Stress was really a natural part of life for a teen like Marinette; everyone was forced to negotiate the complex realities of his or her sexuality, position in the world, relationships to adults who were slowly becoming peers, newfound responsibilities, and a thousand other myriad frustrations.

Being the super-heroine saviour of Paris on top of all that only amplified the majority of the issues, particularly those related to Marinette's multiple crises of a sexual nature as she reached eighteen.

There was only so many times that one could watch Chat Noir's perky booty bouncing and flexing as he packed on the pounds and hit his growth spurt, see an imperious Ryuuko slick blood from her lips after a successful blow landed, and pin an akuma to the ground by staring at it like it was a piece of filth that existed only to be crushed under her boot-heel, or ogle as Alya's boobs bloody undulated in that skin-tight body stocking she called a costume.

Oh, and all the responsibilities of saving Paris.

Those were things too.

In addition to all the marvelously sculpted things on display to Lusty- Ladybug on a daily basis.

Not to mention those ubiquitous billboards featuring Adrien Agreste, gazing out at the city with hooded eyes as he lounged about on chaises, beds, and beaches, shirtless torso gleaming with sweat in the artfully applied lighting, and sporting nothing more than a speedo or leather pants that he had to have been poured into.

Fortunately, as something of a tactical genius, Marinette had figured out a foolproof plan after reading some steamy fan fiction that hit the spot – or, rather, helped her along in her efforts to hit the spot repeatedly with increasingly violent strokes.

Friends with benefits.

Ideal for the girl on the go who, after the collapse of her relationship with Adrien - uh, Luka, even though she still called him Adrien half the time – was well-aware that actual boyfriends or girlfriends were out of the question.

One gentleman whom she knew was trustworthy, considerate, invested, incapable of falling in love with her because he was obsessed with, well, the other her, and, as a plus, kind of beefy and bootylicious, stood out in her mind.

Given Chat Noir's response one night when she slipped the proposition into their conversation over pastries and anime, FWB erotic fan fiction had not led her astray, and, tonight, she was very glad for it.

Because, hot damn, did she need to make good use of her Kitty and her kitty after having finally crashed and fumbled her way through exams in her design courses at Uni, and then spent the better part of the day wrangling an akumatized professor. Apparently, he had surrendered to supervillainy while buried in the stack of papers on his desk. It was simply inhumane, correcting all of his students' incomprehensible and slapdash essays, rife with conceptual errors and grammatical and syntactical issues that should have been identified by prior teachers in kindergarten.

So, tucked up in bed and wearing nothing but a pair of pink panties and a skin-tight black tank top that was showing off just how eager the thought of a pretty kitty visiting her this evening had already made her, she texted Chat's civilian burner phone.

Fashionette: u busy 2nite? The Dork: Doth the Princess have need of a gentlecat's assistance this eventide? Fashionette: im [Hot Emoji] dtf?

His reply took an interminable length of time to compose, the small ellipses and textbox flickering on and off for nearly five minutes. Laying under her soft but still scratchy sheets just to keep herself out of full sight of the kwami – little voyeurs who were enthralled by the sight of "the master's super special screaming hugs" as they were – she stroked a hand over her belly, teasing her flinching abdominal muscles and slipping a finger just under the waistband of her panties. A fine strip of trimmed pubic hair parted, and she bit down in the inside of her cheek, as a few faint touches to her lips had her quivering.

God, she was empty and needed someone to just... eat away all her stress and the general capacity for thought. Lusciously wet fire spread out from between her legs and into her thighs and belly as she squirmed in anticipation.

Finally, the message popped onto her screen.

The Dork: Does the lady levy a lewd libretto to lure a legitimately lawful lad into licentiousness? Lo, that lacks love! A lassie's last letter leads lightly to a languorous lascivious liaison, a lowly lad losing lucidity in loosed lecherousness, and, lo, to leisurely licks and laps lauding a lass's luscious loveliness. Lucky libidinous liberation of lascivious longing at last, lips and legs locked in laudatory long-lasting lurid lovemaking, leading lately to a loosed libertine's licensed leave lapsing lewd in liquid luxury.

Well, that kind of stalled out her fingers, just as she was slipping the tip of her index inside of her womanhood, too!

Marinette blinked, and looked at Tikki and the other assembled kwami who were all in various states of incomprehension - quirking and/or scratching their heads, rolling their eyes, gazing on in stupefied wonder, or palming their chins sagaciously as if they were pondering the secrets of the universe all rolled up in that preposterously pompous purple prose proliferating 'pon Marinette's cell phone screen.

Well, all except for Barkk, who was at the window, keeping an eye out for threats.

