#its been a hot minute since ive posted fic and omg the nerves

[bugsandchatons]

when you weren’t mine to lose

Summary: Change is a scary thing, especially when it feels like nothing has stayed the same.

It's been a year since Marinette became the Guardian of the Miracle Box - a year of struggling beneath a burden she never asked for, a weight that has her leaning on her partner more and more as the hours fly by, of letting him come to her, too, when he needs a soft place to land. A year of falling for the boy who takes on the world by her side with a smile made of sunlight, and fighting the growing urge to tell him what he means to her.

After all, they'll have time enough for that when Paris is safe.

But when the unthinkable happens, Marinette learns the tragedy of loving someone quietly, and the lines she'll cross to save him.

Thank you to @emsylcatac for looking over the first chapter for me!! 💙

[[on AO3]]

***

[one: when I was living for the hope of it all]

The passage of time can be a funny thing.

As Ladybug touched down onto the roof of the apartment that once belonged to one Wang Fu, she thought of how, for every one thing that withstood the hours, another would inevitably change.

There were the facts of Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s life that even passing years couldn’t seem to touch: akumas, for one, rampant and undeterred in the onslaught to claim what Hawkmoth wanted but could never be allowed to have; just as there was the presence of Chat Noir only one step behind, landing in a crouch at her side with a smile made of sunbeams. The rooftops they haunted to keep Paris safe remained more or less unchanged, as did the weight that never left Ladybug’s tired shoulders, and the deepening cracks in a heart that loved too much and too many. There were designs in need of sewing and stacks of homework to get through and secrets to keep, and only so many hours in the day. 

But when Ladybug looked back on the year that had passed, it felt like everything had changed. That too much had. 

Over the summer, Marinette had turned sixteen. She had a red-spotted box buried in her room that carried more responsibility than she knew what to do with. She was split down the middle and slowly coming apart at the seams.

Ladybug takes a deep breath in through her nose, holding it a moment before letting it go. She’d fix it. She always did.

Behind her, Chat Noir huffs. His clawed fingers are tangled hopelessly in the string of her yoyo, and the look on his face is one of such intense concentration that she almost laughs. Instead, she looks away, nose scrunching.

If there’s one change that’s been slowly driving her to distraction, it’s this: when had Chat Noir gotten so tall? And when had she begun to notice?

“That’s not meant to be a toy, Chat,” she reminds him, though the reprimand is nowhere near stern. 

Undeterred, Chat comes to join her at the edge of the roof, his smile bright. “Look, bug. It’s the Eiffel Tower.”

She looks, and the corner of her mouth twitches into a reluctant grin. He has, indeed, twisted the string into something resembling the tower between his hands. 

“Good job, kitty. Now give it back before you knot it.”

He stretches, the long line of his spine a graceful curve, before depositing the yoyo back into her waiting palm. He scans the horizon, one hand at his brow to block the setting sun. “Did you see the Ladyblog last night? I didn’t know Alya jumped in that close to get that shot.” 

Ladybug sighs. She was the one who’d swung in to snatch her friend out of harm’s way. “She’s going to get hurt one of these days.” 

“I think she might be immortal,” Chat whispers, as though he’s uncovered a secret. Ladybug snorts, and he grins at the sound before continuing, “she’s something, anyway.” 

The way he says it is fond and familiar, not so unlike how Marinette would sound, were she the one talking about Alya. She glances at him, quick and considering, before deciding it best to let that train of thought go. It steps a bit too close into dangerous territory.

“She is something. I guess after nearly being dunked into the Seine in a mummy’s coffin, nothing can really scare her,” Ladybug muses. “I envy her a bit for that.”

She hadn’t meant to let that last thought slip. 

Chat turns to face her. “You envy Alya nearly being drowned in the Seine?” 

A laugh tumbles out of her. She lets her feet swing back and forth and watches them instead of him. “No, silly. The ‘nothing can scare her’ part.” 

There’s a pause where all she can hear is the sounds of the city below and his even breaths. He doesn’t make light of it like maybe he would have, once. It’s only another sure mark of how things have changed: they’ve both seen too much to keep up any pretense of being fearless. 

“What’s scaring you, LB?” 

When she chances a look up at him, the fading light has lent a halo to his golden hair. His smile has softened into something open, endlessly patient. He’d take her word or accept her silence. 

