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“Ladybug?”
The heroine answered with a small nod and a shy smile.
“You're… here. You came.”
“You called.”
“It’s after midnight, I thought you were asleep.”
She shrugged, her bangs falling in front of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I wanted you to know that I got your message.”
“Please, don't apologize,” he murmured, finally shaking the marbled stiffness from his frame. He gently laid a hand over hers. “If anything, I should be the one apologizing. In fact, I do apologize. Did I wake you?”
“No, Adrien,” she sighed out, turning her hand over under his, running a thumb over his knuckles.
She was seated now, perched on his windowsill and haloed with moonlight. Like an angel.
Like a dream.
“Are you really here?” he asked, his voice teetering on the edge of hopeful and disillusioned.
Ladybug nodded. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.” She offered him another smile then. So genuine and warm, but subtle. Like a whispered confession, just for him.
“Will you stay?”
The words left his lips before he had even fully formed the thought, and hung in the air like a chill. Slow, but potent – settling into his bones until he ached for the warmth of an answer.
Her answer was quiet. Soft. Delicate, even. The near silent rustle of fabric as she slipped down from his windowsill and out of his starlit dreams. The impossibly soundless landing in the reality of his dark bedroom on her magically costumed tip-toes.
He settled into her presence like sinking into a warm pool, and she waded into the deep end, tugging him along. He would have gladly drowned with her.
In her, even, if it meant more of that warmth. If he could breathe her, instead of air.
She pulled him through the current, holding tightly to his hand until she could draw him to a life raft. When she fell backward onto it, he gave himself to the waves, tumbling down at her side.
She dragged the covers over them both, fluffing the pillow under her head and laying on her side, hands tucked against her cheek.
He mirrored her, the action as natural as taking in air (or the sight of her). She led, he followed. That was how it always was. How it would always be.
“Are you alright?” she asked quietly, reaching out a gloved hand to smooth over the crease of his brow. “What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?”
He hummed, a contemplative distraction as he searched for any thought other than the wonder that she was to him.
His hero. His love. His Lady, curled up under his blankets and smoothing his wrinkles. He didn’t know how to begin to process that thought.
“Adrien?” she asked again, concern wrinkling her nose and the corners of her eyes.
To be the cause of worry seeping into those blue eyes was a crime he knew he could never begin to make amends for.
“You don’t have to stay, you know. I’ll be okay.”
She paused at this, the worries wearing deeper. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
He shook his head, averting his eyes from hers to avoid being sucked into their blue depths long enough to ease her mind. “No, never.”
“What is it then?”
“I just… don’t want you to feel obligated to keep me company,” he said, whispering the thought out like it was a sin. He knew as soon as the words entered the air between them, they could never be true.
His lady smiled, shaking her head at him for a moment and leaned in, ghosting her lips against his forehead. She smoothed his blonde hair back into place when she laid back. “Not a chance. As long as you don't mind, I’d like to stay right where I am.”
He couldn't find the words to answer her, so he nodded, once.
“You should try to get some rest. It’s getting late,” she murmured, shifting to lay on her back next to him.
She held an arm out and he filled the space without a second thought. He would accept any space she made in her life for him, no matter the size.
Silence lingered for a while, until he had timed his breathing to hers. He could have sworn his heart attempted to do the same, sounding out a life-giving duet with every beat.
There was a question on his lips still. Poised there, words shaped and trapped behind his teeth. He held his breath to keep it in until the question (and his pulse) hammered out an escape.
“What do you think of me?”
The words flooded out of him until he was drowning again, and could only hope that she remembered how to swim.
“I think…. you're one of the best people I know.”
He sighed, quelling the soft prick of disappointment at the vague answer. “That’s not what I meant. I mean… How do you feel about me?”
“Short answer: I love you.”
They both paused then, soaking in the warmth of the phrase. To say it out loud was to give it life, and there was nothing Adrien wanted more than to be loved by her.
“And… the not-so-short answer?”
