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Adrien was ashamed to admit how long it took for him to figure it out.
In his defense, he had been a model for his father for so many years that pictures of him in every possible pose were uncomfortably easy to come by. It was common knowledge that artists needed references for drawing. Even Kagami had tried sketching him a time or two while they had been dating. So it made sense that his good friend, and the woman he had unwittingly been crushing on since college, Marinette would use some of his old advertisements to help her practice drawing.
Or so he had been telling himself for the last few years.
Adrien followed all his old friends on social media, though he really only payed attention to a few: Nino’s DJ gigs and mixes, Alya’s work as a reporter on social issues and the Ladyblog - of course, Kitty Section’s posts for upcoming concerts, and Marinette’s public posts.
Now that she had graduated, his Everyday Ladybug was working on starting her own brand under the name Cherry Blossom Designs and he followed that account to show his support for his friend’s dreams - the fact that he took great pleasure in seeing Marinette’s designs and how fast her popularity was growing was a pleasure in and of itself!
However, it was her personal art posts on tumblr - written under the alias MDCherryB - that should have tipped Adrien off far sooner to the state of his crush’s feelings. For her account was full of sketches of her family and friends, but a hefty percentage were sketches of him.
Sure, there were sketches of some of his ads - thankfully not the embarrassing one with the wings! - and several were from some of his full spreads for Fashion Week last year, but even more stood out to him as different than just an artist copying an interesting pose for practice. It wasn’t odd that Marinette would draw her friends, but for her to choose those specific poses to draw and then post was enough of a dope slap to get him to sit up and take notice.
One was of him lying on his back, face to the sky and laughing as if the world and all its cares had just fallen away. There was one of him peaking out over an oversized scarf with smiling eyes, one of him shirtless splashing around in the ocean in gleeful abandon, and one of him leaning against a wall with a sad, faraway look in his eyes.
But that wasn’t all. Marinette had sketched both sides of him.
There were almost as many drawings of Cat Noir as there were of Adrien. There was one of his silhouette outlined against the full moon, one of him running the rooftops with his tail belt whipping behind him like a flag, and one of just his eyes behind his mask. There were pictures of him playing in a pile of leaves with little kids at a park, hanging upside-down with his hair falling down in a fluffy mop, even one of him looking confused with his head cocked to one side and one cat ear forward while the other flipped sideways in uncertainty.
Most of the sketches she would just date, but some she would give titles to, such as the one of him staring off into the distance which she had titled ‘Comfort’ or the one with Cat playing in the leaves was named “Sweet Kittens.” They gave him a glimpse into what Marinette had been thinking when she drew him and it left him with a warm, sparkly feeling inside.
Marinette saw him in a way no one else did - not even Nino. She always had ever since the day he had given her his umbrella as thunder rolled over their heads on his second day of school.
But it was the most recent pictures that hit him like a punch in the gut, leaving him unusually nervous and uncertain yet hopeful.
MDCherryB had posted two new pictures just that morning, Christmas morning at that, and the contrast between them made a lump rise in Adrien’s throat.
The first was a sketch of his civilian self with a hand, presumably that of the artist or viewer, reaching out to ruffle his hair. As gently as he could so as not to shift the image on his tablet’s screen, Adrien traced the line where his face met the curve of the person’s palm. His likeness leaned into the touch, eyes closed as a soft, wistful smile played around his mouth. Adrien could almost hear himself purring in contentment.
The title, written in Marinette’s tidy script, read “Day Dreams.”
The second was of Cat Noir looking at the viewer flirtatiously over his shoulder, a pose that showed off both the definition of his back muscles and the curve of his lips to such perfection that Adrien found his face growing hot in embarrassment.
"Night Dreams” was written in a small print at just the right height to imitate the end of his tail.
Marinette… dreamed about him? She thought about him when he wasn’t around? Did she… perhaps fantasize about him?
Adrien stared at the screen, unable to tear his eyes away from the portraits of himself that the love of his life had drawn with her own hands.
“Looking at more pictures?” Plagg said suddenly right in his ear, nearly startling Adrien out of his skin and causing him to drop the tablet in the process.
If it was possible for a little black cat sprite to collapse in a heap with laughter while floating in midair, then that is what Plagg did. He cackled uproariously, rolling around in the air as if on solid ground and slapping his paw down in a true fit of hilarity.
