Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Marinette de-transformed as soon as she hit her bed.

When the Council of Paris first announced Ladybug and Chat Noir's mandatory days off, the first thing she had thought was, oh my God. I can finally sleep in . But ever since their December break started, she'd been up at six o'clock sharp every morning, raring for the morning patrols she'd been doing for four years now, veins pumped with so much adrenaline her pyjamas would be drenched with sweat.

She'd tried going out. Again. This time, at least, not to helicopter the patrol volunteers, but to just get some fresh air. Still, Squad 4 had caught her wandering around, and had gently shooed her off.

"Go home!" one of the girls said, laughing. "You're supposed to be relaxing!"

That's what she'd thought, too. But apparently her body did not wish to comply.

Pulling her phone off charge, Marinette checked the time. 

9h00. And there she was thinking it was already midday.

She rolled onto her back. Stared at her ceiling. Lay there until a chip on the frame of her skylight started to piss her off, then clambered out of her loft bed, grumbling.

Marinette checked her phone again. Only two minutes had gone by. Scattered in all their different time zones, the girls would probably still be sleeping, so calling anyone was off the table. She supposed she could have another fiddle around with her sewing machine, but, if all her frantic Googling amounted to anything, she probably wouldn't be designing anything until she summed up the money to buy a new one. The deliveries for the bakery wouldn't even be coming in until 12:30, and, while she hated delivery days, she hated being bored even more.

Midway through pulling on her blazer, her phone began to ring.

She picked it up without checking the caller ID. "Hello?"

“I’m not coming back to Paris," Alya said.

Marinette froze. "What?"

Silence.

If she thought she'd been awake before, she was very awake now.

She lowered herself to her desk chair, blazer slipping down her arms. “But— didn’t you say—?”

“I know. I know. I really thought I'd be back for Christmas, at least. It’s just…” Alya sighed down the line. “BBC News offered me a fixed contract. For a year. I can’t give up an opportunity like this.”

Another silence, swelling up between them like a bruise.

She should say something. Something like oh my God! or congratulations! or I'm so happy for you! Alya would've done the same for her. But the words clung to the walls of her throat.

"T-that's amazing, Al," she said. "What's the plan now? With IPJ?"

"I'm gonna defer my entry," she said without missing a beat. "If they give me an offer, of course. But if my contract gets extended, then…"

Her gut coiled up, tight like a spring. 

So she'd already made her decision.

The thought had entered Marinette's mind a few times before, but she'd always dismissed it as one of those anxious brainworms that'd wheedle their way in every now and then. Alya loved London. It was no secret — her Instagram was flooded with photos of Big Ben, of the London Eye, of big cups of slush puppies held up in front of Oxford Street. 🇫🇷 living in 🇬🇧 had only been in her bio since the start of their gap year but it felt like so long she didn't even remember what she had deleted to make space for it. And Marinette couldn't help but wonder, sometimes, whether Alya might decide that London, with its scarlet telephone boxes and bus stops, might be a better fit for her than Paris.

Better than moving in together. And opening their ESMOD and IPJ acceptance letters together. 

“Are you upset?” Alya asked.

Marinette swallowed hard. “No, of course not," she said. "You deserve this more than anyone."

Alya didn't respond. Briefly, she wondered if the connection had cut again. The little apartment Alya was staying at had terrible WiFi. They'd both made a promise to each other to find a good broadband provider before they got their apartment in June, even if they had to dish out some more cash. Neither of them could stand poor connection.

Then, quietly, Alya spoke. "Will you still enter the gingerbread house contest?"

Her heart squeezed.

Suddenly, Marinette wanted to hang up. If she hung up now, she could quietly withdraw her application without letting her know. This wasn't something she wanted to talk about. 

Because she knew what Alya would say if she found out she wanted to pull out. She knew how much she wanted her to join, after spending so many years hoping for a December she would have time to take part. 

But she couldn't imagine herself entering now, not without Alya. Not when it was always meant to be with her.

The silence seemed to give her away, because Alya spoke again. “You should still give it a try," she said. "Even if I'm not in Paris."

"Alya—"

"Please, Marinette."

She hated it when she said 'please'. They never said 'please', not to each other. They never needed to.

Marinette closed her eyes. "Okay," she said, conceding before she could even stop herself. "But it's not gonna be the same without you." 

She said nothing for a moment. "I'm really gonna miss you, M."

And, just like that, the coil in her gut snapped open. Tears stirred at the back of her throat. 

Marinette gulped before she let herself speak. "I'm gonna miss you, too," she said. "But it's— it's okay. London isn't that far from Paris, anyway. I can always come visit." 

"Yeah," Alya said. "You can always come visit."

It wasn't a lie. Not exactly. But it tasted just as bitter as they said it. She knew Alya wouldn't be getting many days off anymore. She might not even be in London most of the time. The BBC could send her anywhere. They already had her going up and down the UK as it was.

"Um. I'm gonna go," Marinette said. "There's, uh, a delivery coming in a few minutes. For the bakery."

"Of course. I have a video conference soon, anyway," she said. "Also, Marinette?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Marinette let out a deep breath. "I love you, too, Alya."

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

Across the kitchen counter, his phone vibrated.

Chat Noir shot forward, so fast the wok on the stove wobbled, and desperately woke up his home screen.

Incoming call from K .

His heart slowed. 

Despite how hard his hands were shaking, he coordinated himself well enough to answer the call. "Hello?"

"Hi," Kagami said. "Why do you sound so out of breath?"

Chat Noir winced. He couldn't exactly tell her that he was an off-duty superhero who was taking a break after four years in action and couldn't even cook himself some stir fry without worrying there was an akuma attack somewhere around the city. It didn't help that there had been an akuma since their break started — Mr Pigeon, but an akuma nonetheless — and his phone had failed to send him his usual alert. He'd only gotten to the scene because he'd been buying ingredients for lunch and heard the news on the TV inside the corner shop.

"Um," he said instead, "I was doing yoga."

She paused. "Okay. Anyway." She took in a breath, as if she was about to say something, then hesitated. "I wanted to let you know that…" Another breath. "I changed my flight details. I'm waiting to board right now."

Chat Noir, stirring the contents of his wok, stopped. "You're leaving already?"

Kagami took in a sharp breath, barely discernible over the line. "Yes," she said evenly. "I am."

"Oh," he said, more surprised than anything. "I didn't expect you to deviate from the plan."

She hesitated again. "Some things are worth the deviation."

In the four years that he'd known Kagami, he'd learnt one thing — his father never questioned any of his business with the Tsurugis. Be it that he wanted to stay on good terms with a bloodline so influential, or because of some esoteric business strategy he had up his sleeve, when Adrien said he would be with Kagami (whether he actually would be or not was never investigated too deeply), six out of ten times he would be allowed out of the house.

(Compared to the usual zero-point-two-five times out of ten, that was a lot).

So when he and Kagami approached their parents with a month-long skiing trip in the Swiss Alps, where there would conveniently be no phone signal to be hounded by texts or calls, they reluctantly let them go. It was their gap year after all, and when he promised to do extra makeup photoshoots and she promised to make it back in time for her fencing tournament in Japan, there was little reason to say no. 

But there was no skiing trip. Instead, there was a month entirely to themselves, to spend doing whatever they pleased, so long as they remained undetected by anyone from their normal lives. The latter part was surprisingly easy — after he posted a photo of the actual alpine skis they’d bought from Rossignol, nobody had any reason to be suspicious.

He lowered the heat on the stove. He wished he could take this phone call out on the balcony — the kitchen had gotten far too hot — but he still wasn't too sure whether someone would recognise him de-transformed, even with a mask. He couldn't risk someone walking by outside and seeing Adrien Agreste out on some balcony in the nineteenth arrondissement, especially when he was supposed to be in Switzerland right now. It'd only be a matter of time before word got around and the Gorilla was banging on his apartment door to drag him back to the mansion.

“That’s… very early,” he said. She was supposed to be in Paris for at least two more weeks before heading to Amsterdam — and she’d never been one for last minute changes. “Did something come up?”

Kagami said nothing. The sound of rolling suitcases and background chatter filled the line.

“Are you safe?” he asked automatically. 

It was a question they’d been passing back and forth over the past few days. While she’d been rather open about her plans to travel during their break, he’d had his lips sealed shut. This apartment was supposed to be a secret, somewhere for him to come back to as Chat Noir — he couldn’t put his identity on the line by telling her that. It worried her — you’re not planning to go off the grid forever, are you? — and he didn’t quite understand it until now, when Kagami ‘never hesitate’ Tsurugi was currently hesitating.

His anxiety mounted the longer she stayed quiet. “You’re not in trouble, are you?” he said. “Did someone recognise you? Is that why you’re leaving early?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” But her voice was still tight, tight in a way he’d never heard before. “It’s, um…”

And then it clicked, like a piece of a puzzle he didn’t even realise he was trying to solve. 

“You’ve met someone,” he said. Not a question, but a statement of fact.

A pause. A long, fortifying inhale.

“Yeah,” she said. “A girl. I met a girl.”

Chat Noir broke out into a grin.

“ Aw .”

“Adrien. Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“Your thoughts are loud.”

“I just think it’s—”

“If you say cute —”

“— adorable that you’re getting shy—”

“That’s even worse.”

“—while talking about your girlfriend .”

“She’s not my girlfriend ,” Kagami hissed. 

Chat Noir so wished he could video call her right now. Just so she could see his very emphatic eyebrow waggle.

“So it’s a transnational booty call?” he asked.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“No, wait, I’ll stop,” he said. “What’s her name? Where did you guys meet?”

She sighed, sounding like she very much wished she hadn't called him. “We met last year, during that tournament in The Hague,” she said. “We used to train together. She asked me out while I was there, but I told her I didn’t want to do long distance, so we agreed we’d give things a try next time we were in the same country.” Her voice grew quiet. “I’ve been waiting so long to see her again. We were talking last night and… I just couldn’t wait two more weeks.”

Chat Noir tried really, really hard to hold in the second aww his mouth was threatening to let out. Kagami? Flying to another country for a girl? He was having the time of his life.

“Also, I’m not telling you her name,” she said. “You’re going to make up a gross ship name for us.”

“I wouldn’t—” He cut himself off. “Okay, you’re right. I totally would.” 

He was a sucker for love. Especially his friends’ love. Especially Kagami’s, whose romantic trysts were few, far apart, and hidden away so carefully that he probably didn’t even know half of them. 

"Maybe if you weren't such a virgin you'd have a relationship of your own to be invested in," she'd snarked at him when they were seventeen, after he'd hidden at the back of a café to make heart signs at her while she was on a date.

He broke out into another grin, bigger and wider than before. “I’m so happy for you, Kagami.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I am, really! I bet you’re both going to come back to Paris and get married and have cute little babies—”

“Hanging up.”

“No, I’m sorry!” he laughed. “I’m just excited. This is the first time I’ve seen you so head over heels.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,” she said. “This is the first and last time you’ll be hearing of this. I wasn’t even meant to tell you about Sofie today.”

“Is that her name? Sofie?”

She paused. “Bye.”

“Sofigami.”

“Stop.”

“Sogami?”

“Adrien.”

“Okay, I’m done.”

He was pretty sure any other day she would’ve cut the call when he’d first called her cute , blocked him, and left him like that for a week. But still, she hadn’t hung up. 

Then, she spoke. “You’re probably not going to hear from me for a while,” she said. “We’re going to be travelling a lot. There won’t be much scope for me to sit down and chat — there might not even be any signal everywhere we stay.”

"Oh." He filtered the disappointment out of his voice. "Don't worry about me. You focus on having fun."

She was silent for a long time. The chatter in the background had died down a little. Chat Noir listened to the chicken sizzling in his wok, dying down as it cooled.

"I'm sorry," she said finally. "I know you miss your friends."

At that, he stayed quiet. He wasn’t sure he could lie and sound convincing. Not about this.

“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug — an inauthentic shrug, one that wasn’t even needed, considering she couldn’t see him. “It’s so we can keep our cover. That’s what’s most important.”

“Right. Of course,” she said. “I’m glad you understand.”

She didn’t say it, but he could hear it in her pause, loud and clear. Please don’t give us away while I’m gone.

“We’re starting to board, now,” Kagami said. “I’ll text you when we land.”

“Okay.” He cracked a smile, for her sake, hoping that it’d colour his voice. “Be safe. Use protection.”

She scoffed, and the line went dead.

He sighed, pocketing his phone in his hoodie, trying to untangle the knot that had formed in his chest.

He’d thought that after fourteen years of practice, he’d gotten quite good at being alone.

That’s what he’d been telling himself since they’d departed, since they’d stood outside Kagami’s hotel with their suitcases and alpine skis, bent over their phones while they logged out of all their social media accounts and uninstalled all their chat apps. They’d downloaded Kik Messenger (Adrien had laughed), gave themselves fake names, and started a conversation between the two of them there, and he’d thought, wow, he wished he’d had the luxury of even one person back when he was homeschooled. This month was going to be a breeze, even if he couldn’t play video games with Nino anymore, or help Alya proofread her articles, or sit on a video call with Marinette while she sewed. 

But apparently four years of learning what it was like to have friends was enough to erase those other fourteen.

He'd considered shooting Ladybug a text or two, but he quickly realised she was out of the question — she’d told him all about the gingerbread house she was planning to build during their issued time off, something big and fancy and time consuming enough she wouldn’t even think about stepping a polka-dotted foot outside her house. Besides, he didn't want to bother her. Even with a text message.

At least he’d had Kagami, and he’d reasoned with himself that it’d be worth it in the end — worth it to have a month away from alarm clocks set for 5AM and spotlights that burnt through his retinae and staring at a piece of food in an interviewer’s teeth, wondering whether it would be impolite to point it out. 

But now Kagami was on a flight to Amsterdam, about to travel through Europe with a girl that had evidently stolen her heart, and he was beginning to feel like everyone else seemed to have something to look forward to except for him.

It was fine. Just growing pains. He’d be fine in a few weeks, maybe after filling up his bookshelves a little more. He had to remember that.

It was almost six o’clock, and the chicken in the wok had stopped sizzling. He reached for the cabinet above his sink, and pulled out a plate. At least he was already used to eating alone.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

Paris Bakes presents:

The 2021 Annual Gingerbread House Competition!

Proceeds will help fund resources for the courageous patrol volunteers helping to protect our city.

Sign up at parisbakes.fr/gingerbread . Participants under 15 must have parental permission.

"Are you thinking of signing up?"

Ladybug whipped around. There was a girl behind her, dark hair pulled up in a top knot, the light outside the Chinese restaurant catching onto her hi-vis jacket. She had the name tag all patrol volunteers had — Hi, my name is _____ typed up in Helvetica. Hers had JASMINE in the blank space, scrawled in bold block capitals. 

"The gingerbread house contest?" Ladybug asked. She turned back to the restaurant, looking at the flyer pasted to the window. "Uh… I don't know. I mean—!" She whipped around again. "Not that I don't want to help you guys with your patrols! You're doing so much for us already, and—"

The girl laughed, taking a swig from her Evian bottle. "You're not supposed to help us with our patrols," she said. "That's the whole point of us being here."

"Oh." Ladybug's face grew warm. "Yeah. Of course."

She still had no idea how to interact with the patrol volunteers. At first, she'd had a tendency to hover — surreptitiously visiting a café in the fourth arrondissement for lunch, which always had the highest frequency of akuma attacks between 12PM and 3PM, quietly telling one of the groups that she could take over if they were getting tired, that, since she was already out, she might as well finish the job. But they always refused, always told her to just go home and relax.  

One of them had snapped at her, once, a woman older than her who was probably still cranky from the 6AM start. "If you think we're doing a bad job, just say it to our faces," she'd said. 

Since then, Ladybug tried her best to stay out of their way. They were all doing their best, all well equipped to take care of the city in her absence, all doing them a huge favour by giving them some time off. But still, it felt strange letting other people do her job for her. Especially when she could easily step in to help.

They continued chatting awhile, until an alarm went off on the girl's phone, indicating her break was over. She waved goodbye, heading back around the corner to where Ladybug knew was the meeting point for Squad 19. 

(Totally not because she would hang around the rooftops in case they needed help. Of course not).

She sighed, then glanced back down at her yo-yo again. Her GPS still hadn't loaded. If Alya were here, they'd probably already be halfway home now. But if Alya were here now, Ladybug probably wouldn’t have been stuck outside a Chinese restaurant in the nineteenth arrondissement because she missed her mum's honey chicken. Honey chicken was for bad days, and none of the restaurants near the bakery had any that she liked. 

Sucking in a breath, she shut her yo-yo and launched it towards one of the apartment blocks. She'd just knock on someone's window and hope they'd let her use their internet. It was far from an ideal solution, but it was already dropping dark, and she was never in this part of Paris. She could barely get to the movie theatre without Google Maps — getting home without her GPS was out of the question.

She was almost glad her parents were in Cannes right now — at least she knew she wouldn’t worry them by coming home late.

Her feet slammed down against a balcony, two storeys up from the ground floor. It was well-kept, a fern potted by the sliding glass doors, soil moist, as if freshly watered. A wicker chair was nestled just below the overhang, flanked by an oak end table, on which a cat-printed mug sat.

Bizarrely enough, there was even a welcome mat, right by the sliding glass doors. Look what the cat dragged in! Who even had welcome mats like that anymore? Who even had welcome mats on their balconies?

She waited, but no one came. Did they not hear her? She stood up straight and headed for the balcony door, trying to peer inside, but the curtains were thick and drawn tight. Was anybody even home? She hoped so. She rather liked this balcony, neat and clean and cute, and she'd rather not try her luck with the apartment next door, with its outdoor light netted with cobwebs.

Then, in a blast of bright, yellow light, the curtains were swept back and the balcony door slammed open. Ladybug staggered back, narrowly missing a potted fern sitting by the railing.

"Ladybug?"

The first coherent thought in her head — once she’d realised the person on the balcony wasn’t some random Parisian— was, oh my God .

Oh my God. Because if this balcony belonged to an apartment and Chat Noir was on the balcony that meant the apartment was his and she just accidentally found out where he lived.

Which, given the fact secret identities existed, this would be an issue.

Chat Noir stood there, staring at her, clearly bewildered. The living room light hit his hand, and that was when she realised, with a jolt, that he was de-transformed, in a black hoodie and some loose sweatpants.

She knew she should’ve said something back, probably something like hi or hello , but there was too much of who what where when why how spinning around her mind to make room for the former two. 

So she stared at him, mouth agape.

Maybe a memory-wiping akuma could attack them right now and she could forget this ever happened. She could forget that this was Chat Noir's balcony, that this was Chat Noir's apartment, and, most of all, that Chat Noir just caught her skulking around outside his window like some kind of alley cat.

Really, that had to be the worst part.

Briefly, she entertained the idea that maybe this wasn’t his place. Maybe things were safer than she thought. They were eighteen, after all, and she knew what the guys in her lycée got up to in their free time, many of their weekends being spent in apartments that weren’t their own. But thinking about Chat Noir standing out on a faceless paramour’s balcony made something twist in her gut, and she batted the idea out of her mind just as quickly as it arrived.

