Chapter Text
Chloé slammed her hand down on his desk, startling Adrien from his daydream of a lithe girl in a red and black spotted jumpsuit. Her lips were drawn into a fierce scowl, eyeshadowed eyes flashing. “Is it true?”
Adrien blinked. “Is what true?”
“You and Chat Noir.”
Adrien’s heart came to a grinding stop. Until this point, no one in class had been paying attention to him. The lunch break had just begun, so students had either exited the classroom to grab something to eat or hurried away to talk to their friends in other classes.
Chloé’s question snagged the attention of the several students who’d lingered in the classroom. Alya ceased tittering on about the newest post on her Ladyblog. Adrien could feel her dark eyes boring a hole in his back.
His mouth tasted like metal. “M—me and Chat Noir?”
“You heard me,” Chloé hissed.
Adrien felt more eyes on him now. He suppressed the urge to shudder. “W—what about him?”
“Don’t play dumb!”
All other conversation had lapsed into stunned silence. Adrien was thankful Nino had gone to the cafeteria to grab himself a sandwich. He didn’t know if he could handle the odd looks his best friend would have certainly been giving him. As it was, he could hardly stand the fact that everyone else in the classroom was staring at him, too.
Too many questions rose in his throat, the first being: How? How the hell did Chloé know? How had bratty, stuck-up, self-centered Chloé figured out his identity before his intelligent, brave, selfless teammate could?
How was he going to explain it, if Chloé had learned the truth? He couldn’t even begin to imagine what the rest of the class would do. Their eyes were searing holes into his spine; he wondered if there would be singe marks on his jacket if he were to look.
He heard Alya whisper something to Marinette, but it was too low to hear. Marinette didn’t respond, and Adrien could only imagine her reaction.
She’d interacted with him both as Adrien and as Chat Noir. She’d grown better at conversing with him when he was Adrien in the past few weeks, and she seemed to have no problems talking to him when he was Chat Noir. He found both aspects of her endearing, though he was thankful she was finally working up the courage to carry out a conversation with him when he wasn’t sporting cat ears and a tail.
Chloé’s lip-glossed mouth started forming words, and Adrien barely heard them through the low thrumming battering around in his skull like trapped butterflies.
“Are you…”
Oh my God, this is the end. This was how Chat Noir’s world ended: being outed as the hero of Paris by the class bully, who could barely finish a project on her own, but had somehow managed to excel at deductive reasoning.
“...dating Chat Noir?”
All side conversation stopped as if she'd fired a gun at the ceiling.
That was not what Adrien was expecting to hear. Chloé’s words echoed over and over in his head, but no matter how many times he went over them, he couldn’t seem to process the question he’d been asked.
He stared at Chloé. Blinked. Opened his mouth to respond. Closed it. Shook his head, not fully comprehending, and then opened his mouth again. All that emerged was a meek, “Huh?”
“Are you dating Chat Noir?” Chloé repeated, enunciating every syllable with a firm thwack on the table.
Adrien let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Chloé,” he sighed, suddenly aware just how out of breath he sounded, “you’re being ridiculous. Chat Noir is...a friend.”
Her eyes went wide. “You know him?”
“Of course I do!” Adrien said, exasperated. “Everyone in Paris knows him!”
As Chloé continued to glare at him, Adrien realized he could have lied and said that he knew nothing about Chat Noir. He was one of the heroes of Paris, and that was it. But Chloé obviously had a reason to assume he and Chat Noir were...in a relationship...and shutting her down with the “just friends” statement seemed to be the best he could come up with.
“So, you’re friends with him?” Chloé wrinkled her nose. “Is that why he was going into your bedroom last night?”
“He was looking for information,” Adrien said quickly. He was impressed with how quickly the lie came forth. “Akuma stuff. One of my father’s business associates has been acting odd lately, and he wanted to know if I knew anything.”
“So he came into your room at eleven o’clock at night?”
Adrien shrugged and did his best to look innocent. “Superhero time clock?”
Chloé exhaled through her nose.
“I always thought Ladybug and Chat Noir were a thing,” Alya mused aloud.
Behind him, Marinette made a stifled, squawking sound.
Adrien bit back a startled laugh. He’d once lied to someone about being in a relationship with Ladybug. It hadn't ended well—resulting in an akuma attack and a case of mistaken identity. He continued to flirt with her, tease her and joke about a love that didn’t exist, but if he was asked about it, he and Ladybug were teammates.
“I don’t think they are,” Adrien said, trying his hardest to sound indifferent. “I’ve never—I mean, Chat Noir’s never said anything to me about it, so I don’t think—”
“You talk to him about relationship stuff?” Chloé barked.
“We’re friends, Chloé,” Adrien exhaled. “Of course we do.”
“And your friends just come into your bedroom at all hours of the night, then?”
“Nino has!” Adrien retorted, fed up with the whole thing. “And besides, how do you even know about that?”
“I have my sources,” Chloé said with an indignant sniff.
“Chloé’s dad thought he saw Chat Noir lurking around near your house last night on his way home,” Sabrina offered.
“Sabrina!” Chloé shrilled.
Adrien put his head in his hands and took in a deep breath. “Chloé, it’s seriously not what you think it is. He told me that he and Ladybug have been concerned about a potential akuma. One of my dad’s assistants. He asked me if I knew anything. That’s it.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Adrien thought he saw Marinette frowning. He wondered if the conversation was starting to annoy her—then again, most things involving Chloé tended to put her in a foul mood.
Chloé opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to snap a retort or form another argument. But before she could say anything, Nino came into the classroom and announced, “Hey, dudes, what’s with all the shouting?”
“Apparently Chat Noir’s dating Adrien,” Alya replied with a small laugh.
Nino’s mouth dropped open into a stunned O. He glanced at Adrien, pupils blown wide in his skull. “Dude, are you serious?”
Adrien dropped his head onto the desk. This was going to be a long day.