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Ladybug dropped onto the ledge he was sitting on and hid her face against his bicep. “Ugggggggg.”
“Awww, what’s up Bugaboo?”
All he could make out was incoherent mutterings muffled by the material of his suit. Chat laughed. “Awww, poor Bug. Has your ‘fantastically handsome’ boyfriend got you going in circles again?”
Getting to where they were had been a long process for him. Of course, when Ladybug had first insisted they were going to be platonic and that was that, it wasn’t like he could process it, fully, with anyone but Plagg. Thankfully, his friends had been there for him, even if he had to make up excuses for why he couldn’t explain all his heartache to them. More than anyone else, Marinette had been his steadfast rock and, in the process, she had become something more. As loath as he was to admit it, Adrien had put Ladybug on a pedestal, and that wasn’t something that would make a great foundation for a relationship. It wasn’t that he didn’t think the world of Marinette, because he did, but she was human in a way that Ladybug couldn’t be.
It had started with an invite to attend a fashion function as his plus one. Three more similar “friend-dates so that I’m not bored and Marinette can network” and his father told him to invite her over for dinner. That night was the first time his father had shown up for “family” dinner in six weeks. Sitting there, watching Marinette debate the pros and cons of tulle with his father, excited to learn but also stubborn when she knew she was right, Adrien had an epiphany. Marinette was someone he could see himself with for the rest of his life. By his side, not a starry eyed fan or a co-worker leveraging his name for her career, but a partner. He asked her to be his girlfriend officially when he dropped her off at home that night. All the lights of Paris couldn’t shine brighter than her eyes at that moment.
He had expected telling Ladybug, because he felt he ought to tell her, to be awkward. It took him a couple of days to broach the subject, but miraculously it wasn’t that bad. As it turned out, she and her old flame had started dating as well. Ironically, chatting about their respective relational bliss ended up bringing them closer together. They each shared jokes and embarrassing moments, vaguely talking through conflicts and helping each other see the whole story. They were best friends and Chat-well, Chat was okay with that.
Which brought him to now, with Ladybug attempting to smother herself on his shoulder.
“Laaa~dybug”
“Ugggggg my boyfriend found out about the biting thing.”
Chat couldn’t contain the burst of laughter at that. “Yeah I’m really not surprised he found out, just more surprised it took him this long. What happened?”
“So, like, he had gone to a water park with his best friend, right? And I sent him a text making fun of his goggle marks. And he sends this picture back, like, I don’t even know what it’s from. But it’s some maroon haired swimmer anime dude”
“Rin Matsuoka?” Asked Chat.
“I don’t know. Does he have maroon hair and like, really sharp teeth?”
Chat burst out laughing. “Oh gosh, he sent you the biting gif didn’t he?”
“YES! And like! What even is that??”
“What did you send back?” Chat had to laugh again, remembering his own brush with the infamous gif earlier in the day. He had a swimwear photoshoot and had gotten a dig from Mari about how cute he looked with racoon eyes from the goggles. He had sent Mari the gif back (she was catching up on his anime collection, but they hadn’t gotten around to Free! yet) and she had played it off, but not without dropping a hint that she wasn’t opposed to the idea. If that was Mari’s response, he had to wonder how Ladybug had responded.
She buried her face in his shoulder again.
Chat burst out laughing. “What’s that, Bugaboo? I can’t hear you.”
She snapped her head up to look at him, fire in her eyes and cheeks blushing red as her mask. “I texted back ‘well two can play at that game’ and then he was all ‘Oh I see how it is’ AND NOW MY LIFE IS OVER.”
Chat managed to choke on air. The cause was probably a combination of Plagg’s ambient bad luck and the fact that’s had just had that *exact* conversation with Marinette. Like, word for word.
"Everything okay, Chat?"
Chat nodded, holding up a hand as he continued to hack up what was either a hairball or an entire lung.
Ladybug looked at him, waiting for some more substantial reassurance (one that, frankly, he was in no position to give her). “Are you sure you’re Feline alright?”
That comment fixed Chat’s dual choking/realizing-he -might-be-secretly-dating-his-former-celebrity-crush’s-alter-ego problem. Unfortunately, it did so by causing a separate crisis because, holy cats ladybug was punning! Which is to say that he stared at her, pupils fully dilated like a cat on catnip.
Increasingly concerned, Ladybug reached out, floofing his bangs back to put her hand on his forehead.
At this, all production once more came to a screeching halt at Agreste Mental llc. as that was, despite Ladybug having never made the gesture to him before, an achingly familiar move. There had been one— ONE —time he had gotten sick after a photoshoot in the rain, and now Marinette checked his temperature every time he looked even a little flushed. And, given a) he had a really cute girlfriend and b) secret superhero shenanigans, he was often quite flushed. So yeah, all in all Adrien was quite proud to say he could recognize the back of his girlfriend's hand anywhere, and, supersuit or no, that was Adrien's girlfriend's hand. Now, had he been firing on all cylinders, he probably would have come to some quippy remark upon his clean bill of health and lack of need for a vet. But he wasn't (see above discussion of the current capacity of Agreste Mental llc) so his recently rebooted mind simply spat out the default line that usually forestalled further girlfriend-ly concern
"Maribug, I'm fine"
Chat liked to think of himself as a sensitive person, attuned to the emotional states of others. He, especially, could read Ladybug or his princess like open books. So, when Ladybug stiffened as he said the words, all mental facilities came back online with record breaking speed.
"I mean, Buginette . . . wait. Camembert, how did I mISS THAT?"
The fact that he had been so close to the truth all this time, hiding it right under his own nose so to speak, would forever be a sore spot for Chat. While he was busy berating his subconscious nickname-generator for not clueing his conscious mind onto the singular identity of his beloved, Ladybug was processing.
Hers was an easy equation to solve. It was a crisis she'd already gone through once, when Adrien first started calling her "Maribug"
It had started as a joke once after she accidentally went full Ladybug on an unfortunate mugger. But, as her confidence grew, it was one of the only nicknames that consistently made her blush, so Adrien had reserved it as a special name, not realizing (so she found out) why she liked it so much.
The math was simple this time:
Chat had called her Maribug.
Only Adrien called her Maribug.
Thus, Chat was Adrien.
She looked at her partner, grabbing his face and looking into his eyes. Well, no clues to his identity in those irises, but she knew his eyes were different out of costume (knowledge gleaned from a game of 20 questions during a spectacularly confusing Akuma that still gave her a headache to think about). But she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and just thought for a moment, and immediately the answer came. She knew the shape of the face in her hands, the jaw line, the high cheekbones. She'd memorized that face from magazine clippings and class photos, from study groups and quiet nights in (where decidedly less studying happened). She leaned over, resting her forehead against his (her mind assured her that he was not feverish, quickly connecting the loopy, confused Chat and the very sick Adrien the last time her kitten had been caught out in the rain).
If she was honest, part of her had stopped believing life was real about three years ago when a small red bug had flown out of a jewelry box, had kept waiting for the moment when she woke up and went back to being her clumsy, scared, unlucky self. But of all the things that had happened, this seemed the most unbelievably lucky of them all.
She couldn't trust herself more than a whisper, scared raising her voice might wake her from the dream
"Adrien?"