Chapter 4:

Tikki huddled with Plagg in hiding behind the framed picture of Adrien on Marinette's desk. When Marinette had successfully averted the akuma's spellbinding gaze and rejected him, the spotted kwami readied herself, preparing to transform her chosen to fight as Ladybug. But in the blink of an eye, Playboy had crossed the room, suddenly only inches in front of the willfully "blind" girl. Her hands still in front of her face, Marinette did not appreciate the supernatural display of speed.

Tikki gasped. His speed is unreal! This akuma is much more powerful than his mostly-unaltered form lets on!

After he murmured something to Marinette that Tikki could not make out, she had watched Playboy pick up Marinette's satin sleep mask and secure it to her face. Then, pressing a leg between her thighs, he had pinned her body to a wall with his own.

But why? Why would he protect her from his power? Tikki wondered, her anxiety growing.

Tikki could literally see the girl's resolve to resist him falter and fall as he trailed kisses up her neck, her statue-stiff posture softening as she leaned into him.

Marinette's words from earlier that day came back to Tikki, bringing with them a terrifying realization. Her chosen had tried to warn her: his very presence had seemed to affect the women in the classroom. His gaze would hold a victim fast, but he didn't rely on that power alone. No, Playboy drew in his victims by capitalizing on all of their senses. His gaze might be a kill shot, but he didn't need it to be victorious. The mask is just an illusion of safety! By relieving her of her sight, Playboy had encouraged her to abandon all of her other senses to his persuasion. And judging by the way she had hungrily tasted his skin, by the way her hands trailed over the muscles of his torso… she had done exactly that.

Plagg, too, watched the steamy scene, his mouth agape. He was ready to bite the akuma again, if he had to, but this was… perplexing. Playboy had hampered his powers, and made no move to land his devastating kiss. Rather, he seemed to purposely avoid her face, kissing her neck, her jaw, her ear. When she began to do the same, Adrien's expression revealed such ecstasy that Plagg wasn't sure he should intervene. While he had readily drawn the souls from a dozen or so girls in the school, leaving them in whimpering heaps, he was prolonging this seduction, taking pleasure in it.

It's about time! The cat-god thought to himself. Poor kid deserves a moment of bliss!

A frightened gasp from the polka-dotted figure beside him drew Plagg back to reality. Ugh, but it's not even Adrien… it's the damned akuma! He won't even remember this… dammit! The black kwami shook his head, irritated, as Tikki darted out of their hiding place.

Finally returning his attention to the scene before him, Plagg realized in horror that Marinette was standing on her toes, her chin angled upward, toward the kiss that would certainly seal her fate. He had been so distracted analyzing what this might mean for Adrien, he had missed Playboy going for the strike! Luckily, Tikki was on the move.

"LADYBUG!" The little bug kwami screamed, shooting toward the girl.

Playboy released the enraptured girl, taken aback by the unexpected voice… and its declaration.

Marinette stumbled forward, his presence suddenly gone. She regained her balance before hitting the ground, but the sudden sensation of falling was enough to shock her out of the dream-like state she had been in.

"It's not him, Marinette! You need to transform and fight!" she heard a high-pitched voice plead from somewhere in the blackness. Momentarily confused, she reached up to remove the night-mask/blindfold as understanding of the situation flooded back into her mind.

As Playboy glanced between the tiny red god and Marinette, recognition and shock overtook his countenance just as he heard Marinette call out: "Right! Tikki, spots on!"

With a flash of dazzling pink light, Marinette was replaced by Ladybug. Using her yo-yo like a grappling hook, Ladybug shot to the railing of her loft bed, anchoring herself there to avoid his tantalizing reach.

"Nice try, Playboy, but my heart belongs to the real Adrien, not some akuma wannabe!" the superheroine declared from her perch, careful not to meet his eyes.

Recovering from his surprise, Playboy scoffed at her remark. "From someone who hates lies so much, that one rolled off your tongue pretty easily, eh Ladybug?" he muttered.

Her brow furrowed. "And just what is that supposed to mean?!"

His figure seemed to tense as he continued, ignoring her question. "I've wanted to tell you for a while… that I love you Ladybug. I have since the very beginning. But it doesn't matter what I do, what I say… doesn't matter that I would happily make a fool of myself to see you smile, that I would readily give my very life to protect you. You'll never see me as anything more than some goofy cat, will you?"

Ladybug blinked in confusion. Did Adrien think he was competing for her heart with…Chat Noir? But she hardly even interacted with Adrien as Ladybug outside of a few rescues and shy hellos, how was he suddenly in love with her?

