She comes in, as always, by the window, like a slip of red ribbon carried on the rising night air to prelude a change in weather. He's been waiting breathlessly and, in the moment, fails completely to conceal his expectation of her arrival; Adrien Agreste ought not to know that she is coming, but perhaps he can pass off his preparation as well-timed optimism. He's hardly been able to think of anything else since she rebuffed a flirtatious Chat Noir hours before.
"I'm afraid I have a date tonight," she'd said, and blushed, and blew a kiss that warmed his face like a slap.
Since then, he's nursed a growing preoccupation which prickles the hair on his arms and wracks his frame with a persistent low shiver that moves with the cooling breeze. It's not yet quite the season to keep the windows open after dark, but he hasn't closed them, and now here comes the reason why, to alight upon his threshold with a little zip of fabric and a sweet tap against the steel frame. It's all he can do to turn calmly instead of jumping or barking or otherwise betraying his crippling, overwhelming anxiety; and there she is. Ladybug crouches like a cat on the sill against the city's wide vista, with summertide wind pulling at her twin pigtails, and at his glance, she smiles. She beams.
"Mon Coccinelle," he stammers, and stands from his desk, and makes the mistake of trying to reach for the wine glasses atop it without looking backward. He nearly knocks one over. "I-I wanted to – I hoped you were coming!"
She asks, "Wine?" in a tone which offers not an ounce of the ridicule that he's been heaping on himself for the last hour. He knows this must be a stupid, formal, desperate look, but she seems genuinely delighted, and drops her legs over the edge of the sill to kick at the wall like an excited little girl. "Adrien, you didn't have to do that!"
It was, in a very literal sense, the least he could do. In a fit of false confidence, he reaches to tousle with the hair at the nape of his neck and catches the trailing end of her admiring stare as he does so. She drops to the floor to stroll into the pool of light around his desk, and shadow retreats from her form like a lifted curtain. She is one smooth curve from top to bottom, red as blood and equally fluid. He catches his hanging jaw and manages not to say anything stupid before she settles into a delicate seat on the edge of his desk. "Château Rayas?" she asks disbelievingly when he lifts the bottle into the light.
"Need to let it breathe," he mumbles to the corkscrew. After decanting, he remembers to answer her implicit question: "It's nothing. My father has so many good wines, this wasn't even..." How's it going to sound if he confesses to taking the Rayas because it was one of the least likely to be noticed as missing? He shakes his head and pretends he never said anything.
"My family could never afford that," Ladybug mumbles. She plays with her left pigtail, flipping it over and over again around her hand. "You didn't need to open it for just me, I –"
"Father will never know –"
"I don't think I'm even sophisticated enough to appreciate –" They both stop on the edges of their protests and take a step back. In the golden light, her eyes look green as jade, set in a mask of royal vermilion and ebony. His captivation lasts too long. She is the one to finally crack an embarrassed smile and break their gaze. "I'm sorry, Adrien. I didn't mean to sound that way."
He says automatically, "You didn't do anything wrong."
"You're too sweet." The scent of red wine floats on thick currents in the air between them. "I don't know what I did to deserve you." Tension pierces Adrien's chest right below the sternum.
He smiles winsomely, and pours the wine.
Gabriel has mentioned more than once that for Adrien's eighteenth birthday, he may have his room remodeled. He hardly uses the sports wall or basketball court anymore, after all; the area could be better given to a drafting table or art studio, and it would certainly be becoming for him to finally have a separate sitting area, to complete the transition from child's bedroom to apartment suite. Until then, though, Adrien and Ladybug will stay at the desk, in front of the black computer monitors with their winking green eyes, under the embracing light of one of the only standalone lamps in the whole cavernous room. They drink (exquisite, she says, and he agrees, though he's privately had even better) and he pulls her up a chair from next to the arcade machines and she tells him about the morning they had together. "It was a dog today," she says, admiring the legs on her wine as they trail down the glass.
