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Ladybug noticed something was up about ten minutes into patrol.
Chat was quiet.
It wasn't exactly as strange as one might think — for all of his dramatic mannerisms and cavalier confidence, Chat wasn't actually all that loud — but this level of shortness and silence was... unsettling.
She spent another ten minutes staring at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to figure out what it was about him that was raising those alarm bells in her head (the cold economy of his movements? The tightness around his mouth? The way he spent more time staring into space then at anything in particular?) before deciding to stop them on the next rooftop.
Another worrying note: Chat didn't notice her signalling a halt. Sure, it happened sometimes, but he was usually on the ball about things like that, and in addition to everything else...
She caught his shoulder before he could make the next leap.
"Hey, is everything okay?"
Chat flinched like he might've honestly forgotten she was there (...hm) and jerked around to face her with wide eyes. As soon as he caught sight of her, the corners of his mouth hitched up into something that might have been a smile (...double hm) and said, "Of course I'm okay. Why?"
Ladybug wondered if miming pushing his lengthening nose in would be too light a gesture for the moment.
"...No reason, you just seem... quiet."
"Oh," he said, putting a little more effort into the smile, "sorry." And then, when that didn't appear to satisfy her, he added, "It was a long day."
It might've flown if she hadn't known that Chat got cuddly when he was tired, not distant. If it had been just 'a long day,' Chat would be leaning on her, an arm around her shoulders as he whined about his legs aching or pouted about the local bakery not having his favorite flavor of macaroons. He would be burying his face in her hair and laughing sheepishly when she pushed him away. He would be yawning and lollygagging and trying (with varying degrees of success) to distract her away from their route.
Right now, he was staring into the distance with a tight smile and stiff shoulders, insisting everything was alright.
"...Tell me about it?"
He blinked at her, and then exhaled a little sigh that was also a laugh, the tension in his frame going exactly nowhere. "It's nothing, really."
Ladybug was unmoved.
"Really," he insisted, still smiling that smile that didn't look much like a smile at all. "My landlord just had a problem with fixing my hot water. It's nothing."
On a scale of how much that was likely to upset Chat, Ladybug rated it a solid four.
Said cat's case of upset, on the other hand, rated a solid eight. Maybe even nine.
"Did he... say something?" she guessed, worried.
Chat snorted a laugh that was slightly more convincing than his smile, though not by much. "I think I heard 'spoiled rich brat' a couple of times, but really..."
Ladybug bumped the rating of the encounter up to a tentative six.
Letting go of his shoulder and nudging it with her own before he could hit her with another variation of 'I'm fine,' she said, "What, you mean you're not struggling to feed yourself like the rest of us? How dare you."
A tired chuckle, and Chat let her usher him over to the air conditioning unit on the flat roof.
"How dare I ask him to take care of the plumbing, like it said I should in the contract," Chat half-grumbled, sounding more tired than bitter, as Ladybug pushed herself up to sit on the metal box.
It put her at eye-level with him — or would've, if he wasn't drooping so much.
"He sounds like an asshole," she decided primly, and bit down a smile of victory when her uncharacteristic swearing got a choked laugh out of him.
And this was how she knew Chat wasn't doing so well: he didn't deny it.
He just shrugged, smiling that smile that wasn't really a smile at all. "It's cheap, and it's close to school."
Ladybug frowned, studying him with concern.
"...And there isn't anywhere else you could stay?" she asked, perhaps more carefully than the simple question warranted.
Or maybe it was warranted, because that not-smile got... flatter somehow. "Not unless I found a roommate to share the load, and..."
Ladybug waited, watching Chat slowly give up on appearing cheerful.
"...And?" she prompted, when it became obvious that he wasn't going to finish the thought.
He shrugged in a way that Ladybug supposed was supposed to come off as unaffected. "My father doesn't approve of roommates."
Ah, there was the bitterness.
"...I thought he wasn't paying your rent?"
The smile Chat gave her then could hardly be called a smile at all, it was so thin. "He's not."
Ladybug waited, watching him, knowing he'd fill the silence if she did.
It took about ten seconds and a glance at the concern on her face for Chat to sigh, slump, and rub his forehead as he looked away. "He's... got an in with my employer. He's got an in with a lot of other ones, too."
An odd thrill of ice shot down Ladybug's spine. "And... you think he'd pull strings if you decided to get a roommate?"
She hadn't thought it was possible, but Chat smiled even thinner somehow. "He's done it before."
Ladybug's blood ran cold and then hot very, very fast.
"Oh," she said, a little faintly.
"...Yeah."
"I don't... I don't think that's okay, Chat."
Of all things, that was what made him smile, the tilt of his mouth putting her in mind of gratitude.
"Is... there any way you could get a job somewhere else?" she asked, because she couldn't say that if she ever met Chat's father, she was going to punch him in the nose. Repeatedly.
Chat rolled his shoulders in a shrug and turned to lean his back against the air conditioning unit beside her. "I... I don't know. I'd have to do something that's not mo—..." He glanced at her and shut his mouth. "—not what I'm used to doing, but..."
