Chapter Text
Ladybug sat on the roof of the Palais Garnier waiting for Chat Noir to arrive for patrol. She was in the second minute of her deep breathing exercises when her yo-yo chimed with an incoming message.
Her eyes flew open to read Alya’s response. Unsatisfied with what it said, Ladybug chewed her lip as she thought about how to answer.
Marinette was having a crisis. Exactly 36 minutes earlier, she had received a text message from Adrien Agreste. The message read:
Hey Marinette! I have a photo shoot scheduled for Saturday and I just spoke to Père. He said it’s okay if you want to come along! Are you still interested?
In her panic, Marinette had screenshot the message and forwarded it to Alya, who told her to respond immediately and accept. Marinette, however, knew it was better to wait to respond so that she didn’t look desperate. Alya’s disagreement had continued past the time she needed to leave for patrol, so she was continuing the conversation from the rooftops.
I want him to think I’m cool and I have a life
Answering in a minute does not show him that at all
Ladybug pressed the M icon at the top of her screen and sent both messages.
A few months ago, she and Chat had been playing around with the settings on their communicators when they discovered this capability. Chat was hoping to find a way to connect to Wi-Fi so he could start an official Chat Noir Twitter, but instead found a way to add another phone number to send and receive calls and messages. She had jumped at the chance to merge her two phones, but Chat didn’t.
“Honestly, m’lady, I love that you are the only one who can contact me when I’m transformed,” he had said with a wink.
Marinette had rolled her eyes and immediately added her civilian phone number. It made it a lot easier to cover herself and back up her excuses if she could contact Alya and her parents when transformed. All she had to do was be careful to choose the correct sender - Marinette, not Ladybug - when contacting them. Tikki had been nervous about the potential for making a mistake but Marinette knew better. Tikki was wise, but she was also old, and knew nothing about technology.
Marinette grew up with phones, computers, and tablets. She had this handled.
Alya had responded:
It’s been what, a half hour? That’s long enough M
Ladybug rolled her eyes, but had to admit that Alya was right.
Chat Noir touched down beside her as she was typing her response to Adrien.
“One second, Chat. I’m making plans for the weekend.”
Chat groaned, and sat down beside her. “See this was why I didn’t like this, Ladybug. I’m trying to figure out my weekend plans too but I left my phone at home and will see later if my friend answered.”
Ladybug refused to look at him until she finished typing. “That’s good for you, Chat.”
Hey Adrien!!! I’d love to come to the shoot!! x
She sent it to Alya to make sure it sounded casual enough before copying it into a new message to Adrien. Alya’s response to add a kissing emoji went unacknowledged.
Ladybug reread the message twice to make sure there were no spelling errors. She made sure there were a different number of exclamation marks after each sentence so Adrien didn’t think she was strange or overenthusiastic.
Once she was sure it was perfect, she looked up at Chat and pressed send.
“Done!” she announced with a smile.
Despite his exasperation, Chat smiled back. “Excited for those plans?”
“Yes!” Now that she had finally sent the message, Ladybug could feel the excitement overriding the anxiety. “Oh, Chat, this is going to be amazing! I’ve literally dreamed of this happening but didn’t think it ever actually would!”
Chat’s smile faded. “Ladybug, do you have a date?”
Ladybug’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? No!” Then she thought about it. “Well, I guess it could maybe be thought of as a date...” She trailed off, the anxiety coming back. She grabbed hold of Chat’s arm and squeezed it tight. “Oh gosh, Chat, do you think he thinks it’s a date?!”
He studied her closely, oddly serious. “Would that make you happy?”
Ladybug nodded rapidly. “Very happy.”
“Well in that case,” Chat said, “I hope he does think it’s a date.” At Ladybug’s surprised look, he chuckled. “I just want you to be happy, LB.” Ladybug felt herself warm up, a blush dusting her cheeks. Chat’s smile turned mischievous. “Besides, I know we’re endgame. This will be a fun story to tell our grandkids one day.”
Ladybug rolled her eyes and shoved him. “Come on you crazy cat.” She pushed herself off the roof to stand, tossing out her yo-yo and pulling the string taunt. “Race you to L’Arc de Triumph.”
~~~
Chat Noir dove through his bedroom window, releasing his transformation as he went and landing in a forward roll on the floor. Plagg spiraled out of his ring, moaning for cheese. Adrien picked himself up and walked to the bed, collapsing on his back.
He still had to complete a chemistry worksheet, shower, and change before going to sleep, but he could afford to rest for a few minutes. He picked up his phone from where it was charging on his nightstand and scrolled through his notifications.
There were a number of unread text messages, but he looked for Marinette’s name first. Adrien was disappointed to see that she hadn’t responded to him yet. He was really hoping that she would come this Saturday to his photo shoot.
He went to respond to Nino when he noticed one new message from a number he didn’t recognize. In fact it wasn’t a normal number at all.