“Um,” she says. “Can I use your Wi-Fi password?”

He blinked a few times, somehow even more bewildered than before.

"Uh. Sure." He stepped aside, holding back the curtains for her. "Come on in."

Ears burning, Ladybug scuttled inside.

Chapter Text

On all logical levels, this was a bad idea. But much of Ladybug's logic fled from her mind when she felt just how warm it was in here. The cold outside had seeped through her costume and into her skin, and it took all her self control not to ask him where his radiator was so she could curl up next to it for a few hours before she went home.

No. That was not why she was here. She needed his WiFi.

"Make yourself at home," he said. "I'll go take a picture of the WiFi password."

He disappeared through the doorway between his kitchen and living room, leaving Ladybug on her own.

She glanced around. She couldn't decide whether it looked like he'd moved in recently or if he'd been here for years. Three large bookshelves stood across the couch, books assorted in each shelf by size. A mahogany coffee table occupied the space in between, a half-finished cup of tea balanced on a black coaster and a copy of Crime and Punishment — an English copy, and she entertained herself with the idea that he kept it there just to make him seem like the type of person that read difficult books in English — angled in a way that looked like he'd set it there while lying down. 

She fiddled with her hands. The blankets on his couch were rumpled, a cushion propped up against the arm rest and wrinkled with the shape of someone's back. Would he be okay with it if she sat there? Alya always hated it whenever someone other than her sat at her desk chair, in the same way Marinette hated it when people used her pens. It always felt different afterwards. Like an intrusion of space.

Chat Noir came back into the living room, holding out his phone. "Here. The name should just be '28'."

He had one hand in his hoodie pocket and the other around his phone case. He kept his nails trimmed and filed in a way that made her inexplicably jealous. Even before she started biting them, back in collège , she could never get them to look half as nice.

She'd never seen his hands up close before. They were… pretty. 

"Everything okay?" he asked.

Ladybug flushed up to her ears. She was not just checking out her partner's hands. She was normal.

Biting her lip, she pulled up her yo-yo, and typed in his WiFi password.

They lapsed into silence while they waited for it to connect. She felt like she should say something. Ask him how he was doing, or about his day, or how he'd been spending his time off. But they'd never used formalities like that. It would be weird to start now.

"I didn't think you lived around here, too," he said.

Ladybug looked up. He was studying her yo-yo, watching the internet try to connect.

"Oh. Uh, no, I don't." she said. She closed her settings and navigated herself back to her GPS. "I was trying to buy some honey chicken."

"Did you try that Chinese place down the road?" he said. 

“Yeah. They're closed.”

“Darn. That sucks. Maybe another day?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe another day.”

Her yo-yo was still connecting.

Why was this so awkward? It hadn't been that long since they’d last seen each other, not long enough to warrant forgetting how to talk. She glanced at his books, thought about a joke she could make, but when she looked back at him, it suddenly sounded way too lame to say out loud. She parsed through the last couple of days, found something funny that one of the patrol volunteers had said to her when she'd been helicoptering, then realised that’d mean having to admit she was helicoptering in the first place, and for some reason, after four years of partnership, it was now that Ladybug was afraid to look pathetic in front of Chat Noir.

Perhaps it was seeing him like this — de-transformed, clad in a hoodie, the soft, golden lights of his living room playing tessellations off his masked face.

“So,” he says. “How’s your break been?”

“Oh. Um.” She looked down. His carpet was pristine, like he’d just hoovered. “It’s… fine. Uneventful. A lot of my friends are out of Paris right now, so I don't really have much going on.”

“And here I was thinking you were totally booked up.”

“Nope.” 

He must've seen the strain in her smile, because his own faded.

He averted his gaze, stuffing both hands into his pockets.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked. “If you have some time?” 

She hesitated. She knew Chat Noir would never be disingenuous with her, but she also knew that it was rather hard to say no to a guest, especially when they turn up at your balcony with no warning. Maybe he was just being polite. He was on his break as much as she was.

She glanced back at her yo-yo, then out the window.

A phantom shiver ran through her.

“I’d like that,” she said. “Thank you.”

He smiled, and gestured to the couch.

Tentatively, making sure not a single wrinkle slid out of place, she sat down.

“Wait here,” he said, leaning down to push the coffee table closer. “I’ll go make some tea.”

He disappeared behind the kitchen partition before she could protest.

Chat Noir returned a few moments later, two steaming cups in hand. “I put the milk in before the water. That’s how you like it, right?” He set hers down in front of her. 

Ladybug stopped in the middle of lifting her cup. “I do. How do you know that?”

“You mentioned it once on patrol,” he said simply and took a sip from his mug. “It was a few years ago. You probably don’t remember.”

She stared at him. She couldn’t remember that specific conversation, but it sounded like her to have brought it up. She was always trying to convince her friends to try putting the milk in first — heated it more evenly, if it went in before. She didn’t think it was important enough for anybody to actually remember it. Especially after so long.

She took a sip herself, mindful of the steam still billowing off the surface. 

He tossed a cushion from the couch onto the floor and sat down. “Did you have a lot of things planned with your friends?” he asked.

She paused mid-sip, wondering if she should have told him to come sit on the couch, too.

“Not a lot of things,” she said instead. She swirled her tea between her hands. “But, well. Still sucks not being around them. My parents are out of town, too, so it's weird being home alone.”

He hummed, not replying for a moment.

She gulped some tea, checking surreptitiously how much she had left. Even if her yo-yo finally managed to connect within the next century, she'd still have to prolong her stay to finish. Maybe this was his apartment. But the jury was still out on the presence of the paramour. Regardless, she really didn't want to be here any longer than she already had to.

“If it helps at all,” he said, “I get it. I probably won’t be able to see any of mine until the end of the year.”

She looked up, surprised. “You won’t?” she asked. “Why?”

He sighed. “No one knows I’m here.”

“‘Here’?”

He made a vague gesture around the living room. “Here. In this apartment. In Paris.” Chat Noir took another, slower sip of his tea. “I have to keep it a secret.”

This time, it was Ladybug’s turn to be bewildered. 

“Why would you keep this place a secret?” she asked. If I lived in a place like this, I’d have my friends over every day.”

That’s what she and Alya always used to say whenever they looked at apartments together. They wanted something spacious, with a nice kitchen and a nice living room, so they could invite Adrien and Nino and the girls over all the time and not worry about stuffing eight people onto a tiny couch that was definitely only a two-seater.

A knot formed in her stomach. She swallowed down another gulp of tea, probably too big for how fresh it was.

Chat Noir took a gulp, too. He moved closer to the coffee table and set his cup down.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “With all the free time we have now, I wanted to get away from my civilian life a little. I work for my family business, and it’s… a little demanding. I can’t get time off just by asking for it, so I had to come up with something to take some time to myself.”

She blinked. He worked for his own family business and couldn’t get time off? Of course, when the bakery got busy, she had to take on more shifts than usual, but her parents had never made her work more than she was ready to. They almost always jumped at the chance at giving her some time off. Convincing them to leave the deliveries to her so they could enjoy their vacation in Cannes was a long endeavour, so the idea of having to hide to take a break—

“You seriously don’t live here as a civilian?” she asked.

Chat Noir laughed. “This place? No way. If only.”

Quietly, she watched him drink from his cup. “How?”

“Well, it's a periodic tenancy,” he said. “But the mask is how I get away with it, mainly. If anyone catches me walking around through the window, they won’t know who I am.”  

She looked around, taking in the coffee table, the bookshelves, the afghan rug laid out on the floor. “You must have spent a fortune decorating this place. And you’re only planning to stay for the month?”

He paused. “It’s the books, isn’t it? I guess I went a little overboard there.” Chat Noir drained the rest of his cup and set it down again, right next to Crime and Punishment . He took a deep breath. “I don’t really have much agency at home to decide how I want things to look. I’m grateful for what I have, of course, but it all feels so… empty, in a way.” Chat Noir lifted his head, glancing around the living room with a smile. “I wanted to make this place as far from that as possible. I wanted it to feel… cosier. More like a home.”

Ladybug couldn’t help it. She smiled. “I never knew ‘home’ meant having an entire library’s worth of books,” she said. “Who knew the great Chat Noir was such a nerd?”

He looked at her for a second, and she wondered if she’d crossed a line. But then he laughed. “Oops. You caught me,” he said. “The one thing I always loved about my room at home was how many books I had. I can’t imagine not having them anywhere else I lived.”

She felt something warm in her chest, and Ladybug couldn’t explain why. Her impression of him had definitely changed over the years. She realised long ago he was much softer than he looked, that the wild look in his eyes during their races up the Eiffel Tower was only a precursor to the gentle, wondrous breath he let out whenever he saw the view from the top. He was cheeky but he was gentle, and the one time she’d seen his handwriting while they signed a card for the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital, she was surprised to see he used cursive. She got that same warm feeling every time, over and over, whenever he showed her a little bit of himself like that. A little bit of the softness.

Somehow, the idea of him having this secret apartment didn't sound so outlandish.

“You seem to really love this place,” she said. “It’d be a shame if you left it all at the end of the month.”

“I don’t think I will,” he replied. “I want to move here properly, one day. Maybe when I start uni. I’d love to bring my friends over. Make memories.” He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice being here. But it can get a little boring. I never thought I’d complain about being on a break.”

She sighed, too. “You and me both.”

He watched her polish off her glass, then took both their cups to the kitchen. He brought them back after a few minutes, steam rolling off the surface once again.

“So, the gingerbread contest,” he said. “Did it not work out?”

She stared at him as he passed her the cup. “How on earth do you remember that ?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “We literally had that conversation two months ago. You were buzzing. How could I not remember?” 

Only two months? Back when the patrol volunteers were all preparing for the holiday month, and they were meeting with the representatives to discuss how their break should work. Back when she’d still thought Alya was coming back to Paris, and had the Paris Bakes website set as her homepage just in case applications had opened early. 

She sighed, leaning back against the couch cushions. “I think I’m gonna skip it.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Why? You were so excited for it!”

“Because…” She bit her lip. “Well, it’s like I said before. None of my friends are in Paris anymore. Who would I even enter with?”

“Surely you could enter alone.”

Her lips tensed around her sip. “It just… wouldn't be the same.”

The woodwork in his walls creaked in the silence.

She looked at her tea. Alya was probably sitting at her desk in London now, typing away at a report with a half-empty can of Redbull, the gingerbread competition so far at the back of her mind that she probably didn't even remember the application deadline. And, like, it made sense. Because, realistically, why would Alya care so much about the competition? Marinette was the one who subscribed to the Paris Bakes email listing every December, who would pay extra for the coloured ink at the library to print her favourite gingerbread houses to glue into her inspiration book. Sure, Alya had been excited, too. But, thinking about it now, most of that was for her benefit, not her own.

And if that was the case, why couldn't she just enter on her own?

It wasn't like she wouldn't have been able to — like Chat Noir had said, there was no minimum number of participants required to enter. It wasn’t even a matter of workload — she’d been in charge of wedding cakes before, three-tiered birthday cakes, two-hundred macarons she had to get done in eight hours. The design she had in mind might not have been a breeze to get through, but it certainly wouldn't be impossible alone. She just wouldn't be able to join the #BudsWhoBake selfie train on Twitter.

Or take turns whisking the dough whenever her arm got tired.

Or have those long conversations at the dining table while the dough baked, cinnamon perfuming the air, the sink overflowing with bowls, spoons, knives, and measuring jugs that she could convince herself to ignore for now because she was having too much fun chatting.

Her heart twisted.

No. She couldn't enter alone.

"We could enter together, if you wanted," he said.

Ladybug snapped her head up. “What?”

It must have shown on her face, because he began to backtrack. Chat Noir held up his hands. " Only if you want to. I needed an excuse to break in the kitchen, and, well, since we were both saying that we can’t meet with any of our friends…" He trailed off, cheeks growing pink under the edges of his mask. "Sorry. That was a stupid suggestion. I know how you feel about… all of this."

For a long while, she just looked at him. Here? As in, in his apartment? This was the kind of absurd, irresponsible idea he would’ve pushed when they were fourteen. Not now .

Her face warmed, suddenly embarrassed. While he seemed relatively blasé in his nice, well-decorated apartment away from his friends, she'd just turned up not even midway through their break and started blabbing on about how she literally had nothing to do because all her plans involved other people. She must have looked like such a loser. Of course he knew the risks it posed to their identities. He probably just pitied her enough to find a way around it.

But, well. They both were still alone. 

She hated the fact she was even considering this. Hawk Moth wasn't gone. Something could happen all the way on the other side of the city but would be left unattended by both of them because they would've been here, cooped up in the same apartment together. The idea made her stomach tight, wrapped in secondhand guilt. What a waste of effort that would be for the patrol volunteers. While they were out in the cold in their hi-vis jackets, doing them a favour, they wouldn't even meet them halfway and do their job .

But… how many times had either of them been late to a scene? Twice, maybe? Never in the recent past. Close calls didn't even happen anymore.

His apartment was also really, really warm.

Ladybug bit her lip. She pulled out her yo-yo and checked her GPS. It had finally loaded.

She could say no, and it wouldn’t be awkward. She’d had her cup of tea and she’d gotten her signal — she could just go straight home. They’d continue their separate breaks and meet again after the new year, and by that time it would have been long enough for tonight to not weigh down on them. 

But now she… kind of didn't want to.

“Do you know how to bake?” she said.

A slow, sheepish smile spread across his face.

She gave him a look. “How do you plan on entering a baking competition when you don't know how to bake?”

“It's not that I don't know how to bake,” she said. “I’ve just never done it.”

“Chat Noir.”

“I can learn!” He raised his hands in mock defence. “You’re a wonderful teacher, My Lady.”

She glanced at him. He seemed… serious. “...I am a pretty good teacher,” she said with a sniff, and sipped her tea. She’d taught Alya so well that she didn't even need to look at measurements anymore. 

Although Chat wasn't Alya.

“Still, though. It's a big project,” she said. It's not gonna be a cute little afternoon activity that we'll finish in an hour or two.”

He snorted. “Are you trying to scare me off?”  

“No,” she said, readjusting her hold on her tea. “I just want you to know what you're getting into.”

“My Lady, how long have we been partners?”

“You don't need to be my partner right now, though, Chat. We're off-duty. I don't want to drag you into something that makes you feel like you wasted your holiday.”

He set his mug down on the table with a clink. His eyes met hers, brow pinched. “Do we stop being partners when we're off-duty?”

“ No ,” she said quickly. “That's not what I meant at all.”

He looked down at his mug, fiddling with the handle. She watched him, chewing her bottom lip. Her and her big stupid mouth. 

She sighed, bringing the cup back up to her mouth. Steam moistened her cheeks. 

“It’s just— it’s gonna be a lot,” she said. “We’re going to need… a lot of ingredients.” She almost asked if he knew what ingredients even were — while she may have been in pot noodles hell herself, she still had baking experience under her belt — but decided that would be a touch too far. “Are you okay with that?”

He looked at her. “Yes.”

She hesitated, glancing at his kitchen. “You'd be fine keeping them here?”

“I’ll make space.”

“You'll need to make a lot of space,” she said. “For all the dough, all the decorations…”

“Space is never going to be an issue,” he said. “Just let me know and I’ll sort it out.”

“You seem confident about that.”

“Well,” he said quietly. “Friends make space for friends.”

Her heart clenched.

Like how Alya decided to move to London, three-hundred miles too far to join the competition they’d been looking forward to for four years?

No. That wasn't fair. 

“Alright, then.” She pressed her fingers into her cup. “Do you have something to take notes with?”

He pulled at something under the coffee table. A drawer rolled out, from which he produced a small notepad and pen.

“We need all of these by tomorrow afternoon,” she said. She set her cup down with a soft clink. “Flour, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, molasses…”

He wrote each item down without missing a beat, all in cursive.

Chapter Text

Spooning some cereal into her mouth, she flipped the page. Pinterest printouts of mansion-like gingerbread houses looked back up at her, the edges still tacky with glue, her own glitter gel pen lining them with excited notes and love hearts.

She smiled at the notebook. Looking through this was definitely doing a good job at calming her nerves.

She'd honestly thought she'd have to reschedule with Chat Noir. It took her hours to get to sleep last night, her head spinning with thoughts about the competition and about his apartment and about every possible disaster that could come out of this. What was she thinking?  She already knew how his hands looked. That was more than she'd known last week. What else would she find out while she was there? Not like how it had been last night, but really there — pottering about his kitchen, opening cabinets and fridge doors and messing with the settings on his oven? Her father had always said you can tell a lot about a person based on their kitchen. Marinette wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing when that person was Chat Noir .

But, well, it was too late to back out now. He told her before she left that he'd buy the ingredients first thing in the morning, and it wasn't like she could just abandon him with the cupboards he’d cleared out just for her. 

She yawned, closing the notebook. Considering she slept well past her 6AM alarm, there was no need for her to be so tired. The only reason she'd gotten out of bed after realising how late it was was because the delivery guys had left her three missed calls and twenty cartons left outside the bakery in the rain. By the time she'd brought them all in, unpacked them, changed out of her wet clothes and showered, she was sure Alya had long clocked into BBC, and Marinette had missed her morning window of opportunity to talk to her.

She glanced at her phone. She could still try.

Pulling her hoodie sleeves back down, she located Alya’s contact, and hit CALL.

Marinette casually switched on the heater, priming herself to try not to care if she didn't pick up.

The call connected after three rings. “Morning, M.”

She did a double take at her screen. 9h00. “Morning?” she replied, surprised. “Aren't you meant to be at work?”

“I called in sick.” A drawer rolled through the line, followed by the clatter of utensils. Alya’s frother whirred, and she could imagine her dragging it through the #1 Ladyblogger mug she’d bought her for her sixteenth birthday. “Me and Estelle were up late last night.”

“Estelle?”

“I live with her,” she said. “Didn't I tell you about her?”

“No,” she said. “You definitely didn't.”

She had a roommate? That couldn't have been a last minute addition. Had she had one all this time?  

“Oh. Well.” The frother switched off, and the tap hissed in the background. “Estelle had the great idea of adding wine to our baking sesh and I woke up with the worst headache.”

Marinette’s chest squeezed. “You guys were baking?”

“Yeah!” she said. “Estelle’s crazy good at it. Though she kinda just does all the work and lets me lick the spoon.”

Marinette never let Alya lick the spoon. Too big of a contamination risk — that was what her parents always said. That was pretty boring of her. Estelle didn't sound like the type of person to be putting down rules like that for… baking seshes .

“Sounds like you both had fun,” she said. “I thought you hated drinking, though.”

“Oh.” An awkward pause ensued. “...I actually, um. Really enjoy wine. I just felt weird drinking when you weren't.”

Marinette stiffened. “Oh.” She swallowed, staring hard at the countetop. “I’m… glad you can enjoy that with Estelle, at least.”

