How much sleep he got turned out to be negligible in the long run: he really couldn't be expected to focus anyway, because Marinette wore the Chat Noir hoodie to school the next day too.

And the next.

And the next.

In fact, she wore it every day throughout the next week.

Adrien got a crash course in 'how to pretend you were paying attention when your crush is wearing a sweater with your signature all over it.'

He failed it miserably.

He was in danger of failing his next history test, too, but that was (allegedly) what the study sessions were for.

(Study sessions were getting steadily less productive as the weeks went on while he, the resident physics expert, got more and more distracted by Marinette and her... Marinette-ness, and Alya, the resident historian, could talk of nothing but the upcoming ball.

Nino and Marinette weren't particularly studious in the first place, and more often than not spent their time together shooting jokes and light jibes at one another.

It made for a wonderful atmosphere, and the sessions were the highlight of Adrien's week, but helping him with his grades they were not.)

Class was better, though only slightly - instead of thinking of followups to Nino's jokes and getting sidetracked by the light in Marinette's eyes, he spent the duration of it wishing he could trade seats with her so he could stare at the back of that hood all day.

He ended up eavesdropping a lot.

He might not have learned a whole lot about calculus, but he did learn about the bakery's customers, what designers Marinette was interested in at the moment, what plans she and Alya had for hanging out over the weekend, a myriad of little things he carefully filed away in his ever-growing mental 'Ladybug' folder.

That folder had rested stagnant for far too long. For all that he could recall any number of her bright grins and off-handed jokes, actual information about her life had been scarce up until very recently. For how often they worked together, his information on her had been painstakingly pieced together from from her reactions to things, her lines, and her jokes.

Until now.

Now his folder wasn't limited to things like 'likes video games' and 'dislikes gifts of live rats' (...certain impulses and cat instincts had been far harder to control before he'd been used to them); now he knew things like what she liked in her tea (one sugar, and one sugar only) and that you should never leave her alone with a cell phone. Ever. (He wondered if that was an instinct she struggled with, at times.)

It had things like how much sun it took to make her freckle (a few hours and her forearms would start to show a smattering of golden spots), where she liked to go to lunch when she had the funds (she was fond of Japanese food, surprisingly; she told him it was because it tended to not be overly sweet), and her reaction to horror movies (she could take the gore but had crawled into his lap and hid in response to the jump-scares and the tension).

(She'd done that last one in the hoodie, too. Adrien wasn't all that fond of horror movies himself but hell if he could be bothered with Marinette's chilly nose nudging the hollow of his throat and two adorable cat ears concealing the killer.)

He knew now that if you startled her out of costume, she would, quite literally, jump a foot into the air (and probably a few to the side, too), arms pinwheeling frantically as she over-balanced, smashed into the nearest immovable object, danced in place, performed acrobatic feats that were out of her reach otherwise, and/or played hot potato with whatever she was holding.

Ladybug was the picture of grace, competence, and self-assured potency.

Marinette had been found stuck in Hotel Bourgeois's dumb waiter, on occasion.

Marinette — no, Ladybug — stumbled and flailed and tripped her way through life, and Adrien couldn't have been more charmed. To think his Lady was this clumsy out of the suit was about as adorable as it was hilarious, and Adrien was starting to think he was in major trouble.

Because as much as he'd adored Ladybug before, there'd always been a certain amount of aloofness, of confident independence — to have that distance stripped away, to have it revealed that she wasn't really some other-worldly being, made her so close, so touchable it took his breath away.

He could touch her now. Text her. Ask her if she wanted to see a movie over the weekend and have her agree.

It was humbling and wonderful and terrifying, all the things he could envision doing with Ladybug now.

Pacing outside his father's study waiting for Marinette and said father to finish whatever they were talking about wasn't one of those things he'd envisioned, but it was still another little proof that she was a part of his life now, not a transient, ephemeral fever dream.

Soundly re-proving that she wasn't some figment of his imagination, the Lady burst out of his father's study, wild-eyed behind a forced, polite smile, letting the door shut itself with a solid-sounding thunk behind her.

"A week," she gasped, staggering up to Adrien and clutching his forearms, grip harsh with a terrifying kind of frenzied energy.

Just what had happened in there?

"A what?" said Adrien intelligently, steadying her as best he could and trying not to get sucked into her gaze, because now was so not the time.

He knew his father could be a bit much, at times, but not outright traumatizing.

Usually.

As far as he knew.

"A week," Marinette repeated, sounding like she was trying to believe it herself. "A week, a week, a week... I have a week to design a lineup."

"...A what?"

"A lineup," she said, letting him go and straightening out her clothing with shaking hands. "For the Christmas showing. One week."

Her hands froze.

"One week," she breathed, corner of her mouth hooked up awkwardly in the most joyous form of panic Adrien had ever seen. "I only have a week."

And with that, she broke every Agreste household rule and charged down the hall at top speed, formal jacket flapping in the breeze and flats squeaking on the tile.

Adrien watched her go, then slowly turned on his heel and opened his mouth to ask the door what the ever-loving fuck? before thinking better of it and going to find Natalie.

Maybe she'd have a clue what that was all about.

She did.

According to Natalie, his father had experienced a work emergency and had decided to dump the least-important lineup of the Christmas showing, a task which would have been a lot for a single, more experienced designer with more time, on one single busy teenage girl, instead of cancelling that particular section like any normal, sensible fashion icon.

Which... well.

His father had a propensity for disappearing for long hours and mumbling to himself while standing in dark rooms alone, so perhaps 'sensible' was not the best descriptor here.

