Work Text:
The second her lips touch his, she knows in the sparkles in the air that she has loved him for longer than she will ever admit.
She knows that the slowly growing distance between them was the heavy emptiness that had settled in her heart over time. These cracks of moments they lost together for the sake of a safe distance between the two of them are now healed with his smile. The contact of their lips tears apart the previous meaning of magic she had come to know.
To now.
To his lips, her lips collided and joined in a kiss.
He tastes of a thousand days beneath the wash of watercolor skies recasting into night, legs dangling beneath them as they sit in still silence to protect themselves and their city from secrets that cannot be known. Secrets that burn in their tongues.
He tastes of millions of smiles stretching their lips as they laugh over a silly joke like nothing about them has ever changed. Like they are still those two kids they were all those years ago, chasing after a butterfly villain that wrecked their world.
This is a mixture she has never known existed, a jumble of bitter and sweet moments they’ve lived made into the taste of their kiss.
The proximity between them feels intoxicating; her lungs replenish with his scent, heart beating with the necessity to hold onto him until the very last star in the galaxy fades away.
That is to say, the rhythm of her heart is her wish to cling to him forever.
When they pull away to breathe again, they are standing breathless in front of a chapel — not at the movies anymore as they had been before.
The long intensity of their kiss speeds up the time somehow, she reasons within herself, that a single tender touch of their mouths was all the confirmation both needed to know that there should be no more just him and no more just her — there should be them forever.
She feels her fingers intertwined with his, and her hand feels at home, as though it was molded to fit in his perfectly. His green eyes stare back into hers, silently telling her about a love he feels and never dies without the need for words. And she, in return, quietly confirms the promise made so long ago: it’s you and me against the world, she wills her eyes to say.
As always, she reads back in his gaze.
She turns her head to look around, tearing her eyes from the ones of the boy she loves more than life itself, and notices the pink border of her vision, making the world seem almost like a dream.
Her friends stand cheering from afar, all wearing their respective miraculous and equally brilliant smiles as they clap their hands together in happiness with shared joy for them.
She feels as if her own lips mirror their contentment.
Her body moves on its own, turning around with arms pulled down to gain momentum. Then her bouquet of flowers flies up in the air, her mind going through recollections of the thousand times she lay in bed dreaming of this moment: a white dress and a ring and a boy she loves more than she could’ve ever imagined standing beside her. Of friends and family standing nearby, bearing witness to a pact between her lover and her. Of flowers being thrown and landing in the arms of the next bride.
This is her dream, her fantasy of girlhood clashing with reality and becoming her sweet reality.
A dream within a dream.
(Deep inside, Ladybug knows that there’s a mask over her face, a suit covering her body instead of the long white dress she designed herself when she was fourteen. She knows there’s no tuxedo suit she drew on him, either. She knows of the small voice in the back of her mind sending signals of Danger! Danger! all through her body at the sight of her Chat Noir covered in an all too familiar white suit. But she ignores all this because it doesn’t matter much. She’s living her dream, and nothing else can possibly matter.)
They defeated Papillon and took the miraculous back.
She married the love of her life.
What else could she want?
This is her dream.
(Far away, she hears the sound of an alarm clock, disturbing the cheers, but that also does not matter. They have all the time in the world.)
__________
The house feels like home instantly, wrapping her in a sense of familiarity as she tumbles in, giggling as Chat’s hands cover her eyes.
Her feet step on the unfamiliar ground, and although she can’t feel the floor through the suit, she steps through the door for the first time, and she feels as though she can walk the place with eyes completely closed. She feels like she belongs here, like she’s been here thousands of other times though really, she’s never even seen the place.
It really is so strange how Chat’s presence makes her feel.
“Ready?” he whispers near her ear from behind her. “On the count of three, you can open your eyes.”
His voice only empowers this feeling of home.
“Okay,” she giggles in response, giddily.
“One…” he begins. “Two… three…” She opens her eyes, only to be greeted by the palm of his hands; he forgot to uncover her eyes.