“...Thanks.” Another roll of a drawer. “But the hangover does not feel worth it.”

Marinette pulled at the rubber on her mechanical pencil.

“I was on the Paris Bakes Twitter this morning,” Alya said. “You're joining with Chat Noir?”

“...They tweeted that?” Marinette asked.

“Girl.” She let out a laugh. “It's trending .”

She put down her pencil and, turning on speakerphone, navigated herself to the app. There it was, the first thing on her timeline, from Paris Bakes Official:

[We are excited to announce two very special participants for our gingerbread house competition this year — LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR!

Head over to our website to learn more!]

She grimaced. So much for keeping things on the down-low. She didn't even want to think about what those patrol volunteers must be saying about them right now, shuffling around outside at 2°C. 

Guilt twinged at her stomach. “Sorry.” She turned off speaker and put her phone back to her ear. “I should've told you. I didn't want you to think I was replacing you, or something. Chat Noir is nice, but it's not gonna be the same without—”

“Marinette,” she laughed. “I told you to enter. I’m happy for you!”

“…Are you sure?”

“ Yes, ” she said. “Besides, it’s only fair Chat Noir gets a turn on the Marinette Crazy Train.”

She paused. “What do you mean?” 

“Well, you’re not exactly the most chill person when it comes to competitions. Or baking. Or, well, anything.”

Her grip tightened, making her pencil creak. She listened to the pull and slam of a cabinet, of a spoon clattering against a rim, sugar being stirred into coffee.

“I’m plenty chill,” Marinette said.

Alya laughed again. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, girl.”

Her jaw clenched. She wanted to be dramatic and hang up. But no matter how hard she tried, all the logical routes she could find, Marinette couldn’t figure out any way to be mad at her that would make sense. It was a joke , not even the kind of joke that would’ve usually been a sore spot, or something, literally just a joke . Why was she getting so worked up?

She imagined Alya sitting at her dining table with Estelle, dough in the oven, a bottle of red wine between them, talking about how her best friend back in Paris never let her lick the spoon, never drank wine with her while they baked, laughing about how uptight she was, how baking was so much more fun when you didn't have someone on your back about whisking with the wrong technique.

No. Marinette was not jealous . She was just nervous about the competition, that was all.

“Chat Noir doesn’t mind, though,” she said. “He actually knows how to appreciate someone who knows what they’re doing.”

It came out pettier than she’d anticipated. 

But Alya just snorted. “Has he actually started baking with you, though?”

“He doesn’t need to,” she said. “We’ve been fighting akumas for years now. We’ll make a great team for everything.”

Alya’s spoon clinked against some porcelain, then clattered against what sounded like her sink.

“Isn’t that different, though?” she asked. “I mean, there’s a lot more going on in battles than with baking. You guys are gonna be in each other’s space a lot more than you usually are.”

Annoyance spindled through her. “Not really.”

“Where are you guys even gonna work?”

“…His apartment.”

“Marinette.”

“It’s not his civilian place!” she said. “He got it to stay in as Chat Noir.”

“Girl. Still. That’s his place. ”

She slammed her pencil down. “Okay, so what?” she said. “Do you want me to drop out? Find a new partner from the plethora of our friends still in the city?”

“Okay, relax.” Her voice suddenly came closer to the phone, slippered footsteps walking faintly across the linoleum. “I just meant that, like, maybe don’t expect it to be like working together against akumas? I mean, of course you guys being superhero partners will make it easier, but this is new, isn't it?”

Her face burned. 

She was not going to argue with her best friend while she was three-hundred miles away. Especially not over something so stupid.

She reached over and lowered the heating, still sweating in her hoodie.

You can tell a lot about a person based on their kitchen.

There were the bookshelves, and the copy of Crime and Punishment on his coffee table. The fact he had a secret apartment in the first place, one that never even inched its way into conversation when they’d been talking about their holidays before.

What else was there that she didn't know about him? What else was there that he didn't know about her? Things that never came up during akuma fights? That never came up in four years of partnership?

Like maybe he didn't own a whisk. Or he did own a whisk, but it was the wrong kind, and he’d make a fuss about her making a fuss about the type of whisk they needed. Or maybe he only took oat milk, which she would rather die than ever try consuming again, and wouldn't tell her until after they’d put everything in the oven because maybe he just didn't think to mention it the way he'd think to mention things during battle. 

Or maybe he really wouldn't be okay with her. Because while it was one thing to tell him what to do without wasting time explaining during an akuma fight, it’d definitely be another while they were baking. Because no one in their right mind would care that much about a gingerbread house .

Her heart began to speed up.

“Marinette?” Alya said. “I’m sorry. That was harsh.”

“No— no, I…” She looked down at her notebook. “Sorry, um— was just… logging the deliveries. I’m not mad.”

A breath rushed through the line. “That's a relief,” she said. “...I just want the best for you, girl.”

It felt like she'd just turned down the temperature in her brain. Marinette’s heart did a flip.

“I know,” she said. “You're my best friend.”

She could hear the grin in Alya’s voice. “I’d better be.” A doorbell rang from her side. “Oh! Estelle is at the door, I’d better get that. She can never turn the lock properly on her own.”

“Oh.” Her chest tightened again. Not because of jealousy. She forced a smile. “Okay. Have fun!”

“ Bisous .”

She hung up.

Marinette watched her phone screen lock and sighed.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

The balcony door slid open with little resistance. His lights were on, and she could hear utensils clattering from the kitchen.

She took a step inside, then stopped.

Her heart was still racing.

She’d tried pushing that conversation with Alya as far out of her head as possible — she’d still actually needed to log the deliveries, which she always messed up if she wasn't focusing, and then ended up scrolling through Jasmine’s Twitter (...and then five other patrol volunteers she’d found in her following) to double-check nothing had happened since last night. Still, it persisted, all the way through transforming and heading over to Chat Noir’s apartment.

She could leave. She wasn't too sure if she remembered the way back just yet, but her WiFi had auto-connected — she could use her GPS this time. How long did it take to get back to the fourth arrondissement, anyway? Forty five minutes? Maybe less via rooftop. He’d just think she got lost, and she could send a few confused texts, before ultimately deciding that maybe it'd be better to postpone this, and when he asked to know when, she could make some noncommittal reference to the future, one that he’d forget about in a few days, and they could continue the rest of their vacations separately, after which she could buy lunch for the next week to pay him back for the ingredients. 

She almost turned on her heel and zipped off the balcony, when Chat Noir appeared in the kitchen partition.

"My Lady! You're early," he remarked. He was wearing a different hoodie today — a zip-up, but it was opened just around his collar. It was still black, though, and he still had on his fabric mask. "Have you eaten yet?"

She bit her lip. "Not yet.”

"Great! My recipe serves two, anyway. Come over here."

Recipe?

He disappeared behind the partition once again. Ladybug sighed, threw a last glance towards the balcony, and followed him.

When she entered, her jaw dropped.

His kitchen looked nothing like she had expected. Plastic bags of vegetables lay strewn around the dining table, a pot sitting on the stove, music playing from the stereo by the window. It sounded like a Green Day song, but Ladybug was too in shock to figure out what the name was.

"You can cook?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said from the sink, washing a chopping board. He said it with a shrug, as if this new piece of information hadn't left her catatonic in his doorway. "I'm making bolognese, but if you want something else, I can always go and buy more ingredients."

She paused. 

It's not gonna be a cute little afternoon activity that we'll finish in an hour or two.

Oh, she wanted to die .

 "Bolognese is fine,” she squeaked.

She came over to look over his shoulder as he moved to a counter, eyes brushing past the snowglobes sitting on the windowsill. He tore open a packet of bacon and set down a few strips at once. “How long have you been cooking for?”

“Not that long. At least compared to some other people.” He sliced up the strips, so fast she had to stop herself from gaping. Her mum sliced things up like that, swift and practiced and chatting all the while. She and Alya used to try copying her, ripping two or three portobello mushrooms to shreds until her mother pried the knives out of their hands and told them to just wait at the dining table. “There’s not much scope for me to cook at home, so when I was about sixteen, I took a food technology class at school. Well, not really a class. It was kind of an after school club I snuck off to without telling my father.” Without even looking, he tugged out some more bacon strips, slicing them up just like the others. “So, I’d get some practice in then.”

Snuck off . It wasn't that surprising. You couldn’t really be a superhero without sneaking out of your bedroom every once in a while, and he was ever the mischievous type, the type that Ladybug could see slipping out of his window in the dead of night to hang out with his friends. 

But Ladybug had never needed to sneak off for an after school club. Why would anyone have to hide that from their parents?

She held her tongue. It’s a long story , he had said. And she’d said it enough herself to know that long story more often than not meant please don’t ask.

“Why food technology?” she said instead. They’d offered it at her lycée, too, but she’d been too busy with being Ladybug and being the Guardian and polishing up her portfolio and all her commissions to even think about indulging in an after school club. She didn’t remember it being a very popular club, though. The cohort was so small that they only ever used half the kitchen space they’d booked. Nino had been there, and Alya would pop in every now and then. But she remembered Adrien would go there religiously, always rushing into the T-block of their school for 16h20 sharp every Tuesday afternoon. 

"Hmm." He put down the knife and dumped the bacon rashers into the pan. "I didn't really have a reason, at first. I guess I thought it'd be a nice skill to have. Even if my father thinks I could be doing better things with my time than making food for myself."

 He said it so calmly that she looked at him.

He returned to the chopping board, peeling out an onion. "I fell in love with it. I'd attend every single session. I got really good at ratios while attending because all our recipes were made so we could take our food home for our families, but I knew my father would be livid if he found out I was lying to him, so I'd only make enough to eat by myself on the way home."

Her heart contracted. Eat by himself?

He sighed, then, and paused his chopping. "It's been a long time since I've cooked anything. Things got too busy in términale to attend those classes. And I've never really been in the mood to make anything anymore." Then, he shot her a sidelong smile. "Until now, of course."

She felt her face flush. 

He could literally cook .

She was so stupid.

Why hadn't he said anything before? If someone had sat across from her and talked to her like she’d never touched a baking tray in her life she would definitely not have nodded along and listened the way he had. She most definitely wouldn't have taken out a notepad and started taking notes.

She watched his knife dice up the onion, every slice practiced and perfect.

“U-Um,” she said, taking a step forward. “I can do that. If you want.”

“Cut the onion?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, you don't have to—”

“Please?” she said. “I… want to help.”

He paused and turned his head. “Okay.” He said, and smiled. He handed her the knife. “I’ll get the meat ready, then.”

She watched him take a spatula off the drying rack and return to the pan. Her eyes drifted to the knife in her hand, still warm from his grip.

The last time she used a knife was last week, because she got pissed off trying to peel open her pot noodles and just stabbed the seal instead.

She swallowed, looking at the first half of the onion sitting flat on the board, the second one partly in ribbons.

She was eighteen years old. She could cut an onion. 

He stirred the bacon around for a few moments, then ripped open a packet of minced meat from the fridge. Meanwhile, she considered the onion. He’d sliced through it vertically, and seemed to have been dicing it up from the opposite corner. Putting her hand on one side, she dragged the knife through.

Or, well, she tried. The top layers popped up, getting in the way, making her pause to readjust the blade. How on earth had he managed to do it so smoothly?

“Oh, sorry, I slice my onions weird,” he said. “You can cut the root out if it’s easier for you. I just like keeping it all together.”

Oh. So she wasn’t dumb. One hand steadying the layers, she turned the onion, and, in one, easy slice, removed the root.

She shot him a smile. “Thanks.”

The pan hissed as he scraped in the minced meat. Ladybug continued slicing. This was… almost kind of relaxing. Relaxing in the kind of way she assumed the patrol volunteers meant when they told her to stop worrying, to go home, to take a break. She thought not being out everyday was taking a break. She didn’t realise she was supposed to enjoy it, too.

She caught an itch on her cheek with the back of her hand. Maybe Alya was wrong this time around. Because standing in this kitchen, with the little stereo by the window, the snowglobes on the sill, the warm, rich smell of meat floating up from hob mixing with sliced onions, nothing felt different. They were still working together, still making the best team, just like they always did. 

Her cheek itched again. This time, she scratched it properly.

Sharp heat cut through her eyes.

Immediately, she jerked back, knife clattering to the chopping board.

“Ladybug?” Chat Noir said. “You okay?”

“Ugh, yeah, I’m fine.” She blinked a couple of times, then stopped when she realised it was just getting worse. “I think it’s the onions.” 

“Oh, no.” She heard him put down the spatula and approach her. “Come here, maybe you could rinse it out?”

“No, no, it’s fine! I’m fine!” She tried opening her eyes to show him, winced, then squeezed them shut again. “Sorry. Don’t stress on my account.” Reaching up, she rubbed her eye.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Ladybug, no. You were just touching onions.”

“Don’t worry, this hand was holding the knife.”

“But still, it—”

It was like ten million needles shooting through her pupil at once.

No. Her left hand was not holding the knife.

She swore with profanity she wasn't sure she’d ever used.

“Oh my God,” he said again, panic rising in his tone. “Okay, don't worry. Can you feel the sink? Just rinse it out there and wait in the living room. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“ No .” She fought her eyes open, but they squeezed shut out of their own accord, tears spilling over her mask. “No, seriously, I got this. I’ll just— open the window—” She grasped blindly for the handle until she could wrap her fingers around it.

“Wait, My Lady, don't pull it open all the way, it—”

She turned the handle and pulled it open.

A cacophony of crashes rained down on the sink.

She froze.

The snowglobes.

The ensuing silence was deafening.

“It’s okay,” he said after a moment. He took a few steps forward, the material of his hoodie brushing against her arm. “It’s okay. They’re shatterproof. I’ll just put them back up later.”

His hoodie brushed her again as his footsteps moved back around the kitchen. She waited a moment, opened her eyes, and sighed.

“I’m really bad at cooking,” she said after a moment. “Sorry. I should’ve told you. I made such a big deal about the competition yesterday when I can’t even… slice up a vegetable.”

He exhaled through his nose, dragging the chopping board across the counter and continuing where she’d left off. “Onions are pretty hard to slice, to be honest,” he said. “I don’t blame you.”

He continued dicing. The bacon sizzled softly on the pan.

“Do you think you’ll still like me by the end of all of this?” she asked.

His head snapped around, grip faltering around the knife. “Where on earth did that come from?”

She averted her gaze to her hands, pretending to pick off a fleck of onion peel. “Just, well, you know. I kinda walked into your apartment and acted like a know-it-all then almost trashed your kitchen.” She braved a glance up at him. “That’s not gonna be easy to deal with everyday.”

He looked at her for a moment, then back down to the chopping board. He finished dicing one of the onions, then scraped it into a neat pile.

“My Lady, that’s just… you,” he said. “You’re smart. You know you’re smart. Sometimes knowing you’re smart means getting things wrong sometimes. You’ve done that before. At least you’re brave enough to actually go ahead and try.”

Her eyes shifted, moving to the snowglobes haphazardly discarded on the drying rack. “That’s easy to say now,” she mumbled.

He paused and looked at her. He wiped the excess onion off his knife, and set it down.

“Do you not want to do this anymore?” he asked. “Because, like, if you changed your mind, we can always withdraw.”

It was her turn to look up. “R…Really?”

He shrugged. “I won’t be mad, or anything.”

She tried to search his face, but he averted his gaze, looking down at his black socks.

The kitchen was perfumed with the smell of meat and seasoning.

All of which he prepared for both of them.

Her heart squeezed. “It’s just…” She sighed. “Don’t you ever think about the fact we don’t really know each other very well?” she said. “I mean, sure, we’re partners , but other than that, what do we know?” She glanced around the kitchen, at the vegetables strewn out on his dining table, the pans on the hob. “What happens if we start learning stuff about each other and realise that maybe… we don’t like each other as much as we think we do? Will we still be partners?”

He looked at her, and, for a long time, stayed quiet.

“Is there a lot of stuff I don’t know about you?” he asked.

She let out a breath. “A lot .”

“Like what?”

She hesitated. Anything about Alya was off the table. And her recent pot noodles diet.

"I bite my nails," she said. "I started when I was fifteen, around the time I became Guardian. My nails look like little stubs and I hate it, and everyone finds the noise annoying. I do it while transformed, sometimes, but I've always tried not to whenever you're around."

He didn’t react. She avoided his gaze. 

But then he smiled. "I obsessively do my nails," he said. "Whenever I get stressed, I start filing them. Buffing them. Everything. I purposely left my nail kit at my civilian place this month because I needed to give them a break." He flexed his fingers in front of her. They still looked perfect to her, neat and tidy, but when she looked closer, she realised some of them were chipped. "I've started picking them, now. I don't know if that's better or worse."

Ladybug wasn't sure why, but she laughed. It was the wrong time, and she almost apologised, but from the look on his face, he seemed to know it wasn't at him.

"I don't like alcohol. It tastes weird and makes my head hurt."

"I don't like salted popcorn. It makes me feel sick."

"I ramble a lot. Awkward silences make me anxious. Sometimes I'll say stupid things in between to fill the gaps. A lot of the time I don't even mean any of it."

"I find it hard to listen when people are talking for a long time. I don't know why, and I always feel guilty about it. But I always find it easier to focus when they use their hands when they speak." He sent her a sidelong look. "I think that's why I can always pay attention to you. You talk a lot with your hands."

She laughed. "That was gonna be my next thing. I use my hands too much. I'm always knocking things over."

He glanced at his now empty window sill. “Really?”

“Shut up.”

This time, they both laughed.

Chat Noir grinned. "Well, I still like you," he said. "Do you still like me?"

It wasn’t like they’d shared anything awful. Definitely nothing to end a partnership over. And maybe more things would come up as they worked together, but wasn’t that just the point of it? Making things work even if it was hard?

"I do,” she said, and smiled.

"Then I think we'll be fine working together,” he replied. “We've always made a great team, haven't we?"

Warmth spread from her chest.

She was shocked by the power of her gratitude, that out of all the balconies she could've landed on yesterday, she'd landed on his.

"We have," she said.

Chapter Text

Before he could turn on the tap, he stopped and looked at the sink.

Two plates. Two glasses. Two sets of cutlery.

Chat Noir smiled and stepped back. He could do the washing later.

Ladybug had devoured the food. She’d finished her plate in about ten minutes, then in what he could only assume she thought was surreptitious, floated around the saucepan he’d been rinsing to ask if he’d made any more. Despite her protests, he’d taken the rest of the meat out of the fridge and prepared a whole new batch. She took more time with her second serving, not once complaining that he’d effectively eaten into all their baking time.

He exited the kitchen, switched off his main lights, and collapsed onto the couch. He adjusted himself closer to the lamp and picked his book up off the coffee table.

Then, his phone buzzed.

He shot up, twisted around, barely registering the thud of his book on the floor before grabbing his phone off the end table and frantically waking up his screen.

1 new message from K.

He let out a deep breath.

He needed a new alert for akuma attacks.

Navigating himself to Kik, he opened their chat.

