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“Where’s…Adrien?” Marinette pants when she’s tumbled into her seat, only barely on time for school which, to be fair, is a step up from being outright late. But there’s no familiar blond head in front of her!
“Home sick,” Nino says. “Poor dude’s got a nasty cold.”
“You reckon his dad’ll let him rest and recover?” Alya says, making a face. “Or is he just gonna learn at home?”
“Probably that one,” Nino says.
“Ugh. He’s got the worst dad, I swear. My mum would tie me to the bed with blankets and force-feed me homemade chicken soup.”
Ms Bustier clears her throat, cutting the conversation short. But Marinette can’t concentrate. All she can think about is poor, sick Adrien, and how she should maybe swing by later that night before patrol with a box of delicious baked goods…but no, she can’t. Between her love for Adrien and the feelings for Chat Noir that she’s trying to shove a lid on, it’s the last thing her tangled heart needs, not to mention that she’d probably end up a flustered mess like when she’d given Adrien the Snake Miraculous and then he’ll think she’s totally uncool and won’t want to talk to her and she’ll have blown her relationship with him on both sides of the mask and –
Marinette shakes her head with a soft groan and forces herself to pay attention to the lesson. Dwelling on it won’t do anything except send her brain spiralling, which is never a good time for her.
Once school’s over, she distracts herself until patrol time making a get well soon card for Adrien, even though she probably won’t have the guts to even sign it, let alone deliver it. Besides, the universe will probably kick her in the gut if she does; after all, she’d forgotten to sign her Valentine, and she’d signed Adrien’s birthday present, but her signature had somehow vanished. Tikki perches on her shoulder, munching on a cookie while Marinette sticks a scarlet heart to the front of the pink card and then sprinkles a touch of pink glitter on it.
“What do I even write?” she says when she opens it. “Dear Adrien, get well soon! Love, Marinette.” She groans and thumps her head on her desk. “No! That’s the most generic message ever! And “love”? Gah! That’s too – too – coupley!”
“I thought you wanted to be a couple,” Tikki teases.
“Yeah, but not through a get-well card when he’s sick!” Marinette says. “Ugh, this is a disaster!”
“Well, it’s almost time for patrol,” Tikki says. “Why not head out a little earlier to clear your head? Then you can work on your card when you get home!”
Marinette exhales and lets her shoulders slump. “You’re right, Tikki,” she says. “I’m freaking out over nothing!”
“Hey, I didn’t say that!”
“Yeah, yeah. Tikki, spots on!”
As Ladybug, all her worries seem to melt away once she’s swinging through the sea of lights that make up Paris. Although she could make it to the Eiffel Tower in less than a minute, she decides to take the scenic route and keeps a nice, relaxed pace through the city. At one point, she even closes her eyes and lets herself plummet, laughing at how the wind whips through her hair and howls in her ears, then opens her eyes and throws her yo-yo just in time to stop herself from crashing into the ground.
Even though she’s early, Chat Noir is already at the Tower when Ladybug lands on the platform at the tip, her pigtails a windblown mess and her cheeks flushed warm with blood. He gives her his signature smirk, although it’s lopsided.
“Milady!” He lets out a giggle. “Get it! Because you’re a ladybug! You’re milady…bug!” He squints at her and adds, “You don’t look like a bug, though. Your eyes are…” He laughs again. “Pretty!”
“Uh…” Ladybug lets her yo-yo swing. “Is there an akuma? Did you get hit?”
“What! Noooo! No akuma!” Chat Noir lets himself fall onto his back. “I’m happy, miladybug. Bugaboo. Angel. The light of my life!”
Her brow furrowed, Ladybug edges towards her oddly-behaving partner and nudges him with her toes. He giggles again and looks up at her with glazed green eyes.
“Okay, what happened?” she says, crossing her arms. “What did you do?”
“I’m sick!” Chat Noir beams as though Ladybug had just revealed her identity to him. “I have a coooold. But I’m so hot!” He flexes his biceps and says, “In more ways than one, miladybug!”
“God help me,” Ladybug mutters. “What kind of cold could you possibly have that would make you like this?”
