Chapter Text
She chases a spare sliver of beef around in her takeout box with her chopsticks, only perking up when she recognizes what he’s said. “Huh?”
“Your birthday?” Adrien smiles on the other side of the coffee table, leaning into a hand.
There’s a battle going on at the other side of his low table. Lady Noire is cunning, and quick, and Akumas are terrified at being anywhere near her when she’s got an eye on their ankles and a hand on her bo staff— but she seems to be losing horrendously to the leftovers at the bottom of her carton. Only Noire would be bested by a Mongolian beef, it seems.
He grins so hard at the sight of her scowling into her takeout that his cheeks hurt.
She gives up trying to grab it after Adrien can’t stop laughing behind his soda can, and proceeds to stab it with the butt end of her chopsticks with a triumphant smile and a squeal. She gestures for him to bring his plate closer so she can give it to him, her tail flicking behind her as she giggles. “Obviously I have one! I had to be born sometime, didn’t I?”
“Kitty, come on.” He takes a long sip from his straw with a laugh. Trust his Kitty to not realize what he meant, or at least pretend not to have listened to him. He accepts the offering anyway, when she leans over the table to place the meat into his own bowl. He scoops it up with his fork, taking a bite and letting the taste coat his mouth. Hmm. Not bad. But he’s more preferable to the shrimp. “You know what I mean. I want to know when your birthday is!”
She hums, pursing her lips into a makeshift pout as she slurps up noodles from another box. She has this habit of eating all of her beef before eating her noodles, which is weird, and it’s a habit that he can’t seem to break on her no matter how hard he jokingly tries. It weirds him out how she doesn’t eat all of it together like a normal person. “Well, I don’t know if I can tell you.”
Adrien quiets. Right. There is, well, that. “Ah. Is it because of your Miraculous business?”
There are cartons of takeout everywhere on his coffee table. It’s not a huge coffee table, Adrien guesses. It’s just a smidge smaller than the size of the couch in his room, but he knows that even having a coffee table in his bedroom is already grounds on calling it massive.
They’ve ordered just about every single item on the takeout menu that Noire had procured from her house. His Kitty is a famished one— when she can actually sit herself down and think for two seconds and realize that she’s hungry— and Adrien himself can never say no to more food. Being Mister Bug takes so much of his metabolism that sometimes he ends up scarfing down plates and plates of food before transforming back into a civilian just so that he can keep up with his body.
And, of course, the model diet never gives him enough calories he needs.
So. Chinese takeout. And it’s delicious.
He has no idea what place they’ve even ordered from, since Noire had ordered it through her baton. But he knows that it’s somewhere she’s frequented, because she’d rolled her eyes fondly when the person on the other side had picked up with a squeal, and she’d proceeded to bullet-fire her way through Mandarin like it was a breeze.
He’d picked up most of the conversation between her laughter and cursory glance at the menu, because he does know a conventional amount given that he’s been studying it for almost eight years, but Noire speaks too fast for him. He’d heard the words shrimp, beef, chicken, pork— he lost her, somewhere, when she started to speak about rice and noodles— and suddenly here they are, staring at about ten different paper boxes brimming with food.
He has no idea how she’s paid for it.
“No, silly. I don’t mind you knowing my birthday.” He’s quick to return her grin when she smiles wide, “But what if you tell Hawkmoth?”
He laughs again, shoulders shifting as he squints at her. “Okay. List time.”
Her cheeks are stuffed with lo mein as she continues to eat out of the carton, and the only physical indication he gets from her that she’s heard him is her hexleather ears perking up at the top of her head. “Ooh, my favorite time of the day, right after Kitty napping time! Lay it on me, sunshine!”
“One: why in the world would I tell Hawkmoth?” He rolls his eyes, guiding another forkful of shrimp into his mouth. He chews as well as he can before instantly shoveling more into his mouth, too caught up with hunger to realize just how quick he’s eating.
“Payback for winning against you in Mecha Strike for the fifth time in a row.”
He’s quick to take the bait. “You cheated.”
“That wasn’t cheating.”
