The sound of wet shoes hitting pavement was starting to grate on his nerves. It didn't help that the cold night wind was making him feel like a wet popsicle and his soaked through hoodie was doing little to guard against the bitter cold.

His shoes were starting to remind him of a lava lamp. With every step he took, he could feel the water seep up from the soles and squish in between his toes. The feeling was completely unpleasant and not at all how he envisioned ending the night.

Adrien walked through the double doors to the hotel with ease, thankful that his luck had held out for once and they had remained unlocked throughout the night. He dragged his feet through the pristine lobby, leaving a trail of wet footprints in his wake, and up the stairs towards his shared room.

He quietly opened the door and peeked inside. The lights were still on, the TV still playing the character select music for Mario Kart 8, and it seemed as though a good number of his classmates had been playing until they literally passed out.

Alix and Kim were sitting on the floor at the end of the bed, controllers long forgotten in their hands. His head had lolled back onto the mattress, legs out straight in front of him and hands holding the controller loosely in his lap. Alix lay next to him on her side, her head nestled on his upper thigh and her knees brought up to her chest. Her controller was still grasped tightly in one hand while the other rested beside her face.

As Adrien made his way further into the room, he noticed even his own bed had occupants. Max was laid out across the foot of the bed, his hands clasped together over his chest, making him resemble a vampire sleeping in his coffin. Ivan had sprawled out up by the pillows, one under his head while the other was in a death grip in his arms, held closely to his chest. It was an interesting site to see, overall.

'Well, guess I'm bunking with Nino tonight', Adrien thought as he reached for his bag under the bed, carefully throwing the strap over his shoulder and making a beeline for the bathroom.

Once the door was closed and locked behind him, he turned the lights on, the hum of the halogen bulb overhead singing to life and lighting up the room with a harsh and unforgiving light. Adrien caught himself glancing at the mirror from sheer force of habit. His reflection was a mess. His hair was still wet and stuck to his head in places, his face still blotchy from the cold air, and his clothes a disaster.

He placed his bag on the counter and began peeling his clothes off, forgoing unzipping the sweatshirt for just pulling it, along with this undershirt, directly over his head. He let them both fall into the tub with a wet thud. The action had disrupted his hair so that a few fresh trickles of water began to run down his bare back.

Grabbing for a towel, he quickly moved to dry his neck and hair, rubbing the soft dry fabric roughly against his head. He closed his eyes and loved the feel of the somewhat massaging action. When he opened his eyes again, his own disheveled image stared back at him, looking fresh from a shower despite the two large discolorations he was sporting on the side of his nape.

Adrien stared at the marks with wide green eyes, leaning closer to get a better look. The mark he had gained yesterday was now darkening to a deep burgundy ringed with lighter tones of reds and pinks, causing it to stand out against his slightly tanned skin. It was more on his shoulder then his neck, and easily covered by his shirt. Yet as he studied the bruise, he could not help but compare it to the new one he sported much higher up.

The new hickey was smaller, but already rivaling the first for color. It was just as dark, yet more concentrated, roughly the size of his thumbprint and positioned just slightly askew from his pulse. He tilted his head slightly to the side to see how sore his new branding would be when stretched, and sure enough a dull throb erupted from the movement. Adrien hissed at the pain before letting his head return to its original position.

'Smaller does not mean less sore. Got it.'

"Nice new 'bug bite' you got there."

Adrien jumped at the voice that echoed in the otherwise silent room, his eyes flying down to his bag to see two gleaming green cat eyes peering up at him from a small opening created by the zipper. Plagg had obviously grown tired of waiting for his charge to open the bag and had taken the liberty of doing so himself. The quantic god zipped out and into the air with a twirl now that he'd had his fun spying.

The cat kwami's cheshire grin was large and ever present as he landed on the towel still resting atop Adrien's head. He gave a quick chuckle as he made eye contact through the mirror, his impossibly wide grin widening even more.

"Have fun tonight, hmm? Out with your girlfriend again?" Plagg teased, his tail swishing back and forth, it's tip peeking out from behind Adrien's head every time the cat god flicked it.

"She's not my girlfriend," Adrien protested, feeling his face heat up at the thought. "And keep your voice down, everyone's asleep."

The kwami gave an absent look to the bathroom door like it was barely worth his time before scoffing dramatically, his tails twitching growing in ferocity.

