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Adrien wakes. It’s Wednesday my dudes. He lets a wry grin surface at the thought of Nino’s latest favorite phrase while he waits for his alarm to tell him to get out of bed.
Sitting for Marinette’s drawings are so easy, and nothing like the photoshoots his father does. She makes him feel so human and real. No spaghetti, no one grabbing him, or sinking their nails into him. He has so much fun riffing off the stuffy modeling poses he has to do for his photoshoots “to preserve his image” he can hear his father saying. With smiles for days he rolls out of bed and sifts through his closet for a set of unassuming but comfortable clothes for this morning. Plagg rolls his eyes and mutters something about having a bigger cheese allowance when he wakes to clothes being flung past him.
“Hey self-conscious brat. You planning on buying breakfast for your little drawing date again?”
“Why yes, Plagg. Did you want something?” Adrien catches himself with a choked out, “it’s not a date… We’ve gone over this.”
Plagg’s eyes narrow. “Ughhh… You humans are just something else. Get me a cheese danish from pigtails’ parents place. I don’t think I can handle this AGAIN.” Plagg dives into Adrien’s pants pocket, cutting the conversation short.
Adrien is once again knocking on Marinette’s apartment door, this time with a box of her parents fresh pastries and her favorite coffee order—mocha, with an extra shot of espresso and lots of whipped cream. He doesn’t linger too long on the similarity that tickles his brain like a nagging itch he can’t scratch.
She lets him in, no stumbling by the couch this time!
“Good morning, Marinette! Ready for another round of drawing your favorite model?” Chipper as ever, he just couldn’t help teasing her. Just a little.
Her face flares with a lovely pinkish red hue, and her eyes refuse to land anywhere but on his hands after that.
“C-c-come in, Adrien.” He holds the mocha out for her to take and she immediately starts soothing her hands on the warmth of it, chancing a few slightly too hot sips. “Thanks again for bringing breakfast. I woke up late today.”
Adrien gives her a lopsided grin, “don’t you always wake up late?”
“Oh shush you. Or I’ll draw your face like those trashy animes you watch.” She pauses, “the really trashy ones mind you.”
“Oh I’d love to see what I look like as an anime character, could you please??”
“You’re insufferable.” With a laugh she grabs and puts one of the croissants into her mouth and heads to her room to grab her materials to set up the living room.
Adrien finds himself sitting placidly on the couch eyeing her hands after all is said and done and they start. It feels like blinking, they work so well together.
Watching her study his hands is as fascinating as ever. He could see the care she put into her work in the intensity of her gaze, but the technical skill was all in her hands, poised and purposeful with deliberate strokes. New pose. Sure she’d always been klutzy when they were younger, she’d grown out of it somewhat, still occasionally being scatterbrained and tripping over her words. New pose. He only saw her move confidently when she was sewing, designing, and now, drawing. New po—
“Ready for ten minute poses?” Marinette doesn’t even look up at him, too occupied with swiping up through her phone. Probably a list of timers, he thinks before she selects one and sets her phone back on the easel.
Adrien blinks, “Hm? Yeah.” He mentally sifts through his repertoire of poses. “You said you wanted arm movement too, right?”
“Yes, please!” She’s still refusing to look him in the face, her cheeks gaining a tinge of red. It was understandable, he found himself thinking. It’s not every day you have one of your closest friends in their underwear in front of you. Besides, this was going to happen every week now and had happened twice already—not counting that initial dream he had. Although, her sketching him in real life elicited less fiery reactions under his skin and more excitement in his poor heart. Like an echo, his skin heats up and he breathes slowly to tamp the burning at the tip of his ears, ignoring the flares of icy hot at his fingertips.
“Okay, 30 minutes now.” She murmurs, focusing on reviewing her drawings. The cotton clears from his ears, it feels like surfacing from underwater. His brain is in a blissful daze. They already finished the pose?
“Ready,” Adrien answers, stretching as he stands from the couch, muscles pliant, settling to a casual but popular pose with his photographer. Marinette turns to say something else but slams her mouth shut to watch him stretch. Leaning slightly onto one leg, putting his hand on his hip as he reaches his other arm over, he smiles softly almost teasingly in her direction. Her face reddening just a touch more, she spins around to set up the next timer.
Adrien what? What was that?
The timer set, he notices her eyes weren’t flitting around as much, they were focusing on spots at a time as she drew. He barely contains the purr that threatens to rumble out from his chest. Plagg had unfortunately confirmed he could indeed purr if particularly motivated. A happy buzz in the back of his mind lulls him into that hazy daydream again, reminiscing about how soothing her charcoal’s ghostly trace felt. His skin warms wherever she glances, and he faintly notices the beginnings of a pleasant tingle once again pouring out of the base of his skull. The timer going off jolts him out of the syrupy comfort like a bucket of cold water.
