From Adrien's perspective, second point of view.
I do not own Miraculous Ladybug.
The walls of your home stretch high and far, its every corner draped thick with shadows where dust is meticulously brushed clean. There is a time you can recall where every curtain had been pulled back far enough light painted each tile pallid and brilliant, what fine speckles that remained in the air swirling in a never ending dance. Now every slant of light is startling enough to blind, you have to blink the ache in your eyes away and swallow the nostalgia building tight in your throat. This is perhaps the reason why you cannot bear to stay in one place for too long, why you pace the halls restlessly and hurry through every meal you spend alone. Your bed is so hardly slept in there is no imprint of your body left behind to sink into, the smell that greets you when you come home from school unfamiliar, detectable in a way it should not be; clean linens, disinfectant, bare walls and empty promises.
You turn over in the darkness in the minutes before sleep takes you and it does not move with you, separate in a way you're told home isn't supposed to be. You once asked your friend what his home smelled like and the look you got in return reminded you to loosen your jaw, to uncurl your fingers, to relax yourself back into placidity until he could no longer see the hints of you peeking back at him.
You shut your eyes, allow the shiver of discomfort to follow the line of your spine, and pretend the blankets are arms warm enough to fall back into.
This process never shortens, never simplifies in all its intricacies but you do not fault yourself for it this time. Today, your father reached over to straighten a lock of hair back into place and for a fleeting second it felt so much like affection you had nearly drowned trying to soak all of it in before he retracted his hand and carried on to his office, from which you rarely saw him out of.
It brings the final coils of sleep about your mind, engulfs you in mock solace and muffles the ever winding of your thoughts until you cannot pick one from the other.
.x.
You meet the girl in your class before the love of your life, and a very small part of your swears if it weren't for one the other would be it.
The very thought stumbles over itself but here, the girl in your class smiles so radiantly you envy the recipient with such a passion you nearly startle yourself. She cannot look you in the eye and in this way you wonder if you are too much like your father, if authority pressed too tightly about your shoulders in ways you haven't grown into yet and if she fears you just as you do him. It catches in your throat and makes you wince, beckons a new worry you easily stretch across your back along with the others. You take to folding the difficult parts of you back into itself, to softening your presence in light of hers so that she can stretch and grow and overcome the wall you think surely must stand tall and imposing between you two.
You are not so taken with her you go out of your way to connect with her, but enough the longing for any connection at all bleeds its way into you that you find yourself helplessly grasping at straws, clinging to any shred she offers up to you with meek grimace and wide, wide eyes—they are like sips of water, coat your tongue fine and sweet.
You do not learn her name for a long time, catch it murmured warmly by her closest friend from the back of the class. It rolls about in your mouth, it fits so perfectly about her there is a moment of perfect clarity in your mind. A curious, But of course, ringing past all else and it is only when your friend nudges you that you realize you have begun to smile.
.x.
The love of your life positively oozes confidence, adorned to the nigh with such self-assuredness it is akin to standing in direct sunlight. She is such a presence you are left winded, grappling for something to fill the void when she is not there to fill it herself. Time flies by far too fast to catch and yet extends endlessly before you there is no way to fathom it all at once. You learn too much and yet not enough each and every time, filing every detail away to memory and praying they do not slip past the gaps in your fingers when she is out of sight again.
The way her eyes, boundlessly blue as the sky itself, shine when you manage to drag an incredulous chuckle from between her rosy lips and the way they crease at the edges just so. The whites of her teeth, how her voice falls around you like silver bells, and the way she lightly shoves at your shoulder when you can't reel the joke back in quick enough.
She is sharp; that is to say both dizzyingly cunning and terribly spiteful.
The first time you have the audacity to question her capabilities, to even imply her too small and too frail, she snapped at the edges, eyes burning and teeth grit, and you could not drag the air into your lungs fast enough to catch up. She whips past you, straight into the thick of danger and your chest seizes up in fear—it all happens too fast, when she is finally standing as tall as she can before you there is a blaring moment you nearly balk at the shadow she casts.