She giggled softly, the soft stuttering of her breathy laugh rattling into his own chest and ricocheting, shaking anything and everything it touched. “When I’m with you… I’m happy. I feel at home, warm and relaxed.”
Each word sent tremors through his fragile heart.
“And when I’m not, well… I feel like my heart might leave me to go find yours. Like it knows that being somewhere you aren’t is wrong. Sometimes, my mind is so filled with you that I can’t think straight. Whenever you’re near me, I can’t think of anything else. You’re the first, last, and only thing I pay attention to when we’re in the same room.” She let out another soft laugh, letting it fade into the endless sea around them.
He could feel the words echo long after the sounds had gone away. They reverberated still in his soul, shattering and splintering inside him, leaving trails of broken ground.
“My lungs gasp when you say my name. My heart lights on fire. My ears twitch at just the sound of your voice.”
He was falling now, well and truly into the sweet oblivion contained in that big room with just the two of them. A chasm opened up in his heart, broken open from the cracks and fissures that her love left behind, swallowing him whole.
“Adrien, you are my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. That is how I feel about you.”
There was no fear of falling with her. As far as he fell (and who knew how far it really was) he always found soft, embracing warmth to catch him. As cavernous as his heart was, crystallized by time and pain, her love was water.
Sweet, calm waves and puddles of gentle affection. Roaring, thunderous floods and downpours of all-consuming, overwhelming love. It eroded the center of him until he was swimming in it and his feet could no longer even find the bottom. It spread that warm current to everything it touched. Everything she touched.
“What about you?”
His breath caught in his throat, dragging him back up into his body. “What?”
“How do you feel… about me?”
“I feel…” he said quietly, rubbing a hand over the warm, pulsing hollow of his chest where he could sense the tides of her love pulling at him still. “I feel that no matter how close I find myself to you, you’ll always be just out of reach.”
He sat up slowly, feeling the all-too-physical after effects of drowning metaphorically. Leant back against the wall, he heaved in a breath, trying to soothe his burning lungs.
“Why would you think that?” she questioned, looking up at him.
Her eyes pierced through to the heart of him, looking directly into the chasm he felt in his chest. “One day you’ll go places I can’t follow. Do things I can’t do. And I’m afraid that one day, you won’t come back.”
It was her turn to fall now, though she did so obviously and physically. She slid sideways, resting her head in his lap and staring up at him in a devastatingly unavoidable way. He took the opportunity for what it was, cradling her precious face. He brushed her hair back, gently untangling the pigtails to comb through them with his fingertips.
“If I could fit you in the palm of my hand, I’d never let you go.”
“Well I’m here now, aren’t I?”
He nodded silently, focusing on carding through the midnight silk draped over his lap.
“Then stay here. Hold me, and don’t let go. I’ll do the same. We can stay like this forever.”
There was silence then, but not a hollow one. A tender one, filled with the remnants of whispered confessions and gentle connections.
His hands to her hair. Her head to his leg. The bed under them, the blanket above. A stable, sturdy solace of their own making, built out of love and longing. They tethered themselves to each other and to the surface of their respective lives, clinging to anything that would keep them afloat.
Finally, when he had slipped sideways, eyes closed and breathing slowed, she curled around him.
“Are you asleep?”
Silence. Stillness. She waited a breath more before speaking again.
“I won’t let you go, I can promise you that. Even if I’m away, I will never distance myself to where you can’t reach me. I’ll find you somehow. In thoughts, maybe. Or dreams.”
She settled into him, feeling the surface ripple around them as she clung to their little life raft, holding them afloat within their sweet oblivion.
“I don’t think I could live without you,” she whispered out, brushing messy blonde bangs back from his face. “Goodnight, Adrien.”
She blocked out the rest of the world then, clinging to him and giving in to the desire for sleep that had crept over her.
The quiet in the room lived and breathed with them, soothing two worried hearts to sleep. The last words uttered that night could have come from either of them, filling the space one last time with words that ached to be voiced.
“I love you, too.”