“Are you okay, Adrien?” Her voice is softer than expected as his brain catches up to reality.
“What? Oh, totally. Yep. Just zoned out there and got surprised by the timer is all!” He must have been watching everything in slow-motion. Her brows furrow just a little, her mouth purses just slightly, her eyes are slowly scanning looking for something wrong. He recognizes something but his bones ache with a memory he doesn’t understand. Adrien shivers with every trace of Marinette’s gaze across his face, boring deep into his soul, watching her eyes catch and jump to his neck when she sees his shoulders shiver. So observant. How often has my Lad-Marinette? Done this check of me?
Brain what?
Plagg’s cheese is getting to him. Camembert is bad for the braincells. There’s a paper out there somewhere.
“How about we take a break for a snack and some hot tea?” He hears the sounds of her adjusting on her easel but all he wants is pleasant warmth again smoothing over his worries and edges. He wants the tree sap feeling again. The good one, where he feels like good goop. Maybe he was coming down with something? Heat flashes? Being sick sounded familiar.
“Adrien?”
“Tea! Tea is good!” He jolts into reality again. Her brows furrow more and a long suspicious hum leaves her pursed lips.
He rises from the couch as smoothly as he can make it and holds out his hand to her. Suspicion laces her every gesture, but she takes his hand gently and he pulls her into her kitchen. As she fills the kettle he goes for her cabinets, knowing where the tea is stored from plenty of visits even before these scheduled ones.
“Lemon ginger for me, please,” she murmurs when he pauses to decide what to have. He can’t seem to find the lemon ginger, a frown forming as he looks. She sets the kettle on a newly lit burner and ducks in front of him to wiggle her hand deep into the cabinet. “It’s in the back, I think?”
Adrien is too surprised, too lost, and perhaps too caught up in the smell of her freshly washed hair. He does what any reasonable man does and freezes. Every inhale seems to send the edges of the neurons of his brain on fire. A hazy damnable lovely fire that smells of vanilla and flowers. He faintly wonders, what would an MRI scan look like? His head gently droops, relaxing and comforted by her scent, soothed by the presence of her apartment, at ease because of her. He knocks his forehead on the back of Marinette’s head.
She stops reaching, her hand now tentatively reaching back with an equally quiet, “Adrien?”
“Just give me a moment?” He sighs. He has no idea what’s come over him and he’s not about to start thinking about it now. The least he can do is respect her space. He needs to move away. He’s about to do just that when her hand lands on his head awkwardly from reaching behind her. She twirls the tips of her fingers in his hair gently as if to ruffle it.
Well. Shit.
Aptly put brain.
Despite his mind warring with itself, his body revels in the… Petting? Head scratches? Who cares. It feels soooo nice. Brain is goop. Spine tingles good. Adrien at ease.
Scalp tingles is new and divine.
“—Heard you had a hard week? Alya said Nino and you were up late talking the other day after the movie. Nino was getting frustrated about something.” Marinette’s voice never rises higher than a soothing hum. She turns slowly, his head raises just a bit as she does, trying to give her that space he drowsily remembers trying to give her. His hands find themselves on the counter, leaning into them instead of on her. If she notices he’s trapped her between him and the counter she doesn’t react, he chooses to ignore the newfound screaming in his mind at the revelation.
She faces him, she’s so short, her watchful eyes are probing him, looking for answers that he doesn’t know what she’ll find. “You can hug me if that would help? Lean your head on my shoulder?” Both her arms now wind around his neck, her cheeks that confusing red again. Adrien drops his head into her shoulder, gladly. His brain has checked out honestly and everything is along for the ride he guesses.
She starts to card her fingers through his hair, separating the strands from their product clumped selves, her nails drift lazily, lightly, down his scalp, his neck.
Oh.
Now that’s a good tingly feeling. His spine feels like the sound a rain stick makes, tik-tik-tik scattering down his back chased by a blooming warmth. His toes start to curl. The purr is starting to build at the back of his throat again. He can’t help himself, he nuzzles into her neck, his arms encircling her. She’s so small compared to him. She’s so good, comforting, safe. She keeps lightly scraping his scalp, his neck, his shoulders. A low hum escapes him and his eyes shut to sink into it all. This all feels soooo good.
His brain is soup all over again. Soupy soupy soup.
His neck gently reminds him he is tall and he can’t possibly remain bent over like this. Adrien slowly lifts his head from her, back straightening, eyes still closed, head bowed while her hands reach less and less. He wants to whine. He can’t whine now. The warmth from her delightful scratches pools everywhere she’s touched. He simmers delightfully. His brain keeps leaking out his ears because when he opens his eyes and catches her staring so worriedly at him he just stares. A part of her lip is tugged into her teeth like it does when she’s concerned for people, her eyes are searching his face trying to unpuzzle the wrong, her hands are resting on his chest. He hopes she doesn’t notice his heart rate pick up when he comes back to her lips again and again and again.
