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The magic dissipates from the air around them, and then it’s just them, standing in front of each other, face to face. For a moment, the world halts, gravity shifting up and around. A little bubble of weightless silence that they both float in on unsteady feet.
“Oh,” Marinette says, feeling a little embarrassed.
“Hi,” Adrien says, and lets out an awkward sort of laugh that drops down to the ground between them, faulty and unsure.
“Well, this is,” Marinette says, a nervous smile stretching at her lips as she gestures vaguely to nothing and also somehow everything, “nice.”
“Yeah!” Adrien says, a little too fast. His voice cracks. He clears his throat, and they both look away from each other at the same time. “It’s nice. Good. Awesome. Fantastic, even.”
“The more synonyms for ‘nice’ you say, the more I’m starting to think you don’t think it’s nice,” Marinette says, and they’re both looking at each other again, and there’s that weightlessness. The moment of space before the tell of a magic trick. The silence.
“No,” Adrien says, and there’s a quiet in his voice, held back at the base of his throat but showing through his eyes. “It really is nice.”
“Okay,” Marinette says, wrapping her arms around herself. “I think so, too.”
They should probably talk about it.
They don’t talk about it.
---
Adrien stares up at the ceiling of Nino’s bedroom.
“Dude,” Nino says, and Adrien covers his face with his hands.
“We’ve dated four times,” he says, which sounds just absolutely ridiculous.
Nino, for his credit, does not state the obvious.
Marinette however, across the city and pacing around her bedroom while Alya watches from her bed, does state the obvious. “We’ve broken up four times,” she says, throwing her hands up. “How am I supposed to look at him now! It was bad enough having to look at him after knowing I broke up with him twice.”
“This is,” Alya says, “and I say this with the utmost admiration and love, the stupidest situation you’ve ever been in.”
Marinette nearly collapses into her carpet.
---
The first was as Marinette and Adrien.
It was a simple sort of relationship, a grade school sort of thing. They were fifteen, and Marinette was desperately in love with Adrien, and Adrien liked Marinette enough to agree to go on a date with her. It had been an ice cream date. They’d gotten interrupted by an akuma.
When they’d returned to the place they’d separated, spouting excuses on both sides, their voices had overlapped and stumbled over each other until they’d realized that they were equally distressed about the interruption. Their eyes had met, and a space of amused quiet enveloped them.
They’d burst into laughter, shy and sweet.
He’d walked her home, their hands brushing until Marinette, heart racing, hooked her pinky finger with his. He’d been in the middle of talking - a weirdly detailed review of different types of cheese, even though he was lactose intolerant - and a certain kind of pride shot through her when his words stuttered on his lips. She’d looked up at him, and his golden cheeks were splashed with red on the apples, and he was staring resolutely at their feet as they walked. But he didn’t take his pinky finger away, and he slowly started talking again, nervous and soft.
Marinette had thought it was devastatingly cute. She’d kissed his red cheek before she’d gone into her house, and he’d smiled a quiet, personal smile as he touched a hand to his cheek.
Their first kiss had been right before another, different akuma attack. They’d each had the rare free time for a date, and so they’d been out for a walk in the park. Adrien had taken her hand in his, and they’d sat down on the lip of the fountain. He was the one who kissed her, cradling her face gently with one hand while he tangled his fingers with hers with the other.
It was chaste, soft, and over when a boom shook the ground beneath them. They’d torn apart to see a giant green woman crunching buildings between her teeth.
And, despite the ongoing akuma interruptions, everything went fine for a while. They both understood any time the other had to make a weird excuse to not go on a date - not because they really understood, but because they both seemed to make excuses at the same time. They never seemed to connect the dots. They were too busy to connect dots.
Marinette was the one who ended it. She hadn’t wanted to, not really, but she could see how Adrien was liking her more and more, and they simply didn’t seem to have time for each other. And she couldn’t tell him about her being a superhero, and they were starting to get into the serious part of the relationship where secrets were kind of a big deal. It was better to end it then, before anyone really got hurt.
“But I lo- like you,” Adrien had said, and Marinette had been a fool to think no one would get hurt. Her heart was breaking.
“I like you, too,” she’d said. “But I just don’t think it can work out.” She tried her best to explain, as much as she could, but it didn’t feel like enough.
