When Marinette says Adrien is perfect, she doesn't mean he's perfect. Well, she does, if perfect is all the usual things, like how he's handsome and kind and gets good grades and has hair that raises adoring sighs everywhere he goes.

But perfect is also green spandex stretching over his skull and hiding that exquisite coiffure, eyes too big and eager in its absence, and his voice catching as he hugged himself and turned away from her in the middle of the sewers after he saved her and saved her and it was never good enough.

The utter shamelessness in the way he exploded into laughter at her predicament when that depraved umbrella snapped shut around her. The way he's never let her forget that sound without ever having to remind her, except by simply existing.

Being a superhero is more than Marinette can handle, sometimes, and especially of late. But she has Ladybug's suit to thank for the faces of Adrien's not-so-perfect perfection she keeps discovering, as if on a revolving jewel that catches light a little differently with every turn.

It starts completely by accident, with a fitful attempt at sleep and a solitary flight across the rooftops. She spots him on the Pont des Arts, hands in pockets of an oversized hoodie, staring out at the water.

His hood is flipped up, and she doesn't recognise him at first, only notices that he looks like a child who's lost his way.

"Hello there! Is everything alright?"

She lands softly on the railing and he tenses, elbows jutting out in defence, before he sees her and she sees him.

"Ladybug?"

"Adrien?"

Her brow furrows in concern. "What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"

"I uh, snuck out," he says, unnecessarily, pulling back the hood in a wonderfully shy gesture that threatens even her heightened sense of balance. "I heard the city is … full of surprises at this hour." The flash of merriment that follows, green as sunlit grass, is criminal.

"Oh?" Ladybug casts him a sidelong smile and drops down from her perch. "Is that so?"

"I wanted to see you anyway," he mumbles, bashful and probably meaning to say something else, yet far too sincere for Ladybug's brain to do more than freeze. Months of defending Paris keep her stance sure though, as he scrambles to smooth over the moment. "So, are two a.m. patrols a thing now?"

"Oh, well ..." Hoping she's imagining the momentary narrowing of his eyes, she tries to evasively explain. "Being Ladybug isn't exactly an ordinary day job."

"Didn't Chat Noir want to join you?"

"No—maybe? I mean—" Ladybug sighs. "Okay no, this was spontaneous."

Adrien smiles. "That makes two of us then. Like, you knew that about me already but … yeah."

Of course even an innocent turn of phrase over a clumsy extension of empathy is enough to take her rising blush up a few notches.

"Wanna see some more surprises?" she offers, letting her face slip into shadow, fingers closing around the yoyo at her hip.

"For—For real? I'd love to."

As always, Paris is beautiful from above. But she only has eyes for him, holding tight to her, lithe arms in baggy sleeves around her neck, warm like home and air full of spring fragrance.

The next time she sees him at the same hour, he's shivering in fog and rain, hoodie-less, bare skin slick with water.

"Adrien, you have to stop putting yourself in danger," she chides, tucking the blanket she snatched in haste from her cupboard around him as rain drips from the awning overhead.

The reckless fire in his gaze tugs at the edges of familiarity. "It's not dangerous if you're here."

Ladybug is entirely too human for that to be true, but she finds him haunting the streets again and again, and the rescues and warnings turn into strolls under quaint window shutters and walls draped in ivy. She dons a hoodie of her own, inside out so the obnoxious green paw print emblazoned across the front won't glow in the dark, and sews Adrien several new ones despite his insistence that he's a fashion designer's son and owns more clothes than he knows what to do with. Marinette's solution is, naturally, to embroider 'Wanted for wardrobe crimes' on her next piece, a cheeky creation that deliberately clashes with everything the Gabriel brand stands for. She signs her work with a minuscule ladybug balanced above a seam, wings half-opened.

Precisely when she got so playful around the love of her life she can't say for sure, but sleep deprivation and hormones are powerful inhibitors of reason, especially combined. Who needs the comfort of a bed when she can trip drunkenly into a hidden alleyway as her consciousness gives out, and wake up with Adrien's cheek squashed against her blanket-laden thigh and his warm breath clouding the rosy dawn?

Fortunately, after that particular outing, they both agree that it's far too risky to camp out in the open whether Hawkmoth or the Gorilla is in the habit of prowling the city in the dead of night or not. ("I sure hope they don't run into each other," says Adrien, wrinkling his nose. "Hawkmoth would get pulverised.") Thereafter any sleeping is strictly done in Adrien's room.

Of course, Ladybug is only doing her duty and taking him home like she should. If she lingers for just a second, a flutter of eyelids to catch her breath and Oops, it's morning, who can blame her?

No matter how many times her dreams are laced with white instead of black and blue instead of green, manic grins and snarling taunts and her own image warping and melting into dust in water, all she has to do is open her eyes and see sunlight in the bright glow of his.

From blushing and stammering and goggling tongue-tied at each other they upgrade to half-awake rambling and crying into pillows in equally jumbled incoherence. The first time it's embarrassing, but Ladybug can't help it until it's too late. She can only hope as she wipes her eyes that she hasn't said anything to give her identity away.

"Oh, I know who you are," Adrien says, sure as the moon pulls the tide.

Her heart slams into her throat.

"I-I mean, you're … the bravest person I know."

He never looks at her with anything less than love and reverence afterwards. It's not like he has any shortage of his own demons.

On the anniversary of his mother's disappearance, Ladybug trails her fingers through his hair, a fluffed up mess that would drive his stylists to despair, and concludes that even photogenic Adrien Agreste is not a pretty crier. Not when there's no one else looking. Puffy eyes and dribbling pink nose and cork-popping hiccups but even so, he still manages to squeeze into the chinks in her heart's armour and stay.

There's something romantic about cobblestones and artistic wilderness that neither of them can resist.

"It was that close?" asks Adrien in hushed tones as they round a corner, away from the main streets.

Ladybug nods. "Other people getting akumatised I can deal with, but I—" she shudders, "I don't know what I'd be capable of."

"Chat Noir would be there. He'd get things under control, right?"

"Yes, but …" The look on Adrien's face is so hopeful that she stops, figures she shouldn't worry him, even if he is the boy who leapt off one of the highest points in Paris without a flicker of fear. "Of course," she says, because the idea of anyone thinking Chat wouldn't go to the ends of the earth for her, whether she likes it or not, makes her bristle with indignation. "I'd never doubt him."

Adrien is quiet for a bit, and Ladybug wonders if it's too much to burden him with her worries. But when he comes to a halt in between two high walls giving way to rows of villas, it's to touch her shoulder lightly and say, "If anyone can fight off an akuma, it's you. We can even practise."

"Channeling happy feelings?" she giggles.

"Exactly."

"You make me happy," she blurts out, and Adrien flushes, looking at the flower pots by his feet, lips pressed shut in a vain effort to keep the grin from stretching clean off his face.

"You make me happier. See? We're good at this already."

"Oh no, here it comes!" Ladybug gasps, red glove vanishing into the voluminous folds of his hoodie, pushing him backwards out of imaginary harm's way until she has him pinned gently against one wall.

"What should we do?" comes his dazed whisper under the trailing ivy, shoes sliding a bit on fallen leaves.

Face alight with heat and daring, she swoops up and kisses him. Kisses him into oblivion and summer skies, breaths intertwined. Her ribbons unravel, dark hair spilling free between his fingers.

The certainty of her lips and the brush of his thumb across her mask say Don't touch us. Ever.