Originally written for a tumblr prompt + pairing meme. The prompt was 'kiss me'. It... kind of got out of hand and became a multichapter thing. Oops.

Chapter 1

Kiss Me (Like You Want To Be Loved)

Marinette smells like cinnamon and sugar.

It's something Adrien has noticed before, especially in his Chat Noir form; being a feline superhero has its perks, one of them being heightened senses all around. But it's more than just the tricky blend of sweet and spicy that he likes about her scent; inexplicably, Marinette smells warm, like a comforting hearth at Christmas or a rowdy extended family dinner. He wonders how this could be, when all he can glean from her is literally just sugar and cinnamon, but Marinette smells like home (or how he imagines homes should smell, anyway) and he can't help but want to get closer whenever he's near enough to take in her scent.

This is one of those times. She's walking next to him in slightly awed silence, her eyes on the array of shop windows before them; her surprised expression is endearing, and Adrien has to hold back a chuckle. You'd think she had never seen shops before. He'd wager that she's only just checking her urge to run and press her face up against the nearest storefront, like a child let loose in a patisserie.

Not that he can be throwing stones here, really, since he's only just checking his urge to lean in close and skim his fingers through her hair himself. She's worn it out today, and while it's a lovely change from her usual twintails, it's had the unintentional effect of spreading her scent thickly over her neck and shoulders. It's a windy day in Paris, and as her hair scatters so too does the smell of cinnamon and sugar; it's all Adrien can do to stop himself leaning in and burying his nose in the glossy black strands.

"So what do you think?" he asks, in part to distract himself from thoughts of Marinette's maddeningly alluring scent. "Where do you want to go?"

Marinette starts and wheels around to look at him almost guiltily, as though she'd forgotten that he was there. A faint blush spreads across her face, and Adrien finds that this pale wash of colour is almost as distracting as the cinnamon-sugar fragrance she's emitting. All of a sudden, it's hard to meet her eyes.

"I, uh, um, that is, y-you should choose! It's for your father after all—"

"That would rather defeat the purpose of me bringing you along, wouldn't it?" he interrupts smoothly, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her around to face the shops again. This has the added advantage of no longer having her glowing pink face turned up towards his expectantly. Unfortunately, this also causes Marinette's warm, heady bakery smell to envelop them both, and Adrien can't help it when his fingertips linger near her hair a little longer than is strictly necessary. "Father liked your taste in fashion, and I trust your judgment. You decide."

At this, Marinette bites her lip and scans the row of inanely expensive high-end stores from under furrowed brows; a little hesitantly, she points to a small boutique towards the end of the line-up, a relatively unknown design house that had nevertheless been garnering steadily positive reviews. Adrien raises his eyebrows; she doesn't fail to impress him. He wouldn't have thought to set foot there in a million years, not for his father; but upon thinking it through he recognises that their clean, luxurious aesthetic suits Gabriel Agreste to a T. He nods at her encouragingly and, with a smile, pulls her toward the shop.

"But you must have some idea what you wanted to get him," Marinette says under her breath to him as they enter, clearly uncomfortable with the kind of rarified atmosphere a haute couture atelier commands, no matter how small or unknown. Adrien laughs, sunny and easy; he grew up in these fashion houses, underfoot seamstresses and embroiderers, babysat by the polished shop assistants that sold his father's designs. His nappies had been Savile Row tailored, for chrissakes. He sometimes forgets what an oppressive, elite world this is, even to someone like Marinette who has dreams of entering it someday. He takes her hand and pulls her towards the scarf rack, where a glittering array of silk and cashmere scarves live on display.

"I was thinking of a scarf," he acknowledges, lightly touching his own turquoise one; the first gift he'd received from his father that had felt genuine. "I wanted to say thank you for this, you know? I've been a model my whole life, but I don't really have the same eye for fashion like my dad does. Help me choose."

Something twists minutely in Marinette's features, but it's gone so quickly that he can't be sure it was ever really there in the first place. She's sorting through the scarves now, a look of concentration firmly in place; her fingers are deft and careful, treating each garment with care. A brief thought of how much his father would appreciate Marinette's reverent handling of the clothing flits through Adrien's head, and he doesn't hide his soft smile; he hopes that when she graduates and is looking for a job, she applies to his father's company first.

