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you painted all my nights a colour I have searched for since
When Adrien was a kid, he’d watch all kinds of movies with his maman. Stories of brave heroes fighting villains; groups of friends going on adventures; and princesses falling in love. They would only have to wish on a star and all their dreams would come true.
‘Could it really be that easy?’ He’d wondered.
There had been a period of time where – for a week straight – he sat by his window every night, waiting for a shooting star to pass so he could make a wish. But regardless of whether he saw one or not, he’d always wake up in his warm bed, courtesy of his maman carrying him across the room and lulling him to sleep.
Perhaps that’s why, ten years later, he still finds himself clinging to that dream.
From the rooftops of Paris, he felt closer to the stars, yet they were still impossibly out of reach.
Adrien thinks loving Ladybug is akin to wishing on a star. Or perhaps it was more like a meteor shower. He still recalls the day they'd first met, when she vowed to protect all of Paris, and how that set him alight. It was instantaneous, as if he’d been wandering through life in a hazy dream and she was a jolt of lightning finally snapping him awake; A sudden thrill washing over him in a second that would consume him for eternity.
On nights like this, when he’s running from his reality, he wants nothing more than to confide in his partner. To tell her everything – all his hopes and dreams; his fears and worries; and every tiny detail in between – without the barrier of secret identities restricting them.
But of course, he knows he can’t do any of that.
So instead, he sits on an empty rooftop, staring up at an empty sky, the cold air prickling his skin. He thinks of how much warmer it had been in the mansion all those years ago.
Shrouded in hues of navy and purple, he searches for a shooting star to make a wish. It wasn’t much different from when he was a child - The only difference was that now when there were no meteors for him to wish on, he’d wake up with terrible back pains from poor sleeping decisions.
Tonight was proving to be another battle between the sky and his own resilience. Hardly any stars were visible in the sky, so Adrien prepared himself for a long night of waiting for nothing.
As time passes, the loud buzz of traffic fades into a faint hum, and his eyelids begin to feel more heavy. He lets himself drift away...
Until he hears a crash .
He jumps to his feet, grabbing his baton as he prepares for an akuma. He scans every nearby rooftop on high alert, searching for any sign of danger.
But instead, he’s pleasantly surprised.
A few balconies away, he sees his classmate. Clutching a dustpan and brush, she’s kneeling to sweep up what looks like a broken plant pot. She’s talking to herself, he notices.
His gut is telling him to go and help her pick up the broken pieces, but he decides against it.
Marinette had a knack for reading people. Even with his mask, she’d surely see right through him. She would certainly ask why he was out ' patrolling' at this hour. He certainly couldn’t answer that he was trying to escape his suffocating house after arguing with his father over the future of his modelling career.
He lets out a sigh and resigns himself to keeping his distance.
Though strangely, he's content watching her from afar. She paces back and forth, picking up every broken shard, still babbling to herself. Even with his enhanced hearing, he can’t make out what she’s saying, but he finds himself smiling along with her anyway. He chuckles at some of the familiar wild gestures he’s so used to seeing her make at school.
And when she heads back inside, 5 minutes later, he takes that as his sign to leave as well.
(He forgets all about his hunt for a shooting star. Instead, he has an early night. When he wakes, he feels more well-rested than he has in a while.)
and I wake with your memory over me
Despite growing up under camera lenses and watchful eyes, Adrien often wonders if he’ll ever truly get used to it.
“Magnifico!” FLASH. “More!” FLASH. “Imagine your mama’s spaghetti!”
He follows all of Vincent’s directions, ignoring the growling of his stomach that arises at every mention of food. It doesn’t help that his position by the park’s fountain gives him the perfect view of the Dupain-Cheng bakery. He watches customers stroll in and out, clutching bags of baked goods, and he’s reminded of the fact that he hasn’t eaten since breakfast.
When the shoot finally comes to an end, Adrien darts straight to the bakery, hoping to enjoy just five minutes of peace before the Gorilla has to take him to fencing class.