“Jumping onto my shoulders and distracting me from completing my finishing move is cheating.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have such broad shoulders.” She flicks her eyes towards his shoulders with a huge nod. He can’t help but tinge pink in embarrassment as she looks at him with such unabashed scrutiny. “They just scream ‘perfect for Noire to stand on’. We would be perfect cheer partners if we were in a cheering team together.”
Laughter bubbles out of him. “Okay, okay fine. But I can’t tell him if I don’t even know who he is.”
“But maybe he knows you.” She shrugs good humoredly, waggling her brows up and down to alleviate tension that starts to form in the air at their conversation at the idea. “I must be vigilant to protect the citizens of Paris, you know! And that means making sure nothing about me gets out into the world.”
He rubs at the back of his neck, feeling a little worried. “I don’t know many old men. I’m pretty sure they’re all busy with office work— and, like, capitalism— to be Hawkmoth. That guy doesn’t seem to sleep.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he follows your social media accounts online!”
Fair point. “Okay, sure. Hypothetically, Hawkmoth follows me online for some random reason.”
“You have like a million billion followers! You get like a hundred thousand retweets all the time.” She waves her hand. “Even when they’re about silly things. Cat photos. Selfies you take with cats. Pictures with me, obviously. People ship us online, did you know that? This is all your fault about saying that you’d like me to step on you.”
She watches him with delight in her eyes as he registers her words. There’s something stuck in his throat, there must be, because he chokes too hard— slamming his hand down onto the coffee table as he coughs. “I— I thought it was a term of endearment— Americans are weird—”
Noire’s laughter fills up the room with a gentle twinkling noise. It’s always so relaxing to hear her hoop and holler, trying to fill in the empty spaces in his room as much as possible. “Yeah, it’s not as if you couldn’t have just looked it up, right? Also, anyway, aren’t you like one of the most followed people on the internet right now?”
“Aside from you and Mister Bug.” Naturally.
“One of them could be Hawkmoth.”
“Could.”
“Well, it’s more likely he follows me and Mister Bug online, but sure! He could. Especially after the campaign you went on for a couple of months straight talking about how much you adored me!”
“People do go crazy when I post selfies of us.” Adrien nods, chewing on the tip end of his fork. He still has the photos of the two of them take on his phone— and he knows that while between the both of them they’ve approximately taken about a billion selfies with fans (including him as Adrien, which brings their total to about a trillion), the photos that he takes with Noire will always have a special place in his heart.
He makes sure to never post photos of them inside of his room together. The last thing he needs is Hawkmoth being aware that him and Noire are incredibly good friends, so the photos usually come from when he spots her out in the street. It’s become a game on the internet, apparently, for fans to try to spot Adrien before Noire does— or the opposite.
“Exactly! Maybe he’s under the impression that we’re friends outside of the suit.”
Hm. “Okay, two: if I accidentally leak your birthday out to the world, which I wouldn’t ever I promise, at what point would Hawkmoth be able to use your birthday for evil?”
“He could make an Akuma on my birthday, and I’ll be super sad.” She cocks her head, her diamond green pupils widening into discs as she tries to grab a snap pea between her two sticks. She buries her face back into her carton as she eats, the only thing visible are the tips of her ears. “Maybe even recreate the Bubbler.”
Okay. Fair point again. “Yeah, you’re right. Well, sort of? I’m not sure why Nino would get upset and get Akumatized on your birthday, but.”
“It’s the principle! My friends could get Akumatized if Hawkmoth’s on the lookout for any bad feelings.” She waves her chopsticks in the air as she talks, and her tail thumps against her cushion. “Besides, maybe he would look up birth certificates from that day to try to find me. I don’t think he knows how old I am, but, you know.”
“Principle.”
“Principle.” She nods sagely.
“Maybe it was a bad idea to ask,” he murmurs into his own takeout box.
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea, Charming.” She pouts again, and lowers her carton just a smidge so that he can look at her mull over her thoughts. There’s about a billion and one things in her head, judging by the way her eyes glaze over, but he waits patiently for her to continue talking. She’ll find her way back to whatever point she’s making, he knows it. She settles on: “I just don’t want to put you or any of my friends in danger. Or your friends in danger. Or Alya in danger. I like the Ladyblog, but I hate that she shows up almost everywhere whenever there’s an Akuma.”
Noire is surprisingly making all good points. Who knew his Kitty was so good at reason?
