She sat on the floor and stared up at the shelves.
He'd caught her looking curiously at the rest of his apartment but she didn't ask any questions about that. She hadn't said anything at all since he'd come out of the bathroom to find her sitting on the edge of his bed, Ladybug again. He'd taken his cue from her. An unusually heavy silence between them. He pushed open the reinforced door and had let her walk inside without any ceremony or explanation.
"I had this sense that something was wrong. I thought I was feeling the after-effects of the sleeping sand but it wasn't, it was this. Can you feel them all the time?" she whispered like they were in a church. No, a mausoleum.
"The door helps," he said, "When I used to keep them under my bed, it was a lot a worse."
"It's like they're all whispering but it's too quiet to hear," she said.
"But they don't have anything nice to say," he said, "Trust me, I know."
She just shook her head and stared up at them in awe for another few moments before the questions started. She wanted to know what he had tried, what had worked, what hadn't. She asked for the stories behind the labels and some he had forgotten entirely. The names or descriptions could have been written by someone else. Others were vivid memories he hadn't been able to shake even when he tried. It had been five years. Five years and sometimes as many as one a week. Other times there would be only one in three months. But even with the down times, it was a lot of butterflies.
She stood up, all in one fluid motion and crossed the room to him. More by instinct or habit, he flashed her a grin. He was leaning against the door frame, one foot crossed over the other and his arms tight over his chest. He hated opening the door at all and he hated that he was forcing all this on her.
She caught his face, one palm on either cheek and pulled him in. She didn't kiss him. He was going to be teetering on the possibility of a second kiss for the rest of his life. Every time she got close he was going to remember it. If this was any indication, he was going to remember it vividly. They were nose to nose and his heart was trying for an escape again.
"I am so sorry for this. I should have known. It was unforgivable to leave it on you like this," she said.
"I forgive-" he started but she put a hand over his mouth.
"You shouldn't. I don't deserve it," she said, "But I'll put it right. I can purify them. We can release them. I'll make this up to you."
"I know," he said and then because he needed to break the tension and she was right there so he kissed the end of her nose. She laughed and jumped away from him. He slouched a little more, tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, "I can think of a few ways you could make it up to me."
"Do you ruin every serious moment in your entire life?" she asked.
"All nine of them," he said.
She laughed and picked up a jar off the nearest shelf. The drone of wings got louder and the smile fell off her face. Each jar was too heavy for its contents. He knew that but watching someone else discover it made his skin crawl all over again. She held them in her hands, hefting one and frowning at it before trying another. It was like the air inside was weighted down by all the evil that had been packed into each one of them.
He imagined Hawkmoth as some sort of fountain of hate. Even when he wasn't filling butterflies were bad intentions and sending them out to terrorize the city, he probably carried that same aura of unease around him that each Akuma did. Some people were just miserable. Hawkmoth had to be one of them.
Ladybug was probably the exact opposite. She was one of those people who walked into a convenience store to buy some milk and when she walked out everyone was smiling. He tried to imagine her face without the mask but something about the magic made the details swim. He could describe her face in details but he couldn't ever remember it properly when she wasn't there. Still, whatever she looked like, people had to smile at her.
"Are you staring at me?" she asked.
"Do you want me to help? Do you need anything?" he ignored the question because he had been. He had been staring and trying to imagine her in her day to day life and generally doing what his grandmother would have called mooning.
"I need more space than this. And carry this one," she said handing him the jar.
They moved back out to the living room. He'd never decorated. An interior designer had decorated. It was all very tasteful and beautiful and the art on the wall might have been real and was almost definitely painted by someone important. But the space was as personal as a hotel room. Sitting there, on his beige sofa, as Chat Noir, opening jars and watching Ladybug felt a little surreal.
She did seven of them before she wavered and dropped down beside him. Her miracle stone beeped at her and she yawned. He glanced up at the ceiling where seven little white butterflies fluttered around the lamp.
"It's going to take forever at this pace," she said.
"Have you ever done more than one at a time?" he asked.
The miracle stone beeped again and she shook her head.
"Then seven is pawsitively impressive," she punched him and there was another beep. He got a little closer, bumped his shoulder against hers, "So it takes some time. Something about rabbits and turtles and winning races," he said with a shrug and a wave of his hand.
They sat together for another moment. She had two beeps left and he had a brief fantasy of her just sitting there beside him until she changed back. Instead she popped up off the sofa and bounced across the room. She paused with her hand on the door to his bedroom. That caused his imagination to throw some more fantasies that he pushed down before any hints of them showed on his face.
"If I gave you my phone number, would you call me?" she asked.
"Can I send you snap chats?" he asked.
She laughed and disappeared into his room before the transformation could slip. He came to lean against that door frame. She was in his room. It was a stupid thing to obsess over. Just four walls, just a person but his mind kept getting caught on it. She was in his room.
"Number?" she said from the other side. She was herself again and though her voice was exactly the same, somehow he could tell. Maybe it wasn't exactly the same, maybe the magic changed it just a little bit. Maybe it was all in his head.
He rhymed off his phone number. It was unlisted because Adrien Agreste was famous enough that stalkers had happened. That any one cared enough about Adrien to go out and find his phone number and follow him home always shocked him and left him feeling rattled. He never quite understood that he was famous even as his face got plastered across billboards and magazines.
The magic made it impossible to recognize her but it also made it possible for him to escape his life and be Chat Noir. Some days it felt like a good trade off. Others, not so much.
On the dining room table, his shoulder bag beeped. He scampered over to it and pulled out the phone. A bunch of messages from Liam trying to convince him to go to some party, an email about an appointment for the Dior shoot next week, Alya's blog update about the Akuma attack - she had set his phone to receive them automatically and he could not figure out how to turn the alerts off - and then there, in the mess of notifications, a text message from an unidentified number.
"Hi, LB," and nothing else.
"Hi back, C," he sent.
He heard it arrive on the other side of the bedroom door. A little chime.
"I'll text you, tomorrow, I've got a thing after work but after, if it's alright with you, I'll come back and do some more of them. I'll see you then?" she called through the door.
"Until tomorrow, My Lady," he said. She knocked once on the door instead of smacking him in the arm and he feigned a pained noise as though he had felt it. He heard the window and waited until she slid it shut again. The fire escape they had climbed up to get in rattled and clanked as she let herself down the side of the building. He was going to get an angry note from at least one of his neighbours about 'improper use of emergency equipment' or something but he didn't care.
He transformed and fell back into the mess of blankets that still smelled like her. Plagg made a derisive noise somewhere above him but he didn't care about that either. He was full of an emotion it took him a long time to identify as hope.
He'd never felt truly hopeless but still, this swelling sureness that things were turning around was surprising. He flipped open his phone and the message was still there. It had arrived at 4:38 am. She had sat on the edge of his bed and kissed him. She had left him with seven butterflies to shoo outside and seven fewer Akuma to wear on his nerves.
"Today is a good day, Plagg," he said.
Plagg didn't answer him but he was already falling asleep with a half smile on his face.
AN: I have an internet connection and a huge lead on this story, expect frequent updates in the near future.