#i wrote this months ago but take it pls and know that ladrien owns my heart

[lnc2]

Flowers on the Window Sill

Summary: The first time Ladybug saw him, really saw him, the universe stopped.

A/N: Hihi we just got permission to post our pieces for @ladrienzine.  This is mine about the babes.

AO3

It started after Volpina.

A silly impulse he couldn’t resist, a silent thank-you, a gentle admonishment for Ladybug’s near-miraculous sacrifice.

The flowers sat on his window sill for days, withering away with the wind and smog and time. Plagg told him it was stupid, disappointed in his disappointment, but Adrien shrugged him off and tried again.

And again. And again.

“One day she’ll see them,” He said. His kwami wasn’t convinced.

“They’re just going to die again.”

Adrien hummed, tying the scarlet red ribbon to the posy’s stems and attaching them to his window.

He thought of his mother, sitting on a blanket in the garden grass, sun shining down on warm skin, the smell of dirt and wet and flowers filling his nose, making him sneeze, making him smile.

“For pere,” Emelie said, clipping the brightest, reddest buds from a nearby bush. “So he knows we’re thinking of him even when he’s far away.”

“Won’t they die?” Adrien asked when he was old enough to hold the clippers on his own. “Won’t that make him sad?”

She smiled, fingers dancing along his sides as she kissed his temple. “That’s what new flowers are for.”

That’s what new flowers are for.

These days there were no new flowers in the garden, another casualty of his father’s neglect, but Adrien remembered his mother’s words all the same. Like seeds planted in his heart they took root, strong and stubborn, until they blossomed like truth.

Gravity, the sun, and ladybugs.

The first time Ladybug saw him, really saw him, the universe stopped.

Eyes, blue, so blue, going from determined to shocked to soft– soft for him in all the ways she had to be hard for Paris– well. Adrien gaped like a fish– nothing at all like the cool cat he knew he could be.

Then again, Ladybug never looked at Chat quite like that before.

It was almost worth being impaled by invisible arrows to stretch out that moment to minutes to forever.

But akumas were akumas, Ladybug was Ladybug, and… well, even Adrien knew some things were too good to be true. After all, what was so special about Adrien Agreste to catch a Ladybug’s attention? Nothing. 

And yet...

His mother told him he took his first steps young.

Smile wide and proud, she talked about his baby pout and bright, bright eyes narrowed in the determination of the untried.

He had his first fall young then too.

Right down on his wobbly knees, still chubby with baby fat photographers loved at the time but loathed as he got older. She wasn’t quick enough to catch him but he didn’t cry. Not with Gabriel staring down at him, stoic and waiting. No, Emelie said, Adrien’s eyes watered and he sucked in a breath before bracing himself and standing up.

His first full steps were shaky, quick, and short, but they were steps all the same.

Falling for Ladybug felt a lot like that.

Adrien Agreste stepped out into an unfamiliar world of magic and supervillains and camembert and found her on the other side.  One too confident step into the sky sent him tumbling, tumbling down into the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.  With a mouth so smart it inspired a city and a heart so big he couldn’t help but covet, from almost the first, Chat Noir was stepping towards Ladybug.

Which made it all the more surprising when sometimes,

just sometimes,

he found Ladybug stepping towards him.

Nino pointed it out to him first:

“Dude. I think Ladybug has a crush on you.”

It was during Jackady, while they were running for their lives.  Not exactly the time for life-changing revelations.  Even still, the idea sent a ridiculous zing of pleasure through him. A pleasure swiftly followed by an equally ridiculous less than half-hearted denial.

“What?” He squeaked. “No way.”

“Uh huh,” Nino said, shaking his head. “Well you certainly had eyes for her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush like that.”

Adrien felt heat rush to his cheeks as if to prove Nino’s point. He shoved his friend’s shoulder.

“Shut up.”

Nino laughed. “Deny it all you want, bro. But if anyone could bag the bug it would be you. Just watch out for Chat Noir.”

He made a swiping motion with his hands, an insulting approximation of cataclysm, but Adrien laughed all the same and changed the subject. None too eager to have Adrien and Chat Noir existing in the same breath.  Still, his friend’s words lingered with him for days.

I think Ladybug has a crush on you.

Hah.

Ha ha ha.

The idea was so laughable it hurt.  Hurt like a want so deep he could drown.

“She’s got your smile,” She’d said, admiring his mother’s picture.

He wished he could tell her how much it meant to him that she saw any resemblance at all. His father always said Adrien was like Emelie but he didn’t say it like Ladybug. He didn’t say it like it was good.

“Thank you,” He murmured, voice soft, heart softer.

Her answering smile, sweet, her freckled cheeks, pink, were enough to send hope spiraling. Adrien wondered if she ever blushed like that for anyone else. Hated that he might never know.

Emelie once told him, as her hands held his own, guiding scissors over garden stems, that when you loved someone you told them.

Adrien was never great with words.  Not like Chat Noir who could smooth talk his way around the Seine. Unfortunately neither of them could surface long enough to help finish his measly poem.

Bluebell eyes and strong disguise?

Who was he kidding?

Everything sounded so trite when all he wanted to say, all he wanted to tell her, fell into three words.  But words like I and love and you proved even too much for Chat Noir when it came down to it.

I hate you, Ladybug.

Plagg spent the entire afternoon laughing at him for that particular blunder. Adrien never hated an akuma more for ruining his life. Never mind that his lady was clever, she’d never think twice to see the truth of what he’d been trying to say to begin with.

And yet, somehow, her reply found him all the same:

My heart belongs to you.

“What makes you so sure it’s the bug?” Plagg asked, over it already even as he watched his charge melt against the window clutching the ridiculous valentine.