(Adrien had learned to tolerate his father's growing oddities in the years since his mother had vanished, but even for his slacking grip on his sanity, this seemed a bit out there.)

In short, Adrien could entirely understand why he hadn't seen or heard from Marinette in two days.

Understanding, however, did not equate to not worrying.

Especially since Alya hadn't heard from her either.

(Alya, upon hearing the news, had winced and laughed and told him not to worry — Marinette had probably just buried herself under her rejected designs.

Alya didn't seem to understand that this was precisely what Adrien was worried about.)

Walking into the bakery at around lunchtime, her mother confirmed his suspicions when she greeted him with a wry smile and a, "See if you can't get her out of the house, Adrien. Goodness knows she needs it," as she assisted a customer with their order.

"My father-" Adrien started, pausing in the doorway, unsure if that sentence was going to end in an apology or a defense.

"I know," Sabine said with a peaceable, understanding smile, not looking at him as she deftly arranged a customer's croissants in a take-home box.

Adrien had the mad urge to ask her what he had been going to say, because she seemed to know far better than he did.

He didn't, but instead worked his way over to the working side of the counter and asked, "Is she in her room?"

"Hasn't come out since she got home on Monday," Sabine said, snapping the box shut and wrapping it in black ribbon in neat, economical movements. She slid the package to the end of the counter with a flick of the wrist and twisted sideways to pick up a pair of tongs. "Speaking of, would you take these up to her? I don't think she's eaten today."

Adrien blinked as the treats piled themselves up like magic, and then Sabine handed him the whole platter and shooed him into their living area with the same unfalteringly mild smile.

Adrien shooed.

At Marinette's door, he held the platter in one hand and rapped softly in the wood with the other.

No answer.

He waited a few seconds before rapping again and calling under his breath, "Marinette?"

Still no answer.

Had she left?

He pushed open the door, half-expecting a shriek or a shoe thrown at his head, and got nothing.

Warily, he poked his head through the opening, and the reason became apparent.

Marinette was asleep.

Adrien's mouth twitched into a smile as he pushed the door open and climbed into the room. He picked his way through the dense litter of crumpled drawings (Alya had been on the money, it seemed) over to where Marinette was dozing, cheek resting on yet another design.

She looked peaceful, despite the dark smudges below her eyes. Her mouth hung open, tiny line of dried saliva trailing from the corner of her lips to the desk. Her hair was tangled into stringy locks, wild bedhead doubtlessly exacerbated by her frantic scalp-scrubbing as she tried to brainstorm far too many ideas in far too little time. Her hand rested palm up by her cheek, long, tapered fingers curled in a way that struck him, abruptly, as vulnerable, open.

Adrien's chest contracted viciously, throat gone very, very tight.

He had to look away then, had to skitter away from the sheer force of that emotion, unsettled on a level just a little too deep, a little too personal.

His eyes fell on the neat pyramid of his gift, multicolored spools of professional-grade thread lifted sneakily off (that is, asked politely of) the designers in his father's main workshop. They occupied the only clear space on the desk, the crumpled wads of designs forming an odd semicircle around the thread structure.

Adrien widened the semicircle to make room for the platter Sabine had sent him up with, carefully shuffling rejected designs to the side with a good deal more thought than their creator seemed to have graced them with.

The clink of the ceramic must have disturbed Marinette, because she stirred not a few seconds later.

"Mmn," mumbled the sleeping Marinette, and Adrien looked over just in time to see her blink open sleep-fogged blue eyes.

Adrien's throat snapped shut, heart swelling too big and warm and tight for his chest, slamming against his ribcage like a sledgehammer.

He couldn't define precisely why watching her wake was so huge, except that it just was. She was open and soft and defenseless like this, with mussed hair and dazed eyes and—

It was a state of vulnerability she experienced every day, one that he had never witnessed before, one that he thought... maybe...

"Adri-ien?" she whispered foggily, and the little crack in her missing voice threatened to be his undoing.

"G'morning, Princess," he whispered back, face aching in a way that told him he was smiling helplessly, hopelessly.

She blinked up at him for a few moments, confused wrinkle on her brow and the remnants of her in-progress design marking her cheek.

His fingertips tingled with the urge to rub the design away, but found he didn't quite dare, and stilled his hand before he could.

Marinette's eyes went wide as soon as they focused on him.

"A-A-A-Adrien?!"

She promptly shot up off her seat and tumbled backwards, arms flailing wildly, and hit the ground with a painful-sounding thump.

He moved without thinking, making an awkward attempt to both catch her and help her and ending up simply staring at the distance between his outstretched hand and the girl on the floor.

Marinette also stared at the outstretched hand, turning an absolutely adorable shade of pink in the process. Her hands flew up to her hair, running her fingers through it and patting it down in what he abruptly realized was an attempt to calm the bedhead.

"A-Adrien," she squeaked. "Wh-wh-what are you doing here?"

Cute.

"I came to see how you were doing," he admitted.

He technically had an excuse about making sure she didn't miss the press conference for Ladybug and Chat Noir that took place this afternoon, but it had long gone flying out the window, entirely forgotten.

"O-oh," she said, voice coming down from it's double-octave jump. She accepted his hand. "I'm okay."

He gave her a dubious look, then pointedly glanced at the whirlwind of crumpled, rejected designs littering her floor.

She puffed her cheeks and glared as she slid back into her seat. "Really."

He didn't dignify that with an answer. Instead he said, "I'm... really sorry for my father."

