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The iridescent glow of the moon streamed in through the small barn window. They had run all the way to the farmland to diffuse the most recent akuma attack, never before had they been forced to travel so far away from home.
"C-Chat," she breathed into his chest, her heart pounding with every passing moment. The cut on her lower lip dripping small drops of blood onto Chat's leather suit and the large purple bruise on her forehead throbbing against his steady breaths.
"Yes, my lady?"
"I'm on my last spot."
His eyes widened for a moment before he replied. "It's okay LB. I won't look." It took every ounce of his remaining strength to keep his composure while being exposed to Ladybug's current, frail state. Apparently her Miraculous Healing Light only fixed damage to non-living things.
A beep filled the midnight air and the familiar, blinding glare flashed in under his chin. He felt the change under his gloved fingertips, her usual spandex suit replaced by an oversized cotton tee. Chat looked over her head of loose hair to see the long shirt was an off white colour and her legs were bare.
"My my," he mused, "never pinned you as the type to sleep without pants." A chuckled escaped his lips and his grip around her waist tightened ever so slightly.
"Shut up. They're just shorts," she responded a little too quickly, feeling her cheeks heat up like a freshly lit campfire. Tikki, not wanting to interrupt the teens, had taken the liberty of flying through the half open window to find herself something to eat to recharge.
The two sat in silence, save for the occasional beeping of Chat's miraculous, wondering how on earth they were going to get back to their families and slip in unnoticed at such a late hour. His back against the hard redwood wall, Marinette sitting on her knees in between his legs, her head down as she struggled to calm herself by counting to ten over and over again.
It was only when an intensity of green blazed in front of her dark-circled eyes did she notice the red soaking through his baby blue pajama shirt, a small black creature floating to the ground with a small thump. "Chat, you're bleeding!" She looked up into his sparkling emerald green eyes in horror only to be met with the unmasked face of her partner.
"Lady-Marine-" his voice hitched in his throat as he tried to piece together the scattered fragments of the situation. Marinette stared at Adrien, her mouth agape with wonder and bewilderment. With her chin practically touching the floor, she felt her ears burning beneath her dark locks that hung, free from their regular pigtails, over her shoulders, the light freckles that dusted her cheeks almost completely engulfed by a dazzling crimson.
She was dumbfounded. The boy she had liked for three whole years and her best friend . . . were the same person? Her lips struggled to form the one name she had loved for so long. "Adrien?"
Her hands rose to cover her mouth, getting a little blood on them from her cut lip in the process. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes but didn't know exactly why she was crying. Was it because she didn't want Chat to be Adrien? Because she was scared he'd be disappointed in her?
She didn't have time worry about such a trivial matter when there was a more pressing issue that needed to be addressed. "A-Adrien, you're hurt." The teen model looked past Marinette's head and focused his attention to his chest which was covered with a hot, sticky splatter of vermillion, rapidly expanding with every second that ticked by.
Hesitantly, she willed her fingers to lift the bottom of his T-shirt up, revealing a set of rock hard abs and a massive cut running from the top of his his left shoulder to his right hip. She acted on instinct, ripping the hem of her shirt off and using the thin cloth to dab away at the wound and then ripping off some more in an attempt to bandage the nasty-looking scar. With every move she made she could feel him wince a little bit under the pressure.
"Marinette . . . it was you this whole time?" he queried as she wrapped up his torso in the light material. She paused before nodding her head, not looking him in the eye. His head felt a little fuzzy, probably due to the amount of blood he was loosing at an alarming rate, and he leaned over to rest his forehead on her shoulder. "I'm glad it was you." Marinette sat stiff as he breathed laboured breaths on her neck.
"Adrien?" No reply.
The dark-haired girl smiled a little as she watch his eyelids flutter and his heartbeat return to a more normal pace. She shifted his body so he lay with his head resting on her lap and scooped up the black kwami in both her hands who was sleeping as soundly as his human companion, clearly exhausted.
Taking another look at his peaceful face, a relieved expression settled on her features. "I'm glad it was you too."