Work Text:
“Pound it!”
The two superheroes bumped fists, just as they always did after a victory. Ladybug’s eyes shone in the warm summertime sunlight as they met Chat Noir’s. He found himself staring, not for the first time, at the way her eyelashes fluttered over her ocean blue eyes, the way her cheeks flushed when he looked at her for a little too long. She was breathtaking, and he told her so. She looked away as soon as the words left his lips, brushing a strand of hair from her face as she barked out a laugh. “I mean it,” Chat insisted, stepping forward to tuck the hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered for a moment on the curvature of her cheekbone. It would be so easy to pull her in closer, to press a gentle kiss to those lips he had wanted to kiss for so long…
But he didn’t.
Instead, he let out a little sigh and stepped back, extending his staff as he prepared to take off. Before he could, Ladybug had grabbed his arm. He glanced over her shoulder to see her smiling at him, a beautiful sunshiney smile he had grown to love. He hoped it was reserved for him. “Thank you, chaton,” she replied. “You’re the best.” She paused and then opened her mouth as if she was going to continue, but her earrings gave a series of angry beeps and she closed her mouth in a hurry. “Gotta go. Bug out!” She let go of his arm and gave him a little salute before throwing her yoyo out and swinging away. Chat Noir watched her go, a bittersweet and familiar feeling settling in his chest. He turned again, about to take his leave, but something gleaming in the sunlight caught his attention.
“Wait! M’lady, you dropped…” The words died on his tongue. She was too far away to hear him. He thought briefly of calling her, but they would meet again later that day for their patrol. There was no need to bother her right now. He jumped down to the balcony the item was on and crouched down to investigate closer. And when he saw what the object was, his mouth went dry.
The lucky charm.
Specifically, the lucky charm he had given Marinette. For a moment, he couldn’t think as he held the item in his gloved hand. Why would Ladybug have Marinette’s lucky charm? He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of his own miraculous beeping at him. He had to go before his identity was exposed. He pocketed the lucky charm and, with a quick shake of his head, headed back towards the Agreste mansion.
“Plagg. I know you aren’t asleep.”
The moment Adrien had detransformed, his kwami had flown to his owner’s bed and was currently laying on his pillow snoring dramatically. The teenager sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair. He was still holding Marinette’s lucky charm. Ladybug had Marinette’s lucky charm. There were only a handful of reasons that could be, and Adrien’s mind was running through them all at warp speed. Plagg was being incredibly unhelpful - as always, Adrien thought bitterly. “You didn’t even eat any camembert. You wouldn’t fall asleep without a camembert!” he insisted as he tossed the lucky charm onto the bed.
“You know, you’re right,” Plagg replied suddenly. The kwami was up in an instant, phasing through the cabinet door that hid his cheese stash, and returning a moment later with a chunk of the smelly stuff. He was halfway back to the bed when Adrien grabbed him in midair. The little black cat narrowed his eyes in annoyance before popping the camembert in his mouth. “Fine, you caught me. Can I help you?” Adrien squinted at his kwami. He knew good and well how he could help him. Not letting go of the little beast, he pointed at the lucky charm lying on his bed. Plagg’s gaze followed his finger and he gave a little shrug and said, “Yes? What about it?”
“Why did Ladybug have this, Plagg?” Adrien asked, a hint of desperation creeping into his tone. He thought he knew the answer, but he didn’t dare hope for the best. It just didn’t make sense. He had seen Ladybug and Marinette together before, when Marinette was Multimouse. They couldn’t be the same person.
Could they?
“Couldn’t tell you, kid.” Plagg phased out of Adrien’s fist and made his way back to the pillow. “Now, can’t a kwami get some rest around here? That akuma was really hard.”
“It was Mr. Pigeon,” Adrien replied dryly.
“It was harder than usual!” Plagg cried dramatically, falling down on the pillow with a sigh. “I don’t know why you’re pressing me so hard about this silly little object. What is it even supposed to be?”
“A lucky charm, Plagg. A lucky charm that I gave to Marinette Dupain-Cheng about six months ago for her birthday. You know, just like the one she gave me?” Adrien sat down on the side of his mattress and picked up the charm again. It was definitely the one he gave her, or at least an exact replica of it. The blue and amber beads were identical to the original. “She can’t be Ladybug. That just wouldn’t make any sense.”