It was an image file, one of a pretty blonde girl. A selfie, phone held above her so she could smile up at the camera with big, green eyes, her lashes mascaraed together in artful clusters, almost as if they’d been drawn on.

A: is that sofie??

A: she’s beautiful 🥺 kind of looks like you!

K: Lol. That is me.

A: …no

A: i don’t believe you

K: It is.

She stopped typing, and said nothing for a moment.

Then, another image file came through.

Another girl, at a lower angle this time, with the same blonde hair, same mascara, but with what was obviously Kagami’s face, one eye still green and the other brown.

A: oh my god

K: my name is kyoko!!!

K: (That’s how Kyoko types).

A: what is happening right now

K: How do you think I got on that plane with nobody recognising me?

A: no way

A: you’ve been in that disguise since we last spoke?

K: It has been an eventful two days.

K: Sofie is so wonderful.

The tone was a stark contrast to anything he’d heard Kagami say before. 

He smiled down at his phone.

A: are you staying with her?

K: Yes. 

K: Well. At a hotel.

A: oooh

A: very sexy

K: Don’t make me block you again.

He snickered.

A: do you have any plans for the rest of your break?

K: We're staying in Amsterdam until the end of this week, but then we’re going to interrail.

A: interrail? 

A: i thought you hated train journeys

K: I do, usually. But Sofie seemed so excited about it. She bought us matching pyjamas and toothbrushes.

A: that’s so married couple

K: Lol.

K: I guess it is.

She didn’t even deny it. It was… sweet.

He glanced at the singular black coaster on his coffee table, the one he bought for fifty cents at a recyclerie because he knew he wouldn’t have enough people over to warrant buying a pack. 

He felt a small twist in his chest, then looked back at his phone.

A: so it’s serious then? :D

K: Lol. It's a bit of a weird time to be thinking about all that.

A: …is it?

K: Well, we're on vacation.

K: Things that feel serious now might not matter much in January.

He read her message a couple of times, fingers hovering over his keyboard.

A: i’m sure sofie was thrilled when you told her that

K: I mean, it's not like we talked about anything more.

A: she bought you matching pyjamas and toothbrushes

K: …You know that doesn’t mean we're actually married, right?

Maybe it was just because he’d never had anyone to have matching pyjamas and toothbrushes with, but it left him a little bitter. 

He shook it out of his head.

A: i feel like you're missing some signals here

K: From Sofie?

K: No way lol, she obviously prefers to stay casual for now too.

A: people can surprise you, you know!

A: maybe being with her this month will change things

A: you might get closer, learn things about each other

A: i mean, you sounded so excited to see her over the phone

K: I was.

K: And, like I said, we're having a great time.

K: But holidays are temporary. You can't be on vacation forever.

For a while, he did nothing but stare at his screen.

A: that's a depressing way of looking at things

K: It’s realistic, though.

K: We live in different countries, and it's not like Mother is going to let me run off to Amsterdam whenever I want.

K: She’s super busy next year, too. Apprenticeships and everything. 

K: We just don't have the time in our normal lives to keep up with each other.

A: i’m sure you could if you really wanted to

K: Adrien, I barely even reply to your messages.

Ouch. 

He of all people knew what it was like dealing with a packed schedule. Running between photoshoots and castings, Chinese lessons and fencing — free time came in snatches, in five-minute breathers where he could quickly check his phone. But checking his phone always meant making sure to talk to as many of his friends as possible, because, well, what else would he want to do more than that?

He supposed most people had different priorities. Like, even Ladybug had wanted to spend her vacation away from each other.

It was an unbidden thought, one that snuck in before he could stop it. Was that how Ladybug felt, too? That spending time with him like this was something temporary, a holiday thing, an anomaly in the category of their friendship?

No, he was being silly. Ladybug’s priorities weren't that different to his — would she have agreed to partnering up if they were? No, of course not. She was spending time with him — willingly; she had to care about him to an extent . She just had more time now for her to show it, since they were both alone most of the time.

Which… would probably change after the new year.

K: Adrien?

A: sorry, was just thinking

A: just realised how sad it is that we can’t escape our parents forever. lol

K: Oh, yeah. Lol.

K: Anyway. Have you done anything interesting?

A: oh, well

A: i made some spaghetti bolognese today

A: [IMAGE]

K: Ah. Looks nice.

A: thanks ^^

K: You’re welcome.

K: Sofie just finished her shower so I will head off now.

K: Speak to you soon.

A: see you!

A: use protection x2

K: I will pretend you didn’t say that.

She went offline.

Chat Noir put his phone back down on the end table, and looked up at the ceiling. The smell of his cooking still hung in the air, carrying through the gaps in the partition.

Ladybug wasn't the type of person to spend time with someone just because it was convenient. She worried about taking up his holiday, worried that he’d find baking hard, worried that, somehow, by the end of all this he wouldn't like her . She always cared — about everything.

And everything was a lot of things to care about. And some things would obviously be more important than others — definitely more important than hanging out at her superhero partner’s apartment and eating lunch together.

Well, like, it wasn't like he’d expected this to continue after the holiday. What they'd agreed on was the baking competition, because, realistically, what other reason would she have to make the pains to come to his apartment? They hung out plenty already — they had akumas and patrols and could have picnics out on the Eiffel Tower. It was the same thing, basically. And while today was nice, nicer than what he’d had in a while, it wasn't reasonable for that to be the standard of their friendship.

Besides, uni would be a lot busier than lycée. He’d be better off not getting used to all of this before he saw her even less.

 He rubbed at a small stain of bolognese sauce on his hoodie sleeve.

He shouldn’t have been moping like this. It’d only been two days, and Kagami was right — something that seemed serious now might not be by the new year. He was just a bit lonely and was happy that he’d finally had someone around. It wasn't like she’d gone and bought them matching pyjamas and toothbrushes, and, hell, even that hadn't been enough to make Kagami expect more.

At the end of the day, they were superhero partners. He couldn’t let things like expectations get tangled into their dynamic.

He took a deep breath and picked his book back up.

It was fine. He had a month off. He could try to enjoy that, no matter how temporary it was.

Chapter Text

Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, Marinette paused at a post on her Instagram page.

alya.ladyblogger: POV — french girls vs the central line

She bit her lip, thumb pressing hard into her screen.

Six hours ago .

Or, rather, two hours after Marinette had texted her goodnight, and still was yet to receive a response.

She stared at the selfie of Alya wrapped to the nose in an orange scarf, then swiped to the second slide.

Two hands in different coloured gloves, holding crêpes in front of a sea of city lights.

Then a photo of a giant Christmas tree, leaves grazing the black sky.

Then, offhandedly, a photo of a small dining table, a baking tray right in the middle, gingerbread men laid out on a brown sheet sliced neatly out of the roll. A half-filled wine glass sat close to the camera, and another, still full, on the other side of the table, next to someone wearing a pretty polka-dotted apron, only visible from the waist down.

She scrolled down immediately. Then sighed.

She scrolled back up, liked the post, and commented, so cute!!! She then scrolled back down.

Maybe Mylène had a point in her ‘no screens’ morning routine.

In her defence, she’d just been checking to see if anyone had started posting progress shots for their gingerbread houses yet. A couple of the contestants she’d followed last year had posted pictures of their shopping trips, and there were a few stories dotted with Instagram stickers declaring today as their first day of dough prep, which meant she and Chat Noir weren't that far behind.

She probably should've closed the app while her mood was still good.

After double-checking her calendar, she locked her phone and rolled back over in bed. No deliveries for today, thank God. With her and Chat Noir’s plan to get started on baking tomorrow, she could stay in bed as long as she wanted and stay as far away from the cold as possible.

With her room still dark from the morning and her body heat toasting up her duvet, she felt herself drifting back to sleep.

Her ringtone jolted her awake again.

Grappling for her phone from under her pillow, she accepted the incoming video call. “Hello?”

"Hi, honey!" her mother said. She had on a fluffy white dressing gown, her hair pulled back in a wrap. "You look so pretty. I miss you."

Face smushed against her pillow, hair in her mouth, Marinette squinted through the light on her screen.

“Hi, Maman,” she said groggily. “You don't have to say that everytime you call me.”

"But it's true. You look prettier everyday.”

Despite herself, she smiled. She switched on a lamp and rolled onto her back.

It hadn't been that long since her parents had left for Cannes, but the distance seemed to have been hitting them a little harder than expected. Her mother called her every morning and her father every evening, telling her all about how beautiful it was in Cannes, about how kind the hotel staff were, about how they still took walks on the beach despite the weather. They told her that her hair looked longer and she had fewer freckles than when they'd left, and that they were sure she would have grown an inch by the time they got back, even though they all knew she'd been stuck at five-foot-four since she was fifteen.

She couldn't say she minded, though. It was weird being away from them, and knowing they were just a call away was comforting. 

"So? Are you excited?" she asked.

Marinette blinked, eyes still a little sticky. "Excited about what?"

"You're entering the same baking competition as Ladybug and Chat Noir!" she said. "Alya must be over the moon."

All the warmth from her duvet suddenly sapped out of her.

Right. Her mum thought she was entering with Alya.

She opened her mouth to correct her, then closed it again.

Maybe telling her the truth wouldn't be the best idea.

Her parents had been so hesitant about leaving her by herself for the next two weeks, and Alya being with her had been their only source of reassurance that she'd be okay. She had no doubt that if they knew the truth, they'd cut their vacation short and come straight back to Paris. And they deserved their time off.

"She's super excited," Marinette said, the lie scraping against her teeth. "She talked about it the entire time we baked last night."  

She broke out into a smile. "It's so nice you girls can hang out together again," she said. "I know how much you missed her."

Marinette smiled, too, hoping the dim covered up the strain.

She wondered what it would’ve been like if Alya was really back in Paris. They probably would’ve answered her mum’s video call together — Alya always slept over when her parents weren't around, even if it was just for a weekend. They’d probably fall back asleep until noon then head back to her place to have lunch — it might’ve not been her mum and dad’s cooking, but Marlena Césaire was a chef, after all, so it would taste much better than pot noodles, at least.

Her stomach grumbled.

Just like Chat Noir’s bolognese had. God . She hadn't had a meal like that in so long.

She paused for a moment, looking up at the chip on her skylight.

“Can I ask you something?” Marinette said.

She leaned back against the headboard of her bed, bringing a mug up to her lips. “Of course.”

“Are you still friends with the people you knew when you were younger?”

She paused, swallowing her tea. “Other than your father? No.”

“But you and Papa met when you were eighteen,” she said. “You really aren’t friends with anyone else from back then?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “I didn’t really have many friends back then in the first place,” she said. “I was more focused on trying to earn some money while I studied. Sure, I spoke to my classmates and my colleagues, but I didn’t plan on staying in France that long. I didn’t see the point in making many long-term friendships.”

“But what about your friends from China?” she asked. “Didn’t you say you were popular at school?”

She laughed. “I haven’t spoken to them in decades .”

She said it so… nonchalantly . “Did you not stay in touch?”

“We tried,” she said. “My best friend and I would email each other everyday. But as we got older, our priorities started changing. We ended up drifting apart.”

“That’s sad,” Marinette said. “Don’t you miss her?”

She held her mug to her chin thoughtfully for a moment. “Not really. I feel nostalgic when I think of her, but not much more than that.” 

“It must have been painful,” she said quietly. “Drifting away from your best friend.”

She smiled softly. “Not at first. I didn’t realise at first. But when I invited her to mine and your father’s wedding, she took so long to reply to the email that we’d already gotten back from our honeymoon,” she said. “That hurt a little. Realising that we weren’t as close as I thought we were anymore. But that’s normal — growing apart. Growing up. We all need to let go of some people so we can change into who we’re meant to be.”

She thought of those glasses of red wine, placed amongst that tray of gingerbread men, and the unbearable need she’d had to look away from the picture. Maybe it was because of how casual it was. The familiarity in the photo. A new normal. One that Marinette wasn't a part of.

“You okay, sweetie?” she asked.

Her chest was tight. “Yeah. I’m just thinking.”

She minimised the app and returned to Instagram, opening Alya’s profile. She stared at the grid of photos, realising that the first two rows were all already from London.

They chatted for a while longer, about the deliveries she'd been taking in, any updates from Cannes. Marinette tried her hardest to focus on what she was telling her about a waiter they had last night, but her thoughts drifted. Would what her mum had said happen with her and Alya? She had an internship, a place to stay, a roommate. She’d made a place for herself — or, rather, London had had a place for her open all along. Was that where she was meant to be? Would their everyday conversations dwindle further and further down until it was just once a month? Once every three months? Once a year? Would neither of them realise until it was too late?

Marinette’s heart clenched. She couldn’t imagine that. Alya was her very first best friend. She wasn’t sure she even knew how to be so close to someone that wasn’t her.

A lull lapsed over their conversation. She continued staring at her Instagram.

“Honey?” her mum said. 

“Yeah?”

“What I said about letting go of people, I wasn’t talking about you and Alya.”

She sighed, closing her eyes. “No, yeah. I know.”

She looked at the camera for a moment, a curl of short hair escaping from her wrap. “Well, I was just making sure,” she said softly. “You two are a thousand times closer than me and my friends ever were. You have nothing to worry about.”

Marinette fiddled with her duvet. Would she have said the same thing if she knew Alya wasn’t in Paris? That she probably wouldn’t be coming back to Paris at all? That she felt the need to lie about this in the first place?

She let out a deep breath. 

She was just upset about the Instagram post. And the unanswered message. That was all.

“I’m not worried,” she said, and forced a smile. “But thank you.”

Her mum smiled, too. “I’d better get going, then. Your father made us breakfast reservations.”

Marinette’s stomach grumbled in sympathy, which she ignored. “Okay,” she said. “Enjoy.”

“Tell Alya hello from me when you see her!”

“I will.”

Her mum blew a kiss to the camera. Marinette blew one too. The line cut, and she sighed. Putting her phone down, she rolled onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling.

She wasn’t that sleepy anymore.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

She tried the door again, thinking maybe she hadn't pulled it hard enough the first time, then groaned. What was the point in even having a Chinese restaurant if it was always closed?

She cupped her eyes around the glass and peered inside. This time, even the lights were off.

Distantly, the patrol volunteers milled around, yellow dots of hi-vis reflected in the restaurant front. She hoped they were far enough apart to go unrecognised. She wasn't sure she could handle the embarrassment of sulking around the 19th arrondissement during her break. Again.

“Ladybug?”

She jumped around.

He was walking up the pavement from the crossing, a reusable Carrefour carrier bag weighing down his left arm. 

“Oh, Chat Noir. I was just—” She glanced around, finding only apartment blocks and the restaurant. “Well. Whatever. Hi.” 

He laughed, flicking his hair out of his face. “Hi.” He was transformed today. He came to a stop in front of her and dropped down the bag, shaking out his hand. His eyes drifted to the restaurant. “Ah, yeah. They're still closed. I think the owner went on holiday with his family.”

“Oh.” Great. It was like everyone in Paris had plans outside the city except for her. She shook the bitterness out of her head and looked back at him. “Well. It's fine. I was just wandering around, anyway.”

“Wandering around?” He gave her a half smile. “I thought you'd be doing some extra-important gingerbread house planning on your day off.”

She perked up at that. “Actually, I…” Her words took a minute to callibrate. “Do you think I could… come over? Maybe get started on the dough?” She shifted her weight awkwardly. “I mean, I know we agreed on tomorrow, so if you have plans literally, just— don't worry, but I’m feeling super antsy today and don't have much else to do so if it isn’t any trouble—”

“It's never any trouble, My Lady,” he said. “Seriously. My place is open to you whenever you need it.”

She wanted to say something about not necessarily needing his place, that she’d technically be fine on her own, it wasn't an emergency or something, but the cold breeze against the back of her neck shut her up. “Thank you,” she said instead, and followed him back home.

They entered through the balcony again, though this time he had to unlock the door with a key. She glanced around. It looked different during the day — it looked different when she knew it was Chat Noir’s. The fern, once again freshly-watered, the wicker chair, the welcome mat greeting them cheerfully from under his boots, Look what the cat dragged in! He had such an eye for detail. Perhaps that fact would've been more shocking to her last week. After seeing the inside of his place, after seeing him cook, it made total sense that he'd care so much for what was essentially just a balcony. He’d never let his place rot away, not like his neighbour haf done.

“I just wanted to do some meal prep for the next few days, but I’ll join you after,” he said once they were inside. He switched on the kitchen light and set the bag down on the table. “Let me get the ingredients out for you.”

“Oh, uh, don't worry.” She put a hand on his shoulder before he could shoot off. “I can get them. If that's okay with you.”

He paused, eyes flicking between hers, then smiled. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

She smiled, too, and headed off towards his cupboards.

She found all their dry ingredients first, lying out the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and ginger on his counter while he washed some meat in the sink. It was a nice surprise to find he actually packed away what he’d bought for the house. She’d half expected he’d just keep it in a shopping bag somewhere for easy access — that was what Alya did.

Her stomach flipped. She ignored it, crouching down to take out a mixing bowl from under the sink.

Chat Noir looked up from what he was doing by the hob, idly sprinkling some garlic into the contents of his frying pan. “You don't need a scale?” he asked.

“No,” she said, peeling open the flour. “Once you've been baking for a while it all becomes second…” 

An avalanche crashed right out of the packet and into the mixing bowl, bursting up into a cloud of white.

She sighed. “...Nature. Second nature.” She righted the packet and set it on the counter, staring at the bowl full of flour in front of her.

“Oops,” he said with a laugh. “If you wait a while I can come help.”

She shot him a look. “Are you just saying that because of the onion thing?”

“No, no.” he said. “I trust you fully.”

“I know how to bake.”

“I know you know.”

“Okay.” 

“Okay.”

His frying pan hissed in the silence.

She took in a deep, steadying breath. She hated being snappy for no reason. It wasn't his fault she was in a bad mood. 

The spicy perfume of garlic suffused the kitchen.

Her stomach grumbled.

Maybe not totally his fault. He didn't know she hadn't had lunch. Maybe if she asked nicely…

No. Absolutely not. He'd already made her that bolognese. She couldn't just come to his house and use his kitchen and eat his food. 

She took a spoon off the drying rack and began scooping the flour back into the packet. 

It was odd to think that the first time she was baking all year was for the competition. Her teachers weren’t kidding when they said the last year of lycée would be intense, but even after she’d finished her portfolio and the bac, her summer was filled with the girls, wringing out the holiday and their time together before everyone went their separate ways. She wondered why she didn’t get anything done afterwards, though. Alix had gone off to Massachusetts for graphic design way back in August, Mylène and Ivan had made their move to Montpellier back in July , and Rose and Juleka hadn’t been around that much anyway, busy rehearsing for tour.

The person who’d been around the longest was Alya. Longer than she probably should’ve, pushing her departure date all the way to the tail end of September, just so they wouldn’t need to say goodbye so soon.

The warm aroma of chicken filled the kitchen. 

The noise her stomach made was inhuman . 

