Chapter Text
He has his reasons. He just has to get away, that much was clear.
The Agreste mansion gets smaller and smaller behind him, though it’s not like he even turns back to look. He can’t. The grief holds him back, locking his neck. There’s only forward.
When Chat Noir dives into the night sky, he feels unburdened. Not that that was necessarily true, but it felt like it right now. He was on a high, when the fear temporarily receded and left only the positive.
When his momentum slows, he suddenly meets face-to-face with himself. Well, Adrien himself. It was the product of one of his recent shoots.
Pureness, that was the theme. Doves and angels, clear blue skies. Something his lunatic fans would be obsessing over for a while. Gabriel Agreste always tried to keep up that image of him, light and pure.
The Gabriel brand was represented by the color white. Over the years, Adrien grew to nearly detest the color. It felt like being trapped. He much preferred the color black, which oppositely felt like freedom.
The ad just served as a reminder for what he was running away from, though. Plagg had already assured him this was a good choice, the right choice.
It wasn’t too late to turn back, technically. It had literally only been 2 minutes, and it was four in the morning. No one could have been any wiser, if he so chose to.
No, he steels himself. He couldn’t back out out of fear. He’d already made a decision; Kagami taught him to never hesitate.
Admittedly, Adrien didn’t know where to go. Sure, he was familiar with pretty much every other rooftop in Paris at this point, but Ladybug was too and if he chose wrong, she could discover everything immediately. He didn’t even know how to tell her, if she even would want to know, that he ran away. Would she even accept the information, were identities that important to her?
He could imagine what she would say, if she found out. Or worse, what’d she do—could do. She was the guardian now; partnership didn’t really seem all that much in comparison. What if she thought his situation was too dangerous for Plagg and his miraculous? She would take it and if that happened, he’d be screwed. He wouldn’t be able to go home, but Adrien Agreste would be spotted immediately in the streets. He decides he’d have to hide this secret completely from Ladybug.
Chat Noir looks over the streets, but he didn’t really have any idea of what he was looking for. It was too early for anybody to be out. The streets were nearly empty, which felt strange for such a city as Paris.
The black of his suit made Chat hard to see if you weren’t paying attention. He usually did this—running across rooftops, playing hero—as an escapism, a diversion from his controlling life. But, now it felt more dangerous and real than ever. He supposes it is.
When he finally makes his way to some arbitrary destination of his, Adrien doesn’t understand why he was in eyeshot of Nino’s place. The realization that he wouldn’t ever get to experience hanging out with Nino again hurts badly.
It feels like he had just been drawn to this location.
Deciding to stay at that rooftop, his gaze seems to be pulled towards Nino’s window. Adrien shrugs the backpack off his shoulder, heavy with materials. A lot of it was camembert, as he would have to have to be Chat Noir. Aside from that, there were a few changes of clothes in the second big pocket, even though the catsuit would be most of what’d he wear, easy food like granola bars, a few other essentials.
He considers the idea to detransform here for a moment, but shakes his head when realizing it was too risky. It wasn’t light out yet, but in a couple hours it’d be. And if anyone catches Adrien Agreste on this random rooftop, or worse Plagg too, it wouldn’t take long for the rumors that he was Chat Noir to spiral. His heart tells him to talk to Plagg, but he wouldn’t be able to bear the hard truths that Plagg always gave him. It also wasn’t like there were very many ways of getting up where he was, and then simultaneously 'look like' Chat Noir too. It also wouldn’t take much for them to spread the word to Gabriel Agreste.
That could not happen. Ever.
So he doesn’t detransform. For a long while, he kind of just stared at Nino’s window. For some crazy reason, Nino’s up at this hour as well. He can see he’s at his computer, probably on some software (“A DAW, dude. It’s called a DAW.” he could hear Nino say in his head) making music. He desperately wants to come in; he’d actually only been in there twice as Adrien. Chat Noir isn’t Nino’s friend though—actually, he didn’t know where they officially stood—so for now, he’d have to stay outside. Nino had been pissed at himself for days after his akumatization, telling Adrien practically hundreds of times that he didn’t mean what he said about Chat Noir, and he badly wanted to apologize personally to the hero. It was practically the only thing he’d been talking about recently.