Because he could try to defend his father's... eccentricities to her mother, but Marinette was the one getting the brunt of the responsibility here, and she deserved an apology for the sheer amount of stress that knowing his father could induce.

"It's... a great honor," she said, a little wry.

"It's a challenge," he corrected her dryly, looking away at the half-expected pang of jealousy. "One of those one of those old kings would give. 'Complete this impossible task and I'll let you marry my daughter.'"

That got a giggle out of her, even as his heart stuttered at the unintentional implication that she'd been asking for his hand in marriage.

If she had asked that, he had no doubt his father would immediately lock him up in some tall tower or faraway dungeon, never to see the light of day again. His father, though odd, was overprotective at the best of times, and at the worst... well.

(There was a whisper of resentment in his heart — if you just gave me a chance, maybe I could give you something to be proud of — that grew with every new restriction, bitter like bile on the back of his tongue and dark in the pit of his heart.)

(But no, delicate Adrien, helpless Adrien needed to be protected far more than he needed to be relied on.)

"It's kind of funny you're more of a knight than a princess, then, isn't it?"

Adrien jolted out of his reverie to the sound of Marinette's gentle murmur. "What?"

"A brave hero in kitty ears," she mumbled sleepily, affectionately. She smiled faintly, almost knowingly up at him from where she'd pillowed her head on her desk again. "My—" She swallowed a yawn. "—My knight in shining armor."

He stared at her, reeling and flushing and flustered and absurdly, absurdly pleased.

She let the moment linger, same soft, devastating smile playing around her lips while he stood and stared, before looking up at her clock with a frown. "What's today?"

"The 13th, why?" he answered, shaking off his daze with difficulty.

Marinette blanched. "The press conference!"

"Oh, right," he said, original reasons for his visit coming back to him as Marinette stumbled out of her seat in a hurry. "The press conference."

He watched in amusement (and affection) as Marinette flailed wildly in the direction of her dresser, stumbling so hard she nearly cartwheeled before she caught herself, and started digging through her wardrobe like a madwoman.

She found what she was looking for, to judge by the grateful, too-wide smile she gave the garments she resurfaced with, and made a mad dash for her hatch door.

"Ah," he called out. "You've got something..."

He tapped his cheek with two fingers when she turned to look at him, because he was pretty sure she would either not notice or fail to remember to clean it off if he didn't say anything.

She raised her hand to the spot he'd indicated and scrubbed her cheek intensely for a moment, leaving it bright red and smudged even worse. She then looked at her fingers and scowled, before giving him a brief thank-you wave and disappearing down the hatch.

He watched the door swing shut, then heard a cacophonous crash. He winced, calling out, "Are you-"

"I'm okay!" Marinette muffled voice cut him off. It was followed by a smaller series of crashes and a few squeaks and, finally, by the snap of what he could only assume was her bathroom door.

He snorted, feeling unaccountably full for how untouched the plate of pastries next to him was.

That's my Lady Luck, all right.

Pastries were eaten, cheeks were cleaned, heroes were transformed, and they were all set for the conference... except for one small problem.

"I think we're in the wrong place."

Chat took stock of the empty schoolyard playground, which didn't look like much of a place for a press conference to him. "Astute as always, my lady."

"Did we get the street name wrong?" Ladybug wondered, frowning at the locator displayed on her yo-yo's screen.

Chat leaned over her shoulder to see where the locator placed them, and inhaled a lungful of her scent. Intoxicating. He swallowed discreetly and tried to ignore the rampant butterflies in his stomach as he looked at the map.

Frowning, he studied the way the streets connected. There was a likely looking place for a convention center that might have been where they had been directed by the head of the press conference near the edge of the screen. He was pretty sure he'd seen that area on his car's GPS when going to one of his father's press releases.

"Hey," he murmured, pointing it out.

Ladybug jumped, snapping to face him.

"Do you think we were supposed to be... here...?" he trailed off, noticing just how close her flinch had put their faces. Her nose brushed his cheek at the slightest movement of his head.

Oh.

She was so close.

Blue, blue, blue... She was so close Chat could only drown in blue. She was so close he could feel her body heat like a hearth fire, could hear the way her breath caught, could smell the sleep and soap that lingered on her skin.

She was so close he could kiss her with just a little tilt of his chin, could press his lips against her cheek, against her nose, against her lips, and with the way she was looking at him, he thought she just might let him.

It was all just too much, after this morning.

He unconsciously licked his lips, heart thumping louder with every pulse, drawing into her like he was magnetized, because he couldn't not kiss her, not after this morning, not with that look she was giving him.

Brrrrring! Brrrrring!

He squawked, jumping back, arms pinwheeling frantically for balance as he skittered over the lawn in his surprise.

She screeched and also jumped back, though she fell into a martial arts pose he was pretty sure he'd seen in a movie instead of floundering gracelessly like he had.

They stared at each other, gaping, a mutual what the hell was that!? passing soundlessly between them for a fair few seconds before the chatter of excited children filtered out from the school building.

He and Ladybug turned to the source of the noise as one.

A crush of happy children poured out of the double doors, babble staggering to a halt as the class realized, one by one, that, yes, those were the heroes of Paris standing on the edge of their playground.

Then, as one entity, they surged forward in a rush, incomprehensible babble coming back with a vengeance and becoming more comprehensible with every foot they approached.

"Ladybug!" and "Chat Noir!" were the easiest and most common out of the auditory slush, followed by "What are you doing here?" and "Is there an akuma?"