"Like I care! You didn't have to listen to them yell and scream all night over some stupid video game," Plagg groaned, his eyes staying on the door only for a moment more before turning his attention back to his charge's reflection. The devilish grin quickly returned to his little black-furred face. "So why are you wet? Need to take a cold swim after being out with your not-girlfriend all night?"

Adrien felt his face heat up considerably as he let the implications sink in. Sure, getting dunked in the icy cold marine water had definitely extinguished his earlier fire from the evening, but it had not been exactly welcome. Or planned.

With a sigh to clear his head, he swiftly reached his hands up to the towel and rubbed his hair, dislodging the kwami into the air with a grunt of disapproval. He dried his hair as best he could, not daring to turn on the blow dryer at this hour, and continued to change for the night.

He had spent longer than he felt comfortable admitting when he picked out each outfit he had packed for the trip. His pajamas were no exception. Originally, he had thought to bring the limited edition Ladybug Logo t-shirt that he had ordered online, the black shirt being made from a soft stretch cotton that was thin yet warm, but he had thought against it last minute for fear of what his friends might think of his weird obsession.

However, there was no way he could pass up the soft and fuzzy matching pants, red with their black spots. The spots were not accurately placed, but he couldn't blame the manufacturer for this slip in detail. Not everyone got to study Ladybug as closely as he did.

After slipping off his soaked pants and boxers, he pulled on a dry pair and his Ladybug patterned pants, feeling his muscles relax at the familiar feel against his legs. He grabbed a basic black t-shirt and pulled that over his head, the towel falling to the floor to join the rest of his wet clothes.

He breezed through his nightly routine, skipping the step he would usually take to remove his makeup from the day and jumped straight from brushing his teeth to combing through his hair. Pulling a larger ziplock bag out of his duffel, he quickly bagged up his wet clothes and shoved them into the bottom of his bag. He hoped they would dry by time he got home so he would not have to explain why he had gone swimming with his clothes on.

With a quick signal to Plagg, the little kwami slipped in between the open zipper and snuggled comfortably into a second sweatshirt Adrien had packed. He took one last sidewards glance at his reflection, his blond hair astray and his cheeks and nose still flushed. With a final sigh, he turned off the light and opened the door

No one had moved in the time it took him to change, his friends still sleeping away unknowingly as he went around to turn things off. Once the TV was powered down, the sudden silence was almost deafening. Kim's subtle snoring at the end of Nino's bed easily overpowered the sound of the others' breathing.

Adrien took a seat on the side of Nino's mattress closest to his own, slipping his duffle bag underneath the bed before slipping underneath the covers and turning off the last remaining light in the room. Now submerged in darkness, Adrien stared at the ceiling and let his thoughts ghost over the actions of the trip.

Meeting Ladybug, kissing her, being kissed back, the beach, the lifeguard post, the yacht. It was a lot to take in, and the more he tried to focus on the details, the more he felt sleep pull him under.

"Goodnight, Plagg," Adrien yawned as he rolled onto his side, bringing the blankets up over his shoulders.

"Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs—oops, too late," Plagg teased, his cat-like laughter slipping up from the open bag.

"Plagg!" Adrien groaned, lifting himself up and reaching down to silence the little god.

"Sorry, forgot you were into that sort of thi—"

Adrien quickly shut the zipper, silencing the kwami for good before sighing heavily and falling back against the pillow. Before he could let his friend's words affect him, he gave up the fight with his eyelids and fell into sleep's sweet embrace.

—

The morning sun peeked through a small opening in the curtains, its warm light hitting Adrien right across the eyes. It woke him from a deep sleep, his dream being washed away as he felt his body begin preparations to get up.

He tested his muscles, feeling the soreness in his arms and back like he had been sleeping on a bed of needles instead of a soft mattress all night. His throat was incredibly dry and his lips felt like they might crack if moved them.

Carefully, he peeled open one eye, waiting as his surroundings came into focus and listening as the stirrings of the room's occupants started to drift through the air. He could hear Nino behind him groan loudly as the boy sat up and stretched, the bed creaking with the movement. Adrien rolled onto his back, his stomach aching with the action as he pushed the blanket off his shoulders and down to rest around his waist.

The room was sweltering now that the sun was up and no one had thought to turn on the air conditioning last night. Another groan from the bed opposite the boys let him know they weren't the only ones awake.

"Morning, Nino," Adrien said, his voice deep from sleep and his throat squeezing around every word, aching for water.