"What are you…? I don't…" Ladybug's brain stubbornly refused to connect the dots.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Plagg's exasperated groan made them both turn as he emerged from hiding.

"Shut up, Plagg, this doesn't concern you!" Playboy snapped. "It's not shiny and you can't eat it, so don't pretend like you care!"

Plagg sighed. "I do care, kid… I just suck at all this love stuff. Ask Tikki, I'm hopeless!" In truth, the cat-god had a problem taking anything seriously… including akuma battles, it seemed.

Upon seeing Playboy and Plagg interact, Ladybug's eyes widened, understanding finally dawning on her as if she was stepping out of the dark into a midday summer's sun. The answer to his strange declarations of love, and to her confused and divided heart, was suddenly blazingly clear. "You… you're… you're Chat Noir!"

"Not anymore," he growled in response.

Ladybug's eyes flashed to Plagg, looking for validation, reassurance that this was real, but the green-eyed god just shrugged nonchalantly as if to say, "Well there you have it."

Securing herself to the railing with her left hand, Ladybug clutched her yo-yo in her right. "Adrien… I will save you. I'll defeat this akuma, even if I have to do it without…"Her mind still struggled with the true identity of her heroic partner. "…withoutyou!" Finishing her thought, she leapt at him, attempting to tackle him to the ground.

With his akuma-powered speed, he easily sidestepped her attack. She recovered by ducking into a somersault and quickly sprang to her feet. She kept her eyes on the ground for fear of meeting his gaze, but soon realized it was going to be extremely difficult to fight if she could only watch his feet. She adopted a defensive stance, watching his movements for any sign of attack.

He rushed her, catching her off-guard with a clothesline hit and knocking her backward. He pinned her to the ground by her shoulders, but she squeezed her eyes shut against him. "I won't succumb, Playboy! Even with all your powers of seduction, you're nothing compared to Adrien, nothing compared to Chat Noir!" Gritting her teeth, she bucked against him, trying without success to land a kick or shove him off of her.

"I can make you love me, Ladybug!" he hissed, his voice grated with such anger that she hardly recognized it. "Then you'll feel what it's like to be rejected, to be hopelessly in love with someone who will never accept your love as true! To try your best, to give your all, and fail." Even filled with ferocity, his voice clearly relayed his anguish.

Marinette continued to struggle, but even as she fought she felt her will to resist start to fade. The proximity to him made her weak, physically and mentally. Her chances looked bleak: she was losing strength fast, and she didn't even know where the akuma was. The ring? Chat's ring? (Which looks exactly the same except it's without the characteristic green pawpads, idiot! She berated herself) Can a Miraculous even BE inhabited by an akuma?

"That's it, just relax…" she heard Playboy's soothing voice whisper into her ear. She had stopped thrashing, her best efforts to resist producing mere twitches. "Now open your eyes, Princess… let me see those beautiful, bluebell eyes." Ladybug saw a glow of light, first a sliver but growing quickly, as her eyelids retracted against her will.

"Lucky Charm!" she called as a last resort, focusing all her strength on flicking her wrist to send the yo-yo spinning.

Placing a knee on her chest to keep her pinned, Playboy caught the yo-yo and slammed it into the ground, but not before it managed to summon her prize. Her hands momentarily free, she reached up and grabbed... a piece of cardstock? It was hard to discern through her half-lidded gaze as she fought the losing battle to keep her eyes closed while they willed themselves to open.

In panic, she raised the card to her face, using it as a feeble barrier between his face and hers, filling her now wide-open field of vision entirely with pink. Recognizing the color, she finally took note of the shape: a heart. Is this… the card I wrote to Adrien on Valentine's Day? Her hands began to shake as she gripped the card for dear life, completely at a loss of what to do with it. She couldn't risk looking around the room for clues without risking catching his eyes and being paralyzed on the spot. She was out of time. She was at his mercy.

A beat passed in silence. Two. Why wasn't he using his power on her?

"Is… is that…?" Playboy's voice had lost its sinister edge and adopted an awestruck quality, sounding again like Adrien. Ladybug cautiously peeked around her heart-shaped shield to find his gaze firmly affixed to the card in her hands. As his eyes followed its movement, she held the card out to him… and far away from her face.

Playboy snatched the card out of her outstretched hand in disbelief, releasing Ladybug from where he had her pinned to sit on the floor. His eyes wide with astonishment, he opened the card. Sure enough, the poem was word-for-word, the penmanship exact… the card was exactly the same as his most treasured possession save for one detail. The card that Ladybug had produced was signed with a small heart and Marinette's unmistakable, graceful signature.