"Ah," said Chat, shooting his partner a grin, unable to resist. "It seems we've been... spotted."

"Was that a pun."

Chat only had time to choke back a self-satisfied snicker before the fastest of the children, a tall, sprightly young girl, hit him at waist height, babbling, "You saved my sister! Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Chat crouched, self-satisfaction shifting out for something softer, kinder. "All in a day's work, young lady."

The girl giggled, and Chat tapped her button nose, smiling involuntarily for what felt like the umpteenth time today.

It was a good day.

The other children had other questions, "Can you play with us?" and "What's your favorite color?" and, oddly, "Do you like garbanzo beans?" all hitting the two heroes at machine-gun pace, but all Ladybug had to do was hold her hands up in a gesture for silence and the whole crowd went silent.

"Don't worry," she said into the silence, commanding. She held up a finger with every question she answered, and Chat mused that they may just as well be at that press conference. "There is no akuma. We're here because we took a wrong turn. My favorite color is pink, and I do like garbanzo beans, but I'm not too sure about Chat." She tilted a little grin at him before her face fell back into military seriousness. "And I'm sorry, but we can't stay to play. We have somewhere important to be."

The chatter turned into a wave of disappointed protests and pleading eyes, and Chat could see Ladybug's resolve waver just a fraction.

"It's just a press conference," he found himself pointing out. He wasn't sure if it was the dark smudges under her eyes or the exhausted kind of longing he caught in that waver that made him say it, but he warmed to the idea quickly.

She needed a break.

"It's just publicity. No one's gonna get hurt if we don't show up."

"We have responsibilities, Chat."

The flat, defeated tone she said it in just sealed the deal for him.

"Not big ones," he added, tilting his head just a little with his most winsome smile. "What's the worst that could happen?"

The girl whose sister they'd saved joined him in his pleading, followed quickly by several other children.

"Please, Ladybug?"

Ladybug's eyes flicked from one pleading face to the next, resolve crumbling like dust. She cast Chat a dark look for his betrayal.

He touched her elbow, holding it loosely as he said to her in an undertone, "Forget about the press conference and about my dad. One day off won't hurt."

Exhausted eyes fell to his hand, and something strange flashed through Ladybug's eyes. She pulled her arm away and mumbled, "Chat. We have responsibilities."

"Ladybug." He hadn't meant to sound so urgent, but that exhaustion was wrapping anxious little thorns around his heart. "You need a break. Please."

She was going to argue, he could see it, and he didn't think he had any counter arguments this time. She opened her mouth, took a breath, and—

Stopped.

She looked at him, really looked at him, and stopped. Something flashed in her eyes, a mix of shock and aching uncertainty and something unidentifiable, infinitesimal, huge, and she finished off with, "Okay."

Chat let go, feeling like his world was rocking to bits and unable to pinpoint precisely why.

Chat loved kids.

They were bright, innocent, clean in a way that had nothing to do with germs or runny noses.

They had no rigid preconceptions, no complex social rules, no hate burned into their mindsets; just a motherlode of energy and imagination that was a joy to witness.

You could make a child's day with a gift and a few well-chosen words, watch them light up even after the most traumatizing of akuma attacks with only attention and a small gesture. They were credulous, starry-eyed, enthusiastic - every day was an adventure or a thrill, something worth feeling something about. They were simultaneously selfish and giving, oblivious and empathetic in the way only the truly innocent could be.

There was a reason Ladybug left him to the clean up when children were involved, even if it meant facing down the media alone.

In the space of that afternoon, Chat was a king, a lord, a hero, a monster, a robot, and a horse. He was killed in action five times and only resurrected twice. He instated 'victory knights,' who were honor-bound to protect his kingdom together (a feat for the shy girl and the schoolyard bully, but he kept a close eye on them and made sure they worked it out) and was dared into seeing how many children he could carry at once (five, as it turned out — a number seriously hampered by how delicate and wriggly his burdens were).

The third time he was 'killed,' Ladybug was summoned from the tea party the girls had trapped her into.

"Only true love's kiss will break the spell!" insisted his first victory knight, the shy wall-flower who'd run for backup at his 'death.'

Ladybug, previously giggling at being dragged from the climbing structure into the middle of an all-out war, fell abruptly silent.

Chat felt his breath hitch.

One month ago, he would have jumped at the chance to tease, to flirt — hell, even yesterday he might've let the setup be, let Ladybug talk her way out of it - but now, so soon after that almost kiss, so soon after watching her wake, in the midst of whatever the hell their relationship was right now, the possibility that she might not talk her way out of it inexplicably terrified him.

He staggeringly raised a fist a few inches off the ground and groaned out, "Fist... bump..."

"Fist bump?" echoed Ladybug, odd note coloring her voice thick.

He made a show of cracking open an eye. "True... love's... fist bump issss... even stronger..."

His first victory knight shushed him without remorse. "You can't talk if you're dead, your majesty."

He blinked both eyes open and grinned sheepishly at his loyal servant. "Sorry, Sir Bella."

"Shh!"

He cleared his throat and shut his eyes again, trying not to grin.

Ladybug didn't say the word, but he could practically hear the affectionate 'dork' in her long-suffering (yet slightly relieved — and just what was he supposed to think about that?) sigh as she padded her way over through the grass.

There was a moment of hesitation in which he worried (hoped?) she might ignore the out and actually stoop to kiss him, but then he felt the familiar press of her knuckles against his, gentler than he was used to feeling them but unmistakable all the same. His chest caved in a confused jumble of relief and disappointment.