This is where you are content to remain, binding the fears welling up in your throat each time she slips too far past your fingertips and remind yourself that of the two she is the stronger, she is the braver, she is the better one and she always will be. You are not resentful that they remember her name over yours, she has more than well deserved it.
You are both brushing fourteen when you meet the first time, bristling with naivety, and some part of you knows to find comfort in this, to sink yourself into her fears and know you are not alone.
"I get scared, too," she tells you once, winding the string back in and lowering her gaze to the task at hand. "I have friends and a family. To know us is to know danger, you know. They'll never truly be safe and we have to accept that."
The image comes unbidden, but the girl in your class surfaces—her wide, wide eyes and the openness of her face; this new and inexplicable fear that she'll lose the color in her cheeks, the innocence in her gaze.
That you'll never see any of it again.
"But I have you," the love of your life shrugs, turning boundless skies on you. Taking your very breath away. "And you have me."
.x.
"Puppy love," Plagg comments, unimpressed. "I've seen it before."
You consider this, turn about the feeling you get in your chest when you lay eyes on her and the way the very ground seems to fall away from beneath your feet, and cannot stifle the scoff that bursts from your mouth. "Have you really," you say, not quite a question.
He takes very little space, but it is refreshing. The darkness of your room at night is now accompanied by another set of breaths, his tiny figure curled on the pillow beside yours. Something about him is larger than life, unsurprisingly, and there are times the air feels almost constricted, cramped in a manner of speaking. You wake in the mornings and feel the need to stretch, to take back your body's rightful span, and sigh when the tips of your fingers skim his side.
He takes so much space, but it is refreshing.
"You're growing," he tells you, standing before your mirror as you attempt to tug your shirt down over the waistband of your jeans. It once fit you perfectly. A line of skin from your belly pokes out from under when you move too quick, sends alarm down your back and draws your fingers back down to the hem once more. When you give him an accusing glare he shrugs, floating around to the other side of your head. "It was bound to happen either way, but all this extra exercise you're getting probably triggered your growth spurt sooner. You're fifteen, you're gonna shoot up either way."
You are changing in more ways than the one. There is new muscle there that had not been there before, the aches and bruises in the aftermath dulling with each night you return drenched in sweat. You find they fade faster and faster with each day, and in their place you grow stronger, the baby fat shedding just a little with each passing week. You wake, revitalized, with a new spring to your step. Everything is slower, your reflexes faster. Fencing becomes so easy, you take in every lesson like a sponge and utilize them later. The staff swings from your hands smoothly, and although Plagg assures it makes no difference either way, there is something so heartening knowing that a fraction of it comes from you and not his influence.
To know even a fragment of yourself contributes is enough.
"I've been alive a long time," he tells you, a tiny paw resting lightly on the tip of your finger. There are no new callouses coating them; the suit protects the skin underneath and you find this regrettable. "I've seen it all. Sometimes Chat Noir doesn't grow at all, sometimes he's the same size for as long as I know him. And sometimes he grows so much I can barely even keep up."
You don't point out his wording. There is going to be an end to this, and you are coming to terms with this fact. It seems and feels so far away from you don't want to linger on it.
"And I've seen him fall in love countless times," Plagg finally settles, leveling your gaze. "Sometimes with Ladybug. Sometimes not."
"Not like this," you argue, but it comes weak. There is something ageless about him, a wisdom you might not have caught before this moment, and you suddenly feel even smaller than he is.
"Need I remind you?" he asks. "Luck is not our forte."
.x.
You don't deny it, although it sinks into the pit of your stomach and weighs you down some days.
There is very little you know about her beyond the surface. You were at one time content with this. The sigh she makes after a pun, the attractive roll of her blue eyes, the way the edge of her lips pull up—it all accumulated at the end and it was enough. You wallowed in these images, happy to make do with what she allowed you until you weren't anymore. A new hunger broils within you and every day it grows more and more insatiable.
