Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Damn Adrien, your boobs!”

That was… not at all the reaction Marinette had expected her newest tailoring attempts to garner when she’d sent Adrien away with them.

She’d roped her three friends into modeling her work all this week, and this was the first day. So far, Alya and Nino’s suits had worked fabulously for them — sized correctly, which was what Marinette had been worried about, but also well cut for their individual figures and good colors to compliment their skintones. There were little things she could see that she needed to fix but, on the whole, three fitting sessions seemed to have done the trick.

Back to the present, she squinted at Alya in confusion, making mental notes to let out the seams of her friend’s slacks when she got those experiments back after school, and then turned to the door. Adrien’s boobs…?

And dropped her tablet.

Damn Adrien, your boobs! was about right, she thought faintly as she felt blood rush away from important parts of her brain to destinations unknown.

Adrien shot Alya an embarrassed grin and rubbed the back of his head, which made his shirt shift over his chest and made everything about a hundred times worse.

Or better.

Marinette hadn’t figured that out yet.

“Where did you get pecs?” Alya crowed, apparently unaware of Marinette’s distress. “You’ve been holding out on us!”

“Oh, you know,” said Adrien, airy tone belied by the faint blush in his cheeks and continued embarrassment. “I am a model, you know.”

Suspenders. It was the suspenders, she decided as she tried to swallow saliva back into her dry, dry mouth. She’d known — theoretically, from the fittings, from the measurements, from staring at his pictures, from feeling him up as she stole kiss after kiss as her alter-ego — that he had pecs, of course. She guessed it was a model thing.

She’d just never considered what they might look like shown off.

Alya eagerly gestured for him to turn around, and Adrien did a little front-back step, hooking his fingers in his suspenders and snapping them as folds pulled tight over his chest, his back, his stomach, his ass—

Marinette swallowed a whine, discreetly squirming in her seat.

Alya grinned at her, cat-like, proving that yes, she was aware of Marinette’s distress, and no, she didn’t have any mercy in her soul.

Marinette would have opinions about that; but that was when the teacher walked in and Adrien sauntered to his seat, leaving Marinette to stare at his shoulders (had they always been that broad?) and crave for the next — she glanced at the clock — six hours.

Six hours of stewing in her hormones before she could get away and transform and maybe ambush him on his way home and augh.

God.

Six hours.

She was going to die.

An unexpected reprieve came in the form of lunch break.

“Hey, mister model!” Alya called, nearly crawling over Marinette in her eagerness to catch Adrien’s attention.

Marinette, laying her upper half on the desk and keeping very still in every way for the fear that if she moved, she’d clamber right over her desk and attempt to maul Adrien from behind, barely noticed and minded less.

Boobs pressed against one’s back were always nice, she thought distantly, especially boobs belonging to Alya.

More than boobs belonging to Adrien, probably.

Not that Marinette would know.

(Marinette really wanted to know.)

Adrien looked up from where he was packing his bag, the fabric of the shirt she’d tailored stretching tight over his shoulders. “Yeah?”

“The rest of us are going to get crêpes in our high fashion,” Alya said, apparently having decided this for Marinette and Nino both. (Or maybe just Marinette? She was kind of preoccupied with Adrien’s… everything right now — it wouldn’t surprise her if she’d missed a conversation or three.) “Be there or be square.”

Adrien put on a wince and rubbed the back of his head, throwing his bag over his shoulder. “All right angles here, sorry. I’m really behind on history. I’m going to the study rooms.”

“Boo,” Alya pouted, snaking an arm around Marinette as she collapsed into her seat, tugging her into her lap.

Marinette let her, still doing her best impression of a fresh corpse. Maybe if she pretended hard enough, some of the corpse’s lifeless properties would transfer over to certain parts of her body. God knew she needed it.

At least Adrien had left, taking his long coat with him.

Marinette was deeply envious of that coat.

“You’re coming, right?” Alya checked, cheek rested on top of Marinette’s head.

I wish, thought Marinette, squeezing her thighs.

Then, wait, did he say study rooms?

Those private study rooms, with the locks on the doors and the ‘do not disturb’ rules? The ones in the back of the library where just about all the couples in school went to get a little private time?

He was going to stay there all lunch break?

Oh yes.

“Sorry!” Marinette yelped, scrambling out from under Alya’s warm, soft figure to pack up her stuff. “I, um! Forgot! I have something to do!”

