Chapter Text
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The beeping of his ring resounds like bells in Chat Noir’s ears. Usually, the sound warns that he must return to his father’s ivory cage. In this particular moment, however, it’s a welcome trill that means he can finally retreat. He needs to gather his thoughts, desperately.
His lips quirk at Ladybug, a facsimile. Moments ago, they were panting over a hard-won victory of Nite-Bat, a shift worker soured by Hawk Moth. They’d brushed their fists over the other’s and smiled, well-worn words leaving their lips.
Now, Chat feels distant and estranged from her, as though he never knew her before this moment.
(he really hadn’t, had he?)
Chat salutes and leaps from rooftop to rooftop, leaving Ladybug alone looking across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
Chat lands hard on a dim balcony and detransforms. Plagg spirals out of his ring. Adrien doesn’t hear the kwami yawn and complain about food. Blood rushes in his ears and he runs a hand through his hair.
“Brown.” Adrien paces to the edge of the railing but can’t bear the bright landscape he finds there.
“What?” Plagg asks.
“Her eyes. They’re brown.” A perfect amber, reflecting the Parisian skyline. Lovely, but—
Plagg told Adrien years ago, in the beginning, that eventually he would see past the magic glamour preventing him from recognizing and placing Ladybug’s features. Today is that day he breaches the barrier, but the effects aren’t what he thought they’d be.
Plagg remains quiet, eyes glowing and tail twitching.
Adrien tries. “Would the transformation—”
“No,” Plagg says.
Adrien pleads, more than says, “But Marinette’s eyes are blue.”
+
THEN
Adrien met Marinette on his very first day of school. Socially clumsy as he was, misunderstandings abounded from the get-go. By the end of the school week though, he thought they had made an understanding between the two of them, and that he may have made his first girl friend who wasn’t Chloe. The next Monday, when he waved to her, Marinette gave him a nervous smile, muttered absolute nonsense, and then promptly ran away.
Adrien discovered that making friends wasn’t as easy as a shared moment beneath an umbrella. Marinette, while friendly, needed time.
He doubted she meant for her words to emerge as tangled and backwards as they did. He also felt sorry for the tense, anxious energy that made her hands wring or contrastingly flap out and knock over any precarious item in arms reach. Adrien’s mother had taught him to be compassionate, so he did what he could to stay calm and make sense of Marinette’s rambling. He let go of what he couldn’t make heads or tails of and smiled patiently as she nursed each garbled word from her stubborn mouth.
In the beginning, that’s who Marinette had been to Adrien— his anxious but well-meaning classmate that he felt he could really have been close with if things were different…
Chat met Marinette while trying to purify the Evillustrator. Ladybug had been preoccupied so he’d paired with Marinette. She made a surprisingly collected partner as she played the role of bait. Even caged in thick glass, she didn’t scream or cling to Chat’s shoulders, instead her fists were clenched like she wanted to do something with her own small hands.
Dodging Evillustrator’s attacks, Chat felt as though he was meeting an entirely different Marinette. She was still as kind and clever as he’d seen in class, but the wry tilt of her lips as she indulged to his puns and her determination to help Nathaniel cast her in decisive light. Her voice was clear like a pealing bell as she shouted at the Evillustrator to give up because they would prevail. Marinette really was capable, Chat thought, with a seed of admiration that was bound to grow.
(Really, wasn’t the most obvious explanation for Ladybug’s absence a simple inability to be in two places at once?)
The Evillustrator wasn’t the last time Chat and Marinette met. More akumatizations would push them together, always revealing more of Marinette’s private self she never showed to Adrien at school. With Chat, she was blunt yet playful, concise in relaying information but always giving the smallest of grins when she lobbed back a pun with her own twist. Even when it was a family member who had been akumatized, she always kept her composure. Moreover, she possessed a thoughtfulness he rarely glanced between her manic mutterings in class. Marinette knew the people around Paris (from her bakery, she claimed) and was sensitive to their changes, and often had a theory about what had bothered them to the point they’d listen to purple whispering. More often than not, she was right too.
