Chapter Text
It's honestly an accident.
Yes, it's technically Nino's fault, but it really is an accident.
It's not even like they haven't thought of it before. This time, for some reason, it just strikes them differently- it strikes them just right.
It starts with an akuma club.
"Babe," Alya says when he brings it up. "That's not most of the class. That's all of the class. That's Chloe."
Nino shrugs, undeterred. "That makes it even more important. We should be able to hang out and talk about what it was like, you know? Besides, it isn't the whole class. Adrien hasn't been akumatized yet."
Alya kind of hates the way everyone has taken to adding 'yet' when discussing the (fewer and fewer) people who haven't been akumatized, but, well, they aren't wrong. "Okay, so it's everyone but him- well, him and Marinette."
Nino makes a face. "Yeah... actually, you know, I kind of hate to make a club and have them be the only two that can't join? Especially Adrien, dude's been left out enough in his life."
"I think he can live with being left out of being akumatized," Alya says dryly.
Kim, who's been not-so-subtly eavesdropping, leans under their table- Adrien and Marinette actually aren't here right now, having both been called away shortly before the current akuma attack that has everyone holed up in the library. Alya and Nino are crushed together under one table, but Alix and Kim have been cheerfully crawling around between everyone's hiding places rather than doing the sensible thing and staying put.
It's kind of a surprise more of their class doesn't try to rush towards akuma. Nino figures he has enough to do restraining Alya; honestly, if Kim and Alix decide they want to go out and join the fight, he's wishing them luck and getting out of their way.
"They could be honorary members of the akuma club," Kim offers eagerly. "I mean, it's everyone else, and Marinette and Adrien are both cool. I don't wanna leave them out."
Crawling after him and just about crushing Nino- there is not enough room under this table for four people when one of them is Kim- Alix nods. "Yeah! Oh!" She lights up. "They could be Ladybug and Chat Noir!"
Alya promptly chokes on nothing. Nino stares wide-eyed at the wall, trying not to think about that too hard.
"Yeah!" Kim says, enthusiastic. "We've got all these akuma, right? Someone should represent our superheroes."
It's only minutes after that the all-clear bell rings (they'd added an all-clear bell after around the school's fifth akuma), so Nino and Alya don't contribute much, opting just to listen to Kim and Alix egg each other on. The two move on pretty quickly from akuma club to trying to wrestle each other (yet another thing there isn't room for under here, but that doesn't stop them).
Their class scrambles out of cover to head back to class (or home, in some cases- it's fairly close to the end of the day, people will frequently use akuma attacks as an excuse to leave, and the school has given up on stopping them). Nino and Alya don't move even when Kim and Alix do. Finally they're the only two people left in the library.
"Nino," Alya says.
"No," Nino says.
"Nino."
"No."
"Nino," she says again, reaching towards him. He catches her hand and pulls her closer. "Think about it-"
"I did! I thought about it, and then I stopped thinking about, because now I'm done thinking about it forever!" Nino stares resolutely ahead, because he knows better than to look at Alya's expression.
"But-"
"No."
She huffs and stays silent.
For about a minute.
"But what if-"
"They're not! I refuse, Al, they're not!"
"Sure," Alya says. "So where were they during this attack? Where are they during most attacks?"
Nino scowls. "My boy forgot something at home again. One of them is more than enough, I am deffo not responsible for yours."
"Oh, please, like I'm remotely capable of keeping track of Marinette," Alya groans. "She had to run home again too. Urgently. Again. Right before an attack. Again."
"It's a coincidence!"
"It's a series of coincidences! How many do you need to have before you start thinking it's not a coincidence, it's a pattern?" Alya thumps him lightly on the back of the head.
Neither of them says anything for a little bit.
Finally, Nino says, defeated, "Do you think they know?"
Alya snorts. "Have you met them?"
"Should... should we tell them?"
"I thought it was a coincidence?" Alya says smugly.
"Fine! Fine, it's... it could be," Nino mutters.
She sighs too and leans into him. "But I don't think we should say anything. We could be wrong, I mean, not likely but we could be. But also we should give them a chance to figure it out."
"Alya," Nino says. "Have you met them?"
"...maybe we should set a time limit."