It had never really mattered to her that Chat Noir was beautiful, before. Lately, though, his quicksilver grins had her turning away before he could see the heat coloring her cheeks. The raw, unfiltered sincerity in his gaze set her heart pounding. He was always there, at Ladybug’s side or on Marinette’s terrace, his laugh a song in her ears, his touch a ghost on her skin. 

His friendship meant everything to her. Maybe one day she’d be able to tell him. 

He catches her looking and his expression turns serious, green eyes intent on hers. Ladybug’s quick inhale gets caught somewhere on the way to her lungs, and she remembers he’d asked her a question. 

“Nothing really, kitty.” Too much. Everything. “Don’t worry about it.”

There’s something sharp in his eyes as he nods. He knows she’s lying, just as well as he knows he can’t press, not really. His hand goes to the back of his neck and his gaze darts away. “If you’re sure.” 

She tries on a smile. “I am.” 

He stays quiet for a moment, nothing between them but the breeze before he speaks again, his voice sheepish. “So I’ve been meaning to ask you something, but I...I don’t want to make you mad.” 

Ladybug bumps her shoulder against his. “You can ask me anything. Well,” she hastily amends, “almost anything.” 

Chat’s smile doesn’t make it to his eyes. He fidgets in place next to her, picking at a crack in the cement. “Okay, hear me out. I’ve been thinking, with Master Fu gone, no one knows us. It’s been a year and we’re nowhere closer to figuring out who Hawkmoth is. I know sharing our identities has always been dangerous, but…” his brow furrows behind his mask. “Isn’t it a little dangerous for no one at all to know?”

Ladybug drops her gaze to the streets below, lips pressed into a taut line. She’d be lying to him if she said the same question hadn’t plagued her for months. She lost hours at night, lying awake and wondering what if. 

Should the worst happen to them, not a single soul would know what had become of Marinette Dupain-Cheng. The boy behind Chat Noir’s mask could disappear, and she wouldn’t even know where to look. No one would.

“I’ve thought about it, too,” she admits, her voice low. Chat’s ears perk, and she holds a hand up as if to halt his enthusiasm in its tracks. “I have, but...it’s a lot. I’m not saying no,” she assures him, “Just...not today.” 

Chat picks up her hand and Ladybug jumps, just a little. She watches, silent, as Chat brings her knuckles up to his lips, a faint, careful memory of a kiss, before releasing her fingers.

It’s been months since his casual overtures of affection had all but stopped. She wants to snatch his hand back as it withdraws and hold on, for just a moment more.

“Whenever you’re ready, my lady,” he says. “And if you decide you don’t want me to know your name, I would still be willing to tell you mine.” 

Their eyes catch and hold in the dark. His offer is a tempting one. He’d give everything he had to her, she knows, without expecting anything in return. 

It’s precisely when something is important, that it's important to say it, no matter what.

It hits her then, in a punch to the chest that steals her breath, just how much she’d like to lean in, close the chasm between them, and kiss him. But if there’s one more thing time hasn’t touched, it’s the same fear that snaps at her heels whenever she tries to take a step.

Instead, Ladybug jumps to her feet, yoyo in hand. “I-I’ll think on it, Chaton. There’s pros and cons either way, and it’s a big decision to make, and I—”

He stands up more slowly as she stammers, his smile soft and just a little sad. Her voice dies in her throat. “I know, bug. Just remember you don’t have to do it all alone. I’m here for you, you know?”

She did know. It was the one, unassailable truth of her life—Chat was by her side, ready to lighten her burden whenever he could, whenever she’d let him. 

Ladybug steps forward, catching the slight widening of his eyes as she rises on her toes to slide her arms around his neck. She tucks her nose into the curve of his collarbone, where he smells like sunshine and leather and something like home.

She feels his breath hitch in his chest before he bands his arms around her waist and pulls her in closer still. His heart pounds against hers, a harmony she knows better than most.

Chat turns his cheek into her hair, his breath warm as it ghosts over her ear. “What’s this for?” he murmurs, but she can hear the smile in his words. 

For everything I can’t say, Ladybug thinks, and squeezes him just a little tighter. For burrowing his way under her skin, for melting into the marrow of her bones, flooding her veins and drowning her heart, until he grew into something vital she’s not sure she could live without.

