Work Text:
Ladybug checked her communicator for the third time that night and frowned.
The green pawprint blinked idly back at her, resting at a junction between city streets—the same place it had been every other time she’d checked.
They hadn’t arranged to meet up that night. It was her turn for a solo patrol tonight, and there hadn’t been any trouble big enough to make calling for help a necessity. She’d stopped a couple muggings, interrupted a robbery—normal, small things. Nothing that needed an extra pair of hands.
And, sure, they both transformed just for the fun of it sometimes. Sometimes they caught one another out on morning strolls or midnight snack runs or impromptu patrols, but usually those involved moving around.
Chat’s tracker hadn’t moved in the past two hours.
She shouldn’t worry—Hawkmoth had been in jail for the past three years and Chat wasn’t in a bad part of town right now—but...
But...
The green pawprint blinked at her from the same junction, at the same pace, unmoved.
Ladybug abandoned the end of her route and headed downtown.
Chat, to her relief, was unharmed.
He was sitting on the edge of a roof in the middle of the business district, kicking his heels against the glass and contemplating something in his palm, pensive but relaxed.
She could just go back to her patrol, now that she knew he wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere, but the night was nice and the city was pretty and they didn’t have a joint patrol for another week and, as much as she hated to admit it, she... kind of missed him.
She collapsed on the ledge next to him without a word.
Chat closed his hand around whatever it was (Ladybug caught a flash of silver—a piece of jewelry maybe?) and smiled at her, some hitherto unnoticed measure of tension leaking out of his frame.
“Hey.”
Ladybug pulled her eyes away from his shoulders (away from the two centimeters of space where they’d dropped now that she was here) and coughed a little laugh, turning to the lights of La Défense. “Hey, stranger.”
Chat swayed sideways to knock his shoulder against hers and joined her in city-watching, his pensive air vanishing like morning mist. “What brings a beautiful girl like you to a place like this?”
“I was worried my kitty had gotten stuck in a tree,” she said, droll and warm as she dug her elbow into his bicep and let the atmosphere sink into her bones. “He bites off more than he can chew sometimes, you know?”
“Oof,” said Chat, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead and fake-swooning, grinning too wide to make either affectation believable. “Ye of little faith. Trees have nothing on me.”
“I know, I know, you doofus.”
Chat beamed at her for a second, openly joyous in that unfiltered way she’d always envied, and then sighed, fist tightening and smile slipping away.
Ladybug’s spirits fell with it.
The wind tugged at her ribbons, the city twinkling navy and gold beneath their feet, the night sultry summer warm, and Chat...
Chat was looking like it like he was somewhere else entirely.
Ladybug’s heart squeezed.
“...Something up, minou?”
He didn’t answer her at first, staying silent as he opened his palm and stared at it.
Or rather, stared at the ring in it.
What she’d thought was a flash of silver was, upon closer inspection, too pale to be anything but white gold. It had a set of stones at one point—clear, colorless, vibrant stones that led up to a slightly larger, princess-cut ruby—and a delicate design carved into the band that suggested high-level craftsmanship.
The whole thing was obviously incredibly expensive, and... looked very much like an engagement ring.
Ladybug stared, almost unseeing, at the blood-red stone nestled in its bed of diamonds, and wondered why it suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe.
(It wasn’t necessarily an engagement ring, right? She... she would’ve known if he had a lover, wouldn’t she? Chat was too much of a hopeless romantic to not gush about a significant other to anyone who would listen if he had one... right?
It could be a memento or a gift or... something.
Something that didn’t imply Chat was about to get married.)
“...Have you ever thought about getting married?”
...Or not.
Ladybug swallowed around her tongue and forced herself to think about the question.
“Not... seriously, I guess,” she admitted, tapping the ledge with agitated fingers that didn’t seem to want to conform to the rest of her outward calm. “I mean, when I was fifteen I had my whole future planned out with the guy I liked then, but that was all just teenage stuff.“
Chat blinked at her, surprise flickering over his face, and then broke into a snigger.
Ladybug’s knuckles met his bicep with just enough force to make him sway a few inches to the side. The attack didn’t so much as break his stride.
“It’s not that funny,” Ladybug grumbled, retrieving her hand, knuckles tingling where they’d met his arm.
Shit.
There was a tangle of emotion in her chest she didn’t want to touch, one that grew larger and more volatile by the second, diamonds and rubies dancing behind her eyelids and doubts winding insidious little tendrils around her ankles.