So that's how it starts. Nino and Alya agree not to mention their suspicions (their deductions, according to Alya; their delusions, according to Nino) to anyone. They shake on it.
And then they start teasing their friends mercilessly, because what good is it if they can't make the best of this?
While they're waiting for class to start (Adrien and Marinette were both miraculously early, which wouldn't be so suspicious if the last akuma attack hadn't been the day before) Alya makes a point of leaning over enough to be well in Adrien's earshot when she says, "So Marinette! You've met Chat Noir a couple times, right? What's he like? Is he really cool, or is he secretly seriously lame?" She leans in further, planting her elbow obnoxiously on Nino's shoulder, and says, "Does he make puns as bad as some of Adrien's?"
Nino snorts and turns towards them, sending Alya's elbow flying. She resettles it as soon as he's turned towards them. "No way. All of Adrien's jokes are terrible."
Adrien bares his teeth at Nino. (Alya immediately tries to stare a hole in Nino's head. He ignores her). "Are not. You're just jealous."
Marinette mumbles something completely unintelligible, probably about how she's sure Adrien's puns are fine.
Rolling his eyes, Nino says, "Sure, dude. Wanna share the one you texted me last night? At two in the freaking morning, for some godforsaken reason?"
"It's a good joke," Adrien defends himself weakly.
"It's not," Nino says. "Also? I was asleep!"
"No you weren't," Alya tells him.
"Not the point! Adrien, tell your damn joke!"
"Okay, okay!" Adrien clears his throat. "So a thief tries to steal painting from the Louvre, but he gets caught when his van runs out of gas. They ask him what he has to say for himself and he says, 'I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh, but I still tried because I had nothing Toulouse."
For a moment there's dead silence.
Then Alya says, fervently, "I hate you."
Marinette's giggling.
"I hate you so much, Agreste, I hate that you made me listen to that with my own two ears and- oh, god, I think you killed Marinette."
Marinette has graduated from giggling to full on gasping laughter. "That's fantastic," she groans. "That's awful. It's so awful it's fantastic."
Grinning, Adrien says, "I know!"
"So, is he better or worse than Chat Noir?" Alya asks, leaning back again. Nino immediately rubs his sore shoulder and gives her a hurt look. "Spill, girl."
"I'm not, uh, sure?" Marinette's eyes are darting everywhere but at her friends. "I mean, uh, I, he d-didn't pun much when I met him I don't think?" Her voice raises in obvious question towards the end.
Nino is going to die of secondhand embarrassment one day.
"Seriously?" Alya exclaims. "He puns every battle! There's a whole section of the Ladyblog devoted to it!"
"There is?" Adrien says, startled, but Alya steamrolls right over him.
"Come on, you have to remember something he said, out with it!" Alya challenges, a slightly manic gleam in her eye, and Nino catches on. If Marinette's been hearing Chat Noir's puns in person every day, after all, there's no way she's going to remember what he said when, and even Adrien is going to notice if she's heard a joke he's only told Ladybug.
Probably.
"I-" Marinette starts, and then there's screaming from outside.
Nino definitely did not imagine the relief that flashed through their friend's eyes.
"I just remembered I left something in my gym bag," Adrien says in a rush, eyes darting to the door.
"Me too, I'll come with you!" Marinette squeaks, before having a coughing fit. "I-I mean, in my gym. Bag. Left my gym in my bag in the locker girl room, sorry I have to go!"
They almost trip over each other on their way out the door. Marinette doesn't even notice, too busy speeding away down the hallway.
In the opposite direction from the locker rooms.
Staring after them, Alya says, "How did we not know this already?"
"To be fair," Nino says, "I think there's magic involved. Because man, are they terrible at this."
If there's an akuma this close the school probably isn't safe, and heading for the front doors has historically proven to be a bad idea, so while their classmates file resignedly out of the door (Max and Markov, Sabrina and Chloe) or take shelter beneath their desks (Ivan, who doesn't appear to care very much about attacks anymore, and Mylene, who does care about staying with Ivan, and Nathaniel, who simply slides under his desk with his sketchbook without pausing in his drawing) or join the group in the corner trying to get video of the fight on their tablets (Kim, Alix, Rose and Juleka, and Alya is personally offended that they aren't waiting for the Ladyblog), Alya and Nino themselves go out the window.
