Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Maybe figuring out how to talk to Marinette caused a shift on the scales. Because right now, he is terrified of Ladybug.

Chat Noir paces the rooftop until he’s afraid the people living there are going to yell at him, then resorts to snapping his baton open and shut so many times his hand starts to hurt. They are patrolling tonight, right? Unless he got the dates mixed up. Oh, God, did he get the dates mixed up? He knew he’d had a feeling he was forgetting something while he and Mr Dupain were baking yesterday. Oh, Ladybug is going to kill him. 

If she doesn't kill him for the our identities must remain a secret and the best kept secrets are the ones you never share and if anyone finds out our identities we'll have to renounce our Miraculouses and the world will end and everyone will die thing first.

The purpling sky lowers along the Eiffel Tower. Ladybug leaps across it, a red slice in the silhouette.

He's going to pass out. He's either going to pass out or she's going to knock him out herself. Those are the more comforting scenarios he gives himself.

She arrives in one purposeful swing with her string detached from its anchor most of the way down. Winding her yo-yo back up, she jogs over.

“Hey, chaton!” she says. “You ready to start?”

“U-Um.” He straightens up against the chimney. Why do his legs feel so awkward? Have his legs always been this long? He rearranges them to the best of his ability, feeling like some kind of baby equidae animal that still hasn't learned how to stand. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Ooh, is it that new thing you're doing with your hair?” she asks. She steps forward and brushes it out of his eyes. “It's longer at the front now, no? Or am I just seeing things?”

He looks at her, startled into silence. “...No, I— why would I want to talk to you about my hair?”

“Because your hair is nice , duh.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s not nice to gatekeep all your styling tips from me. You think the pigtails are by choice ?”

Then she laughs, so loud that he's not sure she would've even heard if he tried to get a word in.

What is wrong with her?

It's not that Ladybug isn't nice, because she is. She's just a little… well. The type of person to open patrol with an itinerary scribbled down on some craft paper and insist that he report back to her so she can keep track of how much of the city they cover per hour. The type to give him the dirty look to end all dirty looks when he suggests that maybe Excel could be more efficient for her purposes. She's not the type to ask him for… styling tips.

He's not sure she's ever come to patrol in such a good mood. It's… sweet.

“My hair’s the same,” he tells her. “But I live by argan oil.”

“Oooh,” she says. “Low porosity?”

“Normal.”

“Darn.” She shakes her head. “Of course even your hair cuticles are perfect.” She opens her yo-yo and tosses it up. “Anyway. Let's get going.”

Listen. You would postpone your death too if you had the chance.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

Big Smiles!: Ladybug can't stop grinning in new interview with Chat Noir .

Chat Noir scrolls his thumb across the screen of his baton. The stream of screencaps embedded into the article is almost never ending, the comment section, usually visible at the bottom of the window, long-buried between photo after photo of Ladybug smiling.

He smiles, too. A happy Ladybug makes a happy Chat Noir. And a happy Ladybug and Chat Noir makes a happy Paris.

He still has no idea where this change came from. Hawk Moth is still at large, and the number of akumas they’re dealing with seems as likely to dwindle as Mrs Dupain-Cheng is in every art class to not tease him about how much paint he always squeezes out on his palette. 

Maybe… maybe it could be because of him. It’s presumptuous, of course, but Heroes’ Day was their biggest victory to date, and he has been bringing her some of the leftover treats after his shifts at the bakery…

He could just not tell her about The Thing. The our identities must remain a secret or everyone will die thing. Like, really, strangling her superhero partner would be such a downer. It wouldn’t be very nice of him to ruin her good mood like that.

Their rooftop emerges behind Montparnasse Tower. He sighs. 

It also wouldn’t be very nice to keep this from her, either. 

They’re partners. He has to be honest to her.

She sees him in the sky and stands up. As he nears, he notices a brown Tom & Sabine bag in her hands.

“Chaton!” she calls as he slows to a stop on the tile. She rummages inside the bag and pulls out a croissant. “Here. Before your sugar drops.”

He looks at her, perplexed. “...Before my sugar drops?”

“Uhhh.” Her eyes snap from the bag to his face and back again. “Yes. You were wobbly last patrol.”

He concedes, taking the croissant. He was feeling a little lightheaded.

He takes a deep breath.

“Someone knows my identity.”

He squeezes his eyes shut. Her gaze on him feels heavy. The bag rustles in the silence. 

Then, suddenly, like a realisation, she gasps. “Ohhh!”

It baffles him enough to forget to be guilty. “...What?”

Her face drops. “I mean— um, ohhh .” It answers absolutely none of his questions.

“...Is that a bad ohhh ?” he asks.

“Um.” Her eyes dart around the rooftop, eventually landing on the paper bag again. “I mean, um. It’s— it’s a relief. Because at first I thought it was someone dangerous but then I remembered that you, um, have been running off to that bakery a lot after battles and so it makes sense that it was someone there and not, like, someone evil, which is a good thing. So it’s a good ohhh . It’s fine!” 

It takes a moment to parse through it all, then another to get his nervous system back into order. 

“So… you're not mad?” he says.

“Of course not!” she says. “I always just want the best for you, chaton. You know that.”

She looks at him fondly.

A surprising wave of warmth fills him.

Maybe a happy Chat Noir makes a happy Ladybug, too.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

“...And that's basically why I think it'd be really funny if Lila was Chloé’s therapist,” she says. “But, like, hypothetically, because even Chloé doesn't deserve that.”

Adrien releases the pressure of his thumb slightly, letting her roll more wool. “Sometimes I wonder if you make less sense now than you did when you couldn't talk to me.”

Marinette stretches her leg across the carpet and pokes her with the end of a pink fluffy sock. “Next time I’ll kick you.”

He laughs, readjusting his hands under the wool.

It's hard to remember sometimes that, technically, Marinette is in love with him. Their conversation from last week feels like a fever dream, but everytime he de-transforms in front of her and she doesn't so much as blink is a startling reminder of just how much things have changed between them.

The wool around his knuckles thins as she ties off the last few metres. The way she scrunches her face makes her nose look like a gumdrop.

Something very, very concerning happens to his heart.

It’s not a feeling that hasn't happened before. He always felt a little funny around Marinette, like he had pins and needles all over his chest. That urge to squish her, fold her up and put her in his pocket — not an uncommon sentiment, if the way Alya glomps her sometimes is anything to go by.

But he's never really acknowledged anything beyond that. It's only been the last couple of days that he's suddenly become so aware of it, and that pins and needles feeling feels a lot more like getting stabbed with his fencing sabre a million times. 

