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Marinette's got a routine. It helps her keep herself organized and on time – at least, she tries. She wakes up, says hi to the Adrien who lives on her walls, eats breakfast, takes a shower and brushes her teeth, gets dressed, makes sure Tikki has snacks, and then she runs to school.
Introducing anything new into the routine is just asking for trouble. For months after she became Ladybug and after Tikki came into her life, she struggled with the new addition to her responsibilities in the morning; half the time she forgot the cookies, or remembered the cookies and forgot to feed herself, or forgot that showers exist at all despite taking one nearly every day her entire life. Her mental state is a very delicate equilibrium and it depends heavily on everything going to plan.
The essentially random nature of akuma attacks has done wonders for her day-to-day functioning. Really. She never used to be late so often before this year. She wonders, sometimes, what the others in her class think of why she's become this person this year, or at least, the ones who were with them last year – Françoise Dupont tries to keep people together if it's practical, so she's had a lot of the same classmates for years. Like Chloé. But also, like Nino and Alix!
Even considering everything that's been happening, her personal life has been pretty great, Marinette thinks with a contented smile, stretching hard as she luxuriates in the warmth of being under her duvet. The girls have been a tight-knit group of friends since Alya came to infect them with her energy and enthusiasm, and while the boys are looser and more chill – probably Nino's influence – they hang out, too. It's such a contrast from last year, when her classmates were mostly individuals, or pairs of friends who didn't interact with the rest. This is a nice change. An amazing change.
She rolls herself out of bed and lands lightly on the balls of her feet, skipping down the steps as fast as she can to take the quickest shower of her life. If she's fast, she might get through her morning routine before tragedy strikes.
But lately, Marinette's luck has been terrible in that department.
As she's finishing her breakfast, she slowly, slowly starts to feel the strings coalescing around her, first tugging on her finger, then her whole hand, then her entire left arm...
Marinette groans and grabs a croissant to shove in her mouth. Snatching up her bookbag and Tikki, she races for the stairs down to the street before it can tangle itself around the rest of her body, too. Marinette waves as she dashes past the door into the bakery, and her mother waves back, watching Marinette go with concern in her eyes.
Some days she's right to be concerned, Marinette acknowledges, because the strings that twist her up come early those days – not often, but enough to be annoying, because it makes getting across the street even more perilous than usual. But not today. Today, thanks to lucky timing on the light, Marinette makes it across the street before the strings tangle her legs together and make her fall flat on her face.
Alya helps her up, torn between wincing and laughter. "That one looked like it hurt."
Marinette groans. "I just wish they were on a schedule, you know? This is bad enough, but not knowing when they're going to be getting here early is terrible. -10 out of 10, do not enjoy."
"I'm sorry," Alya says, cuddling Marinette to her side and helping her up the stairs. There's still some amusement in her voice. "I shouldn't tease. I know you can't help it."
"No, you should not," Marinette says playfully. She'd tickle Alya, but they're going up the stairs and that seems like a bad idea. "Did I tease you when you showed up at Françoise Dupont and your strings immediately started trying to strangle you? No, I did not. I was a perfect angel and helped you whenever you needed it."
It feels like even her feet are tangled up now. Marinette can't help wondering about her soulmate. Is he having as much of a problem walking as she is? Is her string-related clumsiness replacing her normal clumsiness or is it all added together in a glorious mishmash, like creaming butter and sugar for Tikki's cookies? Looking around, there are a few people who are obviously suffering the same predicament as she is, though no one else that she can see is in such an advanced stage.
If her strings are this tangled, like a cocoon around her entire body, her soulmate should be no more than two meters away from her. That's what everyone says – her parents, the internet, doctors, strings experts and all the mythology Marinette could get her hands on. Well, sometimes it's feet or pes or paces or ligne, but all of it works out to about the same distance.
But the only person who's around when she's this bad is –
"Hey," Adrien says in her ear as he comes up behind her and rests his big hand on her shoulder. "Bad day?"
Marinette inhales sharply and only just manages to avoid coughing her lungs out. "Adrien!" Well used to Marinette's general everything, Alya tightens her grip on Marinette's waist and takes more of her weight. It helps. Marinette very nearly turns her ankle underneath her, and only Alya's firm grip saves her.