The bell jingles as he pushes the door open, the sweet smell of vanilla and fresh bread filling his nose straight away. Rows of pastries, macrons and sweet treats are lined up, and he hardly knows where to begin.
“Good afternoon, Adrien,” Sabine’s voice welcomes him, and he snaps his head up to greet her. Perhaps his eyes linger behind the counter for a moment too long, Sabine slightly smiling as she says, “Sorry, Marinette’s out with Alya right now.”
His eyes widen, before flickering to the ground. He felt like he’d been caught, but he wasn’t quite sure what he was guilty of.
“So, what can I get for you?” The older woman prompts him, and he pushes those thoughts to the back of his mind.
He’s still overwhelmed by choice, scanning the lines of sweet treats before him, unsure of what to choose – until his eyes lay upon a savoury tart.
Subconsciously, he reaches for his pocket, searching for the lucky charm Marinette had given him when they'd been rehearsing for the Ultimate Mecha Strike tournament. He smiles at the memory of Tom and Sabine offering them treats throughout their gaming session, exchanging tips, and having a bit to eat in the Place Des Vosges afterwards. Though, he never got a chance to savour it thanks to the akuma attack which interrupted them.
And so, Adrien orders a quiche and leaves the bakery feeling slightly more refreshed.
(On the ride to fencing, long after finishing his snack, he still has one hand tucked away in his pocket. He lightly traces the beads of his lucky charm, the edges of the red string just beginning to fray.)
you say, "what a mind," this happens all the time
In class, the scratching of a pencil pulled Adrien’s focus away from Ms Mendeliev.
His eyes wandered over to his lab partner's notebook, littered with sketches and doodles. Glancing up at Marinette’s face, he notices how she tends to stick her tongue out from between her rosy lips when she's concentrating.
He looks away, forcing himself to pay attention to the science lesson.
But as class goes on, he can’t seem to focus. He keeps getting distracted by the pictures scrawled all over Marinette’s page – fashion sketches, faces, flowers, and half moons – but most of all, the tiny paw prints she has dotted in between every sketch.
Despite his page being filled with neatly written notes, the white unfilled space in the margins was making it look increasingly empty.
And so, he grips his pencil tighter and he begins scribbling away at the empty column.
Adrien didn’t consider himself much of an artist, but watching how Marinette’s creativity could spill from out of her mind and into the world around her, something made him want to try.
So with three simple lines, he draws a triangle.
Another few strokes and he’s drawn the mouth of a cat; followed by two – no – three pairs of lines for the whiskers. Maybe a fraction of Marinette’s talent had seeped into him, his pencil moving without second thought. Dots for the eyes, the round shape of its head and, of course, he couldn’t forget the cat ears.
He lightly tapped against the desk, staring at his sketch in search of more things to add. Should he give the cat a body, or just leave it as a face? Perhaps a bell? Or a ball of yarn?
“ So… adorable…” A soft mumble sounded from beside him.
Instinctively, Adrien shielded the drawing with his arms, flustered and suddenly self-conscious about his lack of art skills. His eyes snapped to Marinette’s, her own eyes blown wide and cheeks now matching the shade of her lips.
“Oh! I meant– The cat!” She nervously pointed towards the notebook hidden under his grasp. “The cat you drew is adorable!” She enthused, her mouth quirking up in a smile.
Huh.
Admittedly, Adrien wasn’t used to being imperfect. Whether it be school, piano, or fencing – he was a prodigy in everything he did; and if he were ever not perfect, he’d be expected to practise until he was. He was an Agreste, after all.
But Marinette’s praise was able to coax him out into unknown territory. Slowly, he uncovered his drawing for her eyes. His work was far from perfection, but for some reason, that didn’t really matter right now.
"Thanks, Marinette."
If it was good enough for her to notice, perhaps that was enough.
(Though he was too ashamed to admit it, for a split-second of their interaction, Adrien had thought Marinette meant that he was adorable . He chalked up his warm cheeks and increasing heartbeat to embarrassment for thinking such a thing.)
(No other reason.)
I saw flecks of what could've been lights, but it might just have been you passing by
After weeks of back-to-back photo shoots, akuma attacks and disagreements with his father, Adrien’s restless nights were finally catching up to him.
