Chapter Text
She took a step towards him.
And then another.
All the words that she knew had failed her, and all of the emotion in her body had left her. What could she say? What would even make sense? There was no fixing the situation, not really, you couldn’t take away three years of waiting and wanting. You couldn’t take away three years of replaying every word in your head and wondering if you said the wrong thing.
“But you’re not him,” that was all she could say, and it hit the air like a deadweight. Because Adrien wasn’t Gabriel Agreste, because he never would be. The love Gabriel had was greedy and selfish, it took and took until it tore away all that he knew, until it ruined Paris and everything inside it. But Adrien? “It wouldn’t have mattered that he’s your dad, because you’re Adrien Agreste, not him, because I would have stood by you no matter what. I wouldn’t have cared what they thought or what they said. I wouldn’t have listened to them or let them stop me. If people wanted to close doors in my face because of who I loved, I’d make new ones. If people didn’t trust me, or see me for who I was, I wouldn’t care because I would know the truth.” Another step, another mountain climbed on her way back to him. “If they hated you because of who your father was, I wouldn’t want to be around them anyway, I wouldn’t want what they had to give me. I know that you’re good. You’re so good that everyone can see it—that they would have to admit it eventually.”
She held his gaze, her hands holding onto her shoulders like that could save her from sinking—like she wasn’t so far gone under the tide of Adrien that everything she had tried to hold back for three years wasn’t already killing her. She couldn’t stop drowning; she couldn’t stop wanting him.
“Adrien, I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen years old,” she whispered, “all of you.”
He exhaled, the low, throaty sound hitting the air.
“When you left, I…” She stopped, because he didn’t need to know, because she didn’t need to see him hurt like she had. “You broke me, and no one else has been able to put me back together since.” That was enough, that had to be enough for then.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, the words almost lost to the crashing of the waves outside.
She shook her head. Maybe she needed the apology, maybe someday she’d want it, but then, at that very moment? She was the only person who could give herself what she needed, the only person who could pull her head above water.
She tugged her hands from her shoulders, and walked closer, far too close to him. It was the lack of distance she would have dreamed of when she was in school, the kind that led to moments she cherished such as placing her head on his shoulder or reaching across his lap to hold his hand. It was the proper distance to look him in the eyes, the proper distance to say what she should have said before.
“Adrien, I would wait three more years for you, fifty if I had too—because I’m so stupidly in love with you, I’ve been so stupidly in love with you.” She inhaled, looking up at him, taking in those beautiful green eyes, “all I want to know is, are you still in love with me too?”
And maybe she would have gotten the answer she wanted. Maybe she would have finally kissed him. Maybe that would have been the start of their happily ever after—
Had Lila Rossi not stumbled into the cabin with Kim’s hand on her ass and her fingers laced in his hair.
“God, you are so fucking lucky I’m horny right now,” Kim muttered.
And just like that, all the romance left the air.
And though she wanted to ask, to drag him out on the deck and demand it, she saw that look in Adrien’s eyes and she knew.
He was terrified.
And really, who wouldn’t be? Who wouldn’t be scared? Who wouldn’t worry about what the future held?
So, she laughed. An empty, loud sound, one enough to break any tension. And, not knowing what else to do, she ran. Because maybe not knowing was better than the truth.
"This is a wedding, not a death march, Marinette,” Alya said, frowning at the reflection of Marinette in her mirror.
Honestly, if it wasn’t Alya, Marinette might have gotten by. Anyone else would have believed her fake smile as she looked in the mirror, applying her makeup.
But Alya? Being her best friend, she was in the business of reading Marinette’s emotions. Marinette couldn’t get anything by her, she was surprised that she somehow managed to hide being Ladybug from her for so long.
“It’s your wedding, Alya, am I not allowed to be sad that I’m losing my best friend?”
“To your other best friend?” Alya asked. She could have at least hidden her skepticism.
“It’s your wedding,” Marinette repeated softly. As in, it’s your wedding, not my problem parade. It’s your day, not mine. Don’t worry about me.
“He’s just over in the next room,” Alya said, reading her mind.
“It’s been a month,” Marinette repeated, shutting down the plan before Alya could even begin to form it. “If he wanted to respond, he would have done it by now.”
“I’m just saying.” She was not just saying. She was suggesting in that Alya way that wasn’t really a suggestion, but rather a demand. “I’m sure if you vanished for just one minute, I could get Nino to pull him out in the hallway and you could get your answer.”
“Alya.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Focus on your wedding,” Marinette commanded.