Chat, for better or worse, wanted to marry someone.
“Sorry, sorry,” he snickered, fist over his mouth and happy crinkles in his mask. “I just... can’t imagine you picking out kids’ names and wedding colors.”
Ladybug huffed.
(Marinette had scouted out local housing options and planned right down to renovating the bathroom tile, actually, but she didn’t feel like giving Chat that particular ammunition today. Not... not right now.)
Chat glanced at her, laughter in his eyes, and then everything in him just seemed to... hitch.
“Well,” he murmured, gaze dimming and skittering away, like the sight of her had sucked the life right out of him. “Maybe I can.”
Ladybug blinked.
It wasn’t... that strange, was it? Lots of kids went through phases like that. It was just a part of growing up, wasn’t it? Deciding you were going to marry the one person your really adored and planning out your future with them—she knew she wasn’t the only one who’d done it.
Silence fell once again.
She didn’t know how much time she lost to the glitter of the ruby as Chat fidgeted with the ring, only that she wanted to look away as much as she wanted to stare, and that both of those desires were dwarfed by the urge to rip it out of his hands and fling it over the side of the building.
That emotion she didn’t want to touch felt disturbingly like jealousy.
“Have you asked her yet?”
Chat jerked, head snapping up as she startled him out of his reverie. “Asked who?”
Ladybug found it in herself to rip her eyes away from the gemstone. “Your girlfriend.”
“...What girlfriend?” said Chat, looking at her like she’d suddenly started speaking a foreign language.
“...Your... boyfriend?” she tried. It was an awfully feminine-looking ring, but you never knew.
(She hadn’t thought Chat liked men, but she also hadn’t been informed of Chat finding a significant other in the first place. What did she know?)
It was Chat’s turn to blink at her in blank confusion.
Ladybug pointed at the ring. “You were going to propose to someone, weren’t you?”
Chat frowned down at the ring, blinked, and then his face cleared in understanding.
And then it clouded again, this time in embarrassment.
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah.”
Ladybug waited for an explanation.
None seemed to be forthcoming.
“...So?”
Chat glanced up from the ring with an oddly pained little half-smile. “I’m not planning to propose to anyone.”
(And, just like that, Ladybug no longer wanted to take the ring to Mordor.
Shit.)
She opened her mouth and took a breath, relief loosening her chest and worry over her relief tightening it all back up again. “...Then why do you have an engagement ring?”
Chat’s embarrassment made a gallant return. He didn’t look at her as he flipped the ring over in his palm once again, instead staring out at the lights and sheepishly confessing, “...I bought it.”
“You bought an engagement ring without planning to propose to anyone,” Ladybug repeated, just to make sure she got it right.
Chat made a face.
“Look,” he sighed, looking anywhere but her and his nonsensical purchase. “We all get drunk and do online shopping sometimes. It happens.”
Ladybug rested her chin in her palm and found herself fighting off a smile.
“So you got drunk and went online shopping for engagement rings without wanting to propose to anyone,” Ladybug reiterated, with additions. She grinned, teasing. “Sounds legit.”
Chat continued not to look her in the eye.
Then, a horrible thought occurred to her.
“...Chat, how much did that ring cost?”
Chat twitched, and then absorbed himself in said ring, studying it with almost comic intensity.
Ladybug’s eyes narrowed. “Chat.”
“...Eight grand?” he offered weakly, after a few moments of hesitation, something that was one part sheepish look and three parts pure wince coming to rest on his face.
Ladybug inhaled, looked at his absurd purchase, exhaled without a word, reanalyzed, and then tried again.
“...Do you need any help?”
His shoulders hunched defensively. “I mean, It’s not like I do this a lot. It’s not a constant problem or anything—I mean, this is only the second time I’ve done it, so it’s not like—”
“Not, like, professional help,” Ladybug clarified, finally letting go of her knee completely to lean against Chat in some minor show of support. “Like, for rent, or food, or... things like that.”
Surprised into it, Chat finally looked at her again.
“I mean...” Ladybug leaned back a little and pointed to his palm, trying to illustrate her point. “That’s eight grand. Are you doing okay?”
Chat double blinked this time.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she went on, gesturing in earnest now. “That was a really stupid thing to do and I think you’re an idiot, but I’m not going to leave you to starve because some stupid jeweler won’t let you return it—...”
