31. Chapter 31

As she watched her Miraculous fall apart around her, Marinette came to the verdict that pink was no longer her favorite color.

The girl felt the air whoosh from her lungs, dragging the last of her sobs along with it as Chat clawed his way down the wall. They landed hard, Marinette clinging to her partner's stumbling form as bursts of pale light shot across her limbs. The magic shattered wherever the light flared, chipping away until scarlet and spots yielded to fabric and flesh.

The de-transformation was far from normal in its approach, and the contrast was jarring. Typically her shift from hero to civilian was instantaneous, Ladybug one second and Marinette the next. Now it came in stuttering spurts, as if Tikki were desperately trying to hold the costume together for just a few more seconds — but even the kwami couldn’t hold out forever.

One hand rendered bare.

A single hair tie falling away.

Piece by piece the heroine was unravelling, in more ways than one.

‘It just had to be now,’ Marinette thought, resignation and dread mixing with her previous bout of penitence to form a numbing sensation that nearly made her throat close up. ‘Once again I’ve screwed myself over because I’m incapable of listening.’

For the second time that week, she was facing an accidental reveal.

‘Lucky me…’

Shaking off the selfish wave of self-pity, Marinette found herself sandwiched between a warm suit and biting brick, her body pressed against Chat’s as the boy continued to pin her head against the crook of his neck. His breathing mimicked the erratic pace of her own — most likely due to the fact he’d just sprinted nearly four blocks with 110 pounds of crying girlfriend strapped to his torso. Marinette dimly heard him whisper something, but the words were muffled by how tightly he threaded her against him, pulling her close until her damp cheeks rubbed salty trails along the side of his neck.

‘Well, there’s nothing to be done about it at this point,’ Marinette thought, resigning herself to the fact this was apparently going down right now. ‘No use in putting off the inevitable.’

Steeling herself for whatever came next, be it rejection or celebration, she tried to extract herself from Chat’s vice grip. It took some coaxing (against both his grasp and her own desire to do nearly anything else) but Marinette finally managed to draw herself out into open air, catching an exhausted Tikki in her shaking palms. She paused a moment to collect her courage, then looked up.

To her utter shock, she was not met with an expected green-eyed stare.

The teen blinked away her tears, brow furrowing in confusion. Tucking Tikki into her collar with slow and careful movements, she took in her boyfriend’s screwed-up expression.

“Chat…?” Marinette prompted, heart still beating dangerously fast as her mind raced in an attempt to process his astonishing reaction. She was right there, caught in his grasp as her civilian self… so why wasn’t he looking?

“I didn’t see anything,” Chat Noir rushed to assured her, shaking his head with a flurry of blonde locks. “I-I swear I kept my eyes closed the entire time and I didn’t see your face.”

‘He… didn’t look?’

Marinette felt her chest clench tight at his incredible sensitivity, knees giving out as she slumped back against the wall behind her with a small “Oh…” Her hands were braced against Chat’s shoulders, his arms still encircling her waist, and the tight embrace was perhaps the only thing that kept her from sliding down onto the dirty pavement beneath their feet. A million different questions begged to be let out, yet only one managed to work its way between her quivering lips.

“Why?” Marinette asked, voice hardly above a whisper as the word slipped into the sliver of space between them.

“You aren’t ready,” Chat answered simply, softly.

“So you… y-you aren’t going to o-open your eyes?”

“Not until you’re 100% ready, my Lady.”

“Why?” she repeated, unable to wrap her mind around his reasoning. ‘This is what he’s been waiting for, isn’t it?’

“You’ve already had one reveal sprung on you,” Chat began, dipping his head, “and…I’m not…” He cleared his throat, the next words a bit gravelly. “I won’t let you go through that again.”

Marinette felt her heart shatter and then stitch itself back together, making her work against a second wave of tears that threatened to pour out over her lashes at the sight of his tightly-shut eyelids. A mix of relief and guilt bubbled up in her throat at his gesture, sticking there as she struggled to work past her shock.

It was astounding, mind-blowing in a way Marinette could hardly conceive. After all the hell she’d put this boy through, after all the yelling and the running and the ignorance, he still somehow found it in himself to put her first.

