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Chapter Text

“Come here often?” Chat Noir purred as he landed in a crouch on the rooftop a few meters off from Ladybug.

“Chat Noir,” she greeted distractedly, voice weary and devoid of its usual playful cadences. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Something on your mind, Milady?” he hummed thoughtfully and then teasingly added, “Is it me?”

She gave a snort and mustered up a wane smile, shaking her head. “No, Chaton. You’re mostly happy or exasperated thoughts.” She patted the roof beside her. “This is…” She shook her head again.

Chat slunk up next to her, taking a seat and bumping his knee against hers. “…not so happy thoughts?” he guessed.

Ladybug nodded.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he inquired, trying to gauge her seemingly mercurial mood. “Or do you need me to distract you?” he offered. “…I could also leave you alone, if you just need to sit and think.”

She bit her bottom lip as she gazed out at the nighttime cityscape, the millions of lights glinting like earthbound stars. “I don’t know.”

“Okay…. We can just sit here, then, and you let me know when you want me to talk or leave or listen…or recite Shakespearean sonnets or tell jokes—don’t make that face; I know you love my jokes, Milady.” His knee bumped hers again as she snickered. “Be nice, Bug.”

She laughed softly like a miniature carillon. “I do love your jokes,” she admitted.

“Ah-ha!” he crowed. “See? See?! I knew it. Two years you pretend to be immune, but you weren’t fooling me, Milady.”

With a roll of her eyes, she corrected, “Chat Noir, what I object to is your timing. You know I love to joke and tease as much as the next girl, but you’re incredibly distracting when I’m trying to figure out where the akuma’s object is and formulate a plan and not get hit. If you could save the clowning for after the fight, I wouldn’t be such a sourpuss.”

Chat pursed his lips. “What ‘after the fight’?” he muttered.

“Sorry?” She cocked her head to the side.

He looked away, pretending to take in the stars. “There’s never a whole lot of time after the fight. Usually, once we save the victim and get things squared away, we have just a few seconds to say goodbye before one or both of us have to run off to detransform. That doesn’t leave me with much time to deliver a punchline. I mean, I guess I could cultivate haiku-length jokes for you, My Lady, but…I prefer the brick joke to the knock-knock, and if I have to provide jokes on the spot like that instead of sharing them as they come to mind…I don’t know. I don’t think they’ll be as fresh and inspired. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You’re trying to distract me,” Ladybug remarked, half amused, fully grateful.

Chat assumed an offended air. “Distract you? Of course not. I’m insulted, My Lady. Here I am discussing very real dilemmas with issues that are important to me, and you have to go and make it about yourself.”

“Typical me, right?” she chuckled humorlessly.

He snorted and rolled his eyes—streaks of neon green in the inky blue of the night. “Hardly. I don’t know where you’ve been, but my Lady is thoughtful and caring and selfless.”

She shot him a pointed look of dissent.

“Okay,” he conceded. “She has her bad days; she’s only human, but most of the time it’s true. My Lady is the second best person I know.”

Ladybug’s brow transformed into a warren of frown lines under her bangs. “Second best? Who did I lose out to?”

Chat Noir waved dismissively. “A girl in my class. She’s every bit as brave and selfless and principled as you, but she does it all without superpowers.”

Ladybug felt her heart constrict slightly. She tried to be happy for him, but…

“…She sounds special,” Ladybug muttered.

“She is,” Chat chuckled softly, for once not looking at Ladybug, not noticing. And the gentle, smitten smile on his face as he thought of the other girl was telling.

Ladybug cleared her throat. “Well, I wouldn’t want to stifle your artistic creativity. If after the battles is too tight a timeframe for you to work with, I won’t ask that you cut the jokes during battle out entirely. Just…maybe be a little more aware of the timing of your delivery, and if I tell you to cut it out because I’m thinking, please respect my request.”

Chat nodded, easily agreeing to the compromise. “All right. I’ll try to keep the situation in mind when joking around.”

“If it helps, you can feel free to joke all you want at times like this when we happen to meet up in costume,” Ladybug offered.

With a lilting smirk and a raised eyebrow, Chat eyed his partner. “Question. When did you tell Alya that us infrequently meeting up randomly and playing tag on the rooftops was called ‘patrol’? I saw on her blog that she snapped some pictures of us, saying that she’d run into us ‘on patrol’, and my first thought was ‘false advertising’.”

Ladybug’s cheeks heated up, and she looked away with a shrug. “She was the one who used the word ‘patrol’ first. She caught me and asked me about our patrol schedule, and I just went with it. It sounded more responsible and heroic than admitting that sometimes we suit up just to chase each other over rooftops and take in the view.”

Chat snorted. “Chasing you and taking in the view are the only reasons that I ever suit up.” He topped his statement off with a teasing wink.

She gave him a playful shove but then went silent, looking back out at the city. She heaved a drained sigh.

“Ladybug?” he called gently, concern coating the syllables.

She shook her head.

“…Anything I can do, Buginette?”

She repeated the gesture. “…You’ll just tell me not to beat myself up and try to get me to forgive myself and attempt to convince me that everything is fine because it all worked out. Part of the reason why I transformed is that I couldn’t take Tikki trying to do the same things. I screwed up so bad, Chat Noir.”

She glanced to the side, meeting his eyes, knowing her own were starting to shimmer with tears she wouldn’t let fall, knowing he would see.

“My Lady…” he whispered reverently. “No.”

“Yes, I did,” she sighed. “See? You’re trying to give me a free pass. Don’t let me get off so easily, Chat Noir. People depend on me; I have to be held accountable for my actions.”

What she couldn’t say was that on top of her inept performance as Ladybug that day, she herself had caused the akuma in the first place.

“Okay. You screwed up,” he conceded, “but then you fixed it.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean I should get off scot-free.”

“No,” he agreed. “But it sounds like you’re adequately punishing yourself, so I don’t think you need anyone else’s help with that. Look. Okay. You fumbled it at first today, but you recovered brilliantly,” he reminded, bumping her arm companionably in encouragement. “You didn’t walk away and leave your mess for someone else to clean up. You took responsibility, and that’s the important thing. You don’t have to be perfect, Ladybug.”

He paused to let his words sink in and then continued in a gentle hush, “You just have to be responsible and innately good. And you are those things. If anyone gives you crap for today, I will personally tell them where they can shove it. You don’t owe these people anything; they owe you,” he insisted. “Okay? So you can stop beating yourself up and overthinking everything…. Okay, Bug?”

His eyes. She couldn’t look away. The intensity with which he was looking at her, the passion and ferocity stole the breath from her lungs because even though Chat Noir was the one she had let down the most, he was the one most in her corner. His belief in her was unshaken. His love for her was undiminished. Unquestionably, he had her back.

It made her heart quicken and her stomach flip. She loved this boy immensely. If it weren’t for Adrien…

“…But I let you down,” she mumbled. “I let you down, Chaton, and even if I don’t owe anyone else, don’t I at least owe you?”

He shrugged, smiling tentatively. “Maybe? But only in the same way that you owe things to yourself. Ladybug, you and I are the same person. You’re my other half. Your failures are my failures, your triumphs, mine. Today was partially my fault.” He said it all without a hint of irony, as if he truly believed each word and was only reporting facts.

She wasn’t so sure she put as much stock in their supposed “two halves of the same whole” as he did, but, in that moment of darkness in her soul, it felt good not to be alone.

She shook her head, rummaging around for a smile. “Thank you, Chaton, but you didn’t do anything wrong. Today was all me, and I’m really sorry I didn’t have my stuff together. I brought personal garbage into the fight, and…”

She bit her lip at the memories of Lila and her threats.

Tears welled up once more.

“Hey.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Ladybug, I forgive you…. Now, for your penance, I need you to do something for me, okay?”

She frowned but nodded.