Sometimes, he thinks that Nino is beating himself up too much even when Plagg says that it maybe was a good thing. Said that he needed to ‘learn how to not be an idiot’.
Chat Noir doesn’t sleep, it wasn’t possible. He lays there, trapped by thoughts. Occasionally happy, nice memories. A picnic with his friends. Marinette’s birthday party. His first hangout with Nino. A bit of it was fear if his plan ended up going sideways somehow. Scenarios that fill his head detailed every possibility if he was found out. Chat knows he was catastrophizing maybe a bit, but how couldn’t he? Besides, it wasn’t like anything he was thinking couldn’t happen.
His father getting akumatized, succeeding in taking his miraculous, and then taking him back home. He’d be powerless and even more alone then. Or someone seeing him transform and it went all over the news.
The thought of either of those things terrifies him, and so when he realizes that it was his own doing—the spiralling—he tries hard to switch his mind to happy thoughts.
When the sun finally peeked out of the horizon, Chat Noir gets up at the same time. Got up, not as in waking up, but literally sitting upright—he was already awake. He shrinks under the harsh morning light, it was way too bright. He squints.
The rooftop was hard and uncomfortable during the night, but it was bearable. With a stretch starting with the flexing of his arms outwards and then down his body, he tenses, then flops down easily when his muscles relax.
The sun did make the rooftop warm though. He feels a pressure to simply resign himself where he is and fall asleep under the sun. It sounded nice, and it is tempting.
Chat Noir sighs; now that it was daytime, he probably should actually do something. As Chat turns to do something, he steals a glance back into Nino’s room—he couldn’t help it. Nino was getting up early. School started at 08:00 and so he honestly didn’t need to start getting ready until around 07:10. A glance at his baton told him it was only 06:45.
There are a couple early risers that open their windows. He really hopes that they won't notice him. He really doesn’t want speculation already. At least it would hopefully probably just be a false assumption that he lived near here.
“Chat Noir!” a couple screams excitedly. Loudly. Of course they had to notice him. Just his luck, he thinks bitterly.
Oh no, he sees Nino turn to his window at that too. Shit. Nino takes a few seconds to find him, looking in multiple directions, before they lock eyes. When he opens his mouth to speak, Chat Noir twitches—deciding, before promptly turning tail.
“Wait!” he hears, slowly fading into the distance.
He books it out of there, fleeing the scene entirely. Chat still hopes that Nino at least didn’t get too hung up on it. Thankfully, he’s fast enough and out of the way enough that no one else spots him.
He’s slow compared to usual, though, because he’s tired. He’s had experience however, one all-nighter won’t take him out. It occurs to Chat somewhere in his mind that he doesn’t actually know where he’s going.
Chat Noir is counting the day down by the minute. He just wishes that he was spending this day going to school.
He assumes by now Nathalie would have tried to wake him up, as she always did at 07:05 sharp every morning, and realized he wasn’t there. If he tries to show up at school, it’d make no sense. Nathalie would likely check the school today anyways. He didn’t even bring his school bag, so there was that.
It was fine, this was fine. Wasn’t this supposed to be a new normal anyway?
Chat Noir’s trip through the city isn’t without repercussions. People are relentless when they spot him, shouting his name and waving. Usually, he indulged them, but today it was just a lot of annoying attention.
When he finally realizes the direction he was already going in, Adrien decides to go to Marinette’s parents’ bakery for breakfast since he didn’t have his backpack right now—though he could easily go get it—and maybe he’d have the off chance of seeing a friend. That is if Marinette would be on time this morning.
When he walks in through the door, he doesn’t expect to see Nino there. Chat freezes. This was why Nino had gotten up early, damnit.