He covered the emotion by slowly raising his arms and sitting up zombie-style. He slowly opened his eyes and prepared his 'uuuugh... braaaaainssss...' speech, only to lock gazes with a chubby young sprout who, Chat remembered suddenly, had adamantly refused any mention of zombies. Chat switched out his speech on the fly.

"I am the Great Crusher Robot 5000," he said in his most robotic voice to a chorus of delighted squeals. "I have arisen from mere mortal flesh by the power of True Love's Fist Bump to protect the earth from the deadly Smorgs from outerspaaaaace."

And then the game was off again.

Ladybug was dragged off again by the limpet clinging to her leg and it was discovered that Chat could toss any seven year old clear into the air, and robots and 'true love' were summarily forgotten.

(The tossing was a nerve-wracking experience for heroes whose catching appendages ended in claws, but Chat was very careful and somehow it all worked out bloodlessly.)

The leader of the opposition's sudden remembrance of The Great Crusher Robot 5000's evil qualities worked out slightly less so, but scraped knees weren't something Chat had the power to prevent one-hundred percent of the time, so he let it go.

It was at about that point that he felt eyes on him, and he turned to find Ladybug watching him from atop the jungle gym, chin in palm, expression distant.

He caught her eye, and tilted his head in silent question.

She smiled, soft and wistful, and his breath caught.

"You…" She trailed off, glancing away and back, the flutter of eyelashes and clear blueblueblue eyes catching him on the upswing. "You'd make a good father."

His heart stopped.

He—

He'd misheard that, hadn't he?

Hadn't he?

(That little bit of his brain that was mostly Chat and that did not. Shut. Up. Ever. said, Great! I'm ready. Let's get started. Right now. Immediately.

The rest of him just reeled wildly for the umpteenth time today.)

She turned away, back to her tea party, still smiling that smile that left him unsteady on his feet.

The children swarmed around his legs, pressing into the backs of his knees in an attempt to bring The Great Crusher Robot 5000 down, but he could barely feel them.

"But Ladybug, Chat Noir isn't old enough to be a daddy. He's a boy," protested the little girl who'd been hanging onto her, in the well-informed tone of a child who had heard that exact phrase many, many times before.

Her sibling must have been a fan, or something, Chat thought distantly.

(—chips of ice, blue like antifreeze—

The corners of his heart whispered was it even possible for him to be a good father?)

"Boys grow up, you know," she said, meltingly soft in a way that kick-started his heart back into gear and straight into overdrive. "He won't be too young to be a daddy forever."

Chat Noir, protector of Paris against the forces of superpowered evil for three years running, fell in battle to a pile of seven year olds very quickly after that.

A few weeks later, Chat wondered, not for the first time, why on earth the Protectors of Paris Ball was held outdoors.

It was held in late fall every year. Surely someone, someone would have though to move the party indoors out of the freezing cold.

It was a bit strange that Chat seemed to be the only one who noticed this, being that he was the only one here wearing a cold-resistant suit, but notice he did, if only by the goosebumps on his lady's arms.

He blamed (thanked) the cold for the way she leaned into him, sweet-smelling and looking like... like that.

Like heaven and hell in high heels, except that she wore flats, not heels. Mobility was a higher priority than glamour, she'd told him multiple times over the years, even when surrounded by the rich and famous.

Like a princess, like a queen, like something ethereal alighted on the surface of his world, as present and enticing and real as she was untouchably out of his league.

And the more she tipped that affectionate little smile up at him, the harder it was to keep his hands off.

She made it a lot harder by choosing that moment to break through his revere, stepping dangerously close.

"Hey," she murmured.

Chat's hand came to rest on the small of her back before he could think about it.

He shot a small glare at the offending appendage. Just where did it get off trying to bring her even closer?

Before he could remove the hand, Ladybug slipped her palm up to rest on his hip, burning warm through the suit. "Let's dance."

Chat blinked. That was odd; normally she waited until most of the guests had greeted them before trusting him with her dignity on the dance floor. He followed the line of sight she was pointedly turned away from, and understood — the young man walking their way was a rather... ardent admirer of Ladybug's. One who had a bit of trouble with the word 'no,' as he'd proved multiple times over the years.

Chat grit his teeth, sudden rush of ill will towards the 'gentleman' souring in his mouth, fingers twitching in his annoyance.

The last bit brought his attention to the exact placement of his fingers — tangled with the laces at the bottom of Ladybug's bodice.

Oh.

The darker voices in his head happily pointed out how easy it would be to sharped his claws and slice through those bindings. He didn't get farther than imagining the dress sliding down her shoulders before he forcibly defenestrated the thought and guiltily untangled his fingers. He slid his hand over to a much more appropriately platonic space high on her hip, incidentally drawing her that much closer.

Oops.

Ladybug didn't help him keep his distance at all, instead tucking the long, hot line of her body into his, close enough that her rosy cheek brushed his suit, close enough to rest her chin against his shoulder and grin winsomely.

Chat's heart was trying to punch a hole in his ribcage even before she opened her mouth.

"Isn't that what dates do at dances? Dance?"

Dates.

Was this a date?

They arrived together — they always did. It had never been a date before, but things had changed between them, leaving Chat thoroughly lost on what they were now.

But here they were, together, and she called them dates.

"I... wasn't aware we were dates."

"Ah, sorry," she said, pulling back while still smiling. "I forgot that I sent that memo by snail-mail."

She stepped even closer, breath ghosting against the space below his ear and sending a hot shudder down his spine, pooling, quivering in his belly. "Consider this your update?"