He counted it out on his fingers: “Figure out what you did wrong. Write it down. Learn from your mistakes. Stop stressing about it. Can you do that?” He gave her an encouraging smile.

She struggled to return it. “All but the last part.”

“The last part is the most important,” he tsked. “Can you try?”

She nodded vigorously. “I will.”

“Good. That’s all I ask of you…. Good talk,” he decreed.

“Good talk,” she confirmed…but then it occurred to her, “So…we know why I’m here, but what are you doing out roaming the roofs at one in the morning, Chat Noir?”

He winced. “Uhh…couldn’t sleep?” He tried to cover it up, but his grin looked pained.

She bit her lip. “…Do you come here often?”

Chat looked out across the Seine. “…Not here, usually. I used to go hang out on the roof of Notre Dame before…” He shook his head. “My school is over that way, and the girl I—uhh—this girl I’m friends with. Her house. She…She always has snacks, and she’s usually up late—sometimes she falls asleep up on her balcony and I have to—but whenever I don’t feel like being alone…” he replied in a jumble and then trailed off, looking away and shaking his head, trying to conceal how red his cheeks were getting. “…So, no. No, I don’t come here often. I just happened to see you on my way, so…”

“I see,” she responded clunkily, trying to absorb the fact that Chat Noir dropped by her house when he was lonely. He had usually seemed in good spirits when he’d come. He’d said that he was out because he had energy to burn. She’d believed him. She hadn’t really thought to challenge his statements before that moment.

She felt so stupid. Why had she never stopped to question, stopped to think?

“Why can’t you sleep tonight, Chat Noir? Something on your mind?” she inquired tentatively. “You don’t have to tell me, but…if you want to talk about it?”

He squirmed, stilled, shrugged. “My friend…she’s actually the one who kind of caused the akuma. Sort of. I mean…it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong. That Lila girl who keeps getting akumatized is a psychotic bitch and a pathological liar. I’d like to think that she has a rough home life and that her behavior is just a desperate cry for the attention she needs, but…I’ve met her mom. Her mom is really nice and kind of a total pushover, and, frankly, I am the one with the rough home life. My sympathy dried up when Lila started trying to sabotage Marinette,” Chat seethed, a fierce, protective bite to his words. “No one hurts the people I care about.”

Ladybug was surprised to learn that her partner seemed so invested in her alter ego. Yes, they were friends and they hung out and joked around and played videogames and shared snacks, but…how had Marinette become so important to Chat Noir?

Chat cleared his throat. “So, anyway, Marinette was right there when Lila got akumatized, and…” He shuddered. “God, Bug, it was bad. I nearly blew my cover. I just…I panicked. I couldn’t get away to transform. The quad was full of people before school, and I nearly transformed in front of all of them when Lila—or Retribution or whatever she was calling herself—swung that giant cartoon cleaver at Marinette.”

Ladybug winced. “Well. It’s a good thing Adrien Agreste beat you to the punch. I saw the videos people took on their mobiles of him shoving her out of the way and getting her to safety.”

Chat nodded, taking a deep, stuttering breath. “I’m going to be having nightmares for a long time of Adrien not making it in time and me being powerless to protect her,” he confessed to the roof tiles.

“Oh, Chaton,” Ladybug cooed, her heart going out to her partner. “I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged. “I think…I mean…She reminds me of you. She looks like you, so seeing her in danger—on top of the terror I felt because it was her and because of how important she is to me—there was also…it was kind of like…a flashback of all the times I couldn’t save you.”

She frowned and almost asked him what he was talking about. Over the two years they’d been partners, she’d been taken out of commission…once? Twice? Three times tops? Very, very few. It shouldn’t have been traumatizing enough for him to have flashbacks. But, then again, she had flashbacks of the times he’d been taken out. There were more instances of when she’d lost him than when he’d lost her, but maybe the fact that he was in love with her whereas she loved him dearly but platonically made up the difference.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, not knowing what else to say. She felt kind of stunned. It wasn’t every day that you found out how important you were to your superhero partner on both sides of the mask.

He shrugged and turned to her with a weak smile that was doing its best to be reassuring. “It’s okay. I’m all right…but as soon as we defeat Papillon, I’m going to see a therapist, and my father will just have to get over it.” He laughed as if it were a joke.

She felt sick. “Oh, Chaton…”

He bumped her arm. “Hey. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s…let’s just talk, okay?”

She frowned, not sure she wanted to let this go. “Talk about what?”

“Anything. Everything,” he suggested offhandedly. “Obviously, no details that would give away our identities, but…can we just—?” He bit his lip, afraid to ask, afraid to be rejected. “No masks tonight. No walls. No keeping me at arms’ length. …Please?”

She studied his face, the raw need in his eyes, the way they begged for her to let him in.

“…Okay,” she finally agreed, and his face lit up like a million fireflies dancing on a pond under the Milky Way.

Her heart clenched because she had no business having that much power over that boy’s happiness.

“But if I say stop, we stop, all right?” she hurriedly supplemented. “And you can say stop too.”

He nodded enthusiastically.

“…I’m going to regret this,” she realized belatedly.

“What’s your favourite flower?” he began, bouncing beside her like an excitable puppy.

“Uhh…maybe roses or…daisies and violets are nice too. I’ve never really thought about it much.” There was a beat before she remembered that this was supposed to be a conversation. “Um…Do you have a favourite flower, Chat Noir?”

“Alstroemeria,” he answered immediately. “I think that the red and orange ones are the prettiest.”

Ladybug frowned. “I don’t know that I’ve heard of those before.”

“They look like little tiger lilies. They’re in the lily family. They’re small and dainty and come, like, five to a stem,” he explained. “I’ll bring you some sometime.”

She gave his nose a teasing poke. “You don’t have to do that. I can google alstro…alstro… What was it?”

“Alstroemeria,” he chuckled. “Tea or coffee?”

“Tea,” she responded decidedly. “Orange jasmine tea. Maman makes it for me. You?”

He smiled tenderly. “Coffee is a necessity; tea is a treat. Honestly, for everyday drinking, Cream Earl Grey is my preference, but when I’m having a crappy day, mint tea is my go-to comfort drink.”

“Why’s that?” she hummed, curiosity piqued by the odd detail.

“My mom used to make it when one of us was having a bad day. It was one of our things,” he answered in a wistful tone. “I still make it for myself from time to time, and it’s kind of a double comfort now.”

Ladybug barely managed to bite her tongue before the words “why doesn’t she make tea for you anymore” passed her lips. Suddenly all the little hints over the years piled up, the passing comments about his challenging home life, the subtle sadness when mothers came up in conversation.

His mother was no longer around to make him tea.

“Favourite color?” Chat plowed ahead, seemingly unaware of her sudden realization. The twinge of melancholy was gone from his voice as if it had never been there in the first place.

She let it go, knowing that neither one of them was in the right headspace for her to press. “Pink mostly, but I like green too.”

“Green like my eyes?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Green like—” she began to correct but then stopped. She smiled apologetically. “…like someone’s eyes.”

Chat gave a snort. “Ah. Mystery boy has green eyes too?”

She nodded contritely. “I’m so sorry, Chat Noir.”

He shrugged. “No worries. I’m confident I can wait you out. You’ll fall for me eventually, and then it will be like ‘Jean-Pierre who?’”

Ladybug cracked up. “‘Jean-Pierre’?”

He raised his arms in a wide, palms-up shrug. “I needed something to call him in my head. It’s much more satisfying to say ‘screw you, Jean-Pierre’ than ‘screw that guy she’s in love with’. Don’t judge my coping mechanisms.”

“I would never,” she promised, trying to cover up a chuckle. “What’s your favourite color, Chat Noir?”

“Peacock blue.”

“Oh, we’re doing shades?”

He shrugged. “You can if you want. What shade of green are Jean-Pierre’s eyes?”

