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Parisians complain a lot about cold winters. This is one of the things I’ve realised since moving here.
Another thing I’ve realised is that most Parisians wouldn’t be able to survive a single New York winter.
I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing one layer less now. Gloves and hats and scarves are a given, and the wool tights and undershirt are always on when it’s snowing, but I haven’t had to think about a bespoke insulation layer for ages and thank God for that.
There’s no snow today, though, just the remnants of snow past, left as gray sludge and piled-up snowplough banks around the streets and plazas of the city. But that suits me just fine. Falling snow is pretty, by all means. But if I’m gonna be outside, I prefer not to have nature precipitate into my mouth while I’m talking or eating. Paris snow is probably cleaner than New York snow, but that’s not really saying much. A shower drain is probably cleaner than New York snow.
Honestly, there’s not a lot about New York that I miss. Most of it was fine, I guess, in the same way that an unfamiliar city block is fine – it does the job for walking past and not thinking much about. Some of it was just bad. A couple things were good, but I’ve had them better since I got to Paris. Such as friends.
And a girlfriend. This one’s much better than the one I had in New York.
Marinette sends me a text message while I’m putting on my hat. Sorry, I’ll be ten minutes late! says the text. I messed up and left my wallet at home. And my coat. Leave it to her to forget a coat in -2 centigrade weather, I guess. I text her back not to worry about it, and to get there when she can.
It’s not like I’m on time, either. When you’re dating Marinette, you become accustomed to everything starting fifteen minutes late. And to hearing a bunch of excuses that range from ‘yep, that sounds about right’ to ‘well, I don’t believe an iota of the words you’re saying, but I know you well enough that I don’t think you’re hiding anything bad’. And honestly? Whenever she’s late, or has to leave early, she’s always extra kissy and huggy to make up for it, and that’s a plus in my book.
So I finish getting dressed and I walk outside, and I take in the chilly air through my nose and feel it tear down my nostrils, and I take a leisurely stroll down to the meeting place outside the mall, and I stop to pick up some trash and put it in a garbage can, and I still arrive a couple minutes before Marinette does.
That’s another plus: when you’re with Marinette, you never have to feel late for anything. And even if you do get there after her, through some extraordinary action of improbable providence, she never blames you for it. Two weeks ago she was on time for once, and I got there ten minutes late because I had expected her to be at least that late, and she was overjoyed when I arrived. Didn’t even mention that she’d waited, or text me about it. Aurore told me about it the day after, because she’d run into Marinette while she was waiting for me. She really just trusted me enough to wait and be patient about it.
Man. It’s a good thing I’m her girlfriend, and not some schlobette who’d take advantage of her trust.
She arrives in a hurry, almost slipping on the pavement as she comes to a stop in front of me. “Hi,” she says, out of breath.
“Hi, sweetie,” I say, and snicker a little. “Forgot your jacket? Really?”
“Yeah, I put on the hat and gloves and scarf, and I thought I had it on me, so I just ran out the door because I wanted to make it on time… then I remembered to check for my wallet, but it wasn’t in my purse, so I tried to look in my pockets and…”
“I get the picture,” I laugh.
She throws her arms around me and places a kiss on my cheek. “I’m so sorry, honey – I’ll bring you some fresh pastries next time, to make up for it.”
“If you’re gonna bring me pastries every time you’re a little late, you’ll just make me fat,” I say, struggling to get an arm free so I can put it around her. But she just holds on tightly, and gives me another kiss.
“You know that’s not how it works,” she says, voice low and quiet. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with being fat. I’ll love you no matter what you weigh, Zoé.”
“Yeah, okay, I love you too,” I say, and twist myself free – and grab her arms to hold them apart. “Babe. I love the kisses and the hugs,” she interrupts me by pecking me on the lips, “uh, um, yeah, I love it, but you have nothing to be sorry for. I know you’re an airhead, and you’re excused. Okay?”
She beams back at me. “Okay. I’ll stop.”
“I didn’t say stop. Just don’t worry about it, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” She grabs my arm. “So what are we doing today?”
It’s usually my job to plan the dates. I’m the one with the wherewithal to figure out a place to meet, and to text or tell or call her about it beforehand. If it were up to her to make plans, she’d probably be too preoccupied thinking about how much she loves me to get anywhere.
Or maybe that’s just a lie I tell to flatter myself. She’d be too disorganised either way.
Either way, I like mystery dates. I give her a place for our meetup, and she arrives, and then I either tell her what we’re doing – or I let her guess until we’re doing it. It’s not always hard to guess (there’s only so much I can do to hide it when the meetup place is the zoo) but the guessing game always excites her. Plus, it sometimes gives me ideas for future dates, given how she’s far more inventive than I am.
Today feels like a telling-her type of day, though, because it’s not my most creative concept. “Well, I thought we could get slushies and check out the crafts store.”
“Slushies? In the middle of winter?”
“We’ll be inside,” I say, grinning. “In wooly hats. Besides, I think you look pretty hot.”
