Here's chapter two! Things are picking up now! A big thanks to Peregrxnans on Tumblr and Twitch for betaing both this and chapter one. Just think of all the typos you would have seen if not for her. To all the followers and favoriters and reviewers, thank you for showing such lovely support for this story! And of course, happy birthday to my darling friend Matchaball. Again, the lyrics at the beginning are from Raglan Road. Enjoy!

I don't own Miraculous Ladybug or the lyrics to Raglan Road.

I saw the danger and I passed

Along the enchanted way

And said let grief be a fallen leaf

At the dawning of the day

Marinette's hands tremble as she lifts the plastic off the dress form. How dangerous, she thinks, to release a whole universe into a small studio, but Alya wants to see the new dress and secretly, Marinette wants to, too. She sweeps the plastic away and feels the whoosh of planets blow her by, electrons skittering at her ankles. She doesn't know if other people feel that mysterious wave, but Alya, at least, rises to her feet as if the dress had beckoned to her.

"Wow," Alya mouths soundlessly, like the air is too scarce to support speech. Marinette understands; it's the dress. The dress has black holes that suck in colors and light and air, and there just isn't enough for you.

"Yeah, I know," Marinette whispers. It's not conceit. She knows - in the same way Alya knows, in the same way the other students whose steps stutter as they walk by know - this dress is something otherworldly. A full-length dress taken in from a tapestry of stars, white-beaded constellations, sheer galaxies with bright nuclei of skin, a cape like wings dyed violet-black with space. Marinette runs her hand down the dress form, her fingers catching on tulle and three days' worth of embroidery. She traces her favorite, a planet with an encircling ring that separates out into darkness.

"Wow," Alya says again, and Marinette nudges her in the ribs this time. Say something else, she means, but her throat is too clogged for words. Alya frowns and elbows her back, and Marinette returns that. They exchange elbows back and forth, piling on unspoken words, faster and faster, biting their lips, trying to hide the growing smiles that threaten to swallow their faces.

"Mari, this is-"

"So you like it? It's good?"

"It's more than good! It's-" Alya clenches her hands, at a loss for words.

"I know! I knooow!" Marinette half-whispers half-squeals and flails her fists against Alya's shoulder, her only other outlet if she doesn't want to burst eardrums with her triumphant scream. Still, she attracts people's attention, and the other students stare at them with expressions ranging from amused to annoyed. Alya drags them to a more secluded corner.

"You've seen it walk, right?" Alya asks, vibrating with anticipation for the details. "How does it wear?"

Marinette closes her eyes and still sees the bright spots twinkling behind her lids. "Like she's walking among stars."

It's one thing to see it on a dress form, but watching it on a model, watching it move, is like watching the universe turn, celestial bodies making their elliptical pilgrimages. She could hardly look, feeling like she had happened upon something secret, something sacred.

Planets and stars are named after gods for a reason.

Alya sighs just imagining it and shakes her head with wonder. "Talk about busting through your block."

Marinette huffs a laugh. She looks at the dress, each time feeling like the first time. Despite the literal days she poured into it, she barely knows it. Usually, she's acquainted with her clothes to the point of marriage, and after days of adding and editing, adding and editing, she wants nothing more than a divorce. But this dress she stares at for hours, and still she tastes the question on her tongue - who are you?

"It's all a blur. I don't feel like I did it. It almost made itself."

Alya rolls her eyes and flicks Marinette's nose. "Hey, don't be so modest. You made this, so own it." Marinette wants to correct her, but where would she begin? How does she explain without sounding crazy that sometimes making this dress was an out-of-body experience, that she would watch herself sew and think vaguely it wasn't her but an alien that looked like her at the machine? She can't, definitely not without sounding crazy, so she doesn't.

"Only six more to go, right?"

"Six more?" Marinette parrots as she gathers the plastic. "Oh, you mean the collection."

"Of course, the collection. This is for the collection, right?"

"I wasn't even thinking of it when I made this. I wasn't thinking at all." She pauses to stare at the dress before rolling it down the form and putting it on a hanger. "But it would make a good finale, a good showstopper."

"Mari." Alya takes the dress from her and brandishes it in all its glory. Marinette can't help how her eyes are drawn. "It'll turn heads."

Marinette laughs and takes it back, putting it in plastic and briefly wondering at the universe infinitely expanding inside. "Six dresses. Three weeks. It's not like they have to be as nice as this one. I could probably do it," she says. "If the ideas keeps coming."

