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Chapter Text

Marinette anxiously bounces the microphone head on her thigh, chewing on her bottom lip and probably causing noticeable damage to the perfect red lip she’d labored for at least five minutes on. She really wants to start biting her fingernails, but then the stage techs are making those hand signals at her and also telling her to stop hitting the microphone head and she’s agreeing and forcing herself still and she’s going up in five- four- three- 

If anyone asked the worldwide sensation and pop punk idol Ladybug what she was doing in the fifteen minutes before the final show of what was supposed to be the single most important tour of her career so far, Marinette suspects they would never believe an answer like, “fighting my way through an anxiety attack in my dressing room because my last minute replacement manager claimed to be an angel and told me I might die from demons if I tell anyone my real name in the same sentence.” And really, she hardly believed it either.

Marinette had responded initially with laughter. “Did Alya tell you I was watching superhero anime again?” she had asked, and Tikki, her self-proclaimed guardian angel and temporary manager during Alya’s unfortunate surprise cold, had simply walked up to her and clasped her hands.

“You have to listen to me, Marinette,” Tikki said, her palms somehow reminding Marinette of skipping rocks and the idea of perfume. “I am being truthful; there are demons amok with only your name to guide them, and I have been sent from heaven to protect you.”

Marinette had wanted to laugh again. But Tikki had looked so sincere about it, that she’d unfortunately felt herself start to believe something extremely absurd.

“Demons?” she asked. “Like, from hell?” 

“Demons,” Tikki unfortunately confirmed, her leaf-like hands petting soothingly over hers. “And there are no words in any earthly language to describe the places I am calling ‘heaven’ and ‘hell,’ but, yes, essentially from what you might consider ‘hell.’”

She could feel her pulse quickening to an alarming rate; she always got anxious before shows, and for this show in particular, she was already more anxious than usual. Three years building her career up, wearing the mask, going by a stage name - all for this moment, this show. Where she was finally going to tell the world, right here in her home city, her real name.

Or not. Demons. From somewhere-like-hell. Oh, my god.

“What do you mean they just have my name to go by?” Marinette asked, her voice getting that high-pitched, thready tone to it that was far too indicative of her level of panic.

“Heaven has eyes, hell has ears. We have always seen who you are, Marinette - past, present, and future,” Tikki said with an apparently heavenly conviction and fondness in her tone. “But hell is blinded by its own destitution at times; it can be tricked by masks and rouses like the one you have with your name. Hell sees your future, but only as who Ladybug will become, not Marinette,” she explained patiently, still rubbing her seafoam hands over Marinette’s knuckles.

“What the fuck,” Marinette said. She looked into Tikki’s eyes, the clearest blue of where the ocean meets the horizon, and Marinette was really and truly believing in angels and demons. There was a feeling she got, when she finally met Tikki’s eyes, and it washed over her like cherry blossoms in the wind; a certainty, a steadiness, a calmness. A perfect peace, divine. “What the fuck,” Marinette said, and she ripped her hands out of Tikki’s.

And that was when she started to have the whole breakdown about it. She stood hunched over in front of the little desk fan on her vanity with tissue paper pressed to the inner corners of her eyes so she wouldn’t mess up her eye makeup or the glue keeping her mask in place as she sobbed and maybe even screamed a little bit.

Two-

The problem was that Marinette had carefully crafted this tour since a year and three months ago when she decided she was finally comfortable with the idea of being famous all the time. She’d built how she advertised the tour, how she performed, how she dressed, how she talked, what songs she played, everything , on her face and identity reveal. 

Her social media for the past few months have been anticipating this concert, what with every celebrity gossip and theorist dutifully teasing apart all of her hints and correctly assuming their true meaning nearly every single time. Everyone was expecting an identity reveal.

“I have so little time to make this huge career-changing decision and also figure out what to say instead,” Marinette had sobbed to Tikki, stuffing a tissue into her nose as her nose was beginning to run quite aggressively due to her aggressive sobbing. “I don’t even know what to say! Anything will just be disappointing after this long of a build up, it’ll never go well! And then I’ll be killed by demons anyway and maybe the world will explode about it, too! Demons always want to explode the world, don’t they?”

“Oh, Marinette,” Tikki had said, changing out the corners of tissue paper pressed to Marinette’s tear ducts and patting her face with her tree ring hands. “You are a problem-solver, you are more than capable. I have all my faith in you.”

One.

Her platform jolts beneath her feet, and then she is rising up into the air, gripping the microphone in her hand like a sword. 

She forces a grin on her face to hide the nerves still shuttering inside of her, and it eases when she hears the crowds, hears the excitement of the room. And then her band hits the count off for her opening song, and all of her muscles relax to the sound of a sharp cymbal and hard kick drum.

She performs her set, only flubbing up in the usual places, by some miracle. It’s a good show with a lot of high energy - likely because of everyone’s expectations, and as she’s sweating through her dances and breathing through her songs, she feels the decision weighing down the back of her head.

Spontaneous angel and probable demons versus the biggest plan of her life, so far. Easy peasy (not).

At the end of her set, she stands up at the edge of the very front of the stage, breathing hard. She closes her eyes and tilts her face up to the raftered ceiling of the stadium, calming her body down and relishing in the cheers around her while still trying to figure out what the hell to do.

She lifts the microphone to her mouth.

“Now, as many of you accurately predicted,” she says as she opens her eyes, scanning the faces that she can see in the crowds all around her, “I have something to tell you guys.” 

An eruption of cheers bursts through the stadium, and Marinette pauses to let it happen, her brain still running wild. If heaven apparently sees all, couldn’t she have gotten a goddamn warning more than fifteen minutes before her show?

“And you know I saw all the theories,” she says, “and all the rumors, and all the gossip” - stalling, she’s stalling - “and I know a great many of you were right.” Screams, shouts, et cetera.

Her hints - what were her hints? Comments about true selves, vulnerable music video imagery, subtle hints in songs about wanting to be known deeper. All the usual stuff. What else could it mean? What were the other theories? She’s blanking, she’s blanking.

Her eyes move over the barricade, a bead of sweat rolling down her temple, and then the world seems to freeze, and she realizes that Adrien goddamn Agreste is there at the barricade for her show, her life-changing show.

Time moves like molasses, and she uses all of those sugar coated milliseconds to stare at the way he’s draped his arms over the barricade, his entire body leaning forward, his mouth moving slowly - through sugar, so slow - up into a smile that sparks like the fire in a hearth. His eyes are the only green of summer, glittering with the lights and the warmth of the crowd, and they are fixed on her.

“A partner,” her mouth says, and then time is normal again, and she is staring out at a crowd of thousands in confusion as to how the hell she just said something so insanely absurd.

The crowd is beginning to parrot ‘partner?’ at each other, at her, and Marinette feels her haunches rise.

“A partner!” she repeats, and her eyes snag on Adrien goddamn Agreste, who is still staring at her with rapt attention. She watches in slight horror as his lips move to form the word ‘partner’ pensively and beautifully to himself, and then she forces herself to look away. “F-for my next step, Ladybug as you know it will be no longer, and instead, you will see” - she’s fully bullshitting now, and she can feel herself getting more terrified at the mess she’s getting herself into with each word that spills out of her mouth - “a partnership with both parties familiar with each other’s true selves, a partnership of honest vulnerability, a partnership where Ladybug is one half of a musical whole. I know it’s not what everyone expected, but this is the way the dream is headed, and I really think you’ll like what comes next. I never meant to stand alone as Ladybug, and now you’ll see that we’ll all be stronger, better, and more complete as a team.”

As soon as the rest of her entirely made-up-on-the-spot spiel leaves her mouth, Marinette covers her mouth with one hand, looking out at the crowd cheering - she can hardly hear if it’s the right kind of cheering - and feels tears well up in her eyes. 

She breathes hard, hoping her panic registers as some combination of overwhelming joy or relief to all the cameras pointed at her, and then her eyes catch on Adrien Agreste’s, one more time. 

He’s shaking his golden head of hair, a wide smile on his face as he seems to talk to the people next to him, throw his hands up in what looks like excitement. He turns his face back in her direction, and their eyes meet again. And this time, he seems to realize that she’s actually staring at him.

She watches his chest move with his breath, and then he cups his hands around his mouth, leaning farther out over the barricade.

“Ladybug,” he shouts, his voice high and clear over the rest of the noise of the stadium, like her ears are zeroed into the soundwaves from his throat. “I swear you are heaven-sent!”

Marinette can’t help it. She laughs.

And something in her stomach untwists, and she blows a kiss to him - Adrien goddamn Agreste - before moving back up the stage and giving the cue to her more than a little confused band members (problem for later) that she’s ready for her encore song.

The opening music starts to play. Cheers sound up, and Marinette grins. At least this part of her pre-planned speech she gets to keep the same.

“All of the sudden,” she says, pushing her hair away from her face, “everything will be different. Here’s the lightning strike of fate, love, and whole lot of luck, this is ‘Coup de Foudre.’”

Chapter Text

Adrien yawns mid-photo for the fourth time, and apparently four times is the cap his photographer can manage to handle with grace. 

“You are not looking sexy like a cat, you are looking like you have eaten too much spaghetti!” his usual photographer shouts at him, despite neither cats nor spaghetti being involved in this shoot at all. “Too big a bowl of spaghetti and now you are sad on the steps of your grandmama’s house watching the other children play because they are not little gluttons! Go! Shoo! Get out of my sight!” 

With another yawn, Adrien bows off the set with a little wave. He’s been working with Vincent long enough to know this is just his special way of telling him to take a break while he fusses over something else for a while, and Adrien is never one to turn down a break. He slumps in his chair purposefully pulled up to the snack table and stuffs a few grapes in his mouth before leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

Vincent would no doubt give him a tongue lashing if he knew the real reason Adrien was so tired this time was because he saw the Ladybug live. In the flesh. At the barricade. 

His excitement had been so overwhelming even after the concert - he shouted something silly, she laughed! - that he couldn’t sleep for hours afterward. Chloe had called him at four in the morning just to tell him to stop sending her concert videos of the same moment of Ladybug blowing a kiss to him because she was tired of being woken up by the incessant beeping of her phone, and Adrien had simply switched gears to sending the videos to Nino, who always had his notification sounds off.

He’d also been thinking about her announcement, which he had been maybe hopelessly and desperately theorizing for months would be a full face reveal, and trawling through all the fan reactions on every social media burner account he had. Some disappointment, some apathy, some excitement - and Adrien, of course, was on the ‘excitement’ side of things, as he had full faith in Ladybug to produce utterly life-changing media at any given moment with any given concept.

A partner. He wonders who it would be, who she’s going to cultivate this ‘honest, vulnerable’ partnership with. Is she revealing a lover? A best friend? A perfectly platonic business partner? He’s dying to know.

Fingers warm and slightly calloused brush along his cheeks, and Adrien opens his eyes to see Nino’s face above him. “Taking the leisure part of an athleisure photoshoot real serious, dude,” Nino says, and Adrien smiles, resisting the urge to rub his eyes.

“You know it, man. Something on my face?”

“Just leftover red glitter,” Nino says, showing Adrien a speckle of red glitter on his finger. “I told you you weren’t going to get it all off from last night.”

“Okay, well let’s all take a moment to recognize that it doesn’t matter at all because the glitter worked,” Adrien replies. Nino raises his hands in defeat, then leans over and picks at the grapes cheese platter.

“Yeah, we all saw her blow that kiss, so what are we thinking? Shotgun wedding? Something classy and in Italy for some reason? I’ll even give you a discount on my DJ services,” Nino says, and Adrien feels his face burn.

“Nino,” Adrien says in a warning tone, looking around at all the people in the studio around them - most of whom have probably also seen the video of Adrien shouting at Ladybug and her returning the favor with a blown kiss multiple times (it was now an internet sensation, Buzzfeed said so as of ten o’clock in the morning) and are at least in part dying to build up the perfectly crafted rumor to cause a problem at some point.

“I’m just kidding, dude,” Nino says, nudging Adrien with his elbow, “we all know my DJ services for your shotgun wedding would be entirely on the house, provided I’m the best man.”

Adrien blushes, but he does return Nino’s cheesy high-five.

“So anyway,” Nino says, gathering more grapes and cheese cubes in his hands, “I’m not just here to organize your wedding while you take a break.”

“Really?” Adrien asks, glancing over at Vincent, who is yelling at a pair of shoes for their laces not being tied ‘with the heart and soul of lasagna fresh from the oven.’ “I thought my dad said no more music stuff until at least a month of his brand photoshoots.”

“And that’s very true, my man, until I got a call from none other than your dear ol’ dad that a couple of very special ladies showed up on your doorstep approximately” - he checks the time on his phone - “twenty minutes ago, and it was absolutely imperative that I come right away and pick you up on my way.”

Adrien frowns. “What do you mean?”

Nino grins.

So Adrien spends the car ride home calculating the best way to sprint up to his room while Ladybug and her two managers are apparently being paraded around the mansion for the grand tour, hosted by none other than Nathalie Sancoeur, a woman intent on skipping over all details just to end a conversation faster.

“It’s hopeless,” Adrien mopes.

“It won’t even be that big of a deal,” Nino says as he turns the car onto Adrien’s street. Adrien’s leg starts to bounce. “Almost everyone in the world likes her, so chances are, she’s stumbled on a shrine or two dedicated to her. It’s only natural.”

“It is perfectly natural to have a stash of photos of your favorite artist in the whole world,” Adrien says, his hand already gripping the door handle, “but only when they can’t see it.”

He’s out of the car before Nino can even protest, and he’s sprinting into the mansion, with the reckless abandon of a man attempting to preserve his dignity. No one in the atrium, no voices on the ground floor. He runs up the stairs, really putting the ‘ ath’ into the athleisure set he is still accidentally wearing, and then his stomach drops to the floor when he sees Nathalie walking away from his room. Alone.

“Did you finish the tour?” he asks, breathless.

“Yes, it ended in your room, just like always,” she says. She glances down the stairs at Nino entering the mansion, and then she unfolds her tablet from the close grasp of her arms, typing out something on the bright screen. “I’ll go ahead and notify your father that all parties are here so that the meeting can begin.”

“Where did you leave them?” Adrien asks, still trying to catch his breath and also live in denial for a little longer.

Nathalie pauses in her typing. “In your room, of course,” she says. 

“Why?” Adrien asks, his embarrassment crashing over his body in a sharp, clean wave.

Nathalie blinks at him. “Your room looked clean, it’s large enough and has the entertainment to accommodate them, why else?” 

Adrien slaps his hands over his face. He stays there for long enough for Nathalie to tell him to please bring Ladybug and her managers Alya Cesaire and Tikki to his father’s office for the official meeting. He doesn’t move until Nino grabs hold of his shoulders and starts steering him to his room.

“Oh, my god,” he says to Nino. Nino hums empathetically.

Adrien’s bedroom door is cracked open, and he hears soft voices drift out to meet his ears.

“He’s absolutely perfect,” a voice that reminds Adrien strangely of sea glass says. 

“I mean, the extremely obvious and well-curated photo stash of your face does seem to give off good vibes,” says a voice Adrien recognizes as Ladybug’s manager Alya from the occasional side content she and Ladybug make together as friends.

“Oh, my god,” says a voice that Adrien could recognize from light years away.

He takes a deep breath, and he pushes open the door to reveal three women sitting together on his couch, two bracketing the third, who is hunched over with her face pressed into her hands. When they hear the door open, all three women look up.

There’s Alya on the left, her face clearly caught in the moment of holding back a gleeful smile that splits wide open when she sees him. There’s a woman Adrien has never seen before on the right, the afternoon sun causing a halo-effect around her head of thick gouache hair as she smiles at him. 

And then there’s Ladybug in the middle, face half-obscured by her signature simple polka-dotted mask. She doesn’t smile like Alya and the other woman, but rather stares at him with her hands still cradling the space her face had been, her cherry red-stained lips parted. She stands, kind of abruptly, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, and she looks at him almost like she’s a little lost. 

Her sky blue eyes flick to his desk, and Adrien looks back to see his Ladybug bulletin board leaning up against the wall by his desk, perfectly on display. It’s not even like he could make the perfectly feasible and truthful excuse that he was a fan of Ladybug’s whole aesthetic and career, since all the pictures that included things like concert set designs, music video art, or her band crew - a few extremely talented unmasked people that fans have affectionately dubbed ‘the kitty section’ - were completely covered by different pictures of Ladybug’s face.

He looks back at her. Wonders briefly what he should do. “You must be Ladybug,” he says, feeling his smile lean more towards sheepish than cheeky despite his best efforts. “I’ve heard a song or two.”

She surprises him with a laugh, tucked into the palm of her hand, and Adrien steps forward without even really thinking about it. She steps forward, too, confident and sure.

“Adrien,” she starts, shocking him with his name, even though she probably had to know it to get into his house. “If you ploud, then ceese be my partior,” she finishes, and then promptly releases a screaming sort of tea kettle sound from her between her lips. 

Adrien blinks. “What?”

“Savior,” she says, and then swings her hands up, waving them around in the air. “I mean, clease, pould you- could you please be my savior- partner.” She slaps her hands over her face, covering her eyes and therefore missing whatever silly expression sprouted on Adrien’s face as realization dawned on him. “I would really appreciate it,” she says into the palms of her hands, “if you could please be my partner.”

Chapter Text

As Adrien goddamn Agreste is leading them all to his father’s office for some sort of extremely terrifying and intimidating meeting that will likely include negotiations and contracts, Marinette hangs back just a little bit to grip hold of Alya’s arm. “Alya,” she hisses, “I know I literally have no other choice, but I don’t think I can do this.”

“You’re right, you do literally have no choice,” Alya hisses back. “After last night, you should be bathing me in champagne and cookies for how fast I found someone for this ‘partner’ concept I have literally never heard of.”

Marinette groans quietly, keeping one eye on Adrien and his self-proclaimed ‘music guy and best friend’ named Nino up ahead of them. “I’m really sorry, Alya, I will make it up to you in every way I can, and I am so thankful for you as my capable manager who deserves all the cake, macarons, ice cream, and everything else nice in the whole world,” she says dutifully. “But I don’t even think I can have a conversation with him! He’s too pretty!”

“Something tells me that is not going to be an issue,” Alya says.

“We will never be able to communicate, he will be convinced I speak another language, the concept will go up in flames, my career will crash and burn, and the world will end,” Marinette replies, indulging in her extremely valid melodrama.

“Alya did very well,” Tikki says, her presence pouring rainwater on the skin of the back of Marinette’s neck. “He’s perfect. Did you see that he looks very much like his mother?” Marinette looks back to see Tikki gesturing to the family portrait hung up at the top of the staircase in the atrium. 

She had pointed out the exact same portrait during the tour, halting their brusque guide just to ask, “that’s his mother?” with her rose petal finger pointed at a golden woman with her arm wrapped lovingly around a younger-looking Adrien. When Nathalie had answered in the affirmative, Tikki had hummed, staring up at the portrait with a smile like wet soil. “They look very much alike,” was all else she said before they’d continued on with the tour.

When they all file in, Marinette busy trying not to throw up as Adrien holds open the door, Gabriel Agreste is standing behind his desk with his back turned to them. His face is tilted up to a ginormous abstract portrait of Emilie Agreste. She’s painted in hues of gold, so bright and lustrous that she seems to glow off the canvas, thick swipes of paint larger than life and twice as beautiful.

“Father,” Adrien says, clearing his throat, “I’ve brought in Ladybug and her managers.”

For a moment, nothing happens. Marinette’s palms are sweating to a heavy degree.

Then Gabriel Agreste’s hands, clasped behind his back, clench, and he’s turning around to face them. He stares at each one of them in turn until his icy gaze lands on Marinette.

“It’s quite rare to announce an upcoming project prior to doing any sort of work on it,” he says, as if he’s testing her, and Marinette swallows.

“This is a rare situation,” she says. “A personal matter came up, and I had to change my plans extremely last minute. Adrien is our first idea and top pick, but if that’s not doable because of your personal preference or his schedule, then please let me know right now.”

He seems to consider her, tilting his head of perfectly coiffed graying hair. “Tell me why I should allow you to work with my son.”

Marinette blinks. “Um.”

A sharklike smile blooms on Gabriel’s face. “If you can’t tell me exactly why you’d like to work with my son, you should not even imagine a contract between us.”

“I’ve always admired him,” she blurts out, feeling panic seize her stomach and push the words out. “I- I think his multifaceted abilities in performance would be a needed addition to the concept I’m trying to create, and I especially love hi- music. I especially love his music - the sound of his music that he’s released before. I think our voices and talents would mesh in an interesting way, and that’s something that I want to explore,” she says, feeling her cheeks burn as she tries to speak calmly without jumbling her words around. She’s hyper aware of Adrien standing next to her.

Gabriel stares at her, his cool eyes squinting just slightly as he surveys her. “Prove it,” he says.

Adrien stiffens beside her.

“E-excuse me?” she asks.

Instead of answering, Gabriel walks out from behind his desk and leaves the office without a glance back at them. After a moment, Adrien clears his throat. “He wants us to follow after him,” he says softly, mostly to Marinette.

“Why wouldn’t he just say so?” Marinette asks, bewildered.

“He’s… eccentric,” he replies, sounding a little sheepish.

They follow a little ways behind Gabriel, back up in the direction of Adrien’s room. “What is he going to make me do?” she whispers to Adrien.

“Sign the blood oath,” Adrien whispers back to her, and Marinette whips her head to look at him. Adrien looks back at her, a ruddy red blooming on his cheeks. “I’m joking. He’s probably going to make us use my piano.”

“Us?”

And then they’re in Adrien’s spacious room with its honest-to-god rock-climbing wall, floor-to-ceiling windows, library, air-hockey table, and, of course, the bulletin board of her face propped up by his desk. The collection of Ladybug pictures is- Marinette feels- normal about it. It’s totally fine. Normal, even. She’s not thinking about it.

Gabriel ignores all of these things and stops in front of the grand piano positioned by the windows, the afternoon sun turning the glossy black white where the light hits. They all cluster around the piano, and Gabriel fixes his eyes first on Marinette, then on Adrien.

“Prove it,” he says again, and Marinette feels her heart seize.

She looks over at Adrien to see him looking down at her, making a pinched, hopeful sort of face. She had not prepared at all to sing today in front of people, let alone acoustically with a piano and in an extremely high stakes situation, but she panic-looks at Alya and Tikki just to see them both giving Marinette enthusiastic thumbs-ups. No escaping this, it seems.

Marinette takes a deep breath, looking back at Adrien. “Do you want to-”

“Yes,” he answers immediately, before she’s even finished her sentence. “Yes,” he says again, and he steps forward, pulling back the piano chair for the both of them. He waits for her to sit down, and then he gingerly sits next to her a careful distance away. He places his fingers on the keys, staring down thoughtfully at his hands. “‘Double Dare’?” he asks, lifting his eyes to hers once more.

She blinks at him. “You know ‘Double Dare’?” It was a song off her debut EP, when her sound was still rough and sharp like a broken bottle thrown out during a garage band set. It was a smooth love song set to crashing guitars and tumbling drums, but the demo of it that she’d released on YouTube was a piano arrangement.

“Of course I know ‘Double Dare,’” Adrien says, as if that’s just a matter of fact. “How about I take the left hand, you take right?” he asks, taking his right hand off the keys. 

“Okay,” Marinette says, maybe a little dreamily. “How should we- I mean, will you sing, too?”

Adrien drums the fingers of his now free hand on his thigh. “You lead, I’ll follow.”

Marinette clears her throat, fixes her posture, pushes her hair away from her face. She looks at Adrien. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

She snaps lightly with he left hand the tempo, somehow managing to keep her gaze steady on Adrien’s face to make sure they’ll start together despite the fact that Marinette finds looking at his face to be a lot like staring at the tightly woven spiral of the inside of a rose - hypnotizingly beautiful, almost impossible to not kiss.

As soon as they start the song, their count off flawless, Marinette closes her eyes so that she focuses on singing the right lyrics and playing the melody with her right hand on the keys, ghosting the bass line with her left hand on her thigh so she doesn’t get confused. Adrien’s quiet presence beside her is a distraction, and she tries her best to block it out.

Until Adrien joins in for the chorus, perfectly matching her melody with a harmony that floats just above hers, siren-like and lifted. Her heart catches over her throat, and she stumbles over the words and looks at him just to see him already looking back at her. She picks the words up again, and his eyes twinkle, his lips twitching up in a smile as his mouth moves. 

As ‘Double Dare’ falls into its tumbling end, the simple bass and melody piano parts mingling and mixing on top of each other, Marinette lets Adrien’s voice weave in and out, above and beyond hers. She looks down and sees her own free hand ghosting the part she’s not playing and Adrien’s free hand doing the exact same thing, perfectly in sync with hers.

She looks at him in wonder, and he looks back at her in much the same way.

The final note vibrates on the cords inside the piano, and when that stops, they stare at each other, breathing hard, hands still hovering over the keys - one left, one right.

“I expect a reasonable percentage of record sales, concert sales, and merchandise sales,” Gabriel says, and Marinette nearly jumps out of her skin, remembering that there are other people in the room. “All rehearsal, recording, and show times need to be approved by Nathalie or me at least two weeks prior.”

Marinette stares at him with her mouth agape, but he’s not even looking at her or Adrien - he’s now turned toward Nathalie, hands clasped tightly behind his back. “Schedule a time today for us to draw up a list of contract requirements, and let’s also look through the calendar to see if there’s any shuffling around we can do to include this new development.” He turns to Alya. “I’ll have a draft of expectations for you to include in your contract draft to you by tonight. We’ll meet again after you have sent a feasible and agreeable contract to Nathalie, and we’ll all sign it.”

And then he walks out, Nathalie following close behind. 

Marinette releases a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, turning her head back to Adrien. He’s still staring at his bedroom door in what seems like shock, and then he turns his eyes to Marinette, a giddy sort of smile growing on his face.

“I get to be your partner, Ladybug.”

Chapter Text

Adrien’s phone chimes, and he dives onto his bed from where he had previously been staring at his book shelves trying to show his phone that he was chill, relaxed, and not at all hinging his entire human being on the text notification sound. But he is. And both him and his phone knew it.

It’s embarrassing how fast he opens up his phone to reply.

Adrien:Yeah ! My father’s original plan for this month was to focus on my modeling for his brand, so there’s some scheduling stuff that I absolutely cannot get out of.

There’s a pause. Adrien almost decides to go back to theatrically demonstrating normalcy to his phone before some text bubbles appear, and Adrien grips his phone until his knuckles are white.

Ladybug

Ladybug:im extremely sorry for this by the way

Ladybug:like words cannot describe

Ladybug:who sorry

Ladybug:HOW sore

Ladybug:y

Ladybug:SORRY

Ladybug:I am. I am extremely sorry to be an inconvenience on your schedules

Adrien:Words cannot describe how much I do not mind. This is everything I ever could have wanted.

He briefly considers that he’s being far too revealing, and then he glances over to his Ladybug shrine, still propped up at his desk, and he figures she should probably know what she’s getting into.

Ladybug

Ladybug:what do you mean by that .

Adrien briefly considers being normal.

Adrien:I am just such an enormous fan.

Adrien:You probably saw me at your concert.

Chapter Text

Marinette pricks herself with a safety pin for maybe the hundredth time, and she doesn’t even go through the process of yelping, sucking on her finger, and wiping the welling blood off. She simply doesn’t have the time - and Tikki, staring tensely at the door to her bedroom and occasionally flicking her eyes out her windows, is not helping.

“We really should be going,” Tikki says.

“I know that,” Marinette says testily. She jabs her thumb with a safety pin, winces, and smears the blood against the red fabric of the shirt she was supposed to be wearing at the interview that she already should’ve left for.

“I mean we really should be going,” Tikki said.

“It’s a rockstar’s prerogative to be fashionably late,” she mutters to herself, although she hates being late more than most other things. But she’d spent most of her time working on Adrien’s outfit for today that she’d had to cram her own outfit-making process into the span of just a few hours - she’d only finished her pants thirty minutes ago, and now she was foregoing stitching on her shirt for a classic punk rock safety-pin look. Nevermind that was not her plan, that was fine, it would be fine. What mattered was that Adrien was only just getting his outfit from her today, courtesy of Alya and Nino acting as the last-minute errand relay race players. They hadn’t had the time for Adrien to try on the outfit before today, and she prayed it looked good. And that it fit. But mostly that it looked good.

“Your parents are downstairs, right?” Tikki asks, and her head twitches birdlike to her windows.

“Yes,” Marinette replies, finally clasping the last safety pin shut. She barely even gives it a look before she pulls the makeshift shirt on over her bra, standing up and wincing at the flashes of skin and lacy black bralette showing all across her chest in a messy diagonal line where the fabric pulled from the safety pins. 

She’s trying to figure out how to make it so that the gaps in the fabric are not quite so wide when Tikki grabs her hand, pressing rain along her skin. “We have to go now.”

“Tikki, absolutely no demons have tried to kill me or end the world, and it’s been over a week,” Marinette says although she lets herself be dragged along, only halting momentarily to pull up the flared hem of her pants to stuff her feet into her silver-toed stompers and grab her eyelash glue and mask.

“We have been lucky,” Tikki says as they rush down the stairs. “But luck eventually runs out, and there’s only so much we can outrun.”

“It feels a little bit like you are just insane and causing me anxiety,” Marinette says, waving goodbye to her parents as they push through the back door. There’s a storm brewing in the sky, dark and thick, and Marinette curses.

“I only wish that were true,” Tikki says, staring up at the sky with her pollen lips pursed. 

Marinette pushes out a sigh, ignoring this same argument they’ve been having since the night Tikki showed up in favor of smearing eyelash glue along the edges of her mask, waving it erratically in the air and then shoving it in Tikki’s hands. “Help me get it even,” she says.

Tikki looks around anxiously before gingerly taking the mask from Marinette’s hands. She’s just smoothing down the edges, watercolor fingers grazing against Marinette’s cheeks, when Alya’s car comes careening into the back alleyway, skidding to a stop in front of them.

The back passenger door opens up, and Adrien is sitting there, black-clad and gorgeous, with his hand on the door handle, looking up at her with wide eyes. And then his eyes drop down, falling over her safety-pinned shirt, her (if she’s being honest) too-tight leather pants, her stompers. And she watches his eyes travel back up, in slow motion. Her entire body burns.

“Hey, hot stuff,” Alya calls back from the driver’s seat just as a drop of rain falls onto the tip of Marinette’s nose, and she remembers they’re supposed to be rushing.

Adrien immediately scoots over to the other side of the car, making room for both Marinette and Tikki to climb in.

“Hi,” Marinette says to Alya, Nino, and Adrien, who is still staring at her.

“Yo,” Nino says.

“Let’s get the party started,” Alya says, and then slams her foot on the gas.

“Hi,” Adrien says as they’re rocketing through the back alleys of Paris. Marinette turns to look at him from her place in the middle seat.

“Hey,” she says back, and he smiles.

“You look beautiful,” he says quietly.

“You do too,” she says, and then feels her cheeks burn, her heart race. “I mean, does everything fit? It looks like it does, I tried my best with the measurements I got from your father, but I just wasn’t sure, and there was no time to really check, and I don’t know what I would do if we had our first interview and I made you look awful in ill-fitting clothes- maybe cry? I mean, I wouldn’t cry- I totally would, but you know-”

“Adrien,” Alya interrupts from the driver’s seat. “How do the clothes fit you?”

“Like a glove,” Adrien replies, his eyes glittering at Marinette.

Marinette can’t decide how to breathe. “That’s great,” she says.

“The only thing is,” Adrien says, looking down at his lap, “I’m not quite sure how to…” He trails off, gesturing vaguely with the black mask in his hands.

“Oh! Yes, I can do that,” Marinette says, holding up the eyelash glue in her hands. She takes the mask from him, being much more careful with the placement of the glue than she was with her own, and then waves it lightly in the air for the glue to get sticky. And then she looks at Adrien, who is somehow still looking at her. “If you want, I can mace the fask even on your fake.” 

“Okay,” Adrien says, even though Marinette’s brain is still processing how much her mouth cannot speak. She blinks.

“Okay,” she replies.

He stares at her. He leans his face forward. Marinette almost wishes she could throw the mask at him and run just for the sake of her not having to look at his quiet, expectant, beautiful face. He’s wearing eyeliner. And it’s messy. 

She’s not thinking about it. (She is, heavily).

Mindful of her fingers, Marinette carefully aligns the mask with the center of Adrien’s face and then presses lightly down. She ignores his summer green eyes watching her as she presses her fingers all along the edge of the mask, tracing the high points of his cheekbones, down the pointed tip of his nose. She does it over and over again, just to be sure, and he watches her all the while.

Just as she’s sure the mask will stay secure, Alya jerks the car, and Marinette’s body lurches toward Adrien. To steady herself, her hands panic, and she ends up grabbing not only Adrien’s jaw, but also Adrien’s thigh. His breath hitches, their faces centimeters apart.

“Sorry,” she says.

“It’s alright,” he replies, his eyes flicking between hers. Her hands are still on him.

“Everyone okay back there?” Nino asks, and Marinette yanks her hands off Adrien, folding them tightly in her lap.

“Yep,” she squeaks.

Despite the fact that they show up about fifteen minutes late, the interview goes relatively well. Nadja Chamack is no stranger to Ladybug’s near chronic lateness, and she takes it all in stride. They’re able to discuss the direction of the new partnership, the persona Adrien is hiding his real identity for, and the sound of the music they hope to make together. It’s all smooth sailing, even though Marinette spends most of the interview trying not to stare at Adrien - now newly christened to the public as his stage name ‘Chat Noir’ - in the tight leather interrupted by studded silver that she’d insanely decided to dress him in. For chrissakes, she’d even made him a leather studded collar with a silver bell on it; it was like her past self was begging her to be distracted.

In one such moment of distraction - Marinette should’ve known better in front of the most gossip-hungry music reporter in Paris - that Nadja leans forward and smiles in a way that already has Marinette’s chest seizing with anxiety.

“Now, many fans were wondering when you initially announced a partnership if it would be a romantic one,” she says, and Marinette feels Adrien stiffen beside her. “Please describe your personal relationship to Chat Noir, if you may.”

“Friends!” Marinette near screams, her throat releasing a sound like a wheezy toy. “We’re just- we-” Adrien’s hand touches her thigh, briefly, and he leans forward.

“As it turns out,” he says smoothly, in direct contrast to her squeaky panic, “we are pretty huge fans of each other. I’ve always admired Ladybug for her stage presence and musical style, since the very beginning, and it’s been such a dream of mine to work with her. Ladybug just so happened to somehow admire some work I’ve done in the indie rock scene before, and when she reached out to me, we realized how compatible our styles and interests are. Our work relationship is still new, but I am finding that I value our new friendship as much as I would a lifelong friend.”

Marinette tries not to stare at him with her mouth agape. He’s so well-spoken that she could kiss him, and she directs that thought into the ether of the back of her mind as she looks back at Nadja and tries to look like she only thinks of Adrien- Chat Noir - platonically.

“Wow,” Nadja says. “So it seems like the ying-yang concept you are both working toward is working behind the scenes too?”

“I would say so,” Marinette says. She looks down at her lap, at her fingers spread out against her pants. “There was a moment, when it was still unclear if I could have him- as a partner, if I could snag him for my concept, I mean - and so we played together, and it was like…” She taps out the bass line of “Double Dare” on her thigh. “It was almost like I’d never heard a song of mine complete until I heard him in it.”

Nadja stares at her. “And you two are… just friends? Nothing more?”

“We’re also partners,” Adrien offers.

“And coworkers, I suppose,” Marinette says.

“Just friends-partners-coworkers,” Adrien finishes. Marinette nods decisively. Her heart aches, and she looks over at Adrien to see him already looking at her. There’s a tightness in his eyes that Marinette feels poignantly, although she can’t explain why.

“O…kay,” Nadja says slowly, slow enough for her meaning to be obvious. “So, when can we expect new music?”

The bubble of tension between them pops, and Marinette snorts. She claps her hands over her mouth, but Adrien is laughing freely, the bell around his neck twinkling along with his breaths.

“Soon,” he says.

Chapter Text

Ladybug’s fingers seem to ballet dance over the keys as she hums out the melody they’d been workshopping for the past hour, frowning quietly to herself. She stops, frowns at the lyrics she had scrawled in her journal, and then frowns harder. She sings the melody quietly to herself, and Adrien leans closer, trying to hide how desperately he wants to hear the air from her lungs.

She surprises him by turning her head to look at him, a bright expression on her face, only for them both to find that, by trying to subtly move closer, Adrien had bypassed ‘subtle’ by a canyon’s width and had made a bulls-eye on ‘far too close for anyone’s comfort.’ He jerks back, reminding himself that they are friends-partners-coworkers, and she clears her throat. “I was just going to say I think I found the problem,” she says to her fingers.

“And what’s that?”

“I hate everything about it.”

“Ah.” 

She pushes out a sigh at the same time she pushes herself away from the keyboard on the rolly-chair, running her hands over her face and messing up her bangs. Leaning back and tilting her face up, she squints at the ceiling. “We’ve got a radio show teaser in three days and not even a demo to show for it. Not even a song title,” she says, the exhaustion clear in her voice.

They’d been at the studio since seven in the morning, and it was not boding well for their first time working together to make a song given the fact that it had been five hours and they had made absolutely nothing work.

“Sorry,” Adrien says, scrubbing his hands over his face. He’d been up until three in the morning filming a nighttime perfume ad, and he was starting to feel it. “Because it’s me, there’s all these time constraints.”

“No, no, if anything, it’s because of me,” Ladybug replies, waving her hand tiredly at him. “I’m the one who sprang an extremely intensive, last minute project on you when you were already booked full for the month.” She turns to look at him, still keeping her head tilted back, the orange studio lights illuminating her neck like gold. “How are you doing by the way? I’ve seen your calendar. It’s intense.”

Adrien shrugs, rubbing the pad of his finger on a piano key. “I don’t know. That’s kind of how it’s always been.”

She gapes at him. He raises his eyebrows. “When do you sleep?” she asks.

“When does anyone?” he replies, and she sits up perfectly straight in her chair.

“People sleep, Adrien. I even sleep. Sometimes to my direct detriment, of course, but I still sleep,” she says, and Adrien blinks at her.

“I sleep,” he says, a little defensively. “I meant that mostly humorously. My father and Nathalie always make sure there’s at least five hour periods every day for me to rest.”

“Oh, my God, Adrien, how do you live like that?”

Adrien blinks at her. He opens his mouth, then closes his mouth. He opens his mouth again. “Do you not?” 

“Absolutely not I’d die!” she exclaims, and before Adrien can think of how to reply, the door to the studio bursts open, and one Chloe Bourgeois bounces in, brandishing food bags and coffee cups.

“Lunch time, bitches!” she sing-songs, shoving the food bags and styrofoam drinks at Adrien before pulling up a rolly-stool and situating herself right next to him.

“I’m sorry,” Ladybug says confusedly, “I thought Alya and Nino were grabbing lunch for us. Who are you?”

Chloe’s face soured just the slightest. “Alright, I’ll ignore how much that pissed me off since I love you so much, but I am Chloe Bourgeois: influencer, popstar, mayor’s daughter, Adrien’s childhood best friend. A.K.A your little errand monkey for lunchtime today because this bitch” - she pointed at herself - “wanted to meet Ladybug and just so happened to run into your little Alya and Nino while they were picking up your lunch and charmed them both into letting me do it instead.”

“Chloe, you can’t keep calling yourself a popstar when you’ve only released one song,” Adrien sighs, and she flicks him hard on the thigh.

“I can if that one song stayed in the number one spot for two weeks,” she snaps. And then she smiles blindingly, sticking a limp hand out for Ladybug to presumably kiss. “Anyway,” she says, “I’m Chloe Bourgeois.”

Ladybug smiles warily, awkwardly taking Chloe’s limp hand and shaking it once. “Nice to make your acquaintance. I’m Ladybug.”

“So,” Chloe says as Adrien begins rifling through the food bags, accepting his fate. “Who’s the weird sourpuss by the door?” she asks, gesturing to Tikki, who Adrien had nearly forgotten was standing outside the studio door. She’d been so still for hours that her presence now shocked him, like remembering the electric blue of the sky during summer.

“That’s Tikki,” Ladybug says, glancing over at Tikki. She stares at Tikki’s oak tree back for a moment. “She’s… here for support.”

“Cool, whatever,” Chloe says. Adrien passes Ladybug her food and drink, and she takes it with a little smile that makes his heart rush. “So how’s the music going? I’m sure Ladybug is taking charge and making all the magic happen,” she says, hooking her ankle around Adrien’s teasingly as he shrugs and chews his food. 

He looks at Ladybug to see that she’s frowning down at his feet. When she seems to realize a silence has fallen over the room, her head snaps up. “Oh,” she says, eyes wide, “um, it’s going bad.”

“Adrien is dragging you down, huh?” Chloe says fake-sympathetically, patting Adrien’s thigh. He watches Ladybug’s eyes flick down then back up, a little vertical wrinkle in her mask forming between her eyebrows. “See,” Chloe continues, removing her hand from his thigh to grab a fry. He swats at her hand, but she evades, popping the fry into her mouth. “I told him that he would never live up to the kind of work you do, but he absolutely insisted on agreeing to be your partner.”

“No, it’s not his fault,” Ladybug says distractedly as Chloe absently fixes his hair. He bats her hand away, but she just pinches his cheek. “It’s more like,” Ladybug says, voice tight, “neither of us are feeling particularly inspired.”

“Oh, is it writer’s block?” Chloe asks, sitting up straight and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “How about you talk it out with me? Adrikins always said talking through his writer’s block with me when he was writing for CSC always helped, although I barely ever listened.” Adrien let out an almost-laugh from his nose, looking up at Ladybug to share fond exasperation only to see her with her lips pursed and her posture ramrod straight. “Of course,” Chloe continued, “since it’s you, Ladybug, I’ll definitely listen.” She leans forward, batting her eyelashes, and Ladybug leans back, skirting her eyes away.

“That’s very kind of you, but-”

The studio door bursts open for the second time, and Alya and Nino come tumbling inside, clearly out of breath. “Oh, my God, Chloe, you can’t just grab shit from my hands and sprint away,” Nino heaves, hands on his knees. 

“I can, have, and will continue to do so as long as it benefits me,” Chloe says breezily. She takes Adrien’s drink from his hands as soon as he’s swallowed and takes a huge slurp. Adrien sighs, and then flinches as a cracking noise sounds and he’s splattered with soda and hit with a stray ice cube.

He looks around, bewildered, only to see Ladybug dripping wet, a closed fist where her drink used to be. “Fuck,” she says a little belatedly, standing up and causing a torrent of ice cubes and soda that had pooled in her lap to splash onto the floor.

“Oh, Jesus, mignonette,” Alya says, still breathing a little hard as she steps around Nino to grab hold of Ladybug’s hand and pull her to the door of the studio. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

They walk out of the studio, the door closing behind them, and Adrien watches them and Tikki leave for the bathroom through the window. When they’re out of sight, Adrien looks at Chloe.

“So you ‘charmed’ Alya and Nino, huh?” he asks flatly, and Chloe rolls her eyes.

