and you're magnificent,” passion in her words and fire in her caress. “You. are. good.”

His tears streamed afresh. It made waterfalls of his face and splashed onto Marinette's skin as he closed his eyes and rested his forehead atop hers.

“If I am good,” he confessed, “it’s only because I have you to remind me.”

“You give me too much credit,” she giggled even as her face transformed into a rose.

“Not nearly,” he shook his head, gazing at her solemnly. “Not enough.”

She conceded with a gratified purr and again, the words boiled at just short of his lips.

“I—” he tried, choking at the efforts. But he wasn't ready, and like smoke, it had gone.

“I know.”

(And though he shouldn't have been surprised, it was any wonder how she heard it at all)

She nuzzled his nose with her own and for more than a couple heartbeats, they remained. It was as if time suspended just for the two of them, that they might have this quiet moment and have it be prolonged in its perfection.

“Can I show you through it?”

“Again and again, till you tire of it, Princess,” he returned. “And even then, once more.”

They took the forgotten mugs of hot (now cold but no less scrumptious) chocolate and a couple of blankets up to her rooftop where they settled onto her chaise, his back against the lounge and hers to his front. She weaved stories of her experiences for each etching—what they had been doing and what they had been speaking of. Some he remembered (his favorite being that of her gorgeous rendering of the landscape from the balcony he had taken her to the first time he sought her out for no other reason than to bask in her presence), but most were lost in Marinette's private recollections and from her own unassuming observations, in the moments when he allowed his vulnerability to cloud their time together—because he had been tired and because he had been sincerely happy.

When she had finished, he made himself a haven as she fell back against his shoulder and slumped over in exhaustion. He wrapped the blanket tighter around her svelte frame, and from its place by their knees, he regarded the sheepskin book. Honestly, it was a work of art. But it left him exposed, and he felt naked at her scrutiny but—strangely strong, too. Because if Marinette had stripped him, it was only so she could build and shape and forge him anew.

“Merry Christmas, Marinette,” he whispered, as he pressed a kiss onto the crown of her head.

So though the gift had been a culmination of his portraits, he couldn't help but feel—watching the steady and reassuring rise and fall of her chest, sleep-warm skin seeping through his suit and into the marrow of his bones… the sunset casting a halo around her raven locks and breathing embers onto her flesh—

The true gift had been her.

“Cat got your tongue?” Marinette snickered, meandering to his side in a way that told him she had not been privy to her mother's comments, otherwise she would have been flailing alongside him. “Or have you gotten another furball?”

He whined. “I do not spit furballs!”

“With how much you ate,” Tom jested, partaking in the ribbing. “I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of those popped out.”

“Ha-ha, you two are hiss-terical,” he deadpanned. “Truly.”

She smirked. “I am known to be claw-ver, you know.”

He gaped. “Y-you… you punned!”

She smirked and his heart skipped a beat. “I could kiss you!” he blurted.

“Bon dieu,” Tom sighed, shaking his head. “And you would have too, had I not been such a clumsy oaf.”

“Oh, mamour,” Sabine giggled, patting him on the shoulder in feigned consolation. Tom, as he was wont to do, leaned into her touch wholeheartedly as he buried his face into Sabine's hair and trembled with mock sobs. However, the whimpers emitting from the burly man were undoubtedly the result of crudely suppressed chortles. Somewhere amongst the ceiling beams, a purring cackle was heard.

(Traitors, all of them)

Adrien's (and Marinette's) cheeks stained a lovely red, but then again—what was new?

“Right,” Marinette coughed, determined to ignore her parents if the firm pout she had fixed onto her lips was any indication. With gusto, she grabbed at his shoulder before dragging him to the apartment door. Powerless with his hands otherwise occupied and unwilling to rendez-vous with the floor again so soon, he limped behind her. “It's getting late. We wouldn't want to keep Chat from his own home.”

“I think it might be drizzling too,” Tom commented, setting aside any amusements as he gazed out the windows at the grim skies with concern. Though it wasn't odd for nightfall to descend so quickly at ten in the evening this time of year, the clouds that muffled the blanket of stars over their beloved city of lights was out of the ordinary—an indisputable credit to the unexpected weather. “Would you like to stay the night?”

“‘Would you like to stay forever?’” Sabine quoted.

Marinette groaned even as Adrien barked a surprised laugh.

“They're quoting Mulan now,” Marinette shook her head, her hands on her hips as she appraised her parents in exasperation. “It really is time to leave.”

“I don't know, Marinette,” Tom replied, surveying him with a critical eye, though there was a sparkle to his look. “I could teach you how to make those macarons, eh? We could make a man out of you yet, Chat Noir.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Or, at the very least, a baking man.”

“Mon dieu, Papa,” Marinette grumbled, but he could tell she was just as tickled. Adrien himself was sorely tempted to accept their offer. It wasn't as if anyone anything was waiting for him in the mansion, and if it was down between the cold and wide yet confining walls of his room or the sparse yet warm and cozy dwelling of the Dupain-Chengs, there was no choice. Still, he had a whole mantle of duties and responsibilities that came with wearing the Agreste name. So though he very much yearned to stay, this was not his home. And as much as he liked to pretend—every minute he was here, it was glaringly obvious that he did not belong.

(Despite the voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Marinette, telling him how much he did)

“It would be an honor,” he acquiesced briefly, “but with the weather like this… I think I need to head back.”

“We understand,” Sabine said, holding Tom's hand as they walked him and Marinette to the door. “Another time, perhaps? The offer for baking lessons stands, of course.”

“I will definitely hold you to that paw-mise!” He replied with an enthusiasm he could barely contain. Despite his reservations, if this night had taught him anything it was that should any of them offer, he would never pass up an opportunity to spend time with the Dupain-Chengs—the chance to learn a new skill was just an added bonus.

They all shared one more raucous laugh that was sure to get the neighbors talking, but they didn't care. What were a few complaints compared to the endless fun that could be had when you were with people whose company you thoroughly enjoyed?

It was made this closing bittersweet. Because how could one say goodbye to that which—to those who had—filled him with such unfettered merriment it was almost like he had been alight?

(Spoiler alert: you could, but damn if it was easy)

With a final wave to both, the door to the Dupain-Cheng abode closed with a finality that felt like the end of a book—like all loose knots had been tied except the for the one directly to your heart, because you had grown so attached to the characters in the story, it left you satisfied yet strangely empty too, for how can the world keep on turning just the same when you had been forever changed?

He lingered for that very reason. And it was also for that reason that he heard a girlish ‘whoop!’ despite the thickness of the wood that stood between him and Marinette's parents. Tom's booming laughter followed.

“Wait, so does that mean we're team Chat Noir now?”

Well, he mused. He certainly hoped they were.

Sabine giggled. “Oh, Tom.”

“But I thought we were team…”

Before he could hear the end of that sentence, however, and have it finally revealed to him who it was Marinette had fallen for, she called for him.

“Minou?” she asked, her head the only visible part of her between the slats of the balustrade—that and her roguish smile.

“You could stay,” she continued. He swallowed the lump in his throat that had formed itself into a ‘yes’. He shook himself out of his reverie and followed her, trudging miserably down the staircase as if they were a mountain and not an ordinary flight of stairs. He had gone two steps below her when he noticed that he couldn't hear her light gait trailing behind him. He paused and looked up at her, one brow raised in the shape of a question mark.

“You were quiet tonight.”

That wasn't strictly true. He had been perfectly sociable, though he understood what Marinette meant. While he had been playful and courteous, there was a certain distance to his actions that he normally reserved for when he was Adrien and hid away when he was Chat Noir. But his axis had tilted, in a way that made both sides grapple for a chance to surface when really, all he wanted was to find a balance within himself. He didn't know how to explain that to her, didn't know if he could even if he had found the words, so he settled for, “I suppose…” he shook his head before shrugging at her. “I was trying to figure out who to be.”

She gasped, horrified. “You didn't have to be anyone but yourself!”

He gave a bitter laugh. “And who is that?” he sighed. “I don't even know, myself.”

She said nothing and he turned away from her, wishing he could shove his hands in his pockets and further shrink from the severity of her stare.

“I do,” she breathed after more than a couple heartbeats. “I know you.”

Confused, he chanced her gaze to find some sort of clarity in her molten, cerulean eyes. “Yeah?”

“For the legitimate first time, I'm starting to.” Her brow furrowed and he itched to sweep the evidence of her frustration till there was nothing but smooth skin and lines and curves that told only of her happiness. “Really starting to.”

“Would you tell me, then?”

“What fun would that be?” she teased. “You'll figure it out, Chat. You always do.”

God, you're amazing, he thought. In the distance, bells tolled.

Without quite thinking, he asked, “Can I visit you tonight?”

Something flickered along her face.

“I should say no.”

There was no helping the way his shoulders slumped and his face sagged. But with a sigh, he agreed.

“You should.”

“But…”

He held his breath. “...but?”

“But,” she continued. “It's not as if you haven't been before.”

“No,” he repeated slowly.

“And we would just… talk.”

He glared. “Of course.”

“Well,” she pouted. “You did promise more of later,” she reminded pointedly. He smiled albeit a slight one as he caught on.

“Yes.”

“And my parents did say you could stay the night.”

He bit his lip to contain the enormous grin that threatened to break free.

“They did.”

“There is one… tiny… detail, we're forgetting.”

He cocked his head, curious as a cat. “And that is?”

She smiled crookedly. “I'm in love with someone else.”

He raised an eyebrow again just as he raised himself another step. “Are you sure about that?”

She hummed, though a more serious expression seized her otherwise enthralling features.

“And you're in love with someone else.”

He went up another stair, lured by her gravity and more than willing to fall into her orbit.

“Are you sure about that?” he pronounced with equal weight to his intonation.

“Chat,” she whispered, licking her lips. The movement had not gone unnoticed by him, his eyes tracking its lackadaisical journey along the length of her pink and luscious mouth.

“Marinette,” he sighed softly. “Is it later yet?”

“Come here, and we'll find out.”

And because he was used to taking orders, he did not hesitate. He climbed the final stair, and it brought them to level in ways that felt significantly more than height or step. With this last footfall, he was shedding old mindsets and dropping previous beliefs. With this hindmost leap, he would stand before her, marrow and sinew changed and soul forged anew, bones shifting to make more room and heart expanding in the shape of the girl who captured it—captured him.

(But was it really a trap when he was so willing to be ensnared?)

He only hoped all that talk about her continuing to be in love with someone else was just that, talk. It was difficult to take her words seriously, not when every look she sent him was a living flame against his all ready fervent skin, not when the touch of her hands, tight around his waist, anchored him to her and to which he was very grateful for. He was positive he would float otherwise for so buoyant did he seem in that very moment, his happiness threatening to catapult him to the moon.

“Je vois de l'amour dans tes yeux,” he murmured. “Alors dans tes yeux je voudrais rester.”

“Then stay,” she breathed.

His bags and his box fell unceremoniously into a heap at his bare feet but he had no care for them. No, all he was was made of Marinette, as he cupped her face tenderly between his palms, his thumbs caressing lightly at the apple of her cheeks and with her eyes framed by his digits, again—tendrils of familiarity curled along the synapses of his brain, little impulses firing rapidly across his nerves till they were one huge blaze calling out a signal that told him this was Marinette but she was also more, a beacon that wanted to shout, yes, I know you. I know you, I know you, and we are one and the same.

He didn't want to close his eyes, but he was magnetized to Marinette's every move and at her pace, heavy lids fell over hypnotized orbs. As one, he bent his head just as she rolled to the tips of her toes to meet his waiting lips in a dance that bound lovers for all time.

They were but a period away when a heavy thud! sounded behind him.

Adrien chuckled. With his eyes still shut and voice pitched low so as not to be overheard, he asked, “Your parents are watching from behind me, aren’t they?”

She pressed her forehead to his and tightened her hold on his waist. It was all the answer he needed—well, in addition to the heatedly hushed cry of, “Oh my God, Tom, did you fall again?”

He nuzzled the crook of Marinette’s neck while she sighed her frustration. Then, with great pain, he lifted his head from the valley of her doughy shoulder so he could shout, “Bonsoir madame et monsieur Dupain-Cheng!”

There was a pause, as though they thought they might walk away without answering and thereby pretend they had never been caught in the first place, before a grumpy but all together embarrassed chorus of, “Bonsoir, Chat Noir...” followed.

The door clicked shut (again) and with a final sigh, he extricated himself from Marinette's embrace. She gave him a withering look, though he inherently understood it was directed at her parents and her voice rang clearly in his mind as if she had spoken it right in his ear.

My parents have the worst timing!

Hiding a smirk, he bent to pick up his bags, going down three steps once more to retrieve them.

“I should head home.”

When he straightened, Marinette was holding out the box of macarons. A compunctious grin was pasted on her features.

“Let me walk you to the door.”

They reached the bottom of the staircase and through the glass panes of the entrance, he noted the state of the night sky before releasing a hefty groan.

The deluge had returned—full force.

“We all mean it, you know,” Marinette continued, looking amused by his aversion to the weather. “You're welcome to stay here.”

“Careful now,” he replied, tearing his eyes away from the outside so he could focus on Marinette. He made an effort to inject some levity to his voice but there was a sobering undertone to his words as he said, “You give this cat ideas and I'll never leave.”

She laughed, a hand splayed athwart his cheek while she cosseted the edges of his mask, as he found she was fond of doing—a teasing yet careful touch that straddled the line between curiosity and decorum, of do's and don'ts and wills and won'ts, like she was eager to know him, all of him, including the man behind the mask but was waiting for him to let her in.

(Not for long now, he imagined)

“My father did say life was just a dance,” she went on. She placed a feather-light kiss on his cheek and contrary as it was to her actions, he felt the sincerity in her vow even as she stepped away from him.