“Oh, Chat Noir!” Sabine calls. “How wonderful!”
Nino’s head whips around. They make eye contact, Nino looks shocked but delighted nonetheless. Chat knows he had been looking for this opportunity.
“Wait, dude—don’t run off again!”
“Sorry… I gotta go—” he chokes out, hastily speeding away.
“Are you okay, Nino?” Mme Cheng had walked up to him, she places a hand on his shoulder tentatively.
“Yeah, just need to… apologize to him after what happened.” Mme Cheng seemed to understand, nodding slowly. She probably saw the fan-submitted footage of the entire fight. Half of Paris probably did. Nino continues, “He just keeps running away from me whenever I approach him. Dude never acted like he has been to me until recently. I even saw him this morning, right out my window and he knew I was there.”
Mme Cheng seems to contemplate something in her head before suggesting, “Maybe he’s afraid of something. If you see him again, maybe offer him food—we have done similar things for him.”
Nino nods, “Yeah, thanks du—Mme Cheng.” He decides upon chouquettes, reminding him of his bro Adrien. If he gets lucky, Chat Noir will appear again on that roof tonight.
“Of course, honey. Let me know how it goes.”
After successfully paying for the chouquettes, Nino hurries to school. He’s lucky it’s right down the street, because waiting in line was tedious. Not that it was Marinette’s parents’ fault at all, but having to input the products in the machine manually (since they weren’t pre-packaged and given barcodes) took a while.
Only a few minutes until the first bell rang when Nino speeds in. “Hey, babe,” he says, not trying to hide his resigned expression.
“Hey,” Alya responds. She scans his face, narrowing her eyes. She knew immediately. “Uh-oh, thinking about Chat Noir again?”
Nino slumps down next to her, “Yeah.” He pauses, looking around, “Where’s Dri?”
Alya shrugs, “Not sure. Photoshoot?”
That didn’t seem right. If it was this early in the morning, Adrien would have gotten a warning and texted him about it.
“I can talk to LB if you want,” she offers, tapping the chain of her necklace once. The bell rings. “We’ll talk more at lunch, ‘kay?”
School so far had been uneventful, but it felt empty without his bro. Obviously Adrien missed a lot because of his busy schedule, but at least Nino usually knew about them in advance.
3rd period is dismissed and instead of going to the cafeteria up on the third floor like usual, they go down into the courtyard to eat. It was more private that way; Rose and Juleka sometimes came down to eat on the bench instead too, but not today it seems.
“Okay, what happened that spurred this on again? I haven’t seen you so down about it since it happened.” Alya inquires. And considering he has been down a lot about it, that was saying something.
Nino sighs, “I saw… him this morning as soon as I woke up, and he was right there on the roof of the apartment building across mine.” Like, they had even genuinely made eye contact. Nino still doesn’t really know why he was there. “And then when I went to Marinette’s bakery, he walked right in and then bolted as soon as he saw me!” he groaned.
“Can I have some?” Alya smirks, reaching her hand towards the bakery’s bag of chouquettes.
“They’re for him. Madame Cheng thought that it would be an easy excuse to invite him in.”
She laughs, her smirk becoming bigger, “Well… the way into a boy’s heart is through his stomach. And if you feed a stray, they might just keep coming back,” she says, repeating the phrases dutifully.
Nino huffs, it sounded like something Chat Noir’d say. “Yeah… with any luck the dude’ll come back ‘round the house again. Also, could you not ask LB for me?” he says.
Alya looks confused, but accepts. “Can I ask why?”
“I just want to talk because he wants to, not because she told him to.”
“Hm…” Alya sucks in her lip, a sign she was thinking. “Do you know why he was right by your apartment that early?” Of course, Alya probably has a couple of ideas already, but she asked anyway.
“Dunno, dude. And it was like, not even seven. Maybe he lives around there, or taking a shortcut to go to school,” he then corrects himself: “Actually, no. No school starts early enough for that.” That’d be a nightmare.