“So I lied, whatever, sue me,” she says flippantly. “But how else am I supposed to meet Ladybug when you two only ever meet up for work and refuse to have visitors like me while letting lame-o’s like that one show up.” She jabs a thumb at Nino, who pushes Chloe’s sunglasses down from her hair, making her shriek.

“Nino is not just a visitor, Chloe, you know he produces the music we make,” Adrien says, setting aside his food to grab some paper towels and begin sopping up the soda and ice on the ground.

“What-ev-er,” Chloe drawls, smoothing her sunglasses back into place and watching as Adrien and Nino clean up the ground. “So anyway, I think that went well. Have you told her I’m a lesbian and available?”

“You know, Chlo, it’s weird, but that hasn’t been brought up in conversation,” Adrien says, and Nino snorts.

“Well, then bring it up,” Chloe snaps. She looks over at the door. “I can live out my pop pillow princess dreams with her if only she’d give me a chance, I can feel it. I could be the high femme to perfectly balance her androgynous punk aesthetic. We’d look absolutely gorgeous together.”

Adrien feels his jaw clench instinctively, but he forces himself to relax. Friends-partners-coworkers.

Nino, however, bursts out laughing. Chloe glares at him in offense, but he just laughs harder, managing to clamber to his feet to throw away the soggy paper towels. “Yeah, you better give up on that while you can, man,” he says. 

Adrien shoots him a look, but he just shrugs. Chloe looks between them with raised eyebrows. “Oh,” she says slowly. “You mean whatever little flirtationship is happening between Adrien and her?” she asks, waving her pointer finger vaguely. 

“Chloe,” Adrien says warning, but she ignores him.

“Yeah, I’m not worried about that,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “I’m busy masterminding my way through this, crafting the perfect homoerotic love triangle, all that biz. You two wouldn’t understand with your simple boy minds, so I won’t even bother. And also we all know that in a battle of looks, I definitely win over Adrien.”

“What about personality?” Nino asks. Chloe sticks her tongue out at him.

Adrien, who is desperately trying to avoid this conversation, pats some towels on the still-damp spill area, then surges to his feet as he sees through the window Ladybug and Alya come into the studio again, Tikki following closely behind. Ladybug is wearing Alya’s terracotta sweatshirt, and Tikki is holding Ladybug’s soiled shirt in her hand. When Ladybug makes eye contact with him, she turns away abruptly, a hand coming up to hide her face.

Since the door to the recording part of the studio is closed, he can’t hear at all what’s being said, but he sees Alya place a hand on her elbow, a fond expression on her face. Ladybug nods, her face still hidden by her hand, and then gestures wildly with her other hand. Adrien watches as Alya laughs lightly, and then moves her hand to take hold of Ladybug’s wildly moving one, lacing their fingers together and speaking what looks like gentle words to her.

Nino comes over to stand beside him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Alya was telling me when we were grabbing your lunch that they’ve known each other since lycée,” he says. “They must be pretty close.”

Adrien stares at the two women, leaning closer to each other in the way that only best friends and more do, so obviously comfortable in each other’s space, in each other’s presence. He watches Alya smooth out the lines of Ladybug’s shoulders with just her words alone, and he thinks about knowing Ladybug since lycée, being in class with her, growing up next to her. 

Knowing her.

A lightning strike of jealousy explodes in his chest so fast, he wavers on his feet, near dizzy with it.

“Best friends in the industry, just like us,” Nino says, elbowing him lightly in the side. “What are the chances?”

Adrien watches as Alya leans forward and pecks Ladybug on the cheek, and Ladybug finally lowers her hand, exposing a smile like starlight. His stomach twists.

“Apparently not just like us,” he says, trying to tamp down the little bubbling green monster apparently making a home in his stomach. “You never kiss me on the cheek,” he says to Nino, and Nino claps him on the back.

“That can change in a heartbeat, dude,” he says affectionately. “Just say the word and I’m there with my lips puckered.”

“Queers,” Chloe says derisively at them just as Ladybug opens up the door to their part of the studio. She halts in her tracks, looking between the three of them, but mostly leveling a squinted look at Chloe. “Oh, don’t worry,” Chloe says, holding up her hands. “I’m a lesbian. And available.” She bats her eyelashes.

“O…kay?” Ladybug says, her head tilting to the side. Her eyes slide to Adrien, and Chloe turns to look at him and Nino, wiggling her eyebrows in obvious satisfaction. Ladybug steps further into the recording studio, clearing her throat. “Anyway, I need everyone out of the studio except Adrien. Ah- thanks for cleaning up by the way, I’m really sorry about it.”

“It’s no big deal,” Adrien says. “Those cups are super flimsy.”

Ladybug’s expression turns a little embarrassed. “...Right,” she says. 

“Why do you need everyone out? Can’t I stay in here to watch? Oh, I’d love to stay in here and watch,” Chloe says, clapping her hands together and already settling deeper into her seat.

“Nope,” Nino says, taking Chloe by the shoulders and using them to force her up and steer her out. “The talent needs their space, so you get to hang out with the lame-o’s,” he says. Chloe screeches her protest, but Nino does not relent.

The studio door closes behind them, leaving just Ladybug and Adrien in the little room.

“So,” Adrien says, raising his eyebrows. “You needed everyone out?”

“Yeah,” Ladybug says, looking out the window at their little crowd. There’s a distinct sort of light in her eyes when she turns back to look at him, a sparking like the switch of a zippo lighter. “I’m suddenly feeling pretty inspired.”

Chapter Text

“Now, guys, this brand new pair has a demo that they’d like to share with us,” Aurore says into the microphone, glancing over to check how close Marinette and Adrien are to being set up. Marinette is still fiddling with her electric guitar, so Aurore continues. “We’ve just heard them talk about their concept and their experience working with each other, and now you are going to get an exclusive look at the product they have created. Their album release date has not been announced yet, but as always, you at Stormy FM get the latest rock music updates. Stick around for the new Ladybug and Chat Noir demo entitled ‘See Me’ performed live on air because I have a feeling you don’t want to miss this.” Aurore lifts her finger off the button and then points at them silently, and Marinette takes a moment to take a deep breath.

She closes her eyes to the blinking ‘ON AIR’ sign above her, centering her gravity before looking over at Adrien seated next to her at his keyboard.

He smiles softly at her, his fingers perfectly poised over the keys, and she smiles back.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Of course,” he replies, and she counts them off quietly in the microphone, tapping her foot on the kick drum trigger they’d set up for her.

She begins the song with a gentle guitar solo, punctuated by the bounce of the drum by her feet as she keeps the beat. She keeps the guitar light and airy, her pick only just pulling the thick strings.

Adrien comes in a bar after her, piano keys tumbling over and around her sound like a waterfall over rocks, and it’s here where she begins to sing.

“I’ve been chasing you

Down distant little rabbit holes,

Gentle lark glittering in the dark of my room

Touch me harder, closer, faster longer

Summer dancer, turn your gaze so 

I can-”

Adrien enters in the chorus, his voice falling just under hers, silk tenor blanketing the space between their instruments.

“See you, dancing ‘round my living room

Gliding starlight

God, I just feel so right

Can you see me? 

‘Cause I am looking right back at-”

Marinette drops out, ducking her head as she stares at her fingers moving over the silver frets. Adrien picks up, and Marinette smiles at the sound of his voice, beautiful and smooth, coasting over their contrasting instrumentals.

“You’ve been calling all the birds to play

Up and around all the clouds you lay

Velvet iron stumbling over a fountain stream

Leave me something soft and sweet and silver-bare

And take me somewhere I can stare as I-”

Together again. Marinette looks over and sees Adrien looking back at her. As soon as their eyes meet, he smiles wide, and she can hear it pull his voice up endearingly. She can’t help but smile back.

“See you, smiling from my pillow case,

Exploding starlight

God, I just feel so right

Can you see me?

‘Cause I am looking right back at-”

In the bridge, they trade lines, Marinette starting first. She can feel her body moving along with the music between them, her foot steady on the kick drum, her fingers flying over the strings. Adrien is magic at the keyboard, his long knobby fingers the points of contact between him and the world, his body moving like a willow tree in the sun. The music picks up with each line, growing and rolling to its crescendo.

“You found me in the brambles of my system,

Fighting for the chance to breathe air

And then you cracked my ribs, green light

Carrying curing salts for the skin of my chest

All I’m asking

Is for you to remember me the way I do you.

I’ve been hiding me without you

You’ve been finding you without me

You’ve been soaked in technicolor sensitivity

I’ve been falling hard through your window panes

Bleeding out just for the glass to break

Please, baby, look at me, tell me you can-”

Here, Marinette lets the last note she played draw out, lets it vibrate and fade in the air through the last verse. Adrien does the same with the piano, his fingers hovering over the keys as he leans forward to let his voice ring out with hers in the new quiet.

“See me, dancing ‘round my living room

(Smiling from my pillow case)

Gliding (exploding) starlight

Oh, my God, I just feel so right (standing here right next to you)

All I’m needing 

Is for you to see me (meet me)

Right where I am looking back at 

You.”

They finish with their eyes met, a big, relieved smile growing on Marinette’s face as they finish the last word, together, in sync. Adrien’s eyes glitter at her, and he reaches over, offering a fist for her, and she grins, adjusting her guitar in her lap to reach back at him. Her foot slips on the kick drum trigger as she does so, and somehow it causes the microphone stand in front of her to topple over, crashing onto the floor, and Marinette’s face burns in embarrassment as she lets out a startled squeak.

Adrien just laughs, bridging the gap between them to tap his fist to hers. “Good job,” he says, and she finds herself laughing with him, covering her face with her hand.

“That was Ladybug and Chat Noir, folks!” Aurore jumps in, pressing a button on her soundboard. The crashing drums of a different track begin to fade in alongside her voice. “Keep a look out for what this amazing pair will do next, and, as always, get the best news first here at Stormy FM.” She presses another button that makes the ‘ON AIR’ sign blinks off, and then she’s letting out an excited scream, clapping her hands together and bounding over to them. She completely ignores the fallen mic stand and gives them both ecstatic high-fives. “That was amazing, you two! I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical about changing up the perfect Ladybug sound, but I am absolutely blown away.”

“Thank you,” Marinette says, feeling a huge bubble of tension she’d been holding in since her disaster concert popping with a rush of warmth to her cheeks. “Oh, and, um, sorry about your mic stand.”

“Don’t even worry about it, girl,” Aurore says, waving her hand flippantly. “I can already tell how much you two are going to boost our ratings, plus I got to hear the Ladybug and Chat Noir live before anyone else. I’d say we’re even.”

“I meant it when I said earlier that it’s been amazing being on your show, by the way,” Adrien says, standing up from his keyboard bench to extend his hand to Aurore for a shake. “I’ve been listening for a while, and so it’s been awesome to actually be behind the mic.”

“Of course, Chat Noir!” Aurore says brightly, disregarding his hand to pull both him and Marinette into a warm hug before she lets them go. “I know Ladybug’s a big name, but we always welcome new indie names, so if your joint project ever includes a moment where Chat Noir goes solo, just know you are always welcome here to give us the scoop.” She gives them a wink, and Ladybug smiles.

“Thanks a lot, Aurore,” Adrien says, and Aurore smiles, checking her watch.

“I’m sorry I can’t keep chatting, but I’ve got to get ready to be back on air in a bit. If you walk through that door” - she points to the door they came in through - “and walk down the unfortunately very creepy staircase, one of my staff will meet you down there to take you where your producer and managers are waiting.”

They wave goodbye and leave Aurore putting her headphones back on and getting situated in front of her soundboard, opening the door to the actually very creepy staircase. It was clear Aurore and the other staff had tried to make it more welcoming by decorating it with various bright band posters and even painting the walls a pretty lavender shade, but the lights cast weird shadows and the soundproofing for Aurore’s studio made an eerie sort of quiet fill the small space.

Despite this, Marinette hopped down the steps with giddiness making her feet light, Adrien by her side. “Oh, that went so much better than I hoped! Even though I embarrassed myself with the mic stand, but, honestly, I can’t even count how often I’ve done that.”

“Like Aurore said, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Adrien says, his shoulders slouching just the slightest as he meets her gaze. “Besides, I think it’s nice. It shows everyone that you’re a real person. It’s cute.”

Marinette freezes in place, eyes wide, and Adrien stops two steps below her, hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket, turning around to face her. Peeking out from beneath his mask, she can see that his cheeks are blooming that ruddy red sort of color, and her heart thumps hard in her chest.

“What?” she asks, breathless.

Adrien shifts on his feet, eyes sliding away from her face. “Ladybug, when we were writing the lyrics, I…” He trails off. Behind them, Marinette hears the studio door open, but it’s so far away from the full silence and her held breath left by Adrien’s words that she doesn’t even pay attention to it. He takes a deep breath and fixes his eyes back on her. “The whole time, I have to admit that I was thinking-” He stops, frowning, his eyes moving to somewhere to the left of her head. “Aurore?” he asks, and then his eyes widen, and he’s grabbing Marinette’s shoulders and picking her up as if she weighed nothing, twirling her around so that she stumbles into the place he had been.

“What the-?” Marinette exclaims, Adrien’s arms the only thing keeping her from falling down the stairs, and then she sees Aurore, right behind Adrien with her blond hair covering her face, her graceful pale arm swinging down, her fist colliding with Adrien’s back. 

Adrien cries out.

Marinette’s stomach drops to the floor, a feeling of horror crashing over her like a tidal wave.

“A-Aurore?” Marinette asks, but Aurore doesn’t reply. Her arm jerks back, her fist leaving from Adrien’s back, and Adrien shutters, letting out a small painful sound. It’s only then that Marinette sees the letter opener held in Aurore’s fist, clenched so tightly her knuckles are white.

The blade of the letter opener is red, and it’s dripping.

The letter opener jerks back down, harsh and inhumanely fast, and Marinette screams, but Adrien doesn’t move. His grip on her tightens, even as a painful breath rushes out of him. 

Aurore, her hair in disarray, finally jerks her head up, and Marinette gasps, a fear unlike any she’s ever known striking through her as she sees that this is not the same Aurore that they left up in the studio. Whatever is standing before her, whatever has its blade jammed into the space between Adrien’s shoulder blades, has twisted Aurore’s face beyond recognition, her pretty lips contorted into an otherworldly smile. Her eyes are the purest black Marinette has ever seen, blacker than any cloudy nighttime sky, blacker than closing your eyes in a room without any windows, and her veins are illuminated the same darker-than-dark, pulsing underneath her thin skin.

The thing licks its lips, and it jerks its arm back.

“Ladybug,” Adrien gasps, his grip on her loosening. He gives her a slight push, and she sees his face, the blood dribbling out of his mouth. Her breathing is rattled, sharp, her heart racing harder than she can keep up. Adrien brings a shaking hand up, wincing as the thing’s fist connects with his back again, and his lips quiver up into a smile as he brushes his fingers along her cheek, wiping away a tear that had slipped out of her eye. “You need to run.”

Then he collapses to the ground, and the thing that used to be Aurore cackles out a laugh like an oil spill, wet and toxic. It spins the letter opener, wet with Adrien’s bright red blood, in its hand, stepping over Adrien’s limp body.

“Ladybug,” the thing hisses, grinding machinery of the throat.

And Marinette runs.

Chapter Text

The last thing Adrien sees before the world goes dark is Ladybug’s boots fading from view. The last thing he hears is Ladybug’s voice, wild and strong, shouting out, “Tikki!”

He breathes out a rattling sigh, pain radiating out from his back in hot waves. She’ll get help. She’ll make it out. That’s all that matters.

With one last hitch of painful breath, Adrien dissolves into nothing.

Nothing.

             Nothing.

                           Nothing.

Something.

A spotlight strikes through the nothingness, sharper than a knife, fiery hot and full. A gasp comes before a body, and the intake of light builds a heart, lungs, burning beats of flame forming a nervous system, bone, muscle, skin, eyes - whole. Something.

Nothingness surrounds the new body, fleshy and new, and the spotlight softens, cools, to an icy comfort, pinpricks pulling ruddy red to the surface of golden skin. The body lifts their face to the light, closing their eyes to the soft shining from above. All this body knows is the nothingness it came from, smooth and comforting, and the warm-cool white bathing them in something so full and beautiful that the body only knows one word: love. They know this with such certainty, they don’t even have to wonder about anything else.

“Adrien,” a voice speaks, and the body recognizes this arrangement of sounds as familiar.

“I’m here,” the body - Adrien - says, voice coming as easily as that first fire-filled gasp.

“Kneel.”

Adrien drops to one knee, bowing his head, a hand coming up to press against the place on his chest where the light beats inside of him. 

“Raise your head and look upon Our knight.”

He dutifully raises his head, opening his eyes and gazing upward at a figure made of the light that made him. The figure is wearing armor perfectly formed to their body that burns red, hot and pulsing like the heart, and it is sprinkled with specks of black ash and smoke that spark like stars in constant explosion.

“Take my hand and stand by my side,” the figure says, a familiar voice, gentle and firm. They offer their hand, delicate and strong. 

Adrien takes the hand offered to him without hesitation, and the knight helps him to his feet, keeping his hand clasped in theirs. Their armor is cool to the touch despite the sparks, the fire, and their hand squeezes Adrien’s. From their clasped hands, his own armor glimmers along his skin, as light as the nothing that still surrounds them. It is a blank canvas, as pitch as closed eyes, with stripes of verdant green that bursts like the first grass of spring, stems of wildflowers in the summer.

As soon as his armor finishes forming, he bows to the knight, pressing their hand to his forehead. “I am at your service,” he says, and the knight gently pulls their hand away. 

Adrien lets them, letting the knight take his hand and press it to their chest as they rest their own hand to his chest. He can feel the knight’s heartbeat, and with the press of their hand to his own chest, Adrien feels the beat mirrored inside of him. The beat travels between them, shared, an orbit that completes only with the two of them, together.

“You are at my side,” the knight says, and Adrien understands.

“I am at your side,” he repeats, and the knight smiles with lips painted the red of what travels between them. 

He looks up at the spotlight that shines down on them, and he feels himself start to ascend into that love light, a wash of warmth falling through his body. He can feel himself returning, loving, dissolving.

“Oh, no you don’t, kiddo,” an unfamiliar voice echos, cutting through the spotlight and the nothingness. “Let’s cut the dramatics and get you back down here.”

And then Adrien is being yanked down by his shoulder blades, a searing pain blooming at three points on his back, and he cries out, throwing his hand out to the only love this body has known.

“Your time will come, beloved child; do not fret,” the voice that called him from nothing says. “Fall, and tell them Our message. Fall, Adrien, fall.”

As his body falls away from the light, a chorus builds around him, murmuring and singing in notes and syllables that fall upon Adrien’s ears, building until the noise is so loud it’s unbearable. And then he recognizes the sound, parses out the word, just before he hits the bottom of the nothing. 

“Emilie, 

           Emilie, 

                      Emilie.”

Adrien’s eyes shoot open, and a shout of pain tumbles from his mouth then dies the instant he sees the knight’s face before him, her mouth fire-red, her gaze exploding stars. His breath catches, the fuzzy light and bright nothing clearing out of his vision at the same time the pain in his back eases, cools.

The knight’s face blinks into focus, and then Adrien is staring at Ladybug, her beautiful face pinched and tight with worry. Her eyes are rimmed with red, her makeup smeared, and there are tear tracks over her mask and down her cheeks.

“Adrien,” she sobs, and she’s tugging his still-limp body to her, one of her arms pressing him close, her other hand grasping at his hair and tucking his face into the crook of her neck. 

“Ow,” he says, wincing as the skin of his back stretches, and he furrows his eyebrows as he registers two hands pressed to his back, a strange sensation spreading through his body at the feel of them. Like unwinding, unbinding, stitching together.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ladybug says, but she doesn’t release him. She smells like sweat, leather, and flowers, her hair brushing along his face. Her body is shaking.

Slowly but surely, the pain fades from his back, and he relaxes against the hands pressed to his back, to Ladybug’s gentle hold.

As the pain unwinds, the last burning cool of the nothingness and light he had been in unwinds with it, and his mind lets the details slip away, even though his heart tries hard to hold on to the fire, the smooth blank nothing, the filling light. 

His eyes fill with tears, and he begins to cry into the skin of Ladybug’s neck, his heart breaking inside of his chest even as the physical pain leaves. He cannot feel the beauty of it anymore, can only remember it, and the memory will never live up to being there, in the spotlight of a universe’s love.

The only thing that comes close is Ladybug’s arms around him, the sound of her voice as she whispers his name, the words “thank God, thank God, thank God,” over and over again.

“Okay, kid, you’ll live,” says a voice behind him, and the hands leave his back.

Adrien sniffs, and Ladybug’s hold on him loosens enough for him to pull away from her. She wipes his eyes for him before she wipes her own, and as she looks in his eyes, he can see that her eyes are getting glassy again.

“Oh, God,” she says, and she uses her hold in his hair to pull his head to hers, pressing their foreheads together as her eyes squeeze shut. “I was so goddamn scared.”

“Ladybug,” Adrien says, bringing up a hand to brush his fingers along her cheek, wet with tears. “I… I had the strangest dream of all.”

“That wasn’t a dream, kid,” says the voice behind him, and Adrien finally turns around, his eyes meeting a man’s gaze that smolders like the ashes of a wildfire.

“I heard you,” Adrien tells him. He shifts how he’s sitting, so that he can keep one hand on Ladybug and reach the other one out to this- man. More than a man. “In my dream, I heard you. You saved my life.” He takes the man’s hand, his skin the wind of a hurricane.

“Like I said, not a dream,” the man says, letting Adrien hold his hand. “I’m Plagg, great to make your acquaintance. Now tell us the message you got from god, or whatever you call it.”

Chapter Text

Marinette stands up, feeling like her entire nervous system is shaking. Her chin wobbles, and she rubs her hands over the thighs of her ripped jeans, fingernails catching on the fishnets underneath. She recognizes that the song softly playing over the speakers is about to end, and the ‘ON AIR’ sign is blinking. Almost time for Aurore to come on again.

“Tikki?” she says, sniffing and wiping her eyes to glance over at where Tikki is kneeling down next to Aurore’s prone body. “It’s almost commercial break.”

Tikki pauses in pulling a black tar-like substance from Aurore’s eyes, a process that Marinette largely looks away from in order to maintain her thin strip of sanity in the moment. She wraps her arms around herself and watches Tikki go over to the soundboard, sitting down gingerly in Aurore’s chair and pressing one lilly hand to her mouth, closing her eyes. As soon as the song ends, she leans forward and speaks, her voice and intonation perfectly imitating Aurore’s as she tells the audience of the radio station to stick around through the commercial break to hear the best in pop punk now.

The studio is silent as she does this, and Marinette swallows, rubbing her temples. She can feel Adrien and Plagg staring at her, and then the ‘ON AIR’ sign is turning off, and then Tikki is staring at her, too. 

She avoids the elephant in the room. “We can’t stay here for much longer. One of her staff is going to be here to check on her eventually.”

“I’m working as fast as I can,” Tikki says, returning to Aurore’s side and picking up the thread of tar she’d been working on. Marinette looks away. “It’s hard to remove the residue without the proper tool.”

“Oh, yeah, hey,” Plagg says, and he digs around in the pockets of his sweats, pulling out a flattened sphere and tossing it to Tikki, who fumbles with the tar and the little circular object in her hands before she steadies. She looks up and glares at Plagg, her gaze tree roots disturbing the soil. 

“You couldn’t have given this to me when you first got here?” she asks, sliding open the flat sphere. A bright light shines out from the two flat surfaces on the inside, filling the room with a weight and wholeness that makes Marinette breathe easier.

“Sorry, sugarcube, I was busy, oh, I don’t know, pulling this kid out of the afterlife? You know, no big deal,” Plagg says, and Tikki rolls her eyes, turning back to Aurore. Marinette raises her eyebrows, surprised at this show of attitude from the normally very placid and calm Tikki, and Plagg waves his hand. “This is what happens when you know a guy since the dawn of time. They get all catty with you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Tikki says, but she doesn’t look up from Aurore. She takes a deep breath and presses the glowing inside surfaces of the thing that Plagg had given her to Aurore’s chest. 

“What is that?” Adrien asks, and he stands up from the floor. He stumbles, and Marinette rushes to his side, wrapping her arm around his waist to help him stay up. He loops his arm around his shoulders, smiling gratefully at her. She helps him over to Tikki, and they kneel down on the floor together. Adrien reaches out, hovering his hand over where Tikki has the object pressed over Aurore’s heart. “It feels like…” He trails off. Marinette looks at his face and sees that he looks as though he’s about to cry again.

“It’s the knight’s tool of purification,” Tikki explains. The longer she has the tool pressed to Aurore’s chest, the more the pitch infecting her veins fades, a rosy glow replacing the sick transparency of her skin. “It holds some of the essence of the universe.”

Adrien nods, as if he’d already known that, sensed it, somehow. Marinette tries not to think about what he looked like bleeding out on the staircase, limp, eyes glassy and blank. “So it’s yours,” Adrien says, looking over at Marinette. “The tool goes to the knight, so it’s yours.”

Marinette’s stomach lurches. “No,” she says, the word falling from her mouth before she even registers. Adrien stares at her, and the weight and certainty of his gaze makes her insides crawl uncomfortably. She shoots to her feet, shaking her head. “No, no, no,” she says. “I… I can’t. I’m not that. Whatever that is.”

“You are,” Tikki says, and Marinette’s breath comes faster. She shakes her head again, heart racing.

“I can’t,” she says, her voice shaking. “I- it can’t be me. It’s not possible.”

“It’s extremely possible,” Plagg says. “In fact, it is.”

Marinette shakes her head again, and then again, her throat hot and tight, and she knows her breathing is coming too fast. Like when she’s nervous for a performance or an interview, but worse, so much worse. 

“I’m sorry,” she breathes, the words forcing themselves out of her lungs. “I- I can’t.” And then she’s running away, out of the studio, down the stairs.

She needs air, she needs space, she needs-

Blood on the floor.

And all of the sudden, she was standing frozen as Adrien collapsed onto the stairs, watching the blood pool from his back as his eyes turned hazy. For a moment, they stayed on her face, and then they slid away, falling onto her boots touching the pool of blood seeping out from beneath him, dripping down onto the step below.

And she was letting out a sob, turning around from the demon licking its lips at her and trying not to trip down the stairs as she screamed out Tikki’s name. Her chest was empty- of hope, of breath- the staircase was soundproofed, Aurore had said so. She wasn’t going to be heard.

Her body slammed against the door at the bottom of the staircase, and she heard that oilspill laugh again, then a clicking sound before her. She screamed, sounds that weren’t even words falling from her as she realized that it had somehow locked the door, and she was trapped inside, no way out, no way for anyone to come in. And that thing was taking its leisurely time strolling down the stairs, confident in its fly stuck inside of its web.

She was crying, screaming, calling Tikki’s name, her parents, Alya, sobbing Adrien’s name. And then the door was exploding, and she was tumbling back from the force, the back of her head cracking against the edge of a step, dizziness and pain shooting out into her brain, and she was thinking this is it, this is all there is, I’ll die here, just right here-

A hand touches her shoulder, and Marinette screams, jolting out of her skin and realizing that she has fallen back to the step before the pool of blood, her boots just touching the edges. She makes a whimpering sound, pulling her feet back and wrapping her arms around her legs, letting out a shaking sob.

“Hey, hey, Ladybug.” Adrien. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She shakes her head, unable to speak, wishing she could communicate how hard her mind was racing, how much she still couldn’t breathe. Adrien’s hands hover over her.

“Can I-? Is it alright if I touch you? Would that help?”

Marinette opens her mouth, but all that comes out is her rattling breath. She presses her hands over her eyes, letting her body fall to the side until she’s leaning her full weight against Adrien. He shifts, sitting down beside her, feet careful to avoid the blood in front of them as he wraps his arms around her.

The weight of him, the feel of him, helps her come back to the feeling of being inside of her body instead of focusing on the tight feeling of her too-short breathing. Adrien rubs one hand up and down her arm, his palms calloused slightly, his skin warm, and the other comes up to press her head against his chest, close enough for her to hear his heartbeat.

“That’s it, my lady, it’s alright,” he murmurs, and she tucks her face into his arm, pressing her nose in the crook of his elbow and closing her eyes. “Let’s breathe together, okay? Follow me.” And he begins to breathe, nice and slow.

At first, it’s hard. She can’t take in enough air to go as slow as him. But the more she tries, the better it gets, and as her breath slows, her mind slows. That fact that each breath brings with it the smell of Adrien’s arm helps, too - his skin smells clean, fresh in a way that feels a little bit like looking at Tikki and now Plagg in a certain way. Like the smell of lightning.

Finally, she pulls away, wiping her eyes with her still shaking hands. “Thanks,” she says to Adrien, her voice hoarse.

‘It’s no problem,” he says, keeping one arm looped over her shoulders to rub soothing circles on her arm. “I told Tikki and Plagg to stay up in the studio. I know it might’ve been… easier for them to calm you down but I think being next to them is…” He trails off.

“Overwhelming?” Marinette asks, and Adrien nods.

“They feel like the light,” he says softly, and Marinette looks over at him. His face is careful, his profile perfectly arranged. She thinks about the way his face had twisted when he described the dream (or not-dream, as Plagg said) to everyone, the clear yearning and tension pulling at his face. They way he’d looked up, as if he hoped to see it again. “It’s a lot.”

“Yeah,” Marinette says quietly, and she untucks her arm from where it was squeezed against his side to wrap it around his waist, tugging them even closer together. He leans his cheek on top of her head.

“Is that… mine?” he asks, pointing the toe of his beat up sneaker to the pool of blood. The loose threads at the bottom of the bootcut jeans she’d distressed for him dangle and touch the surface, absorbing the red.

Marinette nods. The drape of Adrien’s arm around her shoulders and the press of his cheek against her head keeps her breath slow.

“Ah,” he says. He squeezes her shoulder. “Well, that’s. This is certainly something that happened.” He pauses. “Gotta admit, LB, I feel weird about it.”

A watery laugh escapes her, and she wipes at her eyes, nodding. “Understatement of the century.”

“Right,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice. He waits for a moment. “Could you tell me what happened?”

Marinette takes a deep breath, nodding her head. “Yeah. I think I can- I think I could do that. Just- could you-? Could you please not let go of me?”

“Of course, my lady,” Adrien says, and he tugs her even closer. She sniffs, gathering herself together.

“I ran, when you told me to,” she says, and she feels her chin begin to wobble. Adrien rubs his hand over her arm. “And I- that thing that was in Aurore locked the door. I couldn’t get out. I thought I was going to die, but then the door- it just kind of… exploded?” She pauses, wiping her nose. “From there, it gets blurry because I hit my head pretty hard, but the dust cleared, and Plagg was there. He caught the demon before it could get to me, and he did something to knock it out. That was when Tikki came, and then I passed out.”

“How’s your head?” Adrien asks.

“Tikki healed it before she started treating Aurore. It doesn’t hurt anymore, not even a little bit,” she says, and he nods.

They’re quiet for a moment.

“Are you sure it was me?” she asks, staring down at her reflection in his blood. “The… knight you saw. Are you sure it was me?”

Adrien shifts so that he can look her directly in the eye. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

Every organ tightens inside of her, rebelling against everything she’s seen, everything she’s heard, everything everyone is telling her she has to do. She looks at his eyes, at the way they are clear and sure, and she almost feels hope release the tension inside of her.

And then she remembers the sinister dark inhabiting the space beneath Aurore’s skin, the sound of Adrien’s pain as a letter opener punctured through skin, muscle, lung again, again, again. She remembers the choking fear that had paralyzed her mind, the sight of Adrien, lifeless on the floor.

She covers her face with her hands. “I can’t do it, Adrien. I just can’t. Please forgive me.”

Chapter Text

They had to leave the studio eventually, and once Ladybug had received three missed calls from Alya and Adrien had received a slew of question-mark emoji filled texts from Nino, they figured it might be best to do it then. 

The knight’s purification tool that Tikki had been using to heal Aurore made fast work, and they had just been sitting in the studio with her as she slept while Ladybug had explained with a shaking voice to Tikki and Plagg that they must simply find a different knight of Heaven - or whatever it was supposed to be - because she was not it.

Adrien let her speak without interruption, sitting over by Aurore’s sleeping body, watching the breath move in and out of her lungs. Tikki and Plagg tried to convince Ladybug otherwise, and Adrien wondered what Aurore would think of today after she woke up, after Tikki slipped watercolor hands in her head and shifted the memories around like she said she was going to. Would she wake up and only remember her giddy excitement after the performance? A couple hours more of her shift, cracking jokes between music and commercials, scrolling on her phone while music played? Or would she remember, deep in her, between her blood and sinew, the feeling of the-something-else that had crawled inside of her body?

Once the argument occurring just outside of Adrien’s focus settled into a very clear stalemate, Tikki had woken a dreamy Aurore up, pressed her hands to her temples. Aurore’s eyes fluttered, and Tikki gently guided her back to her chair by the soundboard, wrapping Aurore’s fingers around her headphones and turning her chin to face the microphone.

They left her just as a small jolt went through her body as she seemed to realize that she was sitting in her chair. She blinked in slight confusion, and then, as the door closed behind them, Adrien saw her laugh softly to herself, as if amused at her forgetfulness.

They’d parted ways, Tikki leaving with Alya and Ladybug, Plagg slouching along with Adrien and Nino. When Plagg had followed Adrien as he walked away with Nino, Nino had turned around, raising an eyebrow.

“Who’s this?” he asked, looking back at Adrien.

Adrien had opened his mouth, unclear on what to begin to say.

“I’m his uncle. Mother’s side of the family,” Plagg had said, picking a crust from beneath his fingernails that very well may have been Adrien’s dried blood. 

“Oh, sick, he came to see your first radio performance?” Nino asked with a smile, bumping his shoulder with a fist.

“Uh, yeah,” Adrien had said. Best to go along with it.

But now he’s finding that he wishes he hadn’t decided to go along with it, because now Nino is sneaking Adrien out of his house while Plagg was busy pilfering his kitchen for something he claimed was “the greatest delicacy of all the earthly realms.”

“Don’t get me wrong, dude,” Nino says, briefly letting go of the steering wheel to touch a reassuring hand to Adrien’s shoulder, “your uncle seems like a real stand-up kind of dude” - Adrien thinks of Plagg, the angel who apparently wears sweatpants and a black hoodie with weird looking stains on it - “but this is a party thrown just for you celebrating your first radio appearance and your first demo with Ladybug! Just for tonight, screw the adults who don’t want to let you live a little. You deserve to celebrate. And then tomorrow, we can go to breakfast with Uncle Plagg. Easy peasy.”

“I have a fitting with Father’s fashion department during breakfast time,” Adrien says, kind of wishing he felt strongly enough about Plagg’s warning to stay home and out of danger until Ladybug came around to her senses to actually heed it as seriously as he should. 

“We’ll do brunch then,” Nino says. 

Adrien leans his head against the window, feeling the rumbling of the car. 

The problem was that, even for just the couple of hours he’d been locked up in his room with Plagg before Nino arrived to sneak him out, he’d been itching out of his skin to do something. There was a restlessness inside of him that hadn’t been there before, a feeling that made him stare out the windows, tapping his fingernails against the glass as if doing that enough would result in the fishbowl shattering, the world rushing in. 

He thought maybe it was from the place he’d been in when he’d- dissolved. Been looked at in that spotlight. All that light inside of him making him look at his giant, empty room, his color-coded schedule with only a smattering of days clear for the sole purpose of work with Ladybug, his photo board of Ladybug propped up against the wall so that it could be easier to hide from other people - all of it, every single bit of his life - with the rose-colored glasses off. Maybe it was that. Or maybe it was the feeling at the recording studio, before the light, when the last note had rung out and he’d been staring at a growing smile on Ladybug’s face. Maybe it was both.

Either way, he’d let Nino sneak him out of the house, still wearing the jeans with the torn hems stained from his own blood, a zip-up hoodie thrown on over his shirt to cover the three puncture holes in the fabric on his back.

Ladybug had glued the mask on with eyelash glue when she had done it for him, so he does the same as they enter the neighborhood where the house party is, staring at his reflection in the mirror on the passenger side visor as he pressed his fingertips along the edges of his mask.

“Hot,” Nino says, and Adrien gives him a grin that feels a little wild, a little like the fire burning inside of him.

The party is crowded with people and loud music, big names in every genre of music and their groupies crowd cluster around him in a throng of sweat, glitter, and body odor. A lot of them clamor for Ladybug, and he gives out some vague answer about a beautiful rockstar’s prerogative, and then they’re all hounding him, asking him questions, calling people out to go grab him a drink.

He’s had the attention before, all eyes on him in a room; that just comes with the territory of being his father’s poster boy for every single one of his endeavors, ranging from fashion to television and movies to beauty products. But the attention that he gets from his father’s circles is cold and distant, eyes boring into him from across the room, unfocused gazes projecting self-love or -loathing onto his body without a touch being exchanged between them. 

Here, the adoration and jealousy is stitched into everyone’s sleeves, their hands reaching out and reaffirming his realness, his presence as a body producing heat in the room with them. It’s noisy, and it’s loud, and it’s dizzying. Adrien is laughing.

He texts Ladybug at some point.

Ladybug

Adrien:Nino snuck me out
Adrien:I know when we talked with Plagg and Tikki, we said we shouldn’t go. I’m not being very smart, I know
Adrien:I’d very much love to see you

When he’s refilling his drink, he checks his phone, and his heart jolts. Two texts from Ladybug.

Ladybug

Ladybug:here
Ladybug:top floor, room at the very end

Adrien barely even says goodbye to the people he was talking to in some side room before he’s sprinting up the stairs, drink forgotten on the kitchen counter. He doesn’t even stop when he gets to the top floor and it leads off in two directions; Ladybug hadn’t specified which way, so he just runs to the left, barreling down the hallway and yanking open the door at the end of the hall.

A couple who were in the midst of sucking face let out a startled shriek. “Sorry,” Adrien says with a laugh, and he closes the door for them before kicking his feet into a run in the opposite direction.

This time, he slows to a jog before stopping in front of the door, running a hand through his sweaty and definitely messy hair before wiping his hands on the front of his jeans. He’s still breathing hard when his phone dings.

Ladybug

Ladybug:sorry - on the right. Top floor on the right

Adrien smiles, tucking his phone back into his pocket, and he opens the door. 

Ladybug jumps from where she’d been sitting at the stool of a Yamaha keyboard from the early 2000’s, her phone still in her hands. She blinks at him.

“How’d you get here so fast?” she asks as Adrien steps inside, closing the door behind him.

“I ran as soon as you texted,” he says, still breathing a little hard.

Ladybug’s eyes are wide and round. “Are you serious?” she asks.

He nods, tucking his hands into his pockets. She seems to surprise herself with a laugh, a hand coming up to hide her smile, and she shakes her head, looking back up at him.

“It wasn’t an emergency, you know,” she says, lowering her hand. Her smile still glitters in her eyes. “I’m alright now.”

“I know,” Adrien says. “I just really wanted to see you.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, and so Adrien takes the moment of quiet between them to look around the room. Old school music tech like the Yamaha are spread out around the room, and the walls, a metallic blue, are decorated with various records and band posters. Adrien runs his fingers along the frets of a guitar resting on a stand near him, looking over at Ladybug.

“I didn’t think you would be here,” he says, and she takes a deep breath, her shoulders coming up to her ears before she drops them with a sigh. She turns to the keyboard and presses a forlorn note.

“I didn’t want to come. I’m not really feeling my best, you know?” She shakes her head, tapping out a couple more short notes. “Not just… mentally, after today, but, like. My body always feels- it always just feels heavy after I get a panic attack, and sometimes it lasts for hours. This one was pretty bad, so the heavy feeling is lasting longer.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Adrien says, venturing closer. She scoots over on the bench by the keyboard, and Adrien gingerly takes up the new empty space next to her. 

“It’s alright,” she says. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”

She taps out another note. Adrien copies her.

“So how’d you end up here?” he asks.

“Alya put a sack over my head and then painted my face while driving one-handed through the back roads and neighborhoods,” she replies. Her finger hovers over the key, and she gives him a sideways sort of smile, tilting her face toward him. “I’m only exaggerating a little bit.”

“And Tikki?” Adrien asks.

“Left behind at my house, probably freaking out right now. Alya’s powers of distraction are undeniable,” Ladybug says. She returns to tapping out a note on the keyboard.

“Where is she now?”

“My powers of distraction are also undeniable,” Ladybug replies, and Adrien smiles. “I slipped away as soon as I could and found this room. It’s quieter in here.”

And it is, Adrien realizes. Since this looks like a music room, there must be some soundproofing to the walls because the pumping, fiery music from the party is just a faint rumbling in the air.

“I want to thank you,” Ladybug says, and Adrien looks back at her, raising his eyebrows. Her eyes are trained down at her finger, tapping the top of the key. “Back at the recording studio- I know you saw this… vision, sort of thing, and I know. I mean, I know that you think it’s me. You said so yourself. But you didn’t try to argue with me like Plagg or Tikki did.”

Adrien looks down at her hand, and then he places his fingers on the keyboard, playing out a familiar riff, along the keys, soft like a lullaby. He plays it again, and Ladybug tilts her head.

“‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’?” she asks, and he nods with a smile. He plays the riff, normally plucked along an electric guitar and accompanied by galloping drums and a thrumming bass, again, in half time, to a slight sway, and then he presses a button on the keyboard to make it loop.

He stands up from the bench, offering a hand to Ladybug, and she looks up at him. “It’s one of my favorite songs,” he tells her. “Dance with me?”

A shy sort of smile pulls at her mouth, and she takes his hand, letting him pull her to her feet and guide her to the center of the room. He raises her hand, keeping it clasped with hers, and then places the other hand on her waist. He waits for the riff to loop again, and he leads her into a waltz.

“Slow dancing to Blue Oyster Cult?” Ladybug asks with a laugh, and Adrien grins.

“Is there any other way to dance to ‘The Reaper’?” he asks, and she smiles up at him.

“I guess not.”

They go through the first loop in each other’s silence, getting used to the slowness of the waltz, the familiar song turned new on the piano keys. Adrien imagines the lyrics beginning in his head, slower than they already are at the start, pulled long like the strands of blue cotton candy. 

“It’s my favorite song because it was my mother’s favorite song,” he says, disrupting the quiet, and Ladybug looks up from where she had been staring at their feet. Her eye contact nearly makes him stumble, his heart fluttering in his chest, but he only just manages to keep his cool.

“She’s got good taste,” Ladybug says with a soft smile.

“I only learned from the best,” he replies. His mother’s fate lies heavily in the air between them now, soaking the space between the looped riff, saddened by the piano. 

Her disappearance was all over the news when he was thirteen, on every social media site, on everybody’s phones and in everybody’s mouths. Paris’s golden starlet and loving benefactor Emilie Agreste, disappeared without a trace. Left behind destroyed widow Gabriel Agreste, a too-young Adrien Agreste. Anyone who knows his name knows his parents’, too, and all the weight they bring with them.