"Really? A dog?" Adrien already knows this, but his smile is real in remembering the absurdity of it all.
"This little fancy thing." She holds her red fingers inches apart. "The akuma was going for its owner but the dog – this tiny dog! – caught it first. And ate it." They both burst out laughing. "Oh, it wasn't funny, though." Ladybug respects the gravity of any encounter with an akumatized citizen, and tries to straighten her face back out. "And it grew ten times its size, and had a giant bone that drew other dogs into the pack! Do you know how many dogs were outside the Louvre by the time Chat and I got there?"
"But what – ha ha! – what clever name did the dog call itself?" Adrien can't stop shaking with mirth, and can't take another sip until he does.
"Well, it didn't say, exactly, because it was a dog." She gulps too much too fast and hiccups, and Adrien falls one mouthful of wine deeper in love with her. "But I saw its collar, and – hrm, excusez-moi –"
Chat Noir was the one who saw its collar, actually. "Go on."
"It said Puppillion." She doesn't try to contain her laughter this time, and they both have to set down their glasses to keep them upright. When Adrien's face hurts too much to keep smiling he reaches up to massage around his mouth, and tries to make the gesture look thoughtful. He feels warm and dizzy. Their rendezvous – dates is such a significant word – have little variation from week to week, but that's comforting sometimes. They are always dark and richly-worded, and they leave him full of a satisfaction that he does not know how to unearth in himself at any other time. Ladybug is deeply flushed and must know it, because she presses her her cheek against her shoulder to hide her face. Adrien's hands always turn cold when he drinks, so with tempered self-consciousness he reaches out and presses his palm against her sweet skin. She pushes gratefully back against his hand. "It's warm in here," she murmurs, and cups his wrist with her fingers.
Adrien feels shaky again, deep down, a low geological tremble in his abdomen; if the conversation doesn't pick back up he's going to start overthinking things. "So – how did you defeat Le Puppillon?"
"Mm." She sits up and arches her back to stretch. Lamplight sheens across the curving planes of her suit. "We used Chat Noir as bait." Adrien barks with laughter. "What? What else would you use to get fifty dogs' attention? It worked!"
"And you got the bone?"
"And I got the bone." She seems to consider, and then ends the story with a wink. Abashedly, he tousles his hair at the back again. Her smile is too bright to stare directly into.
Then a small beep sounds. "Oh..." He looks back up to find Ladybug sitting straight, her hand lingering next to her ear. Her happy expression has turned in a second to resigned disappointment.
He knows that look. "Are you…?"
She sounds a little sour. "I took too long getting here. I had to take a detour after running into – nevermind. I'm almost out of time." Her sad gaze rolls across the desk, the wine, and finally all the way to him. "I only just got here."
"You could..." It is so hard for him to put the offer forward. They've only ever done it at her proposal, and it's frightening to ask – but he really doesn't want to see her go. "Y-you could stay again. If you like."
Her eyes soften. She presses her knees together and hides her hands demurely between her thighs. The silence carries notes of licorice. When she says, "I'd like that," his stomach seizes.
"Only if you want to," he insists, stupidly.
She says, "I always want to stay," and the gentle patience in her words is interrupted by another chirp from her earring. She looks at him anxiously.
"'Course," he says, a little light-headed. "Just let me..." He lifts the bottle and fills their glasses again, because this will be his last chance to do so. With the fingers of his left hand spread over both crystal bases in order to keep track of the glassware, he slides open the center drawer of his desk and fumbles for the remote control within it, to press the largest button. With a low hum, the curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows along the west wall slide inward to shutter them from Paris' glow. Adrien watches the darkness outside of their solitary islet of light grow deeper, until there is nothing to be seen within it anymore but the décor's reflective ghosts.
Ladybug turns to look at him, slanted in her seat. She wears queenly colors with such modesty. "I'll be right with you," she promises.
He switches off the light.
