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“Come on, M, just admit it! You’re totally dating Chat Noir!” Alya shoved her phone in Marinette’s face where the rather incriminating picture stared back at her. A picture of Marinette waving goodbye to Chat as he prepared to vault away from her balcony.
“He’s my friend,” she said defensively. “He comes over sometimes, that’s all.”
“Uh huh. Sure. Do you see this face he’s making?” Alya zoomed into the picture and focused on Chat’s face.
Marinette blushed when she realized that, yes, he was making a face at her. His eyes were trained entirely on her like she was all he could see. She’d like to say it was fondness and leave it at that, but with the picture zoomed in like that she could tell there was more than a pink tinge under his mask. And the way he was leaning towards her even as he was saying goodbye…
She glanced back up and Alya was watching her, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.
“We’re just friends,” Marinette insisted.
Alya pushed her glasses back up on her nose and looked at Marinette over the rims, although she didn't say anything else. She didn't have to; she'd made her point and that got Marinette thinking.
So when Chat Noir poked his head in her skylight that night and started jabbering about movies they could watch and a UMSIII rematch, Marinette was still thinking about Alya's words and the pictures she'd stolen. Marinette was still thinking about the prudence of his visits, and their frequency. And Marinette was hoping that she wouldn't have to reject him on both sides of her mask.
"Chat?" she started, nervously wringing her fingers around each other, "um… can I… can I talk to you? For a second?"
He dropped to a crouch in front of her and tilted his head to the side, signalling he was listening. Marinette took a deep breath.
"I don't know if it's a good idea for you to come here any… anymore…" She bit her lip and barely managed to meet his bright green eyes before she dropped her gaze back down to her shoes. "Um… people are starting to notice—well, Alya noticed, anyways—and it's only a matter of time before… well, not that she would tell anyone, or at least I hope she wouldn't—"
Especially not a certain blond boy in their class, she thought. What a disaster that would be. Or even if she didn’t tell, Hawkmoth could get to anyone at any time. She shuddered even as she thought it. Either way. An ounce of prevention couldn’t hurt.
"I don’t know, maybe it’s better if you... stay away? For a while?"
As she trailed off, she dared another glance at him. His tail was flicking across the floor behind him as he considered, and his eyebrows were slowly knitting together under his mask.
“I understand, Marinette,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t ever want to put you in danger. I won’t come here anymore, I promise.” He gave her a small, sad smile, then made his way back up her ladder and out the trap door.
Marinette chewed her lip and shared an anxious glance with Tikki before she followed him. Not to bring him back—even if she’d thought that was a good idea, he was already gone by the time she got up to the balcony. Mostly because that smile had unsettled her. There had been a twinge of something hiding behind it, but he’d hid it so quickly that she couldn’t figure out why she felt so guilty.
She stood at her railing, looking off into the night, until the chill in the air started to seep into her skin and made her shiver. When she turned to go back inside, she found the answer she'd been looking for. A bouquet of pink roses, set off to the side of her skylight, still in its crinkly clear plastic sleeve, with a small note attached. He’d meant to surprise her with them when she saw him out, she was sure.
Her hands trembled as she crouched to pull the bouquet close to her and it took her three fumbling tries to unfold the little tag. She had to blink the tears out of her eyes before she could read his surprisingly neat handwriting.
‘I'm glad I got to know you,' signed in the corner with a paw print.
She sniffed and wiped away the hot tears that were starting to streak down her cheeks. She was an awful friend and she’d never be able to make this up to him.
“Tikki?” she called, before she realized that the kwami of creation was already there, resting a tiny, concerned paw on Marinette’s thumb. “Did I do the right thing?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“You did what you thought was best,” Tikki said carefully. The words tore at Marinette’s heart.
“No, I didn’t,” she croaked. “I did what I thought Ladybug would think was best. Chat needed…” she had to pause and wipe her face again before she thumped backwards to sit down instead of crouch. “Chat needed a friend. Someone to talk to, somewhere to go, and I…”
Her words failed her as she cradled the bouquet close to her chest. “I’ll make it up to him,” she said, more to herself than to Tikki. “Somehow, I’ll make it up to him.”
