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When Ladybug and Chat Noir first appeared, Alya assumed, like all of Paris, that they were a couple, or would be soon. Paris' favorite power couple. Back-to-back, partners in arms, perfect complements. So cute. The Ladyblog was a news site, first and foremost, but the speculation section of the forums talked at length about their relationship, and Alya was just as guilty of that as anyone.
Like, they denied it (or Ladybug did, anyway), but they were obviously meant to be together. Alya shipped it.
Not everyone did. That was fine. Marinette seemed uncomfortable with speculating on their relationship status, which was fair, so Alya left the topic alone in front of her BFF. It was funnier to rile her up about her own relationship status, anyway.
Then there were more heroes, and Alya was one of them, chosen by Ladybug herself. And people shipped Rena Rouge with Chat Noir or Ladybug with Queen Bee or any bizarre combination of the five you could think of.
Alya mostly stopped using the shipping speculation forums after that. Marinette was right, it did get uncomfortable fast.
Seeing them up close though, her mind didn't exactly change about them being a couple. Ladybug denied a lot of it, but they were obviously extremely close. There was tension, romantic and sexual and platonic, and while Chat Noir flirted with Rena Rouge and Queen Bee and akumas and civilians he rescued (and Carapace, on one memorable occasion that Alya never planned on letting Nino live down), all of it was playful and charming. Anyone could see that he only really had eyes for Ladybug.
They weren't technically a couple, but Alya knew one day they would be. Ladybug loved Chat Noir, but they had a job to do, and relationships could be dangerous. Alya could accept that. She knew in her heart that on the day the five of them (eight, ten, twelve of them) defeated Hawkmoth once and for all, Chat Noir would take Ladybug in his arms - no, wait, Ladybug would take Chat Noir in her arms - and finally share that romantic kiss all of Paris was waiting for. They would tell each other who they are and fall in love all over again, safe in their victory.
Then it turned out Ladybug was Marinette, so that went out the window.
Because Marinette only had eyes for Adrien, and Alya was way more invested in that ship than any superhero stuff.
And Adrien was too sheltered and innocent to ever figure out Marinette's attempts at "advances", and possibly liked someone else. And Marinette had tried dating Luka and that had only hurt both of them, and Adrien had a bad breakup with Kagami and probably wouldn't date again until he was thirty for fear of hurting his friends, but that didn't mean that Alya was willing to give up on them, not when they had a whole not-as-literally-super superteam of classmates cheering them on.
Alya still sort of thought Ladybug and Chat Noir would be a cute couple, but Marinette and anyone who wasn't Adrien Agreste made no sense whatsoever.
She watched absently as Chat Noir bowed and kissed Ladybug's hand after the customary post-battle fistbump. Ladybug smacked him playfully on the head, ruffling his hair, and she bounded away to recharge as he watched with lovestruck kitten eyes.
Poor guy, she thought. Marinette was - well, not out of his league, he was a super-hot chivalrous superhero - but out of his reach. She wouldn't have eyes for anyone else. Alya wondered if he would ever see that, and if so, if he could get over it.
The forums were buzzing, as usual, with the day's battle. Distant photos and blurry video. Nothing Alya hadn't seen herself. She paused on a terrible photo, where you could just see a tiny blob of black bending to kiss the hand of a tiny blob of red on top of a rooftop.
She started a new discussion.
If you had to choose anyone for Chat Noir and Ladybug to be in a relationship with, excluding each other, who would it be?
A lot of the answers were "me lol".
More flooded in with angry essays about how they were meant for each other and nobody else could ever take their place, how DARE anyone try to separate them??? Too many capital letters and a lot of angry emojis.
One bright fellow kept posting "ur mom" over and over.
A few mentions of other superheroes, few and far between, but none of them clicked with Alya. I mean, excuse me, Carapace and Rena Rouge are both taken , what are people doing shipping them with Ladybug and Chat Noir? Queen Bee isn't even active any more. The others... Alya couldn't imagine it. The other heroes were pulled in quick and fled just as quickly. There was trust there, and friendship, but none of the chemistry that was so obvious between Ladybug and Chat Noir.