She snorted in laughter and then began to chew on her bottom lip. “They’re like gemstones.”

“Oh? Emerald eyes?” he hummed, unamused. “Figures.”

“Not emerald.” She hugged her knees into her chest. “Lighter than emerald…with little yellow and gold flecks. They’re like peridots.”

“Oh?” he repeated, more interested, thinking of how he’d heard his own eyes described when he was detransformed.

She nodded. “They’re beautiful. And my favourite shade of pink is bubble gum.”

“…Dark chocolate or milk?” he continued their getting-to-know-you session.

She scrunched up her nose. “I actually like semisweet. Milk is too sweet, and dark is usually too bitter. You?”

“Would you believe that I’d never had milk chocolate until about two years ago?” he snickered.

She gaped at him owlishly. “Seriously? Why?”

“My father thinks milk chocolate is toxic waste,” Chat confessed sheepishly. “My father thinks pretty much all dessert is toxic waste, so I don’t get sweets much. I like pretty much whatever I can get my hands on, but Tom and Sabine’s has the best of everything.”

“True statement.” Ladybug nodded approvingly, mentally leaving herself a note to send Chat Noir home with double the usual number of pastries she normally did the next time he dropped by Marinette’s balcony. “Do you have a favourite pastry?”

“Tom and Sabine’s macarons are phenomenal. I love their pain au chocolat too,” he answered readily, mouth beginning to water.

“Any particular flavor of macaron?” she pressed, planning on setting aside a few.

His lips buzzed in a thoughtful hum. “It keeps changing. I mean, I love passionfruit everything, and their passionfruit macaron is no exception, but I really enjoy a bunch of their other flavours as well. Key lime pie…lemonade…yuzu… They did a cannoli macaron last month that was really spectacular…. Do you have a favourite pastry, Milady?”

She really had to think about it. Pastries were an integral part of the backdrop of her life, so integral that she had begun to take them for granted. “…There’s nothing better than a good old strawberry tarte,” she decided.

He nodded his approval, almost able to taste the fresh berries, the flakey crust, and the thick, creamy custard. “Favourite book?”

She began to chew on the inside of her cheek. “You know, I don’t really read much. I guess…I mean, there are the trashy romance novels me and my friends pass around, but…I like them, but it’s not like they’re my favourite or anything.” She bit her lip as she wracked her brain. “There was this one book I read to one of the girls I babysit called The Memory of an Elephant that I thought was really neat. The art is lovely, and it’s kind of a mix of story and trivia as Marcel the elephant recounts events from his life and factual information kind of like a Wikipedia entry. I don’t know that it’s my favourite, but it’s a book that I read that I liked.” She finished with a bashful shrug. “Are you a reader, Chat Noir?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “I didn’t get out much the first decade of my life because my parents were a little strict and overprotective. I was homeschooled, and I didn’t have many friends, so in my free time, between all the extra lessons and everything, I watched a lot of anime and did a lot of reading. That’s still kind of what I do. My father let me go to public school starting a few years ago, but he still doesn’t let me go over to friends’ houses or do fieldtrips or stuff like that, so…I read a lot.”

Ladybug schooled her expression into a smile, resolving not to comment on his situation, how unfair his parents were, how much his life must suck. He seemed to be in a fairly cheerful mood at that moment, and she didn’t want to ruin it.

“Wow. You know, I never would have taken you for the bookish type,” she remarked instead.

He gave a shrug, stretching out his legs and leaning back to rest his weight on his hands. “Books let me escape. They let me experience life and see the world. I…My family has never gone on a vacation. I’ve traveled for work, but I’ve never…you know…so books let me get away.”

“What are your favourites?” she prompted, trying to keep the sad tone out of her voice.

“Don’t laugh,” he preempted. “Charlotte and Anne Brontë. Not Emily.”

Ladybug frowned. “Aren’t their books kind of…” She pursed her lips.

“Girly?” he completed. “No. They’re human-y. I like human-y. It’s part of the reason why I love Jane Austen and Victor Hugo so much. Charles Dickens too. Their characters feel real, like I could just bump into them on the street.”

Ladybug nodded, gaining a new appreciation for her partner. She could almost imagine him curled up in a window seat on a rainy day, pillow hugged to his chest, black-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose as he lost himself in imaginary worlds.

“Why not Emily Brontë?” she thought to ask.

Chat’s nose scrunched up in distaste. “I actively disliked eighty-seven percent of her characters and spent the whole of Wuthering Heights hoping bad things would happen to them. In that respect, the ending was rather satisfying, but the book was a slog, and it wasn’t even like my dislike of the characters was cathartic.”

Ladybug nodded as if she could relate. “I’ll make sure not to read it, then.”

“If you’re going to read anything, read Pride and Prejudice or Emma. They’re like trashy romance novels, only everyone will think you’re smart and sophisticated for reading them,” he chuckled.

“What are you reading right now?” She wondered, genuinely starting to take an interest in this getting-to-know-you game.

“The Three Musketeers again,” he replied nonchalantly. “I love Alexandre Dumas, So Musketeers is an old standby. I prefer The Count of Monte Cristo, though.”

“Do you ever read ‘trashy’ modern fiction?” she had to wonder. “Or is it all smarty-pants, five-hundred-page novels?”

“The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich,” he snickered, a pink stain quickly spreading across his cheeks. He covered his face with his hands, unwilling to look at her as he confessed, “And vampire smut.”

“Vampire…smut,” she repeated as if the syllables were in a foreign language.

He nodded, daring to peek at the shocked expression on her rapidly-reddening face. “I have to get it from my one friend and sneak it into the house as if it were drugs or PopTarts or something. I pay her back in manicures and massages, so the arrangement works—she actually thinks my preferences are adorable and doesn’t make fun of me too much—but…yeah. Vampire smut.”

There was an awkward silence.

A thought occurred to him: “…I feel like I shouldn’t have told you this about me until after we were married.”

“No,” she rushed to assure. “It’s just…I’m trying to reconcile your lame puns, your family situation, serious nineteenth century classic literature, and vampire smut. I’m not judging; I’m just…processing. I’ll judge you after I actually read some of this vampire smut. What’s the author’s name?”

“Seriously?” His mind raced, trying to come up with a series that he wouldn’t be too embarrassed to have the girl he loved reading.

She shrugged, meeting his eyes. “Seriously. I find the concept intriguing.”

“Uh…well…The Southern Vampire Mysteries are pretty mainstream, if you want to try that,” he suggested.

She nodded. “…New topic?”

“Yeah,” he sighed in relief. “New topic. Uhh… What is…” He bit his lip, fishing around for something he’d always wanted to know about her. “What is your most treasured possession?”

She looked out at the Seine and hummed thoughtfully, mentally sorting through the items in her room. “I have a couple really important items: an umbrella, a jade hairpin, a bracelet, a thimble…a cat plushie.”

“Oooh?” Chat leaned in, waggling his eyebrows.

She swatted at him. “I liked cats before it was cool…but the cat plushie was a gift from my cousin.”

He raised an eyebrow repeating, “Oh?” softly, with genuine interest.

Ladybug nodded. “We were close when I was little. She’s eight years older than I am, so she was always like a big sister. She played with me and talked to me, and she always took me seriously, even though I was so much younger than she was. She got married right out of high school, when I was ten. I got to be in the wedding. It was small—just her family and a few friends—but…she looked so pretty…and her husband looked at her like she was his entire world. I remember thinking that I wanted someone to look at me like that someday.”

Chat’s heart clenched, but Ladybug didn’t seem to notice as she continued.

“But, anyway, her husband’s family was really awful. Like, he had the worst parents. Super controlling and abusive and neglectful. My cousin and her husband moved away right after the wedding to get away from them, and I haven’t seen her since. We talk on the phone, but it’s not the same as when she used to spend the night at my house and we’d whisper under the covers. It’s not the same as having her here…so the cat plushie she made for me is precious because it reminds me of her.”