When he was Chat, Marinette was easy with him, comfortable in a way no one (sans Ladybug) was around his superhero persona. She wrinkled her nose at his cat puns, even as her lips would split into a smile. She would gently shove at his arm when she thought he was being ridiculous and she was dismissive when he bragged.
Generally, Chat didn’t have a taste for being dismissed —his father had curated that dislike— but she was gentle in her exasperation like she could see behind the airs of superherohood he cast onto himself like a cloak. As though she could see the real him beneath the posturing, in all his effusiveness and his uncertainty.
The first time he caught her rolling her eyes at him, he realized he wanted her to treat him like that as Adrien as well.
The next day, Adrien approached and greeted her with a pat on the shoulder. She squeaked, dropped her books, and her flailing knocked Adrien’s bag clean off his arm. Marinette stacked her textbooks in his hands, stammering nonsensical apologies and backhanded compliments as she crab-walked to the classroom door, all while shouldering Adrien’s book bag. Finally, she realized her error when he glanced down at her pink notebook with hearts doodled in the margins and she shrieked.
After that, he decided to keep greeting her as he normally did, never too friendly, never too coldly, just neutrally pleasant— like he did with everyone he felt unsure of.
Frankly, Adrien thought he must have imagined her spirit when he was Chat, but every chance encounter in an akuma battle, Marinette proved herself calm, thoughtful, and as considerate to the people at risk as the people possessed by akuma. Chat could only marvel and Adrien could only begin to yearn.
(that spiritedness, it really was that inimitable spiritedness that drew him in, and didn’t it make more sense for him to be drawn to the same girl instead of two different girls with the same stirring verve?)
One day in class, head perched in his hand, Adrien realized that Marinette would make a wonderful Ladybug.
The idea was quick like lightning, but true understanding and consideration came on slow like thunder. He watched as Marinette stepped between Mylene and Chloe’s confrontation at school like she had a shield already in hand and pointed out. The electric thought zapped tingly through Adrien as she called Chloe out in no uncertain terms for her bad attitude and ongoing cruelty with such righteousness in her eyes that he thought Chloe might be smote into yellow ash. Marinette then grasped Mylene gently by the hand and led her out of the classroom.
The rolling thunder came later when he stepped into the hallway to use the restroom, intending to check in on Mylene’s emotional state. Instead, he found Marinette already there.
“…don’t have to listen to anything Chloe says! Only you and Ivan know how you feel about each other. Trust your heart, not Chloe’s words, okay? I mean, she’s not a part of your relationship, right?”
He saw Ladybug in Marinette’s kindness and the righteous outrage curling around her supportive words.
That evening, Adrien reloaded the Ladyblog homepage over and over, waiting for a call that never came. Hawk Moth wasn’t akumatizing anyone today, not even Mylene.
(it would be just like Ladybug to diffuse a bomb even before it could ever go off.)
The realization of her aptness as Ladybug was sudden, but Adrien’s acceptance was gradual, and the resounding boom of thunder echoed in him as he watched her leadership in class. He rocked on the soundwave as she marshaled herself against the mayor’s daughter, and even teachers, rockstars, and CEOs on occasion. Any injustice was met by her furrowed brow and determination and Adrien could only stand in sublime awe.
Perhaps she was clumsy out of the costume, but inside, she was always a shining example.
“Our everyday Ladybug,” he told her as he stood on the edge of the picnic blanket. He meant it.
(Marinette was miraculous, he knew. Just like the other miraculous girl he knew and adored.)
Chat Noir didn’t mention his hunch to his lady, even as he had eyed the smear of light that glamoured her fine features with suspicion. Instead, he said goodbye and swung to Marinette’s balcony. Her door was slightly ajar, telling him he was welcome here (always felt that way when she was there). He rapped politely on the glass before sliding inside. He knew from repetition that he probably had twenty minutes or so before he needed to leave and feed Plagg.