Clearly, she'd missed this ... thing that imperiled Marinette's sanity as she typed a suitably erudite reply to her cat-friend-who-enjoyed benefits.

Fashionette: wtf

This time, she only had to wait a few seconds, her face illuminated by the glow of her cell phone as she parsed out the words that she could actually understand and translated them into images of Chat dicking her down with copious amounts of liquid involved.

The Dork: Your message made me horny, so I want to eat you out and then cum in you.

Well, that was a helpful translation.

Also great because she was on the pill, so raw-dogging was yet one more thing from which Barkk did not have to protect her.

Nothing was quite so satisfying

Fashionette: [Drool Emoji] why didnt you say that? The Dork: Alteration is second only to puns as a love language.

Despite her distaste for puns, Marinette knew that, at times, sacrifices had to be made. Anything to get him to stop dawdling and start diddling.

Fashionette: Cum put a bun in my oven The Dork: Play on your last name? Fashionette: Pls [Bread Emoji] me. The Dork: [Hot Emoji] Fashionette: Oven's warm and moist. The Dork: The yeast you can do to promote production of perfect provender.

That was when Marinette sent him a quick snapshot of her panties.

Which were strained to the point of breaking, half shucked and stretched around her smooth and well-muscled thighs.

The Dork: b rite there

At least the dork had some sense.

Grasping hold of the edge of her tanktop, she peeled the thin fabric off her body, tossing it aside to expose her breasts to the assembled kwami whom she dismissed with a few forceful jabs of her chin. In a collective huff, they floated off to their closet, wherein the miracle box was stored, and phased through the door while Marinette settled in. Bubbly yearning coiled up like fiery serpents in her gut, just at the thought of his expression when he pushed open the hatch to her room, seeing her legs spread and ready for him, her skin glistening and eyes hooded and tempting, drawing him in.

Hot damn, that was sexy!

Heck, she'd "benefits" herself to use a clunky euphemism that was only appropriate because she was hot and pissed and on the pill and also might have been using that sentiment to displace her bisexual cravings for Kagami.

Not important right now.

What was important was that Chat was only a few minutes away at best.

Nothing to do but wait.

Well, a little bit of fun before he arrived couldn't hurt, she decided as she cupped a breast and began to squeeze and fondle the softly resisting flesh.

She had to do something to pass the time, after all.

In keeping with her status as a conscientious planner, always prepared and plotting out every last detail, she had a meal laid out for him when he arrived at the hatch to her balcony, the hinges creaking open just a crack to reveal the stars behind his head and the blazing green flames in his eyes, full of promise. A hissing gasp from the darkness spurred her on, had her hands working more quickly to put on a show for him as he dropped to the bed-sheets and crawled towards her.

Predatory and not in the least dangerous, he reciprocated and her breathing stopped at the revelation as the bell and clinging leather vanished, melting away in the cool fire of green light that flooded the room, leaving behind a boy in a mask and a kvetching kwami who fluttered off to parts unknown.

Parts hitherto unseen had cramping pressure building up inside her gut, and it sent her on a quest to explore, planting her hands to his chest. Waxed smooth pectorals downright enthralled in the low light, hands moving in a tortuously slow tease to his flinching abs, hot in her palms as she rolled them.

Too busy fixing his mask, playing with the little straps to make certain that they stayed in place while he was occupied, he only hissed in that delightfully sibilant way that flooded her with warm, wet, sticky power , fogging her head.

" Kitty," she whined softly, abandoning him so that she could lay backwards on her bed, fingers just disappearing inside of herself as she inhaled the scent of his cologne and skin, intoxicating and safe. He burned for her so clearly, teeth glistening in half-a-snarl and half-a-grin, as she bore down on herself. "Need you so badly."

"I can see that, Princess." Tone hushed, he crawled towards the crux of her thighs like a man groping his way towards paradise. He'd made no secret of the fact that he adored laying between her legs, eager, knees over his shoulders, eyes locked until she couldn't stand to watch anymore.

It was his favourite thing, cherished, maddening to the point of immolating her as she bucked and writhed for him, until she hadn't the strength, just lay there and let him; or she would be tugged to the cusp and slowly let down time and time again until she'd shouted and whined herself hoarse, even her slurring and incoherent pleas dying away to croaks.

Only her.

All for her.

If he could only ever do one thing with her, it would be that, he'd said.

Grasping hold of her thin hips and tugging her down into place, he planted a tender kiss to her quivering belly as she sucked down a sharp breath, just a moment of sweet and gentle reverence that almost made her regret this because it was too dangerous for him.

And for her.

