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Sixteen, now — the 'golden age', those magazines insisted — Adrien sometimes found himself eyeing his reflection as he unzipped his shaving kit. That was a new addition, too, but he'd forgotten exactly when it came about — he was just vaguely aware that there was a time when he didn't need it, and now he did.
Marinette was the one that changed the way he saw himself — or rather, what he saw.
"Wow," she had said, after her fingers had strayed from his hair and moved to his face. They had been on a rooftop near the Place des Vosges, his head in her lap, fresh from a quick patrol race. "I never realised how strong your jawline was."
He ran the back of his hand over it. "Really?" Through his suit, he couldn't feel much, but definitely took notice of the prominence of bone that hadn't been there before.
Chat Noir turned his eyes up to Marinette — or rather, Ladybug — and took the chance to scan her face.
She'd still retained much of the softness she had when she was fourteen. Like this, when he lay down beneath her hands, she seemed much bigger than she actually was, but really, she hadn't grown since they'd started dating (and two centimetres in two years, no matter how much she argued, did not count as getting taller). Out of costume, she still wore the same clothes she used to, and tied her hair in the same pigtails.
But Marinette wasn't immune to time — not that it did her any bad at all.
She stopped using her cherry lip gloss sometime the year before, and settled for some tinted lip balm, instead. It kept them less chapped, she told him when he had asked, and now, once they had filled with maturity and plumped just the littlest bit more, Adrien realised just how intoxicating it was to kiss her.
(That wasn't entirely objective, though. He'd kiss Marinette anytime, anyday, and come away more and more inebriated).
Her cheekbones were high, which he'd never noticed before, and when she stood with her profile against the sunlight, Adrien often had to take a moment to recover. Clumsiness didn't leave that easily, (didn't leave at all , he thought lovingly), but there was grace in the way she caught herself, the way she rolled her eyes at her two left feet, the way she proffered him her thin fingers to pull her up that made him want to kiss her knuckles reverently.
The two of them overlapped, in some ways — like in curiosity.
Lips on lips and breaths against mouths and hands tugging at hair and touching spines and hips over blazers and tops and overshirts. Tentative and passionate, shy and inquisitive — Adrien wanted all of her, but was too scared to reach out and ask. He felt it in Marinette, too, when she slipped her cold hands under his shirt as a joke, when she nuzzled his neck as they cuddled, when her breath hitched as he picked her up, emphasising all the more how much taller he had gotten (and if the muscles he had noticed perking up beneath his skin had anything to say, stronger, too).
Adrien looked around Marinette's bed. Her pillows were scattered around their legs, and the half the duvet sank to the floor.
“Won’t you parents get suspicious if they walk in on us like this?” he asked into her hair. They could try telling the truth, but Adrien had his doubts about her parents really believing they got into a pillow fight.
She laughed, eyeing the mess they had made of her bedding. She really was beautiful — if he thought he was in love before, when they were fourteen and baby-faced and still dancing around their feelings, Adrien must have been a goner, now.
Marinette rubbed the forearm he had around her waist. "Yeah, probably."
And yet, she made no effort to move away
Instead, she moved closer, face turned to look at him, loose hair falling over her cheek. They leaned in together, popcorn and chocolate biscuits on their heavy, pillow-fought breaths, and kissed.
He reached up and buried his hand into her hair. This, he thought, while lacing it through his fingers, changed, too. He'd been growing fonder and fonder of doing that when they kissed — with her grown-up lips, high cheekbones, and grace, her hair had thickened, too.
But then his fingers drifted lower, down to her throat, just above her jugular vein. Marinette shivered.
His hand froze.
Adrien pulled back, and surveyed her.
She schooled her expression, and smiled up at him, as if her breath hadn't just jumped against his chin as soon as his hand wandered.
Adrien cleared his throat. He picked up a few more strands of her hair, and pretended he was playing with those.
His acting skills were dubious. All he could think about was how hot the skin was below her ear.
"So uh," he said, as nonchalant as he could, "how long do you wanna stay up?"
She shrugged, as nonchalant as she could. "Midnight, maybe later?"
"Are you gonna get out of bed?"
She made a face, and looked up at her ceiling. “Maybe. I kinda want to finish that dress I’ve been working on, but we’ll see.”
He snickered. "Always working. Aren't you tired?"
Adrien took their steady conversation as a chance to let go of her hair and drag the backs of his fingers down her jugular. They travelled over the jut of her collarbone, far enough from her throat that he could preserve her pride and pretend he didn't see her gulp. He decided to keep his hand there, and stroke her clavicle with his thumb.
"T-tired?" she said. Her endeavour, which was clear in her measured consonants, to remain neutral was cracking. If it cracked any further, he'd be the one bursting open like a dam. Marinette shook her head. "Nope. A-are you?"
He peeled his eyes from her upper chest and up to her face. "Not really."
Neither of them spoke.
The pattering of her heart faded as Adrien moved his hand from her collarbone to her bare shoulder. He trailed his fingers down, lower and lower, sucking in a breath as he watched goosebumps rear their heads in Adrien's wake. They lifted, a tide awakening under his touch. She straightened her arm so he could feel the smoothness of the inside of her elbow, her forearm, before changing routes to her stomach.
Her singlet was bunched up mid-navel.
Intrigued — by her pattering heartbeat and her shivers and the goosebumps that answered to his questioning hands, he used the tip of his nail to trace the length of her belly.
Then lower: it dipped in and out of the crenulations in her skin from the waistband of her pyjama bottoms.
Marinette's hand flew on top of his.
He stopped.
"Adrien."
His pulse plunged into his stomach.
Adrien's dam was about to burst.
Especially when her breaths came out shallow, the redness in her cheeks relentless, and her lips sat still, parted, around the last syllable of his name.
His name, which she had sighed out like that.
Adrien couldn't move his hand. It was rooted there, a dead weight on Marinette's flesh, as his mind blanked.
Then, Marinette's mouth twitched.
She loosened, and her grasp on him eased.
She began to laugh.
"You should see your face right now," she giggled.
It jerked Adrien back to life, snapped him clean out of his daze. He began to laugh, too, pulling his hand away from her skin, and shook his head.
"Did I embarrass you?" she said through a grin.
"A bit," he said. "Did I embarrass you?"
She nodded.
Adrien looked at her for a second, and burst into more uncontrollable, shoulder-shaking laughter. He didn't quite know why he was laughing, but he knew it felt good to laugh like this with Marinette.
He lowered himself back onto the mattress beside her, and returned his arm to its rightful place around her waist.
"Phew," she said, and rubbed at a happy tear at the corner of her eye. "If you went any lower, you'd have to marry me."
"You'd let me?" he said.
She faced him, giving him a look. "You'd marry me?"
He grinned back at her.
They held each other's gaze, before dissolving into another bout of laughter.