“It’s not my cold!” Chat Noir winks. “It’s – it’s the meds! I took cold tablets!” He frowns and adds, “Why are they called cold tablets if they’re not cold? You don’t keep them in the fridge. Maybe you should, though!” He gasps and covers his mouth. “I’ve found the secret, miladybug! I’ll cure colds! Maybe I shouldn’t be a ps – a physicist. I’ll be a biologist!”
So, Chat Noir wants to be a physicist? Huh. Adrien likes physics too.
“A bi-ologist!” Chat Noir says with a rasping laugh. “Because I’m bi! Geddit, miladybug? And I’m bilingual! I’m learning Mandarin!” He gasps. “Are you bi too? Are we balanced? You on this side –” He holds his left hand out. “And me on this side!” He holds out his right hand. “For justice! Lady Justice! Milady Justice!”
“Okay, okay, no patrol for you tonight, kitty,” Ladybug sighs, sitting cross-legged next to him. He immediately shuffles over and rests his head in her lap, and a deep sound rumbles deep in his chest. “Did you just purr?”
“Mm-hmm!” Chat Noir sighs and nestles his head further in her lap. “Cats purr when they’re happy. And you make me happy, miladybug. You’re my – my catnip! I can’t get enough of you!” He twirls his finger near his temple and says, “You make me gaga when you’re around!”
Despite her best efforts, Ladybug can’t stop a giggle from escaping her. It seems that cold and flu medication sends Chat Noir high as a kite and removes any filter he might have. This could be problematic, although she can’t quite put her finger on why because even without a filter, he shouldn’t just up and spill his secret identity.
Right?
“Are you an angel, miladybug?” Chat Noir sighs. “You’re glowing.”
“That’s just the city lights, silly,” Ladybug says and boops his nose. He purrs louder in response.
“Your eyes are so pretty,” he says. “So – so – blue! Just like my friend.”
Alarm bells start to sound in Ladybug’s head. “Chat –”
“Marinette!” Chat Noir blurts out. Ladybug freezes. “You know Marinette, right? Of course you do! You told me to protect her from Nathanieeeel.” He sighs again and says, “Can I tell you a secret, miladybug?”
“Um, I don’t think –”
“I think I like Marinette. She’s so prettyyyy…and she’s always standing up – everyone stands up! No one can sit forever! But she stands up strongly. And she tells off Chloe. I wish I could be as cool as her.”
“Chat, I think you need to shut up now,” Ladybug says, trying to extract Chat Noir from her lap while also trying to deal with the warmth pooling in her gut at his words. Rather than listen to her, however, he utters the words that knock her entire worldview off its axis.
“She’s so beautiful when she’s positive,” Chat Noir says with a strong purr. “She’s the only person in my class who’s never touched a pretty black butterfly, apart from me.” He wrinkles his nose. “Wait, no, they’re ugly. Hawkmoth is ugly. But not Marinette! She’s beautiful. I’m used to disappointment. But she’s strong. Of course she is. She’s a baker’s daughter!” His eyes unfocus. “I wonder if she could carry me like a sack of flour.”
Ice explodes in Ladybug’s stomach, coating her insides. She’s the only other person apart from him that hasn’t been akumatised in their class? But – no, that can’t be – the only other person in Ms Bustier’s class who hasn’t been akumatised is…
Something behind Chat Noir’s mask seems to shift. The blond hair and green eyes are no longer unfamiliar. Now they’re – now it’s Adrien looking out at her with his drug-glazed eyes and lopsided grin –
No. Way. She’s been rejecting her crush all this time for herself! He’s starting to fall for her civilian identity, and he never would’ve let this slip if he’d known it was her behind the mask, drugged or not! And now he’s just gone and blurted it all out to her and outed his identity! What the heck is she supposed to do?
A soft snore snaps her out of her panicked thoughts. Chat Noir has dozed off in her lap, curled up like a cat and letting out little purring snores with each exhale. Before she realises what she’s doing, her fingers are carding through his hair, bright scarlet against soft gold like a rose on sea sand. Okay. She just has to be rational about this. She needs to talk to someone before she has her looming meltdown.
“Spots off,” she whispers. Pink sparkles wash over her, dissolving the ladybug suit and freeing Tikki. The kwami gasps, her eyes bulging as she takes in the scene before her.
“It’s okay,” Marinette says softly, still combing her fingers through his hair. “Adrien’s asleep.”
