There's another TV ad that has people recognising his face on the streets these last two weeks, and Cat Noir isn't as anonymous as he once might've been. The number of places where Adrien Agreste can hope to believably hide is limited, but the side of the rooftop tower cast in some shadow from the city lights at least renders him fairly invisible lest someone happens to be looking.
It is, moreover, conceivably accessible from the house with a bit of suicidal climbing, if anyone should. But it's after midnight, it's Saturday, and people out and about at this hour will be inebriated, cheerful, preoccupied with friends.
Mum used to take him up here, because he never tired of the view so different through just a couple of stories of elevation. The rooftops, chimneys, the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the Montmartre crowned with the Sacre Coeur were so much more than the walls and windows across the street from his room. He used to dream of the day he'd be allowed to come here on his own.
The view has lost some of its novelty after years of running across those rooftops in a superhero's boots, but Adrien is in no heart to consider that. All those half-cooked plans about finding out where his father hid the keys in the days before Plagg had entered his life, and now he's finally here and it's just because his room had finally become fully unbearable.
He's in half a mind to tell Plagg to go eat cheese and leave him alone in this latest degradation, but Plagg has seen him at his most pathetic already. So when Cat Noir drops his transformation and leaves Adrien Agreste slumped against the meagre wall, he doesn't even try to salvage any last shred of dignity.
You're no child, that is what Father would say. Sixteen years old, he should know how to handle his feelings better than this. Particularly in Paris, particularly with its resident terrorist using feelings to turn its citizens into his pawns. Plagg's presence at his shoulder is a safety precaution; he can take the ring should it come to it, he can take it to Ladybug. This is ridiculous. As ridiculous as Father indubitably would say that Adrien's feelings are, but Adrien has done his research. Crying is palliative. More than being a physical sign of hurt, it releases hormones that reduce distress and alleviate pain both physical and psychological.
He's alone for the first time since nine this morning, barring fifteen minutes for a change in costume between the shoot in Giverny and the birthday celebration of Jean-Paul Marant that Father had neglected to inform Nathalie that Adrien was to represent at. God knows how the man had gotten wind of that from halfway across the globe, but wind had come, a piano lesson cancelled at the last minute with time for homework penned in after lunch tomorrow.
Mister Marant's birthday isn't even today, but his party Father remembered.
The tears spilling down Adrien's cheeks are acid, but crying is an instinctual way to regulate your emotions. His father might think they're infantile and undignified and humiliating, but his father is wrong. Adrien knows that, intellectually, but the intellectual anger is a only a pitiful varnish over the hurt of a stupid teenage boy who had dared hope for some worthless ritual that everyone else got. It is stupid, and he isn't a little kid, and as he draws the first breath shaking from a repressed bawl he is irrationally aware that this entire thing is pathetic.
He hears the whimper he makes as his chest heaves and more tears are falling, and vaguely wonders at this disconnect between his body and his feelings and his mind. Even in situations where there are no others to signal your distress to so that comfort can be given, crying is self-soothing. Hurt and disappointment and stress hormones are wrung out of his body with every tear, and Adrien embraces that as he swallows snot and sobs.
Plagg hasn't tried to console him, and Adrien is so preoccupied with handling this collapse that he doesn't even realise until the feather-weight on his shoulder suddenly phases out and into the stone at his back. It's all the warning he gets before a second later sees Ladybug landing beside him.
Absurdly, his first thought is to wonder why she isn't in bed. It's one in the morning, it's six hours since they battled an akuma that hadn't had the dignity to wait until after the dinner to crash the party. It had been a spot of sunshine in Adrien's otherwise disappointing day. He shouldn't be looking forward to Hawkmoth's attacks, but Ladybug was, well. Ladybug, the love of his life, his best friend, his reliable partner, his Lady.
Ladybug, who lit up his days and had been the best gift he could hope to receive. Who had left the entire debacle in an uncharacteristic rotten mood, and Adrien's good spirits had plummeted when he teased her about it and got an explanation that only the most petty and most pitiful would take personally.
Ladybug, standing next to him with a worried frown as he is sitting on the rooftop of his home and snivelling into the knees of his designer suit.
"What happened?"
"Nothing important," he wipes his cheeks, certain at least that Ladybug is nice enough to not tell people what an ugly crier he is later.
She crouches down and puts a hand on his shoulder.
"It seems like it was important to you."
"My dad forgot my birthday."