(That’s a lie. He knows for a fact that Noire is capable of rational thought, and does produce rational thought. But sometimes it’s easy to forget that Noire’s trained her entire life to be a Miraculous wielder when she giggles and laughs and looks at him with her silly cat-shaped eyes that seem to sparkle like jewels and diamonds and glitter).
A brow makes its way up to his hairline. “Do you actually read the Ladyblog?”
“Uhm, duh. I read all about the Akumas, and things.” A blur of a hand swipes for a shrimp in his carton, surprisingly agile with her chopsticks and tossing it back into her mouth with a smile and a precision that shouldn’t be possible— given her recent predicament with the food in her own carton— but Adrien can barely register it in favor of his thoughts starting to spiral.
Hold on. “Why do you read about Akumas if you were already there during the fight?”
“Because I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything during the fight, duh.” She rolls her eyes as if he’s slow.
“You’re looking at pictures of Mister Bug again, aren’t you?” Why does he even bother asking?
She misses her mouth with her chopsticks by the centimeters, the snap pea falling into her lap. “W-what? No, no way.”
“Kitty.”
“I don’t— that’s silly.”
“Kitty.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Oh, no no no. Don’t look at me like you’re trying to change the subject. You tease me all the time about my crush that I’m still not going to give you her name— let me tease you about this.”
“Yeah but this is different— I don’t know the girl you like. You’re all mysterious about it, and never ever tell me her name and it’s practically the meanest thing you do ever,” Noire whines.
“Because I know you’re going to end up, I don’t know— find out her last name, track where she lives, going to her house and pestering her like crazy.” He’s sure that Marinette wouldn’t mind, given that Noire’s one of the hero of Paris, and Marinette has a whole wall dedicated to the two super heroes, but it’s— well. It’s more of the principle, isn’t it?
“Would not.”
He forks more food into his mouth without missing a beat. “Absolutely would.”
“No,” she pouts.
“Yes you absolutely would.”
“I just want to get to know who my sunshine has a crush on, and maybe threaten her a little bit and make sure she doesn’t hurt your heart, but I don’t want to pester her.”
She’s… never called him her sunshine before. There’s something tight in his chest as he thinks about it, his face turning pink. “You’re a horrible liar.”
She ends up curling her tail in a mesmerizing way, high above her head as she giggles. “Unfortunately, my sweet Prince, I’m not lying in the slightest. It wouldn’t feel right to make a girl scared of me just because I’m worried about you. She deserves respect if she’s gotten your attention, I know just how good of a boy you are. And you deserve to be happy!”
He blushes harder. “Well, you know you do too.”
“Ah, you’re lucky you can at least talk to her whenever you want. Meanwhile, everyone knows I like Mister Bug. It’s above my head in neon signs, practically, and I only see him so little throughout the week. Sometimes there’s two weeks of complete radio silence.” Her hexleather ears droop, her shoulders sagging. “So I take every opportunity I can to spend time with him or see him.”
He pauses another forkful into his mouth. He hadn’t really considered that, while he’s bonding with his partner— his ride or die best friend who fights crime with him— Noire hasn’t been. He knows that, obviously, but sometimes it’s so easy to forget that he spends so much more time with Noire than she does with Mister Bug. He may know almost everything there is to know about his Kitty, but to her, he’s a complete nobody.
It kind of hurts to think.
So he tries for humor, trying to bring pep back into her step. “Even to the point where you’re reading the Ladyblog so you can look at his face?”
“Can you blame me? He’s so handsome.” There’s a glassy look in her eyes as she waves her chopsticks, and Adrien can’t help but smile with hard amusement as she talks about him to his face. “He’s so kind, and handsome, and my trusting partner. I wish I could give him the world like I so desperately want to. You know, I don’t even know when Mister Bug’s birthday is, but I’m just hoping that one day he’ll sit me down and tell me more about him.”
“Have you tried asking him for his birthday?”
“Ah, he’d never tell me. It’s my fault— I’m the one who enforced the rule of not telling each other things that could give away identities when we first met. It’s a rule that my uncle, our guardian for lack of a better word, put into place so that we couldn’t get into big trouble— and we could just not tell him, but I don’t think Mister Bug is really interested. And my uncle just has a knack for knowing things.” Her laughter fills up the room again, and he’s just so relieved to hear it. He hates not hearing her laugh.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s willing to try. Maybe you should ask.”