“There’s something I left out when I told everyone my dream,” Adrien says, still keeping up the waltz they had built together. Ladybug looks up at him, lips tight. “After Plagg called me back, after I started falling, I heard voices, a- a sort of choir. It was part of the message - I’m sure of it - I was just… I didn’t know what to think of it. I had to explain it all too fast earlier.”

Ladybug nods slowly. “What were the voices singing?”

“My mother’s name.”

She stops their slow dance, and then they’re standing still in the center of the music room, the riff looping through the room like a circular haunting. 

“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like,” he says, shaking his head. “If I had been the one to see you getting hurt by that- that thing inside Aurore , I don’t know how I would even be able to stand for the rest of the day. It must’ve been awful, traumatic enough to convince you to never have to go through it again, so I respect your decision. I would never try to change your mind on that because you deserve to never have to feel that way again.”

She stares up at him, and Adrien takes a deep breath.

“But,” he says. “My mother’s name was part of the message. I have to know what that means.”

Ladybug’s eyes slide away from his. “Adrien…” She trails off.

“I’m not asking you to help me,” he says, squeezing her hand. “I’m only telling this to you because even though you won’t be working with Tikki and Plagg anymore, I still want to be. I just wanted to let you know.”

She looks back at him, her face twisted in complicated emotion. He smiles.

“Although, for the record, I think we would make a good team.”

Something begins to shift on her face as she continues to look up at him, her hand still clasped in his as the looped riff still drifts around the room, a certainty in its repetition. She opens her mouth to speak.

And then something pounds hard on the door, and the entire room shakes. Something cracks in the Yamaha, the loop disrupting and skipping on the same two notes, over and over, and the lights above them surge and pop.

Adrien feels it, something in the dark outside the room.

“Get behind me,” he tells Ladybug, and then the door shatters.

Chapter Text

There’s a frankly ginormous guy at the door, or the place that used to be the door, and his eyes are somehow glowing black in the darkness. He’s breathing heavy, his breath making a sort of fog in the air, the temperature dropping by the second. Marinette figures none of this is normal, and she is living through a nightmare. For the second time today.

Adrien has one arm thrown out in front of her, the other digging through his pocket. “Okay,” he’s saying, under his breath, kind of in her direction, “when I give the count, you’re going to run.”

“You are literally going to die again,” Marinette hisses, her heart rabbiting in her chest. “For the second time today, need I remind you.”

“You need not,” Adrien says. He finally gets what he was searching for in his pocket out, and Marinette just barely catches the glint of a dark ring as he slips it on his shaking hand. “But I stole this thing from Plagg-”

“You stole from Plagg?” Marinette asks, her fear splitting apart to make room for the ethical ramifications of stealing from an angel - a thought she’s had twice today, coincidentally.

“Yeah, no big deal,” Adrien says, breath coming out in a rush as they both notice that the demon is pawing its leg on the ground, as if getting ready to charge, “he said it was normally used by the companion the knight normally chooses-? Or something, I wasn’t really listening, so I took it, and I’m going to use it. Somehow. I’ll be totally fine.”

“You don’t even know how to use it!” Marinette exclaims, and the demon snorts, the temperature dropping even further. Her teeth are beginning to chatter, and its pawing at the ground is getting faster. The panic is constricting her, jittering her nervous system right alongside the uncanny cold.

“Well, yes, but I’m sure it’s not so hard to figure out,” Adrien says. He wipes a cold sweat off his upper lip, and then he grips her hand. “Okay, it’s going to charge. Run when it does.”

“I can’t leave you here,” Marinette says, and Adrien looks over at her with a smile that seems to lighten the dark around them, just a little.

“Go get help,” he says. “I’ll be just fine.”

And then the demon is charging, and Adrien is using his grip on her hand to push her away. She tumbles back and trips over her feet, crashing into a saxophone stand, saxophone included. She looks up, saxophone digging in her back, just in time to see Adrien dive out of the way of the demon as it charges forward and crashes into a drum set. Adrien rolls to his feet with ease, backing away as the demon picks its way out of the wreckage, and he picks up a mic stand, testing the weight in his hand.

He looks back at Marinette, mouths “run,” and then swings the mic stand at the demon, striking it hard in the side.

It bellows, and Marinette covers her ears, scrambling to her feet and running out of the music room. She’s halfway to the stairs before she stops, her mind racing.

It would be better to go find Tikki or Plagg now; they obviously know what to do, and Marinette has seen that at the very least, Plagg knows how to subdue a demon. It’s the smart thing to do.

But who can say if Tikki is still at her house, if Plagg is waiting for Adrien at his place? And even still, it was a twenty minute drive to get here. There’s no telling if she would be able to find them and bring them back in time.

And what happened last time, literally this afternoon? 

Adrien had taken the hit, and Marinette had run. 

She had left Adrien behind, eyes glazed over, blood pooling beneath a body rapidly losing the luster of its skin. She had left Adrien behind just to save her own skin, which, as it turned out, she wasn’t even particularly good at. 

A pocket in her cargo pants weighs heavy, and she takes a deep breath, bending down to open up the clasps and pull out the small circular object.

It’s the tool Tikki had used before to heal Aurore, the disc that opened up to the light. “You can almost think of it like a human yo-yo,” Tikki had said when Marinette had finally asked to save her body from melting into her bed sheets after her panic attack. “It bounces back everything it’s used upon to its original equilibrium. Plus it’s got a string for transportation.”

“Neither of those things sound like a yo-yo,” Marinette had said, closing her eyes and doing her breathing exercises again.

Now Marinette runs her thumb across the surface, her skin humming over the bright red and the sparking black. It’s like static electricity in her hands, and she’s the one wielding it. Fear pumps thick through her veins.

If she had been thinking right, she would’ve left the yo-yo on her desk for Tikki to find and use when she inevitably came, something inside of her acting like a honing beam on Marinette. But she hadn’t been thinking right, and now she was the one standing here with the yo-yo in the hallway of an oblivious house party, terrible crashing and tumbling sounds behind her hiding just beneath the surface of the thick music pumping through the walls like blood in veins. 

There had been a reason her hand had reached out to grab the yo-yo Tikki had set down on her desk as Alya had shepherded her out the door, Tikki busy looking for “a suspicious looking drone” up on the roof. She’d taken it - stolen it like Adrien stole the ring from Plagg - because she knew, deep down, she might have to use it.

There’s a hard thump in the hallway behind her, and Marinette jumps, spinning around. Adrien is sitting on the floor, back resting in an Adrien-sized impact crater in the wall, blood dripping from his nose and onto his lap. The mic stand he’d had in his hands when she’d left is mangled in his hands, bent and wrong-looking.

Marinette watches in panic as he shakes his head as if to clear it, smearing a hand through the blood on his face as he wipes his nose. Then he looks up into the shattered door of the music room and makes a startled face, scrambling to his feet and only just managing to grab the mangled mic stand as he sprints down the hallway, the demon barreling out of the music room behind him.

His eyes widen when he sees her, and he uses his free hand to grab hold of her hand, pulling her down the stairs. “I told you to run!” he shouts over the loud music.

“You said you would be fine!” Marinette shouts back at him, and he makes an elaborate shrugging motion with his arms, gesturing back at the demon that had now reached the top of the staircase behind him. 

The adrenaline charging through Marinette’s muscles seems to clear out some of the blind panic in her head as they run, and a bad thought occurrs to her. “There are people down there!” she shouts, pointing to the throngs of dancing people they can already see as they round the corner on the stairs.

“Oh, yeah!” Adrien shouts back, looking around as if he only just remembered, too, and then they’ve reached the bottom of the stairs. He looks back at the demon still charging down the stairs at them, and his mouth pulls. “Well, LB, I gotta tell you right now. It seems I’m not much of a planner.”

“Oh, my God,” she says, and she grabs his hand, pulling him into the crowds of people. “Let’s hope this thing is only after us.”

As they submerge themselves into the crowd, a cheer goes up - both from their combined presence, and the wave of what seems like a blast of air conditioning kicking to life from the stairs. Hands tug at her clothes and ruffle her hair, and she smiles anxiously, not stopping for any of the familiar faces or unfamiliar faces calling her name as she tugs Adrien along, looking back and trying to crane her head above the crowds.

She sees the demon, in the body of what looks like one of the bouncers that had been at the front door, halted at the foot of the stairs, its head acting like a swivel as its black eyes scan the crowd with mechanical precision. It doesn’t seem to be messing with any of the people, stumbling drunk or distracted dancing or both, that accidentally bump into it, barely even giving them a glance as they apologize and step away from it. That seems to be a good sign. 

Adrien tugs her into the kitchen, a wall between them and the demon still in the living room, and Marinette watches in disbelief as Adrien opens up the fridge and pulls out a beer, using the hem of his hoodie to twist the cap off. He closes his eyes as he takes a swig, bottle cap clutched between his fingers and a droplet of beer running down from his mouth, cutting through the sweat and blood on his neck.

“Are you joking?” she asks, trying not to follow the stupid droplet of beer down into the neck of his shirt.

“They didn’t have any bottles of water in there,” Adrien says, wiping his mouth - the blood from his nose smears onto his cheek. “I’m sure they have some in a cooler or something, but I didn’t want to take my chance with either water or jungle juice, you know?”

Marinette scrubs her hands on her face. There are a couple of people milling about in the kitchen, and she’s hyper aware of them staring at them, waiting for the chance to say hello or congratulate them, or ask for details, or something like that. They need to get out of here, get somewhere private, figure out what to do.

“Okay, whatever,” Marinette says, and she claps her hands together. “We’ve got to do something about the you-know-what.”

“Right,” Adrien says, taking another sip of his beer.

She looks around the kitchen, sees that there’s a door that leads to what looks like a backyard area. She turns to the other people in the kitchen with them. “There’s a big guy out in the living room looking for us - big bouncer from the front? He’s, um-”

“Killing our vibe?” Adrien offers, and Marinette nods.

“Killing our vibe,” she confirms. “We’re going to go out in the backyard. Could one of you peek your head out and let us know if he comes in here looking for us?”

“Of course,” a person says with red and black glitter on their cheeks in the shape of a ladybug, coming forward to grab Marinette’s hand and clasp it over their heart. “I’m the biggest fan by the way.”

“What should we do?” asks a jock-looking type by the door. “Hand signals? Bird calls?”

“That works fine,” Marinette says, and she gives them both a grateful smile before she’s tugging Adrien out into the backyard, closing the door behind them.

There’s a few people outside in the back, smoking or drinking or both and talking under the porchlights or pressed up with a partner in the shadows by the house, and so Marinette and Adrien go to the very back of the backyard, right up to the fence line and behind the raised stone fountain at the edge of the fancy pool. Here, the music is still pretty loud and there’s still a couple of people closeby, splashing around in the pool, but Marinette can turn her head and see the door of the house, and they’re largely hidden by the fountain of the pool.

“Alright, we have to think,” Marinette says, “and we probably don’t have much time. Do you have a way of contacting Plagg?”

“I don’t think he has a phone, and I think he might still be raiding my kitchen,” Adrien says, and Marinette blinks.

“Okay,” she says, choosing not to ask. “And you didn’t happen to figure out how the ring works?” she asks, pointing to the black circled around his right ring finger, near liquid under the starlight. 

“Well, it certainly works as a ring,” Adrien says, holding his hand out and splaying out his fingers. “It looks good on me, and that’s about all I got.”

“Great,” Marinette says, and she holds up the yo-yo disc, fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. “I have this.”

“That seems helpful,” Adrien says, and he reaches out his hand to touch it. 

A spark jumps out from the ring to the yo-yo, and they both cry out. A jolt of energy sharpens through Marinette like a knife from the palm of her hand, cold and harsh like the wind-burned sun in winter, and she gasps, her eyes flying open like she just jumped into an ice bath.

When she looks at Adrien, he’s breathing hard as if he felt the same thing she did, and his eyes are blazing- glowing, she realizes. There’s lightning flashing in his electric green eyes, and when he raises his hand with the ring on it, she sees that there’s a layer of something glimmering just over his skin, the color of midnight and spring.

He looks up at her, eyes wild, and he grins. “The armor,” he says, and he looks her over, his smile widening. She looks down at herself, sees the shimmer over her skin, fire and ash. It blinks in and out of focus like Adrien’s does, catching the starlight for just a fraction of a second as she moves.

Something seems to shift in Adrien’s expression as he makes eye contact with her once again, and he swallows, seeming to tamp down the smile still tugging at the corners of his lips. “We probably still have time to run, you know. I could Google how to hotwire a car and apologize to Nino later.”

He’s still trying to get her a way out, what she’s so desperately craving, and she appreciates it more than most other things that are happening to her right now. She almost agrees.

A small circle slides out from the yo-yo disc in her hand, and she slips her middle finger through it, instinctively pulling her hand back and flicking it down. A string unfurls from the disc, and it spins easy and smooth, held up by the string over the grass beneath them. Exactly like a yo-yo, Marinette thinks.

Panic is still present in every pump of her heart, but then she hears the opening riff of “Don’t Fear (The Reaper)” by Blue Oyster Cult echo out from the speakers - the DJ must be feeling old school - and she shakes her head, pulling the yo-yo back up to the palm of her hand with a simple certainty. It’s almost like a sign, a message, and she’s finding that she’s taking it to heart.

The door to the kitchen opens, and the jock-type pops his head out, making an elaborate gesture with his hands at the same time as the person with the glitter pops their head out and whistles out a bird noise.

She turns back and takes a deep breath, grabbing the beer bottle from Adrien’s hand and throwing back her head to take a long gulp. “Fuck it,” she says, tossing the bottle back to Adrien, who catches it with a grin. “I’ll stay and fight. Let’s do this.”

Chapter Text

“Okay, we’ve got to figure out a plan,” Ladybug is saying while Adrien is poking his head out from behind the pool fountain stones and watching their friends from inside the house get shoved aside by that big demon guy. The little guy with the glitter on their face - Adrien had complimented it earlier, pre-demon - shouts out a complaint, and the sporty-looking guy who had cheered Adrien on earlier when he shotgunned a beer (also pre-demon) comes to their defense, shoving at the demon’s shoulder. 

Adrien watches as the demon flicks the sporty guy away, batting aside an annoying fly, and the sporty guy goes flying into the can-filled trash cans pushed up against the house.

Beside him, Ladybug is saying something about a bottle cap.

“No time, I think he’s getting aggressive,” Adrien says, and he runs out from behind the pool fountain, brandishing his twisted up mic stand in one hand and his half-full beer bottle in the other.

“Adr- Ah, Chat Agre- Whatever your name is! Get back here!” he hears Ladybug shout after him, but he’s already running across the backyard to meet up with the demon before it turns its glowering gaze on the innocent party-goers into violent action.

“Plan it out, I’ll cover you!” he calls back to her, and then he’s skidding to a stop in front of the demon. “Hey, man, remember me?” he asks.

“Chat Noir,” the demon garbles through the bouncer’s throat, and Adrien blinks.

“Whoa, didn’t know you knew my name.” It’s not like it had come up when they were attempting to beat each other to a pulp in the music room. “But, hey, if you’re familiar with me, how about we become mutually familiar? What’s your name, buddy?”

“Ladybug!” the demon grinds out, taking a swing at Adrien’s head that he only just manages to dodge in time.

“Well, I know for a fact that’s not your name,” Adrien says, and then he’s punched directly in the eye socket.

His head sparks and bounces, and he stumbles back, his arm coming up instinctively to touch his eye, but instead of a hand to his eye, he ends up connecting the beer bottle to his cheekbone. “Oh, ow,” he says, and then realizes the still ice-cold bottle feels nice on the throbbing new bruise. “Oh, nice. Oh, sh-” He ducks out of the way of another swing, hopping back and taking one last swig of beer before swinging his arm down and shattering the bottle on the edge of the patio table.

A shriek goes up from the people still hanging out in the back, and Adrien spares them a glance. “Now would probably be a good time to clear out,” he says, and then tosses the broken beer bottle away - it served its purpose. 

He uses both of his free hands to grip the mic stand before him, and he eyes the demon as it gets ready to charge, feeling his muscles loosen, his stance shift. One foot slightly forward, one arm held aloft behind his back.

The demon paws the ground, and Adrien sniffs, tastes blood on the back of his tongue. The air grows colder, raising goosebumps on the back of his neck. He grins.

It charges, and Adrien steps easily to the side, bringing his arm smoothly down until the mic stand connects with the demon’s side. It roars, and Adrien pulls the mic stand back, but not fast enough. The demon’s hand juts out and grabs hold of the mic stand, yanking it from Adrien’s grasp and smashing it clean in two against its knee. 

“That’s a foul,” Adrien says rather stupidly, and then he’s tackled to the grass, pieces of mic stand on either side of him as the demon is using the bouncer’s thick, huge hands to circle Adrien’s throat, the chill emitting from the demon making him gasp, making him lose his breath faster. Adrien’s hands scrabble at the demon, fingernails digging into his shirt, his face, his neck, but the breath is leaving him fast, and dancing spots of nothing are circling the edge of his view.

Adrien recognizes this may not be good, and yet something inside of him seems to calm the wild energy pumping through him that had been spurred on by the air-headed panic clouding his brain. His body calms, his head clears, and the feeling, clear tranquility, radiates out from his chest and surges out through his arm, making him throw his hand out. 

Static electricity sparks just before his fingers connect with something on the grass, and he grips it tight without thinking, slamming his fist against the side of the demon. Something clicks to life in his fist, and the demon is being launched off of him, his hands tearing off Adrien’s throat with a painful gasp. 

Adrien sits up, coughing and spitting, and he looks down at his fist, blinking tears out of his eyes. He’s holding a small and unassuming mangled piece of the mic stand in his hand, but, as he twists his fist around, he sees a full-sized silver pole catching on the yellow porch lights, shimmering in the dim in the same way the armor did; visible one second, not the other - but still there. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the demon clambering onto its feet again, and Adrien does the same, keeping his grip tight on the staff in his hand, blinking in and out of focus as a broken mic stand. He takes a deep breath, ready to play another round of bullfighting, when he sees Ladybug waving her hands by the pool.

The demon has its back to her, so it paws at the ground, focusing on Adrien as he tauntingly swings his staff back and forth, squinting at Ladybug. The demon charges, and Adrien dances to the side, catching the demon in the leg, keeping an eye on Ladybug as she makes some complicated motions with her hands.

He glances around, using the staff to trip the demon again as he runs a circle around him, and he sees that the people that had previously crowded the backyard are now pressed against the fence line, the people that had been in the pool dripping by the trees. Ladybug must have cleared them out of the way, she must have a plan.

He looks back at her, the demon clipping him in the side with a harsh fist, and he grunts as she frantically makes a twisting motion with her hands and the hem of her shirt then points downward, at the top of her empty miming air meaningfully.

Adrien squints at her. She traces another curvy motion in the air, and points another meaningful finger down. 

He rummages through his pocket with one hand and parrying a strike with the staff in his other, pulling out the beer bottle cap he’d forgotten in his pocket and holding it up in the air as he counters the strike. He looks over at Ladybug, raising his eyebrows.

She nods enthusiastically, holding her hands out.

He jumps back from the demon, and then pulls his hand back, throwing the bottle cap to her with all of his strength. He barely sees her fumble with it in her hands, sparing just a brief moment to hope it didn’t fall into the pool behind her, before he’s having to block another strike.

In his brief moment of distraction, the demon manages to knock Adrien’s staff away, and Adrien curses, watching the staff flicker through the air until the broken piece of mic stand falls with a thump on the grass, ten feet away. He looks back at the demon. “Any chance we can still work this out?” Adrien asks, but the demon just grabs his shoulders, lifting him straight off the ground and squeezing tight, to the point where Adrien feels the glimmering armor around his skin shift and pop, sparking to protect his vital organs from being squashed into a pulp.

He groans, and the demon licks its lips, squeezing harder. And then it flinches, a small piece of metal sounding against the concrete of the porch with a tiny clatter. The demon drops Adrien without a care, and he collapses to the ground, breathing in a rattling gasp as he makes eye contact with the bottle cap he’d thrown Ladybug, there on the ground before him. She’d thrown a bottle cap at a demon.

“Hey, tiny!” he hears her shout, and he looks over to see her standing at the edge of the pool, right in the middle. Her fists are clenched at her sides, her chest heaving with her breath - a matador at the ready. “I’ve got more where that came from, so come get some!”

She’s empty-handed. She’s insane.

“Ladybug,” the demon hisses, and it paws at the ground.

Adrien gets to his feet, ready to do- anything. Anything to make sure she doesn’t get hit, but he sees her hand come up at her side, fingers splayed just for him. Wait.

He waits.

The demon charges, and at exactly the right moment, it trips over a glimmering line just above the grass that Adrien hadn’t seen until just then, and Ladybug dives out of the way. The demon tumbles into the water, and then Ladybug is clambering to her feet, running to one side of the backyard, where a cluster of bushes are. She rummages through the bushes, fumbling with something in her hands.

Adrien sees the demon’s hand come up out of the water, gripping the pool’s edge. Ladybug is still cursing at the bush; the demon is climbing up out of the pool.

He runs straight for the demon, not even a thought launching him into action other than the quick math he’d seen at the sight - demon is closer to Ladybug, Ladybug is distracted, he is not - before he’s tackling the demon back into the pool, Ladybug yanking her hand back and that universe-filled yo-yo thing Tikki had used on Aurore flying through the air toward her on a string made of orbits and starlight the last thing he sees before the water closes over him.

As his lungs burn and bubbles and water slosh around him, Adrien recognizes for the second time tonight that he probably isn’t as much of a planner as he thinks he is. Tackling the demon into the water instead of, like, pushing him or something, probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

The demon tries to kick him away, but, thoughtlessly, Adrien grips onto its shoulders, digging his fingers in without letting go. The demon growls, the sound disturbing the vibration of the water, and Adrien winces. A cold seeps into the water, radiating out from the demon’s skin, and Adrien winces as it burns his fingers, cements them to the demon’s skin. Sticky frostbite.

“Foolish child,” Adrien hears the demon hiss through the vibrations of the now ice water, bubbles frosting over as they float to the surface. The bouncer’s mouth doesn’t move as the demon laughs at Adrien, letting him continue to freeze, stuck to his skin, unable to swim away or kick to the surface for air. “Involve your mortal body in matters of heaven and hell, and see how fast it withers. Fall, beloved child, and free the queen.”

Adrien’s eyes flutter, the edges of his body numbing to the cold, and then the ice water around him shifts. He blinks to see Ladybug swimming down under his arm, the knight’s tool clutched tight in her hand. The demon tries to bat her out of the way, and she struggles for a moment, her hair tickling Adrien’s nose, soft and smooth underwater, and he feels his insides lurch.

He’s going to sneeze. He’s going to sneeze, suck in a lungful of water, and die in the backyard of a houseparty.

His bodily panic takes root inside of him at the same time that Ladybug’s flailing in the water results in the universe yo-yo striking against his hand, and he feels a fiery hot spark cut through the ice freezing through his right hand, electrifying his ring finger. Instead of a sneeze, he feels power surge out from his hand, the skin of his palm the conductor, and then the demon’s struggling shocks to a halt, and Adrien is being propelled away from it through the water, up, up, he’s kicking his feet, up to the surface.

He gasps fresh air, hears some sort of cheer crash through his ears, but he pays it no mind, taking another gulp of air before diving back down into the pool.

Ladybug is at the bottom by the shining blue tile, one hand pressing the open tool, radiating light, to the bouncer’s limp chest, the other under the bouncer’s arm. Her legs kick, but she’s not getting enough momentum to get up to the surface, especially with both of her arms occupied.

Adrien swims down to meet her, and he stops by the bouncer’s face, using two fingers to pry open one of his eyes. The iris is a pretty hazel sort of color, glazed over - no trace of the all-consuming black the demon had. He gives Ladybug a thumbs up, and she nods, twisting the yo-yo closed and tying it somehow around her waist, that orbit-string glinting along the waistband of her cargo pants. 

They look at each other and nod, and then each take one side of the bouncer, kicking off the bottom of the pool and surging to the surface of the water.

Ice chips melt around them as they pull the bouncer’s limp body to the edge. A crowd has gathered around the pool, and they’re cheering, clapping, pointing phone cameras at them, and Adrien sees Nino and Alya pushing their way to the front of the crowd, matching faces of concern and exasperation on their faces.

“A fight with the bouncer? Are you kidding me, mignonette?” Alya asks as she grips strong hands on the bouncer’s forearm.

“I didn’t start it,” Ladybug says.

“He kind of started it,” Adrien says, pushing up on the bouncer’s thighs as Nino and Alya pull him from the surface.

“And you looked cool finishing it,” Nino says, heaving one last time as he and Alya get the passed-out bouncer fully on the surface. Nino wipes his hands on his jeans, sticking a hand out to Adrien as Alya does the same for Ladybug. “But, regardless, we gotta get out of here.”

“We have to do damage control,” Alya is telling Ladybug. “How did you guys destroy an entire music room?”

“Uh-”

“It’s midnight, man,” Nino is telling Adrien, keeping his voice low because of the people still clamoring and shouting all around them. “I know we said screw the adults for the night, but your dad is chewing me out because of your curfew.”

“How many calls?” Adrien asks at the same time Ladybug says, “is the saxophone alright?”

“Like, we’re definitely in the double-digits,” Nino says at the same time Alya says, “fuck the saxophone!”

And then Tikki is parting the chaos, placing one hand on Alya’s shoulder, one hand on Nino’s, her arms creating a soft rainbow, calm after a storm. Alya and Nino both take a breath, and they turn their eyes to Tikki - Adrien even notices that the crowd calms down. Beneath them, Adrien sees Plagg creep in and sling one of the bouncer’s passed out arms around his shoulders, standing up with ease.

“Plagg and I will take care of the damage,” Tikki says to Alya and Nino. “It is absolutely imperative that you two get Ladybug and Chat Noir home now, do you understand?”

“Of course, Ms. Tikki,” Nino says immediately, grabbing hold of Adrien’s arm. 

“Ah, wait-” He protests, but Nino is busy hauling ass to his car. He looks back to see Alya doing the same with Ladybug, pulling her in the opposite direction, and she strains an arm out. 

Adrien throws an arm out, and their fingertips hit, curl around each other.

“Meet me tomorrow!” Ladybug calls out, and then they’re being torn away from each other.

Nino doesn’t slow down until Adrien is dripping in the passenger seat and the keys are in the ignition, his hands on the wheel. He blinks, and then he looks at Adrien, a confused expression falling across his face.

Adrien’s Chat Noir mask peels off his face and falls into his lap with a damp splat. 

“Well, lucky we got out of there in time,” Nino says, still looking a little confused, and then a sharp ringing is cutting through the silence of the car, blaring out over the speakers, and they’re both jumping in their seats. Adrien sees his father’s contact name in Nino’s phone - ‘gaby a’ - light up the display in the car.

“Shit,” Nino says, and he shifts the car into drive.

Chapter Text

Marinette taps the ash off her cigarette, drumming her pencil against her notebook, humming to herself. She looks up anxiously, squints up at the quickly darkening sky, takes a drag, scratches out a word. Hums, tries to see Tikki down on the street, hums, frowns, writes a word, scratches it out.

In order to distract herself from the fact that she arrived at their rendezvous point an hour early and is currently hundreds of feet off the ground, she has set up the perfect work space to keep her occupied; cigarette in one hand, pencil in the other, hair tied back, journal in her lap, phone playing her current inspiration on repeat.

“Now would probably be a good time to clear out,” Adrien is saying on her phone, and her eyes flick over to her screen at just the right time to catch how he casually throws the broken beer bottle to the side and rolls his shoulders in an easy motion, lithe body slipping into a perfected stance, garbled mic stand held aloft. He grins, showing his teeth.

She looks back to her journal, takes another drag.

During her initial obsession with Cat Shell Crush, back when Marinette had committed herself to fishing through the dregs of the internet to find every possible piece of information on the band, she’d been a little put off when she found out the lead singer was some prim and preppy little golden boy from his daddy’s famous fashion magazine. Granted, she’d definitely used the Agreste Brand as inspiration for some of her outfits because it really is that good, but still. Rich kid thinking he’s got the heart for the punk scene - she’d seen more than enough of those guys.

But Cat Shell Crush was just too damn good. She’d dug into Adrien Agreste a little more, looked over the shoots he’d done, watched some of the movies he was in and watched the press interviews to go along with them. He was gentle, polite, and a little distant. He was gracious and beautiful, a perfect prince charming. It had kind of pissed her off.

And then he’d mentioned, off-hand when talking about how he’d done his own stunts in some romance-action movie he’d starred in, that he grew up taking fencing lessons and still participated in competitions every now and then. Which of course led her down the rabbit hole of the other sport Adrien played in his supposed free time - if she was going to be nosy, she might as well be thorough - and she learned that not only was Adrien Agreste extremely decorated as a fencer, but he was also recognized in an elite community league as their star basketball player. This information, of course, led her to YouTube.

Videos of prim and proper Adrien Agreste in basketball shorts and a sweaty tank top, distantly polite face split open with a smile like the sun, gentle body bent over to let a teammate pour ice water over his head, shoulder blades arching along his back like wings. Prim and proper Adrien Agreste pulling on his fencing mask, standing up straight at his start point, tracing out his double ‘A’ signature in the air with his foil, slipping into a fighting stance as easily as breathing, defeating his opponent with almost embarrassing ease. Prim and proper Adrien Agreste tearing the fencing mask off when the match was set in his favor, looking around with a wild gleam in his eyes, his teeth bared in a catlike grin.

In the videos, there was always a moment Marinette caught where he would tamp his smile down, swallow down that animalistic glee that flashed in his eyes at the simpler joys of his complicated life. He would be playing with his team, celebrating a particularly good win to a match, and that wild, satisfied glow would suffuse over his mouth, and then he would seem to catch himself. Look around, sometimes even look into the camera. And he would do something with his facial muscles, pull them down, even them out. His smile would soften at the edges, wild to tamed in an instant.

There was something about that, tied together with the tenor scrape of Cat Shell Crush’s lyrics over heady guitars - “give me freedom or give me a punch in the teeth, they might feel just the same to me” - that had convinced Marinette.

Adrien gets punched in the eye. He reels back, winces, throws his head back and exposes the golden line of his throat to take a gulp of beer; he’s dressed in jeans that have frayed ends and are stained a bloody rust color at the bottom, and his gray hoodie is slipping off one shoulder, the cut sleeve of his t-shirt rolling up to show the slightest peak of muscle. His hair is a mess, he’s got a bloody nose that’s stained his face and his clothes with smears and splatters of blood in varying degrees of oxidation. “Now would probably be a good time to clear out.” Complete confidence, bottle smash, fighting stance. Grin. Raw and close and alive.

Marinette takes another drag.

“Jagged metal candy floss for a pair of nostrils,” reads out a voice beside her, and Marinette shrieks, her cigarette jumping out of her fingers and falling through the air. She only just barely manages to catch her phone and her journal in time, but her pencil is another unfortunate tragedy.

She looks over, heart beating heart in her chest, to see Adrien with his hands up beside her, his mask looking a little crooked on his face. “Hey,” he says, eyes wide.

On her phone, Adrien says “That’s a foul.”

“Hi,” Marinette says. She pauses the video. “I didn’t mean to freak out.”

“I don’t mind,” he says. He gingerly sits down on the platform of iron next to her, leaning his back on a beam of iron. He presses a button on the shimmering staff clutched in his hand, and then the staff is shrinking down, small enough for him to tuck in his lap. As the light shifts and he gets situated, Marinette sees that the shortened staff fades in and out with a broken tree branch.

“What’s that?” Marinette asks, pointing to the tree branch, and Adrien lifts it up with an excited sort of smile, like he wanted her to ask.

“Oh, this thing? It happened last night with the demon bouncer, and apparently, Plagg is saying that’s my whole stick. Get it, like schtick?” he says, waving his stick at her, and she finds herself laughing even though it was definitely not even that funny. He’s got a black eye, he’s positively glowing. “Apparently, you get your universe yo-yo, and I get this staff, but I can only get it if I break something else. Last night, it was the mic stand, this is the tree outside of my window.” He wiggles the stick at her, and it shimmers in the orange light of the sunset.

“Did you have to sneak out again?” she asks, and he shrugs, a little lopsided. He turns his smile to the horizon, squinting his eyes.

“Father wasn’t too happy about the fight; apparently there’s videos all over the internet now?” Marinette tucks her phone into her pocket. “And so he gave me a good old fashioned talking-to. He was pretty mad, but it helped that I didn’t really need my face today. Plagg says he’s going to heal it up enough for me to look pretty for the cameras by tomorrow, and my father saw reason once I reminded him no one at the party knew who I was,” Adrien says. He kicks his feet in the open air. “But yeah. He’s got the front door padlocked.”

“You’re joking,” Marinette says, and Adrien laughs.

“He’s just a paranoid sort of guy. Has been ever since my mom” - he pauses, gesturing vaguely at nothing, everything - “you know? It’s not his fault.”

Marinette twists her lips to the side.

“Plagg says he and Tikki are going to hang out down there and have a conversation,” he says, brushing past the weight in the air as easily as brushing away a piece of fuzz on a coat. “Apparently they have to talk about how much they can tell us.”

“And we have to be up here, on the goddamn Eiffel Tower?” Marinette asks, and she clicks her teeth, grabbing her pack of cigarettes, pulling her baby pink zippo lighter and a fresh cigarette out of the carton. “You know I fucking swung here like- like Spider-Man? Slinging up the Eiffel Tower? With a yo-yo? What the fuck’s that about?”

Her knee taps out the nervous energy she’d had to keep wrapped up inside of herself for the past few hours as she flicks the lighter on, takes a drag of a new cigarette.

“Plagg said something about being out of reach for the demons?” Adrien offers, eyes steady on her.

“Well, yeah, sure, but what about a 30-story building? With walls?” She shakes her head, tapping off ash, exhales chewing at the skin on the side of her lip. 

“I don’t know. Demons can ride elevators, probably,” he says, and she scoffs.

“A demon could probably drive a limousine straight into my window,” she says, and she presses the cigarette to her lips. “I need Tikki and Plagg to get up here fast, I’m going absolutely nuts.”

He laughs. She exhales a plume of white smoke, feeling his eyes on her. She looks over, raising her eyebrows. He tilts his head. “I didn’t know you smoked,” he says, a little smile pulling at his mouth.

“I try not to,” she says. “But I do anyway. Sometimes, on special occasions.” She gestures around to them, sitting on an iron ledge of the goddamn Eiffel Tower not accessible to the general public. “I’d say this is a special occasion.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Adrien replies. Marinette looks over at him, and she raises an eyebrow. “What?” he asks with a shy little laugh. His hair, perfectly coiffed from his father’s work all day, is starting to unravel in the summer breeze.

“Do you smoke?” she asks, holding up her box of cigs to him.

“Am I getting peer-pressured right now?” he asks, his face splitting open with his laugh.

“That depends,” Marinette says, “on whether or not you smoke.” She’s gotta admit that she’s staring at his lips, the glint of his teeth beneath.

“Consider me pressured,” he says, plucking a cigarette from the carton and placing it between his lips. He gestures for the lighter in her lap.

“Well, don’t smoke just because I said so,” she says. “It’s not a good habit to start.”

“It’s a habit I already have,” Adrien says, his lips pulling sheepish around the cigarette that he’s artfully dangling at the edge of his mouth. “I’m just letting you pressure me into it again.”

“As long as it’s not your first,” she says, leaning forward and cupping one hand around the end of his cigarette, using the other to flick the lighter on. 

His golden eyelashes brush his cheekbones as he inhales. “It would’ve been a pleasure to have you as my first,” he murmurs, looking up at her as smoke curls out from his lips.

Her entire body freezes. She has been lit on fire. She’s pretty sure she’s not breathing. The world might be ending, actually.

Adrien leans away, knobby piano fingers coming up to take the cigarette out of his mouth, hold it gracefully in the air. “The first time I smoked a cigarette, I was practicing with the producer of a movie I was in,” Adrien says, and Marinette breathes.

“Oh, you meant- the cigarette. Smoking. You were talking about smoking,” she says with a startled sounding laugh, and he looks over at her curiously.

“Yeah, my first cigarette was super awkward and fully monitored by my father,” he says innocently. She nods, hopefully not manically. “I’m saying that I wish my first cigarette was here, with you.”

She forces herself to relax. “It is kind of nice up here, isn’t it?”

Adrien nods, looking out at the sunset and taking a drag. “It’s very romantic,” he says, blowing out the smoke, and Marinette’s mouth drops open.

“You’re teasing me,” she says, and his innocent, peaceful expression cracks open into a smile. He drops his head, hiding his face in his arms before turning his head to look at her, his chin resting on his shoulder. He’s messed up his hair a little more. 

“Not really,” he says, and Marinette stares at him.

“Then why are you laughing?”

“You’re making me nervous!”

“What am I making you nervous for!”

“I don’t know! You’re the one making me nervous!” 

Marinette throws her hands up. She’s laughing, and her cheeks are burning, for some reason. Adrien is sitting curled up next to her, still staring at her. They look at each other, they both take a drag of their respective cigarettes. They exhale.

“How much longer do you think Tikki and Plagg will leave us alone?” Marinette asks, and he shrugs.

“Hopefully forever,” he says. “I never want to leave. It’s nice up here.” He looks over at her, and he smiles. Marinette feels a little bit like strangling him, in a good way. Kind of.

“You’re so calm,” she says instead of addressing the rapidly electrifying air between them, tapping her ash off. “I’ve been freaking out all day.”

He hums, stretching out his limbs toward the sun. “I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about last night.”

“And it’s making you feel calm?” she asks, and he laughs.

“Well, no,” he admits, “but, can I be honest?” He looks over at her a little shyly. “I watched some of the videos that got posted online of the fight. It felt crazy being in it, still feels crazy thinking about it, but I can’t stop feeling like I was right.”

She snorts. “About what?”

“About us being a good team,” he says simply. “In fact, you were right. You were the one who chose me.”

She stares at him. He smiles, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“Thanks for choosing me, Ladybug.”

Marinette’s hands squeeze her journal. She can’t quite figure out what to say, or how to make her mouth work again, so she looks away from him and his glowing sincerity, inhaling smoke and letting it sit burning in her lungs, right next to her heart. 

“You can thank Alya, mostly,” she says on her exhale, her words quick and spurred on by a lighthearted panic. “I mostly suggested you as a desperate whim of my wildest dreams. I wasn’t really thinking straight - if I was I would’ve been too chickenshit to even think your name. But she wouldn’t let me get away with being a coward, and she found out how to contact your dad and Nino in the span of two hours. She made both calls with me locked in another room, banging on the door. I’m mostly exaggerating, of course.”

She wasn’t.

Adrien laughs. “It kind of sounds like you didn’t want me.”

“I wanted you more than anything,” she responds, her gut squeezing the words out of her mouth on instinct, and she hides her embarrassment behind a particularly harsh drag. “I mean- Wanted to work with you. Meet you. And, er, all that.” She clears her throat. “You just, well, the thought of it kind of scared me because, let’s be honest, you kind of make me-” She cuts herself off, gestures vaguely, wonders why she’s even saying this.

“Nervous?” Adrien finishes, and Marinette looks over at him, her mouth gaping open and closed like a fish. She thinks of him, only minutes before, giggling into his arms, claiming she made him nervous, and she sees him now, splayed out in the sun, looking over at her with popsicle eyes melting in the heat, a little smile pulling at his mouth as he asks her, “do I make you nervous?”

Marinette’s muscles pull tight with her want. “I think you make me violent,” she says, and he bursts out laughing, throwing his head back. The sun kisses the swell of his Adam’s apple, and Marinette has to look away, she wants him that bad. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks her, his smile still obvious in her voice, and Marinette is saved from having to answer by a pair of screams arcing through the air toward them, crashing onto the iron ledge next to them.

Marinette lets out a scream of her own, clutching her journal to her chest and scrambling away, her back knocking into Adrien’s chest. He wraps a protective arm around her waist, and Marinette opens her eyes to see Tikki and Plagg, arms around a wide-eyed Alya and a startled-looking Nino. She stares. They stare back.

“We’re, like, on the Eiffel Tower right now,” Nino says, looking around. He shares a wild grin with Adrien. “Dude, we’re on the Eiffel Tower right now!”

“I know, man!” Adrien says excitedly, and Marinette can feel the reverberation of Adrien’s voice against her spine. 

She feels her face flush as she looks at Alya, who is wiggling her eyebrows at her.

“It’s kind of romantic, isn’t it?” she asks, and Marinette burns, beginning to scooch herself away from Adrien’s hold.

He lets her go, smiling up at Alya. “That’s what I said,” he says innocently, and Marinette turns to glare at him.

“You’re definitely teasing me,” she says.

“Not teasing,” he says with a grin, and she feels like strangling him again. He’s gotta stop doing- whatever this is. Acting hot. Whatever.

“Shut it, chaton,” she snips, and he laughs.

“Yeah, she’s right, shut it,” Plagg says, snapping twice to get everyone’s attention. “We’ve got some stuff to hash out.”

Everyone looks at him expectantly. He pulls out a wheel of what looks like camembert cheese out of the front pocket of his sweatpants, opening up the little cardboard box and pulling out a slice of the stinking cheese. He opens his cavernous mouth and seems to realize everyone is staring at him. He looks over at Tikki, and she raises her eyebrows. “What,” he says, “I have to?”

“I did it last time,” Tikki says, and Plagg stuffs three slices of cheese into his mouth.

“Can’t, my mouth is full,” he says around a mouthful of cheese. Tikki sighs, pressing her fingertips together and turning her eyes up to the sky, as if asking the universe for patience. “You’re better at explaining anyway, sugarcube,” Plagg says, still chewing. 

“I know,” she replies cheekily. And then she turns to everyone else, giving them an exasperated sort of smile. “Well, I’m sure you have many questions, and, as Plagg so gracefully put it, we have some ‘stuff to hash out.’” She sits down beside Marinette, placing a sunrise hand on Marinette’s knee. “Let’s get comfortable for a moment, shall we?”

Chapter Text

“First, we have to make things very clear,” Tikki says. She looks carefully around the small circle they’ve made together on the iron ledge. She and Plagg are seated with their backs to the open air, and both of them look eerily comfortable; Tikki with her back the sheer drop of a cliff face and Plagg lounging like a leopard in the sun. Adrien sees Tikki go out of her way to make eye contact with each one of them, a burning seal of a gaze paired with her poised physical confidence. “It is absolutely imperative that we keep Ladybug and Chat Noir’s true names a secret from everybody who doesn’t already know them.”

Adrien blinks. “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. We’ve been keeping the secret pretty good so far.”

Ladybug pulls her knees up to her chest. “She also means between us,” she says, and Adrien turns his head to look at her.

“But…” He says, and he trails off, feeling a little lost and struggling to figure out why. “We- We’re partners.”

“Yeah,” Ladybug says. She glances at Tikki, and the gaze that travels between them is charged, like they’re both only just restricting themselves from climbing on the defensive for an argument that they’ve had several times. “I don’t like it either.”

“It will protect everyone in the long run,” Tikki says pointedly at Ladybug. She turns canyon eyes to Adrien, hard set and stern. “I am personally already not very fond of your friends and parents knowing your identities as it may make them the target for demons in the future.”

