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“So there’s this girl.”
Ladybug cocked her head and stared at her friend with wide eyes, mouth falling open to say something, but the look on Queen Bee’s face stopped her in her tracks. Bottom lip caught between her teeth, gaze heavy on her hands clasped tightly in her lips, she looked hesitant and unsure, lacking the confidence and charisma that usually oozed from every pore. Ladybug didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t every day that Queen Bee chose to open up to her or any of the other heroes of Paris; she held her secrets and identity tighter than any of them did.
“For my father,” she’d say when asked why and rarely said more. Ladybug wasn’t arguing—she did the same thing—but it was different to have someone so similar working beside her. While she enjoyed Volpina’s presence, and Chat Noir was her partner, Queen Bee was something entirely new and unexpected, but not unwanted. Ladybug had spent so long explaining why secret identities were important, and while everyone had accepted that long ago, Queen Bee was the only person who seemed to understood why.
“So there’s this girl,” Queen Bee had said, completely out-of-the-blue and sending Ladybug’s thoughts into a whirlwind, unprompted on an early Saturday after an akuma battle under the silver sunrise of the Paris morning. “And I don’t know what to do.”
She didn’t offer anything else, didn’t expand or explain the thought. It fell between them like a pair of dice on a game board, and both were afraid to look at the results—double snake eyes or broke. Ladybug brushed her bangs behind her hair with shaky hands, unsure how to approach the situation, because tried not to panic at the thought of Queen Bee finally opening up and proving there was a natural human under that mask.
(And she knew, she knew that Queen Bee was a real person, but there had always been that mask in the way, and a part of Ladybug had always wanted more. The rules had been laid, and the players took their marks, but Ladybug wasn’t ready to win. Even though she’d designed this game, ever since Queen Bee stumbled onto the board, Ladybug hadn’t been happy with the way things were playing out.)
For the first time in a long while, Ladybug wanted to know the person behind the mask. It was a deep longing, an ache in her chest that burned like a beast, and only the truth and tangibility would soothe it. It’s something she hadn’t felt for anyone aside from Chat Noir, who was her partner in all the ways that mattered, and something she never thought she’d feel for the other heroes that had been thrown into their lives just two months before.
“You don’t know what to do?” Ladybug let a laugh fall from her lips, and she shook her head, turning to face Queen Bee. “Sounds like a problem.”
Queen Bee twisted around to glare at her, eyes like steel and ice—sharp and cold—cutting through her chest, shocking her thoughts to a standstill. “I’m trying to ask for help, but if you think it’s just a joke—”
“No, no, no!” Ladybug was quick to lean forward, hands outstretched in a placating gesture, in hopes of calming her friend down. She couldn’t ruin the first chance she had to get to know the real Queen Bee. “I’m sorry, I just meant… It sounds serious.”
“It is.” Queen Bee turned back to face the Paris skyline, staring out over the city as if it held all the answers she sought, but she still couldn’t see them. “I hate her.”
Ladybug leaned back on her hands and kicked her legs lazily like a pendulum off the Eiffel Tower, each tick of the clock a swing through the air. “You don’t sound… like you hate her.”
Queen Bee shrugged half-heartedly. “I’m supposed to hate her, and she hates me. But lately she’s been nice and it makes me…” A soft sigh falling from her lips, she met Ladybug’s gaze with a soft, shy smile, and Ladybug’s heart stammered in her chest. “I think I like her? I don’t know. I’ve never felt this way about someone, and it…”
“It’s a little scary,” Ladybug asked, and Queen Bee made no move to correct her. “Not knowing how you feel about someone, especially when you thought you did, it—”
“—changes everything,” Queen Bee finished sullenly. Propping her head up in her hands, elbows resting on her crossed knees, she shook her head. “I don’t understand what happened, what changed. I hate her, and she hates me. That’s how it’s always been, but lately she’s been nice, and I noticethings.”
“Like what?” Ladybug smiled to herself, knowing exactly where this was going.
“Her eyes are really blue,” Queen Bee whispered with lips pressed in a thin line. “And her laugh is loud, but I don’t want her to stop. She draws, and I always tell her how awful they are, but I actually really love them. I could watch her draw all day. She’s really pretty and always smiles, and she’s nicesuddenly, and everything’s changed because I realize—”
Yep, Ladybug thought to herself, Queen Bee has a big fat crush on—
“I am so gay for Marinette.”