A couple people listed akumas as potential love interests, which was interesting, but not particularly realistic.
Someone said Shadowmoth, which was straight up gross.
"Ladybug should go out with Adrien Agreste," said one post.
Alya blinked at it.
She agreed, obviously, but that was a bit of a surprise. A lot of posts replied to it, agreeing with varying levels of excitement and speculation. They'd been seen together before, Ladybug had rescued him. They were two of Paris' favorite people.
Alya replied and tagged the OP.
"Who's Chat Noir going out with, then?"
That was her actual dilemma, after all. If Marinette ever managed to confess to Adrien, it was Chat Noir who would be left alone and broken-hearted.
The reply came surprisingly quickly.
"Ladybug has two hands."
Alya snorted.
They posted a second reply to her.
"But Chat also has someone he likes in his everyday life."
She tapped at her keyboard, thinking.
"You seem awfully sure about that."
"I have my sources ;)"
Alya doubted that. Nobody had "sources" on Chat Noir. He was an utter mystery, even to Marinette (by deliberate choice, but still).
It was interesting to imagine Chat Noir with a civilian. It made as much sense as anything else. She imagined him walking with a girl, slightly shorter than him, maybe with dark hair like Ladybug's, holding his hand and leaning on his shoulder as they walked along the Seine. She couldn't really imagine a face on her, except that it would be happy, because she couldn't imagine Chat Noir being anything but a gentleman to whoever was lucky enough to get his attention. He probably bought her stuffed animals and shirts with cats on them, and desperately wanted to tell her who he was. Maybe he hadn't confessed yet, because he was conflicted about Ladybug, but he hoped she would understand.
There was another attack the next day, and Alya raced to find a secluded spot to hide. Marinette had jammed Trixx's necklace into her hand as the class evacuated, disappearing quickly in the crowd. Alya wasn't quite as experienced with getting out and hiding and transforming in a timely fashion, especially since it was usually a bit into the battle before Ladybug came by with the Miraculous, so she was still dodging around looking for a place to go while Ladybug was luring the akuma away.
She stumbled into the restroom - the men's restroom, she noticed, but it didn't really matter as long as it was empty - and ducked into a stall below a window, standing on the toilet to crack it open for a quick escape after she transformed.
The restroom door opened. Alya froze.
Footsteps went past her stall, pacing from one end of the room to the other.
"Coast is clear," said a voice.
He was checking the stalls? Alya hadn't bothered to close her stall's door, so it was still open a crack like all the others, and her legs weren't visible through the opening on the bottom since she was standing on the toilet.
"Jeez, two days in a row?" a second voice complained. "Can't a cat get a day off?"
"You're telling me," the first voice muttered. It sounded familiar, echoing and distorting off the bathroom walls, and Alya felt her heart lurch up into her throat. "Maybe if I'm lucky, it'll take long enough that they'll have to reschedule today's photoshoot."
"Don't hold your breath, kid."
Alya crouched on the toilet seat, eyes wide, and leaned as far as she dared to see through the tiny opening in the stall door. A white shirt sleeve, partly rolled up; an open shirt collar; a hint of blond hair; a tiny black cat that caught her eye at the last second before the voice said "Plagg, claws out!" and a flash of green light made it disappear, the silver ring on the person's one visible hand turning black before the whole arm did the same, fingertips ending in claws; quick footsteps echoing in the room before the bathroom door slammed open and shut again as Chat Noir dashed out to join the fight.
Alya sat, staring wordlessly at the empty space where Adrien had been.
Trixx giggled, floating next to her. Her tiny paws covered her mouth, her eyes squinting in mirth.
"You weren't supposed to see that," they said. They floated down to wave their arms in front of Alya's face, tapping her on the bridge of her nose to get her attention. "Come on, we should go help! Ladybug's waiting for you."
