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The rooftop is cold.
Adrien of all people should be used to it, but he guesses his suit he wears when transformed is warmer than the one he has on now. It’s not really a suit, but it’s formal-ish.
Marinette had told him to wear it, and had specified to leave the top two buttons open so it’d be more casual. Three, she said, if he was feeling slutty, but he’d settled for two open and the third half-done, so if it was going to happen, it’d happen.
“Mari,” Adrien says, “what time is it?”
She stands up and lifts her dress, holding it up in one hand, as she fishes her phone out of her shorts she has on under her dress. She’d told him two days ago that she’d wanted to sew them together, but she didn’t have enough time, he guesses, because the stick and poke next to her belly button Juleka had given her on a dare three years ago is visible.
“Uh…” Marinette says as she squints at her phone screen. “Eleven fifty-seven.” She smoothes her skirt and climbs back onto his lap, and Adrien kisses her cheek to thank her.
Alya and Nino come back to the corner of the roof they’ve claimed, brandishing two champagne glasses each that they pass out to them as they sit on the couch they’ve claimed on the corner of the roof.
Adrien, at eighteen years old, has been to far too many parties in his life—but not many like this.
He’s more familiar with the Agreste, Bourgeois, Tsurugi type parties. Which is to say, parties thrown by and for incredibly stilted, wealthy Parisians.
“I’m pretty sure I just saw Chloé doing coke off of Sabrina’s clipboard,” Alya says.
“Happy fucking New Year,” Marinette mumbles into her almost-empty champagne flute.
This is different. This is fun.
Marinette’s on his lap, drunk and happy, they’re three minutes off of the new year, and this is all Adrien’s ever wanted.
Nino starts shouting the countdown when it reaches twenty seconds, and Marinette is guaranteeing Adrien will be deaf by thirty when it reaches five.
Then everyone’s shouting bonne année, and Marinette grabs the back of Adrien’s neck to shove her tongue in his mouth. She’s more polite about it, really, but the kiss is intense. Like she is. He’s so in love with her he might drop dead by the time they break apart.
That has to be sooner rather than later, though. Sure enough, Adrien’s third button is undone, but he doesn’t need tabloids talking about Adrien Agreste’s sloppy NYE makeout with his longtime GF. He’d rather, quite literally, ship his address off to Monarch. So he backs away and pecks her nose, her under eyes, and her mouth one more time before she laughs and rests her head on his shoulder.
“I’m tired,” Marinette says into the shell of Adrien’s ear.
He smiles at her and the glitter on her face and in her hair from god knows where. “Let’s get you home then, huh.”
“Oh, if we must,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Are we walking or driving?”
“What do you wanna do?”
“Walk. The cold would be good for me, I think. I want to sober up so that I don’t worry my parents. If they're even still awake.”
He hisses. “Then we should probably take our time, I guess.”
She laughs and swats his arm. “Let’s go.”
They say their goodbyes to Nino and Alya, and to whoever else they pass on their way out that seems sober enough to be able to remember it.
Marinette downs another glass of champagne on the way out, and Adrien is sure he’ll never love anyone more in his life.
They walk hand in hand to the bakery, and sure enough, Tom and Sabine (they insist Adrien calls them that) are awake, closing up shop.
“Goodnight, Marinette,” he says, kissing her cheekbone before she goes upstairs. “I love you.”
“Love you. See you soon,” she says with a soft grin.
She closes her door, and Tom and Sabine ask him about his night, if there were too many paparazzi (there were none at all, which was surprising and a little suspicious, but nice nonetheless), if it was fun (it was), and if he wants anything before he goes.
“Could I bother you for a few pastries?”
They insist it’s no bother, and they give him everything they have left in a massive bag bearing the logo his girlfriend designed.
“Start spreading the news,” Chat warbles, “I’m leaving today.”
Ladybug rolls her eyes and pats the roof next to her for him to sit. “Hello, Chat. Your accent in English is terrible.”
“You speak English?” Chat asks as he drops down next to her, making the patisserie bag known.
“A little bit,” she says. “You can, right?”
He grins. “Maybe. I don’t think I can answer that, Bug. Would let too much on about my personal life,” he says.
She shakes her head.“Hardly,” she says. “How many people in this fucking city speak English?”
“At least two.”
“At least two,” she mutters after him.
“And anyway, I wasn’t trying to have a good American accent. I was doing Frank Sinatra.”
“And why, chaton, were you doing a Frank Sinatra impression,” she says, flat and barely a question.
“It’s what they do for New Years in New York City. The ball drops and a bunch of confetti and they play Auld Lang Syne and then that Frank Sinatra song. Happy New Year and all that.”
“Have you ever been?”
He hums. “Yeah. Once when I was little. It was okay. I was too young, I think. I thought it was too scary. Couldn’t appreciate it.”