“You can sway my way any time, Chat Noir.”

He would have kissed her then, but thunder blasted over the skies, jolting him to the reality of his situation. Annoyed beyond belief, it was with agonizing reluctance that he summoned his Kwami who, he found, returned to him in a state of unprecedented bliss that instead of baffling him, only served to further his vexation.

“Where have you been?” he asked him.

“Heaven,” replied the tiny creature in dreamy articulations.

He turned to Marinette for explanation but all she gave him was an enigmatic, if not regretful, smile.

“Will you ever not be a mystery?” he asked aloud, unsure as to whom he was speaking to though he felt it was an appropriate question for both of them either way.

And as he expected, there was no answer. The only reply he was given was Marinette's held out arms, to which he passed his baggage. Plagg was still floating aimlessly above his head, lost in whatever fantasy beheld him, when he snapped with a sulky, “Maybe something waterproof, this time, Plagg? Can you do that?”

“Someone's in a good mood,” he jested, utterly unaffected as usual. “Fantastic,” he muttered, barely refraining a snarl.

“Plagg, claws out!”

He never thought he would reach this day, but it was with all honesty that he wished he could be rid of his suit. It must have shown on his face because then Marinette was there, smoothing the pout from his lips with a gentle brush of her fingers. Just like that, the irritation flowed right out of him.

“Will you be all right?” she asked softly. He nodded, taking his bags from her and holding them in one arm so he could grasp the hand that had been caressing him.

“Be careful,” she warned. He smiled.

“I always am.”

“I know,” she answered, despite the slightly dubious look etched upon her visage. He chuckled. “It doesn't stop the worry.”

His gratitude at her regard was another lingering kiss to her palm, right along the crease of her life line. Without letting him go, she opened the door. Yet it still felt as if a pit opened within him, a chasm to match the distance that would steadily grow between them with every stride, bound and swing he took away from her.

A blast of air hit them followed by a spackle of frigid raindrops despite merely stopping just shy of the threshold. His suit held, Plagg having heard him despite his halved attention. He had little knowledge of cloth despite having essentially grown in the fashion industry, but he assumed the material was a blend of thermal and leather as he seemed impassive to the cold. What little rainfall reached him slid right off the surface of his costume, assuring him that once he succumbed to the cloudburst, he would remain miraculously dry.

Just a little ways behind him, Marinette shivered, gooseflesh making highlands of her skin as they rose in hilly bumps. Still, she had the mind to advise him.

“Stay warm,” she prompted grimly.

With their fingers still entwined, he nudged at her chin with a knuckle before resting the pair of tangled limbs against her chest.

“I’ll try,” he promised with a lopsided grin. “Mon coeur.”

They remained clasped at the hands till only the tips of their fingers held adamantly onto their collision, separating only when they reached the brink of her doorway.

“Mon minou,” was all she replied, and for him, for always—

It was enough.

The trip home had been blessedly uneventful, his homecoming moreso. Yet, ensconced in his room once he had detransformed and checked that Nathalie nor his father found him missing, he announced, “I feel different.”

Behind him, Plagg snorted.

“You certainly don't look it.”

“I don't think I'm supposed to.”

“And you don’t sound like it, that's for sure.”

“I know, that's why I feel it. Wait,” he shook his head. “What is that supposed to mean? And hey,” he pinned him with a glare, “What happened to you? What were you doing in Marinette's room? You better not have made a mess in there!”

Plagg bared his teeth as he seemed to stifle a growl. “I didn't touch anything that wasn't mine.”

Adrien himself muffled the overwhelming urge to pull at his hair. Frustrated, he repeated with surly resonance, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you need to think now, Adrien.”

“About what?”

“Tell me something,” Plagg darted right to his face and he had to take a step back to keep from getting cross-eyed when he looked at the mildly threatening creature before him, taken aback as he was by his expression. He had never seen his Kwami so… feral. And he would have been frightened, if he wasn't so achingly confused. He would bear anything right now if it meant some semblance of clarity.

“You and Marinette were awfully cozy tonight,” he pointed out, voice laden with unnecessary sarcasm. “Could it be her bringing about this change in you?”

“What of it? You don’t approve?”

“What about Ladybug? What about your feelings for her?”

“So that's the issue. You don't approve, then.” Adrien said dryly as he flopped onto his bed. “What does my feelings for Ladybug have to do with Marinette?”

“It has everything to do with Marinette!” Plagg exploded.

“What is up with you tonight, Plagg?” He wondered. He couldn't possibly be hungry all ready? Then again, he should know better than to speak for his Kwami's appetite.

“Two millenniums is a long time to be away from the one you love,” Plagg sighed. “Even for me.”

The sound drew Adrien's gaze, for it was in shades of melancholy he was accustomed to. Plagg was always throwing his seniority around despite every other word out of his mouth relating only to cheese. The idiot he was, he was only now starting to realize that perhaps it was a front, for his Kwami had never appeared so old to him, looking every bit his incomparable age.

“But I thought… I thought Ladybug and Chat Noir were two halves of a whole. I thought that the person behind and in front of the mask were the same. I am Chat Noir and Chat Noir is Adrien.”

“Yes,” Plagg agreed. “And though Ladybug and Chat Noir always found each other,” he said each superhero's name emphatically, “it wasn't always easy for their civilian selves. You have to understand, the world was so different then, Adrien. The strife of today seems miniscule compared to what my charges had to go through, and I'm not diminishing the problems of your generation,” he injected when Adrien opened his mouth to protest. “But people were not as accepting of well, anything, as they are now. Millions were being slaughtered on the daily and for things that were beyond their control—be it religion, race, social class… persecuted for something as simple as who they loved.” He shot him a pointed look. “Just imagine a line between freedom and dogma. And imagine being killed if you so much as dared to toe that line, never mind thinking of doing so. Why do you think we keep the Miraculous a secret? Why it's almost impossible to find traces of them throughout history?” Plagg sagged against the pillow next to his head. “Because that was the way of the world more than a thousand years ago. And so my charges, more often than not, chose not to be with their Ladybugs.”

Shocked, he could only shake his head in denial. He threw an arm over his eyes, as if it were enough to block out Plagg's words.

“How—how could they just… give up like that?” Their actions just didn't compute with what he knew about being a Miraculous holder, and his very foundation rocked at the revelation. “How could they choose not to fight?”

“Oh, they fought,” the Kwami muttered darkly before releasing yet another dejected sigh. “But… the world needed them more, and so the world they chose.”

He didn't say anything for more than a couple beats before he settled on, “Wow.”

Adrien swallowed the lump in his throat, suddenly feeling unworthy of the title, Chat Noir. Mon dieu, compared to what his predecessors had endured, what had he done that was worth noting? What had he ever fought for or believed in? What—

“Hey,” Plagg's voice was hushed and mellow. He wedged himself to his cheek so that Adrien was forced to lift his arm away from his face. “I didn't tell you all that so you could spiral,” he teased, even with his somber aura.

“Then why did you tell me all that?” he asked, voice watery.

“Maybe not everything's changed, but it's a whole new world now, Adrien.” His paw drifted to his forehead in comfort. “The choice doesn't have to be so hard.”

“Well it isn't exactly a walk in the park, Plagg,” he huffed then ran a hand over his weary face. “They're both…” were there even any words in the entire history of languages that would encompass either women? “How can I choose? I've been in love with Ladybug for so long, and with Marinette—it's all so new but it also somehow feels all right.” He craned his head up at Plagg, who hovered serenely over him. “Can you be in love with two people at once?”

“No.”

“Then how—”

“Adrien,” Plagg skimmed his golden tendrils before settling at the nape of his neck.

“You can't be in love with two people at once,” he whispered.

“I can't be in love with two people at once,” Adrien repeated, slowly, and again—his brain lit up as thousands upon thousands of impulses jumped along his synapses, every nerve burning with recognition.

“It's time to think now, Adrien.” Plagg pressed his paw firmly against his skin. “It's time to choose.”

“I can't be in love with two people at once,” he said, louder. And just like that—

“Because I'm not in love with two people at once.”

—everything, clicked.

He always thought this moment would come to him in an explosion; in bursts of colors, a heat of the moment or a grand gesture. He would never have envisioned it could be as simple as this—a piece of the puzzle falling into place.

With a laugh, he sat up.

“We need to go!” he exclaimed.

“We needed to go since yesterday,” Plagg whined. “But better late than never, I suppose.”

“What, no bartering for camembert first?”

He shrugged.

“There are more important things.”

It was one of the most controversial serious statements to ever come from his Kwami's mouth but the surprise was buried beneath his excitement—he could not stop laughing. He jumped off the mattress and didn't bother to put on any shoes, just his Marinette-made hoodie and the black sweatpants he elected to change into when he arrived earlier. He did have the presence of mind to grab his mask and tie it on before transforming. Plagg was only too gleeful to comply.

Anyone who happened to glance out the window would see nothing but a black blur as he passed, Adrien had never moved so quickly and so smoothly, too. He did not feel the rain, largely in part due to Plagg's modifications but he mostly attributed it to the joy that overflowed from him making him feel only good and wonderful things despite the downpour.

(And so the black cat can have good luck, after all)

When he arrived at Marinette's round window, it was to dim lights and no movement, apart from the covered lump on her loft bed. Maybe he should have taken it as a sign not to enter, but he had never been particularly skilled at reading those anyway (or it wouldn't have taken him this long to figure things out).

It was a little concerning, how easy it was to enter her room. Given who was living in it, he needn't have worried of course but, as she said, it didn't make it go away. As it was, it was a conversation for another day—because he had that luxury now, to have more conversations for later, as they were so fond of saying.

Balancing on her windowsill, he whispered, “Marinette?”

“Chat?” she whispered back as she popped up from beneath her covers so only her head was visible. “Allez! Get in before you flood my room!”

With a chuckle, he did so with care so as not to wake her parents, landing on noiseless feet and detransforming as he did so only to almost take back his progress when his bare feet landed on her floor.

Biting back a yelp, he raced to her loft and was grateful that she had tucked herself away once more as it was one less thing for her to hold over him. He was convinced she would have toppled over in laughter if she had witness him then, slinking inelegantly as he was to her side.

“Putain! Why is it so cold?”

“The heating may be down again,” Marinette grumbled. “It's an old building, it happens sometimes. My dad will take care of it in the morning.”

Nevertheless, he found his chuckles returning as he ran his hands over her sheets, albeit more than a little mindful of where they roamed.

“Where are you? I can't see you over this mountain.”

Without warning, a blanket was thrown over his head and beneath the darkness of her comforter, her eyes were the light.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” he echoed, his eyes surely glistening just as bright.

“You came,” she said, sounding almost surprised, as if she were just realizing she was someone worth keeping promises for.

“You said to keep warm,” he shrugged, keeping his tone flippant when he felt anything but, just to keep his nerves at bay because now that he was here, so had a thread of doubt appeared. “It's hard to do that alone, you know.”

What the hell am I talking about?

His agitation multiplied.

She raised an eyebrow. “Where's Plagg?”

“Oh, you know,” he waved a hand vaguely behind him, then dropped it. He was sure she knew what he meant, the Kwami having darted to Marinette's purse the moment they had touched down.

“Is it… is this okay?” Despite his mounting tension, he added—albeit reluctantly, “Should I not have come? Do you… want me to leave?”

“No!” she shrieked and he had to lean back as the sound was so contained within their downy fort. Calmer, she reiterated, “No, no. This is fine. You're fine.” She pitched her head briefly over her fleece. “I just don't want my parents to wake up and freak out,” she said once she returned.

“Oh,” he breathed a sigh of relief before hiding a smirk. “I'm pretty sure they know anyway, so—”

“They what?” she exclaimed in a voice that may have been a decibel higher than she intended it to be, if her goal was to keep his presence hidden from her parents.

(Though the rainfall did a pretty good job of quelling any wayward noises)

“At least, I think your mom does,” he placed a hand at the back of his neck. “You know, I never actually got to clarify, so…”

Marinette looked mortified as she landed face down atop her pillow. She groaned and he rubbed circles onto her back, even as he laughed.

“It's not funny,” she griped. She turned to him with a frown. “How are you not panicking?”

He shrugged. “The way your mom said it, I think she trusts me. I mean, with a face like mine—why wouldn't she?” While he waggled his eyebrows, Marinette's frown further deepened, unimpressed. He laughed some more, recovering his former ebullience in waves of giggles that seized his body. With a little more effort, he infused sobriety into his pronouncement so as to ease her mind.

“But more than anything, Marinette, she trusts you.”

A pensive expression dominated her dainty features as she mulled over his words.

“It doesn't make it any less embarrassing,” she huffed. “But I can live with that.”

With a (hopefully) final chuckle, he settled onto his back beside her. Marinette burrowed onto her side, facing him. She yawned.

“Tired?”

She shook her head contrarily. It was his turn to toss a disbelieving brow her way. She sighed. “It's the cold,” she admitted through gritted teeth, as if she were confessing a weakness. Perhaps it may as well have been, given who she was. “It makes me drowsy. Sometimes.”

“Why am I not surprised?” he muttered. She cocked her head in quiet inquiry. In lieu of an explanation, he mirrored her position then opened his arms.

“Get over here.”

She bit her lip. “Are you sure? I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable…”

Trust me, he wanted to say. We've been in worse tangles than this. But he kept such thoughts to himself as he found that he was rather enjoying his furtiveness—at least for the time being—if only because the more he talked and looked at her, the more he saw the resemblance, and he wondered how he could have missed it for so long—how he could have missed her.

“Get over here,” he repeated in a tone that brooked no argument. Without added objection, she snuggled to his side of the bed. Adrien drew her hands to his back, beneath his hoodie, and though he hissed at the temperature (she was not kidding about being cold!) and there were minor protestations from the lady herself, he ultimately had no trouble wrapping her arms around him. He arranged the blanket just under her chin and right by his shoulder, before winding his own arms at her waist. He purred, a long and satisfied sound.