Alya scoffed. “Right. And how am I supposed to enjoy said wedding knowing that my best friend is miserable waiting for a response that, if she doesn’t go and demand it, might not ever come?”
“You could look at your groom and be happy about spending the rest of your life with him?”
“Oh please, I would choose you over Nino anytime.”
She didn’t doubt that.
“Listen,” Marinette began, putting down her make up brush. “I’m going to be fine; I promise. I’m just going to get some air.”
“Sure,” Alya said with a roll of her eyes as Marinette got out of her chair and moved to the balcony door. “I’ll see you when you’re done having your fifth mental break down and finally want to talk, Marinette.”
Damn, she was good. Marinette sighed, turning the deadbolt before looking back at her friend’s knowing expression, the other bridesmaids busying themselves in the background. “Thank you,” she said, because she wasn’t about to deny it, not to Alya. And maybe, once she got it out of her system, she would talk to her. Maybe once it was all over, she would tell Alya everything.
But at that moment, all she needed was air. And so she went, pulling open the balcony door of the hotel room and letting the night air cool her skin. She let go of the handle, letting it click shut behind her as she walked further onto the balcony, the streetlights of Paris gleaming far in the distance.
It was times like this that she missed being a superhero. She wondered what Paris would look like then, sprawled out in front of her years later. Brighter, probably, the city had changed since Ladybug left.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” A voice said, and she was sure that it had said it to her a thousand times before. The words were so familiar in that voice, said in the same inflection at the same volume that she had heard growing up. “It’s ours,” she was sure he’d only said that once or twice before—on the nights when it felt like there was no one else and the city belonged to them alone.
“It’s Paris,” she corrected, just as she had before. Because there was no owning it. It was this living, untamable thing, a treasure for her to protect.
For them to protect, because there he was, standing out on his own balcony, looking at the city like it was far more beautiful than the stars.
Not Adrien, not at that moment. Just as she wasn’t Marinette, not when thinking of Paris. Chat Noir and Ladybug, the heroes of the city, both standing out in their civilian forms, looking over it once more.
There was so much distance between them, and yet it felt like he was right there. At any moment he would leap, clad in his black leather cat suit, and stand right beside her. That was how the story should have ended; if it couldn’t end with a kiss, then it should have ended with Chat Noir and Ladybug, together again.
But Tikki and Plagg were far away in a box in Nepal.
“I came out to get some air,” he said, not turning to look at her.
“Me too.”
“Do you remember when we used to sit on your roof and watch all the cars go by?” He asked, and she could only smile. How could she forget?
Things were so easy when the masks were on.
“We have half an hour,” Marinette informed him. “Then the wedding starts and we start walking. We should go inside.”
“We should,” he agreed. Neither made to move. Neither wanted to move.
She caught him staring at her out of the corner of her eye. Never mind the fact that she was staring too. She wished then, like she had so many times before, that she knew the right thing to say.
“What if we didn’t?” He asked, like it wasn’t this crazy, completely irrational thing to do. Like there weren’t so many people in the rooms behind them waiting on them. “What if we didn’t go at all?”
“It’s not even your wedding,” she said, turning to face him entirely. “Or mine.” He grinned anyway, sauntering over to the side of his balcony nearest her, leaning on the railing. “Don’t you think that would be rude?” They had been chosen for a reason.
“What do a best man and maid of honor even do anyway?” Adrien fired back, raising his eyebrows at her. “Past all of the party planning that we’ve already done, there’s just speeches and toasts ahead of us. I don’t think either of them want us reading our speeches, I planned almost every word of mine to embarrass Nino.”
She frowned, wishing she was able to resist it, but meeting him on the side of the balcony beside herself. He was so close that she almost thought she could leap. “And what would we do?”
“Stay here forever, find a way off this roof, run—Your pick, really,” he said, as if it was that simple. As if they could leave. It was her best friend’s wedding. “I know Andre’s stand closed years ago, but maybe if we’re lucky there’s another icecream man in Paris running around at night. I bet there’s one outside of the Eiffel tower, if you wanted to revisit old times.”
“And why would we do that?” She asked. This stupid, awful part of her was considering it.
“Because Nino just told me that he wanted me to be happy and that was one of the most important things to him today, and I bet Alya just told you the same thing,” he said. “But we’re not happy.”
“And?”
He looked at her like she was stupid. Maybe she was. He’d been out there longer than her, she could tell by the pink of his cheeks, maybe some great clarity had befallen him in that time, and he’d realized that she actually wasn’t all that bright. “Come over here,” he said.
“I am not coming over there.”
“Then I’m coming over there.”