“But aren’t Ladybug and I already targets? And Ladybug already knows who I am, so it’s not like her knowing me makes her any more of a target. The demons want her anyway,” Adrien says, and Tikki’s rose petal lips purse.

“Yes,” she says slowly, “but for the two of you, it is more than just protection from attack.” She smoothes her hands over her thighs, turning her river current gaze away. “In the past, demons have… infiltrated the knight’s chosen partner to induce harm on the knight as well as gain intel on the knight’s identity. You, because of your closeness with Ladybug, are more of a liability to her than anyone else sitting here.”

Adrien feels his jaw work, his eyebrow tense in that way that always got his pictures thrown out for looking too ‘resting mad.’ “What about Alya?” He looks over at her, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t you know how Ladybug is?”

Alya has her lips twisted to the side, her eyes flicking around their circle with an inquisitive air. “I do,” she says carefully.

“As I said,” Tikki says, “it’s not ideal. But Alya will not be posing a physical threat to the demons, as you already have. You are a distraction to them, a possible weakness to exploit, a liability-in-waiting. They will always try to knock you out first.”

“I think I’ve proved that I can hold my own,” Adrien says, but Plagg shakes his head from where he’d been licking the camembert box clean.

“Kid, you died the first time you came into contact with a demon. You’ve got a 50-50 success rate, so just keep your mouth shut and your head down,” he says, and Adrien clamps his teeth shut, feeling his jaw flex. Plagg laughs. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to know your lady’s name once this all blows over. But it has to blow over first.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Alya pipes in, holding her hands up. “I’m hearing a lot of hints at how this started and how this might end, and, as someone who would love to know what’s even going on in the first place, I’d like for us to dwell on that, please,” she says, and then she clasps her hands together in a prayer position, looking over at Tikki and Plagg.

“I second this motion,” Nino says, giving Tikki and Plagg a salute. “Like, for example, I’d love to know how I’m supposed to act in the presence of angels.”

“You humans are like interesting gerbils to us-” Plagg begins.

“That is not true,” Tikki interjects.

“So acting like your regular old cute selves is just fine. Preferred, even,” he finishes for Nino.

“That part is true,” Tikki says, and Plagg gives Nino a cheesy thumbs up.

“Gotta say,” Nino says, looking around the circle and letting out a relieved sort of breath, “that was, like, 90% of what I was worried about. I’m pretty much good now.”

“Well, I’m not,” Alya says. “What’s all this about something like this happening before? And how do we get to the point where it can ‘blow over?’ Also, how frequent will attacks be? We’ve got a music duo that is snowballing its way into worldwide recognition, and I really don’t want that to be sabotaged by poorly timed demon attacks.”

“Now that Ladybug has been found, I’m afraid poorly timed demon attacks are all we can expect,” Tikki says, sharing a look with Plagg. “By the nature of Ladybug's public persona, anytime she is Ladybug, her location is immediately available because of the fact that she is performing for the public. This means that we will be the most vulnerable to attacks during large-scale events that will attract a crowd, as that means a demon is more likely to find the venue and be able to commandeer an innocent bystander.”

“Okay, cool, so you mean literally every event Ladybug and Chat Noir are supposed to attend?” Alya asks, to her credit only sounding a little bit exasperated. She pulls her phone out of her pocket. “Well, great, let me just send a few texts out about security for future events.”

“Demons aren’t real picky about who they body-jump,” Plagg says, picking at cheese stuck between his teeth. “Security guys may help with fending off a demon from the outside - maybe - but they have bodies, too.”

“Noted,” Alya says. Adrien sees her send some texts anyway.

“So when can it be blown over?” Ladybug asks, her arms still wrapped tightly around her knees. “Like, when will we be done?”

“A knight is a knight for life,” Tikki says at the same time Plagg says, “we find the queen and kick her back to hell.”

Tikki gives Plagg a look made of the hot sun that withers flowers. “Technically,” she says, “a knight is born a knight and dies a knight, and they act as an ambassador between the earthly plane and the divine planes if ever a situation arises where an ambassador is needed. This is their duty for as long as they live.” Plagg is making a circular motion with his hand, trying to hurry her along, and Tikki dutifully ignores him. “However, the knight is only ever realized in their duty when they are first needed, which is always when hell is going through its queen-shedding cycle.”

Adrien frowns. “When I was underwater with the demon bouncer at the house party-”

“Awesome sentence, dude,” Nino says, and Adrien grins.

“I know, man,” he says, and he realizes how happy he is that Nino is here, right next to him. He bumps him once with his shoulder before he continues. “He told me that I needed to ‘fall’ to ‘free the queen,’ or something like that. He was talking about the queen of hell?”

Tikki and Plagg exchange an inscrutable look, their gazes making universes of unspoken thought between them. 

Plagg looks at Adrien first. “Yeah,” is all he says.

“The queen-shedding cycle,” Tikki says, eyes evading Adrien’s like dandelion spores in the wind, “is a very tumultuous, but necessary, time for the divine planes. In the cycle, the ruler of hell moves on to another form of service to the universe, and heaven sends a different angel down to contribute their service for the next millennium.”

“That sounds like a smooth system,” Alya says, and Plagg snorts.

“Yeah, but there’s a catch,” he says. “There always is one when it comes to hell stuff. It’s all part of the whole balancing-the-universe thing.”

“The catch in the system is that the new ruler of hell must rebel from heaven in some way,” Tikki explains. “It gives the angel perspective over their future subjects, but the angel is almost never aware of their place as the next chosen ruler. They are often in denial, which adds more chaos to the cycle.”

“I’m not really seeing what I have to do with this,” Ladybug says. She’s still so curled up on herself, her fingers pinched around the cigarette that’s long since lost its ember. Every muscle in her body seems tense, and Adrien wishes he could figure out a way to ease her nerves.

“You are meant to guide the confused angel to their proper course,” Tikki says, and Ladybug’s mouth twists.

“But why the demons? Why the attacks on me? I could find a confused angel, hold their hand to hell, whatever- but the fighting?” she asks, and it’s here that she realizes her cigarette is unlit. She looks around for her lighter, and Adrien hurries to pick it up where it's resting by her knee, flicking it to life and cupping his hand around the flame for her.

She wraps her lips around the cigarette filter, right where her lipstick had already stained it, and smiles with just the corners of her mouth and the glow of her eyes as she leans forward and takes the flame from him. 

And then she’s looking away from him, sucking in harsh and blowing out harsher, looking back to Tikki. “I mean, if it’s a cycle, shouldn’t the demons know what I’m here for and want to help me instead of, like, kill me?”

“Demons thrive in chaos,” Tikki says, glancing momentarily at Plagg, who is scratching at a crust of melted cheese that had stained his sweatpants. “They exist, actually, to provide the chaos necessary for the existence of the universe. They are drawn to the chaos of the transition, and they are inclined to increase it, encourage it for the purpose of their existence.”

Ladybug’s eyebrows furrow. 

“Basically,” Plagg says when the silence hangs for just a moment too long, “the demons don’t-slash-choose-not-to-slash-can’t comprehend all the human emotion and fragility that gets tangled up in the queen cycle. It’s like they’re playing a game with their favorite ants in the anthill, and their favorite part is watching the swarm when a tunnel gets destroyed.”

“So,” Ladybug says, and she takes a particularly hard drag from her cigarette, “I am just a pawn in a game for demons.”

“We all are,” Tikki says graciously, holding open palms up to gesture to everyone. Nino makes a clicking sound with his teeth.

“Gotta say,” he says, giving one of Tikki’s open palms a low-five, “that doesn’t sound too hot.”

“Nothing about the universe is as glamorous as it seems,” Plagg says. “It’s basically just a giant machine, and we’re the cogs that keep it running on the day-to-day.” He stops, looking over at Tikki. “Hey, I’ve got analogies down today. Maybe I really could’ve explained it all this time.”

“I am just a pawn in a game for demons,” Ladybug repeats, each word bringing with it a plume of smoke, “and it’s not even fun for me.”

“Well, I like to think we make our own fun in the world,” Plagg says. “You know, find pleasure in the cheese, that kind of thing.”

Ladybug doesn’t respond, furrowing her eyebrows at the sunset and continuing to suck down the rest of her cigarette.

“It’s a tough adjustment for every knight to make,” Tikki says gently, “but this is a process that has been in motion for many years already. The divine planes don’t get access to the complete future, as humans are capable of free will and spontaneity, but the names ‘Ladybug and Chat Noir’ have been floating around in angels and demons’ ears since the years your parents met.”

Alya clears her throat, lifting a finger. “So what you’re saying is,” she says, looking carefully at everyone in the circle, “it was always going to be Ladybug and Adrien.”

“Alya,” Ladybug coughs, choking on smoke, and Adrien pats her back dutifully, feeling his face burn. He sees Nino give Alya a low-five, and he burns even brighter.

“I can say with no clear certainty,” Tikki says at the same time Plagg says, “yeah, pretty much.”

“Well,” Nino says, slapping his hands on his thighs, “that’s super neat. Hey, quick question?” He raises his hand, and Plagg points to him. Nino lowers his hand. “Why do Alya and I get to know about all this? We’re ecstatic about knowing, by the way, no disrespect.”

“You two control Ladybug and Chat Noir’s public image the most, which will help in facilitating clean up after a demon attack,” Tikki says. “It is likely that you both will be on-scene when a demon attack has just occurred, and it will help to have a layer of distraction between the divine damage control and the rockstar damage control.”

Nino blinks.

“Remember the house party?” Plagg asks. “How these two and the demon destroyed a whole room and you and your girl-”

“Hey, I am not his girl,” Alya interrupts.

“Fine,” Plagg says, looking over at Alya, “you and your boy” - no interruptions this time, Adrien notices with a pointed look at Nino - “did the right thing and roped off the hallway to keep anyone else from seeing, took Ladybug and the kid to safety, and then kept your mouths shut when you didn’t get any angry calls from the house owner? That was perfect. You guys perfectly paved the way for the sugarcube and I to take care of business, and you did it that smooth before you even knew what we were doing. We want it to be that painless every time.”

“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” Alya says. “I’m amazing at damage control.”

“And I love painless things,” Nino says, giving them all a thumbs-up. “Cool. Now I’m 100% caught up. I’m feeling good.”

“Honestly, I am, too,” Alya says with a decisive nod. “This sounds like a lot, but I can see it working out for us. I mean, the videos from that fight with the bouncer have already gone viral, and Ladybug and Chat Noir have earned a cult following of adoring fans in the punk scene. A good amount of fights will keep interest up in all the circles we want.”

Adrien feels his heart jolt. “People liked seeing us fight the bouncer?” 

He had watched the videos on his own, but he avoided the comment sections for his own sanity - he always did that. He had sort of assumed the comments would be filled with the kinds of things his dad had said to him - no one wanted to see him do that, he had made a gross display of testosterone and bodily fluids, all he was doing was making a fool out of himself, no one should like that, etc. - and hadn’t even bothered checking to confirm his suspicions, he was that sure of it.

Of course, he liked watching the videos despite all the things his father had said because he- well, because he kind of liked the sound of all the things his father said no one should like. Watching the videos, in their rough, blurry camerawork and unpolished shine, encouraged that restless feeling that was blossoming in his chest, making a home inside of him. But it was a guilty sort of feeling, the intensity only making the usual self-consciousness he had about all of his more fun, messy interests more prominent.

“Hell yeah they liked seeing you fight the bouncer, dude,” Nino says, bumping his shoulder with his. “I told you you looked cool, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did,” Adrien admits.

“Yeah, and you should know how much the punk scene loves authenticity in the form of conflict with authority,” Alya says rather logically. “A lot of people were praising Chat Noir especially for bringing Ladybug back down to her punk roots.”

“I never left my punk roots,” Ladybug grumbles, stabbing her cigarette butt on the iron next to her. She plucks another cigarette from her pack, and Adrien lights it for her. She smiles at him in that quiet way again, and she stretches out her legs.

“Well, we all know that, mignonette, but the posers needed reminding,” Alya says graciously, and Ladybug makes a face. “Anyway, it’s a silver lining for sure that your fan base is welcoming to a healthy dose of violence - a little demon blood and guts can all just be part of the show to some fans.”

“Gotta love all my adoring fans,” Ladybug says, and then her lips quirk up at the sides. Her eyes slide over to Adrien. “Our adoring fans, I suppose.”

“I am bringing you back to your punk rock roots, after all,” Adrien says, and he’s rewarded with Ladybug snorting out a laugh.

“Keep telling yourself that, chaton, but we both know that it’s the opposite .”

Adrien smiles. She’s absolutely right.

Chapter Text

Unsurprisingly, Marinette is having another anxiety attack. At this point, it’s an expected enough occurrence that she has various failsafes in place that’s normally included in her contracts with every venue she performs at, so she’s usually able to cope relatively well. This venue, small though it is, had done its absolute best to provide everything Marinette had asked for - a secluded room that is relatively quiet to warm up and prepare for the show, three oscillating fans and a few ice packs to cool her down, a chair with a blanket big enough to curl up in, and a small carton of raspberry gelato, all waiting for her exactly as she requested - but these creature comforts unfortunately could not make up for the fact that her drummer was absolutely nowhere to be found.

“Ivan is never late,” Rose, her vocalist and guitarist says worriedly, which does not help at all. “I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

“He’s probably just stuck in traffic,” Juleka, her bass player says, and Marinette nods eagerly.

Adrien opens the door of their dressing room, out of breath. “I found Mylene, but she says he went to the bathroom after they got back from picking up his extra drumsticks from the studio, so I checked the bathrooms and around the bar again, but I still can’t find him,” he says, and Marinette drops her head into her hands.

“If I had just remembered to grab them after our last rehearsal,” Marinette says, for maybe the millionth time. “If we just hadn’t done the new song over again because I said so, he wouldn’t have broken his drumstick, he wouldn’t have had to leave thirty minutes before lights go up, if I had just remembered, if I had just thought ahead-”

“Ladybug,” Adrien says, coming in and placing his hands firm on her shoulders. Smooth wood brushes against the back of her neck, and she realizes Adrien is holding a pair of Ivan’s drumsticks, black with the neon green tape decals along the handle. She finds herself breathing with him, low and slow. “None of us remembered to grab the drumsticks when he left early last rehearsal, and we both know the new song needed the extra work. Mylene is going to continue to look for Ivan, but in the meantime, we need a plan.”

“A plan,” Marinette repeats, and she searches around the room, hoping one of them spontaneously has one. But Alya is off smooth-talking their way into a delayed start, Nino is triple-checking the sound mixing with the venue’s sound guys, and Tikki and Plagg are patrolling the bar to make sure there’s no demon surprises. Rose and Juleka look at her with matching faces of worry, and Adrien is looking at her with an unshakable certainty that smooths out the jagged edges of her panic.

“What do you need us to do?” Adrien asks, his voice soft and calm, and Marinette takes a deep breath.

“Rose,” she says, tearing her eyes away from Adrien’s, and Rose snaps to attention, “get me my gelato, please.”

“You got it, boss,” Rose says, and she rushes to grab the carton and a spoon from the table of snacks they have out. Adrien lets go of her shoulders to bring one of the oscillating fans closer, and she pushes her face into the cool air. When Rose hands her the carton of gelato, she opens it without a care, pressing her tongue directly to the smooth surface of the ice cream. 

The shock of the cold air against her skin and the icy sweetness on her tongue clear a little bit more of the fog clouding her mind, and she breathes a little easier. 

When she’s able, she looks around at her team currently available, and she begins to formulate a plan.

“Juleka, go onstage and tear down the keyboard - Rose, you go and help her. Bring it back here so that it’ll be out of the way and ready to be packed up at the end of the night. Chat Noir, you stay here with me,” she says, and she watches as Juleka and Rose hurry off to the stage.

As soon they’re out of the dressing room, Marinette turns to Adrien, who looks at her with a tight expression. “Be honest with me,” she says, and she finds herself reaching out and gripping his hand, “do you think Ivan has been possessed by a demon?”

Adrien squeezes her hand. “I’d like to say no,” he says gently. “But both Tikki and Plagg haven’t seen him since he left Mylene to go to the bathroom. They think that he got body-jumped, and now the demon is just biding its time until we reveal ourselves.”

Marinette nods, trying to breathe her way through her racing thoughts. “Ivan knows what we’re wearing,” she says, and Adrien frowns, looking down at the red three-piece suit she’d made him.

“Well, yeah,” he says.

“Tikki told me once that demons can be fooled by appearances,” she says, and she stands up from the couch, the blanket falling from her shoulders as she walks over to the wobbly desk by the mirror, riffling through her emergency craft bag she’d left there until she finds her box of safety pins. “I’ve got an idea.”

She’d had the concept for this concert planned out for months, ever since she really started to book all the gigs with Alya that were supposed to come after her identity reveal. Her first performance would be a subversion of her status; she was going to make her big announcement to a stadium of thousands, and then she was going to come back with a show at a dive bar with cheap tickets and standing-room only. Her plan was to build her way back to the top again, and she loved the idea of literally dressing to impress, like she was trying to prove her chosen name to a tiny dive bar for the first time again, bedazzled in sequins, perfectly tailored clothes, and impeccable makeup. A kind of satire, a laugh with her younger self about how little those things contribute to a sweaty show under headlights that burn almost as bad as the sun.

The outfits she’d made for herself and Adrien were meant to reflect that - she was in a black sheath dress with a square neckline and a boxy, slinky sort of fit that brushed the floor alongside her stompers, almost perfectly hiding them from view. She’d even found a pearl necklace to wear, had styled her hair in a braided sort of up-do, and Adrien looked just as prim and proper in the light-weight suit she’d made to fit him like a glove. They looked like they were going to a gala, not a punk rock show, and Marinette was thinking that she wouldn’t mind a little more subversion.

After all, she had a partner now. And this partner was meant to be her opposite, her contrast, herself made different.

When Juleka and Rose came back to the dressing room with the keyboard and its stand in their hands, Marinette had already succeeded in not only convincing Adrien to shed his clothes, but also altering said clothes to fit her. She’d cut his crisp white button-down into a what was basically a pair of sleeves and a collar, made his slacks tighter around her waist with a spare shoelace she’d brought for her stompers, rolled the sleeves and hem of the pants up with a handy helping of safety pins, and had already made Adrien make the waistcoat tighter along her back with more safety pins, despite his conviction that he would poke her. (He did poke her several times, but Marinette didn’t tell him until afterwards so that he wouldn’t chicken out.) 

So, what Juleka and Rose see when they walk in is Marinette kneeling at Adrien’s feet, a pair of scissors held at the hem of what used to be her dress.

“Oh!” Rose exclaims, and she hides her face with her hands. Juleka clears her throat.

“Are we… interrupting something?” she asks.

“Well, Ladybug is just putting the finishing touches on my dress,” Adrien says, looking back at them.

“... Your dress?” Rose asks.

“It’s better for the theme,” Marinette says, choosing to zero in on the steadiness of her hands as she cuts a straight slit up the dress instead of thinking about what Rose and Juleka must be thinking. “Chat Noir’s going to be on drums if Ivan is still missing in action by the time we’re done with this, and we aren’t going to be announcing ourselves.” She snips one last time with the scissors and then leans back, looking up at Adrien. “How does that feel?”

Adrien sits down on the couch, spreading his legs like he would have to for the drumset. His golden knee pokes out of the slit she cut, but it’s clear that she didn’t cut high enough to give him enough space to sit comfortably in the fabric.

“Chat Noir, you play drums?” Roses asks and Adrien nods, standing back up to let Marinette cut a little more.

“Yeah, I’m actually familiar with most percussion instruments because of the music I made all the noise for my other band a while ago. Drums, keyboards, cymbals, and all that, I’m pretty fluent in, but I just can’t do guitar,” he says, and then Marinette curses.

She had cut just a little too far up, and she can now see the sharp white line of Adrien’s boxers poking through. She pulls her hands away, fuming, blushing, not sure what to do.

“Ah,” Adrien says, looking down at the slit. He sits down on the couch again, spreading his legs, and he nods. “Well, it’s a good thing I matched with my shoes today, because it seems like this is how it’s going to be,” he says, and Marinette swallows, looking down at his chunky white sneakers and white ankle socks. He has a point about that.

Still, she hands him two safety pins, avoiding looking at him. “Here,” she says. “For if you- if you want- your. You know.”

He takes the safety pins from her. 

She clears her throat, turning around to the makeup table. She picks up her face makeup palette and four brushes, handing Rose and Juleka each one brush. “Here, put on red or black lipstick. And do the opposite of what you would normally wear,” she says, and Rose smiles.

“I love when you get spontaneous with the theme,” Rose says, and she swabs her brush in the black paint.

Marinette sets the palette down for everyone to use, handing a brush to Adrien - still not looking at him, of course, she needs to focus - and puts on the black lipstick, using her pinky finger as an achor to keep her lip line nice and sharp. 

When she looks around at her stage team, Rose and Juleka look gloriously coordinated in their monochrome black and red outfits and lipstick, and Adrien is holding the brush, lipstick-less, with a lost look on his face.

“I’ve never used a brush for lipstick before,” he says, and Rose suppresses a giggle.

“Ladybug gets the cleanest lines since she’s so detail-oriented,” she says, and Marinette sees her elbow Juleka’s side.

“Um, yeah,” Juleka says. “Everyone knows that.”

‘Do you mind?” Adrien asks, holding out the brush to her. Marinette feels her brain short circuit because, now that she isn’t actively cutting apart her dress to make it fit him in a near blind panic, she has realized that she cut apart her dress to make it fit him and Adrien is wearing it. 

“Sure,” she says, and she takes the brush from him. She holds his chin with one hand and lines his lips with the other, pinky as an anchor. She tries to make quick work of it, but she accidentally glances up, unable to resist with their faces so close, to see Adrien’s eyes steady on her, watching her hand move around his lips, and her hand twitches on the last swipe she was making. “Shit,” she says, using her thumbnail to scrape off the stray thin line of red. “Go check in the mirror to see if it’s bad enough to use concealer.”

Adrien dutifully walks over to the mirror, and he bends down to see himself, planting one hand on the vanity and using the other to touch at the edge of his red lips. His back curves gracefully, his shoulders rounded and strong, and Marinette follows the line of his spine, her eyes catching on the sides of the dress, by his ribs where she’d cut open and safety pinned to be looser to give him more breathing room. Flashes of toned, gold skin hit against the silver of the pins, and she traces the line of the fabric all the way down to where it hit at the midpoint of his calves. When he turns around, she sees that he’d put in the extra safety pins at the top of the slit she’d cut, but he hadn’t really pinched the fabric together at all, and so they seemed more like decoration than a practical protection of decency. His teeth are flashing white from behind his red lips as he says, “it looks perfect, my lady.”

“Enough of that,” she says, her cheeks burning as she shoves her face into the cool air of a fan one last time before she grabs the handle of the door of the dressing room. “We’ve got to play a show.”

Chapter Text

The first thing Adrien did after Nino showed him his teenage bedroom, clustered with various musical instruments and scraps of sheet music, was sit down on the stool behind the drumset. He’d actually always wanted one - had even gotten up the courage to ask his father for one once, but was of course denied based on the firm assertion that it would be “noisy and unsightly.” And Nino’s drumset, second hand and scuffed metal in the afternoon sun after basketball practice, was noisy and unsightly and beautiful. 

He and Nino had actually spent that evening, their first sleepover, learning to play their favorite songs together. A smooth, groove rock for Nino, his fingers plucking the bass like bubbles underwater while Adrien learned the ropes, found his body in the drums. They’d of course played a Ladybug song - that was a given. 

After Nino’s gracious mom had finally come in, past midnight, to tell the boys to save the rest of their noise for the morning, they’d sat in silence for the first time in hours, and Adrien had looked down at the drumsticks in his hands, scuffed and raw in his palms. Nino had looked at him, bass still cradled in his lap, and said, “do you want to start a band?”

He feels that same rush - the dim light of the room bursting with moonlight and childish hope - as he leans over and presses his lips to the microphone, his arms and feet keeping the beat steady while he joins Ladybug for the chorus of their new song.

Ladybug is at the front of the stage, the suit she’d made for him and then ripped apart to be made for her catches in the lights - the material she used had a shimmer to it, and it makes her look fuzzy, ethereal in the light. All he can see clearly is the line of safety pins he’d made along her spine on the waistcoat, until she turned around, her hair a frizzy halo of black in the red light, and grins at him.

And then she was turning back to the microphone, taking a deep breath to prepare for her fast section, the section he knew front and back because she’d kept on stumbling over her own words during rehearsal, her exasperation turning into embarrassed laughter until she’d finally gotten it, her face splitting open with a wild, satisfied light.

“Jagged metal candy floss for a pair of nostrils on

Your starry neck I hold eyes like padlocked sweat and blood

Demons driving limousines, punching into you and me

Even still I can’t resist the stupid grin you press to bottle lips in confidence 

You better hold your breath real tight ‘cause babe I’m knockin’ out the lights 

Of your pretty teeth I’ll fight for the chance to see you right 

But I’m turnin’ my head I’m shutting the blinds

I’m cursing your name I’m staring at the wild 

I’m looking into pearly whites bitten into flower buds and all I’m thinking is that should be me

That should be me that should be me that should be-”

As she rips out the beginning of the crashing guitar solo that follows her scream, her fingers flying across the strings, she casually leans back from the microphone, nodding her head and calling out something over the noise to Juleka.

Juleka nods, and then ducks her head, long black hair falling over her face as she concentrates on slapping out a frankly insane improvisation. Adrien takes it in stride, looping the beat and looking up to see Ladybug slinging her guitar off her shoulders and setting it to the side.

“What is it?” Adrien mouths when she turns around to look at him, but she’s just grinning, her teeth flashing white.

“I have an idea,” she mouths back, and Adrien finds himself matching her smile as she comes around behind the drumset. She stands behind him for a moment, and the bar, packed full with people, erupts in cheers. He tilts his head back, and he sees her pointing in turn to Juleka, still shredding away, and Rose, jumping at the corner of the stage, expert hands playing harmony to Juleka’s line. And then she points to him, the noise that follows pushing against his earplugs, and he smiles, lifting up one of Ivan’s drumsticks and twirling it around his fingers.

“Show off,” Ladybug says, her lips brushing against his ear so that he could hear her, and he shivers, feeling his confident smile at the crowd turn soft. “Stand up for me,” she says, tapping his shoulders and stepping back. 

He stands up from the stool, taking a moment to adjust to the drums now at waist height, and then he turns to look at her, raising an eyebrow. 

“How does that feel?” she asks, and he nods.

“It’s alright.”

“Think you can go the rest of the show this way?” she asks, looking down at his arms still keeping track of Juleka’s groove.

“I think I can,” he says, and she rewards him with a smile and flick against his bell choker.

“Good kitty,” she says, and Adrien fully misses a beat, his face burning, but she’s already walking around to the front of the drumset, adjusting the height of his microphone for him before going back to her own mic. She adjusts her ear plugs, grabbing the mic stand and twisting to the side to smile back at him. “So we can all see him,” she explains into the microphone, her eyes sliding to the crowd. “How do we like the new view?” she asks, and she’s answered by a chorus of screams. She smiles. “I like it, too. Give me a cheer for our dear Juleka, will you?”

Juleka barely looks up from her bass as the crowd chants her name; Adrien can hear her improv winding to a close, so he starts to pick up.

“Now let’s kill this chorus,” Ladybug says, and he kicks the drums into gear.

“Me and you in the midnight

You and I in the headlights

And we’re trading names like we’ve just met

Cracking jokes like ribs I’m

Losing my grip in the sunlight

Come and meet me halfway

Spin me around as fast as-”

Ladybug tears her mouth away from the mic, dancing around the front of the stage as Adrien brings the song home.

“You can

You can you can,

Meet me where I’m waiting, 

Looking out for your face, try

And understand I’m breathing

With you I’m trying 

To catch you ah ah ah- I’m 

Trying to meet you where I am

Cracking ribs in the sunlight

Me and you at midnight

Somebody break my windows down down down

Down!”

Ladybug comes up and plants one of her boots on the top of the kick drum, lifting herself up so that she can share Adrien’s microphone for the last bit, her eyes alight when they meet his.

“Catch me end me save me let me out out out

Somebody please let me out

Somebody please let me in.”

When the song ends, there’s a millisecond of space before the crowd explodes, and Adrien lives in that millisecond, breath caught in Ladybug’s eyes. 

And then the noise returns, Ladybug is turning away, and the show is going on.

After the show, Adrien gets caught up in the crowd as he’s trying to find where Ladybug was carried off to after their set, practically raised over people’s heads like a saint. He ends up getting pushed to the bar by the still-broiling crowd moving to the house music blasting over the speakers, and the bartender slides a beer he didn’t ask for over the counter to him.

“I didn’t order this,” he shouts out, and the bartender leans forward.

“It was a great show, man. On the house,” he says, and Adrien thanks him and takes the beer, although he’s not really sure he should drink it, what with Ivan still missing. He’s trying to stay focused, forcibly pulling his mind out from the satisfied haze of a good performance to scan the bar for voided-out eyes so that he can be ready to fight if needed.

However, he’s finding this task extremely difficult with the low lighting and pumping music and hordes of people coming up to him for a picture, a signature, or a half-shouted conversation. He’s managing to politely excuse himself from a nice conversation with an excited looking guy in mesh when he sees Mylene wave her hands at him. 

“Chat Noir!” she calls, pushing through the people clustered around him, and he makes the space for her, bending down so he can hear her. “I told Ladybug when I saw her a while ago, but I found Ivan!”

“You did?” Adrien asks, and she gives him a tight-lipped smile.

“He was throwing up by the dumpsters. I think he got food poisoning, or something, so after he finishes up in the bathroom, I’m going to take him home,” she says, and Adrien nods, relief crashing through him, and he squeezes her arm.

“I’m glad you found him,” he says, and she nods.

“Me too. He’ll be pissed that he missed the show, but I know he’d be proud of your drum work in his place. It was a great show,” she says, and Adrien can’t help but hug her for that. She laughs, patting him on the back, and when he pulls away, he takes a big swig of his on-the-house beer.

“Hey, you said you saw Ladybug?” he asks, and she nods.

“She’s out on the patio talking with Juleka’s brother and his band. I think they wanted to open for one of our shows,” she says, and Adrien wishes Mylene and Ivan safe travels back home before he’s bounding out to the patio part of the bar, lightning under his feet. 

He finds Ladybug by her shimmering suit in a circle of people sitting just outside of the light cast down by the shoddy lamps. There’s a haze of smoke around them, and Adrien picks up on the earthy scent with raised eyebrows. Another thing he’s learning about Ladybug.

She sees him before he’s even that close, a blunt held gracefully between two fingers of her right hand and a bright red cocktail held in her left. “Did you hear?” she calls, scooching over on the wooden bench she’s sitting on, “Ivan has food poisoning! Which is bad!” The cluster of people she’s sitting with make noises of empathetic disgust, and Ladybug giggles as Adrien sits down next to her, her shoulder hitting his.

“It is bad,” he says, but they’re both smiling at each other, and he can feel her relief in her relaxed posture, in the way she easily sucks in on the blunt and blows out with a smile, pushing the smoke to the side with black pillow lips. “Mylene is taking him home,” he says, and she holds the blunt out to him.

“Oh, Mylene! Star of my heart,” Ladybug says, falling dramatically over him as he takes the blunt. He doesn’t normally partake - he doesn’t normally have the opportunity - but he and Nino have spent a couple late nights in Nino’s apartment, windows open and a fan on. He takes a little hit, holding the smoke in his lungs for a moment before he blows out, laughing as Ladybug says, “she might as well be my girlfriend instead of Ivan’s. She’s gorgeous. Best unofficial kitty section member, hands down.”

Adrien passes the blunt to the person on his left, and does a double take when he sees Chloe’s scowling face. “What the- You said you weren’t coming!”

“Yeah, I wasn’t coming for you,” she says, rolling her eyes and snatching the blunt from him. “I came for Ladybug.”

“Which has been so appreciated, but so unnecessary,” Ladybug sighs from beside him, and Adrien snorts, clapping a hand over his mouth. 

Chloe sniffs, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “She’s warming up to me. We’ll be lesbian lovers by November.”

“I will be no one’s lesbian lover by November,” Ladybug says. “I’m bisexual.”

“And that’s wonderful for you and me both,” Chloe says, and Ladybug shrugs, taking a sip of her cocktail.

“So you’re Chat Noir,” says a voice from across the smoke circle, and Adrien turns his head to see a guy who looks like Juleka with shaggy blue hair smiling easily at him. “Hey, man, you play a mean set.”

“That’s Luka,” Ladybug says beside him. “We’re cool with him.”

Luka laughs. “I sure hope so,” he says easily, and Adrien feels very intensely that everything is easy with this guy. “I’ve been supporting Ladybug and the kitty section from the start because of Julie,” he tells Adrien, pausing to inhale from the blunt and then pass it along. “And it seems like you get along great with these kids. I’m happy to meet you.”

“Thanks, man,” Adrien says, and Ladybug sighs, leaning against Adrien.

“Luka’s great, isn’t he?” she asks, and Adrien nods, smiling down at her.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking,” Luka says, and both Adrien and Ladybug turn to look at him. “How long have you two been dating?”

Ladybug bursts into laughter at the same time that Chloe stomps a foot and says, “they are not dating.”

“Oh,” Luka says as Chloe continues to berate him, and Ladybug stands up, her fingers sliding down Adrien’s arm until she finds his hand to tug along with her as she steps out of the circle.

“We’ll talk later about when you can open,” Ladybug says to Luka, and he nods with a smile, taking Chloe’s screeching with ease. “You,” Ladybug says, turning to look at Adrien, “are coming with me to get another drink.”

“I am coming with you to get another drink,” he repeats, and she smiles, pulling him along as she begins to walk.

“I’ll admit,” she says as soon as they’re far enough to not be heard by the smoke circle, “I’m a little tipsy.” And she laughs, skipping her feet. “Very tipsy.” She looks back at him, and he smiles.

“You’re having fun?” he asks, and she nods happily.

“The show was perfect - well, as perfect as it could be, under the circumstances,” she says, letting go of him so that she can use her hands in wide, vague gestures as she talks. “It was close, and intimate, just like I wanted. And when Mylene said she found Ivan? Oh, that was so wonderful. I was so worried. Tikki and Alya say that everyone’s still keeping an eye out, but I’ve decided to celebrate.” She turns her eyes to him, a smile playing along her black lips. “Are you going to celebrate with me?”

“Of course, my lady,” he says, and he gets to see her giggle before she remembers to hide her face with her hand, eyes glittering at him.

“You’re funny when you say that,” she says, and Adrien grins.

“What? ‘My lady?’” he asks, leaning toward her, and she nods, tugging open the door to the bar.

They walk from the cool summer breeze outside into the close heat of bodies and music inside, and Ladybug pulls him close, clumsy arm looping over his neck so that she can press her cheek to his and talk directly into his ear. His heart races - she smells like sweat and weed, and her skin is warm against his. “So serious,” she says, “and old fashioned.” She pulls away, gives him a smile.

“I’m an old fashioned kind of guy,” he says, leaning down to meet her eyes, and she’s smiling back at him with a tease on the edges of her lips. He’s about to say something stupid when something catches her eye behind him, and then she’s shoving him against the wall. “Ladybug-?” he starts, and then her mouth is crashing into his.

Everything inside of him stops.

And then restarts again, surging to life when he feels one of Ladybug’s hands grip his thigh, her fingers catching on the safety pins at the top of the slit in his dress. He feels her teeth hit his, and he twists his head, one hand coming up to cradle her face as she kisses him with a recklessness that drives him crazy, fuzzy, out of his mind.

When she pulls away, tears herself away, he realizes that he has his arms thrown out over her shoulders, the beer glass in his hand tipping over and spilling the liquid directly onto the ground, and he feels his face burn as he rights his hand, tries to breathe with Ladybug’s breath still sweet on his mouth.

“I wanted to take you out to dinner first,” he manages to say, but she slaps a hand over his face, her palm colliding with his nose as the back of his head hits the wall.

“Ivan is here,” she hisses, and the cogs in Adrien’s brain work double time to comprehend what that has to do with anything at all.

“Okay,” he says against Ladybug’s hand, staring starstruck between Ladybug’s fingers at the dark ceiling of the bar. “Um, does he look alright?”

“He’s been possessed,” she says, and Adrien remembers how to think.

“What?” he asks, whipping his head down. Ladybug pushes his head back with the hand still on his face, and he grunts.

“I didn’t want him to see our faces,” she says, and Adrien blinks.

“So you kissed me?”

She makes a noise with the back of her throat, and Adrien tries to look at her only for her to shove his head back again. “I can’t look at you right now,” she says, her voice getting that thin, thready quality that she gets when she’s anxious.

“Okay,” he says, kind of glad she wasn’t letting him look at her. There’s no way he would be able to focus. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t see him anymore,” she says.

“Do you know where the others are?”

A pause. The music thrums between them. “I don’t see them either,” she finally says.

“My lady,” he says gently, and her fingers flex against his face. “We’re going to have to go look for him.”

“Mhm,” she says. Her hand doesn’t leave his face. Adrien crinkles his nose pointedly, knowing that she can feel it on the palm of her hand. She doesn’t move her hand.

He licks her hand.

She snatches her hand away from him, stumbling back and scrubbing her palm against her slacks. “Did you just lick me?” she asks him, and he shrugs helplessly.

“You just kissed me!” he says, and he sees that her face is burning red in the lowlight.

“To! Protect you! From a demon!” she says, but she’s starting to laugh, and he’s starting to laugh, too, and she is putting her hands on her head, an empty glass still held in one hand. “Oh, fuck, celebrating was a bad idea. I’m kind of fucked up- very fucked up, oh God. Do you think we’ll die?” she asks him.

“Nah,” he says, and she nods.

“Cool, cool.” She takes a deep breath, nodding decisively. “Okay, cool. Let’s go find this demon.”

Chapter Text

Ever since Marinette was a child, she considered herself to be extremely unlucky. There’s only so many times you can trip over air and cause a Rube Goldberg machine of disasters before you start thinking that fate has it out for you, and Marinette had passed that threshold and then some by the time she was 13. A kid with a casual fate-induced chip on her shoulder born from  parents familiar to mosh pits and classic rock would of course be driven to the punk scene, what with the genre’s tendency towards disastrous noise backing up voices that cried out in favor for the girls and boys with bad luck, roller coaster emotions, and a desire to shake up the world. 

When Marinette recorded a video of her hands playing out an AC/DC riff while she quietly sang along with the lyrics, she uploaded it to YouTube to track the progress she made - with Alya’s pushing, of course. They’d been sitting in front of her computer, staring at the YouTube account screen, and Alya said, “every good rockstar needs a killer stage name.”

Marinette had laughed, but a shock of a thrill had gone through her chest. She’d considered countless things for her future, ranging from taking over her parents’ bakery to setting up shop behind runways, watching her clothes on parade, and everything had sounded just as enticing, just as fulfilling. But there was something about the word ‘rockstar,’ the sharp sound of it, that made her fingers itch to keep on practicing.

She’d stood up from her chair, beginning to pace around her room for the purpose of drumming up the perfect stage name, but she’d only made it three steps before she was on the ground, somehow, staring up at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling of her bedroom in something between shock and bewilderment as a ladybug drifted lazily through the summer air over her.

“I think I just tripped over a ladybug,” she told Alya, lifting her finger and holding her breath as the ladybug gently settled on the tip of her fingernail. She’d stared at it in wonder in the hazy afternoon light, and she’d thought about signs from the universe.

Now, as she’s tripping over her own feet trying to get to her rockstar dressing room, dragging her rockstar partner behind her, mind hazy with rockstar drugs and alcohol, Marinette is cursing the universe’s name because she’s remembering that in her panic to switch their outfits before the show, she’d forgotten to loop the yo-yo around her waist - just in case - like she’d planned to. And she was only thinking about it now, mind-racing, because there was a literal demon after her.

“Be honest, are we being chased?” she asks Adrien, pushing through a throng of people and tugging Adrien’s hand. He hums.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” he says, and she looks back at him, making a face that she’s hoping conveys how much she would like him to elaborate.

“People are staring,” he says, his eyes lingering on her face, and she becomes extremely aware of their linked hands, the people still cloistering every corner of the bar - the smear of black lipstick making maroon on his mouth. 

Good God.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, even though it kind of does, but she cannot be looking at him right now, in this state, when he looks like that. 

They make it to the dressing room, and Marinette lets go of Adrien’s hand to comb her fingers through the scraps of fabric and safety pins littering the couch and the floor, trying desperately to remember where she put that goddamn yo-yo. 

“So, hey,” Adrien says from where he’s picking through the clutter on the vanity, “quick question.”

Marinette stands up and kneels on the couch cushions to bend over the top of the couch, rifling through the bag that she left behind it. “Shoot,” she says, glancing at the thankfully still-closed door.

“To hide our faces, why would you choose to kiss me?” he asks, and Marinette promptly falls over the couch and crashes onto the floor.

“Jesus, Adrien,” she says, trying to pull her body to her feet, “right now?”

“I mean, I figure we could at least have a quick chat about it,” he says, and then the door to the dressing room is opening, and Ivan’s big figure is filling up the doorway.

“He-ey, Ivan,” Marinette says, stumbling into a standing position and putting her hands on her hips. “Any chance you just have food poisoning?”

Ivan picks up the folded up keyboard stand from where Juleka and Rose had left it by the door, and he hurls it at Marinette’s face. She only just manages to dive out of the way in time, but it does catch her hard in the shoulder. Still off-balance and, frankly, still crossed, she falls back onto her butt, her hand cracking against the keyboard stand.

“Ladybug,” the demon garbles from Ivan’s throat, black gum stuck to hot concrete.

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s food poisoning,” Adrien says from across the room. “Maybe soul-poisoning?” Marinette turns her head to level him with an exasperated squint - his unshakeable chill is both enviable and annoying - and she sees that he’s holding her yo-yo behind his back, looking pointedly at her.

The demon punches Ivan’s thick clenched fist against the lightswitches, and the wall caves against his fist like paper, the lights flickering off, and Marinette scooches back, her heart racing, and her hand hits against the keyboard stand again.

Adrien’s schtick - stick. Didn’t he say he needed to break something to get it?

Ivan’s head rears back, and a cry like fingernails pounding on chalkboard releases from his throat. He powers into the room, straight for Marinette, and she screams, gripping hold of the keyboard stand as she rolls out of the way and onto her feet.  She swings hard as she twists her body around, and the keyboard stand slams into Ivan’s back, metal squealing against rock hard skin.

“Trade!” she shouts in Adrien’s direction, and then she’s running backwards to the door, throwing out the mangled keyboard stand. Milliseconds later, the yo-yo is hitting her open palms, and she catches sight of Adrien in the shadows, ducking out of the way of the demon’s rough swing just to break the keyboard stand against its ankle.

The demon falls to its knees with a roar, and then they’re sprinting out of the dressing room. The bar is still pumping with music and people alike, and Marinette whips her head around, trying to twist her brain around a good enough plan. She catches sight of Alya and Nino, sitting together at the bar counter, and she waves her hands high above her head.