The fight was not quick. It involved a series of logic games, each more convoluted than the last, hostages with time limits to their demise on the line, which Ladybug thwarted by calling in Viperion to loop ahead and tell her the answers. Rena had to make an illusory Ladybug to keep the akuma occupied while she ran to get him, Chat Noir running interference to keep the illusion from being disrupted.
When Ladybug finally beat the final impossible riddle before the (absurdly fast) timer reached zero, clued in by a now slightly exhausted looking Viperion, the akuma roared that they had cheated, leaping out of its maze to physically attack her.
Chat Noir Cataclysmed its oversized tome easily, and Ladybug freed the butterfly.
They bumped fists. Chat Noir flirted. Ladybug rolled her eyes. Rena Rouge stared.
Perfect couple, she thought. Problem solved.
Chat Noir vaulted away. Ladybug gave instructions to meet up to return the Miraculous, and swung down to talk to the dazed victim.
Wait, Rena thought. Problem not solved. They don't know that the problem is solved, so it's still a problem, and they aren't going to tell each other, so -
A hand landed on her shoulder, breaking her out of her thoughts.
"You okay, Rena?" Viperion asked. He looked very, very tired.
"Fine," Rena squeaked. Her eyes jumped again from Ladybug to Chat Noir in the distance to a nearby advertisement with Adrien's face on it back to Chat Noir and back to Viperion. "I'm just uh. Dealing with some stuff. So I should go. Transform back."
Viperion's eyes widened. He put his other hand on her other shoulder and stared at her.
"You know?"
"Know what?"
Both of their Miraculous were beeping. Neither acknowledged it.
Viperion was still grabbing her. "You know. About them."
"Everyone knows about them," Rena tried to redirect. She wasn't going to tell on her best friend, to compromise either of Paris' greatest heroes' identities even to their trusted teammate, even though she was bursting with wanting to talk through what this meant, "Who doesn't know about Ladybug and Chat Noir-"
"Do you have any idea," he said, "How frustrating it is to know?"
"What?" she said, stupidly.
He let go of her and walked away, looking exhausted again. He stared down at Ladybug. "They don't know. They don't know and they don't want to know, and once you do know, every moment with them, in and out of costume, is the most frustrating moment of your life."
Rena joined him at the edge of the roof. They were both beeping again.
"You know," she said.
"Sometimes I tell them," Viperion said. "In a loop. Just to see how they'll react."
"How does it go?"
"Different every time. Five minutes isn't enough for them to get over all of their... whatever it is." He stared blankly into the distance. "Ladybug usually freaks out. Chat Noir kind of goes blank, then gets hyper. They're usually both pretty upset with me."
Rena stared at the horizon with him. She also felt sort of blank, and freaked out.
"I've been trying to get them together for so long," she said. "But Marinette can't confess."
"And Chat Noir only has eyes for his Lady," he finished. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
The beeping was loud, now. It felt almost like Trixx and Sass were holding out as long as they could for them, to let them finish commiserating about knowing, about having to deal with such obtuse, frustrating friends.
Ladybug was long gone from the street below. Chat Noir had disappeared even before that.
Viperion patted her on the shoulder as he finally turned to leave. They had to return their Miraculous and get back to class.
"Welcome to the club, Rena Rouge," he said.
Back to class, where Marinette would stare at the back of Adrien's head and get flustered when he smiled at her, just minutes after she had pulled her hand out of the way of his kiss and called him an idiot.
"It's a square," Rena said blankly. Her two perfect couples, forever chasing each other and never catching up. "It's a god damn-"
Viperion laughed shortly before hopping down off the roof to return his Miraculous.
"I know," he said.
Alya transformed back, and Trixx collapsed in her hands, exhausted.
"Good work, Alya," Ladybug said. She slipped the Miraculous into her yoyo portal, smiling as if today was just like any other day. "We couldn't have done it without you and Viperion."
Alya looked at her best friend and felt a wave of exhaustion rush over her.
"I know," she said.