"Save Me" | a Ladrien heart-warmer

Tree

The fifth time Adrien spoke with Ladybug, it wasn't him stuck in the tree.

Okay, 'stuck' might have been an overstatement (it would take a hell of a lot more than a high perch to daunt his lady), but she was in a tree and he wasn't, and it made him smile all the same.

Today's shoot was held in a park: a huge, old one, with trees scattered and a lake off to one side, and Adrien had decided to do a bit of exploring while finding a nice spot to eat on his lunch break.

Finding Ladybug in one of the trees along the high moss-and-stone defense wall had been nothing short of a stroke of luck; despite her vivid scarlet suit, the foliage was dense enough that you had to be directly under the tree and look in exactly the right direction to catch sight of her.

"Ladybug?"

She flinched violently, head whipping around to fix him with a downright comical glare. She followed it up with frantic shushing gestures after she identified the voice as him.

He slung his lunch bag over his shoulder and considered the tree, before tackling it with a running start of two steps so he could climb up next to her and talk to her without shouting.

He didn't notice her waving him down until he was almost at her level, and then it was a bit late to leave.

"Sorry," he hissed, wincing.

"It's okay," she whispered back. "What are you doing here?"

"Saw you up here. Thought I'd say 'hi,'" he said, droll and determined not to mention the tree thing, but thinking it all the same.

She shot him a Look.

He beamed back, unrepentant. He got to see her right when he was least expecting it — the thrill was more than enough to wipe away any lingering embarrassment.

Her cheeks, to his utter fascination, went bright pink. "I-I mean why are you at this park?"

"Oh. Photoshoot." He blinked, realizing that he should probably be wondering why she was here instead of just scampering up to her like an ecstatic puppy who'd been convinced it would never see its human again. "You?"

"Stakeout."

"Stakeout?!" If there's an akuma, why the hell hasn't she contacted Chat?!

She hushed him with a finger to his lips and another look.

"Sorry," he mumbled against her fingertip, lips tingling.

She graciously removed the fingertip, turning back to look out, and he now saw that the tree offered a very nice view of the strip mall across the way — nature meeting industry across a lamp-lined asphalt table-runner. "Yeah. There's been a bunch of weird stuff happening lately, and I tracked it here. I'm trying to figure out if it's an akuma or not."

"Where's Chat?" he asked in lieu of what he actually wanted to ask, which was something closer to 'why didn't you tell me?!'

Her mouth twitched. "Believe it or not, my partner actually does have a life. I can't drag him out on all of my half-baked hunches."

"Sure you can." Any time I get to spend with you is worth so much more to me than anything that Nathalie could stuff into my over-packed schedule. "It's his job to keep Paris safe too, isn't it?"

('My partner,' she'd called him.

If it weren't for the context, he'd be smiling stupidly wide right now.)

"Keep Paris safe by sitting around in a tree with me for hours while we stare at a building?" She snorted, a fond, wry grin on her face. "I think he'd go insane."

Only if you kept smiling at him like that.

He honestly couldn't think of a way he'd rather spend an afternoon.

"What?"

With a horrified jolt, Adrien realized he'd said the first part aloud. "Nothing."

She shook it off and went back to studying the strip mall, giving Adrien an opportunity to crack open his lunch and pull out a sandwich as an excuse to hide his burning ears.

He was about to dig in when her words echoed through his mind: '...sitting around in a tree with me for hours...'

He wondered how long she'd been here, and whether or not she'd remembered to bring food.

She took no notice of his pause, instead squinting a little harder at the coffee shop on the corner. It might have just been his imagination, but he thought she looked tired. Strung out. Maybe a little irritated, even.

He offered her his findings.

She accepted the sandwich automatically, focus unbroken, then appeared to realize what had just happened and looked between it and him with an increasingly baffled expression.

"Hours on stakeout without bringing food? Shame," he chided, hoping she didn't notice the flush working its way up his neck.

"I-I can't—" she stammered, trying to give it back to him. "Your lunch—"

Her stomach chose that moment to growl.

"-is now your lunch," he finished for her, pushing her sandwich-holding hand back to her. "Don't worry about—"

"Agreste! Where the hell did you go?"

Shit.

He must have spent more time wandering than he thought.

"Call m— Chat Noir next time you go on stakeout," he half-shouted, forgetting to keep his voice down as he jumped and skidded down the jungle gym of branches, leaving his lunch bag behind on Ladybug's branch. "And don't forget to bring food with you!"

"But your lunch—"

He waved back, not turning around as he hit the ground hard and started running, realizing belatedly that he was going to catch hell for scuffing up the company's clothing like this.

He was leaving his Lady, his stomach was growling, the photographer was already annoyed with him without having even seen the state of his clothing, but...

He'd seen Ladybug smile. She'd called Chat Noir her partner to a near-stranger. She wouldn't go hungry on her stakeout.

Worth it.

Totally worth it.