To know the face behind that mask. To be able to speak with her about her day, what you do not see and she will not let you know. To be able to ask about her family, if her parents loved her as much as you hope they do, if she had siblings at home awaiting her return. To be able to sit with her without the worry of being attacked, or of losing track of time, without fearing the inevitable end—to be able to spend an entire day in her sunlight without casting panicked glances over the shoulder or at the black spots on her pretty earrings.
To simply know her name, to have the freedom to call her by it.
It whittles down to this fact, that you want nothing more than to know her favorite color, or animal or food or anything beyond the mere scraps she allows you.
You are starving, swallow down every sliver of information she trickles toward you greedily—the hunger stretching and caving, rumbling down to the core until you are curling a fist into the fabric over your stomach, mouth wet and throat constricted and heart twisting so painfully you have to squeeze your eyes shut.
"If this is love," Plagg comments, watching you bury your face into your pillow, "I want no part of it."
And it does hurt, worse than any bruise or cut or fracture you've ever been dealt. It sinks its fangs deep into you and rips out whole chunks before you can muster the strength to protest.
"You don't know her," he reminds you, settling beside your head.
That might be the worst and best part about it. If you slip any further you fear you'll never see the light of day again.
But you don't deny it, you have placed her on a pedestal so high you have no hope of ever touching her. She is so far above you there is the barest moment you are suspended in the realization that you will never deserve her, that you will never grow closer, that she is so far beyond your reach you'd never truly had a chance in the first place.
"Oh," you groan into your pillow, unsure if you are on the verge of tears or too emptied out of feeling to even move. Something collapses within you and the air pulls in through your teeth sharply.
.x.
The first time you step foot into her house, you are bombarded with a feeling of rightness. There is the golden scent of fresh bread, an underlying perfume of some sort you cannot quite pick out. Perhaps the vase of vibrant flowers across the room, their choice of detergent, the lemon-scented wood polish, or the natural smell of a family; a loving mother, a supportive father, and a young daughter blossoming underneath their warmth. You take this in with dancing heart, stomach light and excited and curious, and you nearly fall into the kindness in her mother's eyes when she greets you at the door.
Every curtain in her home is pulled back, sunlight spilling into and coating the very ground.
You are filled to the brim with nostalgia, bursting at the very seams until you are rendered breathless, listening with only half an ear to her mother's words.
Her parents are as you would've imagined if you had taken the time to do so, and when they look at each other with such tenderness you are left wondering why you never had. Her father is large in all ways, even his personality fills the room snugly. He laughs and it bounces off the walls just as hers would, wraps around you like a comfortable embrace. They are, as a couple, a stark contrast and yet so well matched you are unsure you've ever seen a more perfect pair.
You immediately see where all her talent comes from. They both have them in spades, the care put into every crease and roll of sweet they present to you is as painstaking as every line in her sketches, every stitch and fold and increment of fabric. This is the first time you glance at her fingertips, spare a single thought to the fading pricks on her hands.
When her mother tells you that she mentions you all the time, you cannot quite comprehend the feeling it causes in your chest.
Her room is decorated in such a way you almost feel ashamed for the blandness of yours. You think if the day ever comes she sees yours, you'd surely wish it were as interesting as hers. You think perhaps you'll invest in some posters for your walls, or a framed painting just like the one she has hanging near her computer.
The hunger is familiar, there in the pit of your stomach, separate from the longing trailing after her father's offerings.
You want to know more.
Marinette, you roll about your mind, letting every syllable dance over your tongue. The way her best friend says it, exasperated and amused. The way her mother spoke it, so loving and kind. The way her father grinned about its trill, with such a fondness you nearly doubled over with envy. Marinette, the pretty girl that sits behind you in class, the pretty girl that smiles vibrant and sweet and whose cheeks paint such a pink you don't think has ever looked more fitting on another person.