Sure, Chat Noir had always been the self-sacrificial type… but this? This went beyond mere chivalry, and the depth of his compassion nearly drove Marinette to ignore her fear and beg him to open his eyes.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t because Adrien was right: she wasn’t ready.

Marinette hated that she wasn’t.  She hated, abhorred, loathed the fact that despite his endless understanding she wasn’t prepared to give up that part of herself just yet. But he'd granted her a choice, one she wasn’t about to squander with her indecisiveness.  

‘This doesn’t have to happen tonight,’ her tiny shoulder devil exalted, tempting the girl back to her comfortable ledge of anonymity. ‘You can go back to how it was before… go back to having him love you as Ladybug.’

‘But it needs to be soon,’ the creature’s more holy counterpart insisted, ever the realist. 'He deserves to know. You owe him that much…’

“T-thank you,” Marinette garbled out at last, willing both little voices away in order to focus on the now. “Thank you, f-for all of this. You don’t deserve to put up with someone like me...” Chat’s throat buzzed with a considering hum, the sound vibrating across the tip of her nose to fan out across her unmasked face.

“Maybe not,” he relented, tucking his chin atop her head with a weighty sigh, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I still want to put up with you.” Marinette’s heart latched onto the words like a drowning man to a life preserver, clutching them tight as his voice floated in the evening air. “And even though you can be stupid… and brash… and stubborn—“

“…I know…”

“Not done!” Chat chirped out, keeping his tone light but insistent as he cut though her soft interjection. “Even though you can be stupid and brash and stubborn and a whole lot of other words I can’t think of right now, you make up for it by also being honest and real and… a-and flawed.”

Here he pulled back, giving Marinette a bittersweet smile that so perfectly mirrored her father’s in its subtle sadness that she found herself floored by the similarity. His voice grew softer still. “You, my Lady, are one perfectly infuriating girl, but you’re my perfectly infuriating girl… so I’ll continue to put up with you, even if it means I only get to know your Ladybug side.”

The alley fell quiet, cool air rushing across the pair as Chat trailed off into silence.

‘He just had to be a poet,’ Marinette thought, making a sort of mangled sound in response to his perfect, piecing words. ‘I’m dating a model and a goddamn poet.’

Chat’s eyes squeezed tighter, face scrunching up as he leaned towards her.  “I can’t tell if that’s laughter or crying without looking at your face,” he admitted, sounding concerned by her less-than-coherent reply. “Did I say the wrong thing again?”

“No, y-you’re fine,” Marinette assured him, letting her head thump against his broad chest as she fought to control her breathing. “You’re... you're perfect actually. It’s just a… little bit of both.” Adrien stayed silent, seeming to sense that she needed a moment to process everything.

‘Not until you’re 100% ready…’

They stood quietly for a few minutes more, allowing their heartbeats to steady and their emotions to settle. Exhausted by the past hour — hell, by the past week — Marinette felt her tired thoughts begin to drift, lulled by the warmth of the protective body curled around hers. A flitting realization occurred to her, hilariously trivial in light of their current situation, but one that still made her irrationally upset.

“I think I dropped my chocolate a few buildings back…” Marinette mumbled against his collarbone. There was a surprised intake of breath. Then the black material against her temples began to quiver, and Chat/Adrien’s tell-tale chuckles filled the empty side street until she couldn’t help but join in on his infectious giggling.

“I’ll bring you another one later tonight,” he promised, eyes still screwed shut but lips stretching into a tentative smile. “Maybe three or four.”

“T-thank you…I’d like that.” She felt Adrien press his hands against her back, worry touching his features as he likely registered the way she was trembling.

“You need to go home, Ladybug,” he murmured. “Go do whatever you have to do in order to calm down, and I’ll see you in two hours, okay?”

“Okay,” Marinette whispered, trying and failing to pull herself from his comfortable grasp. The feeling of being in Chat’s embrace after their time apart verged on the addictive, and the added thought that she was also being held by Adrien made an already difficult action nearly impossible to tackle.

A long moment passed in that intoxicating haze before his voice rang out again.

“You do realize you have to let go of me in order to leave, right?”

“I’m working up the courage,” Marinette replied in a small voice, burying her nose against the crook of her boyfriend’s neck. “Give me a minute.” ‘He always smells so clean,' she mused, losing herself in the familiar scent of his aftershave and trying to cook up some excuse to stay.

