Chapter Text
Adrien closed his eyes. The man in line in front of him kept arguing about some trivial detail pertaining to his insurance policy, his words drowned out by a cacophony of ER sounds. Adrien couldn’t separate the methodical beeping of the monitors from the chipper voices of the nurses updating patients from the cries of that one kid, which seemed to reverberate everywhere—it was all just a blur. He was too caught up by the sound of the words that kept repeating inside his head to focus on anything else.
Hello, Mr. Agreste. We’re contacting you because you’ve been listed as the emergency contact for Marinette Dupain-Cheng. There’s been an accident.
Adrien forced himself to take a deep breath and open his eyes, just in time to see that the man in front of him was finally—finally—moving on. With his stomach churning, Adrien stepped up to the information desk. The nurse seated behind it didn’t so much as glance up as she greeted him. “Hello, how can I help you?”
Adrien cleared his throat. “I’m uh...I’m here for M-Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” he managed to get out, doing his best to ignore the way his throat threatened to close over the words.
“Are you family?” The nurse still didn’t look up from her screen.
“Um...I’m not...I mean, her parents are away right now, and...well, I’m not a blood relative...and technically I’m not like...legally related to her either. Which is stupid, you know? If you had any idea what we’ve been through, then—” he broke off as the nurse looked up. Her thin lips pinched together as she scrutinized him, as though she were assessing Adrien to see if he should be admitted. He knew he was rambling—enough to rival some of Marinette’s less than coherent yammerings—but being terrified tended to have that effect. He took another breath. “She’s…basically the closest thing I have to family?” The nurse continued to stare blankly. “And...I’m her emergency contact,” he finished, realizing that was probably what the nurse had needed to know all along.
The nurse nodded. “Can you confirm your name and phone number, so I can be sure?”
He nodded. He could do that, at least. “Sure. It’s—”
“Adrien?” interrupted a deep voice. Adrien knew immediately who it belonged to—the voice was wrapped around the memory of the worst day of Adrien’s life—but his eyes still widened when he turned and saw Dr. Moulin walk up. The face that haunted Adrien’s nightmares, not that he could hold it against the man. This was the doctor Adrien owed his life to. Or rather, the one he owed Marinette’s life to, which meant more to him in the first place.
Adrien just blinked at the man, too caught off guard to reply.
Dr. Moulin smiled. “I saw them bring in Marinette,” he said cheerfully. How a trauma surgeon could seem so happy, Adrien had no idea. “I was wondering when you’d show up. I can take you to see her, if you want.”
“There’s a protocol for this,” the nurse argued before Adrien managed to formulate a response. She paused to bite down on her bottom lip, hard enough that Adrien was surprised she hadn’t drawn blood. “I have to check his name in the system to make sure—”
“It’s ok, Camille. I’ll vouch for him.” Dr. Moulin turned to Adrien with another wide smile, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Shall we?”
Adrien nodded, and let the doctor lead him away. “S-so she’s okay?”
The doctor dropped his hand, frowning a little. “Of course she is. Haven’t you talked to her?”
“Uh...no? I just got the phone call from her work, and I…” There’s been an accident. “I might have panicked, hung up halfway through the call, and uh...I sort of just ran here.”
“Ah. Well, I’m not her doctor today, so I don’t officially know anything about her case, nor am I really supposed to tell you about anything I do know, but...given your VIP status” —he winked— “I think I can at least reassure you that you have nothing to worry about. A broken ankle, I think. She’ll probably have to take a break from her extracurriculars for a while” —another wink— “but she’ll be better in no time. She was even smiling when I stopped by earlier to say hi.”
“Oh. That’s...that’s good. Thanks.” Adrien took another deep breath as he continued to follow the doctor down a long hallway. Knowing Marinette was alright should have calmed his nerves, but being back here in this hospital, with this doctor, whose jokes couldn’t help but remind Adrien that he, along with one other doctor and a handful of nurses who’d been working here two years ago, knew the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir? It was too much.
“No problem," said Dr. Moulin. "Anything to thank you for everything you’ve done for this city.”
When Adrien closed his eyes at night, sometimes he could still see Dr. Moulin’s face—calm in spite of the chaos before him—watching as the trauma room started to glow. Ladybug’s transformation had timed out, leaving a heavily bleeding Marinette in her place. Marinette.
Adrien hadn’t known that one of his best friends had been behind the mask the entire time, for almost ten years. That the girl he’d fallen for during lycée was the same one he’d never fully fallen out of love with since he’d been thirteen. Hindsight was a bitch, too. He’d considered asking out her civilian self many times, only to chicken out, fearing it would only turn out the same way things had gone when he’d dated Kagami. He’d assumed the lies he’d have to tell as Chat Noir were too much for any relationship to handle. Marinette was too important to lose, so he’d stuffed down his feelings and settled for being her friend.