“Plagg!” Adrien exclaimed, grabbing the tablet off the floor and hurriedly checking for damage. “What did you do that for?!”
“Because it’s funny, d’uh!” The kwami hovered into view with a smug expression gesturing at the screen on which the sketch of Cat’s flirting pose was still visible. “Besides, don’t your fan clubs give you enough ego strokes? Or is it different that it comes from your ‘very good friend’?”
“Don’t you see what this means, Plagg?” Adrien demanded, his face growing hot once more as he clutched the tablet to his chest afraid his kwami’s touch would cataclysm the precious pictures out of existence.
“You mean aside from Pigtails still being whipped for your poor self?” Plagg rolled his eyes. “You may be the best of cats, kid, but she could do better.”
“I know! She is so far out of my league that-“ Then something clicked in his overheating brain. “What do you mean ‘still being whipped’?”
Plagg snorted. “The girl has been mooning over you pretty much since day one. Her attempts to get your attention were the only things worth watching while you were in school. It was a shame when she went to ESMOD and you went to Paris University. Her luck was so bad around you that you’d think I was her kwami instead of yours! Why, I remember that day when you and the Bug fought the giant baby for the first time. It was so obvious that Pigtails and her friends had cooked up something to get your attention but when the two of you finally met up all she could do was babble about coleslaw! Priceless!”
“Plagg!”
“Oh! Or what about the time at the wax museum when-“
“PLAGG!” There was only so much Adrien’s poor love-addled brain could take in one go and Plagg’s idea of humor sometimes went as far into the uncomfortable as his cheese obsession.
“Look, this trip of yours down memory lane isn’t helping matters. Marinette couldn’t have been in love with me all this time. She was always telling me we were friends and she didn’t like me that way. You know how she feels about lies and liars, buddy. We were close - are close! Wouldn’t she have trusted me enough to tell me if she had romantic feelings towards me?”
“Have you ever told her?” Plagg asked, giving him such a knowing, penetrating glare that Adrien’s throat went dry. “Granted, your feelings developed later, but…”
The kwami pulled the tablet down from Adrien’s chest and tapped it back to life, pointing at the drawing of him as Cat Noir. “It looks like she also has some pretty deep feelings for your cat-side, too, lover boy!”
Adrien stared at the pictures, how every detail was added with extreme care and attention, how tender the caress against his hair, and how she had even contrived to make his cat eyes shine despite being portrayed in nothing but pencil.
“Do you think… could she really have feelings for me?” he asked, a hot, bittersweet longing filling his chest at the very thought.
“You could always ask Headphones or the blogger, since it’s clear you won’t take my word for it. I’ve had enough of this mush.” And with that Plagg flew off to decimate his cheese board, leaving Adrien in the nerve-racking position of his world having been rocked to its foundations.
Spurred by the idea, Adrien dashed about his apartment looking for his phone. When he finally found it, vowing to strangle his snickering kwami for hiding it in the clothes hamper, he hurriedly Facetimed Nino.
“Bro! Good to see you! Merry Christmas!”
For a moment, Adrien was stunned. His friend was sitting at table in a vaguely familiar room that Adrien couldn’t place just then.“Yeah, you too. Merry Christmas, Nino, but I was worried I would wake you up. It’s still early. Didn’t you have a gig last night?”
His friend ran a hand down his face, smoothing out the tired lines around eyes and mouth. “Yeah,” he yawned, “but Alya flew in this morning and I promised to pick her up at the airport. Gotta be there for my girl, right?”
“Considering we’re getting married in six months, you’d better be,” called Alya’s teasing voice from the other end.
Suddenly, the woman herself leaned over Nino’s shoulder in a hug to smile at the camera. “Hey, Sunshine. Good to see you. How’s it goin’?”
Adrien smiled. There was something almost parental about these two and always had been. Alya had always been the resident mama bear and Nino was the brother Adrien had never had. They were family in a way that his father, Nathalie, Aunt Amelie, and Felix could never be to him. And while it had taken several years for him to let go of the guilt he felt about that, he had long ago accepted that even black cats like him could find forever homes.
“Can’t complain,” Adrien remarked, warmed and touched by his friends’ care. “ I had a question come up recently and I was wondering if you guys could help clear it up for me?”
“Sure thing, man. Anything I can do,” Nino said taking a gulp from a mug of tea.
“You wouldn’t happen to know if Marinette ever had feelings for me, would you?”