Alya’s eyebrow hiked slowly upwards.

Marinette giggled nervously, managing not to break her neck as she backed down the stairs. “Very important! You and Nino have a fun date without me—” Alya’s face cleared in understanding — thank god for the girl code “—I’m just going to eat Ad— at somewhere else! Somewhere else!! Um…”

Her back hit the door, bag clutched in front of her stomach, and Alya watched her retreat with increasing amusement.

“Anyway!” she squeaked, face heating at the thought of what she was about to try to do. “Bye! Have fun!”

Marinette certainly intended to.

Adrien had been in the study room for all of ten minutes when there was a knock.

That was odd. He’d never been interrupted in a study room before — he was pretty sure there was a rule against disobeying a 'do not disturb’ sign, unless the occupant was breaking the rules themselves.

Cautiously, he pushed himself up, leaving his lunch and books where they were as he went to get the door. Technically, he shouldn’t have been eating lunch here, but no one had bothered to stop him before…

He was halfway to the door before he realized that the knock had actually come from the other side of the room.

He turned on his heel, looking at the only other entrance to the room.

Ladybug was at the window, hanging upside-down and raising her fist to knock.

Adrien rushed to the other side of the room, unlatching the window and shoving it open.

Somehow, no matter how much he saw her now, no matter how much he acclimated to the kisses, every single time his heart did a jig of here, Ladybug was here, she was here—!

Ladybug dropped into the room, fluid, mind-liquefying grace on full display, before she straightened, licking her lips with flushed cheeks and darkened eyes.

Oh, hello, said every single inch of Adrien.

“Hi,” he said, echoing the sentiment aloud with a crack in his voice.

“Hi,” she replied with a breathless, heart-stopping little grin, then reached up, wrapped both hands in his lapels, and hauled him down for a mind-blowing kiss.

Oh, said every inch of Adrien, barely feeling it when he was backed into the desk, too distracted by Ladybug’s hungry, hungry fingers frantically untucking his shirt and scraping the bare skin of his back. Hello.

Ladybug ran her hands up his back, then stroked over his chest, her approval expressed in a tight, hissing noise she pressed into his mouth, and Adrien felt it roll through him like a summer storm, breaking the kiss to pant when her hips followed suit.

He reoriented, finding himself shoved against the desk that held his books with his clothing notably more rumpled than it had been five minutes ago and one of Ladybug’s firm thighs slotted between his own.

Adrien glanced over at the shut door, flushing as he realized that they were all alone.

Or rather, when he realized that they were all alone in a locked room with at least an hour before anyone expected Adrien anywhere.

He swallowed, trying very hard not to think of the myriad of things that could be done in an hour, and looked back down at Ladybug, who was making things that much harder than it should have been by squirming restlessly, seemingly trying to touch him everywhere at once.

She was already looking at him—biting her lip—like she was willingly contemplating every single one of the things he’d tried to put out of his head.

Adrien’s second swallow was more of a gulp than anything else.

“H-hey,” he said, finding the tattered remains of his voice somewhere deep inside himself. He cleared his throat, embarrassment adding to the heat that was already making his joints weak. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

Ladybug stared at him for a second, kiss-reddened mouth falling open slightly before she shut it and dropped her head against his shoulder with a groan.

“Surprise good?” she mumbled into his shirt before he could ask. Then, before he could ask about that, she added, “I mean, was it a surprise that was good? A surprise thing that I gooded you?” She drew a sharp, annoyed breath in through her teeth. “A good surprise?”

He huffed a laugh from lungs that didn’t want to work (god, she sounded so wrecked), and pulled her into a tight hug.

“Always,” he promised, too thick and too sincere, lips against the shell of her ear.

Ladybug whimpered, shuddering in his arms. He could feel her thighs quiver around his, her hips jerk into his with a helpless little stutter, and suddenly there wasn’t any air left in the room at all.

It was incredibly strange to be this clear-headed when Ladybug was this undone — strange to not be drowning before she even touched him, teased to the very edge of his control.

It was kind of intoxicating.

He dipped down, kissing her much softer than she’d kissed him, and she clawed at him, squirming up to meet him with her fingers digging into his biceps and her thigh hitched up around his hip, biting into his lip and licking into his mouth with a tight groan.

