Chapter Text
“Ah, my lovely Lady, bless our good fortune that I may be able to accompany you home on such a cold Autumn’s night. Perchance the stars may be able to lead us back to your marble palace before dawn.”
Ladybug threw her head back and cackled. “You’re such an idiot, what are you even saying?”
Chat Noir scoffed. “Such a sharp tongue, my Lady. Whatever would your father say? Although, I suppose I could lock this secret away between the two of us should you permit me to seal it with a friendly kiss.”
Ladybug stuck her tongue out. “I’ll seal it with my foot up your nose if you’d like.”
“So not only does that sound impossible, but that sounds like a sinus infection waiting to happen,” he replied. “Do you know where your feet have been? I could catch a disease.”
“The depths of your dramatics are truly unfathomable,” Ladybug deadpanned.
“You know, my best friend tells me the same thing,” Chat Noir wondered. “I was thinking of getting involved in acting. I played a detective once. I was pretty good.”
“You should play a knight or something,” Ladybug suggested. “You know, really play up the whole needless chivalry and romantic waxing that you’re so good at. I mean, you’re getting practice for it right now.”
Chat Noir turned his head so that he could stare at Ladybug whose thighs he was holding as he carried her piggyback across the Parisian rooftops. “I’m helping you get home and you’re complaining? What do you want from me, woman?”
“It’s just a sprained ankle! I could’ve limped home just fine. Or just swung back home without putting pressure on it.”
“Nonsense, my Lady! ‘Tis my job as your valiant prince to return you safely to your kingdom should you fall ill!”
“Fine, you goof, whatever makes you feel better, I guess,” Ladybug smirked, hugging her arms tighter around his neck. “Although you should add valiant prince to your repertoire. Start making a list for when you go to auditions.”
“Ooooh, will you be my manager please?”
“Am I getting a wage?”
“Of course, you’ll receive my utmost respect, admiration, and loyalty.”
“I get that anyway, but I’ll accept your payment.”
They both just finished up with two weeks of brutal exams at school, and Chat Noir had practically begged for the two of them to spend a day together that weekend in celebration. It had been a while since she spent time with Chat Noir that didn’t involve patrolling the city or dealing with akumas, and she thought it would be fun to see if she could spend the whole day with him. They’d been walking around the city, getting coffee together downtown, and having footraces on the rooftops before Ladybug had slipped on a chimney and twisted her ankle. It was nothing that some ice and a day’s rest wouldn’t fix but Chat Noir practically had a conniption about it and insisted that he help her at least part of the way home. They were at least a mile away from the bakery and her foot was throbbing a little, so she decided to let it go. Besides, if she was being honest with herself, she really didn’t want to cut the day short sooner than they had to.
Ladybug pressed her cheek against Chat’s and smiled when he leaned into it. “We should do this more often,” she said. “Sometimes, we feel like coworkers.”
“Coworkers?” Chat Noir laughed.
“Yeah, you know! Those people who only see each other during working hours, maybe hang out during their lunch breaks a couple of days during the week, and then never see each other again until the next work day.”
Chat Noir squeezed Ladybug’s wrist. “I’m pretty sure that most coworkers don’t know how many freckles are on their other coworker’s cheeks.”
“You don’t know that either.”
“Do so! Forty-two. I counted that time we were trapped in an alley for an hour.”
“Oh yeah,” Ladybug grinned. “I think that was the time I realized you had little blue flecks in your eyes.”
“See? Not coworkers. Coworkers don’t have the patience required to learn about the people who work with them. You and I are different.”
“I guess that’s true,” Ladybug agreed. “If I have the patience to sit through all one hundred and fifteen of your puns, that must be something special.”
“A hundred and fifteen?”
“I too am a very good counter.”
Chat Noir gripped her tighter as he crouched down and made a wide jump over an alleyway before turning to the left to head down a busier avenue. “So basically what you’re telling me is that you’re giving me permission to remain in charge of scheduling our friendship dates.”
“I’ll give you permission so long as you don’t get carried away with them.”
“You have no faith in me, my Lady. I know better than to do anything outlandish.”
“Free next Saturday then?” Ladybug asked. She pointed ahead of her. “You can leave me four blocks down. It’ll leave me close enough to my house.”