He’d slept through his alarm yet he was somehow still tired, dragging himself out of bed and skipping breakfast. He was beginning to regret all those evenings he’d sacrificed a good night's sleep to stargaze from Paris' rooftops.
Adrien wore his usual practised smile as he greeted a few of his classmates in the courtyard. They all seemed chipper and far too awake, but luckily they didn’t seem to notice anything was out of the ordinary. He drifted near the back of the group, happily fading into the background, unnoticed by the crowd.
Unnoticed by all, but one.
Marinette – who’d arrived earlier than him, for once – shuffles to his side, mouthing a greeting and offering him a simple smile. He returns it, but it doesn’t meet his eyes.
Anyone else would be fooled, but he’s pretty sure she can tell.
She studies his face, lingering on the dark circles he’d desperately tried to cover with concealer on the ride to school. He’s sure she notices how the whites of his eyes are tinged red. Her eyes flicker to his rustled hair and creased overshirt, and his hand twitches with the urge to fix his appearance.
A few moments pass. No words are exchanged between them, but they both seem to know what the other is thinking.
“Adrien,” she mumbles softly, “Are you–”
But he’s distracted by the sound of footsteps speeding towards them. He turns and sees Kim and Alix racing in their direction, going too fast to stop in time. Instantly, it dawns on him – Marinette is directly in their path.
Cutting her off, he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her into his chest, just in time for the pair to bolt past them, with Alix shouting a string of apologies in their wake.
They stay frozen in place for a moment, allowing the gust of wind to settle. Her head is buried into the crook of his neck, and his hands are wrapped around her. For a fleeting moment, he thinks of how perfectly she fits in his arms, as though they were moulded to fit together.
He quickly pulls back.
“Marinette, are you okay?” He hastily asks, giving her a once over. There’s a rosy tinge on her cheeks he hadn’t noticed before.
She blinks. Her lack of response worries him at first, but she quickly snaps out of her trance, eyes widening and cheeks deepening in colour.
“Sorry!” She squeaks, forcing some distance between them as she steps out of his reach completely.
He suddenly feels a lot colder.
“...fine! I mean- No! I’m fine! Not that you’re not ...”
Adrien struggles to keep up with her rambling sometimes. He wonders how she does it – how someone who can read him so easily is so hard to decipher themself.
A string of apologies continues to spill from her lips. She frantically pats herself down, gesturing in all directions, but when her eyes meet his, she seems to slow.
Throughout his life, Adrien had gotten used to being picked apart by scrutinising stares. But with Marinette it was different; He was used to being watched, but he’d never quite felt seen. Being under her gaze wasn’t a scorching, burning glare, it was just… warm.
“Are you okay?”
He understands the weight her question carries. He searches for an answer, but he struggles to find one.
They’re interrupted by the ringing of the school bell, which answers for him.
“We should get to class!” He blurts instead, changing the subject.
He watches her deflate, but she doesn’t push an answer any further. They walk through the courtyard together, words lost between them.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to answer Marinette. If there was ever something he wanted to tell, he was sure it would be to her. For some reason, he felt a connection with her he wasn’t quite sure he fully understood.
But she seemed to understand him.
“Hey Marinette,” he whispers just loud enough for her to hear. “I’m alright,” I don’t quite have an answer, “Thank you for asking,” but I’ll tell you when I do.
She smiles at him, happy with that, and they head into class.
(The next day, he finds a cup of coffee on his desk and a brown paper bag next to it. A passionfruit macron sits inside. He tells himself that the warmth swelling through him is from the steaming cup of coffee in his hands.)
flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful
Despite swearing that he wouldn’t, Chat Noir had once again found himself spending another sleepless night alone on a rooftop. Unlike previous times, however, it wasn’t prompted by a fallout with his father, or any reason in particular.
The skies were clear and the stars were bright tonight. Perhaps he just wanted an excuse to look at them.
He was content, lying alone on that roof, searching for a meteor amongst the sea of stars, fading into the city skyline.