But there was simply no time to contemplate the warmth behind the fire in his eyes, searing away all the layers of thick cloth that she wrapped around her heart as she hissed and bucked off the bed, keening as he dropped between her legs.

Stars and fireworks breached her skull, seared closed her eyes, at the first slow and reverent motion; he knew right where to go, his grip tightening to hold her in place, restraining the culvulsion of her hips.

"Oh, Jesus, Chat! Right there!" Well, even though he was so tentative and gentle with the first few laps, she still sounded so terribly wanton.

Variation left her swirling, grinding into his sinfully perfect mouth as her palms slapped over her eyes. As she breathed, hiccuping, gasping, the odour of her own need flooded her nose.

"That's it, Princess," he chuffed, a grin in his voice, the rush of cool air against her slick folds the sweetest torture. "Just lay back and let me finish you. You'll get plenty more, don't worry. Need you begging."

Oh, Jesus, she wanted him; wanted to feel him tight and close because he was too far, too easily taken away and that made her clutch her fingers into his thick locks of hair, not caring if she tugged at the roots. When she'd asked if he was alright with that, months ago, he'd just grinned, licking his lips, and said that he liked the hint of pain, adored that she was so needy that she lost control for him.

Revelled in her telling him without words how to make her scream for him.

"Chat, please!" she wheezed as love bites rained down on the insides of her thighs.

A curious and inquisitive hum deep in his throat, the pressure building up so tight and taut that she reached down to finish herself, only to be rebuffed by a growl that was perilously close to being feral.

She loved it when he got feral. Brutal. Bred her like an animal. No thought. No voice. Only sweat and pressure and weight.

"You don't try to take a cat's meal, my sweet little mouse," he seethed, hand firm but gentle as it cradled her wrist before moving in to plant a playful little kitten lick to her hip bone.

Then, without warning, he delved back in, intent on his work, with all the fixation and vigour of a starving man whose only chance at survival was to consume her whole, and a scream caught in her throat, pressed down by a thumb jammed into her mouth as she bit down to keep from waking her parents.

Poor kitty almost always broke first, he adored it so much.

Not that she was complaining.

"S-such a filthy boy," she gasped, spiralling heat nearly robbing her of voice, but she squeezed out the taunt anyways. "Nice and deep, Chat."

With the flaring of lights behind her eyes, drowning out the darkness of her room, she lost sight of his gorgeous green eyes, warm with liquid adoration and wonder and so much self-congratulating joy. Not smug or flush with masculine pride or machismo or arrogance, but almost juvenile, yearning and -

Her eyes were closed and the pressure built, stinging salt and then nothing, no thought, no worries, no Ladybug or Chat or the boy behind the mask who was staring up at her because one hand left her bruised hip to-

Head crashing back to the pillow behind her, sweaty bangs slick on her forehead as she yearned, thirsted.

"I-god, Chat, I-" Only babble. No words. Everything crushed out.

" Shhhh , Princess," he cooed into her lips. "You were so good today. Did so much. So lay back and relax."

No time for an answer as he dove back in. Vigorous bliss and slick pressure sent arching electric shocks through her spine, burnt out her synapses, and set her back arching off the bed.

"Please- please no teasing, Chat." Ripped out by a chastising squeeze of her rear, a gasp tumbled from her mouth. If a Marinette who wasn't a little drunk could see her, she'd probably be a little bit ashamed, if not outright disgusted. "I- I need- ugh! Chat!"

Pulled taut like a bowstring, she gazed down past her heaving and sweat-slick breasts, her own hands somehow finding the strength to cup them. Candy-apple green gaze locked with hers, he trilled, vibrations sending fireworks of delight bursting and popping, showering her entire body in scalding metal shards.

It was right there and she nearly screamed. Right there as she threw quivering and melting muscles against him, too weak to break the firm hold.

Then he stopped!

No more swirls with his tongue.

She whimpered pitiably.

No more suckling!

She grunted in frustration.

No more fingers.

No.

He kissed her.

Sweet and gentle and innocent like a teen just feeling out a girl's mouth on the first date.

She clutched his hair.

Tiny little pecks, peppered to her lips in a shower.

She clenched her jaw.

Transient and fluttering.

She crushed him to her with well-muscled legs.

Closed-mouthed and pure and chaste.

"Chat!"

Then she choked and jammed a knuckle between her teeth to keep from screaming aloud, like the passionate need to finish her was suddenly as all-consuming as her blind desperation to finally finish.

And that's what he told her to do.

And she did, grinding into his mouth with the last vestiges of her strength, adrift and all senses blown out in stars and repressed screams and slick wet ecstasy of his tongue to her clit.