Silly kitty.
She giggles again. “You have to uncover my eyes, Chaton, I can only see your hand.”
“Oh, right!” he exclaims a bit dorkily, removing his hands to let her see for real this time.
And she sees it: a spacious living room, a giant kitchen, big windows with a beautiful outside view, fancy bathrooms, and luxurious bedrooms.
It has it all, a place taken directly from her dreams.
“Do you like it?” he asks her, tone slightly nervous. She turns to him with stars bright in her eyes.
“Do I like it?” she repeats, to which he nods, shyly, like he doesn’t know that every place he sets a foot in turns to gold.
“It’s totally okay if you don’t!” he starts when she doesn’t continue, simply staring at him. “We can always look for another place or replace anything you don’t like, I just—”
She launches at him, looping her arms around his neck, kissing him until he goes silent, understanding that she doesn’t just like it. She loves it because it’s home.
It’s not all the luxury and gorgeous view that makes it home, it’s him that makes it home. It’s him and the breathless state he leaves her in when he kisses her in every room, proclaiming that it’s the only proper way to claim a place as theirs. It’s their laughter bouncing through the halls as they jump on the beds of every bedroom, lie on the couches, and open every cabinet and wow at the kitchenware. It’s their smiles as they hold hands, walking through the building, exploring this place that’s theirs forever.
It’s home because they’re Ladybug and Chat Noir, and any place becomes home when they’re together.
__________
They spend the next week cuddled together in the living room, watching TV together and talking until the sun peeks over the mountain tops, coloring the sky anew.
She swells in his warmth, overflows with his love, drowns in the safety of his arms and his kisses. Her skin burns every time he kisses her in the heat of their desire, and even through the suit, she can almost feel the softness of his mouth against her skin when he presses his mouth all across her body.
All his words play in her head; she memorizes every line and curve and crack of his voice until she can tell what he’s feeling exclusively by listening to his tone. It’s a wonder to her how she learns to know him better than she knows herself in a week’s time, each day absorbing every little detail until she knows all the big and the most meaningless of details about him.
Chat Noir is his name. And there’s nothing she doesn’t know about him.
(Nothing is such a loose term to her now. Nothing ever includes his real name or his real face because things like that simply don’t matter anymore. She doesn’t know why it doesn’t matter anymore; she knows it had once mattered, but the thought of a reveal is not a thought that she entertains much.)
They don’t go out of their house, not once, to patrol or to see anyone, only just to race through the city at night for the sole fun of it. And in the night, with the moon as their singular specter, her hair cascades in the wind and the moonlight lights her face in a way she has never known it could.
And Chat, he is the picture of perfection.
His smile was established by the stars themselves, their stardust granted to illuminate his face and the surrounding darkness. His golden mane shakes when he laughs; he just shines like all the light of the world rests in his eyes.
And the world is theirs.
They glide with the stars, drifting in the breeze from rooftop to rooftop like night, and they with it are declared immortal.
It’s as if the whole world is completely new to her, like every place they’ve been to before and places she’s never seen. She feels like it’s the first time she transformed all over again, filled with the adrenaline of a magical moment like none before. Everything seems so pink, so dream-like, that it’s sometimes hard to believe that it’s all real.
“Gotcha!” She hears Chat say, his arms wrapping around her body from behind her, his chin settling on her shoulder as she contemplates the city below them. They’re at the peak of the highest building, the world practically bowing before them.
“Doesn’t it feel like the world belongs to us?” she whispers, afraid that if she speaks up, the sparkles will cease to be. “Like it’s all ours?”
“Yes,” Chat replies, equally quiet, perhaps sharing the same fear. “It doesn’t feel real sometimes.”
She nods her head. “Not quite.”
“But it is,” he confirms, trying to reassure them both that all this is really happening. “You and I against the world, in the world, with the world.”
She smiles, leaning against him. “Of course, Chaton.” She closes her eyes, seeing that even the darkness is pink. “It’s just that every moment with you feels like a dream.”