"So it was actually you? Ladybug… It was really you that replied to my poem?" Playboy was staring at the card in fascination as Ladybug slowly inched away from him. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he retrieved the original for comparison. The size, shape, wording, script… even the line spacing was an exact match.

Ladybug stared at her lucky charm replica and the original card, her Valentine to Adrien that he apparently carried around with him? Her heart ached for him, for the love he gave that he mistakenly thought had been unrequited. Oh Adrien, how could I have been so blind? Indeed the two cards were identical, save the signature… and the color. Her designer's eye picked up the subtle difference. Although she recognized the blush pink of her card the moment she saw it, the rumpled, worn card that Adrien had pulled from his pocket was more fuchsia, as if the original had been tinted with a purple hue.

"That's it! The akuma!" Plagg cried, realizing the same distortion that had caught Ladybug's eye. "I've seen that card a million times, it's definitely tainted!"

Wasting no time, Ladybug plucked the original card from his hands and tore it in half, releasing and cleansing the dark-winged butterfly from within.

"NO!" Playboy protested, dropping the replica card and gathering the torn halves of the original. Clutching the half that had contained the writing to his chest, he sat back on his heels. Face cast down and hair falling in front of his eyes, Ladybug still saw the tears as they dropped to the ground.

Hold on Adrien, your pain will all be over soon! Picking up the discarded replica card, Ladybug threw it into the air. With her call for "Miraculous Ladybug!," the swarm of red and black magic set to restoring the world to as it should be.

As soon as she saw the ladybug swarm start to work its magic, Ladybug snuck behind Adrien's hunched form and detransformed. After all, they were in her room… how was she going to explain that? Within seconds, he was attempting to stand on shaky legs.

"What… what happened? Where am I?" Adrien felt his strength quickly returning, but was baffled at his surroundings. Wasn't he just at breakfast? Here, everything was pink, so feminine and yet somewhat familiar…

"Adrien! Oh thank goodness you're OK!" Marinette came out of nowhere, throwing her arms around his neck in an ecstatic hug.

Adrien's eyes widened in shock, but he found himself wrapping his arms around the petite girl, hugging her in return. Of course, Marinette's room! He recognized it now from the few times he had been here. But how did he get here? And why were they… uhh… hugging?

Almost as suddenly as she had pounced on him, Marinette released him, backing up and tapping her toe behind the opposite heel shyly. She grinned sheepishly. "Uh… sorry, you're probably pretty confused. But I'm just really happy you're OK!"

Adrien felt a slight blush warm his cheeks at her concern. "Yeah, I feel fine, but… what happened?" He had a growing sense of unease that Hawkmoth was on the offensive, and if that was the case, Chat Noir was likely sorely needed elsewhere.

Marinette spoke slowly, deliberately. "Well… there was an akuma…"

Adrien tried (and failed) to hide his alarm. "What?! Where? Where is Ladybug, is she OK? Did she beat it?!" Reflexively he glanced up at the skylight leading to the balcony, planning the quickest exit.

Marinette smiled. Of course his first thought would be to protect her. "Don't worry, she's fine Chat. The akuma is defeated, and all is well in the world."

Adrien exhaled, releasing the tension that had knotted in his shoulders. "Oh, well that's good!" He turned back to Marinette and offered her his signature, stunning smile.

"Oh my living cheese-us, you're even worse than she is!" Plagg moaned, flying into view. "Honestly if the two of you could be more oblivious, you'd forget who YOU were!"

Adrien's jaw dropped. "Plagg!—UH WHAT! What is that, that cat… thing?" Adrien was aware that he did print modeling exclusively for a reason… his acting skills left a lot to be desired.

Marinette giggled lightly as Adrien's eyes flashed from his annoyed kwami to her.

"She already called you Chat, genius, and you didn't even notice!" Plagg flew to Adrien, poking his now-flaming red cheek with a tiny paw. "If you think that's embarrassing, you should ask her what you did when you were akumatized!" At this, the cat-kwami broke out into uproarious laughter.

"W-W-Wait… the akuma was… me?" Adrien tried to process all the information at once, but the gears in his mind were turning agonizingly slowly.

Recalling the events that had transpired, Marinette matched his blush. "Yeah… something about unrequited love and wanting to make people feel rejected? You were… umm," her blush deepened. "The akuma I mean, who looked just like you, was seducing women and stealing their joy."

Adrien balked at this. "Oh… well that's just…" several thoughts occurred to him at once. "So wait, does everyone know I'm Chat Noir?! Did I try to seduce Ladybug?" After a moment, he smirked. "If she already knew I was Chat, how'd she know the seductive version of me was behaving differently?"