Adrien’s face drew in on itself. It was the face he made when he was thinking about things he didn’t want to think about. He’d looked back up at her, eyebrows furrowed. “Can we still be friends?”
“I… I don’t see why not,” Marinette had replied.
Still, it took them about a year to actually be comfortable with each other’s friendship again.
---
“Fifth times the charm?” Nino suggests, and Alya elbows him hard in the side, even though she’s thinking the same thing.
“We have to be normal about it,” she says, taking a hearty sip of her iced water and squinting out at the cafe around them. “To encourage normalcy, you know. They’re always weird about everything.”
“That is true,” Nino says, nodding sagely. He pauses. “You do have a plan to get them together, though, right?”
“Already in motion,” Alya says, nodding her head to the approaching figures of Adrien and Marinette in the window.
They hadn’t planned to arrive together - they’d simply arrived at the same time. They spend a good two minutes at the door of the cafe, trying to decide who should open the door for the other.
“The trick is they’re both already thinking it,” Alya says as a customer leaves the cafe and holds the door open for them, effectively solving their non-argument. Alya and Nino watch as Adrien and Marinette chuckle their way into the cafe, exchanging awkward glances. “They just have to show each other’s hands.”
Adrien and Marinette slide into the opposite side of the booth from Alya and Nino. Their shoulders brush against each other, and they both look away, flushing quietly.
Alya and Nino exchange looks.
---
The second time was as Chat and Marinette.
Adrien knew, even at the time, that it was a bad idea. But he’d fallen in love with Marinette - their relationship hadn’t been perfect, he knew, and he wanted to respect her decision, but he loved her. He missed her. And he dealt with that until they were seventeen.
It started innocuously. He’d just been feeling alone, and he’d wanted to get out of the house, and he’d ended up at Marinette’s. He hadn’t wanted to just show up as Adrien because that would’ve been inappropriate, friends or not, so he’d been wearing the mask. Still bad, but he liked the barrier of separation. He liked that he had an excuse to not say much. He could’ve been anybody underneath the mask - he didn’t have to be Adrien Agreste. He could be Chat Noir, a nobody. A stray.
She’d been up on her balcony, and they’d just talked. It was the nicest he’d felt in a while, and then he’d just… kept on going back. Usually at night, when the world quieted and the stars shone their faces between the light pollution. She’d never complained, and something in his heart ached and jumped every time he went and saw the way her lips slid into a smile when she noticed him. It always looked involuntary. She was happy to see him.
It was just supposed to be quiet nights, a little escape. But then one night he’d had a leaf stuck in his hair from a too-friendly run in with a tree, and she’d made fun of him, leaning over and brushing it out of his hair with gentle fingers.
He loved her, and she was so close. He’d wanted to kiss her, but he hadn’t moved a muscle. He’d just wanted to drink her in, bottle up the memory of her glimmering in the moonlight and tuck it into the fondest parts of his brain.
She had been the one to kiss him.
And then she’d immediately pulled away, jumping away from him as if she’d been burned. “I’m sorry,” she’d said, turning away from him and pushing her hands over her face. “I’m not sure why I did that. I’m sorry, don’t- I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Adrien had said, his voice cracking and soft. She’d turned around, her hands slowly dropping to her sides.
“Alright?” she’d asked.
He’d known it was a bad idea. He wasn’t really thinking about bad ideas at that moment in time, though. He’d taken her hand, and he’d looked into her eyes to make sure, and he’d kissed her again.
What followed after wasn’t exactly what one would classically call a relationship - they had to keep it a secret, and so most kinds of dates were out of the question. But he would still pack picnic baskets and take her to the Eiffel Tower every so often, and she would hold on to him as they moved through the air on his baton, pressing chaste kisses to his neck, right on his hairline.
They were happy, in a quiet sort of way. She never asked too much of him, and she always understood that his duty as a superhero had to come first. She was gracious and understanding, just as Adrien had always known her to be, and he was desperately guilty. He loved her, but he knew it wasn’t right.
He was the one who ended it. The guilt ate away at him, and he couldn’t tell her so many things he wanted to. He needed to let her go.