Alya sees her first, and she puts a hand on Nino’s shoulder to move him out of the way, squinting at Marinette. Marinette points back at the dressing room, makes a few other wild gestures, and then Alya is giving her a thumbs up, clapping Nino’s shoulder twice. Nino looks back, sees Marinette and Adrien, and he waves happily. Alya flicks him on the arm and says something to him, and his eyes widen. He looks back to Marinette and Adrien, and he makes a ‘hold tight’ gesture to them before he stands up with Alya and lets her lead him to the front doors of the bar.

“I think they’re going to get Tikki and Plagg,” Marinette says, grabbing hold of Adrien’s hand to get them deeper in the crowd. It worked at the house party - she’s hoping it’ll work now.

As they’re pushing their way through the dance floor, Adrien looks out to the front of the bar. “They’re alone together a lot now because of us,” he says thoughtfully. “What do you think they talk about?”

“Oh, my god, Adrien, can you focus?” she asks, and he blinks at her, glancing down at their conjoined hands.

“Um, I don’t think so,” he says, looking back up at her. He smiles a little sheepishly, which only makes her look at his lips, at the smear of red and black mixing together, and she feels her face burn. She drops Adrien’s hand.

“Demon, Chat Noir,” she says, and he nods.

“Right, right,” he says. 

They stare at each other. Bodies around them jump to the music, push them closer together. Adrien wipes his hand self-consciously against his mouth, but that only serves to smear the lipstick against his cheek, making him look messier, rougher.

“Is that Ivan from the kitty section?” Marinette hears someone in the crowd of jumping bodies shout to someone else, and then Adrien is grabbing hold of Marinette’s hands, and they are pushing through the crowd again.

By the bathrooms, Marinette sees a cluster of girls standing with hands over their mouths, heads bent near each other, and Marinette pulls Adrien closer to them, something in her head sparking to life. Mylene, she thinks, and she stops in front of the girls.

“What’s going on in there?” she asks, jerking her head over the bathroom as she catches a girl’s eye.

“Oh, my god, Ladybug?” the girl asks, and then all the girls are turning their heads, wide eyes looking between her and Adrien and their hands, linked together. Marinette lets go of Adrien’s hand as casually as possible, clearing her throat.

“Um, yes, that’s me. Is there something up in the bathroom?”

“Yeah, there is, actually,” the girl says, tucking her hair behind her ears and glancing around the other girls. “A girl ran in a while ago, and she seemed pretty freaked out. We’re trying to figure out what to do because she was, like, screaming, but she said didn’t want anyone to come in.”

Marinette looks up at Adrien, and he looks back at her, face grave. “What did she look like?” Marinette asks, turning back to the girl.

“Um… kind of short? Cute bandana and braids hairstyle?”

“She looked kind of like your drummer’s girlfriend,” pipes in another girl in the cluster, and then looks at Adrien. “I mean, your kitty section drummer, not Chat Noir. I think I’ve seen her at other shows before.”

“Okay,” Marinette says, and she looks back at the surging mass of people in the bar. Ivan’s body is stagnant above the crowd, on a slow, meticulous mechanical swivel. She presses her fingers together, the gears in her head turning, and she turns back to the girls. “There was no one else in the bathroom, right?”

“We all kind of cleared out when she came in,” the girl says, looking around. “She was begging us to leave. She even pushed me out.”

“Great,” Marinette says, and she puts her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Hey, thanks for letting me know, and” - she looks around at the other girls - “thanks for looking out for a fellow girl. It sounds like that’s Mylene, so Chat Noir and I are going to go in and take care of her. If you see Ivan, her boyfriend, could you let him in for us?”

“What-?” Adrien starts, but Marinette elbows him hard in the ribs. He grunts and keeps quiet.

“Of course, Ladybug,” the girl says emphatically. “Let us know if you need anything else.”

“You’re a doll,” she says, giving the girl’s shoulder a squeeze, and then she walks over to the door of the bathroom. She knocks, gently but firmly, and then she opens the door slightly. “Mylene?” she calls. “It’s only Chat and I. We’re going to come in.”

She hears quiet whimpering from inside, and she looks back, giving one last grateful smile to the girls before gesturing for Adrien to follow her inside. 

As they walk in, Adrien closing the door softly behind them, Marinette looks around the low-lit graffitied bathroom stalls and the grimy water-stained mirrors, her eyes catching on the twist faucets above the sinks. “Mylene?” she asks. “Are you here?”

A sniffle and a sob from the bathroom farthest from the door. “Ladybug,” Mylene says, “you need to leave- everyone- everyone needs to leave. Ivan- there’s something-” She breaks off with heaving breaths, and Marinette gets to the last stall, pushing lightly on the door. It opens up, and there’s Mylene, curled up in the corner of the stall, tears streaming down her face. When she sees Marinette, her face crumples even further. “There’s a monster inside my boyfriend,” she sobs, her hands white-knuckling the fabric of her jeans, and Marinette runs to her side, dropping to one knee.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, Mylene,” she says, putting her arms around her.

“No, it’s not alright,” Mylene says, pushing Marinette’s arms off of her. She starts to shove at Marinette’s shoulder, and she realizes that Mylene is trying to get her to leave, too. “He’s- there’s something wrong in him, and it- everyone has to leave!”

Marinette pulls back, her eyes scanning over Mylene’s face. She sees a familiar panic - her own denial of the uncanny - amplified and turned back at her. That desperation she felt in Aurore’s studio, the frozen fear of someone you only know to be a good person turning into something that isn’t human at all. And seeing that, twisted over Mylene’s soft, kind features, snaps Marinette’s brain out of the fog, clicks the last gear into place. 

“No,” she says, firmly, taking hold of Mylene’s shoulders. “I’m not leaving. And you’re right, there is something wrong with Ivan, but I’m not running out until I’ve saved him, and you, and everyone else on this goddamn earth. I’m doing it. I swear I will.”

She stands up and she looks over to Adrien. “Stay with her,” she tells Adrien, and then she’s going over to the sinks as Adrien drops to his knees beside Mylene.

“Ivan will be okay,” she hears Adrien tell Mylene. She unloops the yo-yo from around her waist, looking around the bathroom. Five stalls.

“I-I just went to the bathroom to check on him,” Mylene tells Adrien as Marinette weaves the string of the yo-yo around one of the twist knobs on the faucet. “He was taking a while, I just thought he was throwing up again, but he- but he-”

She breaks off, and Marinette tugs on the yo-yo. The weave of string around the faucet knob glimmers with the shift in weight, and then the faucet is turning on. 

“His eyes were black,” Mylene says as Marinette turns the faucet off. “When he touched me, it felt like…” She trails off, and Marinette begins to wind the string of her yo-yo around each one one of the faucet knobs. “It felt like nothing,” Mylene whispers, her shaking voice bouncing on the graffitied walls of the quiet bathroom. “Absolutely nothing.”

“He touched you?” Adrien asks, the concern bleeding into his voice.

“He pushed me,” Mylene sobs, and Marinette pauses in her work, her chest burning with anger. “He pushed me so hard I hit my head, against the sinks. He didn’t even stop to check if I was okay.”

“Are you okay?” Adrien asks gently.

“I tried to stop him,” Mylene continues, as if she didn’t hear Adrien, and Marinette finishes up winding the yo-yo string around the last faucet knob. “But he was like- like stone. And when he spoke, it was- he said he’d kill me if I kept on annoying him. With his skin and his voice and his eyes-”

Marinette tosses the disc of the yo-yo over the top of the stall, and the clatter of it on the tile makes Mylene stop. Both Adrien and Mylene look up at her as she walks into the stall, closing the door behind her. She doesn’t lock it, only eases it closed, and she picks up her yo-yo.

She thinks about her teenage self, tripping over ladybugs and starstruck at even the word ‘rockstar,’ and she wonders what that girl would think about her dazzling life and her beautiful friends getting infected by the fucked up chess game of a universe using her as its knight in shining armor, knocking her diagonal across the board, away from her life. Maybe she would sit back and think, just my luck.

But as it stands now, Marinette is pissed the fuck off. 

She grips the yo-yo hard in her hand, and she looks back at Mylene and Adrien. “Mylene,” she says, and she kneels down, taking her hand. She looks in her eyes, tries to push into her the conviction inside of her own body, make the anger wash away the paralyzing fear. “Do not be afraid. I’m here, and I love you.”

Mylene blinks, her eyes wide, and her eyebrows twist. “Ladybug?” she asks, as if in disbelief.

“You’re glowing,” Adrien says, breathless, and Marinette frowns down at herself.

Sure enough, there’s a red hot glow around her body, shimmering just above her skin, and she feels the yo-yo pulse in her hand, like her own heartbeat, an extension of herself. This only serves to piss her off even more, and she stands up, her knuckles white on the yo-yo.

“Be ready,” she says to Adrien, and he nods, still looking at her in wonder. “Hey,” she says, snapping her fingers in front of his face, and his eyes whip up to hers. “I need you to focus. I need you by my side.”

His face splits open into a grin, and he looks at Mylene, who is still staring between them in confusion, and he bumps her shoulder lightly before he gets to his feet. He looks at her with such joy and certainty that her heart pulses for something other than the anger rushing hot through her veins. “I am by your side,” he says.

And then the door to the bathroom opens, letting in a sliver of noise. “Ladybug and Chat Noir went in there with your girlfriend,” Marinette hears one of the girls from outside say.

Mylene whimpers, and Adrien squats back down, his hand falling onto her shoulder. “Ladybug is here, yeah?” she hears him whisper. “Everything will be alright because she’s here.”

The door to the bathroom closes, and an eerie silence follows. Marinette can hear breathing, sandpaper against a kitchen knife, and she wipes the sweat from her upper lip, her fingers flexing against her yo-yo.

There’s a sound like a gunshot, and Mylene screams.

Chapter Text

The bang echoes throughout the bathroom stall, and Adrien tries to convey to Mylene through a complex language of widening and narrowing his eyes that he does feel very guilty about covering her mouth with his hand, but it is unfortunately necessary. To Mylene’s credit, she lets him continue to keep his hand over her mouth as she squeezes her eyes shut. 

Adrien looks up at Ladybug to see her with her back against the wall of the stall, gripping the yo-yo against her chest. She has her eyes trained up to the ceiling, and then she looks down at Adrien, her breath moving through her like surging waves under the hull of a ship. For a moment, he sees her think, sees it the same way that you read sheet music; he sees the score locking together like gears in a machine in the way that her eyes move along the air, scanning the notes and matching the pitches.

And then she looks back to him, holding up one shaking finger, and then spreading another five. 

Another bang like a gunshot rings out in the bathroom, cracking against the graffiti on the walls, and she and Mylene both jump. But while Mylene shrinks further into herself, Adrien watches Ladybug take a deep breath, recenter herself, look to him with purpose. She closes her raised hand into a fist, and then she pointedly raises two fingers.

Two bangs. Five fingers before that - Adrien works to remember the bathroom as they were walking in. He didn’t count the stalls - why would he? - but there might’ve been five. They were in the last stall, so that would mean, if he was reading Ladybug right, the demon would come barging into their stall after the fourth bang.

Another bang. Three fingers.

Adrien swallows, looking up at Ladybug once more. His eyes flick to the stall door, and she nods, slowly, but she also looks down at the yo-yo in her hand, her thumb reaching up to brush against the almost translucent line of string extending up and over the door of the stall. Her eyes follow the line, and then she looks back down to Adrien. She raises her eyebrows. Get it? her eyes ask.

The fourth bang rings out, the door to the stall next to them whipping back and slamming against the wall of the stall, and the demon’s foot is a cement brick dropping down to the ground. Adrien watches the space underneath the stall, his hand curling tight around his staff as he sees Ivan’s ratty Converse step in front of their stall’s door. One foot begins to lift up.

Ladybug pulls her yo-yo down, and then there’s the sound of water spitting out from the faucets, rushing onto the porcelain and down the drain. The foot goes back to the ground, and there’s a shift in weight, a movement of shadow.

Adrien surges up, pushing his foot out and kicking the stall door open against the demon’s distracted body. The shock of surprise more than pain makes the demon stumble back with a grunt as Adrien moves out of the bathroom stall and swings his staff hard, the glimmering silver whipping through the air and cracking against the demon’s shoulder. 

The demon makes a sound like nails on chalkboard, grabbing hold of the end of Adrien’s staff and yanking back. Adrien nearly loses his grip, but he manages to keep hold, his fingers feeling a small groove in the metal. 

His mind calls back to being on the ground at the house party, the world turning to black at the edges, panic making power surge, the demon flying off him as easy as a leaf stumbling over the sidewalk. 

He presses the button, and the staff retracts into the length of the broken piece of the keyboard stand gripped in his hand like a handle; the demon stumbles back, thrown off balance, and Adrien doesn’t let him take a breath before he’s pressing the groove in the metal again, the end of the staff surging forward and connecting with the middle of the demon’s chest.

The demon falls back, and Adrien hears Ladybug come out from the stall behind him. He glances over to see her fumbling with the sinks, untangling the starlight wire of her yo-yo from the knobs of the faucets. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she’s saying, fingers shaking, and the demon is recovering from Adrien’s lucky hits, charging forward and aiming a thick fist directly at his nose. Adrien lets out an extremely (un)dignified noise, trying to move his head out of the way, but the hit does clip his ear, the side of his head pounding in pain.

He shakes his head out, which turns out to be a mistake because that means his eyes are off the demon, which does allow it the time and space to direct his other meaty fist directly into Adrien’s ribcage.

His lungs let out a wheeze, and he stumbles backward, only just managing to block another swing with the staff, knocking the demon’s arm out of the way and flicking his staff around to stab the blunt edge against the sensitive skin of the demon’s underarm. It roars, and its huge leg kicks out, knocking against Adrien’s stomach.

“God, man, what are you made of, titanium?” Adrien wheezes, and the demon grabs him by the shoulders, throwing him against the edge of one of the sinks. He feels it crack against his back, and he groans. “Man of steel,” he says, “you are so not like Superman.”

“Ladybug,” the demon says, and Adrien manages to turn his head to where Ladybug is standing a few sinks down. Her skin is still glowing, and she is still cursing at the faucets, even as she looks up and sees that the demon has turned its attention to her. Her eyes widen, and she looks over at Adrien.

“The goddamn string!” she shouts at him, and he groans, throwing his hand out to the faucet next to him and fumbling with the thin string. He manages to slip it off just as the demon grabs him by the straps of his dress, pulls him forward, and then slams him back hard against the surface of the mirror behind him. His skull and the mirror crack, and Adrien can’t really do much to control the way his legs shake and slip out from underneath him, even as he tries to kick his feet into standing. 

He slides down against the wall between two sinks, and he watches, a haze over his vision, as Ladybug says, “fuck it,” grabs the wire of the yo-yo and uses it to swing it once, twice, three times up in the airover her head. The light from the wire as it whips through the air burns the same red hot as Ladybug’s skin until she throws her arm out. The disc of the yo-yo whizzes through the air and slams against the demon’s head, directly in its temple.

Adrien sees it blink, voided eyes slipping hazy, and it stumbles back, shaking its head as if trying to clear it. He heaves a breath, trying to get his pounding head to send signals out to his body again, and he sticks his leg out in the way of the stumbling demon.

It trips and falls hard to the tile floor, a skyscraper collapsing to hard pavement, and Ladybug throws the yo-yo away, dropping to her knees in a straddle over the demon. She punches it hard in the face, letting out a howl of rage as it tries to swing its arms and legs up to hit her. “Get! The fuck! Out! Of! My! Drummer!” she shouts, punctuating each word with a hit, her knuckles splitting and leaving smears of blood against the demon’s cheek.

The demon is still struggling underneath her, but she doesn’t let up, and Adrien focuses on breathing through moving his legs underneath him, throwing a hand up to grip the edge of the sink and haul himself to his feet. He limps to the last faucet that had the yo-yo string looped around it, his quivering fingers slipping it off the metal knob. He sees a shift of movement in the mirror, and he looks up into it to see that the demon has managed to to flip it and Ladybug over, pinning her shoulders underneath its meaty hands as she howls, kicking her feet and baring her teeth.

“The queen,” the demon hisses, “is near.”

Ladybug spits in its face.

Adrien has to keep from laughing, because he figures that might be inappropriate and he also figures it might hurt his still pounding body, but he manages to hold it in as he gathers up the wire to pick up the yo-yo.

“Be still, knight,” the demon says, almost cooing but too mechanical to be sweet. “We sense your reluctance. Be still, and join us in the fall.”

Adrien tries to sneak closer, trying to figure out how to get Ladybug’s arms free so that she could grab the yo-yo from him and do its magic. He looks down at it gripping her thrashing shoulders, and all that comes to mind is one way to get himself hurt again.

Fuck it, is all that his still-hazy brain thinks, and then he’s stepping forward, slinging a clumsy foot forward.

The demon catches his foot before it even begins to connect with its shoulder, and Adrien drops the yo-yo into Ladybug’s hand.

The door to the bathroom opens just as Ladybug has clicked the yo-yo open and pressed it into the demon’s chest with an extremely heartfelt, “go fuck yourself.”

“Oh,” says a voice by the door, and both Adrien and Ladybug look up to see Nino standing in the doorway, quickly closing the door behind him so that none of the heads trying to sneak and peek from outside can see what is currently occurring on the bathroom floor. 

Ivan’s body slumps over Ladybug’s, and she grunts.

“Is he… dead?” Nino asks.

“Of course not,” Adrien says. He looks down at Ladybug. “Is he?”

“He’s breathing,” she says, and she kicks her legs lightly. “Now please get him off me.”

“Yeah, of course,” Adrien says, and he bends down only to find that he topples down on top of Ivan. Ladybug groans. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I think I have a concussion.”

“Dude,” Nino says, rushing to their pile of bodies in the middle of the bathroom, “the entire back of your head is red.”

“That’s great, Nino,” Adrien says as Nino loops an arm under him and lifts him off enough for him to fall back onto his butt, “I so really needed to know that right now.”

“Is that your blood on the mirror?” Nino asks as they both grab onto Ivan’s shirt to yank him off of Ladybug.

“The probability is pretty high,” Adrien says. “I would even say certain.”

Ladybug gasps as they finally manage to pull Ivan off of her, and she rolls onto her hands and knees, heaving in breaths. She looks over to Ivan and then sniffs, digging a hand underneath him with a wince until she pulls out the yo-yo. Its glow has stopped, and she twists it around in her hands, looking between it and Ivan’s still body. Finally, she slides it closed.

“Well, that’s over,” she says, glancing down at her hand and flexing her bloody knuckles. She looks up at Nino. “Where are Tikki and Plagg?”

“Ooh, uh,” Nino says, looking between them. “Now, this is going to be awkward.”

“What?” Adrien asks, touching a hand to the back of his head and finding that his entire palm does come back with splotches of red smeared across it. He looks up to the mirror the demon had smacked his head against, and he sees a circular, head shaped impact of cracks radiating out on the blood-stained glass. That’s great. Perfectly fine.

“So the thing is that there’s a situation outside,” Nino says. “Like a demon situation. Tikki and Plagg have been handling it, but they need you two out there fighting, too.”

“Fighting?” Ladybug asks, and she looks over at Adrien. He looks back at her and tries to seem like he is not currently a pulsing nerve of pain.

“I’m sure by the time we get there, it’ll be all fine,” Adrien says, and he slowly gets to his feet, concealing the sway of his feet as a repositioning of his legs and a hand run through his hair.

Ladybug’s mouth twists to the side, her black lipstick a smudge of skepticism, but she stands up and looks at Nino. “Fine,” she says, and then she walks over to the last stall that they had been hiding in, knocking gently on the door. “Hey, Mylene? It’s alright.”

“Mylene is in here?” Nino asks just as Mylene opens up the door to the stall, looking around the bathroom with wide eyes.

“Demons?” she asks, and Ladybug winces.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was a metaphor?” she asks, and Mylene looks at her, at Ivan limp and face-down on the floor. Ladybug still has a glow to her skin, and Adrien is using his glimmering keyboard-stand-turned-magic-staff to keep standing. 

“Not at all,” Mylene says, and Ladybug nods.

“Sounds about right,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Okay, whatever, regardless, we’ve got to get out and figure out what the fuck is happening with Tikki and Plagg.” She turns back to Adrien and Nino, looking over Adrien briefly before turning directly to Nino. “You help me carry Ivan out. Where are Tikki and Plagg?”

“Out back on the patio,” he says, bending down with her to grab Ivan’s arms. “Alya is trying to get the bar to close early so that everyone can leave, and we already got everyone off the patio because I lied and said I saw a swarm of killer wasps.”

Ladybug pauses. “And that worked?”

“Well, Chloe started screaming bloody murder, so yeah,” Nino says with a smile as they finally heave Ivan off the ground. He’s taller and heavier than both of them, so their shoulders sag with the weight of his arms, and his feet drag on the ground as they stumble toward the bathroom door with him.

“What’s going to happen to Ivan?” Mylene asks, wrapping an arm around Adrien’s waist when she sees that he sways even on his first step. 

“He’ll wake up and be fine,” Adrien tells her, using his staff as a cane as they hobble to the door. Mylene opens it for everyone, and she and Adrien stand by the door, and he winces as he sees the crowd of girls that they had seen when they went in is still there, looking at the five of them with wide eyes. 

“Oh, my god,” one of the girls gasps, pointing at his head, “are you bleeding?”

“No, no, it’s… gross water,” Adrien says. “There was a pipe malfunction in that bathroom. Really gross, so better not go in there.”

“What about him?” one of the other girls asks, pointing at Ivan, whose large head hangs loose between Ladybug and Nino.

“Food poisoning,” Ladybug says at the same time Adrien says, “the pipe exploded in his face.” They look at each other.

“He was throwing up in the bathroom because of food poisoning,” she says, “and then the pipe exploded in his face. So we gotta go.” She pulls Ivan and Nino toward the back patio, and Adrien and Mylene follow after them.

Thankfully everyone in the bar gives them a wide berth, probably because of the state Adrien and Ivan are in, and when they open up the back patio, they’re met with crashing winds and pounding rain that stabs into their skin, pelting the wood of the patio and stinging their cheeks.

“This is new,” Nino says, and Adrien scans the patio to see Tikki and Plagg standing in what seems to be a swirling swarm of car exhaust, a bubble of sparking light around the two of them.

The door to the bar opens up behind them, and Alya is stumbling next to Adrien, arm up to shield her face from the weather. “What the heck? I didn’t see a hurricane in the weather forecast today.”

“I think that’s demon-related,” Adrien says. “It’s a hurricane from hell.”

“Nice,” Nino says, and he reaches back to deliver Adrien a high-five, which he of course collects on. “Now, I’ll be honest, I have no idea what Tikki and Plagg want you guys to do.”

“Change the weather?” Adrien asks. 

“You are not doing a single thing,” Ladybug says, handing Ivan off to Alya and unslinging her yo-yo from around her waist.

“What? I’m perfectly fine,” Adrien says.

“You’re hanging off of Mylene right now,” Ladybug says.

“It’s true,” Mylene says, and Adrien gives her a look.

“Not true,” he says, standing up straight and lifting his cane off the floor. “See? I’m cured.”

“There’s blood dripping down your neck,” Ladybug says, and Adrien hooks his arm with hers, beginning to walk them both to the storm cloud around Tikki and Plagg.

“Semantics,” he says, and she glares at him.

“I’m not letting you get hurt anymore,” she says, trying to stop them, but Adrien keeps pulling her forward, the wind and rain whipping at his bare arms.

“And I’m telling you I’m by your side, remember?” he says, and her lips twist to the side.

When they get to the edge of the swarm, Adrien reaches a hand up to touch the inky black, and it explodes outwards, knocking them both off their feet.

Adrien’s head rings, and he pushes himself up onto his forearms, trying to open his eyes. He blinks, blinks, blinks again, uses his fingers to pry his eyelids open.

And as he’s staring forward, fingers pulling thin skin back, he realizes that his eyes aren’t closed - he just can’t see. He’s surrounded by the cloud of darkness, of nothing, and it is cold, and it stings.

His chest begins to pound as he looks around, tries to find Tikki and Plagg, tries to reach for Ladybug, but she’s not right next to him - nothing is.

“Beloved child,” the swarm beats into him, bruising him, constricting him, “beloved child, beloved child, beloved child.” It pulses and pumps, pressing the words into him like claws, and he covers his ears with his hands.

It doesn’t help - it’s not a sound that’s assaulting him. 

“Beloved child,” the swarm tears into him, and he swats at the dark, trying to make it to his feet, but the nothing around him beats him down, pounds him into the ground.

A scream rips through the dark, and Adrien feels his body tighten like a livewire.

“Ladybug?” he calls out, his heart pounding, his head pounding, the voices of the dark pounding.

Another scream, and this time he knows. It’s Ladybug. He tries to arrange his body onto its knees, trying to crawl to her, but he’s having trouble thinking, breathing.

“Beloved child, beloved child, beloved child fall fall fall fall fall fall fall-”

“Ladybug!” he forces out from his throat, his lungs constricting. It’s so dark, so loud, so much like nothing is happening at all, and then-

And then silence crashes down over the swarm, and it blinks out in a heartbeat, and Adrien is blinking in shock at the back patio of the bar.

“Baby?” a shaking voice asks, and Adrien turns his head to see a figure in gold bent over Ladybug.

Ladybug is limp on the ground, her eyes closed, and there is a dark stain growing on her stomach.

Adrien’s breath halts, and he looks back up at the figure in gold, at the curls of flaxen hair tumbling over graceful shoulders, and something inside of him shifts, stops, hurts.

“Mama?” he asks, his voice breaking, and Emilie Agreste’s face is crumbling.

She turns her eyes, a mirror image of his own, up to the starry sky, and he sees a single tear fall down her cheek. The darkness grows around her, and Adrien tries to scramble to his feet, tries to reach them, but his mother disappears in the dark.

“Mama!” he screams, and his heart pounds against his chest with the darkness, overwhelming him.

He can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t see, and the darkness is laughing at him, and he can’t find his mom, he wants his mom, he wants-

His hand connects with something against the nothing, and he grabs hold of it, lifting it up to his chest. A hand - he runs his fingertips along the knuckles. Split.

The hand is limp.

And Adrien feels something come out of him, the sound of pain and power electrifying his veins, burning him, consuming him, and the darkness explodes around him, because of him. The ring around his finger sparks and ignites, and he is a forest fire, he is cracking against the dark, he is falling to the side, he is crying up to a clear night sky.

The stars look harsh. Adrien closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

Marinette’s eyes fly open, and the next thing she knows, she is sitting bolt upright, gasping for air and clutching her stomach. There’s a sharp pain stabbing through her organs, but with the more breath she takes in, the more she realizes that it’s only the ghost of pain - it’s not physical anymore. She heaves air, looking down at her hands, at her bedsheets, and she looks around to see her bedroom, soaked in midnight.

“What the fuck,” she says, and she feels Tikki’s hand, a warm summer breeze, fall onto her shoulder.

“It’s alright, Marinette, I have healed you,” she says, and Marinette nods, still trying to lower her heart rate. One of her hands still presses against her stomach, like it’s trying to staunch the bleeding of a deep wound, and she remembers stumbling through the dark, the smell of rosewater and gasoline the only preface before a sharpness in her gut.

Alya is in the corner of her room, her phone pressed to her ear, and she looks to be in a hushed argument with whoever is on the other line.

“What happened?” she asks, looking back at Tikki, and Tikki presses her lips together. “Where’s Adrien? And Mylene, Ivan, Nino?”

Tikki stands up from the desk chair she’d dragged over to her bed, looking out the dark window, and Marinette feels annoyance begin to bubble low in her stomach, right there alongside her shadow pain.

“Tell me what happened, Tikki,” she says, and Tikki clasps her hands behind her back.

“The queen was at the bar,” she says, and Marinette blinks.

Ivan’s body on top of her, black eyes hissing “the queen is near.” 

“Plagg and I found her trying to run away on the patio, but she refused to come with us,” she says, and she looks away from the window, slowly coming back to sit down on the desk chair beside Marinette. “Her distress summoned a slew of demonic energy - I believe you and Adrien saw that, entered it, and she took advantage of the chaos to run. She… harmed you before she went.”

Marinette looks down at her stomach, at her hand. There’s blood underneath her fingernails.

“The queen of hell stabbed me?” she asks, and Tikki nods slowly. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Unfortunately not,” Tikki says, and Marinette is still trying to figure out how to translate her rage into words when Alya comes up to the bed, looking frazzled and frustrated.

“I’m sorry, mignonette, but you really have to take this,” she says, holding her phone out to her.

“Who is it?”

“Gabriel Agreste.”

Marinette takes the phone with a sick feeling in her stomach, pressing it to her ear. “Ladybug speaking,” she says.

“So you finally decide to grace me with your presence,” Gabriel Agreste’s voice says dryly through the speaker, and Marinette winces.

“I do apologize, Mr. Agreste, I have been- otherwise occupied-”

“Yes, I know, what with your disaster at that godforsaken dive bar,” he says coolly, and Marinette looks over to Alya, who is looking back at her with her teeth worrying her bottom lip.

“The incident at the bar was not-”

“Don’t you dare say it was not your fault, girl,” Gabriel interrupts sharply, and Marinette snaps her mouth shut, clenching her teeth. “Now, I have been extremely patient with you; you have known this to be true after you condoned my son sneaking out of the house for that low-life party where that bouncer who was drugged gave my son a black eye.”

“I did not condone-”

“Let me finish,” he interrupts, and Marinette clenches her fist in her blankets, a physical burn starting in her chest from the effort of holding back curse words. “The only reason I let my son continue to be a part of your reckless little project was due to his high praise for you and the initial success of ‘See Me,’ but now I see that two incidents at two public appearances is creating a disturbing pattern. You took my son to a decrepit dive bar with malfunctioning pipes, and he arrived back to his home near catatonic, no thanks to you. I will not continue to let you harm my beloved son any more than you already have.”

“Mr. Agreste, please understand,” she says through gritted teeth, “you are citing incidents that I had zero control over. I was not aware Adrien was attending the so-called ‘low-life’ party until after he was already there, and the bar gave me no warning about any sort of issues with the pipes. Adrien and I have cultivated an amazing working relationship, as you yourself saw with the success of ‘See Me’ and the turn out of our performance, and it would be a shame to-”

“A working relationship?” Gabriel cuts in, and Marinette feels her blood freeze at the low scrape of his voice. She hears his breath, harsh over the line, and she really wishes she had been able to prepare for this call in any way because, clearly, she just said something very wrong.

“Yes, Mr. Agreste,” she says carefully, “a working relationship.”

“I have seen the video depicting your assault on my son,” Gabriel says, and Marinette blinks, scoffs despite herself.

“Assault?” she asks. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Do not try to deceive me, Ladybug,” he snaps. “If I see you near my son again, it’ll be too soon.” The line clicks off.

“What the fuck,” Marinette says, throwing the phone down on her bed and looking back at Alya and Tikki. “What the fuck was that about, someone tell me right now, or else I’ll start screaming.”

“Nino and Plagg had to take Adrien home since you were passed out,” Alya says, picking up her phone and stuffing it into her pocket. “He- he had also passed out, but he wasn’t hurt like you were.”

“He used his power,” Tikki says. She’s staring out the window again, not looking at either of them as the stars reflect in her moonriver eyes. “To dispel the demonic energy - it takes quite a lot out of a human to use cataclysmic energy, and he must’ve also been in shock.”

“In shock?” Marinette asks, looking between them.

“It was hard to tell because we couldn’t see very well, but he was screaming,” Alya says, wrapping her arms around herself. “It looked like he had a panic attack.”

Marinette rubs her hands over her face. “And what’s this about an assault?” she asks, wondering if she even wants to know.

“Oh, yeah,” Alya says, pulling her phone out of her pocket once more, “that’s what that gray-haired bastard is calling this.” She pulls something up on her phone and flips it around to show Marinette.

On the screen is a video of her shoving Adrien against the wall, and it’s taken at such an angle that the crash of their lips together is clear even in the lowlight. Marinette feels her face burn as she sees Adrien freeze, melt, throw his arms over her shoulders and fully spill his beer behind her. The video cuts out when she had torn her mouth away from him and planted her hand on his face in embarrassment. 

Marinette drops her face into her hands.

“This is a disaster,” she says.

“Yeah, kind of,” Alya says. 

“And Mylene and Ivan?” she asks, not raising her face.

“We dropped them off on our way back here,” Alya says, and Marinette looks up.

“What do we do about Mylene… knowing? She saw, heard everything,” she says, and Tikki shakes her head.

“I took care of her,” she says softly. “All she will recall is taking Ivan home because of his illness.”

Marinette frowns. She’s not sure how to feel about that, but that’s the least of her problems right now. She drags her hands down her face, scrubbing hard, shaking her head, trying to think. 

“God,” she says, irony and anger hot on her tongue, “what are we supposed to do?”

“Well, for starters,” Alya says with a sigh, “I sent out an announcement that all Ladybug performances and appearances are on pause because of the ‘pipe malfunction’ at the bar.”

“Great,” Marinette says, although she does not feel that way.

They have no choice but to wait until the morning to continue doing damage control, and so Alya decides to spend the night, sharing Marinette’s big cat pillow. Tikki politely steps out of the room to do what she normally does at night - patrol the area around the house, watch for demons, give her some privacy to sleep.

In the dark, Alya clasps Marinette’s hand hard in hers. “By the way,” she says, and Marinette looks over to see her eyes wet with tears, “if you die and I have to see you covered in your own blood again, I’m going to kill you.”

“Noted,” she says. She squeezes her best friend’s hand and tries not to cry herself. “I love you, Alya.”

“I love you, too,” she whispers.

Marinette is welcoming the disappearing act of sleep more than anything, dying for some respite from the disaster of the last few hours, but, of course, she doesn’t get that luxury.

Instead of a dreamless sleep, blissfully blank, Marinette is in the pain of darkness, rosewater and gasoline heady in her nose as a knife twists in her stomach.

She screams, once. Butter-soft hands guide her to the surface of the ground, shushing her, patting peace against the skin of her cheeks.

“Shh, shh, little knight,” coos a voice made of satin, brushing knuckles along her cheek, smoothing back her hair. “It’s alright, it’ll only be painful for a moment. It’s not your fault for the job you have, but I can’t let you take me,” the voice says, gentle and sad.

“Please,” Marinette sobs, heaving air around the spike of heat stabbing through her.

“You’ll be welcomed to heaven with all the love of the world,” the voice says, and then the knife is yanked out of her, the absence of metal in her creating an even sharper pain, somehow, and her the skin of her stomach feels hot, wet. “Please understand,” the voice says, and the knife is inside of her again, and she is screaming again, and the voice is saying, “rest easy, little knight. Rest easy.”

Chapter Text

Adrien is laying down rather uncomfortably on his piano bench, head hanging off so that he can stare listlessly out his floor-to-ceiling windows, when Plagg appears in front of his face, smacking on that stinky cheese he likes.

“Still moping?” Plagg asks, and Adrien shoves him out of his face so that he can once again have an unobstructed view of the gray sky outside of his window. 

Moping is one way to put it, although Adrien would definitely call it the understatement of at least the past ten years. Within the past few weeks, Adrien’s entire world as he knew it has been turned upside down - from working with his celebrity crush to finding out demons exist and dying just a little bit about it - and all of that did not compare even the slightest to what it felt like to be on his knees, helpless, as he stared at his mother, her gentle hand making a fist around the hilt of a knife plunged into the stomach of the girl he was in love with. 

She had seen him, known him. And she disappeared anyway, again. 

The next thing he knew, he’d been sobbing in Nino’s car, and he didn’t even know what he was saying, only that he was shouting. For his mother, for Ladybug, for the car to turn around so he could- so he could he didn’t even know what. But he needed to do something, say something, and everything in his body had been fighting against him, dragging him down.

Now, his father has padlocked the doors, and it’s been raining for days.

“It’s been a week and I have not been able to leave the house even once, Plagg,” Adrien says to the dreary weather outside his window. “I don’t even have my phone to text Ladybug or Nino or Chloe. I’m wasting away.”

Plagg sits down right in front of Adrien’s face, blocking his view of the outside and filling the air with his stinky breath. Adrien briefly wonders if Tikki is also like this, or if his guardian angel is just gross. “You could always break the windows,” he says.

“I am not going to break the windows,” Adrien says, for maybe the millionth time.

“Come on,” Plagg says, “I’ll fix ‘em right up. Just break ‘em. Just do it.”

“The glass is bulletproof,” Adrien says, sitting up to let the blood rush down his neck as well as to get out of the way of Plagg’s absolutely foul breath. He taps at the keys of his piano, letting out a few mournful notes. “And father changed the combination to open them after the house party. I can’t leave, Plagg.”

“You’ve got all the world’s cataclysms literally at your fingertips,” Plagg says, reaching up and tapping the liquid metal wrapped around his right ring finger. “Use it.”

Adrien is opening his mouth to meditate on the ethical ramifications of selfishly using his universe power or whatever to destroy his home property when there’s a knock on his bedroom door. He glances over at Plagg, who gives him jazz hands and then blinks out of sight.

“Come in,” Adrien calls, and Nathalie opens the door, stepping inside with her tablet held tight to her chest.

“Good afternoon, Adrien,” she says, looking over his slouched posture and ratty sweatpants that he’s been wearing for a week straight. “How is your head?”

“Peachy,” he says. Plagg had healed it completely after the first night. He taps out another note. “What does Father want?”

Now that the pleasantries are over, Nathalie looks much more comfortable. She glances down at her tablet, then looks back up at him. “As you know, your father’s athleisure line launch party was scheduled for today. Due to recent events, he wanted to check on your health so that your appearance could be confirmed.”

Adrien hums. “Well, in that case, my head feels horrible. Debilitating, really.” He presses out a minor chord.

He doesn’t look at her, but the space of silence that follows indicates that Nathalie is taking her typical three-second breath to compose herself. “Adrien, please be rational,” she says. “You are the face of this line, and it is important to your father that you are there.”

Adrien stares down at his piano. Nathalie had been there, silent in the corner, when his father had told him he would never be working with Ladybug again. She had been there when Adrien, still woozy and heavy, had begged his father to reconsider. She had been there when his father had refused, raised his voice, snatched his phone away, treated him like he was seven years old again.

And the thing about being treated like you were seven years old again by your father who is also your boss after quite literally fighting for the chance to survive is that it kind of inspires a sense of rebellion for maybe the first time in your entire goddamn life. 

“Give me one good reason why I should actually attend,” Adrien says, looking up from the piano to level Nathalie with his gaze. 

She blinks, surprised, and then she seems to think, her fingertips drumming on the side of her tablet. “The dessert catering is from your favorite bakery,” she finally says, and Adrien actually finds himself laughing.

“Fine,” he says, “but I’m only going for an hour. And I’m in charge of what I wear.”

Nathalie purses her lips. “Wear one item from your father’s collection, and we have a deal.”

Adrien ends up wearing a pair of socks from his father’s athleisure collection, which are entirely covered by his ratty pair of jeans, the ones with the bloodstains on the bottoms. He also wears his basketball jersey from the team he plays on with Nino, and he doesn’t bother fixing his hair. Nathalie glares daggers at him when he walks down the stairs, but he just lifts his pants, showing off the socks.

“I wore two items from Father’s collection,” Adrien whispers to her as he passes by. “I’m even wearing his name on my back.” He points to the lettering in all caps on the back of the jersey, spelling out ‘AGRESTE’ in a sun-bleached green.

“Have you ever heard of the term ‘malicious compliance’?” she asks, and Adrien makes an elaborate shrugging motion, weaving through the crowds of people in all of their nice clothes that are staring at him as if he’s just committed a crime.

He makes a beeline for the catering table, loading his plate with the warm, buttery desserts from the best bakery in Paris, according to him and most other people in the city. He sees the owners, Sabine and Tom, behind the tables, and he gives them a wave. They smile back at him happily, the only people in the room not giving him dirty looks for his attire.

He stops in front of them because he knows from experience that they are the most bearable people to talk to at these events, and they both look a little surprised. Normally he doesn’t get around to talking to them until the end of the event, after he’s already been paraded around like a plastic doll, but with the glares that both his father and Nathalie are giving him, he seems to have gotten out of that unbearable duty for the night. 

“Hey, Sabine, hey, Tom,” Adrien says.

“Hello, Adrien,” Sabine says, using the tongs to pile another chocolate croissant onto his plate without him even asking. “You are looking… different.”

“Really?” Adrien asks, tugging on his jersey and looking down at himself in mock-surprise. “Isn’t this how I normally look?”

“I like it!” Tom says with his booming voice, reaching over the table to give Adrien a light bump on the shoulder with his thick fist. “It’s very rugged and hip. I hear that’s the style the kids these days are into.”

“It’s certainly something our daughter would like,” Sabine says, glancing over at Tom with a smile. 

“Oh, Marinette, right?” Adrien asks, and they nod. “When am I going to get to meet her? You guys always talk so highly of her.”

“Well, you know, she’s always so busy with her job,” Sabine says, waving her hand. “But you might actually get to see her tonight.”

“Really?” Adrien asks.

“She’s bringing the cake,” Tom says, checking his watch. “And, just like usual, she seems to be running late.” He laughs as he says it, light and fond, and Adrien smiles.

Tom and Sabine have been catering Agreste events for years, and Adrien always looks forward to seeing his favorite bakers for this exact reason; they’re actually nice, actually full of kindness. They talk about their daughter, a girl Adrien’s age, with an unrestricted kind of love that Adrien finds both refreshing and endearing, and they treat Adrien like he’s a member of their family, ever since that first event they catered, right after his mom disappeared. Tom had found him crying by the kitchen, and he’d knelt down beside him, listened to him, comforted him in a way that Adrien’s own father hasn’t been capable of in a long time. After that, Tom and Sabine have been a reliable safe haven for Adrien at his father’s boring business parties; they listen to him, exchange stories with him, actually seem to like him. 

Plus, they’re always recommending him new music - they were the ones who told them about Ladybug in the first place, talking on and on about a young girl on Youtube that reminded them of their younger days in the punk rock scene until Adrien had no choice but to look her up himself.

Adrien sits down on the floor behind the catering table, balancing his plate of sweets in his lap, and Tom and Sabine exchange a look.

“Is there something the matter, Adrien?” Sabine asks, handing her tongs to Tom so that she can kneel down beside him. “You are normally more active at these parties.”

He sighs, putting down the chocolate croissant that he had half-eaten in one bite. “The truth is that I have not been able to speak to anyone in a week when I have been absolutely dying to,” he says, which he hadn’t really been meaning to say, and Sabine’s face twists. He winces, thinking that maybe a week with only Plagg’s blunt company has done more harm than good to his tact.

“You are having problems with your father?” she asks, and Adrien nods slowly. He looks down at his plate, running his thumb along the edge and trying to pick his words so as not to worry Sabine.

“It’s just… he treats me like I’m still a little kid, like I’m still the kid I was before my mother disappeared,” he says. “And I’m not. I can do more now - I have to do more now - and he won’t let me because he’s just so worried about me.”