True to his word, Chat didn’t come back to Marinette’s balcony, but Marinette had a plan. Chat needed a friend, and he’d found one in Marinette, which wasn’t to say he couldn’t also be friends with Ladybug, right? All she had to do was let him know that behind her mask, she was his friend, and she was listening. So she tried to talk to him more after patrol, tried to linger with him on the rooftops, but he always kept things light, and she had no way to ask him about what had happened, because Ladybug wasn’t supposed to know there was anything wrong.
But there started to be reports of Chat Noir being seen more and more running over the rooftops. It didn’t seem to be for patrol, he was just… out. Almost every night. Just running.
And almost every night he stopped at the rooftop across from Notre Dame. The same one he’d whisked her away to on the first night he came to her balcony. The one he’d filled with flowers and candles for Ladybug. After two straight weeks of watching him stop there, watching him pause as the sunset sank over the towers, Marinette decided it was time to talk to him.
She went to the rooftop early to set everything up. It took her ages to drag her gaming setup from her room to his rooftop, and she tried not to think about how much longer it would’ve taken had she not been suited up. By the time the sun was barely starting to slip over the horizon, she was ready. And, right on cue, his boots tapped against the roof.
“Ladybug? What…”
She turned to him, grinning, and made a “ta-da” gesture to show off her hard work. She’d grabbed pillows and blankets and made a gaming nest, complete with the fairy lights from her balcony strung along the railings for a bright, cheery atmosphere. Chat’s eyebrows furrowed as he started frowning, which wasn’t the reaction she expected.
“I thought maybe we could… hang out a bit?” she started hesitantly, “I know you like UMSIII, or at least you said once that you did, and I do, too, so I brought this up here and…” She stopped at the scowl that was starting to take over his face. “What?”
“What are you doing?”
His dark tone took her entirely by surprise. Her enthusiasm for her plan wilted.
“I… thought…”
“I don’t need your sympathy, Ladybug, or your pity.”
“Chat, I don’t even know what’s wrong! Come on, please, just… let’s sit down and play a round and you can tell me about it, I just want to make sure…”
“What, that I’m not akumatized?”
She gaped at him. He’d been hostile before, but this was… different. Cold. Detached. She shivered as a memory of blank blue eyes behind a white mask tugged at her heart.
“Yes, Chat. I don’t know what’s wrong, but—”
“You never bothered to ask.”
“What?”
He sat glumly on one of the pillows she’d brought over and flicked at the controller in front of him. “You never asked. You just…” He gestured in front of him to her attempt to draw him into conversation. “You did what you do best. You tried to fix it.” He slumped his cheek into his hand and looked away, off in what Ladybug knew to be the direction of Marinette’s balcony. “It’s not the same.”
“You can talk to me about anything, Chat, I hope you know that.” She sat next to him and laid her hand on his arm. He didn’t pull away, but he also didn’t respond.
“Not everything. Not like I could with…” he glanced sideways at her as he trailed off and blew out a breath. “I lost a friend. Well, not lost, she’s fine, but I can’t…well, I mean, I could, without the mask, but—” He let out a little huff of breath and finally turned his face to her. His eyebrows were knitted together again. “Do you see what I mean? I have to focus on what to hide from you, what to reveal, what I can talk about, what I can’t. With her it was…different. Easier.”
He slumped to rest his chin in his hand. “I didn’t have to be Chat Noir, not really, I could be…” He shook his head as he twirled the joystick on the controller in front of him, fidgeting as an excuse not to look at her. “But it doesn’t matter. She asked me not to go there anymore, and I won’t. Because she was right. Going to see her puts her in Hawkmoth’s sights and if she was ever hurt because of me, I… I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Then it’s probably for the best,” Ladybug said, but her heart wasn’t in the words. They were the same ones Tikki had said to her to try to comfort her, and they still rang hollow in her ears.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she was different as Marinette and she’d just never noticed. Because Marinette would've told him that he was always welcome, that he shouldn’t worry about endangering her because she could handle herself. He would’ve laughed at that, probably goaded her into UMSIII trash talk, and they would’ve forgotten about it.
Except that’s not what Marinette did. Marinette gave in to the passing fear that Adrien might find out about Chat and used Hawkmoth as a rationalization and that’s what got her into this mess with him in the first place.