Ladybug looked up at her partner’s uncharacteristic silence. “Chat Noir? You okay?”

He hurriedly pasted on a smile. “Yeah. Fine. Sorry. I just…was reminded of…someone important to me. He got married and left a bad family situation too…. I talk to his wife fairly often, but…he hasn’t taken my calls in years, so…”

Her eyes widened, and a soft gasp escaped her lips. “What happened? Is he mad at you or something?”

The words were out of her mouth before it dawned upon her that this was too personal, and she couldn’t just ask things like that of him.

“Sorry!” she backpedaled. “I shouldn’t have asked. That was rude and way too personal. Please don’t answer.”

Chat Noir stared at her in stunned silence. The situation with Félix had been pressing down upon him like a boulder for years. The secrecy and the silence were stifling. He wasn’t allowed to mention his brother’s name. Félix had been erased from the Agreste household. Obliterated to the point where Adrien often wondered if he’d just imagined a brother for himself…until the next time that Bridgette called anyway.

For a second, when Ladybug had asked what happened, the pressure let up…only to slam back down even harder when she instructed him not to answer after all.

He gulped. “He’s not mad at me.”

“Chat Noir,” Ladybug warned. “I shouldn’t have asked. You shouldn’t tell me something private like—”

“—He’s mad at himself,” Chat pressed forward heedlessly. “He doesn’t think he has the right to talk to me after he ‘abandoned’ me. He’s an idiot…like me. I think we get it from our father.”

She stared at him.

He smiled. “Sorry.”

She gulped, shaking her head slowly. “It’s…okay. It’s okay, Chaton,” she lied for both of their benefits.

She didn’t know what to do with everything she’d learned. She’d thought that she knew him, but she’d been wrong. She knew pieces and fragments. She knew the hand-picked parts he’d chosen to show. She didn’t know what to do now that the curtain had been raised and she could see the gears and the cogs, the raw machinery that kept him ticking on the inside.

“I should go,” Chat whispered, getting to his feet, still wearing a smile like a suit of armor. “It’s late. You’re tired.”

She grabbed his tail. “Wait!”

He blinked, gazing at her apprehensively.

“Please stay for a bit.” She didn’t know what she was going to say to him, but she knew that she couldn’t let it end there. If she let him go, she knew that the intangible thing that had fractured between them wouldn’t get fixed.

He bowed gallantly. “As you wish, Milady.”

He took a seat and waited, gazing unseeingly at the Eiffel Tower looming dark out in front of them.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she considered her next move.

“I’m sorry, Ladybug,” Chat whispered, guilt beginning to weigh him down.

She looked up at him in surprise, mouth a soft “o” of confusion.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he elaborated. “You didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t…” He looked away, mentally kicking himself because he’d betrayed her trust, and now she was never going to do anything like this with him ever again.

“Chaton,” she called firmly but not unkindly. “You don’t have to apologize. I should be the one apologizing. I…”

He frowned, utterly bewildered. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

She let go of his tail and grabbed his hand instead. “Chat Noir, I’m sorry for always keeping you at arms’ length. You know why I do that, don’t you?”

He nodded. “To keep ourselves, each other, and the people we care about safe,” he recited without feeling.

She gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry that the distance between us is necessary.”

“To you,” he mentally added, a touch of bitterness to the thought. She was the only one who thought this torture was necessary.

“It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you. You know that, right?” Her eyes searched his.

He covered his thoughts with a placid smile. “I know, Ladybug.”

She frowned. “Do you? Do you know that I care about you, Chat Noir?”

With a sigh, he shook his head. “Yes, I know. I know we’re friends. I know you care.”

The lines in her brow deepened. “You’re more than just a friend to me, Chaton. You’re my partner. You are my other half, and you’re irreplaceable. You’re important to me, Chat Noir. You’re very, very important to me, okay?”

His eyes widened as it finally sank in that she meant every word. “Really?”

“Yes!” she squeaked in frustration. “Yes! You’re one of the most important people in my life. Just because I don’t know what your name is or where you live or what you do with yourself in your free time, that doesn’t cheapen my feelings for you. That doesn’t mean that you mean any less to me than the friends I see at school or the people I know from my neighborhood. The things I don’t know about you don’t make our bond any less real. I know our relationship isn’t what you want it to be, but I wish you wouldn’t let that get in the way of seeing how special what we do have is.”

A genuine smile penetrated his artificial veneer, and he lifted her hand up to his lips. “Thank you, Ladybug.”

He let her hand go, but she grabbed hold once more.

“Chaton, I wish I could be there for you more,” she whispered, blue eyes piercing his. “From the things that you’ve said tonight, it’s become apparent that you don’t always have the support you need on the other side of the mask, and I wish I could help with that…but I’m sixteen, and I don’t know how. Solving real-life problems is a lot trickier than figuring out how to use whatever object I summon up, and I don’t know that I’m actually the person you need to help you mend the things that aren’t right in your life. Now, if it helps to do ‘patrol’ more often, as long as we’re careful about our identities, that’s definitely something we could do, but—”

“—You’d be willing to meet up more regularly?” he gasped, mouth dropping open in sheer stupefaction.

She nodded. “Yes, Chat Noir. Not too often, but we can hang out if it helps. But do you have an adult that you trust? Like a teacher or one of the instructors that gives you lessons?”

Chat thought for a moment before Miss Bustier’s face came to mind. He nodded. “I think so. Why?”

“Could you maybe talk to them about the things that bother you? You hinted that your father doesn’t approve of therapy, but…could you talk to one of your teachers or instructors about things? I want you to be safe and happy, Chaton, but there’s not much I can do without compromising our identities.”

“…I’ll think about it,” he tentatively agreed. “Thank you, Bug.”

She gave his hand a pat and then let go. “Are we okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I think we’re good…. Thanks.”

“…Wanna tell me what your most precious possession is now?” she asked slyly in an attempt to return the easy atmosphere between them.

Chat Noir blushed and began to rub at the back of his neck. “I mean, sure,” he chuckled. “If you really want to know.”

“I’m curious,” she prompted, giving his shoulder a nudge. “What is it?”

A soft smile came to his lips that made Ladybug’s chest tighten with foreboding.

“You would think it would be something of my mother’s, and I do have a lot of special things from her too, but…my most prized possession is actually something I got from a girl in my class. A friend.”

“Oh?” Ladybug hummed. “A friend? Do you smile so dreamily when you talk about all of your friends?”

He shoved her gently, shaking his head in embarrassment. “God, you’re as bad as Plagg. Okay. I have a serious thing for her.”

“Aha,” she crowed in vindication.

“But for real, My Lady, I’m one hundred percent faithful to you,” he assured, looking her right in the eye. “My friend is the most adorable girl on the face of this earth—present company excluded—but nothing’s going to happen with her. She doesn’t feel the same way about me, and, like I said, I’m spoken for, even if you don’t want me yet. I’m patient.”

Suddenly the sadness in Ladybug’s heart wasn’t only on her own behalf. “Chat Noir…if you like this girl, you shouldn’t let me hold you back. I don’t want you throwing your life away waiting for me. I don’t want you to have regrets”

He shrugged and smiled. “Like I said, even if I did give in to my feelings for her, I don’t think she feels the same. We kind of have a shaky relationship. She’s one of the most wonderful, friendly human beings ever, but we got off to a rough start, and things between us have just stayed kind of rough. She’d give me the shirt off her back if I asked for it, but I don’t think she always feels comfortable around me. Our friendship is kind of tentative, so I don’t think telling her about my feelings is necessarily a good idea…especially since I’m still in love with you.”

Ladybug bit her lips. “I’m sorry things are so complicated.”

Chat shrugged, resigned. “This is just my life, Buginette.”