"Ugghh…" The dark-skinned boy resounded, rubbing his eyes before stretching again. He lifted his arms above his head and sighed as a satisfying pop echoed from his back. "What time is it?"

Adrien struggled to open an eye and glanced at the alarm clock on the small table between the beds. The red numbers showed that it was barely past eight in the morning, meaning they had about twenty minutes until the front desk would call all the students' rooms for their wake up call so as to signal the start of their day.

"Late," he answered with a sigh of his own. He wanted nothing more than to turn the AC on and curl back up into bed, but today was the final day of their trip. Traveling day. Meaning everyone had to pack up and be ready to go right after breakfast, but he wanted a shower before all of that could happen.

Correction. He needed a shower.

Adrien turned his head back towards his friend, both eyes now open to see if the laziness was mutual. Instead, he found Nino staring at him with wide, unobstructed eyes. Normally, his best friend needed his glasses to see two feet in front of his face, but Adrien had to have been within that short range of distance, and whatever his DJing friend had seen caught his undivided attention.

The blond boy knew he must have been a sight. He had barely dried his hair before going to bed and knew even without reaching up to feel it that it must have been a rat's nest from sleep. His face was most likely still blotchy and red and without the makeup he normally wore to cover his imperfections, this was probably the first time he was really being seen by anyone outside his father and co-workers in the modeling industry.

He felt a nervous giggle begin to bubble up from his throat. The unwavering stare was starting to worry him. Was he really that bad looking right now? Was there something on his face?

"Uh, Nino?" Adrien asked, a small, nervous chuckle slipping up at the end.

"Is that a hickey?!" Nino yelped loudly, his eyes immediately squinting as he leaned closer for a better look.

Adrien's hand shot up to his neck, clasping his palm over the abrasions he knew were there, but the deed was done. His friend had seen the truth. And brought it to the attention of everyone else in the room. Very loudly.

"Wha…?" Max groaned as he lifted his head. His bedmate, Ivan, sat up slowly and echoed a similar moan of confusion at the noise.

But Adrien's attention was now solely zoned in on Nino, and Nino's on him.

"Where'd you get a hickey?! When did you get it? Is it from someone in town? Is it from someone in CLASS?!" Nino was practically bouncing in place on the bed between each word, his face lit up like Alya's whenever she sniffed a scoop. The duo truly were two peas in a pod, that was for sure.

"Adrien's got a hickey?" Ivan asked, now fully awake and sitting upright at the head of the opposite bed, pillow still clutched in his large arms.

"Wow, nice, dude! Lemme' see!" Kim's excited voice was still slurred from sleep as he peered over the edge of the foot of the bed, a loud thump resounding as he moved to get a better angle. Alix's voice bellowed from the floor, her head hitting the ground with a lot of force after slipping off of the pillow she had been making of Kim's leg.

"What the hell?" she asked, sitting up and rubbing her head, her hat falling off in the process as she mussed her hair more.

"Adrien has a hickey!" Nino's bouncing had escalated until he was shaking the whole bed, the mattress creaking in protest.

"You know, hickeys can actually cause a blood clot in the blood vessels of the neck that could lead to paralysis, or in some rare cases, a stroke," Max said as he adjusted his glasses on his face, moving to brush his hands down his shirt to smooth out any wrinkles that may have happened during the night.

"Who cares?! They're hot!" Alix cried out, practically jumping onto the bed and pushing Kim out of the way for a better look. A piece of retribution for the disruption of her sleep, no doubt.

Adrien had kept his hand dutifully clamped over his neck, effectively hiding the marks from sight, but incapable of hiding the hot red color bursting across his cheeks. With his free hand, he reached for the blankets that had pooled around his waist and yanked them high over his head, hiding beneath them like a child hiding from the boogey man under the bed.

"Come on, guys, this is a sensitive subject. Best friends first!" Nino reached under the blanket and grabbed his friend's upper arm, effectively pulling him out from under the covers. With another bounce, Nino was off the bed and dragging Adrien towards the bathroom in one motion, slamming the door shut behind them before forcing the lock to click into place.

The bathroom light hummed to life and flooded the room with a blinding white light. Adrien caught himself looking to the mirror again on instinct, just as he had the night before.

As he had expected, he was a wreck. His hair was sticking out in every direction, some of it straight off his head like it was held in place by gel. His face was a mess and the blood which currently flushed into his cheeks and across his nose was exceptionally noticeable. The hand he was still holding tightly to his neck was, thankfully, covering both of the kiss marks completely.

