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SakurAlpha's Fic Rec of Pure how did you create this you amazing bean
Stats:
Published:
2021-07-20
Completed:
2021-10-17
Words:
40,476
Chapters:
10/10
Comments:
1,096
Kudos:
3,912
Bookmarks:
965
Hits:
51,829

The Five Minute Adventures of Snake Noir

Summary:

After Ladybug admits to Chat Noir that she told someone her identity, she insists that he do the same. He wants it to be her. She insists it has to be anyone else. He suggests they use the snake. She finds this to be a reasonable compromise.

After many heartfelt five minute conversations that Ladybug doesn't remember, she decides he should keep the snake. That way he can always confide in her if he needs to. He also realizes it means he can talk to anyone… for five minutes... on repeat.

Contains many Season 4 Spoilers.

Notes:

You may have read this first chapter before if you’ve read my miraculous reveal series . I kept getting ideas and wanted to work on something easy this month, so now this story is its own thing! These tend to be written quickly, not obsessed over, and very dialogue heavy. Think of them like sketches.

This first part starts with Ladybug and Chat sitting on a rooftop somewhere after patrol. She has just told him that she told someone her identity, and that he should tell someone, too. This chapter was written in a 90 minute speed write.

(See the end of the work for more notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: I Want It to be You

Chapter Text

“I understand needing to tell someone. I do!” Chat Noir insisted for the third time that night. “I just don’t understand why it can’t be you!”

Ladybug wouldn’t look at him.

“Do you not want to know?” he asked, his heart falling into his gut. 

She wilted. “I want to know more than anything.” 

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“I can’t explain it,” she admitted. She looked at him with glassy eyes. “Can you trust me on this?” 

He met her gaze, but he didn’t have words. She was near tears and he didn’t know if it was because of the thing she couldn’t share or if he had upset her with his pushing.

“I understand if you can’t. I understand if you’re mad.”

He looked away. “I’m not mad,” he insisted. “I just don’t understand.”

They fell into an unhappy silence. 

“I can respect it, LB. You know that I can. I just don’t want to tell anyone else. I want you to be the first to know.” 

And then to his horror she started crying. 

“LB?” 

“I don’t deserve you,” she sobbed. 

“You deserve everything,” he countered. He held her then. And they didn’t say anything. Just sat together overlooking the city that they fought to protect. 

“What if we used the snake?” he interjected into the silence. 

She turned to him. “Huh?” 

“I will use the snake, and tell you who I am. Then if you still think you shouldn’t know, I will reset it and you won’t remember. Then in some weird way you’ll still have been the first to know, and if you still insist, I can then tell someone else. ”

She considered his words. “Okay,” she finally relented. She immediately opened her yoyo and pulled out the Snake miraculous. She handed it to him with a smile.

Chat Noir’s hands started shaking. Whether it was with nerves or excitement, he couldn’t say. He was going to tell Ladybug who he was. And yeah, she wasn’t going to remember unless he could convince her, but still. She’d know his name. 

He slipped on the bracelet. “Plagg, Sass, unify.” And then he turned back to his partner, and she was fidgeting from one foot to the other. He was relieved that he wasn’t the only one feeling the nerves. 

But somehow, her anxiety made his own vanish, and he smiled gently. And she mirrored his expression. “Second Chance,” he whispered. 

“Okay kitty, what’s your name?” she asked with a playful grin.

“Adrien. Adrien Agreste.” He couldn’t spit the words out fast enough. 

He didn’t know what he was expecting. He knew she would recognize the name. She had protected him as a civilian on more than one occasion, and she had recruited him as a temporary hero. So she knew him - at least a little bit.

But whatever he had expected, he hadn’t expected her to start crying. Then she threw herself at him, and his arms automatically wrapped around her. 

“Buginette?” he prompted.

“W-why… Why did you have to be him?” she sobbed into his chest. And he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t understand why this has hit her so hard. 

“This makes a lot of things make sense,” she said. Her voice was so soft. He wasn’t sure if she meant for him to hear her. 

“Are you disappointed?” he finally managed to ask. 

She jerked back so hard he worried she might have given herself whiplash. But her blue eyes gazed at him, searching for what, he did not know.

“No!” she said. “Never.” And she said it with such conviction he couldn’t doubt it. The tension he hadn’t realized he was feeling dissipated. “This might actually be the best possible answer, but I can’t know who you are. You being Adrien makes that more true. Not less. I’m so sorry.” She choked back another sob.

She wasn’t crying because of who he was, he realized. She was crying because she had to forget. He squeezed her tighter. 

“Why does my being Adrien mean you can’t know?”

She shook her head, wiping her tears from her eyes. And her demeanor shifted into battle mode. “We’re running out of time. You’re going to have to reset. When you do, ask me about Chat Blanc.” 

“Chat Blanc?” 

“I’ll explain! But you have to reset!” She was shouting at him now.

He nodded. Then he flicked the bracelet. 

She was standing before him, no longer in his arms, but she was smiling. Fidgeting again, but smiling in eager anticipation. 

“Okay kitty, what’s your name?”

He offered her a small smile in return, but his eyes burned, threatening tears.

“Are you okay, Chaton?”

“Will you tell me about Chat Blanc?” he asked. 

The blood drained from her face. “You’ve already been through a loop?”

“You didn’t have enough time. You told me to ask you about Chat Blanc.”

She turned away from him, and toward the cityscape. “I hoped you would never learn about Chat Blanc. I’ve been trying to protect you from Chat Blanc.” 

“Please,” he begged. 

She drew in a shuddering breath. “Okay,” she agreed, but she didn’t say anything more. She continued to stare at the skyline. 

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he reminded her. 

“Chat Blanc was your akumatized form.”

