The prequel to this fic is called "The Last Date' and can be found on my profile (it is also complete). I also have a longer ML fic called "Better Together" (currently at 21/30 chapters).
This was my contribution to the Miraculous Ladybug Big Bang 2017 and the art was created by the wonderful dontcallmebugaboo on Tumblr!
I hope you enjoy this continuation!
"Spring is for lovers!"
Adrien smirked, leaning back against a tree and snickering when Marinette elbowed him in the side. Their wedding planner had been spouting sappy lines like that for the entire afternoon, leading the way around their wedding venue with a wealth of romantic one-liners. If he had been dressed as Chat Noir he probably would have taken the opportunity to respond with clever puns, but he was in his civilian form and thus living up to all the politeness that came with the Agreste name by restraining himself to winking at his adorable fiancé.
The bark of the tree was rough on his back and Adrien adjusted himself against the rigid bumps as he crossed his arms over his chest. They were on the third walkthrough of the lush green grounds and Adrien paused against the tree to take a step away from the exuberance of their parents and their overly excitable wedding planner.
It had taken a year's worth of arguments to decide on their location. In that time his father had placed no less than nine deposits on potential venues, managing to aggressively negotiate the refund from every location once they had finally come to an agreement. The outdoor venue at Rapunzels Folie provided the intimate setting that Marinette had desperately wanted, while appeasing Adrien's father's need to spend a remarkable amount of money on the occasion and having the isolation which would ease the security nightmare presented by an Agreste wedding. The paparazzi had already wormed their way into photographs at their engagement party and Marinette's bridal shower, and Gabriel was determined to keep them at bay for the main wedding event.
Adrien snickered again, shaking his head as he kicked at the ground remembering his father's elaborate plan to transport guests to the venue. The secrecy felt appropriate and normal, given the way Adrien spent half of his life behind a mask. It wasn't like his father knew that though, and Adrien couldn't help another quirk of his lips. Six years he had managed to slip in and out of his bedroom window, haunting Paris under the cover of a black mask while his father remained blissfully unaware. When their relationship was at its worst Adrien had relished in his secret, a dig toward his father's incessant need to hide Adrien away from the world.
Now that their relationship had begun to heal, a process significantly jump started by Adrien's proposal to Marinette, Adrien had found himself craving to tell his father about his alter ego. He had found himself almost slipping over dinner once when his father had been excitedly discussing the production of their wedding party's attire and pondering the bizarre, yet fashionable color scheme. Black with green accents for the men, red with black accents for the women. Gabriel had commented that it felt familiar in some way, but couldn't place how and Adrien had nearly told him, barely containing his secret as he bit down on his roasted pork to keep it from spilling out.
There had been other times too. Standing in the fitting room next to his father in matching suits as the tailor made adjustments to their jackets and pants. That moment had made the wedding feel like a reality and when Gabriel had placed his hands on Adrien's shoulders, smiling with a hint of tears in his eyes, Adrien had almost told his father about every hidden piece of his life. He wanted his father to be proud of all of him, but the words had caught in his throat, drying out and fizzling away as Gabriel stepped back to allow the seamstress to finish her work.
Closing his eyes, Adrien let his head fall back against the tree, sighing as the spring breeze swept over his cheeks. The sounds of their parents chattering away with the wedding planner fell away as he focused on the rustle of the leaves and the lapping of the slow-moving stream against the rocks. Thoughts of his father had opened up the beginnings of thoughts about his mother, and Adrien was determined to keep those thoughts at bay. It had been hard enough dealing with all of his father's unexpected enthusiasm, and he didn't need to let the nagging thoughts about his missing parental figure trickle in. Emotion started filling his chest, and he concentrated on the soothing sounds around him to try to push it away.
Marinette watched as the emotions rippled through her fiancé. He had always been a wonderfully complicated man, even during their early years of friendship when he had tried to hide behind masks of model behavior and bad puns. She had loved the outer image of him in a childish way, but the deepest parts of him, the ones that encompassed all of the hurt and confusion along with the silliness and empathy, were what she had really fallen in love with. Adrien Agreste, the boy who loved to laugh was a man who also sometimes needed to cry, and Marinette felt lucky that she was the one to be there for all of it.
