Rating: soft T

Forehead Kiss:

"Ladybug."

She turned, quiet patrol interrupted by the unnerving note of seriousness in his voice. She swallowed minutely before asking, "Yeah?"

"Listen... I..."

And that was when she knew how this was going to end.

She let him go on, though, because running wouldn't solve her problem this time. She had to let him speak, had to stand strong in the face of this tectonic shift, had to bear this uprooting of her world.

She'd been running from this for far too long.

He looked up at her with stars in his eyes and said, "I love you."

And just like that, her sky came down.

"I've always loved you. You mean the world to me and..."

Her heart lurched painfully.

This was happening. This was real and it was happening and she couldn't...

He breathed deep. "And I want to know, if I asked you out, would you give me a chance?"

She couldn't.

The entire speech felt well-rehearsed, like he'd stood in front of a mirror for days to get it right, to make sure he didn't forget it in his nerves, and it's just one more little thing to weigh on this moment, weigh on her heart, weigh on her tongue to try to keep it from its inevitable answer.

"I'm—" she tried, choked and wavering and horribly, horribly weak. She'd run and she'd run and she'd run from the truth, from the fact that they both wanted very different things out of this partnership. From the plain fact that he loved her.

He loved her.

Ladybug wanted to cry.

She didn't, but she wanted to.

"I'm sorry, Chat."

She almost couldn't bear to look, almost, but she did, because he was her partner and he deserved that much, at least.

He was also her best friend, and doing this felt like sticking a knife through his ribs.

"I'm not... I don't think of you that way." And you know it.

He was unsurprised, and, somehow, his heartbroken smile hurt worse than anger or denial ever could have.

They were acting in a play, pieces falling where they were destined to fall, a train following a one-way track, a relationship flowing to its inevitable conclusion.

She hadn't thought rejecting someone could hurt this bad.

"And you can't? Ever?" It sounded like it should have been pleading, but all she heard was resignation.

He'd known how this was going to end too.

She pivoted, right on cue, and took two measured steps away.

"I'm..."

And that was where the script stuck in her throat.

This was where she said, 'I love someone else.'

This was where she said, 'We wouldn't work.'

This was where she said, 'We have other responsibilities.'

This was where she walked away.

She couldn't do it.

He was her best friend and she was hurting him.

She turned back to find that he'd followed her, his expression unchanged. He still wasn't pleading, he'd followed her just like he always did — to help, to protect, to share in her burden — and it killed her.

She was hurting him, and he would still follow her to the ends of the Earth without a second thought.

"I'm sorry," she said again, because it needed to be said. Words could never ease this, she knew, but it needed to be said, no matter how futile.

She didn't love him the way he wanted, but god did she love him.

He shook his head, still smiling that broken little smile, and broke the script himself.

This was where he said, 'But why not?!'

This was where he said, 'But I love you!'

This was where he said, 'Please, just give me a chance!'

This was where he chased her, begging and pleading and cajoling.

But he knew her.

He loved her.

And instead he closed his eyes and said, "I know."

She reached out in spite of herself, remembering inches from his face that her touch probably wouldn't be welcome at the moment.

"I knew you were going to say that. I just..." He shook his head, corner of his mouth trembling, and looked at her with green eyes that were no longer laughing. "I love you, and I had to try."

"Yeah," she agreed numbly, hand floating in the space between them, aching, aching to touch him, hold him, comfort him somehow.

Would it really be so bad to accept him? she wondered. Would it be so bad to take it back, to kiss him, to chase that shadow from his eyes for even just a moment?

Would it be so bad to pretend?

She knew the answer to that, and it stilled her tongue, even as she couldn't help inching closer.

He made a noise that was too much of a sob to be a laugh and too much of a laugh to be a sob and leaned into her, just a little bit, which was all the permission she needed to throw her arms around him and hold him tight.

She bit down on the rush of apologies as they threatened to spill out, focusing instead on the hard muscle beneath her palms and the almost preternatural heat he gave off, her eyes stinging.

He held her just as tightly, crushing her smaller body to him without a thought for their enhanced strength. He nuzzled her hair, and she pretended she couldn't feel the hitches in his breathing.

They stayed like that until their alarms started beeping — not their Miraculous timers, but their patrol alarms — and then Ladybug forced herself to draw back.

Impulsively, she smoothed aside his hair and pressed a kiss to his forehead, trying to convey the hundred-and-one things she couldn't voice with that touch.

And when she pulled back, he looked at her like he'd heard them all.

"I'll be okay," he promised softly.

She believed him.

She rocked a step back and held out her hand.

He took it.

Maybe she hadn't known how this was going to end after all.