"Considerate it considered," he whispered back, wondering if she could feel his palm shaking, wondering if she could feel his heart shaking from this close.

She poked his side, grinning bright and impudent and oh so warm. "Then consider you and me dancing. Sometime in the next week would be nice."

"I'll pencil you in for next Saturday," he promised, brushing his nose against hers and feeling it in the hairs on the back of his neck, in his ribcage.

She was beautiful and dangerous and Ladybug and Marinette and she was his date.

This might well be the best night of his life.

Electric eyes and a childish (adorable) pout at the ready, she twisted away and said, "Well, I guess I'll just go and take my empty dance card over..."

"Oh, would you look at that," said Chat over her smug grin, reeling her back in. "My schedule has miraculously cleared. Free evenings as far as the eye can see."

"You dork."

The reproof was lost in the joy of the endearment, and he was laughing in spite of himself as he lead her out onto the floor.

She chased him, fingers tangled with his, lilting giggles cascading around his ears from distracting, cherry-red lips, and he didn't even try to tell himself he hasn't been dreaming of this for weeks.

He whirled around as soon as his foot hit the designated dancing square, lightly populated with polite, social dancers, and grinned at his date.

His date.

He could walk on air right now.

Ladybug shot him a look, one that was probably meant to be condemning or quelling or something, but she was flushed and smiling and sweet and so gorgeous he was absolutely sure he was about to make an utter fool of himself on the dancefloor, and the effect was lost on him.

His date.

"I still can't dance," Ladybug admitted on a sigh, apparently having accepted his smug good cheer as something she couldn't change.

"You really do need to learn how one of these days," he reminded her wryly as she stepped into his arms, so close she could probably hear his heart pounding. "What will Paris think if they find out their darling Lady Luck doesn't know so much as a waltz?"

She poked his chest. "C'mon kitty, why would I need to learn when I have you?"

"My lady, one would almost think you enjoy needing to rely on me and my sweet dance moves at these events," he teased, breathless.

He knew that wasn't the reason she never got dance lessons — their lives were both busy enough between their civilian responsibilities and vigilante activities — but the night was intoxicating (she was intoxicating) and a boy could dream, couldn't he?

She didn't deny it.

Ladybug bit her scarlet lip and flashed him a coy, guilty little smile, and Chat tripped over his own two feet.

Oh god, she didn't deny it.

She did, however, stumble into him, nose nudging into the crook of his neck and light perfume hitting him like a pillow to the face.

"Sorry," he croaked out of a very dry mouth, steadying her automatically.

She didn't take her face out of his neck, and when she did, it was with a flush a few shades darker than her previous and a case of shyly fluttering eyelashes.

She ran a gloved fingernail over the groove where his shoulder-pad attached to the rest of his suit, sliding over the stud at the point, studying it as though it was the most fascinating thing in the room.

"Is that really so surprising?" she mumbled quietly, as though she wasn't sure whether she wanted to be heard or not.

She was trying to kill him.

"I-I mean, you are my partner." she tacked on slightly louder, hurried and defensive. "It's not weird to ask you to help me with this... is it?"

She ended on a much weaker note than she started, giving him an insecure little glance that faltered away as soon as he met it, cheeks tinting even darker.

She was trying to kill him, and she was succeeding.

"I-I can take lessons!" she babbled on, taking his silence as an affirmative, rather than a sign of his impending death. "If you mind! I mean, I thought you didn't mind, but if you do I really don't—"

"I don't mind," Chat finally managed to get out, rediscovering the air he'd left behind in his lungs when she gave him that little glance.

She gnawed her lip, disturbing the cosmetics. "You sure?"

"Really sure," he said, possibly a bit too fervently. He was really very, very sure. "You can ask me for anything."

The smile he got for that made his ears burn.

"Then can I ask you for this dance?" she said, soft and low and really very close to his heated ear and...

Oh.

They were half-way into the song already.

Blushing out of embarrassment this time, he tugged her into the steps, counting the rhythms in his head.

But hearing her ask if she could rely on him and actually having her rely on him were two very different beasts indeed.

She followed him as easily, as smoothly as he followed her in battle. They were normally in-sync to an insane degree, honed by years of saving each other's lives, by years of teamwork and implicit, absolute trust, by years of a life where non-verbal communication and attention to minuscule cues and shared glances were the keys to survival and victory both, but this...

This was something else entirely.

They weren't fighting for their lives.

They were dancing.

They were moving together in an activity that existed purely for recreation, for pleasure and exercise, twisting together in low light, in fairy lights, physically intimate in full view of all of Paris.

She was trusting him to keep her from screwing up in front of all of Paris, and she was trusting him to do that with her eyes closed. Literally.

He swallowed hard and carefully twirled her into a spin, watching her as her skirts swirled around her thighs, the graceful follow-through of her off-hand, the peaceful smile that never left her face.

Her eyes didn't open once.

He took a deep, steadying breath and pulled her back against him, hand holding one wrist aloft as the other spread over her stomach almost of its own accord.

She leaned back and arched into him, letting his clawed fingers slide up the bodice of her dress until they rested just under the butterfly of her ribs, and turned her face into him, eyelashes fluttering against the corner of his jaw.

"Doing okay?" he checked. His voice came out rougher than he expected, but just about as affected as he thought it might.

"Mmmn," she hummed, seemingly only half awake.

Chat's mind took that noise and ran headlong into the gutter with it.

She leaned into him even further, so close her could feel her lips curl against his skin.