“Have you been to New York any other times?” she asks.
He falters. “Ladybug.”
He waits for her to realize what she's said, and he thinks he might piss himself when she does.
Her eyes go all wide and her face goes a bright red. “Oh! Yeah. Yes you have.” She shakes the bag from the bakery. “Why were you in New York, again?”
“Why were you?”
She narrows her eyes and then scoffs. “Whatever.”
“What I thought,” Adrien says.
“I, um.” Ladybug opens up the bag and pops a chouquette in her mouth and swallows way too quickly for her to have chewed at all. “I read this thing. About Times Square in the 70s. Or 80s, maybe.” She picks up another chouquette and takes one of the pearls of sugar off the top, crushing it between her teeth loudly. “No. It was the 70s. Um, anyway. It was like, crazy back then. Times Square was all full of perverts. Like, live peep shows and stuff.”
“Man. Should’ve dropped by when we were there.”
Adrien doesn’t mean it, obviously, but it’s still fucking awesome to see her go red, throw her head back and cackle. “To a peep show? You freak.”
“Oh, relax, LB,” Adrien says as he flops onto his back.
“Mighty casual of you, Chat,” Ladybug says, her mouth full. “You’d pass out if you ever saw a girl naked,” she says with a wide grin.
He coughs, surprised. “What the fuck? What's up with you?”
“A girl can't talk about the skeevy history of a famous city? Call her friend a virgin?"
He says nothing, knowing she'll fold at the silence.
She sniffs. Lo and behold: “Whatever. I’m a little intoxicated.”
“Ah,” Adrien says with a smile. “That's it. You’re a drunk.”
“Oh, mon Dieu, Chat, it's just some champagne.”
“It starts with champagne, Bug,” he says. “Then you get into the hard stuff. Like seltzers.”
She laughs, despite herself, he knows. She sighs and puts the brown paper bag in her lap. “You, Chat Noir,” she drawls, “are a marvel. Eat a chouquette.”
“I’ve had too many already,” he says.
She frowns. “Then have something else.” She reaches into the bag, rustling it around. “What the hell else did you get? There are so many good things at the bakery for the new year. Pancakes. Galettes. Tikki loves those damn galettes.”
Adrien blinks at her. “You’ve been?”
“Been where?”
“To the Tom and Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie?”
“What a mouthful of a name,” Ladybug murmurs. “Never even…never even realized that before.” She smiles as she takes a pancake out of the bag. “Yeah. I’ve been. Everyone’s been.” She pauses. “You too?”
“Ladybug,” he says incredulously, “I brought these.”
She hums after a second. “You’re right.”
Adrien grins and leans himself up on his elbows. “I feel like you’ve had more to drink than you’re letting on, my lady.”
“I’m a big girl. It’s legal.” She frowns as she tears part of her pancake. “I mean, it’s been for a while. This is only the second time I’ve really been drunk. Kind of funny, ‘cause my birthday’s in summer, but—”
Adrien laughs as he shoves her lightly to cut her off. “That’s a bit too much information, Ladybug,” he says.
She looks up at him, and he falters. He thinks he could find her scary, if he weren’t on her side. Especially her eyes. Big and bright blue. Eerie blue. He's not sure if her eyes are like that already or if they transform when she does, like what happens with him.
“What can it do, chaton?” Ladybug says lowly. “I’ve been eighteen for a few months. Big fucking deal. Now everyone will know who I am.”
“I never really…knew how old you were.”
“Well,” she says, taking a bite of her pancake, pushing it to the side of her mouth. “I’m eighteen.”
“I figured you were my age,” he muses. “Remember when you dropped that textbook and it blew up on the Ladyblog?”
“Oh, yeah, fucking hell. You know, that was close. I don’t know how anyone bought the five thousand years old thing.”
Adrien shifts uncomfortably. “Are you sure talking like this is a good idea?” he asks quietly.
“No. And I don’t really care. Because I’m tired of it,” she says, laying down with him, abandoning her pancake by her side. “Monarch can just fucking…” She raises her arm, waves vaguely. “Get us already.”
“Don’t say that,” Chat Noir chastises.
“I’m not, like, welcoming it. I’m just saying. Master Fu told us not to, and I listened. Maybe I listen too damn much to what other people tell me. Now I'm the guardian. And we all…” She frowns. “We all know how that's working out.”
“Bug,” Adrien says sadly. “Come on.”
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “Sorry. It's just easy to, like…wallow right now.”
“What's got you down?”
She laughs dryly. “For starters?”
“Yeah. For starters.”
“Le Bac, I guess.”
“A given,” he agrees.
