Adrien waited for what felt like hours after Marinette had turned out the lights to open the skylight above her bed, wanting to be sure that he wouldn't startle her and cause a scene; he was certain that showing up in the middle of the night as Cat Noir would come as a shock to her, and he didn't want to cause her any undue stress in her current state of childbearing.
With his sharpened eyesight, Cat could make out her form on the mattress, nestled amongst the pink pillows and blankets; she was curled up, asleep, her swollen belly straining the purple sateen fabric of the nightie she wore. Her dark hair fanned out in mussed waves over her pillowcase, creating a blue-black halo around her head that, paired with the serene expression etched onto her face and the damp, glimmering trails on her cheeks left behind by her tears, made her appear as nothing less than a goddess to Adrien.
She seemed just as far along in pregnancy as Ladybug was the last time Adrien had seen her. He scanned her body up and down as he looked down from his perch, searching for any kind of telltale sign that Marinette Dupain-Cheng sometimes moonlit as the spotted superheroine, but there was none. In fact, she looked nothing like Ladybug while so deep in sleep; she only looked like Marinette, his Marinette, the love of Adrien's life.
He wanted to hold her, if only for a little while; if his plan to reveal his true identity to her ended badly, he at least wanted to touch her one last time.
Unable to help himself, Cat slowly lowered himself down into Marinette's bed as carefully as he could, sliding in behind his sleeping love to pull her backside flush against his front, his gloved fingers slipping along the silky material of her night dress as they found purchase on her hip. She made a noise in her sleep and shifted slightly, pushing herself back against his suit. She felt just as he remembered; warm, soft, curvy in all the right places, her body dipping and swelling everywhere that his hands fit perfectly. He cocooned her in his arms, burying his nose in the locks of hair that pooled around her neck and shoulder; the familiar fragrance of her strawberry shampoo mixed with her own vanilla essence sent a tingle throughout his body, arrowing straight to his groin.
God, how he had missed that scent. Involuntarily, he ground himself against her rear, desperate to line every inch of himself with her.
"Adrien," she moaned. The sound of his name caused him to go rigid with fear, worried that she had figured out his identity, until he realized that she was still asleep.
Is she dreaming of me? Adrien wondered. She sighed again in sleep and pushed back against his crotch; he stiffened from the friction.
"Don't leave me, Adrien," she murmured. "Please stay. Don't leave me."
She choked on a sob and Adrien squeezed her tighter to him, pressing his cheek against her own. He kissed the wet streaks that lingered there, tasting the salt on his lips.
"I'm not going anywhere," he promised, his low voice a quiet whisper that rumbled against her jaw.
Still lost somewhere in a dreamworld, Marinette's face scrunched in pain. "But, Chloe said..."
He shushed her. Inching his face forward, he brought a finger to her chin to tip her mouth towards his, her shoulder turning into him; he kissed her chastely. Her eyelids fluttered; her glazed eyes seemed to look at him only briefly before closing again, not really registering what she may or may not have seen in the dark.
"Is this a dream?" she mumbled sleepily.
He kissed her again and she made a noise of contentment. He murmured against the shell of her ear: "If this is a dream, don't wake me up."
"Adrien?" she whimpered, more cognizant this time as she recognized his voice, her own voice thick with half-sleep; her eyebrows furrowed but her eyes remained closed. "Is it really you?"
"I'm here."
Adrien carefully turned her onto her back, guiding her gently, allowing him better access to her face. He trailed a line of kisses from her forehead to her lips, pressing his own against her pout.
"Oh, Adrien." She kissed him back, her lips clumsy in her sleepy, emotional state. "I missed you. I love you."
Adrien cupped her face in his hand, careful to mind his claws. "I love you, too, Marinette."
His heart felt ready to burst at hearing her confession and expressing his own. He had loved Marinette and only Marinette for so long. After what he had done to both her and Ladybug, he felt doomed to live out the rest of his days alone, but maybe– just maybe– Marinette would truly forgive him and they'd be able to be together. Forever.
They could be a family.