Marinette laughed lightly at this, her embarrassment easing a bit. "No no, nobody else knows, just me. I was here when Plagg, umm… intervened? Since you two obviously knew each other it was pretty obvious at that point."

Plagg sighed. "It's been pretty obvious for a while if you ask me!"

Adrien scratched the back of his neck absent-mindedly. "Yeah, I guess a flying black cat god is kind of a give away… look, you won't, you know… tell anyone right?"

His emerald irises caught her gaze, and for a moment she swore that he had somehow retained Playboy's power. Finding her voice, she squeaked, "Of course! I m-mean, of course not, I would never!" She sighed, annoyed with the return of her stammer, before breaking out into a grin when she saw him smile.

"But Adrien, listen, about Ladybug…" Marinette thought it only fair to let him know her secret, since she had accidentally learned his when he wasn't really in control, but he cut her off before she could continue.

Closing the distance between them, Adrien took her hands in his. "Marinette, I don't know what I might have said when I was an akuma, but I… I mean Chat Noir, has known Ladybug for a long time. And honestly, I fell for her the day we defeated Stoneheart. She was so strong and courageous, intuitive and cunning, that she inspired all of Paris that day to put their faith in us. And she has been unfailingly protecting them ever since."

Marinette stared at their clasped hands, uncertain of what to say. Yeah hate to break it to you, but your heroine isn't nearly as impressive as you think…

"But lately, I've been thinking…" he continued hesitantly.

Marinette tensed. It would be hard enough convincing him that all the attributes of Ladybug hid inside the stammering klutz that was Marinette, and now there's a but?! She glanced up at him, but now his gaze was locked on their intertwined hands.

"…about how much you remind me of her. You're quick-thinking and kind, you're an awesome leader as class president, you stand up for what's right, and always put others' needs before your own. Plus you're breathtakingly beautiful. I felt awful because I thought I was only crushing on you because you remind me of Ladybug, but now… now I realize that I…" Suddenly painfully shy and afraid of rejection, Adrien couldn't get the last words out of his mouth. Would his declaration of love for her ruin their friendship forever? Or was there a chance that she might give him a chance at being more than friends? "Even if you don't return my feelings, I really hope we can stay friends. I admire you Marinette, and I honestly don't know what I'd do without you."

The silence between them stretched, his gaze riveted on their hands, treasuring this opportunity to hold them in case it would be his last.

"Oh Chaton…" her voice was quiet but full of emotion. "You can really see Ladybug… without the spots?"

He inhaled sharply upon hearing Ladybug's petname for him spoken from Marinette's mouth. Lifting his eyes slowly, he finally gazed into those beloved blue eyes unobstructed by the mask, appreciating for the first time the adorable spattering of freckles that danced across the bridge of the button nose that sat between them.

Bringing a trembling hand to her cheek, he cupped her face gently, assuring himself that this wasn't some dream or akuma-induced hallucination. "It's… it's really you?" He asked breathlessly.

Marinette stared into the jade-green depths of his eyes in disbelief that such adoration was directed at her. She felt her heart swell as tears of joy threatened to well up in her eyes. Could it be that her chivalrous, playful Chat and her kind, quiet Adrien both loved her, all of her, and she didn't have to choose?

He didn't wait for her to answer before dipping his head to catch her waiting mouth with his own.

Fireworks exploded in her head as she felt his soft lips press against her own as he held her face tenderly against his palm. She responded instinctually, turning her head slightly and moving her mouth against his. She felt a soft moan rumble in her chest as his earlier invitation echoed in her memory. He tasted like heaven.

Dropping his hand from her face to snake behind her neck and pull her closer, Adrien parted his lips to suck gently on her lower lip. His other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her body flush with his own. She gasped at this, breaking the kiss.

Staring down at her lovely, flushed face, overcome with his desire for her, Adrien tried to calm his mounting need. He was surprised at the intensity of his craving for her, and worried that he may have overstepped. Just as he was about to stammer out an apology, his fears were extinguished when he heard her teasing and vaguely familiar words:

"…Do you want me, Adrien?"

Author's Note: Well that's a wrap for this one! After all, their desires won't be "Unsated" for much longer. *blush* Thank you all for reading, and for your amazing reviews! This community is really phenomenal, I love that you guys are putting so much thought into the characters' motivations and struggles. That's exactly what I was hoping for! It was great to see Team Resist vs Team Succumb in the comments too! I hate to admit it, but I think I would be on Team Succumb... I am weak hahaha. Til next time! -Floof