He really has no idea where it was coming from.
Yes he does. He absolutely does. He can’t keep killing butterflies like this.
Yes he can Hawkmoth doesn’t need more of the damned things.
Her lips are reddened from her worried nibbling, maybe even a little chapped. He feels his mouth part, feels her burning skin through her clothes, feels his hands feel too much. He’s hyperaware of every feeling there ever was and ever will be. It’s way too much. His cheeks set themselves on fire.
What a position to be in.
Adrien can’t even pull himself away, he’s glued, he’s damned, and his brain is on a plane to Marinette-land.
Marinette lets out a quiet breath when she takes everything in. She averts her eyes from his so quickly he misses the blue in them already. Adrien watches her shape the sound of her shallow breaths with her lips.
Don’t make that shape. He pleads to God, gods, kwamis. He begs them all.
“Um.” He starts, her cheeks glow brighter red still. She worries her lips harder, and she won’t even look him in the eyes at this point. Looking everywhere but up at him. Frankly, she’s catching herself at his lips too. She keeps coming back to them. Right? He begs to every holy being he’s ever been taught.
“Can I kiss you?” Someone else is driving the brain, thank you kwamis.
She squeaks and nods almost imperceptibly. He’s gone and sinking and he’s never coming back. One way tickets to Marinette-land only.
It’s such a soft kiss despite it all. Cautious. He’s leaned forward, pushing her gently into the counter, hands once again on the counter behind her for fear of losing control, for fear of his knees collapsing in on him in how much he wants—no, needs this. And yet a hand moves to her cheek, dipping into her hair reverently when she finally meets his gaze as he’s moving his face down to hers. He’s seen enough movies to know to tilt his head and soften his mouth and just maybe he feels the ghost of her eyelashes fluttering against his cheek as she leans in to him. His eyes close as he brushes her lips with his.
It’s over so quickly.
He pulls away just barely enough to let his own eyes open, eager to drink in the sight of a Marinette he’s never seen before.
Or has he.
He finds himself thinking of the heady rush of being on top of the Eiffel tower. A bug with spots gives him a grin that makes his pulse jump.
She licks her lips, glances up at him once more, there’s just something wicked sharp in those eyes before he’s pulled down, down, down back onto her lips, her hands fisting in his shirt, holding him there as they slant their lips together. It’s hot, messy, wet, and he doesn’t give a damn as long as it never fucking stops. Damn the dam. Flood the floodgates. It’s so so so much better than her drawing him.
They slam into the counter behind them as Adrien's hand pulls Marinette into him by her waist, his other hand never leaves her face, only shifting to brush her cheek, to tilt her neck, to open her up to him. There’s a fire pooling in his chest moving down into his belly and it’s all because of her breathing so much life into his very soul.
The fringes of his lungs flare to life. He can’t breathe and breathes too much all at the same time. He’s carving her scent into his lungs and leaving whispers in her mouth as he drowns in the feelings of it all.
Her fingertips are tracing little lines, all those strokes, up his arms, his shoulders, his neck, into his hair. She pulls his head back with a gentle tug at his hair and he greets the ceiling with a gasp as her mouth travels to his collarbones. Little fires left in her lips’ wake all over his skin.
He’s a mess.
Completely wrecked.
His knees wobble just once and suddenly he’s facing her and he’s leaning on the counter and she’s just drinking him in like warm ambrosia on a cold day. Except he’s absolutely on fire and that confident twist in her mouth is doing things to him that turns his stomach in the most delicious and hungry way. Marinette leans in quickly and he chooses then to choke on his breath.
Moron.
She’s brilliant, a goddess, anything to keep the fire stoked. His lady. His heart stops when her palm rests on his chest, sliding up up up to his neck, thumbing his jaw, stroking his cheek, tucking strands of surely kiss-mussed hair behind his ears. He hears a whimper that he almost doesn’t realize came from him and slides to the floor, graceless. She kneels in-between his crumpled legs and begins her attack again.
He jumps a mile from his ass when the kettle whistles high and loud—
Adrien wakes to his alarm, sweating and dizzy from lips too warm too soft dragging sighing open mouthed kisses across his jaw and down his throat and he swallows loudly. His face burns. He isn’t getting through today’s session without a serious looking flush. He wonders if he can tell Marinette he got sunburned after taking too long of a nap outside on his apartment balcony. Plagg is too busy cackling away at his reddened appearance to tell him good morning. Another long day of avoiding daydreaming it is. There’s just something else on the tip of his tongue he can’t seem to remember.