There is one thing on which they can both agree after a half-dozen conversations, sandwiched between his modelling shoots, Hawkmoth's increasingly... sadistic akuma attacks – as if he's trying to hurt, rather than win – and the classes that drag on in an interminable slog.

She's being stupid.

Is stupid.

Her fears are stupid; pure folly and a whirlwind of chaotic and fruitless anxieties that have been inspired by something so juvenile, so insipid as words on a page – words a computer screen about a children's comicbook character and the thousand things that have never, and will never, happen.

Of course he says that none of those things is true, other than the fact that it would be really rather hard for her to have a relationship with a fictional character, he adds with a laugh, mouth folded up into the echo of a smile, but he must actually know that she's being a silly child, afraid of stories, a stupid little girl who's cowering and mewling in the dark and trying to conceal herself from imagined monsters by hiding under her covers, withdrawing from the world.

She was just being a child.

When once he visited her bakery balcony only on rare occasions, he's now a fixture at her apartment, coming to her each night to find her at her computer or in her bed, but she's never actually there. She's in her own head and can't get out when she's beyond tears. She tries to laugh off the icy-pain and hold him at bay, tell him that she's fine and silly and he should just leave her alone.

He should just leave her alone!

It's a shatter that neither of them understand. Her stitch-work is lopsided, loops bowing, fingers stiff. With her back to him, she can still see – still visualize his face as he lounges on her chaise, flat on his stomach with that fucking stupid belt-tail coiling around his feet and flicking about in the air.

He's saying something about the upcoming Mecha Strike movie, blathering on because Adrien's lived in awkward silences, voiceless, and it's obvious that he needs to rip out everything inside of himself and toss it out just so that the world doesn't feel quite so empty. It's like he's trying to prove that there's still something within him to be given - that it hasn't all been squeezed out by pressure applied from a thousand directions so that he's nothing more than an empty tube of modelling concealer, used up and ready to be thrown away. In a sense, he's accommodating her by trying to fill the air so that her thoughts don't press and bulge and fracture her skull, and she breaks regardless.

That's when she tells him why. The deaths were one things, the stories another, and the hatred, the notion that people could hate him and twist her up into something ugly – think that she could every betray him or- or-

She loves him, and she's crying and screaming: He should just leave her alone!

He kisses her then, without thought and without asking, and at first it's just flesh and the heat of his body as lips move over hers. Then, it's warm enough to make her forget the ice-blue eyes and the ruined future and the hopeless present that's a circling death spiral, a downward cycle of the same thing day after day and no hope of escape.

What is she doing? What does she want? What is even happening anymore?

It's the first time that they kissed since the rooftop, the first time they acknowledge that moment. Heated though it is, the press of his chapped lips is like a glacier, consuming her and wiping away everything, every fear and every piece of herself that's left to resist, but the torpid interplay of flesh while he drags her down to the plush and well-worn cushions of her chaise is to her heart what Novocain is to pulling her wisdom teeth because her mouth was getting all jammed up. Pain will come later.

Thick muscles along his back flex underneath her roving hands that move over every inch, familiar because they've always been intimate even as it's alien, and she squirms under the heated press of his body. Her fingernails dig into the soft flesh, awash with fuzz, at the base of his neck as she gasps into his kiss, opening herself, feet hooking around his calves, but Adrien's there as much as Chat, and both of them – all of him – are deference and reserve, pulling back.

A flurry of blinks wipe away the fire and the heat that for just that one moment make it impossible to see ice, and perhaps it's the way he presses her close to himself, letting her bear his weight for a moment, or the way his shimmering blonde hair catches the starlight like a halo, before he gentles her into place atop his chest that lets her stop frowning.

"It's not stupid, even if it was about the stories," he says, claws to her hair, collecting the strands into random bundles and then letting them fall loose. "Anything that you feel is real. It doesn't define who you are, but it matters."

"Of course it's stupid, and of course it's about the stories." Possibly because she needs him to believe in her, to give her the same stable ground that had always allowed her to stand tall, she wants him to say yes even though she needs him to say no. "That's what started all of this!"