She should have known better. Inspiration likes to flit from shoulder to shoulder; it's too quick to leave, too fickle to depend on.

"If the ideas keep coming," Marinette scoffs as she crumples her latest design and tosses it onto her bed. It rolls off the other side, and her bird-man leans over the edge to get it, his wings flapping erratically to balance him. It's three in the morning, but he insists on staying up with her, refuses to sleep if it won't be in her arms. At least he's made good use of his time, unlike her; he's built an impressive pyramid using all the ideas she's tossed aside. What started as a silly project is now beginning to look like a monument to her failure. He finally plucks up the ball and places it at the top of his pyramid. What a success! Now all they need is a parade and a truck-load of confetti, and they can all celebrate the return of her artist's block.

"Yay," Marinette mutters listlessly and mimes waving a tiny flag. Feeling just the slightest bit vindictive, she blows a raspberry at him, and he perks up at the noise and puckers his lips to mimic her. He doesn't recognize the petulance; he only sees the game in it. His nose scrunches as he tries and only succeeds in spitting on her pillow. Her pettiness fades with a soft snort; there's no point in picking a fight if the other person doesn't even know what a fight is. Instead, she goes to him and sweeps his bangs from his face, appreciating his cold skin after sitting in one place for too long.

Outside, the night sky is murky and woven with dark clouds. No one would see them if they went out for a moment.

"Want to go for a walk?"

It's their code for going up to the roof. The apartment doesn't have staircase access to the shingle-topped roof, so the trip itself is always an adventure. Or an embarrassing disaster waiting to happen, depending on who you ask. Soaring into the sky in the arms of an angel(?) is romantic in theory, but that only works if said angel can hold your weight. Her bird-man has floppy noodle arms which are great for hugs, but useless for any fanciful notions of being swept into the night.

Rather, they adopt something she calls the koala system. She wraps her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist like an odd koala, and he holds her as tight as he can. Then they leave the rest to fate, hoping that his flimsy wings will hold out long enough to pass the cover of her balcony and then the extra eight feet up to the edge of the roof.

As he sets her down on the roof, she can't help but think that his wings are hypocritical. They can't handle the extra baggage of her albeit gravity-prone body, but the moment he lets her go, he blows upward on the wind as if he's a feather. And he's no feather; Marinette knows from digging herself out from under him in the mornings.

It doesn't matter, she supposes, as he rides a gust up to dark burgundy clouds, releasing all the pent-up energy that he's gathered while sitting in a one-bedroom apartment all day. Even the possibility of falling three floors into the dumpster below is worth it to see him in his natural element. He spreads his wings to their full span and navigates spirals and dips, backlit by a waning half-moon. He's a show-off; she knows because he never wanders too far and he always looks back, searching for what she imagines is the crescent moon of her smile.

Marinette waves, not knowing if he can still see her when he's so high up. He rolls up into the clouds until she can't see him anymore, but she likes to imagine him dancing among the stars and kissing the moon before he eventually decides to come back down to her.

It's a funnier picture when she remembers he's wearing the cat boxers.

She laughs to herself and stares up at the hazy purple sky, the light pollution in Paris blotting out the stars. She wishes she could see them. Or rather, she wishes they would come to her, wishes they would drip down so she might cup them in her hands and drink inspiration directly from the source.

A heavy sigh slips past her lips, and when she closes her eyes, her mind travels the same well-worn paths: eight-pointed lights and swirls of clashing colors and the confirmation that she's dried up. She shrivels and finds deserts inside her where there should be oceans. God, she's so tired. "I don't know anymore," she whispers to herself, tasting the iron of desperation, a symptom to a disease she doesn't want to acknowledge.

She would be perfectly content curled up into herself, but her bird-man has different plans. He sails in and tackles her, flailing wings and all. Definitely not as light as a feather. She gags on bits of fluff and glares up at her assailant. He blows a raspberry at her, properly this time, and mirrors her glare. It's obvious in the flap of his wings and in the purse of his lips that he's upset she stopped paying attention to him.

"So spoiled," she mutters, before bringing his head down into a hug, lightly combing through the wild disarray of his hair. "So tell me," her throat hums against his temple, and she wonders if cutting out the middle-man of sound waves and ears might help him understand. "Have you ever had a heart-to-heart with a star? Do they have any words of wisdom for the poor fashion student?"