Nino's honestly not sure anymore where their teachers go during an akuma attack. He's pretty sure Mme. Mendeleiev just up and leaves when she hears the alarm, and he thinks Mme. Bustier is waiting for the Ladyblog to update with information on the fight. The teacher glances around to make sure the room is safe, but she also makes no attempt to stop any of the scattering students from leaving. By now most of the population of Paris is more than used to akuma attacks and everyone's developed their own coping mechanisms.
Nino is not thrilled that most of their own coping mechanisms seem to involve running into danger.
"We're on the second floor," Nino says, when they're halfway down. "Where did you learn to do this anyway, double oh seven?"
Alya shrugs, carefully, dropping down to catch a ledge. "Marinette. She knows a bunch of ways to sneak out of her room." She reaches the ground and reaches up to give Nino a hand. "How about you?"
"Adrien," he admits with a groan. "Same reason." He pauses. "Real and invented both, I think."
"Well," Alya sighs. "You know what his dad's like. I guess in your defense, it's totally natural to think Adrien's been getting a lot of practice at sneaking out. Marinette should have had me a little more suspicious- her parents are super reasonable, and it's not like she doesn't have a skylight to climb in and out of."
There's a longer pause from both of them.
"We are so, so dumb," Nino says at last.
Alya sighs again and tugs him after her as she breaks into a run. "Yeah, yeah we are. Come on, let's go catch up to the fight."
"No!" Nino yelps, tripping after her. "No, come on, Alya, the whole point of sneaking out was to avoid the akuma!"
"Maybe for you it was!" Alya shoots back, laughing. "I need to go get some good footage, babe!" She turns back to him without stopping and winks. "Besides. We already knew Ladybug and Chat Noir will keep us safe; now it's just more likely."
"Okay, now you're being mean," Nino pants. "And stupid! Alya, we can't distract them!"
"So we hide! We can bug them after the fight's over!" She flashes him a grin even as they fling themselves under a sideways car- they've already come up on the edge of the battle.
"Was that a pun? Alya, was that a goddamn pun?" Nino demands, throwing himself flat and flinching as another car goes flying past them. "Why are we out here!"
"Shut up and get me a good angle!" Alya pops up over the edge of the car, phone up and ready to record, and immediately drops right back down beside him as most of a streetlight goes flying over their hiding spot.
"How about a better hiding place instead?" Nino gasps, grabbing her and rolling out from behind the car to find a nearby alleyway.
"How is this better?" Alya demands, scouring the alley for a good vantage point. Before Nino can grab her again she's darting up a fire escape.
"What are you doing!" Nino howls, running after her, because she's going to get killed, and he's pretty sure right now his other two best friends are currently fighting someone who's throwing cars and bits of city infrastructure around, and how is this his life. "Why are you like this!"
Luckily for Nino- and oh man, does he hate that this is what constitutes good luck in his life now- Ladybug and Chat Noir's plan involves, for some reason, destroying the fire escape that's Alya's only (easy) way up and down from the roof. Between that and the fact that the roof actually is a fantastic vantage point, they spend the rest of the battle up there, recording with Alya providing delighted running commentary- which, he notices with no small amount of relief, doesn't come anywhere near speculation about secret identities. He hadn't really thought she'd go there, knowing what they do now (sure they don't have proof yet but- come on), but Alya forgets herself in her determination to know things sometimes.
"And that's it, Paris," Alya announces as the ladybugs shower their building in light, rebuilding the shattered fire escape. "Another successful save by Ladybug and Chat Noir. Thank you for following developments on the Ladyblog, but your intrepid reporter had better get back before she's missed!" She ends the recording.
"So," Nino says. "Think we'll beat them back?"
Alya snorts. "I think one of the things that got thrown past us was Chat Noir. They'd better be taking their time, honestly."
Nino's silent, thinking about that.
"Babe?" Alya says, concerned now.
"Alya," he says. "If we're right... then that means Adrien got thrown past us. I mean. He literally got picked up and thrown several city blocks past us."