Having spent much of his youth isolated in his parent’s house, Adrien had indulged in the only way he could experience the outside world, namely through movies and television. As a result he was familiar with the spit takes certain characters would make when startled.
But to suddenly be confronted by a splattered screen partially obscuring a spluttering, coughing Nino and Alya looking completely poleaxed was beyond his frame of reference.
“Everything ok, guys?” he asked, trying to hide his grin.
“Seriously, dude. Your timing is as bad as ever and I’ve never known you to make Marinette the butt of a joke,” Nino replied, sounding almost reproachful.
“But I’m-“
“That isn’t funny, Adrien,” Alya said, her tone instantly stern. If anyone could cause Alya Cesaire to go full mama bear mode, it was Marinette. “I don’t know what kind of lame joke you are playing at, but you leave Marinette out of it, okay? I never thought you would sink so low as to-“
“Guys! I’m serious!” Adrien exclaimed, waving his free hand in front of the camera and trying to waylay Alya from the warpath. “You know how Marinette has an art dump alt on tumblr? One not associated with her designs? Well, she has posted a lot of pictures of… well, me. First, I thought it was just her practicing with my old ads and stuff, but now…”
“What is it, Adrien,” Nino asked softly, concern showing in his tired eyes.
“Oh, nothing bad. I just… you know our beach trip this summer?”
Both Nino and Alya nodded.
“Well, Marinette apparently sketched me while we were there. She has several, including the day we were laying out on the deck to watch the sunset. That got me wondering, but then today… she posted one that left me thinking that… maybe she might…”
“Listen, Buttercup,” Alya interrupted, clearly torn between excitement and concern. “As much as I would love to spill the tea on this subject, it would be better if you talked to Marinette about it. In person. As soon as possible. That ought to clear things up for you.”
Buttercup…
That was what Marinette had called her crush when she practiced her confession with Cat Noir…
And if anyone knew who Buttercup was it would be Alya…
…who had just called him Buttercup.
“Bro, is everything cool or did the call freeze up,”Nino asked, obviously concerned.
“Y-yeah, I’m f-f-fine,” Adrien stammered, nearly losing his grip on his phone in his stupefied state. “I gotta go. Need to see Marinette.”
“Are we still on for our meetup tonight, Adrien?” Alya asked. “You know, the four of us playing board games and whatnot?”
“Yeah. Sure. Sure,” Adrien replied hastily, checking the time on his phone. Seven thirty in the morning. Was there a chance Marinette was awake? Because he didn’t think he could wait twelve hours to see her… to find out the truth. “See you guys then.”
“Okay, dude. Just… be gentle, ‘kay?” Nino pleaded around a yawn. “Marinette is family.”
“I know, Nino, but I can’t let what might be my only chance slip away.”
Both Alya and Nino perked up instantly at that. “What?! Does that mean-“
“I’ll tell you guys how it works out,” Adrien promised and then signed off.
He glanced over at his coffee table where Marinette’s gift stood resplendent in pink paper and silver ribbons.
“I can’t wait anymore,” he said. “I’ll give it my best shot, right now. Come on, Plagg!”
“Ugh! What now, smitten kitten?” his kwami whined as he flew over to him, the very picture of discontent. “More gushing over pictures? I already printed them so they would last you longer. They are worth a thousand words after all.”
“No. I’m going to confess to Marinette. Right now.”
Plagg snorted. “You’re going there to confess to your dream girl in your pjs?”
Adrien looked down, saw his red flannel Ladybug pajamas and all but yelped. Quickly, he threw on the first set of decent clothes he saw in his drawers, ran a brush through his hair, and scooped up Marinette’s gift as well as the printouts before scrambling out the door - too wound up to wait a moment longer.
***
Twenty minutes later, Adrien was knocking at the door of Marinette’s loft apartment.
It was in a converted warehouse and what it lacked in location and aesthetics it made up for in space. It also doubled as her studio, “cutting her commute to zero” as she’d said when she moved in a few months ago.
“I should have remembered she likes to sleep late,” he thought when no one answered at the second knock. “The pictures didn’t show what time she posted them after all. Most likely she posted them at two in the morning before crashing.”
With a sigh, Adrien slouched and made his way back to the old freight elevator that serviced the top floors of the building. He closed the grill, but before he could push the down button, Marinette’s door opened.
She rubbed her eyes sleepily and looked around.
