Adrien woke up feeling warm and heavy and safe and good. He smiled and started to roll over because whatever dream he had just come from must have been wonderful but there was something in his way. Something warm and heavy and draped across his chest. He tried to shake off the sleep but he was too tired, barely awake. She shifted against him and pressed her face into his neck.
"Oh god," he whispered.
"Chat?" her voice was soft and thick.
"Right here," he said.
He reached up and touched her hair. It was loose and he absently smoothed the strands back from her face. She shifted again, pressing even closer and he had to remind himself to breathe. He couldn't see her. He'd thrown the curtains shut and it must still be night because even the heavy blackout cloth couldn't completely keep the glow of the sun away. The room was black as midnight and warm. He wasn't entirely sure he wasn't dreaming.
He was still dressed, even his shoes were on. They had fallen into bed as Ladybug and Chat Noir but he was Adrien again. Her mask was gone too, he traced his finger down the bridge of her nose and couldn't feel it. He pulled his hand back because she wouldn't let him do that if she was awake.
"Ladybug?" he asked then tried again a little louder.
"Hmm?" she said.
"Wake up," he said.
"No," she muttered and he could feel her mouth move against his collarbone. That wasn't helping with either his ability to breathe or his understanding of where the boundaries were.
"Please?" he said.
She lifted her head, still pressed in close to his side and still invisible in the dark. His hand was still in her hair and he untangled it but then couldn't figure out where to put it. He grabbed a hold of a pillow that had been pushed off to the side and twisted his fingers tight to keep himself from touching her when he wasn't sure she wanted to be touched.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Akuma attack, sleeping sand everywhere," he managed to get out past his heart trying to climb up his throat.
"Where are we?" she as she shifted and pulled away from him. He could imagine her half sitting over him.
"My apartment," he said.
"It's dark," she said.
"I sometimes sleep strange hours, so I have heavy curtains. And it's the middle of the night," he said. Chat Noir should have made an entirely different kind of comment there but she sounded nervous and he wasn't Chat Noir at that moment, he was Adrien. She didn't know that but he still found himself falling into Adrien's speech patterns, not Chat's.
"Are you hurt?" she was still Ladybug. Whoever she was in the rest of her life, she was still herself. Shaking off the sleep to worry over someone else.
He sat up and held out his hands though she couldn't see him, "Purrfect, not a scratch."
"You've been doing alright without me?" she said it somewhere between a statement and a question.
"It's good to have you back," he told her which didn't really answer what she had said but he wasn't ready for that yet. If he pretended it away hard enough, maybe this could be simple.
They sat in the dark for a long silent moment filled with things he wasn't willing to admit. He hadn't been doing alright without her. He had been surviving without her but Akuma attacks left people dead these days. Paris's tourism had dropped off to almost nothing but those people who hoped to catch a bit of the action. The world, his world, was darker and more dangerous without her.
"Chat?" she finally said.
Her voice small and the blankets rustling and he was suddenly angry at himself for letting it hang in the air like that. He should have done more to reassure her. She didn't deserve to sound that upset. She had lost her father and had moved halfway around the world and it wasn't her fault. Hawkmoth and his Akuma were to blame, not her.
"I'm just glad to have you here, that's all that matters," he started but she cut him off.
"You never called," she said.
"Oh," he said.
"I left you everything. I thought you would. I thought maybe we could figure something out even over the distance, we could find a way to work together. I thought you would have called or sent an email or a tweet. You could have sent me a tweet," she had struggled her way off the bed. He felt the mattress shift under her weight.
"I never read it," he said.
It had been the battle after the fire. The last time he'd seen her. She had been quiet and angry. When it was over, she had watched the little white butterfly fly out of sight before turning to him. Her miracle stone was beeping but she'd taken both his hands and told him she wasn't coming back. She had been sad and angry. He had never heard her like that before. She had kissed him on the cheek and pressed a small white envelope into his hands.
"I think I'll miss you the most," she had said and then there was another beep and she kissed him again before leaving him alone.
She sighed and in the dark he didn't know where she was. He wanted to reach out and turn on the light but she had always been so protective of who she was. It felt wrong to turn the lights on without her permission so he sat in the dark and looked at where he thought she might be. He dropped his feet over the edge of the bed.
"I would have. I wanted to. I-" he sighed and tried to start over.
"Where are you?" she said and her hand hit his shoulder.
Somehow her fumbling around in the dark struck him as incredibly funny. Or maybe he was just nervous. He had to smother a laugh as he took her hand in both of his and she sat down beside him and sat so her shoulder touched his. He nudged her and she leaned back. It felt like an invitation so he wrapped his arm around her and she settled into him. His heart seemed to have forgotten how to beat properly and was skittering around inside his ribcage like it wanted to escape.
"I got home that day and it felt too big, too important to read when I was such a mess. I had gotten caught in that goo stuff before I had a chance to transform. I had thought I was the only one home, I left it on the table while I went to shower," his voice for sounded almost calm.
The story came out calm as well. Just a reporting of facts. There'd been a pile of his father's stuff on the same table and some helpful assistant had come along, gathered up everything and shredded it. They'd just taken out the garbage and gotten rid of everything.
"I thought maybe I could find the pieces, put it back together again like one of those CSI guys but there was too much," he said.
"That's ridiculous," she said.
"I know," he said, "I wish it had been one of those things that was funny in hindsight but I still don't really find it funny."
She was quiet but she'd grabbed hold of his hand as he told her the story. He could imagine them sitting there. If anyone walked in, they'd look like a couple who had just received some bad news. Letting his imagination out of its box was never a good idea where she was concerned. He was an only child, a lonely only child, he was very good at imagining things until they started to feel real. That was his excuse for leaning over and kissing the top of her head.
He didn't have a single explanation for why she tilted her face up and kissed him on the mouth.
It happened slowly. His mouth was against her hair and then she was shifting and for a moment he thought he had overstepped and ruined it but then her mouth brushed his. He started to say something, he had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth and he didn't get a chance to find out. The brush of lips could have been an accident but this was not.
She kissed him.
Gently and slowly. He pulled her in with that arm around her shoulder and she cuddled in. One of her hands came to rest on his chest. Not tentative but achingly gentle.
Then he did something wrong and she panicked and it all fell to pieces. She pushed back, her hand on his breastbone was stronger than he expected but he didn't shove him all the way off. Her fingers tightened in his shirt like a cartoon villain pulling someone in to punch them in the face. He wasn't entirely sure he would be surprised if she did punch him in the face.
"Oh," she gasped and dropped her head to his shoulder, "Oh. I'm sorry."
"You do not need to be sorry," he said and it came out more Chat Noir than he'd really intended. Flirty. Too flirty. She was untangling herself and pulling away, getting up again and backing away from him.
"I should go," she said.
"Wait," he said.
"No, that was a mistake and you and I know and I shouldn't and you should and I have to go," she babbled. That the very cool and very collected Ladybug rambled when she was nervous was endearing. He wanted to pull her in close again but that was obviously not going to happen.
"I need to show you something before you go. It's important and it isn't about that," he said in his best practiced professional voice. He sounded collected and together. Not at all like he could still feel her and was about to crawl out of his own skin.
"I need to transform," she said.
"Alright, then I'll show you my collection," he said.
"Of what?" she asked.
"Go find your Kwami and send Plagg back here. It's easier to show you than it is to try and explain," he said then he got up and went by memory into the bathroom to give her a little bit of privacy. He turned on the light and sat down on the edge of the tub. He put his head on his knees and took deep breaths until he started to feel like himself again.