His form went rigid. “Why don’t I remember?” 

“It hasn’t happened yet,” she whispered. Her jaw was quivering, her shoulders shaking. “I hope it never happens.”

He couldn't stand it, so he yanked her against him. She remained limp in his embrace. 

“Did I hurt you?” 

She shook her head. “You could have killed me.” His eyes squeezed shut at those words. “But instead, you helped me figure out where your akuma was.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” he joked, but he already knew it had to have been awful for her to be simultaneously trembling before him and monotone in her retelling. 

“The moon was in pieces.” 

“What?” 

“Hawkmoth had granted you the infinite power of destruction,” she told him. “And you destroyed… everything.”

He buried his head into her shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Her hands rubbed at the back of his neck soothingly. 

“No, don’t say that,” she told him. “It wasn’t your fault, and it hasn’t even happened.” 

“But you remember it,” he countered. And he understood how hard it was to remember something traumatic that no one else even knew had happened. 

She nodded. “The worst part was you were so clearly alone. I don’t know how long you had existed as an akuma when Bunnyx brought me there.”

He didn’t really care how long he had suffered alone. If he had destroyed everything, he felt he deserved it. He had to atone for his actions in some way, if only for falling victim to the akuma anyway. He didn’t say any of this out loud because he knew it would upset his partner. 

“The best part was you had killed Hawkmoth.” There was just a bit of warmth in her voice now, and he smiled.  

“At least I took him down with me.” His bracelet beeped in warning. He only had a minute left, though he supposed he hadn’t said anything yet that he needed to erase. He just hated that he had made her cry. 

She looked up at him again, her eyes clear and serious. “Chat Blanc is why we can’t know each other’s identities,” she said.

“I don’t understand.” 

“I don’t either. Not completely.” She glanced down at their hands, which were entwined together. “But when I cleansed the akuma, you knew who I was. Bunnyx explained that it was our knowing each other’s identities that led to your akumatization. That we couldn’t know yet.”

His eyes watered and there was a rock lodged in his throat, but he managed to keep the tears mostly at bay, and nodded once. 

She leaned forward, touching her forehead to his. “It was never that I didn’t want to know. It was never that I didn’t trust you.” 

He nodded again.

“What’s your name, Chaton?” 

“Adrien Agreste.”

Her sobs were immediate. “This is not fair,” she cried. “I want to tell you my name.” 

He kissed her forehead, and then her hands that he was still holding. “Don’t tempt me,” he said lightly. 

Then he flicked his bracelet before she let anything slip.

He drank in the sight of her smiling face once again. The smile reached her eyes, even as her hands writhed in front of her - the only evidence of her nerves. He knew now that she was willing to trust Chat Noir with everything, that she was almost willing to damn the whole world for him and he was almost willing to let her, and he also knew that Adrien was somehow incredibly special to her. 

Somehow, in the space of ten minutes he had fallen more in love with her.

“Okay kitty, what’s your name?” 

“You told me not to tell you,” he said, his voice barely louder than the breeze. 

She wilted on the spot. “I’m sorry.”

He swept her into a hug. “It’s not your fault, Buginette. You’re just trying to protect the world.” 

She tensed in his arms. “I told you about…”

“Chat Blanc?” he filled in. “Yeah, you did.” 

She started crying, and god damn it! He was hoping to make it through one loop without making her cry.  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. He rubbed soothing circles into her back. “I never wanted you to know. I want you to know who I am more than I want anything in this world.” 

“I know,” he breathed into her ear. “I understand now. I’m sorry for putting so much pressure on you. You have the weight of the whole world, and I regret that I ever added to it.” 

She shook her head rapidly. “No! You didn’t! You’ve always supported me!”

“And I hope I can bear more of that weight with you now?”

She grinned. “You say that like that wasn’t what you were already doing. You need to give yourself more credit.”

He smiled. “I will try.” 

“Sass, scales rest.” The snake kwami manifested in front of him. “What do you like to eat, Sass?” 

“I’m partial to eggs.”

Adrien groaned. “Why do I always get the difficult-to-feed kwamis?”

Ladybug laughed. “Hey, you only have to feed two of them. You should try dealing with seventeen of them all at the same time!”

Her phrasing struck him. “Do you… do you want me to keep the snake?”

She glanced away, a pink rising to her cheeks. “I was just thinking about what you said. That you wanted to reveal yourself to me. With the snake, you can do that whenever you want. I don’t know if it’s fair. I still think you should tell someone who will remember, but… I am okay with you using the snake so that I can be one of your confidants.”

He couldn’t breathe. They had already established this evening that she did actually trust him, but this… this was a whole new level. He felt dizzy.

“Chaton? You okay?”

“You… You’re not worried about me taking advantage?” 

“To do what?” she asked. 

“I don’t know. Kiss you or something?” 

Was he imagining the blush across her cheeks? 

“Would you do that?” she asked. 

“Not without your permission.” 

“So, what’s the problem?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowed in complete confusion.

His tears crashed straight through the dam of his usually tightly maintained composure.

This time, she hugged him. And he let himself cling to her. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“What for?” she asked. 

He smiled into her shoulder. “For…” and he had no idea how to put what he was feeling into words. “For being you.” 

“You’re so important to me, kitty. You know that right?”

He did now. He pulled away and offered her his most charming smile, and kissed her hand one more time. She definitely blushed that time. “You mean the world to me, too.” 

They just stood there for a minute, smiling at one another. “I guess, I should get home,” she said. 

He nodded. “Yeah, me too.” 

He watched her go, but despite his words he wasn’t ready to go back to his gilded prison. 

Instead, he took off through the city, running. And he didn’t know if he was running from something or towards something.

…