“What a wonderful place to be,” he sighed, looking down at her as he spoke.

Marinette scrunched her nose. “My room? With the broken heater? Really?”

He laughed. “I was thinking more like, your arms.”

Her infamous blush made an appearance then, her mouth rounding into a soundless oh. Abashed, she didn’t say more after that.

“Marinette?” he began, breaking the pleasant pocket of silence that had overtaken them.

He sensed more than heard her responding hum, tiny reverberations that ran along the length of his body all the way to their entwined feet. Were he not all ready soothed from her warming skin, then the sound of her contentment alone would have banished any remaining frost he might have felt.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

It took a beat for her to answer her affirmation.

“Sure,” she whispered through a stuttered breath.

“I like you,” he murmured into her ear with a Cheshire cat grin. “I really, really do. And I hope,” he pulled away just enough so he could look into her eyes, “you like me too.”

“I thought you were in love with Ladybug,” he swallowed the bubble of laughter that bullied its way to his throat. Was that… was that jealousy he detected? “I thought you were destined to be together.”

“Here’s the thing,” he shifted onto his back, taking her with him so that her upper half was draped along his torso. “Ladybug and I are a team. One could even say that we couldn’t possibly function without one another. We complete each other.”

Confliction wrangled itself onto her visage.

“But,” he grazed the puckered line of her eyebrows. “It’s you.”

She shook her head. “What’s me?”

“Everything,” he asseverated with devout honesty. “A part of me will always love Ladybug. But you? It’s you I want. You, I choose. Every day, I choose you. Every time. Anywhere and anyhow, I don't care what They say.

“I. choose. you. Beyond doubt and beyond reason, I choose you. Without thought, without question, without fail and... without regret."

He cupped her face, affectionate hands catching any obstinate tears from falling any further from her chin.

“I’m not fond of the idea that there are forces out there beyond my control who get to decide who I be with. That is mine to make. That is my choice and no one else’s. And I choose you.

“It’s you, Marinette,” he was babbling, he knew, but he couldn’t stop. “It’s always been you.”

“Chat Noir,” she hiccuped, “I need to tell you something—”

“Kiss me,” he asked desperately. “Please, I need to—”

He didn’t know what the end of that sentence would be but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. With a sob, Marinette dipped her head, and what little distance remained between them evaporated at the touch of her lips to his.

He expected fire—he expected dynamite and orchestral music and fireworks. But again, the reality far superseded his fantasies because this was so much better than anything he could have conjured.

Fire became the heated flesh of her back as his fingers inched a path up the length of her spine. Dynamite became the caterwaul of thunder while the staccato beat of the torrential raindrops against her window pane became their harmony. Fireworks… fireworks was the way lightning twirled along her skin each time he deigned to open his eyes, illuminating her form so that she shone like a fallen angel above him, come to save him from himself.

For the most part, he let Marinette dictate the kiss—pulling when she pushed, bending as she molded herself to him even more, mouth opening at the slightest prod of her tongue till they were a knotted choreography of intimacy—because now he understood, truly understood, that life was a dance, and his every misstep led to every quiver which led to every spin till he was waltzing to his perfect partner. Choosing Marinette meant the calming of his senses… a tilted world returning to its proper axis.

Somewhere along the way they had swiveled so that he was on top of her, her legs buckled unyieldingly around his hips. He caressed one of her calves while the other followed the line of her arm where he delighted in the goosebumps that rose in his wake. She propped herself on her elbows and so Adrien drew back on his haunches till she was seated on his lap, the blankets pooling below them in a jumbled stack. It gave her added height as she towered over him. She ran the fingers of one hand through his undoubtedly messy hair, nails scratching cautiously at his scalp. Sparks of pleasure tingled down his spine. She kissed his forehead, then, lips moving sleepily over his skin.

“I need to tell you something.”

“I know,” he sighed, buzzing with tranquility.

“I don’t know how you’ll react.”

He smiled. “Something tells me I all ready know.”

A distressed noise escaped her so he eased her grievance with another languid kiss, tiny suckles of her upper lip and bottom lip, till she was chasing after him when he pulled away. She groaned a different sort of unsatiated need.

“In any case,” he dropped his forehead onto her chest before pressing a chaste kiss there. “Nothing you say will ever make me not want you, Marinette.”

Her hands, which had found themselves in his hair, tightened about the golden tendrils at the nape of his neck. He wanted to wax more poetic about how everything ended and everything began with her, but then—she unleashed a jaw-cracking yawn. He mewled a laugh, laying her gently back on her bed, her hair spilling like shimmering ink across the width of her pillow and framing her pale skin so that she looked like the moon in the middle of a starless night.

“Rest now,” he advised, propping himself on an elbow at her side. She whined her protest and so he trailed kisses from her brow to her eyelids, the tip of her nose and her cheek, then to the corner of her mouth. “The moon will set and the sun will rise and I will be here tomorrow.”

She hesitated for a fraction before asking, “Promise you'll still want me in the morning?” a quavering in her voice.

“Promise to want you forever, if you'll let me.”

She gave him a long, surveying look, a light entering her eyes as she reached some sort of conclusion.

“I know you,” she expelled slowly, susurrantly, one hand to his heart, the other edging at the bottom of his mask. He smiled.

“Sleep now,” he bid her. “We have time.”

She extended her arms to him.

“Get over here,” she commanded.

“As my lady wishes,” he replied. He situated himself into the arch of her neck, nosing at her inherent chocolate chip cookie and vanilla scent to lull him to serene slumber.

“You're right,” she mumbled sluggishly.

Above him, a whizz of cold air before the blankets were tucked around him. All the while, Marinette’s arms obstinately remained around him as if they were bound as one, her breaths even and the drum of her heart a steady and reassuring lullaby beneath his ear.

“It’s easier to stay warm when you aren’t alone.”

He smiled.

Was it really this easy? he wondered, as he fought the hypnotic lethargy that blustered to pull him under. Perhaps it wouldn’t always be. Perhaps in the light of day, things will seem different. But for now, he was certain—from the nails of his toes to the roots of his hair, from his nerve endings and his tendons and his cartilage, from his body to his mind to his soul, he believed—he would bear any sacrifice, he would endure any hardship... so long as at the end of the day.

Shelter would be found in Marinette’s arms.

AN: Thank you to @swanandapirate and @feyrearcherons! They don't even go to this fandom lol but they took the time to help me with the French translations I needed here.

Je vois de l'amour dans tes yeux, alors dans tes yeux je voudrais rester = I see love in your eyes, so in your eyes I would like to stay.

So the bit about the flavor of the macarons is all me, ube and yema are local to the Philippines which is where I'm from and they are phenomenal let me tell you right now. I've never had them in the form of macarons but in any other way they taste amazing so if you ever get your hands on them, you will not be disappointed!

So like, this has been the longest thing I have ever written for any fandom and I think I lost some steam for this last chapter but I'm very proud to have finished it anyway because I rarely ever do so when I start multichaps. Still, I had a blast writing it and I hope you guys enjoyed reading it too!

For on either side of it, was a pair cat ears.

And not just a tiny pair, but one that uncannily matched the size of his own suit ears.

But that wasn't even the best part! Sewed onto the inner back where the tag was normally stitched and in vibrant green thread, it read chaton, and instantly it was confirmed—Marinette had made this.

And she made it specifically for him.

He briefly wondered why she would ever make him anything, then decided he didn't care. She made him an original Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and unlike her hat, he got to keep it this time. He bounced on the balls of his feet. He honestly couldn't wait to try it on and subsequently, his transformation couldn't have come at a sooner time. His ring bleeped a final warning and he was engulfed by green light.

When he looked at the mirror, Adrien met him and the entirety of him was soaked. He hadn't realized just how warm the suit kept him till he was stood shivering uncontrollably in his wet clothes. Yet he surmised he had never looked brighter, eyes sparkling and smile waggish.

That was, until, “Kid! What the fu—”

“Plagg,” he hissed, cupping the Kwami in his hands and holding him close to his chest. “You're freezing!”

“No thanks to you,” Plagg scowled before nipping harshly at his thumb. Adrien shrieked.

“Ow!”

There was a rustle just beyond the bathroom door as Marinette approached. “Is everything all right in there?” she called.

“Fine! Everything's just fine!”

He could see her shadow shifting from the gap under the wood. “You sure?” she asked, worry tingeing every word. “It sounded like you got hurt.”

“I got hurt all right,” he said beneath his breath. Then, louder, “I'm fine.” He rubbed his forehead with his uninjured hand before shooting Plagg a baleful glare. “I’ll explain when I come out.”

“Okay…”

He chuckled. “Seriously, Marinette. I’m fine.”

“If you say so,” she huffed. “Just, let me know if you need anything?”

“Trust me,” he answered, admiring his hoodie once more before divesting himself of his undershirt and polo. “I’m right as rain.”

“Ha, ha.”

“I'll be out in a minute, Princess,” he said, smiling reassuringly even when he knew perfectly well she couldn't see. “In the meantime, you have my eternal gratitude for deigning to share your personal ensuite with a lowly knight such as myself.”

Outside, he heard Marinette huff. In front of him, Plagg gagged.

No one appreciated his humor.

“You're ridiculous.”

“You love it!”

He counted it as a win when instead of denying it, she merely walked away.

He turned to the floating Kwami only to be met with a deadpan stare.

“Really? We're at Marinette's, again? What is it, the fourth time this week?”

“No,” he replied sullenly. Then, from the corner of his mouth he mumbled, “it's the third.”

“Well, color me impressed at your magnanimous self-control.”

Affronted, Adrien added, “It's not like I intended to stay this time! She invited me in.”

“Truly, your restraint knows no bounds,” Plagg drawled in sarcastic-laden intonations. He sniffed snottily. “Next thing you know, you'll be sleeping in here.” Adrien rolled his eyes.

(...even if the idea did appeal to him—not that he'd do Marinette the dishonor of coming into her bed and sleeping beside her, however nice that sounded.

At least, not unless she gave him the green light)

“I hope you're happy because thanks to your little date in the rain—”

Adrien groaned though he did nothing more to dispute the notion.

“—I'm not transforming any time soon, not in this atrocious weather and certainly not without my camembert!”

“Plagg,” he said softly, drawing out the a in a whine. “Marinette's parents know I’m here and invited me to dinner.”

Plagg raised a skeptical eyebrow. He didn't blame him, he could scarcely believe it himself.

“And how exactly do you plan to keep your identity a secret if you've got a seat on their table? Or are we throwing the whole anonymity thing out the window? You know, the one where a secret identity allows you to keep yourself and the people you care about, protected?”

“I'm not stupid—”

“You could have fooled me.”

His eyes narrowed in frustration. “— Marinette has a mask for me. She has us covered.” Literally.

“How convenient,” Plagg muttered. “An evening interacting with people while it rains outside,” he sighed and with a straight face, continued. “Fun.”

“Look,” Adrien sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before pointing at Plagg. “I don't know if they have any camembert but please be on your best behavior anyway.”

Plagg's jaw dropped, possibly in outrage and shock. “What kind of self-respecting household doesn't have camembert?”

“None, Plagg, because the average household wouldn't have camembert in their pantry. You have expensive taste!”

“So I have high standards. Don't cheese shame me, I'm just trying to live my best life here!”

“Says the one who doesn't have a dwindling bank account,” Adrien scowled. “I’m pretty sure Nathalie thinks I have a camembert addiction.”

Plagg shrugged, unconcerned. “Why not? I, for one, think it's a tragedy not enough people are eating my beloved camembert. But hey,” he shot him a devious smile. “More for me!”

“I think the real travesty is that my clothes will forever smell like camembert.” He sniffed his pants, exaggeratedly gagging at the hint of the cheese the rain hadn't managed to erase to irritate Plagg (a success, he might add, the Kwami sticking his tongue out at him) before folding it in a neat pile to join his shirts, which had all ready found their place in the paper bag Marinette had provided him earlier. Another paper bag was given to him for his sneakers. He deposited both heaps by the door so that it would be a quick gather when he inevitably had to leave. All that done, he put on Tom's black sweatpants and frowned when they sagged to his pelvis and drowned his bare feet.

He pulled on the fabric till his feet came out of the holes then he rolled the waistband till it was snug against him. He bounced, then sighed. It was still a tad loose but it was to be expected, he supposed. Tom was a significantly larger man than him. He would have been better off in Marinette's clothes. He cleared his throat.

The idea made him hot.

In lieu of exploring that line of thought, he tied the mask around his head and put on his hoodie. The fabric was incredibly soft, a hundred percent cotton if he had to gander, instead of the polyester blend he expected it to be. Marinette had sowed it in French seams, unusual for a hoodie but damn if it wasn't comfortable. As a result, the lining felt velvety instead of itchy, rippling smoothly along his skin as he moved. But the most noticeable modification had to be the pockets—for in the place of the standard two-sided provision in the middle, Marinette had tailored two, separate pockets on either side of the front, much like those found on regular jeans. And they weren't shallow like most hoodies’ pockets, but deep enough that they not only covered his hands but would keep Plagg nestled and hidden comfortably. She couldn't have known about him, of course, but the alteration was astoundingly intuitive. Not that he was complaining.

It was apparent that a lot of time (and money!) had gone into its creation. When he lifted the hoodie, the cat ears didn't sag. They stood to attention yet were surprisingly light on his head.

He looked at the mirror and examined himself anew. He didn't see Chat Noir, not when Plagg was hovering by his head with a critical eye. But it wasn’t Adrien he glimpsed either, since he had a mask on. So who was this that greeted his reflection, this amalgamation of the two most prominent parts of himself, who was sharper-eyed yet had softened around the edges, unhindered and unburdened and genuinely free.