But of course, he doesn't understand. Instead, his hands wander to her pockets, no doubt looking for food. Marinette learned the hard way to bring snacks on these trips after one time he got hungry and swooped mid-dive straight into her bedroom. He fishes out the orange she brought for him and grins as he hands it to her to peel. Sometimes, she feels little more than a trove of food for him, supplier and prep all in one, but it's hard to say no when he looks at her with such bright imploring eyes.

"Wow, I'm such a sucker," she mumbles as she makes quick work of the orange and hands him the fruit. He chomps into it, paying no mind to its natural divisions, juice running down the corner of his mouth. She stares at the peel that she kept intact, a small achievement, and wonders at the petal skirt it makes. She sighs and balls up the peel like she would one of her designs. "What's wrong with me? Why is it so hard?" she says more to herself than him, but he cocks his head as if he's listening. "Just last week it was so easy. I was overflowing with ideas, and all I had to do was take my pick. Maybe I did too much too fast. Maybe I'm burnt out. What do you think?"

He wilts under her gaze, taking her sadness as his own. Shame flares up in her, shame that she would teach him sadness of all things. He offers her half of his orange, and she takes a slice before handing it back. She leans in, places a kiss on his cheek, and then blows a loud trumpet against his skin. He jolts up, and his eyes sparkle with surprise. And for the briefest of seconds, she thinks she sees something in him that she's never seen before. Warmth creasing the corner of his eyes, complex in the way his usual transparent happiness isn't. But it's gone before she can commit it to memory, and she wonders if it even happened at all.

He leans in, and she knows he's about to give a kiss. It's his solution to everything now; if he's bored, a kiss, if he's in trouble, a kiss, if he's happy, a kiss. She loves the affection, but she's careful to avoid direct contact to her lips. Sometimes in her quiet moments when she's not thinking of anything in particular, she can taste remnants of that first kiss, spacedust and asteroids and sunspots lingering on the corners. The taste is seductive where he isn't, a flavor that begs repeating. The memory thrums, reminds her of the drought inside her, reminds her that one sip can quench her parched throat. What does one little kiss hurt?

Here's your fallen star, says the alien in her head.

And so he leans in to kiss her, and she lets him.

He tastes nothing like stars and everything like citrus.

Marinette wonders why she ever thought designing was hard.

Making clothes is as easy as breathing. Her hands lay down cloth and rise with dresses, sewing and embroidery fluid and natural, and sometimes in moments between blinking, she doesn't see fingers so much as clacking needles and thread. Designs flow out as smoothly as the ink in her pen. She's so filled with ideas, a cup on the cusp of overflowing; inspiration is just a matter of dipping her hands into the cup and splattering on the page. How easy, she thinks. Why was this ever hard? she thinks.

Her life takes on a routine where she spends most of her time in the studio. When she leaves the apartment, she always makes sure to say "I'll be back." His eyes are too round and sad to say anything but. He'll hold tight onto her and mumble lonely sounds, but she still has to go, and he'll finally let go with a parting kiss. He gets the comfort of her lips, and she gets a rush, a euphoria that slips down her throat and fills her up just a little more.

And she forgets the slightest bit how sad his eyes are.

Marinette is working on the skirt of a dress when Nino wanders into her part of the studio.

"Food delivery," he announces, setting down a plastic bag with food. "Courtesy of Alya. She would have come, too, but she's in the middle of a paper."

"Okay. Just a..." She trails off as she stares at the dress, scanning the balance on both sides.

"No. No seconds or minutes or whatever you're going to say. Alya told me you skipped lunch." He takes a scrap of fabric, sticks her needle through it, and sits her down in a chair.

Marinette blinks and then laughs as he opens the Chinese take-out for her and places chopsticks in her hands. "Who needs parents when I have you two?"

Nino sits across from her and whips out his phone. He catches her raised brow and snorts. "Alya wants a video of you eating because she thinks you'll try to worm your way out of it."

Marinette huffs and grumbles about overprotective parents, but she plays along anyway. She waves to the camera when Nino gives her the signal. "Hi Mom! As you can see I'm doing the thing where you put food in your mouth and swallow." She takes a spoonful of rice, chews, and opens her mouth for the camera to see.

"Ew," Nino says flinching back. "You realize I'm seeing this in HD."

"In all its beautiful HD quality," she laughs. "By the way, I hope Nino is getting paid for his work. Otherwise, I might have to organize a union for him."

Nino turns the camera to himself. "I didn't tell her to say that, Chouchou."

"Is what he says!" Marinette shouts before he stops recording.

He leans over and musses her hair in retaliation. Marinette laughs and almost chokes on rice. "You, monsieur, are whipped."