“Okay,” she’d said, and she’d turned away from him. The night had wrapped around her, holding her and painting her into a faraway silhouette.
“Okay?” he’d asked, and she’d nodded.
“I understand,” she’d said, still not looking at him. “You have to do what you have to do. This never could’ve lasted anyway.”
He’d stepped around so that he was in front of her, and she’d turned her face away. She was crying, steady tracks of tears running down her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut, chin trembling, and Adrien had never hated himself more.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said, and she’d shaken her head. He couldn’t bring himself to leave, just like that, so he hugged her tight to himself, and he’d pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m sorry for everything, Marinette,” he’d said, holding her tight to him as she’d cried onto his heart.
And then he’d left.
---
“How long do you think it’ll take them?” Nino asks as he and Alya watch a video someone had posted of Ladybug and Chat Noir. “You know, to show their hands, or whatever.”
In the video, Ladybug and Chat are shown on a roof. They are talking about something, but the person filming is too far away to be heard. Chat says something, and Ladybug laughs - a full body motion, the kind where she throws her head back and playfully shoves him away - and Chat watches her the entire time, smile caught in the spaces between hers.
“Anywhere between two days and an eternity,” Alya says as the video ends. They flop back on the couch, and Nino turns his head to look at her.
“It’s already been two days,” he says, and Alya nods. Nino stares at her. “Babe, I think you have to meddle.”
Alya grins.
---
The third time was as Ladybug and Chat Noir.
They were nineteen years old and lonely, and it didn’t help that Marinette had begun to fall in love with Chat when she’d dated him as Marinette. She’d gotten over it, mostly, but patrols still left her jittery and new, and she never really got out of the habit of looking for him, even in places she knew he wouldn’t be. But that was alright. She dealt with it well enough.
Until, of course, that night they’d fought a particularly difficult akuma and she’d nearly lost him. She’d yelled at him, pounded her fists on his chest, close to tears, and everything in her brain had been screaming that she couldn’t lose him - she couldn’t bear the thought of doing this without him.
She was the one who kissed him. She hadn’t really meant to, but when she’d calmed down enough to stop yelling and become relieved that he was alive, she’d taken his face in her hands, and she’d pressed kisses to his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, and then to his lips.
He’d frozen up a little bit, and so she’d pulled away, but he’d just looked at her in that quiet way he had sometimes, reaching up and ghosting his fingers along her cheek. And then he’d kissed her back.
It had been fun, while it lasted. To give each other pecks on the cheek in the middle of akuma fights, share quips back and forth, watch the sunset and hold each other in their arms. They’d always been good partners, and it felt easy to add in all the normal things a couple would do.
The issues started to arise when their relationship started to reach the public. Suddenly everyone was talking about how Ladybug and Chat Noir were in love, and when you’re a superhero, being in love is life-threatening. Marinette knew that. She was supposed to know that.
And Chat had begun to get more paranoid about his identity - he wouldn’t tell her why, and she thought he was just finally understanding the importance of the secret. But it had been more than that. She wouldn’t understand that until much later.
Regardless, Chat had been the one to break it off.
He’d told her Hawkmoth was doing bolder and bolder things. He’d told her that with everyone knowing about their relationship, Hawkmoth could use that against them, if ever the situation arose. He’d told her he cared about her too much to put her at risk like that.
He could be so infuriatingly reasonable. He was right. Of course he was right.
The split had been amicable. It had to be. They’d smiled their way through it, but Marinette cried for nearly three days straight, and every time she saw Chat in the time immediately after, his eyes were always red and puffy underneath his mask.
---
“I know what you guys are trying to do,” Marinette says with a laugh, crossing her arms and sharing a look with Adrien. Alya sees the way his eyes linger on her for just a beat too long before he looks back at her and Nino.
“And what is it we’re trying to do?” Alya says. She’s still holding out the voucher for the couples’ day pass to the amusement park that included not only free entry and access to drinks, but a discount for a dinner in the park.
“You’re trying to set us up,” Marinette says, sticking her nose up. “Because you aren’t convinced that Adrien and I are just friends because we like it that way. We’ve talked about it, and we will not be victims of your meddling.”
Alya doubted they talked about it more than the bare minimum amount, but she didn’t say anything.