Plagg let out a huge sigh of exasperation. “God, kid, you’re about as dumb as she is clumsy. Dropping a personal item at the sight of an akuma defeat!” He flew back over to Adrien and floated in front of him. “Tikki’s lost her touch for picking Ladybugs. She shouldn’t even have brought it with her.”
“But Multimouse…”
“Multimouse was an illusion, Adrien. Or at least, she was for a little while. I still don’t fully understand that situation.” The kwami now sat on Adrien’s shoulder, peering down at the lucky charm. “She’s named after a good luck charm. Why on earth would she need some silly trinket to bring her good luck?”
Adrien furrowed his eyebrows as he looked down on the object. And suddenly, it all made sense to him. “Because I gave it to her. Because… she loves me.” Marinette loved him. And Marinette was Ladybug. And Ladybug... Ladybug loved him. His heartbeat increased. This was too good to be true. The love of his life was his classmate, one of his best friends in the whole world. “Plagg, I have to go see her.”
“No!” Plagg’s eyes grew impossibly wide as he looked up at his owner. “It’s not time yet! Master Fu worked so hard to make sure you don’t know each other’s identity. You need to keep it that way, at least until Ladybug decides otherwise, as the new Guardian.”
“But why?” Adrien asked, exasperated. “I already know who she is, and we can’t go back and change that. It’s too late. Besides, I love her, she loves me. We wouldn’t have to tell anyone else anything. It would just be me and her, against the world, as it always has been. Nothing would change!”
“Everything would change, Adrien! There’s a reason you can’t know each other’s identity. Other people always find out. It would go wrong. Trust me, you don’t want to do this.”
And regardless of how much it hurt, Adrien could tell his kwami was telling the truth. He didn’t know how Plagg knew it would all go wrong in the end, but he never was this serious about anything. Adrien held the lucky charm tighter in his hand and sighed. “So what? She’s just never going to find out who I really am?”
“Never say never, Adrien. Just not right now.” Plagg flew back to the pillow and laid down once more. The conversation seemed to be over.
Adrien went quiet for a moment as he looked down at the bracelet. There had to be a way to tell her without something bad happening. He just had to figure out what that was.
School the next day was brutal. It took everything in him to continue facing the front of the class instead of staring at the girl behind him. It was like every one of his senses was tuned to her now. He perked up every time he heard her whisper to Alya, straining his ears to hear her and sighing under his breath when the words were lost to the normal noise of the classroom. She sounded so much like his lady, he wondered how it had taken him so long to realize they were the same person. She smelled a lot like her too - like freshly baked macarons and spun sugar and sweet vanilla, like something Adrien wanted to drown in.
“Adrien, dude, what’s going on with you?” Nino finally asked when Adrien asked him what their teacher had said for the fifth time that day. The boy’s voice had an air of exasperation in it, as if he wasn’t usually the one asking Adrien for assistance with his work. It seemed like he didn’t like the taste of his own medicine.
Adrien gave a shrug of his shoulders as he crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against his chair. “Just haven’t been sleeping well lately. You know, with all my schoolwork, my modelling, Chinese lessons, piano lessons, and fencing, I don’t have much time for anything else, especially not sleep.”
He didn’t add his extracurricular activities as a savior of Paris to his long list of things that kept him awake at night, but if he did, it would be at the top of the list - right along with stressing out about how to tell Marinette he knew she was Ladybug. He wasn’t entirely lying, then; he had been kept up last night talking Plagg’s ear off about his worries until the kwami had disappeared out of his window to spend the night at Marinette’s house with the rest of the kwamis. He had, of course, shown up the next morning before Adrien had to leave for school, but the blond boy still gave him a stern talking to. It was much too dangerous to leave his side, even in the middle of the night, especially with Hawkmoth’s recent affinity for akumatizing people in the wee hours of the morning.
Nino let out an annoyed huff at Adrien’s explanation. “Your dad needs to take a chill pill, man. He’s working you half to death. He needs to learn that you’re his only son, and he doesn’t get a second chance to be a good dad.” Suddenly Adrien sat straight up and looked at his best friend, his eyes widening as a startled Nino nearly fell out of his chair. “Dude, what?”
