A/N: It's been a while since I've written anything let alone fanfiction. But I just love my tiny son so much I had to give him a proper story, due to the lack of fanfics about him. The bottom of this fic will have notes as to how I hope to write it, and how I feel about pairings! Thank you and enjoy.

I do not own Miraculous Ladybug, but Thomas Astruc wished me happy birthday on Twitter so I might as well tbh.

Nathanael looked down into his sketchbook, feeling his heart ache. His comic of himself and Marinette in tender embrace glared up at him like an ugly wound. He felt his breath quicken painfully as he crossed it out once, twice. Laying his hand down on the book and leaning his head back he closed his eyes.

After waking up from being the Evillustrator his head hurt. He couldn't fully remember the experience. It was in brief snippets or moving snapshots. It was like trying to remember a dream, the events and elements slipped away from you, but the emotions remained. He didn't remember the suave things he said to Marinette, or the cruel things he did to Chloe, but he could remember pleasantly sitting next to Marinette. He could remember her smile, and soft eyes.

Yet above all else he remembered her deception. Her cruelty. Broken promises and crushed birthday wishes. His heart ached again as he ran a hand through his hair, massaging his sore head. Waking up to Ladybug and Cat Noir congratulating themselves on a job well done. Ladybug had looked at him smiling with soft eyes and his heart pounded harder than his head.

He opened his eyes again and looked once more at his sketchbook. A very small smile crept on his face as he began a new drawing of Ladybug.

At school the next day Nathanael stuck close to the walls, trying to get through the day as quickly as he could. Although, this wasn't exactly any different from a normal day. He kept his head down and made as little eye contact as he could afford. He sat in the back of the class, far away from everyone else and was lost in thought when a person entered his peripheral view.

Snapping from the reverie he cast a glance toward that direction. It was Marinette! Seeing her there felt like a physical blow, and he closed his eyes from the impact. He turned his head back to his drawing of Ladybug which was near completion. Marinette made a small, awkward cough which he refused to acknowledge. His heart pounded against his rib-cage, but for fear or excitement he couldn't know.

"Hi, Nathanael," said Marinette softly. Her voice was so soft and so musical... No. She was cruel and hurtful. Cruel and hurtful with a kind voice. He made the tiniest mumble of recognition.

"Yeah... I... I never really got to say 'Happy Birthday.' So I got this for you. It's not much, I'm sorry," she said as she slipped a small box in his direction. He cast a glance toward it, and toward her. And there his eyes stayed. Something was... familiar? Her eyes lite to see him looking at her.

"So yes... Sorry about everything. See you later, okay?" She said. He didn't respond. There was something there. What wasn't he seeing? He continued to stare after her, even as she left and took her seat next to Alya. Eventually his eyes drifted back to the drawing before him. What was he missing?

Before long the teacher began her lesson on literature. He half paid attention, though not daring to draw after the debacle yesterday. As Miss Bustier continued her lecture Nathanael slowly put his sketch pad into his backpack and instead took out a notebook to take notes. As he came back up he startled himself to remember the box that Marinette had given him. He looked at it for a moment for shoving it in his bag.

The day continued the same as usual, and luckily for him there were no monsters or mayhem. He kept his head down and anxiously twiddled his fingers. He kept his sketchbook out of his reach, not wanting to draw any attention to himself, pun most definitely not intended. Without a pen or pencil he had a lot of nervous energy that trickled down to hands.

He avoided Marinette for the duration of the school day, despite her best efforts to be kind to him. It hurt his heart to see her smiling to openly. Dismissing the night they had shared. The bitterness of her actions grew around his heart, freezing, hardening and callusing the once tender organ. Yet still it ached and he avoided her eyes. Her beautiful blue eyes.

On the way home he decided to stop at a small cafe. It wasn't uncommon of him to stop here and order a warm drink and draw his emotions. He'd wasted an awful lot of led and ink on that dark haired temptress. After ordering his tea, he was far too tired to order a coffee, and taking his seat he opened his bag. He reached in and pulled his sketch book out and his hand knocked against the box Marinette had given him.

Biting his lip he pulled the small package out of his backpack. He hadn't really taken the time to notice it before, and upon further inspection he found it to be a lovely little thing. It was a simply cream colored box with a pink ribbon tied around it. Gingerly he removed the ribbon from the box and opened it. Inside he found a large vanilla cupcake that wished him a happy birthday.

Ah yes, her parents owned a bakery didn't they? He should have known she'd do something like this. It was so much in her nature to do something sweet and thoughtful like that. And yet... There was a part of him that couldn't help but thing she was trying to quite literally sugarcoat the situation. No amount of vanilla frosting was going to fill the cracks in his heart.

Still it was a free cupcake, and upon further inspection it was indeed very delicious. He ate it with his tea as he began to do some warm up doodles in his drawing pad. Soon the page was dotted with small ladybugs on cupcakes. His mind began to drift and his hand started to doodle a familiar face.

After a sip of tea, the taste of it bringing his senses back, he looked down at his drawing and realized he had been drawing Marinette. It was a small, messy picture of her with a tiny ladybug on her nose. In response Nathanael wrinkled his own. He sighed, and laid his head down on the table, rolling the pencil back and forth.

"Oh, Marinette," he whispered. The taste of her name on his tongue was sour and sweet all at once. There he laid on the table for a few minutes, breathing deeply, taking all the air he could until he could suck her name out of it. When he realized there was too much air he got up, packed his things, including the ribbon from the box, and left.