A strange combination of emotions flickered over Chat’s face as she spoke, too quick to catch, but at her (somewhat impassioned) declaration, he dropped his face into his hands, shoulders shaking silently.
“ ...Did I say something funny?”
Chat was... laughing, maybe, she thought, hunched over and making shaking little noises into his fist. It was kind of hard to tell.
“I’m okay,” he reassured her, looking up with that funny pained half-smile again. “I haven’t destituted myself, or whatever.”
...Somehow, Ladybug didn’t find herself very reassured.
Between the tired lines beside his eyes and the way that smile shook, the smile on her face, the one she’d hitched up in response to his laughter, was starting to hurt.
“You... you’re a good friend,” Chat said by way of explanation, his maybe-laughter subsiding. He looked away again, tired lines deepening and smile collapsing. “Thank you.”
“...Yeah. No problem.”
Stymied, Ladybug receded.
“Why did you buy it in the first place?” she asked after a moment’s silence, determined to steer the conversation away from whatever weird landmine she’d led it into. “Just saw it and thought, ‘Wow, I totally need an engagement ring’?”
Chat didn’t answer, just flipped the ring over in his palm.
“...Chat?”
If this was somehow another landmine...
“I was...” he started, voice low enough to make her perk her ears. “I was looking for engagement rings.”
“...Oh.”
“I thought...” That awful dimmed look in his eyes was back. “There’s... someone I love more than anyone—anything—else and... I wanted to propose to her. So I got a ring.”
...Oh.
Somewhere beyond the ringing in her ears and the renewed tangle in her chest and the newfound hollow in her belly, Ladybug’s mouth said, “I thought you said you weren’t going to propose to anyone.”
His smile managed to look both more like a smile and infinitely more pained at the same time, somehow. “I’m not. I can’t.”
“Why not?” said the reasonable, rational being that had taken a hold of Ladybug’s body.
Chat snorted. “She’s not interested.”
“Oh,” said the being, over Ladybug’s lightsnap of untraceable fury.
“But I thought...” He turned the ring over again, then picked it up and held it up to whatever small amount of light reached their perch. “I thought... you never really know until you ask, right?” Another maybe-laugh, jagged and self-deprecating. “I’m an optimistic drunk, I guess.”
Even the being had nothing to say to that.
“So... she turned you down?” Ladybug guessed, biting the bullet with fire in her veins.
If this girl was the reason Chat sounded like that, Ladybug was going to come down on her like a sack of bricks, lack of interest be damned.
“Heh, no,” said Chat, sliding the ring onto his index finger and then sliding it off again. “I sobered up before I could fuck that up.”
Chat’s mysterious ladylove would live to see another day.
For now.
“So... now you have a ring,” Ladybug finished, watching him toy with it, stomach churning and wondering why she felt so discomfited by the swear.
(It wasn’t that Chat never swore, but that one word had felt... pained. Hurt.
She didn’t know how to fix that. She wasn’t sure she could.
She wasn’t used to not being able to fix things.)
“Now I have a ring,” Chat agreed.
It was a simple story. Kind of silly, even, if she took a step back, but... there was something... something that didn’t...
“...Hey Chat?”
He blinked big green eyes at her that were only half as luminous as they usually were, and something in Ladybug ached fiercely.
“Yeah?”
Carefully, like she was trying to build up the base of a house of cards, Ladybug said, “I thought you hated alcohol.”
He started avoiding her eye again, and Ladybug’s stomach sank like a stone.
“...I do.”
Ladybug waited, and Chat followed it up with an uncomfortable shrug.
“It was... a bad night.”
“Chat...”
He gave her a look that she supposed was supposed to reassure her. “It was just... quiet. I was looking up shot recipes and wanted to try them out. Nothing bad happened.”
“Chat.”
“It’s not...” He sighed sharply and dragged his empty hand through his hair. “I’m okay.”
Ladybug considered, and then offered, “You don’t... sound okay.”
“It’s quiet, at night,” he said again, Adam’s apple bobbing and shoulders drawing in. “Just... quiet.”
“...Quiet?”
“And... lonely, I guess.” He ran a hand through his hair, mouth twisting. “I can’t... It’s not... I’m okay.”
“Chat.”
“My best friend moved away last week,” he said, and choked on a ragged chuckle. “I’m just... taking it hard, I guess.”