“A second chance,” Adrien repeated. Of course. The snake miraculous’s power of time travel. How did he not think of this before? “Nino, you’re a genius.” He gathered his books as quickly as possible as the bell rang, grinning broadly as his friend gave him a flabbergasted look. “I’ll explain later, maybe, but I gotta go right now! See you tomorrow!” And he ran out of the room, leaving behind a confused Nino staring after him.
“Please, m’lady. I wouldn't ask if it wasn’t incredibly important.”
“Chat, I can’t just give you a miraculous with no explanation!” Ladybug turned around to give him the same look Nino had earlier, a mix of irritation and confusion in her blue eyes. Her hands found a place on her hips as she scoffed at him, turning her head as she surveyed the city. She was beautiful, even when she was pissed off at him, he thought with a soft smile. This only served to make her more annoyed as she shook her head and swung her yoyo out to the building across the street, gliding over the street below with practiced grace. Chat followed quickly.
“I will literally explain it to you tomorrow, though,” he replied simply, giving his shoulders a shrug. “There’s just somebody I really need to talk to, but I don’t want them to remember the conversation afterward. I’ll only use it once and then it’ll all be over, I swear. Please, Ladybug. I’ll give it right back.” He pouted at her and intertwined his own fingers, holding them up in front of him in a begging motion. The superheroine just raised an eyebrow and let out a little exhale of exasperation before bringing out her yoyo, opening it to reveal the snake miraculous in its hidden form. He had seen her do this before, materializing a miraculous out of seemingly thin air, but it never got any less impressive.
She handed the bracelet to him, albeit reluctantly. “Okay, Chat Noir. I’m trusting you. Please don't do anything foolish.” She offered him a small, nervous smile, which reminded him once more who she was behind the mask. He knew he was asking a lot of her, and as he took the bracelet from her, he caught her wrist in his hand and lifted her knuckles to his lips.
“You have no idea how much this means to me.” His eyes met hers over her extended arm. Her lips were parted slightly, but when he looked up, she closed them and quickly pulled her arm out of his grasp. He felt his heart flutter somewhat hopefully at the expression on her face; maybe it wasn’t just Adrien she loved. He saluted her, his signature smirk returning to his face as he hummed, “Goodbye, princess.” He turned away, but before he did, he saw the shocked look on her face return. He only ever called Marinette princess.
She opened her mouth to retort, but he was already gone.
“Tikki, what if it was a mistake?”
Marinette and her kwami were settled down on the former’s mattress. Tikki was sitting beside the pillow with a paw resting against her owner’s cheek, a sympathetic frown on her face. Marinette had buried her face in the pillow after coming back from school and had not moved for the entire hour that had passed. “Chat still hasn’t given me back the snake miraculous. What if he’s working with Hawkmoth to gather all of the miraculouses? What if he’s going to use it to do something really crazy and weird that ruins the space time continuum? What if-” Tikki’s paw shifted from its place on Marinette’s cheek to her lips, stopping the raven-haired girl from spiralling even more.
“Marinette, it’s too late to worry about it, anyway. You gave it to him. You just have to trust Chat Noir now.” Marinette lifted her head to look at her kwami as she spoke, detecting a bit of irritation in Tikki’s tone that she rarely had. “And he is not working for Hawkmoth! You know him better than that. I don’t know what he wants with the snake miraculous, but you can’t just assume the worst of him. It will all be okay.”
“Do you really think so?” Marinette whimpered, crossing her arms over her chest as she sat up. Tikki opened her mouth to respond, only to be interrupted by a knock at the trapdoor. “Quick, hide!” The kwami was already disappearing from view as the visitor knocked again, Marinette sitting up to speak to the person.
“Hello?” she called out. She unlatched the door and peered out. There, standing outside with a rose in one hand and the other behind his back, was Chat Noir. Marinette felt her heart jump into her throat. No way. There was no way. Did he somehow know her identity and was trying to give the miraculous back to her civilian self? She shook the thought from her head immediately. No, he randomly visited her pretty often. This was just coincidental.
The door swung open a bit more forcefully than she had intended it to, and she winced as it banged against the side of the house. Hopefully her parents just weren’t paying attention. The last thing she needed was her mother and father coming up to see Chat Noir with a rose in hand waiting on her balcony. She could just hear her dad now, asking the hero to take over the bakery with Marinette.