“Roger that!” he replied. “And I’m extremely free next Saturday. Wanna meet at the Louvre and walk around the palace a bit? We can take pics.”
She giggled and pressed closer to him when a cold wind blew against them. “I’ll try to show up all fresh-faced for you.”
Chat Noir started slowing down as they got closer to the point where Ladybug asked him to drop her off, but she didn’t have the heart to point out that he was trying to prolong their time together. Instead, she let him take his time and carefully let her down onto the roof while she awkwardly leaned heavily on her other foot.
“Are you sure you’re going to be ok? You could stay on my back and I can keep my eyes closed while I take you home.”
“Then you’re going to get hurt too,” Ladybug teased. “Don’t worry, it really is only a few blocks away. I’ll be okay, I promise.”
“Alright,” Chat Noir smiled. “Make sure you ice it and wrap it up with something. And keep it elevated.”
“I will.” Ladybug cupped his caw and leaned up to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for being so chivalrous and taking this poor little princess home.”
Chat Noir chuckled and placed a kiss on the backs of her knuckles. “It’s no trouble, you know that. But get some rest. If an akuma pops up tomorrow, I don’t know how well I’ll handle on my own.”
Ladybug twirled her hair. “Ah, what would you do without me?”
Chat Noir laughed and started backing up so that he could backtrack home. “Not much, you know that.” He jutted his thumb behind him. “Gotta get home, but I’ll see you later okay?”
Ladybug waved to him and stayed on the roof until Chat Noir was completely out of sight. She did her best to keep off her foot and swing on her yoyo as she looped around her neighborhood for a bit to make sure no one saw her sneak back home. She meandered for about five minutes before she landed on the roof of the bakery and slipped back into her bedroom.
Marinette detransformed when she landed on her bed and carefully climbed down from her loft so that she could grab her cellphone from her desk. She checked the four missed calls from Alya while she opened the latch to her room and asked her mom for some ice for the ankle, saying that she twisted coming down from her bed. If it was this late at night, she figured that whatever Alya was calling her about had to have been important so she called her back while she lifted her foot onto the desk to keep it elevated like Chat Noir had told her.
“ Marinette!!” Alya screamed on the second ring. “ Answer your damn phone!! ”
“I was downstairs doing something, geez,” Marinette frowned. “I’m here now. What’s up?”
“ Okay, don’t freak out, but do freak out, because you would not believe the pics that I took today while Chat Noir and Ladybug were out.”
Marinette rolled her eyes fondly. “Oh yeah, I heard about that. I saw them running around when I went for a walk today.”
“ It was ridiculously cool, I’ve never seen them just hang out all day like that. But that’s not even the best part .”
“Let me guess. It’s gonna get you a crap ton of followers and you’re going to be hailed as an investigative genius.”
“ Ugh, you know me so well girlie .”
Marinette laughed, but turned her head towards the latch when she heard her mother calling her down so that she could wrap an icepack to her ankle. “Hey, is it okay if you tell me about it tomorrow? I’ve gotta deal with something right now, but I’m all ears in the morning. I promise.”
“ Everything okay?”
Marinette winced. “I may….have possible twisted my ankle coming down the stairs to my bed?”
“ You’re a disaster,” Alya chuckled over the phone. “ Alright. Well, I’ll post the pics really late tonight so you’ll probably see them in the morning. But still call me, okay?”
“I will I promise. Night, Alya!”
Just as she expected, Marinette’s ankle was hardly anything at all and she woke up the next morning with her ankle feeling a little tender, but definitely well enough to walk on. Lucky for her. She wasn’t sure if her parents were going to let her live down the embarrassment of a self-inflicted injury that was the result of climbing down from a bed she’d been sleeping in for sixteen years.
She’d tried staying up the night before to wait for Alya’s blog to update, but knowing Alya she stayed up until three in the morning and didn’t update it until long after Marinette had fallen asleep. Marinette sat in front of her computer and pulled up her bookmarks, bracing herself for whatever silly photograph that Alya had decided to blow up today so that she could pretend to be excited about it when Alya called.
But the moment Marinette loaded the first page of the blog, she cursed loudly and yanked on her pigtails.