“You are not coming over here!” Marinette declared, slightly astounded. “People are changing!” He didn’t seem to care all that much. “We’re not all models, some of us have shame!”
He laughed. Fuck, his laugh. She’d forgotten how good it was. “Meet me in the middle then,” he said, hauling a leg over his guardrails before she could protest. “I want to be closer to you.”
She was going to die because of him, she was sure, even if he was sitting oh so comfortably on his own railing. With her luck, she’d slip then fall to her inevitable doom. She could only hope that the bushes below her were soft.
“There,” he said once she’d settled, kicking out so that his foot lightly tapped her leg to prove his point, “Closer.” This was obviously some elaborate scheme to kill her that he had spent the last three years planning.
Almost as soon as she sat down, she began to second guess it. The voice in the back of her head was screaming for her to get up and go back to the suite. She could see the girls in the hotel getting ready to leave, Rose hauling up Juleka’s dress and Mylene reapplying Alix’s eyeshadow. She knew she should have left, sitting out there dangling herself over the edge of a building with Adrien wasn’t the best idea. She was supposed to be in there, taking care of things, fixing dresses and calming down nerves. But then there was Alya at the door, her face lighting up as she looked out at her, craning her neck just enough to see Adrien. She didn’t look like she missed her, only like she wished she could stay a moment longer.
She had to see it out for Alya, if only so there was finally an end to it all, a yes or no to the Adrien situation. Then she could be better, the kind of friend Alya deserved, one who wasn’t stuck in the past. Then she could dance at the reception with Nino’s cousins, and faun over men with Alya who weren’t blond supermodels.
“I know I should have told you that night,” Adrien said, drawing her back in. “And I did try to. Actually, I should have told you many nights ago, years even, but I don’t even know how to start now.” She closed her eyes, things like this were easier to take when you didn’t have to look. “I don’t regret disappearing, Marinette.”
There it was.
“But I do regret not taking you with me,” he said, and her eyes flew open.
If she hadn’t been holding on for dear life, she might have fallen off the balcony.
“Not just now,” he clarified, because it felt like a split decision. “But before too, so many times before. From the moment I left, I knew that I wanted to turn back, but I kept telling myself that I was doing the right thing. Over and over again, this is for Marinette. Marinette will move on. It didn’t matter if it hurt, you would be okay.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“You weren’t,” Adrien agreed. “I’m going to sound like an awful person, but I was happy about that. I was way too happy,” he admitted. “And this isn’t going to fix anything, this isn’t going to give you those three years back, this isn’t going to solve the problem an empty hotel room caused, and this won’t bring back Tikki and Plagg—But I’m asking you for just one second to give me this chance. I’m asking you to make the dumbest mistake of your life with me; to leave this party and everyone in it, to walk Paris again like it’s our city to own. For just one night, even though your body will practically ache with stupidity, disappear with me. Leave them all to wonder where we went, how even years later we always seem to miss things. Because I love you, even when you’re just walking on the sidewalk beside me and not saving the day, you’re my everyday Ladybug. Because I just want those moments back where it’s just you and I, and no one else knows who we really are.”
“And who are we, Adrien?” She asked. “The two biggest idiots in Paris?”
“A team,” he said, “amongst other things.”
Epilogue:
Alya Lahiffe was dancing with her newly obtained husband when she saw it, a flash of red and black over the hotel garden wall. Her hands tightened around his neck as she took it in, a woman in a red bridesmaid dress and a man dressed in all black sprawled out in a heap on the ground, laughing after having practically tumbled over the brick wall surrounding the venue. They both looked from side to side, their noses nearly colliding with each other as they turned, both lighting up in laughter as they assumed the coast to be utterly clear and them to have snuck back into the party without anyone realizing.
“You okay, hun?” Nino asked as he looked down at her, taking in her expression.
“Yeah,” she grinned, watching as Marinette left only a peck on Adrien’s nose, resulting in the young man’s outrage. “I think I am.” She turned them, letting Nino see as Adrien reached for Marinette once more, dragging her down to kiss him.
“The absolute worst best man,” Nino chuckled, looking away as he pressed his forehead against Alya’s.
“And the most seasick, lovelorn maid of honor,” Alya said. “It’s a wonder they got anything done.”
“I give them a year before we get to pay them back, and we’re not skipping the ceremony. We’re giving bad speeches and throwing the bachelor party on a boat, doing the cupid shuffle—the whole nine yards.”
“And letting Marinette’s dad overload them with cake?”
“If he forgets any, we’ll just have to pull the samples out of our freezer.”