He didn't know. And maybe that was okay. All he was certain of was Marinette... and how he may have just developed a tiny crush on her. For how could he not? That she had spent any amount of time, however short or long, working on this hoodie with painstaking care and pertinacity suggested just how much she cared for him. And how beautiful it was, to know that you were thought of.

How beautiful she was.

The edges of his mouth expanded to ridiculous heights.

“So?” He spread his hands out. “What do you think?”

Plagg gave him a once over. “I think the real tragedy is you.”

He rolled his eyes but his smile remained. If anything, it broadened—because on the other side stood Marinette, and the chance to be near her overwhelmed him with excitement. He held out a pocket to Plagg. “Shut up and get in here.”

“Ugh, with pleasure you lovestruck fool.”

Plagg was still muttering about “hormonal teenagers” and “I can't believe I have to deal with this shit, every time” when Adrien opened the door.

Only to turn around right away.

“S-sorry,” he stammered. “I forgot to ask if you were done changing…”

In truth, he hadn't seen anything. Marinette had been pulling on the hem of her tank but that flash of a sliver of skin had been enough to drive him a little wild.

She laughed, low and enticing, and god was he thankful for the rain just this once when he felt his temperature rise at the sound.

(So maybe it wasn't just a tiny crush)

“I am,” she assured and bid him to turn around. “Oh!”

She scuttled to her desk and ruffled through a couple drawers before kneeling in front of him.

He gulped. This was not helping his flustered state.

“Um.”

(He could feel the rumble of Plagg's, thankfully silent, snickers. He pressed his hand against his pocket)

“I should have known Papa's sweatpants would be big on you, no matter how old.”

She opened her hand to reveal a bundle of pins.

Oh.

“I was just thinking that I was better off wearing something from your closet,” he said, hoping his voice didn't betray him by being too high or shaky. He subtly cleared his throat. “But your mom went through all that trouble.”

Marinette gave him a small smile. “That's kind of you, but I don't want you stressing over it. I know I would.”

“I really don't mind.”

She shrugged. “It's not like I can't do it. You don't need to be a fashion designer to use a safety pin.”

“But it sure helps,” he said with a wink, before unrolling the waistband.

Marinette made quick work of cinching the waist and pinning it to place. Before he knew it, she was dusting herself off the ground. She stood back to survey her work—he tried not to preen at her appreciative gleam but a bit of the model in him came out anyway as he pushed his shoulders back and smirked—then abruptly clapped her hands.

“The hoodie, it fit!”

He ran his hands over the cotton fabric. “Like a glove!” he enthused. “Did you doubt it would?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “It's not like I could Google your measurements, Chat Noir.”

“You can't?” he cocked his head. Huh, that was a surprise to him. Google knew everything.

She laughed, a hearty guffaw that had her throwing her head back from the force of it, and it was a song he wanted on indefinite repeat inside his brain. His heart grew two sizes just hearing it.

“Come on,” she looped her arm around his, leading him towards her trapdoor. “Dinner's ready by now, I'm sure.”

“Wait,” he said, ambling behind her before gradually pulling to a stop so that he trailed a path from her elbow to her palm, reveling in all the exposed skin being out of his suit and her in her tank afforded him. He weaved his fingers through her own and was surprised at how rough it was, calluses found in the pads of her thumb and forefinger. She had such small hands. Yet the scars peppering her palm betrayed their delicateness, for these were the hands of a gifted craftswoman—all strength, beauty and creativity hidden within. If he thought the opportunity to hold her at all was wonderful, then the feel of her without the barrier of his suit or her blazer impeding movements or dulling sensations was glorious. He found he was fast becoming addicted to the way their hands intertwined, for it seemed as if his fingers were specifically tailored to fill the spaces between her own.

She giggled and it prompted him to break his stare from the bridge between them that was their interlocked hands.

“What is it, minou?”

“I really do love it,” he said earnestly. “Not a lot of people can say they have a Marinette Dupain-Cheng original, you know. And one day your name will fill fashion magazines and be whispered with envy by your peers and awe by aspiring designers from all over the world. I hope I'll be around when that happens—”

“Chat,” she interrupted, face rosy so it bloomed like a flower, albeit a shy one. He smiled, tucking a midnight lock behind her ear before trailing the length of it down her collarbone. He'd never seen her with her hair down, funnily enough, but she was just as beguiling, ebony tresses spilling like the night sky around her face.

“But even if I'm not, I’ll forever get to say that one time the Marinette Dupain-Cheng made me, Chat Noir, an original, customized hoodie in the style of me, Chat Noir.”

She snorted. “Smoothly done.”

She bent to her hatch once again but he tugged her back.

“Hey.”

“What is it now?” she pretended to fume, though he noted with interest that she didn't seem keen to break from his grasp when she had all ready proven how easy it would be for her. He smothered an urge to do a victory dance. He settled for inclining their clasped hands and turning them over so that he cupped her open palm.

He lowered his lips to the succulent curve between her thumb and wrist. Then, he placed a lingering kiss there, never once taking his eyes off hers as he murmured against her warm flesh, “Thank you.”

Marinette audibly gulped.

“S-sure,” she stammered. “It was nothing.”

He shook his head. “Not to me. So, seriously—”

Adrien took the hand that had been playing with the ends of her hair to run it along the nape of her neck where he rubbed calming circles. He liked the way her eyes fluttered when he stepped closer, till they were but a hairsbreadth apart, their hands resting against his chest. She leaned into his touch as she craned her head to peer up at him. He tilted his head, eyes hooded as he repeated with breathy solemnity.

“Thank you.”

His heart was running a marathon in his chest, sprinting from beneath his ribcage and straight into her hands. He wondered if she could feel it and whether he should be embarrassed if she did, but found that he no longer cared. He had always been a little too willing, too open with his emotions. Ladybug would have attested to that. But the difference, he realized, was that this time… this time—

It wasn't one-sided. He wasn't alone.

Because there was Marinette, standing on the tips of her toes, her free hand finding purchase in his hair while he abandoned hers in favor of anchoring his arm around her waist. She hummed. She liked to do that, he was starting to discover, similar to how he purred when he was particularly pleased.

And oh, how he liked to please her.

So he'd wait for her to kiss him. He inched closer till their noses brushed, but he would follow her lead and let her decide when to seal the space between them. He nudged the crease of her cheek with the tip of his nose.

(But surely a little push wouldn’t hurt?)

“Marinette?” Sabine called. “Dinner's getting cold!”

Her summon pierced the bubble they had encased themselves in, voice wafting through the wood loudly as if she had been right next to them. Marinette groaned, burying her face deeply into his neck so his hood fell. He could admit he was somewhat disappointed, yet couldn't bring himself to be too upset—not when Marinette was so blatantly miffed as well. She hadn't even shied away from him so he chanced tightening his arm around her waist and was gratified when she further nuzzled the crook of his neck before resting her chin on his shoulder. She sighed and he relished the audible proof of her annoyance. She was so damn cute, sometimes she didn't seem real.

He chuckled.

“We should go,” he said. “Your parents are waiting.”

“My parents,” she grumbled, “have the worst timing.”

He nudged his shoulder so that he could see her, and had to bite back a laugh. Her face was twisted in a grimace, luscious lips pushed out in an adorable pout that he wanted to suckle between his own. To temper his frustration, he kissed the back of her hand and gave it a small squeeze.

“Do it for the food, chérie.”

He froze. Oops. His eyes widened at her, apologetically. The endearment had sort of just, slipped out of him. He’d always been inclined to using them, it was often Ladybug's plight with him that he wouldn't cease to call her ‘bugaboo’. He remembered their earlier conversation and how she pointed out that he always called her ‘princess’. It hadn't bothered her, but had he gone too far now? She tilted her head at him in an almost curious manner, and he thought he was done for when she pulled her body away.

But then she stayed her hand and returned his squeeze with a smile. He breathed a sigh of relief at the radiant sight.

“I’m no princess,” she said archly as she opened her door. “But I do know a thing or two about being sweet.”

“Believe me,” he ran his knuckles along her cheek, forever bewitched by the miles of skin now available to him. “I'm aware.”

She bit her lip as if to contain her smile, then stepped down, returning to their earlier discussion. “Mama does make a mean wanton,” she sighed with feigned tsuris.“For the food.”

He nodded. “Oui, for the food.”

She paused, as if warring with herself on whether she should say her next words or not.

“And then, later…?”

He was glad she did. He felt his mouth stretch to a Cheshire's grin.

“Later,” he promised, and it couldn't come fast enough.

It hadn't gone unnoticed to Tom and Sabine that he and Marinette had gone down the stairs holding hands and didn't let go of each other till they sat down the dining table, not if the looks they exchanged were anything to to by. He had always assumed that was fiction, two people communicating with a mere glance. But a conversation happened before his very eyes, one that occurred without a single word, all because Tom and Sabine met eyes. He couldn't precisely decode the meaning of their stare, but with the way they regarded him, Marinette, him and Marinette, and then back at each other, he could very well guess. He gazed at Marinette from the corner of his eye just in time to see her roll her pretty, blue orbs. She must have been used to it. But he wasn't.

That cursed blush woke anew.

“You kids took a while,” Tom began airily as he took his place at the head of the table. Well, Adrien had an explanation for the delay. Speaking of—

“I know, right?”

Plagg, the little rascal, darted to the middle of the table before he could stop him. Sabine, who had been about to sit at Tom's right, jumped to a stand.

“Honestly,” he griped. “You should put a leash on these kids.”

Beside him, Marinette gasped.

“Plagg!” he cried.

The Kwami paid him no heed. He sniffed.

“Where’s my cheese?”

Adrien grabbed him midair and held him to his chest. “Nowhere, unless you behave,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I'm so sorry about him,” he addressed the Dupain-Chengs, all the while wrestling with Plagg, who seemed intent on escaping his grasp.

“What… what is... he?” Sabine asked, stuttering between calling Plagg ‘it’ or ‘he’. He was grateful she corrected herself, else this would have gone on for eternity.

“Hungry—”

He pressed against Plagg harder to muffle him.

“He's what gives me my powers, believe it or not,” Adrien said dryly. “He's a Kwami, and by saying a specific set of words, he’s what allows me to transform into Chat Noir. But it tires him out and eating is his way of recharging, apart from sleeping. But,” he yelped as Plagg dug his claws in. When he raised his arm, he dangled from his hand. Adrien sighed. “Mostly eating though.”

“What does he like to eat?” Marinette asked, and he wondered about the twinkle in her eyes.

“Cheese.”

“Not just any cheese, I'm not a barbarian.” Plagg interrupted. “I only eat camembert, the smelliest, most delectable, best of the best, cheese that was ever created. Oh, my beloved camembert,” he wailed. Adrien rolled his eyes. “My stomach feels empty without you. When will we ever reunite again?”

“Well, I don't know about camembert,” Tom started with an amused lilt, “but we do have fondue.” With a sweep of his arm, he gestured towards the kitchen counter where indeed—a small, ceramic, steaming pot of cheese fondue sat.

Plagg opened his mouth and Adrien was about to warn him to play nice when the Kwami literally launched himself into the pot as if it were his own personal swimming pool. Adrien's jaw dropped.

“Plagg!” he cried, mortified. Tom, however, chortled and Sabine’s tinkling laughter followed.

“What?” the little fiend had the audacity to float on his back. Adrien wanted to facepalm if Plagg wasn't all ready being rude enough for the both of them. “He said to help himself!”

He sneered. “He didn't, actually!”

“I suppose that’s one way to start a meal,” Sabine remarked as she began to pass out bowls. “Everyone dig in!”

“I thought only barbarians ate other kinds of cheese?” Marinette teased as she dove for the wanton broth.

“And as previously stated, I’m not one.” Plagg plunged into the pot and emerged with a face full of fondue. “It’s rude to refuse the host.”

“Oh, is it now?” Adrien commented acerbically. Then he turned to the occupants of the table with the most sorry expression his model-good looks could ever muster. “I can't apologize enough for his behavior. I am so, so, so sorry.”

“It's quite all right, dear.” Sabine patted his hand before taking it upon herself to give him a large serving of soup. “Marinette doesn't much stand on ceremony when it comes to food either.”

“Mama!” Marinette blushed and he only felt a little guilty that he wasn't alone in his discomfort.

“It’s true! I don’t know where a skinny thing like you keeps it all at the rate you eat.”

“Oh my god.”

“She obviously takes after her father,” Tom interjected, puffing his chest out with pride before ruffling Marinette's hair. She ducked but wasn't quick enough and suffered through Tom's petting as he stretched across the table to reach her. “Papa!” she grumbled. Adrien laughed at their antics as Marinette swatted her father's arm away before fixing her hair. Abruptly, she said, “Is Plagg always like this?”

He snickered. “Smooth,” he whispered under his breath. She glared, but he obliged the change in subject. He blew an exasperated breath.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Plagg threw a cheesy raspberry back at him. “Would you have me any other way?”

Adrien smiled at his direction, a small upturn of the lips that brimmed with content. “Funnily enough, no.” He returned his gaze to them. “I can hardly remember what life was like before I had him.”

Well, that wasn't strictly correct—it wasn't so much that he couldn't remember than it was a period he rather wished he could forget. He knew his lips had crudely slanted into a frown when he saw Marinette's own face fall. He pushed his shoulders back. The dinner table was not the place to unravel, especially in someone else's dinner table and—

Marinette had put her hand on his knee and all his thoughts grounded to a halt.

“How did you two meet?” she asked quietly.

He gave her a grateful smile as he met her fingers and intertwined their hands. Adrien took a deep breath, finding light in her touch so that it drove away the darkest of demons threatening to swarm his head.

“I came home one day and he was just… there.” Adrien shook his head fondly in recollection. “From the get go, he was all ready a glutton—he tried to eat my remote control!”

