Work Text:
Adrien was…
He wasn’t here a moment ago.
He was… he had been…
Well, two things were true. He didn’t know where he was before, or where he was now.
His eyes were so heavy. Breathing seemed like a chore, but he wasn’t in any pain.
When his ears finally registered the unmistakable noise of crying, familiar crying, he pushed through the heavy-lidded spell he seemed to be under and opened his eyes.
Ladybug.
Positively sobbing her eyes out.
It appeared the heavy feeling wasn’t exclusive to his eyelids. As he reached a shaking hand up to cup her face, any movement he made was met with great resistance, as though he was submerged in a tub of…something thicker than water, but his brain couldn’t seem to work hard enough to come up with what.
Her chest was heaving severely. The only thing he was sure of thus far was that she would make herself throw up if she didn’t get a hold of herself.
“B-breathe.” His voice came out in a rasp. He was so disoriented. Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he think?
“K-kitty… oh, Chat, it didn’t work… why d-didn’t it- I don’t know what to do!” She let out a mournful cry, tightening her grip with the arm around his middle. “Please… p-please don’t go.”
Go?
It was fatiguing to even lift a hand, he didn’t seem to be able to go anywhere.
Fighting through the confusing muddle of half-formed thoughts and questions, he realized he was lying out somewhere. Ladybug had one hand cradling the back of his head. Squeezing his eyes tight, he hoped maybe this would dispel some of the weight pressing in on him from all sides.
Unsatisfyingly, it didn’t help much at all.
Nonetheless, when he opened his eyes again, he decided to tear his gaze from his partner, and scan his own body for whatever had her beside herself with anguish.
Blood. A lot of it.
She was kneeling in a pool of it. It was pouring out of him, and fast.
Oh.
That kind of go.
“L-Lucky… Charm?” His mouth was now strangely watery, and when she went to run her thumb against his lips, he could barely make out the deep maroon color now clashing against the fingers of her scarlet suit.
“It didn’t work! I-I… I tried three times already!” Her sobs doubled over and she threw herself onto him. He could feel the blood now dripping out of the corner of his mouth, but he couldn’t taste it. Why couldn’t he taste it?
Wait.
Her lucky charm didn’t work?
How was that possible?
And if he was hurt so badly, why was there no pain?
Even if he couldn’t remember how he got here, he had taken dozens of borderline fatal blows before, and they still stung. The suit would never be able to eliminate this much pain.
Then it clicked.
“D-dream.” He coughed, laying a lethargic arm around her middle, while her fingers twisted tight into his hair.
Intaking a wheezing breath, his eyesight began wavering between blurry and downright gone.
“W-what?” She seemed to regain something of herself momentarily, both hands now holding the sides of his face to keep his eyes on her. Even in her obvious agony, even with his vision starting to fail on him, she was a terrifyingly beautiful sight.
“I’ll… be there. W-when… when you wake up.” Grimacing, he recollected enough to know his least favorite part was coming next. It was inevitable. The longer he held out, the more pain she would go through.
Because this wasn’t his nightmare. It was hers.
“Stay with me, Chaton. Stay with me!” She wailed, now slapping his cheeks in an attempt to keep him awake.
“Shhh… s’okay.”
He ceased his battle with the overbearing heaviness, and the last thing he made out was her scream as she watched the light leave his eyes.
Instantly, he was in his bed.
Marinette.
With the weight at last expelled, he could only feel pure adrenaline left in its place. He whipped off the duvet on his bed with such force that it slogged the cup of water off his bedside table, knocking it clean over. He completely ignored the puddle it began to form on the floor.
“Plagg!” Adrien dove for the kwami, and he let out a half-asleep scream in response.
“What the-”
“It happened again. We have to go. Transform me.” Not wanting to waste a single moment, he was already halfway out the window before his transformation had completed.
Paris was laid thick with an eerie silence. He knew it must be late, but he didn’t have the time or the mindspace to check any clocks. His phone lay forgotten on the same bedside table the cup was spilled on.
If it was broken, he’d buy a new one. He didn’t care.
The faster he got there, the less time she spent with his… body.
He shivered.
In his haste, he knocked a bucket over with a sharp clang, but the unforeseen noise didn’t phase or interrupt his mad dash in the slightest.
When he abruptly remembered this was the 3rd nightmare of these past 2 weeks alone, he pushed himself at breakneck speed towards the bakery, almost savagely. He absolutely tore across the rooftops. She needed him, and fast.
Feet landing on the balcony with a solid thud, he wrenched open the trap door and threw himself inside.
Even in her sleep, she was convulsing and trembling with a dreadful ferocity. Grabbing her by the shoulders, Chat shook her small form roughly.
Going on his past experiences with her chronic nightmares, this was the only surefire way to get her up quickly. He longed for nothing more than to hold her, kiss her, wake his other half from her plight with the gentle reverence she deserved, but this would only result in her spending more time sealed in her torment.
“Up. Up. Marinette, wake up.” He begged.