(It's always a bad day when Adrien is around, though he hasn't seemed to realize it yet.)
"Let me take that," Adrien says, slipping his fingers under the strap of her bag. He hoists it on his own shoulder and climbs to the step above Marinette and Alya, holding out his hand for her. "Can I help?"
Marinette watches him move with the perfect grace of a trained model. He's beautiful, he always has been, and part of her loves watching him move; but the other part of her knows what it means. He's not clumsy around her. He never has been. Not even once.
So he's not her soulmate.
And that hurts more than Marinette can say.
"Thanks," she says softly, trying to disguise the melancholy that always comes over her the first time she sees him every morning, when it's thrown in her face that Adrien isn't her soulmate, and never will be. He and Alya help Marinette to class and settle her in her seat, and Marinette props her chin on her hand while she watches Adrien get settled in front of her.
It wasn't this bad at first. The strings of fate take their own sweet time about curling around a person, and at first Marinette hadn't really noticed the tiny threads constricting around her pinky finger. That's all it was then: the slightest pressure, easy to dismiss as something she imagined or a bruise she got from smacking it against the wall. The pressure grew so gradually that Marinette didn't notice it happening. It was only when it literally yanked her hand off her desk one day as Adrien came in that she noticed anything was going on at all.
That's how it works. The closer two soulmates are physically, the faster it pulls them together; if they're on opposite sides of the world, the strings might take their whole lives to develop. If they've been next door neighbors their entire lives, they'd probably already know when they start school. There's no telling who it is, not at first, though someone might guess from looking at the other people around them who are stumbling and bumbling around like idiots just like them; the true test, the thing that makes it official, is when the strings develop far enough that they pull the people together. Eventually it yanks on them so hard that they're physically dragged toward each other. Sometimes, if they're really stubborn about it, their pinkies get stuck together until they acknowledge the bond.
Marinette always thought the idea was sweet.
That was before it started happening to her.
Adrien glances over his shoulder and smiles at her, and Marinette smiles back, which seems to reassure him. He turns back around as Ms. Bustier claps her hands for their attention, and they dive into Molière's Tartuffe and the nature and the types of hypocrisy in the Church he was critiquing within it. Marinette follows along while doing her best to take notes, fighting her hand's tendency to wobble – it wasn't this bad yesterday, she thinks to herself with her teeth set.
(She's ignoring the close physical proximity she's thrown into nearly every day with a black-clad cat. It can't be him. Tikki told her that the suits block them from feeling the strings on the remote chance that it might somehow betray their identities, so there's no way that his proximity is affecting her through the suits.
Right?)
At least her notes are still readable. Marinette dreads the day when they're not – when her only reprieve will be the few hours at night she's free when her soulmate must be at home.
Sometimes, Marinette is so frustrated she could scream.
She tightens her fingers around the suddenly slippery tablet pen and forms her letters with grim determination. Soon she'll have to start asking Alya for her notes – but not today. Not yet.
Sometime after lunch, the screaming starts. It sounds like it's several blocks away, but Marinette can tell that it's moving closer to the school. Ms. Mendeleiev starts ushering the rest of the class out of the door; Alya casts a worried glance at Marinette over her shoulder, but Marinette just shoos her away with a small smile.
This is the one area of Marinette's life that got better when her strings started pulling so hard. It's not safe for her to evacuate with the others, not when she could topple over and hurt herself, or pull down an entire crowd of students with her, so she's supposed to hide under her desk or in a supply closet and wait out the attack.
Alone.
Marinette waits for the sounds of people passing in the hall to go away before she opens her little purse. Tikki floats up, her eyes concerned, and Marinette gives her a smile, too. "Don't worry," she says to Tikki. "It's really not that bad today."
"Are you lying to me or to yourself?" Tikki asks with exasperation.
Marinette grimaces. That's a question she doesn't want to answer. "Spots on!" she says, and Tikki's expression flickers into irritation for just a moment before she whirls into Marinette's earrings.
