Chapter Text
“Marinette!” Adrien’s voice came just moments too late on the cold, wet street, filling the air where the bliss of silence had once been, and practically moving her feet for her.
Of course he called for her, of course he wanted to know more, to find a way to make her forgive him—as if she needed to forgive him, and not the other way around. God, she had to pick up the pace, she had to hide somehow, otherwise he would find her, otherwise he would see just how fucking crushed she was.
“Marinette!” Another call of her name howled in the wind, forcing her into an alley, her hood pulled up high over her ears and her hands gripping the ends of her sleeves. She was going to die, she was sure of it. It wasn’t possible to die of a broken heart, but slipping in the rain because you were the idiot who confessed to her best friend? Yeah, no, people had died of dumber things.
People had let their heads fall against the wall of an alley and the thick, hot tears cascade down their faces and intermingle with the chill of the rain for far less. As Ladybug, the former protector of Paris, she knew that.
Just like how she knew every alleyway and twist and turn, how that narrow path could lead out to the other side of the street and take her easily to the Eiffel tower, and then from there? Home. Not her apartment, because he would check there; but home, home. The bakery, her parents—
“Are you crazy?” Adrien’s voice came with a kaleidoscope of swears as he pinned her harshly against the wall, looking her up and down with round, frantic eyes as if she were the one who had walked out onto the streets in just her socks without so much as a coat on.
Unfortunately, she had forgotten that she wasn’t the only one who knew those streets well, and that he was all too aware of her old tricks and her old pathways, that he had practically memorized them when they worked side by side years before.
And he looked like he could have strangled her at that moment as he stared her down, his chest rising and falling just as heavily as hers and his hands pinning her shoulders to the wall, asking her why she would do this with his silent, insistent gaze. She tried to look away. Tried.
“No,” Adrien muttered, his hand moving to her cheek and pushing her to face him, his eyes wide and harsh, panting breaths leaving his lungs as his face sat practically mystified. “Look at me, Marinette,” he demanded, giving her no option to look away. “Just… Look at me.”
She wished she could tell him how hard that truly was.
Actually, she wished that she could tell him how cruel he was being, forcing her to look at him and know that he didn’t love her. Jesus Christ, was there any greater pain? Especially with the way that his eyes roamed over her face, hungrily taking in the details, his tongue moving over his lips not once, but twice as he tried to think of what to say.
What would he say? How could anyone respond? He had to know how things looked to outsiders, how hard it was for her to keep pretending like everything was normal, and how this whole fake dating thing was wearing on her.
She was terrified just looking at him, seeing the way that he looked absolutely feral in the rain, that the small hint of light from the streetlights reflected in his gaze as he looked her up and down, searching for a hint of a lie. God, she wished she was lying.
God, she wished that she had it in her to push him away.
God, she wished she was one of those girls who always knew the right thing to say, and that he was one of those boys who always knew how to fix everything. But they weren’t. They would always just be two screwed up kids.
“You love me,” he whispered in that same, breathless tone that he’d once informed her, ‘you’re Ladybug.’ The moment that she should have replied, ‘you’re the boy I was talking about,’ instead of what she did say, a soft, weak statement of, ‘you’re Adrien.’
All she could do was apologize. That was what he had done, after all, both when she tried to tell him she loved him, and when she acknowledged that he was Adrien. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she truly was, she’d never wanted to tell him before. “If you want, we can just pretend it didn’t happen,” she said, which was evidently the wrong answer. Would she ever get it right?
“Marinette,” he groaned in exhaustion tinged with a hint of something else, and she had to close her eyes, lest she make the mistake of staring at him too long. “Marinette,” repeating her name only made things worse.
And then his lips were on her.
And she was pretty sure that that made things a thousand times worse, because if he didn’t want her to fall in love with him, then kissing her in the rain while she was pinned up against a wall and had just confessed her undying love for him was kind of a strange choice.
“Stop. Over. Thinking.” He demanded, and his lips touched hers again, and again, and again.
Every time was sweeter than the last. Every time took her further away from sanity than the last. Because how the hell was she supposed to operate when he was kissing her like that? When she didn’t see any cameras or onlookers in sight, and his arms were braced to the sides of her, and his lips tasted like… Like honey and every sweet thing that she could have ever wanted!
His hand was firm as it cupped her jaw, and his body was warm, blazing hot, when it pressed against hers as he angled and fitted her to squeeze perfectly against him, almost as if he had plotted out that kiss for the past four years.
Actually, scratch that, eight years. Eight whole, long years.
Eight years and part of one week, with a weekend promised to his father and the words of approval from Gabriel Agreste hanging between them.
“Are you sure this isn’t just because your father said he was proud?” Marinette asked in a dazed stupor between kisses, only halfheartedly responding to him.
“Do you think I cared when my father was mad that I stayed friends with Ladybug, and kept lusting after her well after he was defeated?” Adrien replied, but it wasn’t really a reply to begin with, most a stream of words muttered in between the drag of his mouth across her skin.
“But he’s happy now—” She began.
“Because I’ve waited a long time,” Adrien revealed, as if that was really a reveal at all, and her mind wasn’t going five hundred miles an hour. As if her body wasn’t frozen under his touch, and she wasn’t staring at the brick of the alleyway in a confused, lost way.
Because he was kissing her. And what was happening? What was this? Who was this? Who was she? Who was he? Who was—
“You say you love me and you run out of my home,” Adrien chided, and Marinette perfectly understood that part. She’d just gotten lost somewhere else along the way. “You act like you’ve committed a crime, and you hide in an alleyway. You don’t let me say I love you too—”
“You love me?” Marinette replied, her hand pushing back on his chin and stopping the onslaught for just a moment as she stared him down, blinking at him in confusion.
And if he seemed exhausted and tired beyond belief before, then she didn’t know how to describe how he seemed now.
Because he pulled back to look at her and, with the most puzzled, bemused expression on his face, he replied.
“Oh, my lady,” he rolled his eyes. “Where have you bean all my life?”
Idiot. An absolute idiot. Marinette hated that she laughed that hard.