She winced. “…So…what did your friend give you that’s so special?”

The soft smile immediately returned to his face. “A good luck charm.”

Chapter Text

“A good luck charm?” Ladybug echoed.

Chat Noir nodded. “We were teamed up to do this competition for school, like, two years ago, and my friend was insanely better than me. She tried to make me feel better by saying that she was only so good because she had a good luck charm…and then she gave it to me.”

“And it’s your most treasured possession?” Ladybug frowned, not seeing the significance.

“Yep. If my house were on fire, I’d grab the good luck charm, Plagg, and a picture of my mom…okay, and this one valentine I keep in my bedside table drawer, but that’s close at hand, so… But, yeah. The lucky charm works. Like, for real,” he insisted.

She frowned harder, choosing to be judicious with her comments. “Chat Noir, I don’t think things like that actually work.”

“Well, no,” he laughed as if she’d said something ludicrous. “Those things are a load of hooey. But mine’s for real. That’s why I always carry it around with me.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “Always?”

“Yes,” he asserted. “Otherwise it wouldn’t work.”

She gazed at him skeptically, eyes evaluating. “Are you joking?”

He lifted an eyebrow of his own. “I most certainly am not. Here. Look at it.”

He unzipped the left-hand pocket on his suit front and pulled out a strand of different-sized, various-colored beads on a red string.

Ladybug stared.

Ladybug carefully took the charm from his outstretched palm.

Ladybug stared.

“I swear it works,” he repeated, oblivious to her stunned state. “Ever since I got it, these have been the best two years of my life—well, consistently, anyway. Things have been good more consistently. There were plenty of good times before, but—anyway. So I always keep it on me. It’s really good for relieving anxiety too. Whenever I’m stressed out, I run my fingers over the beads, and it calms me down. The girl who gave it to me is really brave, so it reminds me to be brave too. Sometimes, when I have to go in to talk to my father, I’ll have it in my pocket so I can squeeze it to help give me the strength to stand up for myself. It helps when I’m lonely too. Whenever my father says I can’t hang out with the rest of my friends, I look at the charm, and it makes me feel better, less alone because it reminds me that I have people out there who care about me. I swear it works, My Lady. Maybe mine is the only legit one in the world, but it is legit.”

Finally, Ladybug raised her head to meet his gaze. She held up the charm. “Where did you get this?” she asked, voice shaky and distant.

Chat shrugged, taking the charm from her unresistant hand and stowing it carefully back in his zipper pocket. “I told you. The girl I have a crush on gave it to me. I don’t think I can tell you her name without giving myself away, though.”

“…Marinette Dupain-Cheng gave that charm to Adrien Agreste,” Ladybug replied flatly. “Why do you have it?”

Chat’s eyes went wide, and the visible skin of his face faded to alabaster white. His lips parted, but no sound came out.

Ladybug’s eyes burrowed into his, demanding answers.

Chat dropped his head into his hands and cursed under his breath.

A good ten seconds passed in a babble of obscenities in several languages (half of which Ladybug could not identify for certain) before Chat lifted his head and gazed desolately at the girl he loved. “I am so sorry, Ladybug,” he breathed, voice tight and threatening to snap. “I didn’t mean for you to find out…. I guess…it’s a good thing it’s me and not you. I don’t really care about the total-secrecy-concerning-my-identity thing, so maybe it’s okay that-that you found out.”

“You’re Adrien Agreste,” Ladybug whispered, forgetting to breathe. “Adrien Agreste…is you.”

Chat tensed. “…Sorry…. You obviously aren’t taking this well. Um…I guess I’m kind of different from how I seem on TV and in the magazine interviews and everything, aren’t I?”

She didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide in panic, but her face was blank, almost dazed.

Chat gulped. “I mean…obviously, Adrien Agreste is…I mean I am like that. That’s-that’s real. It’s not all an act. Maybe it’s a little bit of an exaggeration…but I’m also the way I am when I’m Chat Noir too. I’m both. Both are the real me…just different sides of the real me, so…I really hope you’re not disappointed.”

He wasn’t sure how he had expected her to react—there had been fantasies of her falling into his arms, but—but this stunned silence wasn’t it.

“Ladybug?” he called, beginning to get scared.

“S-Sorry,” she spluttered. “I thinking…just. Sorry. Sorry. I’m just thinking. Trying. Trying to. This is…a lot. A lot I need to think about. I mean, my partner.” She began to wave her hands wildly in her agitation. “You’re my partner, but you’re you, and he’s…Adrien, but if they’re the same person, then…” Her entire face went red, and she began to shake her head. “Oh my God, I kissed you.”

She sounded beyond distressed.

Chat’s heart plummeted.

“Is this a dream? Am I having a dream?” Ladybug laughed giddily. “Is this really happening?”

“I kind of wish it weren’t,” Chat mumbled, fishing out his lucky charm and carefully running his fingers over the beads, mindful of his claws.

Ladybug paused in her freak out to really look at him, head turned away, slumped posture. Suddenly, she saw him, saw both of them: Adrien and Chat, Adrien in Chat, Chat in Adrien. She felt so dumb.

“Oh my gosh,” she breathed, barely a whisper. “You’re my Chaton. My Chaton is you.”

“Yep,” he sighed, misery seeping in.

“And you love me,” she marveled. “And you…you like Marinette too.”

“Mmhm.” He kept his gaze on the beads, trying to keep it together.

“Oh my gosh.” She smacked a hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh! What do I do?! What should I do? Do I tell you who I am?”

His head snapped around so he could gawk at her. “What?” he exclaimed, utterly confused.

“No,” she whined, burying her face in her hands. “I can’t. I have to keep my identity safe. I can’t. If Papillon finds out… It’s too dangerous. I can’t tell you.” She looked up at him, a battalion of emotions warring in her eyes. “But…I need to talk to Tikki. I need to talk to Maître Fu.”

A jolt of panic hit Chat Noir like whip crack. “No! Don’t talk to Fu! Ladybug, you can’t tell him you know my identity! What if he tries to take Plagg away?!”

Ladybug froze, thrown for a loop. “Oh.”

“Yes. ‘Oh’,” he laughed, on the edge of hysteria. “Please. Please, please, please, My Lady. You can’t. I can’t lose Plagg. I don’t deal well with losing people. Losing my brother and then my mother…and not like my father and I were close before, but when my mother left, I feel like I lost what little I had of my father too. I don’t have a lot of people, Ladybug, and Plagg is family. If I lost him…if I lost the freedom being Chat Noir grants me…” He shook his head slowly. “If you care about me even half as much as you said you did, you won’t tell Fu…. Please? I’m begging you.”

Ladybug nodded. “Right. Right. Of course. No, I wouldn’t. I won’t. I would never—God, Adrien. You always seem so happy. I had no idea… I didn’t know…” She put a hand over her mouth. “I’m really sorry. I’m kind of freaking out here. I…might suffer from undiagnosed anxiety issues,” she laughed through her fingers.

“Hey.” He put a hand on her shoulder and offered her the good luck charm. “Wanna try holding onto this? It always helps me when I get an attack. I don’t know if it will help you, but…”

Her eyes caught on his, and she felt like she could breathe again. She knew what she wanted to do. She took a deep breath and let it out as her shaking hands fumbled with her yoyo.

“Thank you, Chaton, but I actually don’t need that one.” She reached into her yoyo and pulled out the yellow and blue charm that Adrien had made Marinette for her fourteenth birthday.

She held it up. “The one you gave me works for real too.”

Chat’s eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open. His hands fell to his sides. “Oh.”

“H-Hi,” Ladybug gulped, tucking a loose bang back behind her ear.

“Marinette,” he greeted shakily and then buried his face in his hands to curse once more in a mix of English and what Ladybug thought might be Russian.