Hurray for small miracles.

"Alright, dude, spill," Nino said, releasing his grip on Adrien's upper arm as he squinted at the boy from across the tiled floor. In his haste to get his best friend to a more private area, he had forgotten to grab his much-needed glasses. As it was, he was stuck with seeing the world through a foggy haze of blurred edges and missed details.

"There's really nothing to say…?" Adrien tried for innocence, turning his focus away from his own disheveled reflection and looking at his friend's squinting face.

Nino's hair was fluffier than normal. The strands in the front were sticking up in a rebellious fashion, not having been flattened to his head from wearing his hat all day. It made him look younger.

"Nothing to say?!" Nino's voice echoed off the tiles as he yelled, his face scrunching up as he spoke. "Come ON, man! I'm your best bud! You can't hold out on me like this. You don't go and mack on someone and not tell your best friend."

"Nino, I'm not—" Yet Adrien's words fell dead on his lips. He knew he could not lie, especially to Nino, his first real friend. He could not do that to him, but there was no way he could tell him the truth either. Besides, who would believe him if he said that he had been making out with the Ladybug all weekend.

Sighing loudly, Nino put a hand on Adrien's shoulder as he shook his head, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips.

"Listen, I won't ask if you don't want me to, but you're my best friend, Adrien. If you can't trust me, who can you trust, am I right?" Nino slid his arm to drape around the blonde boy's shoulders loosely, his forearm bumping into the hand still clasped protectively over the marks on the model's neck.

Adrien glanced at Nino's face out of the corner of his eye. He saw the easy-going, relaxed expression he knew his friend wore when he was trying to make Adrien feel comfortable. It was not often that he saw it, but it was an expression he knew.

And it always worked.

Adrien sighed, feeling his shoulders relax visibly as he lowered his hand, the cool air of the room hitting the warmed area like a bite.

"Wow! Holy— it's huge!" Nino quickly leaned in closer for a better look, squinting harder as he tried to force his eyes into focus. "Is that…are there two?!"

Adrien felt the blush deepen on his face and neck. It was like he had grown a third arm or a second head by the way his friend was examining it. Suddenly, a sharp spike of pain erupted from his neck, causing him to jump back and out from under Nino's arm.

"Ow!" he yelped as his hand flew up to hide the marks on his neck once more.

"Heh, damn, she got you good, huh?" Nino's hand was still up in the air by his face, his index finger still pointing where Adrien's neck had been when he had poked it.

"Don't—Don't touch it!" Adrien protested, lowering his hand slowly from his neck as he looked Nino accusingly. "It's still sore..."

"Dude! I can't believe you'd make-out with somebody and not tell me! That's so sick!" With a flourish of his arms in the air, Nino held out a closed first towards Adrien, waiting patiently for his fist bump to be returned. Adrien felt a smile pull at the corners of his lips, his earlier embarrassment and nervousness slowly easing away.

Adrien raised his hand and returned the bro handshake to his friend, watching as the normally bespectacled boy smiled widely at the gesture. His friend immediately flew into a series of questions; what was she like, where did we meet, did he know her, what line did he use that got her to do that.

His mind began to wander, replaying the scenes in his head as he answered each of Nino's questions with a memory. The first time he saw Ladybug swing down from a roof and land with the softest of sounds on the pavement. The way her eyes lit up when she smiled. How her suit felt against his palms, the texture of it, the feel of muscle underneath. Especially how her thighs would tense when he would drag his hands up—

Adrien quickly coughed to clear his head, nearly choking on his own tongue. Nino quickly asked if he was alright before sliding right back into his barrage for information. The questions had started to drift at random, ranging from the birds and the bees to effective methods of hiding the evidence.

One would think Nino was interrogating him for future reference.

That was when suddenly it dawned on him. He was going to need to hide the markings more effectively until they wore off. And judging from what Nino had just rambled on about, simple cover up was not going to cut it.

"Wait, hold on. What did you just say about cover up?" Adrien asked, interrupting Nino mid-question about appropriate times for sexting.

"Did you even get her number?" Nino asked undeterred.

"Uh, she's not really the type of girl to text—" Adrien answered, almost automatically allowing his train of thought to lean back towards Ladybug with a sigh. With another quick shake of his head, he tried to keep his eyes on the prize. "—but back to my question. Cover up?"