Saying it out loud is catharsis in all the grating, tearing humiliation.
"He's out of town and the only thing he's done was to e-mail his assistant about something else."
No card, no call, no perfunctory present. Nathalie had wished him a happy birthday at breakfast. His bodyguard had slipped him a bar of cheap, absolutely contraband, highly treasured chocolate. There had been a looming flower arrangement delivered in ChloƩ's name, a box of expensive candy from Kagami and her mother. Messages from his friends during light checks in Monet's garden.
No word from his father, except to tell Nathalie to send Adrien off to someone else's birthday celebration.
"Oh, Adrien," says Ladybug, and the sympathy in her face is nearly enough to make him start crying again, "that's horrible!"
And then he does cry again, because every single thing about this situation is horrible. It's horrible that his father cares so little about him, it's horrible that Adrien cares so much about it, it's horrible that he's seventeen and crying like a little boy over a disappointing birthday and it's horrible that he's doing it in front of the Hero of Paris who doesn't even know that Adrien's biggest dream is that she'll one day like him as much as he likes her.
That last bit is not going so great right now, but being pathetic in front of Ladybug isn't so scary.
It is, he softly realises, a comfort. Because he's cried in front of Ladybug before, hasn't he? And Ladybug has never sneered or scowled or held his shoulder just too hard. And Ladybug knows what it's like to cry too, because she's never tried to hide her tears in front of Cat Noir.
Ladybug doesn't think it's pathetic to cry when others can see it, and something comes loose as he understands it. Something heavy falls away, and into the hurt flows a relief, and the familiar heart-running reminder of how he loves her.
"I know!" he sobs, and lets the hand slip up to cover his eyes. "I know that it is. Even if he's super busy, and even if it's stupid to be upset about it. None of my friends have parents who'd forget their birthdays, or just not care."
Ladybug is silent, and he's equal parts comforted and dismayed that she doesn't try to contradict him. How many times has she met his father? How cruel is Gabriel Agreste's reputation for even the hero of Paris to think that he is as cold as they say he is?
There was a time when his father wasn't like that, and he weeps a little over that, too.
"I'm sorry," she eventually says.
"It's okay. It's just been a really long day, and I was supposed to have the evening free and then I didn't, and I kept waiting to hear from my dad and thought maybe he'd sent something after all, that maybe it had just been delayed. But then I came home and there was nothing, and he didn't as much as text me. I couldn't take my phone to the party I was at, and when I got it back it turns out my friend Nino had been trying to get a hold me for hours. I think he might have been planning a surprise party - and then if he did he'd waste all that time and effort for nothing because my dad sent me off elsewhere. And now I feel so bad for Nino, too."
"I'm sure your friends understand," says Ladybug, "they know what your dad's like, right? I bet they won't be upset with you for something that's out of your hands."
"I know," Adrien agrees, "I just wish it wasn't like this. That I could be a better friend who could do stuff for them too."
"Just because you're not free to spend a lot of time with people doesn't mean you're a bad friend."
Ladybug's smile is small and very warm; it is one he knows intimately, from a thousand days of adrenaline and destruction by her side.
"Yeah, I know," he says, and he's not at all surprise to find that he's smiling back. Half in joy at her affection, half in secret mirth because Ladybug doesn't know that she and him are the living proof of what she just said.
"It really stinks about your dad, though. Did you get to celebrate your birthday at all?"
"The catering at the party was first class," he shrugs, and leans back on his hands to look out over the city.
"But that wasn't for you," Ladybug frowns.
"It's okay." It isn't. Everything about it still aches, but it's the dull, familiar sadness about things that are long gone. It's been his companion for years already, and the tears did their job in washing out the burning acid in disappointed hopes. And his lady is salve cooling the hurt with her sweet presence. She looks pensive, and Adrien is torn between reassuring her and staying silent in the selfish wish that she'll keep him company just a little bit longer.
"I'll be fine," he finally tells her, but Ladybug doesn't look convinced.
"It's not about being fine," she finally says, sounding almost annoyed. "Nobody should have their birthday ignored!" she climbs to her feet, and stares him down in a familiar resolve. "You wait here for a bit, okay? I'll be right back!"
Her yo-yo is out and over the rooftops to the east before he has the time to blink. She leaves a quivering hollow in his belly, something light and fluttering in place of his heart so recently leaden. Adrien stares out ahead and closes his eyes, lingers in how helplessly all of him loves her.