It takes her all about two seconds for her to click her thoughts together, and she almost drops her lo mein in the process. “Wait!”
He startles, looking back up from his food, his fork poised in the air for another bite. “Yeah?”
“What if I ask Mister Bug to create a fake birthday with me? That way, I can give him all the gifts I’ve always wanted to give him, and he doesn’t have to give me any personal information.” She’s a whirlwind now, her tail whipping behind her as she sits up on her knees, grinning wide and pretty like she always does when she’s excited about something.
Oh. Oh this is a really good idea. He loves it.
“You think he’ll say yes?” He will, but, Noire doesn’t know that yet.
“Hopefully!” She nods regardless, tapping her fingers together as she squeals. She seems to have put down her chopsticks at some point, but Adrien can’t remember seeing her do it, and it’s nowhere on the table in front of them. She’s a professional at these things, so it doesn’t surprise him too much, but it’s still a little alarming. “I have so many things I need to give him. I’ve always gotten him gifts but never had the courage to give it to him because I never knew when his birthday was and it felt weird to do it.”
Adrien registers her words a beat too slow. “What?”
“What?” She cocks her head again.
“You’ve bought him gifts?”
“Keep up, sunshine.” She rolls her eyes fondly. “Of course I bought gifts for Mister Bug. He’s my partner!”
“I know he’s your partner…” God help him. “I’m— you know. That’s not what I was confused about.”
She pauses, the tip of her tail twitching against the cushion. “Are you jealous?”
“No.”
“Is that jealousy? Jealous? Are you jealous? Do I hear jealousy?”
As if. And yet… “No.”
“You’re terrible at lying too, you know.” Her smile goes blindingly wide. “I think you’re jealous.”
Why would he be jealous? And jealous of himself, in some weird backwards way? He doesn’t even think of Noire like that, romantically. Maybe.
Uh.
Okay, sure— he cares for Noire. Obviously. She’ll always be his Kitty— and he’ll always be there for her to nap and snooze and play and bicker and cuddle. But to get jealous wouldn’t make much sense, now would it?
His nose crinkles before he can stop himself. Is he… romantically… in love with Noire?
And besides, being jealous of Noire’s attention being captured by— what— himself? How does that even work out?
“I’m not jealous, trust me.” He tries to pull off a light laugh, but relaxes once he realizes that Noire is completely unresponsive and busy looking for her chopsticks that she’s misplaced somewhere. She groans to herself as she searches underneath cartons, her lips pulling into a frustrated pout.
She gives up with a humph. “Let me use your fork?”
“No way!”
“I don’t have germs!” She scrunches her nose.
His face heats up. He wasn’t— it isn’t because of germs that he doesn’t want to share— he doesn’t mind sharing things with her. They’ve drank out of the same straw before and it didn’t bother him. It’s just— well. He’s just— just—
Well, it’s just the principle, isn’t it?
“I’m— I’m still— still eating my own food!” He takes another forkful as if it proves his point.
“What about me?”
He answers while leaning into his open palm again. “You’re going to lose my fork, too, and then we’ll both be struggling to figure out how to eat.”
Noire goes petulant. Her face scrunches into a little frown as she works out how to respond, her diamond green eyes pinning him in place and making him uncomfortable in his skin. Sometimes she looks at him like she wants to say a curse word, breaking her private morals of not really cursing and upholding the image of Paris’s superhero image, and Adrien struggles not to smile as her hexleather domino mask crinkles. She hums at the back of her throat, twiddling her fingertips against the edge of the coffee table and making audible clicking noises.
She settles on: “Fine. Help me find my chopsticks, then?”
He laughs easy. “Sure.”
They search the table for it, pulling up cartons to see where she’s placed it. No matter how many stacks of boxes they lift and search under, it’s nowhere to be found.
Adrien registers something buzzing against the floor, and watches with simmering interest as he recognizes the beeping noise from her baton staff, and his Kitty reaches for it under the table where she’s stored it. She flips open the compartment to check the home screen of her baton, and groans to herself at whatever she sees.