"This one," she announces after a moment, holding up a beautifully embroidered scarf in a dark green silk, "or this one. You can have the final pick, Adrien, because I refuse to be solely responsible for a birthday present for Gabriel Agreste." The other scarf she holds is a deep purple, almost black; an abstract design is worked throughout the fabric in a lighter dye. Adrien considers them both a while before deciding on the purple. He pays an exorbitant sum of money that Marinette is sure she has never spent on clothes in her entire lifetime combined, let alone on one item, and they step out of the store together.

Adrien lets out a breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding; the rush of clean air around him is welcome after the small boutique, which had been well on its way to being saturated with Marinette's scent. And while he will find any excuse to lean in closer to her to breathe it in, being in prolonged contact with it was… slightly dangerous. In more ways than one.

He should say goodbye to her now; he's already about at his limits in regard to his ability to stay sane in the vicinity of Marinette's cinnamon-sugar smell, but it's a beautiful day and he's alone and relatively anonymous in this crowd. It's a novel experience and he doesn't want to give it up, not quite yet.

Or maybe it's Marinette he doesn't want to give up yet.

"Well, I've got a while before I have to be anywhere," he lies, turning up the collar on his coat against the Parisian wind. "Do you want lunch or something? I'll buy, as thanks for helping me choose Father's present."

"R-really?!" Marinette when she's happy is a sight to behold. Her entire face lights up; her cheeks scrunch up in the cutest way and Adrien swears her eyes are actually sparkling. Why was he the model again? Get this girl a contract, asap. "Y-you don't have to, it was my pleasure—"

"I want to," he interrupts, and finds to his surprise that it's true. He really wants to spend more time with this girl, even at the risk of his Father finding out about this jaunt and being angry at him. It's not just her scent; there's something about Marinette Dupain-Cheng and her unabashed exuberance and happiness that draws him. It reminds him of someone else he knows, someone else he admires for similar qualities.

Ah, but that someone he knows would never blush in front of him like Marinette is doing right now; her face is practically a fire hydrant, and her eyes are darting everywhere but in his general direction. He waits patiently for a response. "I—well, um, if you insist—um, lunch, right, right, where do you want to go, then, Adri—?"

He claps a hand over her mouth before she can finish; he'd caught something familiar out the corner of his eye and he drags her to an alleyway between the stores, looking over his shoulder.

"Sorry," he whispers to her, his hand still over her mouth; his eyes follow the hulking figure of his driver wandering the streets with unease. "I—uh—I might've snuck out for this expedition— I wanted to keep it a surprise, and— I'm actually meant to be at a fencing tournament, hahaha, oh crap, he's coming this way—"

The alleyway is a dead end, and bare; not even a trashcan to hide behind. Adrien searches frantically for a way out and finds that there is none, save for stepping out directly into the line of sight of his driver. As it is, his driver is nearing their hiding place, whistling merrily; only twenty steps, now nineteen, now eighteen—separate him and discovery.

Something that sounds a lot like Chat Noir whispers kiss her in his mind, and Adrien flushes from head to toe.

Kiss Marinette? It would almost certainly get him out of his predicament – after all, who apart from a voyeur would want to stick around too long near a couple that's making out (he sincerely hopes his driver is not a voyeur) – but kiss Marinette? It's not that he thinks he won't like it; in fact, the problem here is that he's liable to like it too much. He loves Ladybug, sure, but lately Marinette has been invading his thoughts and dreams with a frequency that's nothing short of alarming and figuring out his feelings for her and for his superhero partner is not something he wants to deal with quite yet. And he can't do that, he can't do that to Marinette, he can't ask that of her, and oh god he's much too aware of her in his arms right now, and of her small head resting just under his chin; the wind has done nothing to carry away her scent and is in fact blowing it right back into his face, and his thoughts are an incoherent jumble of discovery and gotta hide and dead man walking and kiss her—

"Kiss me," Marinette breathes, grasping his scarf and turning him around to face in her direction, and Adrien is startled enough to jump out of his skin (was she a mind reader?!) until he notices her expression and understands. Her face is still red as a sunset but her eyes are strong, and she's clearly been thinking along the same lines as he has (minus the emotional turmoil, probably, because it's not like she has a weird sort of love triangle with one of Paris's erstwhile heroes to take into consideration) because she looks around his shoulder on tiptoes to check where his driver was at. "Uh, uhm, I mean, if you wanted to sort of—hide—"

That's as far as she gets before he swoops down and puts his lips upon hers. He swallows her shocked gasp, her trail of unfinished words; the smell of cinnamon and sugar assaults his nostrils and something in his mind disconnects.