“Marinette!” he called, happy to see her. It had been a while since he had seen her in person as he had been busy with managing the new casual line for his father and she’d been building her own brand.
But seeing her like this, in a pair of pink flannel boyfriend pajamas with little candy canes all over them, hair hanging loosely around her face in rumpled curls, still rubbing sleep from her eyes? His heart swelled until he thought it might burst.
“A-Adrien,” she stammered, something she hadn’t done as much around him for the last few years. He had kind of missed it and he smiled warmly at the special memories it conjured up. “Wh-what are you d-doing here so early?”
The blush on her cheeks and the confusion that dominated her expression wiped clear everything he had planned to say.
He stepped out of the elevator, tripping over the raised lip as he went, and stumbled into Marinette who rushed forward to steady him. Unable to stop his forward momentum, Adrien pushed them back against Marinette’s doorframe.
Oh, how times had changed! How many times had he caught Marinette when she had tripped or stumbled when they were back in college and hadn’t valued the closeness? And now he was the clumsy one, clutching the heavy box in one arm and holding himself by one hand against the frame while Marinette was holding him by the waist.
Adrien was stunned by more than the near mishap. His mind went blank as he found himself being held by this woman he had adored for so long, the world and all its distractions hidden in a rosy fog. Marinette’s eyes were wide open now and her lips were rosy even without the aid of makeup. She was so close he could just lean in and…
“Are you alright, Adrien,” she asked worriedly, placing one cool hand on his forehead as if checking for a temperature.
“Better than ever,” he said, content at last now that he was where he belonged.
Marinette frowned at him slightly, her lips pursing temptingly. “Then why are you here so early? Not that I mind seeing you at any time, it’s just you usually call first. If something has gone wrong, you can tell me anything. I hope you would know that by now.”
He smiled. That was his everyday Ladybug!
Leaning back on his heels, he held out the box to her. “Um…Merry Christmas?”
She looked from his face to the large pink present and back again. Her face blushed darker than the wrapping paper by several degrees. She slapped her face into her hands, a soft, whimpering coming from behind them.
“Sorry,” she groaned. “I was up late and I didn’t know it was you and I thought it was an emergency because you rarely just pop over to see me. I mean, Nino, sure, but not me so I thought something had to be wrong and-“
Based on years of such spirals, Adrien immediately wrapped her in a one armed hug. He cupped the back of her head gently against his shoulder while trying to keep from pressing the heavy box against either of them.
“It’s okay, Marinette.” he murmured softly. “You have no idea how much your care means to me. How much it has always meant. You wouldn’t be my everyday Ladybug if you weren’t concerned about your friends and family’s happiness as much as you are. I can’t say that I’m sorry I came over, but I am sorry if my not calling in advance worried you. I don’t want you to worry so much. What I want most…”
His mouth went dry and he bit down on the words he was longing to speak, afraid that he would mess everything up at this crucial moment and lose friendship and dreams of love in one fell swoop.
Marinette wrapped her arms around his waist once more, leaning her head against his shoulder and taking deep breaths to calm herself from her anxieties - he hoped.
“Besides,” he said with a soft chuckle, hoping to lighten the mood. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen you in your pajamas, you know.”
She giggled and leaned back to look at him, her eyes… wait. Her eyes were red rimmed. Had she been crying?
“I can do without the crazed fans and hiding in the fountain this time,” she said with a nervous grin. “Let’s go inside before someone sees us and I end up running away with you again.”
Marinette took his hand and led him into her apartment to a small sitting area with a conversation grouping of second hand furniture and a very familiar cable spool repurposed into a coffee table. A small, freestanding heater was working full blast to take the frigid edge off the large industrial looking space.
“Stay here where it’s warm,” she said with a shiver when she let go of his hand. “I’ll get us some blankets and hot coffee.”
After a few minutes of muttering to herself in the far reaches of the apartment, Marinette came back balancing two thick blankets made of a super soft material as well as two mugs full to the brim. She set the mugs on the table and promptly wrapped herself up in her blanket until only her face and the toes of her squishy Santa penguin slippers showed.
“Warm enough, Nanook? he asked with a grin, eying her position and her fuzzy cocoon with restored good humor. There was just something about Marinette being Marinette that put him at ease. She had always managed that, whether he was masked as Adrien or as Cat Noir.