When she pulled herself out of her thoughts, Chat was staring at her, and he had pulled his arm out from under her fingertips. She reached out to him again and he recoiled, scrambling up to his feet and away from her, his eyes fiery and his jaw set. All she could do was look up at him, confused, worried, waiting for him to speak.
“That’s all you have to say? That’s it, really?” His voice was strangled from the emotion he was barely holding back. He turned around and his hands came up to tug at his wild mane before he spun back to her. “She was my home, do you get that? Do you—” his voice cracked and he took a sharp breath in—“Do you even care?”
“Chat… I…”
“Forget it. Forget I said anything about it.” He clenched his teeth and turned around again, leaning against the railing to hang his head. Ladybug’s heart broke into pieces when his breathing became ragged with contained sobs.
As quietly as she could, she stood and walked up behind him to wrap her arms loosely around his waist, pressing her cheek to his back between his shoulder blades. At first he didn’t respond, but slowly he relaxed into her touch and his shaking started to quiet.
“I’m so sorry, Chat,” she whispered into his back. “I never meant to hurt you.”
He shook his head and reached up to lay one of his hands over hers on his stomach. “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have been angry with you. I’m not angry with her either, I just…” he lifted his head to look out at her balcony again. “I miss her.”
“I’m sure she misses you, too,” Ladybug said, the truth of her words causing a lump to form in her throat. “I’m sure it killed her, telling you to stay away.”
She felt him tense against her and he stood straight up, suddenly alert. “Her balcony’s dark,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “It’s never dark.”
Before she could say anything else, he had reached back for his baton and was helicoptering down, vaulting back up at the last second, making his way towards Marinette’s balcony. She cursed under her breath and started after him.
When she caught up to him, he was perched on his baton outside the bakery, examining her balcony with what she assumed was his night vision. She hung from her yoyo and hissed at him.
“Chat, what in the world—”
He shushed her harshly, then tipped his baton forward until he caught himself on her railing. He stashed his baton before he pulled himself up, and she watched in horror as he tapped on the skylight. Her stomach twisted when he tried the latch and found it open. She hadn’t thought of this. She hadn’t thought he’d be worried, she hadn’t thought he’d want to check on her, she hadn’t thought—
With a grunt, she zipped her way over right as Chat climbed back out.
“She’s not here.” His voice was almost hoarse with how tense it was. “She should be here. Why isn’t she here?” He started pacing across the small space, his tail flicking behind him frantically. Ladybug was frozen. She couldn’t tell him Marinette was fine, because how would Ladybug know? She couldn’t tell him she’d taken Marinette’s lights because… well, she could tell him, but he was already upset and admitting to stealing from his friend probably wasn’t helpful.
Suddenly, Chat stopped, and looked back over to the rooftop they’d just left, where the fairy lights still twinkled in soft greens and pinks. His eyes flicked from the rooftop to the balcony, back and forth, until they finally settled on Ladybug.
“You…” He blinked at her, then swallowed as he looked back to the rooftop. “That’s Marinette’s stuff up there, isn’t it?” He pointed behind her, but she didn’t turn to look. She bit her lip as she nodded and he blew out a breath. “Okay. Either I need to be pissed at you for taking Marinette’s stuff.” His eyes traveled back to hers. “Or I need to apologize for being an absolute ass and not figuring it out sooner.”
She hesitated. Either answer wasn’t what she wanted to tell him. One a half-truth and one a blatant confirmation. He was waiting for her to say something, although his tail was flicking around his calves impatiently.
“You weren’t supposed to figure it out, remember?” she finally asked. His eyes went wider than she’d ever seen them.
“But—if you’re—”
She hushed him with a finger to his lips and looked pointedly down at her skylight. He nodded and she led the way inside.
As soon as she had the cover of her bedroom, she dropped her transformation and Chat gaped at her. Tikki said nothing as she flitted away, but Marinette felt her disapproval and knew she’d be getting an earful later. She sat heavily in her desk chair and pulled her knees up to her chin, curling her toes around the edge of the seat. Chat sat across from her on the floor, his eyes still blown wide and glued to her. There was an awkward pause between them and she hated it. She’d never been awkward with Chat. She wanted to ask him what he thought, if he was angry, how he was feeling, but instead she just sank her chin into the top of her knees and waited.