She feels the vibration of his laugh tickling her back. “That’s my line to say, Lady of my dreams!”
She laughs. “Both of us can be romantic, you know, sweet kitty of my heart.”
“Oh, so I own your heart?” The way his voice perks up at the idea makes her giggle.
“Obviously,” she turns her head around, pulling away slightly so she can look him in the eyes. And his eyes are so brilliant, reflecting the lights of the city like giant mirrors. They gaze back at her in that gentle way of theirs that sends her heart stuttering, "I love you." “My heart has your name all over it in the most cheesy and romcom but real way.”
He stares at her for a second, like he cannot believe she’s real, holding her in his arms as one would to a star, maybe. Then, he leans in and kisses her. “And you are the Ladybug of my dreams, you know, because there’s no other woman in this world for me. Just you. Ladybug. My Ladybug.”
Ladybug chuckles, twisting in his arms and locking her hands behind his neck. “My Chat Noir.”
“Your Chat Noir,” he agrees, solemnly.
They kiss the promise and seal it.
“You’re my dream within a dream.”
__________
Slowly, she begins to forget what life was like before him.
He is her home now, the air she breathes, the blood in her veins, the sun in her sky, the moon in the night. She doesn’t need anything else but him because his smiles are her supplies to live and be happy.
Everything is just him.
Her Chat Noir.
Chat Noir, whom she’d live a thousand lives for and who she’d die a thousand deaths for.
She can go months without seeing anyone else, but not a moment apart from him. It’s like he keeps her sane, and the bare thought of being away from him shatters her smile. So she makes him promise not to leave her, and he makes her promise the same in return, seemingly relieved that the anxiety that being apart brings him is shared. His eyes search hers with the same desperation she feels bubbling in her chest, begging her that out of all their promises broken in the past, this one ought to be kept no matter what.
“Yes,” she tells him, eagerly. “I can’t live without you; I would never leave you.”
I can’t live without you had never felt so real. It’s not an exaggeration nor a half-truth; it’s the reality through and through because she knows, like she knows she loves him, that her heart would give up the moment they aren’t together.
She can’t live without him.
__________
Days go by in what used to feel like minutes.
And every day she spends it with him, of course, because there is nothing more to life than him, her, them, and their shared love and dreams. She doesn’t know how it happened, but soon enough, another dream of theirs comes to be.
A small baby with blue eyes and eternally smiling lips.
“OH, look, M’lady,” Chat smiles his happiest smile, the smile that is reserved for only her to see, beaming as he shakes the milk bottle in his hand. “I made the bottle all by myself!”
“You did, didn’t you? I’m so proud of you, Chaton,” she smiles back, kissing his lips briefly. His face lights up even more, his smile growing impossibly larger. “I’m sure Chat Junior is also proud of his daddy, aren’t you, mon Petit Minou?” she coos at the baby in her arms.
The baby smiles, like always. Their child doesn’t know how to do anything but smile. He got that from his father, Carapace always said.
“Did you warm it up?” she asked him, with a playful arch of her eyebrows.
Chat stops shaking the bottle, sitting next to her on the living room couch. “O-Of course I did!”
“Did you figure out how to use the bottle warmer now?”
That sheepish look of shame paints his features. “Well… not quite. I used the microwave again, but I promise next time I’ll actually use the bottle warmer!”
Her smile softens like butter. “I don’t doubt it, Chaton.”
“Can I feed him, then?” he asks eagerly, kitty eyes in full motion. “Please?”
“Of course you can,” Ladybug chuckles. “he’s your son, too, you know? You don’t even have to ask,” she reminds him, lightly, and like always, his eyes sparkle like it’s somehow a new revelation to him.
She passes him the baby, and he receives him carefully, hushing him gently as he settles him in his arms. “Here’s your milk, my Little One,” he whispers in a soft voice with matching soft eyes.