She should tell him she loves him, that she always had, but the words felt heavier than they might have once.

Tomorrow. Ladybug takes a deep breath before releasing him and stepping back to solid ground. There was always tomorrow. 

When she glances up, she catches a flash of something in his eyes, confused or curious or both. It was getting dangerous, how well he could read her.

“Goodnight, Chat Noir,” she says, the words soft.

He watches her, measuring, before letting the moment pass by unremarked. Her stomach flips, a dizzying blend of relief and disappointment. “Goodnight, my lady,” he murmurs. “See you tomorrow.”

Ladybug stays and watches him go, a black blur vaulting away until the dark claims him completely. “I have time,” she whispers to the wind and turns for home.

After all, there would always be tomorrow. 

She sets her phone and the Ladyblog aside and rises to her knees, opens the terrace hatch, and lets the night inside. Chat Noir drops in and lands in a crouch on her mattress, stark black against the pink of her bedding. The smile he offers her is a convincing one, well-practiced and charming, but she knows him better. 

 ***

Hours later, when a tell-tale tapping on her window draws her attention to glowing green eyes in the dark, Marinette wonders if the world is desperately trying to tell her something.

“Did I wake you?”

‘No, minou,” Marinette assures him, shifting back into her nest of pillows. “It is getting late, though.” 

It’s a statement and an invitation in one. They’ve developed a sort of shorthand since the first time he stumbled onto her balcony, broken and so lonely she ached from only the echoes of it. She can say so much in so few words, and he can hear the meaning that hides in between her breaths.

He hesitates, uncertain and almost shy in a way that never fails to find her smile and bring it to the light. She pats the bed beside her and lifts the blanket. His own smile turns a little less brittle and he crawls over to settle in at her side, warm despite the chill he brought in with him. 

Chat burrows under the covers before dropping his chin onto her shoulder. His wild hair is downy soft against her cheek. “What are we watching?”

She sifts her fingers through the hair at the back of his head and he melts into her touch like a starving stray. Like always, it cracks her heart. 

She’s learned her partner hurts, sometimes. She doesn’t know why, but she wonders, as she wonders how she never really saw it before. He has so many fragile fault lines running beneath boundless bravado and spirited humor, and though he tries not to show it to Ladybug, whatever it was the led him to Marinette’s terrace keeps him visiting more and more, restless and wounded, something unspoken clawing beneath his skin.

Marinette knows she probably shouldn’t have let him in, logistically speaking, and she certainly shouldn’t let him stay. She has her secrets to keep and he has his, and their little slumber parties have just become another. It’s asking for trouble, she knows.  

But he’s her best friend. If there’s a tempest that chases him away from his home and out into the night, if it’s all she can do, she’ll be his port in the storm.

“Ladybug and Chat Noir take on Mr. Pigeon, round...what? Fifty-four?” Marinette murmurs. She feels a groan rumble out of his chest, transforming into a quiet laugh. 

“Come on. All of Paris has to be sick of that fight by now.” 

In the glow of her screen, Marinette smiles. “Oh, definitely. But I could never deprive Alya of her well-deserved page views.”

Chat shifts around to look at her, his sharp grin softening into something warm that sets loose a swarm in her belly. “You’re a good friend, Marinette.” 

She bites back a sigh. A better friend might tell him the truth: that she’s not entirely who he thinks she is, that she knows him better than she ought to. That she knows he hides what hurts.

Then again, she keeps her scars to herself, too.

Marinette flicks the bell at his throat. The light tinkling of it cuts through the quiet. “Yeah, yeah. You only say that because I take you in and give you pastries.” 

“No,” he objects immediately, his expression serious. “Well, maybe a little, but it’s not the only reason.” 

She sinks deeper into her pillows, smiling all the while. Her hip lines up to Chat’s, soft cotton against battered leather. They lay side by side - thigh to thigh, knee to knee. It’s no different than sleepovers with Alya, except that it absolutely is. She doesn’t have to ask if he’s staying, and somewhere along the way, he stopped asking if he should go. 

“Bedtime, minou,” she mumbles. 

Chat leans down into his pillow. He faces her with bright eyes searching hers for something that, one day, Marinette is scared he’ll find.

“Goodnight, Marinette.”

Goodnight, my lady. 

Marinette shuts her eyes. Tomorrow, she swears. Tomorrow.