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Marinette jiggles her knees. Her breath shakes out of her in little bursts of white.
On the roofs, she could breathe this air forever.
At street level, the scent of fresh winter comes with some car exhaust. There’s also the rude grind of Vespas shooting past, and harried shopping bags bumping their rickety wooden café table. And the pigeons attempting to nibble on her, which admittedly is also an issue on the roofs some days. She can’t help that she looks like a lady, smells like a bug.
To her left, Adrien pushes open the glass café door with his hip, two large disposable cups of hot chocolate and a paper plate of pie in his hands. He’s got his game face on, winsome but mysterious, and with a tinge of pink to his nose and cheeks. He is devastating. She desires to devastate him in turn, but instead sneezes. "Atchoum!"
"Oh!" Exclaims Adrien, and tries to hand her the wad of napkins clutched between his fingers and the plate. This means that he starts to spill the drinks, starts to upend them right over the table, but her luck negates his and she catches them.
A passerby jumps at the hullabaloo and spooks the gang of pigeons, which circle right back and try to land on Mari. She grins at Adrien, flapping away the birds.
"My dove," Adrien's holds her eye but his ears are red.
"What a team," she smirks.
Adrien settles into his seat without any further challenges as she relocates the drinks, securely to one side. After a brief scrap for the disposable fork (Adrien wins) (Marinette takes away the plate) they settle back into the relative quiet of their patch of sidewalk.
He runs a long-fingered hand down her coat sleeve to where her wrist juts, skinny and prim, out of a button-down shirt. His fingers tug at the pearly button on her cuff and skim the inside of her sleeve, then up her wrist to her finger tips, where he softly presses the pads of his fingers down on her nails. The eye contact is different this time.
A few more shop stops before they can retreat to their cosy apartment. They're back to business after they finish the cake and coffee. He nudges her and she blinks, realizes she'd been gazing at the rooftops.
Adrien and Marinette are both talkative, but since they've known about each other - really known - they somehow talk less, like talking makes them feel farther apart.
The quality of stillness that the city takes on when you're on the roofs, Adrien understands it too. How the sounds below are muted. What the windows reflect from up here: sunlight and clouds and birds. How you can look below, and see the tops of things that are usually above you: street signs, umbrellas, cars.
But today they're down below. Since when has this city been so crowded?
"It's the last weekend before Christmas," Adrien says evenly, as if he could hear her groaning out loud.
"I'm not complaining!" She shifts her bag of shopping around and stands up straighter.
"This is the same face you make when an akuma starts causing mayhem in town. You're not so much complaining as you are steeling yourself for battle." He takes the heavy bag and plants a kiss on her. On the sensitive skin where her lip becomes her cheek. It feels cold when he moves away, and tingly.
"So let's fight this shopping battle, my lady. I'm your trusty sidekick to the bitter end."
Funny how he can make her feel weightless in the space of a kiss. Just like that.
"Alright Spock, what's our strategy?" She asks, marching off, Adrien in her wake, several pigeons in his.
"Everyone gets gloves," he says. "And plan B is iTunes gift cards."