But Adrien knew. He knew it in his bones the way he knew the way she moved.

Plucked out from a pile of forgotten valentines like the way she plucked out his heart for keeps, Adrien’s hope outweighed common sense, crossed his luck against hers, and came out the other side with a determination to rival giants.

This girl.  This girl.

“It’s her Plagg,” He whispered, watching the little ladybug that graced his valentine fly lazily around the room. “I know it.”

He hoped in the same way she’d see the flowers on his window and know them for hers.  An unclaimed declaration, waiting.

And waiting. And waiting.

Chat Noir tried steering her towards the Agreste mansion on patrols, even attempted to point out the flowers a time or two.

“I wonder who the lucky lady could be.”

Ladybug stammered, blushed, and shook her head.

“Stop it, Chat,” She scolded. “It’s not funny.”

He didn’t intend for it to be funny.

Getting close to her as Adrien, outside the mask, was near impossible most days.  Between fencing and his father and superheroing there wasn’t any time to ask about valentines and lingering looks and flowers.

Riposte was difficult enough without asking her if she meant it when she said Kagami didn’t deserve him.  And even when she did seek him out after the Gorilla was akumatized it was to scold him, albeit gently.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” She said, catching him on his way to school one day. His heart stuttered at her sudden appearance, but there was a stiffness to her, a distance he wasn’t sure he could cross.

He tried anyway, reaching forward to place a hand on her shoulder. “Ladybug?”

She shrugged him off. Her eyes, glassy, were on his but she didn’t seem to actually see.

“Leaping off into nothing like that. I say jump and you just– what if the akuma hadn’t let go of me? You could have died.”

Oh. That.

Adrien rubbed his neck. “You asked me to jump.”

“Not like that.  Not like –” She stopped but he heard the lost words all the same.  Not like Chat.

She paused, sniffed, and shook her head. The shadow of every akuma he couldn’t remember reflected in her eyes.

Jump, how high, how far, say when– it never occurred to him what it must be like to be on the receiving end of that.  Chat Noir had died for Ladybug so many times who was Adrien Agreste to question her?

Guilt, swift, settled deep.

“If… if it counts for anything I had a back up plan.”

“Oh?”

“I…” He stopped. Reassessed.  His ring lay heavy against his finger.  “I don’t know.”

She huffed, an agitated little sound, and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Have a little less faith in me. Please.”

Adrien laughed, hollow. “I’ll try.”

He never did.

His mother told him love was in the moments between the Big and the quiet.  In the brushing of hands, the meeting of eyes, the sharing of secrets. In the space between wanting and being wanted in return. It was the terror of being known– hearts unfurling like tea leaf flowers, slowly in the warm.

Adrien wanted to know love like that.

But Chat Noir was Big and charm and soft and Adrien was quiet and sly and lonely and Ladybug, Ladybug…

Well she was caught up with him somewhere in the between.

He was no more one than the other just like her and Adrien spent sleepless nights wondering how much more his heart could open up with waiting for and wanting more.

To see, to feel, to know.

In the end, it wasn’t waiting that brought her to him.

On a night where the moon hung full in the sky, he caught her swinging silhouette passing by.  Through luck or chance or time she heard him calling out and changed course to land at his window ledge, eyes glittering with curiosity in the dim light.

“Adrien?”

He stared silly and stupid before fate (or Plagg) pinched him forward, forcing out his daze.

“Oh!” He said, suddenly frantic, palms sweaty and fingers clumsy as he gestured towards then fiddled with the flowers that hung from his window. “Yours.  You. For you, I mean.”

“Me?” She squeaked, pale cheeks rushing pink.  “Really?”

Adrien gracelessly shoved the flowers into her unwaiting hands.

“Yeah, um. For a while now.  Yours.”

She was a vision there, stun struck, red and black and flower blue. Blue like the posies he’d foolishly picked and plucked and placed on his window sill.

“But… why?” She breathed, handful of flowers, eyes full of heart.

Adrien wanted to drown in those eyes.  His fingers itched, so many pinpricks and jolts, urging him to reach forward, to see, to feel, to know.

He shrugged, looked away. “Why not?”

Ladybug deserved a thousand thanks yous and more.  A mere bouquet or dozen wouldn’t even tip the scale.

“I– thank you,” She said, gently stroking one of the petals. “They’re my favorite.”

“I know,” He blurted, stupid.  Ladybug startled, blushed, but didn’t ask him how.

Just as well.  The Chat in him couldn’t lie to the questions rising in her eyes. Then again, Ladybug was never one to ask a question she couldn’t answer.

Instead, she leaned forward, holding the line of her yoyo in one hand and cradling the bouquet in the other.

“Can I…?” She murmured in the space between.

Struck dumb by her nearness, too stunned to do anything but memorize the freckles on her nose, Adrien nodded.

Her lips were soft against his cheek.  Soft and brief, so, so brief.

She pulled away, just enough.

“Thank you, beau gosse.  For thinking of me.”

Adrien shivered.

Slowly, his hand reached up, hovering just above her.  She nodded, body trembling beneath his hands as they moved from wrists to elbows to shoulders to neck. When his thumb first brushed beneath the line of her mask, sensitive fingertips over red, red cheeks, Adrien felt he could collapse from the relief of it all.

Warm skin on warmer skin still, the smell of flowers and toothpaste and sweat, a shy smile on an even shyer girl hanging in the window of a boy too stupid with love to do anything but marvel. It was thundering hearts in a silent room disturbed by small words that held more than their meaning and...

Oh.  

“Hi.” He said, voice revelation thick.

Ladybug laughed, light and airy and breathless.  “Hello.”