Sweat beaded along his brow, droplets coalescing and dribbling down into the edges of that black fabric mask she'd made for him, to keep them safe, such a silly lie, and got caught up. Never breaking eye contact with her, he wiggled it back into place so that it sat neat and proper on his nose, giving him a nearly prim air, ridiculous and him after he'd just eaten her out – ugly term for something so generous, so beautiful, so him again. A little cockeyed bashful expression would have set her laughing if she had any air.

Good god, had she forgotten how to breathe?

With no small amount of effort, she managed to hiss down just a whiff of air, enough to stave off brain death.

So not quite.

One day, maybe.

If he got in any more practice.

Not a bad way to die.

Breath came roaring back into her lungs as he clambered up her body to lay flush against her, warm and heated and hard to her thigh so that she groaned at the thought of him filling her, soothing the ache that was already building up once again. Slick and spit glistened on his grinning lips, arousal-bruised and smirking even though his eyes fluttered like he was half-drunk just from having been between her legs. Yet behind that intoxicated watery smile was the question that throbbed underneath everything; every mask, layer upon layer; every kindness and tenderness that had her heart knotting up in her chest; everything that he gave to her without asking for recompense; and everything that made it so hard not to love him as he guided her head under his chin and let her breathe.

Did I make you feel good?

Do I do good?

Was I good enough?

And that horrendous, desperate need to be that made her want to flay every careless ingrate in his family, among his friends, at his school – everyone in the world who had ever left him fearing and knowing that he wasn't.

Because they'd discussed it and it was okay and she needed it with a kind of languid, erotic fire that outstripped even her need to cum, she drew him down into a kiss, angling her head upwards. God, she needed to kiss him, feel him. It wicked away all of the stress, just feeling his chest rising and falling against her breasts, though a dribble of precum still smeared her thigh.

He smelled of clean soap, cologne, a mixture of vetiver and refined musk, sharp and pungent in her nose, and boy . Nothing more comforting in the world, just like those moments after an akuma battle when every synapse screamed for him and there was no her and no him; only them because the thought of being pulled apart was too hid-

His lips found her temple, soft and fluttering, as she pressed her cheek to his chest. The blanket that he fluffed with his free hand, the one that wasn't cradling her too intimately, too gently, to let her do anything but breathe and live and tear up, was drawn over her body.

"Marinette, is anything wrong?" he asked, the grip on her shoulder tightening as muscles in his jaw worked painfully. His claws ran pathways up and down her spine, prickling, faint touches still reaching so deep inside of her that as the endorphin rush abated and her eyelids fluttered closed, every lingering drop of tension was dug out. "D- did I-"

"So good," she murmured, because it was and he was, and her thoughts didn't stop. "Loved it." Tongue sticky and numb, she smacked her lips and had to kiss him, so she did, softly to the hollow of his throat.

"Love you," she said hazily, snuggling back into his chest. Her mind wandered, just did as it pleased, puppeting her mouth in the sudden floaty afterglow, but when the even motion of his claws stalled out, her belly twisting up, lucidity crackled through the fog. She had no idea what she was saying, other than something true.

"Oh, yeah." A purr from inside his diaphragm, mingling with a laugh that sounded nothing like the boy who whooped and cavorted in games of chase and tag with Ladybug above Parisian rooftops, fuzzed her brain. "Love you too, princess. You're a really great friend."

There was almost nothing more abhorrent in the world than that phrase, and it was coupled with all the obvious signs of mental defeat that Ladybug could see behind that threaded mask, but Marinette might never be able to pick out – the stutter of his eyes, roving so that they couldn't catch hers, lids drooping, the infinitesimal increase in the pressure of his strokes along her sweaty back, hands catching in the divots on either side of her spine.

That deflection and denial and implicit rejection wounded her more deeply than she ever could have imagined; no phantasmagoric nightmare collage of sneering dismissals from Adrien, or victorious cries from Shadowmoth as he lorded over a subjugated Parisian cityscape could compare to that precision horror that bloomed and flooded like every nerve in her addled body had been pierced with a whirring drill.

If she'd been capable of a spiral, she'd have thought that he was rejecting her and her unconsidered proclamation that left her tongue stinging like the sweet and sour tang of lemonade, refreshing and vitalizing, cool on a muggy summer's day.

He wasn't.

Eyelids pulled upward, taut, cheekbones popping as the flesh around his mouth rose in a ghoulish smile that reminded her of a young boy who had dropped his ice-cream and a fully-grown man who just been told he had cancer, he was lying to her.

Faking a cracked smile.