She rolled up the flour packet, glancing over her shoulder to check if he noticed. She really should’ve eaten something before leaving the house, although she supposed the whole reason she went out in the first place was to eat. Baking while hungry was hard enough as it was, but while someone was cooking in the same room? 

Chat Noir hummed softly to himself. the chicken sizzling in the oil.

She swallowed. She poured the sugar into the bowl, shaking it a little to mix it with the flour. 

It was a good thing she was here, she reasoned with herself, even if it meant she was going to be extra sad with her pot noodles tonight. It was better than wandering around the city, probably pissing off some patrol volunteers while she was at it. 

But she couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt. Was she getting too comfortable coming to his place? Whenever she used to feel sad before, Alya would come over with movies, video games, and snacks — now that she wasn't here, was she trying to wheedle her way into Chat Noir’s private time to fill that gap? 

It was fine — he’d been okay with it today, anyway. But just because Alya was busy with her new best friend didn't mean she could make it a habit.

She stopped pouring, furrowing her brow. 

New best friend?

Was she… actually jealous of Estelle?

No way. She and Alya had been friends since they were fourteen. They’d had countless sleepovers, late-night talks, video chats, she even knew her secret identity — she couldn’t seriously be that insecure over Estelle just because, what, they just so happened to bake together? 

She couldn’t get into her own head about their friendship, not when she would only be gone for a year. How long was a year, really? It was December already, and then it’d be 2022, and then her gap year would zoom by and it’d be September again. A year was nothing.

Well, it'd probably be a lot easier if Alya actually decided to reply to her messages.

She shook her head and continued mixing. 

“Are you okay?” Chat Noir asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, the residue of her thoughts sharpening her tone. She cleared her throat, glancing back at him over her shoulder. “I’m fine. Just… focusing.” 

“Oh. Okay.” He was looking at her weirdly, lowering the heat on the stove. “It’s just that, um, well, I don’t know how it works for baking, but I don’t usually go for a tablespoon when I’m measuring out cinnamon.”

She looked down at her hands. Sure enough, she was in the midst of tipping cinnamon into the spoon she’d been using to transfer the flour. 

She glanced at the mixing bowl.

A hill of cinnamon sat at the top. Way more than she was meant to add.

She closed her eyes and swore under her breath. At the same time her stomach grumbled.

Baking while hungry really was a bad idea.

“Why don’t you take a break?” he said. He was moving his food into some containers, leaving them to the side to cool off. “We could have lunch.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” She dusted off her hands, picking some cinnamon up with the spoon and trying to fit it back into the container. “I’ll just get the dough done and get out of your hair.”

“Oh. Um.” He looked down at the food containers. “I just thought— I mean, I cooked—”

“No, it’s your meal prep!” she said. Her stomach growled again; she clapped a hand over it. “It’s fine. I still have a lot to do, anyway.”

“But My Lady—”

“Seriously, don’t worry. I’ll just go pick up a sandwich from Carrefour on the way back.”

“Ladybug, I made honey chicken,” he said. 

At that, she turned around. “What?”

He held up one of the food containers so she could see. Golden pieces of chicken breast tucked beside white rice.

“I mean, you don’t have to have any if you don’t want to.” He put it down, resting the lid on top of it without closing it. “But you said you wanted some the other day. I thought I could make you a couple of boxes so you don't have to go out every time.”

She stared at him. Then at the food container. Then at him.

He made honey chicken? For her ?

She'd been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t even thought to ask what he was doing. 

“You don't have to,” he repeated. “I mean, it's probably not as good as that restaurant’s, so—”

“No.” She placed down the spoon and came over to the dining table. “No. I want to.”

He looked at her, then at the mixing bowl. “Now?” he said. “Don't you want to finish the dough?”

“I’ll finish it later,” she said, dragging out a chair. “We should eat together.”

He cracked a soft smile. “Okay. That sounds good.”

She watched him take out two plates, carefully serving them — rice first, then the chicken. Her face felt hot while she watched. In her steadfastness not to impose, she must've looked like she didn't want to be here if it wasn't to bake.

Which… well, wasn't that technically the idea?

 It was easy to believe when it was just the spaghetti bolognese that it was just a matter of politeness, that inherent generosity of Chat Noir mixed with an inability to say no to his partner, two things she really didn't want to take advantage of. But honey chicken? After the one time she mentioned it? Not only was he making food for her when they weren't even supposed to see each other today, but food that he knew she liked. 

He found a placemat for her and set down the plate. He folded a napkin, set it down next to her hand, along with a knife and fork.

Unable to help herself, she inhaled.

The overwhelming savour of the chicken, entangled with the honey and notes of garlic, warmed her whole body.

Her face crumpled.

He stopped, halfway through getting his own cutlery. “My Lady?”

“Sorry— sorry.” Oh my God. She scrabbled for the napkin, holding it to the corner of her eye to catch her tears. “This is so embarrassing.” 

“No, it's fine, I…” He opened and closed his mouth a few times. “...Are you okay?”

She could feel her resolve crumbling, to not look like a loser in front of him, not look like the kind of person she really felt like right now — the kind of person that didn’t know how to be alone. But she was so hungry and the restaurant was closed and she missed eating more than just pot noodles, missed having honey chicken on her bad days, and he’d made it for her.

She sighed. “...I haven't been feeling great today,” she said, fiddling with the napkin. “I miss my friends. And my parents. And whenever I don't feel great my mum always makes me honey chicken. It's sweet and warm and comforting and…” She trailed off.

“Wait, so, that day when you needed the Wi-Fi…?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “It's just… been a lonely few weeks.”

A soft silence fell over them. He was still standing, looking at the food.

“Being alone is hard,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been alone most of my life. Being on vacation doesn't really make it feel any better.”

She sniffed, looking up at him. “You seem to love being alone, though,” she said. “I mean, your cooking, your books…”

“Where's the fun if you can't share it with someone?”

There was something in his voice that struck her. Something raw and cracked open, a tone she never usually heard from him.

Everything he’d said to her came rushing back. How he thought about bringing his friends here one day. How he had to eat his cooking alone on the way home so his father didn't tell him off. 

The way he’d immediately offered to be her partner for the competition. Not because he was good at baking, not because he even knew how to bake. Just because both of them were by themselves.

She looked down at the food, steam rolling off it in curls.

“You can share it with me,” she said quietly. “I mean, if you want.”

He let out a soft breath. “Yeah?”

She wiped a tear off her face, and smiled. “Yeah.”

Chapter Text

“Is it weird that I’m gonna miss this?” he asked, running his thumb over the weaving. “I mean, I know it's just a coaster. But we've had some good memories.”

“Kid, I told you, just keep using it. I’m sure Ladybug cares even less than I do.”

“No, but they have to match .” Pointedly, he took out the thin cardboard box from his Carrefour bag and peeled off the plastic. “It'd look weird if all my coasters had polka dots on them except for one.”

From his place on the armrest, Plagg grumbled something under his breath about how a set of six coasters was already overkill, considering he just had one friend. Chat Noir chose to ignore him. What she'd said yesterday didn’t necessarily mean she’d be over every day, but he supposed that, if she was going to be here more often , he could at least do something special.

Though maybe coasters were a little silly. But after they'd had their honey chicken and started talking she'd mentioned how weird it was that he only had one coaster, and asked him whether he expected her to get ugly tea rings all over his coffee table whenever they sat together in his living room.

He’d just… liked that she was worried about tea rings. He liked that she was thinking about being in his living room often enough for there to be the risk of tea rings. And he’d like her to know that he liked it, that he was grateful to have her around, that he wanted her to feel welcomed here.

He removed the coasters out of their box and laid them out neatly, then ripped open his new packet of potpourri and poured it into the bowl he’d gotten from the kitchen.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Plagg said.

“What?”

“When you used to be crazy in love with her.” He leaned back against the couch and crossed a tiny kwami leg over the other. “Wouldn't it be funny if you were in love with her now?”

He gave him a look. “That was four years ago.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m just observing.”

He scrunched up the packaging and threw it into his wastebin. “I’m not in love with Ladybug.”

“Okay.”

“Plagg, seriously. I’m not.”

He stretched himself out across the arm rest. “I’m not saying you are.”

“Well, good. Because I’m not.”

“Good for you.”

Chat Noir rolled his eyes, grabbing his shopping bag and heading to the kitchen. 

There had been no clear moment delineating a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ he was in love with Ladybug. It had been a slow dwindling, a sparkler fizzling out over time. He chalked it up to a side effect of growing up, of growing into their partnership, learning that he could appreciate her, could protect her, could fight by her side without the heartbreak complicating things between them. 

But maybe it was also all of that lycée chaos — the extra classes, the exams, the applications — the distance between them allowing him to reorganise his brain to make more sense of their relationship.

Plagg was always trying to get into his head about it, though. Which was stupid, because he wasn't fourteen anymore. He knew, now, that nothing good came out of expecting more from someone than they could give, especially when working as a team. Right now, what mattered to him was being there for her. For the contest and as her partner.

The balcony door slid open softly. Ladybug’s costume broke through the gaps in the partition while she tried to get the door to catch on the latch again, then crossed the living room to meet him.

“Sorry I’m late. I was waiting for a call from my friend,” she said. “Do you mind if I leave my bag here? It just has some cookie cutters and stuff in it.”

“Sure,” he said, tucking a net of clementines into the fridge. “You can leave it right over—” 

He closed the door, and when he saw her, paused.

She was standing on the other side of his dining table, a black tote bag in hand. Her hair fell in neat, dark layers around her shoulders, fringe wisping over her eyes. She tucked it behind her ear nonchalantly.

It left his mouth before he realised. “You look pretty.”

She threw a hand to her chest and gasped. “Oh my God, Chat, are you flirting with me?”

What he had said hit him. “No, no! I just meant— I mean, your hair— it’s been years since—”

Then, to his surprise, she laughed. “I’m messing with you,” she said. “Thank you. I wasn't really feeling the ribbons today.”

His heart slowed. “Oh. Right.”

She snickered. “My bag?”

He pointed at the hooks near the front door. She hung it up, returned to the kitchen, and started getting the ingredients out.

He watched her, standing on her tiptoes to reach his top shelves. Her hair swayed around her back, falling into the dip between her shoulder blades. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen hair so dark, somehow even darker than it was when they were younger. 

“Okay,” she said. Her fringe swept over her forehead as she turned around. “Did you manage to finish up the first batch of dough from yesterday?”

“Oh. About that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I… I tried. After you went home. But I think I did something wrong.”

Her expression flickered, but she schooled it expertly, clearly not wanting to show her disappointment. “That’s okay. What happened?”

“It just wouldn’t… thicken,” he said. “I was whisking it and whisking it and whisking it, but it still looked so dry and powdery. When I Googled it, I saw something about overmixing? But I wasn’t sure. I… left the bowl in the fridge, if you want to take a look.”

His face felt hot. Making mistakes was fine when he was the only person holding himself accountable. It was different when someone else was in his kitchen — really, that had to be the only good thing about not cooking at the mansion. He couldn't imagine what those food tech disasters would’ve been like with his father watching over his shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal.” She moved the ingredients aside, making some space on the table, and passed him to get to the fridge. “Let me see what I can do.”

She opened the door, then fell silent. 

A beat passed. Then two. The kitchen light hummed softly.

“Chat?” she said.

“Yeah?” 

“Did you… just mix what I left?”

“Was I… meant to do something else?” he asked. “Like, put it in the oven, or—”

“Did you, by any chance, forget to add in the wet ingredients?” Her voice was strained with a smile. “Like, the eggs? The molasses?”

Oh. No. 

He sighed at the same time she started laughing. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, you’re fine, I—” She laughed again, frantically trying to put a hand over her mouth to stifle it, all the while his face rapidly grew warmer. “Sorry. Sorry. I should’ve been clearer before. I just assumed—”

“That I wasn’t an idiot?” he ventured.

She sniffed, laughter petering out. “Yeah.” She shrugged. “My bad.”

She shot him a grin. It looked almost unfamiliar on her face, like a sentence in different handwriting. He hadn't really seen her smile like that since they were younger.

He smiled back.

“Alright.” She removed the bowl from the fridge and set it on the dining table, peeling back the plastic wrap. Seeing the sad, brown mixture of dry ingredients, she let out another giggle. “Grab another bowl. We're going to need way more than one batch, anyway.”

She was still smiling as he reached under his sink, scooping her hair up into a ponytail. He moved one of his saucepans aside, picked out a bowl, and stood up.

“Okay.” She pointed at the flour. “Pour this in first.”

He grabbed the bag, peeling it open. “How do I know when to stop?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.”

He hoisted it up in his hands, angling to tip it forward.

“Wait, wait, wait.” She grabbed his wrist. “You’re going to make a mess like that. Do it slowly.”

“Okay,” he said, and readjusted his grip. Flour slipped through the opening effortlessly. Ladybug’s hand followed his, a firm cup around his knuckles, directing him.

“That’s enough,” she said once he’d poured in a small white slope. She pulled at his hand a little, just to make sure. “Okay. What do you think comes next?”

“Um.” He thought about it. “Cinnamon?”

“Good job!” she said. She pulled out a chair and took a seat, folding her arms on the table while she watched him. “Don't worry, I’ll remember to bring some gold stars over next time.” 

He rolled his eyes, grabbed the cinnamon and a teaspoon and started pouring it in.

“Wait!” Once again, she grabbed his wrist. “How much are you putting in?”

“Uh.” He looked at the spoon. “Two?”

“No, no, no.” She shook her head at him sagely, like she was some kind of wise baking wizard underneath the polka-dotted costume. “Baking isn't about numbers, chaton. It's about the feeling .”

He blinked. “The… feeling?”

“That's what my dad always says!” she said. “We never use numbers at home. We just focus and listen to our heart.”

Oh. Of course. She must’ve learned baking from her family. It was weird that he didn’t know that — it was weird that he’d never even heard about her dad. It wasn't that they'd never talked about their families, but it was always through offhand comments, glimpsing into each other’s lives from the outskirts. All he knew about hers, really, was the fact they were out of town.

He hesitated a little. “Are you close with your dad?” he asked.

She looked at him, surprised, like she hadn't quite intended to invite the question. He opened his mouth to backtrack, say something about secret identities, but she beat him to it.

“Yeah. Super close. With both my parents, actually.” She smiled. “Are you?”

Something must have flickered on his face, because the air changed. 

Immediately, her smile dropped.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “If it's not something you want to talk about, don't worry.”

“No, it's okay,” he replied. “I’m, uh, not, no. My father’s pretty strict.”

She was quiet for a moment. “...I see.” 

He heard her open her mouth, and looked up. She closed it as soon as their eyes met, then seemed to change her mind.

“I mean, it’s something I’ve always wondered about you,” she said. “You know. What your family might be like.”

“...Really?” he said.

“Family is really important to me,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know who I’d be without my parents. Especially now that we’re getting older. I guess I always wanted to know the kind of people you’re growing up with.”

The way she said it sounded like she’d thought about it before. Like this wasn’t the first time she’d wanted to say it. “You could’ve always asked, you know,” he said.

“It never felt like there was a good time,” she replied, then shrugged.

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. He capped the cinnamon and continued adding to the bowl in silence. She watched intently, chin cupped in her hand, her own mixing bowl set aside while she supervised. 

How many other things lay dormant in their partnership, the topics never broached because they were too young, or too busy, or too occupied with being superheroes to be able to address? Was there something different, now, when they could sit together like this? Like they didn't have to think about conversations in the context of their duties? How much had they already missed of each other’s lives, brushed past because neither of them ever asked?

 He finished putting in all the dry ingredients and brushed off his hands. “What next?”

“Mix.”

He began whisking. His eyes flicked up to her. “Do you bake often?” he asked.

“I used to,” she said after a moment. “Not as much anymore.”

“How come?”

She took another pause. “I don't know,” she said. “Okay, no, that's not true. I just… didn't really enjoy it for some time, I guess.”

“Really? Why?”

She kept her attention on his whisk, steady on his movement. “Baking was something I used to do a lot when I was younger,” she said. “But I feel like for a while life has been moving really fast. It feels weird to bake when everything is so different, you know?”

“Have a lot of things been changing for you lately?”

She laughed dryly. “Oh, have they.” 

He picked up a stick of butter and inspected it, glancing over at her. “Um—”

“Two of them,” she said.

“Thank you.” He began to unpeel it and dropped it in. He picked the whisk back up. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

She looked at him and quickly straightened in her seat. “No— yeah, of course I know that,” she said. “I mean, we're kind of stuck with each other. It’d be pretty bad if we couldn't talk.”

He laughed. “Well, as long as we're stuck with each other.”

She smiled. “You can add the eggs, now.”

He did as told, cracking both eggs with one hand and dropping them in the bowl.

“My best friend got this job abroad,” she said. “It’s super cool — literally her dream job. But being away from her is hard.” She sighed. “I just get all these weird, messy feelings and it's— it's so annoying.”

“Oh.” He scraped some of the mix from the side of the bowl with the whisk. “Weird, messy feelings definitely are annoying.”

She shot him a smile. “Speaking from experience?”

“Weird, messy feelings are a Chat Noir special.”

She laughed. It petered out slowly. “It’s just frustrating because, like, I know how amazing she is. And I think part of me wants to keep all of her to myself.”

The idea that Ladybug could ever feel like that about someone had been totally removed from the realm of possibility for him. She was Ladybug — people wanted her , not the other way around. But, well, he supposed she wasn't Ladybug all of the time. That thought wouldn't bother him as much these days, but with her sitting in his apartment, a surprising knot of frustration gripped him.

“Have you spoken to her about it?” he asked.

“Are you insane? No .”

He stopped. “...What's so insane about that?”

“The fact that she's my best friend and out doing what she loves and I should be happy,” she said. “I mean, come on. If it was you and me, would you say anything?”

“...No, I guess not,” he said. 

She gave him half a smile. “See? That whole communication thing is way easier in theory,” she said. “Sometimes I think… you know, I miss being younger. Even all the bad parts. I’d much prefer if the problems I had back then were the problems I had now.” She fiddled with the end of her ponytail. “I mean, I’d still be crap at Physics, but you know what I mean.”

Guilt niggled in his stomach. They were partners, friends — he should've been there for her. But how could he have known any of what went on in her civilian life when he didn’t know her as a civilian? Other than missing her friend, he had no idea what problems she was having. Why hadn’t it felt like this when they were younger, back when he was in love with her? 

It hit him, then. Those busy two years, his feelings for her falling back into the sidelines — they’d drifted apart. Their memories of each other were stuck from when they were younger, things that they told each other right at the beginning of their partnership, things that they hadn’t sat down to talk about… well, ever. How much had changed since then? What expired traces of information were they holding onto to justify the fact they were friends?

“Have you known your best friend for a long time?” he asked.

She paused, ponytail still wrapped around her fingers. “...Yeah, I’d say so,” she said. “Exactly the same time I’ve known you.”