"Says the girl who played matchmaker."

"What can I say? I have a good eye for these things." She munches thoughtfully on broccoli and follows Nino's line of sight to her dress. She smiles because he usually doesn't take interest in clothes, even when he tries. He's supportive, but he certainly doesn't find joy in talking details. "What do you think?"

His eyes soften as he takes in the dress in its entirety. "It's beautiful. You've really outdone yourself. But," he says as he stares at the lemon and orange appliques and blossoms growing up like vines into the torso. "Weren't you going with a space theme for the collection?"

Distantly, she recalls the bitter flavor of ground asteroids and the spicy sting of sparking galaxies, but it's overpowered with sweet oranges and sour lemons and honey blossoms and the cotton candy of bright spring colors. Once upon a time, she must have known what space tasted like, but that in itself feels like a myth. "Yes," she says slowly. "I guess I forgot. But isn't this dress wonderful? It popped into my head, and I couldn't not make it. Do you know what I mean?"

Marinette isn't sure if Alya would understand. She has her feet firmly planted in the ground, and she rarely follows flights of fancy, rarely lets whimsy guide her. Nino, though, looks like he understands as he stares blankly at the dress, not really looking at it, seeing another memory in it. "Yeah, I do," he says. "Like nothing matters but getting this one thing down as fast you can. Otherwise, it'll be gone before you know it, and you don't know if anything as great will come to you again."

"Yes," she breathes. "Exactly."

Nino shakes his head as if clearing his mind, as if he needs to forcefully bring himself back. "Yeah, I know. But you have your collection due in two weeks. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's crunch time, Mari. Can't get distracted like this."

Marinette disagrees. She's not being distracted. Yes, she's not working on the collection, but she's never been more focused, never seen things come together so effortlessly like clockwork. She wonders if he does know this exhilaration in creating for creation's sake because it's not something that you can simply let go. But she says none of this. She stuffs a piece of beef in her mouth and waits for the moment to pass.

Nino offers her a smile. "I'm not your dad, but I'm worried. Alya is, too. You've been so intense with all of this that you haven't been taking care of yourself. Collection aside, schedule some time for yourself."

Marinette looks at the dress and only now realizes how the edges of her sight are fuzzy. For a second, colors blur, and something cuts a line past her eyes, a red flash gone between blinks. She rubs her eyes. She hasn't had a decent night's sleep in a week.

"Yeah. Maybe you're right," Marinette says, closing her notebook. "I didn't realize I was so tired. Sorry. Being a bad host, but I think I'm going to skip out ahead of you." She slips out of the seat and pecks Nino on the cheek goodbye. He laughs and ruffles her head.

"Go to bed, Mari."

She salutes and makes her way out of the studio.

Marinette opens the door and expects the usual - lights on, the sound of the television blaring, her bird-man running up to her and greeting her with a kiss. Instead, she finds the apartment shrouded in darkness, the only light the setting sun peeking in through the kitchen blinds. It's completely silent, and her stomach bottoms out with the heaviest dread.

"Hello?" She says, the silence too uneasy to speak louder than a whisper. She circles the living room as if he might jump out to scare her and laugh that child's laugh when he manages to catch her by surprise. She pokes her head into the kitchen and the bathroom. "Hey! This isn't funny," she calls louder, so he might hear from any hiding spot he might be lurking in. She regrets that they never established a way to call for him besides hey and you. It had never mattered before. He had always been right next to her.

She opens the door to her bedroom, and it hits her like a crashing wave, emotions so strong that she doubles over and clings to the knob. She knows it's him, knows that he's the source of this deep heavy sadness that makes her throat raw and her eyes water. She knows he's in the walk-in closet; she feels it like the epicenter of an earthquake.

Marinette wades her way to the closet, flinching as wave after wave of emotions, thoughts, ideas, all not hers - distinctly not hers - bring her under again and again. A palette of blue bleeds into her sight, dark colors that run chills down her sides, reminding her of deepest depths of the ocean where only skeletons lie. She thinks of clothes, invisible, weight without meaning, vulnerability at its worst. He cries inside, and it's the very sound of hearts rending in two. She could make music with that sound, songs that people empty themselves to, songs that hollow them, and she should write it down - hurry! - while her ears are still ringing.

That thought - the absurdity of it, because she doesn't even have musical training, has never wanted to make music in her life - brings her to herself briefly. It's long enough for her to charge the last few meters to the closet door, and she throws it open.