"Do you really believe that?" he asks and why can't he believe her? Why does it hurt when he looks at her that way? As if she's not worthy of being trusted. Even through the suit, he feels the blow of her fist against his chest, wincing.

"Everything was fine until I wrote that stupid piece of garbage." While the oscillating warble of her voice lances him like a rapier-lunge, fine lines of concentration take the place of the pain that she should see. "I should have just deleted it before anyone else took up that idiotic premise and started-"

Started to malign him. Kill him. Break him down into pieces and use him not as a character, or view him as the person, the sweet, giving, living, dying man he was but as a tool.

Just like his father.

Tikki, who had been watching from Marinette's desk, feigning disinterest, flits behind the sofa.

"You know, I've never had a cavity?" he says, expression cracking and shattering with playfulness, still holding her hand that she only now realizes he had been cradling with his claws, keeping her from lashing out not out of a desire to protect himself, but because he wouldn't want her to bruise her knuckles.

"What?"

"A cavity." His head cocks while he shifts so that his back is to her computer desk and her whole world is found in the piping along his chest; she has no choice but to settle in place on the soft cushions that yield to her just like he does when she cleaves to him, even though she wants him to leave so badly. To not be here. To not see. To stay. To kiss her again. "You know: a toothache or getting something drilled. Good oral hygiene and low-sugar diet. No carbonated drinks."

"Uh- do you want a cavity?" she mumbles from his chest, his arms loose around the small of her back.

"The thing about cavities is that they're not the problem; they're the result of problems – eating and drinking things that are bad for you. Not taking care of yourself properly."

"So, what? It's my fault for not taking care of myself?" Anger is so easy, and it's good to see him hurt when she's one of the few things that can hurt him. It means that she's not weak, but all that power wriggles and squirms around so that it's pointing inward, hateful, loathing. God, what is she?!

"No!" Though it's precisely what she wanted and feared, she can't help clawing at the thick leather of his costume, clinging on, when he tries to pull away. "It's not your fault- it's... it's just that there are things we didn't see. Things we should be doing now that we know."

"But it is my fault." And that's the rub. The reality. "If Ladybug gets all the praise, Ladybug gets all the blame. It's always all on me. I just let things get away from me all the time."

"We don't blame someone for having a broken leg." There's a self-indulgent shiver as his hands trail up her spine, feather-light through her billowing tee-shirt, a contrast to to the constricting tightness of everything else. "We don't blame an akuma victim for being manipulated by Hawkmoth!"

"But I'm not being manipulated. It's not someone else doing this. It's me. I'm choosing to get bent out of shape over – over stories."

"The stories just opened up something." His claw-tip is sharp against her temple as he strokes the soft indention behind her eye. "It forced us to- to confront something. And just because it's inside of your head, doesn't mean that it's not real, and it doesn't mean that it's something that you're responsible for. It's not your fault. You've done nothing wrong, and I love you. You matter, just for being who you are."

Even now that they've unveiled so much of themselves to one another, he's still capable of surprising her, and that's simultaneously the most horrifying and blessed reality of relationships: you think that you know a person, that there's something stable, and then for good or ill, he completely redefines her world through some display of once-concealed insight or desire. It's terrifying. How he can upend and overturn her world, like he does day after day.

Could any story adequately capture him? Do him justice?

"You're... actually really good at this," she breathes into his chest.

"What?" he scoffs. "You mean thinking?"

"Thinking about this kind of thing." There's no need for elaboration; he's reading her like one of her stupid, shitty pieces of fan fiction. Trite and obvious and so pedestrian, especially the one that granted her one glimmering moment of internet fame before she was eclipsed by the heat and fire and spite of all her children. He knows, but he's trying to hide from her again. "Are- are you alright?"

Will they ever stop trying to hide? Take their own advice?

Because he doesn't want to answer – that's the real reason – and because he worries about her getting a crick in her neck and strives to protect her even now – that's also a genuine reason, but a safe one – he scoops her up and carries her to the wide queen-sized bed in the corner of her studio apartment. Normally, she slept like a mouse in torpor, languid and oozing, unable to shake the grip of sleep and exhaustion that settled into her bones hour after hour as she lay, thinking and thinking and swirling without end until she couldn't fear any more and passed out. Awakening to her alarm clock, she always find her bed-sheets disheveled, her skin clammy with sweat, body, heart, and brain fidgety – agitated already.