“E-Excuse me?” Ladybug squawked amidst a windmill of flailing arms and legs, the surprise so sudden that she nearly flung herself off the top of the Eiffel Tower. “You are what now?”
Queen Bee smirked, eyes flashing wildly. “I like girls, remember? Got a problem—”
Ladybug placed a hand on the superhero’s shoulder to stop her, still trying to process the announcement. “No, no, I heard you the first time, but… Marinette? You like Marinette?”
“Oh calm down,” Queen Bee drawled out, flicking her wrist nonchalantly in the other teenager’s direction. “There’s tons of Marinettes in Paris. I didn’t give anything away.”
“O-Of course, that’s fine. I’m not worried. Everything’s fine,” Ladybug said, but there was a shake to her voice that said otherwise. Chuckling to herself, she ran a hand through her dark hair, fidgeting and trying anything to process her panic.
“You sure?”
“I-I am fine.”
Clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, Queen Bee rested her hands on the edge of the metal beam with a white-knuckled grip, laughter spilling into the open air between them. “Sure sounds like it, Bug, but don’t worry, I got a handle on this secret identity.”
“T-That’s not what I’m worried about,” she stammered out in response, a warm flush kissing her cheeks.
“Oh yeah?” Queen Bee turned to face the other superhero, swinging her legs around the beam so she was straddling it, and propped herself up on her elbows with a soft smile, gazing up at Ladybug through heavy-lidded lashes. “You jealous? You thought I had a crush on you, Bug?”
Ladybug shook her head, at a loss for word. They caught in her throat, and her heart strained to push them out but to no avail. “I-I… No, no, I just—”
Queen Bee threw her head back, more laughter following. “Relax, relax. I’m just joking with you. Besides, you’re not my type.”
This earned her a quirked eyebrow and resolute expression. “Oh yeah?” Ladybug challenged, eyes blazing as her bearings flooded back into her like the ocean’s rising tide, having been washed away when Queen Bee struck her dumb. “Who’s your type then?”
“Witty, wobbly, and woman,” Queen Bee snapped.
“Wobbly?”
“…She’s cute when she trips.”
Ladybug cocked her head, staring at her friend again. Queen Bee ducked from her gaze, pink dusting the tops of her cheeks and the tips of her ears, and Ladybug felt her heart pang in her chest. “You know,” she finally said, “I’m sure you and your Marinette are gonna work out just fine.”
“How would you know?” Queen Bee asked lowly, words almost lost in the howl of the wind.
Ladybug shrugged. “It’s obvious you care for her.”
“But she hates me.”
“Then stop hating her,” Ladybug told her, placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder and fixing her with bright eyes. “If you show her the real you—the hero you—there’s no way she won’t like you. You just gotta be patient, alright? If you guys spent so long hating each other, it’s gonna take a while for both of you to come around.”
Queen Bee pressed her lips into a thin line. “…Are you sure?”
She raised her head, eyes trained on the Paris skyline, and Ladybug could only watch her. She’d watched Queen Bee do a lot of things in the last two months: fall in love with being a hero, fall in love with Paris all over again, fall in love with herself, and now… was she watching her fall in love with her Marinette?
“I think things will work out,” Ladybug said eventually. “It’ll just take some time. Rome wasn’t built in the day.”
“You’ve never seen me when I put my mind to something,” Queen Bee snapped back with a sharp smirk, but it lacked any real spite. “Just watch. I bet you I’ll have a girlfriend by the end of the week.”
Ladybug could only laugh. “Now this, I’d love to see.”
Queen Bee pushed herself up on her haunches, narrowing her eyes in determination. “Just you wait,” she told her fellow hero, “I’m gonna sweep Marinette off her feet. Watch me.”
“Good luck,” she said, and Queen Bee only waved a hand behind her in a short goodbye and leapt off the Eiffel Tower and into the open air.
Now, the question remained: who the hell was Queen Bee’s Marinette, and did Ladybug have a reason to worry?
Watching Queen Bee sling away, wings buzzing behind her, Ladybug let out a slight giggle that echoed through the empty air, high and hysterical, because the thought that Queen Bee—one of Ladybug’s closest friends—was also close to Marinette had to be the funniest thing she’d heard in a long while.
What’re the chances? She asked herself.
*
Turns out, as she learned later that week, they were very high.