Marinette's parents laughed but she was pensive when she asked, “How did you take it?” she leaned into his space, her eyes burning with curiosity. “You must have freaked out.”

“A little,” he admitted.

“Are you kidding?” Plagg interrupted his cheese bath to say. “Kid took to it like fish to water. Transformed before I could finish explaining—before I was even fed!”

Marinette huffed a stray lock from her face as she muttered, “Of course you did.”

He would have commented further, but then he took a bite of the wanton noodles. He couldn't hold back his moan.

“This is delicious!”

Sabine chuckled even as she blushed. “I'm glad you think so.”

“The best noodles in Paris,” Tom beamed proudly.

“Can’t argue with that,” Marinette joined.

Adrien sighed. “I could marry this soup. Right now.”

So he slurped at the dish with a gusto one wouldn't expect from someone eating with just one hand. Then again, chopsticks didn't require the pair of them, though it would have been easier. Still, neither teen seemed willing to let go, happy to eat one-handed if it meant they could maintain the rare, skin-on-skin contact, even as innocent as hand-holding.

The rest of the meal passed in lapses of companionable silence and animated conversation. Adrien ate like he never had—had practically inhaled his food, be it Chinese, Italian or French cuisine, the Dupain-Chengs offered it all and so all he ate—had laughed like he never had, for Tom and Sabine had no shortage of tales to spill of Marinette's escapades as a child.

(“One time at a big family reunion, she climbed out of her high chair, crawled across the table—”

“Nooooo,” Marinette whined. “Not this story!”

“—and grabbed a huge chunk out of a whole roast chicken then sat right back without any of us noticing. We just turned around and there she was, trying to stuff her mouth with a chicken leg half her size!”

Adrien was giggling so hard he snorted. “Impressive, Marinette.”

She glowered, but when he poked her cheek she couldn't resist joining their amusement)

By the time the meal was drawing to a close, Adrien had eaten nearly half the contents of the table and felt borderline catatonic as a result. He felt full, but it wasn't merely due to the food. The dinner had been exquisite, made all the more comely for the people he shared it with. The dining table in the mansion was a time of solitary reflection for Adrien; where his thoughts were the loudest din, save for the clink of ceramics and utensils. But here, it was a symphony of colorful sound. If this were to be his first and last meal here, it would be a tune he carried with him for all time.

Even the quiet was something he relished. It wasn't empty, like that in his house. It was the kind of quiet that echoed the good times that preceded it, a quiet that came after a round of shared enjoyment so consuming, it robbed one's breath. It left you silent, sleepy… but overall utterly satisfied.

Sabine had bidden him to stay seated while Marinette and her father put food away, either in containers or in the trash. A nightly chore, he gathered, as they made quick work of it. It fascinated him to no end. Adrien may have been in his father's payroll but he'd never done housework in his life. To see everyone move in perfect fluidity, toiling to restore the kitchen to cleanliness while he remained motionless left him feeling uneasy, like he should have been helping them. He'd been in the kitchens and around the house long enough to observe the way his staff moved—in theory he should be able to provide his assistance. Wasn't that number one on his job description anyway? Granted, this mightn't have been what Master Fu had in mind, but he was Chat Noir. He was capable. It couldn't be that hard, right?

Right.

So when Sabine made to clear the last of the plates, he held his hands out and scooped them up before she could. He brought them to the sink then leaned against it as he addressed her.

“I can wash the dishes,” he offered.

“Such a sweet boy,” she smiled. “But that's usually Marinette's job.” She raised a flinty eyebrow at her daughter. “Marinette? Don't you have something to say?”

She held both her hands up.

“Mama, if he's up to the task, I'm not gonna stop him.”

He shrugged nonchalantly and with a crooked grin, joked, “I volunteer as tribute.”

“See?” Marinette clapped her hands, giddy. With a wink, she skipped to the living room and stood beside her father, who was setting up their game console. It bemused him. Was washing dishes really that terrible?

Sabine shook her head at Marinette's retreating back before turning to him. “Nonsense—”

Plagg snorted. “You said it. He's never had to do chores, like, ever.”

“Plagg!”

“What? I’m telling the truth!”

“Please. Ignore him.” Adrien glared at him before continuing. “I'll handle the dishes, it's the least I can do. You've been so kind to me all ready. Let me do this for you.”

Sabine appraised him and he bore it with baited breath.

“On one condition,” her smile returned, a soft upward tilt of her lips that made him feel small and young, younger than he had ever felt since his own mother left all those years ago. He'd have agreed to anything then, if it meant he could preserve those very sensations. He nodded with kitten-like eagerness.

“You wash, I dry,” she proposed. “Deal?”

He chuckled. “Deal.”

“Okay, if you're done here—”

Plagg dashed up the staircase. Adrien caught him by the tail, a look of incredulity plastered on his face.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Marinette's room,” he stated with a frankness that informed him he should have known this, ergo, Plagg had every right to be there. He frowned.

“Come on, you know you can't just barge into other people's rooms—”

“Oh, cause you're so good at that—”

Adrien refused to give Plagg the satisfaction of showing his frustration by pulling his hair, though he did snarl. “Why do you even wanna go up there?”

“What’s it to you?” Plagg pulled at his tail. “Let go of me!”

“Hey,” Marinette called.

“What?” he looked at her and noticed she had turned uncharacteristically pallid. His frown deepened and he released Plagg. He took a step towards her, arms outstretched in a hug that he would will with all his might to squash whatever it was the distressed her, her parents be damned.

But she wasn't talking to him.

“You can go to my room.”

“Yes,” Plagg sighed peevishly. “I know that.”

He proceeded to float up to her chambers. Adrien bit back the inkling to shout in protest, which was just as well. Marinette beckoned once more.

“Plagg.”

To his surprise, the Kwami ceased his ascent. He faced her.

“Interesting,” Plagg's voice had appropriated a solemnity he rarely displayed. “That it's you.”

They exchanged a weighted look that he couldn't even begin to comprehend. There was a knowing glint in both their eyes, as if a message had been relayed and subsequently received. It made him… apprehensive? No, not exactly. It wasn't like they were talking about him (at least, he assumed they were talking about Marinette). But he definitely felt like there was something he wasn't getting—something he should have been perfectly aware of.

Marinette smirked playfully. “Don't touch anything that isn't yours.”

Plagg rolled his eyes, yet his grin was sincere, and dare he say—tender. Adrien gawked.

“Your… room is in good hands or,” he held out his arms. “As it were, in good paws.”

It was Marinette's turn to conceal her amusement abaft an eye roll. Adrien whirled his gaze back and forth between them, eyebrow raised quizzically.

“I'm missing something here, aren't I?”

“Don't worry your pretty, blond head about it, sunshine.”

“Do you really think I'm pretty?” he retorted saccharinely.

Plagg didn't dignify that with a response. Without so much as a backwards glance, he phased through the trapdoor.

Eerie silence remained in his wake.

“So, that happened,” Tom mused.

“Do I even want to know?” Adrien directed his question to Marinette. She shrugged.

“Not if you want to live longer.”

“I do have nine lives.”

“Trust me,” she resumed her attention to the console and the controller in her hands. “You're not ready to hear this. Not if you want to keep all nine lives.”

“That's so cryptic, Marinette!” He protested, roughly shoving his hands in his pockets. “You can't just say something like that and not explain!”

She ignored him and he tried not to sulk. When did Plagg and Marinette even have the chance to talk before now? Their incredibly brief interaction shouldn't have warranted such familiarity, yet he was convinced some sort of acknowledgement occurred between them. But what? How? Why? He couldn't help the absence that welled within—like the answers were staring right at him, yet he was too blinded by the glare of it to see properly.

“You are a strange child,” Tom declared.

“I'm your child,” she returned, looking at him askance. “If you've got a problem with the product, take it up with the manufacturer.”

“But that's me,” he whined.

“Exactly.”

The tension of earlier seemed to dissipate in the wake of their persiflage, as it seemed was the standard in the Dupain-Cheng household. Had he spoken to his father with such imprudence, he'd have been institutionalized. Had he and Chat Noir been separate people and Chat strutted into the mansion then indulged the same intimacy with him that he had with Marinette, he would have been thrown out. Forget being thrown out all together—he wouldn't have made it past the front door. So really, Adrien could only goggle at this family.

They were marvelous—easily, openly, irresistibly, wholeheartedly, undeniably, marvelous.

Beside him, Sabine shook her head. “Those two have their own world,” she sighed, with a forlornless—a longing that appeared out of place within these four walls, the weight of her emotions so heavy he felt it echo through his soul in tidal waves of wistfulness. His ebullience faded in the wake of this realization.

He knew this sadness, as well as his own heartbeat, and while he was certain this family was the epitome of healthy kinships—he found he couldn't begrudge Sabine her envy. He had only been in Marinette and Tom’s presence for less than a night, but he sensed their closeness straight away. He stared at them, and saw what she saw—how animated and engaged they spoke with each other, how when Tom would pull Marinette would push, how they may have been speaking in French but it might as well have been esoteric to them. Marinette stared up at her father with stars in her eyes while Tom praised Marinette as if everything good in the world had been made by her hands. Those two shared a bond he could only ever dream of having with his own father.

Suddenly, looking at Sabine was like looking at a mirror.

“I just don't understand them sometimes,” she continued.

He tilted his head at her, silken strands falling into his face as he spoke, lowly, compassionately, “But you love them anyway.”

And then she smiled—not just with her mouth, but with her whole body. Her eyes had slanted upwards into tiny smiles of their own while the tension she harbored all over melted till her body hummed in repose. With those words, it was like a lock had been broken and wasn't it just incredible? Wasn’t it absolutely grand? The way love conquered even the darkest of imaginings—the way love healed.

“But you love them anyway,” she repeated.

She lightly bumped her shoulder with his. “You still up for tackling those dishes with me?”

“I'm paw-sitive I can.”

That elicited an exuberant laugh from her. At least one person in this building appreciated his puns.

When they reached the sink, he rolled up his sleeves. Sabine touched his shoulder.

“This is nice,” she noted of his hoodie.

“Marinette made it for me!” He enthused, lifting the hood over his head and twirling without prompt. He struck a pose. “What do you think?”

She chuckled, regarding him with a gleam in her eyes that he couldn't place.

(It definitely wasn't a night of knowledge for Adrien Agreste)

“It suits you.”

He nodded his agreement.

“She's gonna do great things one day,” he sighed happily as Sabine handed him the sponge then drained the sink.

“You two are close, huh?”

That brought him to a screeching halt. Shit, he thought. So she had noticed their easiness with each other. Ugh, who was he kidding? Of course she noticed, they weren't exactly the definition of subtle.

“Yes,” he croaked because at this point, what was the use of lying? Though it still came out more question than statement, as if he himself didn't know the real answer.

She didn't say anything after that, merely began to hum a Chinese lullaby beneath her breath, and so he didn't expound. Maybe she knew they were close but not the hows or the whys. He couldn't fathom being so close to a parent as to share such details with them. Well, not that there was anything scandalous to their friendship (at least, depending on who was asking). But he didn't think any parent would find near-nightly visits from the opposite sex—superhero or not—to their daughter's bedroom in the after hours of Paris appropriate, no matter how innocent the intentions. Perhaps luck, little as it was, was on his side tonight.

After careful instruction from Marinette's mom and some close calls with slippery dishes, he got the hang of it, he and Sabine functioning like a well-oiled machine—he washed a pile, she rinsed and dried.

There was something soothing about the routine. It might have been the asininity of it—the motions repetitive and expected that he didn't have to think at all, and so it was effortless to lose himself. It might have been the clamor of Marinette’s gaming zeal and Tom's overly dramatic wails of defeat as Marinette expertly annihilated him in round after round of Ultra Megastrike IV that brought him serenity when the noise would have rattled anyone else. Even the dissonance of running water and clanging dishware brought him domestic bliss, the likes of which he had never known.

Because the mansion may have been his formal residence, but with the reticent staff and his hermit of a father, it was just another building—foreign and stolid and one he happened to be required to sleep in.

Compared to here though, there had never been more polar opposites. The truth of the matter was, he could have fit the Dupain-Chengs’ apartment inside the Agreste mansion and yet, he found there was no other place he'd rather be in. The organized clutter told of a life well lived and a house well loved. The raucous of continuous chatter and Sabine's soft singing and television static was a symphony to his lonely ears. This was a refuge with people who were free to be who they were and just… love.

This is a real home, he mused, and if he could, he hoped to never leave. And perhaps he never would, if Tom and Sabine liked him enough to invite him another night, if he and Marinette became just as good friends when he was Adrien, better yet if he and Marinette fell in lo—

Stop.

A crack sounded and when Adrien looked down, where there was once an unblemished surface, a tear had wrought through halfway down the middle of the plate he was washing. He gasped.

“I'm sorry! I’m s-so—I’m sorry!”

With haste he let go, only to wish he hadn't. The impact caused the crevice to widen though the plate hadn't completely split into two.

“You're shaking,” Sabine whispered.

“Oh,” he hadn't noticed. “I broke a plate,” he said dumbly. “That must have been a set, right? And you can't have a set with just three—” (never mind that the occupants of this household were that very number) “—I'll replace it. I’ll buy another one.”

I'll buy you a whole kitchen's worth of new sets.

“It's just a plate,” Sabine murmured, squeezing his shoulder. “It's all right, Adrien.”

…

…

…

…

Adrien.

Adrien?

Holy fuck, she said Adrien!

One minute he couldn't breathe and the next, he choked on air.

“Chat?” Marinette hollered at him though she hadn't averted her eyes from the screen. She crowed at a successful 12-hit combo before calling to him once more, “You ok? Choke on a hairball or something?”

She laughed at her own joke and that he wanted to laugh hysterically along with her made him cough all the more.