Seeing her bleeding out in front of him had shattered the adrenaline rush that had been fueling him since the second he’d seen Ladybug go down on the battlefield. In its wake, he was left with pure panic, sharp enough to be a physical pain in his gut. The kind that defied all rational thought. He’d started racing towards the table, and it was only the shock of the two nurses who’d intercepted him that had stopped him short of barreling into the doctors trying to help, since with Chat Noir’s strength he could have easily bowled right through everyone.
The nurses had tried to talk him down after that, but he hadn’t processed a word as they’d led him out into a private room to wait in. It hadn’t been an official waiting room. Looking around, he’d seen tables and a small kitchen area, and he’d surmised that it was probably one of the nurses’ lunch rooms. They’d left him alone with a cup of water he hadn’t bothered to touch.
Left to his own devices, he’d stared down at the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculous that were somehow still clutched in his hand. The two Miraculous that he’d ripped from his father’s chest. After his father had run Marinette through with a sword. After taking a good few minutes to throw up in a trash bin, Adrien had de-transformed and waited numbly for Marinette to come out of surgery. He’d wallowed in the guilt he felt for having been unable to prevent this. He’d never hated himself more.
Now, Dr. Moulin stopped walking in front of a procedure room. “She’s in there. I’d say it was nice to see you again, but...considering my line of work, I’d rather not see you two around here again. Unless you’re planning on bringing new life into the world some time soon.” Another wink.
“Oh, um...we’re not together,” Adrien said awkwardly. With the amount of times he’d had to say those words over the past couple of years he ought to have been used to them, but they still stung.
“Aaaah.” The doctor let the syllable hang in the air far too long for the silence to be comfortable. “Well, in that case...you should probably tell her how you feel.” He chuckled and clapped Adrien on the shoulder once more before walking away.
“I’ll get right on that,” Adrien muttered under his breath, before steeling himself and opening the door to Marinette’s room.
The sight that awaited him was indeed a lot calmer than the one he’d been replaying in his mind since he’d gotten the call earlier. She was sitting up in bed, with an ice pack draped over her ankle as she tapped away on her phone. She smiled when she turned to see him enter. Tikki popped up beside her a second later and waved. Adrien was barely cognizant of Plagg flying out of his pocket to join her.
“Adrien!” Marinette beamed. “Thank God you’re here. Did you bring the food I asked for? They wouldn’t let me eat at first, because they didn’t know if I’d need surgery, but apparently all the bones are where they’re supposed to be, so someone just needs to come back here and splint me up, then…”
Adrien zoned out as she kept talking. He’d stopped at the side of her bed. His eyes zeroed in on her ankle for a moment before quickly sweeping over her body. Despite what he’d been told, he needed to see for himself that the rest of her was unharmed. His eyes got caught on the pale blue collar of her hospital gown, and all the memories of last time, of the days she’d spent living in that colour, her skin almost as pale as the cotton at first, crashed into his mind.
“Adrien? Adrien! Hey, Minou, look at me. It’s ok, I’m fine. Just breathe.” His eyes locked on hers at the sound of her words, but he couldn’t follow her second instruction. Breathing was everyone’s suggestion for how to deal with panic attacks, but in Adrien’s experience having people say that didn’t really help. If he’d been able to breathe properly he’d have been doing it already. He kept forgetting to mention that detail to Marinette though.
His chest was painfully tight. Marinette reached out her arm, her fingers grazing his elbow. He reached up with his own hand in response, gripping her fingers as his brain remembered how to suck in air again. He closed his eyes and focused on the feel of her soft, lightly callused hands as he rubbed circles into them. He honed in on the sound of her voice whispering encouragements against the backdrop of his own stuttered breaths. He took in the smell of antiseptic and the taste of—huh, he really should have had a mint after lunch. Eventually, he’d grounded himself enough to peel his eyes open, locking them once more on Marinette’s concerned ones.
“Chaton? Come sit down.” The words registered, but he couldn’t bring himself to respond aside from slowly shaking his head. Fortunately, Marinette knew him—and his worries—almost as well as he knew himself. “Adrien, you’re not going to hurt me, ok? Just come sit beside me, carefully, so I can make sure you’re ok.”
He thought he might have nodded, and he felt himself move forwards and ease himself onto the edge of the mattress beside Marinette. He stilled as he felt her fingers weave into his hair, then relaxed as she fell into a rhythm of gently scratching circles into his scalp.
“I thought...I was worried it was like last time,” he admitted, leaning against her shoulder.
“Didn’t you get my messages?” she asked.
“I…” Adrien reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, unlocking it to a flurry of awaiting notifications. He opened the Messenger app and sought out his conversation with Marinette. He felt stupid once he saw her texts.