She continued to kiss him, her eyes closed, speaking between liplocks. "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you... that I was pregnant… I was going to tell you… I thought that you'd be so angry with me… that you'd hate me…"
"Shhh," he shushed her again, trailing a flat palm down to Marinette's bulging abdomen to lightly massage the taut skin. He took his chance to pull away and remove his Cat Noir suit with a slit down the middle, not unlike what he had done during his rendezvous with Ladybug all those months ago; it would be regenerated like new the next time he transformed, anyway.
Adrien shimmied out of the skin-tight material completely, except for his masque and ears, before returning to hold Marinette in his embrace, shivering in pleasure at the contact of skin on skin. The moment was so perfect, and he wanted her so badly; Adrien didn't want to ruin it yet with the full revelation of his identity.
"I love you, Marinette. I love you. Only you. You could never do anything to make me hate you."
He kissed her deeply, dancing his tongue over and inside her mouth, and she whimpered, squirming beneath him as he moved to support himself directly on top of her, mindful of her belly. The silk of her nightie rode up her thighs to reveal that she wasn't wearing any underwear, and Adrien couldn't help but press his bare fingers to the glistening flesh there as the kiss became more heated; she jolted at the sensation.
"Even if… even though… it's not yours?" she managed between breaths.
Adrien pressed a long, meaningful kiss to her lips before answering. "None of that matters now. I just want to be with you. If you'll have me."
Of course she would have him; she would never have anyone else.
"Love me, Adrien," she pleaded as she placed her hand over his where it rested at the apex of her thighs to guide his fingers, emboldened by Adrien's declarations of love and devotion; he didn't need to be told twice.
With almost too much force– due to his eagerness– he reached up and yanked her nightie straps down over her shoulders, revealing her breasts. Even in the black pitch of the room, he could see them fully in their perfection thanks to his Cat masque; they were so familiar, so enticing, round and pale and topped with delicious cherry nipples. They were larger from the changes happening to her body as part of her pregnancy, and the thought only served to fuel the hunger within Adrien; he needed to be inside her soon, or else he was going to go insane.
He moved his head down to her chest, taking a hardened nipple into his mouth as he returned his fingers to her sex; he pushed a finger inside of her entrance, eliciting a gasp from Marinette, who arched her back beneath him to try to get more from him. Once he was sure that she was wet enough, he withdrew his finger and replaced it with his cock, moving his hips forward until only the crown was sheathed inside of her tight warmth.
"More," Marinette pleaded sleepily, her fingertips drawing up and down his back, feeling every ripple of muscle; maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but the way Adrien was touching her was divine, every inch of her insides hyper aware and sensitive at the way he was stretching her. Maybe it had just been so long that she had forgotten how good it felt.
She pulled him down to her, bringing his face closer to kiss him. He had to curve his back to avoid pressing against her stomach.
He inched further inside of her; Marinette mewled in response.
"I need you." Her tone was desperate. "I missed you so much. Adrien, please. Make love to me."
Despite his lover's passionate pleas, Adrien was still concerned about loving her while pregnant.
"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered.
She shook her head, almost violently. "You won't," she breathed. "The only way you could hurt me now is if you leave again."
Her voice broke on the last three words, and Adrien swallowed the rising sadness with his mouth on hers. "I'm never leaving again. I promise. As long as you swear you'll have me…"
He couldn't finish his thought as he pushed his hips forward, sliding into his love to the hilt, causing them both to moan and grip each other tightly.
As Adrien began to thrust he wanted nothing more than to make it last, but his extended dry spell, coupled with the emotions swirling through him at drowning in Marinette's love, proved to be too much; when Marinette dug her nails into his shoulder blades and shattered beneath him in pleasure, he followed soon after, allowing himself to spill inside of her with a series of uncoordinated jerks and groans ripped from his throat from the force of his orgasm. He allowed his damp forehead to drop to her collarbone as he recovered himself, pressing his lips to her decolletage and being extra careful to hold himself aloft so as not to put his weight on her.
As Marinette came down from her high, aided by her lover's gentle kisses, she trailed her fingers lazily along his jawline, still unable to believe that he was real; she felt the familiar fine stubble there, before dragging the pads of her fingers up along his cheeks to his forehead, feeling the ridge of an oddly familiar scar above his eyebrow, although she couldn't remember Adrien ever having a scar there. She continued over the contours of his masque, tangling into the soft roots of his hair, feeling his cat ears–
Wait, a masque? Ears?