“'Want you,” she rasped, panting between kisses, and oh he wouldn’t be behind her for long. “Want you, want you so much, want you so bad, Adrien—”

The way she said his name was bringing him up to speed very, very fast.

So were her hands, roaming his body, tugging at his clothing and stroking over his skin, rough and hungry and oh…

“Was watching you,” she admitted, mindless as she disheveled him with a vengeance. “All class—”

Wait.

'All class?’

Ladybug was—

She nipped his Adam’s apple, sending sparks to join the hot chills of realization running through him from head to toe. “Looking so good and I—” He caught her mouth with his own, needing to stop the praise for fear of what more of it might do to him. “Ahhhnm— Adri-Adrien…”

Ladybug was going to kill him if she kept saying his name like that.

She broke the kiss and nosed his neck, panting between damp kisses scattered over his throat, and Adrien tilted his head back and asked for it, every touch sending a new shock through his system, leaving him to wheeze and scrabble at the edge of the desk for support.

She caught her breath doing that, robbing Adrien of his while she was at it.

She pressed a kiss against the column of his throat, then against his jumping pulse, then the hollow just above the first button of his shirt, tracing his heaving chest and snaking her fingers under his suspender straps and tugging.

“Fuck,” he croaked, the snap of the straps burning almost as hot as the mischievous grin she shot him from under her eyelashes.

The grin took on a different, knowing tenor; Adrien wondered if she was projecting that’s the idea on purpose or if it was just him, drowning in hormones.

Probably just him.

Belatedly, he noticed the scarlet lipstick smudged around her mouth. Lipstick she’d smudged on him.

Fuck.

He reached out and cupped her cheek with an almost shaking hand, marveling at the softness of her skin, and traced a thumb through the cosmetic mess.

“’m gonna have to wash this stuff off, you know,” he said, more reluctantly than he intended.

Secret relationships sucked.

Ladybug looked considering.

Adrien had enough experience to know that this was either going to be very good, very bad, or both.

“If you didn’t have to, would you?” Ladybug asked, idly drawing a circle around the top button of his shirt. “Wash it off, I mean?”

Adrien let out a hissing sigh, letting his eyes fall shut. He wished.

“And wash off my badges of honor?” he asked, too light for how badly, how intensely he wanted it. “Never.”

Her finger stopped rubbing circles around his button. A heart-stopping glint of mischief passed through her eyes, and then—

She popped the top button, moving onto the next and the next, neatly undressing him before he’d come to terms with the mischief.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to leave 'em where you won’t have to wash them off.”

She undid the last button, leaving a smacking kiss on his cheek, and that was all the warning he got before she ducked down and nipped his collarbone.

The tiny frisson of pain sent an electric shock through him, rolling over his skin and into his gut, chased by raw heat as she followed the nip up with a little lick, a little suck, a little kiss, and then moved down.

She circled his nipple with her hot, hot tongue, and Adrien was pretty sure he could feel every drop of blood in his head rush straight south. He gasped, clutching at the desk, and could feel her smirk, the draw of her lips and the press of her teeth against the skin of his chest.

He was pretty sure at least some of the blood rushing down had rerouted to his face. There was no other explanation for why he could hear it pounding in his ears.

She trailed more kisses over his torso, idly and without apparent direction, until his chest was heaving and his legs wobbled, barely keeping him up. Already pressing him into the desk, Ladybug gripped his hips and hoisted him onto its surface like he didn’t weigh more than a kitten, then promptly returned to her mission. Leaving him to steady himself, she pressed a kiss to his solar plexus, then one below that, to his stomach, then lower and lower and lower, until he thought he was going to pass out.

She dropped all the way down, flashing him a cheeky grin and very deliberately touching her lips to the button of his slacks.

Every single inch of his skin leapt to attention, the air sucked right out of his lungs.

Oh god.

Adrien might’ve whimpered. He couldn’t tell over the sheer volume of blood rushing to his head.

She didn’t go any farther than that, though; she just pressed a kiss to the skin directly above it and nosed his happy trail on her way up.

Finally, just when she was moving back to safer territory and he thought he was finally getting used to the touch, her lips stopped in the center of his left pectoral.

“Here okay?” she asked, heady and thick and oh god what had she said again?

“Wh-wh-at?” Adrien croaked, trying not to fall off the damn desk.

“Can I mark you here?” she clarified, one trembling hand tracing the waistband of his slacks and making it astronomically hard to think.