The walk home promised to be as sullen and tired as the day he had already spent, until he looked up to the rooftops. As the sun set over the Paris skyline he saw a figure among the chimneys and orange reflecting windows. Ladybug! It wasn't the first time he'd seen the masked heroine and certainly, given his luck, it wouldn't be the last. She was scanning the streets of Paris for some evil Nathanael simply wasn't in the mood for and he pulled his gaze from her and continued to walk home.

He walked for a solid few uninterrupted minutes before he heard a sharp whoosh! noise beside his head. Clenching his fists in panic, feeling his heart race he pulled himself flat against the wall.

"Oh, God please not now," he whispered to himself. He turned his head to look down the street.

In a sudden moment Ladybug stood before him. He turned his head to face her. His breath caught in his throat and he felt his lips part with awe. Her face was a few very short inches away from his. Ladybug smiled as he swallowed hard, blood rushing through his body. Blue, soft eyes.

"Oh, hello. Nice to see you again!" Said Ladybug. He offered nothing in return. Those eyes were captivating. She smiled at him. "Sorry, my yo-yo missed it's mark a little. Carry on, citizen."

Ladybug stepped away from him, casting her yo-yo into the unknown. She made a brief two finger salute before being pulled away into the ever approaching night. Nathanael felt his body release all tension at once, and he slumped against the wall, clutching at his shirt, just above the heart. Those eyes.

The rest of his walk home felt dizzy and dreamlike. A mist of roiling cognition stirred around him as the dusk settled comfortably on Paris. He was inside before the stars greeted the sky like cats grinning down on the streets. His mother greeted him and offered food and he responded with some half-truth about feeling sick. She took the somewhat-lie and allowed him to go to his room.

He took a half remembered shower, letting the water fall over his body, trying to connect those last missing puzzle pieces. Just what was he missing? By the time he exited the shower, steam having fogged up his mirror and surrounding him, he felt on the precipice of some grand mystery to which he held the key. If only he could figure out what that key was.

Nathanael sat down at his desk with a soft and somewhat defeated thud. He was tired in every sense of the word. The light at his desk shone on the sketch book he had yanked from his bag, tugging the ribbon along with it. He placed the ribbon in a drawer in his desk to be ignored. His first gift from the girl he adored. It was almost comical.

He picked up his pencil. Then put it back down. Then repeated this process a few more times before he flipped back to the doodle page that had Marinette's bright face gleaming up at him. Her eyes so soft, so gentle... So... Wait.

Looking down at his small doodle he gently erased the ladybug on her nose. Then he flipped the pencil around and began to trace a line around Marinette's eyes and nose until it connected. He colored in some circles until he had done a replica of Ladybug's mask.

He flipped a few pages of his drawings until he came to the picture he drew last night. Quickly he switched the pages back and forth, back and forth. Something snapped in his mind. Finally he connected the dots in his head, why he stared at Marinette earlier, and again at Ladybug the same way. The same eyes, so blue and full of compassion. It had to be.

It couldn't be.

But it had to be.

The rain was pouring down hard on Paris the next day. The sky unleashed its anger on the world below and its citizens were simply left to cope. The clouds were the color of sickly bruises, and thunder rumbled low like a warning. A good day to stay in bed and let the world pass without you.

Marinette wished she could do just that, but no such luck. She walked to school alone, bright and early as ever, a blue umbrella the only protection from the rain. She daydreamed as she walked. Adrien consumed her thoughts, making them sunny on this gloomy day. Tikki was snuggled up, sleeping in her purse, using Marinette's hand embroidered handkerchief as a blanket. So immersed in dreams where they both that the didn't notice when a new body alighted next to them.

"Good morning," said a shy voice. Marinette jumped slightly.

"Oh! Good morning, Nathanael!" She said brightly, happy that he was speaking to her again. "You startled me."

"Oh... I'm sorry," he said.

"No it's okay."

They walked in silence as the rain fell on their umbrellas, his black. He snuck glances at her, feeling his heart race with so many emotions. Above all he was still very upset with her. She was no better than Chloe. Even if she was very, very... very cute. Still he knew her secret now. Or he thought he did. God it was confusing. This whole mess was confusing.

"M-marinette," he tried weakly. Her name on his lips was a candy of razors.

"Yes, Nathanael?" she asked.

He stopped walking and stared at his feet. Marinette stopped and turned around to face him. He looked like he was fighting something great and immense, fiddling the hand that wasn't holding the umbrella.

"What's wrong?" Marinette asked, more concerned this time. Finally he looked up at her, the hair falling away from his face so she could see both eyes.

"You're Ladybug."

A/N: okay so maybe it's not the most exciting beginning the world has ever known, but I think it sets up a story for myself. Okay so I promised to explain how my story will work here. I headcannon Marinette as dating Nathanael at least for a little while and then eventually getting together with Adrien at some point after learning their true identities.

I'm not sure how/if I will incorporate any of this in this story. I like to write about falling, not being with.I'm not sure if I want unrequited love or some cute fluff. How much am I going to destroy my son in this fic, I don't know. I can write as many as I want so if this one doesn't suit your fancy just you wait.

So this story will feature a LOT of NathanaelXMarinette (because I ship it and it needs fanwork,) and some light MarinetteXAdrien (in any of it's pairings, because I really really ship this but there are lots of great ones!) If you'd like me to write a story about Mari and Adrien, as any of their pairings, please message me or leave me a review saying so. Thanks a bunch and have a great day!