Ladybug leans against his shoulder, gazing at them with love. She saves this moment in her heart, knowing that the image of her kitty holding their baby (their baby, their baby) was another dream within a dream.
The gentle way he sways their little one in his arms, his soft voice as he talks to him, his happy eyes as he watches him eat, his cat ears perking up happily.
How could she ever live without him?
__________
The sound of a rumbling from the kitchen wakes her from a very pleasant dream.
“No!” She hears Chat’s voice, tone angered and altered.
She gets up immediately, afraid that there’s a Sentimonster in their house. She glances at the baby that sleeps soundly beside her, and she tiptoes out of the room, shutting the door as she exits.
“Chat!” she calls, counting her steps to calm herself. “Chat!”
But his reply never comes, though she knows he is there. She hears the faint sound of his raspy breaths. And he is there, hands on the kitchen island as he supports himself, head bowed down.
He’s upset.
“Chaton?” she calls him again, this time gently. “Chat, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, so low that she nearly misses it.
“About what, Minou? What happened?” she presses, putting her hand on his back. Then she sees it. Ashes where the bottle warmer once stood. She lets out a small gasp against her will. “What happened to it?”
“I accidentally cataclysmed it,” Chat admits, quietly, still refusing to meet her eye.
She wants to ask why and how, but she decides to comfort him instead. He’s obviously upset, and no tragedy deserves to pull at his lips ever. “That’s okay,” she whispers, squeezing his shoulder comfortably. “We can get another one, everything is fine. Why don’t we go back to bed with Chat Jr. for a little bit? Then, after that, we can go to the store and get a new one. I’m sure there are thousands more—”
“But this was a gift from your parents!” He interrupts her, looking at her now, through a teary gaze. Her heart breaks at the sight of his crying eyes; no tears deserve to fill his eyes.
“It was,” she agrees, reaching to wipe the tears away. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s just a bottle warmer, Minou, and accidents happen. I’m sure you didn’t mean to cataclysm it.”
That doesn’t seem to comfort him; his frown deepens. “I did mean to, though. I just— I couldn’t get it to work and— and I got angry and just decided to— to cataclysm because it was me being stupid and immature a-and now it’s— it’s broken because I’m a terrible f-father that can’t even figure out how to warm a bottle—”
“You are not a terrible father, Chat Noir,” she told him firmly. No thoughts like that deserve to ever cross his mind. “You are the best father in the whole wide world! I know you aren’t perfect, we never expect you to be, and it’s okay to mess up. That doesn’t make you a bad father, believe me. Besides, it took me three hours to figure out how to build that stupid bottle warmer; I hit it more times than I care to admit. It’s been giving us problems since day one! It deserved to burn under the fury of Paris’ best cat boy Chat Noir!”
He lets out a wet chuckle, and she takes that as a good sign, grabbing his hand with hers. “You’re the best husband anyone could ever ask for,” she says, kissing his cheek. “And, between you and I, even though he would never admit it, I’m one-hundred percent certain that you’re Chat Jr’s favorite.”
He raises his eyebrows at that. “And how would you know that, My Lady, he can’t exactly speak?”
“He doesn’t need to,” she says. “I know you are, I can see it in his eyes.”
“He’s just a baby,”
“Not just a baby,” she shakes her head in disagreement. “Your baby. That alone makes him so special because he’s yours.”
He smiles at her, crying, though perhaps for other reasons than the previous. “Our baby, M’lady, ours.”
Their baby.
Their small treasure.
Their dream within a dream.
“Our baby,” she nods, “has the best father in the whole world. He protects us from everything, even evil bottle warmers!”
“Thank you,” he whispers, leaning his forehead against hers. “I don’t know what I’d ever do without you.”
“You don’t have to know,” she replies, “because you’ll never need to know.”
__________
Taking their second child home for the first time is another beautiful story Ladybug will make sure to tell their grandchildren someday.
It’s raining, and by default, rainy days are the best kind of days for a baby to be born, and the baby probably knows that.