She shivers audibly. “I feel kind of cold, actually.”
“I meant – I was complimenting you, ya doofus.”
“Oh.”
Not for a joke, either. It’s a well-put-together look in every way. She probably knitted that hat and scarf herself, both of them dyed with stripes of dark mint and orange colours. The rest of her outfit may be store bought or it may be home-made – well, the coat is probably store bought, because I’ve never seen her work with puffer material before, but it’s very fetching on her. She’s got a cardigan that pokes out just an inch or two below the hem of the jacket, and the jeans flare out just a little bit above the shoes, and her face... One can debate how much of a face is self-made, but it’s easily the best part of her look every time.
“You’re gonna love it. Slushies just taste that much better when it’s already cold out, because the ice doesn’t melt as fast, so you get the chilly goodness for longer.”
Marinette gives me a look. One of those where she tries to gauge if I’m messing with her, which I have to admit isn’t entirely unwarranted. That’s also one of the fun parts of never telling her beforehand what our dates are going to be, because I can surprise her. Like when I had us meet up at the zoo for the second time, but I snuck her into the chemistry library instead so we could look up wacky words in the dictionaries and try to pronounce them. But this time, I’m being genuine.
She shrugs, and leans her head on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, as long as we do it together.”
The mall is pretty full today – not at peak activity, but closer to that than to the lulling hours. Marinette spots a few of her friends as we walk towards the slushie place, people I recognise but can’t necessarily name; she’s got so many of them I can scarcely keep track. But Marc from my class is there, and we wave hello; there’s also Juleka and Rose, but all four of us seem to decide not to interrupt each other’s outings beyond a smile and a nod.
Which is good, because I want Marinette all to myself. One of the downsides to having a girlfriend like Marinette is that she’s friends with a lot of people, and friendly with basically everyone. She cares about everybody she meets and she stops to pick up things people drop nearby and she’ll run across the street just to help someone lift their baby stroller up a single step.
And I don’t really blame her for it. I love her for it, actually. But sometimes, I feel like she doesn’t love because she wants to, but because she has to or she’ll explode. Maybe she’s my girlfriend because she knows I’m into girls, and she saw I wasn’t with anyone, so she took it upon herself to fill that role. I know that’s not true. Of course it’s not true. But on occasion, I almost believe she could do something so stupid and lovely for someone. Assigned girlfriend by the goodness of her heart, because she holds so much love in her that it has to spill over into something.
She kisses me again, and I thank my lucky stars it’s spilling over into me.
We’re almost at the slushie place when there’s a crash behind us. Not just a crash like of glass smashing against the floor, but a crash like of a wall exploding and coincidentally knocking a lot of glass over, so that it smashes against the floor. When we turn around, there’s a flying bee-man in the middle of the corridor, standing above the rubble he’s just created. He shouts: “Ladybug! Cat Noir! Where are you?”
And Marinette immediately snatches my wrist and pulls me along, so firm and determined I couldn’t pull myself loose if I tried. She sets off into a sprint away from the akuma so fast I can barely keep up, and soon we’re at one of the employees-only cleaning cupboards.
“Hide in here. I’ll go make sure nobody’s hurt,” she says, and then she pushes me inside and is gone before I can even protest.
Honestly, the way she acts whenever there’s an akuma afoot, you’d think there weren’t superheroes around. This cupboard is actually – well, it’s not a nice place, but there’s enough room for two. We could have huddled together and kissed and stuff.
Loving Marinette is to be loved back with such a force that a lot of the love just never hits you; it goes past and hits other people around you. She put me in here because she loves me and wants me to be okay, and she ran back because she loves other people, too. Much as I’d want her to, I could never be the only person in her heart.
And really, I’m not jealous of other people, because I know how much she adores me. I can see it in her face whenever we’re together, in every caress she gives me, and in the texts she sends me late at night where she rambles on about something and then, interspersed between various topics, she adds ‘love u btw <3 <3’ or ‘smiling so hard bc I thought of u’ or similarly sappy things. But on occasions like these, when she shoves me into a closet and goes off to help somebody else rather than cuddle up with me, it does feel a little empty. I wanna worry about her back, and comfort her, and be comforted in return.
Is that too much to ask? Is it greedy of me to sometimes want to feel like I’m the only person in Marinette’s life? My time at boarding school wasn’t kind; I only ever had the one friend there. Can’t find much love in my family, either. I do have more friends now, but… it’s still a little… I don’t know… I feel an egotist even thinking about it, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts from coming.
Suddenly, the door is whisked open. “Vesperia!” the figure says – and for a moment, with her face shadowed against the outside and the pigtails resting on her shoulders, and with my thoughts on Marinette, I imagine that it’s her. But it’s –
“Ladybug?”
“Marinette told me I’d find you here. Are you okay?”
I swallow. “Yeah… I’m okay. Why are you –”
She extends her hand to me, and the hair comb is resting inside it. “Zoé Lee,” she says, “I need your assistance to beat this villain. Can I trust you to help me, and save Paris from Shadow Moth?”
