Chapter Text
“My lady, out of curiosity… What’s your dynamic?”
Adrien swallows his fast-beating pulse, fingers clutching at the hilt of his baton through his gloves.
Ladybug was twirling her yoyo in preparation to swing away, but now her grip loosens, and the yoyo falls like a dead weight. Her eyes find his, uncomfortable and searching.
He feels hot under the collar. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked that.
“It’s just– I’ve been wondering,” he explains, hoping to save himself the scolding, grasping at straws for any semblance of suaveness. “Is Paris’s hero a miracle-working beta, or are we healed by her gentle omega touch?”
It’s not like it’s been plaguing his every waking thought or anything. And objectively, he reminds himself, it doesn’t matter at all. But it’s difficult to keep his mind away from guessing, when she’s the object of his affections.
Is it so strange to want to know more about the one you love?
Ladybug’s shoulders fall, sullen, and she clutches her yoyo in her hands. Adrien feels his eyebrows wrench together in confusion.
“Are you going to start treating me funny if I tell you?” She asks quietly, pigtails blowing in the breeze. “The… My kwami says the costumes keep it suppressed for a reason.”
“So that villains can’t use it against you,” he clarifies, stepping toward her hesitantly. “I’m your partner. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, no matter what your dynamic is.”
Her bright eyes flick toward him, then back to the skyline.
“I’m… I’m an omega,” she admits quietly, drawing in a deep breath of courage and releasing it. Then she turns to face him fully.
Ladybug is an omega.
He sees it, now – in the full curve of her cheek, in her round blue eyes. In the way she’d been so nervous and unsure of herself at the start, when they fought their first battle against an akuma. But she’d risen to the challenge, and her bravery had rained down on the city like sunlight.
A warm smile spreads onto his face, hazy and deep. “An omega, huh?” She stiffens, so he adds, “I’m quite fond of omegas, my lady. Nothing will change.”
She nods briskly, then readies her yoyo to swing away once again.
Adrien panics, something hot rising in his throat. She can’t leave now, when he’s only just learned something so crucial about her.
“Aren’t you wondering what my dynamic is?” He singsongs impulsively, cutting in front of her to lean on his baton.
She makes a face as her yoyo thwacks onto the top of her head. Adrien winces.
“Yes,” she admits, rubbing the part of her hair tentatively. “But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” he purrs, leaning in toward her. “Anything you want to know, I want to tell you.”
He imagines the rush of being known fully by her, and steadies himself against his baton.
“Anything that won’t risk your secret identity,” she clarifies, a light edge of scolding to her voice.
Adrien smiles bright and awkwardly, caught red-handed.
“Of course,” he assures, even though that hadn’t been what he meant at all.
Silence falls for a moment between them, Adrien rocking his weight from one foot to the other. He wonders why he’s so nervous, all of a sudden.
Ladybug’s earrings beep.
“I really have to get going soon, kitty,” she tells him, fidgeting with her yoyo.
She’d asked him a question, he remembers abruptly. And Adrien isn’t one to keep his lady waiting.
“Alpha,” he announces abruptly, cheeks red. “I’m an alpha.”
Ladybug glances up at him, eyes widening minutely between long lashes. Adrien sucks in a breath.
And then, she snorts.
“That’s a funny joke,” she retorts drily, before she moves to leave again.
Something sinks in Adrien’s chest, and a bad taste rises in his mouth. He’s always suspected that he doesn’t come across how he’s supposed to, how he should, but…
With the mask off, no one’s ever laughed at him before.
“I’m serious, my lady,” he clarifies, feigning collectedness. “Your chaton is an alpha, through and through.”
“You–” She pauses, blinking. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” he replies, and he catches some frustration slipping into his tone. He bites it back belatedly.
Is it really so hard to believe?
“But you–” She bites her full lip, chewing it in confusion. “You listen to me. You let me tell you what to do.”
For some reason, Adrien feels a protest bubbling up in his throat – that he doesn’t follow her blindly, that he’s just as brilliant as she is.
But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?
“Well, you’re Ladybug, aren’t you?” He offers bitterly.
His ring beeps.
He bids her a final glance before vaulting away, flying through the streets of the city.
—
“Adrien?” Marinette asks softly, ducking down to look at him. “Are… Are you okay?”