Alya's face falls. "Yeah. It does. And Marinette's getting hurt, too." She hesitates, then sets down her phone and pulls her knees up to her chest. "Nino... Chat Noir is kind of prone to..."
"He throws himself in front of attacks," Nino mutters, sitting down next to her and leaning against his friend. Alya wraps one arm around him instead. "All the damn time."
"We need to work on that boy's self esteem," Alya sighs, staring out across the rooftops without really seeing them. "And here I've thought it was Marinette I needed to worry about."
"Oh, you should definitely worry about her too," Nino tells her. "Because I love them both, but worrying about Adrien alone is going to kill me. Running around Paris in spandex and leather is not a good substitute for therapy."
Alya frowns at him and Nino shrugs. "His dad sucks, Alya."
"Okay, yeah, his dad's a massive dick," Alya agrees. "But babe, do you have any idea how often Chat Noir pulls off the whole heroic sacrifice deal? I don't care how much Miraculous Cure fixes, that's not healthy. Nino, I'm pretty sure he's been dead before!"
"You've been dead before," Nino reminds her. "I've been dead before. Most of the city drowned that one time." He pauses. "When did our lives get this weird?"
"Hawkmoth's fault?" Alya suggested, not joking for once, though they- and the rest of their class- had by now taken to blaming Hawkmoth for everything up to and including obvious acts of nature. (In their defense, the man has been indirectly responsible for a few acts of nature).
"Hawkmoth's fault," Nino agrees. "Adrien's shitty self-esteem, though? That's all on his shitty dad."
"We should probably get back to school," Alya says reluctantly, but she makes no move to get up.
"Alya," Nino says, sounding like the words are being dragged out of him. "If they're this obvious, and it's just the magic that kept us from noticing before... why would the magic drop us like this?"
Alya's silent, thinking about Adrien being thrown past them. All the times Marinette's been late or exhausted or both. All the times Chat Noir's run to take a hit to protect Ladybug. How much closer some of the recent fights have been. "They're in trouble, aren't they."
"Yeah." Nino hugs her back. "Yeah, I think they are."
They don't beat their friends back to school, but only because they don't go back to school, and they find out later that neither do Adrien or Marinette. That's not actually that suspicious- their school has been pretty accommodating with schedules due to its abnormally high number of akuma events. That abnormally high number finally makes sense now, because Alya's always been reasonably sure that magic calls to magic; if they have both Ladybug and Chat Noir in their class it must make them a magnet for trouble. If anyone has any other magic, and frankly Alya's not going to rule that out, they're even more of a target.
They talk about going to Alya's, but with her sisters there's no privacy, and that same lack of privacy applies to Nino's place as well so they opt to stay on the roof after all and claim the akuma attack stranded them (not technically a lie, and it's not like their friends can call them out on it) so that they can make plans.
After all, their friends need them.
The next day, when they've miraculously managed to hold onto both their best friends all the way through school, and even gotten them halfway to the bakery for a study group- they've even got Adrien on board- there's another akuma alert.
"Are they getting closer together?" Nino asks, disbelieving, listening to panicked screams from down the street and not bothering to run. He knows his girlfriend is going to run towards the fight. He knows his best friends are going to run towards the fight. As this point, he figures he might as well give in to fate.
"I have to go, right now, immediately, for unrelated reasons," Marinette says faintly, staring at the worryingly large clouds of smoke now trailing above buildings. Nino really hopes it's not another fire akuma. He really hates fire akuma.
"Me too," Adrien says. "Unrelated. Immediate. Uh, bye?"
And then they both race off in different directions.
"Well," Alya says. "Thank god for magic?"
"No," Nino says. "No, you know what, that's still unacceptable. How did we never notice them being this weird?"
"We met them this year," Alya reminds him. "Ladybug and Chat Noir showed up at literally the same time. They've never not been weird around us."
"Don't make me think about them being superheroes as long as we've known them," Nino pleads. "My brain has been hurt enough recently. And I already knew Marinette anyway!"
"She always this weird?"
Nino scowls. "Well, kind of. I think she used to be on time for stuff, but I honestly can't remember anymore."
"And I honestly don't know if that's your memory or the magic at work," Alya tells him.