It's concerning. What if he’s just had a respiratory problem this whole time and didn't know? His father would kill him.

“You have some wool on your face,” she says.

He snaps out of his thoughts. “Where?”

She reaches over, fingers hovering over his eyebrow, and, against all odds, blushes. “...May I?”

Oh. Ohhh.

“U-um.” That is definitely not a respiratory problem. Oh God. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

She picks the pink speck off his brow. He forgets how to breathe.

He likes her.

Like, actually.

She sits back on the carpet. 

He works on schooling his expression into one that doesn't look like his whole brain just shut down. He likes her. Oh my God of course he likes her. Who doesn't like her, really, she's literally Marinette—

…But Marinette likes him.  

She finishes arranging her wool into her sewing box, tucking each one close to the next, keeping space for her needles. Just last week, her hands used to tremble whenever she put them away. She’d still been nervous. Remnants of that old uncertainty. Uncertainty that he didn't like her.

These feelings have sat in him for a total of forty-five seconds and the idea of that already seems unacceptable. He should tell her. Both how unacceptable it is and also that maybe they should run away together until he's old enough to be emancipated and then come back to Paris and get married.

“...What?” she says.

He doesn't even try to avert his gaze. “Nothing.” He smiles. “Just thinking.”

She continues sorting her sewing box.

He could tell her. Right now. The temptation is so visceral he has to curl his fingers up to hold back.

But doesn't Marinette I-made-forty-birthday-gifts-for-you-Adrien-stop-laughing Dupain-Cheng deserve something above and beyond?

He thinks: a balloon arch. He could get every balloon colour-matched to the exact bluebell shade of her eyes. Then inside every balloon would be a love letter for everyday that she was in love with him and he didn't know. Then he could set it all up in her living room— wait, no, she's only in the living room to play MechaStrike with her dad. Okay, on her balcony— no, wait, the wind. Her room? But surely she'd notice the balloon arch in her room. Actually, how do you make a balloon arch? He’ll have to ask Marinette—

…Ah.

Right.

Marinette I-made-forty-birthday-gifts-for-you-Adrien-stop-laughing Dupain-Cheng is not so easy to match for Adrien sorry-my-only-birthday-gift-since-I-was-eleven-was-a-pen Agreste.

No. He has to make this perfect. And if he can't do it on his own…

Well, who else does he know that definitely knows how to make a balloon arch?

…Is this a good idea? Sure, she said she was fine with someone knowing his identity, but dating that person? 

Marinette stuffs her needles into the sewing box, scrunching up her nose.

He will talk to Ladybug tonight .

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

The Dupain-Cheng’s living room balcony is wonderfully secluded. Once he hears nothing from Marinette’s air mattress, he sneaks into his transformation and heads over to meet Ladybug.

“Hi,” he says when he lands. “I want to ask out my friend.”

She pauses, and winds up her yo-yo very, very slowly.

“Which friend?” she asks.

He hesitates. “...The one from the bakery.”

Her yo-yo scrambles out of her hands.

“Chat, that’s—!” She cuts herself off with an incoherent hand gesture. “That’s— that’s so great!”

This time it’s him who seems to forget how his fingers work. “...Really?”

“Yes, really!” 

Her smile is… frazzled. She’s not lying, is she? He can’t understand why she would, of course — it’s not like she’s ever hesitated to tell him off before. But she’s been acting weird since the other day, and they haven’t really talked about the whole identity thing…

No, she said it herself. She wants the best for him.

“So… you’ll be my wingwoman?” he asks.

Her twitches, like a quickly-corrected static error. “Your wing-what?”

“My wingwoman?” he says. “You know, like une entremetteuse?”

“No— no, I know what a wingwoman is,” she says. “I just— I mean— I guess I just wasn’t expecting— ”

“Oh.” Embarrassment claws through him. It’s not like he was expecting a lot from this conversation, but flat out rejection still hurts. “No, no, that’s totally fine, I get it, we don’t really talk about things like that—”

“No, no , Chat, that’s not it, you can tell me anything. I mean— you're my best friend…” Softness appears in her eyes for a moment. “Of course I’ll be your wingwoman.” 

“...Oh.” The panic flushes out of him. Best friend . It fills him up, just as exhilarating as when Marinette said she cared about him.

She lets out a breath. “I guess I just… uh, expected you'd, you know, just get it over with?

“I want to do something special for her,” he says. The memory of her curled up on her air mattress reappears in his mind; his insides squish together like cake batter. “I mean, sure, we’re friends. But does that mean I can’t still try to woo her?”

“...Oh,” she says. “That’s… that’s very sweet.”

He’s not expecting the sentiment steeped in her voice. She really is his best friend — how could he have ever forgotten that before? Maybe all it took was filtering the hue of his feelings for her out of their relationship and putting it somewhere that she could actually help him with. This whole time he was afraid of Ladybug’s reaction, and now he wonders if this has been something the two of them needed all along.

“So, I wanted to plan something big,” he says. “A balloon arch came to mind? But I don’t know how to make a balloon arch. Do you know how to make a balloon arch? Because I think—”

“Wait,” she says, lifting her hands. “You want to start… now ?”

“Yeah?” he replies. “Why? Should we be starting later?”

“W-Well, um, it's a little late, and I kinda need some time to think about… uh , about… this. I mean, what kind of wingwoman brings bad ideas to the table? Haha.”

“Wait,” he says. “Is the balloon arch a bad idea?”

“What? No.”

“Ladybug.”

Her face draws in. “Well… it's… definitely a choice?”

“Oh. Oh. Okay. Um, that's fine.”

“But it’s not bad! ” she protests. “It’s just… well, a choice.”

He tries not to feel bitter. He thought the balloon arch would’ve been a classy touch. But it’s fine, he has plenty of other ideas, anyway. On the balance of probabilities, at least one of them should be something good. Something deserving of Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

…

…

…

Though he's not sure what those probabilities are balanced against.

“...I’ve got absolutely nothing,” he says.

“‘Nothing’?”

“Nothing.”

“...That’s okay.”

He wants to cry . He can come up with over twenty new cat puns per battle but he’s drawing blanks at something actually important?

No wonder Ladybug never fell for him. He wonders how hard she pities the girl he’s planning to confess to with a balloon arch.

He covers his face with his hands. “She’s gonna think I’m a loser .”

“Chat, no.” She touches his shoulder comfortingly. “She’s gonna be over the moon! No matter what you do!”

“But I want it to be special,” he says, words muffled into his fingers. “I want her to know that I like her.”

A heavy, unfamiliar silence settles between them. Humiliation stabs at his face. He doesn’t want Ladybug to know that he’s just as pathetic with other girls as he was with her. He doesn’t have the self-esteem built for that.