Through the dark, Adrien picks his shaky way toward the sofa and settles into the stiff white leather with a wine glass in each hand. Thin blue light wavers on the floor beneath the curtain, and the stereo console against the far wall blinks placid yellow, but otherwise the room is cavernous and void. His ears perk to follow Ladybug's movements: the patter of her feet against the smooth floor, and her deep and determined breath. For a second, she glows. Red sparks draw her form in the dark before disappearing, and she lets out a sigh of relief. His heart catches in his throat to hear it.
Her Miraculous has been laid aside. They're alone together, and she is no longer wearing a mask.
It takes her a moment to join him. She doesn't know the layout of the room as well as he does, and once or twice he hears her grunt after walking into something. "Merde!"
He sits up straight. "Are you okay?"
"Yes." She sounds clipped. "Stupid foosball table –"
"Where are you?" He is totally blind. "You went three meters the wrong way. Follow my voice." This time her movements make a shuffling hush, and when she finally reaches the couch she collapses without grace and curses again. He waits until the sound of her rubbing her knee through her pant leg stops before reaching out to nudge her shoulder with her wine glass.
"Thanks," she murmurs. There's a little electric jolt in feeling her ungloved fingers brush his when she takes the drink back. He tries not to think about it. They imbibe in peace for a moment before she says, "I wish we could see the stars."
"Even with the window open, the city's too bright."
"I know." She reaches out to touch his shoulder, and after determining he is not holding the wine in that hand leans in to put her head there. Her temple is smooth and bare and feels hot through the thin cotton of his shirt. "But it's not like that everywhere. From the top of le Sacré-Cœur Basilica you can cup your eyes –" She mimes doing so, "And the stars are so bright, you could pretend you're flying through space."
He remembers. It was where they'd met up after their battle with Firefly Guy, and they'd clung to the spire on the dome with skyward eyes for as long as their suffering kwamis would let them. She wouldn't so much as hold his hand the entire time. "I've never gotten to see the view from Montmartre in the middle of the night, unfortunately."
"I was there with Chat. I wish I could bring you." Her wineless hand drifts to his chest and takes up an idle handful of his shirt. He wonders if she can feel the reverberation of his heart beneath his ribs.
Without thinking, he blurts, "Chat is good," and she raises her head curiously from his shoulder. "I mean –" He gambles on the coffee table being where he thinks it's going to be and manages to set aside his wine without incident. "Chat Noir is so... he's a superhero, and he's noble and brave and all of Paris knows that he's in love with you. But you don't seem to want him." She doesn't say anything. "It doesn't really make sense, Ladybug. You know it doesn't."
She whispers, "Are you breaking up with me?"
"What?"
Her voice is watery: "Did you finally decide you deserve better than someone who can't tell you their name?..."
"No, no!" He straightens up in his seat and she pulls further away. "No, I – you have to be Ladybug first. Always. I understand that." Her fist relaxes on his shoulder. "I just mean there's… nothing special about me. You could have anyone in Paris."
"Adrien." Her voice, usually so bright, is as close to gravelly as he's ever heard. "You're very special."
"I'm –" He runs his hands through the hair at the back of his head again, then recognizes the compulsion behind it and furiously pats it back down. What a stupid, vain habit. "I just wish I understood."
"What's to understand?" The leather squeaks, and is followed by the dangerous sound of fine crystal clacking against the mahogany coffee table. She moves toward him again, and her soft chest impresses his arm, and her hand buries itself in the hair he's just decided represents his worst tendencies. When she kisses him, her lips leave behind a tart nip of wine. "I'm Ladybug first, but not only Ladybug. And even if I can't tell you why, I have lots of reasons to choose you over Chat Noir." The name is tossed out like a scarf thrown over her shoulder. She ekes even closer and places a daring hand high on his thigh. "I'm happy to be with you."
Ladybug lowers her head, notches herself in beneath his chin, and curls there lovingly, smelling of persimmon and freshly baked bread. Her civilian clothes are slack, practical cotton and denim, and they twist and bunch and make her wriggle to get comfortable. He stares into the dark until phosphene blooms sprout before his eyes. She's just a girl, he tells himself over and over to counter the overwhelming pressure of her tiny body against his. A girl like any he goes to school with.