“Wow. You must be close.”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, she was the one I was gonna enter the contest with in the first place,” she said. “We’d been planning it for years . But something always came up. We agreed that as soon as we finished lycée we’d finally enter together.”

“Ah. So that’s why you were so excited about our break.”

“Yeah.” She let go of her ponytail, pushing some hair behind her ear. “I feel a little silly making such a big deal about it before. Some break to have to stay transformed the whole time.”

“I mean, you don’t have to stay transformed,” he said.

“Unlike you, I don’t spend all my time scrolling through Amazon for knockoff superhero masks.”

He laughed. “I am sorry, though,” he told her. “You know, about your best friend. And, well… whatever else you’re dealing with right now.” He looked down at the bowl, perfunctorily stirring in the whisk. “I mean, I’m clearly not very good at baking, but I hope doing this together takes your mind off stuff at least a little bit.”

She was quiet for a moment, then smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m really glad you know you’re bad at baking.”

He shot her a look. She threw her head back and laughed.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just teasing,” she said. “I’m really grateful to have you as a partner, Chat Noir. You’ve always been there for me. Even though a lot of things are changing… it’s nice to know that I at least have you.” 

“...Oh,” he said. “Of course, Ladybug. I’ll be there for you no matter what.”

A comfortable silence lapsed over them. He dropped in a little baking soda and mixed it in while she watched. 

“How about you, though?” she said. “There must be a lot of things changing for you, too, right?”

He didn’t reply right away. “I mean, I guess.”

“You ‘guess’?”

“...I don’t really think about change too much,” he said. 

“...Oh.”

Her tone shifted sharply. Immediately, he wanted to smack himself. The last thing he wanted was to shut her down, but what other way could he answer that question without sharing too much? By telling her change was something he was used to by now? That watching his friends live their lives without him was just something that happened — Kagami off with a girl, exploring the world, exploring love; the rest of his friends already miles into the same journey? It was too much. Way too much. Maybe things were changing for Ladybug, but that kind of change was happening to her, not around her, and dumping that all on her made him feel off-balance.

“My mother passed away when I was still pretty young,” he said. “Thirteen-ish. Just before we got our Miraculous. Since then it’s never really mattered to me if things changed. Like, when the worst already happens, you know there’s not much else you won’t be able to get through. It just feels like watching things happen through a window.”

And that wasn’t too much?

The atmosphere in the kitchen had shifted, like it was making room for the extra weight. Chat Noir wanted the ground to swallow him up.

“...I’m so sorry, Chat.” she said quietly. “I didn’t— you never mentioned that before.”

He struggled for a moment, looking down at the smooth, white whips of cookie batter in the bowl. “It never felt like there was a good time.”

Silence fell over them. His pulse seemed to want to drive a hole through his neck. Where did they go from here? His socialising compass was uncalibrated, leaving him unsure of which direction he'd need to turn to go back, to return to the safety of their offhand comments, their outskirted glimpses, to let the rest of the evening continue like normal. 

The way it had been up until now.

He and Ladybug had been partners for four years. But it was frustrating that, even now, their friendship didn’t really reflect that. She had a best friend who was studying abroad that he knew nothing about. His mother passed away when he was thirteen and she still thought he had parents , plural. These things mattered . How could they really know each other if they didn’t know this? And if they didn’t, what did that say about what they shared? Was it really nothing more than a superhero team, two people who only got along whenever they needed to get something done?

“Do you take after her?” she asked.

The question surprised him. “Sorry?”

She looked like she wanted to apologise again, but stopped herself. “Your mother,” she said. “Do you look like her?”

It took a long time to think of a response. They didn’t talk about things like that, things that mattered in this specific way. And maybe that was fine when they were kids, when they didn’t realise that they mattered, but it mattered now , when they were spending time together for more than just superheroing, and the Ladybug and Chat Noir from the last four years didn’t exactly provide much of a guideline.

But that Ladybug and Chat Noir hadn’t ever sat in a kitchen together over mixing bowls of cookie batter. They’d never had the kind of moment where they could afford to put their duties to rest for a second, where in the new space other parts of them could come out of hiding, unfurl, make themselves known to each other.

Sure, maybe they didn’t talk about things like that. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t.

“I do,” he finally said. “Look like my mother, I mean. Though she was obviously much prettier.” Just saying that loosened a knot in his chest, whichever part he usually kept tied tight so it didn’t slip out.

Ladybug laughed. “I mean, well, obviously .”

Her tone made him laugh, too. “What about you?” he asked. “Do you take after your mother?”

“Is that your way of asking me which side the Asian comes from?”

“ What? Oh my God, no, that’s not—”

“I’m messing with you. Again,” she said. “I have a lot of my dad’s face. But everything else is totally my mum.”

The corner of his mouth turned up into a smirk. “Is your temper just a genetic mutation, then?”

“Shut up!” She shoved his arm. “I have no temper. I choose peace and love everyday.”

“Yes, and I totally don’t need reading glasses when I’m de-transformed.”

She gasped. “You wear reading glasses?”

“Only sometimes. My father gave me his crappy eyes.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, then thought better of it. 

“What?” he said. “Tell me.”

“No, I can’t. It’s not nice.”

“Tell me!”

She sighed, head dropping a little, gaze avoiding his. “...He gave you his crappy parenting, too.”

Silence for a beat. Then two.

Then Chat Noir burst into hysterics.

“I never thought I’d hear you roast my father,” he said through his laughter. “Thank you. That’s like a rite of passage for all my best friends.”

A smile flickered onto her face. “Your best friends, huh?” she said. “Am I one of your best friends?”

He sobered. “Do you… see yourself as one of my best friends?”

“I mean… you’ve always been one of mine.”

It hit him like a gust of air, like a window being cracked open, a relief he didn’t even realise he needed. With all their gaps, all the empty space in their schemas of each other, they were still important to each other. How could he have thought that would’ve ever changed?

“Oh,” he said softly. “Well— yeah. You are one of my best friends.”

She rested her chin in the cup of her hands and smiled.

By the end of the evening, all their dough had been prepared. They didn’t check their measurements once.

Chapter Text

When she pulled open her skylight, she found her phone on her pillow mid-ring. Alya’s WhatsApp picture, a photo of the two of them in front of the Eiffel Tower, filled the screen.

Ladybug scrambled down, cold air flooding into her room through the skylight, not even bothering to transform back. She grabbed her phone, fumbled with it through her gloves, and answered. “Hello?”

“Hey!” There was wind down the line. She wouldn't have had work on a Saturday. Was she out with Estelle? “I just saw your photo on Paris Bakes. You and Chat Noir look… interesting. What even happened?”

A smile fought onto her face. Their #BudsWhoBake selfie received the exact amount of confusion and amusement they’d expected from a picture of them baking while she looked like she was fighting for her life.

“It's a really silly story,” she said. “We were just being dumb and, well, somehow ended up in an onion chopping competition? It didn't work out too well. I cried. But it was fun.”

She could hear the grin in Alya’s voice. “You sound happy.”

“I am,” she said. 

She didn't add how behind schedule they were, because, well, by now they really should've been baking the pieces. But if she said that Alya would definitely latch onto how uncharacteristically chill she was being, and she didn't have an explanation for that.

Other than… well. It was nice spending time with Chat Noir. She’d felt so awfully lonely for such a long time, and it was nice to finally not feel like that.

She bit her lip. “Hey, um. I kinda want to apologise for something.”

“Apologise?” There was a pause, then the sound of a traffic crossing, before Alya continued. “Apologise for what?”

She fiddled with her duvet, lacing it between her gloved fingers. “I feel like I’ve been acting really weird lately,” she said. “You know, about you being in London and stuff. And I’m really sorry. I should be more supportive.”

“Oh.” Genuine surprise coloured her voice. “Marinette, it's okay. You weren't acting weird.”

“No, but—” She struggled for a moment. “I just need you to know. That I really miss you. And I’m just not used to missing you this much.” She closed her eyes, squeezing her fingers into the duvet.  “But— but I’m okay now. I mean, I was always okay, but I’m extra okay now. Because, I mean, I can see how much you're enjoying London, and working with the BBC, and, well, obviously I have Chat Noir, so…” She trailed off. “So— just— sorry. Even if I wasn't acting weird. Sorry for feeling weird. I’m just happy for you.”

Silence filled the line. She gnawed on her lip until fibres caught on her teeth, waiting for the microphone to pick up something other than the wind.

“...Thank you,” she finally said. Another pause lapsed over the call. “Okay. So, that makes what I’m about to say a lot easier.”

“...What?”

Alya took a deep breath. “I’ve applied to some unis. In London.”

It was like her lungs suddenly crumpled. “ Oh .”

“It was just— It wasn't planned,” she hastened to say, but the explanation didn't stick the way she probably wanted it to. Did it matter if it was planned if she was telling her like this? “I was just talking to Estelle one evening. And I was talking about how I love London so much, and how jealous I am of the other interns because their courses are so much better than IPJ’s, and she suggested that, well… I could just study here, too.”

Her brain felt too quiet, muffled, like it had gotten up and walked away from this conversation, leaving her to deal with it on her own. Alya wasn't speaking, leaving her no grace period to plan her response.

“I, um. Oh.” She stared at the wrinkles in her bed sheets. “Like, study study.”

“Yeah.” She laughed nervously. “Like, the full three years.”

They'd be nineteen in September. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. They’d be twenty-two by the time she’d be done. In another decade of their lives.

She held her breath, hoping she couldn't hear it tremble. “And your master's?”

She hesitated. “I haven't decided yet.”

So, London, basically. Or maybe she’d spice it up a little. Go somewhere else in England. Add a couple of miles to those three-hundred.

“It's not definite yet, obviously,” she said. “I still need to get accepted.”

“Which you will, of course.” Her voice was hoarse. “I mean, it's you.”

“Don't say that.”

“What?” she said. “It's true.”

“Yeah, but—”  She sighed. “I’m really gonna miss you, Marinette.”

Her fingers clenched around her phone, a shocking surge of anger piercing through her. If she was really going to miss her, why apply in the first place? Why even go ? She didn't need to be comforted by something that wasn't true. She just wanted her best friend back.

Hot tears boiled behind her eyes. She tried slowing her breaths ineffectively, too worried Alya would be able to hear.

“I mean, what's three years, anyway?” she said. Hastily, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “We were basically long distance during the bac, anyway.”

“No, right, of course.” She heard her sniff over her footsteps. “Remember when we stayed up until 4AM playing Minecraft?”

“Oh my God, yeah.” She laughed wetly, pressing her fingers into the corner of her eye. Her mask was slippery. “I think I lost the world, though.”

“We’ll just have to make it again, then.”

There was hope in her voice. Shaky hope. Uncertain hope. And Ladybug couldn't help but feel the same. 

Because if they already felt so far away from each other now, she doubted three years would make it any better.

“That is, of course, if I get in,” she said quickly. She sniffed again, taking in a quick breath. “You're probably just gonna have to deal with me eating all your food and sleeping on your chaise again starting September.”

She should've smiled at that. But she didn't.

“You’ll be fine,” she said. Maybe the correct answer would've been don't say that or I know you will , but she'd already said it once. She wasn't sure she could put herself through that again. “I believe in you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You always do.”

She asked her something about Chat Noir that she responded with a half-hearted answer. With a last goodbye, Marinette put down her phone, staring at the picture of them on the screen.

She swallowed, a teardrop falling on her thumb.

Chapter Text

He found her on his balcony after the attack, gnawing at her nails through the costume. “Looks like someone’s gotten better at navigation.”

She snatched her fingers out of her mouth. “Sorry. Yeah. I figured it'd just be easier to meet you here.” She rubbed her arm, trying to play it off. “Sorry for losing you during the fight.”

“Not a problem, My Lady.” He nudged her to the side so he could open the door. “Keeping Paris safe is always the priority.”

She cleaned her feet on the welcome mat and stepped inside, not looking up. He furrowed his brow.

She’d been quiet all battle. Even after they’d gotten separated, he’d noticed. Maybe she’d just felt rusty — it had been a while since the last time someone had gotten akumatised.

He realised, then, that his new akuma alert was still blaring. Through some fiddling on his phone, he’d managed to connect the alert to some Bluetooth speakers, leaving the rest of his notifications to come through as normal. 

It was, however, annoyingly loud, and drained the hell out of his battery. He grabbed his phone off the coffee table and tapped his screen until the alarm stopped. Then, promptly, put it on charge.

He let out a breath, chucking it onto the sofa. “Do you want something to eat while we bake?” When she didn’t reply, he looked over. “Ladybug?”

She was facing his bookshelf, inspecting a photo he had framed there.

“Random photo of me in your house?” she said, and glanced over. She gave him a half-smile. “Creep.”

He came over to look. “It’s not a photo of you,” he said. “It’s us . Don’t be so self-absorbed.”

She laughed. She turned back around, pushing some hair behind her ear. “We look so small. I don’t even remember who took this.”

It was an older photo, back when they were around fifteen, right after one of their first battles. “Oh. It was Alya Césaire, remember?” He pointed at her face. “Look. You were in the middle of talking to her when she snapped it.”

Her earlier quietness returned. “...Hm.”

She continued staring at the photo, arms crossed. 

“Are you okay?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, no, I’m just—”  She cut herself off, then sighed. “Just… a little annoyed. That I got to battle late.”

“You weren't late.”

“Later than you.”

“Is that the standard for lateness we use now?”

An involuntary smile pulled at her lips. She looked at her feet. “I don't know. Just makes me feel bad, I guess. Making the patrol volunteers do so much work.”

“They’re volunteers. They want to do the work.”

She snorted. “Yeah, because they think we actually have lives outside of being superheroes.” Her head whipped around. “I mean— not that you don't have a life—” With a groan, she covered her face with her hands. “Ugh, I’m sorry. Don't listen to me. I had a crappy night after I got back from yours. I think I’m just tired.”

He deflated. And she’d left his place in such a good mood, too. He wanted to ask, but, at the last minute, changed his mind.

“I’d say we should break out the new coasters,” he said instead.

“...Coasters?” she asked, lowering her hands. Her expression morphed into one of realisation. “Oh my God. You actually bought another one?”

“Oh, My Lady, I bought a set .” He gestured to his coffee table. “I’ll make some tea. Back in a sec.”

He headed off through the partition, pulling down the same two mugs he’d used the first time she came. 

As the kettle brewed, she slipped through the partition, too, and took a seat at the dining table. 

He looked over. “I was gonna bring them to the living room.”

“No, I know.” She’d taken two coasters from the coffee table and brought them here, setting them out in front of her. “But I wanted to sit with you.”

“Oh,” he said again, and smiled. “Okay.”

She sat with her hands tucked under her thighs, looking at a small gingerbread stain on his tablecloth. He leant against the counter, watching her. Long pigtails draped over her shoulders, she pressed her lips together idly.

It hit him like this was the first time he was looking at her — she was so pretty. He’d told her as much yesterday, but it felt different now, like something private, and the momentary sensation of being sent back four years shocked him. This was the same girl whose name he used to doodle in his exercise books, whose face suffused the better part of his photo gallery for more than a year. Now she was sitting at his dining table and letting him make her a cup of tea, like they were the kind of friends that did that. How had they been like this since only the other week? What on earth had they been doing before?

The kettle hissed softly in the silence, like radio static. “We can talk about it, if you want.”

She paused. “And if I don’t?”

“Well, I’m not gonna force you.” The kettle hissing matured to bubbling; he turned around and filled their cups. “But it might help to get it off your chest.” Finding a spoon from his cutlery drawer, he stirred her cup, then slid it across the table.

She placed it on the coaster and bit her lip. “I spoke to my best friend yesterday.”

“Oh! That's good, right?”

“She’s thinking to move for uni. To… where she is now.”

“...Oh.”

She didn't reply. Half-heartedly, she used her spoon to play with the teabag. He racked his brain for something to say, but nothing was fitting into the cavity left between them. Expression blank, she betrayed nothing.

“Do you ever think about how much better your life could've been if you weren't Chat Noir?” she said.

“...What?”

She lifted her head.  “Don't you?”

His mouth opened and closed a few times. Had he ever even thought about it? No, of course he hadn't. What kind of situation would he have had to have been in for his mind to go in that direction?

“...Do you?” he said in lieu of a response. “If you weren't Ladybug?”

She sighed, her spoon left leaning against her cup. “Sometimes it feels like I was so busy being a superhero all these years that I didn't get to grow up like everyone else did,” she said. “It never bothered me before, because, you know, it was just part of the job. But… I don’t know. I guess it just hit me last night that, like, the world doesn’t stop moving just because we were too busy to keep up.” She sucked in a breath. “I can't help but feel like… there’s this shiny new life that everyone’s leaving for which I wasn’t invited to. And that I would've gotten that invitation if I hadn't been Ladybug.”

This was different to how she’d spoken to him yesterday. Like she was bringing herself into the light so he could see her better. He wanted to say something, but for a while, any kind of reply eluded him.

She blew a little at the steam over her cup, gaze distant. 

“Would things have been much different if you weren't Ladybug?” he asked.

“...I don't know.” The steam swirled in weak tendrils around her mouth. Tentatively, she took a sip. “There are things I’ve turned down because I was Ladybug. Whether those things would've panned out anyway is a different story.”

The way she spoke sounded made him wonder if this was the first time she’d brought it up, if she hadn't even let herself hold it too long in her head. He’d definitely never gleaned this from her before. He’d never even considered it. 

“Do you think… you would've been happier?” he said. “You know, if you hadn't turned those things down?”

She inspected the coaster, playing with the weaving. After having asked it, he wasn't sure if he wanted an answer to that question. The idea of her saying yes shouldn't have bothered him so much — it wasn't like she was actually going to do it. They still had a gingerbread house to bake, and he knew full well she wouldn't just leave a project half-done. Still, his stomach felt tight.

 “...Probably not,” she finally said. “Though I almost went to New York when we were fourteen. Can you believe that?”

“New York?” he said. 

“Right?” She snorted. “I could’ve come back with a full New Yorker accent.” She looked down at her cup, wiping at her lip balm on the rim. “Don't think I would've enjoyed it much, though. I’d miss my family.” She looked up, then. “Was there anything that you couldn't do because you were Chat Noir?”

He had to pause to think. The carousel of his memories seemed to only show him everything he could do as Chat Noir, all the things that Adrien would've had no chance to experience. Adrien couldn't even cook in his own kitchen. Chat Noir made breakfast, lunch, and dinner on his very own stove. He didn't like that he had nothing to say. Not when he could tell this was the kind of thing she was hoping he’d relate to.

A thought entered his mind. “I couldn't get you to fall in love with me.”

The laugh that she let out seemed to surprise even her. “Seriously?”

“I mean, I’m not wrong.”

“So you think that's something you could've done if you weren't Chat Noir?”

“Don't crush a man's ego like this.”

She laughed again, shaking her head. “Alright, alright, other than that.”

“Then… well, nothing significant, honestly.” He curled his hands around his mug. “I think… you know, being Chat Noir has always been an escape. Especially when we were younger.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Her expression flickered. He knew she was remembering their conversation yesterday. “No, that… that makes sense.”

