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Given the fact that Adrien lived in a literal mansion, there were a lot of stairs he regularly went up and down. They were all big, grand, wiped clean of dirt and smudges and life. It’s not that Adrien hated them. He just had no particular feelings about them.
And Paris was full of breathtaking landmarks with amazing historic steps that people since the 1600s had lived and stepped on, and that was very cool and nice to think about, but he didn’t really walk up those stairs too often because he got around Paris in a different sort of way. A way that didn’t require walking much, but did require a whole lot of balance and grit, things that Adrien was full of.
There were times, before, when he’d visit Marinette. He’d say the magic words and he’d put on the mask and he’d leap across the city to find her, to just sit and be around her under the night air with all the stars watching them behind the cloud curtains and the light pollution. Back then, he didn’t know quite why he’d go find her on those nights when he felt too full of something and nothing at all, he just knew that being around her grounded him in a way that made sense even when it didn’t. She made laughing and smiling and feeling easy.
And, of course, he’d been to her room - not just her balcony - a couple of times before. But those times were different. The quiet was different then, and there was a strange buzz to the air that only broke when her parents peeked through the trapdoor to ask about cookies and refreshments. So he’d been up her stairs before. And he hadn’t thought much about it, not really. Maybe just that it was super cool Marinette could climb up a cool ladder to get to her cool attic room that had a cool balcony. Just another tick on the list of things that were super cool about Marinette.
But that was before.
Before Adrien’s world had turned all the way upside-down, a full 180 degrees, no exaggeration. They’d found out about each other, about the masks, and that was a whole can of worms. He realized why he’d always felt so comfortable around Marinette, why his heart gave soft little leaps when she laughed and blushed. But that wasn’t the right time to tell her, of course. She was out of her mind with worry about Hawkmoth and saving the world, and it was his job at that time to be the bouncing board to her anxieties, to help her settle and plan and strategize. He’d gone up her stairs a lot at that time - she refused to let him come by with the mask on for safety reasons - but it was just to theorize and to attempt to get her to relax or sleep for at least five minutes at a time. But that shift had only been 90 degrees.
The other 90 came with finally catching up to Hawkmoth, to finally taking away his miraculous and finally ending his terror on Paris. Which, of course, came with a different, worse can of worms. It came with his father, wrapped up by Ladybug’s yo-yo and glaring at him because he didn’t know that it was Adrien he was glaring at for catching him. It came with Adrien wondering in the sick parts of his brain and his heart if, had his father known it was him, he would’ve been a little softer, a little more guilty or if he still would’ve glared and spit and cursed. It came with finding his mother, stuck in a coma and still asleep even now, but now in a hospital rather than in a secret evil basement lair of the mansion. It came with the trial, the official one. It came with his father going to jail. With the questions of what happens next what will you do where will you go are you going to take over the company are you going to let it rot what do you think of your father do you still love him how did you not know what he was doing what happens next what happens next what happens next?
Now Marinette had relaxed, and Adrien was different. It had taken him a long while to figure out how to be anything at all after everything happened, and Marinette had always been there, quiet and steady. He’d asked her all of the questions that had been thrown at him all at once, and she’d gently led him up to her room and stroked her fingers through his hair and said “take one step at a time, chaton; that’s all.”
When they’d kissed for the first time, it had been up in her room, after he’d come to terms with what his life was like. He’d healed, and they’d just come back from a patrol around the city that they loved, and it didn’t really surprise either of them. They hadn’t really talked about feelings since before, because there hadn’t been time, hadn’t been any space to breathe or think or feel. But they’d known, through it all. They’d known.
So when they kissed, it didn’t feel like an earth-shattering revelation - they’d had too many of those, this couldn’t be another one - it just felt right. It felt like it wasn’t their first kiss, but rather their millionth. It felt like their lips fit perfectly together like they were puzzle pieces, like they were meant to kiss and love each other. Like they were made for it.
When they’d finally pulled away for breath, she’d looked at him, her eyes glittering and warm, and he felt speechless in a way that caught in his heart. He’d felt strangely like crying, which felt pretty lame, but then Marinette had breathed out something that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob and she’d hugged him so tightly that his spine cracked.
“Sorry,” she’d said into his neck, her fingers fists in his shirt.
“It’s cool,” he’d replied, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and running idle fingers through her hair. “I’m, like, super relaxed now. My back needed to be popped, actually, how did you know?”
He didn’t mention how he could feel warm tears soaking into the collar of his shirt. She didn’t mention how he sniffed and brought up one of his hands to wipe at his eyes. They knew what it was like, to love so much that you were overwhelmed with it. To feel, so suddenly, like you were complete.
Being together, officially, was the easiest can of worms Adrien ever had to open. There were, of course, things they had to discuss and new actions and words they had to test out and fit with each other. All of the things he’d dreamed of having what seemed like a short time ago were now his, and they were his because Marinette was giving it all to him. That was strange and pleasant to get used to, and he loved every second of it.