“So…” he started eventually, “what… I mean, what happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… should I…?” He gestured to his mask.
She tilted her head sideways to consider. Who was going to tell them they couldn’t? The Guardian? That made it her choice. Her decision to keep the secret identity rule or not. She didn’t know anymore if it was more dangerous to know who he was or not—there were advantages and disadvantages to each situation—but one side of the reveal had already happened. There was no changing that.
“You can if you want to,” she decided finally.
He blew out a breath and seemed to consider before he nodded. “Plagg, claws in.”
Out of habit, Marinette closed her eyes against the bright green flash of magic. She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly before she dared to open her eyes.
And found Adrien Agreste sitting in the middle of her floor.
She yelped as her chair tipped sideways, dumping her on the floor in a sprawl. She scrambled to fix her position, to fix her chair, to sit back down, to act rational and calm and—Adrien Agreste had been in her bedroom. Several, many, multiple times now. Adrien Agreste had been battling her in UMSIII, crawling over her playfully to get to snack bowls, staying over when he was too tired to run home, cuddling against her in blanket forts to watch movies—Adrien Agreste was her flirty, bantering partner who was head over heels in love with Ladybug—Adrien Agreste was…
He was looking up at her with concern plain in his green eyes, with that same sad smile on his face. Rejection. That’s what it was, what it had been that he’d hidden so well last time. He thought she was… what? Upset? That her Chat Noir—her partner, her best friend—was the same person that made her heart pound out of her chest whenever she saw him and turned her into a stuttering mess.
Her face was flaming, but she willed herself to stay in control. It wasn’t working. She hid her face behind her hands and an inhuman squeal came out of her. She shook her head. “Nope, I can’t… can you just…” she made a wrapping motion around herself to indicate that he should suit back up.
“Excuse me, I’m starving!” She heard a nasally voice complain. Plagg. Adrien sighed and she heard him rustling before the strong smell of camembert hit her nose and forced it to wrinkle.
“As soon as Plagg eats I’ll transform again and leave,” he said glumly.
“No!” Her hands flew out to stop his movement, but as soon as she saw him again she clapped her hands back over her eyes. “I-I mean, please don’t leave. I just… I need a minute, that’s all.”
“Are you okay, Marinette?”
She nodded, and another squeal escaped her from somewhere in her chest. This was going to take some adjustment. She took another deep breath and peeked at him between her fingers. That was… easier, at least.
His head tilted to the side. How had she not seen it before? It was the same gesture she’d seen Chat make a million times. A giggle burst out of her from between her fingers and she pressed them tighter to her lips. Deep breaths, Marinette. When she’d gotten her nervous fluttering under control, she lowered her hands and cleared her throat.
“Okay. There. See?”
He chuckled and stretched his legs out to lean back on his hands. Chat’s relaxed posture transposed over Adrien’s frame and it clicked into place for her. She climbed down from her chair to join him on the floor and he raised his eyebrows.
“So are you going to tell me what that was all about?” He gestured with his head to the rooftop. She had a brief thought that she had left her gaming equipment unattended, but it could wait just a bit longer. This was important.
“I’m an awful friend?” she tried. If at all possible, his eyebrows went higher. She sighed. “Alya. She… Oh, God, Alya…” She dropped her face into her hands as she started blushing again.
“What about Alya?”
“She thought we were dating…” Marinette mumbled into her hands. Or at least she thought she did, but since her hands were over her face and her forehead was on the floor, he probably hadn’t heard her. Hopefully he hadn’t heard her.
“Oh.”
She sat back up and was surprised to find him blushing. “Oh?” she asked, and he looked away from her, his blush deepening, as his hand came up to rub the nape of his neck.
“Yeah. Oh. As in, makes sense Alya would think that, you know?”
Marinette narrowed her eyes at him. “She thought I was dating Chat Noir because you were coming to my bedroom at night.”
“Yeah, I got that,” he muttered. “So… that’s why the whole ‘don’t come here anymore’ thing?”