This did nothing to calm Ladybug’s nerves. She was feeling extremely lost and extremely Marinette at that moment, and Adrien and Chat were not reacting well to this news. She couldn’t help but fear that she’d made a mistake and that she was about to lose both of the boys she loved.

Adrien looked back up at Marinette with a pained smile. Very fake. Very perfume ad. “So…when I said that I was seriously into you and that I had a huge, embarrassing crush on you and all that stuff about how brave and kind and freaking wonderful you are, what I really meant was…”

His smile broke, and he looked away to mumble curses again. “…Yeah, okay,” he muttered in defeat. “Congratulations. You got me twice…. And here I thought I just had a type, but…it’s just you. You again. You still. Um…I think I’m going to go home now before I make an even bigger fool of myself.”

She caught his tail as he stood to go.

Adrien laughed wearily. “Princess, you have to stop doing that.”

“Don’t,” Marinette begged, rushing to piece the right words together. “I’m sorry. I’m kind of freaking out, but it’s not because this is bad. This is good. This is good for me. I’m happy. I’m happy that the both of you are-are, well, you.”

Adrien peered down at her skeptically. “You don’t look happy. You look horrified…like I burned down your house.”

“Trust me. I’m happy. This is wonderful. I just have to go scream into my pillow and overthink things because I’m tired and today sucked and I feel like my heart’s been turned inside out. I’m just having a panic attack. That doesn’t mean that I’m not thrilled. I just… This is too much. I need time to process this. And then I have to tell you—” Marinette sucked in a deep breath.

“Maybe stop talking and focus on not passing out,” Adrien advised stooping to put a hand on her back. “In and out,” he coached.

She nodded, matching her breaths to his.

“You can tell me some other time,” he assured.

“But!” she gasped. “But you think I’m disappointed. You think I’m not happy. You think I’m upset, but I’m not upset. I’m just upset,” she choked.

Adrien tried really hard not to let the confusion he was feeling show on his face. “Okay. Why don’t we just breathe and calm down? Then we can each go home, scream into our pillows, overthink things, sleep, and then talk about this tomorrow.”

Marinette nodded. “Right. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he mumbled, breathing right along with her, trying to get his own heartrate under control as well.

Adrien retook his seat on the rooftop beside her, his hand on her back. She placed a hand on his knee, and they sat there, breathing, for minutes stretching into minutes until almost a half hour had passed.

“Adrien?” Marinette whispered.

“Hm?” He looked up, but she wasn’t facing him.

“You are very important to me. Not just Chat Noir my partner, but Adrien Agreste my friend. Okay?” She paused for him to answer.

“Okay.”

“And when I was saying that I had a lot of items that held special meaning for me when you asked what my most precious possession was…the umbrella that I mentioned was the umbrella that you loaned me the day that we met, and the bracelet I mentioned was the good luck charm that you made me.”

She cringed, her body tensing in the wake of her confession.

Adrien could only blink uncomprehendingly. “My Lady, I’m honored, and I’m happy to hear that…but why? I didn’t think we were particularly close. I mean, I know we’re closer than we were two years ago when we met, and I know we’re friends, but…honestly, Marinette, there are days when I get the feeling that you don’t like me all that much. It’s like I make you uncomfortable, so…can we maybe talk about what the problem is or what I’m doing wrong? Okay, maybe not now on a rooftop at two in the morning on a school night, but…”

She nodded, mentally cursing herself and how her ridiculous behavior because of her crush had come across to him. “Yes. Yes, of course. I promise there’s a perfectly logical explanation, and when I tell you, you’re going to laugh at me—only please don’t laugh too hard because I might die of mortification.”

“Breathe, Buginette,” he reminded.

“Right,” she giggled nervously. “Okay. I’m going to go home now to try to wrap my head around all of this, but please don’t be sad or think I’m not happy you’re you. Please don’t freak out, and please don’t get akumatized.”

She leaned in, planting a lightning-fast kiss on his cheek before bounding off over the rooftops, leaving a dazed, puzzled partner behind.

“Don’t say anything,” Adrien sighed as he collapsed onto his bed, releasing his transformation as he fell.

“If she doesn’t get her antennae on straight and sit you down and explain her behavior tomorrow, I’ll have plenty to say about it,” Plagg griped, going over to the minifridge to help himself to the cheese stash.

He came back a second later with the remains of a block of gruyère and landed on the bedspread next to Adrien. “…Talk, Kid. I’m feeling generous tonight after the day you had.”

Adrien turned his head to the side to study his kwami. “I’m a little lost. We’re making progress, but she acts so weird around me still sometimes. It’s good for me that the two girls I like are the same, but how she feels and acts towards Chat Noir is appreciably different than her behavior with Adrien. What if she starts treating me like Adrien even while I’m transformed? What if I lose Chat’s easy friendship with her? I love being Chat around Marinette—the way we laugh and joke—and the same is true of my relationship with Ladybug. Chat and Ladybug are…in sync. Marinette and Adrien are not. I feel sick thinking about what if our dynamics change.”

“Then don’t think about it,” Plagg advised, swallowing a quarter of the cheese block without chewing.

Adrien snorted bitterly. “Oh. Sorry. You’re right. I’ll get right on that. Thanks.”

Plagg clicked his tongue. “None of your sass. Worry about it if it actually happens. For now, sleep so that you don’t fall out of your desk in class tomorrow.”

Adrien got up and shrugged on his pajamas without another word. He slipped into his side of the bed and closed his eyes.

Sleep did not come. Thirty minutes later, he was still tossing and turning, spinning what-if scenarios in his head.

“Kitten,” Plagg groaned from the pillow next to him. “Stop thinking.”

“She’s practically all I think about on a normal day,” Adrien grumbled. “Between her almost getting chopped up by today’s Lila-akuma and learning her identity, my mind is stuck in overdrive.”

“Okay,” Plagg sighed. “Here’s a freebee. I thought you’d want to hear it from her first, but…the reason she acts weird around you is because she’s in love with you. There you go. Problem solved. Go to sleep and let me do the same.”

Adrien snorted crossly. “Funny enough, patronizing me isn’t helping, Plagg.”

“Oh, for the love of Havarti!” the kwami cursed. “Tomorrow, she’s going to tell you that, and you’re going to owe me some quality cheese as an apology.”

“Plagg, I fantasize enough as is. I don’t need your help being delusional,” Adrien spit sulkily. “Whatever it is, I’m just going to have to hear her out and do my best to fix things. We get along fine as Chat Noir and Marinette, so Adrien must be the problem. She said she wasn’t disappointed, so she obviously thinks that whatever is wrong between Adrien and Marinette can be fixed. I just have to listen to what she has to say and go from there.”

Plagg nodded, trying to bottle up his frustration and irritation. It wasn’t Adrien’s fault that he couldn’t believe that the girl he liked liked him back. He’d been burned enough times by false hope. It would be up to Marinette to tend to those wounds.

“Sounds like a good plan, Kid,” Plagg replied gently. “But you can’t do anything about it now. Go to sleep so you can be rested up for tomorrow.”

Adrien nodded with a sigh, rolling over to his other side and closing his eyes, beginning to softly hum each line of Bach’s Little Fugue individually in succession to distract his whirling mind until he slipped off into a fitful slumber.

“Mec, you’re early,” Nino greeted as he climbed over one of the benches in the locker room to get to Adrien. “You here for the Hail Mary chem study session too?”

Adrien put on his best model smile for his friend, but the weariness still showed in his eyes, and Nino saw it. “No. Couldn’t sleep, so I just got up and came in early.”

Nino frowned, sweeping off his cap to run a hand through his hair. “Dude, you look like you’re in serious need of some coffee. I’ve got ten minutes before the study session starts. Wanna run over to Tom and Sabine’s to get some caffeine and sugar?”

Adrien winced, provoking an arched eyebrow of concern from Nino.