Still, Adrien's current swing of emotions was alarmingly fast-paced, even for him. He had been cheerful on the car ride to the venue, laughing as he described the gold plates his father had tried to order for their reception and the shock on his father's face when he had suggested they use plastic ones instead. Adrien had made a game of teasing his father about every aspect of the wedding, and Marinette had laughed until her sides hurt with all his newest antics. Secretly, she knew that Adrien loved his father's involvement, but he also carried a small hint of bitterness regarding it. Five years of misunderstanding couldn't be reversed with one event, so Marinette gave Adrien his space to handle his feelings in any way he chose. She stepped in when those decisions bordered on destructive, but otherwise she let her fiancé have his fun.
The solemn look on his face now conveyed anything but the light-hearted joking of the earlier hours of the day. Even behind his closed eyelids, Marinette could tell that sadness had settled upon his shoulders. Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around his waist leaning her chest against his and tipping her face up with her chin resting on his sternum. She chuckled remembering a time when their height difference wasn't nearly so great, and sighed when she felt his arms squeeze around her waist.
"Hi Bugaboo," Adrien smiled, pecking a kiss to her nose as he pulled her tighter to him. "You think they would care if we snuck off to make out?" He leaned down again, this time aiming for her lips, laughingly pouting when she pulled away.
"I don't even know if they would notice," Marinette giggled, dodging Adrien's second attempt for a more intimate kiss. Glancing over her shoulder, she lovingly rolled her eyes at the sight of her mom waving excitedly with the wedding planner and the dads loudly discussing the size of the wedding cake. The three parents got along surprisingly well, considering how different they were, and it made Marinette return to her contemplation about how Adrien's mom would have fit into this scenario. It was a thought she had kept to herself, not wanting to push Adrien on the topic unless he initiated it, but still let it dance in her mind anyway. Shaking her head, Marinette smiled at their ridiculous parents as Adrien began kissing at her neck. "Hey! Just because I don't think they notice doesn't mean I want to chance it!" She burst into a fit of giggles as he began blowing raspberries against her cheek.
"This is romantic," Adrien said, punctuating each kiss with a raspberry to Marinette's cheek. "I'm going to kiss you like this on the day of our wedding." He laughed against her cheek, feeling his heart lighten as she continued to giggle. Marinette was like magic, appearing whenever he needed her and washing away his sadness simply by existing. This had always been her strongest power, in and out of the red jumpsuit.
"You want our first kiss to sound like fart noises?" Marinette asked, feeling the rumble of Adrien's laughter in his chest. There were times that she would have prodded at him, asked him the questions needed to get him to talk about whatever dark fog had rolled into his mind. Standing against a tree with their parents bubbling with joy a mere fifty feet from them was definitely not the time for such conversation. Instead Marinette sneakily dropped her hands to Adrien's sides and squeezed, causing him to spasm from laughter as she mercilessly tickled his sides.
Their little wrestling match was interrupted when Marinette's father gave a shape whistle. Calming his laughter, Adrien threw his arm over Marinette's shoulder, turning to grin sheepishly at their parents. The Dupain-Cheng's looked amused and loving as they stood together, eyebrows raised at the engaged couple. His father, however, had a blank expression pasted on his face and Adrien immediately felt his mood drop. Letting go of Marinette's shoulder, he shoved his hands in his pockets, smiling softly as she wrapped a hand around his bicep. Falling in step with each other, they made their way back to the small group, ready to go over wedding details for the one millionth time.
"Do you ever think…" Adrien trailed off, resting his head against the driver's seat of his car while rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"That we should have eloped?" Marinette finished, opening her purse so that Tikki could fly out and join Plagg on their pillow in the back seat. Toeing off her shoes, she let her body slump against her own seat, shifting to face Adrien as he nodded.
"I love flowers and place settings as much as the next guy," Adrien chuckled when Marinette snorted, "but honestly, I'm ready to marry you, and I don't give a crud what color the napkins are." Opening his eyes, Adrien turned to face Marinette who smiled at him. She looked as tired as he felt and the overwhelming need to kiss her again had him leaning over the gear shift to pull her close.
"Can we please save the kissing for when we get home?" Plagg whined from the back seat, pretending to faint as Tikki giggled into her hands. "And by home, I mean Marinette's home, because I want ten different types of cheese to make up for all the cheesiness I have endured today!" Sighing, Plagg sagged heavier onto Tikki's lap as the humans broke apart to laugh.
"Your house?" Adrien asked, tugging on the end of Marinette's ponytail as he settled back into his seat. His body was already beginning to calm as he turned the car on, listening to her hum in agreement as he backed the car away from the place where they would be married in less than two weeks.