Her chest pangs at how much he looks like the first time they met. He's hunched over his legs, face to his knees, his wings folded around him, the blanket he usually carries with him a crescent moon at his feet. His hands tremble, holding tightly onto the ring, the chain of which he somehow managed to claw off.

"Oh," Marinette breathes, and he whirls to her, eyes wide with fear and tears flowing down his cheeks. She has never seen him so heartbreakingly human. And for a second, she has that one traitorous thought like a hum in the back that if she kissed him now, she would be inspired for years to come. She scowls viciously and wrenches herself to clarity.

She pulls him into her arms. "What's wrong? No no. Don't cry. What's wrong?" He grips her tightly and cries harder, and she whispers the musical nonsense he loves, lullabies that she's learned from him after weeks of holding each other. His sobs lessen to hiccups, and she hums and coos at him. "Yes, yes. You're okay. You're okay."

She'll hold him as long as he needs her to, wrap him in the safe bubble he needs. She wonders if she did this to him, if she broke him like this, but then she hears the raucous calling of birds, distant and too faint while she had been fighting off his emotions. She would have ignored it if not for the sudden tapping of glass and his immediate flinch. She kisses his hair and pries away to look outside the closet. Out on her balcony is a flock of black birds, cawing incessantly. One pecks at the glass as if it wants in. She furrows her brow and starts to make her way over when she finds arms around her and her bird-man furiously shaking his head, afraid.

Don't go.

She runs a hand over his hair. "It's okay. I'll be back." But he refuses to let go, and she's reminded of their ritual when she leaves every day for the studio. She wonders if those words don't bring him comfort, if they remind him of loneliness instead. She turns and pulls the blanket over his head, runs her fingers along the edge until her hands meet his cheeks. With his nose bright red and his face flushed and the blanket framing him like a veil, he looks like a crying bride. "Hey," she says, quietly but firmly, imploring him to understand her tone if not the words. "Believe me. I'll only be gone a minute. Just wait for me."

He stares at her at length before he nods and curls into a corner with his blanket. Marinette smiles before leaving to see what's happening on the balcony. When she opens the door, the birds fall silent, and they all turn towards her. They're less like birds and more like shadows that have heard from a child what a bird is, hazy in the corner of her eyes and solid full-on. How eerie she would have found them a month ago, but there's something in the gleam of their eyes, that blank-page look that her bird-man came to her with. She stays wary, but she isn't afraid.

"Shoo," she shouts, waving her hands at them. They flap their wings but mostly stay put. She scowls and hates the possibility that she might have to get aggressive. But then she sees one of them eye the bag of seeds. She grabs it and reaches in, showing off the food inside. "You guys want this?" Their eyes follow her hand as she moves it side to side, and when she's satisfied that they're all interested, she tosses the seeds back in the bag and then throws the bag as far as she can, well into the territory of the next building's lawn. It spills into a big beautiful pile of sunflower seeds and safflower and millet, and all the birds dive for the food.

"Don't come back!" she calls after them and goes inside. She crawls in the closet and finds him curled on his side, his body a giant comma, waiting for her to complete the sentence. She lies down next to him and finds the opening to his face. He peers at her with large wide eyes, like he can hardly believe she's there.

"Hi," she says. "I'm home."

He throws off the blanket and tackles her, burying his face into her stomach. Relief comes off of him in waves, and she thinks of the colors of a bright sky and the smell of a summer breeze. She eases into the feeling, his catharsis her own, lazily running her hands along his wings.

Yes, she thinks. This is the usual she so loves.

Marinette wakes up to fingers running down her cheeks. She peers through sleepy eyes at a face so soft with fondness her breath hitches. They lie side by side in the closet, face to face in his nest. Their hands are intertwined between them, which doesn't seem terribly odd until Marinette remembers her hands are bare. She feels a fluttering of warmth, like a chick perched in the gap between their palms.

She wonders how long he's been able to do that. Since when did he stop absorbing her heat and start producing his own?

He leans forward and nuzzles his nose against hers, and he almost lures her back to sleep.

And then he speaks.

"Marinette," he says, her name a sigh on his lips, a sleeping word he drops in the world of the waking. And she, wide awake, catches it, at a loss of what to do with this whispered heartbeat.

A/N: Mysterious things at work. I hope you enjoyed in this chapter and look forward to the next one. If you like this or have constructive criticism, please tell me all about it in a review! I'd love to know that it's a person behind the screen and not some automatic robot! (Very clever to that one anon, apersonnotabot)