...But that's not right. She can't be just a girl. Ladybug could never be just anyone at all, because her rarity is in the very nature of her Miraculous. She's quick and bright and good, and she can direct even the Black Cat's chaos into order. She could spend her nights spanning across rooftops or dipping her feet in the starry sky from atop Eiffel's tower with Chat Noir by her side, but again and again she comes tiptoeing in for midnight handholding with Adrien Agreste instead. Meek, dull, dress-up-doll Adrien Agreste.
He could never turn her away in the presumption that he knows what she wants better than she does, but he can't take her for granted, either. If Chat is not good enough for his Lady, then it's a certainty that her fascination with Adrien cannot last.
So consuming are his stormy thoughts that he doesn't notice her go still, and then pull away. When she asks, "Adrien?" he jumps. "Ça ne va pas?"
"No. Sorry." He tries to smile, and in the dark, it doesn't matter how pained it looks. "It's nothing."
Ladybug, who is not stupid, sounds disappointed. "Maybe I should go."
"Please, no." He seeks out her hand, curled at the base of his throat, to cradle. "You didn't – I wish you never had to leave, ever." Does that sound needy? He's already in deep. "You know you make me happy, too. Happier than anyone."
"Adrien." Her voice is thick. She is so small, but the kiss she pushes against his lips has the weight of gold. He has the feeling of being lightly melted as he falls back into the cushions with his hands spanning her sides. "I missed you," she murmurs against his chin. "I always miss being here with you."
She misses him! He has done nothing to deserve this. His arms fit perfectly along her back, one curving up to her shoulder and the other down to the round of her hip, where his fingers find purchase in the gap between her shirt and belt. She captures his jaw in a tantalizingly bare hand and pulls his face toward hers for a kiss that he, not she, turns his head to receive. Their teeth impact one another, just a little, while she pushes him further backward, almost atop him, sliding together down the back of the couch. Her mouth is cooler than his own, her tongue deliciously foreign-feeling in its furtive explorations of the space behind his teeth. Beneath the licorice wine, she tastes of that aroma of empty breath which comes from the hours between meals, a consuming saveur au natural that he's craved since the minute she last left this room.
She kisses away toward his ear and he buries his face in the crook between her neck and shoulders, sinking gladly into the sensations of her: the sweat that tacks above her lip, the brush of her hair under his nose, the swell of her scapulae as she runs her hands down his sides, replicating his movements against her body. Her breath is hot behind his ear, and she opens her mouth just enough to let her teeth graze his skin.
She can make his bones quake. "Aah," he exhales against her ear.
"Do you remember a few weeks ago, what we talked about?" she whispers into his. "On Fête de la Victoire?"
He does, and knows instantly what she's about to ask. His blood flushes hot and cold in rapid succession. "I-I..."
Ladybug squeaks, "I'd be really happy to try doing it," and the excited trepidation in her voice brings a terrible, aching desire which nearly caves in his stomach. She can perhaps feel him tighten up, and impresses, "Please, if you don't want to just tell me, but – you said before that you mostly felt bad to ask me to do it and I…" She breathes a few times, steadyingly, and then kisses his earlobe again. He catches every moist, intimate enouncement of her perfect mouth: "I want to really help you understand how much you mean to me."
This is the moment of truth, or the latest of many, and probably his last chance to define the terms of all their time together into the future. She's hinted and implied and asked outright more than a handful of times, and only for so long can he avoid answering the question before she decides he's not worth the effort. Is this the night he wants to lose the love of his life? Adrien works hard to keep his breath even.
"...Yes," he says, declarative language in uncertain tone. Her hands are clasped around the back of his neck and at his words they squeeze, and her whole body shudders in a silent cheer.
"Adrien," she breathes into his ear on the trailing end of a laugh. "You know I love you."