Well, well, well, Chaton. Seems you were right about those heels, she’d begun, followed by a string of updates as she was transferred from the ambulance to the hospital, and everything that had happened since she’d been admitted. Heh. I guess you’re still stuck in the lab, aren’t you? When you come by, would you mind grabbing me a wrap from that cafe on campus? I’m starving. I promise they said I could eat.
“Sorry,” Adrien said, once he’d caught up. “I’ll go get you some food now.” He started to sit up, but her hands wrapped around his arm, pulling him back down.
“It’s fine,” she said, guiding his head back down onto her shoulder and starting to tease her fingers through his hair again. “I have everything I need right here. I can eat later.”
“Ok,” he said, too burnt out to argue. He closed his eyes again, breathing in the smell of her shampoo. He always meant to ask what fruit it was, and he always forgot. To him, it just smelled like home.
“I’m sorry, Minou,” she said after a while. “I shouldn’t have put you as my emergency contact. This is too much to put on you, and I wasn’t thinking about...I wasn’t thinking.” Her fingers paused in his hair, and Adrien had to resist the urge to lean into her hand like a cat so she’d start scratching again. “You still hate hospitals, don’t you?”
“I just hate it when you’re in them,” he mumbled. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. I don’t want you to replace me as your contact. If anything happens to you...I want to be the first to know.”
Adrien didn’t have any right to ask that. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t her family. He was barely even her crime-fighting partner anymore. Their occasional patrols now were more of a formality than anything else, and even those were sparse these days. Adrien was nothing except for the guy who couldn’t move on from the girl he’d fallen for at thirteen. It was pathetic, really.
“Alright,” Marinette said softly. “There’s nobody else I’d want by my side, anyways, Chaton.”
***
Marinette and Adrien had long since moved past the stage in their friendship where awkward silences transpired—finding out you’d been saving each other’s lives for a decade tended to have that effect. But the silence that filled Marinette’s hospital room in between doctors and nurses rushing in and out was definitely heavier than normal. When she was finally discharged, Adrien was still out of it. Somehow, that left Marinette in charge of calling an Uber to take them back to her place, despite her pain-killer-riddled state. At least they hadn’t given her anything that made her loopy, just a little drowsy.
On the ride home, she spent most of the time worrying about Adrien. She hadn’t seen him have a panic attack in months, and though she knew there might have been times he just hadn’t told her about, well...that didn’t exactly make her feel better about it. But telling him she was worried would only make him lock into that fake-model-smile version of himself. The one who'd insist everything was fine even if the world were literally on fire, so...she’d have to be creative in how she approached this.
“Hey Adrien,” she began as he helped her balance on the stairs using her crutches. He’d offered to carry her up to her apartment, but she’d argued that she needed to figure it out for herself. Now, he waited patiently for her to take about twenty times longer than usual to climb up one flight of stairs.
“Yeah?” Adrien said. He sounded tired.
“I was just wondering...I might need a little bit of help around here for the next few days or so...just while I’m getting used to things you know? I mean, you know me! I’m such a klutz I’ll probably end up breaking my other leg while I’m still trying to figure out these crutches. And add in painkillers to the mix…” Well...she might feel guilty about omitting some details regarding her motives for asking him to stay, but when she said it like that...she wasn’t exactly lying. Her inability to walk properly had gotten her into this whole mess, after all.
“So, you want me to stay here with you for a bit and help out?” Adrien asked. When she chanced a glance over her shoulder at him, he smiled. His eyes were distant, but the expression was genuine.
“Yeah,” she said as she reached the top of the stairs. “If you don’t mind?”
He took out the Lucky Charm she’d given him all those years ago, which he now used as a keychain, and pushed her spare key into the lock.
“I’d love to,” he said, pushing the door open. “It’ll be fun, like a giant sleepover! I’ll make crepes in the morning, and we can watch a bunch of movies in our pyjamas, and…”
Marinette hobbled inside, smiling as Adrien rambled on. His excitement allowed some of the tension ease out of her. It was a good thing, too. She could feel the last round of painkillers starting to wear off, and she didn’t need to add more emotional turmoil on top of her physical pain.
She was about five minutes into getting ready for bed, something that involved a lot of Adrien hovering beside her as he helped out, when she realized something she hadn’t quite factored into this whole equation. It dawned on her when he offered to help her take off her pants, seeming entirely unaffected by the suggestion even as Marinette felt her cheeks warm.
She’d just invited the man she was in love with to live with her. Indefinitely.
Because while most people might take for the next few days to mean...well...a few days, Adrien wasn’t most people. Adrien was, for lack of a better word, a cat. And cats didn’t willingly relinquish a comfortable spot once they’d found one.
And while she wasn’t a blushing mess around him anymore, she still hadn’t managed to confess her feelings all these years later. First she’d used the excuse that she couldn’t really date anyone seriously as Ladybug. Then, the fact that Gabriel had turned out to be Shadow Moth had put the brakes on any potential confessions for a while, as Adrien figured out how to live with that information. Marinette had been by his side as much as possible over the past two years, but never as more than a friend. And despite their other friends insisting to Marinette that Adrien was every bit in love with her as she was with him...he’d never given her a sure indication of it, and she was still too afraid to act on a whim.