"Well, that was a turn I didn't see coming," Plagg remarks somewhere next to him.
"She's so wonderful," Adrien agrees, breathing deeply. When no sounds of exasperated disgust comes, he turns around to find his kwami looking in the direction his Lady disappeared.
"She is something, all right."
"Don't be a sourpuss."
"Yeah, yeah," Plagg drawls, "I know you've got some cheese on you. I'm gonna need it if I'll have to put up with all that yearning."
"You don't have to stay, you know," Adrien peaceably tells him as he pulls out the plastic-wrapped camembert.
"And you'll get down from here how? Enjoy your party. I'll wait around."
A party of two people is more like a date depending on definition, but Adrien doesn't have it in him to care about semantics. His Lady has once again saved him, from the most insignificant of things this time. His father's silence fades in the radiance of Ladybug's presence, of Ladybug's care and of Ladybug's promise of something. His father is a man lost in his own grief, chained to the dusty absence of his wife. His Lady is a nucleus of power, who makes things and makes things happen, sparking change and reactions every step she treads and pulling Adrien along. He loves her, loves her, loves her. Every moment in her company is a gift, even if she doesn't love him the same way.
She returns with a picnic basket which she sets down with little ceremony before sitting herself down in front of him.
"It's a friend's birthday today," she says quickly, rooting through the basket, "so we were gonna throw him a party."
And she'd been pulled away from the preparations because of a man torn into rage about an haute couture designer who did not care for vintage wine, and a supervillain set on stealing their miraculous.
What a coincidence! It's my birthday too, Adrien had told her, wearing a mask and a grin that maybe didn't help the sincerity of the claim. Her reply had been a flat stare, and she'd left with a dry "bye, Kitty" over her shoulder and didn't seen the way his ears had drooped as he realised that she didn't believe him.
He'd spent the evening in small talk and self-pity. Smiling at famous people and wallowing in the knowledge that Ladybug was just another person who didn't care at all that it was his birthday, hating himself for being bitter about something that wasn't her fault.
"What a coincidence," he says as she lights a tea candle which she drops into a blue glass jar.
"For sure," Ladybug says and pulls the basket closer "and then he couldn't make it after all."
"What happened?" the shame over his previous resentment evaporates as he realises that his sympathy is sincere.
She shrugs. "Something came up. It wasn't his fault, and we know he'd be there if only he could. And hey," she grins and navigates a telling box out of the basket, "leftover cake!"
She sets it down in front of him and pulls up the lid, revealing a looming wedge of sponge cake. It slightly battered but still standing, the decorations only a bit displaced.
"It's got a passion-fruit filling," she proudly says as she hands him a fork.
"That's my favourite!"
"What a coincidence!" her grin stretches into an almost goofy expression that is weirdly familiar and wildly unlike her.
Even after Jean-Paul Marant's first-class catering and (alleged and hotly debated) preference for third-rate Italian wine, someone else's uneaten birthday cake is a feast when it is from her, when she fetched it for him.
It really is a very good cake, on par with anything served at the party, or any of the many, many other parties Adrien has had to attend in his father's name. The night is mild around them, the city lights once again beautiful. His father's disregard feels small now, unimportant next to all the things that are good after all.
Ladybug has has pulled up her knees to rest her chin, eyes set on something beside his shoulder. The candle throws blue highlights onto the metallic skin of her miraculous suit; she looks more supernatural than usual, even curled up and lost in thought like any teenage girl.
Of course, the girl he loves is just a teenage girl, like Ladybug's partner is just a teenage boy. Who would ever believe that Cat Noir would be crying like a toddler because his birthday didn't go the way he wanted?
Would Ladybug?
Adrien doesn't often dwell on his future, not like his friends do. He'll be Cat Noir, he'll do whatever his father wants him to, probably. He's never cared much, but his only hope is one that is bright and desperate: That a day will come when Ladybug will know him, know all that he is. And that he, in turn, will get to know all of the girl peeking out behind the superhero's mask.
"What are you thinking about?"
Ladybug's question startles him out of the beginnings of a daydream, pulls him back into a present that is almost as good.
You, My Lady.
"The future. Isn't that what birthdays are about?"
"I think they're about parties and presents, for my part."
"The only time I had a real birthday party was the first time Nino was akumatised."
She blinks. "For real?"
"Yeah. And you know, he was akumatised because he wanted to throw me a party and then he did it. Can you believe it? Being akumatised and then only throwing a party!"