She nodded. He blew out a breath and dropped his hand back to his lap, although he started fiddling with his Chat Noir ring. Adrien’s Chat Noir ring, that he’d been wearing since—
She toppled back over and her forehead thunked to the floor. He’d been wearing it since she’d met him. A day after Ladybug met Chat Noir. Since the beginning, then. She groaned at their mutual stupidity.
“Marinette?” He reached out and touched her shoulder and it sent a jolt of electricity straight back to her poor heart.
“Alya thought we were dating!” She groaned again. “And I got scared because I thought she would tell you! You-you, not Chat-you. Adrien-you. And if she told you then I didn’t know how to tell you—ugh, Chat-you, not, you know, not you-you that I was in love with someone else because I was in love with you-you the whole time!” She groaned again and sat up, fully aware that she was making no sense.
His brow furrowed as he focused on a spot on her floor. "You were in love with me?" he asked hesitantly.
She clapped her hands to her mouth as she felt her eyes go wide. Maybe she’d made more sense than she thought. She shook her head, then when he looked up at her through his eyelashes and quirked an eyebrow she nodded.
His smile widened until it was a megawatt grin. "You're in love with me."
“Shut up,” she muttered, even as an embarrassed smile started to spread across her face. There was another pause between them, charged with some unspoken electricity. She kept her hands over her face until her blush gradually cooled, although her smile seemed stuck in place. Adrien’s, too, although he was making no effort to hide it.
"So what'd you tell Alya?" he asked, his grin slipping sideways into a smirk. "About you and Chat Noir?"
If he were Chat Noir—which he was, she reminded herself—she would lob a pillow, or a plushie, or a handful of popcorn at him. As it was, she spluttered rather inelegantly. She could practically picture his cat ears perking up and his tail flicking excitedly behind him.
"What do you mean, 'what did I tell Alya?' I told her we were—we were…" Even as she tried to say it, a giggle escaped her. The irony of it. She cleared her throat. "Friends. Just friends. But she didn't believe me because she had this picture and…"
She tilted her head as she remembered the soft look in Chat's—in Adrien's eyes in that picture. The fond smile. Alya's insistence that Chat was head over heels for her.
"Why did you get me roses?"
It was his turn to blush and sputter.
"I… I thought… I wanted to…" He sat up straight and rubbed at the nape of his neck. "You like pink and I wanted to thank you for letting me hang out and play games and…"
"But you give Ladybug roses."
"Well, I wanted to give you roses, too," his defensive tone was at odds with the bright red of his cheeks. He chuckled and dropped his hand before he looked back at her. "Because I'm in love with you, too, Marinette."
Her breath caught in her throat.
"I was so confused for the longest time. I forced myself to think of you as a friend because I thought I couldn't love you and Ladybug, but the more time I spent with you, the more I realized how much I liked you and…" he shrugged. "I don't know, it just clicked. I've been in love with you for a long time now."
"So the roses…"
He shrugged again and looked away. "I figured I'd take a chance."
"And that's the night I decided to tell you to stay away…" She let her face fall into her hands and groaned as she shook her head. "I'm an absolutely awful person and a worse friend and—"
"Hey." His hand fell on her shoulder, snapping her out of her thoughts. "You're an amazing person, Marinette. Who else would've thought to move all that stuff to try to cheer up a friend?" He jerked his head to indicate the rooftop and the realization dawned on her that all her stuff was still up there. He chuckled at whatever expression she was making and stood, offering her a hand up.
"Speaking of which… need some help getting it back here?"
She put her hand in his, blushing furiously, and let him pull her to her feet. He locked eyes with her and brought the back of her hand up to his lips to brush them against her knuckles. When another squeal escaped her, he smirked and swept his arm out as he bowed his head.
"After you, Milady."
She giggled before she called for Tikki and his eyes widened as Ladybug's suit replaced Marinette's pajamas.
"Think you can keep up, kitty cat?" She flicked his nose, delighting in the crimson blush that spread across his cheeks and the stunned grin that he couldn't seem to stop.
She raced up her ladder and heard him transform as she swung up through her skylight. She glanced back once to see Chat emerging from her trap door before she slung her yoyo as far as she could and tugged, knowing he would be right behind her.