0000M0000C0000
SMS message
Convinced that it was a scam or robo-message, Adrien ignored it in favor of answering Nino.
After sending a message, he swiped out of Nino’s thread, intending to check and make sure his message to Marinette went through. On the main page of his message app, however, he could read the beginning of the message from the unknown number.
0000M0000C0000
Hey Adrien!!! I’d love to come to...
Adrien looked at it, chewing his lip as he decided what to do. It was clearly from someone who knew his name, but a scam could have found that out. If it was a scam, it would be better to ignore it. But it could also be something important, or something Nathalie or Père scheduled that he would get into trouble for ignoring.
Deciding the curiously would kill him if he didn’t look, Adrien opened the message.
Hey Adrien!!! I’d love to come to the shoot!! x
The message sounded like it came from Marinette. He was expecting a response from her about a photo shoot, and she often signed her messages with an x.
But unless Marinette bought a new phone with an unconventional number, it couldn’t have been from her.
Something about the number was bothering him, and he took another look.
It wasn’t so much a number as a string of zeros and two letters. He doubted it was coming from a phone. Maybe an IP address? Or an e-mail? One of his fathers’ colleagues had tried to send an e-mail to his phone number and it came out strange.
Deciding to find that old message, Adrien scrolled back through his thread, watching names pass by before something caught his attention.
0000M0000D0000
He pressed it. It was a series of unanswered messages, but Adrien recognized them all. They were reminders he had sent himself: things he had to do before going to bed, homework that was due the next day, people he was supposed to reply to. But he had sent them all from Chat Noir’s baton communicator.
Adrien’s heart was pounding, but the conclusion he was jumping to couldn’t possibly be correct.
“Plagg,” he called out, and the kwami appeared with a wedge of Camembert clutched in his paws. “Can you take a look at this?”
Plagg floated over, and Adrien switched back to the message from 0000M0000C0000.
“Could this be from Ladybug?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.
Plagg glanced at the screen and shrugged. “You know I don’t understand all of your computer stuff,” he whined.
Adrien fiddled with his phone, trying to decide what to do. He finally gave in to his impulses.
“Plagg, claws out!”
Chat Noir sat on his bed, cross-legged, and took out his baton. He opened the messaging app. There were only six conversations: Ladybug, Queen Bee, Carapace, Rena Rouge, his cell phone, and the one time he tried to message Hawkmoth only to discover that he had deactivated that feature.
He clicked on Ladybug’s. There were a series of important messages about akumas and patrols, jokes, and silly memes usually sent by Chat. He navigated to her contact card.
Her face smiled out at him, information below the photo.
Ladybug Miraculous
0000M0000C0000
Chat stopped breathing.
He held his phone up beside the baton and compared the numbers to make sure they were exactly the same. They were.
He released his transformation with an exhale, his baton disintegrating from his hands. Adrien was left sitting on his bed, phone in one hand and frustrated kwami landing in the other.
“What was that for?” Plagg asked.
Adrien decided it would be best to logically present the data he had accumulated. “I got a message from a strange number, that I now can see is actually Ladybug’s yo-yo. The message was addressed to Adrien, which means that Ladybug knows me as Adrien. It was about coming to my photo shoot, and only Marinette would be sending me a message about a photo shoot.”
Plagg blinked up at him. “So?”
“So,” Adrien echoed, his voice calm and measured, “Marinette is Ladybug.”
They both let that statement sit between them for a moment. Then Adrien started hyperventilating.
“Marinette is Ladybug! How didn’t I notice that before? It’s so obvious! Ladybug is Marinette!” Adrien dumped Plagg unceremoniously onto his bedspread and leapt up, pacing the length of the room.
“So Ladybug sends a text to Adrien, but she thinks that she is Marinette sending a text to Adrien. But she isn’t, she’s actually Ladybug who is also Marinette who is texting Adrien who she doesn’t know is actually Chat Noir and was right next to her at the time.”
Plagg watched him. “Sounds about right.”
Adrien ignored him. “Ladybug isn’t interested in going out with Chat Noir, but Ladybug who is Marinette said that she wants the guy she was texting to think of their plans as a date. And Ladybug was texting Adrien.”
Adrien turned to Plagg, his hands tugging at his hair. “Which means Marinette wants to date Adrien, if I haven’t lost track,” Plagg finished for him.
Having reached the windows, Adrien rested his back against one and slid down to sit on the floor. “Which means Ladybug wants to date Chat Noir,” he said, a smile blooming on his face. “She just doesn’t know it yet.”
Adrien started laughing, and found he couldn’t stop. Now that the shock had worn off and the information was starting to sink in, he felt a little delusional. This couldn’t actually have happened, could it?
Plagg shook his head. “How are you going to tell her?”
Adrien thought about it, and suddenly a grin spread across his face. “This photo shoot is going to be fun.”