“Look,” she says.Her voice is patched up tight with affection. “It’s past midnight. It’s normal to have no ideas right now. Why don’t you head back home and get some sleep?”

“But—”

“Chat,” she says, her tone frighteningly similar to when Marinette forces a warmed pastry into his hand. “What did I say you were?”

At first he doesn’t understand, until he casts his mind back. “...Your best friend.”

“And do you think I’d let my best friend down?”

He looks down at his boots, the red shape of her legs reflecting off the steel. “...No.”

“Good boy.” Reaching up, she pats his head. “Meet me here tomorrow afternoon. And bring something to write with.”

He nods. Tomorrow. Right. He can hold himself together until then.

Chapter Text

He leaves Marinette’s to meet Ladybug, a hint of dejection sprouting in his gut. Usually, after they’ve finished a morning shift, they’ll hang out in her room. Today, she seemed rather keen to keep him in the living room. In fact, he kind of got the impression she wanted him to leave, even though he was the one who said he had something important to get to at noon.

He lands on their usual rooftop and jogs over. Ladybug is doubled over, gasping for breath. 

“Oh my God, what happened?” He kneels down next to her, placing a hand on her back. It rises and falls in a harried staccato.

“Nothing— nothing,” she says. She jumps to her feet quickly, still panting. “Tikki hadn’t fully charged up on the way. I had to run half the route de-transformed.”

De-transformed? The question rises up in him, but she cuts him off with a rectangle of folded paper, flipping it open until she can hold it up.

“Ta-da!” she says. “A complete database for confessing to your crush!”

Four A4 sheets of paper sellotaped together look back at him. Rows, columns, pie charts, and scatter diagrams cut the poster into sections, a machine-gun explosion of annotated sticky notes spiralling out of them.

The singular biro he brought hangs pathetically between his fingers.

“...Please don’t tell me you made this all last night,” he says.

“Oh, gosh, no .” She crouches, spreading the page out on the roof tile. She has to use two hands to smooth it out. “This is all the stuff I collected when trying to confess to my crush.”

The information takes a beat to sink in. Then two.

Ladybug collected data to confess to her crush?

He looks at her, adjusting her sticky notes like this is just something everyone does when they have a crush on someone. He’s not sure why this surprises him so much — after all this time being her partner, does he really think she fits into the category of everyone ? He supposes he just never realised that her capacity of not being like everyone could reach mad-scientist levels of insanity.

Though he supposes the mad-scientist types are always the ones to get results. 

Nevertheless, he eyes the database, a little frightened. “Why don’t you just tell me what you did and I can use that?” he suggests.

She hesitates, glancing up at him in a way he can’t interpret. “Ummm. I think it’s better you come up with the idea yourself.”

He raises an eyebrow. Unable to put a finger on the weirdness, he moves on. “How do I use this thing?”

“Well.” She gestures to the hieroglyphic lines and symbols on the left side of the page. “This is all number work. Like, the percentage of a given time period should be spent on the preamble before the confession, and how long that time period should be based on the average length of speech during your conversation.” Then, to the endless writing on the other side. “These are all romantic locations sorted by arrondissement, privacy, and pigeon count, along with excuses for common situations to take the other person there.”

Chat Noir thought the most confusing thing he’s ever had to deal with was Mrs Dupain-Cheng’s colour theory.

He’s beginning to think that maybe he just isn’t all that smart.

“...I’m not sure if this is within my skill capacity, My Lady,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What? Why not?” she asks, holding it up again. “It’s so easy. I’m pretty sure you could even correct some of the maths.”

He looks back at the poster. The sticky notes make his brain feel like a seesaw, like during till audits before the bakery closes. “There’s just so much thought put into it,” he says. “I never had this many ideas when I tried coming up with a plan. There’s no way I’ll be able to pull it off like you.”

“Chat.” She lowers the poster with a sigh. “I think you should know… I never did tell my crush that I liked him.”

The admission is almost lost to the breeze, but it hits his eardrums like a cymbal. “What?”

She bites her lip, lying the page back out. She doesn’t bother to fix the creases. “I wanted everything to be perfect,” she says. “You know, the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect words, because I thought, well, if everything was perfect, then how could anything go wrong? I didn’t realise that if you keep looking for something perfect all you’ll ever do is look. I brought this to help you get ideas, Chat. Not to get you stuck on them.”

The revelation is a shock. She never told her crush she liked him? A cold fog of sadness drifts through his chest. And here she is helping him, regardless of that.

He’s not going to let her down. Maybe if he, at least, can make it work with Marinette, he can help her make it work with her guy.

“Okay,” he says. With a deep breath, he releases his pen and turns the poster towards him. Picking off a sticky note, he reads it. “...An ice cream date. On…” Another sticky note, a pink one this time. “...This weekend.”

“This weekend?” she says. Uncertainty pulls at her face, but disappears when he looks at her. “No, no, that’s perfect, Chat! The faster, the better!”

With renewed confidence, he scans the stacks of bubbly black writing. “Um… ooh, okay, I could… take her on a walk across Canal Saint-Martin in the afternoon.”

“Ah! Romantic!” The uncertainty returns to her face. “But, um, isn’t it meant to rain this weekend?”

Oh. It is? He really should’ve checked the forecast before this. In fact, is Andre’s ice cream cart even going to be around tomorrow? Even if it is, what if it's near the Pont des Arts again, and they end up having to walk forty minutes to the Canal?

If he was Ladybug, he’d be able to figure this out. But he’s not Ladybug, and he can’t just magically come up with a solution that untangles every knot in his plan.

Insecurity creeps through him. He pushes it away insistently. He is going to make it work. Even if he doesn’t know how yet.

“I’ll figure it out later,” he says. 

Her face drops. “Chat— that’s something you should probably figure out now —”

“If you keep looking for something perfect all you’ll ever do is look.”

The muscles near her mouth tighten. “Right,” she says. “No, you’re right.”

He smiles. He leans over to inspect the poster again. “Ooh!” He points at the pie chart. “10h00 is when Jardin d’Acclimatation is least busy. That’d be a perfect time to get her alone.”

She blinks. “At an amusement park?” she says. “I mean, it’s nice, but, well, wouldn’t it be easier to just go to her house?”

“It’s not about finding it easy ,” he says, shocked she’d even suggest it. “It’s about making it perfect. Unforgettable . So she knows just how much I like her. Knows that this isn’t just a joke to me. Knows that…” An unexpected tightness presses into his chest. “Knows that I really, really want to be with her.”