Marinette sent her here. It’s hard not to smile, but I don’t know if it’s a smile of frustration – why wouldn’t you come back yourself, you, you, you utter love of my life and absolute piece of wonderful human being – or just one of happiness and relief. “Is she okay?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Marinette.”
“Oh. Yeah. She had to hide somewhere else, because the villain collapsed some stuff in the way. Will you come help?”
A chance to save my girlfriend. Yeah, I’ll take that.
I also have other motivations, more altruistic ones. But that’s the one that rings in my head as I accept the comb and put it in my hair, as I command Pollen to buzz on: I can be part of saving Marinette. And prove to her that I don’t need to be stuffed into a cupboard when there’s danger.
(Or rather, I can prove that to myself. I can’t tell her about my secret identity, after all.)
The villain is defeated only three minutes later, once I manage to stun him into staying still and Cat Noir can land his Cataclysm. When the ladybug cure spell flows out and restores everything, I try to look around for Marinette, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
“Come,” says Ladybug, and takes me back to where she found me with a firm grip around my wrist. I give her back the comb and she thanks me. “Your help is always appreciated,” she says.
“No problem,” I say. “Um… when Marinette found you… what was she doing?”
The question appears to give her pause. “What do you mean?”
“Was she… helping people? Or hiding with someone? Or, I don’t know… something? You see, I wanted her to… Sorry.” I shake my head. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
She puts her hand on my shoulder, and smiles softly. “Zoé,” she says, “she came running straight for me when she saw me. And she wanted me to make sure you were okay. I can tell she loves you very much.”
There isn’t really much reassurance in that. I’ve never doubted her love. She’s incredibly good at showing it. I just wish she’d focus it a bit more directly on me, sometimes.
But I smile, and I give Ladybug a nod. “Thanks.”
“Bug out!” she says, and claps the door shut with a wink.
To be loved, completely and entirely – I know that feeling well. But to be loved exclusively, specifically… I guess that’s just one of the impossibilities of a relationship with Marinette Dupain-Cheng. And most of the time, I’m fine with just the completely and entirely part, because she also loves me determinedly and intensely. And I’d rather have that than not have her love at all.
She pulls the door open half a minute later, with the fierceness of someone who believes their side of the door is toxic and they need to get inside as quickly as possible. “Zoé!” she says, and throws herself around me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say, hugging her back as she kisses me over and over. I’m used to her intensity by now – but this time she seems more keen than usual. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says. “And I’m sorry for leaving you alone in here! I wanted to come back sooner, but, um, there was an old lady and I had to help her out of the way, and then a baby in a carriage, and…”
“Marinette. It’s fine. I’m glad you’re okay too.” I kiss her on the forehead. Even though she was definitely lying there. She sounded a little too flustered when she spoke, a little too disorganised for her story to be on the straight and narrow. But… I look in her eyes, and they’re glowing at me, alight with apology and adoration. She’s hiding something embarrassing, probably, like how she took a tumble down an escalator.
“Did you see Vesperia, by the way?” says Marinette. “She’s super cool.”
“I was in the cupboard the whole time,” I lie. “She was here?”
“Yeah. You should’ve seen her. She handled the bee guy easily. So cool! She’s my favourite superhero.”
There’s something in her eyes now – a knowing type of look, one that’s just a step to the side and a nudge to the shoulders away from a wink. Does she… know that I’m Vesperia? No – no, she couldn’t know that. Unless she’s Ladybug.
Which is a ludicrous thought, because if that were the case, Marinette would have to have so much love in her that it would drown the whole city if she tripped and spilled her cup. Besides, she’s too busy and preoccupied and, let’s face it, clumsy to be Ladybug. But she would make a pretty good superhero.
“I’m partial to Pigella myself,” I say.
“Oh, Pigella’s so lovely! Definite second place for me. Or Purple Tigress, maybe.”
I laugh, and press her closer. “Should we go get slushies now?”
“Yeah, let’s,” she says. “But first…”
And she plants a humongous kiss right in the middle of my face, and my eyes go wide as plates, and the breath that comes out her nose tingles across my cheeks, and her arms pin me in place, and her lips press on me with such a force that just for the briefest of moments, I feel like I’m truly the only one she’s ever adored. And it’s amazing, in a good way, but also in a way that's terrifying and immense. And it feels like I’ve drowned and been resuscitated at the same time.
“Love you, Zoé,” she says. “I’m so glad you’re in my life.”
I take a few seconds to let my heart slow down, so my breath can catch up. At this point, I’m wondering if my mild disappointment from earlier has been showing, because it’s almost like she’s compensating now. “I love you too,” I say.
Who cares that she lied a little. Who cares that she loves everyone. It’s plain as the lovely little nose on her face that she loves me just a little bit more than anyone else. In a way that’s just a little bit different from how she loves anyone else.
And… now that I’ve thought it over… that’s good enough for me.