Slowly, her words filtered through.

“Y-yeah,” Adrien agreed, shaking from the inside out at the thought of walking around with that under his clothes.

Ladybug set to work.

Adrien hissed through his teeth when he felt hers scrape the spot, panting softly as she fell into a hypnotic, stinging rhythm of kisslickbitesuck, her free hand trailing up, up, up from his waistband and over the skin of his back, leaving burning trails in its wake.

It felt good, better than it had any right to. The physical sensation of being marked was nearly indescribable — pain so sweet he almost felt delirious, what felt like half his blood pounding in his head and the other half throbbing between his legs at the thought of having this, having her, on his skin for him alone.

He wished oh he wished that he could show these off to everyone, say look, look, Ladybug, Ladybug loves me. He couldn’t, not with his father so strict and Hawkmoth desperate for the Miraculous, but she was giving him the next best thing — proof for him.

Proof he’d be able to feel tomorrow, the day after, for the next week if he was lucky. Proof that Ladybug had interrupted his study session purely so she could shove him against a desk and have her filthy way with him.

She pulled away, meeting his drunk look with liquid sapphire.

“There,” she whispered, ragged and wrecked and fuck— “Can’t wash that off.”

Adrien knew he whimpered that time.

He could see Ladybug swallow at the noise. He wasn’t sure if it was better or several hundred times worse that she was as fucked up as he was.

He wasn’t alone, but oh god.

Ladybug was like that because of him.

He shut his eyes, desperately trying to block her out so he could bring himself back down.

Slowly, carefully, he eased himself off the desk, air hitting his bare chest and slacks pulled painfully tight over his groin. Still leaning heavily against the desk, he started reciting formulas to himself.

V equals delta speed over delta time. Alpha equals delta omega over delta time. Phi equals velocity over flow— no, over time. Nu equals eta over—

Something hot and damp touched his hip, bringing every attempt at calm to a screeching crash.

Ladybug, on her knees and intent on his zipper, cracked a grin up at him.

“Um,” croaked Adrien, heart staggering to a halt.

“I don’t think I’m done marking you up yet,” was all she said before drawing his zipper down, licking her lips at the sight of his underwear. “Red?” Her eyes flicked up to his, blue gone dark as sin. “I’m flattered.”

Adrien emitted a broken noise.

Then she pushed his underwear down too, just enough to place a kiss to the junction between his thigh and hip.

Adrien’s hands were starting to hurt where they were clutched around the edge of the desk, his head swimming; Ladybug opened her mouth and sucked the skin into her mouth, biting down lightly, and Adrien’s hips snapped up.

Or tried to. Ladybug pressed him back down gently, unperturbed, holding him there, and Adrien swore the touch struck him like a match. He held still, panting and burning and desperate, the world fading out as Ladybug took over every corner of his senses, applying herself to the spot she’d chosen.

It was the suggestion of her placement, more than anything else, that was killing him. Her fingers were still hooked in his slacks, her lips brushing the hem of his boxer-briefs and choking him each time, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks, making his heart pound still faster at the thought of what seeing her lips wrapped around his cock might look like.

His entire body felt like a heartbeat, constrained at the edges by the tight band of his underwear, by the suspenders digging into his shoulders, by the edges of the the desk pressing into his palms. He panted louder and louder with each passing second, with each pass of her tongue, each breath catching the edge of a moan on its way out as the heat started to concentrate in his spine, brighter and heavier and hotter all the time.

He needed to pull away, he realized dimly, the thought struggling through the heat-haze. Or he needed her to pull away, or else he was going to come very, very soon. In his borrowed clothing. And then he would have to give Marinette back her precious work covered in cum stains.

Ladybug hummed softly, the vibrations of her lips and teeth pushing the heat to a nigh unbearable peak, and Adrien broke.

“L-L-Lady-Ladybug— s-st-o—…”

Ladybug growled, and Adrien wheezed, gutted, as he got a hand on her shoulder and shoved.

“E-enough, enough, please—” he begged, overwrought and nearly senseless.

It took her a second, but eventually she gave in, easing away from his hip with a slight pout.

Why? her dazed, glazed eyes wanted to know, and Adrien exhaled a shaken, whimpery laugh.

“If you keep that up, I’m going to come,” he admitted in a rasp, too far gone for shame.

