The minute the words left her lips, she regretted it. Adrien just stared at her wordlessly, his mouth gaping like a fish's with his eyes so wide she worried they'd fall out. Marinette brought her hand up to nervously tuck her hair behind her ear, already shying, already coming up with an excuse, a reason to back out of the inquiry, a reason to get away from the situation that was increasingly making her want to die of embarrassment.
He'd just… He'd been so sweet, and he'd been there holding her and comforting her fears and she realized that he'd always been there this entire time. With or without the suit, he'd been there for her, and it just made her love him more, and oh, god now she was making a fool of herself even more than in their Collége days…Why can't you ever just stop, Marinette?
"I.. I-It's okay, Adrien, you… Just forget I said anything… I.. Yeah I should… I'm going to go, um… I…" Marinette stammered her excuses, already disentangling herself from him because of course she was practically in his lap already, and made to get up, but…
But she felt his hand on her wrist, and turned back around, looking at him with wide eyes of her own.
"Marinette," Adrien murmured, and Marinette gasped softly, never having heard him say her name quite like that before. Marinette let him gently draw her back down toward him, transfixed by the way his eyes seemed to have turned molten in their intensity. "My Lady, I have been waiting for years for you to ask me that." Marinette hesitated, hearing the all-too-familiar endearment, and Adrien's head tilted slightly in silent inquiry.
"Have… Have you been waiting to hear that from Ladybug or from Marinette?" She asked quietly, and she couldn't meet his gaze. She couldn't because if she saw a truth that she knew would be there, then-
"Both," Adrien replied simply, tilting her head up, making her look at him. "Marinette, you are Ladybug. You've been my everyday Ladybug since my first day of Collége, and you've been my Lady fighting beside me all these years…" His hand shifted, and he cupped her cheek, and that molten gaze turned gentle, his affection obvious. "I couldn't be happier that you're one and the same."
Marinette trembled against his hand, her heart beating so wildly in her chest that had he been transformed, she was sure Adrien would have heard it. He could probably hear it anyway, she thought, even as her eyes slid from his, down to his lips.
"S-so may I…?"
"If you don't, Purrincess, then I will," Adrien smirked, leaning slightly closer to her with a mischievous look in his eyes, though Marinette didn't see it. Instead, she was focused on his lips, and if she just moved that tiny bit closer…
She heard Adrien chuckle and blushed, but to his credit, he seemed to be staying still, waiting for her to make the move. This only resulted in her blushing more, but then she closed her eyes and-
And then she was kissing Adrien Agreste, and oh, he was kissing her back and oh, it was even better than her wildest dreams becauseit was real and he knew who she was and he was kissing her anyway.
Marinette could die happy.
After what felt like too little time, but what had obviously been enough because her lungs were screaming for air, they broke apart. Marinette felt that her cheeks were as flushed as she saw Adrien's to be, and her lips quirked right along with his as the two of them both stumbled headlong into laughter. Their relief bubbled up and over and they found one another blindly, clinging to one another and peppering each other with such small, chaste kisses that it felt like the brush of butterfly wings. But no butterfly could touch them here. There wasn't an Akuma for miles that could withstand the sheer joy radiating from the loft atop the Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie that day.
And no Akuma did.