“Nah, no meddling here,” Nino says, holding his hands up. “I just promised to help Chris with his project this weekend and completely forgot about it. I didn’t tell Alya about it, so she didn’t put it on our calendar, and we got the voucher before we remembered. You dudes know how important the calendar is.”
“The calendar is very important,” Adrien points out, and Alya watches Marinette waver.
“Okay, fine,” Marinette finally says, and Adrien accepts the voucher. “But we will be strictly friends! Just in case there is meddling involved! We are just friends!”
“We get it,” Alya says, holding her hands up in defeat. “I’m just glad the voucher won’t be going to waste now.”
Adrien is looking down at the voucher, reading the terms of it, and Alya sees the way Marinette’s eyes wander over him, soft and intimate, before she leans in and reads over his shoulder.
Nino excitedly nudges Alya’s ribs, and Alya tries to suppress a smile.
---
The fourth time was as Ladybug and Adrien.
Adrien didn’t mean for it to happen. He went to her, as Adrien, about his suspicions about his father, and she’d been so concerned and sympathetic towards him that he’d been surprised. Not that he should’ve been surprised. He knew how good her heart was - he loved that heart. But she’d fussed over him, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been fussed and worried over. They’d been twenty one and determined.
It started just as check ins, every so often. She’d visit him - sometimes at the mansion, sometimes at quiet places at work - and she’d ask him if there’d been anything new in the whole My-Dad-Is-Hawkmoth Department, and he’d tell her if he’d seen anything more, and she would take the information steadily with just the slightest of nods. She’d been filing all that information away in the spreadsheet of her brain in order to make the most foolproof plan she possibly could.
But even though she’d been planning months ahead, she always took time to ask him how he was doing. Mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically. Anything he could give her, she would wait and listen to. It was nice, to be listened to. To be honest.
It was slow, mostly. Check ins became longer, almost-dates. He would tell her about his day, and she would hold his hand, thumb brushing over his knuckles. He would give her a kiss on the cheek, and she would let him.
He’s not really sure who the other kissed first. They’d just been sitting, in a stairwell of one of the various photoshoot offices he’d been parraded to, and he’d been taking a much longer break than he probably should’ve, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had his head resting on her shoulder, and she was playing with his fingers in her lap.
“I’m just scared,” he’d said, and she’d hummed. “I still love him, you know. I still care about him. Even when he’s terrible. I’m not sure what my life will be without him.”
“It’ll be rough,” she’d said. “But only at first. You’ll learn how to let yourself be happy.”
It was such a profound, beautiful thing to say. He got the feeling, suddenly, that she knew him better than perhaps anyone in this moment. He’d raised his head, and they’d looked at each other, and Adrien had said, “I do want to be happy.”
And she’d said, “I want you to be happy, too.”
And then they’d kissed.
It had to be a secret, of course, and Ladybug always worried about putting him or Chat at risk. He always felt a little flutter in his stomach when she talked about it - it was obvious, that she should care about Chat, but to hear her tell him how much she cared about his alter-ego left him buzzing. But he knew how much the worrying got to her.
All said and done, it wasn’t very long of a relationship. But it was exactly what Adrien had needed, in that tense and steady build to the end. He’d needed a space of quiet, a bubble to unwind in, and her arms, her eyes, her hands were exactly the place to do it. She never said, but he got the feeling she felt the same.
Still, a month before the end, she met with him, and she kissed him on the forehead. “I’m sorry,” she’d said, pulling away and cradling his face in her hands. “I can’t stand the thought of him using you to hurt me. I don’t want to have my feelings for you cause something to go wrong.”
He knew the way she thought - he’d watched her plan in circles as Chat for months. He knew that, privately, she’d probably incorporated every possible situation involving their relationship into the plan, and ultimately the cons outweighed the pros. He trusted her judgement. He let her go.
He kissed her one last time, and then he let her go.
---
They use the voucher to the full extent, as much as friends possibly can. And it’s fun - of course it’s fun - and it’s easy - of course it’s easy - and it’s natural - of course it’s natural. They ride rollercoasters, planning the faces they’ll make for the mid-coaster photo while in line, they take breaks on picnic tables, passing strawberry funnel cake back and forth, and they play those cheesy amusement park games, trading the stuffed animals they win and maybe being a little more competitive than grown adults are supposed to. That doesn’t change the fact that Marinette wins more games, though.