“I'm fine,” he managed to bite out once his fit had calmed. Sabine patted gently at his back, albeit with a modicum of reluctance. He turned to her.

“What—” Voice considerably lowered though no less panicked, he repeated, “What did you call me?”

He held his hands to his face to see if his mask had slipped. It was intact. He felt it was, so how did she…?

“I'm sorry,” she deflated when when she approached him and he unconsciously took a step back. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”

“I'm not frightened.”

She glanced down, emphasizing how it hadn't escaped her that his shaking hadn't relented.

“It’s all right, Adrien,” she said again.

Her words were meant to comfort but it was as if she was underwater and everything was warbled. His name, his civilian name, falling from her lips was like a buffer against rationalization, and it had him blanching. She flinched.

He clenched his fists and took a deep breath, then two, then three—till the gallop of his heart faded to a steady tread and his trembles abated.

“Are you going to kick me out, now?”

She shook her head. “Why would I do that?”

“You know who I am,” he lamented. “That's dangerous.”

She smiled. “Is it now?”

“It's not funny,” he whispered, looking down. “If Hawkmoth finds out about you and what your family means to me, and god forbid something happened to Marinette and mon dieu—” he returned his attention to her. “Who else knows? Does Marinette know?”

Sabine shook her head. “Just me, as far as I'm aware.” He breathed a sigh of relief before regarding her with oblique intent. “So… how did you?”

“Well, it's less clear when you're transformed. But after?” she cocked her head. “I think modeling the jacket was a bit of a giveaway,” he blushed. “The hair is pretty notable. Your eyes, too.”

He gaped. “Lots of guys have blond hair and green eyes!” he defended.

“I suppose that's true.” She laughed, before fixing him with an austere stare. “But they don't care for Marinette the way you do.”

He didn't know how to answer that—partly because he was embarrassed that he was so transparent.

Mostly because it was true.

“Adrien…” Sabine started, glancing at Marinette and Tom from her periphery to make sure they were otherwise occupied. “What happened just now?”

“I'm always breaking things,” he confessed, as if that were explanation enough. And maybe it was because the sorrow in her eyes almost had him coming undone.

I don't want to break her, he wanted to shout. And I don't wanna break my own heart too.

Because falling in love was the easy part—falling in love with the unattainable was even easier. He knew the outcome was bleak and so it was simple to be able to put on his armor of innuendo and impavidness and say it was all right that they didn't love you back.

After… after was what scared him. Reciprocation scared him. Because he was broken, was always going to be just that little bit damaged and a step behind and he didn't want anyone else to get caught in the crossfire that was his internal turmoil. Because he was lost, always lost, and he didn’t know how to be enough for someone else.

“Hey,” she said, derailing him from the dangerous path his thoughts had veered to. “Who needs a set of four plates when we're only three.” She shrugged and added, conspiratorially, “I've been dying to replace these sets anyway but Tom didn't see the point. Now, you've given me the perfect excuse. I mean, they're older than Marinette—no wonder this one broke!”

His heart lifted as they joined in merriment. What was it about the women in this family? Would he forever have a weakness for dark hair, blue-eyed females?

(If that was the case, then he hoped never to be strong)

“Besides,” she shared, everything about her so far removed from her previous melancholy that his own worries of insecurity and being discovered evanesced into a plane of halcyon where no one and nothing that would ever hurt him, could—if only ephemerally. “In my experience, the best people in life are the ones who are unafraid to show their imperfections.”

(And who was he kidding? The halcyon wasn’t some undiscoverable plane—it was here)

“So own them, darling,” she cupped his cheek, and he found himself leaning into her touch, starved as he was for motherly affection. He clutched her forearm as if for dear life, and lapped at her every word when she declared, “You'll find that the cracks are where the light shines the brightest.”

He let a little more than a fleeting moment pass as he considered her words. Could it really be that simple? Own it, she advised.

“Thank you,” he sniffed.

“Thank you for helping me with the dishes,” she grinned lopsidedly. She may have been thanking him for his assistance but he was adamant he had been the one to gain the most from their encounter.

He disposed of the broken plate and cleared the sink while Sabine put the rest of the dishes away. After, she jutted her chin towards the living room.

“Shall we see what the other two are up to? Before they get swallowed by the TV?”

Thankfully, no such misgivings had arisen since, caught up as they had been in their conversation, it slipped their notice when Marinette and Tom had moved on from the game console to their music player. Charles Aznavour's rich, buttery tones wafted from the crisp speaker as he sang Il faut savoir.

Even with the cramped space of the apartment, the father and daughter duo found a way to make a dance floor of the living room, moving in some semblance of a...waltz? ‘Gifted’ as they were with two left feet.

He chuckled and hoped the mask hid the way his eyes shone. Then again maybe not, if it meant Marinette’s countenance vivified at the sight of it.

“You’re here!” Tom bellowed, spinning her outwards with a little too much exuberance and so she fell back against the cushions.

“Tom!” Sabine shouted just as Tom squawked his apology and Marinette expelled a cute, “oof!” when she landed. Adrien pressed his lips together and tried not lay the adoration thick but—she didn't exactly make it easy.

She jarringly chided her father before expelling a greeting so cheerful and sweet, you would think they hadn't seen each other in years instead of the scant few minutes they were actually apart. She moved a smidge so there was room on the sofa for him even with her limbs aslant.

What he wouldn't give to have a camera right now, to capture the flush that burgeoned the apple of her cheeks because it was from exertion and not bashfulness, for once… to immortalize the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at him like this—unharmed and glowing and arrantly, confoundingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

He crouched on his haunches so he was eye-level with her and lightly swiped the tip of his finger across the length of her bangs. Her sigh was a cool breeze against his lips.

“Hello, Marinette.”

She sat up, affecting a severe air as she enounced, “I'm surprised you remember my name.”

He gestured at her to scoot over. He hunkered beside her with his legs crossed, one arm spread atop the back of the couch while the other was propped against his thigh. He rested his head on his hand and raised an eyebrow at her.

“What? Why?”

“You and my mom looked so cozy,” she teased. “I thought you'd forgotten me.”

“Oh, are you jealous then?” he shot back in acute delight. “You don't need to worry,” he leaned into her space so he could whisper in her ear, lips ghosting her skin as he murmured, “You're impossible to forget.”

She rolled her eyes then looked away, but not before he caught her gratified expression. He beamed as he pulled away.

Chiming laughter and gruff chortles had the pair of them turning to the pair before them. The sight they were greeted with was nothing short of miraculous, as Tom expertly twirled Sabine athwart the room, ebbing and flowing in a dance they appeared to have been doing since they were born.

“How come you can dance with mom that way and not me?” Marinette demanded haughtily. Truth be told, he was glad she asked. He was bewildered at the grace with which Tom maneuvered Sabine when not minutes ago, he and Marinette had been fumbling about like gravity was personally out to get them and they were desperate to outrun it.

“Don't you know?” Tom said before he twirled Sabine, first out then into his arms. “Life is but one, long dance. Sometimes you take a wrong turn somewhere and swing out of beat.” He dipped Sabine, “But other times, if you sway at just the right moment—” and, slowly, they ascended together, “—you might bump into someone who's willing to move just that little bit off beat with you, and you find you've made a rhythm that's all your own.”

Till they were in perfect alignment, her back to his chest and his chin nestled atop her head.

“Each step you take is a step towards that person so... dance. Make your move and make it right. Hell, make the wrong one too! Just…”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“Just—just what?” He goaded, endeavoring to limit his impatience as he leaned towards the man.

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Papa,” she rebuked but he could tell she was just as engrossed as he was.

Tom smirked.

“Just dance.” His lips whittled into a softer, more profound, grin. “You do your utmost to ensure you lead a successful life, but all that won't mean a thing without the right partner by your side.” He locked eyes with Sabine. “So, don't forget to dance.”

Now it was Edith Piaf's poignant voice crooning her Hymn to Love that filtered through the spaces between their bubble of conversations. Sabine elegantly twisted in Tom's arms so she could rest her head onto his chest. In absolute synchronization, they sighed, and it was the purest sound of rapture he had ever heard.

Then Tom threw them, what he must have thought was, a sly wink. “Do you?”

What?

Adrien glanced at Marinette and saw she was just as baffled as he was. With an eyebrow raised, he conveyed with her, as if to say, he's your dad—you ask him what he means! to which she rebutted with her arms crossed and a pointed, if you're such a curious cat, you ask him yourself!

(Though, admittedly, the curious cat was something he added for his own amusement)

He relented though they both turned to Tom.

“Do… we what?”

“Have the right partner?”

Without thought, his eyes found Marinette's. Marinette—who tripped even as she stood, whose belongings were forever escaping her grasp as they sprawled whenever she careened about the pavement. Marinette—whose maladroit affliction had faded when he held her in his arms and danced with her that one time.

They had fallen into each other’s gaze long enough that more than a beat had passed. Tom reverted his gaze to Sabine and the two were lost in a world of their own, a lambent pendulum as they flowed in and out of each other's gravity.

Do you have the right partner?

He had always thought Ladybug was his, through thick and thin. In some ways, she was the right partner—but he was looking for someone who was right, not just in some but in all the ways it mattered.

Tom's words reverberated like a gong in his head.

Do you have the right partner?

When Kagami had been Akumatized, Ladybug stowed him away to safety whereas he and Marinette teamed up to defeat the Evillustrator. When he needed advice, he asked Marinette. Marinette had given him his very own lucky charm. It was him and Marinette who worked so well together in Ultra Mega Strike even when they were in opposition, only him and Marinette who had been in complete awareness of Lila's falsehoods, Marinette that he went after in the skating rink.

Marinette, Marinette—in everything it was Marinette.

Do you have the right partner?

Looking at her, an ethereal beacon amongst the fluorescent and lamp lights as she watched her parents fall in love all over again, he wished he had the courage to speak up. For though he had broken down his thoughts and discovered the answer was within his grasp, he would have liked to dance with her just then… just once more—if only to be certain.

(When really, what he verily wanted was to build himself around her and hold her close)

AN: There is a part 3. I have no self-control lol.

ALSO, THAT MARICHAT SNEAK PEEK THO??? I SWEAR TO GOD I AM STILL CRY-SCREAMING ABOUT IT, IT IS SO SIMILAR TO MY VISION FOR THIS FIC IT'S LIKE I DREAMT IT AND IT LITERALLY CAME TO LIFE RIP ME

Any assurance she offered was tainted with this lie. If she was Ladybug, they could have leaned on each other. But he left so swiftly, before she could offer her support, and there had been no time to exchange soothing words. Now he was here but she was in the wrong form, the same person but with the mismatched set of shoulders to carry a hero's burden. She should have told him to leave. She was fixated on her own failures and lost in the sordid memories—memories he knew but that she couldn't even share without revealing herself—of the day that she ought to have been the last person dispensing lenity.

But she hated to be alone more.

“Do you want to come inside?”

“What… what about your parents?”

The look in his eyes—desperate and tortured with the same agonizing need for company—told her he would have accepted regardless whether they were present or not, so long as she was offering. But she had always had exceptional luck, recent events notwithstanding.

“They're out of town. Come inside.”

“Okay,” he answered, leaping off the metal barrier in rapid but graceful movements that spoke of his relief.

She may not be able to tell him she was Ladybug, but she could offer her comfort all the same.

They stowed away inside, seeking respite from the chilly November air and finding it within the confines of the Dupain-Cheng living room. Chat Noir opened his mouth, no doubt to ask whether he could take a seat on the couch, when Marinette threw the blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders towards the cushions and made her way to the kitchen.

“Marinette?”

She shot him an arch smile before she rifled through her cupboards for a pair of specific objects.

“We’re in the home of bakers, monsieur chaton.” She let out a quiet whoop of triumph when she found what she was looking for and hid it behind her back.

“Er…”

She laughed at his, admittedly, adorably bemused expression before beckoning him to her side.

“So I hope you brought your baking game.”

“I don't actually know how to—” When he was close enough, she sprung on him, a shadow enveloping his vision and effectively cutting him off. Before he could tell up from down she had tied an apron around his waist.

“Kiss the Baker,” he read upside down before he smirked, trepidation at his lack of experience clearly forgotten. “Well, you can't argue with hardcore apron logic like that.”

He puckered his lips in an exaggerated manner as he jokingly aimed for her face. Marinette giggled, stopping his unsurprisingly accurate traction with her fingers.

“Uh, uh, uh! We earn our keep around here.”

“Oh la, la,” he read on her apron then waggled his eyebrows at her. “Is that a promise?”

She rolled her eyes before she directed his pouting face towards the pantry, calling out basic ingredients they would need as she brought out the baking instruments. Brownies would have been the easy option, chocolate chip cookies even easier seeing as her family always had frozen cookie dough at the ready. But they both needed the distraction, and maybe the quiet accomplishment that came with creating something from scratch—

“What are we making?” he asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

—even something as small as a cupcake.

“How do you feel about Red Velvet?”

He smiled.

“Do you have to ask?”

It went without saying, he loved the color red.

Though he had never worked in a kitchen before, he took instruction very well and they worked in perfect harmony—as they had always done. He mixed flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl while she preheated the oven then beat butter and sugar in an electric mixer. He brought out eggs and cracked them in a bowl.

“Okay so put them in—wait, no! Not all at once, Chat!” she shrieked.

“Sorry!” he dropped the bowl before he scratched at his black ear in abashment. “I got excited!”

“You'll have to do better than that for kisses,” she teased. He sauntered back to her side.

“Oh, so it was a promise?”

She bit her lip. “Work on those skills and we'll see.”

She urged him to pick up the bowl once more. “One at a time,” she instructed, guiding him gently with one hand while she controlled the pulse of the mixer with the other. They continued without incident, Chat apparently having taken her words seriously because he paid special attention to her directions and mirrored her every move.