“No rush, Bug,” Chat murmured, sounding equally entranced as he continued to let her cling. Gloved fingers carded their way through her hair, careful claws tangling amidst the dark strands as the sounds of the city echoed down the corridor. “It’s down,” he noted. Marinette hummed in reply, taking the opportunity to snuggle a little closer. “That’s cute. You’re cute.”

Needless to say, the sound of Adrien whispering compliments against the crown of her head didn’t do her blood pressure any favors, but Marinette found it in herself not to squeak. ‘He’s your boyfriend,’ she reminded herself, fighting down an irrational bout of shyness. ‘He’s been your boyfriend for weeks, so pull it together, girly.’

After a few more moments of indulgence, she finally willed herself away, drawing back as his hands slid out from around her.

“I’ll wait here for five minutes,” Chat said, leaning against the wall with his eyes still dutifully shut. “That should give you plenty of time to scamper out of sight.”

Marinette nodded, then gave an affirmative sound when she remembered he couldn’t see her. Taking one last look at the now almost comically familiar face (‘Yep, that’s literally just Adrien Agreste wearing a mask’), she reluctantly turned to leave.

She'd taken one step when a last-minute decision struck her, and before she could think twice about it, Marinette swiveled back to plant a peck on Chat’s cheek. It was quick and incredibly chaste, but it still inspired a roiling wave of bashfulness that lit up her skin as she removed her lips.

‘You can do that now. Just… just kiss Adrien whenever you want.’

Middle school Marinette would have had an aneurism.

But that wasn’t who was standing in the alleyway, and Lycée Marinette just flushed, watching as her boyfriend swallowed a grin.

“'Til later, my Lady?”

“'Til later, chaton.”

…

‘Til later, Adrien.’

“So… I guess I’m the one in the hot seat now, huh?”

Adrien swiveled atop the chimney at the sound of Ladybug’s voice, arranging his face in a businesslike expression despite the way his heart fluttered at her arrival.

The past two hours had been torturous for the boy, though in a way that had been very different from the rest of the week’s torment. Upon reaching home Adrien had immediately been summoned to his father’s office for a grueling address about his upcoming show schedule, then directed towards the wall of monitors to take part in some video conference he had no interest in, then sent to the kitchen to consult with the head chef on his new high-protein diet, then—

Well, you get the point. He was a busy guy.

So busy, in fact, that he hadn't found the time to actually sit down and process his encounter with Ladybug before nine o’clock snuck up on him. He hadn't had the time to work out whether he was still upset or relieved — or maybe even a little of both — before Chat Noir had to be leaping off to their meeting place.

Somehow he'd managed to arrive first, and the hero had helped himself to their judge’s podium.

“You are indeed in the hot seat, my Lady,” Adrien responded to her greeting, crossing his legs at the booted ankle and regarding his partner through narrowed eyes. “So start chatting.” Ladybug gave a slight wince, scuffing her toe against the rooftop before peering up with a contrite expression written across her adorable face.

“I brought you croissants?” she tried, drawing his attention to the white box clutched in her grasp.

Adrien’s eyebrow twitched, his heightened feline senses picking up the warm scent of butter as it rose from her offered parcel. “Resorting to bribery now, are we?” he teased, willing his growling stomach to behave. ‘Talking now, eating later…’

“Well, you did bring me chocolate first.”

“I brought you chocolate because your body is tearing itself apart. You bought me croissants because you feel guilty.”

“All right… you've got me there,” Ladybug conceded, making a move to pitch the box off the roof and into the dumpster below. “Guess I’ll just toss them—“

“Wait!” Adrien shrieked, nearly leaping from his perch as Ladybug paused mid-throw.

She quirked her lip. “Yes?”

“…I didn’t say I didn’t want them,” he grumbled, straightening with a huff as Ladybug passed the offering up to him. Chucking his self-control out the window, Adrien fished a hand in and stuffed a pastry into his waiting jaw as he returned his attention to his girlfriend. “We’re shtill tawking by thu way,” he reminded her, spewing crumbs with each word. “You awre not off the hooshk.”