Home. She smells like home. She smells like warmth and love and a family to welcome him back; she smells like all he's ever wanted. Her hair slips through his fingers and Adrien gives his hands free reign to tangle themselves in the night-dark strands, messing it up more than the Parisian wind could ever do. Something aches inside him and he presses closer to her, as though her cinnamon-sugar scent can fill up the emptiness in his chest that's the exact shape of the Agreste mansion.

A hesitant finger brushes along his cheekbone before curling around his cheek, and Adrien loses all thoughts of stopping as Marinette's grip on his scarf tightens and she pulls him closer.

It's sensory overload; ever since taking up the Chat Noir identity, all his senses had sharpened to match his alter ego's, even while in civilian form. It was one of the reasons why he couldn't stand Chloe anymore. Her voice grated and she wore some godawful perfume that made him sneeze. ButMarinette; Marinette, he just appreciated more. The softness of her skin, the luminance of her eyes, the whisper of her breath against his lips as they moved in tandem.

And her scent. God, her scent, the sweet-sugary-cinnamon-vanilla-bakery scent that was somehow more than the sum of its parts, the scent that was on his tongue and in his head and seeping through his pores right now, and he hopes to high heaven that when he goes to bed tonight her fragrance lingers around him on his hair and skin and clothes—

Something clatters on the pavement behind them and the two of them jump apart as though electrocuted. Their chests are heaving as though they'd run a marathon; their breaths are twin clouds of white vapour in the air. But even through the smokescreen, their high colour is unmistakable—bright, bright, glowing red, red as apples, red as rubies, red as ladybugs. They're silent for a moment, a single, tense, split second, before—

"I—oh god, I'm sorry, Ididn'tmeanto—"

"Tha—I mean, I just—Imeanthatwas—"

Both of them start speaking at the same time, a torrent of embarrassed words; they also stop at the same time. They look at each other again, then something forces itself through the cinnamon-sugar haze in Adrien's brain and he snaps his head around so fast Marinette worries she's broken him.

"Is—is he gone—?" he asks, green eyes searching the road.

He is. The road full of stores is empty, save for a single black cat meowing next to an upturned café chair. That was probably what they'd heard, Adrien realizes, and the irony of the situation isn't lost on him. He only barely represses the urge to make a cat pun.

"I, um," Marinette says behind him, and he flinches—he can't help it, he's not sure he can look her in the face right now. He chances a glance back at her, sees her face still burning up bright as the sun, and has to look away hastily to hide his own damning blush. "Um, it—it's good that he, uh, got… away? I suppose? Now you won't get in trouble with your dad."

Ah, yes. His father. He had a father, right? That's why he was in this fiasco in the first place, right? His father's birthday. Birthday present. Marinette. Yes. It was all coming back to him now.

"I have to be somewhere," he blurts out, as his thoughts eventually reach the fencing tournament he is supposed to be at and very clearly isn't. "I, uh, I just remembered, the fencing tournament ends soon, I better get there so my driver can pick me up, um, I, I'll buy you lunch some other time? Sorry, Marinette—"

"No, no, it's alright! I understand, you go—I should go help out at the bakery anyway—"

"Yeah, bakery. Lots of cinnamon sugar scrolls there—I, I mean, um, yeah, sounds great, lunch some other time, I, uh. Better go! Bye!" Yeah, he's gotta go right now before he makes this a bigger mess than it already is. He's sure that whatever he's supposed to do after he's kissed a girl for the first time, it isn't this—but he can't think straight right now, and he can't even look her in the face, and he can practically hear Plagg calling him a coward from his bag but he's not running away because he doesn't want to face her.

It's because he has an overwhelming urge to kiss her again.

He's gotta get away. He almost runs out of the small alleyway but manages to tone it down to politer, brisk walk, and he gives her one last, jerky nod in an attempt to be normal before wheeling around mechanically and marching home, his arms and legs swinging in what he hopes in a jaunty way but makes him sadly look like a malfunctioning robot. The scent of cinnamon and sugar seems to follow him all the way home.

Adrien has only one clear thought for the rest of the day:

I'm never going to be able to have cinnamon rolls ever again.