“Yeah,” she says. “And…god. I have a boyfriend,” she mumbles, covering her eyes with her forearm. “You know about him. And I love him to death. But I can't tell him everything." She bites the inside of her cheek. “And I know there are things he isn’t telling me, either.” She huffs, turns to look at him. “I trust him. But it’s….” She closes her eyes. “Weird. I don’t know. Just...I know you trust me. And I trust you. Trust you a lot.”
He smiles softly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth.
He jerks away, holding a hand out. “Um, Lady—”
“I'm not…” Ladybug holds her hands up to her face. “Sorry. That was…yeah. But…Jesus. I'm not trying to fuck you, Chat. Lord.” She thinks for a moment. “I used to want to, but now, I don't,” she says decisively.
Chat Noir swallows. She must be far fucking gone, because there’s no way in hell that the Ladybug that he knows, the sober one, would ever think of saying something like that.
“Ladybug,” Adrien murmurs. He would've loved to hear that, a while ago. It wasn't like he didn't get enough of it in and out of the mask. Doesn't mean he's a fan of it, or that he's ever been. It isn't better coming from someone who isn't a stranger, but it’s different.
He would've loved to hear that, in the past. Not now.
“You should probably…we should probably get going,” he says gently.
“Chat,” Ladybug says, sitting up. “I'm just a little drunk. I'm not incapacitated. And I'm not coming onto you. Relax.”
“Kind of feels like you are.”
“I'm…not. Just telling you stuff.”
“Which you said we weren't allowed to do.”
“Well,” she says. “Today we are. You kind of started it. So tell me something about you. What's got you down, then?”
Adrien frowns. “Nothing.”
“Really?” Ladybug asks flatly. “You're only one of the most famous people living in Paris.”
How badly he wants to tell her that she doesn't even know the half of it.
“And a superhero on top of that,” she continues. “And you've got whatever you've got going on as a civilian. And you have nothing to say right now.”
“I don’t think I have too many things going wrong for me right now. I don’t know. The things that aren’t good have always been like that. Monarch. Le Bac was always going to come up.” He crosses his arms. “Um, and family stuff.”
Even drunk, Ladybug knows he doesn’t want to talk about it. She nods sagely and cracks her knuckles. “Tell me some good stuff, then.”
“Uh…” He rolls his neck. “My friends. I’m really lucky to have them. And my girlfriend,” he says, quieter. He feels like, when talking about Marinette, he has to be softer. He has to tell anyone who will listen everything good about her in a gentle voice. And he does.
When he's finished waxing fucking poetic, Ladybug gives him a wobbly smile. “Oh, Chat,” she says quietly.
“Are you crying?” he whispers.
“Yeah,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “Chat, I’m just so happy that you’re happy.” She opens her arms to give him a hug. “You are one of the people I love most in the entire fucking world.”
“Drunk Ladybug is really interesting,” he says into her shoulder.
“I’m sobering up, anyway,” she says. She taps his head and pulls away, her eyes still shining. “I have to get home before I pass out. I don’t even know how the hell I got here in one piece.”
He watches as she stands up clumsily, and he laughs. “I don’t know how you did either.”
“Alright. Well.” She shakes her legs out and gives him an uncoordinated salute. “Joyeuse année. I’ll see you later.”
He shakes his head as he watches her swing away. He makes sure he can’t see her anymore before he starts to make his own leave, rolling up the top of the pastry bag and shooting off towards Marinette’s.
She wasn’t super fucked up when he’d dropped her off at home, but she doesn’t drink too often, so he wants to check on her. Check on her and see her again and talk to her a little bit. He’d like to flirt with her, but she’s taken. By him. But that’s more nuanced than he can really think about right now. Maybe he’s drunk by proximity.
He drops onto Marinette’s balcony, setting the bag down next to the hatch leading to her bedroom, knocking on it and opening it up when he hears a muffled, come in.
He lands on the edge of her bed, balancing himself on the thin metal of her bedroom. “Hi, Marinette,” he says quietly.
“Hey, Adrien,” she mumbles.
He stops in place for a moment before exhaling slowly. “Actually, it’s Chat Noir.”
She sticks her head up out of her mess of blankets with a stupid grin that makes Adrien feel like he’s swallowing boiling water and melting down all his organs. “Yeah.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I said hi, Adrien.”
He swallows hard. “Adrien Agreste sent me to check in on you, because he—”
“Just…” Marinette lays back down on her bed so forcefully that she bobs up and down for a second. “You can be honest, okay?”
“What do you mean?” he asks in as level a voice he can manage.
“I figured it out ages ago. I didn’t really know how to bring it up. Panicked for a while and asked Tikki what to do,” she says, turning and pulling her duvet up to her ear. “Wondered if I could get reach out to Alix or Luka to fix time or something, but I guess I just realized because I know, like, both of you way too well and there was no one moment that made me notice, so I figured I could just…” She trails off. “Yeah. Anyway. I know.”