Ladybug didn’t realize she was reaching for him until hand was hovering over his shoulder, heart tied in knots.
“It’s just... too quiet,” he said, low and raw and folding into himself so tight it looked like it hurt. “My-my dad’s... My father is in jail, my mom is dead, Na— my... nanny, I guess—she’s been gone for a long time, and I don’t...”
He took a breath that sounded like it came from the very edge of his composure and let it out again. When he spoke again, his voice was almost perfectly steady. “I’m okay, it’s just... quiet. E-empty.”
Ladybug, god knew how, managed to mimic his composure as all the little bits and pieces of the conversation came together for her. Her hand only shook a little bit when it rested on his back.
“’Quiet’ enough to make you spend eight thousand euros on a ring for a girl you know isn’t interested.”
“She’s amazing, Ladybug,” he whisper-laughed, pulling his hopeless gaze away from the cityscape to look at her. “So amazing, and I just... wonder, sometimes.”
It was her turn to look away, a roiling, acidic mess of fear and hope and fury and envy eroding her insides like she’d swallowed paint-stripper.
“I wonder what it would be like to...be with her, like that. To live with someone again.” He looked away again, the stars in his eyes just... dimmed. “If-if she sings in the shower or if she talks at movies or just... I just... What would it be like to...” He stopped, swallowing hard.
“Not be alone anymore?” she offered, shaking hand tracing his shoulder. She fenced off the fallout zone of her emotions and added, “With... with her?”
Chat just... crumpled, nodding in a jerk as his face met his knees, what she could see of it twisting miserably.
Watching on in silent, hopeless horror, Ladybug could only wonder how she had missed this for so long.
His shoulders shook once, twice, and then stilled beneath her palm, the movement and stillness alike jarring through her bones and leaving her misaligned in some vital, necessary way. A quiet, hitching breath, a soft sigh, and another shake all rolled through her like toxin, and then he stilled again.
The pattern repeated itself long after Ladybug gave up keeping count—long enough to watch most of the window lights in La Défense go out, long enough for the tide of traffic to recede, long enough to find herself shedding the tears he didn’t seem to be allowing himself.
She wrapped herself in a hug around him, and it didn’t occur to her to move until Chat’s breathing had evened out and that she was staring at the back of the very last car in the parking lot in front of them.
She pushed herself up from where she’d sunk down, face pillowed in her arms on Chat’s back, bones and heart aching both, and flashed Chat a tired half-smile in response to his silent question.
“You should ask her,” she decided, apropos of nothing, scrubbing her face and shaking out her hair.
Chat winced as he straightened back up, movements stiff. “...She’s going to say no.”
“She might not,” Ladybug pointed out, swallowing down her distaste for the idea. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? You never know until you ask.”
“I think that would be a better idea if our friendship wasn’t what’s at stake,” he retorted, more amused than anything else.
“If she turns you down, tell her it’s a joke then,” she proposed, probably less concerned with this outcome than she should have been. Sue her.
And then, without further ado, leaned over and plucked the ridiculously expensive piece of jewelry out of his hands.
“And if she does, then you should ask me.”
Chat blinked once, twice, took a breath, and let it out again, still blinking. “S-sorry? Diiiidn’t quite catch that last bit.”
“If she says no, then ask me,” Ladybug repeated, too emotionally drained to feel anything close to shame as she hopped up and held the ring up to the moon. The stone complimented her suit perfectly. “I’ll say yes.”
And then she slipped it onto her finger.
It fit criminally well, too.
Chat stared up at her with eyes too wide, lips forming unvoiced, unfinished questions.
...But he wasn’t dimmed anymore.
“I-I’m... loud,” she said—offered, really—stumbling over the awe in his eyes. “I snore. I sing in the shower, and shout at movies and hum while I work, and I... I play video games late at night, and...”
He hadn’t moved a single centimeter, still half-twisted in his seat and staring at her like she’d said something huge.
She swallowed. “I’m— I’m loud. I know I’m not her and I never will be, but... but if I’m there, it won’t be quiet. I promise.”
His eyes fell to her left hand, a funny shudder running through his frame as soon as he came to the ring. “Don’t... don’t you have someone already?”
It was a very strange thing to realize that the answers to that were, no, and, why would I? and, I’ve never met anyone I wanted to see past the third date, and, I have ridiculous standards, you know, and...
And...