"Oh, for the hickeys?" Nino's face fell slightly as his marathon of probing questions was over, but with a shrug, he thought back to his earlier remark. "Yeah, you can't use like normal foundation. That shit won't hide anything. You have to, like, mask the color with another color, then cover that with foundation, then powder."

Nino stacked his hands one on top of the other, trying to show the process of layering the makeup. With a shrug, he put his hands on his hips and threw a knowing smirk towards his friend.

"I always looked at it like I was building a house. You gotta lay the base before you start building the roof, ya know?" Nino said with a laugh.

Adrien nodded absentmindedly, mentally jotting down notes to stow away for future reference, when suddenly a question began nagging at the back of his mind.

"Wait, Nino, have you had a hickey before?" Adrien asked, watching as his friend's confident and playful face fell to a look of shock and horror.

"W-What?! I—uh, I—n-no!" Nino stuttered, his calm demeanor from earlier gone as he shook in his place.

"You have! Nino! Who was it? When?" Adrien was shocked he had guessed right. He wasn't blind, but he also wasn't the quickest person when it came to social cues, he knew that.

"It wasn't— I mean, it's not like it was often—I don't think she'd like it if I talked abou—"

"If you can't trust your best friend, who can you trust?" Adrien repeated Nino's earlier words back at him, now donned with his own smug expression. He, for one, was pleased with himself at how the tables had turned.

Nino's eyes locked with Adrien's as the words sunk in. Before he could think of a rebuttal, a loud knock came from behind the bathroom door.

"Twenty minutes, boys. Please be packed and meet downstairs for breakfast."

It was Ms. Blanc with the morning check-in. There was muffled noise from the other room's occupants as their classmates most likely panicked in fear of having been caught breaking the rules. But just as quickly as she had come, she was gone, the sound of her knocking on the door to the room beside theirs just barely echoing through.

Nino and Adrien turned back to each other, eyes wide and shock clear on both of their faces. It was Nino that broke the silence first, a smile cracking his face and laughter bouncing off the tile walls. Adrien's chuckles followed shortly after, the two nearly in tears by time they were done. Nino wiped at his face with his hand before running it through his hair and sighing loudly.

"Alright, one problem at a time. Let's get that branding of yours taken care of before the guys knock down the door and really start demanding answers, K?" Nino asked, hands back on his hips and smile high-spirited once more.

"Sure, but I'm not letting you off the hook that easy," Adrien said with a chuckle in his voice. "After we get home, I want details, best friend."

Nino laughed at the threatening, yet playful tone his friend used to address him. He shook his head while his laughter died down, looking to Adrien and smiling wildly, bringing his fist up for another friendly bump.

"Deal."

—

The boys quickly concealed Adrien's love bites and by time they left the safety of the bathroom, their shared room was empty. The others had most likely left to pack and head downstairs.

Nino's bag had been turned upside down sometime throughout the night so that his contents were strewn across the floor by the air conditioner. Max had already unplugged the game console and controllers and taken it with him when he had left the room earlier, but left the pile of games that Nino had brought from home.

Adrien reached under the bed and carefully slid his bag out into the open, placing it on top his own bed and dragging the zipper open slowly. The moment he had gotten the zipper one inch down, a pair of glowing green eyes glared at him through the opening. It was a sight that he expected, but still sent a shiver up his spine nevertheless.

The cat god was not one to be messed with or ignored. Since his weakness against plastic ziplock bags had been discovered, Adrien knew he was walking a fine line between peaceful order and utter chaos. Before he could open the bag any further, Plagg forced a plastic covered piece of camembert through the opening, the zipper jerking open to accommodate the sizable portion loudly.

With a quick glance back towards his friend, he saw that Nino was too busy frantically digging through his own belongings to notice the odd exchange. Adrien grabbed the bagged piece of cheese and turned the ziplock around to find the opening only to choke on laughter at what he saw.

Apparently, some time in the night or early morning, Plagg had resorted to animalistic measures in his attempt to find food. The only proof the kwami had left behind in the form of small teeth marks along the entire opening of the bag and small puncture holes by the corner the cheese had snuggled against. The sight of the chewed bag would have normally sent Adrien into hysterics, but he knew he was already on thin ice with the kwami and he worried he would not be able to lie to his friend a second time that morning with a straight face.

But hey, drastic times called for drastic measures, apparently.