Ladybug’s eyes flashed intent, everything distant and dazed gone in a second, as she looked at the prominent bulge poking out from his open zipper.

No laughter this time. Adrien just straight-up whimpered.

“These aren’t my clothes,” he had to explain, even though it kind of felt like his head was about to explode. “They’re my friend’s— I can’t…”

Adrien’s explanations petered off.

Ladybug didn’t look particularly dissuaded. Kind of the opposite, really.

Oh god.

“I’m not— I’m not giving Marinette her clothes back covered in stains,” he said, strangled, trying for firm and ending up somewhere between scandalized and pleading.

Ladybug licked her lips.

Adrien shut his eyes, like that could keep her from seeing the way his cock jumped for attention at her gesture.

“I’m not,” he continued, thready and gone. “So that means you either need to blow me for real or stop.”

It took a brain-meltingly long time for Ladybug to decide that no, she didn’t want to just jump straight to oral sex, and give him space.

As soon as she was far enough away, Adrien doubled over, lungs deflating like an old balloon but erection still going strong.

Physics, he thought. Nu equals eta over …alpha? Theta? —Rho. F-beat equals F-high minus F-low. Q equals… What did Q equal in the equation for sensible heat, again?

It didn’t help much.

Of course, that could just be Ladybug’s gaze boring into him like a laser.

Adrien swallowed heavily.

X equals negative B plus-or-minus the root of B-squared minus four-A-C over two-A. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. A plus B equals B plus—

Slowly, very slowly, the pressure eased enough for Adrien to cautiously stand fully upright, looking to Ladybug as he did so.

Her bright red lipstick was still smeared around her mouth.

He struggled to process this as she drew little come hither gestures in the air, grinning teasingly. “C'mon, hot stuff. Let’s put you back together.”

He staggered forward on weak legs, automatic obedience taking hold despite its long history of leaving him in some very embarrassing positions, and then staggered to a halt in the middle of the small room, amazed his legs hadn’t given out in the three steps it had taken him to get there.

He wasn’t quite sure what 'putting him back together’ involved, but he was pretty sure that if it involved Ladybug’s hands on him, it was doomed to failure.

As it turned out, 'putting him back together’ apparently meant Ladybug buttoning his shirt back up, starched fabric scratching over the hickey, and tucking it back in his slacks. It meant Ladybug reaching over his shoulders and resettling his suspenders (when had those fallen down?), smoothing her hands down the straps. It meant her picking up a napkin from his forgotten lunch and using it to wipe off the lipstick she’d left behind.

Adrien was almost, almost tempted to stop her. But every time he dragged his senses together enough to try, she touched him again and the breath was knocked right back out of his lungs.

His silence awarded him with the hilariously incongruous sight of Ladybug scowling in a downright motherly fashion as she scrubbed the stuff off his face and neck.

Thankfully, the pain and humor of the situation brought his arousal down far enough that he was no longer worried that a stray smirk would take him down like a house of cards. When she finally drew back, the slacks had gone from 'nigh unbearable’ to 'tighter than strictly comfortable.’

“There,” Ladybug pronounced, tossing the napkin onto the desk. “Perfect.”

Adrien grinned.

Ladybug dropped any and all pretense of motherliness, drawing back and returning his grin with a playful, hungry little smirk that went to his still-pressing erection. She began prowling around him in mock inspection.

Adrien folded his hands behind his back, standing tall and trying to bite his grin into something resembling sternness.

Ladybug did one full circuit of him, just looking, then reached out to stroke a finger down his bicep as she turned behind him.

Adrien bit down a gasp, stomach and thighs clenching involuntarily as the skin of his arms and neck erupted in goosebumps.

Ladybug gave a considering little hum. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t tell if it was his reaction that had drawn that out of her or not, but he could feel himself flush all the same.

She appeared at his right, flashing him a grin even hungrier than before, and followed it up by raking her eyes slowly, oh so slowly down his body, so intensely he felt it like a physical thing.

She paused at the bulge straining below his belt and growled.

Adrien barely managed to remain standing, what with all the blood rushing to his head.

She moved on, stroking down his other bicep as she did so, and leaving Adrien to burn.

And then she slipped that same finger under a suspender and gave it a snap, leaning over and whispering in his ear, “Looking sharp there, hot stuff.”

Adrien really gasped that time, the air escaping him in a feeble little groan.