Sabine seems to think for a moment, and then she places a gentle hand on Adrien’s shoulder. “While it is natural for parents to worry about their children, you are an adult.” She gives him a smile, a squeeze on the shoulder. “And all adults need the space to spread their wings.”

“But he won’t let me,” Adrien says, and he doesn’t miss the way her smile turns sad before she’s giving him a little laugh and a shake of her head.

“You know one thing about my daughter? She has never waited for Tom or I to ‘let’ her do anything, for better or worse. That girl is a force to be reckoned with, in more ways than one.”

“She sounds cool,” Adrien says, and Sabine’s smile widens.

“She’s the coolest girl in the world, although I may just be biased.”

Just then, the front door is slamming open, and a figure hidden by a giant cake box is teetering through the doorway.

“There she is,” Tom says proudly, “the coolest girl in the world.”

The coolest girl in the world, still hidden by the cake box, is earning a good deal of disgusted stares from the high society only used to the help entering through the back door and never making any sort of noise, but she does not seem to realize this, murmuring ‘sorry’s and ‘excuse me’s as lightly as if she’s making her way through a crowd at a concert rather than a clump of snobs. Adrien likes her already.

He stands up as Tom and Sabine’s daughter nears the catering table to greet her, and he sees the disaster waiting to happen; her tennis shoes are untied, and she doesn’t seem to be able to see this, what with the cake in her way. One of her feet steps on the lace from the other shoe, she begins to topple forward with a cry, and Adrien rushes around the table, only just managing to grab hold of the box to steady her before it’s too late.

“Holy shit!” she says, her voice echoing out through the atrium, above the light and boring classical music, and Adrien can’t help but laugh at the shocked silence that follows. “I mean,” the girl says as Adrien carefully takes the box from her hands, “shoot! Holy shoot! All under control here, folks, continue your- uh, socializing? Celebrating? It’s all good, no disasters here!”

Adrien turns to set the box on the table behind him, looking up at Tom and Sabine to see them looking both exasperated and fond, and he smiles. The music and the chatter returns, and Tom and Sabine’s daughter says, “hey, thanks for-”

He turns back around, and Tom and Sabine’s daughter stops mid-sentence.

“Saving you?” he finishes for her.

Her pale cheeks begin to flush, and she points fully at his chest. “Adrien,” she says.

“Marinette,” he says, pointing back to her, and her mouth drops open.

“How the fuck do you know my name?” she asks, and Adrien throws his head back and laughs, caught by surprise.

“Marinette, honey,” Sabine jumps in from behind the catering table, “we told him you are our daughter. That’s the only reason he knows you.”

“Oh,” she says, and her red cheeks turn redder. She presses the backs of her hands to her cheeks, looking back up at him. “So you… don’t know who I am?” she asks.

“I know you’re the daughter of the best bakers in Paris,” he says with a laugh, and she nods vigorously.

“Yeah, right, right, that’s- that’s normal. Yeah,” she says. She swallows. “Um, nice to meet you?”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Adrien says, sticking his hand out. She shakes it gingerly, and he looks over her face, at the light freckles along her nose, the bright blue eyes, the blunt bangs and full, pink lips. He leans forward, frowning. “You look kind of familiar, Marinette. Have we ever met before?”

“I-”

“Adrien,” calls a stern voice, and Adrien freezes.

He turns around to see his father standing behind him with his hands clasped behind his back, and he swallows.

“Yes, Father?” he asks, and Gabriel’s lips purse. He turns on his heel and walks toward the kitchen area, and Adrien’s shoulders slump.

“He really just expects you to read his mind, huh?” Marinette says almost as if to herself, behind him, and he turns around with a shrug.

“It was nice to meet you, Marinette,” he says.

“For the first time,” she says. “We, uh, we’re meeting for the first time. You have never seen me before.”

“Well,” Adrien says, looking between her and her lovely parents, “if I don’t see you again tonight, I hope to see you soon.” He gives them all a wave, turning around to follow his father, but he feels a light tug on his jersey. He stops, looking down to see a delicate hand holding the hem of his shirt, and he looks up to see Marinette staring at him, her eyes wide. “Yes?” he asks.

“I-I just,” she starts, letting go of his jersey as if it burned her and stepping back, wiping her hands on her slacks. “I mean, I know we only just met, and it wouldn’t make sense for me to say anything at all, but-”

Adrien feels himself shift on his feet despite his best efforts, a low thrum of anxiety tugging on the pit of his stomach. His father must have reached the kitchen by now. He hates waiting.

“-and I don’t mean to take up too much of your time, but…” She trails off, and then she just looks at him with those wide eyes, clear blue like a summer day - she really does look familiar, feel familiar. “Ah, fuck it,” she says, and she grabs hold of his forearm, squeezing hard. “Give him hell, Adrien.”

“Wh-?” 

Before he can finish, she’s using her grip on his forearm to spin him around, planting her hands on his back and giving him a light push in the direction of the kitchen. He finds himself laughing, a little baffled, but he lets his feet follow her push.

He looks back to see her talking with her parents, hands pressed to the sides of her head, and he can’t help himself when he calls out, “Marinette!”

Her head turns before he’s even finished her name, and their eyes crash together over the people between them. She looks at him in- in a way that makes him pause. He can’t quite figure it out, the way her eyes reach for him, the way the world seems to slow. 

“Your shoes are untied!” he calls.

She blinks, looks down at her shoes. “Oh, goddamnit,” she says, and then he’s ducking into the kitchen.

“You know how much I don’t like to be kept waiting,” his father says as soon as Adrien walks in, despite the fact that his back is turned to him.

“Yes, Father,” Adrien says. “It was only that Tom and Sabine’s daughter had something-”

“I don’t care,” Gabriel says, turning around and leveling him with a heavy gaze. “What I do care about is you prioritizing talking to the help rather than the business that you are at this party to do.”

“The help? ” Adrien asks in disbelief, but, of course, his father just bulldozes past him.

“And don’t even get me started on this ridiculous outfit you have chosen to wear,” he says, throwing his hand out to gesture carelessly at Adrien’s clothes. “You look foolish and sloppy, and everyone knows it. You have chosen to embarrass me and yourself in front of all my business partners, and for what?”

Adrien clenches his jaw.

“For what, Adrien?” his father repeats, snapping his fingers. “You told Nathalie earlier that your head feels fine, so I can only assume that cannot be an excuse for your erratic behavior, and, if that’s the case, then the only excuse is that you are still acting like a child over this whole Ladybug nonsense.”

“First of all,” Adrien says, voice hot, anger bubbling over, “Sabine and Tom are more than just the help, especially with how often we’ve called upon their amazing services.” Gabriel waves his hand, obviously disinterested, and Adrien finds that he really can’t control his mouth anymore, nor does he want to. “And second of all, maybe my ‘erratic behavior’ can be attributed to living through a traumatic event not even a week ago! A traumatic event, which, may I remind you, Father, was not Ladybug’s fault in the slightest. I am not acting like a child, I am acting like an adult who is fed up with attending boring parties and pretending everything is fine.”

Gabriel clasps his hands behind his back. “You were just sitting on the floor gorging on sweets not even five minutes ago.”

“And!” Adrien says, throwing his hands up. “Not every adult has to act like you, be like you.”

“I swear,” Gabriel says, pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head, “this is all that silly girl’s fault. I should’ve known better than to let you get involved in her” - he lets go of his nose, gestures disgustedly - “rebellious environment. You were perfect before her, you were your mother’s son.”

Something in Adrien’s chest cracks, and he strangely hears Marinette’s voice in his head. Give him hell.

“You can’t say a thing about mom,” Adrien says, fists clenched at his sides, and Gabriel whips his head to look at him, cold eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything, Father, you just don’t.”

“I don’t know anything?” his father asks with an astonished scoff. “Adrien, you are letting yourself be pulled by the whims of some pop punk princess” - he spits out the words like an insult - “and all I am doing, all I have ever been doing, is trying to protect you from-”

“I don’t need you to!” Adrien interrupts, shouts, and Gabriel stops, silences, and all that’s left in the air is Adrien, Adrien coming to life. “I don’t need you to protect me. Don’t you see, Father, how much your protection looks like suffocation? You’ve kept me locked up my whole life, ever since mom left, and being with Ladybug, making music with her, getting messy and sloppy in that rebellious environment has been the only thing that has reminded me of who I am, what I like.” He shakes his head, letting out a harsh laugh. “I mean, come on, I was perfect, just like mom? Do you even know who mom was? She took me into the pit of a rock show when I was ten!”

“Adrien,” his father says sharply. “Lower your voice.”

“No,” Adrien says, harsh, “no, I’m going to be loud, and I’m going to be messy, and I’m going to be by Ladybug’s side, whether you like it or not.”

His father tries to call out to him as he leaves the kitchen, but Adrien makes it to the atrium where all the people are, and his father predictably stops. Wouldn’t want to make a scene now, would he?

Adrien walks up to Sabine, and he gives her a light kiss on the cheek.

“Adrien?” she asks, but he just shakes his head, unable to speak. Tom places a hand on his shoulder, and Adrien places his hand on top of his, looking up at him and hoping that he can convey all the appreciation he feels for him.

And then he turns to Marinette, hanging back behind her parents. Tom and Sabine step aside, sharing a look that seems so natural to parents in tune with each other, and Adrien smiles at them before stepping forward and embracing Marinette in a tight hug.

“Oh-” she says, her body stiff in his arms. And then she relaxes, smoothing a hand over his back. “Adrien,” she says gently, “you’re crying.”

He nods, letting go of her and wiping his eyes. “Your parents are right about you - I’m glad I got to talk to you.”

“Of course,” she says, looking at him with a concern that is so familiar, so loving.

He shakes his head. “Sorry, I know this must be weird since we’ve never met before.”

“No,” she says, a little fast, and then she clears her throat, thinks for a moment, takes his hand. “No,” she says again, “I think it’s perfectly natural.”

He’s glad she gets it, whatever it is.

And then he’s ignoring the whispering crowds, ignoring the stares from Nathalie and his father, and he’s climbing up the stairs to his room, closing the door behind him and taking a deep breath.

“Plagg,” he says, and Plagg appears sitting on the piano bench. He leans his elbow on the keys, releasing a dissonant chord with a smile.

“Yeah, kid?”

Adrien rubs his thumb along the sparking surface of the ring on his finger. “Show me how to break the windows.”

Chapter Text

Marinette is in the middle of another ultimately fitful and unrestful sleep when Alya bursts into her room, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her once, twice, three times in quick succession.

“Ohmagaw-” Marinette croaks, still smacking on morning breath.

“Situation situation situation,” Alya says, still shaking Marinette, and Marinette nods, shakes her head, blinks, squints.

Her room is still dim.

“What time is it?” she asks as Alya physically drags her out of bed.

“Just past five,” Alya says, shoving clothes in her direction, “and Adrien is downstairs talking with your parents.”

“What?” Marinette near shrieks, dropping the clothes that Alya had shoved at her. Her first instinct is to run over to her mirror and pull at the obvious dark circles under her eyes, and then she wakes up a little more, feels her cheeks burn, and turns back to Alya. “What is he doing here?”

“He was trying to crash at Nino’s place, but his father sent out fucking? Bodyguards or something? We ran, I told them he could crash here, he’s crashing here. You’re welcome?” Alya says as Marinette wrestles her still-tired body into a pair of shorts.

She realizes only too late that she jammed the shorts on over her pajama pants, and then she pauses, squinting up at Alya. “We?” she asks, and Alya bites her bottom lip, scrunching up her eyes. Marinette stares at her. “Were you sleeping over at Nino’s place?”

“That is so not the important part right now,” Alya says, and Marinette can see that her face is getting red.

“Oh, my god, yes it is!” Marinette exclaims, bounding up to her and grabbing her by the shoulders just to return the shaking favor. “Tell me everything! What! Why haven’t you mentioned anything! What the heck!”

“Marinette!” Alya cries, wrestling Marinette’s arms off of her. “Adrien! Downstairs talking with your parents!”

“Oh, fuck, yeah.”

They tumble down the stairs side by side, Marinette needling Alya the whole way down for some spare details, and then they’re standing outside of the kitchen, Marinette desperately trying to smooth down her bangs.

“Wait, wait, he still doesn’t know I’m Ladybug, right?” Marinette asks, and Alya gives her a certified look.

“Girl, you choose now to ask?” she hisses, and Marinette gestures wildly.

“You choose only after I’ve asked to tell me?” she asks, and Alya throws her hands up in exasperation.

“Well, somebody was too focused on the wrong facts,” she says, and Marinette scoffs.

“Frankly, I think that the fact that you and Nino are canoodling is nothing but the right facts to focus on!” Marinette exclaims, and then Alya is clapping a hand over her mouth, and they are both staring with wide eyes at her mother, standing in the now open doorway of the kitchen.

Marinette looks past her, and her father, Adrien, and Nino, are all sitting on the stools around the center island, also staring at Alya and Marinette. 

Nino breaks the awkward silence with a laugh that slips into a giggle. “Canoodling?” he asks, and Alya glares at Marinette, who feels largely unremorseful and licks Alya’s hand about it.

Alya curses and snatches her hand away from Marinette, and Sabine steps aside to let them into the kitchen, brushing her fingers through Marinette’s bangs as she walks past.

“Good morning,” Marinette says, sitting down at one of the stools, looking between Nino and Adrien. “I also live here.”

“Right,” Adrien says, leaning forward. He’s got the hint of dark circles under his eyes, his hair is a mess, and he’s still wearing that basketball jersey he’d worn to his father’s party the night before. “And I’m truly sorry for barging into you and your family’s home so early in the morning-”

“Bread is already in the oven,” Tom says with a wave of his hand. “It’s not too early.”

Marinette, still picking sleep gunk out of her eyes, is inclined to disagree, but she gets her father’s point. Adrien looks flustered and vulnerable, and Marinette gets the feeling all he needs is someone to assure him that he’s not being a bother.

“Even still, I know we don’t know each other all that well, and I really don’t want to bother you,” Adrien says, looking between Marinette and her parents. “I’m just… not really sure where else to go.”

Her parents look at each other, do that thing where they have a whole conversation without saying a word.

Marinette looks at Adrien, watches the way his eyes cling to his parents with a hope that is desperate and small. “I know I probably missed the explanation part,” she says, and Adrien turns his eyes to her, eyebrows twisted together, “but what’s going on again?”

Adrien pulls a tired hand through his hair, letting out a long sigh. “At the party yesterday, I had a discussion with my father that didn’t exactly end well,” he says, looking back up at her. “It was actually after we talked.”

She thinks about Adrien, the laugh and the smile he’d given her over his shoulder on his way to talk to his father, and then the crushing hug he’d given her afterwards. It had broken her heart, more than a little, to see him walk out again, tears streaming down his face, and go up to the people at the party he should’ve known the least for comfort. He hugged her - a girl he thought he only just met five minutes before - and wanted a hug. She had felt his tears against her neck.

“You ran away from home,” she says, and he nods, slow.

“I didn’t… That’s not what I wanted to do, really,” he says softly, wiping tiredly at his eyes. “I just wanted to go outside, talk to my friends.”

Marinette actually feels her heart break, crack in two. She reaches forward and takes his hand over the center island, and he looks up at her in surprise. But Marinette won’t budge; Adrien needs a friend, and he’s got one in her, no matter what name she’s going by.

“And then what?” she asks, and he looks up from their conjoined hands, looking over her face.

“I went to my friend Chloe’s house,” he says, and he looks away, rubbing his thumb absently along her knuckle, like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. “For a few hours, it was fine. We just hung out, talked, you know? But then when we were going to sleep there was this awful knock at the door. It was a bunch of big guys, guys from the bodyguard company my father uses, and they pushed Chloe to the side to get to me. I ran.” He uses his free hand to rub at his eyes again, and Marinette sees the wetness there now, the semicircle of tears clinging to his bottom lashes. She gives his hand a squeeze.

“That’s when he showed up to my place,” Nino tells her. Alya has sat down beside him, and he glances at her for a moment before he continues. “He told us what was going on, and by the time he finished, there were already cars circling the neighborhood. We didn’t know what to do, so Alya suggested coming here.”

“I figured the guys his father sent knew where to go so fast because Chloe and Nino are close with Adrien and he visits them pretty frequently,” Alya explains. “And I work with Adrien, too, so…” She trails off, lifting her hand up to gesture to the bakery.

“So you guys came here,” Marinette finishes, and the three of them nod. She looks back to her parents, and they look back at her.

“Let’s talk outside for a moment, okay, honey?” Sabine asks, and Marinette squeezes Adrien’s hand once before she follows her parents out of the kitchen.

When the door closes, Marinette wastes no time in opening her mouth.

“We have to let him stay,” she says at the same time her father says, “we want to let him stay.”

They blink at each other.

“We just wanted to make sure you were comfortable with it,” Sabine says, and she pulls Marinette forward into a hug. 

“Why wouldn’t I be comfortable with it?” Marinette asks, hugging her mother back with a laugh.

“We know how you get about that boy,” she says, and Marinette pulls away.

“Now what is that supposed to mean,” she says, and Tom laughs.

“You made us stop telling you about seeing him at events we catered!” he says, and Marinette slaps him on the arm.

“Yeah, because all you would do would tease me for not being able to go,” she snaps, and her mother pats an arm on her shoulder.

“We can’t help that you’re busy all the time,” she says, “our little rockstar.”

“Maman,” Marinette warns. “He doesn’t know.”

“We’ll keep both your secrets, chamallow, don’t worry,” her father says, and Marinette raises an eyebrow at him.

“Both?” she asks.

“Well, aren’t you in love with him?”

“Papa!”

Later, Marinette and Adrien are standing on the front steps of the bakery, watching the sun tickle the horizon as Alya and Nino make their way to Nino’s car.

“I can’t believe they’re a thing,” she says, smiling a little as she sees Nino open the passenger door of his car with a bow for Alya.

“It was a surprise to me, too,” Adrien says, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. “Well, kind of.”

“You knew?” Marinette asks, looking over at him, and he shrugs with one shoulder, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

“I mean, not really. Nino didn’t tell me, which is messed up, but he and Alya were always alone together because of how often Ladybug and I had something to do,” he says, and, now that Marinette thinks about it, he is right.

“I guess that makes sense,” she says.

Adrien claps his hand over his mouth, and Marinette jumps, looking over at him with raised eyebrows.

His eyes are wide with panic. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” he says.

“What, that Alya and Nino spend time together?” she asks, kind of incredulously.

“No! That I work with Ladybug!” he says, and Marinette squints at him.

And then she remembers.

“You work with Ladybug?” she gasps, awkwardly feigning surprise. “I can’t believe it!”

Adrien drops down to a crouch, covering his face with his hands. “I’m ruining everything,” he groans, and Marinette panics, dropping down to her knees beside him and patting his back maybe a little hard.

“No, no, no, it’s fine! I kind of already knew!” she says, and he looks up at her, eyebrows furrowed.

“You knew?” he asks.

Marinette panics again. Why did she say that? Why is it bad if Adrien knows again? What is she supposed to say?

“I’m, like, a huge fan,” her mouth says, and she feels a little bit like slamming her head onto the pavement, but, miraculously, she keeps on fucking talking, “of, um, Cat Shell Crush? My room is totally covered in posters - some of them I made because you guys never came out with that much official stuff, you could totally see them if you wanted, wait no you shouldn’t come into my room maybe- um! Your voice! I recognized your voice!”

Adrien stares at her.

They end up in Marinette’s room, standing in the brightening morning light, as Adrien leans closer to look at one of the posters she’d made for Cat Shell Crush. He’s really examining it, hand on his chin like he’s at a fucking art gallery. Marinette is standing by her desk with her head in her hands.

“You made this?” he asks, turning around. He looks soft and dreamy in the sunrise, and Marinette nods miserably. “I like it a lot,” he says, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I kind of didn’t believe you when you said you were a fan of Cat Shell Crush.”

Marinette blinks. “Why, because I don’t look punk rock enough?”

“No, because no one I’ve met is a fan of Cat Shell Crush,” he says with a laugh. “Well, aside from Ladybug.”

Marinette chews on the inside of her cheek, watches the way Adrien’s smile fades from his face. He looks back at her, expression tight.

“You’re friends with Alya, right?” he asks.

“Right,” she says.

“Do you think you could ask her for Ladybug’s number? I need to call her, but my father took my phone away,” he says, and Marinette only just barely manages to tamp down a flood of righteous rage before nodding and pulling out her phone.

She opens up the messages app and comes to the realization that they are going to run into an error pretty fast here: her number is also Ladybug’s number. God, she hasn’t had to be up this early in a long time.

“Would you rather just meet her?” she asks. “I mean, do you think you can?”

“Yes,” Adrien says, stepping forward. “You could do that? Arrange a meeting for me with her?”

Marinette swallows. “Of course. Where do you want to meet her?”

Adrien seems to think for a moment. “The Eiffel Tower.”

Chapter Text

Adrien has already moved the green glitter pen to the back of his mouth so that he can properly chew on it with his back molars before he remembers that he is only borrowing this pen, and it is generally considered rude to put your mouth on things that you are only just borrowing. He takes the pen out of his mouth and looks down at the end of it, wincing at the teeth marks pressed into the plastic. He’ll apologize to Marinette, profusely. Maybe even buy her a new green glitter pen, if there aren’t any bodyguards hanging around the supermarket on his way back to her place.

His father’s been using the same company ever since he was born; he’s primed from years of experience to recognize even the most discrete of Twin Rings logos. The absolutely jacked men and women with the tiny interlocking rings gleaming on tie-pins or embroidered on tight-fitting polo shirts have been the people that he looked for after long photoshoots or recordings in the studio, always casually waiting by a sleek, black nondescript car. His father had even made him study the photos of each one of the bodyguards available through Twin Rings on their website, looming over his shoulder and repeating periodically, “this is for your safety, Adrien. You must remember these faces because they will protect you when I am not there.”

It didn’t feel much like protection last night, when he’d been peeking out from Chloe’s bedroom, curious at who would knock so hard on the door so late at night, trying not to let the anxious feeling in his stomach get to his head. He’d seen the gleam of those silver rings in the dark, and his breath had stopped when those big hands that always opened the door of those sleek black cars for him were used to push Chloe’s yellow head of hair hard to the side. Her head had cracked sickeningly against the wall, and he’d watched her fall to the ground, the bodyguards push their way inside.

The only reason he was able to escape was because of how goddamn big Chloe’s apartment is; the bodyguards had to do some searching, which allowed him time to sneak past, check on Chloe. She had moved to sitting up by the door, a hand clutching her head, and when he’d dropped to his knees beside her, scared out of his mind, she’d just scowled at him.

“Fucking bastards,” she’d spat. “Feel free to run, Adrikins, because I’ve got a score to settle.”

She wouldn’t let him argue, stubborn as she is, so he’d just helped her grab one of her heavy iron golf clubs from her broom closet, and he’d run, and the rest of the night, his childhood protection had hunted him down like it was a sport.

He flips the page on the little pink notepad Marinette had let him borrow, his foot shaking back and forth where he’s dangling it off the ledge of the Eiffel Tower he’s sitting on. He taps the chewed up end of Marinette’s pen against the lined paper, kind of wishing he had a cigarette.

“Yo,” Plagg says, appearing beside him, kicking his legs out and stretching in the sun. He tosses two things at Adrien in quick succession, and Adrien only just manages to catch both of them before they fall hundreds of meters to the ground below. “I come bearing gifts.”

Adrien looks down at his hands and sees his phone and a pack of cigarettes. “I thought you were going to talk to Tikki,” he says, although he does feel grateful. And then he frowns down at his phone. “How did you get this?”

“I stole it,” Plagg says easily, and Adrien stares at him. He grabs the pack of cigarettes from Adrien’s hand, takes out two and lights them both with a snap of his fingers. He keeps one for himself and hands the other to Adrien, who is trying very hard to understand. “What?” Plagg asks.

“Isn’t… isn’t stealing a sin, or something?” Adrien asks, and Plagg laughs, throwing his head back like a tree cracking in a flood.

“The way I see it, it was yours in the first place. Not really stealing if you’re just stealing from the thief who stole it first,” he says, and Adrien frowns, taking a long drag from the cigarette.

“My father is not a thief,” he says, although he hears even in his own voice the wavering uncertainty bleeding through.

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” Plagg replies with a shrug. “I went and checked on that friend of yours like you asked - perfectly fine now, but, FYI, my subtle head-healing magic did not heal her annoying personality.”

Adrien smiles. “Wouldn’t have it any other way. Thanks, Plagg.”

“No prob, kid,” Plagg says.

Adrien tries to open up his phone, but all the screen shows is the low battery icon. It’s dead, of course. He sighs. “When do you think Tikki and Ladybug will get here?”

“Oh, I have no clue,” Plagg says, leaning back on his hands and letting the cigarette dangle from his lip.

Adrien blinks. “Weren’t you going to meet up with Tikki and talk with her before she and Ladybug came?” he asks, and Plagg waves his hand.

“Nah, that would be bad for me,” he says, taking a drag from his cigarette. “I actually haven’t talked to the sugarcube since that whole shebang at the bar.”

“What?!” Adrien cries. “You were supposed to tell them I was safe! Oh, my God, does Ladybug think I’m dead? What have you been doing if you haven’t been leaving to talk to Tikki this entire past week? Does Ladybug know I’m alive?”

“Whoa, whoa, cool your jets kid,” Plagg says, raising his hands up and patting the air like he’s trying to soothe a wild mustang. “I told them you were alive, like, right after I healed your noggin. I just haven’t talked to them since.”

“Why not?” Adrien asks incredulously, and Plagg’s blistering coal eyes slide away from him. He watches as Plagg takes a long drag, exhales the smoke and watches it curl up in the mid-morning light. He taps the ash off the cigarette and looks down at the ground below, still avoiding Adrien’s gaze.

“Sugar’s mad at me,” he says, his tone matter-of-fact, almost like he doesn’t even care. But Adrien sees the tenseness of his face like the brewing clouds of a storm in the sky.

“Why?” Adrien asks, and Plagg brings the cigarette up to his mouth, just leaves it there, still staring at the ground below.

“Tikki and I, we’re like this,” he finally says, lifting up his free hand and showing Adrien his crossed pointer and middle fingers. “We’re two sides of the same coin, partners since the beginning of time, before that even. We don’t really do secrets, never have, really.” He pauses, and he looks over at Adrien, his eyes the burning of dying stars. “I kept a secret.”

For some reason, Adrien thinks about that bubble of light, crying out in the middle of the demon storm. The way it shifted and churned, bright, searing chaos.

“What secret did you keep?” Adrien asks, and he feels almost like the answer would hurt him, feels like Plagg knows that, too.

“Best not to say right now, kid,” Plagg says, giving Adrien a smile that was all gleaming teeth and eyes like soft tsunamis. And then he’s turning back away, inscrutable weather beside him.

Adrien frowns down at the notepad in his lap, at the haphazard lyrics he’d been scribbling down. They sit in silence, smoking their respective cigarettes and avoiding eye contact. Adrien writes down a couple more words, and then sighs, scratching them out again. He’s thinking too hard, and his brain hurts, and he hates writing lyrics when his brain hurts. 

“What do you think that girl you’re staying with is doing right now?” Plagg asks, breaking the silence, and Adrien looks up from the mess of green glitter ink on the page, feeling his eyebrows twist together.

“Marinette?” he asks, and Plagg nods, his eyes sparking, wood rubbed to smoke. Adrien shrugs. “She told me before I left that she had to go meet a friend so she might not see me right when I get back, so I guess that, probably.”

Plagg laughs. “What do you think about her?”

Adrien looks down at Marinette’s notepad, rubs his thumb along the plastic of the glitter gel pen she’d lent him and he’d promptly chewed on. He thinks about this morning, when she’d reached across her parents’ kitchen island, without hesitation, to hold his hand right when he felt the most like he needed to hold onto something. He remembers her handmade Cat Shell Crush posters, framed on her wall and bursting with all the color and heart that Nino and Adrien had poured into the music itself, and he thinks about standing to the side, dumbstruck, as she riffled through her bin of sewing projects to give him a change of clothes. 

“She’s… nice,” he says, but he knows that word is not enough to encapsulate her or all the things she’s done for him. “I’ve only known her for two days, and it’s like- it’s like she’s a superhero. At the right place at the right time with all the right words to say.” He pauses, shaking his head with a laugh. “Marinette is a beautiful person, Plagg. I don’t know how else to say it. Why are you asking?”

“No reason,” Plagg says lightly. “Hey, Ladybug.” Adrien turns around fast, and sure enough, Ladybug is standing behind him, one hand over her face, the other gripping her yo-yo. Tikki is standing behind her, face unreadable.

“Ladybug!” he exclaims, hurriedly shoving the things that were in his lap to Plagg so he can jump up and wrap his arms around her. She lets out a soft grunt, kind of stumbling back, but Adrien holds on tight enough that she isn’t in any danger of falling. When her hands come up to hold on to him, too, something breaks in his chest, and he finds himself letting out a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “I’m so happy to see you,” he says.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” she says, one of her hands coming up and brushing along the back of his head, fingers soft on his scalp. “I was worried about you. Have you been alright? Are you safe?”

“I’m alright,” he says, pulling away just a little so that he can look her in the eyes. He reaches back and presses her hand flat against his head, where he’d been bleeding that night at the bar. “All healed up, and staying with a friend. What about you? Are you alright?” He looks her over, eyes catching at her stomach, where he’d last seen a grim and growing blotch of red.

She takes his hand from his head and presses it to her stomach. “All healed up, too. I’m okay, chaton.” 

He closes his eyes, breathing out a sigh of relief. He knew this whole time that Tikki had been with her, so of course she would be healed with just as much speed as he had been by Plagg, but it was a different thing to know than to see. He feels her lace his fingers with hers, and he gives her hand a squeeze, opening his eyes. 

“I’m so sorry, Ladybug, for everything,” he says, wrapping her hand in both of his. “I wanted to call you, to contact you, to reach you - anything - but my father is being difficult, and- and a little dangerous. And on top of that, with how my mother…” He trails off, an image of his mother, crying over Ladybug’s body with a knife in her hand, flashes in his mind, and he shakes his head, at a loss for words. 

Ladybug frowns, tilting her head to the side. “Your mother?” she asks, and Adrien blinks at her.

“Yes, my mother,” he says, but the look of confusion on her face grows larger. 

Adrien looks at Tikki, hovering solemnly behind Ladybug. When their eyes meet, she looks away, as firm and rigid as an old oak. He looks back at Plagg, who is still sitting down and smoking his cigarette, staring out at the skyline as if they’re not even there. “Neither of you told her?” he asks them, and he sees Tikki’s jaw tighten.

“I had been given the impression that it was supposed to remain a secret,” Tikki says coolly.

“Don’t start, sugar,” Plagg says, and Tikki sniffs, crossing her arms.

“Someone tell me what’s up with Adrien’s mother or I swear I’ll throw a fit,” Ladybug says testily, looking between the three of them. “I’m sick of not knowing what’s going on.”

“My mother was the one who hurt you,” Adrien says, and he finds himself bringing her hand up to clutch by his chest, like that might soften the blow of his words - for her, or for him, he couldn’t tell.

Ladybug’s free hand comes up to touch lightly at her stomach. “Your mom was the one who stabbed me?” she asks, incredulous, and he nods. “Then she has to be…”

“She’s the queen,” Plagg says, still sitting on the ground, still staring out at the sky. “Emilie Agreste is the next queen of hell.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t understand,” Marinette says, looking between Adrien, Plagg, and Tikki. Only Adrien meets her gaze fully, his eyebrows twisted in pain, his hands still clutching hers. “That doesn’t make any sense because Emilie Agreste is… I mean, she’s…” She trails off, mind racing to connect the dots. 

Emilie Agreste, Gabriel Agreste’s wife, Adrien Agreste’s mother. Parisian starlet, beloved philanthropist, glowing portrait in Gabriel’s Agreste’s private study, mysteriously wiped from the face of the earth a decade ago. Queen of hell.

“If she’s the queen of hell, then doesn’t that mean that she’s… not human?” Marinette asks, and Tikki finally moves, glacial eyes searing into Plagg’s back as she nudges her foot against his spine. He doesn’t look up, only scoots to the side with another suck on his cigarette.

“You’re moping,” she says, flat and harsh. “Quit it and give everyone an explanation.”

Plagg sighs, raking a hand through his hair, and Tikki kicks his back again. “Alright, alright, sugar, I’m talking,” he gripes, swinging his feet around so that he’s sitting cross-legged with his back to the sheer drop to the ground. He pats the iron around him. “Everyone get comfy. This maybe isn’t something we want to hear standing up.”

Tikki sits down next to Plagg, leveling him with a burning glare. 

Marinette looks at her self-proclaimed guardian angel curiously, thinking back to this past week. Tikki had been unusually testy and quiet, and any time Marinette tried to get her to leave her side to check on Adrien and Plagg, she’d always given Marinette a clipped response that Marinette needed her protection more and Plagg didn’t need her anyway. Her behavior, Marinette thinks, is starting to make sense.

“Alright,” Plagg says, clapping his hands together and looking around at the three of them, now sitting down. “Uh, so, Emilie Agreste is not human. Never has been.”

Marinette looks over at Adrien to see how he’s receiving this information, but the clenched line of his jaw and the pinched scrunch of his eyebrows tells her that this information isn’t new, but still painful. She reaches over and takes his hand, and he smiles gratefully at her.

“She’s an angel, like Tikki and me,” Plagg says, rolling his cigarette between two fingers before he lifts it back up to his lips and takes a drag. “She came down to earth for her service about, uh-” He stops, frowning. He looks up at Adrien. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” Adrien says, and Plagg nods.

“Twenty-three years ago. She was just supposed to be here to look after you humans, take care of you, clean out your enclosure, so to speak,” he continues. “But only a couple of your human weeks into her service, we lost contact with her. She fell.”

Marinette frowns. “If she fell that fast, why wasn’t there a knight to take her to hell back then? Isn’t that all it takes to start the hell queen cycle, or whatever?” she asks.

“Not really,” Plagg says with a shrug. Marinette squints at him, and he looks over at Tikki, raising his eyebrows in a quiet question. Tikki ignores the look to reach forward and place a leafy hand on Marinette’s knee, her apologetic look answering the undertone to Marinette’s words.

“Rebellion is what is required for the queen-shedding cycle,” she explains gently. “Falling isn’t rebellion. It’s… like a natural reaction. A symptom of free will. Anyone can fall, anyone can ascend once more. A great many angels who service your earthly plane fall, for a time. Your earth can be a tempting, exhilarating, lovely place for an angel, and it’s only natural to want to indulge.” She pauses, reading over the tense muscles in Marinette’s face. “I am sorry, Ladybug, but there was no knight back then because there was no rebellion. The cycle always takes many human years to complete, and there was no other way it could go once the gears were set into motion; as soon as you chose your stage name, you became the knight.”

Thirteen year old Marinette, laying on her back in the center of her room with that little ladybug on the tip of her finger. Her sign from the universe, her good luck charm that she’d only remembered with the sweet nostalgia of a new beginning, in actuality tripping her unaware into another Rube Goldberg machine of disaster. Just her goddamn luck.

She shakes her head. She decided, for Adrien, that she would see this through. And that decision seems all the more pressing now that his mom is supposedly the angel whose hand she’s supposed to hold down into hell, attempted murder or not. She’s getting to the end of this Rube Goldberg machine, no matter what. 

“So if falling isn’t so bad, then what’s rebellion?” Marinette asks.

“Intentional disruption of the order of the universe,” Tikki says, and she glances at Plagg, who looks away. 

“What did my mom do?” Adrien asks, and Marinette looks over at him in surprise. She’d thought he already knew everything, what with how Plagg seemed to be holding the cards of information here, but he’s leaning forward, imploring in the afternoon sun.

Plagg looks over at him, and he sucks up the last dregs of his cigarette. “She had you, kid,” he says, the words curling smoky and sad.

Marinette squeezes Adrien’s hand involuntarily, watching his face as his expression shifts, turns, breaks.

“Angels can do a lot of stuff. Fly, instant transportation, mind manipulation, shapeshifting, you name it,” Plagg says, looking away from Adrien to snub out the ashes on the iron. “But we don’t create. It’s not in our stardust - the universe and you humans have a complete monopoly on creation, and we’re supposed to be happy with that arrangement. Your mother knew creating you would disrupt the order, but she did it anyway.”

“Why?” Adrien asks, shaking his head, and Plagg looks at him with raised eyebrows.

“Why else? She loved your dad. Loved him enough to forget about the rules.” 

Based off of her own interactions with Gabriel Agreste, Marinette cannot imagine anyone who would go out of their way to talk to him when it’s not necessary, let alone break the universe for him, but when she looks at Adrien’s face, any trace of surprise or confusion lacking from his grief, she figures that maybe she just doesn’t know him that well. If an angel loved him, if Adrien (who is also apparently an angel, at least in part, which Marinette finds to be the most logical part of this story) loved him, then there has to be something there to be loved.

“For thirteen years, she lived out her rebellion in peace,” Plagg continues, tracing his finger through the smear of ash on the iron. “But then hell realized it was queen-less, Ladybug became the knight, and Emilie had a couple encounters with some free roaming demons that told her she was their queen. She realized her life with you and your father would start to get messy, and so to protect you both, she… disappeared.”

“She didn’t just disappear,” Tikki says testily, and Plagg winces.

“Right, yeah, she disappeared thanks to me,” he says, and Marinette sees the way he searches Adrien’s face, his eyes the regretful pull back of the waves before a tsunami. “I helped her disappear.”

“What?” Adrien asks, his voice a harsh outrush of breath.

“I came down on service, I ended up stumbling into your mother, she asked for my help, and so I helped her,” Plagg says. 

“And you proceeded to not tell a single soul what you did,” Tikki says, and there it is, that force that had them repelling from each other like magnets turned the wrong way. 

“She made me promise not to,” Plagg counters, his teeth the sharp canines of a wild cat. “She wanted to search for a way, somewhere else, for an alternative, and she knew everyone would get in a tizzy about it. It’s not like I threw her to the wolves! I checked on her, politely asked her to use her head, the whole shebang.”

“That’s worse!” Tikki cried, and a veneer of careful composure that Marinette realized she’d been holding onto since perhaps the moment they met shattered. Tikki was a violent force - a flood of storm clouds rolling in. “You purposefully prolonged the cycle, and even continued to do so with every moment you did not bring Emilie back to earth. You let demons run amok for far longer than they’re supposed to, you let her run away from her divine duty, you let her run away from the bar and injure the knight when we could’ve made this all balanced again. And you kept it all from me!”

Plagg withstands this beration with a steady gaze, mountainous. “Emilie asked me to,” he simply says, and Tikki’s shoulders bow with the pressure of her emotion.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because you would’ve stopped her,” he says, and Tikki covers her face with her hands.

“I don’t understand,” she says. “I don’t understand at all.”

“Why,” Adrien says, voice scratching sandpaper, “did you help her leave?” Marinette looks over at him to see that he is not looking at Plagg, but rather the quickly darkening sky, blurred over with thick gray clouds. “Did you believe she could find an alternative? Did you think she could come back?”

“No, kid,” Plagg says gently. “No, I didn’t.”

Adrien’s face twists, breaks. A tear drops down from his cheek, blooming dark on the fabric of his jeans. “Then why?” He turns his gaze, broken stained glass, to Plagg, and Plagg looks down at his lap, carefully pulling out another cigarette from a pack by his legs.

“Your mother had a nickname for you, way back when, didn’t she?” he asks, rolling the cigarette between two fingers.

“Plagg,” Adrien says, voice breaking, “please just-”

“Chaton,” Plagg interrupts, glancing up at Adrien. “Right? It helped you choose your stage name.”

“And because black cats are unlucky,” Adrien says, shaking his head. “Equal and opposite of Ladybug.”

Plagg nods. “When your mother ran into a couple demons, they told her the names of the knight and their companion, you know, so she could run from them, prolong chaos like they wanted. The knight and the companion that would send her to hell - Ladybug and Chat Noir. Your mother knew a divine coincidence when she heard one.”

“She found out her rebellion would be the source of her return,” Tikki breathes, finally uncovering her face and looking between Plagg and Adrien, sad realization on her face. 

“When I ran into your mother, it was because she sought me out. She knew I’m a bit more flexible with the rules than some, and she explained everything to me,” Plagg says, still staring down at the cigarette moving back and forth between his fingers. “Even still, I wasn’t gonna agree just like that. Queen-shedding’s serious stuff, you know? But she showed me you.” He stops rolling the cigarette, looking up and meeting Adrien’s gaze.

“We met?” Adrien asks, confusion furrowing his features.

Plagg shakes his head. “No, she just made me sit on the bleachers while you played basketball with your little team. You were so bad at it.” He pauses with a small smile, his eyes drifting away from Adrien’s. “You’d only just started playing, and you were all gangly, like a baby deer stumbling over the court. Just a kid still.” Plagg’s smile fades, and he looks down at the cigarette in his hands, finally bringing it up to his mouth and lighting it. “I realized I had a choice,” he says around a curl of smoke, “make you motherless and a child soldier, or just plain motherless, and I chose motherless. I stand by that choice.”

“It wasn’t your choice to make,” Tikki says quietly, but Marinette hears the pull of uncertainty between the words.

“But I made it anyway,” Plagg says with a shrug. “No changing it now.”

It starts to rain, a torrential summer downpour, and the raindrops bounce and fall from the gaps in the iron above them, soaking them in seconds.

But Tikki, Plagg, and Adrien don’t move, don’t even show signs that they’ve noticed. Only Marinette seems to register the cold wet as soon as it happens, and she realizes, looking around their somber circle, that she’s the only one left free of their tumult. Tikki confronted the betrayal of a friend, Plagg unloaded a universe-sized secret, and Adrien’s whole perspective on his mother, his life, and his guardian angel have likely been changed. Marinette is sitting in the eye of the storm, and she has to be the one to pull the three of them out.

Amid the downpour, she squeezes Adrien’s hand, reaches forward and takes the ruined cigarette from Plagg’s mouth, pats Tikki’s knee. “We all know now,” she says gently, trying to catch all three pairs of eyes. “And that’s all we can hope for. Now let’s get out of this rain and rest before we plan our next steps, okay?” she says, standing up and pulling Adrien with her. 

Tikki and Plagg follow her lead, and then the four of them are standing. Marinette turns to Adrien, smoothing his wet hair away from her face. “You’ve been through a lot with not very much sleep, haven’t you? Go back to that friend’s house you’re staying with and get some rest.”

He nods, and then his face crumples, and he’s pulling Ladybug into a tight hug. Marinette holds him, feels him cry, wishes there was something she could do to make it all better.

But Adrien pulls away, and all she can do is watch as he leaves without giving Plagg a second glance. Plagg leaves, avoiding Tikki’s eyes.

When it’s just the two of them left, Marinette pushes her bangs back from her face and looks at Tikki’s drawn expression. “Fucking hell,” Marinette says, and something in Tikki’s face blooms.

“Yeah,” she agrees with a small smile. “Fucking hell.”

When they get down to ground level, Marinette peels off her mask in a back alley and tucks it in her back pocket, shielding her eyes from the rain.