A small pinch of anxiety tightened in his chest. “You're not… planning to give up your Miraculous, right?” he asked. 

“God, no. Never,” she said. “I thought about it a lot after I became Guardian. But I realised that I would miss it too much.” 

And again, that same time-travelling feeling, shooting him back four years and back again. It was such a long time ago. He hadn't been sure they would've even stayed partners. It was... so different to what they were like now.

“What do you miss when you're not Ladybug?” he asked.

She hummed, looking around the kitchen. “I guess… not having to think about civilian stuff,” she said. “Like, if I did badly on a test or something I could just transform and be a superhero and it didn't matter that much anymore. There'd always be an akuma to fight or a patrol to finish, anyway.”

“What about now? When you don't have either?”

She smirked. “I accost you on your balcony and force you to make gingerbread with me.”

He laughed, taking a sip of his tea.

“I miss the sunsets,” she said. “I miss that feeling when you get on top of a rooftop and see how tiny everything looks. How can you be sad about anything when we're all just so tiny?” She smiled to herself. “I miss seeing people reunite after akumas. The way people will run across the city just to hug each other. I mean, it must be terrifying for them, but—”

“But it's nice to see people wanting to be close.”

“Yeah.” She polished off her cup and set it down on the coaster.

They lapsed into a soft silence. How much did it matter, really, if their experiences were different? He knew what those sunsets looked like, and that feeling of looking down at the city, like he could reach out in front of him and lift the Eiffel Tower up between his fingers. Who else in the world knew what that was like? No matter how far apart they drifted, they still had this. The invisible tie of their partnership holding them together.

He cleared his throat. “And… do you miss anything else?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to get me to say I miss you?”

“Pfft. No.”

“Oh?”

“I don't care at all.”

“Really?” She leant back in her chair. “That's a shame. Because, well, I do. Miss you, I mean.”

He bit back a smile. “You do?”

She pinched her fingers together. “Just a little.”

He laughed. “A little, huh?”

“A tiny, tiny bit.”

“Well, I’m glad I still made the cut.”

At the absence of her laughter, he looked at her.

She was looking back at him, hands folded on the table next to her empty cup.

“I think I miss you the most, actually,” she said.

Over the years, she’d said a lot of things for his benefit. And maybe it wouldn't matter as much if this was just that, an offhanded reassurance, kind as a gesture but without much weight to the meaning.

The way she said it now was different. Like an observation. A fact.

He exhaled through his nose, covering his face with his cup.

“Oh my God, are you blushing?” She laughed, but there was a softness to it. “I do miss you the most!”

“You want me to believe you have nothing better to do than miss me?”

“I said I miss you, not that I recite poetry about you to the moonlight,” she said. “We're partners and I care about you and I miss you when I don't see you for a while.”

Unexpectedly, a knot formed in his throat, stoked by the heat of the tea. God, he hoped she couldn't see it on his face. There was nothing in what she'd said for him to be getting so emotional, and he was sure she thought that, too. But there was something in it, something about hearing it from her, that felt like ice on a bruise he didn't even know was there.

He swallowed hard, hoping his voice wouldn't give him away. “I miss you the most, too,” he said.

He braved a glance at her face. 

Kitchen lights glistening in her eyes, she smiled.

He supposed she had her own bruise, too.

Chapter Text

Ladybug had washed their cups after they were done, and, without her asking, he’d taken out the ingredients from his cabinet. He’d insisted on preparing another batch of dough by himself, for ‘demonstration purposes’, wanting to test out his own unmeasured-measuring technique.

The issue arose of the electric mixer he’d procured from Lidl that morning, which he insisted on using, and due to a mistimed press of the button, left streams of gingerbread dough spattered across his face and hair.

Tap still running, she scrubbed between the metal of the whisks. Just looking at them made her snicker. She placed them upside down on the drying rack and towelled off her hands. He was still humming in the shower.

Unprompted, Alya entered her mind. A staple of their sleepovers had always been listening to her music through the stream of the shower head. Her playlists were the best, a somehow seamless melange of French, Creole, English, and even some Spanish, volume never any lower than the absolute loudest. Had her playlists changed since she’d met Estelle? Maybe they’d even made their own playlists together. Maybe they were listening to them now, scrolling through pictures of the unis she applied to, gasping and reading off all the modules available for her degree, just like the two of them had done with IPJ and ESMOD. 

She sighed, opening the fridge and taking out the other batch of dough. Chat Noir needed to hurry up and finish his shower. Talking seemed to keep Alya thoughts at bay.

The water switched off after a few minutes. The bathroom door unlocked and his footsteps padded into the kitchen.

“I’m getting started on some of the pieces,” she said, placing some dough on her workspace and rolling it out. She’d retrieved the tote bag she’d left, cookie cutters, cardboard templates, and a roll of baking paper spilling out onto the dining table. “You can keep whisking your—”

She looked up. 

Chat Noir stood in the doorway, hair wet and messy in his eyes, the warm, fresh scent of moisturiser following him. A black tank top framed his shoulders. 

He rubbed at some water on his neck, the muscles in his arm flexing as he moved.

“...Your dough,” she said. “Um. Don't use the electric mixer, please.”

Shaking water out of his hair, he entered the kitchen. “Man, you make one mess and suddenly the electric mixer is off limits.” He grabbed a normal whisk from the drawer, but instead of staying at the counter, took the mixing bowl and migrated to her side.

His arm brushed up against her.

She jumped.

He looked at her.

“Um.” She looked away. “Nothing. Sorry.”

He blinked, smiled, and continued whisking.

His arm hole cut out a smooth, tan semi circle of the side of his chest.

Lining up one of the templates with the dough, she yanked her knife through.

Since when did Chat Noir have such nice arms?

Surely, surely she would’ve noticed this before. The suits didn’t exactly hide anything, and, well, she’d basically been seeing him everyday since she was fourteen. He definitely didn’t have arms like that back when they were younger. 

He shifted his clutch around the bowl. His deltoid tightened under his skin.

Was he kidding her.

She took in a sharp, and what she hoped was imperceptible, breath. They were arms. Literally everyone had arms. Just because she’d never seen them out of costume didn't make them special. 

“Am I doing this right?” he asked.

She turned around. The dough had smoothened, a creamy brown mixture forming between the wire loops of the whisk. The tendons in his forearm were tight.

She wanted to throw herself off his balcony.

“Yeah, um.” She looked away again. “You’re doing fine.”

He paused. “I am?”

“Yeah.” She cut the last part of the dough and moved the template. 

With a smirk, he glanced over at her. “You’re not gonna tell me I’m not listening to the feeling?”

“...What?”

“You know. The feeling ?” he said. “What I was trying to show you before the gingerbread explosion?”

She looked up. The trajectory of her vision somehow missed his face completely and landed on his collarbone, at the place where it melted into his shoulder.

She snapped her eyes back down to the dough. “No, you’re fine,” she said. “Just keep mixing.”

The quizzical look he sent her did not go unnoticed.

Her face burned .

What was wrong with her? Chat Noir decided to wear something that wasn’t either a full body suit or a hoodie and suddenly being a normal, functional person wasn’t possible anymore?

She had the mental image of him awkwardly shrugging his hoodie back on, pretending it wasn’t because she was objectifying him, and the shame that licked through her could’ve been enough to set the knife in her hand alight.

“Actually, um, can you leave that?” she asked. “You can pre-heat the oven, instead.”

He paused, then looked at his bowl. “Can I… not continue mixing after I’ve pre-heated the oven?”

“Um. No. You can't.”

He stared at her, then, with a shake of his head, placed the bowl down on the table. “Okay.” He left her periphery, heading behind her to get to the oven.

She let out a deep breath. 

Out of sight, he opened the oven door, took out some trays, then closed it again. She focused on the sound of the oven, the beeping of the interface, trying very, very hard to think about how many pieces they’d be able to get baked today, and not how Chat Noir’s arms looked like the kind she would use for anatomy studies, all perfect, interlocking shapes and lines that could only be captured by the flat end of a 2B pencil.

“So, like, is the arm fetish out of bounds for superhero talk or were you planning to bring it up later tonight?” he asked.

The knife clattered to the table. “ What .”

“You've been checking out my arms since I walked into the kitchen,” he said with a laugh. He turned sheepish. “Sorry. You seemed embarrassed so I thought airing it out would feel a bit more normal.”

She stared at him. “Oh my God.”

“My Lady, it's fine!”

“You noticed!”

“No— well, I mean, a little bit.”

She covered her face with her hands and turned back around. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was just shocked. I’ve never seen your arms out of costume before. I feel like such a creep.”

“Aw, don't say that.” He came back over, and picked up the mixing bowl. “Here, do you want me to keep whisking? I’ll flex my biceps for you extra hard if that cheers you up.” He squeezed his arm tight, the muscles popping up.

She scrambled for one of the cardboard templates and smacked him with it. “Shut up.”

He cackled. But when she covered her face again, he sobered. “No— I’m sorry, please don't feel bad.” 

How fast would she need to be if she was gonna try that balcony thing? If he’d noticed her staring at his arms, what else had he noticed? Oh God, was he going to say he’d seen her staring at his hands?

“I am never going to look at you again,” she mumbled.

“Ladybug!” A hint of desperation appeared in his voice.

She didn’t respond, keeping her face glued to the safety of her hands. The material of her costume should be the only thing she was allowed to look at. No superhero partners with mixing bowls to distract her here.

He sighed. “Look, I’m not a total saint either.” The soft sound of the bowl being placed down tapped the table. “I… used to stare at your legs a lot, too.”

All self-loathing screeched to a halt. She’d misheard. Surely . But the quality of the ensuing silence felt too loaded, too much like he was holding his breath. 

Slowly, she lowered her hands. “...What?”

He seemed not entirely ready for her to look at him. He fiddled with his hands, picking a little at his nails. “It was, like, ages ago,” he said. “We were sixteen, seventeen, I think? You tripped and fell into me while I was sitting on our rooftop and I think I grabbed your knees and was like… whoa .”

He was messing with her. He had to be. She looked down at her legs, red and polka dotted and well, legs . Alya always joked that Ladybug’s legs alone could knock out any akuma, but that was Alya.

“But, I mean— it wasn't like you'd never seen my legs before?” she said.

A slow blush darkened his cheeks, in a way that she’d never seen on him before. “I think it was less about never seeing them before and more about touching a pretty girl’s legs.”

It was her turn to blush now.

Part and parcel of being a superhero was simply forgetting the concept of personal space. Even today’s battle involved their regular yo-yo tangle that Twitter loved retweeting hundreds of thousands of times. But the good thing about them was, well, it didn't faze them. 

Because how could it? Four years of knees lodging into spines and elbows knocking into chins and faces awkwardly close to chests — at a point, things like arms or legs were nothing but minor inconveniences.

They weren't things they blushed at. Not the way Chat Noir was.

They definitely weren't things that she stared at, either.

“Well.” She shifted her weight. “You were pretty hormonal when we were younger.”

He laughed, almost entirely an exhale, and visibly relaxed. “Yeah. It's a weird time.” He shot her a smirk. “What's your excuse?”

She picked up the cardboard threateningly. He leapt back before she could hit him again.

He returned to whisking, and she the gingerbread. Carefully, she tore a rectangle of baking paper and transferred the dough she’d cut. She rolled out the ribbons left on her workspace, then rummaged through the mess for a cookie cutter. 

She shifted her weight between her legs again.

Was he… looking?

No. No . That was not the road she was about to go down. They’d talked about it, they'd cleared the air, and now they were going to move on. She slammed the cookie cutter down harder than strictly necessary, as if that could knock her back to some semblance of normality.

He stopped mixing. “...Are you okay?”

She hesitated, fingers pressing hard into the cutter. “Don't you find it weird?” she asked. “Feeling things… like that?”

“‘Feeling things’?” he said.

This was awkward territory. He was over her, of course, but it wasn’t something you just asked about. What if she tripped into something sensitive, unhealed, a part of him that needed more time for the skin to grow back? She knew how hard it was for him back then. Why would she have even brought this up?

“Like… you know.” She struggled for a moment, hoping to direct the conversation to less precarious ground. “Finding each other… attractive?”

“...Well, It’s weird when we’re talking about it like this,” he said, and laughed. “Is it… weird for you?”

She pressed harder into the dough, watching it bulge inside the metal perimeter of the gingerbread man. “It’s… a little weird.” she said. “You’re, well, Chat Noir , you know? I mean, obviously you're pretty , but you're not really a guy .”

“Wow. Thanks.”

“You know what I mean.”

He chuckled. “I guess it makes sense,” he said. He twisted the whisk around the dough, as if he knew that he should’ve been looking for air bubbles. “But it's not as big of a deal for me, I guess. I mean, you’re my partner.”

Her eyes snapped up from the cutter. “Huh?”

“Ladybug. Come on.” He rolled his eyes. “You know you're hot.”

It was like he’d just dumped the entire contents of the mixing bowl over her head. 

“H- Hot?” she eked out.

He laughed. “Don't give me that! You come in here with your long hair and your fifty metre legs.” He flicked his head dramatically, water droplets flicking out. “Looking like a L’Oréal ad and a runway model mixed in one.”

She stared at him, half-certain that he wasn’t even speaking French anymore. “I don't— I don't do that.”

“ Sure .”

“I don't!”

“All of Paris agrees with me. All of France .”

“People just like the fact I’m wearing a skintight suit,” she said. She barely even paid attention to those tweets anymore, the accounts dedicated to waxing poetic about random parts of her body. “You know me. You've seen me try to cut an onion.”

“Was that supposed to turn me off?”

“It should have!”

“My Lady, listen,” he said. “You’re smart, funny, and drop-dead gorgeous. Anyone with eyes and a brain would be attracted to you. It's just a fact of life.”

How could he be so casual about this? Like being attracted to someone was something that was just there , like having a favourite ice cream flavour. As if there wasn't something so intrinsically not them about it.

Well… maybe not as intrinsic as she’d thought.

Seeing him walk into the kitchen with his arms strong and toned and damp had shot panic through her because… attraction was messy . Those feelings that had sparked in her couldn’t possibly be good for their partnership. How could they possibly fight akumas, knees lodging into spines and elbows knocking into chins and faces awkwardly close to chests, if just the sight of his arms had her vision magnetised to him? She and Chat Noir weren't like that. They could stand near each other without being distracted by their own biology. What kind of superheroes would they be if they couldn’t? 

But… if he thought finding someone attractive was something that casual, like having a favourite ice cream flavour, like treating it as simple as a fact of life, did that mean those feelings weren’t all that bad? That maybe even they could somehow work , the way he still managed to be a great hero despite what he thought of her legs?

She glanced up at him while he whisked, at the defined muscles in his arms, the length of his neck, hair pushed haphazardly away from his eyes. 

It’s just a fact of life. Continuous. Inevitable.

How bad could it be for their partnership, if everyone else would’ve stared, too?

She grabbed her cookie cutter and continued picking out gingerbread men.

“I think I’ve finished whisking,” he said. He set down the bowl and shook out his hand. “What now?”

“Just put it in the fridge,” she said. “We need to let it cool for a couple of hours.”

He crossed the kitchen behind her towards the fridge. When he returned, he stopped behind her and looked over her shoulder.

“How many gingerbread men are we gonna make?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe they'll be a gingerbread family.”

He laughed. “Do they get a gingerbread cat?”

“What? Where do you think I’m gonna get a cookie cutter for that?”

“Ladybug, it’s about the feeling .”

“I knew I made a mistake telling you about that.”

In a gust of breath, he blew on the back of her neck.

She jumped. She reached behind her and pushed his face away, all the while he laughed.

When she turned back to the table, she noticed, with dismay, how uncomfortably hard her heart was beating.

His laughter petered out. “Was that… weird?”

“What?” she said quickly. “No, of course not. You're always being annoying.”

And she didn't know what possessed her to do it, but she leaned her head back and blew against his ear.

He jerked back quickly, then set her with a look. Before she could process it was happening, he ran his fingers up her back, tickling her.

The image of his hand, that bare, uncostumed hand, with the dissonance of his manicured cuticles and chipped nails, entered her mind. Her face warmed.

She didn't laugh.

“Um.” He stepped back, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“Sorry. Just…” She trailed off. “You know.”

“Feeling things?”

She waited. The sky hadn't fallen. The apartment hasn't burst into flames. Her Miraculous was still in her ears. Hawk Moth was not suddenly breaking through the window. She was still standing in front of Chat Noir, still baking with him, still working as a team.

She let out her breath, and laughed. “Screw you and your arms.”

He laughed, too. Hard.

Was this how easy it was? Just being able to… talk about it? What happened to wanting to throw herself off his balcony?

Maybe she had been a little dramatic.

And maybe the only thing making it weird was her.

She transferred the last gingerbread man to the tray and brushed off her hands. “Okay. I think we can put them in the oven now.”

“What?” He pouted. “I didn't get to cut any out.”

“We have, like, three,” she said. “How big do you want the gingerbread family to be?”

“Huge,” he said. “I think they should have eight kids.”

“Eight kids!” She laughed. “My best friend is one of four. It’s like the whole house is a safety hazard.”

He smiled. “I always wanted a big family like that.”

The shift in tone made her look up. “You don't have any siblings?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just me and my father.”

Her heart clenched. She looked back over at the cookie cutters.

“Here.” She grabbed some more dough out of the bowl and set it on her workspace. She rolled it out until it was flat. “Make some gingerbread kids.”

“...Really?”

“Yes, really.” She handed him a cutter. “As many as you want.”

His face lit up, as if she’d just given him free rein to do whatever he wanted with the house. Did it really mean that much to him, making a gingerbread family for their gingerbread house? Making sure nobody spends their time in that house alone?

He took the cookie cutter and pressed it into the dough.

With the way he was standing behind her, she could feel his chest against her back, just barely, his arm bracketing her side as he cut. It was the kind of contact that didn't matter, like a side effect, while he twisted the cutter into the dough with precision she didn’t even see when he was cooking. She watched for a while, comfortably. Until she realised that the heartbeat against her shoulder blades was not hers, but his. 

He shifted.

She shivered.

He stopped, and looked at her.

“What?” she said.

He paused. “It's still weird to you, isn't it?” 

He sounded disappointed. 

She struggled for a moment. It was not weird — she’d made that decision. He could be attracted to her and she could be attracted to him and it didn't have to mean anything. It didn’t have to mean they couldn’t work together, or that they couldn’t be normal with each other, or that things would have to change between them.

But… 

She sighed. “Would you hate me if it was?” she said. “I’m sorry, Chat Noir. I just… I don't like things being so… different.” She looked up at him. “I like things the way they are. Without… feeling things.”

He was quiet for a moment. He didn't look sad, exactly, but that did nothing to assuage the guilt. After he’d done such a good job at being normal about these things, being the perfect partner like he always was, and now she was the one driving a wedge between them. Because, what — she couldn't handle a shift in feelings? As if that never happened. Even Alya’s feelings for her had shifted. Like he said: a fact of life.