“Ad – oh.” Tikki’s large blue eyes are fixed on Chat Noir. “You know. How?”
“He’s high on cold meds,” Marinette says. “He let a few things slip. Things I couldn’t just brush off. Like how we’re the only two people in our class who haven’t been akumatised.”
“That would do it,” Tikki sighs. She darts into Marinette’s purse and emerges with a macaron, devouring half of it in one bite. “And you’re not…upset? Freaking out?’
“Oh, I’m about two seconds from losing my mind,” Marinette says rather evenly, still stroking her kitty’s hair. “I think it’s just a delayed reaction. And I don’t want to wake him up or freak out Paris and make them think there’s an akuma.”
“Poor Adrien.” Tikki darts down to press a tiny kiss to Chat Noir’s forehead.
“It makes sense now,” Marinette says. “Why Chat’s so…Chat. I mean, his timing could use some work, but of course he’s going to be that open when he’s Chat.”
“It’s not like he’s a different person as Chat than as Adrien,” Tikki says.
“Yeah, I know that,” Marinette says. She sighs and leans down to follow Tikki’s example and kiss Chat Noir on the forehead. The inevitable meltdown in the next few hours as she tries to process this is going to be huge. “Adrien has his dorky moments. How did I not see it before? He literally told me it was a ‘knightmare’ after Darkblade was defeated! And you knew!”
“Of course I knew,” Tikki says. “I saw him when you were facing Dark Owl. But are you really upset that I didn’t tell you?”
“No, no…it was my decision to keep our identities a secret. I guess I’m just trying to process.”
“Maybe you should process at home,” Tikki says. “You’re clearly not going to get any patrolling done, and it’s probably best for Adrien if he’s at home to rest.”
“But he’s…so peaceful.” Marinette starts to stroke a finger down Chat Noir’s nose over the shiny leather mask, just like her mother used to do to her as a small child. Chat Noir lets out a loud purr and nuzzles against her thigh.
“The longer you try to suppress this freak-out, the stronger it’s going to be when it sinks in,” Tikki says. “And super suit or not, the best thing for Adrien right now is to be resting at home. It’s not exactly warm out here.”
“That’s…true.” Marinette huffs and carefully shifts Chat Noir’s head so that she can stand up. Chat Noir lets out a tiny mewl when his head touches the cool metal of the Eiffel Tower, rather than the warmth of Marinette’s legs. She can’t help but let a laugh slip out when, absurdly, she realises what Chat Noir might have to say about Tikki’s wording. “That silly cat. He’d say suppurress and then give me that grin of his when I groan. I can’t believe I’m in love with this dork!”
“You’re in love with him?” Tikki says. Marinette braces herself for a freak-out that never emerges. Huh. Maybe it really is waiting until she’s home and her brain isn’t currently trying to process a million past interactions at once.
“He’s Adrien,” Marinette says. “Of course I’m in love with every side of him. And okay, so I might have been catching some feelings for Chat, but I’m just going to ignore that. And bury it deep down. Really deep down. And then let it blow up as I scream into my pillow and you float there and try to calm me down and offer me advice about how it’s all going to be alright and I’ll start shrieking about our three kids and hamster and island home and my parents will just assume I’m going on a lovesick ramble again –”
“Marinette!” Tikki says loudly, cutting off the rest of Marinette’s babbling in her throat. “Maybe you should get Adrien home while you’ve still got some semblance of higher brain power?”
“Right. Right. Of course.” Marinette runs a hand through her hair, accidentally pulling some strands out of her pigtails. “You’re right. Tikki, spots on!”
Once transformed, Ladybug scoops Chat Noir into her arms bridal-style and then leaps across the buildings of Paris in the direction of the Agreste mansion. To be honest, there’s a part of her that’s praying to see Adrien in his room, to maintain this charade of Adrien and Chat Noir being two separate people, even though she knows rationally that after Chat Noir’s rambling just before, there’s no way he could be anyone else. But sure enough, when she swings smoothly through the window into Adrien’s bedroom, there’s no one there.
Well, then. Guess there’s no more deluding herself. Chat Noir and Adrien Agreste are the same person. The boy she’s been turning down is the boy she’s been so in love with for so long.