Marinette spun around from her place at her desk. A towel hung over her shoulders as she rubbed her wet hair. Her face was red, even as she glared at him.
(from a shower, it was wordlessly implied, but what if she had just raced home after running over the Parisian rooftops in the rain and pounding his fist?)
“Bonne nuit, princess,” he crooned.
“Stop calling me that, I’m not your princess,” she griped.
“So, you’re someone else’s?” he inquired.
“It’s not your business, you silly cat.”
(Silly Chat, shouted, murmured, booming down the streets in and amid battles, how could he not think—)
It wasn’t like he started visiting Marinette because he thought she was Ladybug. There wasn’t a distinct point to when they turned from civilian and hero into friends either. Instead, he remembers a dozen moments of him passing by as she opened her balcony door, being lured by the smell of sweets, wanting to check up on her after a scathing day with Chloe or Lila when Adrien couldn’t find the words or wanting to hear how she really felt about something instead of her tongue-tied stuttering…
The Marinette who Adrien knew was uncertain, doubting, unable to say what she meant around him. Quick to please him and others when she felt uncomfortable. The Marinette Chat knew was quick to retort with a playful line so nuanced with backhanded compliments that he never really knew what she thought about him. She said what she believed with her eyes bearing into him. She was outgoing, family-centric, and friend-promoting. He now knew what marvels she was capable of when her mouth wasn’t self-sabotaging. He had seen it time and time again with other people from a distance, but never up close as Adrien. Why not with Adrien though, when he counted her among his first friends?
(the lightning and the thunder were far away from Paris that day, barely a blip in his hearing as he glanced at her beneath the awning they shared, umbrella in hand and hesitating about how to explain himself to her when he admired her spirit so much already)
Something about Adrien himself must repulse or confuse her. Maybe it was his money or fame that made him too strange and distant to equate himself as friendly to her. It had happened before when children grew up enough to understand status and special treatment.
He wanted special treatment from Marinette, though not the kind that comes with wealth. The kind that she extended effortlessly in giving Chat her time and attention. He wasn’t pure enough to deny himself it even under a mask. She fed him cookies, and often sussed out things he didn’t know he’d been waiting for a chance to say. He told her abstractly about his father in the tones of confusion, heartbreak, and love and she took it all in with a meter of understanding and compassion.
Somewhere they tripped the line of friends into something neither Chat nor Adrien has any experience with. Comfortable vulnerability.
He couldn’t stay away.
Chat sprawled over her bed, the very image of a spoiled cat, having made himself welcome some dozen nights before. She had initially refused to join him until one day she was so exhausted she slumped into her plush pink bedding, completely ignoring him.
Together, they found that some things were easier to say to the ceiling as they strayed into waters deeper than casual conversation or even eye contact allowed. It never felt as though he was talking to himself, not with Marinette’s slow breathing and peripheral warmth, her hums of understanding and compassion.
Marinette must have felt the same because she practiced her love confessions on him. At first, it was in earnest, until she suspected his compliments were teasing and she snapped at him, angry then playful as she joked with him about his lady love too. As the evening wore on, her attempts grew serious again, and he knew it was the same confession she was always worrying between her tongue, meant for that boy she was in love with.
(Ladybug was in love with some nameless, lucky boy, too.)
“Ever since I met you, there have been three suns in my heart,” she murmured to the ceiling over and over again until she became quiet and displeased.
“It’s not genuine enough,” she sighed. “This just isn’t me.”
Chat knew a few things about that, or rather, Adrien did…
She continued, fingers tangling on her chest, “The truth is… The truth is, I the first time I saw you, I misjudged you. I thought you were conceited and superficial. Then I got to know the real you, someone sweet, sincere, and generous!”