“I didn’t think so,” Ladybug sighed, planting herself below him and waiting until he’d inhaled his first treat. Adrien watched her shift from side to side, reveling in the comfort of her sorely missed company while he tried to organize his thoughts.

They needed to talk, that much was abundantly clear. Now it was just a matter of knowing where to start.

Ladybug had mentioned an apology earlier, but Adrien found that despite his air of fabricated aloofness, he’d already mostly forgiven her. Her actions after the akuma fight had all but confirmed what Plagg had told him earlier: Ladybug’s reaction to his reveal had been a purely knee-jerk response, not the result of some perceived shortcoming on his part. That understanding had made it remarkably easy for Adrien to let go of his lingering malcontent.

That being said, he wasn’t about to let her off that easy.

“I don’t like it when you run away from our conversations,” Adrien began, jumping right into the discussion with a brutally honest confession. ‘No hero worship. No sugar-coating. Just confront her about how you’re feeling.’

Ladybug swallowed, eyes snapping to his.

“Yeah, that’s something I really need to work on.” The heroine stilled, tilting her head. “Wait, no. That’s something I will work on.” Adrien nodded, feeling the knot he’d tied himself into over the past week begin to unravel at her frank response. For the first time in a long time their conversation didn’t feel like a game, and the sensation was liberating. “I’m sorry I didn’t do a good job of explaining myself that night, but thing were just a bit c-crazy for me at that point… what with you being you, and… a-and I know that’s not a good excuse but—“

“Ladybug,” Adrien cut in, fearful she was winding herself up again, “it’s all right. We have time now, so you can explain whatever you feel like sharing and I’ll listen.” The girl deflated, chewing her lip in concentration before lining up her thoughts.

“I was never disappointed in you,” she began, “and I’m so sorry if I ever made you feel that way.” Hearing her say the words was like having a dead weight lifted off his chest, but Adrien dutifully continued to pay attention through his soaring relief. “I’m sorry I can be bad at talking things out sometimes and I’m sorry you have to take the brunt of my hurt feelings. I’m sorry I ran and I’m sorry I yelled and I’m really sorry about ignoring you all week.” Ladybug dragged both hands down her face, peering up at him between latticed fingers as she mumbled against her palms, “Basically, sorry for being a total bitch.”

Adrien tried not to snort.

“You weren’t being a bitch.” Blue eyes narrowed. “Well, you weren’t being a total bitch.”

“I was though!” Ladybug moaned, now pacing listlessly below him. “I made you feel like you were the problem when really it was just me having all the issues! I’m an absolute jerk!”

“Agreed.”

“I’m a hypocrite who let things get way too out of hand!”

“Yep.”

‘No point in arguing it,’ Adrien thought, allowing his girlfriend to blow off some steam as he reached for a second croissant.  

“I’m a… a…” Ladybug twirled her wrists, seeming to claw at the air for the right word.

“A stupid teenage girl?” Adrien suggested helpfully, taking a big bite of his pastry. ‘These are good… almost familiar.’

“Yes!” she exclaimed, firmly planting her feet as she half-shouted her declaration into the night. “I’m a stupid teenage girl who couldn’t get over the fact her stupid teenage boyfriend was also her stupid childhood crush!”

…

Adrien felt himself shoot straight up to heaven.

Ladybug looked as if she’d plunged into hell.

He swallowed abruptly, abandoning his munching in favor of stretching his mouth into a comically wide grin. ‘Oh Lord, this is too good to be true…’ Adrien thought, tossing her confession around in his head as his girlfriend balled her hands into fists with a whispered curse.

“Excuse me, my Lady,” he said, shaking his head in wonder, “but did you by any chance just say—“

“Nope!” Ladybug squeaked, turning as red as her mask as Chat broke the still atmosphere with a whoop.

“Yes, you did!” he cried, swinging his legs with utter glee as leaned forward atop the chimney. “I most certainly did just heard you say you had a childhood crush on me! Oh, I can see it now. Little Ladybug with her pigtails and missing front teeth, twirling around her bedroom with a magazine clutched to her chest!”

“I-It wasn’t— a-and— you—!”

“Did you scribble tiny hearts in your journal, tacking my last name onto the end of yours?”

“Oh, for the love of…”

“Did you name our kids yet?”