The sticky notes cling to the fingers of his suit. Ladybug watches him, mouth parted slightly, her silence underscored by some kind of surprise that he’s not sure what to make of.

“Okay,” she says. She grabs an empty sticky note straying to the corner of the poster, then gropes for the pen he brought. “Okay.”

“What are you writing?” he asks.

“The nearest flower shop to the bakery,” she says. “So you’re not rushing around at 08h00 trying to get her a bouquet.”

“Oh my God.” He smacks his forehead. “I totally would’ve done that.”

She smiles to herself, a hint of something knowing colouring the edges. “Yeah. I know.”

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

It’s just as the florist finishes writing his gift card that the sky bursts open with rain.

He looks out the glass, then at the bouquet being handed to him, sans bag.

He forgot to check the forecast. Again. 

He dips into the alleyway and transforms, hoping that the extra speed will keep the flowers somewhat dry. The rain attacks him the entire way to Marinette’s, and once he lands on her balcony, he checks their state and sighs. 

Exactly like what a bouquet would look like after being under a jet stream for ten minutes.

Okay. No big deal. What was it that Ladybug said? If you keep looking for something perfect all you'll ever do is look . He hides the shameful bouquet under her deck chair and shakes out his hair. He can make this work. He is going to make this work.

He pulls the parasol so she won't get wet and knocks on the hatch. She opens it so fast she might as well have known he was there. “Hi!” she says.

His thoughts get lost somewhere between hello and wow .

Marinette is pretty — he knows this. But he didn't know what she looked like with her hair down, rolled into loose, barely-there curls, pale peach fluffed into her eyelids and her already gorgeous eyes framed with dark mascara.

“You're so pretty,” he blurts out.

“Oh.” Some colour rises to her cheeks. Or is that blusher? “Thank you. It's, well, a special day.”

“It is?” 

Her expression shifts. “I— I mean, you know, if you prepare for a special day you'll get a special day, right?”

She prepared for a special day.

The rain pelts the parasol. He tries not to look at the flowers.

“R-Right,” he says. He releases his transformation and clambers into her room.

Watching Marinette make her way down the ladder sends a new wave of panic through him. What is he going to tell Ladybug after this? That the girl from the bakery got all dressed up for a special day and now he can either drag her out to an amusement park in the pouring rain or sit gawking at her in her bedroom? He knows she wouldn't show it, but she'd be so disappointed. Even he's disappointed.

“I made some hot chocolate,” Marinette says. “Do you wanna put a movie on?”

Getting discouraged by one setback is the exact thing he can't do. He rearranges his face into a neutral, model smile. “Sure.”

He pulls some blankets over to her chaise while she turns out the lights, the fairy lights above her bed glowing like a powder pink constellation. She hands him a steaming mug and takes a seat next to him, bringing her knees up to her chest.

She’s so close he can smell her perfume.

Holding his breath, he wraps an arm around her shoulders.

She tenses for only a second. Then, with a smile, snuggles up to his side.

“...You look nice, today, too,” she says. In the darkness, he feels her fingers play with the placket of his black shirt.

“O-Oh.” He laughs softly. “Well… maybe I was preparing for a special day, too.”

“Yeah?” She tilts her head up to look at him. The light from her monitor illuminates her face, reminding him of the moon.

“U-Uhhh.” Go on, say it. With her snuggled so close, the fairy lights twinkling in the darkness, the volume on her monitor somehow so serendipitously lowered so he can hear her even when she speaks quietly, now is literally the perfect moment.

“I—” His voice surprises him by coming out in a croak. He turns his head and coughs into his arm, clearing his throat from the cold. “Well, Marinette, I—”

He realises that he accidentally shifted away on the chaise, his arm no longer around her shoulders.

She looks back at him, sitting awkwardly hunched, like their cuddling left its impression on her shoulders.

Oh. The moment isn't perfect anymore.

“Adrien?” she asks.

But it had been perfect. Which means he doesn't technically need to look for perfect. It’s there, it exists … somewhere.

“Everyday is special with you,” he says, and winks.

“...Oh.” She draws her lips into a line, seems to realise, then lets them fall back to normal. “Well. Thank you.”

He looks back at the movie, unable to concentrate over the dim pulse of anxiety. Maybe he could just shelf this for today. The rain and the flowers and everything all just feels like a bad omen — the fact he's literally a Black Cat surely can't make this any better. He’s sure Ladybug will understand — and it's not like he's giving up, or getting stuck on an idea, he's just… rehashing their plan.

“You know, Adrien,” Marinette says. “U—Um, if you want, we could… get some ice cream.”

The question comes so out of the blue that he turns to look at her. “What?”

Her sheepish smile is lit by flickering colours. “I mean, maybe Andre might be around? We can always have a look online.”

Rain hits the skylight like showers of pennies.

“...Or we could just get some from a shop, somewhere?” she suggests. “I don't know. Could be nice. We could even… walk around…?”

…She wanted to do that? In this weather? The concept is so bizarre that he can't even feel vindicated that his original idea ended up being the one she liked. How would that even work? It’s the kind of rain that'd melt their ice creams even without any sunshine. Definitely not his definition of a special day.

His definition of a special day means her knowing. To the very last detail. The way she tried so hard for him to know. But he's beginning to wonder if maybe the most he can achieve of that is an approximation, like a bouquet after being under a jet stream for ten minutes.

He doesn't reply for a long time, watching the way the colour of her eyeshadow changes with the images on the monitor. She really is so pretty. Like the moon. And he’s sure, then, that he finds it here, in this pocket of time, like the brief moment when he picked out the flowers and watched the patterns of light in the cellophane — this is perfect. 

“Marinette, I—” His voice feels weak, like a snapped twig. He tries to shuffle closer, hoping to recreate their proximity from before. “I—”

The volume suddenly blares from her monitor. Quickly, he leans back, and slams the volume back down on the remote, and sets it on the side of the chaise where he won't accidentally press down on it. 

He looks back at her, his cheeks itching.

“Continue.” She bites back a smile. 

“Right.” He clears his throat. “I—”

 An aggressive gust of rain whacks the windows. He jumps, letting out a squeak he really, really hopes she doesn't hear. 

But she most definitely does, because she laughs . “Someone’s a bit of a scaredy-cat, huh?”

“Ugh.” He turns away from her, trying to hide his face with a well-trained shake of his hair. “This is all going wrong.”

Her laughter stops. The silence is somehow worse than the embarrassment. He wants to run away and leave ten voicemails for Ladybug of him crying. Rain and all.

Marinette’s fingers gently start touching his arm. “Adrien,” she says. “Do you know how many times I tried confessing to you?”

He dares to look at her. “...No?”