The ceiling wavers ever so slightly by reflections of city light, and he is with it, floating in blue tones high above his needful body. "I love you too."
He feels her trembling as she wiggles down from atop his lap to kneeling in front of it with her hands resting on his belt. Even in this position, he is embarrassed to imagine that she can feel how hard he is. He hadn't let himself think about it much while there was still a chance that this was destined to be a completely decorous midnight rendezvous in his darkened bedroom, but now it's all he can do not to buck his hips in excitement as she paws at his buckle in the dark. She tries for a second longer before voicing a deflated, "Could you, um…?"
The buckle is of his father's design, a needlessly complicated but exquisite twist of metal that releases by a concealed button. He should have thought about it sooner to avoid making her struggle. With ephemeral awareness, he pulls the belt open and starts to undo his zipper, automatically, the second piece of an everyday two-part operation, but her warm hand dives in to finish the work for him instead and reemerges triumphant around his erection. He almost chokes, and thrusts a little into her grip, and she sighs. "Mon dieu." What has Adrien ever in a thousand years done to deserve her? Her hand is clumsy and loose around him, at least until moving it up his length, where it draws perfectly tight. "I wish I could see… Is this alright?" She makes another awkward draw down and back up.
Each pulse of his heart puts up fireworks behind his eyes. "Yeah," he whispers again.
"I've never done this before," she hisses, close enough to heat the crown of his cock with her breath. "I'm sorry, Adrien, I..."
He's going to have a heart attack. "Don't apologize."
Another deep, warming exhale. "I'm going to try now." He nods, though she can't see it. She swallows and licks away the delectable moisture on her lips. When she tilts his cock downward, he thinks he knows what's coming, but he's not really prepared for the hot ring of her lips to slip across head. Electricity in the voltage of a licked battery runs athwart his pelvis, and he bucks with mouth so wide that his grunt of pleasure comes out soundless. Her bicuspid grazes his crown.
"Did I hurt you?" She pulls away, and her hand falls protectively across the spot she nicked. Again he shakes his head, but of course, she still can't see.
"No."
"I'm sorry," she repeats, "I've never done this..."
Swallowing does nothing to relieve his cotton-dry mouth. "It's fine," he croaks. "You're fine."
"Are you sure?" But she seems mollified and, given a few more seconds, makes a second attempt. Adrien knows what to brace for this time, but still only barely manages to tamp down on something like full-body collapse when she lays his cock on the outstretched bed of her tongue and delivers it into her mouth. She sheathes her teeth behind her lips this time, and swallows the air that enters with him, and he is nearly undone by his entry to the softest, warmest place he's ever been. Eight or more years of refinement of his own understanding of self-pleasure have nothing on that first second spent by her hand and mouth.
And then she starts moving.
The longer the darkness stands, the less absolute it becomes. As in diluted ink, watery violets manifest between the shadows; if he dares look down, he can actually see the shape of her kneeling between his knees, the black of her hair moving in a sea of blue, on the tide of the pleasure that cants in his legs and loins. Down she goes, not quite far enough, and up, and then down again with more daring so that he can feel the slick tautness of the back of her throat for a second before she splutters and pulls out to regain her composure. If this is her first time, she's certainly at least done research. Her technique is clumsy and inconsistent, but her every touch and suckling pull still flushes his cold body with desert heat and sweeps fine white sand from dunes built up along the valleys of his bones. Fevered swells pepper the inside of his stomach, like static electricity from a muscle left inert. He keeps his arms flung stiffly along the back of the couch, and he shakes, and he tries not to glance down, fearing that the night may grow so thin he can look her in the eye. She can't have been going for more than a minute now; if he's not careful, he's going to come.
"Adrieh?" Her voice sounds muffled from around his penis. "Arh you…?"
"Good," he chokes without thinking, and reaches to sweep his trembling hand down her cheek. "I mean, you're amazing, you're – God, you're so beautiful..."