“Welcome home, little one,” she whispers as they enter through the living room. Chat came in behind her, pushing Chat Jr. in his stroller. “This is your home now,” she tells the baby in her arms, gazing at his little smiling face with tenderness.
“It’s the best place to call home in the whole world,” Chat explains, now standing next to her. “And you get to be surrounded by the best people, too. The most meowtiful mom ever to exist and the most supaw coolest brother and the pawsomest dad with the best sense of humor ever!” he exclaims, kissing his little hand.
Ladybug rolls her eyes, wrinkling her nose. “Just be aware of the ‘pawsomest dad’s’ puns, my son, I heard they give headaches. ”
Chat gasps, dramatically. “Your mother is an absolute liar! My puns are so punderful and ameowzing!”
“He’s also a bit delusional at times,” she adds, showering his face with kisses. “Ask Chat Jr, he’ll tell you about that time his father declared to be the coolest cat in the house. It’s clear that Junior is the best cat.”
Chat glares at her as he picks up Chat Jr. from the stroller, and she chuckles. “I’m willing to admit I was a bit delusional that time. But only that time,” he said, begrudgingly, before turning to the baby in his arms and kissing his cheek. They love to kiss their babies. “Chat Jr. is the coolest cat ever.”
The baby smiles.
“That’s true,” Ladybug agrees, leaning her head against Chat’s shoulder. “But he learned all his coolness from his father.”
Chat smiles at her. “Now you’re just being delusional, Buginette. He learned it from you.”
“He’s also a bit of a flatterer,” she whispers to her baby again.
“A truther!”
“You’re gonna love it here,” she tells the baby. “It’s really the best place ever.”
They name their baby Adrien because there is something about the rain that reminds her of that name, though she isn’t quite sure what. Chat said he liked it, too, staring out the window with a pondering look.
__________
“Olahlah, twins?” asks the ice cream man. Andre.
“No, they’re actually a year apart,” Chat answers, smiling at their sons in their joined stroller.
“Oh, but how cute they are!” Andre coos. “I always knew you two would have beautiful children! Didn’t I tell you a few years ago? Didn’t I?”
Chat and her exchange knowing looks, recalling the memory as if it had been yesterday. “Yes, indeed, and you were so right,” she answers with a chuckle. “Quite the prophet you are, Andre.” Chat lets out a laugh.
“It’s the power of love that makes a child so beautiful,” Andre explains, waving his ice cream scooper their way. “And you two are very much in love. Made for each other, two halves of one whole, soulmates in all ways possible!”
She looks at Chat Noir and smiles at him. The yin to my yang, she willed her eyes to say.
“And these two precious children—” he looks at the smiling babies. “---Are proof that I’ve always been right!”
“Of course, Andre, we never doubted you,” Chat replies. “But could we please get our ice cream?”
Andre laughs. “Yes, yes! My most famous mix: the LadyNoir mix!”
Their colors.
“But tell me, what are their names?” he said, referring to their babies. “I must know!”
“Chat Jr. Noir-Bug and Adrien Noir-Bug, last name hyphenated,” Ladybug answers, saying their names with warmth.
“Adrien?!” Andre exclaimed, star-struck. “Mama mia! Like— Like…” he drifts off, staring into nothing as he thinks. “Adrien… I could’ve sworn I knew an Adrien, but I can’t quite remember right now.”
She shrugs, taking their ice cream. “Thank you.”
Adrien.
__________
For their third anniversary together, they go to spend the weekend on an island.
Chat had been very excited about their trip for days, explaining to her that it had been one of his fantasies from youth to live on an island with her. And she could not deny him anything, especially not when he looked at her like she alone held all the power to make this one dream come true.
Ladybug had one purpose ever since the defeat of Papillon: To make every single one of Chat Noir’s dreams come true.
Life was nothing else but this.
“Even for a few days, that’d be enough for me,” he said, washed in excitement. She couldn’t help but smile at his eagerness, and she beamed with him because he was the sun and she was the moon; her light came from him.