He’s planted himself on a bench, resting his chin in his hands, and he’s sure he looks primed for akumatization to his classmates. He shooed Nino away when he tried to check on him, but…
Marinette has big, kind eyes, shining in the overhead light, and she’s peering at him like what he’s thinking actually matters.
“Y–” He starts, then sighs, then puts his face in his hands. “I don’t know.”
There’s silence for a moment, and Adrien wonders if Marinette walked away. But then he hears the sound of something being set on the ground – her backpack, most likely – and suddenly, there’s a gentle presence tucked into the space next to him on the bench.
“I-I…” Marinette stammers, and he peeks through his fingers to catch her red cheeks and trembling hands, which she fidgets with against her clavicle. “I’m h-here for you, Adrien. If you mead– need anything. Anything… Anything at all, o-okay?”
She wagers a glance at him, just the briefest dart of her sparkling irises, and Adrien softens enough to speak.
He can trust her with this. She’s the nicest girl he knows.
“Marinette, do you ever feel… like you’re doing a bad job at being who you’re supposed to be?”
Alphas are meant to be domineering. They command the room. Adrien isn’t, and doesn’t. He never speaks his mind, unless he’s wearing the mask. He makes sure to say please and thank you. He prefers to let others take the lead – Ladybug, especially.
He smells like an alpha, at least. And he feels like one, too, even if he’s too young to truly understand what that means. But he leaves a trail of failed expectations in his wake, and that doesn’t seem very much like an alpha at all.
Next to him, a sigh wracks Marinette’s body. She curls in on herself, and wrings her hands together for the hundredth time. Adrien’s shoulders lift, and he turns to face her.
“Yes,” she mutters clearly, pressing the toe of her shoe against the heel of the other. “I understand what you mean.”
Something heavy surrounds the both of them. He doesn’t understand what Marinette could possibly feel that way about – doesn’t everybody see her for the kind girl she is, trying so hard to help when she can? But it’s not his business, so he won’t pry.
Instead, he tells her, “I don’t think I’m very good at being an alpha, Marinette.”
She stiffens, and turns robotically toward him, wide-eyed and red. “W-W-What do you mean, Adrifine? I mean, Adrien?”
Adrien holds back a laugh. Her expression is so cute, so funny, and so Marinette. He knew she was modest, but even the slightest mention of their dynamics has her clamming up. He’ll be sure to avoid the subject of her being an omega in the future.
She’d asked him a question, he remembers abruptly.
“I mean that I’m not very good at taking the lead,” he explains, and bitterness seeps into his tone, up from the bench into his throat. “Father is the type of alpha I’m supposed to be. He always gets his way. But I… I’m not even sure that I know what my way is.”
He looks to Marinette, but her shocked eyes have his heart fluttering nervously, so he averts his gaze toward his lap. A pause lingers, before the girl next to him finally manages to speak.
“Adrien, I like the way you are,” she tells him. “N-Not romantically, of course, I don’t like-like the way you are. I just– I just mean that whatever your way ends up being, it’ll probably be g-great, because it’s yours. It doesn’t make you l-less of a-an… alpha, or anything. A-And… I think I prefer… a-alphas like y-you.” She blinks, and her face reddens further. “But not like that.”
“H-Hey, I get it, don’t worry,” Adrien assures with eyebrows pressed together and a soft smile. Marinette relaxes with a deep breath, and something sinks in his chest, distant and soft.
That feeling is soon drowned out, though, by the warmth at the thought that maybe his way could be enough for somebody. And if it’s enough for Marinette, then maybe it could be enough for everyone else, too.
“Thank you, Marinette,” he tells her honestly. “You always know just what to say.”
—
“My lady, do you like alphas?” Adrien asks, as his feet dangle over the edge of the Eiffel Tower.
“Not all of them,” Ladybug answers, without much thought at all. Her foot knocks against his ankle.
Adrien’s face falls, tensing at her side.
She presses her shoulder against his own affectionately, interrupting his thought spiral. “But I like alphas like you, chaton.”
Adrien loosens up, and suddenly, he feels hot under the collar. He resists the urge to preen, but his back nonetheless seems a little straighter.
“Thank you, buginette,” he replies. Then, to lighten the mood, he adds, “I must admit, I like omegas of all types – but you’re most definitely my favorite.”
Adrien leaps away from the tower, grinning, just in time to catch Ladybug’s scowl – etched into the full curve of her cheek, and her round blue eyes.