“Five-hundred and thirty-three times.”

He turns so fast he almost slips on the blanket. “ What ?”

She avoids his gaze fiercely, but her tone remains stubbornly even. “I wanted to make sure everything was exactly the way I wanted it,” she says. “Because it was less scary if I knew beforehand what was going to happen.”

Five-hundred and thirty-three times? That's over a year’s worth of attempts. Two years worth of attempts. They've only known each other a couple of months. It must have been so frustrating for all her attempts to have been thwarted by what had actually happened.

And yet…

He's sure neither of them would have it any other way.

“Marinette, I—”

“You like me?”

His cheeks go from itching to stinging. “You knew?”

“Adrien, I invented being weird around your crush. You can't hide from me.”

He can't stop the grin fighting onto his face.

In an impulsive, entirely unplanned lunge, he pulls her in for a hug.

Laughing, she hugs him back.

Chapter Text

“Kids?” Mrs Dupain-Cheng’s head pokes out from the hatch. She squeezes up a plate. “We have more croissants!”

Despite the strain he’d caught on her face when the door had opened, Marinette still smiles, and comes over to take the offering. “Thanks, Maman.” She pecks her goodbye, closes the hatch, and comes back over to the chaise, shaking her head apologetically.

Adrien laughs. Same old, same old. It’s so easy to feel that way, even though they’ve only been dating for a week. Because, well, it is the same old. The only difference being her parents’ incredibly unsubtle attempts to keep them at a safe, non-kissing distance apart, regardless of the fact they’d both indisputably agreed that any notion of kissing so soon felt a lot like being a Mento inside a Coke bottle.

(Her analogy, which he thought was perfect. Everything she says is perfect. She’s perfect).

It slips out, the words soapy and unstoppable with his feelings. “I think I’m in love with you.”

Marinette, currently stuffing a portion of croissant she’d severely miscalculated compared to her mouth, freezes. “ Whaf fif fou fusf sfay?”  

What did he fou fusf sfay ? He’s not sure the answer to that either.

He looks at her — face chipmunked, eyes wide, golden flakes of croissant crumbling onto her pyjama shorts and into her carpet. His heart squeezes , so hard he almost gasps, like the rest of him just realised what his mouth had just said. Yes, he is in love with her. He feels it right down to his fingertips, to the ends of each strand of his hair. There’s no adjustment period, no weirdness about it. Why wouldn’t he be in love with her?

He opens his mouth, ready to tell her all of that, the most honest he’s ever been, the best confession that has ever confessioned.

No sound comes out.

He clears his throat, swallows, and tries again.

Marinette watches him expectantly.

He sorts through the recently opened tabs in his brain. The words had been right there . How could they just disappear? Well, he supposes it’s not that big of a surprise to forget what he was going to say as soon as he looked at Marinette. She really is that beautiful.

He reaches over and takes her hands in his. They’re soft, still warm from the plate of croissants.

“A…Adrien?” she says.

He thinks of the feeling of sharing a desk with her, of how jumpy she was when he first joined her at the back of the class. He thinks of their advanced maths sessions with Ms Bustier, and watching her sneak off during lunch to take a nap. He thinks of how, despite how hard it was for her, she never stopped trying to be a good friend to him. She invited him to her house, and let him sleep over, and, when all else failed, was even ready to do what scared her the most — tell him how she felt. And even then, even when he hadn’t been able to reciprocate her feelings the way she would’ve wanted back then, she never once let that come in between them.

He loves her the way he loves working at the bakery, or painting with Mrs Dupain-Cheng, or even being Chat Noir. Like all the things he believed he would never be good enough for, until he looked a little closer and realised he had it all along.

He takes a deep breath, drawing on ten years of homeschooled French language, on every passage of text Ms Bustier put a gold star next to in his homework, bringing it all together to tell her the only thing that he’ll ever say in his life that matters.

“...Um.”

Marinette looks at him.

He looks at Marinette.

The croissants look at both of them.

“...’Um’?” she repeats.

A painful flush rushes through him, like the capillaries in his skin all suddenly exploded.

“...Can you excuse me for two seconds?” He leans in, hugs her, then calls on his transformation. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

He’s up on his feet and out of her skylight before she can even dust the croissant crumbs off her lap.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

He’s pacing the rooftop, opening and closing his baton, when Ladybug drops down behind him. “You called?”

He turns. 

She looks fiercely pissed off.

He makes a choked sound. Maybe Marinette’s was just the beginning. Maybe he’s actually starting to forget how to make words come out of his mouth. Forget the respiratory problem, his father’s really going to kill him for this one.

“...Hi,” he says. “I didn’t drag you away from anything important, did I?”

She surveys him with a silent, unreadable expression. “I had to run here.”

“Ah.” Maybe SOS EMERGENCY MY LADY HELP wasn’t the best thing to text her to get her attention. “But… you’re here now?”

She looks at him wryly. Winding her yo-yo back up, she takes a seat at the edge of the roof. “What could possibly have been so important to interrupt your date?”

His eyebrows raise, taken aback. “How do you know I was on a date?”

“....Ummmm.”

This isn’t the first time she’s guessed his whereabouts when he was with Marinette. It’s always sort of gone over his head before, but perhaps this time the adrenaline sharpened his senses.

“...Because your GPS shows you around there every evening,” she says. “You basically live with her.”

“...Oh.” Does that mean she knows when he rushes off for ‘urgent business’ he’s just going to see her? And he thought moving on from Ladybug meant not having to embarrass himself in front of her all the time anymore. 

“So?” she asks. “What happened?”

“...I love her,” he says. “Like, really, really, love her.”

The change in her face is miniscule, but he catches it anyway. “I mean, isn’t that a given?” she asks. “You guys are super close.”

“But this is different,” he says. “This is like… like I don’t want to do anything else but be with her. Like all I want to do is listen to her talk and hold her hand and hug her and kiss—” He cuts himself off sharply, but judging by the way her eyes widen, just a little, it’s too late to reel his words back in. “I love her like that . And I was about to tell her but then as soon as I opened my mouth my brain suddenly went blank.”

The way she looks at him is not reassuring in the slightest. It’s concerningly similar to how Marinette had been looking at him when he ran off, like he’d just thrown a water balloon at her face. 

Clearly, he’s even less ready than he thought.

“My Lady, please help me.” He falls to his knees on the rooftop and grabs her hands. “I will take all the 08h00 patrols for the rest of the year. I will stop taking hits during akuma attacks. I will never make a single pun again.”

“Chat!” A rush of colour hits her cheeks. She pulls at his hands. “Oh my God. Get up.”