"Does he have a lock on an entire market?" she asked, half in jest and half thinking of Adrien, who bounced between modeling jobs like the pro he was, and Gabriel, who was still trying to get his son to come back to the company.
Chat's smile looked a little less like a smile again. "...Kind of."
...So, theoretically, how much trouble would she get in if she wanted to track someone down for the sole purpose of kicking them in the balls? Because...
Chat glanced at her face and made a noise that sounded like a fraction of a laugh. "It's okay."
"...Have you ever considered working for, I don't know, a bakery?" she asked, because grabbing Chat by the lapels and shaking him in helpless frustration wouldn't actually help anyone. A horrible thought occurred to her. "...Unless it's the bakeries your dad's controlling."
Chat barked a real laugh that time. "No, not the bakeries."
Well, that was a relief.
"I just..." He folded his arms, and Ladybug wondered if it was a gesture of comfort or if her imagination was playing tricks on her. "...He came to talk to my landlord today."
Ladybug blinked, processed that, and then her stomach was burning in sympathetic fury and embarrassment. "...Did he?"
"The landlord called him," he said dryly, like it was a cringe-worthy-yet-amusing act unrelated to himself. "Wanted him to pay for the pipes. So, you know, he had to come over."
"Oh," said Ladybug, chest aching already. That was really all there was to be said.
Chat breathed another chuckle, and then swallowed and held himself a little tighter. "I'm... pretty sure he's... trying to get my landlord in trouble. S-so that I'll... have to move back."
...Oh.
(Once she was done punching his dad in the face and kicking him in the balls, she was going to toss a man out of a window.
A seventh story window.
You know, for science.)
(She remembered how happy Adrien had been when he finally moved out, thanks, and she didn't doubt that Chat had been even happier.)
(There was a reason for that, and she didn't think it was because he hated living in luxury.)
"...There's nowhere else you could move?" she asked for the second time that night, once she'd packed down her violent impulses.
Chat's mouth twisted. "It's the only 'acceptable' place that's affordable and close enough to the school, and if I ask my father for money..."
"You're right back where you started," Ladybug finished with a sigh, feeling like she was swallowing a bitter pill herself.
She tried to think of what Adrien had done to get out — a lot of blowout fights, bargaining, and conceding, if she was remembering right.
His father still checked in on him from time to time too, though she didn't think Mr. Agreste was nearly as bad as Chat's father.
She pulled one of her knees up to rest her chin on and murmured, "I wish I knew how to help."
Chat gave her a tired, sad little smile, and said nothing.
"I have a friend who's having the same problems you are," she confessed, staring out at the skyline with him. "I don't know how to help him, either."
"Friend?" Chat echoed, a strange emotion in his voice she just couldn't place.
She hummed an agreement. "He had to really work hard to just move out." A shaken little laugh. "I can't imagine."
"It's a little... unbalanced, yeah," Chat acknowledged, watching her intently from the corner of his eye.
"You mean 'unfair'?" she half-asked and half-corrected, and glanced over in time to see his leather ears flick and his mouth flatten.
For Chat, that was as good as an agreement.
Ladybug bit down on a sigh.
"...So, your friend has a... controlling parent too?"
Swallowing a snort at the delicate tone, she said, "Yeah, something like that."
How was Adrien dealing with that, anyway?
"His dad isn't great either," she said slowly, thinking about it. "But he works as a model, jumping around jobs before his dad can buy out the people he works for — his dad's... kind of a big deal — while working on his degree. It's not forever, but..."
"But?"
Ladybug chewed on the words for a moment before mumbling, "I still wanna punch his dad sometimes."
And that earned her the realest laugh she'd heard all night — a loud, startled bark that was half shock and half hilarity.
"Do you?" Chat asked, a grin squashed down around the corners of his mouth and more present than she'd seen him yet. "Mr.—... Your own friend's father, assaulted by local superheroine Ladybug. That would be a headline for the ages."
Didn't she know it.
She flapped her hand at him in exasperation. "I wouldn't actually do it, but..."
Chat, when she looked back, was just... smiling at her. Softly, fondly.
...Gratefully?
"I've... thought about it," she finished, turning his reactions over in her mind. And then: "...Do you have an out?"
Or do I have to kidnap you myself, went unsaid.
He blinked at her for a second, catching up with the subject switch, and then smiled vaguely. "Same as your friend; once I get a degree I can intern somewhere else."
It was her turn to blink then.
...Had she ever mentioned that Adrien was planning to intern?
Then Chat mumbled, "...If I'm allowed to finish school at all," and Ladybug let that go in favor of breathing very deep, a roiling ball of hot, tight fury sitting in her stomach.
"...Do I need to punch your dad too?"
That, for some reason, made him laugh even harder than before, muffled snickers making his shoulders shake and his cheeks scrunch up under his mask.
"...Maybe a little bit," he allowed once he was steady again. "Not a lot."
Yes, a lot, Ladybug resisted grumbling, setting her chin in her palm and taking the little victory of honest mirth for what it was.
Okay, okay, they were the same age. How close would that put him to graduation (escape) again?