Ladybug pours over her, like a cool and bracing shower, and the feeling of being compressed and crushed disappears immediately. She stands up and takes one or two hesitant steps before she really feels like she's steady, but after that, Ladybug dives out the window and swings away as fast as she can so no one will notice her coming from Françoise Dupont.
She loves akuma fights. It's awful that Hawkmoth is hurting these people, of course it is, but Marinette loves being able to move without tripping over everything all the time; the feeling of her body doing exactly what she asks it to the first time is nothing short of bone-deep satisfaction. Patrols are great, too, but akuma fights are extra, little treats dropped into her day like disruptive surprises to give her a break from the constant clumsiness and tripping and the pain, the embarrassment that sinks under her skin and lingers all day long.
It kind of sucks, honestly.
The akuma is smart and determined, so it takes Ladybug and Chat nearly forty-five minutes to capture and cleanse the akuma; luckily, she wasn't one of the destructive ones, so Ladybug isn't worn out and exhausted at the end, like they sometimes are after long battles. She pauses at the edge of the rooftop and waves at the press and the civilians gathered below her, smiling widely, and takes off.
She runs the roofs toward her school for a little while, but she pauses halfway there and sinks down to sit with her back against a chimney and her arms wrapped around her knees, breathing soft and steady, despite her recent exertions and the run. She's probably being missed right now, and if Ladybug were smart, she'd go detransform and claim that the akuma carried her away –
But just one more minute won't hurt, will it?
It's so nice to just sit down and breathe that Ladybug finds herself drifting, her eyes on the city and her body quiet and still and completely under control. That's how Chat finds her.
He plops himself down next to her and crosses his legs. "I thought you'd be back at school," Chat says cautiously.
"Maybe I'm home-schooled," Ladybug says lightly. "You don't know."
Chat gives that idea what it deserves, a snort and a raised eyebrow. "No, but really. Are you okay? You've been... lingering, lately, after fights. You used to yell at me about that."
"I'm okay," Ladybug says, giving him a smile. "It's..."
She wants to spare him this. She knows he still has feelings for her, whatever they might be, and this is going to hurt him, but... He needs to get used to the idea. If her strings are pulling this hard, she's going to meet her soulmate soon. Very soon.
"It's my strings," she says, chewing on her lip as she watches Chat go all stiff and still. "I'm almost there. Two or three weeks, at most. I'm really ready for it to be over. I'm clumsy enough as it is. I don't need the strings yanking me off my feet every five seconds, too. The suit blocks them, which is why I'm enjoying being still for a few minutes before I have to go back to being me."
"Oh," Chat says quietly. He sounds miserable, hollow, like she's given him a death sentence. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. "Are you okay? I didn't know they could get that bad."
Ladybug shrugs. "I think that because I'm naturally clumsy, it's somehow worse? Honestly, as long as I get out of this without a concussion, I'll be happy."
Chat winces for her, which is nice of him, but he still looks like a kicked kitten.
"I'm sorry, kitty," Ladybug says, very softly. "I know what you wanted, but..."
"I know," Chat says, interrupting her. "Really. I do. And it's mostly not that, actually. I was thinking about... Can I tell you something that no one else knows?" he asks, glancing at her again. "It can't be identity-breaking if no one else knows, right?"
Ladybug bites her lip, thinking it over, but Chat is right. How could that kind of secret threaten their identities? "Sure," she says, and smiles at Chat's relief.
"Cool," he says, leaning over to put his elbows on his knees. His spine is as round as a doorknob. It looks hideously uncomfortable to Ladybug, but Chat swears it feels good. Cats. "So my father has this thing about me being like, the ideal representation of the family? He doesn't want me getting hurt, but it goes further than that: he doesn't like me having obvious wounds, like bruises or a cast, and he hates the idea that the strings might make me look clumsy to the media or to my fan – " He stops, coughing. "To other people," he says hastily. "I mean. And the media would only care because... because... we're the most famous family of clowns in France! It's passed down through the family, you see, from father to son – "
Ladybug breaks out into giggles. "I believe that you're a clown, kitty cat," she says affectionately.