She still thought he shouldn’t visit her as Chat Noir anymore, just because their relationship was pretty well-known in the media, as Adrien and Marinette as well as Ladybug and Chat Noir. It would be a scandal if someone caught Chat Noir sneaking off to go hang out on Adrien Agreste’s pretty girlfriend’s balcony. Adrien agreed the logic was very sound, but sometimes he would still visit like that, when it was late and he felt bad about waking Gorilla up to drive him to his girlfriend’s house just so that he could wrap himself up in her arms and quiet his mind for a bit.
She’d scolded him the first few times, but she figured it all out even before he’d told her about exactly what he was feeling. After that, she teased him gently and warmly, checked around for any watchers (that were never there - Adrien was very careful), and led him down into her room. Then they’d sit, and they’d talk, and she’d hold him and run her fingers through his hair, and he felt safe, always, with her there.
There was one night when he hadn’t been able to sleep, and he’d wandered around the mansion like he was some sort of ghost, trapped in a space that wasn’t his. It had always been empty, since his mother disappeared, and it had felt even more empty after his father and Nathalie were sent to prison.
Gorilla had moved in to take care of him, because he’d been there for Adrien, and he’d sat him down when the trials were starting, and he’d used his rare words to ask. If Adrien wanted to go with his aunt and Félix and leave Paris behind, or if he’d be alright with Gorilla. He’d chosen to stay - despite everything, he loved Paris, he couldn’t imagine leaving it behind - and Gorilla tried to make the mansion feel less empty. He let Adrien bring friends over any time he wanted, and he put on music on the fancy speakers that ran throughout each room, and he made sure dinner was always spent together, side by side.
That helped, tremendously, and Adrien loved Gorilla for that. But at night, it was different. Sometimes, Adrien could ignore it and just go to sleep, but that night he couldn’t ignore it, and so he was wandering. He visited all the empty rooms, the rooms that his father or Nathalie liked the best, and he walked up and down the stairs that were still so clean and unworn and long.
Stairs, on principle, meant that you were going someplace. But as Adrien had been going up and down all the stairs in the mansion, he felt as though the stairs in that place achieved the impossible; they went nowhere. Going up or down those stairs didn’t matter because the air was the same in every room and floor and closet and hallway. It was all empty, and it was all so big and vast that it made Adrien want to scream just to fill up the space.
He floated down the stairs that led into the atrium, and his glassy eyes caught on the front doors of the mansion, the doors that led out into the world. He felt something stir inside of him, and he remembered that he had another place to go, another place that was smaller and warmer and kinder.
On the way, he didn’t put on the mask and take out his baton. He just walked. And he felt himself fill up with each step, becoming more and more awake and alive until he was buzzing with it on the doorstep of the Dupain-Cheng bakery.
He pulled out his phone (which, thankfully, he’d remembered to stuff into his pocket before wandering around the mansion) and texted Marinette that he was currently standing outside of the closed and dark bakery. Two minutes later, he could see her hurrying through the dark, bundled tight in one of his old sweatshirts that she’d claimed and a pair of Chat Noir-themed sleep pants that had green paw prints printed all over them. She unlocked the door and swung the door open, looking at him like he was insane.
“Why didn’t you come through the balcony?” she asked, ushering him inside and quickly shutting and locking the door behind him. “It’s late, Adrien.”
“I walked,” he said, and her face twisted in horror as she grabbed his arms and manhandled him about, seemingly checking for injuries. She didn’t find any, so she shoved his hair away from his forehead and checked his temperature with the back of her hand.
“You could’ve gotten hurt,” she scolded, and they started up the stairs into her house. “And that’s such a long walk, too. Is Plagg hurt? Is that why you didn’t transform to come over here? You could’ve called me, if that’s the case, and I would’ve gone over to get you, or something. You didn’t have to walk, are you crazy?”
Adrien assured her Plagg was just sleeping, not sick, and listened to her whispered berations fondly as they passed through her dark living room, feeling his heart beat and smiling down at their conjoined hands.
She was still scolding him when they reached the stairs up to her room, and she started to pull him up them, but he stopped, holding her back.
“...You didn’t even tell me you were on your way, for Pete’s sake, so you really can’t blame me for-” She stopped, realizing that he wasn’t going up the stairs. She blinked at him. “What?”
“Did you know,” he said, bending down and tracing his fingers along one of the steps, “that these are my favorite set of stairs?”
“What?” she repeated, a mix between confused, worried, and amused.
“They go somewhere,” he said, fingers pressed against the warm and worn wood of the steps, his palms flush with scratches and scuffs that were years old and so, so perfect.
“Generally, that’s what stairs do,” Marinette said, tilting her head at him.
“But these ones,” he said, looking up at her and feeling - feeling alive and complete and full of love and like everything fit inside him and was him all at once. “They lead up to you. They’re my favorite.”
Something melted in her expression, and her lips pulled up at the corners. “Come here,” she said softly, holding her hand out to him.
And he walked up the steps, his weight making the old wood creak, and he stood on the step just below where she was, and she leaned down and kissed him. Soft, sweet, chaste. “You’re my favorite place to go,” he whispered against her lips, and he felt her smile bloom against him.
“Sap,” she said, and they went up the stairs and into her room.