You make the mistake of allowing yourself to peek out at her from behind the façade but she does not flinch, she does not recoil away from you in her surprise and distaste. Her brow furrows and her eyes soften and her voice is so gentle against your skin you struggle to make sense of yourself.
There is such a tenderness in her gaze your throat closes, your skin scatters with goosebumps, your heart comes to a stop—
You are grateful her parents choose to interrupt.
.x.
"She's a very charming girl," Plagg pipes up from the other pillow as you are waiting for sleep to come.
There is the faint memory that comes, unwelcome, as you slide underneath the covers; the weight of her body, how she molded against your side. The quiet has offered you sanctuary, but when you rest a hand over your stomach your gaze flickers to the side and finds his, glowing green and unearthly back at you. They blink knowingly and you hope he will not point out the burning in your face at being caught.
He only continues his thought, shutting his eyes so that you can no longer pick his shape from the darkness. "I'd wager there are quite a few boys in your school that are pining after her now as we speak."
Your fingers curl into you shirt, considering this.
It certainly wouldn't be a surprise. She is by no means unattractive, and whatever imperfections you have not found alone are more than made up by her personality. She is kind and friendly, and as your alter ego you have found she has more bite than you had originally given her credit for. Something about her had beckoned a smirk, your lips to the smooth skin of her knuckles, every ounce of your attention—it was difficult to even look away for a second, the thought of her in danger hanging at the back of your mind.
You bristle, and then sigh, "I'd wager at least one has caught her eye by now."
"Maybe," he allows, and you can hear his smile.
"Does it matter?"
"You might not agree," he begins, and he has drawn away some. "But I personally think you should be wasting your affections on her instead. You've a better chance."
"I'm in love with Ladybug," you state, hoping you sound as resolute as you usually do.
Something about that statement is chipping away, weakened at the core by some blow you hadn't anticipated.
The clear distinction, you know Marinette's name. And she knows yours.
"Maybe I don't know what love is," Plagg says, and he sounds even further away. "But I do know that girl is beautiful, and you certainly think so, too."
You sigh, shutting your eyes. His words bring about the memories left over from the day. Your arm around her waist and the way she drew away, or the way she wrapped her arms tight about your shoulders, face tucked into your neck as you swept her up and away from danger. The smell of her perfume, something sweet like candy and light as clouds. The way she called out to you, worry lacing her every word, asking after Adrien as if fearing for his very life.
Something drew up inside of you. You have heard her say your name before but hearing it this way did things to you, the way it caught in the middle, the way her voice had lifted about it.
It rings through your mind and another sigh escapes you.
"Yeah," you finally say, breathless. "She's so beautiful."
.x.
There are moments you find need to pause, to blink until reality settles thick over your nerves once more.
Today, her blue eyes cut across yours and for a second you swore she was someone else. You are rendered speechless, flung out into dead space as the whole sky opened up within you. You are stricken by her luminance and you have to pull the air into your lungs mechanically until you remember how to think again.
The part of you that cannot comprehend this revelation denies it altogether.
The love of your life is larger than life itself, too brilliant and shining for you to bear.
The shy girl that sits behind you in class is soft spoken, small and timid and delicate.
But it is not until you cannot pick the blue of her eyes and the cream of her skin from the other that it dawns on you, a collision cast head first and it is with perfect clarity that it comes wrapped in a, But of course—
"I am in love with Marinette."
.x.
There is a new reluctance going home now, what has nothing to do with the cadaverous hallways and all of its shadows, the heaviness of empty promises and disappointment. It is the knowledge that you cannot find her shades there, in the mirrors or the portraits, in your linens or the fine marble tiles. It is the knowledge that you cannot wrap yourself in enough blankets to simulate the warmth of her smile, or her laugh, or her blushing cheeks, or her arms wrapped tight and comfortable around you.
There are two sides to her, and you are smitten with both.
.x.
A.N.: Yeah, no, I'm fucked. We're all fucked. I barely started watching this show and I am too deep in.
Hope you enjoyed.