“CHAT NOIR YOU STOP TEASING ME RIGHT NOW!”

“Chat Noir? Who’s that?” Adrien sang out, riding his wave of giddiness as he slid down to the roof below. Quick as a flash, he gripped Ladybug’s arms where they crossed over her chest, bending down to look her straight in her sourpuss face as he let his words roll out in a cocky exclamation. “Why, I’m Adrien Agreste! Your childhood crush, remember?”

‘Kill.’

Marinette was amazed that her mask hadn’t melted off her face; she was sure that the heat of her blush would have reduced a less-magical disguise to pure ash at this point. Pseudo-murderous thoughts were stewing in her head once again, but she managed to avoid stomping on the roof like a child in favor of grinding her teeth in embarrassment.

Her boyfriends just continued to pull that goddamn smirk.

She knew the two boys were the same — of course she knew — but having Chat Noir outright declaring himself as “her childhood crush Adrien Agreste” was a little disorienting to say the least.

“That was years—“Well, a year. “—ago!” Marinette shot back, avoiding those glimmering green eyes as if her very sanity depended on it (which it totally did). “It was just a silly little infatuation is all, and I can assure you my tastes have matured since then.” She ended with a sniff, still refusing to meet his magnetic gaze.

“Reaaalllllyyyyy now…” Chat—

Adrien?

She didn’t know what to call him at this point.

“Reaaalllllyyyyy now…” her partner drawled out, playfully twisting her upper body side to side. “So what you’re saying is, your tastes have evolved from young me… to slightly older me?” The boy laughed, long and free in a way that almost made Marinette crack a smile. “I hate to say it, my Lady, but I think you have a type.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to point that out,” she admitted, letting the blush ease off her face with a deep breath.

“So you have a track record for falling for gorgeous blondes, do you?”

“Mostly just you in particular if I’m being candid.”

“You know, I think I like this whole ‘honesty’ thing,” Chat mused, finally managing to catch her eye. “I’m learning so much already.”

“I can’t lie, this ‘talking things out’ routine is pretty refreshing,” Marinette conceded, giving him a tentative smile. For the first time the two noticed how close they’d drifted towards each other, now only inches apart with Chat’s hands resting on her upper arms. Marinette felt a tiny spark light in the pit of her stomach at their proximity, deliciously similar to the fluttering she’d felt when their relationship was first blossoming and so exciting in its resurgence.

It was the lingering butterflies of her buried Adrien crush mixed with the bursting heat of Chat’s endearment. It was dangerous. Deadly, even.

It seemed as though he had killed her first… but she couldn’t find it in herself to complain.

“Are we going to be okay?” Marinette asked, breaking the silence that had begun to envelope them.

“Of course we are,” Chat responded, letting his thumbs skate across her suit. “We always are in the end.”

“But I don’t want this to be the end.”

“Well then, it isn’t. In fact we can call it our new beginning if you’d like.” Marinette nodded, prompting his head to bob alongside hers.

“I would like that,” she said, the idea of opening a new chapter sounding simultaneously exciting and nervewracking. Frankly, Marinette didn’t know what would come of her deciding to keep her identity a secret. She didn’t know if it would ultimately save or break them. The millions of different questions from hours before came flooding back, poking the inside of her skull with their insistent inquiries.

What would change between Ladybug and Chat?

What would change between Marinette and Adrien?

What could come of two people pursuing a four-sided relationship where only one person held all the chips?

What—

“Can I hold you again?” her boyfriend asked, his voice snapping her from her musing. With a shake of her pigtailed head Marinette glanced up at him, a sweet grin breaking across her face at the care she found written in his handsome features.

“Yes please,” she replied, meeting him halfway as Chat drew her towards him. The way they intertwined was effortless, Marinette slinging her arms around his neck and Chat allowing his to settle behind her waist. Exhaling in tandem, the duo melded into each other with a silent conversation that flowed across their bodies in a mutually understood exchange.

Her fingers in his hair were the most eloquent of apologies, spelling out everything words couldn’t convey against the surface of his scalp.

His cheek nuzzling against her neck was its own kind of forgiveness, expressing something beyond simple acceptance with an imprint that was both physical and emotional.

The shared heartbeat that thrummed across their chests was a promise, simple in conception and without any cumbersome expectations.