Marinette brought her fingers back to his face as she paused the kiss, tapping them along the edges of the leathery material that was firmly in place around his eyes. With both hands against his shoulders, Marinette pushed her lover away from her face as her eyes snapped open, breaking their liplock and creating a space between them; she squinted as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, analyzing the features of his face that she could see. She gasped upon recognizing him as none other than her nefariously flirty, crime-fighting partner. Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach at the realization.
"Cat Noir?" she shrieked in disbelief.
Cat chuckled nervously. "In the… erm, flesh."
Marinette's mouth moved up and down like a marionette's, struggling to put voice to her frantic thoughts. "What are you– I thought you were– what the hell are you doing here?"
"I needed to talk to you. It's important."
Marinette scrambled to get out from under him, scooting back on the bed until she was sitting with her spine flat against the headboard; she winced at the aftershocks that still pulsed between her legs from their lovemaking, the wetness still leaking out of her and staining the sheets. "Well, you haven't done any talking!"
Tears welled in Marinette's eyes from the shock of such a deception from the one person left in her life whom she had foolishly believed she could trust with all of her heart and soul: her partner, the father of her unborn child. She remembered the way her body had reacted to him only minutes earlier, the words that had fallen with wanton abandon from her lips in the midst of mutual passion, and felt the burning shame course through her veins. She had been tricked in the most cruel way possible.
"I thought that you were someone else," she whispered. "How could you take advantage of me like that? How could you?"
Cat reached for Marinette, but she shirked from his touch.
"I wasn't trying to deceive you. I'm in love with you, Marinette," he confessed at last. "I love you so much that it hurts. I couldn't stand it any longer. And after I saw you with Luka tonight, I knew that I had to tell you the truth once and for all–"
Marinette shook her head violently. "Stop it. You don't love me, you love Ladybug. You took advantage of me… you pretended to be someone else…"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Plagg–"
"This is all wrong," Marinette whimpered mostly to herself, clutching her head in her hands; she hadn't felt so confused and violated since Witchkraft's curse. "This wasn't supposed to happen. No. No. Not again. Please, not again."
She whipped her face up to glare at him. "I am going to kill you."
"Wait, what do you mean by 'not again?'" Adrien questioned, but before Marinette could elaborate a deafening boom rumbled nearby, shaking the room around them, causing a handful of picture frames and other knick-knacks to crash to the floor.
Cat Noir's head snapped up towards the skylight above Marinette's bed. "No time to talk now."
Another boom, and Cat's senses picked up on an impending threat approaching– and fast.
"Look out!"
No sooner had he spoken the words than the entire roof to Marinette's room suddenly caved in with a deafening crash, bits of concrete and other masonry debris raining down around them; Adrien quickly moved to cover Marinette with his body, shielding her as much as he could, grunting in pain as various rubble made contact with his bare back.
Before the dust could settle, he felt Marinette pulled away from him, screaming all the way. He fumbled for her as dust choked his lungs, but she was already gone; her voice disappeared into the night, travelling away from him until he could no longer hear her. Adrien jumped up on achy legs and hurried to the remains of the skylight above what used to be her bed, climbing up onto the roof in all of his dusty, naked glory.
"Marinette?"
No response. Somewhere down on the street below, a car alarm wailed.
"Marinette!" he cried out again, to no avail.
His vision suddenly blurred, and he heard a voice in his head that wasn't his own. A woman's voice.
"Well, well, well. Poor little kitty has lost his plaything."
Adrien braced himself in case of a surprise attack. "W-who are you?"
"You know very well who I am, Cat Noir. Or should I call you by your real name, Adrien Agreste?"
Adrien clenched his fists and growled; a trickle of blood dropped from his hairline into his eye. "How do you know my name?"
"Oh, I know everything about you, doll," the sickly sweet voice sang. "Your father was Gabriel Agreste, otherwise known as the villain Hawk Moth. Your mother was Emilie Agreste. You still live at Agreste Manor. You possess the Cat Miraculous… you're in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng… and you're the father of Ladybug's unborn child."