“Geez, it’s really coming down, huh?” she asks, squinting through the thick gray slants of rain falling sharp through the air. “I almost want to stop and buy an umbrella or something on the way home.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to stop,” Tikki says, glancing worriedly around as they leave the alley and start walking down the street.

“Are you getting the demon feeling?” Marinette asks, keeping her hands above her head to shield herself from the rain as best as she can, although she sort of knows it’s futile. It’s just coming down too hard for her to have any hope of remaining dry.

“I do feel uneasy,” Tikki says, looking up at the sky. “Sudden changes in the weather like this are not usually good signs. I don’t remember hearing that it was going to rain like this.”

Marinette didn’t remember either, but she hardly ever remembered to check the weather forecast, and she definitely didn’t this morning, what with her hurrying out of the house after Adrien left so that he wouldn’t have to wait long for her. They walk past a convenience store, and Marinette glances at their box of umbrellas forlornly. 

“Do you think Plagg will follow Adrien back to my place?” Marinette asks, thinking both of their need to stay close to each other with Tikki’s anxiety about the weather and of Adrien leaving Plagg behind.

“He will if he wants to truly protect Adrien,” Tikki says, and Marinette looks over at her, a little curious despite herself.

“Are you still mad at him?”

“I was never angry with him,” Tikki responds, and Marinette raises her eyebrows at her. The rain falls in rivulets down Tikki’s unguarded face, and Tikki sighs, wiping at her cheeks like tears. “I was frustrated and hurt… And perhaps a little angry with him,” she admits, glancing up at the gray sky. 

“That must be hard, since you two are so close,” Marinette says. It’s not like Tikki has ever elaborated - Marinette has gotten the feeling that Tikki likes for whatever relationship they have to be professional - but Marinette has eyes. From the moment Plagg showed up, Marinette had seen an intimacy in the way they interacted with each other. Like best friends, or an old married couple.

Tikki nods slowly. “Throughout the many years, Plagg has always found new ways to annoy me. He is rash, and he is gross, and he is far too skilled at toeing the line between falling and rebelling. I am used to being frustrated with him; I don’t mind it.” She pauses, and Marinette waits. “I am not used to Plagg holding secrets. That is what is hard.”

“Do you think you’ll forgive him?” Marinette asks, although she feels like she already knows the answer.

“I already have,” Tikki says, confirming Marinette’s suspicions. “Once he explained his reasoning, I understood. We have guided many knights, and it is always harder the younger they are because of how easily it is to get attached to them, and how easily it is for them to be hurt. And I don’t blame him for protecting Adrien especially.” She touches a hand to her chest, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “I have felt… an affinity for him since I saw him. It must be the piece of Emilie and our kin inside of him; Plagg must have felt it, too. He is a kind angel, soft with his emotions despite how much he tries to deny it. I’ve always loved that about him.”

Marinette feels the urge to hug Tikki, all of the sudden. Walking side by side in the rain, she settles for looping her arm with hers. Tikki pauses, looking over at Marinette curiously. “Did you see something?” she asks, looking around the rapidly emptying street dutifully, eyes catching on the speedwalking people ducking into the stores and shops they walk past to get out of the rain.

“No,” Marinette says with a little laugh. “I’m just glad to have you be the one looking after me.” She gives Tikki’s arm a squeeze.

Tikki looks over Marinette’s face, a small smile forming on her lips. She reaches up and pats a rainwater hand on Marinette’s where it’s resting on her arm. “I know this mantle is not one you chose or one you even particularly want, but, Marinette, you are a good knight. One of the best I’ve known.”

Marinette snorts. “I’m not even good at fighting demons.”

Tikki’s smile turns fond and soft, a reaching vine finally holding onto its lattice. “That is not what makes a good knight.”

“Go ahead and remind me of that the next time I’m getting my ass handed to me by a demon,” Marinette says with a laugh, and she sees Tikki try and bite back a laugh of her own.

They’re still a few blocks away from the bakery when Marinette begins to feel the hair on the back of her head stand up. She rubs the back of her neck, glancing around. The streets are mostly clear because of the rain, but there’s a few people still bustling into the shops or walking through the rain like her and Tikki. At first glance, nothing really seems out of place.

It’s just, while she and Tikki aren’t running per se, they certainly aren’t walking leisurely. They’re both already soaked to the bone and hurrying to get home; to escape the rain and unite with Adrien and Plagg alike, and most of the other people on the street are walking fast like Marinette and Tikki. But there are some people on the street that are walking mechanically slow, heads on a slow-moving swivel. 

“Tikki,” Marinette murmurs softly, and Tikki nods, jaw tense.

“I’ve seen them,” she mutters back. One of the slow-moving people on the street walks by them, and Marinette finds her eyes lingering on them. They’re wearing a nice suit with an embroidered logo glinting silver on the lapel, what looks like twin rings interlocking. Marinette wonders at their unhurried pace despite their nice clothes, and she glances up at their face, their gaze moving past them, over them; her chest freezes - its eyes are pitch black. 

“That was a demon,” Marinette hisses as soon as she thinks the demon’s far away enough, clutching onto Tikki’s arm, and Tikki nods tersely. 

“Yes. We’ve passed at least four,” she replies.

“Four?” Marinette says, and Tikki shushes her gently, patting her hand and continuing to pull her along.

“It’s alright. We have a higher chance of safety if we just make it back to your home.”

“Adrien might still be out,” Marinette says, panic squeezing her gut. “He left before Plagg. What if they’re not walking together? If there were just four demons that you’ve seen, how many more are there? How many might be where he is?”

Tikki opens her mouth to reply, but she is interrupted by every single one of the slow-moving people on the street halting dead in their tracks. Their heads snap as one towards Marinette’s house, and then they are running.

“That doesn’t seem good,” Marinette says, fear a cold pit in her stomach.

“It’s not,” Tikki replies. “Get your mask on. We have to follow them.”

“I can’t,” Marinette says. “The glue that I use isn’t water resistant, and I am literally drenched.”

Tikki wipes her hand over Marinette’s eyes, and then takes the mask out of Marinette’s pocket herself, doing the same to it. Marinette touches the area around her eyes and finds it completely dry, the rainwater skidding off the area in beads. “You could’ve done that this whole time?” Marinette asks, looking at their soaking wet clothes as she pulls out the little vial of glue that she’d brought in her pocket just in case.

She watches in amazement as Tikki holds her hand over Marinette’s, completely blocking all rain from hitting Marinette’s hands, the glue, or the mask with what looks like a small invisible bubble, the rain bouncing off of it as if it was solid. 

“Tikki, I’m wearing shorts and a tank top. I’m absolutely freezing, and you could’ve kept us dry this whole time?” she asks, jamming the mask on the dry area of her face.

“It’s better to be natural than it is to be comfortable,” Tikki says, helping Marinette press the mask into place. “And the weather is the least of our concern with demons amok.”

“Well, of course, but I figure I can complain about both,” Marinette says as they start to run after the demons. “And speaking of that, what was that you said about being good at fighting demons not being what the knight is all about?”

“Being the knight is all about the quality of your soul,” Tikki says as they run past Marinette’s house - the demons are rounding the corner, not even taking notice of the bakery, which Marinette finds the space between panting breaths to be relieved over.

They skid to a stop, looking up at the school Marinette had gone to when she was younger, a jagged hole torn through the front doors. 

“Right,” Marinette says as she watches the running demons they’d been following pour into the school. There looked to be at least twenty of them, and it seemed like more were coming from all directions. “My soul will really help me out here.”

“...And it’s also a little bit about being good at fighting demons,” Tikki says.

Chapter Text

Adrien’s head is still a mess by the time he’s a block away from Marinette’s house, and he remembers that he had completely forgotten to grab both her green glitter pen and her notepad before making his exit from the Eiffel Tower. There was no sense in going back; the notepad was likely ruined from the rain, taking all the terrible lyrics he’d been trying his hand at with it, and he’d already ruined the pen before the rain had even started.

He stops moving his body on the staff he’d managed to conjure from a crooked lollipop stick outside Marinette’s, sliding down it like a fireman’s pole until his feet meet the earth behind a row of shops. He presses his forehead to the cool metal of the staff, closing his eyes and letting the rain pound down on him.

On his way, he’d lost track of Plagg. He hopes he doesn’t find him now. Plagg doesn’t seem like the type to deal with crying well, and Adrien sure is doing a lot of it.

His thumb slips on the button that retracts the staff, and it slides to miniature in his hand. It flickers in and out between garbage and divinity between his fingers, and he throws it hard against the brick wall across from him, not even bothering to watch it fall to the ground as just plain garbage before he’s on his knees, pressing his face into his hands and doubling over like the wild pain is something physical, something he could take out if he could just reach far enough inside.

And maybe it is.

He is two parts of one whole; one part his human father, one part his divine mother, and these parts have always, always been at war with one another, tossing and turning inside of him. He can see it now, can almost feel the separation inside of him, like oil and water for organs. His father is the epitome of human - ambitious, stubborn, angry, passionate. Willing to create a life out of the world and carve out a piece to make himself fit. And his mother- his mother-

She took him to his first rock concert when he was 10. He doesn’t even remember the band - it was an indie show. She always took him to smaller concerts, and barely ever any repeats, because of how well-known their family was. He would sit and watch her paint her face at her vanity, using darker shades and styles than she would ever wear otherwise, and he would try not to squirm or laugh too hard when she leaned over and tried to smear a bit of eyeliner around his eyes. 

When they arrived, she’d wrapped her arm around his shoulders and carefully guided him to the very front. People would always make way for her, no matter how crowded the room, and it would always amaze Adrien, every single time, to watch his mother part the ocean, over and over. The people at the shows would give them a double take, and then they’d laugh and strike up conversation with his mother like they were old friends, reaching down to pinch his cheeks or ruffle his hair, friendly and familiar strangers. 

The moment the music had started at that first show, Adrien had fallen in love. It had all been so different, so different even from the similar music that would drift from his mother’s radio, and there had been something captivating in seeing the words take the form of spit against the microphone, to hear the vibrations of the drums changing the beat of his heart. Even with the earplugs his mother had given him, the music had consumed him, the people had excited him. His mother, alight with sweat and contentment, had transfixed him.

He’d put his feet between the bars of the barricade, straining up on his tip-toes to get closer, to understand everything his mother loved even better, and then he’d felt a pair of big hands lift him up, over, and he was sitting on the shoulders of the man who had been standing behind him. He’d called out to his mother, halfway between terrified and exhilarated, and he’d look down to see her looking up at him, eyes full of stars.

“Just relax, baby, and let it take you,” she’d called up to him, and then she’d looked down at the man holding him up on his shoulders, at the whole crowd. When she called out to everyone, her voice rang as clear as a bell, seamlessly integrating into the electric guitar as if her voice was music, she was part of the song. “Take him around, all the way to the very back, and then bring mon petit chaton back to me!”

And then Adrien had been falling back, his stomach lurching, and he was caught by what felt like a million sweaty, kind hands. The hands were from all the smiling faces that he had seen earlier, and so he was not afraid anymore as he bounced and jostled in the air, riding the crowd like a bird on a cloud.

When he reached the very back of the crowd, the hands twisted and laughed with him as they launched him homeward, back toward the speakers, back towards his mother. From his lofty view, out and above everyone else, he could pick out the shape of his mother, but only because he loved her; anywhere else, he found his mother from the dent she made in the crowd, but there she was, jostled and messy, just like everybody else. The only thing that made her different was the fact that she had her back to the hot lights of the stage, her arms outstretched because she loved him, and Adrien was keeping his eyes on her, watching her big smile get closer and closer with each friendly toss of the crowd because he loved her, too.

And then he was falling to the ground, caught just in time by his mother’s loving arms, squeezing him tight and swaying him back and forth. “You flew!” she was saying, combing back his sweaty hair and laughing in perfect time with the drums. “Look at you, my little angel, look at you, chaton, you flew!”

The rain isn’t letting up.

Adrien heaves breath, and he lifts his face from his hands, keeping his eyes closed as he offers his face up to the sky. The rain from the heavens above stings his cheeks, burns, kisses, and it feels like the answer to a question he is dying to know the answer to.

He stands, staggering on feet gone numb from his kneeling, and he walks out from behind the store, letting his hand trail over the rough bricks slick with rain. 

Once in the street, he looks around, trying to reorient himself, and he sees that there’s a school across the street from him. Its large double doors look stately and solid, firmly closed for the weekend, and he turns to look at the store he’d been hiding out behind. It’s a stationary store, probably meant to service the students who go to the school across from it, and Adrien only hesitates for a moment before walking inside.

His clothes and his hair drip onto the wood floor of the shop, and he self-consciously wipes at his cheeks, although he knows it’s just rainwater on his face now, not tears. He drifts through the aisles of school supplies and decorative journals and stickers, careful not to touch anything so as not to get anything too wet.

When he finds the pens, he stares at all the packs of glitter pens before finding the one with a green that most matched Marinette’s, and then he stares at the mini journals until he finds one that’s a soft pink color, like the walls of her cozy room. He takes his finds up to the register, where a bored looking teenager is scrolling through her phone. She looks up at him and whistles. “Some rain, huh?” she asks. “Really came out of nowhere.”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice catching in his throat. He clears it, pushes the journal and the pens towards her. “Um, just these, please.”

She rings them up and tells him the price, and he reaches into his pocket to find that there is absolutely nothing there. He’d forgotten to put his wallet in his pocket before he’d left Marinette’s.

His vision starts to blur with new tears, and he furiously tries to blink them back. He was supposed to be done crying - he’d already made the decision. All that was left now was this measly gift, and then he’d be back at Marinette’s, and sooner or later, he would meet up with Ladybug, and it would all be over. That’s what he had resolved himself to, behind the stationary store, and here he was, getting weak in the knees because he’d forgotten the one thing that would’ve propelled him into the end of this day and the rest of his life. His goddamn wallet.

“Um, sir? Are you alright?” the girl asks.

Adrien opens his mouth, unsure of what to do except for maybe to beg for just the green pen, but then the door chimes open, and Adrien is overwhelmed with the smell of cigarettes and stinky cheese as Plagg is running up and grabbing hold of him.

“We gotta go, kid, there’s- what are you doing?” Plagg asks as Adrien sinks his heels to the ground and refuses to budge. 

“The pen and the journal for Marinette,” he says. “I ruined hers.”

“Well, then grab ‘em and let’s go,” Plagg says, tugging again.

“I don’t have my wallet,” Adrien says, except it comes out more like a sob, and he is dripping rainwater and tears alike onto the wood floor.

“Ah, geez, kid, you’re hopeless,” Plagg says, his soft tone erasing the harshness of the words as he wipes gently at Adrien’s eyes with rough hands. Then he’s digging through his pockets and producing the exact right change to toss onto the counter. “Grab the stuff for your girl and let’s go.”

Adrien dutifully grabs the journal and the pack of pens, nodding his thanks to the girl, before following Plagg out of the store.

“There’s demons crawling out the wazoo around here, kid,” Plagg says, lifting his hand up and creating a shield from the rain. Adrien looks up at the shield and then over at Plagg, completely dry. He hands the journal and the pens to Plagg. “Wha-? Oh, fine, fine, I get it the pen is important, I’ll keep it dry, now are you listening? Demons out the wazoo! We’ve gotta get you back to Marinette’s, and fast.” Plagg starts to pull Adrien into a speedwalk, and Adrien follows.

“How would we take my mother to hell?” he asks.

“Ladybug’s yo-yo can create a portal,” Plagg says “And, by the way, have I mentioned the demons wazoo-ing it up? A whole bunch of them?”

“Does Ladybug have to be the one to open up the portal?” he asks.

“Not really, it’s kind of all about power and intent, or whatever, and I really feel like you are not grasping the gravity of this situation,” Plagg says, and then he stops short in his tracks, pulling Adrien to a stop with him. “Wait, why are you asking that?” he asks.

Adrien shifts on his feet. “Aren’t there demons out the wazoo?” he asks.

“Kid, I swear to god, if you are cooking up a stupid idea in that head of yours, you better stop,” Plagg says sternly, stabbing a finger into his chest. “You better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“How would you even know what I’m thinking?” Adrien asks, jutting his chin out, stubborn.

“Oh, I don’t know, because I have eyes?” Plagg scoffs, rolling his eyes. Adrien frowns, and Plagg sighs, rubbing his forehead. “And- and ‘cause we’re made of the same stuff, kid. We’re family. Trust me, I know what you’re thinking, and I’m saying it’d be better to just stop thinking about it.”

Adrien swallows. “We’re family?” he asks, something in his voice cracking, and Plagg looks at him, charcoal eyes a softened hearth.

He reaches up and ruffles Adrien’s hair. “Let’s just get off the streets and get you back to your girl, okay?” He pulls Adrien back into walking, and then they are smacking straight into two other people.

Adrien stumbles back, an apology already on his lips, and then he looks up to see the Twin Rings logo on a damp polo shirt, and his mouth freezes. There’s another logo on the other person’s jacket. Adrien looks up, stomach made of lead, and he sees that both Twin Rings bodyguards’ eyes are a complete, pitch black.

“Beloved child,” both of the demons scrape out of the bodyguards’ mouths.

“Fuck,” Plagg says, and then he and Adrien are sprinting in the other direction.

Unfortunately, Adrien realizes what Plagg had meant by ‘demons out the wazoo’ because now he sees that there are bodyguards everywhere, running towards them from every street and every direction, like they all have a homing beacon set directly on Adrien’s ribcage. 

“You didn’t say there were this many demons in the wazoo!” Adrien cries as they end up running up the steps to the closed school with nowhere else left to go.

“It’s not like I took the time to count,” Plagg gripes back. He’s fumbling with the locked doors, and Adrien turns around to see the demons converging, tumbling over themselves to get to him faster. 

They move like a single mass, all arms and legs toward him, and Adrien realizes with a growing horror that the demons are a single mass. Wherever they collide, back and chest alike, their skin sticks and stretches, veins connecting and bulging with black sludge. The bodyguards’ throats open, mouths releasing all-too human screams while demonic voices scrape through the vocal cords to harmonize with the screams, singing for him as a hundred hands reach for him as one, fingers splayed, flesh dragging against concrete.

“P-Plagg?” Adrien asks, and Plagg turns to see the mass of skin, limbs, and veins.

“Goddamn akuma,” he mutters, and then he curses. “Fine, destruction of school property it is. Tikki’s always been better at picking your stupid locks.” He steps back, seeming to pay no mind to the monster of flesh rapidly approaching.

“Akuma? What is that thing?” Adrien asks, a note of hysteria high in his voice. 

The monster’s chorus is getting louder, closer. Beloved child, beloved child, beloved child.

“Demons do that sometimes. I gave it a fun nickname a while ago,” Plagg says. “Stand back.” And then the doors to the school explode.

The explosion knocks the flesh monster back, but Plagg’s hand on Adrien keeps him steady, and then they are racing into the open courtyard area of the school, the rain pounding down at them from the open skies above, Plagg’s shield of protection forgotten.

“What do we do?” Adrien asks as they run up the stairs to the second floor, wincing at the sound of cracking wood from the doors. He looks back to see that the flesh mass - akuma? - has doubled in size and torn through the already exploded front doors, fingernails scraping the basketball court alongside mismatched shoes bulging out of black-veined legs. 

“What do you mean what do we do?” Plagg asks as their feet hit the second floor. “We fight it and send it back to hell!”

“Well, yeah, sure, but how?” Adrien persists, trying the handle of a classroom. No good - locked.

Plagg barks out a laugh. “You think I’m the one with a plan?”

“Well, I’m definitely not the one with the plan, either!” Adrien exclaims, throwing his hands up.

They look at each other helplessly.

The akuma reaches the bottom of the staircase. Bone hits the metal railing as it starts to shift, churn, reorient to fit onto the stairs.

“We need Tikki and Ladybug,” Adrien says.

“We need Tikki and Ladybug,” Plagg confirms.

And no sooner had that factual statement left their mouths before a disc sails through the air on a wire made of starlight toward them. The yo-yo wraps tight around the railing, and then both Ladybug and Tikki fly through the air, straight over the akuma, right into Adrien and Plagg.

“What the fuck is that thing!” Ladybug screams, tumbling into Adrien’s arms, and he catches hold of her with a laugh, squeezing her tight.

“Hell if I know, my lady, but we need a plan,” he says, and he could kiss her with how readily her expression shifts into business the moment his arms leave her. “And it seems like you’re the one for the job.”

“Well,” Ladybug says, sharp eyes marking a quick survey of the area, “I think I’ve got a few ideas.”

Chapter Text

First things first, Marinette figures they have to address the giant flesh monster in the room. “So, like, is the whole thing one demon that got really out of hand, or what?” she asks, grabbing Adrien’s hand and leading their group away from the stairs. 

“I mean, I did see, like, fifty bodyguards all kind of… roll together, so I’d say it’s more of an ‘or what’ kind of situation,” Adrien says as Marinette tries the door to Mrs. Bustier’s classroom. 

“Bodyguards?” Marinette asks as the door swings open. 

“Yeah, from Twin Rings. My dad sent them after me when I ran away from home,” Adrien says. “I don’t think he meant for them to be demons, though.”

She glances back - not thoroughly, she really doesn’t think now would be a good time to throw up - and sees that the mass of flesh has only managed to climb a few of the stairs. She nods curtly, ushering everyone into the dark classroom before shutting the door behind her and locking it, just for good measure.

“The demons were likely drawn to the bodyguards, since they were already searching you out,” Tikki says, peeking through the curtains to watch the slow-moving progress of the flesh amalgamation. “The akuma isn’t a good sign; it means the demons’ collective power is getting stronger in this realm. We need to get Emilie to hell soon.”

“Right,” Marinette says, glancing over at Adrien (jaw clenched, face drawn, no tears - Marinette squeezes his hand anyway), “but the more pressing issue is this human-demon ball-”

“Akuma,” Plagg corrects.

“-akuma, sure, the point is that it’s really gross, and it’s getting closer,” she finishes. “I need to know if one pass with this” - she waves her yo-yo - “will get the demons gone.”

“It won’t,” Plagg says. “That’s why akuma are such a goddamn pain.”

“Since they’re made from multiple demons combined, you have to exorcise every demon in order to truly save the people inside,” Tikki says. “I can’t begin the separation process until there’s no trace of demonic energy left in the flesh.”

“That is a goddamn pain,” Marinette says with a sigh. She looks around the classroom, walks over to the windows looking down into the courtyard, looks down at the akuma steadily climbing the steps. “Well, might as well go with what I was first thinking. We need to keep that thing down on the first floor. Tikki, do you think you could fix the door down there? And Plagg, I need that staircase to be broken.”

They both nod, immediately ducking out of the classroom, and Marinette turns to the back of the classroom, where Mrs. Bustier always kept the supplies the class shared. “Do you still have your baton?” she calls back to Adrien, rummaging through the drawers until she’s found two pairs of scissors and a roll of duct tape.

“No, I- I lost it,” Adrien says.

“You could probably grab a piece of the broken stairwell,” Marinette says, sitting down on top of a desk and planting her feet on the chair. She takes hold of one pair of scissors in both hands, pulling hard on each side of the handle. “Or, you know what? Grab a pencil and break it. That way you won’t be unarmed when we go out.” The scissors snap in her hands.

“Sure,” Adrien says as Marinette puts down the two blades of the now broken scissors, “and what exactly is the plan for when we go out?”

Marinette picks up the other pair of scissors, pulling hard on the handle. “It’s less of a plan and more of a vague idea I’m hoping won’t get us killed,” she says, and the second pair of scissors snap in half. She rubs her sore fingers on her thighs and then picks up one of the scissor blades, bringing her foot up and positioning the blade on top of her shoe. “I’ve got to get up close and personal with the akuma to exorcize all the demons, so I’m going to kind of just” - she rips off a long piece of the duct tape - “climb it?”

“Eugh,” Adrien says, and Marinette snorts out a laugh, holding the blade in place as she wraps the duct tape around it and her shoe. “God, where are the pencils in here?”

“Check the top right drawer of the teacher’s desk,” Marinette says, ripping off another piece of duct tape to wrap around her new stabbing shoe. She hears the pens and pencils in the drawer rattle as Adrien opens it up, and she spares a moment to send a silent thanks to Mrs. Bustier and her deep-set habits.

“How’d you know that’s where they’d be?” Adrien asks as Marinette triple-tapes her shoe, for stability. 

“I went to school here,” she says, moving on to her other shoe. “This was actually my classroom. I was class president, and I was always helping my teacher out, so I got pretty used to knowing where everything was.”

“Is that also how you knew this classroom would be open?” Adrien asks, and Marinette smiles.

“Mrs. Bustier always stays late and forgets to lock the door,” she says, finishing up her other stabbing shoe. She looks up to see Adrien leaning against the desk across from her, twirling his baton - flashing in and out with a broken pencil - absently in his hands. “Give me your shoe.”

“Are you going to give me knife-boots, too, class prez?” he asks, and Marinette nods, shifting her position on the desk and patting the wood between her legs. Adrien dutifully swings his leg up and props his foot onto the desk.

“I mostly want you to try and distract the akuma while I climb all over it, but I want you to be able to do some climbing on your own, just in case,” Marinette says, ripping off a long piece of duct tape. “It’s not my best plan, but I can’t really think of what else to do with a giant flesh monster.”

Adrien hums. “Where did you sit?” he asks.

“What?” Marinette asks, smoothing down the edge of the tape on the top of his shoe. She rips off another piece.

“When you went to school here. Where did you sit?” 

Marinette looks up at him, raising her eyebrows. “Is the flesh monster concerning to you at all?”

“You’re giving me knives on my shoes, Ladybug,” Adrien says. “And I don’t see a flesh monster in this room, but I do see a former class president and a whole bunch of desks.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Marinette says, but mostly she just feels relieved. She’d been afraid Adrien would be too shaken up from their conversation earlier to properly focus on the fight, but there’s a soft light in his eyes, and his shoulders are easy and relaxed. “At the front,” she finally says, pointing at the desk way up at the front of the classroom before returning to taping the scissor blade secure on Adrien’s shoe. “Right next to Alya.”

“I wish…” He trails off, and Marinette looks up. He’s looking at the front of the classroom, his eyebrows twisted in a soft, sad looking expression.

“You wish?” Marinette prompts, tearing off another piece of duct tape.

“I wish I got to know you back then,” he says softly, and Marinette’s heart jolts. She stares at his face, tries to piece out the meaning of that sad look with those words. And then he laughs, shaking his head. “Class president. Of course you were class president.”

“And look at where that got me,” Marinette says, smoothing down the tape over the scissor blade. “Making weapons out of school supplies.”

“They do say childhood leadership roles build character,” Adrien replies, and Marinette scoffs. She taps his foot, and he drops it to the floor, swinging the other one up. She makes quick work of this shoe, and she’s just smoothing down the last piece of tape when Adrien speaks again. “Do you remember what I said after you kissed me?”

Marinette chokes on her spit. Between coughs, she manages to say, “Adrien, I was just handling a fucking knife.”

“I know,” he says, sliding his foot off the desk. “That’s why I waited until you were finished.”

She stares at him open-mouthed.

“Do you remember what I said?” he asks, and Marinette gestures in the vague direction of the door and the flesh monster waiting outside, but it’s half-hearted because now she is thinking about kissing Adrien. He waits for her.

“I-I don’t know,” she finally manages to squeak out, covering her face with her hands. “You made some joke about going to dinner?”

“I said I wanted to take you out to dinner first,” he says, and Marinette’s face burns.

“Right,” she says, nodding into her hands, “that was it.”

“Before all this is over, before we give hell its queen and all that,” he says, and Marinette manages to look up at him. He’s leaning against the desk, his hands resting lightly on its edge, and he’s looking at her with a steadfastness that makes her heartbeat jump up to her throat. “I want to take you out to dinner, Ladybug.”

Marinette swallows, tries to remember how to breathe. “Before?” she asks.

He smiles. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”

He’s so beautiful that Marinette has to look away from him, or else she’ll strangle him, or something. Looking at her like that, saying things like that, all while in that grayish dim of a dark classroom, empty of the whole world except for them. 

“I cannot stand you,” she says, jabbing a finger in his chest and stomping towards the door in her knife shoes. “Being that distracting when there’s a flesh monster outside.”

“So are you going to let me take you out to dinner?” Adrien asks, jogging after her, and Marinette thinks that answering him or even looking at him while trying to focus on a fight with several demons combined would be too dangerous, so she just violently waves her hand at him as she grabs the door handle to the classroom. He laughs; her face burns.

“So you lovebirds are finally done?” Plagg asks as soon as Marinette opens the door, and she screams, throwing a punch in surprise. Plagg catches her fist easily, patting her knuckles with his other hand.

“Sorry,” Marinette manages to say, feeling her face burn even brighter, and then she stops, yanking her fist away and gaping at Tikki and Plagg. Tikki is leaning a hip against the railing that overlooks the courtyard, arms crossed but otherwise perfectly relaxed, and Plagg, is of course, standing right next to the door, back against the wall. “Wha-? How long have you two been waiting out here?”

“How long ago did she send us out?” Plagg asks Tikki as Marinette leans over the railing, examining the broken staircase, the completely whole door, and the very angry akuma thrashing around on the pavement, completely trapped.

“About four minutes ago,” Tikki says. “We’ve been waiting here for about two and a half minutes.”

“And you two were just” - Marinette waves her hand around - “eavesdropping?” 

“We didn’t want to interrupt,” Tikki says at the same time that Plagg says, “well, of course.”

“Oh, my god, okay, whatever,” Marinette says, pinching the bridge of her nose and feeling bizarrely like no one cares enough about the flesh monster on the ground floor, including her. “We need to focus. I have knives on my shoes now, and I’m going to use them.”

“What would you like us to do?” Tikki asks, and Marinette sighs.

“Distract it from getting too mad at me while I’m on top of it,” she says, really wishing that this was not her idea. “I’m going to spider monkey this bitch.”

So Adrien, Plagg, and Tikki both jump down to the first floor, while Marinette grips the railing in preparation of spider monkey-ing that bitch. She watches Adrien expand his broken pencil baton and then bang it hard against the pavement, causing a resounding metallic sound that has the flesh on the akuma rippling, its limbs straining over to Adrien.

The sounds it’s making - which Marinette had largely been able to ignore thanks to being in the classroom - also shift, the wordless grinding and screaming of vocal chords, vaguely reminiscent of discordant music, turning into the words “Beloved child” over and over, overlapping and straining, just like the fingers that splay out to touch Adrien right before Plagg stomps his foot and cracks the earth beneath the akuma, throwing it off balance. Tikki takes advantage of the akuma’s distraction, nimbly and almost invisibly darting forward. Marinette sees her hand swipe across the hard skin of the akuma before she’s dragging a long, thick ribbon of sludge behind her. She makes a swinging motion with her hand, and the demonic sludge ribbon wraps itself neatly around her wrist.

Marinette remembers that first demon, trying to hold back tears and throw up alike in Aurore’s studio while Tikki pulled black sludge from Aurore’s eyes. It took forever and looked really gross at the time, but now, in comparison to the writhing mass of skin, muscle, and bone thrashing around her old school, Marinette just feels touched that Tikki’s helping her out. She is also, of course, really grossed out.

The three below start the process of Adrien drawing attention, Plagg deflecting, and Tikki sneaking in once more as Marinette climbs up to stand, balanced, on the edge of the railing. She unslings her yo-yo from around her waist, narrows her eyes, and then jumps down right after Plagg’s explosion settles.

There is a moment of terrifying weightfullness, the knowledge that she is falling to the ground with only the fused-together bones of countless humans to catch her. She resists the urge to close her eyes and scream, clamping her jaw shut tight and forcing her eyes open to the horror rapidly approaching.

And then she lands, teetering hard to the side, and she lets herself lose her balance because the akuma’s flesh jolts at her contact. “Knight,” multiple mouths nearby her hiss, and she slides off the side of the akuma, throwing an arm out and catching hold of something - she doesn’t really want to know what - to keep her from falling to the pavement entirely. And then she stabs her shoes into the flesh with a sickening crunch.

The akuma screams, thrashes, and Marinette holds on for dear life. 

“Yo!” Adrien shouts, and she hears his baton ring out against the discordant screams. “Weren’t you just singing a song to me? Come on, I want to hear it!”

“Chat Noir,” the akuma’s mouths murmur, as if remembering that he’s there. “Beloved child.” The song resumes, hammers on granite, and Marinette opens up her yo-yo with her teeth before pressing it to the akuma beneath her hands. 

Whatever she was grabbing hold of shifts, brushes along her arm, and Marinette makes the unfortunate mistake of looking up to see what exactly her hand is gripping around. 

It was an arm. Its fingers are straining for her forearm, purple painted fingernails making contact with the hair along her wrist. 

And there is a face, right beneath the arm, stretched tight like a fitted sheet, its bulging black eyes rolling and heaving out of the skin.

“Fall,” the face sings in its grating way, and then the rest of the mouths are joining in, adding their own variations to the song. “Fall, Chat Noir, beloved child, rebuke the knight, love us, discard the mortal body, beloved child, Chat Noir, fall,” stumbling over itself. Loud enough to pound against Marinette’s eardrums. She keeps her hands steady.

And then there’s a feeling in the yo-yo, a little pulse shot to her heart as if to say that it was done and she needed to shift its position. She takes the yo-yo away from the skin, and the moment she does, the harsh black in the eyes of that face beneath the arm that she is still, despite it all, clinging onto, snaps away, leaving only wide, terrified brown eyes.

“H-help me,” the face gets out, its voice suddenly all too human, and the dark brown eyes slide to Marinette, the pupils straining to see her. 

Marinette stares into the soft, human brown eyes, and she begins to feel a horror that is nameless, wordless, and all-consuming.

“Please,” the human fused together with countless demons says to her, and a tear falls from those brown eyes, mixing with the beads of sweat oozing out of the pulsing flesh. “Please help me!” the human cries, and the hand with the purple fingernails makes a grab for Marinette’s wrist.

She can’t help it. She yanks her hand away, her knife shoes tearing out of the flesh with her shift in balance, and she falls hard on her back onto the pavement. The pain and the air knocked out of her mean nothing because she immediately rolls over and throws up - or rather, dry heaves, as she has had no time to eat anything today.

Behind her, she can hear the akuma making its screams into that discordant music, and the one human in that mass of writhing flesh sobs in pain and confusion, the melody to those dissonant notes.

Hands touch her shoulders, and she screams, thinking only of those purple painted fingernails reaching out for her, that face, grotesque in its humanity, calling out to her. Still calling out to her. 

“Ladybug, my lady, it’s alright,” Adrien says, and Marinette sobs, shaking her head, covering her face with her hands.

“Nonononono,” is all that leaves her mouth, her tears and spit alike making dark spots on the pavement.

“Ladybug, it’s getting- ah, shit,” Adrien says, and then there is the sickening crunch of a blade sinking between gristle, and Marinette’s neck moves without her consent, looking up to see Adrien’s foot firmly planted in the akuma only a few feet away.

The akuma screams. The human cries out.

“Love us loveusloveus,” the akuma sings. “It hurts! Make it stop it hurts!” the human sobs.

“Stop it!” Marinette shouts, surging up from the ground to wrap her arms around Adrien’s waist and yank him back. He grunts, they both tumble backwards, and then he’s picking her up by the armpits, throwing her over his shoulder and lifting them straight off the ground.

“Hold it off for a sec!” he shouts out to Tikki and Plagg as he jumps off his baton, retracts it, plants his feet on the second floor, and sets her down in one smooth motion. Then he’s smoothing her hair back, wiping her tears and trying to catch her gaze. “What happened, LB? What’s going on?” he asks, gentle and soft.

The akuma singing, the human screaming. She covers her ears with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut, but she can still hear the gritted tones of the demon’s voices, and in the blackness of the back of her eyelids, all she sees are a pair of wide, scared brown eyes. And so she opens her eyes and fixes her gaze on Adrien’s face, the tears in her eyes making a hazy golden halo out of his hair. 

“I-I took a demon out,” she finally manages to say, her hands still half-covering her ears. “And the human came back, and she’s awake, and it hurts,” she sobs, crying into her fists like a little girl. “I don’t want to hurt her. I-I can’t look at her. I don’t want to hurt her.”

“There’s… a human, conscious, in that?” Adrien asks, looking over the railing to the inhuman thrashing of limbs and tongues below.

Tikki appears beside them, one arm wrapped in demonic sludge up to the bicep, and she’s holding the yo-yo in her free hand. Marinette must have dropped it down below. “I know it’s-”

“Why didn’t you say anything about the humans inside the akuma waking up?” Adrien demands, whirling around to Tikki, who opens up the yo-yo and slides the demonic sludge in with a grimace. “You didn’t give us a warning, and now Ladybug is-” he breaks off, looking back at Marinette, still wiping actively falling tears. His eyes, pained, reach out to her, and then he grabs hold of her hand, stepping back to stand beside her. “We can’t fight it if we’re hurting the people in there,” he says firmly.

“There’s not really another option,” Tikki says, gently taking Marinette’s free hand and pressing the yo-yo to her palm. Her touch sends shockwaves of divine peace flooding through Marinette’s veins, and it’s almost as startling as the horror that had been pumping through her arteries before. “Adrien’s cataclysmic power might be able to separate all the demons, but there’s no guarantee all humans will survive intact, and then we’d be dealing with all the demons individually.”

“But you didn’t say anything about that,” Adrien persists, his hand squeezing Marinette’s in his vehemence. “Or that, while we’re actively harming the akuma, we’ll also be actively harming more and more humans the more demons we take out.”

Marinette’s stomach drops, fist fights the divine peace Tikki’s still pushing through her. She hadn’t thought of that.

Tikki looks between them, and then her eyes make contact with Marinette’s. A tide of emotion surges in Tikki’s eyes, and she sighs, an ocean of apology on her breath. “To be honest,” she says, looking down at the crying akuma below, “I didn’t consider it. It’s been so long since an akuma manifested on the human plane, and I… forgot that this isn’t a sight or feeling familiar to you humans, especially with how readily both of you accepted the initial appearance of the akuma. I should’ve warned you; I am truly sorry.” Her eyes meet Marinette’s once more, and Marinette can feel how much she means it, how much she wishes she hadn’t upset them, all in the light touch of her hand on Marinette’s. “You humans are delicate beings capable of so much care and love, and you are all the better for it,” she says, and then she gently pushes the yo-yo to Marinette’s chest, lifting her touch on her hand to brush away one of Marinette’s tears. “And that is why you are the knight. That love and care you feel for a woman you have never met, that strong desire to not hurt anything, no matter how corrupt - that is why it’s you, Ladybug.”

“But what if I’m not strong enough?” Marinette asks, shaking her head. Just one person crying for her help had quite literally grounded her, thrown her off into near insanity. How would she deal with every human trapped in that demonic cluster of muscle begging for her help?

“You are,” Adrien and Tikki say at the exact same time, and Marinette looks between them, at the complete and utter certainty in their voices.

“You are strong enough, Ladybug,” Adrien repeats, and Marinette fixes her eyes on him, clutching the yo-yo to her chest. It pulses in time with her heartbeat, and she can feel Adrien’s ring beating with her in their still-clasped hands, too. “Do you know why?”

“Why?” she asks.

“Because you want to save everybody down there,” he says, pointing down at the akuma. “You want them all to stop hurting. And the only way to do that is to take all the demons out.”

“When I separate the akuma, I’ll heal all wounds, wipe every horrible memory of this,” Tikki says. “The pain will only last until we’re done.”

Marinette takes a shaking breath, squeezing her eyes shut and gripping Adrien’s hand hard. Adrien and Tikki are right - she knows what she has to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“Hate to break up this breakthrough moment,” Plagg rushes, crouching on the railing, “but Adrien’s dad is here.”

“What?” Adrien exclaims, and he speeds over to the railing with such force and velocity that he tugs Marinette along behind him and she ends up slamming into his back.

“No, no, he’s not inside,” Plagg hurries, “he’s just getting closer. I can hear him coming down the street.”

“We need to stall him until the akuma and the humans are taken care of,” Marinette says, stepping back from Adrien’s back and smoothing his shirt. “Plagg, do you think you could go out and-”

“Not a chance,” Plagg says. “I’ve made this akuma so pissed off I think it’ll chew through wood to get to me,” he says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. Sure enough, the akuma is slamming its body on the broken stairwell, as if trying to get it upright to get to Plagg.

“Fine, then Tikki, it’s up to you,” she says, and Tikki nods.

She puts one hand on the railing, as if ready to jump off and land right in front of the doors, and then she pauses. Marinette is about to ask what’s wrong, but Tikki surprises her by turning around and wrapping her in a tight, all-consuming hug. It feels like a summer day, like the soil that nourishes tree roots, like the embrace of a friend.

“I believe in you, Marinette,” she whispers into Marinette’s ear, squeezing her once, and then she steps back. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she calls out to everyone, and then she’s gone.

Marinette wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. She feels steadier, although her insides still waver, but now they’ve got a time limit. She has to pull herself together, for the sake of protecting Gabriel for Adrien, for the sake of all the humans waiting for her down below.

“Okay,” she says, looking between Plagg and Adrien, “it’s up to just you two to distract the akuma while I’m on top of it.”

“We’ll take care of you,” Plagg says, and then he’s bending backwards over the railing, letting his body fall to the ground floor. There’s a small explosion, a shower of powdered concrete, and the screech of the demons below.

Adrien turns to Marinette. “Just look at me and we can trade out, whenever you want,” he says, his eyes full of a burning, ferocious sincerity that he makes sure she sees by keeping his eyes level with hers. “I’ve got the knife shoes, too, remember?”

“I remember,” Marinette replies with a small smile. “Thank you, Adrien.”

He looks at her like he wants to say something more, but he just closes his jaw, letting go of her hand just to take her cheeks in his hands. He leaves a parting kiss on her forehead, and then he leans down, pressing their foreheads together. He doesn’t say anything as his eyes connect with hers, and she doesn’t say anything, either; the heartbeat of the liquid metal of his ring against her cheek, the pulse of the yo-yo in her hand, the places where their skin connects - that all says enough.

And then he’s letting her go, jumping onto the railing with a little salute to her before he’s letting himself fall backwards as easily as Plagg had. 

Just like before, Marinette hangs back, waits for Adrien and Plagg to get into a rhythm of distraction together, rubs her sweaty palms on the jean of her shorts. 

Without Tikki in front of her, coaxing every cell in her body to calm down, Marinette feels dangerously close to an anxiety attack, but she’s got none of her usual niceties - no ice cream, no blankets, no fans. She slaps her face with her hands and then climbs up onto the railing, her knees shaking as she crouches down, waiting for the right moment.

“Help me!” she hears between percussive tongues pounding out their unholy song. 

Marinette takes a deep breath, and then she points her finger at the akuma, just like Adrien had done. “I want to save everyone down there,” she says to herself, and she believes it. 

So she jumps.

Chapter Text

Adrien glances at the door for perhaps the millionth time and then stumbles, looking back forward to see his baton caught in the grip of one of the akuma’s many hands waving through the air like particularly hungry and violent anemones. He presses the button to make it extend, jabbing the flesh of the akuma, before quickly tapping the button again to bring it back to the size of his fist. 