“Psst!” A familiar voice called out to him, pulling him out of his trance.“Chat Noir!”
He sits upright and spots Marinette, leaning against her balcony railing, just a few rooftops away. He hadn’t even realised how close he was to her house.
Before he even has a chance to dwell on it, he swings over to join her, following the magnetic pull which seemed to have drawn him to this side of Paris in the first place.
She gives him a soft smile when he lands on her railing, “What are you doing out here at this time?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Well, this is my balcony,” she playfully rolls her eyes. “But I guess I… couldn’t sleep. My brain won’t switch off so I thought I’d do some sketching…” She trails off, gesturing to her notepad. She flicks her page – it’s filled with a half-finished drawing of the night sky.
He doesn’t know why he says it. The words spill from his lips before he can stop them.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
She seems surprised by his request but happily accepts, on the condition that they have to be quiet because her parents – and the rest of the city – are asleep.
At first, he is quiet. He sits by her side, stargazing just as he had been before, except he isn’t alone this time. She continues her sketch, her company making the air feel less chilly.
But as time passes, light chatter fills the empty space. It continues to flow, until eventually, her notepad migrates to the floor and they find themselves making jokes over silly conversations about nothing.
He doesn’t know how long it's been when he spots a flashing light passing above them, but he immediately points to it.
“Make a wish!”
Marinette laughs, and he thinks it might be his favourite sound. It’s bubbly, and light, and so Marinette. She smiles, colour seeping into her cheeks and he can’t help but notice how beautifully the flush of red brings out her eyes. He’s hardly able to focus on what she’s saying. Had she always had that many freckles?
Rolling onto her side, she faces him. “That’s a helicopter,” she lets out between giggles.
He pulls his eyes away from her, and back to the sky. The ‘star’ is moving in a perfectly straight line, a flashing red beam radiating off it.
Yup.
Definitely a helicopter.
Still, he can’t help but wonder, “What would you wish for anyway?”
“Well, if I told you it wouldn’t come true,” she teases.
But then she shifts under her seat, and when she continues, her voice is more timid than before.
“I don’t think wishing can change much anyway.”
He feels like they're sharing secrets under a blanket of the sky. He lowers his volume to match hers, “Why not?”
“Well, when I pin all my hopes on one thing going right, it never works out,” she mumbles, and she's suddenly much more interested in picking at her nails right now. He wonders briefly what must've made her feel that way.
"But-" she snaps out of it, her chipper voice returning, “I also think that our fates are already written in the stars.”
When he looks at her in confusion, she reaches over to grab her sketchpad, flicking to one of the previous pages.
It’s a map of the constellations.
“When I was a kid, my maman would tell me all these stories about different constellations,” she traces one of the lines on her page, then gestures up to the sky. “Those stars there make up Cygnus, and those ones–”
“Wait," he squints, trying to follow her eyeline, "I don’t see it."
She shuffles, scooting closer so their shoulders are touching, before she continues pointing the rest out.
He listens intently as she recounts the Chinese legend of the Magpie Bridge – two fated lovers separated by a heavenly river, who would meet again courtesy of a bridge of magpies once a year.
(What Marinette didn’t know, however, was that Chat Noir already knew the story. And the next story she told him. And the next... As a child with unlimited internet access, he’d long since fallen down the astronomy rabbit hole, teaching himself the legends behind all the constellations.)
But he wouldn’t tell her that. He wanted to hear those stories from her.
He wanted to experience them with her.
And as she continued rambling on, slowly, it all began to make sense.
For so long, Adrien had chased the high of an instant thrill. He’d thought that could love only ever exist as a clap of thunder, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lightning strike.
Except in this instance, there was no shooting star or meteor shower. It was just the two of them, on Marinette’s balcony, carefully joining the dots between the stars which had been right in front of him all along. Seeing her fully for the first time.
The moonlight washes over her features. He smiles thinking of how the freckles on her face are like a constellation of their own.
Perhaps he would’ve realised all this sooner if he’d simply approached her balcony the first time, all those months ago.
Or maybe their fates were already aligned, and this was exactly how it was supposed to go.