"You…" he swallowed hard with the realization that there was only one explanation for the telepathic intrusion in his mind. "You have the Butterfly Miraculous."
"Aren't we a smart cookie?"
"Am I being akumatized? If so, stop toying with me and fucking get on with it."
"I'm not akumatizing you, sweet boy. I'm summoning you."
Adrien blinked. "Summoning me?"
"Of course. You want your precious Marinette back, don't you, Adrikins? You'll have to come and get her."
Adrikins. There was only one person who ever called him that: Chloe Bourgeois. He could almost hear her smirk through her tone.
"Why did you take Marinette? What do you want with me? You're after my Miraculous, aren't you?"
"Hush, now, kitty cat. All in good time. If you want answers, come to the top floor of the Le Grand Paris Hotel tonight at midnight. Be sure to come alone… although, I have the feeling that you'll have no choice in the matter, since your partner Ladybug is currently… incapicitated."
Before Adrien could respond, the fog in his brain seemed to dissipate all at once, leaving him dizzy yet lucid once again.
In a fit of frustrated rage, he leapt down into the ruined remains of Marinette's bedroom and yanked the Cat Miraculous off of his finger; he transformed back into his civilian clothes, allowing Plagg to fly free, then punched the nearest wall to him that was still standing. "Damn it!"
The black cat kwami whistled low and long. "Wow, what the hell was that all about?"
"Chloe has the Butterfly Miraculous." Adrien rasped. "She took Marinette. We have to go after her."
"Wait, wait, wait, slow down. Shouldn't we come up with a plan first?"
"There's no time for that," Adrien growled, nursing his sore knuckles in the palm of his un-punched hand. "Chloe is the new Hawk Moth and she has Marinette. We need to get to her before that bitch hurts her, or worse."
He thought of Marinette's unborn baby, slumbering unawares inside of her body, and felt a new sense of dread wash over him. If anything happened to either Marinette or the child, he'd never be able to live with himself.
"I'm beat," Plagg whined, wiping his forehead with the back of a paw for dramatic emphasis. "I understand the need for urgency, Adrien, but you just transformed back. I need a break to recover! And a snack. Actually, some Camembert would really hit the spot right now."
Adrien was about to argue his point further when the pair was interrupted; a noise like the squeak of a mouse, almost inaudible to the human ear, sounded from the corner of Marinette's room. Simultaneously, human and demigod both turned to see a tiny red creature crawl out from the remnants of the door to Marinette's bathroom, pulling itself on little legs as it coughed up a miniscule amount of dust from miniature lungs.
Before Adrien could register what he was seeing, Plagg zoomed forward with wide eyes, towards the creature.
"Tikki! Tikki, are you alright?" he croaked, the fear in his voice evident that he was worried for the surprise newcomer's wellbeing.
"I'm alright." The black-spotted creature wheezed. "Just a little shaken up."
Plagg hooked both arms under her shoulders and pulled her up to float with him, supporting her with an arm around his neck. "Tikki, why aren't you with Mar- erm, Ladybug?"
The creature called Tikki looked fearfully from Plagg to Adrien and back again, wondering just how much she could say; her timid, wary looks only served to make Adrien even more suspicious.
"She asked for some space for herself tonight. I was napping in the plant on the windowsill in the bathroom when the roof came down." Tikki's lower lip trembled. "Where is she? Is she… ?"
"She was taken."
Tikki's expression fell and she seemed ready to cry. "Oh, I knew that I shouldn't have left her alone, I had such a bad feeling…"
Adrien raised an eyebrow. "Plagg, who is this? Another kwami?"
Plagg looked to Tikki, as if asking for permission for something, and Tikki gave her friend a wordless nod that he seemed to understand.
The black cat kwami sighed, before looking at his human companion with the most seriously grave look that Adrien could ever remember seeing. "Adrien, I think it's about time… that I told you everything."
A/N: Woof. I apologize for the delay. Since last fall I've accepted an awesome job offer, moved across the country, got engaged, and I'm buying a house. Definitely haven't had time to write! But I forced myself to write a bit during quarantine. Hoping to wrap this up soon. Thank you as always for the reviews!