Chat makes a face at her. "Rude," he says, but he seems relieved. "Anyway, my father put me in dance lessons ever since I was really young. Like, four years old. He had them focus on poise and flexibility and just being able to move, you know? Between that and the extra flexibility from the miraculous, I don't think I could trip if I tried." He sighs disconsolately. "I always thought it was just to make me into the perfect son or whatever, but one of my friends is like you – her strings, I mean – and it made me think. What if I can't even feel them? What if the pull just doesn't work on me? How am I ever going to find my soulmate?"
Ladybug's heart clenches in an excess of empathy for the boy next to her. She leans over to the side and presses her shoulder against his. "You don't know it's not going to work," she points out. "Maybe they just live really far away, and it's not your time yet. Don't give up hope, Chat. It doesn't suit you."
He blows out a breath, giving her a look that holds more than its fair share of wry acknowledgment. "I guess," he says, playing at being exasperated. "Stop making sense while I'm whining."
"Stop whining," Ladybug tells him, sticking out her tongue. Chat tries to grab it between his fingers, but not very hard; Ladybug jerks back, gasping in offense. "Rude!"
"More or less rude than telling me to suck it up?" Chat asks, sticking out his tongue at her in return. Ladybug glares at him, but it's a pale imitation of her normal glare. He's right.
"It's not just suck it up," Ladybug protests. "You just have to wait for them to find you. I can't imagine that both of you have the same problem, can you?"
Chat shakes his head.
"Then you just have to wait for someone to attach themselves to your pinky finger," Ladybug says, pleased with herself and her logic.
"What if someone tries to fake it?" he asks, his voice softer and more vulnerable than she's ever heard it. "I want what's real, not someone trying to – "
Chat cuts himself off, but Ladybug looks at the clean lines of his profile against the Paris sky and remembers that half-cut off word, and the idea that the media cares about his civilian form, as well as Chat Noir. Maybe a false claim is something that he has to worry about, after all. "Then don't acknowledge it right away," she suggests. "I know it sounds mean, but if you don't, they'll still be cursed, right? It's hard to trip and fall like that on purpose. If they're really your chosen person, they'll understand why you need to do it."
He's silent for a long moment while the wind twirls and blusters around them, pulling at her hair, her hair ribbons, and Chat's hair, too; his tail is twitching rhythmically, like someone tapping their toes. "Maybe," he says eventually. "I don't know if I could do that to someone, but on the other hand, it would probably make me feel better... I don't know. I'll have to think about it."
"Whatever you need, kitty," Ladybug says, allowing herself to rest more heavily against him. "Even if it's just to talk. Or snap at each other like alligators. I still don't believe your teeth are that sharp."
Chat turns his head to look down at her, his eyes gleaming. He smiles wide, showing off his kitty fangs. "Wanna bet?"
He chases her across the rooftops for a while until they get bored, and then they turn around so she's chasing him, playing like children on a beautiful afternoon in the most beautiful city in the world.
———
It gets worse and worse over the next few weeks, until Marinette begins to feel like she's being yanked out of her skin every morning before school starts; her mother starts walking her over, concern deep in her eyes, and delivering Marinette to Alya in person.
It seems cruel from the outside – Marinette knows that, from when Alya and Nino went through the same thing – but encouraging the bond to develop is the fastest way to get through the worst stage, the clumsiness before attachment. She knows that.
Her knees may acquire every color of bruise under the sun, and her hands are scraped to hell and back, and her elbow might be fractured from slamming into a door, but this is the best way. Really.
Marinette groans and slumps over her desk in her second-period class, her head on her arms, letting her hair cover her face. She can't take notes anymore. All she can do is listen to the teacher and prove that she's paying attention when called on. Most of her teachers understand, thankfully.
"Poor Marinette," Alya says, only half mocking, as she strokes Marinette's hair comfortingly.
"It's really going to make you go all the way, isn't it?" Nino says sympathetically. "Sorry, dude."
"It's okay," Marinette says, sighing. "I'm just really ready for it to be over."
Adrien slides into his seat, and Marinette can hear the sound of him dropping his bag on the floor. "Hey, Marinette," he says hesitantly. "How are you doing?"
She pulls one of her hands out from under her head to give Adrien a sarcastic thumbs up – or that's what she means to do. But when her hand reaches out toward him, her strings suddenly seize around her, with a feeling like iron trapping her, like she doesn't have a choice, and her hand keeps moving toward his –
Until her pinky ends up smashed against Adrien's.