(And was it her imagination or had he not taken his eyes away from her lips?)

Though she did have to take the food coloring from Chat when he wanted to be a little too liberal on the droplets.

“Aw, come on Marinette! You can never have too much red.”

“Exactly who is the baker here?”

He pointed at his apron. She supposed that was her fault. Nevertheless, she rolled her eyes.

“Don't think I don't know what you're doing. You're trying to match it to Ladybug's suit!”

She would know, she knew that outfit like the back of her hand. But she was surprised when he scoffed.

“Who said anything about Ladybug?” he swooped closer to her, till his breath was a cool, sweet sigh along her lips. “I want your blush.”

She could feel the heat of his body with the lack of space between them. The intensity of his gaze stole her breath and she felt warmth bloom from her chest to her face. He traced a fingertip along the apple of her cheek, a ghost of a touch she felt all the way to her toes. She could feel herself blush harder.

“That's the one,” he whispered.

Her tongue darted out to wet her suddenly parched lips and those emerald orbs tracked its path. He blinked owlishly, as if loathe to miss her every move.

This was getting out of hand.

“You can actually,” she sort of squawked and Chat Noir stepped back, either from the high frequency of her voice or because he knew exactly what he was doing and got his intended effect from her.

“Pardon-moi?” he beamed, mischief bringing a shine to his gaze.

Well, that confirmed it. It was the latter. She restrained herself from sticking her tongue out at him, though barely. She frowned at him with devoted obstinateness.

“You can have too much red for this, cause then you affect the consistency of the batter.”

“Well, we wouldn't want that,” he nodded sagely before a crooked smile stole across his lips, “I'm nothing if not consistent.”

She rolled her eyes though her teeth gleamed under the fluorescent lighting of the kitchen even as she tried to hide her amusement.

She put him in charge of pouring the dry mixture into the bowl beneath the mixer, handing him a measuring cup so he could control the amount he put in. When he had exhausted the contents, he got ready for the next step by placing a dozen muffin cups of ranging colors into the cupcake pan. Together, they spooned batter into the paper-lined cups—Marinette in expert efficiency while Chat Noir did so with varying degrees of success, getting batter onto himself than the tray more often than not, probably doing so on purpose because he was impatient for a taste. Exasperated, Marinette handed him the used wire whisks and the bowl.

“Have at it.”

He jumped and pumped his fist in the air.

“Sweet!” he winked at her.

His joy was bubbly and infectious. It was easy to forget what brought them together in the first place. They had been at this superhero gig for two years now, sometimes she forgot they were only teens. Ladybug’s legend was 5000 years old and after a day such as this, she could feel each and every one of those lifetimes on her shoulders. But then Chat Noir scrunched his nose charmingly or laughed, free and uninhibited, and his delight in simple things reminded her—

There was time for youth, yet.

He stopped mid-lick at the expression on her face, a cross between curious and content.

“What?”

She wanted to tell him he was wonderful and brave and strong. But she didn't want to cloud the moment with laden sentimentality so she shook her head, swiping at the batter that had somehow splayed on his cheek before popping her thumb in her mouth. His eyes widened, before they narrowed in poorly-concealed hunger.

And it wasn't for batter.

“Nothing,” she murmured coyly before turning her back on him. She grinned when she heard him huff frustratedly.

She popped the tray in the oven and asked Chat Noir to clean up. After all, he had started on the bowl and whisk—albeit with his tongue. He whined for a bit, probably at her blasé manner, before she promised to teach him how to frost if he did so. Easily bribed (men are weak, she cackled internally), he washed the used apparatus in record time and finished just as she was scooping vanilla cream cheese frosting into a second piping bag.

The timer sounded and Marinette brought out the tray from the oven. From the corner of her eye, she could see Chat swoon. She couldn't blame him—the cupcakes smelled divine. The scent of vanilla and butter wafted through the air around them, permeating their senses so that they could almost taste it. For Marinette, it reminded her of her favorite recollections growing up, the genesis of her family's bakery, the tutelage of her parents in this very kitchen, her surrounded by sweets—both the victual and affectionate kind. Reflection painted a reverie on her face. Chat Noir tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and she was brought back to the present.

“It must have been nice,” he mused quietly, almost unconsciously, as he took in the eclectic amalgamation of Asian and European bric-a-brac that made up her home. “Growing up here.”

She assessed her surroundings, trying to see what he saw, and smiled. “I have no complaints.”

“I wish I knew you,” he suddenly said.

She got what he meant. They weren't supposed to talk about their home life but based on what little he had revealed over the couple of years, his wasn't exactly stellar. She couldn't imagine living in a home that wasn't as loving and supportive as her own, couldn't imagine how she would have turned out if she didn't know the kindness of her own parents—a kindness she constantly desired to emulate. So for Chat Noir to be who he was, to possess a heart like his, so open and depthless, a well of love he was so willing to give...

He was incredibly resilient, and she admired him so much for that.

She clutched his hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re always welcome here. Y-you know that right? Even if my parents are home,” she swallowed around the nervous lump in her throat that told her she was being too forward. “You'll always have a place here. It's the least I can do.”

He looked stricken, but awed too, as if he couldn't believe the words falling from her mouth because he couldn't possibly deserve it.

She gripped his hand harder.

“Thank you, but that’s too much. I couldn't possibly—I mean, you've given me enough,” he stammered. “Your friendship means everything to me.”

They often flirted and bantered and endeavoured to keep things light between them, they were each other's reprieve from the stress and solemnity of their lives. But—for her at least—she did her best to let him know, in her own unassuming way, that she was someone he could rely on.

“It isn't nearly enough,” she confessed, “but I mean it.”

There was an awkward beat of silence, the kind that came when a barrage of unexpected emotions were bared and the involved parties were unsure how to act or proceed. But it was broken by the timer of her phone, indicating that the cupcakes had sufficiently cooled and—judging by the blush on both their faces—‘saved by the bell’ had never been more prompt or appropriate.

“Frost on?” he simpered broadly, his body humming with anticipation. She couldn't help but mimic him as she gamely exclaimed, “Frost on!”

Since it was Chat Noir's first time, she started them off with a round nozzle and demonstrated a ‘swirl’ style of frosting. At the final rotation, she withdrew and Chat applauded her as he marveled at her perfect technique. She bowed with a flourish that made him proud.

When it was his turn, however, in his eagerness he squeezed the bag too hard and frosting spilled over the sides of the cupcake. He frowned even as Marinette scooped the excess onto the frosting bowl with a spatula.

“You made it look so easy!”

He sounded almost accusatory. She stifled a laugh and nodded.

“Try again,” she encouraged. But with every faux pas, Chat's frustration mounted till he was depositing the crumpled and depleted piping bag on the table and slumping against it. He sighed, defeat lining his shoulders and hunching his back.

“This is hopeless. I'm hopeless.”

She frowned. “Chat…”

“I destroy everything I touch.”

She had a feeling he was talking about more than the frosting on the cupcakes.

“I mean, what kind of power is Cataclysm? A power for destruction? It's any wonder Ladybug even puts up with me. Black cats are nothing but bad luck.”

“Not you,” she averred.

Despite the easy-going smiles and chuckles they had shared throughout the night, she knew his turmoil had been building, and he had reached his boiling point.

“I could have saved her. I could have saved that little girl.”

“Then Ladybug would have died.”

“And that makes it better?” he shouted, and she flinched at the way the bedlam in his voice rang in her ears and reverberated throughout her kitchen tiles. Regret filled his features in quick succession and he held his arms out as if to hug her in apology before he thought better of it, claws closing around the edge of the island.

Her heart broke for him.

“No, but it was a difficult choice.”

And it had been—the Akumas had been  getting progressively motivated, obviously in response to Hawk Moth’s growing desperation. They had always prevailed but today… today was the first civilian casualty they had ever had.

“You did what you had to do,” she told him. She told herself. She refused to feel guilty over the difficulties of her job, even as she felt cloying damnation seize her lungs until it was impossible to breathe.

“I would have done the same thing,” she assured him and meant it. “I would have saved Ladybug and were the situations reversed, I—” she stopped herself. “Ladybug would have saved you, too.”

“You think so?” he murmured, hope framing every word, every letter.

“I know so.”

More than I can ever tell you.

He shook his head. “Still, it should have been me. If I had been more useful instead of always just making a mess of things, then it never would have reached that point and… and that girl would still be alive.”

He propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands.

“I just feel so guilty, and ashamed. How can I ever face Ladybug again? She must be so disappointed in me.”

That's what his abrupt departure had been about? She gaped, he had to be joking! But his shuddering breaths told her he wasn't and when she hugged him from behind, he was trembling. She felt tears spring to her eyes, his anguish a direct echo of her own.

“I can't speak for Ladybug,” she felt a pang in her heart at the lie, “but I think I know you well enough. No matter what you feel never forget, you are not the villain. You did what you had to, to do the right thing even if it was difficult, because that’s what heroes do. That’s what you do. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes, Chat, cause then you'd know how helpful you are—how wanted you are.”

“Wanted,” he whispered as if he never heard the word, especially in relation to him. It was so simple, to want—so easy to say and a word used rather gratuitously. But it was more than a word, it was a feeling and it was teeming with depth and utterly disarming.

“Yes.”

She let him work through his sobs, rubbing smooth circles onto his back while he caught his breath. He squeezed her hand that she hadn't relinquished from his waist, needing to be near him, needing to touch him, and she understood it for the shattering gratitude that it was.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” she whispered into the skin of his neck. She grabbed the second piping bag and handed it to him, grasping his hands and molding herself into the lithe form of him till they were in complete alignment—a hybrid of hope.

“Sometimes we have to break down in order to better build ourselves up,” with her guidance, he began to frost, “and there’s no shame in that.”

With her hands framing his, they made a swirl. It was drooping and lopsided but it was perfect all the more for it. They had made it together. She pressed her lips to his shoulder in exultation.

“A kiss for the baker,” she said. “You've earned it.”

“Thank you,” he whispered and again, she knew he was referring to more than the frosting.

He let go of the piping bag and turned to her. She brushed the back of her knuckles along his cheeks in lambent strokes as if she could erase his sadness and raise him anew. In turn, he took her face in his hands, and kissed her cheek.

“A kiss for the baker,” he hummed. “You deserve it. You deserve more.”

She felt overcome—with him, the sensation of him on her skin and on her soul. She was awash with all that she wanted to express in that moment but couldn't, because of her identity and because she lacked the words, so it flowed through her eyes in tears instead. He wiped the tracks of her liquid emotion in delicate caresses that left her feeling gentle and weightless, his eyes going back and forth across the planes of her face as if he wanted to take all of her in and she let him. She let him in, heart wide open as he became the blood in her veins and the oxygen in her lungs. He pressed his forehead to hers and wrapped himself around her until they were knitted in bone and sinew and together—

They breathed.

Watching her leave is an odd combination of dreadful and thrilling for him—he hates the stretch of distance that grows between them with every departure but damn if she doesn't look good doing it.

(The wind in her midnight hair, the curve of her bottom in that skin-tight suit… it does things to him and superhero or not, he is still a boy—one whose blood continues to run hot even after the adrenaline dwindles and the scent of her remains)

Tonight is different.

His blood simmers, yes, but it is accompanied with a heat in his eyes that stems from a pressure behind his lids. This time, he turns away from her to take in more of the crisp, Autumn air so that he hears more than sees the long tract of her yo-yo as it coils around the neighboring building and pauses. With a heavy heart, he anticipates the swooping whoosh of her absence and is instead met with the snap of the string retracting.

Before he can throw out a snappy pun or utter a witty comment, an arrogant yet charming, back so soon? I knew you couldn't get enough of me, her hand descends upon his shoulder like it was made to be there and she fills his line of sight.

“Chat… thank you.”

Stunned, not at the words but at the gravity with which she voices them, it takes more than a couple heartbeats before he can muster a reply. He shakes his head.

“For what?”

For what, indeed? She couldn't possibly be thanking him for having her back—it is unquestionably a part of the job description. She couldn't also be thanking him for saving her life, for that is a force without exception, as embedded to him as breathing.

So what?

She steps closer, and it feels as if all the oxygen in his lungs seizes when she takes the hand from his shoulder to cup his cheek.

She’s touching me.

It's a stupid thought. They've touched before, more intimately even and a kiss had been stolen (and as of yet, unrecovered—much to his dismay). This is nothing, it's elementary.

If only his heart would get the message, because an even stupider thought enters his head.

I haven't shaved.

It's a five o'clock shadow and a barely discernible blond against his skin, but it's the sort of hysteria his brain clings to. She doesn't seem to mind though, not when she's running her thumb along the line of his jaw, her nail catching on the stubble and scratching at the hair there. It takes all of him not to purr the way he did as a hypersensitive 15-year old.

(Even if he does feel just that every day he's with her)

Her sigh is a breeze flirting across his lips, the kind of cool air he had been searching for earlier that night.

And though shivers do crawl the length of his spine, too bad it does the exact opposite of chilling him.

“Nothing… everything,” she stammers, the gesture familiar yet unequivocal to the ever unflappable Ladybug. She takes a breath, her eyes closed, and when those moon-wide orbs focus on him, they are overcome with an expression so open and vulnerable—it could only be described as tender.

“Just, thank you.”

He feels blood rush to his all ready heated face. Once again, there's that feeling of more, the air between them riddled with things unsaid, with secrets and the unknown, but the obvious too, like—yes, hello, I know you, our souls are one and the same.

Yet, even if he could think of some semblance of a sane reply, his ring chimes with urgency and then, swift as a hummingbird’s wings, she’s gone.

And he is all alone.

But he doesn’t want to be.

