Dearly Despised, (I love you)

Three's a Crowd

A/N: Did someone say possessive Adrien? And art of it??

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"For someone who hates Marinette, you sure get stuck with her a lot. Isn't that funny?"

After a three-hour photoshoot near the park fountain with nothing but thick sunlight and Vincent's "smile like your mother just gave you spaghetti" instructions getting under his skin (his photographer seemed to forget the... unknown about his mother), the last thing he needed was Plagg reciting the failures of his life.

As if his irony with Marinette weren't already unspokenly obvious.

"It's called bad luck, Plagg. I have you to blame for it."

"That's not how the miraculous works."

Adrien's eyes turned to slits. He chugged his water and slunk on the wooden bench. He loathed solitude more than anything, but sometimes he managed to loathe Plagg even more.

At least he got to see Ladybug that day. Granted, it was to chase an oversized baby terrorising the city, but they chased baby August together. She'd make a great mother in the future, he thought. She was firm and gentle at once and seemed to have a lot of babysitting experience. The chances of him being the father of her kids were so close to impossible it ached.

To think Plagg knew her identity after their principal got akumatised and he didn't ached almost as much.

"Why can't I know Ladybug's identity?"

Plagg floated beside his head, nibbling his cubed yellow lunch. "Ugh, how many times do I have to tell you? That's just the rules."

"But why?!"

"Do I look like I study the rules? The guardian just said so. Something about it being dangerous if Hawk Moth catches one of you." He swallowed the camembert whole, then irked his palm to request Adrien pass him another roll from his bag. "Just tell Ladybug you're pathetically in love with her without mentioning your identity."

Adrien passed him more cheese. "I've thought about it."

To say he'd "thought" about that option was an understatement. He'd stewed, dreamt, slept on, imagined, and even practiced that idea. Excessively. He had the whole script right now, but not the motive – what did he want from it: to get it off his chest? to openly praise her in a way she knew he was serious? to know how she felt? a relationship?

"Then why not?"

Or did he want to ruin their partnership and face rejection?

Or even better, be completely shot down due to the fact they didn't even know each other?

"I'm not sure," Adrien said.

Maybe tomorrow he would, he decided, as he decided every day. But the great thing about 'tomorrow' was that it never came.

His internal spiral winded backwards as he observed the park dwellers – kids playing, the photoshoot camera crew packing away, and pairs of people posing like couples. Perhaps on any other day that would be wholesome to observe and add cheer to the end of his work and akuma-fighting day, but one couple stuck out like a sore thumb in his line of gaze.

The stirring of uneasiness proved his instincts recognised them before his mind could. His arm hair bristled as he took in the odd-coloured hair of the wiry male brushing shoulders with a girl that, if he didn't already know, would otherwise catch his eye immediately with her rosiness and Ladybug-like facial features. They each held generous pilings of André's ice cream. By the looks of it, the boy's was blueberry and cherry, while the girl's was strawberry and mint.