When they're laying together on her bed, his wild mane askew and billowing around his head as she rests with her forearms to his chest, she asks again – the real question: How does he know?

Chat Noir and Adrien alike have always lied to her, to everyone, in their own ways, and now that she sees the boy, the man, and the facades peeling away, she knows that he's on the verge of lying again.

Both of them have to be strong for each other. Because that's the truth they've embraced – the reality that all of them has to be thrown out to the Parisian wolves, a public that eats them alive with gossip and rumour, speculations and an utter lack of discernment or care save for image, he is strong for her. He does the most courageous and gallant thing that she's ever seen from him.

He lets himself be weak.

Sometimes, you need to see that others are weak, to know not that there are people out there who've made it through the storm, but are there, weathering it with you, just as terrified by the creeping shadows and the savage lightning strikes or resounding thunder-cracks as you are. Someone to shudder in the dark.

He had troubles when he was around 18, his responsibilities as Chat Noir and the blistering schedule of actives in his civilian life conspiring to rob him of the will to do anything more than survive, endure, stumbling in the mire, feet carried by momentum and routine rather than will. Things piled up to the point that he wanted help and asked the only person who might possibly arrange it.

Nathalie tried to convince his father to allow him to see a therapist, but think of the company's reputation! Adrien spiraled worse and "did some really stupid things."

That is when she interrupts.

"What?" she asks into his chest, and there's no Ladybug courage there, no reciprocation .

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does, Kitty." Eyes and mask alike are strangely rough when she cups his cheek, expecting creaseless mystic fabric and finding something that scrapes her fingers. "You matter – everything about you matters to me, but that doesn't mean you have to talk about it, though."

"Thanks, My Lady." A kiss finds her palm. "Nathalie was – she wasn't happy about that, and she told me- told me that she'd make sure that everything was okay. He fired her after that. Must have had security remove her."

In a way, he's been alone too; she's abandoned him to civilian life and the merciless furor of the citizenry and fans alike.

No more secrets. If this whatever it was uncovered the truth, then let it unveil everything.

She tells him about Chat Blanc and the dangers of them being together, the white world and endless ocean that had risen up to subsume everything in glacial-calm madness.

"Our love destroyed the world," she says, still holding on to his cheeks, fingers dimpling tender skin, wounding they're so tight now. The heels of her palms rest on his angular chin to half-conceal the grimace that's pain, and that's her fault – all the pressure she's been exerting with her life; not her hands.

Variations in the pitch of his purr that had sent all-but impalpable tingles through her torso as they lay chest-to-chest, softness to softness because he's so gentle, garble from pained to fearful, always comforting. Clawtips run the expanse of her back, catching on the bony spurs of her vertebrae and curving around the expanding and contracting wings of her shoulder blades before finding purchase on her hips, and it's too soft. Tenderness, his presence, makes the fear worse because he's here and real and that only means that it's still possible for him to be ripped away, but it's the only thing that even offers to gentle the shards of glass out of her throat, hands, and heart.

How can she love him and hate him, be comforted and pained, need him to leave and stay, all at once?

"I can understand that... and him," he whispers into her palm.

"O-oh?" Stupid. Fumbled. Why did he have to confirm it?

"Yeah."

As she thinks of him drowned, and burst, blood pouring from a million different gaping wounds, slow deaths, necrotizing tissue and burnt flesh, fat rendered and stinking like charred meat, she tries to convince herself that he doesn't mean it.

Don't say it.

"It killed you."

His voice is so distant, like someone calling to her from beyond a cave entrance, the sound reverberating and resounding off the walls until someone else entirely reached her.

"That's the only world that matters."

The truly horrifying thing is just how little that whimpering cry, couched in the airy almost dismissively nonchalant tone, shocks her

Probably because she feels the same way.

She's not far-gone enough to know that's not healthy.

But as his lips find hers, capturing, claiming and wiping away everything ugly, inside and out, for a few moments of non-existence when there's only him, she is far-gone enough not to care.