"He also sent people's parents into space," Ladybug reminds him. Before he has the time to feel ashamed, her face scrunches into a dissatisfied frown, "if only he'd at least gotten to your dad. He was the one who deserved it."
The once instinctual defence of his father's behaviour rests on Adrien's tongue.
"This is pretty nice too, though," he says instead. "The cake is amazing."
"I'm glad to hear that." Her nose is once more buried in her knees, but he can tell her smile from the crinkling of the eyes behind her mask. "Everyone should have nice things on their birthdays."
"It's too bad about your friend."
"Yeah. But I have a feeling it worked out okay for him after all." She unfolds and reaches into the basket once more.
The present she hands him has been lovingly wrapped, with a tag with his name.
"It's just something I had laying around," she says shyly, as Adrien tries to grab hold of his feelings, to find words appropriate for emotions that can't be manifested in language.
Nothing truly tangible can be known between Cat Noir and Ladybug. Any object that can be recognised might spark a suspicion that might send them down a path they're not allowed, and losing Plagg, losing her, losing everything that is Cat Noir's life is not something Adrien is willing to risk. Flowers are found in millions in the city, in any girl's room, wilting and thrown away within days, and that's the only gifts he is allowed to give her. He's never asked anything in return, but oh - he has dreamed. Fantasies about friendship bracelets, jewelry, pretty stones she picked up like a child on the shore. Trinkets to be slipped into his pockets like Marinette's good luck charm, carried every day as a reminder of his Lady's affection.
Maybe it's not quite the same when she doesn't know who it is she's giving it too, but that hardly makes it less meaningful. Someone giving presents to boys she comes across crying late at night would absolutely give presents to her superhero partner if she could. Adrien hasn't waited for it, hasn't expected it, has only hoped for something that might happen years and years. Yet here it is, and he can't ever tell her what it means to him.
"Thank you," he finally manages. He keeps his eyes on the gift in his hands, afraid of what she might see if he meets her eyes.
He is careful, so careful, as he peels the wrapping paper apart and finds a beanie in chunky knit.
"Don't you think the colour will go well with your eyes?"
I think the colour would go well with the last real birthday present Father got me, he thinks, because it looks deceptively the same - it could have been made to be a matching set. The yarn is a lot thicker, but the weave so loose that it's soft and floppy. He puts it on and tries to muster a grin. "What do you think?"
He knows that he's seeing the girl behind the mask in that moment, because never once has Ladybug in battle looked so off-guard, so lost, so utterly lacking solid ground. Up here, he isn't Cat Noir and this isn't a battle they're losing. He's just Adrien, weak and useless like any other civilian, but Ladybug takes five seconds to visibly struggle for words, flustered and near timid in a way she has never been in front of Cat Noir.
She is a superhero who saves the city daily and he's just a B-list celebrity she found crying on the roof of his home, yet there is a moment, hanging between two endless breaths, in which they're both equally misplaced.
"Perfect. You're perfect. I mean, it's perfect! The perfect fit. Expert accessory for the suit." In the span of three seconds the girl is gone, replaced with the superhero who crosses her arms and nods confidently.
"I'll keep that in mind," Adrien promises as he reaches up to let his fingers brush over the silky yarn once more, "might even run that by my dad. I'm sure he'd approve."
Ladybug makes a face. "You know, tonight I couldn't care less about what Gabriel Agreste thinks about my work."
"You made this?"
It's probably insulting, the speed with which he yanks it off to inspect it. Adrien is no stranger to the craft of teenage girls; ever since he started regularly appearing in fashion shots at twelve, there's been the occasional gift handed over at events, during fan meets, sent from his fanclub. Twenty-eight scarves, eight different hats, three sweaters, one pair of socks. None of them passing clearance for public wear, of course, and all have quietly disappeared from his closet throughout the years. It wasn't for Adrien to decide to keep them, but he's treasured the effort. He's traced the uneven stitches, the patterns where the yarn in contrast colour had been pulled too tight, the casting-offs creating unintentional loops and wholes. It was weird to have girls who had never even met him care so much. But nice, too.
Ladybug's beanie is an expert work. The weave is effortlessly even, only close inspection shows where the threads are fastened. But no tags, no evidence of mass production. Unmistakably a personal work.
Ladybug's cheeks have taken on a visible blush. "It's just a hobby," she mutters.
"You're amazing," Adrien says with a sincerity that probably betrays everything he was hoping to conceal, but Ladybug only blushes deeper.