"I'm good," she whispered, throaty and relaxed and mind-liquifying. "You, kitty?"

Well, his knees were a lot weaker than they had been five seconds ago, but he was good.

He wouldn't make it through this dance if she kept that up.

Impulsively, he pinched her side, and with his most annoying smirk, he said, "Claw-some, my lady."

If they'd been alone, she would have squawked. As it was, she made a muffled noise of outrage and yanked back a few inches to give him a look of utter betrayal.

He took those few inches of grace gratefully, and shot her a not-quite-sheepish grin as apology.

She narrowed her eyes and stepped lively, skipping out of his arms with a dangerous look in her eye.

He wondered briefly if he'd made a terrible mistake, and then she was pulling him into a twist identical to the one he'd just pulled her through, except instead of ending with him in her arms, she dipped him low, sly smirk on her face and nose mere centimeters from his own.

"Getting frisky there, eh, kitty?" she purred, cerulean eyes gone velveteen-dark and ocean-bottomless.

Oh fuck.

He strangled himself on a yip, a noise that might have been an agreement or could have just been a squeak, forced out through the static silence in his head, and she let him up.

Ladybug took the lead this time, although less in a dancing capacity and more in a safeguard capacity, making sure they didn't run into anyone while Chat recovered his bearings.

She was trying to kill him, but at least she was being polite about it.

He trembled his way through a turn or three, moving more off sheer muscle memory than any sort of design, mind tumbling over the exact cadences, the dimensions of that tiny little crack in her voice, the wavelength of that purr, and Ladybug guided him through it, keeping him safe while he recovered from her.

"That was unfair," he hissed at her under his breath as she pulled him close in a move that would have his late instructor rolling in his grave.

"That was revenge," she hissed back at him, flashing white teeth against red lips in a little smirk that set him back several steps on the road to recovery.

He huffed at her, trying to hold on to his annoyance in the face of that look.

He failed. His blood had scorched his veins at the very sight of it.

They fell back into the rhythm of the dance, staying on for the next set and the one after that and the one after that, slipping into improv when the dances he'd been taught just wouldn't cut it (or just weren't enjoyable enough — he'd been taught nearly every formal dance in the book, but Chat was not a rule-follower, or a square). Ladybug followed him through them all, not distinguishing between the well-known, the lesser-known, and the entirely made-up, warm and soft and solid and in his orbit.

It wasn't until the band announced they were packing up that he realized they had honest-to-god danced the night away.

The crowd had thinned greatly, the hosts showing people out in droves, only the most tenacious of the journalists left to document the going ons, Alya among them. Chat was pretty sure she'd stick around until she was kicked out.

"Looks like the party's over," Ladybug noted, surprised enough that he suspected he'd lost track of time as badly as he had.

She stroked his bicep quietly, and he took it as a signal to let her go. He hesitated, holding on for as long as he felt he could get away with, before reluctantly convincing his fingers, his hands, his arms to release her.

The late-night air hit him hard through his suit, swirling in the spaces she left behind when she stepped back. She flashed him a little smile as she moved, and he returned it, pretending his body wasn't aching in protest of letting her go.

He watched her survey the party, looking for the host so they could say their goodbyes, admired the slope of her nape and the stray locks that had escaped her elaborate up-do as she chased the man down and made their excuses.

This dance had shown him something he hadn't fully grasped before.

Ladybug trusted him.

Finishing up, she tittered politely at something the host had said and walking backwards towards Chat. She waved one final time at the host and turned on her heel. By the time she faced Chat, the forced smile had melted into a look of exasperated exhaustion, shoulders slumped and skin right around her eyes.

"Done?" she asked, all too obviously ready to leave.

She trusted him.

"Yeah," he said. "Just a second."

She tilted her head curiously.

He took her hand and carefully slipped off the glove, catching the tips and sliding the material away, and then he met her eye and held it.

Slowly, he raised her bare hand to his lips, heart thumping erratically in his throat as her eyes went wide.

She trusted him.

He kissed the tips of her fingers, smiling at her without really meaning to, ignoring the storm of gaps and suddenly flickering camera flashes from the remaining media people.

She let him.

She trusted him.

"Ch-Chat- what?" Her voice fluttered, exertion-flushed cheeks flushing even darker.

"Thank you," he said, a note of something in his voice he didn't want to name, something that gave those two words far too many meanings. He hurriedly tacked on, "—for the lovely evening, my lady. It was an honor to escort you."

Her shock-slack red lips twitched up into a wobbly smile, an odd look in her eye as her trembling fingers curled into his.

She trusted him.

She really, really trusted him. She trusted him to catch her, she trusted him with her back, she trusted him with their friendship, with her laughter and her joy and her dreams.

She trusted him with her dignity. With her insecurities.

She'd always trusted him with her life. Now, she trusted him with her identity, too.

They were getting closer all the time, and it had a way of making him hope. A way of making him wonder.

A way of making him think maybe, maybe, maybe one day...

Maybe one day, she'd trust him with her heart too.

Adrien pushed open the gate of the cat shelter, leading Marinette in behind him.

He hadn't had to beg for this, surprisingly. The lion's share of her work for the fashion show was over and done with, and when he'd suggested that she join him on one of his volunteer visits, she'd agreed almost immediately.

The look on her face when he introduced her to one of the older litters was well worth the entirely too knowing grin Sonia, the head volunteer, had given him when he'd walked in shoulder-to-shoulder with the girl he'd been talking about for weeks. Like she knew exactly how big it was to bring Marinette here, to a place this important to him.