It was so obvious in that moment, her brain blasted out and torpid, finally silenced as she oozed into his hold, and, though his arms enveloped her, she cradled him. The only conjoined wonders, aside from the welling need to cup his cheek and guide him into her bosom, smooth a hand through his hair, easing the itchy tension that had him squirming and mewling to get into her attic room each night, was that cold realization that nearly had her vomiting.

He didn't think that she meant it.

Didn't think that he was good enough.

Couldn't believe that someone could love him.

Because in his world, the one that swirled behind his eyes, no one could.

She was going to fucking murder everyone in his life who helped him to build that world, nursed it with every cruelty, seeded it with each dismissal, watered and made it grow with indifference to the poor boy who was screaming in her arms.

Hand to his cheek as she pulled back, she saw the flicker of a deep shadow pass over his eyes, cast from something deeper inside of him than she ever imagined might exist, a hidden well of sentiment plastered over by that mask and smile and machismo.

"No, Kitty." While she'd meant her voice to be strong, firm like the steel of Ladybug standing defiant before Hawkmoth, all she had was a trembling, uncertain cadence.

"N-no," he whispered, fluttery motions of his lips brushing the pad of her thumb, green eyes almost frantic as she clung on tight to assure herself that he couldn't leave.

"No." Her thumb brushed over his philtrum before she drew him to look at her, see her properly, both hands to his cheeks. Already, the thoughts were starting to form, voices from the past and the future crying out to be heard – Fu, Tikki, Wayzz, Bunnyx, Blanc – but they didn't matter. Not when there was only him and the wailing spectre behind those eyes.

"I'm sorry, Chat, but I broke the second rule," she explained. The first, of course, was consent.

"Y- you did?" he asked, voice rising up in a way that set her heart palpitating.

"Yeah." She nodded, and to show him because he hadn't been shown, just as he hadn't been told, her neck craned upwards so that she could press a faint kiss to his lips. Not lurid, or lustful, or even romantic in any sense that Marinette had felt when she was pursuing Adrien, but with an intimacy and warmth born of a thousand nights spent on rooftops where she indulged in pastries and gentle ribbing and games of twenty-questions with his head on her thigh, and a thousand battles carrying each other's lives in their hands as the most precious and vital and massy weight she could conceive.

She'd always loved him; not with fire, but with steel, and it was time to admit it. Stop all the lying that had bottled her up and fractured her.

"Yeah. And the first rule of being a hero, too." she admitted, watching something break and be born in the shadows of his eyes, brows raising upwards. " Ladybug fell in love with you."

She'd expected him to be shocked, but, no. Of course not. Instead, he simply smiled the way he did after they had both finished, sated and showered, and simply lay together, and as he plucked off the mask to unveil the person she knew had to be there – the man she loved – the reason why was obvious.

Who else could be there?

"Hello, My Lady," he said simply, taking her by the hand, but not to level a kiss as she expected; only threading their fingers together. While his rouge cheeks strained with the force of his smile, and the corner of his mouth was still glazed with spit and slick, he looked calmer than she'd ever seen him. "I feel like I should be gobsmacked, but this just seems-"

"Obvious," she finished for him, putting a thumb to his mouth to wipe it clean. Her head shook. All the time that they'd spent together really should have made it obvious. "Like: Who else could it have been?"

His laugh was like the crystalline chime of wedding bells.

Damn saccharine of her, but she'd not have it any other way.

"Yeah," she agreed as she pressed into him and pecked his lips, tasting the faint remnants of her on his tongue and shivering through a reciprocal smile.

"Who else could it be?"

That was when, enervated and emotionally exhausted though she was, she kissed her way down his pecs and mountainous abs and then lower. As she worked, the boy she loved croaked out something unintelligible, groping for her,.

In under a minute, given his prior frustrations and ministrations had him wonderfully worked up, he'd cum in her throat.

"Oh, god, I love you," he mumbled as she flopped next to him, not minding the taste of his own seed, by all appearances, in the least when she gave him a quick peck on the lips while they cuddled. "I can't believe how lucky I am. Or how this started, really."

She blinked before nuzzling his nose. "I can."

"Oh," he huffed, tone inquisitive as he cocked his brow cutely.

"Of course." She pressed a kiss to his chin, his cheek, over both his eyelids, before pulling back to offer him a familiar boop on the nose. "It started and it ends with you and me."

Friends, lovers, beneficiaries, or any other permutation or combination of identities and roles, even as a giggly Marinette and Adrien, sneaking into the bathroom to brush their teeth and wash up before hunkering down in their bed, skin to skin, intimate yet not erotic, that was always true.

And always enough.