“Marinette,” Adrien says shakily. He lays his hand, palm up, on her bed, squeezing his eyes shut as she takes it immediately. “You can’t be serious.”
Her mascara is smudging around the corner of her eyes. Her lipstick has long faded, her lips left pale and chapped. “I thought April Fool’s was the one where you pull pranks, chaton,” she says, drunk and tired and gorgeous.
And he knows. He should've figured it out earlier.
No one has eyes like hers.
“Oh, Bug."
She smiles. “Chat. I love you.”
"I love you too. But..." He furrows his brows. If she can’t focus on this, he has to. Hard as actual hell, but he's got to take the role of the responsible one for a second. “This is dangerous," he says. "Really fucking dangerous. You know that, you’re the one who said it in the first place, and I don’t want you to—”
“Adrien,” she says softly. “I really, really don’t care. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. We were talking about New York before. Everyone knows who the heroes are there. They don’t keep who they are secret. And it’s hard, of course it’s hard, but they’re okay.” She holds onto Adrien’s hand tighter. “Majestia and Knightowl have kids,” she whispers. “They made it. We can too. I promise you that. I promise.”
He swallows. “I’m nervous.”
“Me too. I won’t lie to you. I am too.”
He sighs, runs his hands over his face, careful not to rip his skin open. He’s a little tempted. “I guess there’s nothing we can do about it,” he says. “You know. You figured it out.”
“Right,” Marinette says. “And if we run into trouble…we will anyway. We’ll deal. We always do.”
Adrien smiles at her, knowing she can see the tears in his eyes. She kisses him on the corner of his mouth, just like she did before as Ladybug.
“Besides,” she says, patting his shoulders, “you’re famous either way.”
“You’re terrible,” he says, rolling off of the frame onto her bed.
Marinette wrinkles her nose. “Detransform before getting under my blankets, please.”
He laughs and kisses her temple as he whispers, “Plagg, detransforme-moi.”
“Do you have food for him?” Marinette asks into her pillow.
“Mhm.” Adrien hops onto the ground and pulls a plastic bag holding a wedge of Camembert out of the breast pocket of his jacket and lays it on the chaise where Plagg has settled. Next to Tikki, he now sees.
He climbs up the ladder to Marinette’s bed, getting under her blankets and holding her hand.
“Sorry for being weird before," she tells him.
“It’s okay.”
“I forgot you didn’t know. Or, like I didn’t, but I half-did.”
“I know, Mari.” He brings her hand up to his mouth, kissing her knuckles.
She exhales, her breath warm on his arm. “If Alya ever found out you were Chat Noir,” she says, “she would actually explode, I think. Do you know how long she wanted us to get together, Adrien? And you remember all the shit she would say on the Ladyblog. I’m fucking serious. She would blow up.”
“She would,” Adrien agrees. “Nino, too.”
“Oh my god,” Marinette says. “Chloé.”
“She would die. Immediately.”
“I know you guys grew up together so I’m holding myself back from saying how I’d feel about that,” she says.
“I appreciate that, Mari.”
“Anything for you,” she grumbles.
They’re quiet for a while, basking in the warmth of Marinette’s bed and the purple shadows of her room.
Adrien presses his lips together. “I just, um…” He turns to look at her. “You said that if Alya found out about me she’d freak out. Does she know about you?”
“Oh.” She blinks. “Yeah,” she sighs. “Has for a while. I felt so guilty about it, chaton. I wanted to tell you, especially when we started dating, but. You know,” she says sadly.
“Don’t worry about it, Bug,” Adrien says. “I get it. In all fairness, I didn’t tell you, either.”
Marinette smiles and kisses him softly.
Adrien kisses her back for a second, holds her face gently. “Why did this have to happen when you were drunk?”
She gives him a sort of half-shrug. “In vino veritas and all that, ma beauté,” she says.
Adrien laughs into her neck, holds a gentle fistful of her big sleep shirt. “You know, you lied to me before when you said that you were sobering up.”
She cracks an eye open. “Yeah, well,” she says sleepily, as if to say, what can you do?
He laughs, quietly, because he knows Tom and Sabine open the bakery at seven, and they already have to be tired from staying up to see the new year. He doesn’t even know what time it is. His phone’s somewhere, maybe left at the party, maybe left on that roof.
He doesn't really have to know. He could be here as long as he wants. Marinette always asks him to stay over, her parents won't mind, and his father probably won’t notice he’s gone, and Nathalie will cover for him.
Marinette kisses his clavicle, and Adrien starts to take the bobby pins out of her hair so they won’t stab her in her sleep. “You are not going to have a fun morning,” he says, wrapping his arms around her.
“No. But we’ll deal with it when we get to it,” she replies.
She means more than her hangover.
“We will,” Adrien whispers.
So does he.