Chat felt his suit stand on end, his tail wringing tightly around his own wrist as he tried to breathe through her impassioned speech. He felt like she was talking about him, him and all his airs and dramatics as Chat and the veil of coolness he wore as Adrien. She did see him after all.
She trailed off, his voice lapsing over the je t’aime.
He arched his neck, looked away from the ceiling to stare over the landscape of her face. He took in the swell of her cheek, the narrowness edging her eyelids and the dusty freckles, feeling she was too brave and amazing to just be herself, she saw entirely too much of him.
“Are you Ladybug?” he whispered.
She paused for a long moment and Chat heard his claws scraping over vinyl in his palm. “Shouldn’t you know?” she asked.
“We don’t know who each other are. We promised to keep it secret as best we could.” Chat released his grip, tried running fingers through the pink duvet.
“Is that why you come over here?” she asked, her voice soft and low. Suddenly, this peripheral glance at her wasn’t enough to understand her words and he levered up to see her better. She looked soft and flush against the covers, her brows narrow.
Chat said, “No,” almost without thinking about it. He knew that saying yes would be a mean thing, and he had been raised with better manners than that.
Taking a second to think, he knew it wasn’t the real reason, but as he looked at her inky hair, he aligned it with the dark tresses chasing over rooftops he wasn’t all sure what he meant. It was enough for Marinette though, who nudged his elbow until he laid down on her level again.
“Then it doesn’t matter, does it?” she mused. Softer, with more meaning she said, “I wish I could be so amazing as that.”
He almost felt like she was teasing him because she was that amazing and more.
(Besides, he knew she would never tell him her identity anyways…)
(…and in the end, she hadn’t, had she?)
+
NOW
Plagg stares with distant sympathy at Adrien as he tries to swallow his new reality of a brown-eyed Ladybug.
Instead of returning to his ivory cage to lick his wounds and make sense of the pounding confusion in his head, he transforms again.
Chat lands feather-soft on Marinette’s balcony. The night is warm, and she’s waiting for him as she looks out at the city lights. He isn’t ready for her, but he also isn’t ready for anything to change. He slinks up behind her, drawn like a moth to the flame.
She turns and his hands reach around her shoulders, coming to rest across at back, clinging. She looks up at him with surprise, her face open and bright in the dim evening light.
“I wanted it to be you,” he says. His claws dig into the cotton of her sleep shirt, pulling her close into a hug.
Her voice is muffled, confused. “What?”
“I wanted her to be you.”
The tension in her tone eases and something sad settles there. “Oh, kitty.”
“You’ve never been Akumatized,” he tries to reason. “And all the times that Ladybug has been at my school—”
“Maybe she goes to our school,” Marinette reasons. “And besides, I’ve never wanted to be Akumatized. Even when I feel hurt it just doesn’t seem worth it…”
He pulls back to stare at her, too much emotion welling inside of him. She sighs, watching him. Marinette sees too much of him now after all their time trading secrets and feelings.
Blue eyes look out at the city, lovely but—
“Sorry, I’ve never been anything as special as Ladybug.” She smiles, self-deprecating and still sweet. “I’m just clumsy little Marinette.”
He’s angry now that it isn’t her. He’s angry that there is someone out in the world somehow more deserving of being Ladybug when stubborn, brave, amazing Marinette is living in Paris, unmiraculous and yet astonishing.
He can’t find the words for the betrayal he feels, and she’s speaking again, a gentle hand on his shoulder, her thumb brushing against his bell.
“Does that mean you found her?” she asks. Her eyes gleam with excitement, joy for him discovering the identity of the girl he’s professed his love for in ways so numerous that all of Paris knows.
“No,” he mumbles. He hadn’t even thought about what the glimpse meant or of tracking her down. He’d only thought that she wasn’t Marinette.
“No,” he says again, burying his head in the hollow of her neck.
Marinette hums, fingers gentle as she rubs behind his ears. “Don’t worry, you will.”