“Can I kiss you again?” Chat requested, nosing his way up until he was situated in front of her face.

“Yes please,” Marinette breathed, meeting him halfway once more as their lips rejoined in a caress that was both tentative and sure. Their movements were practiced, his tilt of the jaw just as expected as her sigh in response, but the context was different now. They were different now.

Her fingers tightened in the hair of the boy she’d been chasing after for years, lips parting against the ones she’d caught long before she had even realized.

His nuzzling cheek was now concave, drawing the breath from the girl who had, and always would, take his away.

Their shared heartbeat was quickening now, its promise taking on a new heat as two suited chests pressed together in a mutual desire for more contact.

“Can I love you again?” Adrien pleaded, whispering the words between their momentarily parted lips.

“Yes please,” Marinette begged, meeting him halfway yet again as the boy hoisted her up onto his hips.

Chat took four long, lumbering steps, and Marinette gasped she felt her back shoved against the cool brick of the chimney. His mouth reclaimed hers in an instant, probing and pleading but never harsh in its loving exploration, and his fiery care only spurred her to meet his every push with equal fervor. Marinette felt that name, the one she’d trained herself not to desire, lingering on the tip of her dancing tongue, but she chose to swallow it down with a groan.

She knew she could say it; it belonged to him after all. But something about acknowledging her classmate in this particular circumstance seemed wrong to her. This moment was for Chat Noir. It was for the boy who had never once overlooked her in a crowd, the partner who had never once let her down in a fight, and the young man who had never once left her wanting when she needed him the most.

She was here for Chat.

And even though it was technically Adrien’s hands skimming up and down her back, Adrien’s lips trailing kisses down the curve of her jaw, Marinette wouldn’t allow him to intrude on this space that had always been for Ladybug and Chat Noir alone.

So when her boyfriend sunk his teeth into lobe of her ear, hips canting up against hers, it wasn’t Adrien’s name that she exhaled into the night.

“Chat…” Marinette sighed, letting him wreck the side of her face for only a few seconds more before she tugged him away. He surfaced with a slow blink, pupils blown wide and entirely focused on her.

“Is this okay?” he asked, instantly dialing back his intensity for fear of overstepping his bounds. “You can tell me whenever you want to stop.”

“This is perfect,” she assured him, heart swelling at the way he seemed to relax. “I missed you so much.” Chat’s subsequent expression reminded Marinette why she loved the way he turned things up even more than the way he dialled things back.

“Did you miss me?” the boy questioned, voice lilting in mounting desire. “Or this?” the cat continued, pitching forward to grant her a positively scorching kiss. Marinette grinned into his onslaught, letting her fingernails trace tiny trenches down the plane of his suited back as Chat coaxed her into arching against him.

“Why not both?” she both inquired once he’d relinquished her lips. “Am I allowed to have missed both?”

“Absolutely,” Chat confirmed, sounding pleased with her answer. “And for the record, I missed you too.”

“Well now I’ve got to ask, don’t I?”

“Ask what, my Lady?”

“I’ve got to ask whether you missed me…” Marinette cupped his jaw, pressing a closed-mouth kiss to his lips before whispering low against them, “…or this.” The groan Chat gave in response to her hips rolling forward was answer enough, but the following affirmation was also nice to hear.

“Both,” he said, bringing their foreheads together as his hands hitched her up higher, “definitely both.”

“Good… cause you’re about to get a lot of both.”

The space between them disappeared.

“All right… Copycat, Dark Cupid, and Rogercop,” Ladybug asked, brushing away a few stray strands of hair that had fallen into his face as Adrien mulled over his answer.

The two of them had inevitably ended up tangled together on the rooftop, abandoning their make out session after about fifteen minutes in favor of just snuggling under the moonlight.  It wasn't that Adrien didn’t want to kiss her (Lord knew it topped the list of his favorite pastimes), but turned out talking was difficult when your lips were otherwise occupied, and the pair of them had silently decided they’d rather spend their time catching up than trying to suck each other's faces off.

So talk they did.