She rose with a gasp, her face painted with shock and pure bewilderment for a single moment. When their eyes met, and realization struck, her face twisted into a sour, lurid expression, and he had to pull them flush together in order to muffle her weeping in his chest.
“Shh, don’t panic, bien-aimé. I’m here.” With one arm locked around her waist, the other clawed hand picked out the hair tie holding her bun together, and he began to smooth her hair down and around her shoulders with unparalleled, aching compassion.
They had been through this dance dozens of times before. Even in desolation, her hands still prodded, searched and hysterically covered every inch of his body, checking and double-checking that it really was a dream. Reaching for his bell, she pulled the zipper down as far as it would go, hands now plunging into the opening.
Plainly, she didn’t want to take the suit’s word for him being unharmed.
“Look at me.” Now cradling the back of her head, he pulled away a few inches. She followed him, obviously desperate for their closeness to remain. “Listen to me. We’re in your bed. Nothing got me. Just another dream. I’m right here, Buginette, safe and sound.”
“I-I can’t lose you!” Her voice shook with vulnerability, and his own tears threatened to spill. He needed to be strong for her this time. He must.
“You’re not going to.” Chat soothed, his hand on her back now sliding up her shirt to draw his claws up and down her spine. He placed several benevolent, lingering kisses to the top of her head, hellbent on alleviating her current condition.
“You can’t know th-that!” Her whole body shuddered and she let out another mournful cry, throwing her arms around his neck, and her full weight into him.
The heaving hadn’t stopped, and she kept squeaking out unintelligible, dire gasps and pants while the anxiety overtook her.
Worrying her parents might overhear, he wordlessly scooped both her and the duvet behind her up, making his way up the ladder and back out into the palpable silence of the nightfall.
Now that he had returned to the elements of the outside world, he realized that the reason for the deep lull in the air was that it was snowing.
In his preoccupation to get to her as speedily as possible, this had bypassed him entirely.
Chat changed their position so her legs were wrapped around his waist, her arms locked in a vice grip around his shoulders. Despite her bawling, she supported her own weight whilst he brushed any residual snow off of her chaise, and then settled himself in, tucking the blanket tight around them wherever he could reach.
This wasn’t ideal, to say the least.
If they went back inside, they gambled getting caught by her parents together, at what had to be, at earliest, 3am. If they stayed out here, he risked her falling into… hibernation.
While their miracle stones gave them incredible powers, they also came with a price to pay. Side effects, that only seemed to get worse with time and knowledge.
The nature of their miraculi tied their souls together.
That was the explanation given for the sudden pulling into each other’s nightmares, at least. Once they knew one another’s identities, nothing could stop their spirits from searching, spanning out and interlacing together for the other’s comfort in their bad dreams.
He’d rather it be this way, in all honesty. Yes, it was exposing, and even at times downright embarrassing at first, but knowing Marinette’s nature she would try to hide these nightmares from him if he wasn’t pulled into them. At least they gave him the tools to comfort her, and vice versa.
Most of the other inherited tendencies were inconvenient at best. Sure, Adrien struggled not to purr when his girlfriend ruffled his hair before class, or Marinette would get absolutely entranced by flowers, often missing half of a conversation over the smell alone.
With the major exception being hibernation.
Every passing winter, Marinette got sleepier and sleepier in the cold, and the only cure known to her magical dilemma was his own body heat.
It was just another balance thing, he figured. Creation and destruction. Yin and Yang. After he knew it was her that donned the spots, echoes like this seemed plentiful in their lives.
She ran cold, so he ran hot to remedy it.
They had played it off like it was just some cringey-couple-thing they liked to do, but the real reason Marinette quite literally burrowed up under his zipped-closed jacket in the school courtyard every morning was to avoid the prospect of her magical slumber overtaking her again.
Not taking the kwami’s warnings seriously enough amidst the previous year’s frost, resulted in his girlfriend falling into a coma-like sleep for a full forty-six hour span.
He could handle fighting her continual nightmares for the rest of his life if he had to, but what he could not handle was a scare like that again.
Her sobbing had definitely slowed, and uneasiness plagued him on if this was snow-related, or if she was just simply regaining her composure.
“Talk to me.” He soothed in her ear, both arms sliding up and under the back of her shirt again to press her closer.
“S-sorry. I… I can’t make them stop.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for, mon coeur . You don’t ask to have nightmares,” Resting his cheek on the top of her head, he called off his transformation with a mumble. Plagg phased through the floor at once to give them privacy. “I just want to do what I can to help.”
“Y-you know how to help, and you won’t listen!”
And so, they were at this part of the night.
It seemed even an everlasting sleep threatening to swoop down on her couldn’t stop her from scolding him.
He understood her position, really. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have his own occasional nightmares where the roles were reversed, and he watched in dismay as his red-spotted beau went limp with a terrible finality in his arms.
But knowing she was Marinette had only made his adherence to safeguard her all the more irrepressible. Protective was an understatement when it came to her.
“I… Can’t.”
“You can! Stop getting yourself killed for m-me, Adrien!” She twisted her hands into his shirt, and his mind swelled with a mix of guilt and headstrong, stubborn pride.