“We can stay for as long as you want,” she had told him, to which he’d brighten even more. “It’s our three-year anniversary since we got married, so it’s very special!”
Chat nodded vigorously. “Any day with you is special,” he’d countered. “But yes, you’re right, this one will be especially special.”
She’d smile again, taking his hand. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
She doesn’t think that’s possible.
For someone to love more than she loves him. Not even he can reach that level of love, but she stayed silent and let him win this battle, though falsely.
And now they are lying on a blanket after having their first-ever picnic on the little island they now call home, enjoying the sun and the summer breeze as it dances gently on their skin and through their hair. Ladybug curls beside him, their babies between them as they smile their eternal smiles.
This place, too, feels like home. She suspected it was simply because any place with Chat and their little family is home. They carry home with them: their love is home, and their love follows them everywhere they go.
She closes her eyes, swelling in the feeling, memorizing the rhythm of Chat’s breathing, the sound of the faraway sea, the warmth of the sun.
This is what beats in her chest in place of a heart.
Simply recollections of moments such as these — home.
A deserted island.
Chat.
Her.
Their babies.
There isn’t a single thing that she would change about this moment.
“We have all the time in the world,” he says.
__________
Time is irrelevant in her world.
There is no day and there is no night because there is no end and no start. Hours do not matter because there’s no need for such separation, not when every day is such a dream.
When forever begins, time ceases to have value.
What once she’d so desperately sought to stop has no power over her anymore, and it never will.
( She won. They won. They finally won.)
But somehow, it feels like an empty win.
Even so, she sits at the park with her love beside her, holding their soulmate ice cream as they stare into the eternal sunset. A gust of wind passes through, cold and thin, but she ignores the chill that runs down her body.
(We have all the time in the world.)
The colors of the world flicker for half a second — a second too brief to notice, but enough to make her blink. And then a sharp taste of iron rises in her throat, clawing at her insides. She bends forward, choking, and something heavy falls from her mouth.
A clock.
“Again?” She says, because it’s happened again and again. “All these alarm clocks are turning into a real nightmare.”
“Are you—”
Her stomach twists before he can finish. She turns her head rapidly towards the faraway horizon.
Another clock towering over buildings.
She gasps and looks around — the city is covered in them. Clocks dangling from tree branches, clocks in the sky, clocks floating in the Seine, clocks in the place of her babies. Her three perfect angels.
Everywhere, the world ticks.
“This is a dream,” she murmurs, a truth dripping from her tongue.
The sharpness in her throat returns, and the lump of tiny clocks lands between her feet, hands spinning so fast they blur into nothing. Another one follows. Then another. Soon they’re pouring out, shattering on the pavement, all ticking at different tempos, all wrong.
Everywhere, the dream cracks.
“Chat Noir,” she cries, coughing up blood and numbers. “This is a dream,”
A nightmare.
But Chat smiles at her, tenderly, adoringly, like he is blind to all the cracks. “I know, My Lady, living with you is the sweetest dream.”
She chokes in desire and spits out the words again, holding one of the tiny clocks in front of him as it shakes and rings violently.
Chat tilts his head, confusion shadowing his features. “You’re saying that this is all fake?”
She opens her mouth to answer, but no sound comes out. Only more clocks.
And then she sees it in his eyes — the understanding. The same horror reflected back at her.
This isn’t real. It never was.
He grabs her hand, desperate, taking the clock from her grasp as if destroying that single object will eliminate reality with it. His own body begins to fracture at the edges, pieces of him flickering like static, as though even he is only borrowed time.
Her breath comes ragged. She looks at him, at his green eyes filled with terror and recognition, and she knows.
“We have to wake up.”
She feels the false memories of the dream surge through her veins, then halt, leaving her body to collapse into a heap of pink and clocks. Repetitions of negations flood her thoughts; she rejects the truth of the end of the world.
And yet, deep down, she knows that when she wakes, she will deny far worse things than this.
The clocks all stop at once.
And in the sudden silence, the dream collapses.