Adrien popped the bag open and removed the piece of cheese from its prison, bringing it close to the zipper before two small stubs-for-arms shot out and yanked the piece from his fingers, pulling the food down into the darkness of the bag. The boy chuckled softly to himself at the sight.

"You gotta be kidding me!" Nino yelled behind him.

'Shitshitshitshitshit!' Had he been caught? Adrien screamed frantically inside his head, his mind reeling as he tried to think of an explanation that would work for why he had a small impish gremlin hiding in his bag.

Slowly, he turned around to find that Nino was not even facing him. In fact, he was still hunched over his own bag with his back to him, nearly elbow deep in one of the compartments of his backpack and items thrown across the bed.

"It's gone!" Nino cried out again, ripping a sweatshirt from inside one of the compartments and throwing it onto the bed.

"What's gone?" Adrien asked, quickly opening his own bag and grabbing a fresh change of clothes while his friend was distracted. No need to chance his friend actually spotting said little gremlin.

"My copy of Borderlands 2!" Nino pushed the bag away from him in a huff before storming over to where the console had been sitting earlier, looking behind the TV and checking behind the desk it sat on.

Adrien closed his bag and removed his sleep shirt as he watched his friend frantically search for the game. Once he had switched his pants for a clean pair of jeans, he glanced at Nino to make sure the coast was clear. When he found Nino scrambling on the floor, he opened his bag, crammed his dirty clothes in, and slammed the zipper shut in record time. When his friend turned around to look exasperated at him, he was sitting on the edge of the bed with all his belongings safely tucked away and tying his shoes with an air of practiced innocence.

With a heavy sigh, Nino lugged himself over to his bag and fell onto the bed, his shoulders slumped.

"Damn it, man, I hadn't even finished re-playing it yet. I'm like halfway through the campaign!" he said as he half-heartedly began shoving his stuff back into his backpack.

"Maybe Max packed it on accident?" Adrien offered.

"Yea, maybe…" Nino did not even try to hide the dejected tone in his voice as he finished closing his bag and slipped his feet into his shoes. The boy had left the laces loose so that he did not have to unite them to remove them or tie them to get them on.

"Come on, I'm sure some breakfast will make you feel better." Adrien slung an arm over Nino's shoulders as the two stood up with their respective bags in hand. The blond gave a friendly squeeze before ushering him towards the door of their shared room.

The two walked down the stairs in relative silence. Nino's mind was most likely still on the missing game while Adrien was enjoying a rare moment of quiet. The trip had been such a whirlwind from the beginning that he was starting to understand what people meant when they said they 'needed a vacation from the vacation'.

Adrien ate his breakfast in a daze as his mind cataloged all the mind-blowing events of the trip. Not only had he been given some unexpected time off, and even his father's approval, but he had also been able to spend three days and two nights as just a normal boy. That was a dream in and of itself. No modeling, no photographers, no wardrobe changes, no interviews or paparazzi. Just hanging out with friends, playing video games and staying up late.

And Ladybug.

The chances of running into her this far out of the city was astronomical, but what was even more unbelievable was their encounters. Their dates.

Touching her, kissing her, feeling her against him. Her lips, her hands, her hips, her thighs.

The way she moaned when he rubbed a spot just right. The way she pulled when he would push. The feel of her suit texture sliding against his hands. The feel of her tongue dancing across his own.

'Maybe next time,' Ladybug's voice whispered in his mind, her parting words after their last encounter. It was not a dream, the marks on his neck were proof enough of that. But what got him even more excited than just remembering what had happened was thinking about what was to come.

By the time Adrien snapped back to reality, he was sitting on the bus as the rest of his class filed in. Nino was beside him, looking at his phone like it was the best thing on earth. Nino quickly began typing a text to someone whose name Adrien could not make out. With a heavy sigh, the dark-skinned boy locked his phone and rested his head back against the seat, his eyes closed.

After a few seconds of silence, Nino titled his head to face Adrien, peeking open an eye to look at his friend through his glasses.

"Girls, man," Nino said, sounding exasperated.

Adrien looked at his friend and saw something he had not expected to see. He saw himself. Even if the two could not share their respective 'dirty secrets' with the other, they were in the same boat. They knew each other's pain. Adrien leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes, sighing heavily as he felt his own shoulders slump to mimic Nino's.

"Yea."

The sound of the other passengers and the roar of the bus starting and pushing into gear drained away as he felt himself slip into an exhausted sleep.