...I’m pretty sure that’s all your fault.
She swallowed and pushed the realization aside. “No, not really.”
(...Oh. So that was why she’d never...)
He blinked. “You don’t?’”
Looking down at the glitter of red and white on her finger, Ladybug wanted to shiver a little herself, and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling at all. “I said it, didn’t I? I’ve never really thought about getting married before.”
But now she was.
(What would it be like like to sleep next to him, reaching out to feel his heartbeat whenever she needed to, to have someone to make breakfast for and to bid goodnight, someone she could trade chores with and lean on when she’d had a bad day, who she could joke with when they were both up at three A.M., who... who...)
“Oh,” said Chat, barely audible.
She found him still staring at her and hastily fumbled the ring off her finger, face burning and gut churning.
“Ask her,” she repeated, almost meaning it as she handed the ring back. “And if... if she says no...”
(Things like wedding nights and future children flitted across her mind, along with what it might feel like to have Chat... doing things to her, and to do those things in return, and she hastily shoved the bundle of yes-please-want back against the wall, shoveled behind the mess of her other set of uncomfortable revelations.)
Chat was silent for a moment, just staring at the ring that was now back in his palm, and then interrupted her jumbled thought process with a quiet, hesitant, “...Why?”
“Why?” Ladybug echoed, confused. “What do you mean ‘why’?”
“Why would you...” He rolled the ring in his palm, his brow knitting slightly. “Why would you do that? For me, I mean.”
“Well, why wouldn’t I?” said Ladybug, confused.
“Do you propose to all of your friends when they’re worried about getting shot down?” he asked dryly, with a wet little chuckle that went straight to her gut, and closed his fingers over his palm.
“Oh.” Ladybug got stuck on the way his claws laid over the heel of his hand, elegant and gentle and careful, and then tore herself away, finding it was her turn to clear her throat. “Not... not really.”
“Then... why? Why now?”
Because you’re too important to me for me to just sit by when you sound like that.
Because I’m starting to realize that you’re why it never worked out with anyone else—you’ve raised my standards so high I’m not sure who I’ll marry, if not you.
Because I’m lonely too.
“I-I mean, if you don’t want to...” she stammered, face heating all over again. She couldn’t say any of that, she couldn’t.
Chat, screw him, only had to look at her, knowing and expectant, and she found herself explaining.
”It’s... it’s just...” She put a hand on the back of her neck, meaning to scrub it but losing focus halfway through and squeezing it instead. “You deserve so much more—than to be alone, I mean.”
She glanced away as she said it, but that didn’t keep her from catching the look that flashed across his face.
“...O-oh.”
“And... my standards are kind of stupidly high, you know?” she tacked on, nerves bubbling up in her throat and spilling out as stammery, too-honest babble. “If I don’t marry you, who am I going to marry? And tax benefits! Who doesn’t love tax benefits? A-and... And I’m... I-I wouldn’t... mind living with you, you know.”
“...Hey, Ladybug?”
“Because my house is quiet too, and I really—”
“Ladybug?”
“—really think... What?”
Chat was getting up from his seat, the smile on his face soft and touchable in a way she really shouldn’t be thinking about, but that was all moot because the only reason Chat was getting up was so that he could kneel in front of her.
“Will you marry me?”
...What?
A strangled, awkward laugh jittered out of her chest, mangled by her booming heartbeat. “Chat, you’re supposed to ask her first.”
He glanced down at the piece of jewelry and rolled his thumb through the loop and back out again. “...That’s what I’m doing.”
...What?
“So, will you marry me?“ he asked again, looking up a little tired, a little wry, a little hopeless after all that.
“...No, I-I mean,” Ladybug stammered, “the girl you bought that ring for—”
“She’s you,” Chat said, and it wasn’t any less staggering the second time. “I bought the ring to... to propose to you.”
All Ladybug could do was gape.
“Because I was drunk, and you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
“Y-you said that to me once before,” she croaked, stalling, even if she wasn’t sure why. Chat was still on one knee. “When we—” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “—when we were... sixteen?”
Chat blinked. “I did?”
Ladybug felt her face flush, stumbling over admitting, “I-I thought about it for months after that. A-about what you meant by that, and...” And whether the sheer adoration she’d been hearing in his voice had been a hallucination or not.
“I meant this.” His mouth quirked into a maybe-smile. “I’ve always meant it, ever since I met you.”