Except now, she was going to be spending all day and night with him for the foreseeable future. Doing domestic things. Saying good morning and good night in person instead of via text. Probably even sharing a bed, because the couch was too small for him.
Marinette was doomed.
But then again, it was Adrien. If there was anyone she’d want to spend all of her time with, it was him.
And really, what was the worst that could happen?
***
Adrien awoke in a cold sweat. His eyes flew open to the surrounding darkness and his heart pounded in his chest. He was about to cry out when he recognized the smells of Marinette’s apartment—a mix of vanilla scented candles, and lavender detergent from the pillow resting under his head. He looked around from his spot on the couch, registering the dark shapes of her living room. Slowly, the images plaguing his mind began to fade. The ones of Marinette bleeding out in front of him, pale as the ghost of Adrien’s childhood innocence, as Gabriel’s voice taunted him, telling him he was too late.
It wasn’t real, he reminded himself. She’s ok. It was just a nightmare.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he rubbed his sleepy eyes in defeat. He reached over towards the coffee table and blindly fumbled for his phone. He made contact and lifted it above his head, squinting as the bright screen flashed painfully across his retinas. He slammed his eyes shut again as soon as he managed to make out the time.
2:31
He set the phone back on the table with a groan, trying to go back to sleep. But his panic hadn’t disappeared entirely. It had only abated to a background anxiety, the kind that told small children to call their parents in to check for monsters under the bed, even if they’d been told time and time again that monsters weren’t real.
Adrien had never had the kind of parents who’d check his room for monsters anyways, so he’d always had to do it himself. Now was no different, as he pushed the throw blanket off of himself and sat up on the couch.
“Plagg?” he whispered into the darkness. For whatever reason, another common nightmare Adrien had was that his Kwami had disappeared, so he had to reassure himself. “Are you there?”
“‘M sleeping,” Plagg grumbled from the direction of the knitting basket under the coffee table. “Gimme s'more camembert you…” His sentence trailed off into a series of snores. Adrien let out a silent huff of laughter until another wave of panic cut into his relief. He still had to check on Marinette.
He got up and padded over, feet wincing against the cold hardwood, and eased open the door to her room. He grimaced as the hinges let out an obnoxious creak, but Marinette didn’t stir. He imagined the pain-killers helped with that, but then again she normally slept so soundly that she probably wouldn’t have woken even if someone were to start belting karaoke in her ear.
He crept forwards until he was close enough to see her chest rise and fall softly, her body faintly illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the crack in the curtains. He stayed there for a few minutes, doing his best to ignore the voice in his head telling him it was creepy to just stand there watching her sleep, until the rhythm of her breathing calmed his own heart rate back to normal, his body finally satisfied that she was okay.
He considered settling in beside her for the rest of the night—she’d offered to share the bed with him earlier, arguing that the couch was too small—but he didn’t want to intrude. It would set him at ease to be close to her, but a part of him would feel like he was taking advantage too. He’d thought about sleeping next to her more often than he cared to admit, but he didn’t think she felt the same way. Plus, he’d seen the way she’d been watching him, both at the hospital and on their way home, and he was half convinced she’d asked him to stay with her so she could keep an eye on him, not the other way around. He felt like he was failing her somehow, and staying with her now would be like proving he couldn’t do this on his own.
Recovery isn’t linear, said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his therapist. Just because you’re having a set-back doesn’t mean you’re not making progress.
They were words he’d heard many times before. Words he understood. But in moments like this, they didn’t mean a hell of a lot.
He let out a quiet breath, then left the bedroom, smiling half-heartedly at her snores as he shut the door behind him as quietly as possible. He’d mostly managed to calm down, but he was still too keyed up to sleep, so instead he sat down at the kitchen table with his phone.
For the next hour or so, both because he didn’t have anything better to do and because if he did nothing he’d probably start spiralling again, he started researching ways he could help out Marinette. He made a list of foods that were rich in calcium and vitamin D—both essential for bone health—so he could pick some of them up whenever he got groceries. He ordered lavender oil, which was supposed to promote relaxation and help reduce inflammation, as well as a few kinds of tea that were apparently good for the immune system. He found a page filled with massage techniques to help ease the tensions accrued from using crutches.
Eventually, his yawns began to overwhelm him, and he wearily got up and lay down on the couch again. Marinette was right about it being too small—his feet hung off the end—but he was tired enough that the world started fading to black seconds after his head hit the pillow anyways.
His last conscious thought was that he’d make up for yesterday by being the most helpful temporary roommate he could be. That put a tiny smile on his face as he drifted off.