She taps a button on the touchscreen, bringing the baton up to her face like a phone, a small smile filtering on her face like she can’t help herself as she practically meows into the receiver. “Ni hao! You’ve reached Lady Noire.”
Adrien blinks slow. He didn’t know it was possible to call Noire’s baton. Sure, he’s done it multiple times as Mister Bug, but that was because his yoyo compact is magic. Emphasis on magic. Noire’s number— or whatever it is— is already programmed into his compact.
And he’s called other people on the phone before, too. Hell, even Noire’s called multiple delivery places before on her phone.
But he didn’t know that they could receive calls on them from non-Miraculous devices. He wonders what service provider their Miraculouses are actually using, or if it’s just plain magic as well.
“Who is it?”
“My mom,” she mouths out quietly, twirling her left hand around her chopsticks. He’s given up trying to figure anything about Noire’s ability to be simultaneously the most forgetful, and the most surprising. How does she lose something and then proceed to find it almost immediately when she’s not looking for it?
He tries to look as sympathetic as possible, giving her a simple: “Oh.”
Her ears flatten against her head at whatever she hears on the other side of the call, and she bites her lip, changing between languages with a flip of a switch. “[Mama, you can’t call this phone. What if someone else had picked up?]”
Adrien recognizes that she’s speaking softly and hurriedly so that he hears as little of the conversation as possible. She’s speaking Mandarin in hushed tones, trying to play off like she isn’t on the phone with family.
His Kitty doesn’t know that he studies Mandarin— at least, he’s never told her— and he tries not to appear like he can understand their conversation.
He doesn’t want her identity to be accidentally revealed over the phone call, so he busies himself by digging into his food, trying to finish before Noire ends up losing her utensils again. He checks his phone to give her privacy, flicking through the latest conversation he’s had with Nino, confirming that they’re hanging out in the afternoon.
Her face scrunches. “[Mama, I’m— I’m kind of busy. You really want me to— now?]”
Adrien looks up to her in time to watch her hexleather ears squeeze down as she sighs tiredly.
“[Can I at least do it in the suit?]” She grins at her own words, erupting into giggles. “[Yeah, probably not a good idea, right? Okay. I’m on my way. Give me ten minutes?]”
She gives a cheerful goodbye, sliding the baton shut with a groan and leaning onto the spare little space left on the coffee table where there aren’t any boxes.
“You okay?”
“My parents want me back home.” She sounds tired immediately. “I gotta go do some stuff for their work. Running errands across town, that kind of thing.”
She always looks so defeated when she talks about home. It worries him that she’s not happy back there, whether it be because she’s worked to the bone or because of the high expectations of her family knowing who she is and what she does on the regular to protect them.
Noire’s talked about it before— how she runs and escapes into his room to get away from her family trying to get her attention. According to the brief times she’s talked about them, they’re always pushing her to be better and more efficient with her time. They’re a rowdy bunch, who are always constantly trying to get her attention and pulling her in all sorts of directions trying to get her to be a super hero twenty four seven.
He knows through Master Fu that she works constantly— whether it be in her studies or training to be the Miraculous guardian. The poor girl comes to his room completely fried, sometimes, wanting nothing more than a cuddle and a snuggle and to completely zone out while watching anime with him.
She’s shown up a few times at night, after their conversation about how she shouldn’t be going on patrols without Mister Bug, with her eyes completely flat and devoid of shine. He’s lucky that he was home early, after the mess of a fencing tournament, and found her pawing at his window with a clear look on her face that read in all clear letters: please comfort me.
She’s told him that her house is loud, rowdy, full of people talking constantly and filled to the brim with people. Adrien knows that his room must be a breath of fresh air for her— with his house being so quiet that sometimes he’s not sure that there’s anyone ever in the house outside of him.
And he knows she struggles with loud noises. He knows that her sensitivity to noise and colors while in the suit sometimes drive her crazy and makes her burrow harder into his chest when they’re cuddling and watching a movie, and that she feels more at ease in his arms. He knows that she can’t really handle having a huge family without needing reprieve.
But…
He can’t help but feel a little jealous when she talks about the amount of cousins and uncles and aunts she has that are begging for her attention— he wouldn’t mind having family members looking for him. It would be a nice change of pace, at least. He can’t remember the last time his dad talked to him, and the thought should be a lot more upsetting than what it ultimately is.