After dinner, they sit down on a bench as the night folds over them, and they watch the fireworks burst across the sky.
“What was Chris’s project?” Marinette asks as a green firework sparks over their heads.
“I’m not sure,” Adrien says, watching the red firework burst next to the green, the little streaks of fire brushing up against each other. “I think it might’ve been some sort of music thing.”
Marinette hums. The fireworks continue, and it’s just the fireworks, the night, and them, side by side.
“Do you think Alya and Nino are really trying to set us up?” Marinette asks quietly, and Adrien turns his head so fast to her that his neck cracks. Their faces flush, and they’re suddenly both glad that it’s night time.
“I don’t know,” Adrien says with a shrug he hopes looks easy. “Maybe, maybe not. I mean, they both know it didn’t work out four times, so.” He shrugs again. Marinette laughs.
“Yeah, I mean, it’d be ridiculous to try again after having it not work out four whole times,” she says, the fireworks popping and crackling over them, simmering. “It’s like that- that definition of insanity kind of thing.”
“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” Adrien supplies, and Marinette nods.
“Yeah, exactly. That’s insane,” she says, and there’s a note of quiet in her voice, one that Adrien tries not to read into and Marinette tries to pretend isn’t there. “There’s no way we’re that insane,” she says softly.
“Of course not,” Adrien says.
The fireworks continue.
It starts to rain, immediately after the fireworks show. A torrential downpour, biblical proportions. The kind of rain that drenches everything, revealing it’s real shape and form, clearing everything else away. They laugh and run under a nearby awning, and Marinette says she’s going into the gift shop to see if they have any umbrellas. Adrien waits outside for her, holding his hand out and catching rain in the palm of his hand.
He watches the rain fall, and he thinks.
She counts the change at the gift shop counter, and she thinks.
When she returns, he looks up and his lips move into a smile, completely involuntary. Her mouth does the same as she holds out the umbrella she got. A Ladybug and Chat Noir themed one, naturally.
“I figured-” she starts.
“I never-” he says at the same time.
They stop, and then they laugh, a little jittery and nervous. “You go,” she says, and he smiles at her, his hand still out to catch the rain.
“I was just thinking about it,” he says. “I never stopped loving you.”
Her breath catches. Gravity shifts.
“Even when I thought I was loving someone else,” he says. “It was still you.”
“Oh,” she says, and it’s not really because she meant to say anything, but rather because it was a sound to let out. They’re weightless, in the air. The whole world floats around them.
“Does it count as insanity if I’ve only ever fallen in love once?” he asks.
Marinette finds herself taking a step forward, toward him. Gravity has shifted, and they are each other’s axis. “I was thinking,” she says. “And it was different every time. We’ve done the same thing, over and over, but it’s always been different.”
Adrien considers this.
Marinette fidgets.
The silence is theirs to inhabit, just as always, but she feels the need to make something clear.
“I never stopped loving you, either,” she says, and then Adrien is stepping into her space, cradling her cheek with his rain-slick palm, and he is looking at her in that quiet way he has. He smiles.
They’re not sure who kisses who. It doesn’t really matter anymore anyway, because they kiss, and it is familiar and lovely, just as it has always been. It’s the bubbles of quiet, of comfort, of love that they’ve found in each other, again and again, over and over.
When they pull away, Adrien still leans in and gives her one last peck. “I’m sorry,” he says, and she shakes her head in bemusement. “I interrupted you,” he explains. “You were going to say something when you came out of the shop.”
“Oh,” Marinette says, looking down at the Ladybug and Chat Noir themed umbrella still somehow in her hand. She laughs, a light, airy sound he drinks and keeps, close to his heart. “I was- I just figured it’d be funny.”
---
Nino finishes reading the text on his phone at the same time Alya finishes reading the text on hers. They look up at each other at the same time, and Nino grins at the same time Alya does.
“I called it first,” Nino says.
“You still owe me five bucks,” Alya says, and Nino tosses a bill to her and laughs.
Across the city, underneath a Ladybug and Chat Noir themed umbrella, Marinette and Adrien walk home.