He had probably forty minutes before his next class started, but there was absolutely no way he could walk back out of the study room like this.

Ladybug seemed to know it, too. She glanced at him pointedly (and much too heated and needy and hungry for his sanity), with a smug little smile and said, “Maybe I should go ahead?”

The only thing left for him to do was nod helplessly. “That… might help.”

“Aw, are you saying I’m keeping you all hot and bothered?” she dragged out, teasing.

Adrien just looked at her, nerves lit up from head to toe, hair a mess, panting and flushed and mussed and still very obviously aroused, and Ladybug blushed, biting her lip and looking away as her cheeks darkened from rosy to scarlet.

That wasn’t helping either.

“You always do,” Adrien confessed, almost in supplication, as he shut his eyes to try to block her out.

It just heightened his sense of hearing in time to catch her tiny inhale.

“R-right,” she said, and stood. “I’ll just…”

Adrien nodded jerkily, eyes still shut.

“Nice seeing you, hot stuff,” she chirped, breathless, and Adrien felt her kiss his cheek, the warmth of the tiny gesture sinking into his very bones.

Then she drew away, skipping back a couple steps with a soft, happy noise, and Adrien made an answering noise in the back of his throat, toes curling in his shined shoes.

She leaned against the wall, rustling clickclacking activity suggesting that she’d climbed onto the windowsill.

“See you soon!”

I was watching you all class…

Adrien’s head shot up, a wait! dying on his tongue, just in time to catch a glimpse of her legs as she shot up the side of the building.

Ladybug was in his class.

Ladybug was in his class.

But who?

He let the thought occupy him, distracting him from what was going on in his borrowed pants for long enough that his arousal was no longer painful.

By the time his erection had subsided enough to risk moving, he had sort of crossed out most of the people whose body types didn’t match Ladybug’s.

(Though he knew personally that that couldn’t count them out entirely — Plagg had padded his suit fairly thoroughly before hormones and regular superheroing had put muscle on Adrien’s actual body.)

Of course, as soon as he moved, the elastic of his underwear scraped over the mark on his hip, and he was right back at square one, seeing Ladybug’s heavy-lidded gaze on his face and her lips branded themselves onto his skin.

Fuck.

He glanced at the clock.

He had twenty minutes before he needed to be back in class.

It was going to take either a miracle or a swim through ice water to get him in any presentable state by then.

To get him presentable for a class he shared with Ladybug.

Ladybug, who’d left scarlet lipstick marks and two deliciously tender hickeys on him, and who could be sitting anywhere in that room.

Fuck.

He picked up his history book, knowing full well that every single word of it was going to go in one ear and out the other (looking sharp there, hot stuff), but willing to give it a shot.

Worst come to worst, he’d just have to wear his winter overcoat for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t going to be overheated for his entire next class anyway.

Three hours, four well-meant 'aren’t you too hot in that coat?’s (yes, he really was, but the alternative would be too much to bear), one hurried, semi-relieved change of clothes later, and he was handing Marinette back her designs.

“Thank you so much for modeling these today,” she gushed, cute as ever. “You really saved me.”

“My pleasure,” Adrien demurred, trying not to think about just how much of a pleasure it had been. “Your designs are amazing.”

She blushed, nibbling her lip against a smile as she took the clothes from him.

Seriously, how was anyone allowed to be that cute?

“Oh! Um! Th-thanks,” she flustered, running her hands over the cloth in her hands.

He was about to say something else when she paused, rubbing the button of the slacks between her fingertips and then looking at them.

Adrien’s mouth went bone dry.

On Marinette’s pale, delicate fingertips were five streaks of bright scarlet lipstick.

He wondered if he should say something, anything, try to apologize or explain or maybe swear her to secrecy, because really, what kind of explanation could he give for something like that?

She raised her head and met his eye, knowing little smirk curling the edges of her scarlet lips, and Adrien swallowed his words down and coughed, the back of his neck burning hot.

He was never, ever going to live this dow—

…Wait.

Scarlet?

No.

It couldn’t be…

“You looked pretty sharp today,” she was saying. He stared at her mouth, his breath held tight, watching her lips move as she spoke. “Real hot stuff.”

(Looking sharp there, hot stuff.)

Her lips were painted the exact same shade as the streaks on her fingers.

“Oh,” he said weakly. “Thank you.”

Marinette — Ladybug — just smiled.