"I wish I could know when your birthday is," he confesses after a beat of silence, "I know that you can't tell anyone, but I'd really like to give you something too."
"Yeah? What'd that be?"
"I don't know. Nothing like this, for sure - I'm not really good at making stuff. What would you like?"
"Something from the heart," she answers without missing a beat, "something that tells me what you feel. The important thing about a gift isn't what it is, it is the person giving it."
"Do you like flowers?"
"I love flowers!"
He can't stop the smile any more than a river can stop its flow.
It's not exactly quiet up here, but the bustle of the city is distant and dimmed in the late hour. Ladybug has settled from her previous anxiety. She looks comfortable, relaxed and in no hurry to leave. Moments like these are what he treasures the most on patrol - when nothing happens, when she's just happy and carefree like he wants her to always be. Glad for his company, smiling at his jokes. He gets to see more of her on those days - the girl wearing Ladybug's costume.
Ladybug is amazing, and no matter how often he tells her it will never be enough.
"You know," he says softly, and she turns her head to meet his eyes, "I don't know why you decided to stop here for my sake. Or to bring me cake and, and all this. But Ladybug - this is the best birthday present I could've gotten. Just getting to be here with you."
And there she is again: beneath the mask covering half of Ladybug's face is a girl who looks upset and amazed in turns, her eyes so wide and her mouth halfway open until she finally says, "Adrien, of course I would do that for you!"
And it's two in the morning, he's twelve metres above ground without his suit for protection, the hero of Paris has just given him a hand-made birthday present, and none of this is real, nothing about this will count tomorrow morning, and Adrien finds that his heart is as bare as his hands and the skin beneath his clothing.
"But I'm just a guy!"
"No you're not!" she almost shouts the words at him and looks as surprised as he is at the ferocity. When she continues, it is at a lower volume but with no less intensity. "Adrien, you saved me twenty-six thousand-whatever times! You're brave and you're kind and you're amazing and of course I'd do this for you if your jerk of a dad won't!"
Of all things to forget. Of all things for her to remember. My Lady, I'm always there next to you, but that is the one thing he's not allowed to say. Why would she remember Aspik when Viperion has won them battle after battle? But she does, and she transforms the twenty-five thousand nine hundred and thirteen failures into something that is noble and proud.
Cat Noir is a ghost who disappears when there's no use for him, and Adrien Agreste is just some rich daddy's boy whose dad forgot his birthday. There is nothing he could give her that could measure up to all the ways she has changed his life, and so he offers her the only thing that might mean something, no matter how little, no matter how sad.
"I love you."
When he hears his own words, he realises that he never has said them before, never told her as plainly. He knows he has made his feelings more than clear as Cat Noir, and she knows because she has answered every confession with the same reminder: her heart belongs to someone else. He stopped telling her ages ago; it only upset her to disappoint him, and Adrien has had his share of experiences in telling people 'I'm sorry'. He's answered a number of fan letters like that, and it always stings because he knows that on the other side is someone who will hurt for it. It was so much worse when it was Marinette, even if he was Cat Noir at the time, even if she'd seemed fine the next day in school. Maybe a confession from just another fan will be easier on Ladybug's heart than those of her superhero partner.
"I'm sorry, I know this is ridiculous. And that you probably won't care for it from me. But if it's - if it can - I just want you to know how much I mean it, that you're amazing. You're so strong and brave and nice to everyone, and you do so much for Paris, and you've saved so many people, and stand up to Hawkmoth. I really admire that, I always have, but - more than that. The reason I tried so hard as Aspik was you. Because I love you, Ladybug, for real."
Ladybug, he distantly notes, must not be used to getting confessions from a lot of boys. Shock is painted plainly on her, and Adrien turns to stare out over the city of love, giving her time to find the words to tell him no.
"It wasn't just something I had lying around."
She is very quiet and she's not looking at him.
"It's not true that I'm amazing, I do lots of stupid things, and sometimes I'm selfish and short-sighted. When I chose you for Sass, I might have been thinking more about myself than about what was smart. I made that beanie for you, but I had no excuse to give it to you before now. And I picked you for Sass first because I really, really wanted for you to be the right person."
The unsaid things shining through the cracks are like sun through leaves on bright summer days, casting a play of shadow and brilliance over this midnight moment.
"Oh," is the only thing he says, because no daydream has been wild enough to imagine that this would be her answer.