“Hi, Marinette.” Chat’s voice shook slightly as he spoke. Marinette raised a curious eyebrow at him. He usually sounded so sure of himself, oozing a confidence Marinette could only dream of. But as he looked at her now, every bit of swagger seemed to have been wrung out. He was practically a mirror of how she was every day with Adrien. “Um. This is for you?” The statement came out as more of a question as he offered her the red rose. She reached out to take it from him, her fingertips brushing against his gloved ones as she brought it to her nose.
“Thank you, Chat Noir,” she breathed, a soft smile playing at the corners of her lips. “Let me go put this in a vase.” She turned to disappear back into her room, but he reached out and grabbed her arm before she could. Her gaze flickered down to where his fingers wrapped around her wrist gently, before moving back to meet his own.
“No, we don’t have much time.” Chat Noir let out a deep breath as he closed his eyes. “Plagg, Sass, unify.” A flash of light blinded Marinette for a moment as the boy in front of her transformed into a unified version of the two miraculouses. The girl took a step back as she looked up at the taller boy.
“Chat Noir…?”
“I know who you are,” he interrupted, taking a step forward. Marinette’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch as she stared at him, her mouth going dry. How had he figured it out? What had she done wrong? She had always been so careful, so calculated. She opened her mouth to voice her concerns but he barreled on. “You dropped this the other day after an akuma fight.” The hand he had been hiding behind his back came into view, and in its palm laid a charm bracelet. Marinette let out a gasp of surprise as the hero deposited the charm into her hands. She stared down at it with wide, unseeing eyes, knowing as she was standing there that she had begun to shake. There was only one way that he would have figured out her identity just from this charm alone.
“You…” Marinette swallowed hard, looking back up to meet two concerned green eyes peering back at her. “Adrien?” she whispered, the rose she was holding in one of her hands falling to the floor as she reached up to tentatively touch his face. He leaned into her palm, his eyes slipping shut for a brief moment before he stepped forward and rested his hands on her shoulders.
“It’s okay, m’lady,” he said softly. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m going to fix this, for you, at least. I just had to tell you. I love you. You knew this already, but you never heard it from Adrien. I can’t detransform if I’m going to go back, but now you know it’s me. And I know it’s you, and I needed you to know, if even for a moment, that I am unbelievably in love with you. So in love with you it hurts sometimes.
“First I fell in love with Ladybug. I fell in love with her strength, and her confidence, and the way she never once faltered even when the situation seemed futile. She was… perfect. In every sense of the word. She was everything I wanted for the longest time, and it blinded me for awhile from what was right in front of me. You, Marinette. At first I thought you were polar opposites. And it just didn’t make sense for me to love you both, when the two of you are like two sides of a magnet. It didn’t make sense. You were clumsy, and you stuttered every time you tried to talk to me in my civilian form. But when we started talking like this, as Chat Noir and Marinette… I started to see the similarities. I started to understand how I could love you both. And now I know I never loved two girls at all. It was all you. It has always been you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”
The superhero gave another shuddering breath, leaning in to cup the girl’s face in his gloved hands, and pressed his lips to her own without another word. For a brief moment, Marinette didn’t respond, still too in shock to react, but when his thumb ghosted over the swell of her cheekbone and he sighed quietly against her mouth, she surged up to fully meet him in the kiss. She swung her arms up and around his neck, her body pressing against his as if every atom of oxygen between them was one too many, as if she could never, ever be too close to him. The kiss was over entirely too fast, and he was pulling away, his eyes still shut as if lost in the feeling of her lips. “Cha- Adrien, please, don’t…” Marinette whispered as she watched his hand move to his wrist. “We’ll be okay, I don’t care about our identities or anything, we can fix this ourselves, nobody else has to know.”
The boy in front of her opened his eyes, his expression suddenly unreadable. Marinette took a step forward, her hand grabbing for his wrist, but just as her fingers closed around it, she heard him whisper, “Second chance.”
A knock startled her from her spiral. “Quick, Tikki, hide!” Marinette whispered frantically as she sat up, her heart hammering against her ribcage. Who could possibly be knocking on her balcony’s trapdoor? Chat Noir? she thought, nibbling anxiously on her bottom lip. He usually didn’t visit her during the day, so she couldn’t understand why he would be there.