"Thirteen days," Marinette sighed, almost as if she was responding directly to his thoughts. "I can't believe we have thirteen days until you are officially stuck with me forever." She laughed when Adrien poked her in the cheek, glancing at him and sticking out her tongue.
"Being stuck with you…" Adrien smiled, lacing his fingers with hers as he leaned sideways for another kiss, "that sounds perfect to me." With the windows down and the hopeful scent of spring dancing in the air, they headed back toward the city of Paris.
Marinette's parents had long ago given up pretending that they didn't know Chat Noir was the same person as Marinette's darling fiancé. The conversation had been hilarious, born of Tom finding Chat Noir lurking in the kitchen at two in the morning after Marinette and Adrien had returned from Italy happily engaged. Tom had pretended to let Chat Noir down with the information, asking that he please not ruin his daughter's happiness by continuing to try to seduce Marinette. Under his mask, Adrien had turned sixteen shades of red, becoming increasingly confused when Tom burst into hysterics and Sabine rounded the kitchen corner with her phone out to record the conversation.
Standing in the kitchen, Marinette joining them after stumbling down the stairs in confusion, Tom and Sabine had revealed that they had known their secret identities since Marinette's seventeenth birthday. The coincidence of Marinette and Adrien becoming a couple, and the obvious change in Ladybug's and Chat Noir's relationship, had not been lost on them. Together they had laughed over mugs of hot chocolate and day-old pastries, as Tom and Sabine explained all the ways in which neither hero had ever been slick in hiding their identities.
After that conversation, there had been a much more awkward conversation about their plans leading up to the wedding. Marinette nor Adrien had planned to move from their parents' homes until after their marriage was official, but Adrien had taken to spending quite a few unannounced nights in Marinette's bedroom, under the disguise of his superhero alter ego. When the offer had come for Adrien to move in, taking up residence in Marinette's bedroom for the remainder of the year until they were married, he had paused to consider the option. The Dupain-Cheng household had always felt like home to him and he loved being a part of their family, but in the end, he knew that he needed to repair the foundation of his own family first.
Despite his ultimate decision not to move in, the open-door policy remained in effect and Adrien had never returned to feeling like a guest. He helped cooked meals and did dishes, and on the nights he stayed with Marinette, he made sure that every one of his actions was respectful. They had forever to be together, and he didn't want to risk his found family by pushing those boundaries.
The drive from their venue had been confounded by Paris city traffic and both of them were worn out and grumpy as their made their way up to Marinette's bedroom to collapse across her bed. Sleepily, Adrien waved a hand at Plagg and Tikki as they flew off toward the sound of Sabine's voice offering treats. The best part about Marinette's parents knowing about their identities was that the kwamis were free to move about the house as they pleased, a welcome break for Plagg from the secretive confines of Adrien's own room.
"So… tired…" Adrien whined, tucking Marinette into his side as his head flopped back onto the pillow. His head had been going a mile a minute during their drive, and he could feel the weight of his thoughts pulling him toward sleep.
Resting her chin on Adrien's chest, Marinette studied his face. There were dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks were less rosy in the dimming light of her room. She always worried when he looked so exhausted, and decided that it was time to encourage him to talk. If she could get him to discuss whatever foul thoughts were souring in his mind, maybe he would finally be able to rest. Poking him in the cheek, she waited until he opened one eye to peer at her to speak. "Your head has been busy today," she spoke softly, running her fingers across his cheek, "want to fill me in?" His chest heaved with a sigh, causing her head to bounce and they both chuckled with the movement. As his fingers began to skate slow circles over her back, Marinette turned to press her cheek to his heart.
"My mom," said Adrien, not really a whisper or a question, but more of an all-encompassing forlorn statement that seemed to summarize everything in his mind. "I wish she was here. I always imagined her being here." His eyes were closed as he spoke, the image of his mother floating in his mind. The very last time he had seen her she had kissed him goodnight in the hallway outside of his room. By morning she was gone, and Adrien had no answers beyond that. His father still talked about her as if she was somewhere in the world, but Adrien had long ago given up hope that she was alive. "If she was alive," he spoke out loud, knowing that his sentences were only connecting in his mind, "she would want to be here. I know she would."
Nodding, Marinette lifted her head again to respond, finding that Adrien had drifted off to sleep on his last word. Reaching up to kiss him on the cheek, Marinette carefully eased out of the bed and tucked the covers over his chest.
Snagging her laptop from her desk, Marinette quietly slipped out onto the balcony, dropping onto her lounge chair and quickly opening up her computer.
If Lavande Agreste was still alive, Marinette was determined to find her.