If she was twenty, then technically it should be year after next, but if he had a longer degree...
"Hey, what are you studying?" she asked, unthinking as she realized that, for all they'd vaguely alluded to their lives to one another, she didn't actually know.
"Physics," he replied, just as automatic and unthinking, and then went... very still.
"Oh," said Ladybug. Just like Adrien.
Who was also taking an internship.
Who also had an overly controlling father he was trying to escape.
Who also…
Chat’s earlier words came back to her like someone had tossed a mining flare into her brain.
I'd have to do something that's not mo—
That's not modeling.
Chat would have to do something that wasn't modeling.
Oh.
(And the way he'd gone soft and present when she'd started talking about Adrien, like he knew exactly who she was talking about...
Oh.)
Ladybug belatedly remembered to inhale again, lungs aching and pulse thrumming in her mouth.
"Wow," she said, a little too dry in her shock. "I never knew you were such a smart kitty."
Chat unfroze, giving her her fourth laugh of the night with hunched shoulders and a slant to his smile that looked equal parts shy and flattered, and Ladybug's heart did a little one-two step.
She reached out and scuffed the hair between his ears, trying to hide the way her everything was trembling as she processed the realization. The fluff was as comforting as it always was, even though she could never tell him that.
"Physicist Noir,” she teased, trying not to sound too affected, “here to solve all your space mysteries."
Chat's shoulders hitched mid-laugh and stilled there, and Ladybug belatedly remembered that Chat Noir hadn't ever said a word about space.
"You know what you should do after that?" she went on quickly, before he could remember that Adrien's last conversation with Marinette had mostly consisted of him waxing poetic about rocket fuel for three hours.
He blinked at the gravel in front of them, and then he blinked at her. "What?"
"Become a teacher."
"A teacher," Chat repeated, baffled amusement in every line of his face.
"You could teach a bunch of kids why stars are big for a living," Ladybug asserted wisely. "About... gravity. And gases."
"...About the cumulative effect of gravity when applied to certain volumes of atomic particles?" he suggested, sounding almost like he wanted to laugh again.
Ladybug stared at him for a good three seconds before saying, "Teacher. Definitely become a teacher."
"Pffffffft—"
(It wasn't a connection she'd ever made with Adrien, somehow, but Chat? Chat loved kids. And kids loved Chat back.)
"You laugh now," she said, gut fizzing at the happiness on his face, "but will you be when your first class graduates with top marks because they couldn't hate science in the face of all your dumb enthusiasm? I think not."
His laughter hitched again, and when she looked down, the longing on his face hit her like a sucker-punch.
"...Maybe not," he conceded, low and raw.
Almost involuntarily, Ladybug reached out to ruffle his hair again, a funny bundle of emotions tied up tight in her chest.
"Just... gotta get through school first," he mumbled, leaning into her touch.
Right.
That.
Ladybug curled her fingers in his shaggy blond mop as she thought.
And it was a terrible, terrible idea, but...
"I meant it about the bakery, though," she said, running her fingers through the strands. "Bakers are nice people, and there are lots of jobs in bakeries."
Chat looked amused again. "There are?"
Ladybug ignored that. "Have you ever heard of the... ah... Dupain-Cheng bakery? Best macaroons in Paris?"
"The only place to get macaroons," Chat asserted, standing a little straighter, and Ladybug shot him a grin, remembering all the times Adrien had pouted over them running out of the caramel-flavored ones before he got there.
"Y'know, I hear they were thinking of hiring."
Chat blinked. "They were?"
Well, no, but if Marinette asked very nicely and sent them that nice boy that they never quite got to parent as much as they would've liked to, she bet they would be.
They had an empty room too, now that she'd moved out.
"Just a rumor," she said, and dropped her hand. "But, you know, I bet if you walked in with a green tie or something next week, they... might be willing to hear you out."
Chat was smiling a touched, gratitude-laden little smile that told her he was hearing the implicit offer in her words, and Ladybug bit the inside of her warming cheek as she looked away, belly fluttering.
Abort, abort, abort—
"But!" she went on before either of them could acknowledge anything, breath squeaking around her heartstrings. "We were doing something! Patrol! We, um, really need to finish that."
"Hm," said Chat, taking her graceless subject change at face value and looking in the direction of their route. "You're right."
Ladybug stiffened, instantly on guard. He never agreed with her that easily unless...
He nudged her shoulder with his.
"Tag, you're it."
Oh, that little—
Ladybug flailed, clawing into the space where he should have been, and found that he'd just about teleported to the opposite end of the roof.
"Chat!" she called after him, breathless and furiously delighted. "You're going the wrong—..."
He just laughed, bright and loud and fading with distance.
She gave up on her sentence and tumbled off of the air conditioning unit, focusing her energy on catching up so she could tag him back and they could actually go in the right direction this time.
Well, she thought dryly, affectionately as she scrambled after him, at least he wasn't quiet anymore.
(And two weeks later, her dad texted her a picture of Adrien grinning at the camera with a smudge of flour on his cheek, bakery kitchen in the background, accompanied by the caption, Thanks, little bug. Best worker we've had in ages.)