She unlatched the door and looked out. To her surprise, the leather-clad superhero was nowhere to be found. She frowned a little in confusion and stood up on her bed, glancing around to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving here. Nope, there was nobody there. She pulled herself onto the terrace and crossed her arms over her chest. “Chat?” she called out, trying to push down the bubble of hope rising in her chest. But he was nowhere to be seen.
She sighed, turning around to go back inside, when she felt something under her foot. She took a step back and looked down. On the floor lay a single red rose, slightly crushed but still beautiful. Marinette stopped down and picked it up, bringing it to her nose and inhaling the sweet scent. It was from Chat, of course, although she wasn’t quite sure why he had left after bringing it. She had the sudden feeling that she was forgetting something, something important. The rose was too familiar. She furrowed her eyebrows and concentrated, but nothing came to the forefront of her mind. Marinette shrugged her shoulders and plucked at the petals, letting them fly away in the light breeze that was blowing. Maybe they would find their way back to Chat Noir.
“M’lady, I did it.” Chat Noir sounded uncharacteristically tired as he met her on the rooftop, his eyes glued to the bracelet in his hand. Ladybug gave him a bewildered look but didn’t ask questions, just holding her hand out for the miraculous. Chat placed it in her waiting hand after a moment’s pause. “Thank you again. I promise I won’t ever ask for a miraculous for personal use again. I just had to get something off my chest, even if they would never remember it.”
Ladybug looked up from where she was stashing the bracelet back into her yoyo. Chat Noir was staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face, as if he was waiting for her to say something. But she didn’t know what he wanted her to say, so she just stayed silent, offering him a soft smile. Part of her wanted to ask about this mysterious conversation he had had, wanted to know every detail about who he was so desperate to confide in. But she knew if he wanted to tell her, he would. So she just said, “You’re welcome, kitty.”
“Oh!” Chat said suddenly. Ladybug turned to see him holding a charm bracelet out to her, remnants of his signature grin quirking at the corners of his lips. She squinted for a moment in the bright Parisian night lights, before she finally realized what it was. She gasped and reached out for it, but he was too fast; he pulled it out of her grasp, letting her fingers close around nothing. “Uh huh, what’s the magic word, m’lady?”
So he wasn’t totally out of character tonight. Ladybug tried (and failed) to keep the smile from forming on her lips. She hated to see him sad, so this sign of his usual humor was welcomed. “Please, Chat,” she sighed dramatically, extending her hand out again as she puckered her bottom lip out in a pout. “Where did you find this, anyway?”
He deposited the lucky charm into her awaiting hand. “You dropped it after our last akuma fight. Have you been hit by Reverser again?” He raised an eyebrow as he tilted his head at her, letting out a soft laugh. “I tried calling after you but you were too far away. I just figured I could give it back along with the miraculous.”
“Thank you.” Ladybug’s bewildered expression turned into one of pure gratefulness as she looked down at the bracelet in her hands. Chat felt his heart melt at the look on her face, feeling his gaze soften on her before he cleared his throat, moving to step away from her. She grabbed his hand in her own before he could. “Really,” she said quietly, not meeting his urgent gaze, “thank you. This charm mean… everything to me.”
Chat Noir’s cheeks burned hot with a blush as he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to her gloved knuckles. “Anything for you, princess,” he responded simply. His eyes widened as he realized what he had called her, but if she had noticed, she didn’t say anything. He let go of her hand and stood up straight, clearing his throat. “Ready for our patrol?”
Ladybug stashed the bracelet back into her yoyo and looked up, a curious expression on her face that soon melted to one of mischief. “Race you to the Eiffel Tower?” she replied, and, without waiting for his answer (she knew it would be “yes”), she swung off on her yoyo across the city streets.
Chat stood for a moment, watching her disappear into the night. She would win, like she did every time. She liked to think it was her speed that led to her victory, but Chat just liked to watch her in her element, swinging with graceful and practiced ease. She always waited for him, anyways, ready to mock him about how he sure was slow for a cat.
And so would he, he decided as he extended his staff and took off after her. For Ladybug… For Marinette, he would wait forever.