“Uh…no. Thank you. I appreciate the offer, Nino, but…” Adrien bit his lip and leaned back against his locker, bracing one foot up against the door. He lowered his voice. “So…last night I snuck out to go check on Marinette because of all the Lila drama yesterday, right?”

Nino nodded, crossing his arms and tipping his head to show he was listening.

“Well…in my infinite stupidity and with my inability to shut up, I may have told her about how awesome and brave and kind and phenomenal I think she is,” Adrien mumbled, cheeks beginning to heat up.

“Mec, how is that any different than usual? You are, like, a one-man Marinette Dupain-Cheng cheering section,” Nino pointed out. “Not even Alya has the ability to top you and your rants about the magnificence of Marinette, and Alya can work up one hell of a motivational speech.”

Adrien squirmed, looking down at Nino’s shoes. “So…last night, I might have let slip how important she is to me…and how I’m seriously into her and have a giant, embarrassing crush on her. That was different than usual.”

Nino’s eyes flew wide in shock. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “Adrien…you know that you have a thing for Marinette?! Oh my God. All this time I thought that you were totally oblivious!”

Adrien rolled his eyes and swatted half-heartedly at his best friend. “Dude, knowing that you have feelings for someone and admitting it out loud are two separate things. Maybe I was oblivious for the first year or so to what the way I felt when she was around meant, but…I recognize now that I’m in love with her, so…”

“Wait. Wait,” Nino demanded, hand going to Adrien’s shoulder. “You love her?”

Adrien shrugged and nodded.

“Alya is going to flip,” Nino muttered.

“You can’t tell her,” Adrien groaned, looking up to meet Nino’s gaze.

Nino shook his head in sympathy. “Mec, if you told Marinette you had feelings for her last night, Alya already knows.”

Adrien winced. He should have guessed.

“Okay, so what happened?” Nino prompted. “What did she do when you let it slip? What did she say?”

Adrien shrugged without enthusiasm. “She freaked out. I freaked out. I think I was able to keep it cool on the outside for the most part, and I think she was too busy having an anxiety attack to register how messed up I was, but…yeah. She told me I was important to her, she kissed me on the cheek, and she ran.”

Nino let loose a heavy sigh and shook his head. “Oh, that girl. So let me guess: now you’re thinking she doesn’t like you and you’re stressing because you think you’ve messed things up, right?”

Adrien nodded. “What if she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore? What if she can’t talk to me even worse than normal now? I really screwed up, Nino.”

Nino shook his head slowly and deliberately. “Adrien, no. No. Listen. She’s just shocked. She probably needed time to process because you liking her is a big deal. Do I wish she was more mentally healthy so that she could absorb things more quickly instead of having to run off and go panic and overthink things? Yes, but I can assure you that that is exactly what is happening. This isn’t about what you said or did, Adrien. Her reaction was about her and her own mental struggles. Just sit tight and give her time to give you her response. You have nothing to worry about.”

Adrien pursed his lips, trying to let Nino’s words sink in. “Thank you for the advice, but I still feel like I’ve single-handedly destroyed everything between us, so…if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to keep freaking out because Marinette and her friendship are super important to me, and I think I seriously screwed things up.”

Nino sighed and smiled in fond exasperation at his best friend. “Dude, sometimes you can be as bad as Marinette when it comes to catastrophizing. Take some deep breaths. I swear to you that you and Marinette are going to be fine once she has the chance to calm down and process.”

“How can you be so sure?” Adrien sighed, letting his head thunk back against the locker.

Nino clapped him on the arm. “I’ve got insider info. Just chill, Adrien.”

Adrien groaned. “Easy for you to say.”

“Uh-huh…. Good Morning, Marinette.”

Adrien’s head whipped around to spot Marinette Dupain-Cheng peeking at them around the lockers on the corner.

She jumped, letting out a quiet squeak and almost dropping the box of pastries in her hands. “M-Morning!” She cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and looked Adrien right in the eye, saying, “Good Morning.”

“Good Morning,” he breathed, voice catching as he registered her simple red sundress and glossy black belt. She’d put on makeup.

“Well, I’ll leave you guys to it,” Nino announced, clapping Adrien on the arm once more before gracefully making his exit.

Adrien gulped. “How did you sleep?”

Marinette blushed, looking down at her shoes for a moment before visibly collecting her resolve and meeting his gaze again. “Not well. Not much.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Same.”

He didn’t know what to say after that.

She shifted uncomfortably. “Hey, so…” She lifted the pastry box. “Are you hungry? You’re probably not hungry. I mean, you have a professional chef that makes your meals. Of course you’re not hungry, but I brought some things from the bakery, and I thought we could go sit by the Seine and maybe share, so…”

He pushed off the locker and stood up straight, turning to face her. “Actually, I didn’t have an appetite this morning at breakfast, so I didn’t eat very much, and now I’m starving. Tom and Sabine’s pastries sound like a godsend. Shall we?” He gestured awkwardly for her to lead the way.

“R-Right! Good,” she spluttered, whipping around and almost tripping.

Quick as a striking snake, he was at her side, steadying her with a sheepish grin. “Careful.”

“Thanks, Chaton.” She blushed, and they both laughed nervously.

“Here.” He held out a hand for the box of pastries. “How about I carry that and you lead the way, Milady?”

Marinette nodded, easily acquiescing.

They walked down the stone steps from street level to the pathway alongside the Seine and took a seat on one of the benches. Marinette took the pastry box back from Adrien and set it on the bench between them. She pulled some napkins out of her bag, passing a few to Adrien and keeping some for herself. She opened the box and motioned for him to choose first.

Adrien’s eyes widened at the variety, but he conservatively chose three citrusy macarons and a pain au chocolat.

“Feel free to take as much as you want,” she encouraged.

“Thanks.” His grin softened as he bit into the pain au chocolat and his nerves quieted down.

“So…” Marinette sighed, selecting a mini strawberry tarte. “First off, I want to apologize to you.”

Adrien coughed, covering his mouth with a hand. “Whatever for?”

“For flaking on you last night. I’m sorry that I left you hanging,” she explained down into her lap.

“You were having a panic attack,” he snorted. “It was kind of a lot all at once on a day that was already too much to handle. You get a free pass.”

Marinette shook her head, forcing herself to meet his gaze, “Adrien, it was a lot for you too. You needed me to be there for you and support you and…not flip out like I did. I let you down yesterday.”

Adrien shook his head. “Buginette, you’re the only one who thinks so.”

She sighed in frustration, wishing someone would just hold her accountable already. “Stop forgiving me so easily.”

He shrugged, taking another bite of his pastry, chocolate smearing on his bottom lip in the process.

Marinette frowned. “…You really are my Minou, aren’t you?”

Adrien chortled, pulling one knee into his chest. “Yep.”

“You’re infuriating,” she informed tersely.

“There’s my Lady,” Adrien snickered. “Have I told you lately how much I love it when you glower at me?”

“Ugh!” Marinette groaned, looking away as her entire face flushed vermillion.

Adrien Agreste shouldn’t be allowed to say things like that.

“Sorry.” He bit his lip trying to get his giggle fit under control. “I’m sleep deprived because I’ve been stressing out for, like, the past five hours about how I ruined everything and how you were never going to speak to me again, so I might be a little goofy. Sorry…. You were trying to have a serious conversation with me?”

She looked back up at him blankly. “What?”

His grin evaporated as a horrified expression began to wash over her face. “‘What’ what, Milady?”

“Have you really been up stressing about those things?”

He shifted uncomfortably and shrugged. “Yeah?”

Sadness replaced horror. “Oh, Chaton…I’m so sorry. This is my fault. If I wasn’t such a spazz…if I could have just kept it together and talked to you like any normal person would have been able to last night…” She dropped her head in shame. “I’m sorry, Adrien.”