He knows that what he’s wishing for is wrong— Noire doesn’t deserve him comparing how ‘good’ she has it in her life. She never does that to him. But there is a tang of jealousy in his heart when she talks about how her dad needs help at work, or how her mom needs her to do errands for them.
He wishes he could get feedback from whenever he does things for the Agreste name.
Although, calling her on the baton is a whole new thing entirely. He hopes that it won’t be a regular thing, if his Kitty is going to feel better and happier. He doesn’t like it when her eyes go flat behind her domino mask.
“Awh, Kitty. I’m sorry.”
“Do you want me to take some trash with me?” She picks at her carton listlessly, pouting to herself.
“Nah, it’s okay. I’ll store the rest of the food in the kitchen for a later day. I know you get hungry all the time.” And him, but that’s not the point. “Maybe you’ll come back after the errands hopefully? I have a hangout in a couple of hours, but maybe you’ll get back before I leave. Or do you want me to cancel and say I have something to do?”
She sags against the table even more, a mixture of a pout and a frown making its way onto her face. “Oh, I can’t do that to you, sunshine. Even if I really want to keep you all to myself, something tells me I won’t be done with these errands until like, well into the night. I have patrol with Mister Bug tonight, too, so I don’t think I’ll be seeing you until tomorrow.”
“Oh. Kitty. Do you have to go?” He frowns before he’s able to stop himself, but it seems to be the right thing to ask because Noire seems to relax at his obvious display of wanting her to stay. His Kitty always enjoys the feeling of being wanted, and he can’t blame her. He’s the same way.
“Unfortunately I do, sunshine.” Her eyes glitter when he meets them, looking up from his own bowl of food as he frowns. “You know how it is. Big or small, Noire’s got to keep Paris safe. Even if that means I have to go do errands halfway across the city using the metro and run on cheap shoes to make sure I do it on time, because my old pair is finally starting to kick the bucket and is threatening to tear at the heel so I had to borrow a pair from my aunt. I haven’t even had time to order a new one.”
“I can order you new shoes,” he finds himself saying, distracted by how her diamond green eyes catch the light coming through his floor to ceiling windows. Her eye color shifts as she moves her head around, changing from green to yellow. “I can get my laptop out and you pick out the shoes you need. I’ll pay.”
She blinks slow.
“You can’t pay for my shoes, Charming, it’ll make me feel like I’m using you for money.” She looks almost surprised at the idea.
“You’re using me for entertainment all the time!” He takes a sip of his soda through the straw, letting his smile twitch at the sides while his can makes an audible slurping noise. She giggles as he gives her a wide smile. “What’s the difference?”
“I use you for something more along the lines of friendship.” The tense line at her shoulders decreases, and he’s so grateful to see the playfulness come back to his Kitty’s face. “But the entertainment is definitely a plus!”
“Little Kitty is using me for friendship, the horror!” He gasps dramatically, faking a fatal wound to the heart, proud of himself that he’s able to make her laugh. “What a monster!”
She grins wide enough and bright enough to make the sun look pale. “Thank you, Adrien, that’s really sweet of you to offer the shoes. But my family would freak if they thought I was using Paris’s golden child for money.”
She stretches out her legs when Adrien can do nothing but look dejectedly at his fork, and she surprises him when she nuzzles into his hair while giving him a giant hug. She has to stand on her knees in order to be tall enough to get her arms around his shoulders, even while all he’s doing is sitting down on a couch pillow he’s propped against the floor, and he leans into her with a smile.
She’s a block of heat as he wraps his arms around her, taking in the smell of coconut oil in her hair. She’s small and thin in his arms, but solid and warm and here.
That’s all he can really ask for, at the end of the day.
His best friend— his Kitty— being here.
She starts to purr at the back of her throat as she continues to nuzzle him. “You’re my best friend ever, Prince Charming, and I’m so grateful for you. Thank you for being there for me always.”
“You’re my best friend too, little Kitty.” He stops himself from hauling her into a nap. She would probably just manage to grapple him out of it, anyway. “You know you’ll always have a place here with me to escape the noise out there.”