He obliges, but doesn’t let go of her. “Ladybug, please. You have no idea how important this girl is to me. I… I can’t get this wrong. I can’t get anything wrong when it comes to her.”

Her fingers slacken around his. “Chat Noir…”

“Please, Ladybug. I’m your best friend, aren’t I?”

He knows how frustrating he must be to her right now. Needing help to ask a girl out is one thing, but a love confession? Shouldn’t he be good at those already? She’s probably having flashbacks just looking at him, of all the over the top stunts he pulled when she was the one he was in love with. God, he probably looks like such a tool right now, like just seeing a pretty girl is enough to have him losing his mind. He wishes he could tell her that it’s not like that. That everything he feels for Marinette is so painfully, tangibly real.

“Okay,” she finally says. “Okay, we’ll— we’ll write a script together. Okay? We’ll edit it until you’re happy with it, until— until you’re ready to tell her. But, Chat—” She looks up at him, so earnestly it makes his stomach flip. “Trust me when I say I know you won’t get anything wrong. Okay?” Then, quietly, “you could never get anything wrong with her.”

He can’t fully decipher what she means by that. But he knows it makes him want to hug her.

And he does.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

By some miracle, he manages to act normal for the rest of the evening once he’s back at the bakery.

The same thing cannot be said about D-Day. Aka, Friday night.

“Chat, you're going to be fine.”

Ladybug’s rubbing his shoulders while he reads the script, like he's getting ready for a boxing match rather than a date with his girlfriend. It certainly feels like that on the inside, though, his heart rate leaping up to the triple digits, his stomach curled like a chocolate twist.

“I’m gonna be fine,” he repeats. “Right. Right. I’m gonna be fine.” He turns to look at her, a knot of gratitude in his throat. “Thank you, My Lady.”

She ruffles his hair. “Go get ‘er.”

It’s when he stumbles through her skylight and sees her standing by the mirror and brushing her hair that he rethinks his state of fine-ness.

“Hi,” he squeaks.

In the reflection, he expects her to look startled. Instead, she smiles. “Hi.”

Her eyes drift to the script.

Quickly, he scrunches it up and stuffs it in one of his pockets. He’ll stay transformed. Just in case.

She turns around, soft, fluffy pyjamas lapping over her slippers. 

“Do you wanna stay up on the bed tonight?” she asks. “We could cuddle.”

For the first time, he wonders if it's biologically possible for steam to literally come out of his ears.

“...Sure,” he says. He looks down pathetically at his steel boots, then, sliding the script out of his pocket, de-transforms. He takes one quick look at it before shoving it under her pillow.

She fusses with her monitor until she can have it facing the bed, then, once she clambers up the ladder, casts the Netflix show they’d been watching together last time he was here.

The name of which completely ejects itself out of his head when she pulls the duvet over them both and snuggles into his side.

He freezes. This was not on the script. This hasn't been on any script he's ever had to learn in his life — he's not sure being cuddled by the literal love of his life would've come in handy for fashion galas.

“...Sorry,” she says, and shuffles to the side, putting some space in between them. “Is this… are you okay with this?”

The hesitation in her voice swiftly unclogs his throat. “No— I mean, yes, yes, I’m fine!” Without a second thought, he gathers her into his arms and yanks her in, hearing a small oof against his collarbone. “This is good. This is perfect. I love this. I love—”

This time it's her who freezes.

He swallows, and settles on rubbing her back. “...I love spending time with you.”

Her room flickers with the monitor light. She lifts her head, hair mussed, and smiles at him.

“I love spending time with you, too,” she says.

Her fluffy pyjama bottoms bunch up against his leg when she winds herself up with him. Her hair smells like shampoo and water and everything good in the world.

It's hard to believe that it was just a few weeks ago when she was figuring out his identity. Could he have imagined, back then, that this would be his new future, so close to his beautiful, smart, amazing classmate slash desk partner slash friend Marinette that he could feel the exact shape of her shoulder blades through her shirt? Never in a million years. 

Her fingers trace patterns into his back, gentle and soothing. “I love you, Adrien.”

He jumps up.

The maneuver is so sudden that the bed sheets snap up with him, tangling around his legs and almost making him face plant back down to the mattress. Marinette stares at him, eyes wide, a hand reaching out to steady him.

“Adrien—?”

“I— give me two minutes.” He transforms, picks the duvet off his limbs and makes a harried attempt of folding it nicely. “Um. There's an akuma?”

Her eyes grow wider. “ What?”

“Um! A small one! Don't worry!” He squeezes her hands reassuringly. “I’ll just be, um. Two minutes! I swear!”

In a quick swoop, he leans in, pecks her on the cheek, then launches out of her skylight.

His lips are still tingling when Ladybug arrives at their rooftop.

“What the hell?!” she cries. She's panting, slowing to a stop to catch her breath. “You said the script was perfect!”

“She didn't follow the script!” he says. “She told me she loves me ! How am I supposed to respond to that?!”

Ladybug blinks. She blinks again. 

“You tell her that you love her too ?!” she says. “That's, like, all the hard parts taken care of, surely!”

“But I don't know how to do it without the hard parts! We planned for the hard parts!”

She sighs, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, and straightens up.

None of this should be so difficult. When Marinette had been trying to confess to him, she had no idea what the response would be. She had no safety net, not even indication where such a conversation might go. But Adrien? Adrien is dating her. He knows just how much she loves him. Up until now it’s been her doing all the heavy lifting in their relationship, and, really, what has he done, other than let her spoon feed him every moment he was meant to take the initiative?

Not that it even seems to work all the time. How could he freak out when she told him she loved him?

“Chat,” Ladybug says. Her tone has lost all her exasperation from before. “Do you think maybe this is less about getting it wrong and… more about being scared her feelings for you might change?”

He looks down at the roof tile, some of the patina chipping off around his boots.

“...No one’s ever loved me back before,” he says quietly.

She lets out a soft breath. “Oh, chaton.”

She’s enveloping him in her arms before he has time to backtrack, to swear that Marinette isn’t the type of person that’d switch up on him like that, that she’s always been patient, and caring, and loving, and he just needs to start pulling his weight and act like a normal boyfriend.

“ I love you,” she says against his shoulder. “You know that, don’t you?”

Her hair smells comfortingly like Marinette’s. “...I know.”

She doesn’t let go of him for a long time. His mind drifts to the script under the pillow, and wonders if she’s seen it already.

“Look,” Ladybug says, and takes a step back. “You’re gonna go back to that bakery and tell her how you feel. And if you get nervous, come right back here, and I’ll give you another hug, and you go and try again.”