“Hey,” he cooed, tentatively resting a hand on her forearm. “Don’t. Don’t beat yourself up. I’m fine. Just…talk to me now. Take your time, Marinette, and just…say whatever it is you need to say. There’s no need to freak out. I mean…it’s just me.”

She looked up into his eyes once more and shook her head. “It’s because it’s you that I knew I had to be careful. Part of what made last night so hard was that I knew that I had to get it exactly right so that you wouldn’t misunderstand, so that I wouldn’t hurt you, wouldn’t lose you…my friend and my partner.”

He frowned, angling his head as he listened intently, biting his tongue so as not to interrupt her.

“I thought about it long and hard after I finished screaming into my pillow last night, and I think I know now what I need to say.”

He nodded for her to continue.

“You know it wasn’t that Ladybug never had any feelings for Chat Noir, right?”

His eyes widened. “Did Ladybug have feelings for Chat Noir? I thought…”

“She did.” Marinette nodded. “It’s just that it was too complicated to pursue anything with their identities and Papillon endangering them and the people they cared about. She did have feelings for him, but she didn’t let them grow. She kept them buried. Besides, there was someone else.”

“Jean-Pierre,” Adrien sighed, his chest tightening.

“Okay. That’s Part One. Are you with me?” She glanced up tentatively.

“Ladybug was kind of attracted to Chat Noir, but she wasn’t planning on letting that go anywhere because of Papillon and Jean-Pierre,” he summarized and then looked to her for confirmation.

She smiled shyly and nodded. “Part Two,” she announced. “Do you remember when you and I met?”

Adrien grimaced. “Yeah, usually I make a better impression on people.”

Marinette blew out a sigh. “Do you remember how I thought you were just going to be a male version of Chloé—who, I remind you, had been torturing me for literal years?”

Adrien added a wince to his grimace. “Oh. Well. Is that what that was about? Seeing as we’ve never discussed this before, this is new information to me, but I’m glad to finally know what the deal was. You seemed so nice to everyone else, but you wouldn’t even let me explain about the gum.”

A pained smile stretched across Marinette’s lips. “Not one of my finest moments.”

He gave her arm a gentle nudge. “It’s okay. We got things straightened out, and you’ve more than made up for it since.”

She looked back down at the strawberry tarte in her hand. “I got you completely wrong. I just made all these assumptions…but the reason I brought this is up is that I wanted to remind you that, since the beginning, I wasn’t impressed by your money or the fact that you dad was one of my idols. I didn’t care about your fame or your good looks. None of that made me want to be friends with you, okay?”

“I remember,” he replied quietly, recalling the frustration of the situation, the way his heart ached for her to like him.

“It wasn’t until after school on the front steps in the rain when you explained and you told me that you hadn’t really had friends before and you were shy and insecure and kind…it wasn’t until then that I started to like you and want to be friends with you. I didn’t want to be friends with Adrien Agreste. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of the real Adrien, the boy behind the fame and the money and the name, that I wanted to know you. Okay?”

She glanced up tentatively. Her face felt so hot. “Are you with me?”

He nodded. “You’re saying that you like me for me, not my influence or wealth or my father’s fashion empire.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. Part Three.” She gulped.

She’d been doing so well. She’d actually been able to talk to him without stuttering or mixing her words around for going on fifteen minutes, but now it felt like her throat was closing up. Why did she always fail just within sight of the finish line?

“Hey.” He placed a hand lightly on her forearm, his thumb stroking slowly back and forth. “Breathe. Take your time.”

She did. In and out, matching her breaths to his until the tightness in her chest faded.

Why was she so scared? She knew how he felt about her. What was there to be afraid of?

She finished off her strawberry tarte in three bites, steeled herself, and then turned to look at him.

“You know Jean-Pierre?”

A brief flash of pain shot across Adrien’s face. He grimaced. “Yeah?”

“Adrien Agreste is Jean-Pierre.”

He stared at her.

She stared back. “Adrien, it was you. It was always just you, on both sides of the mask.”

His mouth dropped open.

He covered it with a hand.

“You…love me?” he whispered. “Me?”

She nodded, a tentative smile beginning to gather steam on her lips.

“I am the guy you like? This whole time?” he laughed incredulously, on the verge of hysteria.

“Ever since you handed me that umbrella and cracked up when it closed on me,” she confessed, feeling a weight lift off of her chest. “I love your laugh.”

“I love you, Marinette,” he breathed, quickly moving the pastries out of the way so that he could slide closer to her on the bench, take her hands in his own. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Now do you see why I was freaking out so bad?” she laughed at herself. “I’ve had this enormous, embarrassing crush on you for two years, and I was terrified that, since we’re not super close as Marinette and Adrien and since I’d been turning Chat Noir down without telling him that I did feel something, you would think that I was just some crazy Adrien Agreste fangirl when it’s not like that. Well,” she corrected, “okay. It is a little like that. I am a huge fan, but it’s not like I’m blinded by your fame or whatever. I actually really like you as a person, so…”

She looked up at him, eyes questioning.

He leaned in to rest his forehead against hers. “Thank you for taking the time to explain properly, for taking my feelings into account. It really would have hurt if you had suddenly blurted out last night that you were in love with me after you found out my identity. I probably would have thought that you were in love with Adrien Agreste and not the real me, and that…” He swallowed, voice thick. “That really sucks when people want to get close to the model, the rich kid and not the dork who likes anime and cat puns, so…even though it was a rough night tossing and turning because of the uncertainty, I’m glad you took the time to figure out how to say all that stuff. Thanks for being considerate.”

She gave his hands a squeeze and pulled back to meet his eyes. “Would you want to go on a date with me?”

His face lit up.

She hurried to add, “—Just something really casual at first so that we can get to know one another better. I was thinking after last night, us talking, that…there’s a lot I don’t know about you. A lot of the things you said surprised me—not in a bad way,” she hastily explained as a cloudy expression edged in over the joy on his face.

“Just…” She bit her bottom lip. “Before we dive into a relationship too fast and mess up our friendship and our partnership…I want to get to know you, and I want you to get to know me. Maybe Ladybug and Marinette aren’t as perfect as you think. We screw up…like yesterday with Lila and the akuma. We drop the ball, and I don’t want you going into a relationship thinking you’re getting this superhuman girl when really…I’m just me. I don’t want you to wake up two years from now disillusioned and feeling cheated, so—”

“—Never,” he snorted.

She shook his hands. “You don’t know that.”

“Then give me the chance to know it for sure,” he sighed, shaking his head in fond exasperation. “What did you have in mind?”

“Coffee dates. Lunch dates,” she suggested. “Taking it slow…and lots of talking. Lots more of last night. I want to know your favourite movie, what you wanted to be when you grew up as a kid, your most embarrassing moment, the accomplishment you’re most proud of, your favourite flavor of ice cream,” she listed. “I want to know everything about you.”

“I want to know everything about you,” he echoed, leaning in slightly. “We’ll get there, Marinette…. I’m looking forward to getting there…the journey along the way…but…first…may I kiss you?”

She closed her eyes and closed the distance.

It was chaste and warm and tingly and perfect. Short but sweet.

He squeezed her hands and pulled away to gently nuzzle her nose and forehead.

Their eyes met, and Marinette burst out laughing.

“What?” he whined, a broad grin still in place on his lips.

“Vampire smut,” she tittered. “I am never going to get over this. Adrien Agreste likes vampire smut.”

Adrien groaned. “I never should have told you.”

“Let me borrow some sometime,” she snickered, grinning up at him.

“Sure,” he snorted, “…but now I’m going to have to find some dirt on you to hold over your head.”

“I still have pictures of you all over my walls,” Marinette offered in a show of good sportsmanship.

“That will do,” he hummed, deciding to not bring up his own collection of Ladybug merchandise. “…May I kiss you again?”

“Please.”

She closed the gap for him.

The

       End