Archive of Our Own ^beta

Paris is in the middle of a cold snap that's lasted for more than a week. It's even worse on the roofs. Aspik is currently huddled on the top of what feels like the tallest, most exposed rooftop in the entire city, shivering as the wind howls right through him, right into his bones, to freeze him from the inside out. Are his teeth actually chattering?

He wishes someone had told him that accepting the miraculous of the Snake came with it the complete inability to regulate his internal body temperature while in the suit. Outside of the suit, it's tolerable, but when he's suited up, it's the worst.

Ladybug asked him if he wanted to be excused from winter patrols – and Aspik should have said yes, honestly, because he's drowning in patrols as Aspik and Chat and modeling and homework and everything else going on in his life – but that would have meant giving up his favorite part of the week.

He turns his head as Multimouse leaps up onto the roof next to him, already wearing a concerned look as she gives him a thorough inspection.

"It looks bad tonight," she says, already unwrapping her jumprope from around her waist.

Aspik laughs shakily. "I've been warmer," he agrees.

She sits down next to him and lifts her arm in a silent question, but Aspik is already burrowing into her side. Multimouse is tiny, and he has to curl up into a tight ball to make it work, but that makes it all the better, as far as he's concerned. Her warmth is heavenly. She rubs his arm briskly, laughing a little when he squirms even closer.

"Better?" Multimouse asks quietly.

"Yeah," Aspik says, sighing.

He's going to miss this when spring comes around and he doesn't have the excuse to cuddle anymore. They'll probably get a lot more done on their patrols, true, but it's not like they've ever caught an akuma early on a patrol before, even back when it was just Ladybug and Chat Noir and Hawkmoth was clumsier in his akumas. Adrien has carefully refrained from pointing that out to Ladybug, though, because if he doesn't get out of the house every once in a while, he's pretty sure he's going to explode.

And now, he gets to spend more time with one of his best friends while he's doing it. Here a win, there a win, all while possibly dying of frostbite. The life of a superhero in a nutshell.

"What would we actually do if we spotted an akuma?" Aspik asks.

"Toss your lyre?" Multimouse suggests. "Ooh, or we could tie it to my jumprope and make the whippiest kind of flyswatter ever."

Aspik snickers at the mental image. "Low rent Ladybug's yo-yo."

"I'm not sure if it would catch it or if it would just smack the butterfly into the next dimension," Multimouse says thoughtfully.

"Maybe it would play a jaunty little tune as it hit," Aspik suggests.

"Can you actually play the lyre?" Multimouse asks curiously. "I don't think I've ever seen you use it."

Huh. That's not a thing he's ever thought about. "Fantastic question," Aspik says. "In the normal course of events, no, but if the miraculous can give Ladybug magical powers of being really awesome with a yo-yo, then I'm going to call party foul if the answer's still no while I'm suited up."

He reluctantly shifts away from Multimouse a whole centimeter so he can sit up straight and reach over for the lyre attached to his hip. The cold air breezes through the space between them, making Aspik wince. He leans into her side again as her arm slides down to lie around his waist, instead.

This feels somehow different than squirming into her side with his knees basically burrowing into his chin. This feels... more charged, maybe. Or like it means something.

Maybe it's the heat Aspik can clearly feel coming from somewhere in the general vicinity of Multimouse's face. Like Marinette's pretty, pretty blush, the one that makes her eyes look so blue. Yeah. Like that.

Instead of looking at her, Aspik turns his attention to the lyre in his lap. It's pretty simple: five strings, that's all. Not enough notes for real music. He's just having her on, honestly. There's no way that he can play anything on this except nursery rhymes.

He brushes his fingers against the strings, testing their tone, but what comes out isn't just the small arpeggio he'd expected – it's music. There are notes in there that he couldn't possibly have played, layering over and over each other to make something complex. It rings through the air around them, lingering in a way that's clearly supernatural, and then fading slowly until there's only silence.

"That was pretty," Multimouse says shyly.

Aspik can't help glancing at her this time. "It's got to be the miraculous," he says, shrugging one shoulder. "It's not possible to sound like that with only five strings. I feel like magic music is cheating."

"But you're still the one playing it," Multimouse points out, smiling at him. "I'm going to give you the credit anyway, I think. Play something else for me?"

He could have said no to anything – except that. Adrien is only now beginning to realize that he would do quite literally anything Marinette asked, no matter what it was, and no matter who he was when she asked. Whether Aspik, Chat, or Adrien, Marinette has a hold on him that he can't deny.

He doesn't know what it means.

That it means something is obvious, even to him, but Adrien thinks that maybe he'll let himself think about it another time. For now...

Aspik draws his fingers across the lute, letting instinct guide him, and what comes out of his lute sounds very much like La vie en rose. Multimouse laughs, the sound ringing across the rooftop, making Aspik smile at the sheer loveliness of it.

"You're such a romantic," she says playfully. Aspik can't resist glancing over at her again. Her eyes are sparkling in the streetlights.

"Yeah," he agrees softly, and plays on into the night just to keep its brightest star smiling.