It already feels like too much to expect from her. “But—”

“I will be right here,” she says. “I promise.”

He bites his lip, glancing from her, to the route to the bakery, back to her.

“ Go .” She shoves him towards it. “Get your girl!”

He sucks in a breath. With a hesitant smile towards her, he leaps back off towards the bakery. 

The wind buffets his face, cooling his skin. He has nothing to be afraid of. Marinette loves him, she’s going to love him even after he tells her how he feels, and everything is going to be perfect , whether it follows the script or not.

When he lands on her balcony, he sees her already there, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

“Adrien!” she says. Oddly, a drop of sweat runs down her temple. “You’re back! Did you defeat the akuma?”

Oh. The ‘akuma’. 

He didn’t prepare for this part of the story.

“...Um. I’m not sure,” he says. He opens his baton again, still warm from his journey here. “Let me, uh. Just go check.”

He sprints back to his and Ladybug’s rooftop. Just as promised, she’s there. But, weirdly, she seems even more out of breath than before, scrunched up on the roof tile like she just ran a marathon.

“My Lady?” he says.

“You got this!” She shoots him with a thumbs up, still on the ground. “I believe in you!”

She hauls herself to her feet to throw herself at him in some semblance of a hug, before sending him back on his way.

He can’t help but think about how lucky he is to have Ladybug. From the moment he first told her about Marinette, she’s been his number one supporter. Would he have come this far with Marinette if she hadn’t been there? Would he ever have faced his fears and had the confidence to be with someone he loves?

He hopes, one day, he can give her the same confidence. That maybe she could be with the person she loves, too.

He slows to a stop a few rooftops away from Marinette’s. 

If he’s going to be honest about his feelings tonight, maybe he could start with Ladybug.

The distance to their spot is not far at all from the bakery. Barely an arrondissement away, just in the boundary between one and the other. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ladybug sprinting parallel to him, clearly heading for their rooftop, too.

“Ladybug!” he calls. “I need to tell you something before I go!”

Her head snaps around to look at him. Her eyes are wide, frazzled, her mouth open and drawing in ragged gusts of breath. Did she see him change directions on her GPS? She looks frantic even from where he’s standing, and it shocks him enough that he halts in the middle of his sprint.

As if pulling her back with an invisible string, she does, too.

Except she falls to the roof tile, gasping for breath. 

And her transformation drops.

He stares at her, the wind carrying her hair into shapes around her head, her fluffy pyjamas like snow across the patina.

Slowly, Marinette lifts her head, and turns around.

“...Hi,” she says.

Chapter Text

It feels like an entire day passes where all he does is look at her. The night feels darker, like walking into his dark bedroom after coming back from patrol.

Next to her fluffy pyjama leg, Tikki lies on the roof tile tiny arms are spread-eagled.

“I’m sorry, Marinette,” she says softly. She opens a cerulean blue eye, just as big as Plagg’s. “I tried to hold on for as long as I could. But we were transforming and de-transforming so fast…”

His eyes go from the tiny red kwami, to Marinette, to the kwami again. He half expects her to jump up and scream, the way she does whenever she sees an actual insect steal into her room whenever she lets him in through the skylight. But she just sighs, scooping Tikki up into the cup of her palm so casually that it leaves no doubt in his mind of what he just saw.

“I’m the one who's sorry.” Marinette — Ladybug, Marinette, his girlfriend — kisses Tikki on the head. She rummages in her pocket, and produces a crumbly semicircle of a cookie. “Here. Take all the time you need.”

She munches on it gratefully, movements still slow. Marinette sets her back on the tile gently, then stands up.

Her face is pink, the same colour he used to associate with strings of words he couldn’t understand.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” she asks.

His mouth goes dry. Yes, he should say something. What should he say. He needs to go find Ladybug. Ladybug could help him figure it out.

…If Ladybug wasn't Marinette, and Marinette wasn't Ladybug, and both of them — just one of them? One of her? — weren't standing half an alleyway’s jump away from him.

“I—” His words snap in two. “You—” He makes a gesture. “The whole time—?”

The way she hesitates makes his stomach do cartwheels. Hesitating means that this might be a mix-up. That maybe, for some reason, the real Ladybug just happened to drop her Miraculous off with bakery girl, and she actually has nothing to do with this.

But… would just anyone know how to take care of a kwami like that?

“...Yes,” she says. “...Can't you come here?”

The little jump separating them feels both huge and tiny at the same time. Huge, because how is he supposed to confirm this is his lady, his girlfriend, his lady-girlfriend from this far away? Tiny, because, God, he's only this far away from confirming this is his lady, his girlfriend, his lady-girlfriend.

He jumps across effortlessly. The change in the air as he lands makes her hair sweep upwards.

Shampoo and water. It feels like a purified akuma just crawled into his brain and is busy flapping away.

“...You're even more beautiful right now than you were before.”

Her mouth falls open. “W-what?”

Wait. No. That wasn't it.

“I want to be with you forever,” he says.

“ What?”

NO . WAIT .

He’s this close to cataclysming his own mouth. What. WHAT .

The pink in Marinette’s face has quickly turned to red, and he genuinely worries that one of them is about to pass out. He needs the script. He needs it. All he sees in his mind is a scribbled sheet of paper, non-sentences scrambled together like his very first attempts at icing cupcakes that give him absolutely nothing to hold onto.

“I— I mean —” His brain is a blazing white of static. “U—Um, Bakery Girl— I mean, shoot, Marinette, from the first day we met I knew you were special. When you gave me a second chance after you thought I put gum on your seat—”

Her laugh tears through the air between them. Sudden, loud, unintentional. She claps her hand over her mouth quickly.

“Sorry— sorry, I just—” She laughs again, then shakes her head. There’s a note of hysteria in her voice, like she can’t quite believe any of this is happening. “You’re— you’re using the script now ?”

Heat scorches across his cheeks and nose. Right. Of course. Because Marinette knows the script. Marinette knows everything about all of this, because she’s Ladybug. The words slide back down his throat, hot with embarrassment.

Memories from the last few days roll through his mind. When he snuck out of their sleepover to ask Ladybug to be his wingwoman — she knew. When he came up with their god-awful date plan, with the ice cream and the walk and God that stupid balloon arch — she knew. When he begged Ladybug to help him tell her he loved her, practically cornering her, leaving her no choice — she knew.

How she had to remind him of the rain. And write down the address of the florist. And run back and forth between the bakery and the rooftop during what should’ve been the most special night of their relationship to comfort him when he should’ve been confessing to her .

He feels small. Tiny. Like he could fold himself up over and over again until he could roll himself under one of the roof tiles.