“Not that I could ever really hide much from her aside from my identity,” he thought, proud and slightly nervous at the thought. “She always managed to see right through me when no one else could. Father’s training was too good, but she always cuts to the heart of things in her own gentle way. Cheese and crackers! How am I ever going to get this out in the open?”
She gave a funny little snort as her wrapped hands struggled to hold her mug steady. “Not by half. This place is impossible to heat, but it is tolerable in summer and it gives me enough space for setting up shop until I have enough money to lease a storefront.”
Marinette took a sip of her coffee - hazelnut cream and two sugars, he remembered - then looked him over.
With a roll of her eyes he was more used to seeing from behind a mask, she unwrapped herself only to wrap him in the spare blanket before huddling back under her own.
“So, now will you tell me what is wrong?” she asked, her voice sounding concerned once more. “You look anxious and I’m going to worry until you tell me what is going on.”
If ever there were words that would fill his mind with guilt and his heart with lead, she had just spoken them. More than anything, Adrien wanted Marinette to be able to relax, to not worry and fret about everything until she spiraled into a nervous mess the way she used to. No, more than that he wanted to be the one to help her relax… to take away her burdens… to soothe her anxieties and comfort her when the world and all it’s madness impinged on her sensitive awareness.
“D-don’t you want to open your present first?” he asked, nervously.
She frowned at him, sending a wash of deja vu over him like a wave of cold mud. “Adrien?”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck over the pale green scarf she had made him last year. “Youpostedontumblrthismorning,” he mumbled, almost too fast for himself to understand let alone anyone else.
But this was Marinette who practically spoke ‘nervous’ as a secondary language. She blinked twice then her brow cleared. “Oh, yeah. Last night… well, stupidly early this morning, I guess. Just some designs and sketches. Stuff for my new line-”
“MDCherryB posted,” he clarified, and he felt himself growing hotter with each passing heartbeat. “You posted two pictures. One of Cat Noir… and… one of me.”
It was a good thing her mug was still on the table for her sudden spasm would have been enough to soak them both. “You… you know about that account?”
He nodded. “You use an alt account as an art dump site so nothing will get attached to your brand.”
Marinette seemed to shrink inside her blanket until only her eyes were visible. “So… you’ve seen them… the sketches? All of them?”
He nodded again. “Yeah. Your alt was in my orbit so, I followed you with my alt account. I’ve been watching them since you started posting.”
She shivered, but surely it wasn’t due to the cold. “I’ll… I’ll delete those pictures today. I won’t post any more of them. I… I promise.”
“No!” he said, a little loudly for all the hard surfaces in the room as his voice echoed back to him. “If you hadn’t posted them, then I might not have… I mean, I wouldn’t be here and…”
“I’m sorry if you felt hurt by it, Adrien,” she said, gaze glued to the floor as her face darkened into blotches of magenta and purple. “That was never my intention. Sometimes I just need to draw something to clear my head and… my friends… help clear the cobwebs and-“
Adrien grabbed her chin and gently lifted her eyes to his. “But it isn’t just your friends, is it?” he asked, holding his breath and not daring to hope. “Sure there some of Alya, Nino, or the rest of the old gang but…”
She looked away. “It is mostly you and Cat Noir.”
“Does that mean something to you, Marinette?”
“Please, oh please let it mean what I think it does!” he thought, his heart pounding furiously in his throat.
Her sapphire stare snapped back to his face, leaving him breathless and his hand was shaking on her chin. Tears welled up at the edges of her eyes, trickling down her cheeks as the tip of her nose turned pink.
“It’s just… you… and Cat… you both mean a lot to me.”
He leaned in closer, lost in her eyes. “Is that the truth, Marinette?”
“Y-y-yes, of c-course.”
“The whole truth?”
For a long moment neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved or even breathed. They just hung there, suspended in a moment of time, lost in each others’ eyes.
Finally, Adrien broke the silence. “I have loved you for a really, really long time, Marinette, and I need to know… if there is any hope that you might-“
With a gasp, Marinette flung herself at him, blanket spread open like an angel’s wings as she wrapped herself around him. She pressed her lips to his eagerly, as if she was hoping her actions would prove more reliable than her words.
Adrien clung to her like his lifeline as her warmth and sweetness shook him to his foundations for the second time that morning.
Plagg had been right. The pictures had told him the truth and her kisses?
Well, they were definitely worth more than a thousand stumbling confessions.