"Mm." She sounds bashful, and pulls him from her mouth so she can run a loose hand up his sopping length instead. "You don't know what I look like."
I know enough, he thinks to say, but the words are stolen from him by her return to business. He lays his head back and opens his throat in order to maintain a manful silence. The phosphene flowers in his eyes have started catching fire.
If he concentrates, there is a balance to be struck at the edge of immersion, where he finds an anchor point on which to lash himself and let pleasure wash across his body without being carried away. He imagines Chat Noir, standing in the shadows of the cavernous room before him, shaking his head sadly. Adrien doesn't deserve to be in this position, he knows that. He just has to hold out long enough for his Lady to decide she's proven her point, and she will leave this room tonight with her dignity intact. What of the night after that? It is impossible to plan that far ahead with her mouth on his cock. He'll figure something out.
If he's not careful, he's going to cry.
While she moves on an increasing tempo, he runs the question through his mind again and again. Why me? How hasn't she come to see, after so long, that Adrien Agreste is not worth her time? Adrien, who hasn't the backbone to stand up to a bully like Chloé Bourgeois, let alone his father? Adrien, who sits alone at the end of the table each and every night with Nathalie standing guard, who has mastered smiling without substance, who has taken six years of fencing despite hating every moment of it? Adrien, who can never follow her into battle against monsters and madmen, only be taken captive?
He should have never let things get this far. Her throat is so warm. He was too weak to feign disinterest in order to spare her the effort of getting to know him, like he does at school with Marinette. His legs tense ever tighter. Chat Noir stands behind him, he can feel it, casting a shadow as broad and disapproving as Gabriel's. He is not jealous. He's disappointed.
His shakes have spread. His legs tremble; he buckles at the waist. Don't. He tries to think himself back into his post at the edge of the sea, where the tide cannot take him. He can't give in. Ladybug will hate him if he does. She'll stir from her wine-haze and behold his weakness, and realize her mistake. He imagines a face for her, creased by disgust, coughing and retching at the taste of him, the taste of come, glaring up from her position on her knees with a mess around her mouth and — and streams patterned across her face and nose and… in her bangs...
Her chest bare, décolletage glistening. One blue eye closed. Her tongue cupped and pearlescent and stuck from her wide-open mouth —
"No." Adrien gasps aloud as he realizes what he's done. Not soon enough. Ladybug makes a noise of confusion, and then of spluttering surprise, and Adrien tries to wrench away to avert his vision of the future, but muscle contraction has already given over to throbbing ecstasy and he comes with a deep-throated cry, doubled over in flashing delirium. He tries to stop the flow with his hand, but can only wedge his palm in front of her chin a few instants too late. She is not spared as cleanly as he'd hoped.
"Adrien?!" With a small thump, Ladybug falls back, sounding flabbergasted. "Adrien, are you okay?"
He can't answer until the terrible rapture subsides, and on the far side of it he tries to breathe again and realizes that his throat is too full of emotion to speak. He chokes, still with his face hanging over the floor. "Adrien!" She puts her hands on his face and tries to help him up. At skin contact, he jumps and twists away from her, shamed. "I'm sorry," she babbles, "Adrien, I'm so sorry, I don't know what – I shouldn't have pushed you –"
She sounds like she's about to cry. It finally pierces the misery around his shoulders. "...Ladybug?"
But she's already up, stumbling away, and there is a thump and the clear sound of a crystal wine glass tipping and shattering across tile. "Spots on," she whimpers, and five feet away from him red sparks fly in the air. "I'm sorry, Adrien, I'm sorry." He tries to stand, awkwardly, but it's too late.
There is the sound of tacking footfalls followed by blinding blue. Ladybug wrenches open the curtains, and for a second stands framed by the cold summer night. His eyes are tender after the dark, but he can see the tears on her face.
She whispers to him, "I am so sorry, Adrien." And with a leap and a swing she is gone, carried away by a breeze embittered by her apology, rolling the clouds in across the sky.