That feeling of unease—of wrongness—fills his chest, growing tenfold so that even his bones feel like they don't fit right, clumsy and disjointed with iniquity. It spreads throughout his body like wildfire, till there is nothing but white noise in his head and a persistent feeling that something was missing.

Rather, some one.

This life of fighting crime has enlightened him to various experiences—mostly fascinating, some he’d rather forget (stupid crocodile), one he had apparently forgotten (stupid Valentine's day) and others… just plain strange.

Today for instance—he had been playing the piano for so long, before he could even walk or reach the pedals, that it was practically an extra body part. So imagine his surprise at discovering how lethal the instrument could be, never occurring to him that it could be used as a weapon till the day’s villain, Con Rubato, used the notes to hypnotize people into listening to him—

—the strings to slice through flesh.

Con Rubato had been aiming for a building, but cut a fleeing bystander’s arm on the way. The welt of blood that had pooled on their skin had inspired the bastard to use the metal strands on his true victim.

Marinette.

Marinette, whose endearing clumsiness cost their music teacher’s performance and Chloe, exacerbating the man's embarrassment by starting a round of laughs. They practically handed him to Hawk Moth, the Akuma latching onto his negative emotions with alacrity.

With his target spotted, the evilized man focused on her, razor sharp vendetta fueling his motions, his fingers dancing in the air and commanding the instrument the way a masterful pianist should. The terror that had overcome Chat, seeing the deceptively delicate cords fly towards her, he—

He lost it.

“MARINETTE!”

She had been helping others escape because of course she was, ever ignorant to her own safety. If there was one thing, just one thing, he has learned about this girl—this woman—it’s that saving people is as instinctual to her as blinking, without thought or provocation.

It's one of the many things they have in common as he’s learned over the years, getting to know each other on the roof of her home, growing fonder with every morsel of information she deigns to share and him herding them like the rare, invaluable currency they are. The fact of the matter is, his celebrity and superhero status does not lend to genuineness in people. There is always that undercurrent of are you using me? to every interaction, coupled with his own secret double life, that makes forming connections near impossible. Few have made the exception—Marinette being one of them, for both Adrien and Chat Noir.

So there was no confusion or ambiguity—only innate protectiveness driving him to her side, running faster than he ever had he could have been flying, yet it still wasn't enough, the string cutting a lock of her hair just as he reached her and rolled them both out of the way.

He hadn't stopped. Using the momentum of their spin, he sprung to his feet with Marinette cradled in his arms like a bride. She hadn't needed to be told twice—her arms winding around his neck, her face burrowing onto his chest. He sped towards a closed shop, breaking in like the cat burglar his suit suggests he is, and deposited her behind the counter. As soon as her feet touched the ground, he was on her—hands roaming her every line, curve and flesh, needing to be certain she was unharmed.

“Are you okay? Are you injured? Did he hit you? Tell me where he hit you—”

“Chat, I’m fine—”

“Tell me where it hurts—”

“Chat, you need to slow down, you need to breathe—”

Harsh gasps filled the room where his chatter had been and he realized they were coming from him, his breathing ragged as hyperventilation forced his inhalations and exhalations.

Marinette cupped his cheeks.

“In through your nose for four seconds, hold for one, then breathe out for another four.”

Her hands on his face, he held her stare—because it took all of his carefully constructed restraint to hold himself up instead of collapsing in relief, because he had forgotten how to breathe and she was teaching him how, because he was drowning and her eyes were the surface.

Because he might have been the hero but she was his salvation.

“You can't, you can't—”

“I'm alright. No cuts, no wounds and no bleeding. Don't worry about me.”

Don’t worry. Don't worry? She couldn't possibly be serious!

“You can't stay here. Ladybug needs you!”

For once, Ladybug wasn't on the forefront of his mind. But the reminder is a staggering realignment in priority.

Or at least it should have been.

“You have to promise me you'll stay here.”

“But—”

“Marinette,” he pleaded. “He’s after you. I won’t be able to concentrate unless I know you're safe from him. So promise me.”

The barest of hesitations, and then—

A nod.

It was so unconvincing as to be laughable, she was a terrible liar. But not even he could conjure any levity to diffuse the charged situation. He saw the gears shifting in that big, beautiful brain of hers and he knew it was a vow she couldn't keep. So he kissed her forehead in lieu of a fruitless insistence.

“Please be careful,” he murmured onto her warm skin, and in that moment he swore he'd never known such hardship as leaving his friend behind.

His ring blares a final warning, ferrying him back to the present, and he has just enough time to step into the shadows as he transforms to Adrien.

Plagg is cranky and hungry, no surprise there. He feeds the Kwami three huge chunks of camembert in an effort to butter him up into transforming again.

What does surprise Adrien is Plagg’s lack of whining and complaint. The little thing looks at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes that leave him feeling naked despite the many layers of clothing he has on.

“It’s okay, you know,” Plagg says.

“What is?”

Why does everyone insist on being so cryptic tonight?

“You don't love Ladybug any less just cause you're worried about a lady friend.”

Again, he is struck by the revelation that Ladybug hadn't even crossed his mind.

So rather than correct his wayward friend, he stutters out an agreement—anxious as he is to transform—before he goes, “Claws out!”

It is with logic that he concludes she would be at home, and under median circumstances he would have been right. But it isn't logic compelling his motions, it's heart, and it beats in the direction of the school so it is there he runs.

The front door is locked but it takes only a shimmy of his claw to open it, and then he is stepping inside. It's an odd sight, the school at night—but not entirely unwelcome. With the halls bereft of the bustling energy of working students and laughing, mischievous children, it is calm... awash with a peacefulness that has his muscles melting in repose.

Marinette is here.

He senses her, in that inexplicable way that goes beyond his feline senses, his body attuned to her own as if they were but an extension of each other, and so he is always aware of her.

But even without this intrinsic sense, he need only follow the sound of the disjointed notes piercing the otherwise silent academy and know without a shadow of a doubt that it was emanating from her.

“I would think you’d have had enough of pianos, after today.”

She laughs, swiveling on her perch on the piano bench so that she faces him.

“Well, as proven by time and time again, you don't know everything.”

He rolls his eyes but the grin that stretches the breadth of his lips belays any hint of annoyance. He glides towards her side and there is no hesitation from her, only that inherent connection that shapes them into synchronicity, as she slides to make room for him and he falls into place beside her.

They don't say anything, their friendship long past the need to fill the space between them with meaningless chatter, content as they are in each other's presence that the silence isn't so much as encumbering but comforting.

Marinette’s fingers fly across the keys in tuneless disarray, elegant digits pressing at random before blending into something more purposeful.

The melody of All I Ask of You floats in the space between them, lovely yet hollow, incomplete as it is. After all, it isn't a harmony till two are playing.

He joins her then, his hands poised over the keys in practiced grace as he commandeers the bass quarters and matches her measured beat. There’s a gravity to his movements, a pressure in his chest filling with sensations aching to be free of him, yet those with which are inadequately expressed by words. So he lets the music do the talking instead, lets it course and crash through their veins in a symphony of speechless elucidation, till the hissing static of terror ringing in his ears fades, till the weight in his rib cage abates.

Till there is only safety, and the warm cocoon of her engulfing him, present and steady.

The last note reverberates throughout the walls and in the aftermath she whispers, “I didn't know you played,” as unwilling as he is to pierce through the echo of the melody with gratuitous exuberance. He doesn't miss the underlying awe in her tone though, and he smiles.

“Contrary to your belief, you don't know everything either,” at her curious expression he adds, “I've been playing since I was a child.”

“Wow,” she murmurs, mouth hanging open in disbelief. It baffles him.

“What?”

“I just… didn't peg you for a classical musical instrument guy. Electric guitar maybe. Certainly not broadway.”

That cursed blush makes a reappearance and spreads to his cheeks. To cover it up, he replies, “Been thinking a lot about me, have you?”

She rolls her eyes. “You wish, Kitty.”

The nickname bestowed upon him by Ladybug passing through her lips awakens something in him, and that undue intimacy—like he’s been here before, like he knows her in some other way—wafts through him like smoke.

But then she stutters and just as quickly, it is gone.

He chuckles at her brazenness and to save her from herself, he asks, “How about you? How long have you been playing?”

She shoots him a grateful look before grimacing. “I don't, actually. My fingers would constantly stumble over themselves.”

He laughs harder. “I can see that, yeah.”

She glares, before slumping her shoulders in defeat. She releases a frustrated puff of air before smiling, fondness painting a captivating image of her face. He tucks the stray lock resting on her cheek behind her ear to better see her.

Her smile widens and he feels his own lips widen to mirror her joy.

“I love Phantom though. I was determined to learn All I Ask of You and even then I couldn't manage to play it in its entirety.”

“Let me guess, bad hand-eye coordination?”

“Got it in one,” she groans. He nudges her shoulder with his good-naturedly.

“I don't blame you for wanting to learn. I mean, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a genius!”

She giggles. “Well, at least I can now add ‘pianist’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera fan’ to my extensive and ever expanding knowledge of Chat Noir.”

“Yeah, and you better guard that information with your life. Do you know how many people would kill you to gain all that insight?”

There's a sharpness to his articulation as the humor drains from him. The reminder of how close he'd come to losing her mere hours before erases whatever tranquility he had managed to conquer in the minutes past.

A feeling of apprehension settles around them, a stifling and suffocating mien that causes his hands to tremble from their place in his lap.

“Good thing I don't have to worry about that,” she affirms in lambent susurrations, her fingers breaching into his space and tangling themselves with his, “not when I have you.”

He gulps down the lump in his throat, even as a mist burns in his eyes.

“What if I wasn't there? What if I had been too late? What if—”

“But you weren't.”

Her hold on him tightens, her grip firm but gentle, the contrast of her pale skin remarkable against the ebony leather of his suit. He clings to this—to her—to keep himself from spiraling towards his dark thoughts. Being close to her again, holding her, knowing they will have this night and many more like it to come, he savors it with a newfound appreciation that he knows she reciprocates when she takes his chin in her free grasp.

“I didn't get a chance to earlier and I should have for all the times before, but I want to say, thank you.”

He is hit with a sense of déjà vu as her lips wrap around the words. But then she's cupping his face in her palms so that he sees nothing but her and he's overcome... by her voice, her warm, butter and vanilla scent and those kind, compassionate, depthless eyes—it almost feels like she’s staring at the very heart of him.

“Chat Noir, thank you.”

He shakes his head. How can he make her understand? There is no hesitation, when it comes to her, there is simply no precedent—her life is invaluable and, apart from Ladybug, she is above everybody else.

Even him.

But he doesn't say this. Instead, he tells her, “You're my best friend.”

And he’s never said it before, but as the words come out, he knows them to be true. With her, he can be honest even with his mask on. With her, he isn't so alone.

“I can't lose you, Marinette. I think I'd go crazy.”

She doesn’t say anything, for what is there to say? With Hawk Moth at large, either one of them could perish in the crossfire and there isn't any one thing they could do about that.

So she presses her forehead against his and they sit there in companionable quietude. The way she holds him, their tears falling as they breathe each other in, makes him think she somehow hears the words that clog its way up to his throat, pleading, pleading that she keep herself safe, that he never has to know a day without Marinette in it.

“Please,” she says after some time, “will you play for me?”

It's late, he should be getting her home and they technically are trespassing, but he is helpless against the current of her gaze and so he acquiesces.

Beethoven's Sonata 1 Opus 2 pours from his hands as remnants of his sadness fragment his soul. But then Marinette lays her head on his shoulder and it soon fades to Liszt's Love Dream, a tinkling background to accompany the contemporaneousness of their heartbeats.

When she droops against his side in slumber, he takes it as a sign to stop. But as the final melody languishes, he doesn't get up right away. He closes his eyes and focuses on the solid weight of her, at her even breaths, how they tickle the sliver of exposed skin on his neck and how they form the perfect soundtrack for him to cap off the night.

And when he has his fill of her (at least, for now) he scoops her into his arms. He is grateful for the darkness when he swoons at the way her arms curl around his neck, even in serene languor. As he walks to her building, his heart nearly falls right out of his chest at the touch of her lips to the underside of his jaw. Then, she nuzzles her face into the curve of his shoulder.

A cuddler, he muses with equal parts beguilement and affection. This tidbit he tucks into his part of the brain reserved for all things Marinette.

With her still in his arms, he turns her covers over before settling her onto her bed, a forethought to his every action. He relieves her of her bag and hangs it on her bedpost because he knows she likes it close to her at all times. He takes her shoes off, contemplates removing her jacket before thinking better of it and leaving it on—even if it might be scratchy against her skin—so as not to wake her. He takes off her pigtails, her hair spilling like the night sky against her pale, pink sheets. He feels drawn to the silken locks glimmering beneath the waxing moonlight so, propelled beyond control, he runs a hand through her hair.

“Chat,” she murmurs, turning on her side and reaching for him. He obliges, and this time it is him who twines their fingers.

“Always taking care of me,” she says around a yawn. “How can I take care of you?”

He thinks she's awake when she asks this, but then a snore trills from her. He chuckles, his hand never having left their perch on her head so he twirls the soft strands in his digits once more, and answers her anyway.

“You all ready do.”

And it is only because he’s assured she is deep within the inescapable clutches of sleep that he hums, “Marinette, love me.”

He pulls the covers up to her chin, tucking them the way he remembers his mother used to do for him, even well into his teen years.

He kisses her forehead, but it isn't enough. His lips feel like metal, her skin a magnet where he whispers, “love me, love me” in between nuzzling her cheek… brushing the corner of her mouth...

“Love me, Marinette.”

No one will harm you, he silently promises her. The sleepy smile on her lips feels seared into his brain, a balm to the anguish in his soul when he looks down at her and knows that with him, as Chat Noir and Adrien, she is cherished.

“That's all I ask of you.”

AN: This is my first ever Miraculous fic. I hope you liked it!