(Like she knew he was practically under a compulsion, slowly introducing Marinette to every little nook and cranny of his life and praying to God she liked what she saw while wondering just what the hell he was doing.)

Marinette, for her part, seemed to be experiencing revelation.

Adrien had introduced her to The Hoard.

(Or so the batch of older, weaned kittens were affectionately termed by their caretakers.)

"Why hello," she cooed at the gaggle of kittens, hands clasped on her knees as she stooped close to them. She followed it up with a delighted squeak as one of the kittens batted her necklace.

Nursing the infant kittens was a time-consuming job, but it was methodical: suckle and toilet them, stroke as necessary. It was one of Adrien's favorite jobs.

It was also somewhat mindless, and left him with enough attention to watch Marinette out of the corner of his eye.

She took to the kittens almost immediately, which was completely unsurprising — the only person Adrien had met who didn't like kittens was Chloe — but somewhat more surprising was how quickly the kittens took to Marinette.

Forget eating out of her palms — all she had to do was hold her hands out and she had them attempting to climb into them, the more adventurous clawing their way up her chest in their quest for more pets.

He muffled a laugh in his shoulder when a little black tom made it high enough to sniff her chin, the infant on his knee complaining softly at the jostling. Petting its tiny head with a whispered apology, Adrien turned away to focus more fully on his task.

His focus lasted all of ten seconds before his mind started to wander.

He watched Marinette play with the kittens out of the corner of his eye, watched her nearly leap out of her apron (now wasn't that a thought) at a kitten's surprise attack from behind, and found himself snickering all over again.

"Careful," he couldn't help but call over. "Don't you know that seven out of ten attacks are from the rear?"

"I'll attack you from behind," she sniped back without heat, distracted almost immediately by her charges of the afternoon.

"Please do," he quipped, returning his eyes to the fed kitten, putting away the bottle and picking up the paper towel.

Marinette whipped around to stare at him, and, belatedly, he realized what he'd just said.

Shit.

"Please forget I said that," he begged, flushing and paling at once.

"...I think that might be worse than the time you said, 'or what, you'll spank me?'"

"You started it," he grumbled, ears and neck heating up. Oh god why.

Marinette scooted up to him sideways, leaning into his space with a shit-eating grin, kitten in her lap and elbow on his shoulder. "So..."

"Don't start."

"What kind of 'attacking' were you thinking about, kitty?"

"Stop."

"Because it looked to me like—..."

"I will pay you to stop."

"Thinking such things in front of the children." She tsk_ed, slowly shaking her head, still grinning. "For _shame."

"Do you want your money in fabric, cash, or cheese?"

"Video game time." She spread the fingers of the hand attached to the elbow that rested on his shoulder, grin going downright sleazy. "For five rounds of Ultimate Mecha Strike 2, I will stop."

"That game ruined the series," Adrien groused, almost en route at this point.

Marinette made a disparaging noise in the back of her throat and pushed off of him to cradle the kitten to her chest.

"Don't listen to your father," she cooed to the little black tom, effectively stopping the heart of the other 'black tom' in the room. "He speaks lies."

He took a second to catch his breath again before shooting back, "I speak only the truth. UMS2 is an abomination. Your mother is consorting with—"

Oh hell did he just call Marinette his wife?

His 'wife' stared at him with big, shocked blue eyes, going pinker and pinker as the words sunk in, then coughed and looked away.

Adrien returned to the kitten in his lap, holding the paper towel in one numb hand and wondering what it was for, drowning in embarrassment and trying not to think too hard about just how it felt to say those words.

(It felt like belonging.)

"So," said Sonia, looking in on them with a leer. "When's the wedding?"

Marinette screamed, launching both herself and the kitten up and backwards, flailing limbs narrowly missing the horde at her feet.

Sonia burst out laughing.

"Sorry, sorry," she gasped, catching a tear at the corner of her eye with a gloveless finger. "You two are just too cute, y'know?"

"No," Marinette grumbled, pink and baleful and plucking furry denizens off of her apron, making sure they were unhurt as she did so. "I really don't."

Adrien expelled a relieved breath.

She was okay.

"Mhmm..." Sonia hummed, setting her chin on the heel of her palm with a grin that was equal parts smug, knowing, and amused. "Well—" and here she straightened back up, "—try to finish up in the next fifteen minutes or so, okay? We have a schedule to keep."

Adrien and Marinette nodded obediently in sync, and Marinette picked herself up, careful of the kittens.

"Oh," Sonia added as she left. "Not that I wouldn't understand, but please try to keep the hanky-panky to the minimum. Think of the children!"

Marinette spluttered, and Adrien spluttered with her, despite knowing Sonia full well and knowing he should have expected that parting remark.

"'Hanky-panky,'" Marinette muttered, echoing his thoughts rather succinctly, though with considerably more aspiration, picking up the black tom again and brushing his fur with her fingertips. She softened immediately.

Adrien could only describe what happened next as a revelation.

She tipped back, nose-to-nose with the tiny black kitten in her palms, giddy, giggly grin on her mouth, eyes scrunched at the corners with her joy, the stress of her week fading, slipping of her shoulders in the face of that young whiskery critter.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, a different kind of affection softening her countenance, and stuck her tongue out. Jealous, kitty?

The smile was nothing he hadn't seen a hundred, a thousand times before, warm and happy and trusting and teasing and here with him, present and solid and real, but that was what did it. It was no big thing - a little thing, a minuscule thing, really - but that was what made it click.

Oh, he thought.

It's you.