“Well…” Alya hopefully suggests, “maybe he was looking to talk to you too.”
“I hope so,” Nino replies.
The conversation goes stagnant after that. They eat in pretty much silence, though Nino does end up giving Alya a chouquette—he has an excessive amount if he’s being honest. It isn’t an uncomfortable silence, they’re so close that it’s kind of hard for it to be that way.
Later, Alya texts him. He can practically hear the befuddlement in her tone as she texts: heeay, just wanted to let u know that for some reason there are a /LOT/ of chat noir sightings today. maybe you’ll get lucky? <3
Nino furrows his brow in interest. Having a kwami, Wayzz, meant that he knew more about superheroes than the rest of Paris. And it didn’t make sense for Chat Noir to drain his own kwami’s energy all day long unless there was a reason. Usually that reason was akumas, but Ladybug and Chat Noir also did semi-regular patrols. This wasn’t either probably, but Chat Noir’s fine, so he only pays attention to the second sentence. Maybe he can finally catch up with Chat Noir, it really felt like the hero had been avoiding him.
When Nino sets his mind on staying up until Chat Noir shows—because he’s absolutely certain it’d happen for some reason, he doesn’t expect it to be so late. He had gone through 3 energy drinks in the past few hours, something that his mom would absolutely kill him for. She absolutely hated them, she cares about him too much for something like that to turn him in.
A streak of black shoots across the rooftops, landing on the same roof as Chat Noir had been on this morning (yesterday morning?). It was him. Nino had nearly missed it, he was so goddamn tired and jittery. He shakes himself out of his daze, opening up his window.
“Chat Noir! Please, come in! We need to talk—or I do, or whatever!” Shit, already messing this up. “I bought some chouquettes for you, if you just want to come in…? I know you want to talk too!” He probably sounds like an idiot, ugh.
Especially not in this darkness or distance, Nino can’t tell what the hero is doing in the moments before he leaps with one fell swoop onto his window. He balances like a cat on the windowsill, reluctant to come in. He honestly looks a bit scared, unsure of himself.
“Dude, I said come in.”
“If you insist,” Chat mutters. He slinks in, but doesn’t stand completely straight, his body still turned slightly towards the window. Nino notices that as well, his ears are drawn back and his tail coiling around his leg.
Even when he was trying to apologize, he somehow made it worse for Chat Noir. And that was definitely not the goal here. “...Uhm, so… chouquette?” Nino sheepishly offers the bag.
“...Thank you,” he says, taking in Nino’s room.
“Do… you wanna sit down?” Nino offers, gesturing to the lounge underneath his loft bed.
Chat Noir seems to accept, awkwardly sitting down. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Needed to talk. What are you doing up, and transformed, at this hour?” In hindsight, that sounded a little rude. That was decidedly not the right thing to say either because Chat Noir goes rigid and wide-eyed. Sensitive topic, his brain supplies. Okay, backtrack: “Alya thought you probably wanted to talk too, actually, so stupid question. Don’t answer that.” Nino says. It seemed close enough to the truth anyway.
“Uh, I guess so,” Chat Noir replies. He guesses he wanted to talk? There was definitely more, but Nino doesn’t want to pry more on the ‘stupid question’ so he couldn’t and wouldn’t ask.
“Listen, dude,” Nino chokes. He doesn’t even know how to, or if he should, slowly segue into the topic. And he doesn’t want to say something wrong by accident, though he had rehearsed in his mind tens of times over the past couple hours. “I messed up so bad. I seriously hurt you over some dumb bull that I made up in my own head. And just holy shit—I’m so sorry because I actually do really respect you and admire you for everything you do for Paris—”
Chat Noir cuts Nino off, “It’s fine. You were akumatized.” And how could he be so dismissive?
Nino frowns. “It wasn’t like that. It was before that, that’s why I got akumatized! Right before I got akumatized, I said some awful crap because I took things out of context. I should’ve trusted Alya and I should’ve trusted you, man.”
