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The rooftop is quiet tonight.
Paris stretches out beneath them, glittering like someone scattered diamonds on velvet. A city of dreams and secrets, and somewhere in the middle of it all, sits Marinette Dupain-Cheng, legs dangling off the edge of her favourite building, cradled in silence.
And Damian Wayne beside her, close enough for her to feel the warmth of him, like a flame licking gently at the skin without ever burning. The city knows them both in pieces. Ladybug and Robin. Saviors. Soldiers. Teenagers are over their heads.
But here, under a sky softened by stars, they are just Marinette and Damian.
He doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t need him to. She leans her shoulder into his, pressing against him gently. He responds the way he always does: a subtle tilt of his body into hers, a steadying anchor. Always firm. Always grounding.
Damian kisses the crown of her head, just barely. It was a silent whisper of affection. A promise made in silence. Marinette closes her eyes. There is something sacred about the stillness. The weightlessness of it all, like the two of them are suspended in a space between breaths. Between lives.
He, the boy born of power and blade. Raised to command, to destroy. The sun burning mercilessly at his back. And she, a child of Parisian shadows and hopeful light. A reluctant guardian wrapped in polka dots and expectation, who learned to shine in darkness.
She laughs quietly, and the sound is soft. Damian tilts his head to look at her, a question in his eyes but not on his lips. She smiles, eyes still closed. “Sometimes I think the world never gave us a chance to be what we are—or what we were before.” children went unsaid.
He understands.
He presses his lips to the curve of her neck, just beneath her ear. Not possessive. Just present. Just his way of saying he knows. That he sees her. All of her. Not just the mask, not just the charm. Marinette. The girl who sketches dreams on napkins and bakes away her fear.
“Maybe,” he murmurs against her skin, “We were always meant to find each other because of that.”
Marinette opens her eyes, turning toward him, their noses nearly brushing. “Because the world shaped us into the same kind of lonely?”
Damian doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts his hand to her cheek, thumb tracing the bone with reverence. Her breath catches. Not because of her words or the truth behind them. No. It was because of her.
The way her hair fell over her face
The way her gaze would soften.
The way her voice became tender.
The little things that reminded him why he chooses her.
And why he would always choose her.
His lips met hers slowly, gently, like he was savouring it. It tastes like moonlight and jasmine, and the secret language they have written between each other. She curls into him, her hand finding the steady beat of his heart, and there’s something almost… desperate about the way he holds her. Like he’s afraid she’ll disappear if he loosens his grip.
But it was never tight enough to bruise. To hurt.
Because Damian Wayne, heir to the League, weapon forged in blood and fire, loves with the kind of gentleness that defies everything he was raised to be.
And Marinette loves him back like the moon loves the sun. Quietly. With reverence. Knowing she’ll never outshine him, but always needing him to rise. Only shining with the light he gives her.
She pulls back, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the tiny scar beneath his bottom lip that she came to adore. “Did you ever think you could love someone like this?” she asks, her voice soft, like wind running through the grass.
He closes his eyes. “No. But I never knew someone like you existed.”
Her heart aches in the most beautiful way.
They stay like that for a while. The city breathes below them. A siren here. A bell chime there. But above it all, the hush of two souls learning how to be tender.
Marinette leans her head on his shoulder. He rests his cheek against her hair. No words. Just the silence of two people who don’t need anything more than this.
In the tiny apartment above the Dupain-Cheng bakery, the lights are dimmed and the smell of lavender tea lingers.
Marinette is curled on her bed, sketchpad abandoned on the floor with a few unfinished projects beneath it. Damian sits beside her, legs stretched out, holding her ankle in his lap, absentmindedly tracing circles on her skin.
She hums. “You know, you’re the only person who doesn’t ask me to be okay when I’m not.”
Damian lifts his gaze, and there it is. That look. The one that sees too much, too clearly.
Like his read this book before.
“You don’t owe anyone your strength,” he says. “Least of all me.”
She pauses, and then, she shifts, crawling into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. He holds her with ease, one arm wrapping firmly around her waist, the other curling around her back.
Her face buries into the crook of his neck. He smells like jasmine and cedarwood and something distinctly him. She kisses the spot just beneath his ear, slow and soft, and he breathes out like she’s the only air he’s ever needed.
“I feel safe with you,” she whispers. “And that scares me.”
Damian doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t bristle.
“Then I’ll wait. For as long as it takes. To be someone who doesn’t scare you anymore.”
Marinette pulls back, her eyes wet and glowing in the low light.
“You don’t scare me, Damian. You never could.” She says softly, her voice a whisper as she cupped his cheek.
She swallowed slowly.
“The thought of loving you does.”
And for the first time in a long time, the ever-composed, ever-calculated Damian Wayne lets his mask fall completely. Not just in the way he kisses her next, slow and desperate and filled with wonder, but in the way he holds her after. Not like she’s porcelain or something that needed to be protected, but everything.
Everything he never lets himself want.
Some nights, it’s harder.
The battles, the press, the friends they can’t always be honest with. The weight of dual lives.
Marinette stands in the shower, steam clinging to her skin like guilt. She tries to scrub lipstick on her chin. Wipes the blood off her knee. Trying to get the ache in her chest to go away.
When she steps out, Damian is there. In her room. Sitting on her chaise like he belongs there. Like he is a fixture, not a visitor.
He looks at her like he sees everything. The broken bits. The bruises. The girl behind the hero.
She doesn’t speak. Just walks over, drops the towel, and climbs into his lap. Damp hair soaking his shirt. Bare skin against his hoodie. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even move to tease. He just wraps his arms around her and breathes.
Her breath hitches. He presses a kiss to her collarbone. One to her shoulder. Then another to her neck. All slow. All deliberate.
Like each kiss is a stitch holding her together.
They fall asleep like that. Wrapped in each other. Moonlight spilling over them through the window, soft and holy.
In the park, far from rooftops and expectations, they sit beneath a tree. He lies on his back, head in her lap, eyes closed. She weaves flowers into his hair, daisy chains and clovers, smiling.
“You know you’re ridiculous,” she says fondly.
He smirks, eyes still shut. “I do. And yet, here we are.”
Marinette leans down, brushing her lips across his forehead, then the bridge of his nose, and finally his mouth. A kiss as light as the breeze.
He opens his eyes, dark green catching her light blue ones. His gaze softened “I think you’re the only one who knows how to quiet the voices in my head.”
She cups his cheek. “Because I know what it’s like to live with a thousand versions of yourself, and not know which one you’re supposed to be.”
He gently grasps her wrist, titling his head to the side as he presses a kiss into her wrist.
She smiles, leaning down and kissing his temple.
They don’t need to say more.
Sometimes they fight. Not loud. Not cruel.
Just the quiet kind. The kind filled with silences that cut and looks that say too much.
But they always find their way back.
Always.
Tonight, it’s raining. Paris, moody yet peaceful..
Damian finds her on her balcony, curled beneath a blanket, sketchbook forgotten beside her. He makes his way over to her where he stood from a different rooftop. He steps on to the balcony, soaked. She looks up.
He doesn’t say a word. Just kneels in front of her, takes her hand, and presses his lips against her knuckles.
“I missed you,” she says.
“I missed us,” he replies.
She pulls him close. He leans up and kisses the hollow of her throat.
The rain keeps falling. The world keeps turning.
But for a little while, they’re whole again.
They are the sun and moon.
He is sharp and blinding and warm.
She is soft and silver and constant.
They orbit with each other, again and again, always drawn close no matter how far they have to be.
And in the stillness of each night, beneath stars and between breaths, they choose each other.
Not because the world demands it.
But because their hearts always will.