The first post — pinned to the top so that absolutely nobody would miss it — was a photoset of Chat Noir carrying Ladybug home last night, of Ladybug kissing Chat Noir on the cheek, and Chat Noir placing a kiss on the backs of her knuckles while the two of them had equally wide smiles on her face. Marinette didn’t really need to see the headline on the post to know what was going on, but it was kind of hard to miss ‘LADYNOIR CONFIRMED!!!!!’ in big block letters across the screen right underneath the pictures. She scrolled down to the short text that followed the pictures and sighed in frustration.
.
Hello my fellow Ladybloggers!
No your eyes are not deceiving you. Our patience has finally paid off and I can finally update you with some pretty monumental developments in the relationship between our two favorite superheroes. Now you can take a look at these pics and decide for yourselves, but if you ask me, that right up there is nothing short of L.O.V.E. Think these cute kids are dating? Maybe setting up for something more serious? Tell me in the comments and bask in the shipping feels! :D
XOXO Alya <3
.
“Alya, I’m going to kill you,” Marinette muttered. The comments were an absolute nightmare. Everyone was fixating on these photos that Alya must have grabbed on her camera phone when she was out last night. The theories were absolutely ridiculous. There were a couple of people gushing over their close friendship and partnership, and Marinette appreciated that at the very least. But the vast majority of commenters were all fixated on just one thing:
Ladybug and Chat Noir were very obviously in love and dating.
With a sick feeling in her stomach, Marinette checked Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and checked all of the Ladybug and Chat Noir tags. Sure enough, the photos were trending, and it had only been about nine hours since Alya had posted the photos. All the pictures were getting liked, retweeted, reblogged, and shared on literally every social media website that Marinette could find, and she was convinced that if the whole city of Paris hadn’t seen these pictures, they were going to before Marinette even had a chance to finish breakfast. Freaking Alya. Marinette was two seconds away from showing up to her doorstep and throttling her.
Marinette waited until Tikki finished up her cookie breakfast before transforming and swinging out a couple of blocks away until she was sitting on top of a flower shop. She pulled out her compact and made a call to Chat Noir, hoping that his kwami would be able to tell that she was trying to get through to him even if he wasn’t transformed. Luckily, he answered on her third call, looking like he was out of breath and running while he was talking.
“ Please tell me you saw the Ladyblog this morning.”
“How could I not?” Ladybug frowned. “It’s all over freaking Twitter too. She only posted them last night how is this even possible?”
“ I mean, if I’m being honest, with the way that Alya girl and all of her followers talk about the two of us, I’m surprised it’s not on the damn news.”
Ladybug groaned. “God this is a mess. What are we going to do about this, people are never going to leave us alone about this.”
“ I have no idea but this is super not cool,” Chat Noir insisted. “ Where are you? Can we meet? I sort of want to put this fire out as soon as possible if that’s all the same to you .”
“Trust me, we’re totally on the same page,” Ladybug grumbled. “I’m pretty sure we stopped by her house last Christmas when we had to deal with that Santa Claus akuma. Do you remember the address?”
“ Pretty sure. It’s a Sunday, she’ll probably be home. Wanna stop by for a quick visit?”
“Sounds good to me. Loop around to the Notre Dame and I’ll meet you there.”
It didn’t take them very long to head on over to Alya’s house, all the while ignoring all the teenagers who were pointing to them from the street and yelling about how cute a couple they made. They both landed on Alya’s balcony and saw her sitting on the couch of her living room alone and updating her blog. Chat Noir reached forward and knocked insistently on the glass door until Alya looked up and smiled brightly at the two heroes. She practically threw her computer off her lap and scrambled to the doors to unlock them and come out to her balcony to meet them. “Holy shit!” she screamed out as she bounced outside, pulling a coat on along the way. “What are you guys doing here? Did you see the piece I did on you guys?”
“Yeah,” Ladybug muttered. “About that….we need to talk.”
Chat Noir scratched the back of his head. “You. uh….wouldn’t mind taking that down, would you? You see, this is all actually just a huge misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding?” Alya echoed. “Was that not the two of you being all kissy and touchy last night?”
“I-I mean it was!” Ladybug amended. “But it’s not like that, honest.”
“We’re not dating,” Chat Noir laughed nervously. “Seriously. That’s just how the two of us are, you know?”
Alya crossed her arms and smirked. “Ah, I get it. You’re just really close . Right. Gotcha.”
“Why are you saying it like it’s a lie?” Ladybug frowned.