Chat Noir’s ears flatten even more. But then, they flicker upwards slightly. “It’s in the past, okay? Apology accepted. So… bros?” Nino still doesn’t like how completely dismissive Chat Noir was being of the situation, it wasn’t right.
Deciding that he shouldn’t push, he tries to pull a smirk, holding out his hand for a pound it. “Bros.” They both smile, and Nino can see the relief sink into Chat Noir as his body untenses. “So, you gonna head home?”
Nino’s heart drops down to his stomach when Chat Noir has that same reaction. Like he wanted to run, but was frozen still as a statue. Was it connected to why he was out right now?
Instead, Nino quickly offers, “Hey, you know, you can always stay here for the night. I got the lounge and everything, probably would keep it under wraps from my parents though.” He slowly whistles, “Don’t know how they’d react, but. I’d still let you stay.”
Chat Noir flushes, “Thank you—Nino. I’ll… keep that in mind, but I should go.”
And where are you going? Nino thinks but doesn’t ask. “Please. Consider it. Offer’s always open, dude.”
Actually, he should probably ask his parents... they'd be pissed though. It wouldn’t be too hard to hide a cat superhero in his room, though. Right?
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and then nods. Chat Noir jumps out the window with a bag of chouquettes in one hand, baton in other, and Nino watches as he then extends out his baton. He seems to lean over and do something on that rooftop before leaping away again.
Nino runs his hands along his face, and sighs. He’s certain they’re on better terms now, but clearly something is up with the guy. Chat Noir had already inadvertently given him some hints, though it wasn’t much and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
Never before had he seen Chat Noir act like this either. He had seen Chat Noir maybe angry or jealous, but that differed from this. Nino has the feeling it was probably too personal to share without risk, but still. He looked totally… lost. Something is definitely wrong.
He wishes that he had Alya here to bounce ideas off of. She was always good with that, and she seems to have some personal stake with Ladybug. Alya never really wants to reveal much of that to Nino beyond now being Rena Furtive, which is disconcerting but he won’t push on it nonetheless.
Having Wayzz here too would be nice. They don’t get to talk much because Ladybug holds the turtle miraculous permanently, but Wayzz is always so insightful. He could see things from any perspective.
Maybe he should text Alya even though it was late as hell. Besides, she placed her phone on silent for text messages at night and he isn’t desperate enough to call.
al, can u call or come over tmr; something happened, idk what to think. need help. ly <3 He sends the message to Alya. She’d understand why he texted her at this time once he told her what happened.
He knows. He knows. is Chat Noir’s first thought as soon as he leaves Nino’s room. He couldn’t help his reaction, his flinching, when Nino had said those things. Not that he blamed Nino either—how could Nino know? But, shit was he cutting it close.
After grabbing his bag from his spot last night, he decides to go to the most hidden spot he could remember. Luckily for him, it isn’t too far. Chat Noir feels he can hardly stand anymore, but he has to persevere. It had already been more than 30 hours since he’d slept.
Nino had offered him a place to stay, to sleep more importantly, but he had to turn it down. There is no way that he could accept it. How would it look? Even if Nino is only a little suspicious right now, what would he think when Chat Noir practically admitted to needing said place to sleep? No, he couldn’t.
Keep up the illusion that he was fine, that’s all he needs to do.
How much did Nino even know? Clearly, something by the way he kept correcting himself or doing whatever. Nino was paying attention to his body language, too—using night vision, Chat Noir could see his pupils focused on him. The way his eyes narrowed, looking at his reactive ears or tail, watching his freezes and closed-offness.
When Chat touches down on the new rooftop, he’s finally free enough to talk to Plagg. And he really does want to.
“Claws out,” he spits out.
Plagg zips out of the ring in a flash, appearing on the ledge of the rooftop. Adrien quickly pulls out wedges of camembert from his backpack guiltily. Plagg groans.
“You drained my energy,” he states.
“I’m so sorry, Plagg,” Adrien begs.