“He can’t detransform like this, can he?” Ladybug mumbles to herself once she’s laid Chat Noir down on the bed as reverently as someone might set down their new bride. Chat Noir snuffles and curls in on himself, then lets out a tiny snore, and Ladybug’s insides melt into goo at just how…adorable he is.
If she’s honest with herself, Chat Noir’s always had a bit of her heart that Adrien never had. It would’ve been easy – so very easy – to let herself fall for him. But how could she do that when her heart belonged to Adrien? How could she let herself give up on the boy she loved?
Except that now, she doesn’t have to. The two boys who’ve staked claim to her heart are one and the same. It’s not as though her feelings for Adrien have transferred to Chat Noir now that she knows they’re the same person. It’s more like…acknowledging the duality of Adrien and Chat Noir has unlocked her heart, allowing herself to fully love both sides of the same boy, simultaneously so similar and yet so different.
Ladybug blinks and shakes her head. Of course she’d stand there and wax poetic over her sleeping kitty. But how is she supposed to detransform him without waking him up to have him say the words? She can’t really leave him there as Chat Noir in case someone comes to check on him and finds a leather cat superhero where the sunshine prince of Paris should be. She bites down on her lip to stifle her laughter at that thought, to avoid waking him.
“Forgive me, mon minou,” Ladybug whispers. She takes his hand in hers and starts to slide his ring off, ever so slowly, making sure that he doesn’t wake up and start freaking out that someone’s trying to remove his ring. She freezes when he grunts, but his head just lolls to the other side and he continues to snore softly, his exhales whistling just like hers do when she’s all clogged up from a cold. Poor kitten.
In a flash of green light, Chat Noir is replaced with Adrien once Ladybug finally gets the ring off. Plagg comes tumbling out and whips around, no doubt to investigate why he’d been forcibly freed from the transformation, so Ladybug just raises a finger to her lips, Plagg’s Miraculous in full view, and then carefully twists the now-silver ring back onto Adrien’s finger. Plagg watches her silently, his bright green cat eyes rather eerie in the rolling shadows of Adrien’s room cast by the lights outside his window.
“I can’t believe he’s my kitten.” Ladybug sits down next to Adrien, careful not to disturb him, wincing when he forces in a particularly loud gulp of air. She resumes stroking her finger down his nose just as she’d done on top of the Eiffel Tower and he seems to lean into the touch with a soft purr, although that could just be her imagination.
“Thanks for taking care of him.” Plagg’s voice is soft, both in volume to not wake Adrien up and in tone, unlike his usual crassness. “I tried to get him to skip out on patrol tonight.”
“He should have. Silly kitty.” Impulsively, Ladybug bends down and smooths back Adrien’s soft hair to press a kiss to his forehead, her lips lingering on the hot skin. She won’t kiss him on the mouth, not while he’s asleep; that’s a privilege that she has to earn when he’s awake and aware. “I wish I could help.”
“Kid, trust me, when I tell him Ladybug kissed him, that’ll help him plenty,” Plagg says. Then he smirks, his fangs glinting in the dim light. “He’s gonna freak when I tell him Ladybug knows who he is. Maybe he’ll finally shut up about his lady and her silky hair like night and her bluebell eyes –”
“Plagg!” Ladybug hisses as blood rushes to her cheeks. “Don’t be a turd!”
Plagg just cackles quietly. “You should go, Pigtails,” he says as he zips down to snuggle on the pillow next to Adrien’s head. “I’ll watch out for him. Wouldn’t want to be late for school tomorrow, would ya?”
“You and I both know I’ll always be late, Ladybug or not,” Ladybug say. But she still rises from the bed as gently as she can, then turns back to leave one last kiss on Adrien’s forehead. “Sleep well, mon chéri.”
“Gag me,” Plagg mutters. Ladybug rolls her eyes at him before heading for the window, tiptoeing so that her kitten can sleep peacefully. She her yo-yo to catch on a nearby chimney, blows a kiss back at Adrien, then leaps out into the cool Parisian night.
“Don’t worry, Adrien,” Ladybug murmurs as she reflects on the action-packed events of the past hour, praying that she makes it home before it really sinks in and she starts to scream, because the last thing she needs is to scare the living daylights out of Paris. “I’ll carry you like a bag of flour tomorrow. Just you wait and see.”