For nearly an hour they’d gone back and forth, discussing anything and everything from the upcoming holidays to which video game character would win in a fight to what they’d done that week. They hadn’t lingered on that last bleak topic, finding no pleasure in recounting hours of nothing but worry and sadness, and eventually the conversation had turned back in the direction of the ridiculous, leading to a no-holds-barred game of—

“Fuck Copycat, marry Rogercop, and kill Dark Cupid,” Adrien said, nodding his head decisively as Ladybug let out a snort.

“That’s a little narcissistic, don’t you think? Banging yourself? Also: why in the world would you want to marry Rogercop?”

“Technically Copycat’s my clone, so it’s more or less masturbation at that point. And seriously? He’d be the ultimate husband, always keeping me safe!” This earned him a considering hum.

“You make some valid points,” Ladybug conceded, snickering nonetheless as she glanced up at him. Adrien drew her closer, arm draped over her shoulder as slender legs sprawled across his folded ones. He gladly nestled in, stifling the yawn that threatened to bubble out of his throat. The teen hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest in some time, and with the emotionally taxing day he’d just gone through, Adrien’s body was screaming out for sleep.

“Okay, now you,” he said, electing to ignore his drowsiness. ‘There’s no way I’m cutting this short,’ Adrien decided, watching as Ladybug tossed her head in thought. ‘Not when I just got her back.’

“Hmmmm…” she mused, narrowing her eyes and tapping a finger to her chin. “I’d say, kill Rogercop—“

“Not my husband, you monster!”

“—fuck Dark Cupid and marry Copycat.”

“Okay, now I’m going to need your explanations here.”

“Easy, Rogercop is scary and I don’t like him.”

“Again, step off my man.”

“Dark Cupid literally abhors love so I doubt he’d make good spouse material.”

“Smart, smart.”

“And Copycat got akumatized because of his love for me, making us the perfect match!” Ladybug finished, spreading out her hands as if she’d concluded an important lecture.

“Yeah, or something,” Adrien said vaguely, recalling the real force that drove Copycat to become akumatized. “But are you sure you aren’t just marrying him for his good looks? You are aware you have a type...”

“The fact Copycat happens to be incredibly handsome has minimal bearing on my decision,” his girlfriend said with a sniff. “I reached my conclusions through logic and reason alone.” Adrien opened his mouth to retort, but all that came out was a tell-tale yawn he couldn’t quite smother in time. “Oooooh, I heard that. I think it’s time for us to head home, kitty cat.”

“I hate to say it, but I think you’re right.” Adrien felt his back crack as Ladybug pulled him to his feet, the boy reaching back to dust off the backside of his suit.

“Text me when you get in bed?” Ladybug asked, her voice taking on an almost pleading tone as she appeared to gauge his reaction.

‘God, I missed her.’

“As nice as that sounds,” Adrien began, leaning down to make sure she could spot his teasing smile, “I’d love to actually get some sleeping done tonight, so you’ll have to keep your sexting brief.”

Had he ever mentioned how cute she was when she blushed?

She was super cute when she blushed.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ladybug muttered, laying her knuckles on the center of his chest and lightly dragging them against the suit’s zipper. “I just… text me goodnight?”

Adrien felt his heart melt a bit at the hopeful way she stared up at him, their week of lost contact and miscommunication fading into a distant memory in the wake of her suppliant blue eyes. “Of course, my Lady,” he assured her, dipping down to press a kiss against her scarlet palm. “Every night, for as long as you’d like.”

Her relief-drenched smile was the perfect closer to their night.

Adrien found his trek home to be significantly easier than his trip to their meeting, motions effortless despite having to vault across Paris with a half-filled pastry box wedged under his arm. He didn't even hear any complaints from Plagg as the two separated in their dim room, the kwami merely nodding in a gesture that could almost be construed as pride before zipping off into his lofty perch.

He could feel the sting of his shower as the water cascaded across his skin, feel the stretch of his pajamas across his shoulder and the slide of sheets against his back. Adrien felt the weight of the cell phone as he gathered it into his palm just as he could feel the vibration that accompanied her immediate reply.

[ goodnight ladybug <3 ]

[ goodnight chat noir <3 ]

Adrien felt relief. He felt joy and approval... and maybe still some worry as well, but all that really mattered to him was that he was feeling again. That they were speaking again.

And he’d never felt a better night’s sleep than the one Ladybug lulled him into that evening.