The kwami looks at him tiredly, but begins to eat. Adrien doesn’t even care about how gross the cheese was right now. When finished, he responds, “Don’t be. I’d rather this, than be around your father anymore.”
It isn’t lost on Adrien how much vitriol Plagg said ‘father’ with. The more he and Plagg talked about him, the more he followed Plagg’s and Nino’s opinion on his father. He supposes it was just hard to understand because he never lost anything, his father had simply always denied things to him: school, hanging out with friends, or even having friends at all.
“Yeah,” he concedes. Adrien sits up against the ledge Plagg was on, and quickly begins to tire. His eyelids grow heavier with every blink, until each one is more than a few seconds. After a while, Adrien falls asleep without realizing.
In the morning, Adrien wakes up a couple hours after dawn, roughly judging by the sky. When he sits up, he can feel the soreness of his entire body. He groans, stretching and testing out his muscles as he stands up.
Adrien looks at the bag of chouquettes, and half-heartedly takes a couple. He offers Plagg camembert, which the kwami quickly accepts. Adrien takes his time eating staring at his food, knowing that he has nothing else to do and no schedule to adhere to. Eating also just didn’t seem important to do anymore, if he is being honest.
His mind begins to wander, and he questions what his father (or more likely Nathalie) is doing about him right now. By now, they’d obviously have to have noticed. Would Nathalie go around asking his friends for his last known whereabouts, if he had run to them? Maybe, but his father wouldn’t like many people knowing that Adrien had disappeared.
When Adrien ran away to go to school, his father ended up being more mad in the end about a photo a bystander took of him getting angry at Nathalie. He had to pay the guy handsomely not to sell it to the news. There was no way he’d let a repeat happen if Nathalie were to be discovered looking for her boss’s son, so Nathalie wouldn’t be doing that at all.
No, they’d probably just wait for his ‘fit’ to be over. Adrien probably has a punishment simply waiting for him at home, the Agreste mansion, he means.
“Hey, kitten.” Plagg pokes him.
“Hey—!” Adrien swats Plagg back. “Yeah?”
The kwami huffs. “Could you actually eat instead of wallowing?”
“I’m not wallowing. Just thinking about… what my father would do,” he mumbles.
“Yeah, well, not your problem anymore, is it? Eat.”
Adrien obeys, taking a large bite of chouquette while eyeing Plagg. The kwami looks pleased with himself.
“Okay!” Plagg flies closer to Adrien, off his perch on the ledge. “What do you wanna do today, kid?”
His gaze averts downwards, he doesn’t want to exhaust Plagg again.
“Kitten, why don’t you go out again? People-watch or whatever it is you do,” he flippantly waves his arm.
“Okay…” He still feels guilty, but Plagg has essentially given him a green-light, hasn't he? “Claws out.”
When Chat Noir vaults into the busy city, he feels that same unbridled feeling. A sense of being unlimited, if he was to describe it. It nearly makes him start purring, a pressure in his chest and throat—wait, what? He shakes it off, and with it that feeling.
What he wants though, is to see his friends. Yeah, he had seen Nino last night, but it wasn’t the same. He wants to actually hang out and have fun with them, and have them know it was him too. He values being Chat Noir and he had never told anybody his identity, but for the first time ever, it paled in comparison.
Did that make him a bad hero? Obviously, he’d never tell anyone though… But it was nice dreaming up a scenario in which he did. Would it even be ideal anymore? He ran away, things would be different with him now.
Chat Noir sighs, mumbling something unintelligible under his breath. Even though Plagg hadn’t mentioned anything, he experienced weird tinglings and pressures sometimes. Like the feeling with the purring, he had felt the same other times before. And he had read about cats sleeping in concentrated sunlight, and he had also felt the same about that yesterday morning.
Would Plagg have said something if this was another Chat Noir thing, and it must be, right? Plagg had been vague after the first time he found himself purring, during battle embarrassingly enough. Just said something about how he’s such a cat. Adrien decides that he needed to have a conversation with him later.