“I don’t mean anything by it, I swear,” Alya laughed. “Forget I said anything. I mean, I’m happy to take things down but it kind of already went viral. I can’t really control anyone who puts up mirrors of it on other websites. I mean, Lord, have you seen Reddit lately? That’s all anyone’s talking about today.”
“It’s only been nine hours!” Ladybug exclaimed.
“You really underestimate how much this city ships you two,” Alya snorted.
Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Perfect. Give it like two days and we’re going to be a meme.”
“We’re likely going to be a reaction image at best, my Lady,” Chat Noir assured her.
“Chat, you’re so not helping.”
Alya cleared her throat. “Hey, uh. You mind if I ask a question?”
“About what?” Chat Noir asked.
“Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve made theories about you two,” Alya pointed out. “Granted this one blew up like crazy and I totally didn’t see it coming, but Ladynoir has trended on the Ladyblog like four times in the past. I obviously don’t mean to make you guys uncomfortable, but I didn’t think this sort of thing would bother you.”
Ladybug big her lip and shared a gaze with Chat Noir. “Well….things might have….changed recently.”
“Changed?”
“It’s just that it’s particularly awkward this time around,” Chat Noir explained. “Trust us, we’re totally happy to let fans do their guessing and support us whatever way is appropriate. But this time it’s just toeing a really weird line for a couple of reasons.”
“Well, what’s the reason?” Alya asked. “If you want me to change the wording of the post I can try to do that.”
Ladybug rubbed her arm and sighed. “Well….the two of us are dating.”
Alya blinked a few times before her eyes widened. “Wait a minute you two are dating each other!?”
“No, no! Not each other!” Chat Noir amended quickly. “We’re both dating two different people is what we mean. She has a boyfriend and I have a girlfriend.”
Alya’s mouth formed into a small ‘o.’ “I….am seeing the issue.”
“Don’t get us wrong it’s not like our partners know who we are, but it’s still just really awkward for the two of us, that’s all,” Ladybug explained. “It’d put our minds at ease if you could just take them down and stay on the safe side.”
“Shit,” Alya sighed. “I’m so sorry. I mean, like I said, I have no problems taking the pictures down and correcting the post but it’s really too late for that. People already latched onto this and there are going to be rumors about all of this spreading around to other blogs no matter what I say.”
“I hate the Internet,” Chat Noir sighed.
“Well, is there anything else we can do? You’re the social media expert!”
Alya drummed her fingers against her pursed lips as she paced around the balcony. “Well, there’s one thing we could do. But it’s a little complicated and it’s going to take some effort from the two of you.”
“Well what is it?” Ladybug urged.
Alya shrugged. “Well, how else do you counter a celebrity hook up? Follow it up with a celebrity break up.”
Chat Noir shook his head. “Hold on a second, you want us to break up?”
“That’s right,” Alya grinned. “Well, a fake break up technically. Since apparently you two aren’t dating which, oh my God, I’m still really freaking out about that because are you sure? Like totally positive?”
Ladybug glared. “No, actually, some days I wake up and I conveniently forget my boyfriend. Tends to happen quite a bit.”
“Alright, alright, I get it,” Alya amended. “Totally platonic, nothing going on, I screwed up and jumped to conclusions. I have learned my lesson.”
“I mean, that would work,” Chat Noir reasoned. “The fake break up, I mean. Might be a bit abrupt but hey! Let everyone else theorize about that.”
“Ugh, alright. I guess that’s our best option at the moment,” Ladybug said.
“It shouldn’t be too complicated,” Alya promised. “If I could get it on video and post it on the blog as solid proof, that’d be our best bet. All the rumors drop, you two are strictly friends and partners, and everything ends happily.”
Chat Noir raised his hand. “Uh, slight problem. Public break-ups are not one of my areas of expertise.”
“Oh don’t you two even sweat that part. Consider me your unofficial publicist,” Alya winked. “If it’s a fake break up you’re looking for I can orchestrate one no problem! Besides, consider this an apology for getting you two into this mess in the first place. I insist.”
Ladybug smiled. “I appreciate that. Although, if you don’t mind my asking, exactly what did you have in mind in terms of a break up?”
Alya clasped her hands under her chin and smiled innocently at the two of them. “Oh my darling heroes of Paris, I’m so glad you asked.”