“...I guess there’s not much else I can say,” he says. “You’ve heard it all already.”

Her face flickers. She doesn’t seem to want to laugh anymore.

“Adrien, I’m so, so sorry,” she says. “I should’ve told you my identity right away. But when I was still getting used to you being Chat and being friends with you and suddenly you were saying you liked me and I felt so bad because you are my best friend and I couldn’t just leave you when I knew exactly how it feels to be in that situation—”

“You let me do all of that because… you felt bad?”

“No. No . That’s not what I meant at all.”

He’s not really sure what she means, then. Because that’s what she said. That’s the only explanation. And it’s not a bad thing at all, not when it’s so quintessentially Marinette, to care about her partner so much that she’d exhaust her transformation down to the quick just to be a good best friend to him and wingwoman for herself . 

But this was supposed to be the one time she didn’t have to do that. Didn’t have to take advanced maths classes so he didn’t feel lonely, didn’t have to let him sleep over because he wanted to spend time with her, didn’t have to go out of her way to tell him she had a crush on him not because she thought anything would come out of it, but because she didn’t want him to think she didn’t like him.

He just wanted one time where she wasn’t the only one picking up all the pieces. Where he could show her, look, I can pick them up with you, I’m not totally useless.

He looks down at his feet. Turning around, he takes a seat at the edge of the rooftop, where she had sat herself when he realised he was in love with her.

“...Adrien?” she says. “Are you okay?”

He looks at the city below them, like a printed blanket rolled out under the building. “If you want to break up, you can,” he says. The choke in his voice flouts his attempt at casualness, to be the opposite of what he was all the times before with Ladybug, to do everything possible to not give her more of his feelings to shoulder. “I’m not gonna take it personally.”

Silence. Then, footsteps approaching him on the roof tile, silent and socked, but still somehow heavy.

She grabs him by the shoulder and turns him forcefully. “ What?”

He keeps his eyes down. Her socks have pink kittens on them.

“Is that what you think of me?” she asks. “That because I had to help you tell me your feelings I’d stop liking you? What’s wrong with you?”

The anger in her voice makes him shrink back. He can’t even parse why she’s mad. Just that, whatever it is, this surely is enough to end what they have.

“...I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

He expects another slap of a sentence. A quick transformation with a fully-charged Tikki, and an empty rooftop.

Instead, she sighs, and crouches onto her knees in front of him. Gently, ever so gently, she cups his face.

“Adrien, do you have any idea how much you’ve helped me ?” she asks. “Wanting to be my desk partner, wanting to be my friend, still spending time with me even when you didn’t feel the same way?” She smiles at him, almost in wonder. “Yeah, maybe you didn't help me tell you how I felt. But you helped me feel okay about it. You helped me feel normal . You helped me feel like I deserved to be your friend even if I messed up a million times. How do you think any of that compares to, what, writing a script for you?”

He looks into her eyes, bluebell. Like the balloon arch. His heart flips. “Because I wasn't helping you,” he says. “I’m just in love with you.”

Oh. It's there. The easiest it’s left his mouth since he caught her with a croissant in her mouth. Her face slackens a little, and he wonders if she's thinking the same thing. All that effort to surgically remove the words out of him and here he's telling her that the colour of her own hair.

“Oh,” she breathes. She leans back on her haunches, a hand going up to fiddle with an earring. “It feels so different hearing it in your voice.”

If you keep looking for something perfect, all you'll do is look .

She reaches over and takes his hands in hers. “Adrien, do you remember the database?”

“...The one for confessing to your crush?” he says.

She nods. Then looks at him. And looks at him. And blushes.

“... Wait ,” he says. “That's me. I was the crush. Wait— you made a database to ask me out?”

“Do you sincerely believe I was acting in my right mind when I decided to bring that out to the person who would eventually know it was for him?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “...Maybe?”

“Adrien.” She says it laughingly, squeezing his hands. “When you told me you were planning to ask me out, all I could think about was getting you to just do it as fast as you could. I was an awful wingwoman. All I wanted to do was smooch your stupid face, not get ice cream or walk around Canal Saint-Martin. But all your plans, your scripts — they made it special . No matter how they turned out, no matter what they were. Just the very fact you wanted to think about it, wanted it to be something you could make beautiful, made it special.”

A small smile tugs at his lips. “You wanted to smooch me?”

“Right there and then.” She grins, her eyes drifting to his lips. “Still kinda want to.”

He flushes, and looks away quickly. “I’m sorry I kinda ruined it by making you run up and down the city.”

“S’okay. I got my steps in.”

At that, he laughs. “I really, really love you, Marinette. You are literally the only girl I know who would be both my wingwoman and my girlfriend.”

She touches his face. “I told you,” she says. “You're my best friend. I’ll be there for you however you need me. And I know you'll be there for me, too. You already have been.”

He enjoys the softness in the air, the way her fluffy pyjama sleeve brushes against his cheek. This is perfect. He doesn't even need to look to know it. No more complicated plans, or scripts, or balloon arches. This feeling, the one he wanted all this time, is right here.

When she looks at his lips this time, her gaze lingers.

“I thought you said a week was too soon,” he says.

“I lied so hard. I knew you were too nervous.”

“...And if I changed my mind?”

Her eyes move back to his. “Wait,” she says, and leans back again, putting a non-kissing distance between them. “I want to hear the script.”

He waits for her to laugh. 

“...Are you being serious right now?” he asks.

“We worked hard on it, Adrien!” she says. “You're just gonna throw that all away?”

Does he even remember the script? He feels like the past half an hour was enough to push it out of his head completely.

“...I feel silly,” he tells her.

“Oh, pretty please?” she says. “Look, I’ll even say it with you. Bakery Girl, from the first day we met I knew you were special. When you gave me a second chance after you thought I put gum on your seat—”

“— I knew right away how important you were to me ,” he finishes. He wants to roll his eyes at it, at the clichés, at how over the top it all is when she knows now, knows everything, but he can't bring himself to. Because, well. No matter how over the top it is, it's true. “ You are the smartest, kindest, prettiest girl I’ve ever met, and also you could totally beat Ladybug in a fight .”

Now she's laughing. It echoes around the rooftop and right into his chest.

“ ...You’re my favourite person in the world,” he says. “As Ladybug. As Marinette.”

“Hey,” she says. “We didn't write that.”

“Yes we did.” He takes her by the hand and pulls her closer. “We both knew it was there.”

She brushes his hair away from his eyes, and holds his face. “I love you.”

He nuzzles her palm. “I love you, too.”

“I’d like to smooch you now.”

“Does that follow the script?”

“It does now.”

His mind goes blank, and he's fine with it.