Chat Noir put down the cookie cutter. “Give me two seconds.” He went around the table and disappeared into the corridor, turning into a direction he’d come through after his shower.

He returned wearing his full-sleeved, zipped-up hoodie, only his hands visible under the sleeves. ”Better?” he said, and smiled.

The sight hit such a note of familiarity in her that she almost felt emotional. That was Chat Noir. Her partner. Her friend. There were no feelings, no weirdness. It felt like… them.

She smiled. “Yes. Better.”

He came back beside her, and picked the cookie cutter back up. In a light, comfortable silence, he cut out his gingerbread men.

Through the corner of her eye, she watched him. It wasn't something furtive, or shameful, not like before. He’d just… changed so much. Since when had he become so mature? Would he have done something like this when they were younger, amidst the full force of his feelings? 

It made her feel soft and warm. Her chaton. He’d grown up so much. They both had.

Then, she looked at him. Really looked at him. He was taller, now, much taller, and he’d let his hair grow out. She thought about the photo of them on his shelf, how small and squishy they were. Time went by so fast. To think, Alya had captured that picture. An entire lifetime ago.

And yet… she could still see some of that boy in his face right now. His older, thoughtful-looking face, the face she’d been searching for during battle, the face that had filled her with relief when he landed on his balcony.

It was… very much the kind of face she had a tendency to like.

She sucked in a deep breath.

It was hard to acknowledge this. That, after all these years, maybe Chat Noir could be someone she actually saw that way. Because if it was true, if she really couldn’t be okay about it, if it really did make things irreparably different between them… she wasn't sure what she'd do.

He cradled each gingerbread man into the baking tray, his hoodie sleeves puffy around his wrists.

He was so careful she wanted to laugh. He bit his lip when he peeled their arms off the chopping board and patted their heads when he placed them down. He spaced them out evenly, making sure they were all straight, standing in a line like an army of gingerbread troops. 

And she felt something warm in her chest, like the first time she saw his handwriting, like the first time she saw his bookshelves. He was so soft. So much softer than he looked. So much softer than she remembered sometimes. Because this was Chat Noir, her partner, her friend, who used to sneak to food tech classes after school, who made her honey chicken because she mentioned it once, who, despite all odds, had been spending this break somehow just as lonely as she had, who, even when he didn't know it, was still working with her as a team.

Her brain felt quiet.

“Chat,” she said.

He looked over. “Yeah?”

She squeezed her eyes shut so she didn't have to see his reaction. “Can you… take your hoodie off?”

A long, tense silence followed. “...What?”

“Please?”

More silence. Her eyes remained steadfastly shut.

It wasn't until she heard a zip and the rustle of fabric that she dared to open an eye.

She looked at his arms. His neck. His collarbones. She met his eyes, and he must have seen it, but his confusion seemed to stop him from asking.

She stepped closer. Until she could see the small, dark hairs of his eyebrows peeking through the top of his mask.

And again, her brain felt quiet.

“My Lady?” he asked.

She kissed him.

It was like the insanity of it shut off all her neurons. She kissed him, the only thing in her being how normal this felt, so normal, oh my God, how could this feel so normal, how could they have been partners for this whole time and this was normal?

"Ladybug, I—" 

She kissed him again.

This was weird . This was so normal and so good that it was weird. Their mouths were touching and their lips were wet and she could feel the moisturiser on his chin rubbing onto hers. This was weird and she should stop. But also wow this was good, and oh that was his arm under her hand, and that was a good arm, and oh wait, oh no, wasn’t he trying to say something—?

She yanked herself from him quickly, myriad apologies already on her lips.

The lips which he then proceeded to dive in and kiss again.

His hoodie fell crumpled over her feet as he removed his hand from it, instead slipping it behind her neck, turning her to kiss her deeper. Oh. Oh . He was kissing her back. She was so dizzy she couldn't fathom what else to do than push harder against him. If she’d tried to kiss him before, would he have kissed her back then, too? She allowed herself to lament over the lost opportunities she'd had before he turned her by the hips and pressed her to the counter and her brain lost all capacity of thought beyond hhhhhhhhhhh.

Her hands slid up his body, over the contours under his tank top, until they rested on the firm muscles of his shoulders. The shock it sent through her was hard enough that she pulled back, panting.

They looked at each other, catching their breaths. His face was red, so hot she could feel it on her own. The same face from that photo, the face she’d searched for during battle, the face that, with her lip gloss smudged across his mouth, she… couldn’t quite recognise.

Her stomach drew into itself.

Ladybug stepped back.

“...My Lady?” His hands were still around her, but they’d grown hesitant, like he wasn’t sure where in this limbo between the kiss and now they stood.

She took another step back. This was a level of shame she’d never felt before, guilt that topped any guilt she felt from staring at his arms. She kissed him. She kissed him, but they didn't kiss, and how could she have thought this was normal?

She let out a deep, painful breath. “...I think…I— I need to— I need to go home.”

She shot through the partition and off his balcony, leaving her cookie cutters strewn across his table.

Chapter Text

The moment flashed through his mind like a movie reel — untouchable, unreal, a world other than the one he currently inhabited. He watched her lean up, watched the look on his own face when he pulled back, and, with a clarity that rivalled even Vincent’s DSLR camera, his own fingers digging into her hips, throwing her up against his dining table, kissing her mouth like it was something that made sense to do.

He slumped down on one of his dining chairs, suddenly unable to keep his balance.

Ladybug had kissed him .

There had been a time when such a notion would've felt like evidence enough that, despite all his previous notions, there was a God out there listening to his prayers, that miracles could really happen, that maybe he wasn't destined to be alone his whole life, and that maybe love was something that had been right under his nose the whole time.

This was not that time.

Because the only thing Chat Noir could think of was how this was not something that happened.

How hesitant had Ladybug been when she'd first crashed onto his balcony, when he'd offered they enter the competition together? He’d known, even then, it went against all her principles of superheroing, of maintaining that wall between them no matter how close their friendship got, of keeping their boundaries indisputably clear — they were partners, they were friends, but they had to be responsible.

Was what they had done responsible? He didn't think so. And given the way she’d left so fast she’d left the balcony door ajar, she probably didn't, either.

In a quiet smudge of black, Plagg floated awkwardly into the kitchen, perching a safe distance away on the dining table. “Adrien?” he said. He tucked his paws underneath his feet, perhaps for the same reason he himself wasn’t touching anything on the dining table, as if moving one of Ladybug’s cookie cutters might’ve caused some irreversible change he wasn’t prepared to deal with as of yet. “You okay?”

Chat Noir stared at his folded hands. A long strand of black hair was coiled around his Miraculous.

“...I’m not really sure what just happened,” he said.

“Okay,” Plagg said. “So, do you know what a kiss is?”

He set him with a look. 

But, honestly, he was starting to have his doubts. 

Did he know what a kiss was? He wasn't sure anymore. What he and Ladybug had done certainly felt like a kiss, felt more like a kiss than he’d ever imagined a kiss to feel, but that didn't make sense, because no matter how many other walls were broken, he and Ladybug didn't kiss , not even at the height of irresponsibility. They were partners, they were friends. They didn't kiss .

He looked at the hair caught in his ring. From when he'd pressed his hand to the back of her neck to bring her in deeper.

His face felt hot.

Okay, maybe they didn't kiss. But it sure as hell felt natural when they did.

The realisation made his stomach feel funny, and suddenly, the smell of gingerbread was too much for him. How could kissing Ladybug feel natural? She was— she was Ladybug , and sure, she was pretty, okay she was gorgeous, and yeah he used to stare at her legs an unhealthy amount, but he also used to be in love with her , which he definitely wasn't anymore, so why should any of the other stuff feel so… present? 

Unless. 

Unless he never really got over her.

Unless the whole reason he’d cared so much about having her here wasn't because he was lonely, but because he missed her.

Plagg looked at him carefully. “...Adrien?”

No. No, no, no . That was not an option. Absolutely not. He did not, could not still have feelings for Ladybug.

It was like the last four years of their partnership meant nothing to him. Like she hadn't told him off numerous times for how his feelings spilled out at her during battles, nor told him how stressful it could be when he thoughtlessly threw himself in front of her because he couldn't bear to see her get hit. Like it hadn't taken the bac to separate them, to dim the light of their friendship until it was just the skin of the word, before he could work with her normally again.

Because he knew if it was true, if, this time, it was an option, it would not be as easy as two years to get over her.

Not after the past few weeks.

Not after that kiss.

When Ladybug had accepted his offer to partner up for the competition, it had been on a mountain of trust. Trust that things wouldn't change between them. Trust that they'd still be partners by the end of this. Trust that, although she didn't say it, he would carry his own weight of their duties, that he would reinforce that wall, that wall that they needed, even if she forgot to.

He was not going to let his feelings get in the way again. He was not going to push the boundaries that they had between them for a reason, the boundaries that kept them working together, the boundaries that meant Ladybug and Chat Noir could be a team.

Yes, the competition had brought them closer. But it couldn't be at the cost of their partnership. Not after life had finally started feeling less lonely.

We're on vacation. Things that feel serious now might not matter much in January.

He had to remember that. Ladybug would've had her own reasons for doing what she had, but he wasn't going to fall into the same trap again — he wasn't going to expect more from her than she was ready to give, than would be beneficial for what was really important between them.

…It hurt, though. Just a little.

He sighed, bending down and picking up his hoodie. “Do you wanna break out the new camembert while I cook?” he said.

Plagg jumped up. “ Hell yeah!”

The kitchen still smelled like her.

══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══

She was frantically scrolling through her phone contacts on her yo-yo when, suddenly, she saw it.

Alya changed her WhatsApp picture. What used to be the two of them squished below the Eiffel Tower was now a selfie of her in front of Trafalgar Square.

Her footing slipped on the roof tile. She launched her yo-yo as far as she could but, finding nothing to take purchase on, it sent her swinging halfway through the Place des Vosges and left her to gravity right over the fountain.

The splash hit all six of the patrol volunteers sharing sandwiches on the grass. Their sticky name tags looked like inky drops of nothing.

 She staggered to her feet, ignoring the pain shooting through her back. “I am so, so sorry.”

“It's okay, really,” one of the girls, whose name tag either said Charlotte or Caroline , said. She exchanged an awkward look with the other volunteers, her soggy sandwich still clasped in her hand. “Are you, um, are you okay?”

No because my best friend took down the picture of us from her WhatsApp and I just kissed my other best friend on the mouth and everything is weird and different and I just need to breathe .

“I—I’m fine,” she said, and swung herself over to the bakery.

Tears pricked the corner of her eyes. Because of her back. Of course.

She de-transformed just before she hit her bed, luckily removing all the water with her transformation. 

Except for the water collecting behind her lashes. Hastily, she rubbed it away with the back of her hand.

Next to her head, her phone rang out. She grabbed for it, thinking maybe it could be Alya, maybe she was calling because she could tell something was wrong, that she wanted to talk to her best friend, that she still remembered to call even if it wasn't just to tell her how great London was, how great Estelle was, how something came up to keep them away from each other for an even more indefinite time—

She checked the caller ID.

Maman.

She bit her lip, and accepted her request to video call.

"Hi, sweetie," she said. She was lying in her hotel bed, an avocado mask smeared over her face. "Your father went out to look around Cannes. I'm having a spa evening."

She tried not to look surprised. It’d already been a few days since she'd last called her mum. She'd been so wrapped up with Alya and Chat Noir that it'd slipped her mind completely.

Her mum frowned. “What's wrong, baby? Were you crying?”

Quickly, she rubbed at her face. “No, no, I just, uh, woke up from a nap.”

She didn't press, but still eyed her carefully. "Where's Alya?" 

"Alya?" It took her a second before she realised. "Alya… Alya's at the corner shop," she said, the lie straining in her voice. "We ran out of mini candy canes. For the gingerbread house. She's just out buying some more."

Her mother was silent for a second.

"I got a call from Mme Césaire today," she said. "She asked if Alya had left her old backpack at the bakery."

"Oh?" Marinette said. "I'll… uh, ask Alya to have a look around when she gets back."

"From the corner shop?" 

"Um. Yeah?"

"Interesting. Because Mme Césaire mentioned that she really hoped the backpack was at the bakery and not with Alya, because Alya is currently in London."

"I… didn't specify whether the corner shop was in France ."

Her mother’s eyes narrowed.

"Okay, I'm sorry," she said. "I lied. Alya's been in London this whole time. I should've just told you the truth."

"I just don't understand why you felt the need to lie, sweetie," she said softly. There was no trace of reproach in her voice. "You never lie. Did something happen? Is there something I should be worried about?"

Marinette bit her lip. Wow, her back really seemed to be hurting right now.

"If it's too difficult to be alone in Paris, you know we can always come home early," she said. "It must be hard being by yourself. I thought… if you were at least with Alya—"

"Maman, no," she said quickly. "I'm okay. Really. Please don't worry."

"But I am worried," she said. "What happened?"

She struggled for a moment. Technically, she didn't need to worry about it. But when did that stop her mother from worrying? If she told her about the last few weeks, about the missed phone calls and the half-hearted text messages, and about her contract, and Estelle, and the uni applications, and her WhatsApp picture—

It wasn't a big deal. Not really. But her mother would want to be with her. Her parents were already finding it hard enough knowing they were across the country away from her. With the excuse of Alya at least, they had some reassurance she wasn't all on her own. But now…

Telling her that she lied so she didn't sound so sad all the time was out of the question.

And it also… wasn't all true.

Marinette sucked in a breath. "There's… a guy."

Her mother stared at her, blinking through the skin-coloured holes in her avocado mask. 

"A guy?" she finally said. "Did I hear that right?"

She flushed, saying nothing.

"I thought Adrien was on that skiing trip," she said. 

"Yeah, he is," she replied. "It's… not Adrien. It's someone else."

"Luka?"

"No, not Luka." She winced. "You haven't met him before. And we're…"

We’re what? She couldn't say partners, because that wouldn't make any sense, but the word friends seemed to not want to leave her mouth. 

She sighed. "It's complicated," she said. "And I didn't want to tell you because I don't really understand it myself either."

“How do you know him?” she asked.

She froze. “Oh, just… you know.”

An unimpressed raise of an eyebrow.

“Tinder,” she blurted out.

The silence that filled the line was heavy.

“...Okay,” her mother finally said. “Well, first of all, the pharmacy next to the bakery sells ellaOne, you can take that within five days—”

“ Maman!” Her cheeks flamed. “Not that kind of complicated!”

“Oh.” Relief filled her expression. “What kind of complicated, then?”

Marinette bit her lip. “Well, we’re friends, but…” She sighed, averting her gaze. “We may have… kind of. Kissed. A little.”

Hearing it out loud sent an anxious thrill through her belly. They had kissed. She and Chat Noir had kissed . It was like testing a new name out in her mouth — it was an unchangeable fact. She and Chat Noir had kissed.

The thrill quickly pretzelled itself into dread. She and Chat Noir had kissed . Why had she said it out loud? In the safe confines of her brain, she might’ve even been able to convince herself it hadn’t happened.

Unprompted, her mind went to him, and that pretzel morphed into guilt. How must he have been feeling, alone in his apartment, with no other explanation than her disappearance? Was it fair to want to just forget, convince herself it hadn’t happened, when it had affected him, too? She wished she’d given him something more than what she had, that she’d told him, in some other way, that it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him at all, it was just— it was just what it meant , what it felt like, as if the tectonic plates of her life kept shifting and shifting and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

A noticeable silence had fallen over the call. Then her mum finally spoke.

“And what does that mean for you?” she said. “The fact that you kissed?”

Marinette’s mouth ran dry. “I… I don’t know,” she said. “It freaks me out.”

“Did he pressure you?”

“What— God, no, maman, he would never.”

“Then what happened?”

She sighed. She turned her eyes all the way up to her ceiling, focusing on the chip in her skylight to divert it from the memory. “I… kissed him. And then… left.”

“...You left?”

“Yes,” she said. “I left.”

Another heavy silence. “You know, honey, boys don’t tend to like it when you run away after kissing them.”

“ Maman ,” she groaned. “I know that.”

“Sorry.” She laughed softly. “You looked like you could’ve used a little cheering up.”

Despite herself, a small smile curled at her lips. She really did miss her mum. She wondered if it would’ve been different if she was still in Paris, if maybe having someone to talk to about all of this would’ve made everything feel a little less confusing. But, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure if she would’ve even been going to Chat Noir’s apartment if her mum was here. If she had someone from her normal life to talk to in the first place.

The thought made her sad.

“Have you ever been in a situation where there’s someone you really care about, but you know you shouldn’t get too close to them?” she asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and smiled. “Your dad.”

“Come on.”

“I moved to France for him. My parents still refuse to talk to him.”

“But that’s dad,” she said. “It’s different.”

“How?”

She opened her mouth to protest, but realised, belatedly, none of her arguments were very convincing. Her mum and dad were just… different . They were different because their whole life sounded like a guaranteed happy ending from the start. She and Chat Noir didn’t have that. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted that, if it meant so much between them changing to accommodate.

“...It just is,” she said.

"Do you like him, Marinette?" her mother said. She was looking at her carefully, probing through the phone screen like a laser beam.

"I…"

"Because I'd like to think I raised you in a way that you'll always be honest about your feelings."

She sucked in a breath. "He's my friend," she said. "He's my friend. That's what matters the most to me."

"Hm."

The silence made her stomach seesaw. It wasn't a lie. She was just… embarrassed. That didn’t mean she liked him. She didn't.

She didn't.

"Well, what do you want to happen by the end of this?" she asked.

Marinette blinked. "What do I want?"

"Honey, when it comes to love, should s and shouldn’t s don’t matter that much." She shifted around, now lying on her side. "It either is or it isn’t."

Love ? She wanted to laugh, but she was afraid it’d come out as a squeak. This wasn’t about love . This was about… she didn’t know what this was about. But love was a word she didn’t want anywhere near this. Love wasn’t a word she used with Chat Noir. She wanted to keep it as far away from this as possible.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes.

"What I want…" she said. "What I want is for things to be normal. I… don't want things to change between us."

She smiled. "That's your answer, then."

It didn't feel like an answer. It felt like the same mess of thoughts she'd been trying to untangle since she'd run out of his apartment. 

"I don't understand," she said.

"You want things to be the way they were," she said. "Does that mean being friends with him? Or does that mean being something more?"

She turned her eyes back up to the ceiling, at the chip on her skylight.

"You're eighteen, Marinette. You're kind and intelligent and so mature. I wouldn't be doing justice to you by telling you what I think you should do. All I can do is guide you to finding your own answer," she said. "I trust your judgement. You should trust it, too. All I want is for you to be honest with yourself."

Honest with herself. Right.

What did that look like?

She paused, closing her eyes again.

Maybe her mum was right. When it came to… whatever this was, it either was or it wasn’t.

Marinette let out a breath, and opened her eyes. "I love you, Maman."

Her mother smiled. "I love you, too."