Marinette picks her head up and stares at their hands. "Um," she says, with impressive coherency considering the situation.
Is that really her hand stuck to Adrien's?
He's staring at her with his eyes wide and very green in the classroom light, astonished, his forehead wrinkling like he's confused –
Honestly, so is she?
"But you weren't stumbling or anything," Marinette says to him, half an accusation, her voice wobbling as she fights her overwhelming feelings of panic and distress and the sudden suspicion that the universe is playing a cruel joke on her heart.
"My father enrolled me with a dance tutor when I was four years old to teach me grace," Adrien says in a faint voice. He's looking at their hands now. "I felt something – weird – but I thought it was bruises from fencing."
What.
"What," Marinette whispers, staring at Adrien like she's never seen him before.
What are the odds that two green-eyed, blond-haired boys would tell her the same story two weeks apart? Glancing down at their hands, Marinette tries to gently tug her finger away from his, but she's stuck to him.
Stuck with him.
Marinette closes her eyes, breathing fast, as she tries to convince herself of anything except the stupid, absolutely asinine idea that Adrien could possibly be Chat Noir.
And fails.
"Maybe you shouldn't acknowledge it right away," she whispers.
If possible, Adrien's eyes grow even wider as he looks up at her. She knows that he recognizes the words she'd said on that rooftop. She can watch it on his face: the sudden shock, the hope leaping into his eyes, the very obvious glance at her earrings.
He knows.
"I know it sounds mean," Marinette says carefully. She can't remember everything she'd said, but parts of it stick out in her memory. "Your father doesn't trust people around you, right? Believe me, it's hard to trip and fall like that, and it hurts. I know I'm not faking it, but I would understand if you felt like you need to do it. For your father."
She's giving him her identity on a silver platter. Everything inside of her is screaming that this is a terrible idea, that Paris is doomed and maybe the whole world, but those are small and quiet things compared to the pure elation rising in Adrien's eyes.
"I don't think I could do that to someone," he says carefully, his smile growing. "And I know that I can't do it to you. I hate watching you fall, even if I love walking you to class. Besides, I'm really excited that you're my soulmate, Marinette," Adrien confesses in a soft voice. "And I don't want to waste even one more second."
Marinette beams at him, her eyes wet, and he grins back at her. As if on cue, they both close their eyes. As hard as she can, Marinette thinks:
Adrien Agreste is my soulmate.
Over and over again she thinks it, until all of a sudden, the tight, tense pressure around her body simply evaporates. She gasps at the relief, her shoulders relaxing and her entire spine going lax and loose. "Oh god," she says out loud. It's very nearly a moan. "That's so much better."
"Nice one, Agreste," Alya says, amusement in her voice. "I would have beat you up if you'd left her like that, you know."
"I know," Adrien says. Marinette can hear the bright smile in his voice. It's a great sound.
He puts his big hand over hers on her desk and Marinette's eyes fly open, her face going hot. Oh god, this is Adrien –
But the look in his eyes puts a stop to her panic. Yes, this is Adrien, the boy she's been in love with forever, but this is also Chat. And she's never more safe than when she's with Chat Noir.
"We only just cut ourselves free," Marinette points out, her voice only a little shy. "Do you really want to risk getting attached again?"
"Maybe that's what I'm hoping for," Adrien say slyly. "Would it really be so bad?"
He doesn't have the kitty cat fangs in real life, of course, and surprisingly, Marinette finds that she misses them. His wild grin doesn't seem finished without it, like he forgot something at home. "No," she admits. "Not at all."
Adrien hooks his pinky through hers, their sole point of contact, and he just sits there and smiles at her, like she's everything to him.
And that's all Marinette's ever wanted.
"I'm so glad it's you," she says, soft, quiet, a secret between the two of them – because Marinette's talking about the strings, of course she is, but Ladybug is talking to her partner.
They have so much to talk about. But for once, Marinette's not scared of the conversation. No. Looking at Chat's wild, carefree grin on Adrien's face, she has a feeling –
This is going to be great.