Against his will, scattered memories of her taking hits he could have prevented stuck out in his mind. At the recollection of a particularly bad one, only from the week before, his resolve to be her rock tonight pulverized to smithereens.
“You know I can’t do that.” His voice broke. He hoped against hope she wouldn’t feel the hot tears hit the top of her head, now pouring from his face. “You’re the one who can save Paris. Without your lucky charm-“
“We are the heroes of Paris! Together! What if a day comes where I can’t-… where you don’t…” She shifted, breaking apart enough so they could hold eye contact. Fresh tears shed from both parties, mingling together on his chest.
“I have to protect you.” He spoke hoarsely, his arms pulling her close against him again, gulping back a sob as he buried his face in her neck. He wanted to take all of her anxiety, soak it up like a sponge, and throw it directly into the Seine, never to be discovered again, but he knew in his heart her fears weren’t fully unfounded. It was her turn to dip her fingers into his hair. “I would never forgive myself if I stood by and watched you get hurt without intervening.”
“I can protect myself. I have to protect you, too.”
This conversation wasn’t new for either of them. After most akumas, after virtually every nightmare she had, the pair hashed and re-hashed their points to one another. It always ended in a stalemate.
When silence fell, his concern momentarily moved back to her being out in this snow. He heaved the duvet back up-and-over her shoulders, hooking it under his chin, re-tucking it taught underneath himself to ensure she remained plenty warm in their cocoon.
Steeling himself, he did what he could to regain his emotional balance, hands pressing hard into her back.
“I worry about you.” He admitted. ”Every second of the day.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she let out an embittered laugh.
“You think I don’t do the same?” She mused, her fingers twiddling with the hair at the nape of his neck.
They both moved in tandem, meeting in the middle for a very tenderhearted kiss, filled with all the sentimental, passionate and downright corny words left unspoken.
They may never see eye to eye on this, but their unshakeable mutual devotion was enough to look past that. (For now. He was sure they’d have the same argument next week.)
The snow was blanketing the ground at an increasing rate, and the silence was so absolute, that it felt as though they were the only 2 people in Paris.
They were together. They were safe. Just for a moment.
When she pulled away, he noticed her hair and eyelashes were now dusted with thick, fluffy snowflakes, and surmised that he must look the same. Her crying had all but dissipated now. He’d have to get her back inside soon.
As pressing quietness fell again, she flipped herself, now pressing her back into his front and settling between his legs. One of her hands absent-mindly reached behind her to continue to tousle his hair, a steady purr rolling out of his chest. They watched in silence as a single car, fogged by the onslaught of snow, rumbled down a deserted street.
“…Do you ever wish we were normal seventeen-year-olds?”
“I wish things weren’t so hard sometimes,” He began, fingers now digging into her hip. “But I wouldn’t trade the connection we have for the world.”
Poking his free hand out of the over-large swaddle they were in, Adrien tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. He craned his head around to kiss her cheek lovingly, and she looked back at him, a fond smile spreading on her lips.
“Yes, the battles suck. Yes, I get terrified of losing you, terrified of hurting you even, but I’d fight more villains a thousand times over if it meant I got even 10 more minutes of this.”
The pair of them closed their eyes, reveling in the secure warmth of their bodies interlocked together.
Now he had the hard question to ask.
“Do you wish we never found out, so the nightmares never… spiraled?”
He expected her to hesitate, possibly even fall back into crying again. But the certitude in which she shook her head a resounding ‘no’ left him with his heart buoyant, and a rather large lump in his throat.
Unabashedly, completely, all he knew he wanted to be was hers.
“Knowing is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I know I kinda… freaked out when the kwami told us initially,” She ducked her head, gulped, and then glanced back at him, hand squeezing his knee. “But then… When I finally let you in, everything in my life made sense. Having a soulmate isn’t a restriction, it’s a blessing.”
They shared a watery smile, and a few more adoring kisses for good measure.
“I love you, My lady.”
“I love you too, minou.” She blinked a handful of lethargic blinks, a sudden aura of sleepiness overtaking her. Letting out a jaw-cracking yawn, Marinette turned back on her side, her head lying limp on his shoulder as she curled deeper into his chest. “Why else would my worst fear be losing you?”
“Why else would I come wake you, rain or shine or… snow, I guess, in this case?”
She let out a drowsy giggle, and he peppered the top half of her face with more pecks.
Calm, at last.
Hooking his arm under her legs, he hoisted her up bridal-style and carefully made his way back down to the bedroom. “Let's get you to bed, my little red bug.”
She could only muster a content hum in response.
When he picked up her phone to set himself an alarm, it was later than he thought. Almost 5am. He’d only be able to stay for maybe an hour.
“Coffee in the morning?”
“Chai.” She corrected him, burrowing deeper into her fortitude of blankets and pillows.
“Done. I’ll pick you up before school.” He joined her, bodies now tangled together in a mess of limbs he could only describe as home . “Sweet dreams, Marinette.”