“Focus, kid!” Plagg shouts at him from the other side of the akuma.

“I am!” Adrien calls back, although he knows that’s not strictly true and Plagg also knows that, even though they can’t see each other over the massive bulk of the akuma.

He just can’t help it - his father is somewhere out behind those doors. One of the bodyguards probably gave him an alert, somehow, before they got possessed. When none of the other bodyguards responded, despite the ridiculous number of them, Gabriel had likely gone out himself to see what the issue was, why they couldn’t bring his son home. He was here, walking down the street and into the mouth of a demon, all because he was worried about Adrien.

And it’s not like Adrien can imagine him being truly slowed down by Tikki, minus real divine intervention - which Tikki must have resorted to by now. There’s no way his father would’ve listened to a disgraced former business partner for longer than a couple seconds, and as one of Ladybug’s ‘managers,’ he would see Tikki as even more responsible for that disaster at the bar that he yelled at Ladybug for. 

Adrien looks at the door.

One of Plagg’s explosions rocks the air, and then a hand is grabbing Adrien’s foot. He stumbles, off balance, and the only way to keep himself from getting crushed by the hard give of flesh stretched tight over roped muscle and bone is to grab hold of a stray ankle and yank himself upward as the akuma rolls away from Plagg’s beration. 

He uses the scissor blades that Ladybug had taped to his feet to continue hauling himself up, and he winces with each stab of the blade into the akuma’s skin. Ladybug has obviously made great progress because every other open mouth is a human screaming for help, and each time he stabs his shoe into the skin, they all cry out in pain.

From far away, half-focused on the door and half-focused on distracting the akuma, it was easy to push the sounds it was making to the back of his mind. The demons’ song had long since become background noise, even though he could feel that most of the song was directed at him - they kept calling his name, begging him to love them, to look after them, to fall. Adrien didn’t need to listen to that.

But now, palms scrabbling to find purchase on sweat-slick planes of flesh, what was loudest was not the urging song of the demons, but the human cry of people in pain. Everywhere he looks, there’s wide eyes bulging out of stretched thin eyelids to catch a glimpse of him, to call to him for help. Hands and feet alike strain to brush along his clothes, fingernails catching on his hemlines, voices telling him to make it stop, make it stop, you’re hurting them, you’re hurting them, make it stop makeitstopmakeitstop make it stop.

A hand grabs hold of the front of Adrien’s shirt, pulling him down hard, and he’s too dizzy with sickness and grief to stop it. His arms collapse, the only thing keeping him stable on the roiling planes of skin the blades on his shoes and the grip of the hand on him, and he finds his face pressed to the skin between two faces. He can tell from their voices; one is a demon, licking out music from a barbed wire throat and the sound of his name, and the other is a human, sobbing into his ear.

And it’s all Adrien can hear, all he can feel. The turmoil of this cursed being he’s connected to, the rejection of itself deep in its marrow. The raw desire seeping through its sweat glands for him, for the lives trapped inside. He begins to cry, breath for breath matching the human next to him, harmonizing with the demon song.

Just as he feels like he’s lost himself completely, like he’s just a cube of flesh to add on to this monster of men, a different voice rings out, and a cool, gentle hand runs fingers through his hair.

“I am the one you are calling for,” the voice warbles, shaky but clear, “and I’m knocking them down, I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” The hand slides down Adrien’s face, a thumb running along his cheekbone, and he manages to lift his head.

Ladybug is on her knees - they’re on top of the akuma now - and her hand is on Adrien’s face. Her other hand is being used to press the yo-yo into the skin, and she is singing down into the human face by Adrien’s head. “I am the one who loves you,” she continues singing, and the human sobbing quiets, lulls. “So trust in me, your little knight, and I will bring you home, too.” Her skin is glowing red, and she is crying.

The demon singing in Adrien’s other ear comes to a halt, and he looks over to see the previously pitch-dark eyes wide with a hazel-irised fear. The human begins to cry, and Ladybug shifts over, petting the back of her hand over the human’s sharp cheekbones jutting out from the skin. “I am the one you are calling for,” she sings, starting her verse again, her focus so intent on the crying human that Adrien would think that she didn’t realize he was there at all if her hand on his face didn’t gently creep down to the hand that was still gripped tight around the cloth of his shirt.

He watches, enraptured by her graceful, fragile divinity, as she gently pries the fingers off his shirt. He’s able to shift over, regain control of his own limbs, and his heart thumps at the sight of her cradling the flexing, agonized hand in her palm as she finishes her verse. As soon as it’s done, Ladybug gingerly leaves the hand grasping at air, glassy eyes shifting to the next singing face a yard or so over, already starting to sing again.

“Ladybug,” he calls out, finding his voice, and he reaches a hand out to touch her wrist. As if on instinct, she takes his hand in the same way she had cradled the hand writhing from the akuma’s surface - gentle, forgiving. “Ladybug,” he says again, louder so that she’ll hear. “Do you want to trade out?”

He can’t imagine taking over for her, not after only a few seconds on the akuma had nearly rendered him useless, but he could do it if she needed it. He could do it, since he promised. He could. And she’s still crying; thick, steady streams of tears drip from her eyes like waterfalls, although the rest of her face is strangely serene.

“Do you want to trade out?” he repeats, louder, and a furrow forms between her brows.

“I am the one who loves you,” she sings, shaking her head as if in confusion as Adrien reaches forward and tries to wipe some of her tears away. She leans her face into his hand, and when she blinks, her chin wobbles. But then her eyes are open once more. “So trust in me,” she continues, her tears running over Adrien’s fingers, “your little knight, and I will bring you home, too.”

And then she turns away from him, smoothing her cool hands on the hot skin of the akuma.

“KID!” Plagg shouts out, and Adrien startles hard enough that he fully loses his grip, his shoes dislodging from the muscle. He falls back, bracing himself for the impact of his body on the tattered remains of the concrete beneath them, but Plagg is beneath him in a flash. He catches him and then practically tosses him onto his feet. “I was going to say get your butt down here, and it looks like you read my mind,” Plagg says, flicking his fingers and causing a microexplosion that gets the akuma screeching away from them.

“I know, I know, I need to focus,” Adrien says, attempting to shake his head clear of what he’d seen, readying his baton once more. “But Ladybug is up there, and she’s-”

“She’s fine,” Plagg interrupts. Adrien opens his mouth to argue, but Plagg grabs him by the shoulders. “She is fine, and I mean that. She’s coping. And I’m leaving.”

“What?” Adrien exclaims, and Plagg curses, snapping his fingers to cause another explosion a few yards in front of the doors, keeping the akuma from veering too far away from them.

“There’s a situation outside, and I’ve got to meet it before it gets worse,” Plagg says, his words rushed.

“What is it? Is my father-”

“You are going to focus,” Plagg says, punctuating himself by jabbing his pointer finger at Adrien’s skull. “I’ve gotta take care of this, you’ve gotta do your part. She needs you right here,” he says. Ladybug’s song, the quietest of all the sound ripping out of the akuma, rings clear to him now, now that he knows how to pick it out. Adrien swallows. “Got it?” Plagg asks.

“I’m here,” Adrien says, nodding. “I’ve got it.”

“Good,” Plagg says, and then he’s gone.

Adrien swallows. There’s a billion images swimming through his mind of all the kinds of situations that could be happening outside, but he forces them down to the pit of his stomach, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

And then he runs forward, working his muscles to bat his baton against the chunks of displaced concrete on the ground, causing ruckus to disrupt the demons’ song. He darts back and forth, ignoring cries for help and begs for love, hearing snatches of Ladybug’s song and trying to focus on that. 

The rain had stopped sometime ago, but the air is still thick with the moisture and heat of a storm - each breath Adrien takes in is as coppery and sweat-slick as the akuma’s skin, as Adrien’s own skin. The baton is slippery in his hands, the base material pencil too slim and smooth to keep a good hold on. He can feel his breaths coming faster.

His body is aching. He is running in circles. He is squinting up through sweat and tears alike in the hopes of seeing the red glow of Ladybug’s skin. He is swinging his baton like a baseball bat, and when it meets its target, a human voice pleads with him to have mercy. His body is so tired.

His shoes are scraping over crushed concrete, he is weightless and looking up at an ice baked blue sky.

“Involve your mortal body in matters of heaven and hell, and see how fast it withers. Fall, beloved child, and free the queen.”

Adrien hits the ground, mentally and physically exhausted. He’s distantly aware of his baton rolling out of his fingers, but his whole world is going hazy, and his breath is pincushions in his lungs. He wants, very badly, to go to sleep. He thinks it must be forever since he slept.

He wonders if he’s about to die. He wonders what will happen to him, half-boy that he is, when he dies. He wonders if it will feel like it did the first time.

And he stares up at the moving flesh of the akuma - from the song of it, all human now - and the waving fingers and ankles are like dandelions under the hot summer sun. There is the summer sun, burning red, just above them, kneeling over them. He watches as the sun stands and climbs down from its flower, and he blinks tears out of his eyes as she kneels down beside him.

She is crying. She is singing. She is burning.

“Ladybug,” he says, reaching an aching arm up to touch her cheek. The moment his skin touches hers, warm against warm, she closes her eyes with a sob, bending in half over him and crying into his chest.

Adrien takes it all willingly, and he traces a finger along the edge of her glow, up her forearm glittering in the sun, and then presses his hand flat on her back, right between her shoulder blades. He feels her breath on the palm of his hand, feels the way it hitches and releases.

One of her hands searches, stretches out, and he lifts his free hand for her to find - realizing there is an earthy, greenish burn to the shade of his skin. He twists his arm in the sun in wonder, and then her burning fingers find his, thousand-degree sparks flying from the power of it. But it doesn’t sting him - it feels like lava cooling where their hands meet, the palms of their hands grinding together to make new soil for the lichens forming. 

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Long enough for the ache in his body to dull, for his eyelids to pull closed and his breathing to slow. He no longer feels like he’s going to die, just that he needs a proper moment in a bed. Ladybug has stopped crying into his shirt, and she is breathing easy and smooth, her cheek pressed against his heart and her eyes closed. 

He opens his mouth to say something cheesy about dinner.

But then his field of vision is filled with his mother’s golden face, her hair like ribbons of sunlight and dewy perfumed roses falling over his face. “Mon chaton,” she says, her green tea eyes glistening with tears.

“Mama,” Adrien replies, and he finds that he is not sad, and he is not angry. He smiles at her.

After that, Adrien and Ladybug have to stand up, separate a little. Tikki gently tries to tug Ladybug over to the akuma to get her help in saving the people still trapped inside, and Adrien’s mother and Adrien’s father, who has run in now, both try to usher Adrien a little farther away from the crying ugliness of the humans suffering.

But, for a moment, Adrien keeps his feet planted in the same spot, and Ladybug does the same. Their hands are still melded together in the same way that the layers of earth kiss each other, long familiar. Adrien looks at her, at their still-burning skin. Her face is gentle, her eyes obviously grieved - rimmed-red and sad - but her tears are gone, her shoulders strong.

She squeezes his hand, and she steps toward him, pressing their foreheads together. They look into each other’s eyes, and Adrien feels, acutely, that they have been changed. That Ladybug knows it, too.

Adrien lifts their held hands and presses a soft kiss to the hard bone of her knuckles. The seedlings of a smile tug at the corners of her mouth.

Then they are stepping away from each other, meeting their next duty. 

Adrien’s mother and father wrap their arms around his shoulders, guiding him away and fussing over his clothes and the blood dripping from his nose. Adrien feels Plagg fall into step behind them.

When they’ve walked far enough away that the humans’ crying isn’t so bright and Adrien can’t stand being any farther from Ladybug, he halts in his steps, waiting for his parents to stop with him. Sure enough, Gabriel and Emilie both miss a step, immediately turning to look at him.

For a moment, he stands before them, behind them, and they just look at him. His father’s hair has been washed clean of its usual hair gel by the rain, now making rainbows up between the clouds, and there is a raw, tired look in his eyes that Adrien has not seen in years, perhaps since the last time he saw his father next to his mother.

And his mother. His mother has his blood smeared on the bottom edge of her Cat Shell Crush shirt that she’d used to wipe his bloody nose clean, and her silver glitter eye makeup has started to run, staining her cheeks like shimmering tears.

His father is holding Adrien’s left hand in both of his, and his mother is doing the same with Adrien’s right. For a moment, the three of them seem to look at each other with a loss.

And then Plagg places a hand on Adrien’s shoulder, and Adrien breathes out a sigh. Gabriel’s palms, warm and dry, tighten around Adrien’s hand.

“Adrien,” he father says, and Adrien is surprised to find that his father sounds near tears. “I never meant-” He breaks off, his steel gray eyes flicking over to where Ladybug and Tikki are, peeling apart layers of human skin like winding thread into skeins of human parts. “I sent the bodyguards because of all the danger you are in, all the things looking for you because your mother…” His voice trails away, and Adrien looks over his father’s face, at the awkward tug of his mouth trying to communicate words and feelings he’s lost practice in.

“My mother,” Adrien repeats, and he squeezes his father’s hand to show him that he has accepted his father’s clumsy apology. He turns his eyes to his mother, although he speaks to his father. “Does this mean you knew?”

His parents exchange a look.

“He knew what I am,” Emilie says, smoothing her thumb over Adrien’s knuckles. “What you are, our beloved child.”

Adrien thinks of years of locked doors and tinted windows, his father’s paranoia broadcasted in ever-changing security codes and strict curfews. He feels a forgiveness wash over him - he’d be paranoid, too, if he’d known the entire universe was out to get him.

“You left to try to find an alternative,” he says to his mother, and he sees her eyebrows twist. “Did you find one?”

Her bottom lip trembles. “I searched everywhere I could, in every realm, with every star, every being, every rock overturned. All the while you grew up in this world I love without me to see.” She reaches one of her hands up to shakingly touch Adrien’s cheek with the palm of her hand, and Adrien closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. He does not feel his determination waver, but rather feels it strengthen - even as he starts to cry.

“I thought about you all the time,” he says, his throat hot with his own tears. “In everything I did.”

His mother pulls him tight in a hug that feels like speakers blasting music to hold him in a cradle, like the ice cream they’d get after concerts, exhausted and sweet and warm. She combs her fingers through his hair, and he feels small and young, beloved.

“And I see it,” she says against his shoulder - he’s taller than her, has to bend to wrap his arms around her waist like he did when he was a child. “When I came back, I found your band, with that nice boy you’d started to make friends with before I left. He’s wonderful on the guitar. And your noise is pure creation.”

Adrien pulls away, tugs at the sleeve of her Cat Shell Crush t-shirt. “You listened,” is all he can say, and she nods, smearing his tears into his skin with her coppery hands.

“The first thing I did when I got back was catch up on everything you’d done, everything you’d created. It was too dangerous to contact you or your father, so I found you in any place I could,” she says with a smile, and then her chin starts to wobble. “But then I heard about that interview the knight had announcing her new partner, and I tuned in to your radio performance, and I feared I was too late. I wanted to warn you at the radio performance after-party, but I bumped into a demon and ran, hoping that he would chase after me.” She stops, shaking her head. “And your concert… that’s when I knew there was no escaping anymore. That drummer was so nice to check on me, even when he’d just been so sick, but I only got him into danger. And you. And…” She trails off, looking over at Ladybug. “Your poor little knight. I was so afraid, and so wrong. I should’ve never hurt her.”

Adrien’s mind is racing, tracing back and finding all the points of contact he could’ve had with his mother. She was there, watching at the concert. He scrapes every corner of his brain, trying to pick her out in the crowd like he’d always been able to, but all he remembers is the safety-pinned spine he’d made glittering along Ladybug’s back.

“You were at the concert,” he says, and his mother nods, her eyes brimming with sunny day rain.

“You were beautiful,” she says. “You were flying.”

“Then,” Adrien says, a darkness roiling under his heart. “You saw Ladybug with me before you hurt her.”

His mother, Emilie Agreste, the rebellious angel, drops her face into her hands. “I saw your souls entwined on stage,” she sobs, “and I never thought I could be so happy, but then-”

She breaks off, and then Gabriel wraps her up in his arms, petting his dry hands along her Rumplestiltskin-thread hair. His father is crying, too, Adrien realizes. 

“But then,” his mother continues, “when I thought of what she might have to do, to separate my family-” Emilie looks up from her husband’s arms, gazing lovingly at her son’s face. “I felt as though I had no other choice.”

Adrien looks between his parents, holding their clumsy hands out to him, and then he looks at the sunset, glowing red and walking toward him, barefoot.

No, Adrien thinks.

Ladybug touches a solar flare fingertip to his elbow, resting her other palm on his mother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” is all she says.

“It’s alright,” Emilie says firmly, turning to Ladybug. “I can see now - or I’m starting to,” she says, her voice faltering as she glances at Adrien.

Please, Adrien thinks.

His mother wraps him in a hug like her rose perfume, her arms warm and just the right size to hold him. “Wherever you go, whenever you are,” she whispers into his ear, “remember that your mother loves you.”

And his father joins them in a family hug, tight and wound like the clockwork on the inside of a rose, and his mother makes them promise to take care of each other, and the whole time Adrien is reaching a boiling point beneath his skin, his legs itching to kick out.

His mother is pressing a kiss to his forehead. He is watching his parents embrace, he is staring as Ladybug arcs her yo-yo into a graceful circle, a hand outstretched to her ward, his mother. 

“I’m sorry for all I’ve done to you,” Emilie says.

Ladybug smiles, and she kneels down on one knee, pressing his mother the queen’s hand to her forehead. “All is forgiven,” she says, and then that graceful circle she’d been spinning, unbroken in their shared peace, rips open the still storm-thick air, revealing a churning dark maw of a place, grinding machinery calling out for its ruler. 

Adrien is locked in place, unable to breathe.

Emilie thanks Plagg and Tikki. She kisses Ladybug’s cheek, whispers something in her ear. She steps into the mouth of her rule. Ladybug is nodding, smiling gently.

And Adrien is taking a deep breath and crying out for his mother, running forward and grabbing her hand before she is all consumed. “Mom,” he calls.

“Baby,” she says, kissing the back of his hand, smiling through her tears, “carry my love for this world, won’t you?” she says, and then she is stepping back, and the maw is closing its teeth, and Ladybug gently pulls him back, and he is holding nothing at all.

He is holding nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Marinette’s phone dings, letting her know that Alya is on her way. She curses, setting down her eyeshadow palette to tap out a quick reply before returning to sitting cross-legged in front of her full length mirror, smearing gray eyeshadow on her eyes with her fingertips.

“You really are late a lot,” Tikki says from where she is sitting on Marinette’s desk chair, idly testing each one of Marinette’s many pens on a sticky note.

“I heard about rockstars being fashionably late at a young enough age that it stuck,” Marinette says, leaning back and squinting at herself in the mirror. The smudge of gray goes a little too high on her right eye. “Unfortunately for me and everybody else.” She leans forward to try and blend out the smudge with the only clean part of her fingers she can find - the side of her pinky.

Tikki pauses. “Really?” 

“No,” Marinette says. “That was sarcasm.”

“Oh,” Tikki says, and then she laughs. “That was funny.”

Marinette’s phone dings again, and her eyes catch on a message from Adrien.

Adrien

Adrien:I’m leaving my house now
Adrien:I know you might not be ready yet, but my father and I are making a quick pit stop before we head to the party

Her heart softens, and she wipes her fingers on the red fishnets crossing over her thighs before typing out a response in the affirmative.

It’s been a week since Emilie left, for good. 

Right after it happened, right after she had nudged the jaw closed that then clamped its teeth over its queen, all Marinette had wanted to do was crawl up inside Adrien’s ribcage and sleep there, with a hand over Adrien’s heart to keep it safe. And Adrien-

Adrien.

Her memory isn’t hazy per se, but the way the images of that day come to her mind are different from the way every other memory does. It’s as if she’s remembering everything from a distance, like she was a storm cloud watching over her body on the concrete below, her thoughts about what she needed to do coming at her like lightning and her body enacting her commands like the steady stream of a downpour. Through it all, the confusing divinity and the wild intake of her senses, all she remembers clearly, sharply human, is taping knives to Adrien’s shoes, looking up to a sad cast on his face as he gazed at the desk she went to school in.

And she remembers afterwards, pressing her cheek against his heartbeat and closing her eyes, feeling like the universe was moving through her pores, moving out through the liquid gold dripping from her eyelashes. She’d been so exhausted, a filter for the loose matter of the world to sift through, and Adrien had been the thing to call her back to herself, remind her of her own love in her own body.

She hadn’t wanted to take his mother away, so soon after they’d reunited. She’d taken her time with Tikki, repiecing together each human that had cried out for her, holding their hands as their cries lapsed into a peaceful amnesiac sleep. But there was only so much delaying that could’ve been done. They couldn’t face a demon like that again, couldn’t risk another akuma.

Marinette had stood on the steps of her old school, watching as his father led Adrien to a slick black car still dewy with the rain that had berated them before. She’d wanted to go with him. Something inside her marrow was screaming out for her to run and catch him, to keep him from leaving her sight. She’d even found herself running down the steps of her school, catching her palm against the car door before it closed.

“Adrien,” was all she said, and there was no chance that even a fraction of what she’d meant to say made it into the tone of her voice or the way her face moved, but from the way Adrien’s expression broke, the way he leaned forward and pressed his face into her stomach, hunched as he was from the car - he seemed to understand.

“I’ll see you, soon, my lady,” he’d said, and then he was driving away with his father.

Logically, Marinette knew that was best. Adrien had just lost his mother, truly, and he probably had a lot of things to sort out with his father. He also needed real rest in his own bed - with everything that had happened in that 24 hours, she doubted he’d had a proper moment to close his eyes, let alone truly rest. She’d felt similarly.

So they’d parted ways, before her marrow had been ready. She stayed home, helped her parents, told Alya everything that had happened, to the best of her ability. Hung out with Tikki, who seemed content to stick around. She and Adrien sent messages back and forth, shared a phone call here and there, but it was few and far between, and Marinette didn’t blame him. He was going through a lot.

She was honestly surprised when he agreed to meeting up with everybody. She’d just brought it up like it was weird to think about, unsure if she herself had even wanted to face a frivolous business party after everything she’d seen. She was kind of unsure about everything, now.

“I think it sounds nice,” Adrien had said, his voice quiet on the other end of the line. “It might be good to see everybody. The band, and all. It could be nice.”

So they’d talked it through, and they both decided that it would be best to keep the business side of things out of it; neither of them felt ready to step back up onto the stage and perform, but they did both want to see the kitty section. Marinette suggested that Luka’s band still come - they were all close with the kitty section, after all - and Adrien brought up Chloe coming. They decided on a kick back instead of a business meeting, hosted at Luka and Juleka’s houseboat, since they offered, and so that was what was happening.

It had been a full week since Marinette had saved exactly fifty two souls and held an angel’s hand down into her place in hell, and it had also been a full week since Adrien had asked her to get dinner.

Not that Marinette thought that last part was particularly important, in the grand scheme of things. It was just that she was thinking about it. And maybe she was thinking about how she’d been too busy trying to focus to say yes.

“Do you think it’s salvageable?” Marinette asks, turning around from the mirror and holding up her eyeshadow-y hands up to Tikki.

Tikki caps a dried-out pink highlighter. “Are you trying to replace your normal mask with makeup?” Tikki asks, completely genuine, and Marinette drops her head into her hands with a groan. So much for looking nice.

Her phone dings, and she kicks it over to Tikki, turning back to the mirror and wiping her hands over her fishnets and her skin alike. “Check that for me? I’m going to try and figure out what to do with all this.”

In the reflection of the mirror, Marinette sees Tikki bend down and pick her phone up from the floor. Marinette turns her eyes back to her own reflection, mentally tracing out the area that her mask normally covers, her head bobbing along to the music tumbling out from her speakers.

“Hm,” Tikki says.

“What is it?” Marinette asks, testing out the black eyeshadow on her finger before smearing a bit of red glitter on top of it. She makes a face.

“It looks as though Adrien is on his way over here.”

“Here?” Marinette asks, somehow jumping up to her feet. Her unused makeup brushes and multiple palettes scatter around her feet, and she looks helplessly at her reflection in her mirror.

She looks insane. She’s only half-ready in her fishnet tights and her oversized CSC t-shirt that she normally sleeps in, holes torn in the fabric by the neckline from overwear. There’s gray eyeshadow all over her eyes, black and gray eyeshadow smudged up every single one of her fingers, and a smear of red glitter somehow on her cheek. She looks like a goddamn raccoon.

“Why is he coming here?” Marinette demands, tumbling down the stairs in her room to scrub at her hands in the washroom.

“It seems Alya heard from Nino that Adrien had an errand at the bakery he wanted to complete,” Tikki calls down to her, and Marinette rushes up the stairs, yanking off the hairband she’d been using to push her bangs back and picking hopelessly at her fringe.

“Nightmare,” Marinette says when her bangs resolutely flip up, exactly how she hates them. 

“Are you worried about him finding out your identity or him finding you half-dressed?” Tikki asks as Marinette searches through her bed covers to find her lounge pants that she’d thrown over in this general vicinity.

She stops, looking over at Tikki slowly. “Does it… matter?” she asks.

And Tikki, by now used to answering all the questions that Marinette doesn’t say in words, looks at her carefully. “Sometimes we should let the universe take its course,” she says, and Marinette feels her knees give way.

“Do you mean-?” she starts, but then her parents are calling her name from down in the bakery, and Marinette is once more jumping up to her feet, grabbing hold of her lounge pants and jamming them on over her legs.

She rips open the trapdoor of her room, and there Adrien is on the steps, looking up at her.

Marinette squeaks, snapping her head over to her desk, but Tikki is gone. 

“Hi,” Adrien says, pulling her attention back to him, and Marinette looks down at him, heart racing fast. He looks over her face, his gaze fond and soft, and he smiles at her. “Remember me?”

“Of course, I remember,” Marinette splutters, leaning back so that Adrien can finish climbing up into her room. He sits down on her floor, legs dangling over the edge, and looks around her room with an inscrutable look on his face. His eyes catch on her CSC poster, and her old worn shirt, and he meets her speechless look with a smile. 

“I’m sorry to surprise you like this, Marinette,” he says.

“It’s- it’s alright, I was just getting ready- I mean, I didn’t know you were-” She gestures vaguely, standing up and helping him to his feet, too. His hand is warm in hers, a shock of static electricity traveling between their palms. She pauses, and he does, too, looking strangely down at their conjoined hands. Marinette holds her breath.

“I thought about texting,” he says, letting go of her hand to walk over to her poster, “but I realized the last time I was here, I didn’t even get your number.”

“Oh,” Marinette says with a nervous sort of laugh. She really wishes Tikki had been clearer on what she was allowed to say. She tugs on her own makeup-stained fingers as he stares at her with warm, familiar eyes.

Now that she knows what he really is - a divine boy with an angel for a mother - she wonders at how no one else could guess it. Beauty radiates off him in waves.

“You- you left your wallet here, with your old clothes,” she finally manages to say, throwing a hand out to point to his jersey and jeans, freshly washed and folded on her sewing desk, his wallet placed neatly on top. “I wanted to take it to you, but-” she breaks off, shrugging helplessly.

Adrien breathes out a laugh, walking over to his clothes. He places a hand on his jeans, traces his fingers over the frayed edges that the washing machine couldn’t take the red out of. “As a matter of fact,” he says, turning around and slipping a hand into his pocket, “I have something for you, too.”

“You do?” Marinette asks, startled.

He nods, and he pulls out a small pink notebook along with a bundle of glitter pens, all wrapped together with a pink ribbon. Marinette stares, eyebrows furrowed, and then looks up at Adrien. “You lent me a notebook and a pen. I lost them,” he says.

“I did?” Marinette asks, blinking, and Adrien laughs.

He steps forward, pressing the notebook and the pen in her hands. The touch of their skin shocks again, but he just closes her hands over his gifts, clasping her hands in his. “Along with some clothes you said I could keep, a place to stay, and your kindness.”

Marinette looks down at the notebook and the bundle of pens in her hands. If she lent Adrien a pen, there’s no way she lent him a whole pack - he’d gone out and bought a whole new one, just to send his thanks. To her, Marinette, a person he only knows from the minimum she’d given him.

“Adrien,” Marinette says, feeling tears well up in her eyes, “you really didn’t have to-”

“I did,” he interrupts, squeezing her hands. “You were a stranger to me, but you comforted me when I needed it, and offered safety when I had nowhere else.” He pauses, his thumb moving over her knuckles as his eyebrows furrow. “I know I didn’t end up taking you and your parents’ kind offer to stay the night, but my father and I couldn’t stop thinking of your unending generosity. We wanted to thank you.” He pauses, looking over her eyes, at whatever he could see there. “I wanted to thank you.”

“It was really nothing,” Marinette says, although Adrien isn’t looking at her like it’s nothing, and her heart isn’t thumping like it’s nothing, either.

Adrien smiles. “No, it really wasn’t,” he says, and then he idly reaches up to fix the wayward curl of a lock of her hair.

Her breath catches.

He pauses, and he looks at her, really looks at her, and then a mark of confusion falters over his face, and he steps back. He clears his throat, and when he looks at her again, that confusion is gone, replaced by a smooth, grateful look.

“Anyway, that’s all we stopped by for,” he says, gesturing to the notebook and pens in her hands. “To thank you, and see you.”

“Of course,” Marinette says, fighting through her blush to grab him his clothes and his wallet, pushing them into his hands. “Thank you,” she says, hugging his gifts close to her chest.

He takes the clothes gratefully, smiling when their fingers touch and their electricity passes through them again. “Do you think you could show me to the bathroom?” he asks. “I’ve decided I want to wear these pants instead.”

“Oh, sure!” Marinette says, and she leads Adrien down the steps to her room, showing him to the family bathroom. 

“My father is downstairs talking with your parents,” he says at the threshold of the bathroom. “He wanted to personally thank you, as well, so if you could go down and meet him, it would mean a lot.”

Marinette’s chest softens, somehow, even more. “Of course,” she says.

Adrien stares at her. The moment stretches like the rays of a sunset.

“I feel…” Adrien says, hesitantly, and Marinette leans forward. He breathes out a laugh, shaking his head. “It seems silly.”

“Tell me anyway,” Marinette says, and he looks up at her, that searching look he’d given her back in her room fixed in his eyes once more.

“I feel as though if we’d met earlier, we’d be best friends by now,” he says softly, and Marinette can’t help it. She throws her arms around him and hugs him. 

He startles, reeling back from her weight. “I feel the exact same way,” she whispers, and she feels him relax, wrapping his arms around her tight.

She’d just meant for it to be a short hug, the quick embrace of new friends, but she’d missed him so much, and he doesn’t let go, either. It feels like Marinette’s heart is tugging her body closer to his, making tears well up in the back of her throat as she grips his shirt in her hands.

When he finally pulls away, Marinette has to wipe at her eyes surreptitiously, although she knows she probably isn’t as good at hiding it as she’d hope to be. “Sorry,” she says, but she isn’t, really.

“Don’t be,” Adrien says, and then she leaves him at the bathroom, stumbling out some words about meeting his father, and she tries to pretend she doesn’t feel him watch her go.

She kicks herself on the way down to the bakery, thinking of the universe going its course (whatever that means), thinking of hugging Adrien for the first time in a week and he didn’t even know it, thinking of dinner. 

But all of those thoughts are pushed out of her head by the sight of Gabriel Agreste, in jeans and one of the few Ladybug and Chat Noir t-shirts that had been printed before the entire project had been put on hold, his usually perfectly coiffed hair falling down over his tired forehead. He’s talking with her parents, his steel gray eyes fixed on their faces, and, if Marinette didn’t hear the words he was saying, the intensity with which he was saying them would’ve made her think he was scolding her parents.

“...Truly, there is not enough compensation I could offer for the services you have provided for my son,” Gabriel says firmly. “But I must offer all the same. If it suits you, I can write a check-”

“Please, Mr. Agreste,” Marinette’s mother interrupts, holding her hands up with a laugh. “That really isn’t necessary.” 

“I insist-” Gabriel starts, and then stops, his cold eyes catching on Marinette. He stands up from where he was sitting on one of the kitchen island stools, clasping his hands behind his back and bowing deeply to Marinette. “Ms. Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” he says abruptly, standing up straight. “I am Adrien’s father, Gabriel Agreste.”

“H-hello,” Marinette greets, looking at her parents. They both give her matching shrugs, their faces light and amused. “Pleasure to meet you,” she says, sticking her hand out for a handshake.

Gabriel looks at it with his sharp eyes, and Marinette is just about to drop it and just move on, when he awkwardly takes her fingers in his, shaking them in a way that no normal man would. Marinette stares at him, and Gabriel clears his throat, releasing her fingers and returning to clasping his hands behind his back. She thinks she sees a ruddy flush begin to creep up his neck, like he’s embarrassed, but his face remains the same cold slate.

Marinette starts to laugh.

“I don’t understand what’s funny,” Gabriel says, his voice testy, but that only serves to make Marinette laugh harder when she looks up to see that the ruddy red has gotten up to his jaw. It looks just like the way Adrien blushes.

“Mr. Agreste,” she says, and she feels the urge to hug him, too, knowing why he’s got that tired look in his eyes. But she settles for resting a hand on his arm, giving him a light pat. “My parents aren’t going to accept a check.”

Gabriel stares at her, perplexed. “Then,” he says, turning to her parents, “anything - within reason, of course - at my estate is yours to-”

“No, no, no, Mr. Agreste,” Marinette says with a laugh. “Don’t you see? We care about your son, too. Why would we accept money for loving him?”

He shakes his head, still looking confused.

Adrien comes down the stairs then, the jeans she’d distressed for him what seems like forever ago hugging his thighs and dragging rust-colored thread along the steps. The other jeans he had been wearing are thrown over his shoulder, and he’s tied his sweatshirt around his waist to reveal that he changed into his jersey, too. When Marinette finally manages to look back at Gabriel, she is embarrassed to see that it looks like he is just now starting to understand what she means.

“I see,” Gabriel says stiffly, looking between Marinette and Adrien. 

“I-I mean,” Marinette says, “we - as a group, as a family, you know, care about him. We love him together, all three of us.”

“You do?” Adrien asks, looking between the four of them standing there. Marinette’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. Gabriel looks at his son with a pained look on his face that Marinette is starting to recognize as severe awkwardness.

“Of course we do, sweetheart,” Marinette’s mom says, breaking the silence for the rest of them. She steps forward to fix a lock of Adrien’s hair, and something in his face breaks. He pulls Marinette’s mother into a tight hug, and she returns it without hesitation, without question.

Gabriel turns away, a hand going up to his eyes. 

Marinette touches a hand to his shoulder, and she sees her father pat a large hand on Gabriel’s other arm. 

“Oh, hell,” Tom says, wiping a tear from his eyes and clapping Gabriel on the shoulder. “We’re huggers here, Gabe- come on in!” And then he envelops both Marinette and Gabriel Agreste in one of his signature bear hugs, scooching the three of them over until they are colliding with Adrien and Sabine, and then he wraps them up in his bear hug, too.

Adrien responds with a wet sort of laugh, ducking his head and accepting the love, and Gabriel responds by awkwardly looking over Marinette’s shoulder, in the direction of the door. 

Until Adrien’s shoulders start to shake. Then Gabriel turns to look at his son, and he clumsily maneuvers a hand onto Adrien’s shoulder, patting once, twice.

This time, Marinette really can’t help it. She hugs Gabriel Agreste.

When she’s standing with her parents at the front doors of the bakery to see Gabriel and Adrien off, Gabriel tries to send Adrien to the car before him.

“I told you, Father, my friends probably won’t be accepting money,” Adrien reminds, and Gabriel looks up at the sky.

“I am aware,” he says stiffly, glancing down at Marinette’s family. 

“Okay, as long as you know that,” Adrien says with a shrug. And then he turns to Marinette’s parents, giving them both one last hug and goodbye before he turns to Marinette. 

Static electricity vibrates in the air between them, or at least it feels that way to Marinette. Adrien steps forward and hugs her, tight.

“You’re a beautiful person, Marinette,” he says against her hair. “I’m happy to have-” He stops, squeezing her once and then letting go. “I’m happy to know you,” he finishes with a smile, and then he walks back to the car.

“Thank you once more,” Gabriel is saying to her parents. “Since you will not accept anything else, accept my unending gratitude. My son is fond of both your family and your sweets, so I ask that, when our paths cross again, you will indulge him just as seems to come natural to you,” he says, and Sabine laughs behind her hand.

“Of course, Mr. Agreste,” Marinette’s mother says, and she mimics a curtsey with the apron tied around her waist. Gabriel blinks and bows.

“Well, hey, you’ve got some fancy words and a good boy there,” Tom says, clapping Gabriel hard enough on the shoulder to make him stumble, “so you’re always welcome here, Gabe.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel says stiffly with a curt nod, and he turns to Marinette. He clears his throat, glancing at her parents, then back at her, and then takes a step farther away from the threshold of the bakery, turning his back slightly.

Marinette remembers this eccentricity - she follows even though he didn’t say if he wanted her to. “Was there something you wanted to tell me?” she asks, and he nods, his cold eyes fixed on the pavement.

“Yes, you see,” he starts, and he clasps his hands behind his back, nodding his head again. “I am obviously very grateful for the care you have offered my son.”

“As you keep saying,” Marinette says with a little smile. She can see that ruddy blush creeping up his neck.

“Quite,” he says brusquely, and then he clears his throat. “And because of my gratitude for you, I would like for your friendship with my son to be-” He drops off, waving his hand vaguely as he searches for the word. “Equal,” he finally decides on.

“Okay?” Marinette says.

Gabriel sighs. “I fear my son may have his heart reserved for another,” he says, as if the words are grinding themselves out of a rusty engine, his eyes still fixed to the pavement.

Marinette stares at him. “What?” she asks.

“It is beneath my dignity to tell you who, so don’t ask,” he says sharply, and Marinette holds her hands up, shaking her head as if she would never dare to do such a thing. Gabriel shifts his shoulders, pinching at the fabric of his t-shirt like muscle memory is begging for him to fix a tie. “I would like for my son to be happy, and he is clearly happy in your family’s company, so please do not hold it against him for having affection for another. That is all.”

He speedwalks down the pavement, sliding into the waiting car and slamming the car door shut. As soon as it’s closed, the car pulls out of its parking space, cruising down the street.

“Weird guy,” Marinette’s father says.

“He seemed to be trying his best,” Marinette’s mom says, patting Tom’s arm.

“Well, I hope they visit soon,” Tom says, pushing open the door to the bakery and holding it for Sabine and Marinette. “Haven’t I always said we should be closer with that Agreste guy since he’s always hiring us? And look at that! He even let me call him Gabe, just like I thought.”

“Yes, dear, you have always said that,” Sabine says idly, patting Tom’s chest as she walks by. 

Marinette laughs, and then there is the sound of a different car peeling through the street, skidding to a stop in front of the bakery. She turns around to see Alya poking her head out of the window on the driver’s side. “Girl,” she says, “you are nowhere near ready.”

“Shit,” Marinette says, because she’d essentially forgotten she was only half-ready and supposed to be on her way somewhere, and then she’s sprinting up the stairs and pushing open the trapdoor in her room. 

She takes one glance in the mirror and then screams, slapping her hands over her eyes. She just met Adrien and his father, for a heartfelt moment as herself without the mask for the first time-

And she looks like a goddamn raccoon.

“Alya please tell me all this makeup looks cool and avant garde,” she says into her hands as Alya climbs up through her trapdoor. 

“Sure, if a raccoon tried their hand at high fashion,” Alya says, and Marinette sobs.

With Alya’s help, Marinette manages to scrub off most of the gray eyeshadow from where it’s not supposed to be, and they both decide her baby pink slip dress deserves something just as subtle - and less time-consuming. She’s just slathering on her lipgloss when something catches her eye in her mirror.

She smears her lips together, capping her lipgloss and walking over to her CSC poster, slipping her socked feet into her stompers as she does. The frame is a bit crooked on the wall, and she fixes it, frowning down at the new marks on the bottom of the poster in what looks like green glitter gel pen.

“What is it?” Alya asks as Marinette squints back at her desk. Sure enough, the bundle of pens she’d left on top of her new notebook have the green pen sticking out just a little farther than the others, as if someone slipped it out, used it, and then hastily tried to shove it back in.

She bends down so that the new marks are eye-level, and she reads the words written neatly at the bottom edge of her design.

Thank you for everything, Marinette. Your friend, Adrien.

“Oh, shit,” Alya says, looping an arm around her shoulder, “did Adrien give you an autograph?”

“Yeah,” Marinette says, and she strangely feels a pit growing in the bottom of her stomach, unsettling her balance. “I guess he did.”

“You made him take your poster off the wall, pop it out of the frame, sign it, and then put it all back together?” Alya asks incredulously, and Marinette blinks, startled out of her uneasiness.

“Of course not!” she splutters. “I would never make him do that, I didn’t even ask for this-”

She stops. Both she and Alya seem to make the connection at the same time.

“So he did all that,” Alya says, gesturing to the poster hanging just a little crooked on the wall, “without you even knowing?”

“I had him out of sight for, like, two minutes,” Marinette says, racking her brain. He’d said he wanted to change, but it would’ve been easy for him to slip back into her room and quickly sign the poster when she’d gone downstairs. But then- he’d actually changed clothes. And he was gone for two minutes, still. “Is Plagg hiding somewhere around here?” she asks absently,  looking around the walls of her room and wondering if Adrien perhaps had divine help. “Tikki?” she calls.

“No angels here, girl, except for your boy,” Alya says teasingly, poking a finger in her ribs. “And he doesn’t even know you’re you, yet, right?”

Marinette’s face burns, and she leans down to zip up her stompers. “I don’t think so,” she says. She touches a finger to the mask that Alya had already helped her glue to her face.

“I say we get on that,” Alya says, pulling Marinette until she’s standing up straight and steering her toward the trapdoor to her room. “You two need to hurry up and kiss already. Nino thinks so, too.”

“Alya!” Marinette exclaims, kicking a playful leg out. Alya laughs, batting her boot away, and urges her to hurry her pretty ass up because they’re already late enough as it is.

Marinette agrees, grabbing hold of the handle on her trapdoor and taking one last look at the autograph on her Cat Shell Crush poster. She feels a little bit like the glint of the green glitter pen is telling her goodbye.

But then Alya is slapping her ankle, and Marinette is griping despite the fact that she, as always, is the one making them late, and she closes the door to her room, leaving the autographed poster where it’s supposed to be.

She bounds to the car with Alya, and she convinces herself that she’s going to meet Adrien in just a few minutes, with the rate Alya drives, and everything will be fine. The queen is where she’s supposed to be, she’s feeling normal enough to hang out with her friends, and she’s seeing Adrien again in a few minutes.

Everything is fine.

She thinks about Adrien, and she thinks about dinner, and she thinks about how he’d said before they’d taken care of his mother. She thinks about the halt in his words before he’d said goodbye to her, just a handful of minutes ago, and she thinks about the finality of a green glitter pen.

Alya reaches across the center console to bat Marinette’s fingernails out of her mouth, and Marinette laughs, shaking her head.

Everything is fine. It has to be.