“...Oh.”
A cold breeze nipped at her hot, hot face, the tangle of emotion in her gut even tighter now, somehow.
At her silence, Chat’s face didn’t fall so much as it settled. He started to withdraw the ring.
She said started because her heart lurched in panic as soon as she realized what he was doing, and grabbed his wrist before he could retract it entirely. “Wait!”
Surprised, Chat waited.
Ladybug took a ragged breath. “I-I will. I’ve... I’m...” She found she couldn’t look at him. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Slack with shock, Chat surrendered the ring without a fight.
“You... will?” he echoed faintly as she struggled to get the ring on her finger with shaking hands.
She waited to answer into it was all the way on her finger, and then she lost a few seconds staring at the ornate band. “...'Course I will.”
And then, because his silence held a note of disbelief that she may or may not have been imagining, she added, “Do you know how many dates I’ve had that haven’t worked out because of you? ‘Too tall, too short, too dark, too pale, doesn’t listen, doesn’t talk, disrespectful, incompetent, not enough sass, not enough puns’—” Chat snorted. “—I... I didn’t realize it at the time, but... those were all the ways they weren’t... you.”
Chat looked up at her, eyes too wide and jaw a little slack. He was doing that a lot lately.
Ladybug shrugged weakly. “If you’re good at anything, you’re good at raising a girl’s standards ridiculously high.”
Chat opened his mouth, inhaled, and said, haltingly, “That... kind of sounds like... you lo—...” He swallowed. “—you feel something for me, you know.”
Ladybug contemplated the ring. “...You’re the only person I couldn’t take losing.”
“...Oh.”
“I... I don’t know if it’s love,” she admitted. “I just know that I could trust you with anything at all.” She rubbed the heel of her palm over her aching chest and repeated, “...Anything.”
The look on his face as he pushed himself up said that he’d caught her meaning. He hesitated once he’d stood, and then asked, slowly, softly, carefully, “Can I kiss you?”
She dropped her hands to her sides as his came up to tentatively cup her cheeks. “...Yeah, you could do that.”
It occurred to her—as she felt the pads of his thumbs trace the lower edge of her mask, as he leaned down to meet her, half-lit by the lights of La Défense, as her stomach churned and fluttered and knotted and her eyes caught on his every feature and her heart pounded harder over all of them—that there was a reason she tried not to think about his face too much.
It usually led to thinking about scenarios like this, unexpected proposal and all.
The kiss itself was nothing short of overwhelming (she knew her lips weren’t always this sensitive, she knew that, and yet her toes were curling, her face hot, her entire body reacting to the slick slide of his lips against hers), and by the time it was over she was clinging to him like a junkie, panting and wrecked and close to begging for another hit.
Chat was just shaking.
“S-so,” he laughed, tremors running through his broad shoulders under her hands, “marriage, huh?”
The word itself was kind of a thrill. “Mmm.”
“Our... our names posted in the mayor’s office together?”
Ladybug tucked her nose into the crook of his neck and let his proximity relax her, as it always did. “Mhmm.”
His adam’s apple bobbed, and then, with forced levity, he proposed, “Wedding night.”
Ladybug resisted all of two seconds before grinning and murmuring, “Why wait for the wedding?”
Chat actually jumped at that. “I, ah. I-I. Um—”
“Pffffft.”
A soft huff, and he buried his nose into her hair. “I forgot I was proposing to a tease.”
“Rude,” she mumbled back. “It’s only teasing when you don’t plan to follow through.”
“Guh.”
She kissed his neck in apology.
Given by the way he shuddered, the gesture was misinterpreted.
Ladybug found herself surprisingly okay with that.
Chat detangled himself before she could push any harder, what she could see of his face flushed rosy red. (Cute.) “A-anyway, we. Should. Um.”
“Go?” she suggested, warm and amused.
He exhaled sharply and scrubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, that.”
Ladybug generously swallowed down the your place or mine? “Okay.”
Arriving at the address he’d given her the next day, Marinette found, in order: one stupidly fancy high-rise penthouse suite; one old lycée crush who was worn down and yet somehow even more devastatingly handsome than she remembered him; and one painfully empty apartment that smelled like Chat, and, therefore, home.
If this was what the rest of her life looked like, she thought as she dropped her bags in the hall, then it was so much more than she’d ever expected from it.
And then she found her partner and kissed him silly, just because she could do that now.