Ladybug's head ducks further between her shoulders, into her knees. "It's no use like this. My life is absolutely crazy and I can't be dating anyone, it doesn't work. But if I could, then I'd - Adrien, I - "
Her fists clench, her eyes squeeze shut, but breath she draws as her back straightens is controlled. The quiver in her voice is gone when she turns to him, looks him in the eye, knees down and arms at her side.
"Adrien, I love you."
Her eyes are unyielding for a second, but as he opens his mouth to say something, her face falls and she shakes her head.
"But we can't be together. If anyone knew, then Hawkmoth would come after you for sure. He's done it before, you know - attacked our friends and families. And, I mean. Stupid. Who'd want to be with someone whose name they don't even know."
"I do," he stupidly says, and Ladybug's face warms in a small and smitten smile.
She's never looked at Cat Noir like that, and she's never been closer, never further out of reach. Maybe Cat Noir would be acceptable, as anonymous and unknown as Ladybug herself is.
But Ladybug loves the boy who was crying on a rooftop in the middle of the night.
Ladybug thinks that that boy is brave and kind and amazing, and maybe - maybe the reason she chose him for Sass that time was because there is some of Cat Noir in Adrien Agreste after all. Twenty-five thousand nine hundred and thirteen failures in his eyes became twenty-five thousand nine hundred and thirteen acts of bravery in hers, and one day, one day Hawkmoth must be gone, one day he can tell her, one day for sure he will really meet the elusive girl under Ladybug's skin.
The girl who scoots over and lays her head on his shoulder. White, happy, purified butterflies flitter against his bones at the feeling of her body pressed against his, and the night is brilliant and the world is beautiful and Adrien Agreste is loved by the most miraculous girl in the world.
"Nothing would make me happier," she says.
"I'm really happy with just this," he replies, and nudges his hand against the one in her lap. "Is this okay?"
"Just for tonight," she says as her fingers fit snugly into his, "I really can't be seeing anyone as - well, as me. And nobody can know who I am when I'm not Ladybug."
She never had the chance to answer that time Aspik told her that he's also Cat Noir. How easy it would be to say those words; how little it would take to tell her that she knows him unlike anyone else. How dangerously fragile the wall keeping everything from falling apart. Her suit is latex-thin over her skin, and he can trace her nails and the bump of her knuckles, the swell of her thumb root. The girl behind the mask isn't allowed to come out, and Adrien isn't allowed to pull up the veil of his own secrets.
Joy and despair and bright and bitter love are swelling in his veins. She can't, he can't, it's spectacularly stupid to even consider the hope for something that can't ever be allowed to exist. Oh, if Adrien ever thought he missed Ladybug when he was alone then that was nothing next to this - to have her resting within his reach, and to ache for her when she holding his hand because they both know that this can never be.
But feeling her suit against his own naked hand is intoxicating, ambrosial like the knowledge that Ladybug will comfort him when he cries, that Ladybug loves him even when he's being pathetic and thin-skinned and having feelings about things he's too old to be upset about.
The only time he touched her bare skin was the first time he told her he loved her, the first time she told him there was someone else.
"Just for tonight," he says, loved and warm in Ladybug's acceptance, "would it be okay if I kissed you?"
She reaches out and cups his face, the suit metal-cold and smooth against his skin. And before he has time to dwell she has leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his, and she is warm and soft and moist and Adrien has never before known another person's body like this. Only hers, only twice, neither of which he remembers. Her mouth isn't hidden by a magic transformation; it is the only place where he can reach the girl behind the mask. He leans into it with greed, pushes closer and deeper into her and he could moan as she opens for him, slips her bottom lip between his to suck his top between hers. The taste of her spittle, the pillow of her cheek against his nose, her hands in his hair and his awkwardly braced against her shoulders.
The universe has eclipsed an eternity when he pulls back to heave for air, still so close that it's her warm breath that he pulls in. An eon has turned, and Adrien is seventeen and no longer a little boy after he kissed this girl who can't be his. The skin of her cheek is warm against his fingers, her lips bare and yearning, her brimming eyes violently send him back to a day four years ago. The first time he saw her cry, and it was only the second time they met, and that was when he saw that the true strength of his lady had nothing to do with kwami magic and superpowers.
whoever she is beneath that mask-
"I love you," he says instead, to the only person who can truly see him when he is right there.
The tears spill from those blue, blue eyes, and she leans in to let him touch the her who nobody else is allowed to meet.
